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September 2018

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Cowardly Republicans Grant a False Premise By Angelo Codevilla

By on September 26th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/26/cowardly
The logic of a premise will drag you to its conclusion. When Senate Republicans accepted the premise that Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh was a legitimate personal complaint rather than a political maneuver orchestrated by the Democratic Party, they placed themselves in the grips of a logic leading them through bargaining about how to accommodate her as he was dogged by a nationwide campaign of personal and political vilification.

The logic’s next step is likely to come Thursday, when Ford does not show at the Judiciary Committee hearing amidst renewed Democratic and media accusations of a litany of sins by now all too familiar.

Republicans will be left with the same option they had when the Democrats first brought up their last-minute landmine—to press ahead with confirmation. But by accepting a premise they knew was false, they energized the Democrats’ constituencies and dispirited their own.

They embarrassed themselves by volunteering to be played for suckers, as well as looking callous toward victims of sexual assault. Brilliant.

The substance, the manner, and the circumstances of Ford’s accusation shouted that it is a hoax—that the Democrats had conjured a political bludgeon of last resort, and never intended for Ford to testify. But the Republicans, being pusillanimous, refused to acknowledge the reality of what they were getting into.

The accusation’s substance advertised its unseriousness. The total lack of specifics about the time and place of the alleged assault, of anything that might be an investigation’s staring place, was red flag enough. But the contradiction between the original report to a therapist about four men in the room—and nothing about Kavanaugh—and the subsequent account of two, Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, was as obvious to the Democrats making the charge as to the Republicans. When Judge denied any knowledge of the alleged party, followed by all others who Ford named as having knowledge of it, the Republicans had no reason to refrain from labeling the accusations the very definition of slander. No reason except cowardice.

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Laugh at the U.N., Not With It The world body’s record on human rights is a cruel joke. 3 Comments By Elliot Kaufman

By on September 26th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/laugh-at-the-u-n-not-with-it-1538002997

Oh, how they laughed.

When President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” the delegates of the world couldn’t contain themselves. “I didn’t expect that reaction,” Mr. Trump responded to the laughter ringing through the hall, “but that’s OK.”

Mr. Trump’s boast merited an eye roll, but I’d laugh right back at the U.N. It deserves it.

Who but the U.N. would elect some of the world’s leading human-rights abusers—Saudi Arabia, China, Venezuela, Pakistan and others—to run a Human Rights Council and lecture the rest of us? In 2016 many of these members even tried to silence Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in midsentence as he exposed their hypocrisy.

Who but the U.N. would elect the Islamic Republic of Iran to the executive board of its agency “dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women”? The World Economic Forum ranks Iran 140th out of 144 nations in parity between the sexes for a reason. Its regime arrests and beats women who peacefully protest for their rights. It imprisons and tortures women for removing their headscarves. Discrimination is written into every area of Iran’s civil code, from marriage and divorce to employment.

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Democrats Endorse Avenatti Brett Kavanaugh’s opponents will believe anything.

By on September 26th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-endorse-avenatti-1538004075

Now comes a third accuser against Brett Kavanaugh, this time claiming the Supreme Court nominee was part of a gang of high school boys who spiked the drinks of teenage girls in order to assault and rape them. Really? Does even Mazie Hirono believe this?

The charge comes from Julie Swetnick, a Washington-area woman elevated to accusatory fame on Wednesday by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels. She claims that Mr. Kavanaugh and high school friend Mark Judge drank to excess at numerous parties and then assaulted girls and women with abandon. She says in a sworn statement that the gang would “‘target’ particular girls” who were alone or shy for serial rape.

So we are supposed to believe that the boys at Georgetown Prep, amid their dreams of Yale, conspired to commit drug and sex crimes on multiple occasions over many years. Yet word of this rape gang at an elite Jesuit high school never made it to anyone in authority. None of the rape victims spoke up—not to a teacher, parent or other official—then or since. None of the boys bragged about it to friends who spoke to a parent or priest.

As for Ms. Swetnick, she says in her statement that she was personally assaulted in 1982 at one of these parties, yet she admits that she attended “well over 10” of these parties from 1981-1983. This means she would have returned to these parties even after she was gang-raped. She suddenly recalls it all now after 35 years, though somehow this never came up during FBI investigations of Mr. Kavanaugh’s background over more than two decades.

