Tag Archives: Christine Blasey Ford

This week: A ‘blue wave’ tomorrow?

Posted on by
Reply

Still a question whether a ‘blue wave’ is coming on November 6.

Making Democrats look good

Arithmetic-of-the-field numbers make the Democrats look good. In races for open seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republicans have far more seats to defend than the Democrats. Fundraising for Democrats has largely been off the charts. Polling for weeks between Labor Day and last week seemed largely positive for Democrats in congressional races and to some extent in state races.

Politico’s morning tip sheets pounded a big-blue changed congress for weeks, as in this article from October 9:

The Republican House majority continues to show signs of collapsing, with Democrats steadily gaining ground toward erasing the 23-seat margin and ending eight years of GOP control.

A total of 68 seats currently held by Republicans are firmly in play — rated as ‘Lean Republican’ or worse for the GOP — presenting a stark contrast to the Democratic side, where only a half-dozen Democratic seats are in similar jeopardy [ . . .]

With a month to go until Election Day, there are now 209 seats either firmly or leaning in the Democratic column — only 9 shy of the 218 the party needs to wrest away control of the chamber — according to the latest update of POLITICO’s race ratings.

Twenty days later, some of the same outlook:

White House political director Bill Stepien wrote a three-page memo this week in which he outlined the political landscape confronting the GOP and bluntly warned that the party’s prospects for the House are ‘challenging.’ … [I]n the memo, Stepien attempted to divert blame from Trump toward several other factors that he said made a ‘traditionally challenging year even more difficult.’

He noted that dozens of Republican incumbents had retired, creating a plethora of vacant seats for the party to defend. Stepien also highlighted the fundraising challenges confronting the GOP, noting that 92 Democratic challengers outraised incumbent House Republicans during the third fundraising quarter.

Then there’s that historical pattern that the presidential party loses congressional seats in the first midterm election, also noted: “And he pointed out that the party in power historically suffers significant losses during a president’s first midterm election.”

Some of the predictions are coming true, depending on location. After days of early and absentee (mail-in) voting, the three states on the West Coast look solidly Blue, not that that’s a surprise. Virginia is trending Democratic, if the polling is accurate. Iowa and Minnesota seem to be returning to or staying in the fold, respectively.

Making Democrats look bad

But below the radar of the ‘influencers’, making the Democrats look bad, is the perception created by some of the very individuals and entities supporting the Dems, or at least opposing the White House.

In the perception of the voiceless, and we’re right about being voiceless, there are reasons why they/we don’t have much voice:

I. Money speaks loudest. I’ll keep this short, because the point needs no belaboring: the inundation of money, donations, may signal a certain kind of support in elections, but it’s no sign of small-d democracy. Candidates and campaigns have to raise funds, but the seemingly ceaseless, breathless hype about the tidal wave of funds going to Democratic-aligned super PACs is anti-democratic, anti-voiceless. Every headline about another twenty million from Michael Bloomberg, et al., confirms that these are people who have more than you and I have.

II. Big-time media speak loudest. I’ll condense this, since it calls for a book, but the bottom line is that the hysterical contingent in the news media is damaging Democrats. It is not the news media’s job to help Democrats, of course. And there is little or nothing that candidates can do about a certain kind of support. There is no (lawful, public) way the Democratic Party can rein in the relentless triumphalism, name-calling, and ganging-up in some of the biggest media outlets. It is free expression, albeit very well-paid expression. But the ugly boasting about destroying President Trump; the moral outrage of wrapping themselves in the mantle of the Resistance of World War II; and the foolish insistence that they’re winning, crushing all opposition, whatever–as in hyping a ‘blue wave’–turn many people off.

As they should. For millennia, self-awareness has been considered part of human wisdom. When big media outlets go holier-than-thou, wisdom is not what comes across. You can see why news media don’t want to revisit the (long) era when the U.S. press supported racial segregation. But the refusal to mention their support for invading Iraq is breathtaking. Then there’s the extent of how wrong they all were about the 2016 election. Then there’s Juanita Broaddrick. I believe Christine Blasey Ford, and said so in writing. But I also believe Juanita Broaddrick, and have said so.

