Sunday, September 30, 2018
Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg's angry political attack taints the impartiality of the Supreme Court: She should resign
"He is a faker," she said of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. "He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. ... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."
Christine Ford may have changed the date of alleged assault from mid-1980s to 1982 after reading Mark Judge's book
Margot Cleveland here thinks Ford changed this to 1982 when she was fifteen involving two boys after reading Mark Judge's book, which may be the reason why Ford has refused to turn over the therapist's records.
Julie Swetnick allegedly has a history of filing slip-and-fall lawsuits as well as serious problems with state and federal tax authorities
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
Detail of Ford testimony about seeing Mark Judge at Safeway comes straight out of Judge's own book
Evidence builds that Ford's story is fabricated to ruin Kavanaugh. The possible motives include politics, ideology, and perhaps an actual perceived slight when a teenager now blown up out of all proportion into this sad affair.
Christine Ford misrepresented herself as a psychologist under oath, Stanford hastily scrubs her faculty page
Testifying under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christine Blasey Ford identified herself as a ‘psychologist,’ but records indict this is a false statement under California law. Someone at Stanford University also appears to have caught the blunder and edited Ford’s faculty page.
Just one sentence into her sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford may have told a lie.
After thanking members of the committee on Thursday, and while under oath, Ford opened her testimony saying, “My name is Christine Blasey Ford, I am a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.”
The issue lies with the word “psychologist,” and Ford potentially misrepresenting herself and her credentials, an infraction that is taken very seriously in the psychology field as well as under California law.
Portland company Webtrends claimed Kavanaugh accuser Swetnick made false sex allegations against employees
In the suit, Webtrends alleged Swetnick claimed to have graduated from Johns Hopkins University but the company said it subsequently learned the school had no record of her attendance. Webtrends said she also "falsely described her work experience" at a prior employer.
The suit also alleges Swetnick "engaged in unwelcome, sexually offensive conduct" while at Webtrends and "made false and retaliatory allegations that other co-workers had engaged in inappropriate conduct toward her."
The suit alleges Swetnick "engaged in unwelcome sexual innuendo and inappropriate conduct" directed at two male employees during a business lunch, with Webtrends customers present. Swetnick claimed two other employees had sexually harassed her, according to the suit.
Webtrends' suit said it determined Swetnick had engaged in misconduct but could not find evidence to support her allegations against her colleagues. Later, the company alleged, Swetnick took medical leave and simultaneously claimed unemployment benefits in the District of Columbia.
Ford became "popular figure on the Dewey Beach bar scene" in the summers after alleged assault
DEWEY BEACH, Delaware — Christine Blasey Ford grew up in Washington’s affluent Maryland suburbs, graduated from an expensive all-girls private high school and spent summers immersed in the wild nightlife of this Eastern Shore resort town. ... Longtime residents of Dewey Beach, a Delaware resort known in the late 1980s as a place where the college students who worked the other resorts lived and partied, remember her nights waitressing at the Waterfront, a raucous bayside bar. ... Ms. Blasey Ford was a popular figure on the Dewey Beach bar scene.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Uganda prepares to vaccinate as Ebola threatens from Congo
From the story here:
Uganda, which has had five Ebola outbreaks since 2000, says it is preparing to begin vaccinations as needed. The health ministry in Congo, which is facing its 10th outbreak, says more than 12,000 people have been vaccinated so far.
His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama has Europe for Europeans moment: Refugees have to go back
Well naturally. Tibet for Tibetans. Germany for Germans. Hungary for Hungarians.
Justice Anthony Kennedy is to blame for much of the polarization now evident everywhere in America
From Paul Kengor's Anthony Kennedy: Reagan’s Worst Mistake:
The Kennedy pick was supposed to calm the waters after the storm generated by the Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg nominations. ... His subsequent 30 years of judicial decisions literally redefined things as basic as life and marriage. His calamitous three decades on the court will be followed by an endless maze of legal-cultural wars and church-state battles dealing with the disastrous dust-up of what he unleashed. ... Kennedy led the majority with one of the most breathtakingly outrageous statements in the history of jurisprudence: “At the heart of liberty,” averred Kennedy, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
In short, Anthony Kennedy spearheaded America's turn into the Libertarian Party in convention, but where no one can agree about anything.
Justice Anthony Kennedy's extreme libertarianism made him the enemy of anything "civic"
From Bruce Frohnen's Anthony Kennedy’s Jurisprudence of Extreme Individualism:
Justice Kennedy’s view [is] that each of us must be “left alone” in a radical sense to define all that is important for ourselves. ... The paradigm motivating Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence is of an individual who must be protected by the courts from all outside pressures. ... For many decades, Justice Kennedy has stood for the proposition that courts should protect individuals from interference from the outside—whether by the government or by the associations (religious or otherwise) they choose to join—in their “mystical” notions of personal identity. The price of this fanciful theory of human liberty and the ability of individuals to define reality for themselves, is the breakdown of social order, the deaths of millions of innocent children, and the further marginalization of God and religion from public life. ... This accidental jurist has caused very real damage to our nation’s institutions and its very soul.
