Of all the exhausting amount of stupid in the news today, for some reason this irked me the most —

A major evangelical leader has spoken in defense of US-Saudi relations after the apparent killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate, saying that America has more important things — like arms deals — to focus on.

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared on its flagship television show The 700 Club on Monday to caution Americans against allowing the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia to deteriorate over Khashoggi’s death.

“For those who are screaming blood for the Saudis — look, these people are key allies,” Robertson said. While he called the faith of the Wahabists — the hardline Islamist sect to which the Saudi Royal Family belongs — “obnoxious,” he urged viewers to remember that “we’ve got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of…it’ll be a lot of jobs, a lot of money come to our coffers. It’s not something you want to blow up willy-nilly.”

Just how far, and how many times, can evangelicals throw Jesus under the bus? He’s got to be nothing but bloody pulp by now. So to speak.

I’m recommending this Facebook post. Of course, wingnuts have decided that Jamal Khashoggi is mixed up in Islamic terrorism. Larisa Alexandrovna Horton explains why this is absurd.

Greg Sargent comments on the apparent aid Trump is giving Mohammed bin Salman to forge a coverup. Another good reason to subpoena Trump’s tax returns?

Ivanka Trump learned how to do business from her old man — lies and deceptions mean profits!

Charles Pierce comments on the O’Rourke-Cruz debate.

I ran into a couple of op eds today with musings about why Jamal Khashoggi’s death has gotten more coverage than the many deaths in Yemen. Steve M already wrote the blog post I planned to write, so I don’t have to.  But, seriously, the situation in Yemen gets virtually no news coverage in the U.S., and this is true even though the U.S. is involved and the atrocity is certain to come back and bite us some day. If you were to stop a thousand Americans in the street and ask them “What do you think about what’s going on in Yemen?” you’d be lucky to find one who had even a glimmer of an idea about what’s going on in Yemen. And if Jamal Khashoggi hadn’t been a journalist, and somebody that many in the national press corps knew, we’d probably be hearing only a little about him now.

I’ve been working my tush off on a book, and I just shipped all but the last chapter off to the publisher. I’ll post something tomorrow!

Nicholas Kristof writes,

Turkey claims to have audiotape of Saudi interrogators torturing Jamal and killing him in the Saudi Consulate. None of this is confirmed, and we still don’t know exactly what happened; we all pray that Jamal will still reappear. But increasingly it seems that the crown prince, better known as M.B.S., orchestrated the torture, assassination and dismemberment of an American-based journalist using diplomatic premises in a NATO country.

That is monstrous, and it’s compounded by the tepid response from Washington. President Trump is already rejecting the idea of responding to such a murder by cutting off weapons sales. Trump sounds as if he believes that the consequence of such an assassination should be a hiccup and then business as usual.

Frankly, it’s a disgrace that Trump administration officials and American business tycoons enabled and applauded M.B.S. as he imprisoned business executives, kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister, rashly created a crisis with Qatar, and went to war in Yemen to create what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis there. Some eight million Yemenis on the edge of starvation there don’t share this bizarre view that M.B.S. is a magnificent reformer.

There are credible reports that the U.S. knew the Saudis intended to seize Jamal Khashoggi before it happened, and did nothing.

Did I mention how much Trump loves the Saudis? His personal business ties to the Saudis are deep and go back many years. And in spite of his claims to the contrary, those ties appear to continue.

Since Trump took the oath of office, the Saudi government and lobbying groups for it have been lucrative customers for Trump’s hotels.

A public relations firm working for the kingdom spent nearly $270,000 on lodging and catering at his Washington hotel near the Oval Office through March of last year, according to filings to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the firm told The Wall Street Journal that the Trump hotel payments came as part of a Saudi-backed lobbying campaign against a bill that allowed Americans to sue foreign governments for responsibility in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia cited the payments by the Saudi lobbying firm as an example of foreign gifts to the president that could violate the Constitution’s ban on such “emoluments” from foreign interests.

The Saudi government was also a prime customer at the Trump International Hotel in New York early this year, according to a Washington Post report.

The newspaper cited an internal letter from the hotel’s general manager, who wrote that a “last-minute” visit in March by a group from Saudi Arabia accompanying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had boosted room rentals at the hotel by 13 percent for the first three months of the year, after two years of decline.

Saudi Arabia has also helped on one of Trump’s key policy promises, and helped the president’s friends along the way.

And, of course, Trump’s first foreign trip as POTUS was to Saudi Arabia, and Mr. Ivanka appears to have developed a close relationship with MBS.

So how will the Trump administration respond to the apparent murder of  Jamal Khashoggi?

Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that though he didn’t like the fact that Khashoggi had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, he didn’t want to risk losing a very lucrative arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

“This took place in Turkey, and to the best of our knowledge, Khashoggi is not a United States citizen, he’s a permanent resident,” the president said. “We don’t like it, even a little bit. But as to whether or not we should stop $110 billion from being spent in this country, knowing they [Saudi Arabia] have four or five alternatives, two very good alternatives, that would not be acceptable to me.”

So no, he’s not going to do anything, and I’m sure the Saudis were counting on that when they decided to take out Jamal Khashoggi. But I don’t think this issue is going to go away, either.

Greg Sargent addresses the question, “Why is the mob angry?”

President Trump and Republicans have adopted a closing electoral strategy that depicts the Democratic Party and “angry” leftist protests against Trumpian rule as the only real reigning threat to our country’s civic fabric and the rule of law. A new Republican National Committee video juxtaposes footage of leading mainstream Democratic figures with that of angry protesters, while decrying “the left” as an “unhinged mob.” …

… But much of the resulting debate over all this is hollow, because it is not putting these basic realities front and center: Trump, more than any leading U.S. figure in recent memory, has actively tried to stoke civil conflict on as many fronts as possible. He has concertedly subverted the rule of law, not just to shield himself from accountability, but, more to the point for present purposes, with the deliberate purpose of exciting his minority base — and enraging millions on the other side of the cultural divide — in a manner that is thoroughly corrupt to its core.

Witnessing this gaping hole in the debate is akin to watching a team of doctors diagnose a patient with advanced stages of brain cancer without acknowledging the existence of his tumor.

In a larger sense, this goes back to the question of who gets to be angry. See “Who Gets to Be Angry” and “Who Gets to Be Angry II.”

In the first “Who Gets to Be Angry” post I pointed out that right-wing white men are the only demographic in the U.S. allowed to display anger without social or cultural penalty. Right-wing white women are allowed to display anger if they are standing next to a white man who is angry about the same thing — call it ladies’ auxiliary anger. Otherwise, women who display anger are labeled “hysterical” or “whacky,” whereas a white man doing the same thing is “strong.” Men who are not white must also take care to be gentle of temperament, because right-wing white men have a pathological fear of black men displaying so much as mild pique. Or wearing hoodies.

Even white men can be slammed for anger if they are also “liberal” or “lefties,” although younger white guys generally aren’t used to being sensitive to the privilege rules and don’t hold back expressing themselves in angry ways. If there’s a big leftie demonstration, if somebody acts up and behaves badly it’s nearly always a young white guy.

One of the not-often-spoken rules we’ve all followed all these years is that only right-wing white men are allowed to be angry. This was plainly illustrated by the Kavanaugh hearings, in which Christine Blasey Ford was careful to be calm and unemotional, although she clearly was frightened, while the Right rewarded Kavanaugh for his unhinged hostility to the Democrats who questioned him.  Literally, he was entitled. If Ford had behaved the same way, they would have crucified her for it.

The same multiple standards apply to group demonstrations. Right-wing mobs are celebrated as the voice of the people; leftie demonstrators are condemned as violent extremists on George Soros’s payroll. Even Karen Tumulty noticed right-wing hypocrisy on that one.

There was a time, less than a decade ago, when the sound of red-faced protest was music to Republican ears.

That, of course, was when Barack Obama was president, and the tea party movement was hijacking congressional town hall meetings with shouts of “Tyranny!” There were plenty of shoving matches, and Democratic lawmakers were burned in effigy. The police were regularly called in to bring a semblance of order.  …

…Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) lauded the conservative agitation as a pure expression of the frustrations and values of ordinary Americans.

“You’re the people who prove the politicians wrong when they say that all this activism and unrest was crafted, somehow, in a boardroom, down on K Street,” he said. “The grass-roots movement isn’t Astroturf, as they like to put it. It’s something that started at your kitchen tables.”

The tea party really was more astroturf than grass roots, but let’s go on …

Now it is the Democrats who are making the noise, and the argument is playing in reverse.

“You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern. Republicans believe in the rule of law — not the rule of the mob,” President Trump tweeted Saturday about the demonstrations that erupted after the Senate voted to confirm his nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

I’ll go back even further. Remember the Brooks Brothers Riot? Those guys really were paid political operatives. They stopped a legitimate vote count and helped steal a presidential election. What did Democrats do to retalitate? Nothing.

BTW, while googling “Brooks Brothers Riot” I came across this opinion piece at Jacobin that’s worth reading.

