" Noah Feldman: With Kavanaugh, #MeToo meets partisan warfare on the ultimate stage . "

" The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, when Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford both face questions about her accusations of assault, is going to be hard to watch for different reasons for different people. The cognitive dissonance stems from the fact that the hearing is functioning on two levels that coexist uncomfortably.

On one level, the hearing will be a televised capsule of the #MeToo moment, considering allegations of sexual assault against a significant public figure. On another level, the hearing will be pure political theater, one act of many in these hyperpartisan times.

In that political dimension, the relevant question isn’t what happened decades ago or who should be held accountable for it. Rather, Republican senators will be seeking the cover they need to do what party activists desperately want them to do: confirm Judge Kavanaugh and consolidate a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come.

The disjunction between these two paradigms for the hearing can already be seen in the run-up. Consider the announcement by the committee’s Republican majority that its members — all men — won’t be questioning Ford directly. Instead they have hired Rachel Mitchell, an Arizona prosecutor who specializes in sex-crimes cases, to ask the questions.

Seen from the standpoint of a #MeToo investigation, the decision to outsource the questioning to a woman who is not a senator seems at least a bit condescending. It looks as though the committee Republicans are so predetermined not to believe Ford that they need a buffer between them and her. A similar possibility is that they want to express skepticism about Ford’s account but don’t want to do it themselves on camera.

Understood politically, however, the decision not to question Ford directly has a certain logic to it. The Republicans remember the terrible optics when male Judiciary Committee members went after Anita Hill for her sexual harassment claims during Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991. They don’t want to create the same visual again because it would raise the cost of voting to confirm Kavanaugh.

The political aspects of the hearing also help explain why Kavanaugh has adopted a strategy of outright denial of all allegations, rather than offering apologies for drunken behavior and saying he doesn’t remember the incidents alleged to have happened. Kavanaugh is not seeking #MeToo absolution. He’s seeking to get confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Voting to confirm Kavanaugh is much easier for Senate Republicans if the nominee gives a straightforward denial. It allows senators to say that the facts are disputed and, given the doubt that creates, that they will vote to confirm an accomplished jurist with an otherwise strong record.

Throughout his earlier hearings before the committee, Kavanaugh skillfully deployed the idea of precedent. He said there was precedent about precedent, and in an original twist, he invoked the precedent of earlier justices in their confirmation hearings.

There is a precedent for Kavanaugh’s strategy of denial as well: Thomas didn’t apologize for making Hill feel harassed, nor did he say there had been a misunderstanding between them. He flatly denied her allegations. And the Senate confirmed him, at least in part because the disagreement about the facts allowed them to say they believed Thomas.

The one way in which the two paradigms of #MeToo and the political theater of confirmation might come together is in the reaction to the allegations of sexual abuse that lawyer Michael Avenatti released Wednesday.

It has become a familiar part of the #MeToo script that initial allegations come to form part of a repeated pattern. In almost no instance has a prominent harasser or abuser been held accountable for isolated or individual acts.

Taken on their own, allegations from Ford and from Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a college party do not form a pattern as clear and repeated as we have come to expect in well-publicized #MeToo cases.

The question is whether the sworn affidavit revealed by Avanatti has the substance that is enough to count as a pattern of sexual abuse in the public mind. His client, Julie Swetnick, said she was present at high school parties with Kavanaugh where he participated in efforts to get girls drunk so that a group of boys could have sex with them. Swetnick says in the affidavit that she was raped at one such party.

The existence of such a pattern might change the political calculus for Republican senators. It’s one (political) thing for senators to accept Kavanaugh’s account of the Ford and Ramirez allegations, neither of which has been specifically confirmed on the record by named witnesses to the events. It would be quite another to dismiss allegations supported by third-party witnesses. Swetnick says she knows of such witnesses.

Anything can happen before Friday, when the Senate committee has scheduled a vote, of course. Until the new allegations, it seemed most probable that the political dimension of the hearings will outweigh the #MeToo dimension. Ultimately, senators are politicians more than they are cultural actors. If that’s right, Kavanaugh is likely to be confirmed. The consequences will be profound culturally, politically and constitutionally.  "

