October 5, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Fatal Weakness of the Kavanaugh’s Conservative Supporters

Friends,

Yesterday while riding in the car to meet some former co-workers for lunch, I happened to catch a bit of the Glenn Beck radio program.

That, probably, was my first mistake, but I made myself listen nevertheless. Beck, of course, was a virulent Never Trumper who seldom missed an opportunity to malign and attack candidate Trump during the 2016 election season. Of course, like many—but certainly not all—Never Trumpers he has slightly modified his take since November 2016, going so far as to state that he has been “favorably surprised, even shocked” by the “conservative things” President Trump has accomplished in two short years.

Yet, recently, while absent from the microphone he invited that motor-mouthed windbag Ben Shapiro—a “big boy” wannabe, greasy pole climber in the “conservative movement”—to substitute host for him. “Little Ben” is another reformed Never Trumper who, despite his similar “surprise” and satisfaction with some of the president’s first two years, managed to  find plenty of negatives things to say about Donald Trump.

And as I reflected and recalled what both Shapiro and Beck had uttered, about their criticisms, which centered on Trump’s style, his demeanor, his refusal to go along with the conservative “establishment,” and his opposition to the infectious globalism that has ruled the Western world since the end of World War II, incarnated in such creaky worn-out frameworks as NATO and, more ominously, in the EU, or in such trade deals as NAFTA—as I vividly remembered all that, my thoughts turned again to the Kavanaugh nomination and the increasingly apparent reality that those frenzied and unhinged voices opposing him—the “#MeToo movement, the Democrats, academia and Hollywood, and the media—know exactly what they are doing. They have a carefully thought-out and choreographed strategy, and a fanatical no-holds-barred, no tactic excluded determination to pursue it, even if it should completely destroy whatever is left of the constitutional rights once guaranteed to us and inflict untold damage and hurt on innocent lives in the process.

No matter…just collateral damage.

But there was Glenn Beck, wringing his hands and wailing in “alta voz” that he supported the #MeToo movement and feminism, but, “it has now gone too far.” And in that he vividly symbolized the decadent and corrupt state of what passes for contemporary conservatism today, that is, establishment conservatism.

Ever notice on Fox News during the past few weeks that, save for Tucker Carlson on a few occasions, each time a defender of Kavanaugh is brought out to be interviewed or a Fox reporterette regales us with news, there is always a certain defensiveness? It’s like: “Hey, I REALLY do like feminism, and I REALLY favor ‘women’s liberation’ and complete equality,” but then follows the caveat: “But this has now gone too far.”

Those First Generation feminists and their male enablers tore down the “barriers” which supposedly—they tell us—“restrained” them or “hindered” their freedom and advancement. But what they in fact actually did was demolish those natural and time-tested arrangements and that Divinely-inspired order that had served to both protect them from the brutish aspects of the modern world and insure their God-given dignity and honor as mothers, wives, and governesses of Western civilization.

Once successful in that initial demolition, the floodgates were open. Just like the dedicated French Revolutionaries—or the Bolsheviks in Russia in October 1917—the logic of inevitable radical change, once implanted and in place, knew no limitations and had its own logic. 

The French Royalist journalist, Jacques Mallet du Pan (d. 1800), watching the progress of the French Revolution, coined the phrase, “the Revolution devours its children” [“la révolution dévore ses enfants"] in 1793 at the height of the Terror. That is, once begun the incendiary fire and violence of revolution gains its own momentum, and those early “moderates” (such as the Girondistes in France) are soon bypassed by the rage and fervor and passion of the more exalted and more enraged (the “enragees”). And in the end their cries to halt at so-called “moderate reform” are drowned out and their voices silenced—and in France it was on the guillotine that they paid the price for their moderation.

And here in the United States with the Kavanaugh process, the “moderates” follow suit. In abject fear of being attacked by the Farther Left and the #MeToo lunatics, they protest: “Hey, look I have favored ‘women’s rights’—I favor equal rights, doing away with all those legal hindrances to women, the glass ceiling and all that,” but then they add quickly, watching both ways nervously to insure that no feminist should assail them for “sexist” or “anti-women” views: “But this is not the correct way to advance our goals,” or “these demands go too far.”

Thus those  hate-possessed, Creation-denying Harpies, those vile bodies who believe abortion, the killing of children in the womb, is a newly-discovered Eighth Sacrament and that Donald Trump is a “new Hitler”—overwhelm their pitiful opposition.

And in the end the latter day “moderees”  not only castrate real and effective opposition to the madness of #MeToo and feminism, they are eventually devoured by the logic of the ongoing Revolution, and made irrelevant. Their only role has been to enervate and poison that opposition…and enable the eventual triumph of the Terror.

My friend Dr. Paul Gottfried has seen this process, has written extensively about it, and he has a superb column describing it—and I pass it along today.

