Patterico's Pontifications

10/6/2018

Brett Kavanaugh Confirmed To Supreme Court

Filed under: General — Dana @ 1:59 pm



[guest post by Dana]

By a vote of 50-48, Brett Kavanaugh has been officially confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Supreme Court.

President Trump weighed in:

Mr. Trump said Judge Kavanaugh would be quickly sworn in. “I applaud and congratulate the U.S. Senate for confirming our GREAT NOMINEE, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote on Twitter. “Later today, I will sign his Commission of Appointment, and he will be officially sworn in. Very exciting!”

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

348 Responses to “Brett Kavanaugh Confirmed To Supreme Court”

  1. This has been an all-around horrible two weeks. All I can think about are the two wrecked families involved, who have to cobble their lives back together, their children having to bear the brunt of hate from people they don’t even know, as well as trying to understand why people are threatening them with death. These are ugly times, and very wicked people roam this land, presenting themselves as good Americans who love their country.

    Next up, the midterms.

    Dana (023079)

  2. Meh. Well, that was fun, wasn’t it.

    But before midterms, next up, two teams on opposing sides swinging bats at each other: the Wor1d Series, Dana.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  3. Is the ABA really going to marginalize itself further by adding another line item to the almost five decades of evidence that they are dishonest left wing partisans when they think they can get away with sabotaging a Republican nominee?

    https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/410130-american-bar-association-re-opening-kavanaugh-evaluation-due-to-temperament

    M Scott Eiland (b16b32)

  4. What would be the point of the ABA changing its evaluation now? He’s confirmed, the only way to get rid of him is impeachment followed by conviction (yeah, right), retirement or death.

    Soronel Haetir (86a46e)

  5. NeverTrump awwwwfullly silent.

    You know if Cruz was POTUS, Merrick Garland would be swearing in tonight.

    Pu$$ies would have folded.

    Bob the Builder (9af831)

  6. What would be the point of the ABA changing its evaluation now? He’s confirmed, the only way to get rid of him is impeachment followed by conviction (yeah, right), retirement or death.

    Spite, and virtue signaling. If they want their future offerings to be explicitly identified as partisan garbage by all honest observers, so be it.

    M Scott Eiland (b16b32)

  7. You know if Cruz was POTUS, Merrick Garland would be swearing in tonight.

    Cruz? I think not. But if JEB! had somehow convinced the electorate to choose him over HRC, or if Rubio or (shudder) Kasich was President? They would have folded like cheap rugs in the first three days after Feinstein’s treachery became public knowledge.

    Personally, I’m amused at the mental image of Trump putting Garland up for RBG’s seat when she resigns or passes away, just for the spectacle of watching every Democratic politician in the country turn on Garland like rabid honey badgers until Trump said, “Kidding! It’s Amy Coney Barrett, and I can’t wait to see what you morons try to manufacture to use against her!”

    M Scott Eiland (b16b32)

  8. Another broken Trump campaign promise.

    It’s a pity the media let him slide on so much.

    Dave (e3e7e1)

  9. As Bill Belichick would say, “We’re on to Cincinnati.”

    Ed from SFV (6d42fa)

  10. @9. ROFLMAO

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  11. 3 – “These aren’t idle threats, they’re mobilizing a nationwide mob”

    Of course they are.

    When you don’t have facts, common sense or history available to sway people, you threaten them.

    Threats and violence are how the true Left operates, always has been. Also part of that playbook is eating their own.

    They key will be if the media is capable of understanding what the long term results will be of cheering them on.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  12. Take note of what the focus of some is on. Very telling.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  13. Rev Al made an odd claim on MSNBC about justices nominated by president that didn’t win the popular vote, so I looked it up.

    John Roberts – Bush 2004 50.7% popular vote
    Clarence Thomas – Bush 1988 53.4%

    Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Clinton 1992 43.0%
    Stephen Breyer – Clinton 1992 43.0%
    Samuel Alito – Bush 2004 50.7%
    Sonia Sotomayor – Obama 2008 52.9%
    Elena Kagan – Obama 2008 52.9%

    Neil Gorsuch – Trump 2016 46.09%
    Brett Kavanaugh – Trump 2016 46.09%

    What was interesting is that Wikipedia doesn’t list the popular vote percentage for Bill Clinton.

    Neo (d1c681)

  14. From Matthew Continetti…

    “Can we pause for a moment to consider what has transpired in the last seven days?
    TRADE: Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced it had reached an agreement with both Mexico and Canada to revise and rebrand the North America Free Trade Agreement as the United States Mexico Canada Agreement. This announcement fulfills one of President Trump’s key pledges on the campaign trail while benefiting constituencies in important states such as Michigan (autos) and Wisconsin and Minnesota (dairy). Trump also renegotiated the Korea Free Trade Agreement and has made progress with the Europeans as well as the Japanese.

    ECONOMY: The Trump Bump continues, with Friday bringing news that unemployment has reached its lowest level since 1969. Consumer confidence is high, and data from the manufacturing and service sectors indicate continued growth. No president is responsible for the state of the American economy. But fiscal and regulatory policy help. And presidents take credit or receive blame in any event.

    JUDGES: Susan Collins’s announcement that she will vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh practically guarantees he will be seated on the Supreme Court in the coming days [update: he’s confirmed, baby!!!]. Kavanaugh’s elevation will secure a five-vote majority of originalist and textualist judges on the high court for the first time in modern memory. Such a transformation of the federal judiciary has been a goal of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan. The fact that it will be Donald J. Trump who will cement this victory is no small feat. On the contrary, it may turn out to be his greatest and longest-lasting achievement.

    FOREIGN POLICY: President Trump is slowly and steadily re-orienting U.S. foreign policy to face the central challenge of the twenty-first century: the rise of China to great power status. Beginning with the national security strategy released at the end of 2017, and continuing through today’s announcement of a landmark review of the defense industrial base, Trump has accomplished the “pivot to Asia” that the Obama administration so often talked about. What the pivot looks like is a policy of containment—one that should have been pursued decades ago. Trump has made this move while sanctioning Russia, getting tough on Iran, ending the farcical Middle East “peace process,” and attempting to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula. Yes, his belief in personal diplomacy has led to missteps such as the Helsinki press conference and his overly florid treatment of Chairman Kim. These lapses should not disguise the fact that Trump is establishing facts on the ground that constrain the despots’ freedom of action.

    Trump has achieved all of these gains, in such disparate areas of policy, through totally unorthodox means. He brags, he intimidates, he pouts, he jokes, he insults, he is purposefully ambiguous, and he leaves no criticism unanswered. He is unlike any postwar American president, though he shares some qualities with LBJ and Reagan. He is frenetic and polarizing, a showboat and a salesman. His methods are over-the-top, combative, and divisive. In place of the politics of consensus he adopts the politics of confrontation. Where others mindlessly repeat politically correct clichés, Trump unequivocally challenges them. He has ushered in a new era of American politics by dissolving the varnish that for so long obscured fundamental cultural divisions between and within the parties. He is president of a country that is wilder, zanier, and more unpredictable than before. It is also stronger.

    Donald Trump is putting the finishing touches on one of the most remarkable weeks of his presidency. For Republicans, it doesn’t get much better than this.”

    https://freebeacon.com/columns/trumps-remarkable-week/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  15. The nation’s oldest men’s group filed a Title IX complaint Thursday against Georgetown University, calling for the termination of the professor who tweeted that white GOP senators “deserve miserable deaths.”

    According to the October 4 complaint, filed with the D.C. branch of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Georgetown Professor Christine Fair has “has openly called for violence and terrorism against men as a class… and several specific men.”

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/title-ix-complaint-filed-against-prof-who-called-for-miserable-deaths-of-white-senators/

    harkin (f2bc98)

  16. Before Ford’s live testimony on September 27, the estimable Ed Whelan messed up badly in promoting a mistaken identity/doppelgänger theory, in which he very inappropriately identified the potential doppelgänger without his permission, thereby injecting him into a controversy he did not want to be in. Whelan’s acknowledgement of his screw-up promptly derailed further discussion of the theory among Kavanaugh supporters, while turning it into a “wild conspiracy theory” worthy of ridicule and derision as viewed by Kavanaugh opponents.

    The reason I mention it now, though, isn’t because of Whelan’s theory. It’s because of the anti-Kavanaugh camp’s reaction to it, which was reported by the WaPo on September 21:

    Ford dismissed Whelan’s theory in a statement late Thursday: “I knew them both, and socialized with” the other classmate, Ford said, adding that she had once visited him in the hospital. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”

    The same substance, but in an extended version of a purported quote that included the doppelgänger’s name, appears in a tweet from NBC News reporter Peter Alexander:

    NEW: Dr. Ford dismisses mistaken identity theory: “I knew them both, and socialized with Chris Garrett. I even visited Chris Garrett when he was in the hospital. There is zero chance that I would confuse them.” https://t.co/5c6ffb2EDC— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) September 21, 2018

    If there was a written statement from Ford or her lawyers, I can’t find that in my googling, but I welcome help from anyone who can; and either the WaPo version or the Alexander tweet is adequate for purposes of this comment, I think.

    The reason I’m bothering to rehash this is because it relates to something I’ve harped on continuously: Ford has never publicly laid a predicate for how she was able to identify Kavanaugh as her attacker.

    But this statement in quotes from Ford proves that she and her lawyers damn well know how to lay a predicate when one can be laid.

    It’s all in the details. There’s a boundless universe of what they might be, because of the infinite variety of the details in life that stick out or are otherwise observed, to then become part of our memories. (I’ll bet Dr. Ford could explain the neurochemistry of this exact process, in fact, which — if I had been deposing her without time limits, I certainly would have explored, using all her past research & writing as the predicate & guides for my questions.)

