Sunday, September 30, 2018

Ford vs. Kavanaugh: Be careful what you wish/scheme/lie for...............

................because you may get it.

I was going to develop this point until I read the following superb essay by Kevin McCullough.

10 Reasons The FBI Will Clear Kavanaugh

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Posted: Sep 30, 2018 9:35 AM. Townhall.com

The FBI will conclude its “supplemental” background check into Judge Kavanaugh (it’s 7th), limiting its time and scope to focus on purely the claims of sexual misconduct earlier than the Democrats hoped.

Those Democrats will resort to additional dirty tactics. Speeches from all of the Democrats will occur on the floor of the Senate—most opposing Kavanaugh. They will throw seismic fits, and spittle-flying rants, condemning Kavanaugh, republicans and even the very FBI they begged to investigate all in an attempt to destroy and demoralize Judge Kavanaugh.

Newly dubbed Majority Leader “Cocaine Mitch” McConnell will whip the vote and Judge Kavanaugh will fill the spot of the ninth justice on the Supreme Court

It will conclude one of the ugliest periods of American politics. Sadly about fifty percent of the American people will be too uninformed to explain why it was so ugly. The average American will mistakenly think (thanks to the horrifically awful media) that Judge Kavanaugh did something that no one ever proved he did.
Not one scintilla of evidence revealed, and all witnesses involved clearing him of any involvement, attendance, or even having met.

Justice Kavanaugh’s life will never be the same. Nor will his accuser’s. But sadly some of the Senate Democrats who decided to ruin these lives will sleep like babies and never take so much as a moment to ponder the damage they did. They will never question the unethical use of violating the trust of a constituent who confided in them and desired an anonymous process. They will never regret their attempt to slander an honorable father in the eyes of his own daughters. They will only move to plot their next step in attempting to regain power.
Having realized that here are some basic reasons the FBI investigation will conclude the matter.
  1. In a supplemental background check the witnesses involved will be interviewed. All have agreed to cooperate fully. They will answer the questions asked, and in all likelihood give the same answers they’ve already given under oath and under penalty of felony perjury if their answers differ from what they previously said.
  2. The FBI (will for the second time) along with Maryland authorities, as well as every prosecutor that has looked at this evidence admit there is no felony/federal jurisdiction here. 
  3. After the Democratic Party attempted to have Kavanaugh arrested on Saturday, Maryland officials reiterated their findings that by their standards, the worst charges possible, would carry with them a one year statute of limitations. 
  4. Additional prosecutors are on the record citing the evidence as insufficient to even merit a basis for a search warrant—much less an arrest.
  5. What all of the law enforcement bodies continue to point to is lack of a time and place. And while the accuser is 100% sure that something happened. The accused and 3 witnesses are 100% sure they were not witness to any event resembling its description.
  6. The FBI will also highlight greater amounts of exculpatory evidence against Dr. Ford. Her “fear” of flying, her “misremembering” her 100% clear account at the mysterious Safeway “second door” (it only had one,) her complete inability to figure out how she got to or from the “incident,” and the continued refutation by her best friend that such a gathering occurred with her present is likely the tip of the iceberg.
  7. Therapy notes will likely be required to be turned over. Why they were not turned over to the Senate Judiciary is inexplicable especially since she uses that as “corroboration” of her first “telling” of the mysterious incident.
  8. Dr. Ford’s own family—not a one—was capable of coming to her support for this dreadful season. Why weren’t they? The FBI may need to ask given that she was living with her parents at the time.
  9. The FBI may also need to probe possible motives for Dr. Ford. Her work on RU-486 (the abortion pill) would certainly be in jeopardy if he is named to the court. Her five go-fund-me accounts with alleged links to Soros and a now blossoming $1 million dollar surplus were established why? To pay her pro-bono lawyers? (Remember it was her lawyers that testified they were pro-bono — if it turns out a Democratic staffer is paying them then they committed perjury.) Are the go-fund-me crowdsourcing efforts really a way to pay off a witness for coming before a Senate committee (in itself a felony crime?)
  10. The FBI may very well uncover a coordinated effort between the Senate staffer who leaked Dr Ford’s name (against her wishes,) the law firm recommended by the ranking member, and the links to others making accusations.
By Saturday midday, Judiciary Democrats, with the investigation having not even been underway for a full twenty-four hours were already attempting to undermine the validity and reliability of its efforts.

Simultaneously Mitch McConnell tweeted a short clip of his floor speech from late Friday. In it he made crystal clear that “all fifty-one” republicans were in agreement in moving forward with the scheduled vote. “All fifty-one,” he reiterated.

I think he may know more than he’s let on. I believe the FBI may actually be nearing completion of its “supplemental background investigation.”

And thankfully I believe that this nightmare for Judge Kavanaugh is almost finished.