Hey Justice Kennedy: A generation of vipers can't be magically taught to use enlightened civic discourse
Anthony Kennedy, miserable cretin, quoted here:
"Perhaps we didn't do too good a job teaching the importance of preserving democracy by an enlightened civic discourse," he said. "In the first part of this century we're seeing the death and decline of democracy."
O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
-- Matthew 12:34
Friday, September 28, 2018
Trump says Christine Ford's a credible witness
About as credible as he is promising never to sign another spending bill without funding in it for the wall.
One lameduck Flake holds entire confirmation process hostage to one more week of redundant investigation by incompetent FBI
And a fine way to be remembered in opprobrium forever it is, too.
Bill Kristol alienates another one, this time over Kavanaugh
Pretty soon NeverTrump will simply be spelled Bill Kristol.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Ford was a cheerleader and party girl at Holton-Arms, apparently had the nickname "Easy Blasey"
Republicans got her yearbooks, which had been scrubbed from the web, but never used them today.
From the story here at Real Clear Investigations:
Other evidence indicates Ford, a popular cheerleader at the time, was immersed in an alcohol-fueled party culture and no stranger to “keg parties” in the D.C. area — or the "bar scene" along the Maryland and Delaware coast. In fact, Ford was known as a "party girl” on the Delaware shore during summer breaks, another source with direct knowledge of the congressional investigation said.
One report, moreover, recounts how Ford once got caught in "a romantic triangle" at Dewey Beach that ended with the two men getting into a fistfight over her.
At Holton-Arms, the source added, she was known by classmates, and even some parents, by a sexually derogatory nickname playing off her maiden name Blasey, suggesting she was promiscuous.
“She was not the wholesome Catholic girl they’re trying to portray her as,” the source said, making her claims of victimization at the hands of Kavanaugh "harder to believe."
Feinstein just blamed the victim for leaking her story!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh, so this is political.
If these cowards and slime in the US Senate refuse to confirm Kavanaugh, I hope he runs for president
Brett Kavanaugh is the great man Donald Trump only dreams he could be.
Donald Trump fights for Brett Kavanaugh like he fights for his wall
"I'm going to see what happens tomorrow. I'm going to be watching," he said during a rare solo news conference. "I'm going to see what's said. It's possible they will be convincing." "I can be persuaded also," the President went on. "I can't tell you if they're liars until I hear them."
Brett Kavanaugh's deeds are plain for all to see, his accusers' dark and filthy
Nor need I speak my deeds, for these you see:
The sun and day are witnesses for me.
-- John Dryden
Tim Walberg just blamed no funding for the wall on Democrats Chuck Shumer and Debbie Stabenow
Just now on the Steve Gruber Show.
Walberg knows damn well Republicans control the Congress and can pass such spending if they want to. Spending bills don't require supermajorities.
Republicans simply don't want a wall.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Ford took polygraph Aug. 7 in MD, told Feinstein she'd be back in CA after Aug. 10: How'd she do it if afraid to fly?
She protested Grassley's invitation to testify so quickly partly on the grounds of fear of flying.
NBC lies about Senate probe of recent anonymous allegation dating to 1998
The Senate has already dismissed the anonymous allegation. There is no "probe", just hysteria.
Julie Swetnik's former boyfriend briefly got restraining order against her
Julie Swetnick, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a friend of attending house parties where women — including herself — were sexually assaulted, had a restraining order filed against her years later in Miami by her former boyfriend.
Julie Swetnick was in college when Brett Kavanaugh was 17: Maybe she supplied them the alcohol and drugs
Questions About Julie Swetnick’s Claims: She Was in College When Brett Kavanaugh Was in High School:
[A]ccording to the New York Times, “Ms. Swetnick grew up in Montgomery County, Md., graduating from Gaithersburg High School in 1980 before attending college at the University of Maryland, according to a résumé for her posted online. Judge Kavanaugh graduated from Georgetown Prep in 1983.” That means she would have met Kavanaugh while she was 17 or 18, and he was 15 or 16 years old. It also would mean that she was attending high school parties while in college.
Brett Kavanaugh's girlfriend when he was 17 backs him up
The Wall Street Journal reports here:
Maura Kane, who dated Judge Kavanaugh for several months when they were both 17-year-old high-school students, said in an interview Wednesday that she didn’t know Ms. Swetnick and didn’t believe such parties occurred. “The allegations are so outrageous and insane,” Ms. Kane said in an interview. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, and we stand by Brett.”
