Illustration showing a woman executed by hanging, for the practice of witchcraft, 1692. Published in ‘A Pictorial History of the United States’, 1845. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)
In the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690’s, the judge admitted “spectral evidence” (dreams and visions) into court, something criticized by Cotton Mather. The boosters for the Kavanaugh accusers are demanding the return of “spectral evidence” when they demand the accusers’ stories be accepted despite the evidence, lack thereof, or counter-evidence. They circumvent simple reason with the wrong question: Why would she (the accuser) lie? The proper question is, Did she lie?
Blasey-Ford testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sept. 27, 2018.
The “why” query solely relies upon a window into the accuser’s mind – the “spectral evidence” of 1692 Salem. Rather, the latter question moves us in a fact-based direction, even though the matter still may have no quick and easy resolution.
Did Blasey-Ford lie? I don’t know. That requires some evidence of intent. Though, it must be admitted that her testimony was riddled with an absence of critical facts and the presence of probable untruths. Her role in the saga is increasingly looking like a willing participant in a smear campaign. Her story isn’t aging well.
As for the others (Ramirez, Swetnick), their’s are fictions that belong in the “lie” category. The scorecard: 2 lies and 1 highly questionable tale.
RogerG
*Thanks to Kevin D. Williamson for raising the topic.
The new lynch mob: Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., joined by from left, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.
Decency requires much more from an accuser than a ballistic and life-changing charge against another person. Try proof. Instead, we are getting a claim of preference for a person with the preferred genitalia. Lacking any evidence – and as the evidence mounts contradicting the veracity of the accusers – we are asked to jettison the requirement of simple proof and accept the story solely based on the gender of the accuser and nothing else – indeed, in spite of everything else. In the meantime, the accused’s life and name are left hanging in the balance for all time.
Making perjury acceptable? Christine Blasey-Ford, Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick (l-r).
Please, don’t come to the defense of Blasey-Ford’s unsupported story by citing other unsupported stories. That’s just lining up the attention-seeking partisans willing to take one for the partisan team. Their stories are dissolving like salt in boiling water.
Blasey-Ford’s story is taken as “compelling” only because she performed in a sincere manner. It’s a performance-based judgment. If you support her, I hope that you don’t face an accuser who only performs well.
Well, her whole story is teetering like a drunk after the Super Bowl. The fear of flying, ha! (See the transcripts – see my previous post for the reference) The second door installed in her house due to claustrophobia, ha! (See the contractor’s notes) The unfamiliarity with polygraph tests, ha! (Her ex-boyfriend’s letter) The claim of supportive witnesses, ha! (3 denials and 1 “can’t remember”) The claim of ignorance about the Judiciary Committee’s willingness to come to her, ha! (Grassley submitted 4 documents asking to interview her in California)
All she’s got is her performance before the committee … and the zealousness of the looney-Left and their blue-bubble followers in the media. Maybe that’s the crux of the matter. Stories like this can only gain traction among people who lack self-awareness of their social isolation in the Malibu-SF and Acela corridors.
The lefty smear-merchants of today are actually making a case for the white female accuser of Emmett Till back in 1955. He was falsely accused and murdered. Always believe the woman, right? I only present the picture below to drive home the consequences of gender-based “justice”. It ain’t pretty.
Christine Blasey-Ford as she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sept. 27, 2018.
In their perpetual-motion fabrication of accusations against Kavanaugh, stories stripped of even elementary proof are enlisted in defamation for partisan political purposes. The one labeled “compelling” – Blasey-Ford’s (B-F) – is no more credible than the other Bigfoot-type sightings.
In an effort to legitimize the illegitimate, B-F’s press advocates – meaning most of the press – parrot her best friend’s lawyers in denying their client’s denial of knowing Kavanaugh and the infamous party. Got it?
Yeah, her bff (Leland Ingham Keyser) didn’t contradict B-F; she just wouldn’t confirm the story, nor could she since she wasn’t there and doesn’t know Kavanaugh, according to bff Keyser. Come to think of it, for investigatory purposes, bff clearly contradicts B-F’s tale.
Leland Ingham Keyser (l) and Christine Blasey-Ford.
Judge for yourself. Bff Keyser’s lawyer, speaking for his client, said, “Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.” Simply put, how does that sound to you (besides too many b’s and f’s)?
