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Home » Enough, already

Enough, already

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m getting tired of all this waiting on the Kavanaugh vote. Wasn’t there some sort of deadline today that came and went? Christine Blasey Ford and her lawyers have played Lucy and the football long enough for me.

So, what are Grassley and McConnell thinking? I don’t know. So far they’ve played this surprisingly well, but I lack faith that they’ll continue to do so.

The delays also make me wonder if the reason they’re not holding the vote now is that there are some defections on the GOP side. They can’t hold a vote unless they’re sure they’ll win it.

And while they’re at it—isn’t it about time to censure Dianne Feinstein?

UPDATE 2:08 PM:

Don’t know whether this report is true, but that’s supposedly where it stands at the moment. In negotiations. I think postponing at this point and allowing her to testify and set conditions is wrong. But my guess—as I wrote above—is that it’s what some of the more squishy GOP senators are insisting happens in order to get their vote.

A bigger GOP margin in the Senate would mean that those particular senators couldn’t hold the rest hostage.

UPDATE 5:15 PM

Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice:

More here:

“We’ll do it on Wednesday, we expect the accuser before the accused, and we do intend to have the counsel do the questioning,” the senator said, summing up the Republicans’ stance.

The party is assenting to two of the terms Ford’s lawyers laid out in a Thursday evening call with staff from both parties, the senator said: limiting the hearing to one camera and ensuring that Kavanaugh is not in the same room as her.

GOP members of the Judiciary Committee held a conference call on Friday morning to discuss how to respond to the requests from Ford’s lawyers. But several elements of their offer appear to be nonstarters with Democrats and Ford’s camp, which had made clear that she could not be in the capital to testify before Thursday, according to a senior aide to the minority.

“They’re making this disingenuous counteroffer knowing she won’t be here,” the Democratic aide said.

The GOP has been told that Ford does not want to fly from her California home to Washington, according to the Republican senator, which means she may need to drive across the country to make the hearing. Ford has reportedly told friends she is uncomfortable in confined spaces, indicating a physical difficulty in making the trip by plane.

Comments

Enough, already — 42 Comments

  1. As to the censure, absolutely.

    PowerLine contributor Paul Mirengoff posted a thread recently in which he praises Grassley for the way in which he has handled the hearings (including the underhanded Feinstein ploy), and admits to having had his doubts earlier.

    There’s also a fine commentary there regarding each of the demands that Ford and her attorney have laid out, and how the committee should respond in each case.

  2. I have been composing a letter to McConnell in my mind that goes like this: “What is the point of having a Republican majority in the Senate if the Democrats have de facto control of the functioning?”

    I won’t send it; but, it seems like a valid question, and one that I ask myself each time I get a plea for a donation. The GOP leadership seem to operate from a position of fear. This is their opportunity, perhaps the last one, to show many people that we are mistaken.

  3. Per PowerLine, CNN says that Ford refused to show up on Monday, negotiations occurred, her appearance at the hearing is now scheduled for Thursday.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/where-do-the-ford-testimony-negotiations-stand.php

    They’ve also got a piece up to the effect that Ed Whelan retracted his story. (It didn’t sound very convincing to me, I must say. As Attorney Perry Mason used to say, “he’s sewn a vest onto a button.)

    I really truly think Grassley & McConnell should have hung tough on Monday, whether Herself shows up or not. Maybe they’re afraid of losing Flake & Collins?

  4. The WSJ has a dubious poll.

    The poll found that 38% of registered voters oppose the Kavanaugh nomination, up from 29% in a Journal/NBC poll last month. Some 34% said they support his nomination, which is about the same as in last month’s poll.

    It could be that the WSJ is now the plaything of James and Lachlan Murdoch not unlike Bezos/Marty Barron/WaPo.

  5. The only links I can find say “maybe Thursday” for Blasey to testify — but they were still arguing about terms. She wants to go second. That’s unacceptable. She’s the accuser. They should hold out for Monday, then have the vote when she doesn’t show.

    According to Grassley’s letter, Feinstein has still not turned over the unredacted letter to the majority. Her behavior throughout is inexcusable. She should be censured.

  6. There is no way to win this thing, other than to fight. And the stakes have never been higher. This is about a lot more than a nomination. This is about whether one half of the nation wants power so badly, it would abandon the rule of law.

  7. president Trump better send in a team of special agents to secure Ford’s personal safety. The left is willing to do anything including killing one of their own to frame the right for political purposes. The left has everything to gain while the right has everything to lose if anything unfortunate happens to her even including her committing suicide. Remember that woman getting stabbed to death right before the Brexit referendum?