    And it’s the Alexander tweet that’s the more convincing version, isn’t it? She names the name, Chris Garrett. She offers a detail that is capable of objective proof or disproof: She went visited Garrett in the hospital. A private investigator, with those details, has lots of places to start looking for further corroboration, which in turn would likely — if the assertion is indeed true — generate more corroborating details. That’s how corroboration works.

    So she knew them both, but in her own words (as polished by her lawyers), only “socialized with Chris Garrett.” Does this careful distinction not scream for further questioning?

    You’ve told us in your opening statement, Dr. Ford, that you, quote, “attended a number of parties that Brett also attended,” unquote. Is it fair, then, for us to presume that at however many parties there were present, you did not, quote, “socialize,” unquote, with Kavanaugh, in the same way you’d socialized with Garrett?

    The immediacy and specificity with which Ford rebutted Whelan’s theory involving Garrett, in other words, only highlights, by way of spectacular comparison, the utter lack of any corroborating detail at all for the most essential, most fundamental foundation of Ford’s story — that it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked her.

    Mitchell surely had this tweet. She or someone with whom she was consulting surely considered this line of questioning — and decided for strategic reasons not to pursue it, not even through multiple layers of kidskin gloves.

    But ladies & gentlemen of the jury America, doncha know that if Ford and her lawyers and handlers could have produced even one corrorating detail with respect to Kavanaugh that was remotely as credible, just on its face, as they did with Garrett, they would have done that?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  17. (Alexander’s tweet linked something from Whelan that Whelan has since deleted, so that link is broken in the current version of Alexander’s tweet that I embedded in #17 above. Twitter is perhaps the worst possible way to memorialize evidence. Twitter delenda est!)

    Beldar (fa637a)

  18. @15. Meh. Our Captain is making with some very nice words for the FBI and the Justice Department today, too, Haiku. If he can survive Mueller, it’s four more years, Colonel.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  19. What was interesting is that Wikipedia doesn’t list the popular vote percentage for Bill Clinton.

    Shocking! A professional liar working for an organization run by left wing partisans citing a biased source that doesn’t even support the lie being told. Awe-inspiring, the level of pure fail involved.

    M Scott Eiland (b16b32)

  20. Telling that Ford will not be following up on the allegations that she claims are responsible for debilitating issues she’s been forced to deal with… https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2018/10/06/no-police-report-then-christine-blasey-ford-will-not-pursue-her-allegations-any-further/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  21. huh? moderation for #18?

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  22. @ Bob the Builder: Your #6 is as bad a smear of Cruz as Ford’s claim was on Kavanaugh, good sir. Read Cruz’ autobiography, particularly his discussion of his service as Texas’ Solicitor General and his SCOTUS arguments, and consider that it was Cruz who secured Trump’s public, written promise, in September 2016, to choose SCOTUS nominees exclusively from a list of 21 candidates — none of whom was Merrick Garland, or anything remotely like Merrick Garland. Cruz supported McConnell’s refusal to move the Garland nomination, as did everyone else on the Senate GOP caucus; he was a consistent supporter of Kavanaugh from the moment of his nomination through the moment he voted to confirm. You’ve misread the man, I respectfully submit.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  23. @15. Mr. Trump has made some very nice statements about the FBI and the Justice Department today, too. If he can survive the Mueller investigation, it’s four more years.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  24. Also, Bob: regarding so-called “Never-Trump” Republicans/conservatives generally: Have you looked lately at, say, National Review or the Weekly Standard? You’ve got this entirely backwards, I submit to you: Kavanaugh, more than anything since — well, since Gorsuch, has enlisted Trump-skeptical Republicans/conservatives, of which I remain one, into common cause. You’re picking a strange time to throw rocks at Trump skeptics who are genuinely celebrating Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  25. BtB:

    NeverTrump awwwwfullly silent.

    You know if Cruz was POTUS, Merrick Garland would be swearing in tonight.

    It’s impressive that you managed to lie twice in two sentences.

    Demosthenes (c4f1a0)

  26. Speaking of RBG and Ted Cruz……

    Ryan Saavedra
    @RealSaavedra

    While speaking to the National Woman’s Party on 08/26/18, an audience member had to give Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg a copy of the Constitution because she lost hers and couldn’t remember what the 14th Amendment said.

    Ted Cruz memorized the Constitution as a teen.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  27. Or, had I read down far enough, I would have just said “I second Beldar.”

    Demosthenes (c4f1a0)

  28. We now, officially, have Associate Justice Kavanaugh.

    Thanks be to God.

    Ed from SFV (6d42fa)

  29. @17 Beldar.. Indeed, I too have found that the devil is almost always in the details. Attention to that reality will oftentimes allow one to avoid the drawing of facile and unreliable conclusions from a superficial (or overly-speculative) consideration of the evidence. The difficulty, of course, is that the “noise” component is also details, and in the details. The crucial task which one is presented with is separating the noise from signal with any remotely reliable discretion and intellectual honesty. Some of us succeed better than others, some days; some regularly; and some seem to scarcely try or succeed at all. And so it has always been, I imagine. Or so I submit, respectfully.

    Q! (86710c)

  30. Thanks be to God.
    Ed from SFV (6d42fa) — 10/6/2018 @ 3:34 pm

    Amen.

    felipe (023cc9)

  31. @31/33. You might want to toss Trump a bone; after all, he nominated him.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  32. Mitch “Bad Sonuvab*tch” McConnell is on a roll, he’s unstoppable… https://static.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-10-06-at-18.16.30-600×268.png

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  33. I’ve interviewed and examined witnesses, on and off the record, friendly, hostile, and neutral, on a daily basis for close to four decades now. Most of them acknowledged that they have gaps in their memories, which is another way of saying: They’ve all been human. As I probe them, trying to examine the boundaries of their present recollections of past events, I frequently see witnesses who are very certain of particular details, despite have no recollection, or only a hazy recollection, of other details.

    So when such a witness insists that he’s very certain of a particular detail, I often ask: “Is there any reason why that detail stuck in your memory?”

    And they almost always have an answer, if they’re telling the truth.

    Jurors or other evaluators of evidence, upon hearing such a reason, resonate with it — or not! — on a common-sense basis, because they’re asking themselves, “If I’d been in the witness’ shoes, would that have struck me as peculiar or unusual or worth remembering?”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  34. Can we all at least agree…America is being made great again?

    lee (eda32e)

  35. Not to worry, Narciso, her own son is a Walkaway at Stanford.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  36. So I’ve heard, like juan Williams son

    Narciso (d1f714)

  37. There was no evidence, they shouldnt have wasted much time, but like Dr. Strangelove they couldn’t help being who they were.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  38. Is this the scene you were just referencing, Narciso?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  39. I was rough on Jeff Flake
    He can be an insufferable *bleep*
    But he did the right thing and I’m thankful.

    I also am grateful to McConnell for staying late today to push other Trump nominees through. Mitch does understand how to play a momentum game.

    hf- maybe Collins has earned a week off from being called “lobsterpot ***”? Although with what she’s being called today, that one seems kinda sweet by comparison

    steveg (a9dcab)

  40. I don’t usually troll for validation so obviously, but: Is my argument about the lack of foundation for her identification resonating with anyone? Is this at all interesting, at least as an example of how one trial lawyer (me) responds to the state of the record on that critical subject? A lot of what I’m trying to do is explain why Ford’s story has always seemed — to use an imprecise slang word — hinky to me, and what’s set off my internal buzzers, bells, and whistles as I’ve listened to it. Is the horse so dead now that I should stop beating it?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  41. Also not getting all the wailing coming from people on the left. Its as pointless now as it would have been for me to splash blood on the crotch of Lincoln statue when Sotomayor was confirmed.

    steveg (a9dcab)

  42. Just saw your comments, Beldar. Going back now to read links. The premise is intriguing.

    Dana (023079)

  43. The claim that any other Republican would have caved is idiotic and dishonest. Have the Cult45ers never heard of Clarence Thomas and Bush 41? (Or Scott Walker?)

    Bush 43 lobbied senators on behalf of Kavanaugh – with nothing to gain from it himself – but Trump cultists took it as just another occasion to bash Bush. They won’t admit that Kavanaugh is very much of the “establishment.” They won’t acknowledge that the hated “GOPe” has largely been supportive of Kavanaugh.

    Trump mostly kept silent while senators did the real work. But he pronounced Ford “credible” and a nice person when he thought his audience wanted to hear that, and then mocked her as a liar in front of an audience who wanted to hear that. So much for moral courage.

    Radegunda (b0ffbf)

  44. Beldar_

    she took such a giant whiff on corroborative ID that I didn’t notice the details within.

    that and her lawyers tried to convince us they’d had a royal flush up their sleeve the whole time but only wanted to show it to the FBI

    steveg (a9dcab)

  45. Yes, Beldar, I read your takes with much interest. I’ve felt Blasey-Ford was hinky from the get-go. A total performance, from her protestations of never wanting this to go public, to her changing voices and poses from scared little girl to assured competent professional. Also not impressed with her throwing her uncorroborating “best friend” under the bus or, for that matter, her not knowing the most basic data relative to the purported incident.

    No sale here.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  46. Now German Kahn didn’t take particular offense, Matthaus groteschauer in fail safe which might have been referring to either Kahn or Kissinger might have been another mayter.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  47. You know, lawyers definitely have the edge and experience vis-à-vis witnesses and the veracity thereof. But there are stories and tells both buried and right on the surface that are difficult to disguise, or for that matter, miss.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  48. At least, IMHO. Sometimes it’s as plain as it possibly can be.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  49. The one thing that has been fundamentally pure GOP establishment has been judicial appointments. The selections are literally from the “GOPe” lists.

    Being for Kavanaugh is completely irrelevant to being a delusional Trump fanboy. If there was a photo next to the definition of “GOPe Judge”, it would be a picture of Kavanaugh.