Oh, but bff Keyser believes B-F … but won’t confirm. I think that we’ve entered one of Dali’s surreal paintings.
At Thursday’s kangaroo court, when confronted with her bff’s non-confirmation [translation: “denial”], B-F answered with a loopy, cobbled-together non-response. Judge for yourself:
* Rachel Mitchell, special counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, reminded B-F of the denials of the 4 people mentioned in her written account, including bff Keyser.
* B-F’s response: “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.”
Go ahead, parse that. Bottom line: B-F’s story is one that won’t add up. The best-friend-forever doesn’t appear willing to commit perjury, but the Dem goon squad on the committee and the lefty hive are at the ready to swarm.
This isn’t the stuff that makes for “compelling”. It is good enough for demagoguery.
Read the hearing transcript here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/kavanaugh-hearing-transc…/…
Joseph Nye Welch, general counsel for the US Army, at the McCarthy Hearings, June 9, 1954.
I can think of no better response to the shameful display of Democrats at the Kavanaugh hearings than the one given by Joseph Nye Welch, general counsel of the US Army, to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Senator.”
No, few Dems in the US Senate have any sense of decency. Following the Lenin/Alinski playbook of the ends always justifying the means, they have championed baseless charges against Kavanaugh. Their goal is to stop the nomination at all costs, even if it means destroying people’s lives.
Blasey-Ford isn’t any help. Still, she can find no one to validate her story other than her personal feelings. Others mentioned in her story deny it. That’s not validation, Christine; it’s therapy.
If anyone thinks that there is any credibility to these wild claims, that person should stay away from the Kool-Aid punch bowl being served at MSNBC. In summary, there is no corroboration for any of it. And if there is no corroboration, there’s no there there. The whole thing is reminiscent of the child sex-abuse hysteria of the 80’s and 90’s and false accusations of campus rape by Mattress Girl, and those directed at a UV fraternity and the Duke lacrosse team. All won $$$$ in settlements for false charges and slander.
The Dems are playing the more-investigation card. Cut the crap. Translation: delay the nomination … forever. Their modus operandi involves making a baseless allegation no matter how wild, call for an investigation by anyone and everyone, gin up more baseless allegations, ad infinitum, till the Republicans or the nominee withdraws the nomination.
The problem for the more-investigations crowd: there’s no limiting principle. Easily conjured and baseless charges can be cooked up at any moment. There’s no end to it, particularly if you’re a conservative and Republican.
These claims would not be the stuff of investigation by a detective division or DA for long. There’s no corroboration and plenty of counter evidence. A statement would be taken and then the person would be shown the door. End of story. And that’s how real justice works.
Make no bones about it. From the gitgo, this is an attempt to prevent the president from exercising his Article II duty. And no concession is to be made for honor and decency.
Don’t conflate the Merrick Garland case with Kavanaugh. Garland’s nomination was treated according to the Biden Rule: no SC nomination approvals during a presidential election year. Sen. Biden (D, Delaware) stated it; the Republicans were faithful to it.
The rogues gallery of the shameless and repulsive:
Sen. Kamala Harris (D, Calif.)Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.)Sen. Corey Booker (D, New Jersey)Sen. Mazie Hirono (D, Hawaii)Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D, Conn.)Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D, New York)Sheldon Whitehouse (D, Rhode Island)Sen. Charles Schumer (D, New York)
Many more senators with a “D” after their name – that means you, Sen. Dick Durbin – could be inducted into this hall of shame. Space requires some restraint by limiting the inductees to those constantly running to the microphones and cameras to defile reputations. These suspects come readily to mind.
And, of course, we have the bewildered:
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley (R, Iowa)
Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, in probable consultation with his colleagues, agreed to a week delay of the committee vote on the nomination upon the request of a Dem committee member. Quite rightly, a person could be excused for suspecting something was up. It was. An orchestrated hell broke loose – a shameful and disgusting orchestrated hell.
The Senate Republicans always appear flat-footed when it comes to women making charges against other Republicans and conservatives. The Dems are much more agile. Look at their dexterity in defending Bill Clinton. They smeared Ken Star, created new partisan media flagships in the form of MoveOn.org, rhetorically manipulated Clinton’s perjury and perversities into Republican prurience, and vilified the women accusers of Clinton’s adult sallies into rape and less abusive forms of abuse. And got away with it! Heck, his chief enabler, his wife, Hillary, was only 43 electoral votes shy of appointing liberals to the bench and wreaking other havoc on our republic.