That brings me to point number three:

III. Loudmouths speak loudest. Social gestures can be misconstrued, and will be misconstrued. I don’t think Amy Schumer’s getting herself arrested will benefit Democrats on Nov 6. Nor am I sure it will benefit women or rape victims. Schumer is probably a good person acting with good intentions, but we need more rape crisis hotlines, more support for law enforcement and prosecutors in criminal assault cases, better processes for ‘electing’ judges (the process is dreadful in Maryland), and more research into the causes and the incidence of rape–not another reminder that some people can afford to get arrested where others can’t.

The relationship between celebrity and feminism is mixed. There have always been female celebrities, in societies by no stretch of the imagination gender-equal. Tragically, demonstrators against rape at the Capitol probably came across like the over-painted loudmouths on Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise or the ladies on Bridezilla. (By the way, why are those shows on the air?) Rep. Mazie Hirono’s (D-HI) saying that men should “shut up” did not help, nor is it feminist. Too bad, because her solid comments on Kavanaugh’s dishonesty before Ford’s testimony should have gotten more cogent media attention at the time.

Meanwhile, that argument about ‘your sons’ being at risk of some day being falsely accused is powerful, and yet Democrats and their allies in media pretended that it wasn’t. Like the ‘bathrooms’ issue, it may be bogus, but it’s effective.

Combination of all the above: For the past two years, our 9.9 percent in the public discourse could hardly have done more to come across as entitled, elitist, and oblivious, had they been given a script.

Oblivious, in combination with entitled and elitist, comes across as–frankly–stupid. Once again, lesson learned–by the rest of us: rich people don’t pay for stupid mistakes the way poor people do.

Not a winning message for the Democratic Party, regardless of outcome tomorrow.

Kavanaugh’s calendar: I don’t believe Kavanaugh, and he lied to the president who boosted him

Posted on by
Reply

Some people seem to like being lied to. In fact, there are some people who’d rather be lied to by a man than told the truth by a woman. Let’s hope President Trump isn’t one of them. If Judge Brett Kavanaugh had any claim to credibility going in, at yesterday’s hearing, he has none coming out.

As I wrote day before yesterday,

The nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court should not be a partisan divide. At this point, there is more than enough reason to go back to the drawing board. The judge should thank his lucky stars for his current job. He and the White House should withdraw his name from consideration. President Trump should pick a nominee who does not have a track record of alcohol trouble.

It’s not only the series of misstatements from Judge Kavanaugh–claiming over and over again that people exonerated him when they didn’t, claiming that his drinking and drunkenness were less than they were in truth, claiming that he has always treated women with respect. Some of his own friends including Republican friends have spoken to the contrary. Lynne Brookes spoke on Cuomo Prime Time last night. She herself saw Kavanaugh and friend Chris Dudley decide to embarrass a young woman–by breaking into a room where she had gone with her date–and they did so.

Image result for kavanaugh calendar

A dead giveaway would be that calendar that Judge Kavanaugh himself offered.

MITCHELL: Dr. Ford described a small gathering of people at a suburban Maryland home in the summer of 1982. She said that Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth and Leland Ingham also were present, as well as an unknown male, and that the people were drinking to varying degrees. Were you ever at a gathering that fits that description?

KAVANAUGH: No, as I’ve said in my opening statements — opening statement.

To her credit, the questioner, Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, followed up with Kavanaugh as she had followed up with Ford:

MITCHELL: I want to talk about your calendars. You submitted to the committee copies of the handwritten calendars that you’ve talked about for the months of May, June, July and August of 1982. Do you have them in front of you?

KAVANAUGH: I do.

MITCHELL: Did you create these calendars, in the sense of all the handwriting that’s on them?