    Colonel Klink (f9132f)

  50. You’re picking a strange time to throw rocks at Trump skeptics who are genuinely celebrating Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
    Beldar (fa637a) — 10/6/2018 @ 3:21 pm

    Of course they’re celebrating, even though they have zilch to do with it since they didn’t support Trump in the general. No Trump, no Kavanaugh and no Gorsuch either.

    And, after fighting so hard to limit the FBI scope and time frame for Kavanaugh, which was key, they’ll go right back to supporting an FBI investigation of unlimited time and scope into Trump, keeping true to their hypocrisy… err, principles.

    Munroe (8e217b)

  51. @42 Beldar – Absolutely. So, too, is how “her” attorneys are shutting her down.

    Ed from SFV (6d42fa)

  52. maybe Collins has earned a week off from being called “lobsterpot ***

    i’m just not thrilled with Collins at all

    but i’m too tired right now to get super articulate about it

    it was a cold and soggy day here

    tomorrow’s the marathon btw I hope the weather’s significantly more pleasant for those guys come morning

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  53. There’s a gap in your logic, Munroe. Can you spot it, in this (#52):

    [T]hey have zilch to do with it since they didn’t support Trump in the general.

    There were Republican senators today who voted to confirm Kavanaugh, but who supported Trump weakly, if at all, and others who have consistently opposed Trump. Without their votes, Kavanaugh definitely would not have been confirmed. I’m not going to debate your premise that only Trump could have beaten Hillary (I think that’s far from obvious and probably false). I’m going to let pass the serious possibility that Trump could have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by mocking Ford at the rally. I give Trump credit for agreeing to choose from a list, from relying on good advice to compile the list, for picking Gorsuch and Kavanaugh from the lists (as updated in Nov. 2017, in the case of the latter), and for sticking with Kavanaugh despite the opposition. I give lots and lots of credit to Trump. I’m heartily glad that he outsourced this selection and confirmation process almost entirely to people who knew what they were doing, and that he supported them while otherwise staying mostly the hell out of it.

    I don’t give him exclusive credit, though, because that would mislead people into thinking I’d joined a personality cult that has sapped my power of critical judgment entirely. Do you give Trump exclusive credit, or will you allow that he might have had a little help from Republicans who didn’t support him in the 2016 general election?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  54. Do you give Trump exclusive credit, or will you allow that he might have had a little help from Republicans who didn’t support him in the 2016 general election?
    Beldar (fa637a) — 10/6/2018 @ 5:22 pm

    That is already answered directly in the second paragraph of my prior comment.

    Munroe (1d0605)

  55. @53. Yep.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  56. There’s a twist in that le carre meets lovecraft tale I hadn’t considered.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  57. for ten bucks there better be

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  58. It’s about memory or what we think is memory, timely no?

    Narciso (d1f714)

  59. you like apples Left?
    How do you like them apples?
    “Justice Kavanaugh”

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  60. “ I’m not going to debate your premise that only Trump could have beaten Hillary (I think that’s far from obvious and probably false).”

    I think this premise is true.

    I don’t think that any other Republican trying to gain the nomination in 2015/early 16 would have ever gotten the exposure and support that the media, especially television, handed Trump on a silver platter.

    The motives were pure malicious; get this sideshow of a human being front and center and hope beyond hope that the rubes jump on the bandwagon and take away the chance of any person who would be a prospective danger to Cruella Von Pantsuit.

    But the same media had no clue that the hard truths behind some of Trump’s crude message would resonate and at the same time their brazen disdain for average Americans would show as obvious as their love for and willingness to prostitute themselves and their profession to get Hillary in.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  61. This plan has been underway since April 2012, when Romney was wiping the floor with his primary opponents, an extra filip is seem with both McLean and McCabe counsel, who put the deep in deep state.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  62. “I don’t think that any other Republican trying to gain the nomination in 2015/early 16 would have ever gotten the exposure and support that the media, especially television, handed Trump on a silver platter.”

    I wholeheartedly agree!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  63. Congratulations to Justice Kavanaugh. Now may he maintain fidelity to the Constitution which he has promised to follow.

    NJRob (fa8906)

  64. @42. The little details are what keep Ford’s story from coalescing. Leaving her friend doesn’t line up. I can understand not being able to date the event exactly but not being able to say beginning or end of summer is odd. Not being able to give a street address is also understandable but not knowing who’s house it was or narrow it down more is telling. Not knowing how she got there or how she got back is almost certainly a lie. At a minimum she should know how she commonly got from the pool to a house party like this or be able to describe her options, i.e. a friend, parents dropped her off, etc. There are a limited number of options for that. In ‘82 or ‘83 even rich kids in MD would have to use a real phone to call someone to come get her. Which she would have to do if she left the party earlier than planned and she wasn’t getting a ride with the friend she left inside.

    Ford’s lawyers had to explore these missing pieces. They are being avoided on purpose.

    I spoke to my teenage daughter about this expecting her to be biased toward Ford. She thought it was a big party and Ford just slipped away. When I told her it was just a small group she called bs on leaving the friend.

    What’s also strange are the details she gave to support the story. How stupid is it to let the two front door story get out when it’s so easy to discredit? I don’t think the fear to fly story came from her but that was also ridiculous. I think the marriage therapy thing is a miscommunication. I think they went to therapy for a variety of reasons. It would have been so much easier to just say the assault came up in marriage therapy and leave it at that.

    I don’t think this is a dead horse and I don’t say that because I want to punish her. I want a complete story. I suspect she will withdraw and turtle. I’m starting to suspect she knowingly lied from beginning to end but maybe as time goes by we will get more information to fill in the blanks.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  65. No longer will the meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights vary daily according to which side of the bed Mr. Justice Kennedy arose on that morning, before he went off to his day job to write about the sweet mysteries of life.

    If the Constitution really were a “living, breathing thing,” it would surely breathe a huge sigh of relief tonight.

    But it’s not, which is rather the point. Huzzah for the Union! Huzzah for Associate Justice Kavanaugh!

    Beldar (fa637a)

  66. @ frost48 (#67): Thank you, we’re on the same page. As for Ford going forward: Attorneys: Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t want Kavanaugh impeached, has no regrets:

    As Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh awaits a final Senate confirmation vote, a lawyer representing Christine Blasey Ford says she absolutely does not want him impeached if Democrats take control of Congress.

    Ford’s attorney Debra Katz tells CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that Ford only wanted to tell her story to Senate Judiciary Committee members. She doesn’t want the process to drag on into the next Congress should Democrats end up winning control on Capitol Hill.
    “Professor Ford has not asked for anything of the sort. What she did was to come forward and testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and agree to cooperate with any investigation by the FBI and that’s what she sought to do here,” Katz said.

    That’s pretty Shermanesque (if nominated, will not run ….) Her sainthood’s assured, but the book deal … the book deal is being negotiated as we speak.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  67. @42. For that matter, how many kids went to these three schools during this period, I think it was two boys schools and one girls school? That’s a finite number of houses in the area. You don’t even have to look at all of them. Just make a list and have Ford strike out all of them she knows it wasn’t.

    You don’t need the FBI to run that down. Given the resources the anti-BK groups mustered it’s not impossible for them to do that research themselves.

    So, yea, not just the missing details. If she really wanted any sort of justice there are a lot of things she, and her lawyers, would have done that they avoided doing.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  68. @ Munroe (#57): That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, eh? Well, that’s Trumplike of you, I’ll certainly agree, and not even a surprise. Congratulations, you’ll interpret that as a compliment.

    @ harkin (#63): The counterfactuals from 2016 will be a source of passionate speculation for years. I wonder if someone’s writing, or has written, a good alternate-parallel-universes treatment for this? Something sort of like the Starz series “Counterpart,” but with a timeline diverging when Marco Rubio and John Kasich stood on either side of Ted Cruz as they delivered their endorsements and delegates, leaving Cruz and Trump in a one-on-one with several key primaries to complete.

    Stunned by the news, as just texted to him by Lisa Page, FBI Agent Peter Strzok distractedly steps in front of a D.C. Metro bus that’s traveling at about 50 m.p.h.; his replacement frowns puzzledly as he discovers the folder secreted in Stzock’s desk with info that’s been diverted — something to do with Anthony Weiner’s laptop ….

    Beldar (fa637a)

  69. @69. I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe she never wanted this attention and is now trying to recover whatever she can of her life. An impeachment process would make that impossible even if she is being truthful.

    My cynical side says of course she doesn’t want an impeachment if she’s lying. She would not get the kid glove treatment in that process and the risk to her is so much greater.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  70. @ #17 Beldar, Blasey Ford had actually gone on dates with Chris Garrett…and this is allegedly how she got acquainted with Kavanaugh’s posse. But it brings up a few interesting questions: if Garrett was Ford’s friend, why wouldn’t he have been at the “gathering”….or why wouldn’t she have remembered him being at the house? It is almost like she is keeping him out of this….while hoping that Keyser would throw her a friendly corroborative bone. I want to know the nature of Ford’s interaction with Kavanaugh’s gang from Garrett and how Keyser figured in as well. I think if you start dissecting and getting answers from Garrett and Keyser…..the fog starts to lift as to what is probable, possible, or not likely.

    AJ_Liberty (165d19)

  71. “Ford’s attorney Debra Katz tells CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that Ford only wanted to tell her story to Senate Judiciary Committee members.”

    Even Soros operatives who exploit troubled women can read poll numbers.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  72. @72. I guess the old back-in-the-day stories about the FBI are just that, stories. At least stories of a bygone past. Otherwise, it seems like one of those old tough-as-nails types would have arranged some bus accidents just to protect the bureau’s reputation.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  73. @ harkin: Oh-my-God, not only with young girls, but with a man in a dress! Shocking!

