Monday Reading (UPDATED)

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Nan Aron writes about how an important lesson from the KavaNut battle will be to make the courts at all levels an issue for women and progressives:

For 40 years, the right wing has sent its voters to the polls with the federal courts as a priority. It also built a machine for manufacturing and marketing the kind of nominee exemplified by Brett Kavanaugh: conventionally credentialed, politically connected, and partisan to the core. 

Progressives will never have an appetite for cookie-cutter nominees or the conformity-imposing systems that build them. But we have the power as voters to make the courts an issue and a matter of real accountability and electability for senators, this year, in 2020 and beyond. [snip] 

So yes, this is no time to pack up the tents. Kavanaugh has helped us to see all too clearly what the stakes are for women, for workers, for racial equity, LGBTQ Americans, and the environment when the right captures our courts—and those stakes are far too high. We have arrived at this clarity through a painful process, but we have arrived, and with a midterm election right around the corner. And that’s just the beginning. (our emphasis)

Avi Selk on the "junk science" vile weasels (he mentions Trump and Sens. Collins, Manchin and Graham for starters) used to try to annihilate Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's "100 percent" certain memory of KavaNut sexually assaulting her:

The politically convenient, scientifically baseless theory that sexual assault so traumatized Christine Blasey Ford she mixed up her attacker is now something like common wisdom for many Republicans. 

President Trump explicitly endorsed the theory Saturday, shortly after Brett M. Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed as a Supreme Court judge, telling reporters he was “100 percent” sure Ford accused Kavanaugh in error. [snip]

It’s easy to forget that less than three weeks ago, when the mistaken-identity theory was first formulated, it was so widely ridiculed that a pundit who advanced it on Twitter subsequently apologized and offered to resign from his job. But for many cognitive researchers who study how memories actually form during traumatic events, the theory never stopped sounding ridiculous.  (our emphasis)

Speaking of science, the human race is hard at work on self- extinction, with Trump's America at the forefront:

A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.” 

The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population. [snip]

Avoiding the most serious damage requires transforming the world economy within just a few years, said the authors, who estimate that the damage would come at a cost of $54 trillion. But while they conclude that it is technically possible to achieve the rapid changes required to avoid 2.7 degrees of warming, they concede that it may be politically unlikely. 

For instance, the report says that heavy taxes or prices on carbon dioxide emissions — perhaps as high as $27,000 per ton by 2100 — would be required. But such a move would be almost politically impossible in the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. Lawmakers around the world, including in China, the European Union and California, have enacted carbon pricing programs.  (our emphasis)

Finally, please take some time to check out the link round- up at Infidel 753. Among other things, you might see sunrise on an asteroid.

UPDATE:  Tennesseean Taylor Swift posted her choices in the State and local congressional race on Instagram:

... I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love. Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape. She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values. I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives...

As of late afternoon, the post has over 1.5 million likes, much to the horror of her Aryan 4Chan fanboys.