KAVANAUGH: Yes.

MITCHELL: OK. Is it exclusively your handwriting?

KAVANAUGH: Yes.

MITCHELL: When did you make these entries?

KAVANAUGH: In nine — in 1982.

MITCHELL: Has anything changed — been changed for those since 1982?

KAVANAUGH: No.

MITCHELL: Do these calendars represent your plans for each day, or do they document — in other words, prospectively, or do they document what actually occurred, more like a diary?

This is a series of good questions. Mitchell did no grandstanding. She stuck to evidence and stuck to detail.

KAVANAUGH: They’re both forward-looking and backward-looking, as you can tell by looking at them, because I cross out certain doctor’s appointments that didn’t happen, or one night where I was supposed to lift weights, I crossed that out, because it — I obviously didn’t make it that night. So you can see things that I didn’t do crossed out in retrospect, and also, when I list the specific people who I was with, that is likely backward-looking.

MITCHELL: You explain that you kept these calendars because your father started keeping them in 1978, I believe you said. That’s why you kept them. In other words, you wrote on them. But why did you keep them up until this time?

KAVANAUGH: Well — well, he’s kept them, too, since 1978, so he’s a good role model.

At this point, most unfortunately, Grassley stopped her–at Kavanaugh’s request:

GRASSLEY: Ms. Mitchell, you’ll have to stop.

MITCHELL: Oh, I’m sorry.

GRASSLEY: Judge Kavanaugh has asked for a break, so we’ll take a 15-minute break.

(RECESS)

Eventually, after Leahy’s turn questioning Kavanaugh, Rachel Mitchell was allowed to resume.

GRASSLEY: Ms. Mitchell?

MITCHELL: Judge, do you still have your calendar — calendars there?

KAVANAUGH: I do.

MITCHELL: I would like you to look at the July 1st entry.

KAVANAUGH: Yes.

MITCHELL: The entry says — and I quote — “Go to Timmy’s (ph) for skis (ph) with Judge (ph), Tom (ph), P.J. (ph), Bernie (ph) and Squee (ph)”?

KAVANAUGH: Squee. That’s a nick…

MITCHELL: What does…

KAVANAUGH: … that’s a nickname.

MITCHELL: OK. To what does this refer, and to whom?

KAVANAUGH: So first, says “Tobin’s (ph) house workout”. So that’s one of the football workouts that we would have — that Dr. (inaudible) would run for guys on the football team during the summer.

So we would be there — that’s usually 6:00 to 8:00 or so, kind of — until near dark. And then it looks like we went over to Timmy’s — you want to know their last names too? I’m happy to do it.

MITCHELL: If you could just identify, is — is “Judge,” Mark Judge?

KAVANAUGH: It is.

MITCHELL: And is “P.J.,” P.J. Smith?

KAVANAUGH: It is.

So — all right. It’s Tim Gaudette (ph), Mark Judge, Tom Caine (ph), P.J. Smith, Bernie McCarthy (ph), Chris Garrett (ph).

MITCHELL: Chris Garrett is Squee?

KAVANAUGH: He is.

MITCHELL: Did you in your calendar routinely document social gatherings like house parties or gatherings of friends in your calendar?

KAVANAUGH: Yes. It — it certainly appears that way, that’s what I was doing in the summer of 1982. And you can see that reflected on several of the — several of the entries.

There was more, in the testimony to Mitchell and in the calendar itself, more than enough to rebut Kavanaugh’s claims that he has “never” been to such a gathering as that testified to by Dr. Ford. Unfortunately, Mitchell’s time was up. The calendar had not run out, but the honest questioning had. Once Senator Lindsey Graham launched into his bogus diatribe, the day for fact-finding was over.

At least, it was over in the hearing room. Others have confirmed through Mark Judge’s own book that he did indeed work at the nearby Safeway that summer, the summer of 1982.