    Beldar (fa637a)

  74. Meanwhile: Narciso, have you started binging season 2 of “The Man in the High Castle” yet?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  75. Hoover sent some to Montana, that was his exile, there were a few self involved who thought themselves whistleblowers like William Turner or Wesley swearingen, most of those who came up with the hot take on Hoover was operation finales father John weird, wannabe company fantasizt Gordon novel and ex gangster mill Susan rosensteil.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  76. “Ford’s attorney Debra Katz tells CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that Ford only wanted to tell her story to Senate Judiciary Committee members.”

    ‘Even Soros operatives who exploit troubled women can read poll numbers.‘

    Exploding sh*tburger, chips… No Coke! Pepsi!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  77. Don’t get Amazon,

    I imagine that Garrett and Ford’s relationship didn’t end very well for both involved hence they don’t want to open that can of slugs re Cavanaugh maybe she had some feelings for him, which never amounted to much, it’s the stiff of bad scandal episodes

    Narciso (d1f714)

  78. #25 Beldar, I don’t find common cause with people who would lose their minds over flawed while giving comfort to evil.

    That NeverTrump found common cause to Trump on Kavanaugh is a testament to a) Trumps pugnaciousness is not beneath the office but necessary to hold it in these times and b) NeverTrump never thought a fellow country club Conservative would be accused of gang rapes … and they are angry as of now.

    Whether of not NeverTrump continues to exhibit militant attitudes towards the Left, and not Trump, is something I will keep an eye on.

    Flawed warriors for one’s side are to be helped and used, not discarded and mocked. Especially when the other side is plain evil.

    Bob (9af831)

  79. #63 spot on.

    Trumps cruel truths are why he wins.

    After you get over the shock, you think … dudes right,

    Bob (9af831)

  80. This November, it’s Teh Party of Shrieks vs teh Swingin’ Richards…

    https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1048681376533434370

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  81. Nah, the truth has finally become apparent. Trump orchestrated the entire last week to distract from Melania going around Africa dressed liked Michael Jackson.

    nk (dbc370)

  82. @68 Huzzah!

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  83. Beldar,

    I think your questions are perceptive and interesting, but I frankly can’t get too energized because I remain puzzled by the fact that so few people seem to care about the evidence and where it leads us. I don’t think many people care about the truth, let alone the process of how we get there.

    DRJ (15874d)

  84. 72 -Beldar.

    If it was “far from obvious and probably false” that it took Trump to take Hillary down, at least offer another Republican candidate that would have gotten the same day-in, day-out exposure handed to Trump.

    I can’t think of one who would have gotten even a quarter the coverage. I think the only who would have gotten even close to that was Kasich, for the simple reason he’s willing to bad-mouth conservative issues like a trained seal.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  85. Beautiful, Col.

    mg (f0a1d2)

  86. NeverTrump awwwwfullly silent.
    You know if Cruz was POTUS, Merrick Garland would be swearing in tonight.

    I didn’t vote for Trump and never will, ever, yet I wasn’t silent about supporting Kavanaugh. ly consistent conservatives will support his nominees when those nominees are supportable, and Kavanaugh was a supportable nominee.
    As for Cruz, false hypothetical. Had he been elected, he would’ve been free to pick any conservative candidate not named Garland.

    Paul Montagu (c7580b)

  87. Er, intellectually consistent…

    Paul Montagu (c7580b)

  88. Applauding McConnell and Lindsey. Didn’t think Lindsey had walnuts.
    Well done.

    mg (f0a1d2)

  89. People who were able to vote for Trump were just far bigger gamblers than this humble conservative. One could argue that the risk was worth it knowing exactly what a Hillary Clinton Presidency was going to be like. The problem is that it was even money in my mind that a Trump Presidency could have been an even more epic failure, with generational problems for the GOP.

    First, Trump was a life-long New York City pro-choice liberal who was politically unknown to any conservative in the trenches. The only thing he was known for in conservative circles was being a Birther (and then later somewhat of a Truther). Second, Trump was a policy neophyte….with policy proposals that seemed reckless if not unhinged and unconstitutional. Third, he attacked people in the most crass terms (Fiorina, McCain, Cruz, Judge Curiel, etc)…people I at least knew where they stood and could respect. Fourth, he surrounded himself by really questionable characters, from dictator=enabling Manafort, to woman-pushing Lewandowski, to let’s-stoke hatred Bannon. Only the best did not suggest the likes of Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, Haley, and DeVos. Fifth, Trump stood on stage and made the case that we don’t know for sure that Putin is a murderous thug…because there was no photographic evidence (!).

    The reality is that I didn’t want to spend 4 years make excuses for the inexcusable…and hoping….HOPING….we didn’t lose allies and start WWIII. Am I thankful that his Tweets, pep rallies, and tariffs are the worst of it so far. Yes….but I want to be proud of my President….and not have to hold my breadth every time he is making a public announcement. We don’t need to be in the sewer.

    AJ_Liberty (165d19)

  90. DRJ… I would like to know where the evidence leads, whatever evidence exists after 36 years.

    If you’re also talking about how all of this surfaced… including emails, text messages, phone records, everything, I am right there with you. Getting to the bottom of this and holding the people responsible for it accountable may be the best way to make sure these tactics are not employed in the future.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  91. I have my suspicions…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  92. Trump is taking credit for Daines going to his daughter’s wedding. He claims he “asked” Daines to go. He is a ridiculous buffoon.

    And if you think he even knew Brett Kavanaugh from Brett Gardner before McGann and the Heritage Foundation told him to appoint him ….

    nk (dbc370)

  93. These criminals must be held behind bars, not fines that Soros will pay.

    mg (f0a1d2)

  94. Beldar–
    #42, yes. Indeed. Which is why I really wanted to have a conversation with her earlier therapists to see if ANYONE had gotten a whiff of this. Failing that, where DID it come from? Hypnosis? A sudden breakthrough (unlikely given how long she has gollumed her victimhood)? A suggestion?

    Or was it NOT sudden but a “growing realization”? As in: “That bastard will overturn Roe!!1!! Hey! Waitaminute! It WAS him!!1!! …”

    Kevin M (d6cbf1)

  95. From WaPo on Oct. 2:

    Another friend from Kavanaugh’s high school days, Chris Garrett, has also completed an FBI interview, according to Garrett’s lawyer, William M. Sullivan Jr., who declined to comment further.

    I think we can reasonably infer that Garrett’s statement is among the interviews reviewed by the Judiciary Committee senators in their SCIF. The further inference, since Richard Blumenthal’s head has not yet quite exploded, would be that Garrett’s statement, at a minimum, didn’t say, “Oh yeah, I introduced Brett and Christine, absolutely!”

    That’s a wonderful example of a circle intersecting, one Ford has no trouble or reluctance in elaborating on with contextual details that make it very plausible and that can also be cross-checked. But it just makes more stark the contrast with her ID of Kavanaugh, which was never knitted together; we’re left to imagine how the gaps got filled, and that means we’re left to speculate, and speculation ain’t a reason to deny an otherwise eminently qualified person, even a white male Republican, a place on the SCOTUS.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  96. have you started binging season 2 of “The Man in the High Castle” yet?

    It’s Season 3.

    Kevin M (d6cbf1)

  97. Charlie Daniels
    @CharlieDaniels

    Seeing the fanatics stalking the halls of congress is tantamount to peeping into an insane asylum
    The face of new democrat party is bizarre and threatening and the fact that their leaders will not address it is a telling view into a chaotic future if they should come to power.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  98. Whelan, in his throwing guided darts might have come up with something.

    We’ve already had one confrontation with the Wagner corps, if we intervene in Venezuela we might have another confrontation with Russian proxy forces, we will deal with them when we need to,

    Narciso (d1f714)

  99. Oh! And have you started it, Kevin M?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  100. MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt to Joe Manchin after his vote for Kavanaugh:

    “Senator, do you think there’s still a place in the Democratic Party for you after this?”

    They don’t even try to appear unbiased any more.

    Earlier, Chris Matthews has described Republican Lisa Murkowski as a “profile in courage” for voting no.

    https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2018/10/05/watch-moment-chris-hayes-realizes-kavanaugh-will-be-confirmed

    harkin (f2bc98)

  101. Allegations of gang rape didn’t work so the brain trust at the NYT gave him both barrels with headline allegations of Kavanaugh being questioned by the authorities for throwing ice in a bar in 1985.

    Given another week delay, I’m sure the Dems might have found some fellow who remembered that he’d heard stories about a 5th grade classmate who’d complained about a wet willie some said Kavanaugh had given.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  102. 85, nk I would think her choice of dress would be the least of his worries in regard to Melania alone in Africa, I’ll check certain websites next week

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  103. She has secret service around her,

    Narciso (d1f714)

  104. When Obama went there, he had an Air Force squadron around him.

    nk (dbc370)

  105. How many holdovers….the same ilk that let the big Captain board air force 1 with toilet paper on the shoe this week?http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/10/05/trump-air-force-one-paper-stuck-shoe/1534322002/

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  106. Today it feels great, but this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon and if the Party of Shrieking is successful next month, they won’t hesitate to move on the new Justice.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  107. Scott Wilson – 1942 – 2018

    RIP

    His interrogation scene in In Cold Blood with Gerald S O’Laughlin and James Flavin is one of the all-timers.

    Along with his supporting role as a young man accused of murder in In The Heat Of The Night, two nice performances.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  108. Tupac had a different definition of mob. I think the dem

    mg (9e54f8)

  109. Great actor who had a lot of work over the years, harkin.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  110. Democrats used it.

    mg (9e54f8)

  111. Many of these people really are sh*tbirds… https://nalert.blogspot.com/2018/10/stephen-colbert-writer-brags-that-she.html

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  112. Lindsey should be appointed Attorney General. Darn guy performed like a gold medal winner.

    mg (9e54f8)

  113. Great actor who had a lot of work over the years….

    It was nice to see him get long overdue recognition in later years.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  114. He,was in a little known adaptation of pkd radio free albemuth where he played a variation on Nixon, albeit filtered through his paranoia.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  115. @ 99. Beldar The further inference, since Richard Blumenthal’s head has not yet quite exploded, would be that Garrett’s statement, at a minimum, didn’t say, “Oh yeah, I introduced Brett and Christine, absolutely!”

