What was behind the Kavanaugh attack?
Now that Judge Brett Kavanaugh is Justice Brett Kavanaugh, there’s a lot of analysis of going on about the nature of the process we actually witnessed.
While the battle was still ongoing, Christine Ford was treated by the GOP as well-intentioned, wounded, and mistaken rather than duplicitous. But now there’s a growing murmur (and sometimes shout) that Ford knowingly lied about Kavanaugh, and that she may even have had help in that endeavor from one person or many.
You probably have come across several of these stories. One line of thinking involves Ford’s high school friend turned “beach pal” Monica McLean (see here, for example); another theory involves a larger number of players than just McLean.
I can’t say whether any of this has merit; only time and a more thorough investigation has any hope of doing that. But these are the things I do know:
Christine Blasey Ford already has been caught in some serious lies (for example, see this) that seem to involve political calculations and motives. The involvement of McLean at some level does seem to be highly possible, in part because of Ford’s visit at the height of the whole thing to the place where former FBI lawyer McLean resides.
One of the strangest aspects of Ford’s story is that, by the time her identity was revealed, much information about that identity had been removed from the internet with an unusual degree of thoroughness for a layperson, indicating the participation of someone who knew exactly what he or she was doing, not an amateur such as Ford herself. How was this done, and who did it?
For me, one of the most curious aspects of all is that her high school yearbooks disappeared from their online site as well, not long after almost all of her personal information was scrubbed . Ford did not have the power to do this because the yearbooks were not displayed at her site or social media pages. So who did it for her, and why, and at whose behest? What’s more, the site that claimed to have archived and displayed the yearbooks disappeared as well not all that long after.
It takes quite a bit to get me into conspiracy theories, but this has been extremely odd. Are the yearbooks that were displayed at that site authentic? If so, why did the site that offered them disappear without any explanation? The yearbooks revealed massive drinking and partying by the young ladies of Holton Arms, including Ford herself. I’d love to get some clarification on all of this.
But as Hillary Clinton might say, what difference at this point does it make? After all, Kavanaugh is a SCOTUS justice now.
I think it still makes plenty of difference because of the desirability of clearing the cloud of charges that still hang over Kavanaugh’s head—not that those who judged him guilty with little or no evidence will ever judge him not guilty. And if Ford, alone or with others, planned and/or conspired to defame Brett Kavanaugh with knowingly false allegations, she and/or they need to be tried and punished for it. That may cause those who contemplate such a move in the future to cease and desist, although I doubt it.
I fear that the entire Kavanaugh incident and its denouement will serve as a different example. The left may learn something from it, all right, but what they learn may be how to do it better next time. For example, perhaps Ford got her story out before it had been sufficiently fine-tuned. She seems to have included elements that could be tracked down (the witnesses who were not actually witnesses, for example) and not corroborated. Next time, perhaps there won’t be any alleged witnesses (that’s what occurred with Roy Moore, to the best of my recollection). There are many other possibilities that come to mind, but I’m not going to give any suggestions to the left, just in case they haven’t thought of them. Although I’d be the last person to underestimate their creativity, I don’t want to make their task easier.
The attack on Kavanaugh was, imo, obviously orchestrated by deep pockets. My guess is Soros cash and dnc operatives.
“There are many other possibilities that come to mind, but I’m not going to give any suggestions to the left, just in case they haven’t thought of them. Although I’d be the last person to underestimate their creativity, I don’t want to make their task easier.”
Indeed.
Which reminds me of a story I read once when researching some European history, I think dating from somewhere in the transition from medieval to Renaissance, but I don’t have any witnesses.
The Catholic clergy were concerned about the increasing number of confessions involving sexual deviancy (not just the garden-variety dalliances) and wanted to make sure that they expunged the vile sins from the membership, so the Vatican issued a long list of items that the priests were to ask in the confessional.
After awhile, the officials in charge asked around to see how things were going, and were petitioned to suspend the use of the list.
According to the priests, it was just giving the young men ideas they had never considered before.
” The left may learn something from it, all right, but what they learn may be how to do it better next time.”
The Left has been fine-tuning their methods for a long time. They learned what worked with Bork, and what didn’t with Thomas, and tried to combine them with Kavanaugh.
They failed for a number of reasons, not the least being arrogance and under-estimating the targets of their attack (Trump and Kavanaugh – in that order).
After decades of being in control, they ran up against two men who wouldn’t back down, and triggered a couple of new defenders (Graham and Collins) that they did not expect.
As usual, Victor Davis Hansen gives voice to the thoughts of many, succinctly, in these two posts.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1018/hanson100418.php3
“The polarizing atmosphere of the university has now spread to Congress.
During the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, we witnessed how college values have become the norms of the Senate. On campus, constitutional due process vanishes when accusations of sexual harassment arise. America saw that when false charges were lodged against the Duke University lacrosse players and during Rolling Stone magazine’s concocted smear of a University of Virginia fraternity.
Americans may disagree about the relative credibility of either Kavanaugh or his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. But they all witnessed how the asymmetry of the campus governed the hearings.
Ford’s veracity hinged on empathy and perceived believability. There was little requirement of corroborating testimonies, witnesses and what used to be called physical evidence. In contrast, Kavanaugh was considered guilty from the start. He had to prove his innocence.
One belief of the university is the postmodern idea of relativist truth.
On campus, all can present equally valid narratives. What privileges one story over another is not necessarily any semblance to reality, at least as established by evidence and facts. Instead, powerful victimizers supposedly “construct” truths based on their own self-interests. As a result, self-described victims of historical biases are under no obligation to play by what they consider to be rigged rules of facts, evidence or testimony.
This dynamic explains why Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) insisted that Dr. Ford told “her truth.” In other words, evidence was not so relevant. Ford’s story of events from 36 years ago inherently would have as much claim on reality as Kavanaugh’s rebuttal — and perhaps more so, given their different genders and asymmetrical access to power.