  8. There was a cynical comment that we know there can’t be anything to Ford’s accusations, because if there were there are Republicans who would be folding like a cheap card table. Okay, that’s not proof, but it’s good evidence.

  9. This is another situation (in a long line of them) where if the Republicans allow this nomination to be scuttled because of the sleazy tactics of Feinstein and her ilk, they deserve to lose. But it is never they who lose, it is we, the citizens.

  11. Have Democrats gained or lost so far as a result of the Kavanaugh accusation?
    Artfldgr on September 20, 2018 at 8:33 pm at 8:33 pm said:

    what is being done is the attempt to change all law by precedent… several actually.. one is that the state should cater to a victim to get them to testify, and so in this case the presumed victim is dictating terms which if the state department meets will do what in the future?

    given the way this “testimony” is going to go, i see two violated amendments….

  14. Hi,

    Off topic but important. His MOTHER was a judge. My mother’s father was a judge in a small town. There where a lot of both spoken and I spoken expectations placed her that resulted in multiple generations.

    I went to college with a guy in Upstae NY. Did he often get drunk – yes. Duh 1976 legal age 18, keg of beer 14.00 from ratcellar! Pot, never his dad was some type big shot politian on Long Island.

    Knew the son of a minister, some pot and partying in college I heard.

    To the point I am sure his mother endured many of the challenges that face woman today. I am sure my mother and sister have as well. How or does this effect his behavior ? My father’s mother was a divorced working woman in the forties, fifties, and sixties. My father at times would show a seething anger and comptent towards lewed comments and actions by towards man and the language that they would use.

    Forget about worrying about mom’s reaction to language or actions, worried about dad.

  16. Artfldgr

    I respectfully ask you to please stop taking jab at me every time you mention peterson. I have never read anything written by this man, I barely have watched any video from him, I was merely making a comment sharing the interesting fact that this man who is often mentioned by many conservatives who frequent this blog strangely enjoys a cult following in my native country due to the fact that many young men in asia who had trouble adapting to adult life found his book “12 rules of life” to be very helpful. Nothing was reflective to my personal opinion of him. If you being a white conservative in America bearing no interest in understanding the conservative movement outside of America just as not many other people interested in your right wing conspiracy then just ignore my moment

    Thank you

  18. Artfldgr:

    I second Dave’s motion.

    Please stop the personal digs. They are gratuitous, counterproductive, and sometimes inappropriate to the situation and based on a misunderstanding on your part.

  19. John:

    Sorry, but not sure I’d have much to say on that particular subject. I’d have to know a lot more about Kavanaugh’s family and his youth. I think reactions are very individual.

  20. The dems are playing to their BLM, anti fascists fascists, pussy hat cult, and all the usual players that make up their base. Kavanagh has been a federal judge for many years. This claim about 36 year old events is a hail mary pass made in desperation. Trump with two terms and a solid majority in the senate would have the opportunity to reverse the judicial activism the left relies on to push their social agendas. That is what they fear the most.

  21. But my guess … is that it’s what some of the more squishy GOP senators are insisting happens in order to get their vote.

    This is pure conjecture, but at least consider the possibility that a couple squishy GOP senators are saying that they’ll vote in the affirmative, if they get x, y, or z. Then as the circus is prolonged, they’ll look for an excuse to flip their vote. Oh, my constituents have decided that Kavanaugh is not suitable. Or, I just don’t think he has the integrity of a Kennedy.

  22. Moving from Monday to Thursday isn’t a high cost to secure the support of Flake and Collins – and any other squishy Republicans in the Senate.

    Everyone is confident that Prof. Ford will say nothing new, offer no concrete evidence. She can’t because once she says precisely where or when this happened she allows Kavanaugh the ability to clearly refute it and produce an alibi. As for going first or last, all it means if she goes after Kavanaugh is that he has to come back in to answer and rebut.

    Does anyone else think Whelan’s now retracted and apologized for story serves the purpose of putting an alternative, plausible explanation out there to sow more doubt about the credibility of what Ford has alleged?

  24. What Whelan did was gracefully offering the left and Serial Liar Ford a face saving way out (to accept she was indeed a sexual assault victim who unintentionally dragging an innocent man in due to her broken recollection of the event) and hopefully the left and Ford would cut losses to avoid humiliation and tarnishing the metoo movement before the release of further overwhelming exonerating evidence for Kavanaugh and damning evidence exposing Ford to be a complete liar.