    Say what? Assuming the reference to Blumenthal is ironic -slash- jokey -slash- non-serious -slash- wholly gratuitous, why is “the further [presumably reasonable] inference … would be that Garrett[] … didn’t say “Oh yeah, I introduced Brett and Christine, absolutely” ?????

    (1) Why would that be an inference that a normal human being would make? That is, why, precisely, is it so very unlikely that Garrett might say such a thing?; why is it so unlikely that it might be absolutely true?
    (2) Same question, but on the understanding that the reference to Blumenthal of yours, is other than that as described (by me) above ???

    Pardon me if I’m being dense, but your inferences seem fantastical and bordering on nonsensical.

    Frankly, your several posts in this thread along these lines, together, have me scratching my head, and saying to myself what in good God’s name is Beldar thinking and feeling and why does he go on and on about an issue which is a non-issue. That is, is it not reasonably obvious to you that [the obvious and wholly unsurprising explanation is that] Kavanaugh and Ford’s paths likely crossed back in 1982 – most likely because of Ford’s friendship with or dating of Garrett – and that the reason Ford identified Kavanaugh as her assailant is because she had a set of eyes, and ears and knew that the fellow that assaulted her was known as Brett Kavanaugh?

    In this vein, you wrote above someplace (@ 17) that Ford had not laid out “a predicate” for her identification of Kavanaugh as Kavanaugh:

    The reason I’m bothering to rehash this is because it relates to something I’ve harped on continuously: Ford has never publicly laid a predicate for how she was able to identify Kavanaugh as her attacker. [Emph. in original]

    It really is mystifying as to what you might possibly mean, and just as mystifying what it is you are hoping to prove by uttering what (to me at least) seem to be nonsenses. What “predicate” was lacking re: her identification of Kavanaugh as Kavanaugh; or P.J. as P.J., or Judge as Judge, etc. ?? Clearly, ordinarily implicit in an assertion that one has first-hand (visual) knowledge that X, and Y, and Z (etc.) were present at a party, or at a beer-mart, or at church together on a particular occasion, is the assertion that one saw individuals X-Z there, who one knew by the names X-Z. One might as well say (I think) that Ford failed to establish a “predicate” for her assertion that someone forced her down on the bed, because she did not explain how it came to pass that she knew that the piece of furniture she was forced down on was “a bed”.

    As I say, perhaps I’m being dumb as a sack of rocks on this point, but I wholly fail to see the import of any such inquiry. fwiw.

    Q! (86710c)

  116. A little like watchmen but stranger and no superheroes

    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1129396/reviews?ref_=m_tt_urv

    Narciso (d1f714)

  117. Did you hear about the running back from Duquesne?

    His 40 was only 4.6 but his vertical leap was 16 stories.

    Pinandpuller (3d96b5)

  118. “ and that the reason Ford identified Kavanaugh as her assailant is because she had a set of eyes, and ears and knew that the fellow that assaulted her was known as Brett Kavanaugh?”

    Lol – she declined to cooperate. She declined to release evidence. She wiped her social media. That speaks volumes. Stick with the sack of rocks theory.

    harkin (f2bc98)

  119. 123, to Democrat ears, right outcome but wrong Beltway Catholic High School athlete alum.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  120. He didn’t even live long enough to see his first false rape allegation.

    Pinandpuller (3d96b5)

  121. Well I’m sure BK had a better day than this fellow Yalie and former MLBer: http://www.yahoo.com/sports/tbs-announcer-ron-darling-uses-unfortunate-phrase-discussing-masahiro-tanaka-alds-025501697.html

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  122. Someone Is going to a lot of effort to phase out coal burning.

    Pinandpuller (3d96b5)

  123. Women’s March
    @womensmarch

    What we did today:

    1. Flooded the capital ✅
    2. Disrupted the Senate vote ✅
    3. Stormed the Supreme Court ✅
    __ _

    Emily Zanotti
    @emzanotti

    4. Lost. ✅

    harkin (f2bc98)

  124. Did the Kardashians join an abstinence program, pin?

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  125. From what I’ve given to understand high castle involves the multiverse crossing tropes from Charles stross merchants series.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  126. Ulb… it’s as if these creeps sit around all day waiting for something to be outraged about.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  127. Keep hope alive, Q.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  128. Urbanleftbehind

    I hear Kim is provoking different reactions these days. They are nearly out of cardinal names.

    Pinandpuller (3d96b5)

  129. I watched Say Say Say today and was shocked by MJ’s black face and PM’s minstrel show.

    Pinandpuller (3d96b5)

  130. This is the point that Malekh levels london.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  131. @120 “That is, is it not reasonably obvious to you that [the obvious and wholly unsurprising explanation is that] Kavanaugh and Ford’s paths likely crossed back in 1982..”

    Are you sure it was 1982? Because that was one of six different dates she gave:

    She told her therapist in 2012 that it was the mid-1980’s.
    She told her therapist in 2013 she was in her “late teens” when it happened.
    She told the Washington Post in a text message it was the mid 1980″
    She told Feinstein in her letter that it was “early 80’s”
    She told the polygrapher that it was “high school summer early 80’s”
    She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was summer, 1982.

    Pete (a65bac)

  132. Whose running the show now, Alyssa, you tater tot.

    mg (9e54f8)

  133. I don’t usually troll for validation so obviously, but: Is my argument about the lack of foundation for her identification resonating with anyone? Is this at all interesting, at least as an example of how one trial lawyer (me) responds to the state of the record on that critical subject?

    Yes, I find it an interesting point that I had not previously considered. I am mystified why Q! is mystified by it.

    Patterico (ea0387)

  134. Do you give Trump exclusive credit, or will you allow that he might have had a little help from Republicans who didn’t support him in the 2016 general election?
    Beldar (fa637a) — 10/6/2018 @ 5:22 pm

    That is already answered directly in the second paragraph of my prior comment.

    No it isn’t, Munroe. Beldar made a good point and you have now ignored it while claiming you addressed it.

    Patterico (ea0387)

  135. Stick with the sack of rocks theory.

    OK, penalty flag, enough of that.

    Patterico (ea0387)

  136. @111. yes, RIP Scott Wilson. That scene in the cell where he asks for a cheeseburger- can never order one w/o thinking of that. His portrayal of the legendary Scott Crossfield in ‘The Right Stuff’ was stellar, too. Lots of fine work by him. We lost a good one.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  137. ^re- ‘In The Heat Of The Night’

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  138. Should an attorney general have addressed the senate death threats by now? The tax-payer has the right to know. Because first they came for the senators.

    mg (9e54f8)

  139. Should an attorney general have addressed the senate death threats by now? The tax-payer has the right to know. Because first they came for the senators. Is he on vacation?

    mg (9e54f8)

  140. I apologize for my finger mauling on the keyboard.

    mg (9e54f8)

  141. She can’t explain how she knew him outside Mark judges books and articles, note to anyone considering public office, never admit any weakness,

    Narciso (d1f714)

  142. At any time in the past.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  143. Virgil Tibbs: “Onions?

    Harvey Oberst: “Now you’re talkin’”

    In The Heat Of The Night

    harkin (f2bc98)

  144. I like how trump is starting to isolate china. He’s just out of the blocks.

    mg (9e54f8)

  145. @150. Bingo. Honestly- always think of that putting a slice of onion on.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  146. @151. Did you catch wind of that 45 yard encounter between one of their navy ships and one of ours in the NC Sea? Pretty ballsy. You expect that usually from Russians.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  147. @124, 134, 138 I can only suggest that you might consider reviewing my post (and Beldar’s, if necessary), and consider what it is that my questions and/or observations actually are (which was attempting to make sense of several particular assertions of Beldar’s which seemed to me to be particularly problematic or unintelligible). I do not think I can express myself any clearer than I did already — which is not to say or suggest that you should spend even one second longer in an attempt to understand my post, or Beldar’s. Regards.

    @140 So, Patterico does not share my mystification level, and is mystified at my mystification. Apparently finding post 17 intelligible and interesting. I have no idea why (obviously) but there you are. (I have no clue whether Patterico likewise finds my comments re: post 99 to be equally ill-taken.) Perhaps further discussion will disabuse me of my ignorance and/or error. Perhaps not.

    @142 Not my field and not my flags, but for the record, if the Stick with the sack of rocks theory had been accompanied by any attempt at any honest & cogent analysis as to why the “sack of rocks” (possible) self-attribution was in order, I wouldn’t take offense and would likely decline the penalty if such an option were on offer.

    Q! (86710c)

  148. Sorry, was talking about Article 3210 in the new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, my mistake, DCSA

    mg (9e54f8)

  149. @155. Understood. Just a bold move by them on the high seas. There’s that recent report of China hiding/incorporating rice-sized electronic monitoring chips in circuitry and motherboards for industrial espionage shipped to key customers in the U.S. and possibly in military parts for other spying purposes as well. They’re pushing back.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  150. When a witness is permitted to testify as to what name goes with a person whose face the witness saw, the witness must tell how she came to know that that name goes with that face. Once she lays out a prima facie, bare-bones showing — not a showing that she could somehow, reliably, have learned what name goes with that face, but a factual basis for a logical sequence through which she actually did learn what name goes with that face — then she’s laid a predicate. And her identification will be allowed into evidence, i.e., it will become something the jury is allowed to hear and consider and decide the relative weight (credibility) of. The defendant, having heard the predicate, can certainly still try to challenge (impeach) the credibility of that particular identification. But that’s a different step in the process, and only begins once the predicate has been laid and the identification permitted.