There was little interest in discovering the ancient idea of the Truth. To do that would have required the messy work of taxing the memories of teenage behavior nearly four decades prior.
Truth-finding would have required difficult, time-honored examinations of physical evidence, the testimony of witnesses, and even unpleasant cross-examinations about the time and place of the allegations. Feelings might have been hurt. Motives might have been questioned, as they are under constitutional norms of due process.
Also on the campus, the race and gender of people now increasingly determine who we are.
Republican senators were repeatedly written off by critics as “old white men,” not unique individuals who might be disinterested or biased, fair or prejudicial.
[or women, in Collins’ case; old and white, anyway]
Kavanaugh was largely assumed guilty, in part for once being a privileged white kid of 17 who had gone to a prep school.
Meanwhile, Booker, by virtue of not being old and white, was considered a credible senatorial examiner. No one cared that Booker had once invented stories about an imaginary friend named “T-Bone.”
Such blanket race- and age-based stereotyping was not even consistent. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is 72 and white. Yet given his progressive politics, no one dismissed him on the basis of gender and age, much less for being a serial fabricator who concocted false stories of being a Vietnam veteran.
The Senate also adopted the modern university’s doctrine of self-censorship, no-go zones and safe spaces.”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/07/one-ford-narrative-too-many/
“Christine Ford in July may have had no idea that her original anonymous accusation would ever become sensationalized publicly, much less put her into a position of trying to reconcile a number of irreconcilable narratives.
Instead, Ford had initially thought a single anonymous but poisonous letter would do the trick far better than had previous weeks of grandstanding Democratic baiting, demonstrations, and walkouts. A last-minute drive-by and anonymous charge of sexual assault would panic Republicans with the mere whiff of #MeTooism, shock and cower a goody-two-shoes, family-man Kavanaugh, and thus force a beleaguered, pre-midterm-anxious President Trump to withdraw the nomination—all without the disclosure of Ford’s name and thus without any further need to substantiate her narratives.
As a side note, in this context, I am confused by the bipartisan outrage solely directed at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s or her staff’s lowdown leaking of Ford’s name. Of course, it was unethical and so typical of the twilight years of the senior senator from California. But, then again, so is authoring an anonymous hit piece without any corroborating evidence but with misleading written assertions (such as how Ford sought “medical treatment” for the assault—without disclosing she meant marriage counseling 36 years after the fact.) It seems far less noble to charge Kavanaugh with sexual assault anonymously than to have come forward at the outset and demonstrate the charge transparently. The cloak of anonymity does even more damage to the idea of jurisprudence than does the unethical removal of it by a would-be enabler.”
It’s all baloney. It will probably come out, eventually, that EVERYTHING about this sordid affair was planned and orchestrated by the Dems and Trump knows it/knew it all along. They are toast. Especially DiChiFi.
Now Christine BF’s lawyers are strongly protective of her right to return to the life of a private citizen, quiet and unhassled. She has no interest in plans to impeach Brett Kavanaugh, she wants the process she started to be ended, finished, kaput —
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/10/ford-calls-it-quits-on-kavanaugh-wants-no-prosecution-no-investigation-no-impeachment/
— and she most definitely wants no further investigating!! Attorney Debra Katz is kwite koncerned to be klear on that skore.
Thinking about this topic, I note that the common practice today–more commonly on the Left than on the Right–is that, when someone starts to connect the dots, and suggest that several people and/or groups have conspired together to do this or that, such an analysis is immediately shot down, dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”–so “obviously” the province of boozed-up, gap-toothed morons, the tin foil hat brigade, and the deranged–and that charge of “conspiracy theory” is designed to stop any further discussion of the original analysis and proposed theory, and people are supposed to then move back over the line, and into what are supposedly saner pastures.
This term, this diversionary technique is what one of my old college professors called a “thought stopper,” a word or charge–things like calling someone a “racist,” or Nazi,”” homophobe,” ” Islamophobe”, “bigot,” or, yes, “Conspiracy theorist”–that is designed to stop all discussion and analysis, and to divert attention from the issue at hand, and often on to an analysis of the person who proposed the “conspiracy theory,” and his motives, etc.
However, I think that we have seen in recent months pretty overwhelming evidence that many in the top echelons of the FBI, the DOJ, State Department, and various Intelligence Agencies–aided by Congressional Democrats, and the MSM–have, indeed, combined together in a seditious conspiracy.
In another example, in the case of the attempted destruction of Kavanaugh and his family, the evidence is also starting to emerge of another leftist conspiracy.
The disappearance of the website that archived the yearbooks was very strange indeed. I was following him daily as he chronicled his findings and then one day he/she/(it?!) was gone. This page, which is cached by Google, is worth reading as he explains what he is going to do.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mvzeGvFxwDEJ:https://www.scribd.com/document/389225422/cult-of-the-1st-amendment-why-christine-blasey-ford-s-high-school-yearbooks-were-scrubbed-faculty-approved-rac+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
On Monday Sept. 17th, Christine Blasey Ford’s high school yearbooks suddenly
disappeared from the web. I read them days before, knew they would be scrubbed, and saved them. Why did I know they would be scrubbed? Because if roles were reversed, and Christine Blasey Ford had been nominated for the Supreme Court by President Trump, the headline by the resistance would be this:
As to the yearbooks, I would assume that the school had displayed them, to minimal interest, for years, that the school noticed a sudden uptick in page views, and that an administrator reviewed the yearbooks, realized that things which seemed funny 40 years ago are no longer considered funny, and pulled the yearbooks from the web, mostly to protect the school from bad publicity, although no doubt with an understanding that the yearbooks, if available, would be used to hinder a political agenda which the school administration supported.
