Dispatches from Vilnius

Brett Kavanaugh may have sealed his own doom with this passage from his now infamous calendar of 1982.  Rachel Mitchell had started to question him about this entry in her second round of five-minute questions, but after the break was heard from no more.  Had the Republicans misjudged Mitchell, which conservative tweets suggested she had been too soft on Christine Ford?  She may have been soft, but she was clearly making an effort to erode key parts of her testimony.  Here she was using the same technique to probe Judge Kavanaugh's calendar of events.  Lindsey Antebellum picked up on it, and when it came his turn took to the podium after the break, he delivered all the pent-up rage in the Republican Party for having their Supreme Court nominee questioned like this. Charles Pierce in Esquire offers the best take I've read thus far on the political theater we saw yesterday.  Here was a man drunk with power every bit as belligerent as described by Chr...

Events surrounding Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Hearing have literally turned into a cluster fuck with a fourth woman now coming forward, claiming that a drunken Kavanaugh threw her against a wall and tried to have sex with her coming out of a DC bar in the late 90s.  This was the time Kavanaugh was working with Kenneth Starr in building a case against Horny Bill over similar allegations.  Maybe he was just trying to recreate a scene from the Oval Office, but the woman was none too pleased, and claims she has friends to support her story.  So far, she has chosen to remain anonymous. Of course, Kavanaugh denies it as he has all the other charges, using his boyhood calendar to defend himself.  What strikes me as odd is how poor Naughty Brett's defense has been so far.  Does he really expect us to believe he would have marked a kegger on his calendar?  Instead, he raises more questions like "Who is Suzanne, a name which appears three times in the notoriou...

If only it were this simple .  Way back in 2001, The Simpsons nailed anti-Intellectualism in this country, and may have revealed the secret to Trump's debilitating mental powers.  Those nasty Crayola crayons kids apparently love to shove up their noses. As we watch "Crazytown" unravel, it seems Michael Avenatti is taking full advantage of the situation by offering a third assault victim and witnesses in regard to Judge Kavanaugh's moral character.  Hard to put too much trust in Avenatti, given his propensity to chase ambulances, but it has thrown the Republican confirmation hearings into similar disarray.  Mitch and Chuck were badly hoping to have Kavanaugh seated by the end of the months, but it now it looks like these hearings will stretch into October. Republicans find themselves in a damned if they do/ damned if they don't situation in their attempt to stack the Supreme Court.  The last president who tried to do this was FDR and the Democrats paid...

Or Tainnkyauthcwar hcaung (google) to my Burmese friends Facebook is an easy target, as is social media in general, but is it really the platform's fault that so many persons abuse it?  That seems to be what Congress is implying as it goes through another round of hearings to determine the role social media networks had in the 2016 elections and if they are just as vulnerable in 2018. The Senate panel was apparently better at questioning social media executives than had been the House earlier in April, but it strikes me Congress is trying to pin all the ills of the past election on social media rather than owning up to its lack of any meaningful legislature to limit electoral abuse.  This is why Google didn't even bother to show up. John Oliver tore facebook a new asshole on another front, its reach into countries like Myanmar, where facebook is readily available as a phone app.  It is apparently used so much in this newly opened country that it has become ...

Another thing that caught my eye in Budapest were all the NASA t-shirts and patches on backpacks.  Back in Vilnius, I noticed a lot of young persons wearing NASA t-shirts as well.  What gives? Not surprisingly the trend can be traced back to Kylie Jenner, who first sported a NASA-inspired t-shirt in 2016.  Turns out she was referring to a 90's club that was known by the same acronym, but soon other celebrities were sporting shirts with direct references to the space agency.  NASA became so popular that top fashion designers were quick to weave the logo into their clothes, or at least a semblance of it.  Space is the place! as Sun Ra would say. I guess I just didn't notice it before I was rummaging through a box of patches in a shop called Szputnyik in Budapest, pulling out all the space-inspired ones, as I recalled my infatuation with space travel back in the 70s.  It was Tang and chocolate space sticks for me each morning there for awhile....

On an amusing note, it was fun to see some of the sculptures in Budapest on a recent trip.  Ever since Hungary returned to the European fold in 1989, local artists have been making it known where their allegiances had long lied.  This is why you find a life-size bronze likeness of Ronald Reagan in Liberty Square, where a Soviet obelisk still stands in commemoration of the Soviet liberation of Hungary from Nazi Germany.  It's kind of hard to get both in the same picture. The Reagan statue was erected in 2011 with much fanfare and has been a favorite spot for American tourists ever since.  There is also a statue of US General Harry Hill Bandholtz , erected in 1936 in memory of the role he played in stopping a gang of Romanian soldiers from looting the National Museum of Transylvanian treasures in 1919.  Surprisingly, it wasn't taken down during the Soviet-Hungarian years. I learned that Transylvania is a sore point for Hungarians, as this infamous regio...

