Posts

Showing posts with the label Kavanaugh (Brett)

Another celebrated South Bender

Last Sunday was cold, and our church met indoors, but today’s service was held in the parking lot, in balmy weather. After Karin and Samuel and I went home and ate lunch, Samuel refused to sleep, so I pushed him in his stroller around the block. “Enjoy the last day of good weather,” one neighbor said. Sure enough, the temperature is supposed to fall by twenty degrees.

Another sign of summer’s end: people have been towing their boats back into the neighborhood.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Recently widowed, Karin’s mom went on holiday to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the northern town of Charlevoix. Beaver Island seems to be a hideaway for the rich. The residents kept telling Karin’s mom not to walk on the beaches (which may well be their private property) or on the roads (which probably aren’t).

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” her brother said.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Pete Buttigieg’s failure notwithstanding, a South Bender will become a very high federal official. I mean the Notre Dame professor, the Catholic charismatic, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS choice. This is hardly the nomination that Pete’s fans would have wished for. As for me, I don’t mind Barrett like I minded Brett Kavanaugh. Although Barrett is both a textualist and an originalist, she might rule as justly as any SCOTUS judge could do (it’s U.S. constitutionalism and judicial review themselves that are problematic, I’ve come to believe).

But the hypocrisy! What was it the Republicans were saying four years ago, when Obama wanted to install a judge before an election?

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised.

Here are some interesting remarks by a friend of a friend. (As always, to enlarge an image: click on it; then, right-click on it; then, open it in a new tab; and, finally, click on it again with the magnifying cursor.)

Diagnoses

So, the clinic called today. The tests confirm that I have SEVERE sleep apnea. The clerk who relayed the news didn’t know how to pronounce “apnea” – hup-NEE-uh, she said – but I asked her to spell it, and A-P-N-E-A, indeed, is what I have. I was told to buy a CPAP machine at my pharmacy. Would I like to schedule a “titration” at the sleep clinic? Yes, please, I said, but what was I supposed to do first? Buy the CPAP machine, or have the “titration”? After more phone calls it was determined that I’d do nothing further before going in for the “titration” on January 20. (Really, the slowness of this process is baffling.) I’m still not sure I understand what to do; I plan to investigate further.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Our coffee pot broke a week ago. Karin & I have been keeping awake with sodapop and storebought iced mocha. But by this morning, those supplies had run out; moreover, after two days of relative calm, Samuel decided to shriek and shriek. By the time I’d prepared his bottle and gotten him suckling, I could hardly stay awake. I dozed off watching a TV show about heinous Australian crimes. Samuel slept in my lap. I dreamed I was visiting certain professors in Ithaca – ones under whom I didn’t prosper. My dreams were vivid; my wakefulness, hazy; but, all the while, I was aware of Samuel’s breathing.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Yesterday, I was more alert (I had two glasses of iced mocha), and I read a terrific essay by Nathan J. Robinson analyzing the memoirs of various staffers of Barack Obama’s White House. Robinson isn’t a columnist I ordinarily seek out. On several occasions, though, I’ve admired his work without realizing he was the author of something I’d admired previously (one piece I’ve highlighted in this blog is his assessment of Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial credentials). Now I’m attending more closely to how Robinson connects his political dots.

Interestingly, his condemnations of Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren (whom he used to esteem more highly) seem to hinge on similarities that he perceives between those candidates and Obama. Robinson really doesn’t like Obama’s political style, and I increasingly agree with him. (I put more stock in reasonableness than Robinson does – I’ve written a dissertation about that governmental virtue – but I also lament the manner in which Obama employed reasonableness as an ideal.)

The best thing about Robinson’s analysis of those fanboys’ memoirs is that it conveys what’s dangerous about the allure of a leader who styles himself as elite. Such a person will likely be a technocrat who considers himself above his electorate and his party, or else a panderer to financial elites who play him for a sucker (or both).

Read the article about Obama and his fanboys.

Weep.

Ask how we can do better.

Closing credits (2018)

A rainy New Year’s Eve. Still, 2018 ends with more warmth than 2017 did.

This is my 120th entry of the year. I’ve written ten entries each month.

For providing material to discuss, I again thank Karin, Jasper, and Ziva; my tutees; my blood relations; and Brianna and other in-laws.

Additionally, this year, I acknowledge:

The poets.

Boca Juniors and River Plate.

The Mormons, who, until mid-October, were very friendly to Karin & me. They must have then given up trying to convert us.

Brett Kavanaugh.

My dissertation adviser for – so far – allowing various prolongments.

The St. Joseph River for declining to flood our apartment complex.

The city of Austin.

Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö for authoring the Martin Beck mysteries.

Aimee-Ffion Edwards for acting in four of the best screenworks I viewed this year:
  • Skins (a lewd TV soap opera about Bristol’s teens; not for the faint of heart);
  • Detectorists (a gentle sitcom – featuring the excellent Toby Jones – about rural, amateur metal detectorists; quite suitable for the faint of heart);
  • Luther (a quasi-fantastical crime show starring Idris Elba; for the great of heart); and
  • Queen & Country (the long-overdue, surprisingly un-cynical, cinematic continuation of John Boorman’s Hope and Glory).
I also thank the moviemakers of 1996.

And I thank our new church, which welcomed Karin & me during a rather turbulent period. We watched over the two- and three-year-olds during many services. Starting in the spring, we also wrote, printed out, and folded each week’s bulletin. (Mercifully, that task will soon be performed by a new secretary.) The most rewarding event each week was the adults’ Sunday School class. For authoring that class’s discussion guides, I heartily thank the late John Stott.

Finally: thanks to everyone who offered money and prayers on our behalf. Please pray for me to complete my degree soon. Karin & I long to get out of this rut in which we’ve been living.

Brett Kavanaugh

Various bloggers and Facebook friends – Democrats, Republicans, and “independents” – have been sharing articles and blog posts under, roughly, the following description: “This is the best item I’ve read about the U.S. Supreme Court candidacy of Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford.” The pieces they’ve shared have expressed a wide range of views about the affair.

Well, this article by Nathan J. Robinson is the best thing I’ve read.

It’s meticulous.

It confirms what I thought when I heard Kavanaugh give his testimony: This guy seems dishonest, and his reasoning is shoddy enough that his appointment to the Supreme Court would be a disaster.

Not all of Robinson’s arguments are convincing. But more than enough of them are.

Some conclusions:

(1) Perjury: Kavanaugh told falsehoods under oath. Again and again. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes with a reckless disregard for the truth. And he did so concerning issues that matter to his own credibility, to the credibility of his accuser, and to the discovery of the truth.

(2) Evasion: In response to straightforward questions, Kavanaugh changed the subject. Again and again. …

(3) Testimonial sufficiency: Certain “subjective” considerations (such as the aggressiveness of Kavanaugh’s tone) are much less important than the content of the testimonies. This content, along with fact-checking, suffices to establish (1) and (2). And (1) and (2), along with plausible principles about who may be appointed as a judge (e.g., “An appointee must not be recently guilty of perjury”), suffice to disqualify Kavanaugh as a judge in the Supreme Court (or anywhere!). As Robinson puts it: “At this point there is absolutely no need” for further investigation “unless Christine Blasey Ford wants it.”

To summarize: even if Kavanaugh didn’t assault Ford, he certainly lied and, in other ways, made the truth harder rather than easier to assess. These facts should disqualify him from being allowed to join the Supreme Court.