Second Woman Accuses Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax

The damage from the political tricks of far right Republican operatives against Virginia's top Democrats continues as a second accuser has come forward alleging to have suffered sexual assault at the hands of Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax.   The timing of this and the first accusation, to me is suspect given that the assaults allegedly took place 115 and 19 years ago respectively.  Where were the accusers in 2017 when Fairfax was running for office?  The other irony is that the Legislative Black Caucus - which lead the rush to judgment against Ralph Northam as it salivated at the prospect of a black governor in the form of Fairfax if Northam resigned - now finds itself calling for Fairfax's resignation. Would any of this rolling catastrophe have continued to unfold if the Democrats had used calm, reasoned analysis and understood that they had been played by the right wing when the photos in Northam's yearbook had first been floated?  We will never know for certain, but I suspect ALL of the accusations against Northam and Fairfax were carefully pre-planned, with the far right counting on the Democrats to self-destruct.  And by Democrats, I mean numerous Virginia elected officials and national figures, including would be presidential candidates (all of whom will never receive my support), not the men and women on the street who seemingly have not leaped on the rush to judgment train wreck.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post: 

A Maryland woman said Friday that she was sexually assaulted by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) in a “premeditated and aggressive” attack in 2000, while both were undergraduate students at Duke University. She is the second woman this week to accuse him of sexual assault. Fairfax forcefully denied both allegations.

Democratic Party leaders quickly called for Fairfax to resign, including the influential Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. Many who had withheld judgment after the first allegation this week said they could no longer stand by him, including most of Virginia’s Democratic congressional delegation and national Democrats with presidential aspirations.

While Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) said Fairfax should resign if the allegations were true, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) offered no such equivocation. “The allegations against him detail atrocious crimes, and he can no longer effectively serve the Commonwealth,” Kaine said in a statement. “We cannot ever ignore or tolerate sexual assault.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) told senior staff that he would serve out the remaining three years of his term and would not step down amid his own scandal involving a racist photograph from his 1984 medical school yearbook.

It was a head-spinning turn in a spiraling week of chaos in Virginia. Only a week ago, Fairfax, 39, was preparing to take over as Virginia’s second African American governor when it looked as though Northam, 59, would be forced out over the racial issue.

The new accusation against Fairfax came from Meredith Watson, who said Friday in a statement through her attorney that she shared her account with several classmates and friends immediately after the alleged assault occurred. Watson did not speak publicly Friday, and her lawyer did not make her available for an interview.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Gerald E. Connolly, Don Beyer, Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton, in a lengthy joint statement, called for Fairfax to resign. National Democrats piled on, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) — who said “it is no longer appropriate for [Fairfax] to serve” — and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

Republican leaders in the Virginia state Senate called for criminal investigations while Democrats in the Senate and the House issued a joint statement calling for Fairfax’s resignation.

Fairfax’s statement said he would not step aside. “I demand a full investigation into these unsubstantiated and false allegations,” the statement said. “I will clear my good name and I have nothing to hide. I have passed two full field background checks by the FBI and run for office in two highly contested elections with nothing like this being raised before.”

Where it all ends nobody except, I predict the GOP will retain control both houses of the Virginia General Assembly which is why all of these crises were deliberately ignited.   The GOP is playing three dimensional chess while the Democrats have continued their circular firing squad. 

Mitch McConnell: Women protesting Kavanaugh Were "Clowns" and It Will "All Blow Over"

If one wants evidence of the contempt that today's Republican Party holds towards women, look no farther than GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the man who other than Donald Trump, has done more to destroy American constitutional government than anyone else.  McConnell in effect has labeled all survivors of sexual assault and women who are tired of GOP misogyny as "clowns" and has suggested that the whole Kavanaugh outrage as something that will "blow over," the inference being that women are shallow, gullible and of short memory capacity.  A piece in Daily Kos looks at McConnell's contempt for women and survivors of sexual assault.  Here are article highlights:

Nothing could exemplify the wholesale contempt the Republican Party has for women than the words of its own Senate Majority Leader, fresh off of successfully installing an accused attempted rapist and hard-right political operative onto the Supreme Court. . . . he considered them useful idiots too. “Harassing members at their homes, crowding the halls with people acting horribly, the effort to humiliate us really helped me unify my conference,” McConnell told the New York Times. “So I want to thank these clowns for all the help they provided.”