Messrs. Judge and Kavanaugh deny the accusation, with Mr. Kavanaugh calling it “ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone.” But that’s unfair to the late Rod Serling, who was more subtle than this kind of character assassination. We wouldn’t even report the details of this latest smear if Democrats and the left weren’t treating the accusation as disqualifying for the Supreme Court.

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Oops! Arizona Dem Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema caught lying about her past By Thomas Lifson

By on September 26th, 2018

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

The race to replace retiring Arizona senator Jeff Flake has been polling as a statistical tie. Until now, at least. Republican candidate Rep. Martha McSally has an incredible life story to tell, with 26 years of service in the Air Force and a historic milestone – the kind that actually means something:

She is the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat and first to command a fighter squadron in combat in United States history.

This is literally leadership under fire.

So her opponent, Krysten Sinema, faced a challenge in coming up with a compelling life story and settled on something that would appeal to Democrats. In place of accomplishment and heroism, she turned to victimhood. In a campaign video, she tugged at heartstrings, claiming (via the Daily Caller):

“First we lost our car, then we lost our home,” Sinema says in an ad. “For nearly three years, we lived in an old abandoned gas station without running water or electricity. Sometimes we didn’t have enough food to eat, but we got by, thanks to help from family, church and sometimes even the government. Those were tough times, but I knew it could be different. I never believed that being homeless was going to stop me from being who I wanted to be.”

Just one little problem, as the Daily Caller notes:

[C]ourt documents obtained by TheNYT reveal that Sinema’s mother and stepfather had provided a judge with records detailing monthly payments they made for electricity, phone and gas bills during that time.

Her response does not inspire confidence:

Sinema did not have an answer when asked by The NYT why her stepfather made payments for power and gas, nor did she address directly whether she had ever embellished details about her upbringing in the Florida gas station in the mid-1980s.

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Kirsten Gillibrand won’t confirm Kavanaugh, but confirms that she is an idiot By Thomas Lifson

By on September 26th, 2018

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

I confess that I have always found Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to be a vacuous politician, someone who blows with the wind, seeks shallow advantage, and lacks good judgment. But last night, speaking on MSNBC, where she has no reason to worry about being challenged for verbal excesses, she let slip a statement so appalling that it ranks with her colleague Mazie Hirono’s notorious injunction to the male half of the populace (and her constituency) that its members “shut up.”

On Chris Hayes’s program, these words actually left her mouth:

Every time you hear on Fox News, “assume you’re innocent,” “you have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” they’re trying to confuse voters.

To this mental midget, the assumption of innocence before proven guilty is indeed “confusing.”

Don’t believe me? Watch for yourself:

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Keith Windschuttle Three False Waves of Australian History

By on September 26th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2018/09/three-false-waves-australian-history/

The divisive myth that modern Australia is the result of three sequential ‘nations’ — Aboriginal, European and post-war immigrant — has seduced many, most recently Paul Kelly, who believes it ‘true and inclusive’. There has been only one nation, brought into being at Federation.

Morrison should reference the best recent formulation of Australian identity and history, courtesy of Noel Pearson, who argues the nation embodies three traditions: the first Australians, who roamed this continent for 65,000 years, long before the ages of Babylon, Athens and Rome; the British inheritance dating from the voyages of James Cook, the initial colony at Sydney Cove, the rise of British-derived laws, values and institutions; and the immigrant tradition, the arrival of people from many nations that so enriched the culture and led to a multicultural nation. Pearson’s concept is true and it is inclusive. It should appeal to the entire nation, from conservative to progressive.
—Paul Kelly in The Australian, September 26, 2018, on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call to retain Australia Day on January 26 but also observe a new public holiday to commemorate indigenous people.

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There are a number of problems with this proposal from journalist Paul Kelly. For a start, it is wrong to say the concept originated with Noel Pearson; second, it provides a seriously mistaken view of the formation of the Australian nation; and third, it is not hard to show the notion fosters division not inclusion.

Nonetheless, Kelly is right to say the idea should appeal to both conservatives and progressives, since it has already done so for almost twenty years now. John Howard used the same terminology in 1999 when he sought to include in the preamble of the Constitution the words ‘honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation’s first people’. I have heard both John Howard and Tony Abbott repeat this terminology several times since then, providing the same ‘Three Waves’ version of what they call the ‘national story’, though without knowing its real origins.