Of course, lefty types dominate the newsrooms which makes a headwind for Republicans but fills the sails of the Dems’ political racing yachts. The Dems have a perpetual downwind advantage. So, credible charges of rape quickly go down the memory hole as hazy teenage charges of teenage antics of ancient vintage get the full rectal examination. Go figure.
Lets’ face it. The Kavanaugh imbroglio is about one thing: keeping a conservative from joining the 8 other potentates in black robes … at all costs! It stands to reason. Progressives wouldn’t be progressives if they weren’t on a mission to remake mankind in their own image. The state, not churches, is the engine for the recreation since their image doesn’t comport with the biblical one. So they fight tooth and nail to control the levers of power. It’s who they are. It means so very much to their political identity.
On the far end of the lefty side of the political spectrum, we have Lenin, a political operator whose credo entails the ends always justifying the means. The notion has seeped into the owner’s manual of politics for Dems in their drive for perpetual reform. The connection is not surprising since lately they have been ideologically sliding ever closer to the old and still-deceased goat in his Kremlin mausoleum. He endorsed state-sponsored terror. The Dems are only slightly more humane, stopping short of the blood on the wall and floor, even though we’re getting close to that. Simple decorum and decency be damned.
Their enthusiasm to get us back on the track to the pc-plagued nirvana means ginning up the hive, using anything at hand. And they have a political mre-equivalent in the estrogen-rich swarm of women’s marches and Mee Too.
Vagina caps for participants in the Woman’s March of January 2017.Woman in vagina suit at the Woman’s March in January 2017.
Everything gets tossed into that maelstrom including Supreme Court nominations, and especially Supreme Court nominations. If the Dems can’t find anything compromising in the nominee’s adult and professional background, just extend the time frame to childhood or at least those in-between years of 15-18. In fact, the teenager phase with its hormonal hyperactivity is probably dense with potentialities for later chicanery. The Dems have hit upon a rich source of tar for their brushes.
One thing about our modern overheated politics is the huge number of willing recruits into the legions of political cannon fodder. What budding NeverTrumper and SJW, with some long-ago life intersection with Kavanaugh, or not, wouldn’t relish the opportunity to step forward to take one for the team? Brush off Andy Warhol’s 15-minutes-of-fame moniker, but replace “fame” with “shame”.
The Folly of “No Woman Lies”
People with vaginas for headgear are chomping at the bit to enter Warhol’s hall of mediocrities. They have in mind a war with the white male patriarchy in the form of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, the guys running CBS and NBC, and any of the other suits in charge of things. But bear in mind that along with the certified brutes we have Columbia University’s mattress girl, Emma Sulkowicz. Fully reminiscent of the sexual revolution’s hookup culture in the college dorm rooms of today, she had consensual sex with fellow student Paul Nungesser. Somehow she turned it into a cause replete with agitprop. (1)
The accuser: Emma Sulkowicsz and her dorm mattress and her supporters at Columbia University.The accused: Paul Nungesser.
The University of Montana tells its incoming freshman “Almost no one lies [meaning female accusers]” in its flabby attempt to assuage the female-genitalia-headgear squads. (2) Really, no woman lies? Emma did.
She filed complaints against Nungesser with the school and New York police and both concluded that action was unwarranted. Corroboration – you know, that thing that presupposes that we are not a god with the power to make pronouncements from a heavenly throne and therefore we must backup what we say – was lacking. There was much to contradict her. And she pursued him as a sexual interest for months after the purported “assault”. She concocted a sham and turned it into a cause.
For 3 years Sulkowicsz was the poster child of the campus “rape culture” movement. The hifalutin Feminist Majority Foundation and others heaped honors upon her for her “courage”. Harassment on campus – the real kind – haunted Nungesser till graduation. Then, in 2017, Nungesser sued Columbia. In the settlement, Columbia apologized and promised “that every student — accuser and accused, including those like Paul who are found not responsible — is treated respectfully and as a full member of the Columbia community.” (1) Mea culpa, but now the cause takes on a life of its own. The genie is out of the bottle.