Hit and run works when there are sanctuaries and incentives for its progression.
Yep, those “echo-chamber” creator-creatures sure were working overtime.
And all the ducks were lined up:
– The MSM were delirious with frenzied hysteria, charge after charge, accusation after accusation, insinuation after insinuation. (Oh, they were chomping at the bit. And inventing, creatively, along the way. No charge was too absurd; no accusation too incredible; no charge was too laughable.)
– The civil rights groups and academia and the women’s groups and the minorities in all their varietal glories, with even some religious groups riding shotgun, oh were they ever livid with righteous indignation (the best kind, to be sure!)….
– The poor woman’s documented past was assiduously scrubbed clean. No crumbs on that carpet. Not even lint.
As the livid, hepped-up masses were yelping and baying and jeering and cheering.
And chanting for blood.
And if Kavanaugh denied anything, then of course he was guilty.
And f he remained silent, it was further proof of his guilt.
And if he got angry, it was proof of his unsuitability.
And if he got emotional—if he cried(!!!)—then he was (naughty, naughty!) being manipulative, trying—there can be no doubt—oh so pathetically to mask his guilt.
Yes, indeed, welcome to the Democratic Party party, kiddies! Darkness at Noon! But also in the morning and at night; at dawn, at sunup, at sundown and at dusk. And in between. That’s right! It’s Darkness 24/7 at this party—this oh-so-moral and ethical party: pure and distilled and oh-so-refined. Not to mention caring!)
Ah, it was a beautiful thing to behold. And it was a sure thing. 100% fool-proof. They had that white prep boy (and his crass, orange-haired master) trussed up and hog tied. Squirming like the worms—like the vermin!—they were!!
It was masterful.
It was a slam dunk.
It was perfection….
But all this is nothing compared to the oh-so-well-wrought, elegant deviousness that’s about to be revealed. Compared to the glorious plot that has begun to unravel.
Compared to the conspiracy that was to be that good ole “insurance policy” orchestrated and choreographed—once again, “to perfection”—to prevent a Trump win in 2016, and if by some diabolical stroke he DID win, then to prevent him from governing.
Compared to the extroardinary layer upon layer upon layer of coverups that were “built in” to the system from the top on down, which, too, will begin to unravel. It is only a matter of time.
(But then, this is precisely why it is so absolutely essential for the Democrats to be successful in November.)
So stay tuned…
Coda: But, but, if the perfect, most elegantly crafted, most ingeniously conceived, most gloriously orchestrated plan appears nowhere in the MSM—is read about by no one—-then does it, at all, exist? Hmmm. We may have to consult the good Bishop Berkeley….
The judicial committee hearings were such a great opportunity to see exactly what kinds of monsters are sitting in the senate. Kamala (Demon Queen) Harris and Cory (Dumb Idiot) Booker can kiss their presidential ambitions goodbye. Boofing Whitehouse, Lying Blumenthal, and Creepy Coons will always be laughing stocks on tv and the internet. DiFiChiSpy will drown in a pool of her own tears.
Kuntsler, not always the most reliable when you poke at his Peak Oil pony, has these thoughts and more at the link:
Aftermath as Prologue – Kunstler
“It’s a matter of record that Dr. Ford traveled to Rehobeth Beach Delaware on July 26, where her Best Friend Forever and former room-mate, Monica McLean, lives, and that she spent the next four days there before sending a letter July 30 to Senator Diane Feinstein that kicked off the “sexual assault” circus. Did you know that Monica McClean was a retired FBI special agent, and that she worked in the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York under Preet Bharara, who had earlier worked for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer?
Could Monica McLean have spent those four days in July helping Christine Blasey Ford compose her letter to Mrs. Feinstein? Did you know that Monica McClean’s lawyer, one David Laufman is a former DOJ top lawyer who assisted former FBI counter-intel chief Peter Strozk on both the Clinton and Russia investigations before resigning in February this year — in fact, he sat in on the notorious “unsworn” interview with Hillary in 2016. Wow! What a really small swamp Washington is!”
“It’s a matter of record that Dr. Ford traveled to Rehobeth Beach Delaware on July 26….”
Did she drive? Take the bus? The train? Thumb?
This:
To Understand Christine Blasey Ford, Take a look at Palo Alto University
Juicy!
Christine Blasé Ford was a black-out teenage drunkard? I’m sure that has nothing to do with her 100% certainty about the identity of her attacker; or the veracity of her attack claim.
_____
Someone dredged up an older C-SPAN clip of Nancy Pelosi from June 2017.
“We don’t engage in the politics of personal destruction.”
“It’s a diversionary tactic,” she starts. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy, you demonize and then — the ‘wrap-up smear.’ You wanna talk politics? We call it the ‘wrap-up smear.’”
“You smear somebody with falsehoods and all the rest,” Pelosi detailed, “and then you merchandise it. And then you (gesturing to the media) write it, and then they say, ‘See, it’s reported in the press that this, this, this, and this.’ So they have that validation that the press reported the smear, and then it’s called the ‘wrap-up smear.’”
“And now I’m going to merchandise the press’s report on the smear that we made,” she repeated. “It’s a tactic. And it’s self-evident.”
___
It’s just a tactic folks. Move along, move along.
_____
“That may cause those — to cease and desist, although I doubt it.” – Neo
I agree completely with paragraph, and doubt it too, if the prosecution and punishment is a one-off. OTOH, if such actions can be punished with some consistency, it would likely have a significant positive effect.
vanderleun:
Ford maintains that she has family in Rehoboth and was visiting them. To the best of my knowledge, no one has tried to ascertain whether that is true or not. Of course, she could visit family and also see McLean on the same trip.
“and she most definitely wants no further investigating!! Attorney Debra Katz is kwite koncerned to be klear on that skore.”