    If she says, “I knew his name at the time of the attack because a week earlier, I heard him say ‘I’m Joe Smith’ to someone else while we were both at a rock concert,” then the defendant can say, “But wasn’t it very loud at that rock concert? Weren’t your seats on Row ZZZ while his were on Row A? Are you really sure?” And the jury can weigh that sort of attempted impeaching in deciding whether to believe her or not about the rock concert testimony.

    When the witness says instead, “I knew the man who attacked me and it was Brett Kavanaugh, and I know that was his name because there were parties that we both attended,” that doesn’t actually answer the question of how she learned to connect that name with the face she recalls from the attack. That’s because it’s entirely possible to be at a party, or ten parties, without knowing the names that go with the faces of everyone you had a chance to see at the party. It’s also entirely possible to be at a party that someone else also attended, but without you ever seeing him or him seeing you. Having both attended some of the same parties is a possible, even a plausible, way to begin the explanation of how that led to you putting that name to a particular face, which you later recognized on your attacker. But it doesn’t actually narrow down at all the universe of possibilities to something that a listener (like a juror, or a viewer of Senate Judiciary Committee testimony) can test against his common sense.

    The guesses you made, Q! — that Ford learned that the name Brett Kavanaugh went with a particular face through their mutual friend Chris Garrett — certainly are reasonable guesses. But if that is the particular vector, the particular means, through which Ford acquired that knowledge, not only should she be able to say so (“I knew him well enough to recognize him in the bedroom because Squee talked about him a few times, and pointed him out once to me by name,” for instance), but Squee might be able to corroborate that, if it’s true. The foundation can come from either her or from Squee. But it has to come from someone, and it can’t be based on an invitation for the jurors to “connect the dots” based on their own guess as to what is or isn’t likely.

    It would be a fundamental denial of due process in a criminal case, and it is fundamentally unfair even in this Senate Judiciary Committee, to permit Ford to say, “Yes, I know it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked me, because I knew him: we’d been to some of the same parties.”

    That’s slightly closer to a predicate than if she’d said, “We both lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, and that’s how we knew each other.” It still doesn’t explain at all how the name actually came to be reliably attached in her memory to a particular face so that when she saw that same face again, she could say, “That guy’s name is Brett Kavanaugh.”

    The FBI certainly should have asked Squee, “Mr. Garrett, did you ever introduce your friend Brett Kavanaugh to your friend and sometimes dating-partner now known as Christine Blasey Ford? Did you ever point him out to her by name, even without introducing them?” He might have a clear recollection today that he never so identified Kavanaugh to Ford; or he might say he has no recollection either way; or he might say, “Yes, I did.” Any of those answers is interesting. If he gave the last one, though, that should be in the interview report, and Blumenthal would have seen it and been shouting about it to the world while he and his buddies were rending their clothing and gnashing their teeth about this vote going forward.

    I can’t explain it any better than this.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  151. republicans now being warned to be careful when knocking on voters doors. also when putting up campaign signs as hit and run driver has already tried but missed as young lds member jumped out of the way.

    lany (f81d1e)

  152. Lock them up to save America

    mg (f0a1d2)

  153. There is a actually a rule about this, which I ought to have cited & quoted sooner, specifically, Federal Rule of Evidence 901, “Authenticating or Identifying Evidence”:

    (a) In General. To satisfy the requirement of authenticating or identifying an item of evidence, the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is.

    (b) Examples. The following are examples only — not a complete list — of evidence that satisfies the requirement:

    ….

    (6) Evidence About a Telephone Conversation. For a telephone conversation, evidence that a call was made to the number assigned at the time to:

    (A) a particular person, if circumstances, including self-identification, show that the person answering was the one called; or

    (B) a particular business, if the call was made to a business and the call related to business reasonably transacted over the telephone.

    The phone call example is a good one. In the first place, it confirms that even though the rule general rule refers to “an item of evidence,” that includes evidence of an identification. And evidence about a phone conversation requires a predicate for an identification that doesn’t involve or depend upon seeing or recognizing a face. People dial wrong numbers; sometimes they guess wrongly about who’s just answered; sometimes the people on the other end may pretend to be someone they’re not. It’s not a hard predicate to satisfy; but the step can’t be skipped, or the evidence is not admissible.

    Using the general rule: The proponent, here Ford and her lawyers, had an obligation to produce sufficient evidence to support a finding that the she had a basis for identifying the guy who attacked her with the name Brett Kavanaugh and the person bearing that name who was under consideration by the Committee. She’s failed.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  154. (In #160 I missed a blockquote close tag, and beginning with “The phone call example is a good one,” the rest of that comment is not a quote of the rule, but rather from me.)

    Beldar (fa637a)

  155. chels
    @thefunnymuggle

    Try and convince me these people are sane. I dare you.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/thefunnymuggle/status/1048711553967689728

    harkin (f2bc98)

  156. Republican senators met that night just off the Capitol Rotunda. Ms. Collins said she would find it hard to vote yes without a sworn statement from Judge Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge denying that he saw what Dr. Blasey described. Aides to Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Judiciary chairman, got a fresh statement from Mr. Judge within three hours to satisfy her.”

    From an article about Kavanaugh’s angry retort turning the tables in The New York Times that starts out fairly even and benign but ends like a DNC press release.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/us/politics/kavanaugh-vote-confirmation-process.html#click=https://t.co/gXPO3UB7mG

    harkin (f2bc98)

  157. Oh! And have you started it, Kevin M?

    Not quite yet. I’m awaiting my 4K TV set (Sony OLED) which should arrive Wednesday.

    Kevin M (d6cbf1)

  158. @157 & 160 Beldar First off, thank you for the detailed explanation re: the issue w/ post 17. You’ve spelt it out clearly, and in fact the explanation is in accord with my understanding of what your position was (in gross terms, at least), after I had originally read post 17.

    I do appreciate the sincere effort to educate me (and/or others). That said, you have not convinced me that you’re more in the right and that I’m more in the wrong. Both on the “main point” (the “legally point”) and on several others.

    I say this notwithstanding the fact that you no doubt have considerably more trial experience than do I. And perhaps it will turn out that at the end of the day everyone (save me) will join in a chorus of yeah, on that point at least, Q! proved to be as uneducable as a sack of rocks, or that everyone including me will say boy, but it took Q! ages to get the rocks out of his head.

    Re: the notion that in a trial scenario, the judge would sustain an objection to Ford’s testifying that Brett Kavanaugh was her assailant, on the grounds of lack of foundation, I frankly find unbelievable. Indeed, I can scarcely believe that an attorney would raise such an objection, and if he did, I am confident that the judge would over-rule, and state that that was something that the objecting attorney could inquire into on cross, but that the objection was not well-taken. Again, I concede your no-doubt much greater trial experience, but for what it’s worth, a Fastcase search in Arizona (me) and Texas (you) with the following query yields 4 returns, none of which were (from the blurbs) helpful to your position.

    (“lack of foundation”) w/17 (identi*)

    Obviously this is far from the be-all-and-end-all of legal research on the subject, but I would be most obliged if you could point me to any reported decision which you believe supports your broad-brush position on the “foundational impropriety” of Ford testifying that she knew it was BK who attacked her because she knew the name of the person, and it was BK.

    In this regard, recall that Ford testified as follows:

    FORD: During my time at this school, girls at Holton-Arms frequently met and became friendly with boys from all-boys schools in the area, including the Landon School, Georgetown Prep, Gonzaga High School, as well as our country clubs and other places where kids and families socialized. This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me.

    During my freshman and sophomore school years, when I was 14 and 15 years old, my group of friends intersected with Brett and his friends for a short period of time. I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett’s for a short time during my freshman and sophomore year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended. We did not know each other well, but I knew him and he knew me.

    As I say, I simply cannot believe any judge would entertain an objection raised immediately after the words of the first sentence were uttered, nor that she would sustain such an objection (for example) at the end of the second, or the third, or the fourth, and order the witness’s answer stricken.

    Please, please, if there is governing authority out there (from *any* jurisdiction, but preferably Texas, I suppose), please educate me. We both have Fastcase & I don’t have access to any other subscription service, so authority outside of its database will obviously be much less helpful or perhaps of no help at all. I won’t necessarily be “happy” to be corrected, but I’ve been wrong before, and as a rule I like to at least indulge the notion that I’m pretty fair-minded. Which is not to say, of course, that if you should proffer authority which (imo) is not on point or which is fairly distinguishable, that I would not argue accordingly.

    Now Attorney Mitchell certainly could have crossed Ford on this (Ford’s coming to know K, and that “K was K”) – and perhaps she did – but I suspect that that was among the very least of her concerns, if on her radar at all. (And yes, the format was not a trial, and very artificial, blah blah blah)

    But (for the reasons expressed above) I must disagree with your statement that:

    It would be a fundamental denial of due process in a criminal case, and it is fundamentally unfair even in this Senate Judiciary Committee, to permit Ford to say, “Yes, I know it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked me, because I knew him: we’d been to some of the same parties.”

    if, in so writing, you are asserting (as you apparently are) that Ford’s testimony (reproduced, supra), was “fundamentally unfair.”

    Turning to some other points you make, it may not surprise you that I find frankly astonishing that you (or anyone) should hold the opinion that “[Garrett] might have a clear recollection today that he never so identified Kavanaugh to Ford”. 36 years after the fact! A clear recollection of something that did not happen and which it would be astounding for most everyone to have remembered?! Now, I certainly cannot claim a great memory for many things, but I have not found that I am significantly out of the normal range. Yet, if you asked me, how did I meet any of my friends or acquaintances in high school – some 50 years ago – about as good as I could do is to say, well . . . it must have been in high school sometime, but how, exactly? — no recollection; sorry; not a whisper of an independent memory [fn 1]. Actually, the best I could do would be with a real cute (and smart) girl in 1st or 2d year Spanish, whose name (both front and back) is long gone, but who was (as I say) very good looking, smart as a whip, and (now that I think of it, or imagine that I remember) was one of the better students. (Oh, and now that I think on it, there was another girl, funny little redhead, moved from Jersey City (what an accent)! Remember her name too; English class 11th or 12th grade; more details than that though . . . like the dodo . . .)