The Silkowicsz-Nungesser case illustrates the enthusiasm of left-wing activists to turn the Fifth Amendment into the irrelevance of the Third. Lenin would be proud. It’s a rewrite of western civilization’s legacy of enlightened jurisprudence. The rights of the accused are supplanted by the ambiguous “preponderance” of believability and the need to protect at all costs the feelings of the accuser and her allegation from being questioned. The woman-as-accuser is our new god.
The event is only a small chapter in a long tale of moral monstrosities. They include the 2006 public lynching of the Duke lacrosse team, complete with the connivance of the local DA, and the subsequent vindication of the accused and Duke’s agreement to pay the 3 male students $20 million each. Rolling Stone in 2017 had to cough up $1.65 million to the Virginia Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity for its hit piece on the group for a false claim of gang rape. Additionally, the Rolling Stone writer of the article, Sabrina Erbin Erdely, was assessed $3 million for defaming Nicole Eramo, a Virginia University administrator, as the “chief villain”. (3)
The history of our current “rape culture” hysteria is a mixed one. There are real instances of real assaults along with mutual abuse and bald-faced lies. It’s really a story of the sexual revolution’s Sherman’s March through the culture and college life. Hookup, be sexually liberated, experience this integral part of the college experience, and consequences be damned. That’s the message and the kids live it. Don’t be surprised that we lose much of our cultural integrity along the way with a few out-of-court settlements and ruined futures to boot.
Private citizens accused of high-octane falsehoods, and few things are more high-octane than a charge of rape, have recourse to a court of law. Brett Kavannaugh, as a public figure, presents the perfect target. He can be smeared without consequence by any accuser and their huckstering Dem supporters. Support her, damn him, and expunge any semblance of fairness from our deliberations is their sickening message.
We can only hope that they won’t get away with it at the ballot box come November.
The Miasma of Polygraph Tests and Repressed Memories
Miasma by Brian Mashburn.
Unbeknownst to Brett Kavanaugh as he jumps in the water of the nomination approval process is that he just became chum for a partisan shark frenzy. Thrown in as accusatory chum for Dem sharks is Christine Blasey-Ford. She purports an attempted rape by Kavanaugh of 36(?) years ago but witnesses dispute her story. She’s fuzzy on the details. But she is to be believed despite her own 4 witnesses contradicting her and no other evidence.
Oh, she has passed a polygraph test. What about that test? For her examination, Blasey-Ford was asked only 2 questions with the important one being, Is your written statement truthful? This was no deep dive into her accusations. The examiner said that this was to avoid traumatizing the accuser. The test only tells us that she has a foggy recollection, since her written accusation is so foggy, but she believes it. But is it the “truth”?
A polygraph test measures certain bodily reactions such as heart rate and blood pressure to an interviewer’s questions. If the subject remains calm, ipso facto, she must be telling the truth, or so it is assumed. No, it’s only proof that she remained calm, period. Remaining calm can be an intuitive or coached skill. The test also might indicate that the subject believes in something that isn’t true. And aren’t we really concerned about getting to the truth and not ending proceedings with a measurement of a person’s serenity?
Criminal defense attorneys, and most jurisdictions in the country, find polygraph tests highly suspect. Here’s from one law firm’s website: “… a polygraph machine does not have any reliable capacity for detecting the truth or falsity of a statement…. While these [blood pressure and heart rate] may be indicators that a person is lying, they may also simply indicate that a suspect is feeling pressurized by the interrogation even if they are telling the truth.” (4)
What are we to conclude? Blasey-Ford has a long-in-the-tooth murky allegation and she remained calm as an examiner asked her about her “written statement” and not the details of it. Is this the stuff of truth or even justice? Hardly.
But she has “repressed memories”, which can be scientifically suspect and an excellent source of fairy tales. Many adults have languished, and are languishing, in prison due to testimony of “repressed memories”. The use of “repressed memories” catapulted Florida state attorney Janet Reno to fame and a seat in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Attorney General. Sadly for Reno and the claque of psycho-therapist fans of “repressed memories”, the convictions are being reversed. It’s a poor rack for Dem”solons” to hang their hat.
It’s not that people can’t have “repressed memories”. The problem lies in the tactics in the conjuring of them into the rudiments of testimony. Even as strong a defender of the phenomena as Jim Hopper (Teaching Associate in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry of Harvard Medical School) acknowledges that, “There is strong evidence that people can sincerely believe they have recovered a memory or memories of abuse by a particular person, but actually be mistaken [my emphasis]”. Further he writes, “There is strong evidence that such memories have led to accusations about particular events that never happened and accusations of people who never committed such acts.” For Hopper, the potential for misuse of the theory lies with the therapist. (7) True, very true.