Rasmussen Generic Congressional Ballot Wednesday 9/26/18
46-43-3-8
Democrat-Republican-other-undecided
AM radio's incessant propagandists for women and LGBTs of the Ad Council lied in 2012 that they created Rosie the Riveter
And their lie remains on the record, here at HuffPo, because, you know, women can never lie:
“Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires.” “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” “Take a Bite Out of Crime. “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” You’ve heard these slogans, right? Whether you’re old enough to remember them or they’re familiar because they’ve seeped through our popular culture (Rosie the Riveter paraphernalia is everywhere these days), they ring a bell. They’re memorable and iconic. And they were created by the Ad Council. ... You know about Rosie the Riveter, but did you know that she helped recruit over two million women to join the workforce during the war?
But this so-called Rosie the Riveter isn't Rosie, and wasn't created until 1943, and not by the Ad Council but by Westinghouse's artist, a man, J. Howard Miller, for internal use only and was little seen:
"We Can Do It!" is an American World War II wartime poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. The poster was very little seen during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called "We Can Do It!" but also called "Rosie the Riveter" after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The "We Can Do It!" image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. ... [D]uring the war the image was strictly internal to Westinghouse, displayed only during February 1943, and was not for recruitment but to exhort already-hired women to work harder. ... No more than 1,800 copies of the 17-by-22-inch (559 by 432 mm) "We Can Do It!" poster were printed. It was not initially seen beyond several Westinghouse factories in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the midwestern U.S., where it was scheduled to be displayed for two five-day work weeks starting Monday, February 15, 1943. ... During World War II, the "We Can Do It!" poster was not connected to the 1942 song "Rosie the Riveter", nor to the widely seen Norman Rockwell painting called Rosie the Riveter that appeared on the cover of the Memorial Day issue of the Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1943. The Westinghouse poster was not associated with any of the women nicknamed "Rosie" who came forward to promote women working for war production on the home front. Rather, after being displayed for two weeks in February 1943 to some Westinghouse factory workers, it disappeared for nearly four decades.
Byron York thinks Feinstein call to postpone Thursday's hearings designed to give cover to Ford to back out
Here:
Are the new protests a prelude to Ford rejecting yet another hearing date? That's not yet clear. But if she does, she'll have the support of Senate Democrats.
Dianne Feinstein calls for immediate postponement of Kavanaugh confirmation after second accuser emerges
Dianne Feinstein calls for immediate postponement of Kavanaugh confirmation after second accuser emerges
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
The Rush Limbaugh lie of the day: "Drain the swamp" is why Trump was sent to Washington
"Drain the swamp" was a late development in the campaign, courtesy of the libertarian Steve Bannon and former Cruz campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, also a libertarian. Arguably if Trump had dropped that rhetoric and pretended to make nice with the Establishment after he'd won we'd see far more of the things Trump ran on accomplished by now than we do.
Trump distinguished himself from every other candidate in the primaries by making the border with Mexico the central issue from the time he walked down that elevator until mid-August 2016, which, when solved, would help to solve many other problems, like drugs, disease, and crime. After Bannon and Conway came on board replacing Manafort, however, that message began to be played down, to the point that Trump's campaign nearly cratered in the Arizona town hall in late August with Sean Hannity when Trump wavered badly on the issue, polling the crowd for its opinion. That was not the same man we had been seeing for an entire year.
Rush Limbaugh is also a libertarian, and characteristically doesn't give a damn about the border. He never has. He just licked his finger and checked the wind in his support of border security under Trump. But illegal immigration was never on Rush's radar, just as it wasn't on Ted Cruz' either. Rush was for that dual citizen, remember?
Here is Rush today, still trying to co-opt the Trump base:
That’s why at every Trump rally, what is the No. 1 sign they see, outside of Make America Great? What’s the number one sign you see at a Trump rally, Mr. Snerdley? (interruption) Nope. “Drain the swamp.” “Drain the swamp” is the No. 1. “Build the wall,” No. 2. (“Lock her up” is really a chant.) But “drain the swamp” is why Trump was sent there, and declassifying these documents would be a giant step for mankind in draining the swamp.
Wikipedia gets some things right:
False accusations of rape occur at rates 2 to 6 times higher than for other false accusations, over 40% of accusations recanted
From SEX, LIES, AND RAPE:
It is a primary tenet of “feminist jurisprudence” that women never lie when complaining of sexual abuse. This delusion is as ludicrous as the notion that all women think alike.
Any man who states the obvious, however, puts his career at risk. Even liberal Law Professor Alan Dershowitz was accused of sexual harassment just for discussing in class the possibility of false rape allegations. In 1993 Dershowitz told author David Horowitz that he began videotaping classroom lectures on the subject for his own protection, and that other experts in the field stopped teaching rape law rather than take the risk.