“You may not be interested in the investigation, but the investigation is interested in you.” — per Comrade Trotsky
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/152853-you-may-not-be-interested-in-war-but-war-is
Barry Meislin on October 9, 2018 at 5:12 pm at 5:12 pm said:
Yep, those “echo-chamber” creator-creatures sure were working overtime.
And all the ducks were lined up:
* * *
… they just forgot that the other side had better hunters, despite their setting up of the Ultimate Catch-22 Game.
“And if Kavanaugh denied anything, then of course he was guilty.
And f he remained silent, it was further proof of his guilt.
And if he got angry, it was proof of his unsuitability.
And if he got emotional—if he cried(!!!)—then he was (naughty, naughty!) being manipulative, trying—there can be no doubt—oh so pathetically to mask his guilt.”
Nice essay, and very obvious from our movie screen.
On the other hand, the Left sees something else entirely.
(linked from the Kunstler link by G.VdL. — it’s good to see what the other side of the drive-in is watching.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/opinion/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Liberals, This Is War
What’s at stake is much more than a single Supreme Court seat.
Charles M. Blow
By Charles M. Blow
Opinion Columnist
Oct. 7, 2018
“Yes, Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court. Rue the day. Rend your garments.
Then, step back, view the entirety of the battle in which you are engaged, and understand that Kavanaugh is just one part of a much larger plan by conservatives to fundamentally change the American political structure so that it enshrines and protects white male power even after America’s changing demographics and mores move away from that power.
This, for them, is not simply a game about political passion and political principles. This is a game of power, pure and simple, and it’s about whether the people who have long held that power will be able to retain it.
[[true, and he just conveniently forgets to mention that both sides are after the Brass Ring — cue Senator “Scorched Earth” Graham]
For them, Trump is just a useful idiot, a temporary anomaly.
They are thinking generationally, not in terms of the next election cycle but in terms of the next epoch.
[news to most of the GOP electorate]
Liberals can get so high-minded that they lose sight of the ground war. …
In July, Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the “constitutional originalist Federalist Society,” as RealClearPolitics phrased it, told Fox News:
“Any Supreme Court confirmation is transformative. This is a court that is often equally divided. At the end of the day, I think what’s really important to remember is that there’s been a movement on the court toward being more originalist and textualist. In other words, the idea that law means something, it has determinate meaning. And that’s the trend that I think this president wants to continue.”
But, when I think of originalism, I think this: Many of the founders owned slaves; in the Constitution they viewed black people as less than fully human; they didn’t want women or poor white men to vote. The founders, a bunch of rich, powerful white men, didn’t want true democracy in this country, and in fact were dreadfully afraid of it.
[actually, this is true…and we are beginning to see that they might have been on to something there.]
Now, a bunch of rich, powerful white men want to return us to this sensibility, wrapped in a populist “follow the Constitution” rallying cry and disguised as the ultimate form of patriotism.
[Kind of rich coming from the party that spends vast amounts of money and effort ensuring that black people today can never get off the Left’s plantation…last time I looked, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were still in force, and no Conventionists I know of have called for a repeal.]
…
As The Washington Post pointed out in 2016, “In the Electoral College, each individual Wyoming vote weighs 3.6 times more than an individual Californian’s vote.” The Post continued, “That’s the most extreme example, but if you average the 10 most populous states and compare the power of their residents’ votes to those of the 10 least populous states, you get a ratio of 1 to 2.5.”
[see below]
…
Folks, Kavanaugh is only one soldier, albeit an important one, in a larger battle. Stop thinking you’re in a skirmish, when you’re at war.”
* * *
Well, he did end with a true statement.
(Have you ever noticed that the NYT and WaPo leave articles out in front of the paywall when they really want their people to have access?)
On the vote weighting, that was deliberate and necessary to get the Constitution accepted.
The two-senators-per-state rule, which contributes most to the weights he cited, was to protect the smaller nations in the United States — because they could all have gone their own way like the Balkans after the British were driven out — and most of them are Leftist-majority, last time I looked.
So they balance the much bigger Right-majority states in the South and West.
The two states cited didn’t even exist when the Constitution was written, but I suspect the Authors would not have anticipated very much wider discrepancies in population than already existed; however, the West was not settled as fully as it could have been because the US Government took control of vast swathes of land and never released it for settlement.
IMO, the 1:3.6 just means the some of the votes of the illegally-registered electorate are cancelled out.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/10/08/california-dmv-finds-it-registered-more-non-citizens-to-vote/
Pingback:The Bookworm Beat 10/9/2018 - the American life edition and open thread - Watcher of Weasels
Barry: they also forgot to line up three very important ducks: Ford’s only “witnesses.”
I suspect they thought Mark Judge would do the standard leftist-fellow-traveler mea culpa, and just assume that it happened on one of those nights he was so wasted (as detailed in his book, so conveniently), but his knowledge of his friend Brett’s character trumped the social-guilt-syndrome.
P. J. Smyth I have never figured out, but he didn’t figure heavily in the story, and maybe they just gambled that he was at some party sometime somewhere that had a “blank spot” that the alleged improprieties occurred in. Why she picked someone already on the record as pro-Kavanaugh is a mystery to me.
Not nailing down Leland Keyser before the letter was outed was a major fail.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/third-accused-male-patrick-smyth-denies-far-left-activist-christine-fords-allegations-of-abuse/#comment-4104450185
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/was-leland-keyser-the-hero-of-the-kavanaugh-controversy/
Was Leland Keyser the Hero of the Kavanaugh Controversy?