The Strange and Ahistorical Objections of Cultural ‘Moderates’

https://www.amgreatness.com/2018/10/03/the-strange-and-ahistorical-objections-of-cultural-moderates/

By Paul Gottfried| October 3rd, 2018

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The radio talk show celebrity Tammy Bruce was on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program last week, where she uttered some puzzling comments about what Senate Democrats had done to Judge Brett Kavanaugh earlier in the day. First let me say that I totally agree with Bruce’s expressions of outrage about how the judge has been treated. Like her, I am shocked by the tricks and smears Democrats have used to derail his nomination. I myself almost gagged on September 28 when the Democrats, who voted unanimously against Kavanaugh’s nomination after tarring his reputation with unsubstantiated charges of sexual assault, called for yet another FBI investigation. This would take place in order “for the process to go forth,” a process that Senate Democrats have already shamelessly disgraced and which would end with their near unanimous rejection of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination on the Senate floor. Never have I witnessed such over-the-top hypocrisy combined with partisan malice.

Bruce was justified in calling this situation to our attention and did so with her customary enthusiasm. Whereupon she said something else that seemed even more noteworthy. She thundered against the Senate Democrats, especially those women among them, for setting back everything she had worked for since the 1980s. It seems these reactionary figures were trying to take us back to the past, which presumably was dark and unjust.

Carlson effusively agreed as soon as his guest expressed this thought. As points of information, it should be mentioned that Tammy Bruce is a self-identified lesbian who spent much of her adult life as a feminist activist. De gustibus non disputandum est, as the Romans said. Yet it’s astonishing to hear what Bruce had to say about Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, and their fellow-feminist politicians driving us back into the past. As a social traditionalist, I wouldn’t exactly be booing these ladies if they tried.

Bruce’s statements, which she has since repeated, made me wonder about her ascribed “conservative” identity. According to her narrative, America in the 1960s and 1970s was still a relatively backward country because women weren’t “taken seriously” and because gay lifestyles were still taboo. On her own telling, Bruce devoted most of her adult life to changing that situation, and now she’s unhappy with the efforts made by current feminists and the Democratic Party to carry her ideals beyond where she wanted to take them.

But there’s no reason to assume that the targets of her attack are bringing us back to an earlier age.

As someone who grew up in the 1950s, I haven’t noticed Senators Feinstein and Harris calling for a return to the post-World War II America in which I spent my youth. What Bruce fears is that the radical social change achieved by a previous generation of leftists, including herself, may be endangered.  A Thermidorian Reaction may set in, the way the French Revolution once having reached its Jacobin excesses in 1794, took a turn toward what was then the political center. In a similar way, Senate Democrats and the culturally leftist media are thought to be going too far in their destructive activities, and so a popular reaction could undo the accomplishments that Tammy Bruce and her friends are now celebrating.

My other thought in listening to these comments is that it’s silly to believe the historical process stops exactly where certain progressives hope to have it stop. This is my problem with media conservatives who jumped off the train of progress just a bit before their erstwhile friends. Thus “second-wave feminists” complain that their “sisters” are misrepresenting what they all once fought for. But why should the more radical sisters stop their reconstruction of gender relations and social attitudes because the less daring don’t want to push matters any further? Why shouldn’t Third- or Fourth Wave feminists continue to work to move us away from what they see as an unjust past? There’s also the question of power that’s already been given away. Once government agencies are created to fight “discrimination” and are allowed to expand their control, the process assumes a momentum of its own.

This reminds me of the concept of a “derailed socialist revolution” first put forth by Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin’s losing competitor in the power struggle in Soviet Russia after Vladimir Lenin’s death. According to this theory and its later variants, Lenin carried out a true socialist revolution, but then after his unexpected death, a bureaucratized Soviet government emerged and chose as its leader a brutal administrator, Joseph Stalin. Until then, however, the revolution was moving along just fine. What is conveniently left out of this account is one crucial detail, namely, that Lenin and Trotsky even before Stalin took power threw their opponents into gulags and committed mass murder. Despite these factual omissions, Trotsky’s legend does furnish a long-lived myth about the good revolution that went bad. Like Tammy Bruce’s view of recent history, this archetypal legend places evil in the pre-revolutionary past, so that any attempt to deviate from the speaker’s notion of what the revolution should be becomes a leap back into the bad old times.

I certainly understand why the Left believes such things. But why do “moderate” cultural revolutionaries whom the revolution predictably passed by speak for the current Right?

About the Author: Paul Gottfried

Paul Edward Gottfried is an American paleoconservative philosopher, historian, and columnist. He is a former Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, as well as a Guggenheim recipient.

October 3, 2018

MY CORNER  by Boyd Cathey

Judge Kavanaugh, Logic, and the Story of the Boiled Frog

Friends,

I pass on only one article today. It is by my friend Professor Jack Kerwick. Jack is widely published nationally, including articles and essays at Townhall.com, American Greatness, and The Imaginative Conservative, plus books such as Christianity and the World and The American Conservative Offensive, both of which I highly recommend.