    PS: I admit though This speculation of mine involves a lot of wishing thinking on my part.

    GOP needs to just man up and vote the judge in, people forget and move on about this whole accusation the minute the nomination process is over.

  25. SW said:

    “Does anyone else think Whelan’s now retracted and apologized for story serves the purpose of putting an alternative, plausible explanation out there to sow more doubt about the credibility of what Ford has alleged?”

    Yes, I do. Whelan is too smart for that to not be true. And I think it’s possible that Kavanaugh has something he has held back that is along the same lines.

  26. Vanderleun:

    You’re ignoring one big possibility that I think may be reality, which is that they may not be able to get the votes to confirm unless they have some sort of hearing. They cannot take a vote now if they will lose.

  27. steve walsh:

    If she gets more specific about her charges she will be asked why she didn’t say that in the first place, but she will answer that she was afraid or her memory just got better.

    But more specific charges only give the appearance of offering him an out for an alibi. Unless Ford happens to hit on a place and time when Kavanaugh can prove he was in Outer Mongolia, for example (highly unlikely), he will not be able to come up with an alibi. “Where were you on the night of July 17, 1982” asked 36 years later—who on earth would be able to answer?

    It is ludicrous.

  28. This whole play is an obscenity. A “witness” demanding the circumstances under which she will testify before the Senate Judiciary committee–closed doors, no lawyers present, and only after Kavanaugh testifies?

    This piddly Ford, a psychologist “statistician” whose credentials show no mathematical education, tells the US senate what to do? To hear her phony story?
    Anita Hill was better at this game, but Ford has “her” attorneys, all likely being paid by Democratic donors.

  29. This piddly Ford, a psychologist “statistician” whose credentials show no mathematical education,

    You’d have some training in statistics if you study economics or geography. Very common in sociology and psychology as well. I’d wager she’s an autodidact for much of it Her dissertation was on a clinical topic.

    Degree programs in statistics are not common. About 2,000 BA degrees are awarded in statistics in a typical year v. 5,000 or so in geography, 30,000 or so in economics, 30,000 or so in sociology, and over 100,000 in all components of psychology.

  31. According to Special Report on Fox, which my husband watched, the Senate is awaiting her response to their final offer. If they don’t hear by this evening, the hearing is on Monday, whether or not she shows, and the vote will come immediately after. Apparently they agreed to allow only one camera and to have Kavanaugh not in the room, but did not agree to let her testify second.

    I think her handlers will find some reason to say no, and proceed to whine about “unfairness.”

  33. Ace of Spades is reporting that Senator Grassley issued a 10:00PM (22:00) deadline (EST) for an agreement by Dr. Ford to testify before the committee or they vote on Monday. http://ace.mu.nu/

    More Kabuki to be expected, or is it a fan dance?

  36. Refusing to testify under reasonable terms means ford is a liar making the whole thing up. What a magnificent piece of work this liberal woman is, if this is what liberal women are and most single women are liberal nowadays then stay single bros, a piece of hot p**** to f*** is not worth the inferno of living together with a feminist woman.

  38. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/21/trump-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-charges-834664

    “But Kavanaugh’s defenders continued to support the nominee. More than 70 women who have known Kavanaugh at various points in his life crowded a stage at the JW Marriott in Washington on Friday, adamantly dismissing the allegation as contradictory to his character.

    One of the women, Meghan McCaleb, said she would hang out with Kavanaugh nearly every weekend in high school and that Kavanaugh dated her sister and some of her closest friends. McCaleb said she tangentially knew Ford through mutual friends. Though McCaleb did not say Kavanaugh and Ford were never at a party together, she did say she never remembers being at party with Ford, who was in another social group.”

    https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2018/09/fords-college-best-friend-never-mentioned-assault-summer/

    “The text message from Christine Blasey Ford this summer worried her college best friend, Catherine Piwowarski.

    Over their years of friendship — as roommates, bridesmaids and parents on opposite coasts — Dr. Blasey wanted to know, had she ever confided that she had been sexually assaulted in high school?

    No, Ms. Piwowarski said she texted back, she would have remembered that, and was everything O.K.? Dr. Blasey didn’t want to speak in detail quite yet, her friend recalled her responding. “I don’t know why she was asking that or what it ultimately meant or didn’t mean,” Ms. Piwowarski said in an interview, but she remembers thinking that the question betrayed deep turmoil.”