“Repressed memories” as false accusations turned into false convictions? Enter Harold Grant Snowden, Bobby Finje, Janet Reno, and the “Miami Method” into the unhinged child sex-abuse saga of the 1980’s and 1990’s. (6)
Harold Grant SnowdenBobby Finje, 14, at the time of his rial.
The “Method” involved a brew of “expert” testimony, multiple child witnesses, and questionable physical evidence. The physical evidence is doubtful because it might, or might not, be supportive of the charges. The tests for sexually transmitted diseases produce positive results for conditions not necessarily sexually transmitted. The tests as corroboration don’t corroborate. And, by the way, conveniently for Janet Reno, the test samples were mysteriously destroyed. Witting or unwitting destruction of evidence by the state?
What of the multiple young accusers who allegedly confirm each other’s stories? The problem with their testimony is the same as with the testimony of the child-therapist “experts”. The children were saying things on the stand that came out of the interview sessions of therapists Joseph and Laurie Braga.
The characters of Joseph and Laurie Braga as depicted with kids in the made-for-tv movie “Unspeakable Acts”, 1990.
Later courts found their techniques suggestive and coercive to the point of planting false “memories” in the kids’ heads. Young adolescents playfully interact with an interviewer when the questioner starts presenting elements of a scenario no matter how outlandish. An Easter-bunny-believing kid can come to accept the reality of the Bragas’ new artificial reality. The kids on the stand were confirming a Braga story of the suspect’s abuse of children in oral/anal sex, spaceships, dismembering babies, and Satanic rituals. The Bragas added new meaning to the word “travesty”.
Both Snowden and Finje were exonerated. Bobby Finje, 14 at the time of the accusation, was acquitted by a jury. It took Snowden 11 years to be cleared on appeal. Many of the other convictions were overturned or sentences commuted by parole boards due to “substantial doubt” about guilt. (8)
Janet Reno still became Attorney General. She refutes the Peter Principle because she kept rising despite showing incompetence at lower levels.
Caution is wise when tinkering with the “repressed memory” stuff.
Today, caution is out the window as the old child sex-abuse hysteria feeds into another hysteria, the delirium to neuter Trump and conservatives. Blasey-Ford’s hypothetical “repressed memories” of attempted rape first appeared in marital counseling in 2012. That’s a 30+-year repressed memory. Important details are missing, the named 4 witnesses/participants deny it, and her verbal and written statements contradict her therapist’s notes.
The only non-corroboration corroboration is that of people who confirm that she mentioned the matter to them not in 1980-1-2-? but in … 2012. Kavanaugh’s name wasn’t attached to the story till 2016 or 2017.
So what do we have? We have a repressed memory of an event allegedly with many people present but none can validate. What can we conclude? We can conclude that she was serene while wired to a polygraph. Anything more than that belongs in the fever swamp of The Resistance.
Auditioning for the Role of Additional Accuser
The week-long interregnum in the Kavanaugh hearing was a busy time for the left-wing/Dem hive. Its minions went fishing for candidates to fill roles in the expanded cast of their not-based-on-facts docudrama, “The Sick and Evil Brett Kavanaugh”. It didn’t take long for auditioners to show up.
The New Yorker article on the second Kavanaugh accuser, Deborah Ramirez.
The New Yorker made a splash with a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez. She claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a Yale party in the early 1980s. She was drunk; there are gaps in her memory; she pieced together the story over 6 days of flogging her memory and consultations with her attorney; and the red flag in these allegations: no reliable corroboration.
The New York Times couldn’t find anyone. The paper reported,
“The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.” (9)
Only one person could admit to hearing something like this from someone. That attempt at validation lies somewhere between not-for-certain hearsay and hallucination.
Next, we have the tall tales of Julie Swetnick.