Jack is a professor of philosophy and logic, and thus his thoughtful perspective (which I pass on below) on the Kavanaugh confirmation process and the recent public hearings and investigation is measured through the lens of careful and rigorous logical examination.

It is a perspective that has been mostly missing in much of the swirling and frenetic debate revolving around this unprecedented political circus, this increasingly revolutionary episode which appears to be an immense watershed moment defining the widening unbridgeable chasm that separates what can only be described “two Americas.”

As Jack accurately intimates, too many so-called “conservatives” who support Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination and his account, have yet to figure out the brutal nature of the battle—the cultural war—that they (and we) are in. While they play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules and bend over backwards, blubbering and apologizing profusely, not to be thought as in any way questioning the “story” or “credibility” of Christine Blasey Ford, the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats—now totally infected and possessed by the screaming virus of virulent feminist lunacy—leave no stone unturned, no insult unmade, no accusation unlaunched—no matter how base and filthy, no matter how unsupported, no matter what real and collateral damage it might do: to Judge Kavanaugh, to his family, and, in effect, to what is left of the creaky American political process.

The Left and its minions are the real Nazis here—they believe, accurately, in Dr. Goebbels idea of “total war”—“Totaler Krieg.”

In other words, the Democrats and that contingent of raving revolutionary feminists who now make up a considerable portion of the inhabitants of the American nation are, in plain language, going for the jugular, while most of the establishment GOP slinks off trembling to the “tall grass” and fears that it might be called “anti-woman” or “sexist” if it were to pursue the many loose ends and inconsistencies in the Ford testimony, or in the various other bits of “evidence” or outlandish “accounts.”

Increasingly we live in a nation which has become just a mere geographical expression in which violently opposed factions stare at each other with hatred and disdain—a collection or patchwork of people diametrically different in almost every way.  The problem is while the other side fully understands the nature of that conflict and will use any method, even the most evil and the most base, to achieve complete victory (and our extermination), our side too often sits back and although grumbling and expressing our opposition, does not effectively counter those revolutionaries.

As Jack points out in his closely-reasoned essay, the first step towards a realistic understanding of and engaging in this fatal conflict—and that is what it really is—is to comprehend the language and terminologies used, and to repossess the English language, and to then restate forcefully the falsified propositions being employed by the media and our political elites.

The battle we find ourselves in may not be of our making—we may wish it simply to go away so that we can go back to watching Saturday’s football game or taking the family to the beach or state fair—we may think we can’t do very much—but that assumption needs to be rethought.

Whether we like it, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are in a giant battle for our culture, for our republic, for our families, and, yes, for our very lives.

That means voting the evil bastards out this November (and in the future), while supporting effective and real opposition; that means if at all possible, removing our children from corrupting public schools and sending them elsewhere (charter, private, religious, home schooling); that means demanding that our elected legislators commit to effecting real radical reform of our bloated and leftist indoctrinating public university system; that means working with friends and other families in local groups and organizations to counter the heretofore very effective loud voice of the raving minority who dominate the air waves.

In short, we must become involved and active, or we shall find ourselves…and at the minimum our children…imprisoned, mired in one immense totalitarian leftist state that will make George Orwell’s dystopia seem like a veritable Heaven.

Remember the proverbial frog cast into what initially is lukewarm water, and then the water is gradually heated to the boiling point? By the time the frog realizes what is happening to him, it is too late…and he is, as it were, boiled and dead.

That is what has been and is happening to our culture…and to us. Each of us personally, and for and with our families, must say before God: “No further; it stops with me here and now. The Reconquest of our culture—of my culture—begins today!”

Read Jack’s column:

Kavanaugh vs. Ford: Two Definitions of 'Credibility'

https://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2018/10/02/kavanaugh-vs-ford-two-definitions-of-credibility-n2524687

Jack Kerwick    Posted: Oct 02, 2018 9:04 AM

To hear numerous GOP and GOP-friendly (“conservative”) commentators tell it, both Christine Ford and Brett Kavanaugh are highly “credible.”  Of course, none of these pundits claim to believe that Ford was telling the truth when she claimed that she was sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh.  What they claim to believe is that she was indeed sexually abused—but by someone else. 

Aristotle, the Father of Western logic, identified numerous fallacies. One of these is the fallacy of equivocation.  This is the fallacy of which those of Kavanaugh’s defenders who simultaneously find Ford “credible” stand convicted. 

Equivocation occurs when an arguer slides from one meaning of a term to another in order to draw the conclusion that he desires.  A blatantly obvious example of the fallacy of equivocation is something like this: “Joe is a damn good athlete. Therefore, he must be a damn good human being.”  Clearly, “good” means two different things, depending upon whether it is used to describe an athlete or a person.