    (quoting NYT)

    NYT Posted at 12:00 pm on September 20, 2018

    nytimes.com/2018/09/19/us/politics/christine-blasey-ford-brett-kavanaugh-allegations.html?action=click&module=Top+Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  39. https://hotair.com/archives/2018/09/20/dianne-feinstein-twas-media-outed-kavanaughs-accuser/

    “Is that right? The way DiFi puts it here, you would think Christine Blasey Ford’s name appeared like a bolt from the blue in the pages of the Washington Post on Sunday afternoon. In reality, the press had spent the previous 72 hours murmuring about a mysterious letter in Feinstein’s possession that may or may not contain a serious allegation against Kavanaugh. No one would say what the letter alleged but the Intercept knew that Feinstein knew something about it. BuzzFeed also knew that Feinstein knew something.
    …
    All of which is a long way of asking: Who do you suppose it was that tipped the media to Ford’s accusations, putting them in a position to “out” her at the eleventh hour?
    …
    Democrats outed her. Maybe not Feinstein personally or someone acting at her behest, but someone in the Capitol high enough up the chain to have known Ford’s name.
    …
    Also, not to nitpick, but no one “outed” Ford. Unless I missed something, at no point did any media outlet reveal her identity against her wishes. She chose to speak on the record to WaPo over the weekend after Ronan Farrow and outlets like BuzzFeed came knocking, believing that someone *would* end up revealing her name against her wishes before long. But no one (I think) actually did so before the WaPo story came out. Whether Democrats might have been so frantic to stop Kavanaugh that they would have forced Ford’s name into print if she had declined to speak up this past weekend is a fascinating what-if. Probably they would have — which seems to have been Ford’s conclusion too. Again, so much for the privacy of victims.”

  40. Question:

    Is it a foregone conclusion that Kavanaugh was in the habit of attending parties where there was drinking going on, and drinking a lot while at those parties himself, during this period?

    I ask because I haven’t seen anyone yet establish that such behavior was typical of him at that age.

    I haven’t seen anyone deny it, either.

    As someone whose first (and, really, only) experience with intoxication was in college, and whose friends didn’t habitually get sloshed either in college or high school, I wonder whether we aren’t assuming that Kavanaugh was a “typical kid” (in a scene where “typical” meant “drunk”) in this way when he actually an outlier.

    I have heard the relevant prep schools described as having a party scene. Okay, fine; so did my own school. But not everyone was part of that scene, and few people were “regulars” in it. Was Kavanaugh habitually a part of that scene? Was he a fixture? Or was he unknown in it? Was he a relatively rare participant? Was he prone to drunkenness when present, or was he one of those — I’ve done this myself on occasion, and so have friends of mine — who might be at the party, but more entertained by observing the drunkenness of others than by overindulging himself?

    Of course, saying such behavior is uncharacteristic of the boy is no proof he didn’t, on a particular occasion, act uncharacteristically. On the other hand, if it was uncharacteristic, that increases the likelihood that he woke up the next morning remembering nothing of the previous evening, retching, and resolving never to go to that kind of party again. (In that case his current protestations that no such event ever happened would be entirely honest.)

    I also wonder whether there might have been some misinterpretation of the event itself? (Presuming it happened at all, and no matter the identities of the boys.)

    Presume two boys are drunk and they play a prank on another person at the party. They dash off — weavingly — to another part of the house, laughing about their prank, fleeing with exaggerated theatricality from the person they’ve played a joke on. They burst into a back bedroom, where there’s a girl already there, bowl her over, and fall on top of her. The person they’ve pranked can be overheard roaming the house, coming up the stairs behind them, shouting and looking for them. One shuts the door. They both tell one another and the girl to be quiet — “shut up!” “you shut up you’re louder than me!” “dude” (giggle) “shhh!” (girl begins to say something) “no no shut up!” (hand over mouth) “be still he’ll hear us!” “dude, you landed on top of me, get off” (squirming pile of teens; awkward hand position winds up in wrong place on girl, hastily moved) “wait shhh!” — and after a minute the aggrieved party is gone, the two boys get up and, still giggling and shoving one another, lurch their way out of the room and to another part of the house.

    Is that plausible? Seems that way to me, although perhaps I missed a detail that makes this explanation implausible.

  41. R.C. on September 22, 2018 at 12:06 pm at 12:06 pm said:
    Question:

    Is it a foregone conclusion that Kavanaugh was in the habit of attending parties where there was drinking going on, and drinking a lot while at those parties himself, during this period?

    I ask because I haven’t seen anyone yet establish that such behavior was typical of him at that age.

    I haven’t seen anyone deny it, either.
    * * *
    Much too rational.
    And something that an investigation would look into first, I would hope.

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