Julie Swetnick
Her story upped the ante from mere attempted rape and exposure to serial gang rapist. Now we’re getting close to the Satanic-rituals-in-spaceships style of accusation that was evident in the 1980’s child sex-abuse fever. She spins a tale of Kavanaugh at 10 drug-induced gang-rape parties from 1981 to 1983. Further, she was raped at one of them in ’82. What she was doing at high school parties when she was a sophomore in college is anyone’s guess. (10)
And, as in all the others, no one can corroborate. How is it that serial gang rape in a small community of high school students – with one college sophomore in attendance – can go unnoticed for 35+ years? How is it that corroboration is so difficult about something so heinous and so well attended for such an extended period? Her claims evaporates any possible meaning of credible.
There have been other stories coming down through the ether equally as bizarre. The fact is, there appears to be no shortage of auditioners. My Demdar (radar capable of detecting Dem bogies) is activated. Lawyers and other handlers within the loose network of Dem operatives have fingerprints all over much of this.
This May Not Be A Criminal Court But It Certainly Looks Like A Lynching.
One of the Dem talking points in response to their clear intent to discard the presumption of innocence is to assert that the Kavanaugh hearing isn’t a criminal trial. Yes, and neither was the above.
The Dems intentionally miss the point. The presumption of innocence and the rest of the rights of the accused go to the heart of elementary fairness, one of the great projects of western civilization. That legacy was an attempt to establish and codify the simple rules of fairness. The rules are more than a matter of guidelines for court proceedings. They touch upon how we relate to one another in the broader course of our lives. The Dems have conveniently forgotten them in their zeal to smash their opponents.
Here’s a sample of the forgotten civilized principles that the Dems would do well to remember. (1) Before the accused can defend themselves, he or she must know the accusation in order to refute it. (2) The burden of proof must rest with the accuser since it’ll be forever hard to prove a negative – the demand that a person must prove that he or she didn’t do it. (3) The charge must be stated in a falsifiable manner. That is, it must be stated in way for it to be capable of being proven or disproven. It’s simple logic (see the writings of the philosopher Karl Popper). (4) And a charge against a person can’t be allowed to stand on the say-so of one person alone. More is required.
That’s how it should be, but that’s not how it is for the Dems when the swing seat on the Supreme Court is in the balance. It’s amazing how quickly they jettisoned our inheritance for a leg-up on those who disagree with them. Disgraceful. Disgraceful.
RogerG
Footnotes and Bibliography:
A full accounting of the Emma Sulkowicsz episode is found here: “It’s High Time Columbia’s Mattress Girl Was Discredited”, Mona Charen, National Review Online, 8/4/2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/columbia-university-mattress-girl-emmas-sulkowicz-paul-nungesser-lawsuit-rape-accusation-exonerated/
Once more, Mona Charen: “What the Left and Right Don’t Get About Campus Rape”, Mona Charen, The Federalist, 8/31/2015, http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/31/what-the-left-and-right-dont-get-about-campus-rape/
“Rolling Stone to Pay $1.65 Million to Fraternity Over Discredited Rape Story”, Sydney Ember, 6/13/2017, NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html
“Why Polygraph Tests Are Not Admissible in Court”, Broden & Mickelson: Criminal Defense Attorneys website, 10/13/2015, https://www.brodenmickelsen.com/blog/why-polygraph-tests-are-not-admissible-in-court/
An excellent introduction into the mania about child sexual abuse at daycare centers can be found here: “The Child Terror”, PBS Frontine, originally aired on 10/27/1998. A synopsis and transcripts can be seen at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terror/.
“Harold Grant Snowden”, The National Registry of Exonerations: A Project of the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Scoeity, University of Michigan Law School & Michigan State University School of Law, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3871
“Child Abuse: Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse”, Jim Hopper, https://www.jimhopper.com/child-abuse/recovered-memories/
A recounting of the 14 significant child sexual-abuse cases can be found here: “Day-care sex-abuse hysteria”, wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria
“Christine Blasey Ford Reaches Deal to Testify at Kavanaugh Hearing”, Sheryl Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos, New York Times, 9/23/2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-testify.html
“Things Fall Apart: NYT Delivers Another Kill Shot To Kavanaugh Sexual Misconduct Fiasco”, Matt Vespa, Townhall.com, 9/27/2018, https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/09/27/things-fall-apart-nyt-delivers-another-kill-shot-to-kavanaugh-sexual-misconduct-n2522947
Bedlam was a hospital for the mentally disturbed in London – officially named the Royal Bethlem Hospital. Right? Wrong. It’s been moved to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room. The overwhelmed director of “bedlam”, Sen. Charles Grassley, seems bewildered by the antics of the hostile and equally unstable medical staff, the Dems, as they make a mockery of the profession with the assistance of the inmates, the voluble hair-trigger left. Welcome to the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”. Ha!