If it has been made abundantly clear the religious right will elect or stand behind anyone who swears his allegiance on the Ten Commandments, sees abortion as murder, and believes in the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. We saw Alabama religious conservatives continue to support Roy Moore, the so-called Ten Commandments judge, despite numerous highly credible claims that he was a sexual predator of teenagers while serving in the District Attorney's office.  The same "moral majority" similarly has no problem with thrice-married Donald Trump, who admittedly cheated on each of his wives and left a trail of sexual abuse allegations that continue to hound him in office.  Now we see the same religious zealots coming to the defense of Brett Kavanaugh, despite a serious charge of attempted rape while a senior at a prestigious Georgetown prep school. The underlying thread among all these nefarious characters is their steadfast support of the holy trinity of religious rig...

At this point in the campaign season, you want to be scoring some wins to propel your Congressional candidates to victory in the upcoming midterm elections.  Instead, the GOP looks like the Arizona Cardinals . What appeared to be an easy confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh has turned into a three-ring circus, with at least three Republican Senators expressing their doubts about his moral fiber after his accuser made herself public and passed a polygraph test.  This was enough to make nearly all the women, who signed a letter of support for the Supreme Court nominee, get cold feet , or they didn't exist to begin with.  Kavanaugh's staunchest defender, Mark Judge, is a right-wing ideologue with a dubious past tracing back to his days with "Bart O'Kavanaugh" at the now infamous Georgetown prep school , where Christine Blasey Ford claims the two tried to rape her.   Even the White House needed a couple of days to determine how to approach this thorny di...

They call them manure lagoons , which seems like an awfully nice term for shit ponds.  This is where all the hog shit goes from those huge hog farms in the Carolinas.  There are probably more hogs in North Carolina than there are people.  All to feed our insatiable appetite for pork.  One can imagine how this will affect Coastal Carolina, where many of these hog farms are located. Hog farming is an ugly business.  The Danes raise a considerable number of hogs, and to try to ease the overflow in their small low-lying country, have set up hog farms here in Lithuania.  The stench is overwhelming, leading many local inhabitants to complain how the government ever allowed Danish pork companies to set up their operations here, not to mention the periodic "swine fever" that breaks out among these pigs.  This year, nearly 20,000 pigs had to be culled. At least pig farming is regulated to some degree in Europe, which is more than you can say for North ...

I don't know why I follow Yahoo! news feed other than I have my e-mail account through Yahoo!  Sandwiched between all the stories of the Kardashians, missing teens, fallout over Nike's Kaepernick ad, and most luxurious castles to sleep in are a few stories on the anonymous editorial in the New York Times by a senior official in the White House. Everyone is trying to guess who he is.  The most intriguing theory is Mike Pence, largely based on one word -- lodestar.  More likely it is Dan Coats or Don McGahn or someone we don't pay much attention to.  Whatever the case, it sure has gotten  the Donald's dander up . Some have come out and said a senior administration official is " gutless ," as he is answerable only to the Commander-in-Chief and is himself or herself posing a national security risk.  Others feel all these officials are answerable to the United States, and if they have grave doubts about the sanity of the President, which Bob Woodward...

Another upset in the liberal Northeast.  Say hello to Ayanna Pressley .  She just beat a 10-term incumbent Democrat in Massachusetts' 7th District.  The Democratic Party is so badly in need of fresh faces and is finally getting them.  Of course, establishment figures like Michael Capuano are none too happy about it, but after so many terms he should be thinking about retirement anyway. If only we could convince Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and other lifetime Congresspersons to step down gracefully.  Pelosi is 78.  Feinstein is 85.  They have been in Washington since 1987 and 1992 respectively.  There reaches a point where these political figures no longer offer any fresh ideas, dragging the party down. Ayanna, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Conor Lamb, has voiced outright opposition to Nancy Pelosi, as have many of these young insurgents in the Democratic Party.  A strategy that has worked for Democratic candidates as their Repu...

There's a panic in the air as the midterms quickly approach.  It is now just two months before that fateful day in November where voters get to throw the bums out of Congress and their states as well.  The only problem is that the retention rate is usually pretty high, and very rarely do we see the upheaval we imagine. Social media is leveling the field to a certain degree.  It no longer takes a huge war chest to be competitive in a campaign.  But, some persons still get out there the old-fashioned way, going door to door as Beto is doing in Texas.  He has Ted Cruz sweating bullets, calling on no less than Donald Trump himself to get him over the finish line in what has become a very close race.  David Hogg wants Texans to remember what Trump said about Ted during the 2016 campaign.  You might call it a billboard outside Lubbock, Texas. Across the country, many Congressional races are unusually close.  The fact that Ted has to defend hi...

Aretha had a send off fit for a queen, although one has to wonder about some of the political figures on hand for her memorial service.  It would have been nice to avoid this kind of representation all together, but there was Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan moving in and out of the background as performers gave their soulful tributes to the Queen of Soul.  Their presence served as a distraction more than anything else, as this is what was commented upon most in social media. For me the high point was when Shirley Caesar came to the pulpit, breaking into song at the 3:45 minute mark of this video clip .  She was joined by Tasha Cobbs on a rousing version of "How I Got Over."  The other songs were hit and miss, as you can expect at such a gathering.  Jennifer Hudson appeared to be trying too hard on Amazing Grace, and Chaka Khan gave a rather subdued albeit heartfelt performance of "Going Up Yonder." CNN moved from hers to Mc...