By RICH LOWRY
October 8, 2018 9:56 AM
“You can make a good case. She was the most important purported witness. Kavanaugh was out with his categorical denial before having any idea what Keyser, a friend of Ford’s, would say. If she had said she remembered being at a party with Kavanugh and Ford, his nomination would have collapsed, even if Keyser’s account was fuzzy or if she could have been accused of having partisan motives. So she had more influence than any U.S. senator over the outcome and despite her friendship with Ford — and perhaps pressure to change her account — she told the truth about having no memory of such a party or ever meeting Kavanaugh. You might say this is simply what any honorable person would do, but given the pressure and the stakes — and how low opponents of Kavanugh were willing to go — she should be commended.”
* * *
I vote with Lowry.
TommyJay on October 9, 2018 at 6:10 pm at 6:10 pm said:
Someone dredged up an older C-SPAN clip of Nancy Pelosi from June 2017.
“We don’t engage in the politics of personal destruction.”
…
“That may cause those — to cease and desist, although I doubt it.” – Neo
I agree completely with paragraph, and doubt it too, if the prosecution and punishment is a one-off. OTOH, if such actions can be punished with some consistency, it would likely have a significant positive effect.
* * *
Nice catch.
Thing that most infuriates me, inter alia, is the blatant roaring hypocrisy of the Democrats.
“Ford maintains that she has family in Rehoboth and was visiting them. To the best of my knowledge, no one has tried to ascertain whether that is true or not. Of course, she could visit family and also see McLean on the same trip.”
Of course.
Then again some conspiracy theories turn out to be true.
Snow on Pine on October 9, 2018 at 5:09 pm at 5:09 pm said:
“In another example, in the case of the attempted destruction of Kavanaugh and his family, the evidence is also starting to emerge of another leftist conspiracy.”
* * *
Except it’s beginning to look like an off-shoot of the same leftist conspiracy, kind of like aspens, or mushrooms.
I took my tin-foil-hat out of the attic and am keeping it closer at hand.
Andy on October 9, 2018 at 5:10 pm at 5:10 pm said:
The disappearance of the website that archived the yearbooks was very strange indeed. I was following him daily as he chronicled his findings and then one day he/she/(it?!) was gone. This page, which is cached by Google, is worth reading as he explains what he is going to do.
* * *
Well, it’s still cached by Google NOW – but it’s missing all the pictures of the yearbook pages, or I couldn’t get them to work.
I hope he saved some kind of screen-shots.
BTW, any conservative blogger still on Blogspot, YouTube, or anything owned by Alphabet and its tentacles needs to repent and support some other part of the economy.
And be sure you have auto-backup to a hard drive somewhere, not a cloud.
What difference does it make? Until the perpetrators, all of them, suffer consequences, consequences of significance and duration, we will see similar and worse in a steady escalation. Felony convictions, long sentences in standard, uncomfortable Federal prisons, perhaps combined with asset confiscation. And not just the foot soldiers. High level DoJ types, Senators and Representatives, media big shots, professors and Antifa thugs. Bad food, rough roommates and jumpsuits.
I always leaned towards the “invented” side and assumed that the erased public records would be embarrassing, if not downright incriminating. It will be illuminating if the timeline for that can be pieced together, it seems to have been carried out by someone who knew what they were doing and with malice aforethought.
When I read Ford’s web history had been scrubbed — including her high school yearbooks — I knew some tech people had gotten paid good money to do so. That’s not trivial. That’s not something Ford could have done on her own.
The only questions remaining are how early in the process it happened, how quickly Ford was connected to tech people who could do it, and how they were paid.
I’m all in that this was a setup from the git-go. Ford was not some sad, broken victim, who in a late brave act contacted Feinstein or Eshoo, and then the dominos fell.
I also don’t think Ford’s refusal to pursue her claims further is because she’s high-minded or so broken she can’t. The last thing she wants is to put herself in further legal jeopardy.
Which isn’t to say she won’t write books and appear in the media as the heroine/victim of this affair.
“Scrubbed? Like with a Brillo?” — HRC
I wrote on an earlier thread that Ford was merely a tool, that when her usefulness was over she would be discarded and that, forever after, she would never have any privacy again, as her life would be constantly being ransacked by people trying to find proof for their particular take on the Kavanaugh opera; victim that she claimed to be, her life would be even more ruined.
Now, as more inconsistencies in her story are revealed, I think that she quite willingly became a prime player in this set-up.
However, I did not count on GoFundMe, and naively didn’t even think about book deals.
So Ford now has at least one million dollars–and counting–thanks to GoFund Me donors, and I’m sure that book contracts and speaking fees will be coming her way as well.
So, if–contrary to when she said–she really yearned for her time in the limelight, she got that–plus a place in the history books–and a cool million, with more to come.
She’s hit the jackpot!
There is a theory, that I have read several times, that Blasey Ford was assaulted by a high school boy whose family was very influential. He was NOT Kavanaugh. The mother and the daughter DID file a police report and the boy apologized to her and her mother. After this, the father, a powerful DC figure, had the entire police report expunged. My experience in reviewing applicants to the military is that these police reports are NEVER permanently expunged. We will see if it surfaces.
MikeK – that’s a minimum of 3 people who know the story you propose, plus: police, witnesses, judge, court staff, jail staff. I would like to think you are right that information would surface if it is true, but think how many people know what grades Obama made in school, and how many have leaked so far.
Zilch.
If the family is Democrat, we will never hear from them, and you can bet most of the non-family are Dems.
You might put some small fry in jail for a short time, but the powerful people who really orchestrated this will never be named or prosecuted. Too bad…
To me these data points stand out.
1) former Pres Obama, almost certainly interesting details in his life history none of which have leaked
2) Christine Ford’s unlikely story and the disappearance of her personal data including high school yearbooks. Of course, zero interest by media to follow up
3) Hillary says there can be no compromise with us.
4) I believe it was Justice Sotomeyer who claims SCOTUS is now under a cloud. In a former life, didn’t she work collegially with BK?