Similarly, when Kavanaugh’s Ford-sympathizing defenders assure us that both Ford and Kavanaugh are “credible,” they are guilty of equivocating upon the word credible. Judge Kavanaugh is credible in that he has articulated a preponderance of exculpatory evidence, i.e. good, coherent reasons vindicating him of the allegation leveled by Ford. Not only have several dozen people, and several dozen women, including ex-girlfriends from the years during which Ford claims he assaulted her, publicly attested to his character. Kavanaugh has presented calendars that he kept at the time which, along with the fact that no one who Ford identified as having been present at the party at which the Judge supposedly attacked her has any recollection of the event, decisively establish that he could not have done the act of which he is accused. 

 “Credibility” in the case of Christine Ford, in contrast, has a dramatically different meaning.  The sex crimes prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, who the Republicans arranged to question Ford released her findings over the weekend.   The facts of which she reminds the public are crucial.

For starters, Mitchell notes that Ford fails to supply a consistent account of that which is most fundamental, i.e. the year in which the event in question is alleged to have occurred. Repeat this to yourselves: A woman who claims to have been traumatized by someone who sexually attacked her can’t even recollect the year—and, thus, her age—when it transpired. 

Mitchell supplies some other insightful observations. Ford doesn’t remember how she got to and from the party where the event is alleged to have happened, nor does she recall any other details of the night “that could help corroborate her account.”  Such details include the house in which she insists the assault occurred and the location of the house.  Mitchell mentions the fact that when Ford shared with her husband that she had been sexually assaulted, she “changed her description of the incident to become less specific.” 

She also points out that Ford “struggled to identify Judge Kavanaugh as the assailant by name.” What Mitchell seems to mean by this is that it evidently took Ford over 30 years before she mentioned to anyone that it was Brett Kavanaugh who supposedly assaulted her. Furthermore, she was married for over ten years before she told her husband that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her. 

Mitchell’s conclusion is as powerful as it is inescapable: “The activities of congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford’s attorneys likely affected her account.” 

Although the sex crimes prosecutor’s findings exonerate Judge Kavanaugh while exposing Ford for the untruthful person that she is, any remotely honest person who had been paying any attention to this national disgrace of a Senate confirmation hearing knew long before Rachel Mitchell came to D.C. that Ford’s story is most incredible. 

Ford’s witnesses—every single one of them—either refute her story directly or, insofar as they deny that they have any recollection of the events that she recounts, indirectly.  And at least one of these witnesses is a person with whom she’s be close friends for most of her life.

Initially, Ford claimed that it was four teenage boys that had her alone in a bedroom (of a mystery house whose location and owners she can’t recall). This, she said, happened to her when she was in her later teenage years sometime in the mid-1980s.  Subsequently, though, Ford changed her story.  The remake takes place in the early 1980s when Ford is a younger teenager and is trapped with only two boys.   

Ford initially said that she didn’t want to fly from her home on the west coast to Washington D.C. to testify before the Senate because she had a fear of flying. However, this “fear” never stopped her from flying to many vacation spots. 

There are still more reasons that put the lie to Ford’s account: 

(1) Ford is a woman of the left; 

(2) She refused to allow the Senate Judiciary Committee to see her therapist’s notes concerning the sexual assault that she allegedly suffered at the hands of Kavanaugh; 

(3) Ford never uttered a peep about this incident until this past July, nearly four decades after Brett Kavanaugh entered public life and long after he became a visible and influential public figure;

(4) She says that she wished to remain anonymous, and yet Ford had been speaking to the virulently anti-Trump, leftist Washington Post; 

(5) Ford says that she always desired anonymity, and yet months before anyone learned of her name, Ford had her entire social media history, her entire internet presence, eradicated—a feat for the accomplishment of which she would have surely needed help.

Yet despite all of the foregoing considerations, many of Kavanaugh’s Ford-sympathizing defenders maintain that Ford is…credible.  What in the world could they mean?

Assuming that they aren’t just virtue-signaling, such Kavanaugh supporters could only mean that Ford strikes them as sincere.  Period. 

Since there is quite literally zero evidence to substantiate her charges, and considerable evidence that militates against it, it can’t be the case that these Kavanaugh defenders find Ford’s testimony defensible—for it most certainly is not anything of the kind. And precisely because of the numerous inconsistencies and gaps in Ford’s account, it can’t be the case that they think that her account is credible even in the sense of being plausible, for it is most implausible.

That leaves only sincerity. Christine Ford is “credible,” then, because she sounded like she really believed what she was saying.  

However, when it is remembered that actors, the self-delusional, the insane, the wildly irrational, and good liars sound like they too really believe the nonsense that flies from their mouths, it should be that much clearer that “credibility” has a very different meaning in the case of Christine Ford than it has when used in connection with Brett Kavanaugh.   

October 2, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

       Latest on the Kavanaugh Process,                Plus Articles on the Special Counsel’s Report                and the Latest by Pat Buchanan

Friends,

The last five installments of MY CORNER have dealt with, in some way or another, the implications and background of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And by now I believe many of us are filled to the saturation point, just tired out by the whole incredibly sordid business.