A protester is led away by police after disrupting the second day of the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill.Protester is removed during the fourth day of Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, September 7, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie.U.S. Capitol Police remove a protester from the Kavanaugh hearing.Protesters outside the capitol during the Kavanaugh hearings.
The hostile “bedlam” staff – Dems – have unleashed at the last minute, after sitting on it for 2 1/2 months, a vague charge of teenage sexual misconduct from 36(?) years ago. 36(?) years ago! The accuser can’t substantiate nor provide important details because she is about as hazy about the alleged incident as the allegedly drunken teens were the alleged morning after. Something that wouldn’t get past the Dean of Students smell test is now grist for the inmates running the Senate’s asylum.
Christine Blasey-Ford, the accuser with the hazy memory.
The Dems sprung it at the last moment so it couldn’t be properly vetted by the sober-minded. For it to be vetted now, the inciters of bedlam would accomplish their goal: delay, delay, delay. They had their chance in those 2 1/2 months and a week of witness interrogation and took a pass. They knew about it and knowingly waived their right by sitting on it.
Blasey-Ford demanded anonymity and she also waived her right by doing so. Instead, an outrageously hazy charge benefits from outrageous demands like the insistence on the accused going first, the FBI swallowed in a months-long probe, and the insistence on giving a “voice” to a mouth with not much to say. Nothing like turning the 5th Amendment, Blackstone, and common decency upside-down.
The nomionee, Brett Kavanaugh, having to sit through the antics.
Blasey-Ford and the Dems had a 3-month window to smear reputations while retaining at least some semblance of due process. It’s disgraceful for them to profit from political hooliganism.
Take a few depositions under oath and the next day, Tuesday, have the vote.
Watch this scene of traumatized Googlers trying to make sense of the fact that a good chunk of the country doesn’t have their “values”, and it showed by putting Trump in the White House. By all means, Googlers, don’t question the universality of your peculiar beliefs; question the motives of those who disagree with you. Heck, Googlers can’t even recognize their views as “peculiar” since they aren’t likely to rub elbows with those who think different. They get their prejudices reinforced, and reinforced ….
The leftist stream of consciousness on the Google campus stage on that November day of 2016 was littered with politicized code words. Take the word “values”, as in “our values” by Sergey Brin. The word is freighted with other words like “diversity”, and it ain’t the diversity of the opinion kind. For this monocultural groupthink, all diversity is limited to race, genitalia, and sexual appetites. Mix enough hijab-wearing lesbians into the workplace and, voilà, the only meaningful kind of “diversity” is created for this diversity-is-our-strength gang. Conservatives are tolerated … so long as they lie low. The other kind of diversity – as in diversity of thought – will be a casualty. In fact, it might be excised as “hate speech”.
James Damore, ex-Google senior engineer, after his 2017 firing for publishing on the company’s “free speech” forum an essay, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”.
It’s as if Googlers found themselves rejected by the election results, and rejection is a powerful source of anxiety for those ensconced in their self-reinforced and pampered cocoons. How to make sense of it since the mind must still grapple with the reality? Well, brand your opposition as morally and intellectually deficient. The other side is said to suffer from “tribalism” and “fear”. It’s not that adversaries simply disagree, but their disagreement is a product of an unrestrained id, a libido run amok. People like our Googlers have such a high self-regard that no concession can be made to the validity of an opposing point of view. Therapy on the Google campus was reduced to fortifying the attendees’ sense of superiority and convincing them that Darwin’s missing link resides in red America.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin at the post-election confab.
There was an early light-hearted moment. A rousing cheer came from the crestfallen when Brin announced the success of pot legalization. Now that says something. Either intoxication is a preferred state of mind for Googlers, or many of them have all the seriousness of Animal House’s Bluto at a frat party. Or it could simply be a Brin joke. Anyway, it probably isn’t Joe Sixpack material.
The expected response came out of the Google inner sanctum after the video went viral. The declaration went along the lines of “we’re biased but trust us”. Here’s a good portion of it: “Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias [we’re biased] ever influences the way we build or operate our products [trust us]. To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint [trust us]”.