For the sake and innocence of his daughters, bride, family and all who have supported and been grateful for his public service of over 30 years—It’s past time!

Friday, September 28, 2018

Ford v. Kavanaugh: Well said!


September 27, 2018
FEATURE ARTICLE
The Kavanaugh Hearings Are About Reason Versus Emotion
The Real Dividing Line in the Reaction to the Kavanaugh Hearing

by Robert Tracinski


There is only one fundamental dividing line in the reaction to the televised hearing about accusations against Brett Kavanaugh, and it's not solely a partisan one. It's the line between those who judged the hearing based on emotions and those who judged it based on reason. 

The testimony of Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey-Ford, added nothing of substance to the claims already reported. She was still unable to place her accusation at a specific time and place, she was unable to fill in many of the gaps in her recollections, and she was still unable to find a single other person supposedly present who could confirm any aspect of her story. It remains a vague claim with no corroborating evidence. 

Brett Kavanaugh was able to provide some evidence based on old calendars about where he was and wasn't in the general time frame, but absent any more specifics in the original accusation, this is of limited value. And somehow a Brett Kavanaugh doppleganger who was the real perpetrator failed to materialize. 

Based on reason and evidence alone, you would have to conclude that we have gotten no farther in the case and are not likely to get any farther. What is an FBI investigation supposed to so, other than to serve as a delaying tactic? Federal investigators would simply go out and interview all the same people who have already testified or given sworn statements. Given that the claim against Kavanaugh remains uncorroborated, I think the Senate has no choice but to confirm him. Not to do so would eliminate any standard of evidence and invite politically motivated false accusations against future nominees. 

But evidence and logic are not what we heard about in most of the reactions to the hearings. What we heard about is how the testimony made people feel

The attack on logic began before the hearings, with commenters pointing to quotes saying the case against Kavanaugh is "plausible" and "believable"--but providing no actual evidence that it actually did happen--and then describing this as "compelling." But "plausible" is the opposite of compelling. Direct evidence compels belief, logically speaking. Someone's speculations about what might have happened have no logical standing and compel nothing. 

Or consider the phrase you probably heard a thousand times today: that Kavanaugh should not be confirmed because he is "credibly accused." What does that mean? What makes the accusation "credible," and what evidentiary status does that give it? A vague accusation with no independent corroboration from the very people the accuser herself described as witnesses doesn't sound all that credible to me. 

But you will look in vain for any clear standard of what is "credible." It is not an evidentiary term but an emotional one. All it means is "this is something I feel like believing." 

People are not judging credibility based on evidence. They are judging based on how the two witnesses made them feel, which is to say that they base it on a purely emotional reaction--a reaction heavily influenced by partisan loyalties that prejudice you for or against the two witnesses.

So we get pure appeals to emotion like this one: "I can't imagine how many thousands of women, around the world, are in tears as they listen to Christine Blasey Ford's voice cracking." Brett Kavanaugh's voice cracked, too. Does that mean we should also embrace his side of the story?
The ability to jerk tears in the audience does not constitution evidence, and if all important issues are to be resolved by the test of who is a more charismatic speaker, then impartial justice becomes impossible. On this issue, Conor Friedersdorf makes a highly relevant point: "I've studied too many criminal trials that sent innocents to jail or that acquitted the guilty to trust that a mass audience can distill whether anyone is telling the truth or not by consulting their gut while watching testimony."
This was the problem from the very beginning. Everyone was talking about how each of the witnesses "looks" and about what's "sympathetic"--as if it's all about the feels, rather than evidence or logic.

When it's all about feelings, the logic must be bent and twisted to fit. So when Kavanaugh became emotional while describing his young daughter's reaction to this case, it wasn't proof of a man who loves his daughter. No, it was proof that he was abuser. Why? Because "The boyfriend that abused me cried a lot." Get the logic here? Because one man was abusive and cried in an attempt to get sympathy from his victim, then any man who cries is therefore an abuser. This line was repeated a lot, mostly by women citing an abusive man in their own lives, sometimes a father but usually an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband

It's fairly normal for people to project their own personal issues out onto politics in the hope this will make them easier to solve. (In fact, it only makes them harder.) A lot of women on the left have been making Kavanaugh into an archetype of the Generic White Male and projecting onto him their issues with men in general. Or they are acting as if all of life is a Social Justice morality play with any person you don't like cast in the role of the stock villain. 

Or there is the response that Kavanaugh's righteously angry response to the smear campaign against him is itself proof of his guilt: "Kavanaugh's unhinged, entitled rage is making it easy to imagine him grabbing a teenage girl, throwing her on a bed, and forcing himself on her while muffling her screams." So the ultimate proof of Kavanaugh's guilt is the fact that he defends himself. Which he is, in fact, "entitled" to do. 