But the continuing drum beat, the all-consuming mania of the feminists and the Left to find “evidence” to disqualify the nominee goes on and on and on. As we turn on our television sets there it is for us to see and hear, the frenetic efforts to miraculously discover something, anything, some event, any event that might have occurred thirty-five or so years ago. It doesn’t matter how minor, how minuscule….how dubious, how outlandish.

“Kavanaugh drank too much beer back in 1985!” screams a leftist professor at NC State University. “I saw him…well, I’m pretty sure it was him! He threw his beer at somebody! Well, maybe it was ice cubes!”  And at that point, very conveniently, that paragon of moral virtue Bernie Sanders jumps in to demand another investigation…of Kavanaugh’s drinking “problem” and whether he threw ice at someone, and whether he might have “perjured” himself about how many beers he might have drunk when he testified last week before Congress!

This is actually happening…and I doubt any of us could have come up with anything more bizarre…but this is where we have arrived.

Damn! How many of us can remember how many beers—or Coca Colas, or wine coolers—we might have consumed back four decades ago?  And this, dear readers, is enough—say Sanders and frenzied Democrat politicians—this is enough to disqualify Kavanaugh.

Boy, am I glad I am not up for some high Federal appointment!  But, you see, I recall exactly that at 9:45 p.m. (and 19 seconds), on December 31, 1965, I began drinking exactly four Michelob Lights in rapid succession (it took 21 minutes), and my potential and “cry-to-Heaven” criminality was witnessed by four friends…who I am prepared under oath to name right here and now. My memory, despite the years, is crystal clear, you see!  The temperature was exactly 54 degrees Fahrenheit, I had two slices of pepperoni pizza (partially consumed), and I remember that a re-run of Gunsmoke was on the tele….Miss Kitty was giving Marshall Dillon a beer, too!

Of course, what I just wrote in the above paragraph is rubbish, what in layman’s parlance one would call that fetid matter scattered around a pasture! If you get my drift….

But this is where we have arrived in the decrepit geographical expression called “the United States of America”: No God, nothing much left of our old Republic, honesty a rarity, the Constitution shredded, and with nearly half the nation crazy like the Gadarene swine in the New Testament into which Our Lord cast the Demons who had earlier taken possession of a man. And you know what happened to them? Their possession was fatal as in their mad frenzy those pigs plunged into the Sea of Galilee.

The difference is that today’s lunatics, those psychologically cultic feminists and their brethren (or should they be called “sisteren”?) will take much of America with them as they burn up, self-incinerate, and flame out in their unleashed fury and insanity.

But one question:

Senator Sanders, think back very, very carefully…did you ever drink more than, say, three beers at one time in December 1959, when you were eighteen years old? I think I know an old codger—er, I mean elder gentleman—who says he knew you in high school (well, he says he knew people who knew you), and that you—quick, call The New York Times—drank “too much” and, I hate to report this sordid fact, actually threw up! 

O tempora! O mores!

So I am seriously concerned about your service in the United States Senate and your ability to cast an informed vote on…anything. Perhaps the Vermont voters need to demand a recall election?

I pass on two items printed by Breitbart, both relating in detail the report of the special counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee from last week, you remember Mrs. Rachel Mitchell? Her report clearly states that Dr. Ford’s testimony and accusations can in no way be considered evidence of sexual assault.  And, as well, a column by Pat Buchanan on just how wimpy and cowardly the Republicans have been—something I’ve been saying for far too long.

Prosecutor’s Senate Report Outlines 9 Reasons Why Christine Blasey Ford Not Credible

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/01/christine-blasey-ford-not-credible-prosecutor-mitchell-senate-report/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181001

By John Nolte    1 Oct 2018

Rachel Mitchell, the veteran sex crimes prosecutor chosen by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, has filed a report that points out Ford’s inconsistencies and apparent deceptions.

“In the legal context, here is my bottom line,” she writes. “A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence.”

She adds, “Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.” This means Ford’s story does no reach the 50-50 level of more likely than not.

Read the full report:

Mitchell Memo by on Scribd

On Sunday, Breitbart News published an extensive list of Ford’s inconsistencies, including the fact she told the Committee she is afraid to fly when the truth is that she flies frequently for both business and pleasure. Mitchell’s report is even more comprehensive, with nine different general objections (marked with underlined text) substantiated by dozens of contradicting claims and unanswered questions.

Ford’s deviations in her timeline about when the assault occurred are important. Did the event occur in the “mid-eighties” or “early-eighties,” was she in her “early teens” or “late teens,” and why did she cross out the “early” in “early 80s” in the statement for her polygraph report?

Mitchell lays it all out:

• “In a July 6 text to the Washington Post, she said it happened in the ‘mid 1980s.’”
• “In her July 30 letter to Senator Feinstein, she said it happened in the ‘early 80s.’”
• “Her August 7 statement to the polygrapher said that it happened one ‘high school summer in early 80’s[.]’”
• “[Then] she crossed out the word ‘early’ for reasons she did not explain.”
• “A September 16 Washington Post article reported that Dr. Ford said it happened in the ‘summer of 1982.’”
• “The Washington Post “article reported that notes from an individual therapy session in 2013 show her describing the assault as occurring in her ‘late teens.'”
• “But she told the Post and the Committee that she was 15 when the assault allegedly occurred.”