According to a report of the Defense Department Inspector General released in 2005, approximately 73% of women and 72% of men at the military service academies believe that false accusations of sexual assault are a problem. But military officials keep pretending that the problem does not exist.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Rush Limbaugh just read the riot act to Chuck Grassley, telling him Republicans had better vote on Kavanaugh
Good! But I doubt Chuck is listening. He's been asleep since September 21st.
Kooky "Macro Tourist" tells us to put aside our political views, uses crabbed Talking Points Memo graph to warn us about Republican federal spending increases
Although the Republicans are supposedly the party of fiscal conservatism, we all know that sort of talk is only for when they are not in power. ... There should be little surprise that under Republican stewardship, the greatest fiscal stimulus in the past decade has been instituted. Not saying if it is good or bad because my opinion is completely irrelevant. ... You would be foolish to ignore the dramatic change in the world’s attitude towards economic policy. “Tight fiscal and easy monetary policy” is being replaced with “easy fiscal and (somewhat) tighter monetary policy”. And ironically enough, the Republican Party under Trump’s “leadership” is at the forefront of this change.
Apparently the guy can't figure out the facts for himself, which show that Trump is projected by the center left Tax Policy Center to be in the same league as Obama through fiscal 2020, not in the Reagan league, not in the Nixon league, not in the Bush 41 league, either. Hell, he's not even projected to make the Bush 43 league, which was bad enough. Spending is going up under Trump, too be sure, but it's a world away from previous Republican administrations.
What really matters for spending is who controls the purse strings, which is Congress. Until Clinton, Republican presidents had to bargain with Democrat Congresses to get what they wanted. That often meant agreeing to big spending bills. The Republican resurgence in Congress under Clinton marked a new era in spending, which comparatively speaking is way down on a compound annual growth rate basis, even under spendthrift Bush 43.
Personally I'm less fearful than I had been of a new spending spree under Trump with Republicans in control of Congress. Trump is adversarial with the Republican Establishment in a way that no Republican president of the past has been. Getting what he wants hasn't been at all easy for this very reason. Republicans are obstructing him no less than Democrats are even as Trump folds like a house of cards on taxes and regulation without getting anything in return, like a wall. At some point he's going to veto something, or go down to electoral defeat.
At any rate, talk of a new dramatic change is simply kooky.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
I just found out my new neighbor is in the bottom 2.88% of the population
He's a fat, white, father of two young girls whose idea of fun is spending the day at the pool, and he's a Twitter follower of Rachel Madcow.
Thank God for carvedilol.
Thank God for carvedilol.
John Brennan is the Democrats' self-admitted communist, James Comey is the Republicans'
Mr. Comey Goes To Washington (New York Magazine, 20 October 2003):
Comey has been savaged by William Safire and lauded by Chuck Schumer; just what kind of Republican is he, anyway? This sets Comey howling again. “I must be doing something right!” he says. “In college, I was left of center, and through a gradual process I found myself more comfortable with a lot of the ideas and approaches the Republicans were using.” He voted for Carter in 1980, but in ’84, “I voted for Reagan—I’d moved from Communist to whatever I am now. I’m not even sure how to characterize myself politically. Maybe at some point, I’ll have to figure it out.”
Dianne Feinstein shouldn't only be censured by the US Senate, California voters should vote for her opponent in November
From the story here:
Regardless of the fate of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, the Senate should censure the ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein. Her deception and maneuvering, condemned across the political spectrum, seriously interfered with the Senate’s performance of its constitutional duty to review judicial nominations, and unquestionably has brought the Senate into “dishonor and disrepute,” the standard that governs these matters. As a matter of institutional integrity, the Senate cannot let this wrong go unaddressed. ... Feinstein ... sought to keep her committee from timely and properly investigating an apparently serious charge of misconduct, and is still doing so, even in the face of criticism from all (or most) quarters. ...
As the second-richest member of the Senate, with a net worth of $94 million, Feinstein is presumably above the temptations to which [censured Senators] Dodd, Talmadge, and Durenberger succumbed. She does, however, face a difficult reelection campaign, with a serious enthusiasm gap on her left, the California Democratic party having refused to endorse her bid for a sixth term in office. Her conduct in arranging matters to make her appear the champion of an allegedly abused constituent, and perhaps positioning herself as the woman who sank the Kavanaugh nomination, can only help on that flank. Is a nakedly political motive for senatorial misbehavior any less reprehensible than a financial one?
Maureen Dowd admits Ford is purely political, calls her a woman daring to obstruct a conservative nominee
If Brett Kavanaugh were a liberal nominee, this wouldn't be happening.
From the column here:
But I most dread the rhyming history we are plunged into now: the merciless pummeling of a woman who dares to obstruct the glide path of a conservative Supreme Court nominee.
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