The idea that Aborigines are the nation’s first people is a version of Australian history devised not by Noel Pearson but the left-wing economist Herbert Cole ‘Nugget’ Coombs in 1982. As president of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, he addressed the National Press Club on Australia Day that year, giving a speech titled ‘The Three Waves and Australian Identity’. Coombs said Australian history was defined by three distinct human migrations: the Aborigines who arrived some 40,000 years ago; the Anglo-Celtic migrants from the British Isles who came in 1788 and thereafter; and the third wave, the more ethnically mixed migrants of the period after the 1939-45 world war.

Coombs did not go to the National Press Club to lecture his audience about Australian demography. His aim was to score moral and political points, and he laid down a narrative that many people have found compelling ever since.

On the one hand, he described the continent when Aborigines dominated it as a paradise where people were in harmony both with nature and one another.

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The Long March of the Chinese Navy By Frank Lavin

By on September 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/china-naval-power-growing-new-doctrines-new-missions/

Over time, the expanded navy will push China to new doctrines and new missions.

With the launch of its second aircraft carrier, China has enhanced its position in the front ranks of military powers and prompted questions as to the ultimate purpose of its navy. The Chinese navy, formally known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), is expanding and will be doing so for years — decades — to come. Some of this is the natural consequence of being the navy of a country in economic ascendancy. Some of this is bureaucratic politics; the PLA is represented on the Communist Party Central Committee, and the PLA answers to the Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese government. But some of this, the interesting part, is what’s left after one accounts for normal economic growth and institutional self-interest. We might not just be seeing an updated navy or a more potent navy; we might be seeing a different navy, with a different mission.

The axiom here is that in the short run, doctrine determines capabilities, but in the long run, capabilities determine doctrine.

So in the short run, the PLAN will acquire the navy it needs to do its job, already expanding to resupply and safeguard the growing Chinese base structure in the South China Sea. And with one eye on the United States, the PLAN will advocate internally for more ships, bigger ships, better ships, along a new generation of ballistic missiles, all with enhanced range, speed, and lethality. The U.S. military terms the Chinese strategy A2/AD, for “anti-access/area denial.” In other words, China need not match the U.S. ship-for-ship or weapon-for-weapon; it can still throw quite a punch. None of this should surprise military analysts. As countries grow, they seek to project power.

But in the long run, this new navy will itself push the PLAN to new doctrines and new missions. No longer just territorial defense. No longer just Sea Lines of Communication, those maritime arteries that facilitate commerce and military access. No longer just to intimidate or defeat countries in its near abroad, the “first island chain” in PLAN lexicon. Over the next few decades, China will increasingly discover that it has a broader mission.

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America’s Biggest Battle, 100 Years On By Dan McLaughlin

By on September 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/meuse-argonne-americas-biggest-battle-100-later/

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive of 1918 was the largest battle ever fought by Americans.

One hundred years ago this morning, at 5:30 a.m. Central European Time, the 1.2 million–man American Expeditionary Force launched all of its available combat strength into the largest and arguably the bloodiest battle in American history: the six-week Meuse-Argonne offensive that continued through the armistice at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The horrific and protracted battle brought a decisive end to the first war in which Americans fought on European soil. Though it was filled with then-famous incidents and notable Americans, the ordeal of the Meuse-Argonne is far less remembered today than Gettysburg, Normandy, Yorktown, Okinawa, or New Orleans. We should keep that memory alive, as it tells us a lot about the America of 1918 and the century that followed.

Amateurs at War
Even the name, “American Expeditionary Force,” speaks to a different era. The armies of America’s wars before 1941 came into being to fight a specific war, and disbanded at the end, leaving their names behind as monuments: the Continental Army, the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Tennessee. The professionalized, permanent army and Marine Corps were tiny then; the Army in 1917 was less than 150,000 men, compared to some 11 million Germans under arms and 8 million Frenchmen, and ranked as the world’s 17th-largest army. Only after the Second World War would the United States develop what Dwight Eisenhower termed our “military-industrial complex.” Americans had put the world’s most formidable fighting forces in the field against each other in the 1860s but had mostly forgotten the arts of war by 1917, when about 14,000 Americans (two-thirds the size of the Continental Army in mid 1776) were all that could be put in the field in France.