     Autumn is coming early this year with the lush ,  flourishing  , leafy verdant Maple & Oak Trees beginning to hint at their true colors as a continuous rain
fell unabating Friday Evening during another tremendous , TREMENDOUS drinking session . Emperor Xi and his Entourage arrived into town early in the
morning and headed directly to Warren Buffet’s Home (  ….. just up the street from The Brazen Head ) for a light lunch and a Lil’ Nap Nap .  I  ( Your Young
Joey ) reached the establishment a bit early in order to work the room and say , “ Hi “ to a few of the comely new waitresses recently hired for the
upcoming ‘ busy ‘ season ( Irish Bars slowdown in the summer but really hit their stride during the cold , snowy winter months what with numerous
Out – of – Town Celtic – Rock bands displaying their relentless sizzle [  Side Note :  ‘  The Elders  ‘ to call it quits after 2018  ]  ) . 
     Right around 10:00 PM ; CDT The Emperor materialized at The Brazen Head Main Bar and promptly took his specially reserved VIP Seat (  .. naturally
in front of Bar Manager Christy  [ Her Ass can make a Bishop kick in a Stain Glass Window ] ) . He motioned for me to join him and together we began
to drink the place out of Guinness ( Well , not really    ----- but we sure made a nice dent )  . Xi asked if things still look promising this November 6th ?
I assured him that the Stock Market is showing no stressful signs this fall and that regardless of what ‘ October Surprise ‘ occurs right before the election
“ The Stock Market Leads the WAY !!!!!!  “ All the American People care about is having enough money in their pockets to buy the things they want / need
and  --  as of this writing  --  The Republicans are on target to remain in control of the Senate and may , MAY even hang onto the House . Developing ……
I stated to Emperor Xi , “ We will know for sure the weekend before the election   --- everything should be in place by that Saturday  / Sunday . “  Xi
smiled , took off his dark blue sport coat and promptly ordered up a round of Jager Bombs and even a small shot of Lagavulin Single Malt Scotch Whisky
to slowly sip on throughout the evening .

     It was at that EXACT moment that Bar Manager Christy walked past our side of the bar , turned around and gave Xi a lusty , non-committal leer . Emperor
Xi excused himself  , grabbed his Scotch  , and disappeared with Christy into the Robert Emmet Room (  ……………. not to be seen for the rest of the Evening ) . 

" 'You kept us alive': Berlin Airlift veterans meet in Omaha on 70th anniversary .  "

" Reggie Powell was a green soldier from the South, just 18, when fate landed him in post-World War II Berlin, during the biggest supply operation the world had ever seen.

An Air Force radio repairman in 1948, he didn’t know much about the politics that pitted the United States and Great Britain against the Soviet Union after the Soviets had blocked roads and rail lines into West Berlin. It was an attempt to starve the German capital into submitting to communism, and the first major clash of what came to be known as the Cold War.

But Powell did know an amazing sight when he saw it, at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport.

“When we landed in Berlin, it was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen!” Powell said this week during a visit to Omaha. It was like a beehive, trucks and planes, coming and going.”

Powell, 88, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is one of eight Berlin Airlift veterans who have been in Omaha this week for a meeting of the Berlin Airlift Veterans Association.

They are joined by about 40 family members and two special guests: Roswitha Barry, 76, and Christa Schneider, 78, who live in the San Francisco Bay area now but during the Airlift were Berlin schoolgirls.

Their families, and thousands of others, received care packages flown in by U.S. Air Force and Royal Air Force aircraft that landed, one every three minutes, for more than 15 months, from June 1948 to September 1949.

“You kept us alive,” Schneider said.

“We are forever grateful to all of you,” said Barry.

The veterans visited the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum in Ashland Thursday, where they saw a display on the Airlift and toured a restored C-54 Skymaster, the Air Force’s four-engine workhorse of the air bridge that kept Berlin supplied through the crisis.

They also ate dinner at the German American Society meeting hall, and were scheduled to visit Boys Town on Friday. Their reunion, at Comfort Inn near 70th and Grover Streets, will wrap up this weekend.

The conflict was rooted in the post-World War II division of defeated Germany and Berlin, each divided into four zones. The zones were each controlled by one of the prevailing Allies: the United States, Great Britain, France and the USSR.

Since Berlin was deep in the Soviet sector, the U.S., British and French sections of the city — newly consolidated in 1948, and known as West Berlin — represented what the Russians saw as an irritating island of capitalist influence in the middle of Communist East Germany.

When they cut off ground access by June 26, 1948, the Western allies came up with a plan to supply West Berlin’s 2.4 million residents through three 10-mile wide air lanes into the city.

The Allies started “Operation Vittles” with fewer than 100 available transport aircraft. Over time, that number grew to at least 400 planes. They landed every three minutes, quickly unloaded, and took off again to grab another load of coal, flour, salt or whatever was needed.

Berlin hadn’t recovered from wartime bombing, which had leveled much of the city.

Barry recalls her once wealthy family in West Berlin being reduced to near-starvation. Her mother had been an opera singer, but she chopped up the family’s piano for firewood and sold her furs to pay for food.

They lived in a bombed-out apartment building.

“We had holes in the floor, and no windows. But it was shelter,” Barry said.

