Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in to the Supreme Court around 7pm last night 6 October. This puts a controlling/dominating Pluto in the 10th square the Libra Sun and trine a Virgo Moon – all of which makes sense of a confirmation rammed through with maximum force. There’s also an exact disappointed-woman Neptune opposition the Moon. Both the Moon and Neptune are in aspect to the Mars/Pluto midpoint – which Ebertin describes as ‘injury caused to a woman’ as well as ‘cunning and deceitful.’
For a man who’s got what he wanted he doesn’t look too exuberant from transits to his midpoints with a couple of tr Saturn downers in November; a disputatious and loss-making December/January 2019; and a continuing run of Neptune transits to midpoints, some of them damaging, right through from now till early 2020. Plus tr Pluto is aiming to undercut his best laid plans from April 2019, on and off till late 2020, to which he’ll respond with displays of confidence, but he won’t be happy. It’s unlikely he’ll be impeached though there are moves afoot to query certain of his confirmation hearing claims.
His relationship with SCOTUS itself looks uncertain, clouded in suspicion from late this month till late December.
And his relationship chart with the USA is ploughing through murky waters from early 2019 through till late 2020 with tr Pluto square the composite Venus and Neptune as well, which also tugs on the disruptive composite Uranus right through into the early 2020s. Plus a destabilising tr Uranus conjunct the composite Sun Mercury in 2019 and square Mars in 2020.
Not a popular appointment and the story may have a ways to run yet.
This thread has been very interesting! I was sorely disappointed in Susan (Susie) Collins and equally disappointed in the democrat senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia who’s up for re-election in a heavily republican state. Marjorie your thoughts on him? The ONLY democrat to vote for Kavanaugh.
I fail to see how this whole episode and Susan Collins helped women in anyway. Most sexual assaults are unreported and they still will be and maybe even more so because if this…Republicans care more for having the guy they want as President, than for victims of sex assault. It is a disgrace.
I think that what the hearings did should help women who faced sexual assault, and will help them come forward. That was a good outcome. I also think that women will be clearer and firmer in saying that no means no.
This discussion mystifies me. Kavanaugh voted the same as Justice Merrick Garland something like 96% of the time. These people who go crazy over Roe vs. Wade also went crazy over the nomination of David Souter, too. I think the activists against Kavanaugh really demonstrated what kind of activism does not work. Why would people mistrust what Senator Susan Collins said? She made it clear she wouldn’t vote for anyone who would overturn Roe vs. Wade, and she’s confidant Kavanaugh will not. In 22 years of service, she has never missed a vote and has shown herself to have very reasoned, responsible approaches on all issues. She did not vote for President Trump and she voted No on reversing the Affordable Care Act.
Unlike many politicians, Senator Collins is not someone to go back on her word, and she has demonstrated that time and time again. So all these people who lunged insults at her and called her a “rape apologist” are really hurting their cause.
JAS, your belief that ”all these people who lunged insults at her and called her a rape apologist are really hurting their cause” mystifies me. Just what cause is it that Susan is going to dump all over because she got insulted? Susan made a speech about Ford that was insulting and heinous. If I take your mysterious statement as fact, she can dish it out but she can’t take it.
She’s a typical republican politician, no more, no less. She’s well known for being a long time member of the Bush inner circle.
You ask, “Why would people mistrust what Senator Susan Collins said?” Well, let’s take a gander at her voting record. She voted against the Act that prohibits suspected terrorists from getting firearms, against letting the Attorney General delay transfer of firearms to suspected terrorists, against denying firearms and explosives to dangerous terrorists (Susie is all for freedom of terrorism), against the fix gun checks act, against PROMESA aid to Puerto Rico, against expanding and improving Medicare, against removing unauthorized US troops in Yemen, against the Coons-McCain act that would have given protection to children who were brought into the country illegally, and she rubber stamped all of Trump’s appointments to high office with the exception of DeVos. That’s just 3 years worth of her 22.
Changing what you think about her is not my intent. It’s kinda cute that you have such a crush on her. But I just wanted to let our Star4Cast friends know a few things about her to balance out your petition for her sainthood, lol.
There are several problems around sexual abuse allegations. The first is it has been swept under the carpet for so long, with victims disbelieved, smeared, deleted that there is an understandable groundswell against the pattern being repeated. The second is in historical cases that memory is fallible – usually the core holds a kernel of truth but there may be (most likely are) inaccuracies and distortions which allow the nay-sayers to blow the accusation out of the water. And more to the point, which is number three, it allows the deniers to remain in their comfort zone – people like us don’t abuse, nasty things only occur to other people, a faraway Them.
I think Kavanaugh should have been dis-confirmed if only for his partisan Clinton conspiracy nonsense and display of unjudicial temperament. Had there been more time, more would have come out about the frat-boy drinking scene, and may yet emerge – which makes it more likely than less that untoward behaviour took place.
So I think Susan Collins’ justification was a touch ingenuous.
