RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271538/nobody-believes-all-women-daniel-greenfield

fter Christine Blasey Ford’s confused testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bumble took out full page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in its trademark black, white and yellow, “Believe Women”.

Probably not a good idea with a dating app accused by some users of fooling them with fake profiles.

Nobody believes all women. The Democrats certainly don’t. Just ask the two women who accused Keith Ellison, the DNC’s number two, of domestic abuse. A Minnesota poll showed that 42% of Republicans believed Ellison’s latest accuser, while only 5% of Democrats did. 71% of Minnesota Democrats didn’t think Al Franken should resign even when the line of accusers stretched out the door and then some.

Democrats are more likely to believe female accusers in the abstract, not when they have political skin in the game. That’s why fewer Democrats were willing to believe the allegations against Al Franken than against Bill Clinton, even though there were far more Franken witnesses and even a photo. Bill Clinton was yesterday’s news, while Franken, like Ellison, was a current progressive champion.

The willingness of more Democrats to believe Bill Clinton’s accusers isn’t evolution, it’s hypocrisy.

Democrats covered for Bill Clinton as long as the Clintons were a viable political dynasty. Only when Hillary went down in flames, and Bill Clinton seemed to spend most of his time playing with balloons, was it safe to start believing the same women they had been ridiculing and demeaning all these years.

And maybe when Keith Ellison retires to practice corporate law or plant bombs in synagogues, the Democrats will finally come around to believing the women who have accused him of abusing them.

Local Democrats are also less likely to believe the women accusing their own politicians than national Democrats are. The left supports #BelieveAllWomen in the abstract, but not when it hits home.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-reader/

Only a lengthy and voluminously footnoted book could paint the full picture the judge’s ordeal on his way to the US Supreme Court. Nevertheless, what Roger Kimball, John Hinderaker and others have had to say sheds a grimly unflattering light on the tactics and motivations of his accusers.

In Quadrant‘s October issue, Hal G.P. Colebatch contributes the second installment of his two-parter on TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome — and notes how hatred of this outsider president has drawn forth a venomous insanity wherever the Left prevails. “The Sydney Morning Herald in October, 2016, claimed that ‘Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler Have More in Common than Slogans‘,” Hal writes, adding that the globe-girdling hysteria on the Left has seen “the institutionalisation and acceptance of violence and lies.” If you scratch from the ledger of ‘progressive’ bullying the attempted massacre by a Bernie Sanders supporter of congressional Republicans training for a charity baseball game, an outrage seldom mentioned since in the manistream media, the most vile manifestation of the Left’s principle- and decency-free strategy has been the Borking of US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Below, a selection of the slanders and misrepresentations masquerading as commentary, interspersed with rebuttals the mainstream media has found it convenient to omit. In a better world you might have come across the facts on the ABC, rather than the by-rote Democratic Party talking points the national broadcaster serves up as news. And when an agent of accuracy does get a word in edgeways, the get the treatment accorded Judith Sloan on The Drum. Skip to the 40-minute mark of this video when Judith is repeatedly shouted down by the customary stacked panel. That’s the ABC’s idea of debate, just as this off-with-the-fairies polemic from a US contributor proceeds from the premise that Kavanaugh is the beast from Central Casting and must he held responsible for the ills inflicted on women. (…the image of Dr Ford, giving her testimony, now will accompany Mr Kavanaugh for the rest of his career. The image, in fact, is that of American women of her generation and everything that they have tried to become, and what they have had to endure to do so.)

Roger Kimball’s observations are especially worthwhile, but first a couple of cartoons that further the Democrats’ guilty-until-proven-innocent framing of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/04/on_the_question_of_judicial_temperament_138257.html

Last Thursday, we watched Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh vigorously defend himself against very serious charges of misconduct that he has consistently and unequivocally denied, and for which no corroboration seems to exist.

In the wake of that hearing, we began to hear murmurs, which then escalated into much louder criticisms, that Judge Kavanaugh lacks the necessary judicial temperament to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court.

From 1988 to 2006, I served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming chief judge in 2000. Additionally, I have worked with many judges throughout my career, in private practice and in government service. So the concept of judicial temperament is not an abstraction for me, but one that I have had to give considerable thought to.

As it turns out, Judge Kavanaugh is not a newcomer to these concepts either. He had not one but two hearings to become an appellate judge on the D.C. Circuit. His first hearing was in 2004, but his nomination was initially filibustered by Senate Democrats for partisan reasons, based on his role in President George W. Bush’s administration. He was re-nominated and eventually confirmed in 2006, but not before being subjected to another round of intense partisan attacks.

With the bitter taste of partisan acrimony still in his mouth, Judge Kavanagh began his tenure on the D.C. Circuit — considered by some to be the second-most important court in the country. He has served in that role with distinction and earned widespread respect across the ideological spectrum. It was no surprise to those of us who know him that Elena Kagan invited him to teach at Harvard Law School when she was dean there; or that he was recently introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee by leading feminist lawyer Lisa Blatt; or that he has been praised by leading legal liberals such as former Obama Solicitors General Don Verrilli and Neal Katyal.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/04/dems-give-in-to-our

As Democrats indulge in another high-tech lynching of a Supreme Court nominee, it’s worth noting that the fight over Brett Kavanaugh isn’t really about who’s qualified to serve on the nation’s highest court. The controversy is the latest manifestation of the Left’s effort to reshape or destroy American institutions. Now rapidly morphing into a leftist party reminiscent of those in Europe and Latin America, the Democrats and their activist supporters are not following a policy agenda focused on a specific issue or candidate so much as a grand strategy to discredit and redefine the institutions that make civic American life possible.

To beat the Left, the GOP not only must understand this reality, it must refuse to play by rules for which Democrats have no respect nor interest in maintaining. Not only that, conservatives and classical liberals should embolden themselves and re-engage the American cultural spheres long dominated by the Left. Fretting on the sidelines simply won’t do.

Designed for character assassination, the manufactured scandal Democrats arrayed against Brett Kavanaugh followed a simple formula based upon past leftist successes in politics and culture. Unable to find legitimate arguments over prior rulings or procedure to block Kavanaugh’s appointment, the Democrats accused him of a crime and capitalized on our culture’s moral panic du jour embodied in the #MeToo movement. The Democrats would have us pay no mind to the fact that the way someone was in high school, thankfully, does not often translate into the way a person will be throughout life. Nor would the Democrats remind us that the #MeToo movement only was made possible by the predatory behavior by powerful men in Hollywood, one of the most profitable of the Left’s occupied territories.

Fact is, the Democrats placed Kavanaugh in a position of having to prove he did not commit a crime. The only way definitively to prove innocence is to prove someone else committed the crime in question; otherwise, all that can be done is to cast doubt upon the notion of guilt. As with Hollywood, the Left controls academia and has done so for decades. If the Left comprises the erudite class that it so often claims for itself, however, its spokesmen would know that a nonevent couldn’t effectively be disproven. Was Kavanaugh at a party with Christine Blasey Ford or not? She says one thing, he says something else. There is no evidence either way—and so there is nothing an investigation might find to say he wasn’t there.

In the president, one big bully stands up to others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/opinion/trump-kavanaugh-ford-allegations.html

For the first time since Donald Trump entered the political fray, I find myself grateful that he’s in it. I’m reluctant to admit it and astonished to say it, especially since the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford in his ugly and gratuitous way at a rally on Tuesday. Perhaps it’s worth unpacking this admission for those who might be equally astonished to read it.

I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I’m grateful because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life, and never more so than in the face of sly moral bullying. I’m grateful because he’s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.

A few moments have crystallized my view over the past few days.

The first moment was a remark by a friend. “I’d rather be accused of murder,” he said, “than of sexual assault.” I feel the same way. One can think of excuses for killing a man; none for assaulting a woman. But if that’s true, so is this: Falsely accusing a person of sexual assault is nearly as despicable as sexual assault itself. It inflicts psychic, familial, reputational and professional harms that can last a lifetime. This is nothing to sneer at.

The second moment, connected to the first: “Boo hoo hoo. Brett Kavanaugh is not a victim.” That’s the title of a column in the Los Angeles Times, which suggests that the possibility of Kavanaugh’s innocence is “infinitesimal.” Yet false allegations of rape, while relatively rare, are at least five times as common as false accusations of other types of crime, according to academic literature.

http://politicalmavens.com/

During a fight at the Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx, twenty correction officers were injured by 16 and 17 year old boys who had been moved from Rikers Island due to a state law requiring that they be treated differently from adults in courts and jails. (”Officers Hurt at Youth Center, WSJ 10/4) Despite the fact that these young men were gang members, City Council members are concerned that staffing the Juvenile Center with correction officers and juvenile counselors is too similar to replicating the jail experience. In other words, 16 and 17 year old hoodlums are still just boys.

I wonder whether Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, to name a very few vociferous democrats, would be abashed to discover that they are dealing with the purported behavior of a boy the same age as these youngsters, and insisting that if the allegations against him were true, the 53 year old man he had become must be held responsible for acts performed 36 years ago. His punishment would be his unsuitability for the lofty job he has held for the past twelve years to unanimous acclaim and his certain removal from consideration for the higher post to which he had a presidential nomination. The Administration for Children’s Services which runs the Horizon Juvenile Center claims that none of the 20 officers was seriously injured, so despite that large number and the background of these boys, the spokeswoman argued for greater understanding of their issues and less concern for the safety of those who must control them.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-never-conservatives-1538608630

Donald Trump didn’t help Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation with his crude mockery of Christine Blasey Ford on Tuesday night in Tennessee, but then this Supreme Court moshpit isn’t about this President. The left’s all-out assault on the judge is clarifying because it shows that the “resistance” is really about anything and everything conservative in America. Mr. Trump is its foil to regain power.

Brett Kavanaugh isn’t part of Mr. Trump’s New York menagerie, or some Steve Bannon insurgent. The judge is the epitome of the GOP legal establishment, a Supreme Court nominee from central casting. He went to the best schools and served his apprenticeship among legal elites including a clerkship with former Justice Anthony Kennedy.

He has spent 26 years in public service instead of cashing in as a Beltway lawyer. He served at the highest levels of George W. Bush’s White House staff in positions of great trust. On the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for 12 years, he has written more than 300 opinions and had at least 10 adopted by the Supreme Court. He has taught at Harvard Law School at the invitation of then dean, and now Justice, Elena Kagan.

With these credentials Judge Kavanaugh would have been on any Republican’s short list for the Supreme Court. He could have been Jeb Bush’s nominee, or John Kasich’s, though Mr. Kasich in the ambitious ebb of his career now tilts with the anti-conservative left against Mr. Kavanaugh. In 2012 the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin wrote that Mr. Kavanaugh would have been Mitt Romney’s “most likely first nominee” for the High Court. Mr. Toobin, who loathes conservatives, meant it as a warning.

***

Mr. Trump’s nomination of Mr. Kavanaugh is a credit to the process he established to win the election and govern with conservative support. He sought the help of legal elites on the right, led by the Federalist Society, who compiled an impressive list of potential nominees. This isn’t a rogue judicial operation to choose presidential cronies. It is the gold standard for legal talent that believes in the original meaning of the Constitution. It’s hard to see how any GOP President would have done better, and others have done much worse.

https://www.city-journal.org/cognitive-and-psychological-testing-of-politicians-16209.html

Congress continues to rank dead-last in the most recent Gallup poll of public confidence in institutions. It’s no surprise: when representatives and senators aren’t squabbling, posturing, and at one another’s throats, such as during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, they’re saying and doing things that strain credulity. It’s no coincidence that insulting the intelligence of members of Congress is such a staple of American folk wisdom. “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself,” quipped Mark Twain. “When Congress makes a joke it’s a law, and when they make a law, it’s a joke,” said Will Rogers.

Too often, though, the joke is on us. A friend of mine was seated at a banquet table with the family of a then-congressman from Kansas. Family members expressed relief at the congressman’s career in politics because none of them thought that he was smart enough to enter the family business—processing scrap metal. “When I was debating what became the 2008 Farm Bill,” said Colorado congressman John Salazar, “I had a member of the Agriculture Committee actually ask me if chocolate milk really comes from brown cows. I asked if he was joking and he assured me he wasn’t.” That’s in the same category as the concern of Representative Hank Johnson that stationing 8,000 U.S. military personnel on Guam would cause the island to “become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas once proclaimed that the U.S. Constitution was 400 years old. And as a member of the House Science Committee, Lee, during a visit to the Mars Pathfinder Operations Center, asked a NASA scientist whether the Pathfinder probe had photographed the flag that astronaut Neil Armstrong left behind in 1969. Armstrong had, of course, left the flag on the moon. In 2010, Lee proclaimed on the House floor that “victory had been achieved” by the United States in the Vietnam War and that “today, we have two Vietnams: side-by-side, north and south, exchanging and working.” Lee was a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee when she made that statement.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/tolerance_not_really_a_thing_in_islam.html

One of the most salient passages in the Quran is 2:106, which shows us the basis for the doctrine of abrogation: “We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except when we bring forth one better than earlier verse or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent?”

Abrogation has an impact on the arguments about the true nature of Islam. At endless interfaith dialogues, the early tolerant verses are quoted to show the nature of Islam as peaceful. When both verses are quoted and then abrogation is applied, we see that the later verse trumps the earlier tolerant one. Jihad abrogates tolerance. In general, the Medina Quran abrogates the Meccan Quran. There are several verses of tolerance that are abrogated by jihad against Christians.

But the earlier verse is still acceptable and in use. Abrogation does not negate the early verse. Indeed, the earlier “peaceful” verse that is abrogated is the one most apt to be used in public discourse.

This creates a logical problem, since if two things contradict each other, at least one of them must be false. This is a fundamental element of Western unitary logic. In Quranic logic, two statements can contradict each other, and both are true. This is dualistic logic.

To put it simply, Allah changes revelations as he pleases, and the latter revelations supersede the earlier ones. There are deviations among Muslim theologians as to which verses have been abrogated and replaced, but the overall idea has been clear. When Muslims are weak and in a minority position, they should behave peacefully according to the Meccan passages (which reflect the early time, when Muhammad was vulnerable and building his power base), and when strong, they are obligated to wage war according to the later Medina passages.