This is far from over.
One fears that the toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube.
Given the stakes and the delay between letter and revealing it as well as what might have happened in the time before the letter was sent – it seems likely to me that the Ford we saw was only what the Democrats and their lawyers, tech people wanted us to see. Given the stakes the fact that only the DNC’s service provider had access to their hacked server – it seems likely to me that what we know about what happened to that server is only what the Democrats, and their lawyers and tech people wanted us to see. In the larger context of the election, I think it is very interesting that Trump has referred the FISA declassification to the IG. Is he just controlling the timing of the release relative to the election or is there mutual blackmail involving what Mueller has versus what Nunes has?
most here don’t know democrat politics you think they are all communists. democrat senators could care less if kavenaugh sexually assaulted ford. they care about being re-elected. fiensten fears democrat party left not kavenaugh. alexandra ocasio-cortez clones are the worry of democrat establishment not republicans who can’t primary them.
“Not nailing down Leland Keyser before the letter was outed was a major fail.”
Oh, they had Leland Keyser lined up alright.
In their own minds.
(After all, “a friend in need is a friend indeed”! “Sisterhood”! “Priorities”! “Taking one for the side”!! “TRUTH!!!!….to power”, etc., etc.)
And if “best friend” (they hadn’t been in touch for years, apparently) couldn’t remember what she sure-as-heck was supposed to have remembered, well then, the reason just HAD TO BE—as the noble, understanding, oh-so-gracious (and don’t forget: bestest, best friend) Ford assured us:
“Leland has significant health challenges, and I’m happy that she’s focusing on herself and getting the health treatment that she needs, and she let me know that she needed her lawyer to take care of this for her, and she texted me right afterward with an apology and good wishes, and et cetera. So I’m glad that she’s taking care of herself.”
Right. (If this doesn’t make one puke then it would seem that one has a very strong stomach indeed.)
So yes, in their own minds….:
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/04/relative-says-christine-blasey-ford-threw-witness-leland-keyser-under-bus/
https://nypost.com/2018/10/05/friend-of-ford-told-fbi-she-was-pressured-into-altering-statement/
Having said all this, it should be added that with an allegation/accusation of this kind, corroborating “witnesses” is totally unnecessary. Not needed. Immaterial. Extraneous.
Hence, any and all analysis, speculation, proof is essentially irrelevant. Is beside the point.
In an earlier thread, I noted that this is precisely the “beauty” and “elegance” of such an accusation.
You float it out there and—with the usual suspects providing careful nurturing and non-stop nourishment (e.g., only the finest chicken guano, cow pies and horse “compost”)—it grows and grows. Even flourishes.
So now poor Dr. Ford just wants to disappear into her private life….
And, of course, one must respect her wishes (preferably after sending her a hefty—heartfelt—contribution for her efforts. She did, after all, give it her very best shot!)
1) former Pres Obama, almost certainly interesting details in his life history none of which have leaked
What’s not leaked are his academic transcripts. John Kerry’s leaked. George W. Bush’s leaked. We can wager his didn’t because the dean of students at HLS, the dean of students at Columbia College, and the dean of students at Occidental College each signed out the microfilm containing his transcript and locked it in a safe in his office, a precaution they wouldn’t take with anyone else. The Los Angeles Times has for 15 years sat on the video of his tribute to Rashid Khalidi. And, of course, the media are remarkably incurious when it suits them. Hellary has been a national figure since 1991, but it’s only in recent years that we learned she flunked the DC Bar exam.
P. J. Smyth I have never figured out, but he didn’t figure heavily in the story, and maybe they just gambled that he was at some party sometime somewhere that had a “blank spot” that the alleged improprieties occurred in. Why she picked someone already on the record as pro-Kavanaugh is a mystery to me.
It’s a reasonable wager the people she picked appear in Mark Judge’s books. If she actually was acquainted with Christopher Garrett, she may remember names he’d mentioned.
What is the deal with Charles Blow?
How is it that any human being can so utterly fail at self-awareness?
How is it that he does not see himself describing himself, and his predecessors in leftism?
How can he be unaware of the depth of the psychological projection?
Sigh.
Find a leftist — the aren’t “liberals” in any meaningful sense of the word, they’re leftist — who is accusing a right-of-center person of something shady, either in motives or in tactics, and I guarantee you, 100% of the time, that same leftist stands shoulder-to-shoulder with, and at the near end of a long historical line of, leftists guilty of exactly the same evils.
It makes me think of a passage from C.S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader, wherein Lucy is carefully, clandestinely making her way down the long upper hallway of the house of a magician of fearful repute:
It feels like leftists are forever jumping at shadows and fleeing from rumours of the Horrible White Male Sexist Racist Right Wing Bogeyman. But if they’d stop for a moment and look carefully at these grotesque faces that keep popping out at them, they’d just see…themselves.
It makes me wonder, then: Are we in some fashion paranoid about them? I’d like to think their philosophy is less oppressive in inclination, or less dehumanizing in intention, than it looks at first glance.
But sadly, I don’t think there’s any real symmetry there. For while leftists are forever able to insulate themselves from the thought or company of well-spoken persons on the right, filtering out all the most-amenable presentations of conservatism and libertarianism and replacing them with straw-men in white hoods, American conservatives have no corresponding option of epistemic closure.
They are forever beset by leftist propaganda, up, down, and all around them, because of the way it has conquered the mainstream culture, entertainment, corporate HR departments, the education system, and half the churches. And of course court decisions much celebrated by the left and mourned by the right (or vice-versa) make it quite clear how the left desires to make various “pinches of incense, offered to the emperor” compulsory on all Americans.
So while Charles Blow’s hatred of conservatives seems based entirely around a phantom, it’s hard to see how conservative fear of leftist hegemony can be based on anything other than sober-minded appreciation of real, valid, ongoing experience.
Aesop fan quotes Charles Blow as saying,
This kind of open and unabashed racial and cultural antagonism toward the entire project of western classical liberalism and the people who established the geographic and political space which made it possible, is probably one of the more remarkable developments of the last decade.
The relating of changing demographics, i.e., ethnicity, to inevitably changing mores, is especially critical here.
This vaunting “kill the Boer” mentality is something relatively new in this country (say the last 10 years or so), as is the implicitly racist boast that changing demographics necessarily leads to race related changes in mores – and lifeway values.
The more the left talks, the more they make those most rabid white nationalists of old appear to be prophets who accurately predicted that no good and welcoming deed goes unpunished.
If then, as these progressives seem to argue, the taste for freedom and economic liberty is in fact race related, what is there to talk about? If for hysterical progressives “it takes a village”, and they will allow you no other life but communal life; and if on the contrary for others, bondage to the personal dysfunctions of others is mentally and even physically intolerable, then what compromise is possible?
We used to have different polities as a way of sorting this out. No longer, apparently.
Not too long ago I had an exchange with a reparations advocate who, try as I might could no be reasoned with. He was of the opinion that everything that had been accomplished economically (industrially, agriculturally, scientifically) had been the result of slave labor.
The conversation ended when he accused me of thinking I was the smartest person in the room, and said that it would be different one he got his hands on me.
And so our debate ended with a physical threat.
So much for the role of reason in modern politics.
Was trying to type and handle some other stuff at the same time in the comment above. Trying to shoehorn an additional paragraph or two in at the last moment during the editing allowance, didn’t help.
“…unabashed racial and cultural antagonism toward the entire project of western classical liberalism and the people who established the geographic and political space which made it possible…”
Yep. It’s basically:
“Nice culture you got there. Be a real shame if, er, something were to happen to it….”
Sooooo, vote for the Left…. (and let’s avoid all this unnecessary unpleasantness. Yes, come let us reason together… so that we can “transform” society in relative peace.)
Basically, the Leftist protection racket, writ large.
It’s more cultural/political than racial or gender-based (though those cards are played by the Left for all they’re worth).
For example, look what happens to Republican women (or women who refuse to swallow the Democratic line), e.g., Palin, Haley, Collins, etc. . Ditto with Blacks or Hispanics, e.g., Kanye West, Ben Carson…and this rather courageous fellow:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/03/pastor_darrell_scott_trump_most_pro-black_president_in_my_lifetime.html.
And then there’s this gem:
https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/10/09/leftists-labour-members-racially-abuse-black-tory-london-mayoral-candidate/
For the Left, having the “correct” politics trumps everything else, it seems.
I see Hillary Clinton is in the headlines saying that the time has passed to be civil with the other side. I think she’s at least 10 years too late to that game.
Difi sat on it for 6 weeks.it beggars belief she didn’t have story checked out in some way. At the very least contacting Leland Keyser. My theory is she researched and the whole thing was garbage. For all we know , when origly contacted, Keyser prob said she’s a fabulist or something to the like. Then when it seemed kav would get through she played the game- I’m handing to the FBI, it’s out of my hands, etc etc. Some curious reporters (if there are any left) might be able to find out more
Not too long ago I had an exchange with a reparations advocate who, try as I might could no be reasoned with. He was of the opinion that everything that had been accomplished economically (industrially, agriculturally, scientifically) had been the result of slave labor.
There is a commenter at Althouse who is otherwise conservative but totally into the “reparations” thing. I avoid him as he gets very nasty in comments in return. If I wanted to get equally nasty, I would ask him for a list of successful black societies.
DNW:
Good counters to this assertion can be found in Frederick Law Olmstead’s books on his travels through the South in the 1850s. He repeatedly observes in the 3 books on his travels that the rural South was economically and technically more backward than the rural North. If slave labor was responsible for the advancements of the West, then why was the area of the US that used slave labor more economically backward compared to the area of the US that didn’t have slave labor?
Olmsted’s three books are titled:
1. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, with Remarks on Their Economy,
2.A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853-4
3. A Journey Through Texas; Or, A Saddle-trip on the Southwestern Frontier. With a Statistical Appendix.
All can be downloaded for free from Google Books, which also has an abridged version of these three books in two volumes of The Cotton Kingdom.
This is the same Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Manhattan’s Central Park and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. A remarkable man.
The Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel had an interesting observation about politics and backwardness of slaveowning areas in his book The Latin Americans: Their Love-hate Relationship with the United States. I read this book in Spanish, where it was titled “Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario.” (From the Good Savage to the Good Revolutionary.) (page 195).He points out that in 1816 the South voted with the North in imposing tariffs on imported British goods, in order build up the US textile industry. The South had many advantages in developing a textile industry, such as much closer access to raw cotton and better water power in the fall line between the Piedmont and the coastal plain.
But the North, not the South, developed a textile industry. This led to a Southern change of heart on tariffs.
When the Brits imported cotton from Egypt and India during the Civil War, the South found out that Southern cotton wasn’t the King Cotton they believed it to be.
For claiming that slave labor was responsible for the wealth of the textile manufacturers of New England and of England, the reply is both they did just fine without slave-grown cotton.
Neo, I published a comment, and while I was editing the comment well within the five minute window, a message appeared that “You may no longer edit this comment.” The comment disappeared a minute or two later, presumably to the spam folder. What is going on?
The comment had two links and took a while to write.
Gringo:
Thanks for letting me know.
You can see it above your comment in this thread now. I liberated it from the spam folder. I also found some other commenters’ comments in there. Sometimes the spam filter is overzealous; I have no idea why. The spam filter never explains itself.
Thanks, Neo. Your spam filter is, at least, not as stringent as Disqus, which will throw out pedantic comments for such reasons as too many links or too long to write or too many edits. Two edits is usually considered too many. Moreover, you reply. A Disqus-eliminated comment at Instapundit will NEVER be corrected.
The Atlantic was even worse, as once you had a so-called spam comment, all subsequent comments were spammed out. I wasn’t surprised when The Atlantic stopped all comments.
I have a relation who will make a political/cultural observation as a matter or assertion of fact. If you contradict it with facts, she complains she is being emotionally assaulted and hurt.
She is, of course, a lefty. Or, to put it another way, thinks in lockstep with the mush heads who do this stuff to feel good. I don’t know if she has an actual construct on which to hang this stuff other than to feel righteous.
I’d say it’s infuriating, but I don’t bother.
DNW
As lefties often lack the facts and knowledge to back up their arguments, a physical threat is about all they have left.
Back in the day, I attended a meeting at a restaurant that the local rag had billed as a meeting of concerned people about the loss of the Sandinistas in the 1990 election in Nicaragua. A “poet” recited a “poem” replete with blood. More people talked.
I pointed out that Pinochet had a better record on reducing Infant Mortality than Castro did. That message didn’t go over very well. “But Pinochet had help,” came the reply. As if the Soviet Union never “helped” Cuba!
Later on, when I began to speak, the “poet” informed me that if I said anything further, he would beat me up. As he was definitely bigger and younger than me, I took him at his word, and said no more. Even if I had super powers, his fellow lefties would probably have lied on a police report.
Cuba: Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)
1963 41.7
1977 20.8
1978 18.7
Chile : Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)
1973 63
1983 20.8
1984 19.4
1988 18
World Bank Development Indicators: Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)
The World Bank doesn’t have any Infant Mortality data for Cuba before 1963. CEPAL- Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean- does.
Also: 1977 Infant Mortality for Chile: 41.1
Cuba took 14 years to go from 41.7 to 20.8 (1963 to 1977)
Chile took 6 years to go from 41.1 to 20.7 (1977 to 1983)
I will admit at the get-go that I may not be up to snuff on the latest developments, as my reading time is limited. I believe that the most interesting possibility concerning the truthfulness of Ford’s accusations involves the “second front door” question. My understanding is that this was the impetus for her therapy (and therefore the resurrection of her trauma). The second front door was needed to alleviate the anxiety of not being able to escape an enclosed area, the anxiety being the result of the “attack.” She and her husband were said to have sought therapy to resolve what he must have considered to be an odd request. Examination of the property records (legal documents, I may add) showed that they purchased the home with a second front door already in place. This second door not only existed beforehand but continued to be used as the entrance to the prior owner’s business after the Fords had purchased the home. If this is in fact accurate, Dr. Ford’s case should be submitted to the Department of Justice for perjury. No one makes a mistake like this inadvertently.
I can no longer edit the HTML block quote instructions after 20 seconds?
Huh … even the comment itself is gone. Casual profanity maybe. Neo has permission to clen-up/edit if that’s the case
The practice of seemingly “gratuitous” insults and implied threast, is, one learns, just part of the standard operating procedures of the left which they use to establish social dominance through intimidation. Throw you off balance and all that.
So rewind thirty years. I have this class, and I can’t even remember what it was. Maybe “Labor History” or some other major fulfillment shit-class like that. It was taught by a youngish, tall, thin and tousled secular professor with one of those offices right out of a movie: … cluttered with stacks of leaning-tower papers, call to action posters on the walls, and perpetually populated an earlier generation of proto-social justice warrior sycophants gathered around His Hipness, their living font of wisdom.
So, one day the prof has this Jesuit punk from Malta in to tell us all about the crimes and oppression perpetrated by Anglo-America. When I arrive the Jesuit (a dark haired Mediterranean type probably in his young forties), is already seated by a perpetually scowling near middle aged blond; who, as I recall it now, looked like an emaciated Kara Unger with a hangover and lank scarecrow dry straw hair.
As they are parked in what is usually my seating area in the back row, I find the only relatively empty row a couple up. Whereupon as I take a seat I hear, from this woman I have never spoken to or even made eye contact: “Oh great … the biggest gorilla in the class has to sit right in front of us”.
Now, if I was a gorilla, I was not much of one since on my tallest day in life I was not over 6’2 in boots, and not over 190 at the time, despite the lifting I did a couple times a week.
So I turn around to look, offering to get up and move if I am blocking their view of the coming attractions or something like that. The jebbie smirks, “You don’t seem to have made any friends!” Thus this life irrelevancy of the second part, is defending the comments of his companion irrelevancy of the second part, by implying I deserved to be attacked. This, is the mindset of the left. You don’t have to do anything, you just have to be there as a target of their bile.
Later as I have said here before, the priest got up and blamed the western democracies for their cultural imperialism. In response I pointedly suggested that we make amends by refraining from all contact and even withdraw all those awful tainting technologies which had been polluting their Elysian existences … including the scourge of antibiotics and modern medicine. “How’s that sound?” All went quiet.
Of course he said nothing. Neither did anyone else. He just stared at me for a bit and then turned to someone else.
One of the few times in college I basically said “f88k you” to a speaker. The professor didn’t even respond.
I guess I got away with it because … gorilla …
DNW:
I just found your comment in the spam folder and liberated it. You can see it in this thread now. I have no idea why it was blocked. The spam filter seems a bit overactive lately; I’m not sure why. Let me know if it happens again.
I want to know more about Blasey Ford and “Squi” Garrett, her boyfriend whom she would not name at the hearing. When and why did they break up? On the assumption that she re-purposed some event in her life to try to keep Kavanaugh off SCOTUS, doesn’t her story sound more like a drunken, mistaken encounter with a boyfriend than an interaction with a relative stranger? The FBI talked to Garrett. I wonder what he said.