Ford’s timeline of the trauma she claims the event left her raises questions:

• “She alleges that she struggled academically in college, but she has never made any similar claim about her last two years of high school.”

This is relevant because her final two years of high school were the two years immediately after the event.

Mitchell moves on to lay out how Ford’s version of what happened has been every bit the moving target as the timing of the event. “When speaking with her husband,” Mitchell writes, “Dr. Ford changed her description of the incident to become less specific.”

• “Dr. Ford testified that she told her husband about a ‘sexual assault’ before they were married.”
• “But she told the Washington Post that she informed her husband that she was the victim of ‘physical abuse’ at the beginning of their marriage.”
• “She testified that, both times, she was referring to the same incident.”

Now it is an attempted sexual assault.

Mitchell explains that Ford’s “inability to remember” where the house where the event took place “raises significant questions.” As does her inability to remember how she “got from the party back to her house.”

• “She told the Washington Post that the party took place … more than 7 miles from her childhood home … that it was a roughly 20-minute drive from her childhood home.”
• “She also agreed for the first time in her testimony that she was driven somewhere that night, either to the party or from the party or both.”
• “But she has no memory of who drove her or when. Nor has anyone come forward to identify him or herself as the driver.”
• “Given that this all took place before cell phones, arranging a ride home would not have been easy.”
• “Indeed, she stated that she ran out of the house after coming downstairs and did not state that she made a phone call from the house before she did, or…”
• “…that she called anyone else thereafter.”
• “Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.”

In other words, how did Ford get home? She had no cell phone. She testified that she did not call anyone to pick her up while she was in the house. She testified that she ran out of the house without telling anyone, so no one in the house gave her a ride home. How did she arrange a ride home?

Mitchell moves on to Ford’s “account of the alleged assault,” and how she “has not offered a consistent account[.]”

• “According to her letter to Senator Feinstein, Dr. Ford heard Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge talking to other partygoers downstairs while she was hiding in the bathroom after the alleged assault.”
• “But according to her testimony, she could not hear them talking to anyone.”
• “In her letter, she stated, ‘I locked the door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stairwell, at which point other persons at the house were talking with them.’”
• “She testified that, after the incident, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and heard them going downstairs. But she maintained that she could not hear their conversation with others when they got downstairs.”
• “Instead, she testified that she ‘assum[ed]’ a conversation took place.”

In the Feinstein letter, though, Ford makes it sound as though hearing the conversation downstairs was her signal that it was safe for her to leave the bathroom.

Mitchell then points out the glaring inconsistencies in Ford’s account of who and how many people attended the 1982 house party.

• “According to the Washington Post’s account of her therapy notes, there were four boys in the bedroom in which she was assaulted.”
• “She told the Washington Post that the notes were erroneous because there were four boys at the party, but only two in the bedroom.”
• “In her letter to Senator Feinstein, she said ‘me and 4 others’ were present at the party.
• “In her testimony, she said there were four boys in addition to Leland Keyser and herself.”
• “She could not remember the name of the fourth boy, and no one has come forward.”
• “Dr. Ford listed Patrick ‘PJ’ Smyth as a ‘bystander’ in her statement to the polygrapher and in her July 6 text to the Washington Post, although…”
• “…she testified that it was inaccurate to call him a bystander.”
• “She did not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends.”
• “Leland Keyser’s presence should have been more memorable than PJ Smyth’s.”

Why would Ford fail to note in her polygrapher statement that her best friend Leland Keyser was at the party, a woman who is still a lifelong friend.

Despite their friendship. Keyser maintains (under penalty of a felony) she has no memory of this house party and that she has never even met Kavanaugh.

Mitchell also focused on Ford’s memory of recent events.

• “Dr. Ford struggled to remember her interactions with the Washington Post.”
• “Dr. Ford could not remember if she showed a full or partial set of therapy notes to the Washington Post reporter.”
• “She does not remember whether she showed the Post reporter the therapist’s notes or her own summary of those notes.”
• “The Washington Post article said that “portions” of her “therapist’s notes” were “provided by Ford and reviewed by” the Post. But…”
• “…in her testimony, Dr. Ford could not recall whether she summarized the notes for the reporter or showed her the actual records.”
• “She does not remember if she actually had a copy of the notes when she texted the Washington Post WhatsApp account on July 6.”
• “Dr. Ford said in her first WhatsApp message to the Post that she ‘ha[d] therapy notes talking about’ the incident when she contacted the Post’s tipline.”
• “She testified that she had reviewed her therapy notes before contacting the Post to determine whether they mentioned anything about the alleged incident, but…”
• “…could not remember if she had a copy of those notes, as she said in her WhatsApp message, or merely reviewed them in her therapist’s office.”