    So, when you proclaim that “[Ford] should be able to say [which particular “vector” it was that she came to know that the walking-talking-humanoid that was Brett Kavanaugh had the name “Brett Kavanaugh”]” (emph. added), I can only say Pshaw! Stuff and Nonsense! “Should” simply doesn’t enter into it, which is not to say that she might have a “particular” memory in that regard, more or less vague — the vaguest being something along the lines of “well, it must have been -slash- probably was in relation to Chris, but more detail than that . . . I have no clue” In my experience, Counselor, that sort of recollection is much more common than not, for such ancient events. Much more.

    Finally, you address “the Blumenthal question” in your 2d to last paragraph, and especially the last sentence thereof. Again, I appologize for being so dense, but you’re going to have to be a bit more explicit as to why that particular answer-in-question would have been so noteworthy and voiceworthy, by Blumenthal’s lights. I.e., I don’t follow.

    PS. Re: Rule 901, maybe that’s a good place to start re: you finding authority to back up your position. I’ll spend a little time on it as well. (But frankly, the ball’s properly in your court, Counselor.)

    ………….
    [fn 1 Though, it’s certainly not out of my and other human’s experience that even as to a memory that cannot be “independently generated/accessed”, someone else who does remember a shared experience will say such-and-such, which jogs the otherwise buried memory free.]

    Q! (86710c)

  159. Holton arms were a great group to party with like the ski bunnies from hot dog the movie:

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/seedpods_from_the_garden_of_stupid.html

    Narciso (d1f714)

  160. Four score and ten days ago, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for Associated Justice to the United States Supreme Court. A great struggle ensued which tested the Democratic Smear Machine’s sliminess to its lowest nadir.

    Now that struggle is ended, and we whupped their miserable leftie heinies.

    With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to reverse Griggs v. Duke Power Co., Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Grutter v. Bollinger, U.S v. Windsor, and Hodges V. Obergefell, so that government of the sane, for the sane, by the sane, shall not perish from the face of America for at least a few more years.

    nk (dbc370)

  161. Four score and ten days ago, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for Associated Justice to the United States Supreme Court. A great struggle ensued which tested the Democratic Smear Machine’s sliminess to its lowest nadir.

    Now that struggle is ended, and we whupped their miserable leftie behinds.

    With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to reverse Griggs v. Duke Power Co., Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Grutter v. Bollinger, U.S v. Windsor, and Hodges V. Obergefell, so that government of the sane, for the sane, by the sane, shall not perish from the face of America for at least a few more years.

    nk (dbc370)

  162. It’s like one of those time dilation exercise when years go by.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  163. I forgot New York Times v. Sulivan.

    BTW, it’s your site and your sensibilities, Patterico, but I was surprised that the WWI word for a German, short for Heinrich, which became slang for gluteus maximus, tripped the moderation filter.

    nk (dbc370)

  164. @120 and @165. In the first post it sounds like you’re truly baffled about the entire idea of laying a foundation for evidence but in the second you display some understanding of the objection and the ability to do some research. I commend your ability and willingness to educate yourself so quickly. I can’t speak for TX and AZ but I wouldn’t expect to see many hits on lack of foundation in my area simply because laying the foundation should be easy to do and attorneys are taught to do it as a matter of course.

    Which is, I took to be, the point. It isn’t hard for Ford to lay a foundation here.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  165. This was one of the hard partying gals who signed the open letter:

    Samantha Guerry (Semerad), 52 – Bethesda, MD | MyLife.com™ Background Profile
    https://www.mylife.com/samantha-guerry/e340131397932

    Narciso (d1f714)

  166. @120.

    One might as well say (I think) that Ford failed to establish a “predicate” for her assertion that someone forced her down on the bed, because she did not explain how it came to pass that she knew that the piece of furniture she was forced down on was “a bed”.

    Bed is a common word and is an object that in one form or another everyone uses, on average, once a day. It can safely be considered common knowledge for anyone capable of having a conversation and competent to give testimony.

    The name attached to a person is not common knowledge.

    It is ridiculous to ask someone how they know what a bed is. I would expect “and how did you come to know X” or some variation to be a reasonable question to ask a witness.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  167. I understand that Senate proceedings are oftentimes more theater than substantive inquiries for truth, but why weren’t all of the principals deposed prior to the hearing? Yes it takes time to coordinate and execute but it would have established the minimum factual tier for moving forward. Obviously Kavanaugh was helped by having as many outstanding questions left open as possible. Thus, we can still exasperatingly ask, did she even know him? It’s stunning to me that we know pretty well from Kavanaugh’s records who was in his circle circa 1982, but to this point we don’t know who was in Ford’s circle except for Keyser. But if there were more people who could provide minimal corroboration, certainly her lawyers had obtained these names and could solicit witness statements establishing Kavanaugh and Ford at parties together. No statements even from siblings about a noticed change in behavior, mood, or academic performance. The fact that we have not seen any of this remains a pretty big red flag.

    I guess we will eventually see interview transcripts for Judge, Keyser, Smyth, and Garrett, but if there was any substantive corroboration, wouldn’t this have been surreptitiously leaked before the vote to put pressure on Manchin, Collins, and Flake? Yet…nothing.Not even last minute sworn statement by Ford identifying some potential leads. It’s not just thin, it’s emaciatingly thin.

    AJ_Liberty (165d19)

  168. “Bed is a common word and is an object that in one form or another everyone uses, on average, once a day. It can safely be considered common knowledge for anyone capable of having a conversation and competent to give testimony.

    The name attached to a person is not common knowledge.”

    You had to explain this……

    harkin (7f4688)

  169. @170. I also wouldn’t expect many hits on the exact phrase “lack of foundation” because I don’t think that’s an actual objection. Maybe something more specific, i.e. speculation or lack of personal knowledge (602). I suppose there are different ways to say that and different courts might allow a variety of versions.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  170. @175 (for example) frosty .. All due respect, it sounds like you’re likely not an attorney and not otherwise trained in the law, so you may want to reconsider somewhat your speculation on the legal issues under discussion (and the profitability of your devoting time to them). Feel free to do what you want, of course, but . . .

    With respect to your comment I also wouldn’t expect many hits on the exact phrase “lack of foundation” because I don’t think that’s an actual objection, a down and dirty Fastcase search (Az and Texas databases only) with the query (“lack of foundation”) w/17 object* yields 123 returns, the first “blurb” or “headnote return” of which reads as follows:

    Darnell v. State (Tex. App., 2012) February 28, 2012
    nothing to suggest that a predicate could not have been laid for the video by witness testimony that the matter is what it is claimed to be. See Tex. R. Evid. 901(b)(1); see also Whitmore v. State, Nos. 05-07-00292-CR, 05-07-00293-CR, 2007 WL 3293640, at *2-3 (Tex. App.—Dallas Nov. 8, 2007, no pet.) (not designated for publication) (no ineffective assistance based on failure to object to lack of foundation [Emph. added]

    Regards.

    Q! (86710c)

  171. As much as I’ve always understood – intellectually but not viscerally – how you couldn’t vote for Trump in 2016, I hope you are able to get to a different spot in 2020. I’m in NY so my presidential vote wasn’t going to count for Electoral College purposes. Having concluded from my wasted 3rd party votes in 1976 that nobody noticed the 3rd party votes I concluded that the second most important election number after the Electoral College total would be the number of opposition votes for the main opposition party. Even as a Californian you felt differently.

    The behavior of the Dems during the Kavanaugh confirmation exceeded some (but not all) of my worst fears. I can’t stop thinking that with all of Trump’s flaws, these people would be in total control today if Hillary had won. Their complete contempt for normal behavior is beyond even Trump’s difficult-to-accept behavior. In spite of himself, Trump has obeyed the courts and the law. He’s talked big about doing this to one person or that to the other person or that he’s going to figure out how to intimidate this group or that group but it’s all been bluster. Unpresidential? Absolutely? Moral basement? Maybe but not the moral cesspool.

    Any port in a storm? Yes, for me again in 2020. I very much hope all the never-Trumpers think about the alternatives. We can survive another Trump term. I don’t know if we can survive the alternative.

    Lazlo Toth (5c011f)

  172. All due respect, it sounds like you’re likely not an attorney and not otherwise trained in the law, so you may want to reconsider somewhat your speculation on the legal issues under discussion (and the profitability of your devoting time to them). Feel free to do what you want, of course, but . . .

    With respect to your comment I also wouldn’t expect many hits on the exact phrase “lack of foundation” because I don’t think that’s an actual objection, a down and dirty Fastcase search

    That’s two very funny paragraphs when put together. One mocking someone for offering legal opinions without being a lawyer, follower inmediateky by Twitter-lawyer-style opining (“I don’t think this very common objection is actually an objection because of this Internet search I did!”).

    Maybe you don’t understand Beldar’s argument because you don’t understand the concept of laying a foundation (or, if you like, a factual predicate) for a statement.

    Anyway, the first paragraph is also overly personal. Tone it down.

    Patterico (ea0387)

  173. Lazlo – Erick Erickson (a Never Trumper) echoes your sentiments:

    Trump 2020?

    I have wobbled back and forth on the idea of supporting President Trump in 2020. I opposed him in 2016 and voted third party. The candidate I supported, Evan McMullin, has, like so many others, abandoned all his values as his hatred of Trump poisons his conscience. I dare say the worst mistake in my life was not climbing a mountain only to remember I was scared of heights or playing with a scalpel that nearly cut off my finger as a kid. It was voting for McMullin……

    ……..Frankly, Trump does not have the character or strong Christian faith I prefer in a President. But he is positively angelic compared to his political opponents and the press. Between Trump and his opposition, I would rather vote for him, despite his flaws, than his opponents who want a flawless progressive utopia. Trump is neither an ambassador for my values nor the articulate champion of my principles I would prefer. But he is a safe harbor in a progressive storm that seeks to both destroy my values and upend our constitutional republic.

    https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/erick-erickson/trump-2020-o6THPVgsn0aDRZcARyWq_A/

    harkin (7f4688)

  174. “Once the party of the working man, Democrats have become the party of the screaming woman. Trump has literally driven them insane.”