There used to be a time in this country when someone in as important a position as McConnell would, after a bitter political fight, attempt to mend fences with his opposition, particularly in a circumstance fraught with such a raw and emotional issue as rape.  There would be some act of simple grace in the acknowledgment of the validity of the other sides’ sentiments, even in defeat. That is the way the U.S. government worked for well over two hundred years, and it is in part what has kept us together as a nation.

More than anyone in the Congress and Senate, Mitch McConnell has worked to undermine those traditions, preferring instead to tear the fabric of this nation in two for the sake of imposing his party’s reactionary agenda on us all. So it’s not unexpected that rather than acknowledging their trauma, even in disagreement, he would instead belittle those rape victims, who protested and painfully told us their stories, as “clowns.”  Donald Trump has now made it acceptable to cruelly mock one’s political opponents, giving no quarter to the fact that they may represent the views of more than half the nation. McConnell’s remarks here simply signal that in the age of Trump the Republican Party has no decency left to spare . . . . .

Even here the undercurrent of misogyny is instructive. Demeaning and diminishing the victims of sexual assault, raising doubts about their truthfulness, was  the GOP’s tactic from the get-go in the Kavanaugh hearings. McConnell’s smug self-assurance that the anger and emotions poured out over the last two weeks will just “blow over” is simply another way of minimizing the experience of those who have had to deal with the trauma of sexual assault and its aftermath. It’s another way of saying that rape, in the end, is really not that big of a deal.

For those women and men who take a different view of sexual assault than that of the Republican Senate Majority leader, November 6 is now [less than] only thirty days away.

The Religious Right's Hypocrisy Filled Battle on Trump’s Behalf

I have long argued that there is no group of individuals more immoral and morally bankrupt than the so-called "Christian Right" who I refer to as the Christofascists.   They feign piety and wear their fake religiosity on their sleeves even as they support Republicans pushing policies that are the antithesis of the Gospel message.  Hate, bigotry and misogyny are their hallmarks.  And then there is their allegiance to Der Trumpenführer, who as you will recall made these remarks:

You know and ...She used to be great. She’s still very beautiful.

I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.

I did try and fuck her. She was married.

You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything. . . . Oh, it looks good.

Yes, the infamous Access Hollywood tape.   Not exactly exemplary language in any context much less among those who claim to be devout Christians - although, they ceased to be that many years ago when white nationalism and GOP greed and bigotry driven politics became their true gospel.  Now, despite ample evidence that Donald Trump is a pathological liar and that the GOP policies that they support will harm millions of Americans, the Christofascists are rallying to Trump's defense.  Their moral bankruptcy is now complete.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at how low these people have stooped.  Here are excerpts:  

President Trump’s escalation of his inflammatory claims that Obama loyalists are out to get him, . . . .  has brought his Breitbart-fueled siege mentality to a new level of conspiracy-mongering.

A host of fact-checks and explainers have poked holes in Trump’s claims, pointing out that they lack any evidence or substantiation. But even as the mainstream media has attempted to re-attach the public to reality, another group of people is already showing signs that it may rise to his defense: the religious right.

In so doing, the religious right — a core Trump constituency — is revealing something interesting about the bond that these millions of Americans have formed with Trump. His religious-right defenders see themselves as warriors in an epic battle for Christian America, not unlike the one underlying the agenda envisioned by top Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon — and as Trump hunkers down, they are invested in the narrative that Trump’s critics are satanic enemies bent on destroying him.

White evangelicals are Trump’s most ardent supporters. A January Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 66 percent of white evangelicals had a favorable view of Trump, the only religious constituency boasting a majority with a positive impression of him. 

Now religious-right figures are rising to Trump’s defense in the battle over whether Obama tapped his phones. For instance, Charisma magazine, a leading source for charismatic and Pentecostal writings, is credulously citing Breitbart as proof of the need for a congressional investigation of Trump’s claim that Obama ordered the wiretap. Charisma has long been a cheerleader for Trump; during the campaign, it promoted widely disseminated comparisons of Trump to the Persian King Cyrus, referred to in the Book of Isaiah as God’s “anointed” one.

Meanwhile, the Christian Broadcasting Network, which has long provided Trump favorable coverage, has also lent support to Trump’s claim about Obama.

The larger context here is that the religious right is girding for a much longer fight alongside Trump. His signing of his new travel ban today will signal to the religious right that he remains a strong defender of their Christian nation. A Pew pollin February found that 76 percent of white evangelicals supported his original executive order, and a Public Religion Research Institute poll found that white evangelicals are the only constituency whose support for a Muslim ban has grown since last year.