Maybe the word “monoculture” is inadequate. The Borg of Star Trek fame is gaining relevance as the more appropriate metaphor.
The Borg or Silicon Valley/blue America?Borg drones or the Google workforce?
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 11: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. This is the second day of testimony before Congress by Zuckerberg, 33, after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The term “monoculture” had its origins in farming with the production of a single crop. A monoculture does exist, but it isn’t a horticultural one or the type often measured by melanin counts or genitalia by hyperactive SJW’s. Socially speaking, we have a singular, smothering orientation to the world – a monoculture of the mind – chauvanistically present in the leadership and dwellers of our key social institutions: media, arts, entertainment, education, government agencies, foundations, etc., with tentacles deep into the corporate boardroom. Today’s left is obsessed over a monocultural patriarchy. Ironically, it is they, left-progressives, who have prevailed in creating an unacknowledged monoculture of the mind. In the video below, Zuckerberg admits to Silicon Valley being “an extremely left-leaning place”.
I bring this up not to parrot the crowd in the Sean Hannity zone. Heaven knows, Zuckerberg is in a difficult spot with Facebook’s problems with privacy and complaints of political censorship. Before the Senate, he looked like an exposed adulterous husband trying to keep his marriage together. Pity is only natural as he occupies the lonely seat in front of our elected publicity hounds.
Next comes the tortuous ritual of admitting the left-wing preeminence while denying any effect of it. It’s a claim of superhuman qualities once reserved for the heavenly host. Apparently, left-wing people don’t produce left-wing products. Mark me skeptical.
I just saw the full Nike ad on Thursday Night Football. It was repeated in college football broadcasts Saturday. It was a seemingly innocuous message mostly in homage to the “marginalized”, replete with a girl boxer wearing the mandatory hijab — I don’t know how that squares with the early feminist sacramental act of bra-burning. The whole kaleidoscope was emceed by a resurrected Kaepernick, the guy who soiled himself by soiling the flag. The message was never to be dissuaded from your “dreams”, an adolescent primal scream without an inkling of mature judgment if there ever was one.
Honor goes to Michael Ramirez for his capture of the ludicrous spectacle in a single image. Here it is:
The historical model for Sen. Kamala Harris (D, Ca.) at the Kavanaugh hearings is Stalin’s prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky.
Comrade Sen. Kamala Harris from the DPR (Democratic People’s Republic) of California.Andrey Vyshinsky, Stalin’s chief prosecutor in the late 1930’s.
During the purge trials of the 1930’s, the fate of the defendants was sealed before interrogations and evidence. The trials were extravaganzas to create an aura of malevolence over the subjects in the dock and thereby justify the political and physical necktie party (actually, a shot to the back of the head after a lonely walk down a basement hallway). The defendants didn’t even have to be present to be found guilty.
I wonder if comrade Harris closely studied the Vyshinsky playbook. She was among the Democrat claque on the committee who didn’t wait for the public announcement of the nomination to proclaim their “no” vote. California has given us a senator who has taken on the role of prosecutor as political attack dog, like Andrey Vyshinsky. Her goal isn’t truth. It’s conviction without the formality of just cause.
Her questions were littered with loaded and partisan political rhetoric in which any answer would be tantamount to accepting a distorted and one-sided storyline. For instance, she, like her other Dem colleagues, kept interrogating with questions freighted with “voter suppression”. It’s lefty code for regularly clearing voter registration rolls of deadwood, reducing voter fraud, and implementing voter ID, three very popular fixes to our election system. A good Vyshinki tactic is to hide the obvious details behind an odious conceptual accusation, place it within a question, all to embarrass and trip up a witness.
Another favorite slander was the attempt to plaster Jim Crow on the witness. Racial disparities, whose causes run deeper than Kamala’s makeup, were reduced to the toddler-like reasoning of “racial disparities = hidden racists everywhere = you must be a racist if you oppose me”. It’s a new take on the loaded question gambit of “When did you stop beating your wife?”, only understandable as a natural law in the Leninesque world of the ends justifying the means. The macabre scene is plainly revolting.
Is Comrade Harris in the running for the Order of Lenin? I can’t think of a more deserving candidate.
The highest civilian award in the Soviet Union. I nominate Kamala. Is there still an authorized committee out there to receive the nomination?