Today Democrats are re-evaluating Michelle Obama’s famous words, “When they go low, we go high.” A few days ago, Eric Holder said, “When they go low, we kick ’em. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.” The Right, naturally, has been outraged, never might that they declared open season on kicking, punching and even shooting Democrats a long time ago.

I’m still opposed to violence. I’m not opposed to pulling whatever legal, political levers can be pulled to destroy the Republican party, however. Voting rights reform and putting an end to gerrymandering would go a long way in that direction, and Democrats damn well better get to work on those if they take back the House. No more Mr. Nice Political Party.

We’ll know better after we get election results, but I’m seeing indicators that Republicans finally broke the Bigger Asshole rule. To review:

The Bigger Asshole Rule

Effective demonstrations are those that make them look like bigger assholes than us.

That’s because the public will turn against whichever side is the bigger asshole. So, if demonstrators are seen as bigger assholes than the Powers That Be, public opinion will support the establishment and turn against the demonstrators. But in the Kavanaugh debacle, I sincerely believe that a majority of the public saw the Republicans as the bigger assholes, and most recent polling backs that up. Even now right-wing commenters are crowing that the Democrats damaged themselves on Kavanaugh, but I don’t think so. And I think the backlash against Republicans for the Kavanaugh debacle is just beginning, and it will continue for a long time.

Item One, ya’ll folks in Florida, stay safe.

Item Two, there is more speculation about why Nikki Haley announced she is leaving the UN:

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley reportedly announced her departure on Tuesday — even though she’s leaving at the end of the year — because she wanted to avoid appearing as though she were leaving the Trump administration in response to potential negative outcomes of the midterm elections or any other negative news, Politico reported.

According to two people familiar with the matter, Haley also was trying to avoid the appearance that the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe had anything to do with her departure.

While Haley’s official story is that her exit is fueled by her passion for term limits, her allies say Haley felt she couldn’t move up any further in the Trump administration and she decided to “bow out,” in Politico’s words.

There are hopes among the remaining Never-Trump Republicans that she’ll challenge Trump in 2020. Trump, for his part, is said to have been “annoyed” by her popularity and political ambitions, which means that if he weren’t such a sodden mass of Stupid he’d have offered her bigger jobs.

Item Three, There are new indicators that the post-Kavanaugh backlash is helping Demicrats and hurting Republicans, which is not what Mitch McConnell expected. See Philip Bump, “This Is Not What a Pro-Kavanaugh Electoral Backlash Looks Like.” See also “Dems Gain On Generic Ballot In Post-Kavanaugh CNN Poll, Contradicting Other Surveys” and “Poll: Kavanaugh confirmation energizes Democrats more than GOP.”

Item Four, My dad was born 100 years ago today. This photo was taken about 1944, when he was about 25.

No idea why.

I haven’t been this angry at politicians since I can remember. I am take-no-prisoners, display-their-dripping-heads-on-pikes angry. And I’m not generally an angry person. I can’t imagine how really angry people must feel.

Meanwhile,

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.”

Right now, I feel that it’s going to take some heads on pikes to get the U.S. government to address this. The political system is broken.

See also: Charles Blow, “Liberals, This Is War”

David Atkins, “With Kavanaugh, Republicans Secure An Unjust and Unsustainable Minority Rule”

Nancy LeTourneau, “Republicans Have Reason to Fear ‘Mob Rule’”

It’s expected that Beer Bong Brett will be confirmed today, so what’s next? This may not be the end of the story.

House Democrats will open an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct and perjury against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh if they win control of the House in November, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat in line to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on Friday.

Speaking on the eve of Judge Kavanaughs’s confirmation vote this weekend, Mr. Nadler said that there was evidence that Senate Republicans and the F.B.I. had overseen a “whitewash” investigation of the allegations and that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court was at stake. He sidestepped the issue of impeachment.

“It is not something we are eager to do,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview. “But the Senate having failed to do its proper constitutionally mandated job of advise and consent, we are going to have to do something to provide a check and balance, to protect the rule of law and to protect the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.”

Josh Marshall:

But now there’s this: FOIA lawsuits by Senate Democrats and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that have unearthed information “about potentially thousands of Brett Kavanaugh’s White House emails and other records related to the Senate hacking scandal from early in the George W. Bush administration and other controversial subjects that have not been disclosed to the Senate.”

Here’s the article. It’s not totally clear how much is really there. Read the piece to get your own sense. These emails are now approved for release, though White House could step in and say no.

However, if the Dems are the House majority they get subpoena power; seems to me they could get those records.

See also The Effort to Unseat Susan Collins in 2020 Is Already Underway.

I’m so depressed over the Kavanaugh mess I don’t even want to follow the news. I’ll check back in later.