Another op ed that never ran--from 9-4-2018

Asylee from Burma: Kavanaugh Hearing, Woodward Book, Amazon. 9-4-2018 Kyi May Kaung holds a doctorate from the University of PA in Political Economy, studies dictators and worked in academia, international broadcasting and for the Burmese democratic government in exile. Today has been a very interesting day for me, as they say. A refugee from Burma, because I sought and was granted refuge here in the USA, after I obtained graduate degrees in America and my ideas became too democratic for me to be safe in junta-controlled Burma, I have been paying particular attention to American politics since Nov. 2016, and the shock of the Trump win in the electoral college. I always found American politics fascinating, as when I read in Burma, in Time Magazine, about the missing section of tape erased by Rosemary Woods during the Watergate scandal. All those names were very familiar to me, even though Time Magazine was the only reading material I had. There was no TV and no radio. Once in America, it was so strange and exciting to see Barbara Walters stick up her finger and chide Reagan for exceeding his time. “Mr. Reagan, you’ve done it again.” If she were in Burma, she’d be arrested as soon as she stepped off the stage. Famous Burmese comic Zarganar or pincers had a joke, “They say I have no teeth. They were broken when I was beaten in prison. But I do have teeth—look!” And he’d take off his dentures and show the audience. So today, I almost went to my dentist on the wrong day, but I happened to call her assistant because my over-dentures were hurting when I tried to put them in, and the assistant told me I had the wrong day. So I checked the news. Then I got online and watched the Kavanaugh Hearing live. My favorite Sen. Blumenthal was on, then Cory Booker, then Ms. Hirono in an acqua blue jacket, then Ms. Kamala Harris. When the Republicans were talking about what a good father Kavanaugh was, I went to the other room and ate, or I took a nap, or I went to the bathroom, or I did some blogging and tweeting. I deleted my Facebook account in 2016, because an exact clone of me appeared, and I got scared. Also, I did not like the way Mark Zuckerberg evaded questions during his Hearing. I revived my LinkedIn account again, to recover some email addresses which I lost in the big Yahoo hack. I got back to tweeting, because Trump tweets and like him, I like to make one-way comments and on Twitter, they can’t really answer back to your face. But I never follow Trump or Trumpies, in fact have blocked him to see if I could. I can. At the Hearing, everything the Democrats said made sense. What are the Republican’s hiding? How can anyone read or review 42,000 documents which only finished downloading at 6 AM this morning, and the Hearing starts at 10 AM. Now as a senior citizen, it takes me at least one hour to get ready to go out. Why did the GOP spend 57 days reviewing the documents? Clearly, they are trying to delay, then push the Supreme Court nomination through in time for the midterms and to “help” Trump if he is impeached. I don’t want Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Justice. Abortions: I have any number of stories about botched abortions and infanticides, especially in villages in Burma. One servant girl from a family I knew, went home, got pregnant and died because there was an abortion which involved the midwife jumping on her belly. I can still see her face, she was stout and strong. We called her Ah Sein Gyi, Big Diamond, because the other Diamond was small. Another story was about a woman who was raped maybe while working as a porter on the Burma-Thai cross-border black market trade. This woman, I was told, had a red haired baby, but exposed it and let it die. If you stop legal abortions, illegal ones will appear, and they will be lethal. I don’t like how Kavanaugh ruled for finding a sponsor for the 17 year old immigrant who was already pregnant, so more time would pass and she would no longer be able to get a legal abortion. Glad he was overruled. Don’t like his other views either. Woodward book Fear and transcript of phone call with Trump: Quite clear Kellyanne and Trump are giving Woodward the usual run-around. Trump must be afraid, after all, Amazon today passed the one trillion dollar mark, and everyone knows, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. If I were you, I’d run out and buy Washington Post, Amazon and New York Times stock pronto. ***