This is completely delusional. There is an automatic right of appeal to the DC Circuit, which hears literally thousands of cases a year. The vast majority of them are three-judge panels unanimously affirming the district court’s decision below. A similar voting record in the DC Circuit does not mean there would be a similar voting record at the Supreme Court, which hears 75 cases a year and specifically picks the most controversial ones, on which there is broad division. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were picked from a list of people specifically chosen because they are reliable votes for a hard-right-wing agenda. If they and Merrick Garland were really going to vote the same way on the Supreme Court, McConnell would have had no reason to refuse even to meet with Judge Garland, who was nominated to a vacancy by the duly-elected President, for eleven months. They took such unprecedented and unprincipled steps because they knew a Justice Garland would vote differently than a Justice Gorsuch or a Justice Kavanaugh. Don’t insult our intelligence.
Brett Kavanaugh is certainly a serial perjurer, and almost as certainly a serial sexual assaulter. He also is a partisan operative who has no business on the Supreme Court. Susan Collins cannot credibly say she believes Dr. Ford while cherry-picking the parts of Dr. Ford’s testimony she chooses to believe, like her 100% certain identification of Brett Kavanaugh as her assailant. The entire Collins floor speech was an exercise in partisan lies and trying to have it every which way. “I believe her, but not this part.” “I believed her and wanted him to withdraw, and then his angry ranting testimony upset me greatly, but somehow simultaneously convinced me to put him on the highest court in the land for life.” What utter crap.
Susan Collins is a lying fraud, and always has been. She is a Republican hack who pretends to be a moderate. She’s fooled some people in the past, but that is over. I personally will spend every weekend of 2020 in Maine seeing that she is defeated if she even runs. The only one who “hurt her cause” is the odious Susan Collins.
There’s a very touching piece by Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan’s daughter in the WP in support of Christine Blasey Ford.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dear-christine-blasey-ford-what-a-difference-you-made/2018/10/08/85f8fde8-cb30-11e8-a85c-0bbe30c19e8f_story.html?utm_term=.0edd38c80500
May he be as miserable as he’s going to make many of us.
Pluto Square the 17° Libra Neptune in the 1787 US Constitution Chart. Jupiter at 23°Scorpio square Saturn at 23° Aquarius in the US Constitution chart .
I was amazed to find that there was not a single Protestant sitting on the SCOTUS unless you count Gorsuch and he was raised and educated as a Catholic and only attends the Episcopalian Church because his British wife is a member of the CofE. In fact it currently consists of 6 Catholics and 3 Jews , groups who represent only about 25% of the American demographic. I know the WASP ascendancy in the past discriminated against minorities but it seems odd that the 150 million Protestants in the USA dont have at least one representative in the Constitutional court. Kavanaugh makes no secret about the way his religious beliefs inform the way he interprets the law. Given the US Constitution was largely written by dissenters who believed in strict segregation of Church and State this may be a problem down the road.
Neptune in the 1518 Reformation Saturn Pluto Synod Chart is at 23° Aquarius exactly Conjunct Kavanaughs Natal Sun. It also squares Jupiter at 23° Scorpio in the Senate Confirmation vote chart. More importantly transiting Saturn is now withinone degree of the 4° Capricorn it shared with Pluto in 1518. It will be exact at he same degree on 30 October 2018 as Pluto crosses the ecliptic and is hit again by the eclipse in December 2019. At some point religion will be an issue here.
Again, an interesting take, given there only has been one non-Protestant POTUS. That said, Protestant churches obviously have significatively different views in many issues, with mainline Lutheran and some Episcopal churches counting as the most Liberal ones and Southern Babtist and Free Churches as the most conservative.
Hugh, Thanks. I didn’t know that. Frankly scary given the anti-women’s rights approach of the Catholic fraternity amongst other restrictive attitudes.
The USA is truly a different country – makes you be glad to be a Brit for all its horrendous faults. David Steel’s UK Abortion Bill was late 1960s for which I campaigned as a journalist; as was the post-Wolfenden decriminalising of homosexuality. And that was the end of angst about both issues.
Religion is changing drastically in the US. White Evangelicals are down to 11%, while 35% of young people claim “no religion”, with 21% overall claiming “no religion”. Protestants of all kinds are 36%, and Catholics 22%. (Latest ABC News/Washington Post poll)
Catholics have held steady over the 15 year poll, but Protestants have dropped sharply, especially hispanic Protestants. Religions did not gain, while “No Religion” zoomed upwards.
Protestantism is not just a matter of religious affiliation. It is more a state of mind. In that respect agnostics, atheists and people of no religion though they may not appreciate it are essentially expressing a Protestant view of the world mediated to them via the Age of Enlightenment. The very idea of beliefs based on personal reason and individual conscience simply did not exist prior to the Reformation. Indeed without the intellectual ferment stirred up by post Reformation conflicts such as the English civil war then the American Republic and its Contitution would have been unimaginable. Similarly without the concept of non conformity there would be no separation of Church and State. Nor would the idea of a pluralist or secular society be possible. None of these concepts existed in the medieval Catholic world which was essentially a closed society with one official belief system with which all members of the society were expected to conform.