The Marine Corps would do much to build its legend at Belleau Wood in June 1918, and would fight again at St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne under the command of Major General John Lejeune (namesake of North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune), but a small, elite force like the Marines cannot alone conquer a battlefield as vast and densely soldiered as the Western Front. And America’s industrial might was not the decisive factor it would be in the 1940s, when mechanized warfare ruled the battlefield; the American Army Air Service was not a notably effective factor in the battle, and many of the American tanks were borrowed from the French. It was the freshly recruited, still-amateur “Doughboys” of the Army, manning rifles, machine guns, and artillery, who made up the bulk of the estimated 600,000 men committed to the initial assault at H-hour on September 26. The six-week struggle would be the first and, as it turned out, the last time the AEF was fully committed to battle.

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Beto O’Rourke Will Not Get the Kavanaugh Treatment By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on September 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/beto-orourke-wont-get-brett-kavanaugh-treatment/

The media are curiously uninterested in investigating the unanswered questions surrounding criminal misconduct in O’Rourke’s past.

I used to see the mainstream media as an adjunct of the Democratic party. That’s debatable; it could be that the party is the adjunct. Either way, the most brazenly overt aspect of the partnership is that the press no longer even feigns interest in allegations against nominees; it is interested only in allegations against Republican nominees.

We await the next shoe to drop in the Judge Kavanaugh saga. Rest assured that if there’s a rumor that, in third grade, young Brett yanked on the ponytails of the girl in the second row (war on women!), the New York Times, NBC News, and phalanxes of their journalistic colleagues will be all over it.

Meanwhile, Representative Beto O’Rourke had a pair of felony arrests in his mid-to-late 20s, including a reckless drunk-driving incident in which he crashed into a car and allegedly tried to flee from the scene. The cases appear to have mysteriously disappeared without serious prosecution, notwithstanding that O’Rourke continues to deny basic facts outlined in at least one police report.

So, what really happened? We don’t know. See, Representative O’Rourke is a Democrat.

Not just that. O’Rourke is the Democrat running for a Senate seat against Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent who is a favorite of grass-roots conservatives. Consequently, the press and Democrats have about as much interest in probing O’Rourke’s checkered past as they do in exploring allegations against Keith Ellison — the hard-Left Minnesota congressman, attorney-general candidate, and deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who has been accused of physically abusing his longtime girlfriend.

O’Rourke appears to be quite the character, notwithstanding the media’s indifference.

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Senate GOP Has Bent Over Backwards To Get Testimony, Evidence From Kavanaugh Accusers By Mollie Hemingway

By on September 26th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/26/senate-gop-has-bent-over-backwards-to-get-testimony-evidence-from-kavanaugh-accusers/

Within minutes of The New Yorker breaking the story of a second woman alleging improper behavior by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Senate GOP investigators reached out to accuser Deborah Ramirez’s attorneys asking for any and all evidence she had to support her allegations. The article was based on a foggy accusation of misconduct and admitted that the accuser was not sure of her memory even days before it was published.

Over the next 48 hours, attorneys for the Senate Judiciary Committee repeated their requests for testimony and evidence another six times. Yet more than three days later, attorneys for the woman have still refused to provide any evidence or formal statements beyond what she told The New Yorker.

At 7:43 p.m. on Sunday, Mike Davis, chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, emailed Ramirez’s attorneys asking when she’d be available for an interview with Senate committee investigators. “[W]e are determined to take Ms. Ramirez’s statement and investigate further as necessary as quickly as possible,” he wrote. He followed up later that evening and again the following morning. Her attorneys said they’d respond later.

Throughout Monday, he asked again if Ramirez had “any other evidence, including other statements, in addition to those that are contained in the New Yorker article?” At 3:03 p.m., the attorneys responded with vague, non-committal statements about possible future compliance.

At 3:11 p.m., Davis immediately reiterated his request for any additional information beyond what had been published in the New Yorker article. A few hours later, Ramirez’s attorneys put off the request again. So Davis emailed again at 7:11 p.m. pleading with them for additional information.

Still not receiving the information necessary to proceed by Tuesday morning, Davis implored Ramirez’s counsel at 10:05 a.m. to answer whether she had any other evidence and whether she was willing to provide it direcxtly to the committee. He did so again at 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday night, and again at 8:05 p.m. after another non-responsive email.

Rather than making Ramirez available for an interview, providing a formal statement, or providing any evidence to support her claims, her attorneys instead sought to delay and obstruct at every opportunity. This mirrors the behavior of the attorneys of Christine Blasey Ford, who has yet to provide a sworn statement to the Senate, instead making a seemingly unending list of demands for delays.

Correspondence from Grassley and his staff make clear that they have repeatedly sought to make accusers comfortable and safe so that they can formally testify to their allegations.

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