Ford claims she cannot even remember crucial events around her polygraph test, which she took in August, less than 60 days prior to her Committee testimony:

• “Dr. Ford could not remember if she was being audio- or video-recorded when she took the polygraph. And…”
• “…she could not remember whether the polygraph occurred the same day as her grandmother’s funeral or the day after her grandmother’s funeral.”

Mitchell adds that “It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who was grieving.”

Mitchell reminds the Committee that “Dr. Ford refused to provide any of her therapy notes to” them, which means we will never know the truth of anything, not only because Ford will not provide the notes, but because she claims she cannot recall if she showed the Post the actual therapist notes or her version of them.

Mitchell lays out Ford’s comments about her claim she is afraid of flying, a fear that delayed everything for a full week.

• “The date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was informed that her [PTSD] symptoms prevent her from flying.”
• “But she agreed during her testimony that she flies ‘fairly frequently for [her] hobbies and … work’.”
• “She flies to the midAtlantic at least once a year to visit her family.”
• “She has flown to Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Costa Rica.”
• “She also flew to Washington, D.C. for the hearing.”

Mitchell goes on to not only lay out the facts that again point to a delaying tactic, but undercut Ford’s claim she wished to remain anonymous:

• “Note too that her attorneys refused a private hearing or interview.”
• “Dr. Ford testified that she was not “clear” on whether [Committee] investigators were willing to travel to California to interview her.”
• “It therefore is not clear that her attorneys ever communicated Chairman Grassley’s offer to send investigators to meet her in California or wherever she wanted to meet to conduct the interview.”

Elsewhere in her report, Mitchell points out the inconsistencies in Ford’s repeated claim she wished to remain anonymous and would have preferred a private interview:

• “She claimed originally that she wished for her story to remain confidential, but…
• “…the person operating the tipline at the Washington Post was the first person other than her therapist or husband to whom she disclosed the identity of her alleged attacker.”
• “She testified that she had a ‘sense of urgency to relay the information to the Senate and the president.’ She did not contact the Senate, however, because…”
• “…she claims she ‘did not know how to do that.'”
• “She does not explain why she knew how to contact her Congresswoman but not her Senator.”

Ford’s team turning down the Committee’s offer to have her give testimony privately, at her home in California, also delayed things.

Finally there is the issue of Ford’s three “witnesses,” all of whom refute her account.

• “Dr. Ford has named three people other than Judge Kavanaugh who attended the party— Mark Judge, Patrick ‘PJ’ Smyth, and her lifelong friend Leland Keyser.”
• “Dr. Ford testified to the Committee that another boy attended the party, but that she could not remember his name.”
• “No others have come forward.”
• “All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying any memory of the party whatsoever.”
• “Most relevantly, in her first statement to the Committee, Ms. Keyser [Ford’s lifelong friend] stated through counsel that, ‘[s]imply 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.’”
• “In a subsequent statement to the Committee through counsel, Ms. Keyser said that ‘the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford’s allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.’”
• “Moreover, Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.”

Before attaching a detailed timeline, Mitchell concludes with, “The activities of congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford’s attorneys likely affected Dr. Ford’s account.”

--------------------------------------------

Prosecutor: Christine Blasey Ford Doesn’t Know if Polygraph Was on Day of Grandmother’s Funeral

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/01/prosecutor-christine-blasey-ford-doesnt-know-if-polygraph-was-on-day-of-grandmothers-funeral/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181001

by Joshua Caplan   1 Oct 2018

The final Senate report from Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor who interviewed Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford, questions Blasey Ford’s “struggle to recall important recent events” such as whether she took her polygraph test the same day as her grandmother’s funeral.

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Blasey Ford — the California professor who brought forth an allegation of teenage sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — said she did not know whether her polygraph examination less than two months ago occurred on the same day her grandmother was buried. This discrepancy is listed among nine categories of strikes against Blasey Ford’s testimony which led Mitchell to conclude her account did not meet the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

When asked why Jerry Hanafin, the polygraph administrator, conducted the examination at a hotel near the Baltimore–Washington International Airport, instead of his Virginia office, Ford revealed time constraints left her unable to travel far for the test.

“I had left my grandmother’s funeral at that point at Fort Lincoln Cemetery that day and I was on a tight scheduled to get to make a plane to Manchester, New Hampshire,” the 51-year-old professor told Mitchell. “He was willing to come to me, which was appreciated.”

“So you were administered a polygraph on the day that you attended your grandmother’s funeral?” Mitchell asked.

“Correct, or it might have been the next day,” Ford responded.

She then turned to her attorney, Debra Katz, and said she did not remember the exact day the test was taken.

“Dr. Ford could not remember if she was being audio- or video-recorded when she took the polygraph,” the memo reads. “And she could not remember whether the polygraph occurred the same day as her grandmother’s funeral or the day after her grandmother’s funeral.”

According to Mitchell, administering a polygraph to an individual who is “grieving” is “inappropriate.”