Kavanaugh, Ford: It’s not ’50-50′: We do have facts

Posted on by
Reply

What’s called a hearing will take place this morning, on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and the statements of Professor Christine Blasey Ford–

Hoping we don’t hear the inevitable–‘he says, she says’, or ‘it’s 50-50’, the verbal equivalent of people on air throwing up their hands–‘How do we go back 35 years?’-

We don’t have to. We have facts, and facts in the common knowledge at that. Line up the pronouns; here are a few:

  1. She wants the FBI to investigate. He does not. (By the way, I cannot believe that Republicans in the Senate are trying to ward off an FBI investigation. Look at the nightmare on their hands if they were to confirm Kavanaugh, and some enterprising journalists dig up the relevant information after he gets on the high court, when the only remedy is impeachment.)
  2. She submitted to a polygraph exam. He did not.
  3. She passed the polygraph. He did not.
  4. She wants the process to take whatever time needed to arrive at the truth. His allies do not. They (the more top-down elements of the GOP) are trying to rush it through, hugger-mugger as Hamlet would say.
  5. She wants the other person allegedly in the room, Mark Judge, to appear and to answer questions. His allies do not.
  6. [ADD THIS ONE, 10:04 a.m. Thursday] Her classmates have spoken out in her defense, giving their names. Years’ worth of Holton Arms alumni have signed petitions in her defense. His “members of the class have agreed not to speak on the record to reporters.” (WaPo A10, “Swednick’s Job Experience [etc]”)

Image result for Christine Blasey Ford

‘We weren’t in the room’. No, but we’re in the room now.

Hopeless is not necessary.

Re the typical push-back in yesterday’s blog post, the one all-purpose riposte is that Dr. Ford’s credible allegations are part of Democratic delaying tactics. Not for a moment do I believe that the accuser is part of some Chuck Schumer plot, for the record. But the Dems’ own political lameness–calling for the nomination to be ‘blocked’ when it was constitutionally impossible to do so–set up this bogus rebuttal.

Also, the Democrats in the Senate might not be in this position in the first place if they had pushed for Mitch McConnell’s expulsion back when he openly flouted the U.S. constitution.

“It’s about the integrity of that institution.”

Posted on by
Reply

Why is President Donald Trump trying to appoint someone with a track record of drunkenness to the Supreme Court?

The nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court should not be a partisan divide. At this point, there is more than enough reason to go back to the drawing board. The judge should thank his lucky stars for his current job. He and the White House should withdraw his name from consideration. President Trump should pick a nominee who does not have a track record of alcohol trouble.

While public record in Maryland would show that I am a registered Democrat, and I make no secret of my political leanings as a citizen and voter, I am not taking my stand against this nominee based on partisanship. As a newspaper reader, I have no respect for the hysterically anti-Trump drivel I’ve been trying to sidestep for months now. One reason I have not weighed in against the hysteria more, aside from regrettable time constraints and constraints on other resources, is that I do not want to step on a future book project–a book on political philosophy that I plan, or hope, to write.

Related image

Right now, Judge Brett Kavanaugh has at least two serious and credible accusations against him. I for one believe the accusers named so far, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez. None of the questions or accusations or implied threats so far leveled against the accusers give me pause. Nobody like me is going to be called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but if I were, I could address the main, predictable categories of push-back,

  1. the Why-didn’t-she-do-such-and-such question/s
  2. the Why-did-she-wait-until-now question/s
  3. the We-don’t-have-enough-evidence stance

I’m hoping nobody takes those tacks in tomorrow’s hearing–which I will be watching on  video, in between other work as usual.

Image result for Christine Blasey Ford

Aside from the sexual misconduct accusations, there is more than enough evidence in the public record already to show that the younger Brett Kavanaugh had a problem holding his liquor, as they used to say. The article in (my issue of) today’s WaPo is only one recent example. Multiple witnesses who know Kavanaugh and/or who knew him when have instanced his bouts of drinking. Like millions of other college kids, he drank a lot. Again like millions of other college kids, he drank too much. Comments from Kavanaugh himself indicate that he still drank heavily after getting into Yale Law.