It is no accident that there are many Protestant churches but only one Roman Catholic one. This fact relects the fundamental differences in the way the two traditions view the world. Protestantism is organised from the bottom up since ostensibly it is based on a priesthood of all believers who speak direct to God and mediate their beliefs by their personal reading of the Bible. Since there is no established central authority determining what is to be believed Protestant groups tend to fragment as individuals often have different opinions The Roman Catholic tradition is organised from the top down. It has one head, the Pope. It is a patriarchy since that individual is always a a man (he is quite literally the Patriarch of Rome) and he is chosen by a College of Cardinals who are also men. While Catholicism is not monolithic and does encompass some differences in religious practise it does not tolerate non conformity in its widest sense. Member of the Church are expected to obey the articles of faith that eminate from the Magisterium. At core it does not believe in a pluralistic society since that in contradicts the whole concept of a Catholic Church. It should be noted that religious tolerance (ie the absence of persecution) and religious pluralism (the acceptance of contrasting belief systems) are different things. The latter idea of Freedom of Religion from state interference was at the heart of the creation of the American Republic and is written into the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Needless to say what the Founding Fathers of America did not envisage was that one of the main bulwarks to their Constitution, the SCOTUS, would one day be dominated by people coming from an entirely different intellectual tradition. Nor do I suppose that they thought for one moment that certain section of the Protestant religious community would aid and a bet that process thereby essentially betraying the Protestant ideas that had granted their congregations freedom of worship in the first place.
Now I am not arguing here that Catholic judges on the Supreme Court will start slavishly imposing Catholic practises on the rest of society. However, they cannot help being influenced by the religious and intellectual tradition in which they grew up and were educated. It is bound to inform their judgement on certain issues particularly relating to areas such as birth control and abortion. Moreover a Church that has a patriarchal view of divinely mandated authority cannot help but reinforce that concept in the minds of its adherents. If these individuals happen to sit on SCOTUS then it is quite possible that these idea will inform their legal judgements. That is why I think historically the Kavanaugh appointment is so important.
Thanks Hugh, Very elegantly put.
Here’s a breakdown of Sup Justices since the start.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/08/us/politics/how-kavanaugh-fits-in-among-supreme-court-justices.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Thanks Hugh that’s really interesting. I should perhaps declare that I was raised a Catholic, although my parents weren’t ultra observant. The irony is that I went to a convent school up to age 13 where the nuns were very much the boss. Our priest was a mild mannered, slightly bumbling English convert who definitely wasn’t in charge. It didn’t seem like a patriarchy away from Rome 😉
My direct maternal line is English protestant, with some Huguenot ancestry even. Likewise, I don’t think there are many people in urban areas or the diaspora these days with a “pure” influence of one particular set of values in their upbringing, other things inevitably seep through. My parents valued education and I think education will make a big difference to people of any background. So some protestants like those in the DUP could easily have more extreme views on abortion than educated, urban Catholics. But I agree, it would be ideal to have a range of backgrounds in any institution.
I provided current, verified statistics to add to the data set in this thread. Gave no personal opinion, yet I provoked a reply from you that has gone far beyond those simple numbers. I apologize for whatever it was that challenged you to this extent.
Those statistics support your original post that pointed out a gross imbalance in favor of only two religious affiliations.
In your rumination about the meaning of no religion, you tied yourself in knots. “No” means “No”, Hugh.
Hugh, given the latest poll numbers on religion, Protestants are down to 117,000,000–using a base population of 327,000,000. 327mil, 36% Protestants, are the 2018 figures (US census February 2018, ABC News/Washington Post long running polls).
Excellent, eye-opening post, Mr. Fowler!
Marjorie: I noticed on my twitter feed that Kavanaugh tweeted/posted the photo of his swearing in at 3:45pm that day. The final vote had barely been cast; the final was noted by VP Pence presiding at 4:00pm. Maybe a news embargo held it till 7:00, but it sure seems fishy. Er, Neptunian?
Here’s a link: https://twitter.com/BrettKavanaugh/status/1048705906999930880
Twitter times are a mystery. Don’t know what they are fixed to zone-wise.
Now that I remember I got it off the SCOTUS twitter which said 7.05pm and assume that’s DC time.
I’d assume local time zone. But not certain. Noticed other Twitter photos by people in the room (but the official photo) with time stamps of 6:44 or so. It’s a mystery.
CNN said he had been sworn in several hours after the final vote and somewhere else said evening. He’ll have another ‘ceremonial’ swearing in by Trump at 7pm tonight.
Which puts the New Moon square Pluto in the 10th – much of a muchness or worse.
Women will be major losers in this game, but men will be loser$$$ and most don’t even realize it yet. No abortions? Welcome to child support for 18 to 22 years, guys. And DNA tests are cheap. A big difference from pre 1970.