Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings Veer into Absurd Comedy

Saturday Night Live is necessary to process the pro-
rape faction attempting a take over of the United States.
Above is a head shot of Matt Damon offering a
brilliant depiction of Brett Kavanaugh's appearance
before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

Meticulous journalism is insufficient to describe the macabre affair of the rapist wanna-be nominee to the United States Supreme Court.

Committed to the state taking away a woman's right to choose, and other liberties deemed threatening to the Republican Party, Brett Kavanaugh's denial of attempted rape before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary left civilized Americans traumatized and outraged.

Saturday Night Live is necessary, truly.
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The Intercept has consistently offered the most insightful coverage of Kavanaugh, a partisan and personally repulsive figure, leading America into a land of permanent Republican rule.

Mehdi Hasan writes today on solutions:

Only a new FBI investigation into Ford’s allegations, time-limited to a week, now stands in the way of Donald Trump entrenching a hard-right conservative majority on the Supreme Court for a generation or more.

To be clear, such a majority on the Court would be an utter disaster for women, for people of color, and for the poor. One upside of Kavanaugh’s raw and angry rant on Thursday—he referred to the Democrats on the panel as 'you people,' a 'disgrace,' and accused them of exacting 'revenge on behalf of the Clintons'—is that it exposed the Court for what it is, a partisan on the political battlefield, not a disinterested defender of the Constitution.

So it’s past time for liberals and the left to consider court packing: When they next have control of the House, the Senate and the White House, Democrats should add at least two new seats to the Supreme Court and then fill them, ideally, with left-wing and well-qualified women of color. They could even call it 'court balancing.'

'Pack the courts as soon as we get the chance,' tweeted Indiana University law professor Ian Samuels, the co-host of the popular Supreme Court podcast First Mondays, on the the day Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court in June. 'Pack the courts' should be a phrase on par with‘abolish ICE.'

This might sound extreme – but it isn’t. The Constitution allows for Congress to decide on the number of Supreme Court justices. 'There is nothing magical about the number nine,' HuffPost’s Zach Carter observed in June. 'The court was founded in 1789 with just six justices and has included as many as 10, from 1863 to 1866 — when a Republican legislature intentionally shrank the court size to seven justices to prevent President Andrew Johnson from making any appointments.'

Do not believe for a moment that even at this time of maximum peril, the Democratic Party necessarily knows the stakes.

Most, if not all, social questions would be decided without regard to the general welfare and the rule of law. Much of the progress made in the United States in the past 150 years would be eroded, including civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights, and other liberties we take for granted.

Raising Brett Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land is the fulfillment of the Republicans' long game.

As David Brock has stated, "I don't need to see any documents to tell you who Kavanaugh is — because I've known him for years. And I'll leave it to all the lawyers to parse Kavanaugh's views on everything from privacy rights to gun rights. But I can promise you that any pretense of simply being a fair arbiter of the constitutionality of any policy regardless of politics is simply a pretense. He made up his mind nearly a generation ago — and, if he's confirmed, he'll have nearly two generations to impose it upon the rest of us."

Cop Problem — Minnesota Cops Drugged 60-plus Supects with Ketamine Last Year

Art and Healing: In the Moment is an exhibition of artwork
made by community artists in response to police execution
of Philando Castile in 2016. The exhibit is on display
at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) from
June 17-July 29.
From MIA: "In the months after Castile’s funeral, artists
across the community were motivated to make art,
some of which they gave to his family –
gifts intended to help the people closest to Castile process
their grief and start to heal, while also bearing
collective witness to the tragedy of his untimely death.
The family, moved by this generosity, approached Mia
with a desire to publicly share these artworks,
which includes video, sculpture, posters, paintings,
and quilts."

Bearing witness to America's cop problem

Cop problem denialists abound.

For a revealing look at America's cop problem, Google "officer-involved shooting," and set an alert to deliver news to you email In Box. Cancel the alert after two days because your In Box will be overwhelmed very quickly.

Of course, police shooting people is a numerically small part of the cop problem.

The anti-social police mind-set is dangerous and ambushes the community in unexpected and many ways.

Consider Madison, Wisconsin Police Chief Mike Koval who excoriated the grandmother of an unarmed, 19-year-old black man gunned down by Madison Police in 2015. The Madison Police Chief dubbed the grandmother, a "raging lunatic," capturing well the attitudes and intentions of the thugs that populate the Madison Police Dept, inducing a psychic toll on police victims, (Daily Cardinal).

In San Francisco this weekend a news report reads, "An officer-involved shooting captured on body camera and surveillance video in a popular San Francisco neighborhood has left the community outraged," (ABC News). "Both body cam and surveillance video captured the officer running after, and then shooting 28-year-old San Francisco resident Oliver Barcenas in the back in between a crowd on the sidewalk."

In Minneapolis the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports police are asking medical EMS responders to inject suspects with ketamine, a powerful sedative and date-rape drug. Minneapolis police are in full-CYA mode following the news report.

In some instances, the forced-ketamine injections caused several victims hearts and breathing to stop, forcing drastic measures to revive the cop victims.

ThinkProgress notes:

The (forced-ketamine) practice had been increasing, up from three injections in 2012 to more than 60 last year, even as there had been no policy regarding such injections. Earlier this year, before the (requested and finally obtained) report was made public, the department’s commander issued an order that officers 'shall never suggest or demand EMS Personnel ‘sedated’ a subject. This is a decision that needs to be clearly made by EMS Personnel, not MPD Officers.' ...

The Minnesota ACLU said such a drugging practice would amount to a 'horrible abuse of power' if the report is accurate.

The Pulitizer-worthy piece by Andy Mannix is a must-read.

Mannix notes the cops refer to ketamine as the "Big K." Cops also refer to the drug-induced delirium as the "K-hole" Mannix does not report on what the cops call it when the victims' heart and breathing stop.

Speaking of Minneapolis, the police execution of Philando Castile and human healing from police violence are the subjects of a new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) opening today and running through July 29.

The exhibition is entitled "Art and Healing: In the Moment," the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.
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So, who acts with such hate and violence towards people? What is wrong with the cops?

Note first, cops are not a logical necessity for communities. We don't need police.

One can offer many reasons explaining why municipal police have become an anti-social, often deadly menace. Cops have long been the designed tool for killing and terrorizing labor and civil rights movements, ala central American death squads and para-military terrorists. You won't find many human rights workers and social justice activists among cops.

Excellent academic and lay work exists on the historical, structural, and institutional operation of cop squads. Recent major policy initiatives — the drug war and post-911 everyone-could-be-a-terrorist — help to explain in part why cops act out the way they do.

It's imperative as well to understand the cop problem by examining the ideological composition,  personality disorders and psychopathology cops manifest. We need help from behavioral science certainly but not sure the FBI is approachable on the topic, (worth looking into).

But social critics — writers, civil rights activists, comedians, neighborhood advocates, abolish-the- police, police abolition intellectuals — offer critical analyses.

This weekend, Bill Maher, social critic and comedian, offers this insightful critique of cops: Roughly, cops are resentful outcasts — grudge hoarders — who had a tough time in high school and want revenge. Give Maher a listen: