RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/20/after-kavanaugh

Is there a silver lining in the malignant circus now playing at the Capitol and beamed to computer and television screens across the fruited plain? Depending on when you happen to read this, you might ask: “Which circus? Who’s playing this week?”

Politics is by nature a performance art. The rhetor declaiming in the Agora or the orator fulminating in the Forum may not have been Cory Booker or Kamala Harris—and certainly wasn’t Dianne Feinstein—but we can see the same habits of exaggeration, grandstanding, calumny, and economy with the truth at work, to say nothing of Machiavellian calculation and preening self-regard.

Politics, in short, may be a high calling—the proper ordering of the state, after all, is a big deal—but it is assuredly a grubby business full of loathsome characters, backstabbing, and power-hungry melodrama. So what else is new?

Everyone’s personal metanoia proceeds at its own pace and is sparked by different contingencies. For me, this week’s performance, starring Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, was a minor Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment. I have long known, and often written, that the process by which we confirm candidates for the Supreme Court has become deeply corrupt. (I was going to say “politicized,” but that is not quite right: it’s by nature a political process, but one that has been perverted.)

As many commentators have noted, the definitive twist came with Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork in 1987. That televised circus, unprecedented in its tawdriness, captivated the nation’s prurient attention and marked a brutal new low, unsurpassed even by the battalions of lies that surrounded Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings. This wasn’t “advice and consent” but naked power politics, shocking partly for its breathtaking mendacity and bad faith but mostly alarming because of what it betokened about the place of “the least dangerous branch” in the metabolism of out political life.

Yes, judges were men, and men were interested parties, but here—one had thought—was a part of our political process that was set slightly to one side of the usual rough and tumble “I-want-this-so-you-cannot-have-that” partisan squabbling. The still-novel idea, back then, was that we were a country of laws, not men, and we therefore required people of intelligence and good will who were sufficiently impartial to don the black robe signifying not that they had no personal interests but that they could be sufficiently dispassionate to bracket those interests in order to adjudicate a dispute on the basis of the settled law of the land in light of precedent and the Constitution. Once upon a time, that was the idea.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-new-normal-1537484921

The economy is doing so well these days that even Barack Obama recently emerged 20 months after he left office to claim credit. Perhaps he’ll give another speech after Thursday brought more news that the days of economic malaise are over.

On Thursday morning the Labor Department announced that the number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims last week hit a new low for the current expansion. The seasonally adjusted figure, 201,000, was down 3,000—the lowest since November 1969. Part of the dip could be due to fewer claims in areas affected by Hurricane Florence. But the drop was even steeper in a few states like Illinois, and anyway the four-week average is at a record low too.

Then on Thursday afternoon the stock market, shrugging off President Trump’s latest tariffs, surged to a new high. At market close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1%, enough to beat its January record. Other indexes followed suit. Mr. Trump, responding to the news on Twitter, seemed to break his caps-lock key: “S&P 500 HITS ALL-TIME HIGH Congratulations USA!” If workers are checking their retirement accounts for the first time in a couple months, they’re probably happy too.

All the usual caveats apply: The data on weekly jobless claims can be noisy, the economy is bigger than the stock market, and nobody on Planet Earth knows what the Dow will do tomorrow. Mr. Trump’s trade fight with China continues to escalate, with no clear resolution in sight.

No doubt most of our readers recall when the sluggish economy of the Obama years was said to be a “new normal.” Economic sentiment began to shift on Election Day in 2016, and economic policy shifted dramatically toward growth over the last 20 months. Coincidence?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dianne-feinstein-on-the-hot-seat-1537463501

“DiFi on the Hot Seat” announces a Los Angeles Times newsletter emailed to readers this morning. It is beginning to dawn on even liberal politicians that the Kavanaugh controversy could potentially hurt Democrats more than Republicans.

The L.A. Times reports on the challenges that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) has created for herself and her party with her handling of an initially anonymous claim that a teenage Brett Kavanaugh assaulted another teen in the 1980s:

Republicans accuse her of withholding the allegation until the most politically advantageous moment. Even some Democrats initially complained that she didn’t share the explosive information with them earlier.

Next week, Feinstein may have to lead Democrats into a hearing — if it takes place — with Kavanaugh and possibly his accuser, Northern California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, that will likely determine whether Kavanaugh goes to the high court or watches his confirmation fall apart amid the #MeToo movement over sexual misconduct.

The Times reports that Democrats have generally rallied to Sen. Feinstein’s defense but notes that “at least one Democrat is ready to publicly criticize.” It’s her November election opponent, California State Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León. Because the Golden State maintains a “jungle primary” system in which the top two vote-getters in the primary election advance, regardless of party affiliation, Sen. Feinstein faces her fellow Democrat in the general election. The Times notes the political fire she’s now taking from both the left and the right:

“The American people deserve to know why the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee waited nearly three months to hand this disqualifying document over to the federal authorities, and why Sen. Feinstein politely pantomimed her way through [the confirmation] hearing without a single question about the content of Kavanaugh’s character,” De León said.

Feinstein landed in hot water Tuesday when she told a reporter that she “can’t say everything’s truthful” in Ford’s account, a comment that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said makes “clear” why she didn’t bring the allegation forward sooner.

Feinstein later tweeted that she’s found “every single piece of information from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford eminently credible, sincere and believable.”

The Times report follows an editorial this week in Ms. Feinstein’s hometown San Francisco Chronicle:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s treatment of a more than 3-decade-old sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was unfair all around. It was unfair to Kavanaugh, unfair to his accuser and unfair to Feinstein’s colleagues — Democrats and Republicans alike — on the Senate Judiciary Committee. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/fast_times_at_holton_arms_high_when_christine_blasey_ford_was_a_student_there_.html

Since high school keg parties at the elite prep schools attended by Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey are now a matter of consuming interest to the Democrat-media complex, it is perhaps telling that the high school yearbooks of Holton-Arms, the school attended by Blasey, have been scrubbed from the web. The blog Cult of the First Amendment says:

On Monday Sept. 17th, Christine Blasey Ford’s high school yearbooks suddenly disappeared from the web. I read them days before, knew they would be scrubbed, and saved them. Why did I know they would be scrubbed? Because if roles were reversed, and Christine Blasey Ford had been nominated for the Supreme Court by President Trump, the headline by the resistance would be this:

CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD AND THE DRUNKEN WHITE PRIVILEGED RACIST PLAYGIRLS OF HOLTON-ARMS.

And it would be an accurate headline. That’s why the yearbooks have been scrubbed. They are a testament to the incredible power these girls had over their teachers, parents and the boys of Georgetown Prep, Landon and other schools in the area. In the pages below, you will see multiple photos and references to binge drinking and the accompanying joy of not being able to remember any of it.

The most revealing page in that regard is this one, which seems to indicate that drunken keg parties were a frequent pastime for the Holton-Arms girls:

These yearbooks are, therefore, relevant to the national investigation now being conducted in the media, in homes, and in the halls of Congress. And they should not have been scrubbed. If Brett Kavanaugh’s yearbooks are fair game, so are these.

And you will wonder while reading them, why the hell did the faculty approve of these yearbooks? Why did the parents take out paid ads in these yearbooks? Animal House had nothing on the infamous “Holton party scene”.

The resistance media has been singularly focused on Brett Kavanaugh’s high school yearbooks, which imply that he got drunk and threw up. There’s no need to imply anything from the Holton-Arms yearbooks. It’s all there in focus, and the written word too. All of the sordid details as approved for publication by a “look the other way” faculty. And now it’s available for historical/evidentiary review.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kirsten-gillibrand-believes-christine-blasey-fords-allegation-true/

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York on Thursday expressed no doubt in the truth of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school.

Speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Gillibrand cited Ford’s request that her claim be investigated by the FBI as evidence of her truthfulness.

“I believe Dr. Blasey Ford because she’s telling the truth. You know it by her story. You know it by the fact that she told her therapist five years ago. She told her husband. This is a trauma she’s been dealing with her whole life. She doesn’t want to be in a bedroom that doesn’t have two doors. People knew that about her a long time ago,” Gillibrand said.

“These are the hallmarks of truth, these are the hallmarks of someone who wants to be believed. I believe her because she’s telling the truth. She’s asking the FBI to investigate her claims,” the senator added. “She’s asking for that kind of review, that investigative work, that oversight, that accountability. Someone who is lying doesn’t ask the FBI to investigate their claims.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-therapy-mob/

Too many of his detractors mistake the man for their abstract mental mock-up of a “privileged” preppy white male.

This week, a former classmate of Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of committing sexual assault in high school, blew up the Internet with a long, emotional Facebook post. The Kavanaugh saga, she wrote, touches a “very personal nerve.”

This must be true, because she then went on for an entire opening paragraph about how Mark Judge, whom Ford has named as a witness to the assault — and who flatly denies that anything happened — once stood her up for prom, getting “bombed” before dinner. Woah! What a cad! Men are horrible, am I right? But wait a minute: What on earth does this have to do with Brett Kavanaugh and the very serious accusations at hand? Nobody knows! Anyway, let’s move on: “The incident did happen,” she wrote, confident and assured.

Well. That’s a very big deal. (It’s also a little weird, considering that Ford says she told no one about the incident until 2012, but whatever. As we’ll see, details are becoming increasingly irrelevant in this case.) The Facebook post is now deleted; so is the corresponding and equally definitive Tweet, which declared that “Kavanaugh should stop lying, own up to it, and apologize.”

Life, however, comes at you fast: “That it happened or not, I have no idea,” the classmate told NPR within a day. “I can’t say that it did or didn’t.” Wait. What? Here’s more: “In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did” happen, she continued. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”

Oh. Well, never mind. It’s a good thing we’re dealing with an abstract mental mock-up of a “privileged” preppy white man who represents all of our pent-up resentments and issues, rather than with a serious, potentially career-destroying accusation against a real human being with a family and a job and a soul!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/19/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-mazie-hirano-believe-survivor-column/1358923002/
Democratic senators say they believe Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, but belief before the hearing isn’t blind justice. It’s bias.

It is a growing mantra on and off Capitol Hill. Both members and commentators have insisted that Christine Blasey Ford “has a right to be believed.” Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono not only has insisted that she and other women alleging abuse “need to be believed,” but men need to “just shut up and step up.” It is a jarring disconnect for members who insist that they confirm a nominee who will approach legal questions with a fair and open mind while dispensing with such considerations in their own treatment of his nomination. The fact is that Ford has a right to be heard and to be treated fairly. Neither she nor Kavanaugh have a right to be believed on the basis for an allegation or a denial.

Throughout the confirmation hearings, Democratic Senators pressed Kavanaugh as to whether he was a lock for business and corporate interests — favoring certain types of litigants and not giving a fair hearing to others. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse denounced the conservatives on the Court — and by extension Kavanaugh — as changing their approach based on who was making allegations. He decried conservative jurists who spared corporate or business litigation from what they viewed as the “indignity of equal treatment.”
Kavanaugh and Ford deserve blind justice

Yet, the touchstone of legal process is neutral, consistent, and fair review. That means that no one has an advantage because who they are or what they represent or what they are alleging. Law is objective and, yes, blind.

These politicians however insist that blind justice means turning a blind eye to abuse. Various Democratic senators announced within days of Ford’s allegations that they believe her, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Hillary Clinton and others have insisted that the test is whether you believe any woman alleging abuse. Clinton declared “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault … You have the right to be believed, and we’re with you.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/19/the-playbook

Call their bluff. Call the vote.

Who really can be surprised by the Democrats’ latest antics surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court? As the sands of the hourglass pour over what once seemed like their inevitable ideological triumph, and leftists across America and around the world realize that their Glorious Revolution will not be completed in their lifetimes, the agitators, true believers, and committed cultural Marxists have grown increasingly desperate as they try to stave off their imminent discomfiture and defeat.

Still, the tactics they’re now employing against Kavanaugh, while extreme, are nothing new for them. They’ve always shot from the hip and aimed for the heart, hoping to sway public opinion by means of passion rather than reason. The more convinced they are of the righteousness of their cause—call it their “higher loyalty” to the arc of history—the more antic they get, like chimps in the zoo at feeding time, moving from whingeing servility to outright viciousness the hungrier they get. Left unchecked, even the cuddliest Cheetah eventually will rip off your face.

By now, the outlines of their playbook are well known. Since winning isn’t just everything, it’s the only thing, “by any means necessary” is their working ethos. It matters not whether any part of their argument contradicts their own long-held beliefs and principles (although if you don’t like those, they have others), or that their prescriptions are inconsistently applied, and that rarely if ever are they willing to live under the same strictures they wish to force upon others. If they weren’t so malevolent, you might mistake them not for Karl Marx, but for Groucho:

But malicious they are, with a madness to their method. First, they posit a counterfactual—say, “diversity is our strength”—and then they argue it as if it were prima facie true. Should you object, they bombard you with insults and imprecations, calling your intelligence and, even more, your moral fiber into question. And once you’ve accepted their unexamined premises, if only out of politeness and conflict avoidance, they beat you to death with them.

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/407335-exclusive-trump-says-exposing-corrupt-fbi-probe-could-be-crowning-achievement

President Trump in an exclusive interview with Hill.TV said Tuesday he ordered the release of classified documents in the Russia collusion case to show the public the FBI probe started as a “hoax” and that exposing it could become one of the “crowning achievements” of his presidency.

“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office.

“I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done … in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said.

Trump also said he regretted not firing former FBI Director James Comey immediately instead of waiting until May 2017, confirming an account his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gave Hill.TV earlier in the day that Trump was dismayed in 2016 by the way Comey handled the Hillary Clinton email case and began discussing firing him well before he became president.

“If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. … I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”

Trump has offered different reasons in the past for his firing of the FBI chief, blaming Comey’s handling of the Clinton case but also linking it to Comey’s actions in the Russia investigation.

The president also called into question the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation, again criticizing it for surveilling his campaign.