They used dandelions, grass and boiled nettles for food, or cut the maggots out of rotten potatoes.

Berliners had been the enemy of the Western Allies just a few years earlier, yet thousands of young service members worked themselves to exhaustion to feed them.

Boston native Ralph Dionne, then 21, was a mechanic when he was suddenly promoted to become a flight engineer on C-54 cargo planes, monitoring certain instruments and helping with navigation among other tasks. He had almost no training.

“They needed air crews. They said, ‘You’re going to become a flight engineer,’ ” Dionne recalled. “I said, ‘What do you do?’ They said, ‘You sit there and do what the pilot tells you to do.’ ”

The planes flew round the clock to bases in West Germany, whatever the weather.

The fog was terrible. The Air Force developed primitive ground-based navigation aids using radar signals to guide the steady stream of transports through it.

Dionne recalled one landing at Frankfurt’s Rhein-Main Air Base after a run from Berlin. As the co-pilot called altitude — 500 feet, 400 feet, 300 feet — Dionne still couldn’t see the ground.

“I said, ‘Where the hell are we?’ ” Dionne said. “Then I look down, and I see cars on the highway, right under the wings. And, thump, we were on the ground.”

The most famous Berlin Airlift pilot was the “Candy Bomber,” Gayle Halvorsen, who gained fame for dropping chocolate and gum to children who waved to him from a hill near one of Berlin’s airports.

Roswitha Barry was one of those children.

“We went to the airport and got the candy,” she said. They would bring it to school and share it with friends.

Halvorsen lives in Utah and is a member of the Berlin Airlift Veterans Association, though he was unable to attend the Omaha reunion.

His gesture touched the hearts of Germans and Americans, and is forever linked with the Airlift in many people’s memories.

“The candy bombing had a lot to do with the results,” Dionne said. “The (German) parents didn’t know whether to go with the Americans or the Russians. The kids came home with candy. It made them know the Americans had a heart.”


American airmen worked 12-hour shifts every day, sometimes making three or four round trips to Berlin. Fly in, quickly unload and fly back.

They knew the Airlift was a humanitarian mission. But for them, mostly it was just hard work.

“You had a job to do. You didn’t worry about the international situation,” Dionne said.

After 277,569 flights over 15 months, hauling 1.7 million tons of supplies, the Russians ended their blockade. The Americans, British and French had won the first major confrontation of the Cold War — though 32 Americans and 39 British airmen lost their lives in crashes.

The Airlift cemented the friendship between Americans and West Germans, especially Berliners.

“It was also a strategic move by our government, to keep the Soviets in check,” said Richard Stanberry, 90, of Burnet, Texas, a flight engineer who is attending the reunion. “The Berlin Airlift stands on its own merits. It was designed to do exactly what it did.”

As the number of eyewitnesses to the event dwindle, the veterans worry the Airlift will be forgotten. They see it as an example of Americans pulling together, along with their allies, and a useful beacon for leaders today.

“Everybody had to do something, and it all meshed. It was teamwork,” Dionne said. “Could you find a better example?”

     Inchoate Longings  …………….   You all remember Inchoate Longings    …… those formless , incipient misty – eyed yearnings of yore
where dreamy , sentimental recollections conjugate with a sensate duality of the space – time continuum thus providing a cleansing moment
of clarity  . What the FRIG am I talking about ?  Well me Stoneslings  , as we await the proper / official Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation to the United
States Supreme Court  ,  Emperor Xi and your young Joey were waxing nostalgic of our Prep School Days Friday Evening at The Brazen Head .
Indeed , it was a time ( late 1970’s  - early 1980’s )  when Saint President Ronald Reagan was just beginning to reshape America into a brand spanking
new nation full of bright shining Promise and Hope  . Whilst I sucked down me Guinness  , Xi mentioned that the same thing appears to be happening
today in President Trump’s America . I concurred and remarked to the Emperor that President Reagan’s approval ratings stood at 32 Percent
during the 1982 Midterm elections with the Republican Party losing the Senate and taking a severe beating in the House    ----- two years later
Regan won forty – nine states and almost won Minnesota (  ….. came within three thousand votes    --- AMAZING !!!!! )  . The Emperor asked
if the Republicans can hold / retain both Congressional Houses this November 6th ?  I brayed ,  “ If the Stock Market keeps setting record highs 
this October we might just name President Donald J. Trump ‘ PRESIDENT FOR LIFE !!!! ‘  “  The Emperor smiled and stated  ,  “ I know how that
feels . “  At this we both laughed heartily , ordered up a couple of rounds of BarenJager and some more Guinness Pints and dreamed of an upcoming
Trump vs. Pocahontas 2020 Presidential Match .



“ I LOVE YOU ALL !!!!!!   “