Something more than just college drinking or college-age drinking went on, however. For one thing, Kavanaugh’s heavy drinking began in high school, and high-school excess drinking does at least as much harm as college excess drinking. Teens should not drink, because the teenage brain is still developing and cannot handle alcohol abuse. Kavanaugh’s high-school drinking at Georgetown Prep shows up in his own high school yearbook statements. It shows up in the writing of his longtime friend, Mark Judge, who has written frankly about his own alcohol addiction.

For another, he continued the heavy drinking for years, through high school, in college, and in law school. For another–unless you assume that every single person who saw him drinking is lying–then he is lying about the alcohol use or genuinely does not remember it. This is not a good sign. For real substance abusers, the lying becomes almost as compulsive as the drinking; and the lying can be abetted by genuine memory lapses brought on by the alcohol itself.

And for another thing, his personality changed when he drank. This is the real danger sign–even more of a danger sign than just drinking too much.

And on top of the drinking and the accusations of sexual misconduct, there are also the young Kavanaugh’s own words. That “Renate alumnius” ‘joke’, for example? This from the man who claimed on national television that he has always treated women with respect? (This is not the only such yearbook message from Kavanaugh, by the way; I’m choosing not to quote another.)

‘Trump’ is not the story here

If Judge Kavanaugh does end up getting confirmed to the highest court in the land, by the way–IF he does–it will be not only because of Republican intransigence but also because of some of the ham-handed unfairness in news media, not against Kavanaugh but against Trump. I have no interest whatsoever in the phalanx of hysterical commentators and even reporters who clearly just want to spend the next two or more years going TrumpTrumpTrump.

I am a freelance journalist myself, I have loved newspapers all my life–although I haven’t always loved the way they treated their printers–but it is only too obvious right now that some individuals in the news media think anything is okay, no holds barred, as long as it might damage President Trump. Some of these individuals are at the New York Times. There’s that ridiculous anonymous op-ed on September 5, purporting to come from some inner sanctum in the White House. –Heard anything about that lately, btw? There’s the equally ridiculous ‘news report’ August 24 purporting to show that Rod Rosenstein discussed removing Trump from office. Actually, NYTimes’ language itself suggests that this ‘story’ is not a leak, but a plant. If I worked at the Times, I’d be looking at McCabe. –Wonder how soon this furor will die–or has it died already?

When we as members of the informed electorate see an august newspaper getting away with this garbage, when we see over-secure and over-promoted journalists getting away with the abuses, and no one willing or able to call them on the abuses, the offenses give credence to sweeping attacks against the press. The sweeping attacks then become, of course, a way for the worst offenders to wrap themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment. Needless to say, I don’t see the U.S. press as “enemies of the people.” I’m part of the press myself, I’m a reader, and as said I love newspapers.

I’m also part of the people. So are the rest of the press. They’re not enemies of the people; they are people. That’s the clue. Line up the fundamentals as premises, make a syllogism out of them:

  • All human beings are fallible
  • All journalists are human beings
  • Therefore, all journalists are fallible

The fallibility is a universal. But a universal is not a constant. Again, fundamentals, premises, chain of argument:

  • A universal is not a constant
  • That human beings do wrong is a universal
  • That human beings do wrong is not a constant

We all do wrong things. That does not make us all equally wrong. (Et cetera.) If it did, there could be no justice system.

The fact that a few or several human beings at the New York Times did some very wrong things does not mean that all journalists do the same.

Back to alcohol abuse: people who abuse substances can go into recovery, genuine recovery. When they do, the signs are there–not just the sobriety itself, but the frank and accurate admission of the compulsion; the fulfillment of a program; and the willingness to take responsibility and to make amends.

I wouldn’t say that no recovering alcoholic should ever become a judge, or even a Supreme Court justice. But I would say that recovering is a prerequisite.