This illogical and illiberal argument is being made by many others, including celebrated Harvard law professors--which explains a lot about how we got where we are. It's the ancient and time-honored "he acts guilty" standard. 

At this point, the accusations against Kavanaugh have become a classic example of what philosopher of science Karl Popper called an "unfalsifiable hypothesis." No matter what new evidence arises, it will reinterpreted, ad hoc, as evidence of his guilt. 

All of this is in service to a rather spectacular moving of the goalposts. If you want to know whether Kavanaugh's testimony succeeded, I will just point out that most commenters on the left have given up trying to convince us that he is actually guilty of assault and have moved the goalpost backward to argue that his vociferous defense shows that "even if he didn't assault Ford, he has just shown us that he lacks the temperament to serve on the Supreme Court." But no one is expected to have a calm, neutral, Spock-like judicial temperament in his own case. This is why judges are supposed to recuse themselves in cases where they are personally involved. But don't try to make sense of it. It's just another way of taking evidence that is not particularly favorable for the accusations against Kavanaugh and spinning it into confirmation of the conclusion you already wanted to believe.

I say that this was the dividing line in reactions to the hearings, but I am not claiming that people on the right are always rational or that people on the left are always driven by their emotions. If the right acted only on facts and reason, I'm pretty sure they would have nominated a different candidate in 2016, so this is a culture-wide, bipartisan problem. But this time around, Republicans are the ones who have a partisan interest in sticking to facts and logic--which is one the reasons this case has managed to bring together what one commenter calls "Trump fanatics and rational Trump critics." 

There has been a lot of debate recently, in discussions about the legacy of the Enlightenment, about the adequacy of reason, evidence, and logic as the basis for making decisions. The Kavanaugh circus, and the wave of illogic it has summoned up, is a reminder of the travesty that results when we rely on anything else.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Dr. Ford sawed off the limb I was out on........but

.........she made a mistake doing so by not providing even a scintilla of corroboration for her allegations, and by providing Judge Kavanaugh and his supporters many opportunities to reiterate that her own "witnesses" did not provide any support. Sadly, she appeared to be a troubled woman who was merely a tool for the liberal and progressive democrats who had made up their minds five minutes after the President nominated the judge. They have poisoned the confirmation well for well into the future.

Friday, September 21, 2018

Ford v. Kavanaugh: Out on a limb

I am , because I predict she will not appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That is not to say her handlers aren't urging her to do so "for the cause," because I believe they are using her for their own ends.

 I don't think she'll appear for two reasons.

One is that objectively she has bitten off more than she can chew, from saying something to a therapist six years ago, to writing the mystery letter, to now the prospect of facing 21 United States Senators, batteries of the international press, and countless millions of Americans on television. A daunting prospect, even for a woman who alleges a serious wrong and wants to be heard.

My second reason is that Dr. Ford need not suffer this serious, potentially devastating downside because she can achieve her goal in other ways, including but not limited to becoming a feminist icon (an Anita Hill II), scoring a book deal, appearing on countless TV shows, and hitting the lecture circuit.

While Dr. Ford's handlers have their own agenda, they are skilled DC lawyers with well-honed political skills and know that Judge Kavanaugh will be favorably reported out of Committee and confirmed (albeit narrowly) and there is nothing they can do to stop that. How can they stand by and watch Dr. Ford injure herself even more, with nothing to gain and much to lose?

To quote a favorite line of the President: "We'll see."


Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Christine Blasey Ford and the art of conjecture

Putting aside all that has been, and can be, said about the obvious and crude attempt by the democrats to derail the Kavanaugh nomination, there is one point that I haven't seen made anywhere.

There are two indisputable facts: (1) Apparently after many years of silence, Dr. Ford told some version of her story (2) while in "couple therapy," a euphemism for psychiatric or psychological counseling for two people in a personal relationship.

Why the story then, after decades, and why in that setting?

Was it to avoid admitting something else about herself that she was unwilling to reveal, using Judge Kavanaugh's alleged misdeed as cover?

Saturday, September 15, 2018

"Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, Installment VIII


"Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, INSTALLMENT VIII




 "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam evaluates Hanoi Jane’s wartime journey to the Communist regime by measuring it against the American law of treason. It is the only book proving that Hanoi Jane could have been indicted for, and convicted of, constitutional treason.

Beginning on June 1, 2018, “Aid and Comfort:” Jane Fonda in North Vietnam began serialization on the first and fifteenth of every month for fourteen weeks, free of charge.
Installment VIII has now been posted. See HanoiJaneSite.com.
If you believe that the harsh spotlight of constitutional treason must be shined on Hanoi Jane’s 1972 pilgrimage to our North Vietnamese  enemies, please circulate this information as widely as possible.
A petition dealing with Jane Fonda’s conduct in North Vietnam can be found at HanoiJaneTreasonInvestigation.com