My Mistake

Our first taste of bad weather arrived last night. As we sat around a cozy fire, a mere ten feet from the water’s edge, we saw heat lightening across the lake flashing sporadically, revealing a bank of menacing clouds. Soon, the wind changed direction and freshened. Before long our cottage was being lashed with sheets of rain. This morning, the skies are low and cloudy, the water is up and it’s barely 50, with a stiff breeze. Not a lake day, so we will go exploring.

This morning, as I surveyed the scene, my guard dropped for a moment and I made the mistake of pulling up the news on my iPad. All of the screaming headlines were of Kavanaugh and a decades old allegation of sexual misconduct of some kind. There was wrangling over when the accuser would be heard and why the Dems withheld this information until the closing days of the hearings. Hillary Clinton, who can always be counted on at times like this to offer clueless, irony-free comments, opined that Kavanaugh’s accuser...deserves the benefit of the doubt.  Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky could not be reached for comment.

Setting aside the question of guilt or innocence in this matter for a minute...I’m staring to think that the most terrifying words in the English language for any judge in America are...Congratulations! The President wants to nominate you to the Supreme Court! Who, in their right mind would want to endure the kangaroo court/character assassination/clown show that is the Judicial Committee Confirmation Hearings?? Let alone, subject your entire family to it??

Listen, I don’t really have an opinion on Kavanaugh. He’s a judge, man. What do I know about legal philosophy? Nothing. And neither do any of these preening Senators, who only know what their party talking points tell them. Like all judges, the man has a paper trail of decisions and opinions, some of which I would probably agree with, some not. But, he seems smart enough and qualified by education, training and experience. Here’s what I do know...since he was nominated by a Republican President, the Dems are doing everything in their power to prevent his confirmation, including, apparently, trolling through his high school yearbook for dirt. When it’s a Democrat President’s turn, he or she will nominate someone equally qualified, and the Republicans will pull out every trick in the book to prevent confirmation. It’s the way the game is played. The fact that many years ago it was not this way is irrelevant. Many years ago, people rode horses to town, but that ship has sailed too.

So, apparently, Monday is a big day at the circus. The question everyone seems to be asking is will she show up to testify or not? If she does, it will be yet another low point in our political life, the latest in a long line of bar-lowering embarrassments, a further deterioration of public discourse.

In other words...2018.

But, come what may on Monday...I won’t be watching. My morning will be filled with a round of golf, and my afternoon with lake recreation. I’ll have to find out what happened by checking out my Facebook feed. That should be a blast!