Right now in Washington the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding the confirmation hearing for Donald Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. He’s the judge who’s argued in the past that presidents should be exempt from criminal investigation and prosecution, which means, if he makes the Supreme Court, he’ll probably be the judge that lets Trump get off scot-free from whatever the Mueller investigation digs up on him. Also, 93% of the documents from Kavanaugh’s time as an adviser to the Bush White House haven’t been released to the committee, which is unheard of—when Elena Kagan was being confirmed, 99% of documents from her time serving in Clinton’s White House were released. And the Kavanaugh documents that have been released for review weren’t made available until last night—giving almost no time for Democrats on the Committee to review them before today’s hearing.
So, we’ve got a potential Supreme Court judge who doesn’t think presidents should be held accountable for their crimes, who apparently has documents in his past that could potentially wreck his nomination, and, oh yeah, who will also almost definitely vote to restrict (or eliminate) abortion access while consistently siding with corporations over the public. Sounds like a real winner.
That combination of Kavanaugh’s terrible beliefs and the GOP’s shameless strong-arm tactics have made the Kavanaugh hearing the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation since Clarence Thomas’s back in 1991. If you weren’t around back then, uh, it didn’t go well for the Democrats, just as Kavanaugh’s hearings probably won’t go well for them (or the nation at large) today.
If you aren’t a fully invested supporter of the graying, dwindling Republican Party, everything about this nominee and this hearing should be infuriating. It’s yet another political moment where the brute force of a self-interested minority will trump the will of the majority, and not in a way that brings about progress, but instead has the exact opposite goal, dragging us further back into the past. It ain’t good.
This is just one more in a seemingly unending sequence of miserable political developments that are rendered inevitable by the lockstep unity and lack of ethics of the GOP. There’s little chance Kavanaugh’s nomination will fail, unless two Senate Republicans are willing to go against their party and vote with the Democrats, and that seems very unlikely. The rest of us can protest and write earnest essays decrying Kavanaugh and what his appointment to the highest court will mean, but will it accomplish anything? Or will it be exactly as effective as making resigned, depressing jokes about the entire thing on Twitter? All of reactions are legitimate, and if protests do somehow work and gum up the works of the Kavanaugh train, that’d be amazing. Don’t fault those who can’t muster up anything but gallows humor today, though. They’re doing valuable work by letting us all feel a second or two of commiseration over the unceasing flow of depressing politics in America today.
So yeah, long-winded intro aside, here are some jokes I saw on the computer today that made me chuckle, or at the very least made me understand why others might actually chuckle at them.
thinking of starting my own supreme court because i feel like we might need a new one.
If this dude announced he was voting against Kavanaugh it would start a snowball that would make him a centrist hero, sell ten trillion books, and the next Dem pres would probably make him AG. Easier to stay quiet and sit on the Koch Board for Kid Stabbing or whatever https://t.co/6w3eTBCBV7
Thinking about live tweeting the Kavanaugh hearings so I can offer up valuable insights like “Wow… this is unreal” and “shut up Chuck Grassley” and “All Republicans should honestly just go to prison [9,000 retweets]” and “what the hell is happening right now lol”
Please, we must maintain decorum and proper order to ram through the Supreme Court pick of the rapist game show host before he’s indicted for a federal crime
Remember, the majority of voters who showed up in 2016 voted AGAINST letting a reality TV landlord with a gold toilet picking Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. #SCOTUS
Kavanaugh is the 10 millionth Irish-American male to participate in the end of democracy. Spicer, McConnnell, Ryan, Mulvaney, Bannon plus O’Reilly, Hannity and more. The wrong people starved to death in the Irish Famine.
Here’s what we’ve learned so far from the #Kavanaugh hearing: 1) There’s nothing elderly white men love more than interrupting women. 2) There’s nothing elderly white men hate more than being interrupted by women. And we already knew all that.
If you imagine that instead of introducing a potential Supreme Court nominee this guy were trying to get through a stand-up bit about Natural Peanut Butter, this is basically the last bar show I did. https://t.co/0z6isrNvCm