The policy-focused segment of the religious right . . . .  regularly praise the president in the hopes that he will grant their wishes for nominations and appointments, and will eventually sign a broad executive order creating unprecedented religious exemptions for opponents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality and reproductive rights.

In a sense, what we’re seeing is a developing alliance of sorts between Breitbart and the religious right. Some of the religious right’s rhetoric about the Trump era has echoes in the worldview of Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the mastermind of the Breitbart style.

[S]ome leading religious-right pundits appear ready to defend what they see as a Christian America, led by Trump, that is under attack by enemies, which include the left, the so-called “deep state,” Obama, a Muslim fifth column, and what they portray as immigrant and refugee criminal elements. 

This fuses two Trump allies in a shared belief in a civilizational showdown. With the White House giving all indications that it will stand by the notion that Obama wiretapped Trump’s phones, it would not be surprising if more religious-right figures rallied behind the claim, leading millions of evangelical Christian voters to believe it.

When the nation hopefully throws off the Trump regime - and hopefully, Congressional Republicans as well - one hope I have is that the Christofascists will have so discredited themselves and showed their moral bankruptcy that the exodus from religion becomes a stampede.  Both Trump and his Christofascist supporters are despicable and reprehensible.

Trump In 2007: Hot Women Are "My Alcoholism"

Despite Donald Trump's lie claim that he respects women, his past statements and behavior tell a different tale.  With a total of 10 women so far coming forward to describe how Trump engaged in sexual harassment or near sexual assault of precisely the type Trump boasted about in the 2005 Entertainment Tonight tape, it is pretty clear that Trump is a predatory and sexist pig.   The New York Post reports that a new poll found that 63% of Americans surveyed (including a third of Republicans) believe Trump committed sexual assault in the past.  What I find most ironic is that his hometown media is the most vehement in its rejection of Trump and effort to expose him for what he really is.  Perhaps all Trump's years of bullying people, screwing over contractors and investors and riding rough shod over people in the greater New York City area is at last coming home to roost. The New York Daily News is now publicizing Trumps "alcoholism" - Trump's own word - for "hot" teenage girls and "women."  I'd say the best description of the many, in my opinion, falls into the category of "pervert" and "lecher."  Here are highlights from the Daily News:

Donald Trump claims to only hire the “best people,” but also boasted once of hiring a teenager with no experience just because she was beautiful.

In video taken of Trump giving a paid Learning Annex speech in 2007, the Republican presidential candidate — currently accused of groping as many as 11 women against their will — said he insisted on hiring “a beautiful girl, 17 or 18, so beautiful” as a waitress even though she had no work history.

He also told the crowd that hot women are his “alcoholism” and that having one near him was like setting a glass of Scotch in front of a drunk.

The macho-man exchange occurred at a San Francisco Learning Annex talk that Trump was reportedly paid $1.5 million to give.

The cringe-worthy moment began when a woman in the audience asked Trump how many jets he owned and how she could apply to be a flight attendant.

Trump, leaning over the podium, demanded she come up onstage — as wolf whistles and loud cheers erupted from the men in the crowd.

Video of the 2007 event shows the woman, who introduced herself as Juliet, crossing the stage as Trump leers at her low cut blouse and ample cleavage.

After giving her a blatant once over when she arrives at the podium, the married Trump wraps an arm around her squeezes and says, “You’re hired.”

As Juliet pivots and walks away, Trump keeps his eyes trained on her derriere.

“Now if she worked on my plane that’s like a death wish for me,” Trump says, before going into his riff that beautiful women are his biggest addiction and weakness.

Trump, who is trailing Democrat Hillary Clinton in the latest polls by 7 percentage points in the latest polls, saw his 11th accuser emerge Thursday — the day after the third and final presidential debate.

Wellness expert Karena Virginia recounted the humiliating hands-on experience with The Donald during the 1998 edition of the tennis championships.

I was in shock,” she said at a Manhattan news conference about their encounter. “I felt intimidated and powerless.”

The GOP nominee — as he has with the 10 previous women who made similar charges — dismissed Virginia’s tale as bogus.

Virginia, like several other Trump accusers, said she was moved to come forward after a long-buried videotape emerged in which the businessman bragged about his crude treatment of women.