As Breitbart News has previously reported, Blasey Ford was only asked two broad questions during her polygraph exam: “Is any part of your statement false?” and “Did you make up any part of your statement?”

“Ford was not asked any specific questions about the specific allegation,” Breitbart’s John Nolte pointed out — no questions to name Kavanaugh as her attacker or about the details of her story. “There are also no test or baseline questions where the subject is intentionally asked to lie.”

The memo’s release comes after the White House ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to launch a week-long investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh, a request made by Jeff Flake (R-AZ) moments before the committee was slated to vote that Kavanaugh’s confirmation be sent to the full Senate for a vote.

”I think it would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to but not more than one week in order to let the FBI do an investigation, limited in time and scope to the current allegations that are there, limited in time to no more than one week,” Flake said. “And I will vote to advance the bill to the floor with that understanding.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would announce hours later that President Donald Trump would accommodate the request and asked the FBI to probe the claims. “I’ve ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file,” President Trump said in a statement. “As the Senate has requested, this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week.”

In a separate statement released through the White House, Kavanaugh said he stood ready to cooperate in the investigation. “Throughout this process, I’ve been interviewed by the FBI, I’ve done a number of ‘background’ calls directly with the Senate, and yesterday, I answered questions under oath about every topic the Senators and their counsel asked me,” said Kavanaugh. “I’ve done everything they have requested and will continue to cooperate.”

---------------------------------

Are Republicans Born Wimps?

http://buchanan.org/blog/are-republicans-born-wimps-130269

By Patrick J. Buchanan  Tuesday - October 2, 2018

Republican leaders are "a bunch of wimps," said Jerry Falwell Jr.  Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing "nice guys."  "The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps."

So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority, and he has here a self-evident point.

Thursday, 11 GOP senators on the judiciary committee freely forfeited to a female prosecutor their right to cross-examine Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

The Republicans feared that televised images of 11 white men, sharply questioning the credibility of Ford's claim to be a victim of Kavanaugh's sexual assault, would be politically lethal. So, while the Republicans mutely abstained from challenging her, Ford was treated by the Democrats as the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, though not a single witness has corroborated her story.

Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake caved to Democratic demands for another weeklong FBI investigation of the judge. The Republicans, egg visible on their faces, endorsed their colleague's capitulation. Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham had been the Republican lion of the hearing, indicting Democrats for the moral atrocity they had deceitfully and dishonorably perpetrated against the judge.
By Friday, our Cicero was reaching out in collegiality to the same senators he was castigating 24 hours before.

Falwell's point: Democrats fight savagely and for keeps, while Republicans — street-fighter Trump excepted — are wimps, often bewailing any loss of camaraderie with their colleagues across the aisle.

As my late friend Sam Francis said in the title of his book, many Republicans are perfectly content with being "Beautiful Losers."

Yet the stakes here are immense. Consider how the Supreme Court has remade the America we grew up in. Since World War II, the court has de-Christianized all public schools and the public life of a land Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman called a "Christian nation." It has established secularism as our state religion.

Despite civil right laws declaring race discrimination illegal, the court has given its blessing to affirmative action, deliberate discrimination in favor of peoples of color against white men in the name of diversity and equality.

The court has declared that what were once crimes, abortion and homosexuality, are now constitutional rights all Americans must respect.

These changes were not legislated democratically, but imposed dictatorially by the high court. While a Senate confirmation of Kavanaugh would not reverse these mandated changes, it might halt any further imposition of this radical social revolution by unelected judges.

But while the Democratic left, understanding the stakes, is fighting bare-fisted, Republicans are sparring with 14-ounce gloves and seeking to observe Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

In other ways as well America has been remade. Not only has Christianity, and all its symbols and expressions of faith and belief, been removed, but also a purge is underway of monuments and statues of the explorers, colonists and statesmen who, believing in the superiority of their religion, culture and civilization, set out to create the county we inherited.

And William Frey, resident demographer at the Brookings Institution, writes about how America is being changed — without the consent of the people. "Since 2000, the white population under the age of 18 has shrunk by seven million, and declines are projected among white 20-somethings and 30-somethings over the next two decades and beyond. This is ... a trend that is not likely to change despite Mr. Trump's wish for more immigrants from Norway. The likely source of future gains among the nation's population of children, teenagers and young working adults is minorities — Hispanics, Asians, blacks and others."

When we are all minorities, and all behave as minorities, making our separate demands upon the country, what then holds America together?

In Federalist 2, John Jay famously wrote:

"Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion ... very similar in their manners and customs...

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

Yet, each decade, less and less are we descended from the same ancestors. Less and less do we speak the same language, profess the same religion, share the same manners, customs, traditions, history, heroes and holidays.

Does America look today like the "band of brethren united to each other" of which Jay wrote, and we seemed to be as late as 1960?

Or does not the acrimony attendant to the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh suggest that we have already become a land "split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties."

With all our new diversity, whatever became of our unity?