Trump campaign deputy communications director Jessica Ditto ripped the woman’s attorney Gloria Allred, who last week appeared with another of The Donald’s accusers — Summer Zervos, once a contestant on “The Apprentice.” Allred also represents several women accusing Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting them.

Having raised a son and now with two grandsons, Trump epitomizes what I would never want these males to be like or think like.  Meanwhile, my two Mellennial generation daughters have jumped on the "nasty woman" meme that mocks Trump and his boorish, low class sexism. 

Donald Trump and the Normalization of Sexual Assault

Over the last few years we have heard numerous stories about sexual assault on college campuses and efforts to change the mentality of males who would possible disregard the meaning of the word "No." Enter Donald Trump as revealed in the 2005 tape released last Friday and his excuse - and that of far too many of his surrogates - that all he was doing is engaging in "locker room talk." I may be gay, but over the years growing up, I was in many locker rooms and secured a varsity letter in high school.  Yes, there is racy talk at times, but in my experience it is about how much women supposedly want a guy (at least in the guy's imagination), not the fact that the guy can assault them at will  because he's a "star."  Trump is a sick and disgusting individual and a case study in the reality that money cannot by class and decorum.   A column in the New York Times looks at how Trump would normalize the sexual assault of women.  It also looks at how a Trump/Pence administration would likely be anti-women.  Here are highlights:

 After recently being caught on a 2005 tape gloating about sexual assaults, Trump issued an unapologetic apology in which he focused on the “big difference” between words and actions. And he has a point.

But there’s abundant evidence that Trump has indulged in not just scurrilous rhetoric, but also in heinous actions. Several more women have stepped forward to offer on-the-record accounts of having been aggressively groped or kissed by Trump against their will, right after he met them.

Some Republicans have demanded laws to ban transgender women from entering women’s restrooms or locker rooms, but instead they might focus on the risk of Trump doing this. He has boasted that he marched unannounced into changing rooms to ogle beauty pageant contestants naked, and a former contestant, Miss Arizona, Tasha Dixon, said he did just that as they were changing into bikinis. “Some girls were topless,” she said. “Other girls were naked.”

The pageant theme that year? Empowering women.

There’s more. In Trump’s 2005 tape, he referred in vulgar ways to a married woman, Nancy O’Dell, he had unsuccessfully pursued, but what’s less known is that in 2007 he reportedly tried to have her fired from hosting the Miss USA Pageant. Why? Because she was pregnant.

What is dehumanizing is not necessarily dirty words as such, but rather the casual braggadocio by men that normalizes assault. One study of 16,000 comments on a website for fraternity men found that the most common body part mentioned was “ass,” followed by “tits.”

There’s some evidence that hearing sexist language may be linked to greater tolerance of rape. And we already have a national problem with sexual harassment: One large survey found that almost one-quarter of American women said they had been groped in public spaces.

So I’m delighted that at least one person, Billy Bush, is paying in a concrete way for the words in the Trump tape. Maybe this can be a wake-up call for us men to appreciate that sexist epithets are no more acceptable than racist epithets.

If we’re outraged by vulgar words, shouldn’t we be even more appalled by predatory actions? And policies? Here the truth is that a Trump administration’s policies might be less titillating than his words, but they would be far more dangerous.

Every year, 550,000 women in America require medical attention after an assault by a boyfriend or husband. That’s an issue that is belatedly being addressed through screenings under Obamacare, which Trump wants to repeal, and by the Violence Against Women Act, which a large bloc of Republicans opposed in Congress. Trump’s concern about such assaults seems dubious, and in fact both he and his campaign C.E.O., Steve Bannon, have been accused of domestic violence themselves.

Since he never held public office, Trump lacks a voting record. But his running mate has tended to look at what might help women and do the opposite, including voting against equal-pay legislation.

At a time when 11 women a day die of cervical cancer, Trump and Pence have also been stalwart opponents of women’s health programs that provide cancer screenings. They are motivated partly by hostility toward Planned Parenthood over abortions, but Pence, while a congressman, also sponsored legislation to defund Title X, the main federal family planning program. It does not pay for abortions but does help screen more than 750,000 women for cervical cancer a year.

New York magazine once quoted Trump as telling a friend about women, “you have to treat ‘em like——” well, manure. But to me, his language pales beside his behavior and likely policies. So let’s try to pivot from outrage at gross words to condemnation of unconscionable behavior and policies.