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  175. 180 – whomever it was who christened the affair Kavanaugh a ‘National IQ Test’ really hit the nail.

    harkin (7f4688)

  176. 181… Banshee Donkey!!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  177. Q!, I’ve had you on my list of filtered people because I came to the conclusion long ago that you don’t argue in good faith. I regret investing any time trying to further explain something to you as fundamental as evidentiary foundations. You say you think no lawyer would object. I say in a case of disputed identity — which this is, because Kavanaugh says he does not know her, and she’s yet to establish how she knew him, and “some parties” doesn’t do it — a lawyer who didn’t object would be guilty of malpractice.

    This concludes our discussion — on this matter, and all others.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  178. Dream ticket!!!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  179. The democrat women remind me of the Wicked Witch of the West.

    mg (9e54f8)

  180. Too funny, Col.

    mg (9e54f8)

  181. Q!’s comment re: lack of foundation was quoting frosty in the previous comment. frosty was the one who didn’t believe “lack of foundation” to be a real objection.

    Leviticus (52e1fd)

  182. It would have been easy for her to say: “I remember his face. I have strong reasons to. It hasn’t changed that much with age.” Admissible; weight up to trier of fact. It would make no difference when, where or how she had learned his name. In fact, she could have merely said “I remember his face”, and that would be sufficient foundation.

    I only listened to her testimony up to the word “caffeine”. Did she say anything that’s close to the above? And if not, “Wadda hey, lady?”

    nk (dbc370)

  183. Paul Ryan should be held accountable if the republicans lose the house. This piece of dirt has did zero to help the true American voter. Such a disgraceful human.

    mg (9e54f8)

  184. #157
    Beldar

    Thanks

    Now I get it

    After Ford’s testimony my thoughts were that she’d layered Kavanaugh into the experience she was describing (even the experience was suspect in the sense of personal experience and/or professional experience) and now I see that she was cut and pasting Kavanaughs name into the story, but was unable to also layer in a foundation as to how she actually knew him.

    If I understand you correctly, I’d help myself understand more completely by thinking of it as on of those cut and paste(s) where the font is a little off, or like the Bush memos where the type font was not in existence as of the date of the memo. What should be a seamless fit is not, and whats more it can never really fit any more than doctoring a puzzle piece can finish a puzzle

    steveg (a9dcab)

  185. @176. It’s possible that 123 hits counts as many. But many and none are different words. An appeal claiming it wasn’t used, as part of an ineffective assistant claim, doesn’t support the argument that it is a common objection at trial. I wonder how many of those hits are criminal defendants on appeal throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

    And it’s a fair point that I don’t know TX or AZ rules of evidence. But I don’t think that’s required to notice that in the earlier post you used one search to establish that they are rare and then later used a different search to establish that wouldn’t expect many (a longer way to say rare) is unreasonable.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  186. I have to say, this is a substantial victory for Trump that other Republican presidents probably wouldn’t have gotten. Ted Cruz, sure, he would have stuck it out, but other than him, I think many would have folded.

    It remains to be seen if Kavanaugh turns out to be a great Justice. I don’t respect him, but then all I know of him is how he reacted under fire. What really matters is if he’s the next Souter or Kennedy, or if he’s the next Alito or Scalia.

    I believe this debate became so ugly because it was so critical. It’s the swing vote, and therefore probably the most powerful act of Trump’s presidency, and has real potential to change a lot of things. Instead, the focus was this sleaziness. I think accusations like this probably come up more often than we realize, but Feinstein’s office decided this time it was justified to take it a lot farther A lot of people, including families, are paying for that. And long-term, we make our ruling class even weirder, even more isolated, and even more elitist.

    A whole lot of ambitious people watching this today will make a decision to live their lives like Mike Pence. To some extent, that can be harmful if our justices don’t have a common experience to the rest of us. I see how Ted Cruz’s family was attacked by millions of people and realize most normal people would never run for high office.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  187. @188. If that’s was how I presented my argument then I would like to clarify. I don’t think doing a search for the phrase “lack of foundation” is a meaningful data point. I think there are a variety of ways to object to what would be a lack of foundation, e.g. speculation or lack of personal knowledge, etc. I’m not making the argument that it is not an objection, I’m arguing that attacking foundation can be done in ways that wouldn’t show up in a search for the phrase “lack of foundation”.

    But that is what I understood to be the argument in @165. The claim is made that “lack of foundation” is uncommon or unlikely against witness identification by doing a simple search.

    My argument is that there are a variety of reasons that a low hit result from a quick and dirty search for “lack of foundation” doesn’t support the argument being made.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  188. Ford and all of Kavanaugh’s other accusers have routinely included in their own statements to the Committee factual assertions for which no predicate, no foundation, no authentication, no showing of personal knowledge, has been made. Take, for example, Ford’s assertion that Kavanaugh and Judge had been drinking before the party. How does she know that? She was never asked, no objection was ever made, no ruling ever obtained.

    My very, very confident guess is that when asked, she would have said, “Because they were obviously drunk when I first saw them.” But that gets us into her ability to perceive blood alcohol levels from across the room, doesn’t it? And that’s something neither she nor any other witness can give direct evidence for simply based upon observation. Moreover, unless she’d been tailing them all day, observing them through binoculars from a parked car or something, she has no personal knowledge of where they’d been or what they’d been doing. And thus, no trial judge would have permitted her testimony that they’d been drinking before to stand.

    Instead, a judge might, and probably would, have permitted testimony to the effect that she observed them to be stumbling, to have slurred speech, to be laughing and otherwise behaving as if they were uninhibited. In that event, though, the question arises: Is prior consumption of alcohol the only explanation for teenaged boys being giddy, or laughing, or even slurring their speech? How reliable were her observations, and was her own capacity to observe affected? And when that context is all considered, her claim that she somehow knows they’d been drinking before they arrived suddenly becomes a guess, by her, from ambiguous circumstances. Instead of unchallenged evidence, the factfinder now has challenged evidence, the weight of which is going to vary dramatically according to the circumstances.

    I tried a dram shop case some years ago which I’ve commented about and linked before here, as co-first chair with a partner from my then-firm’s Austin office. (She didn’t need me for the resulting appeal, although I did review & comment on her excellent, winning brief.) In dram shop litigation, the question is typically whether the provider of alcoholic beverages (i.e., the dram shop, in the quaint language of Olde England), through its employees, continued providing even after “it was apparent to the provider that the individual being sold, served, or provided with an alcoholic beverage was obviously intoxicated to the extent that he presented a clear danger to himself and others.”

    I assure you that both sides were hyper-vigilant about foundations being laid, and about confining the other sides’ witnesses’ testimony strictly to facts that they could speak about from personal knowledge, without speculating and without relying on inferences to reach conclusions. Some witnesses tried to give testimony just like Ford’s, about what other people did when outside the witnesses’ presence, and every objection to such testimony was sustained. But none of those rulings were challenged on appeal, and the appellate decision in the case doesn’t mention any of them, because they were so very basic, and the trial judge’s rulings on such objections so obviously correct, that our opponents would have shown themselves to be great fools and wasters of the appellate court’s time by complaining about those rulings.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  189. @178 Patterico .. I was being wholly sincere and not mocking anyone in any respect in my post at 175. Just offering a suggestion, and one reason lying behind my suggestion (i.e., with regards to frosty’s prior speculation that “lack of foundation” was not a legitimate objection). As Leviticus suggested (if I read him aright), I believe you misread my post.

    @184 Beldar. Feel free, of course, to not engage and accuse me of bad faith argumentation, as the reason for the non-engagement. If I were in your shoes and felt aggrieved, however, I would spend a little time to show that blackguard Q! (and his little dog too, and the rest of the commenters!) just how wrong and blackguardy Q! was, by finding a case or a dozen which proved my position, and disproved his. By Jove.

    Whether I am a scoundrel or not (I vote not), I do note (and am absolutely unsurprised in being able to note) that you have not risen to the occasion, to provide even a single reported decision which arguably supports your position in the least, as to the sort of fact scenario under discussion. In my Reply Brief (if we were briefing this), of course I would characterize that (and rightly so) as a concession by opposing counsel.

    All that said, of course I may be wrong. I have, however, been proffered absolutely no reason to believe that I am. Kind of surprising, if in fact I am wrong: — Given the tens of thousands of cases out there (and the treatises as well, of course), and given your interest, and given the fact that there seem to be at least a handful of attorneys here other than yourself and me, that should be able to shake the research tree and demonstrate without too much difficulty one would imagine (& with whatever might be the achievable degree of on-pointedness) how far I’ve fallen into error. If, in fact, I’ve erred.

    Regards.

    Q! (86710c)

  190. I will work toward helping this comments section be a less insulting place by addressing the people who are genuinely promoting debate instead of flinging political feces around.

    My feelings about the current issue are independent of gender or #BelieverHer or #DontJudge or whatever hashtag is most popular now.

    The concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is critical. Folks can claim it doesn’t apply in this context (though that astounds me), but they NEED to consider how it works when the shoe is on the other foot.

    When Reid nuked the filibuster, the Right warned the Left. The Left didn’t believe it.

    And it works both ways.

    What this really is, is tribalism. “My” tribe is good, and “your” tribe is bad. “My” tribe is smart, educated, concerned with the rights of others, and fair-minded. “Your” tribe is stupid, ignorant, white supremacist, and selfish. And from there, the “other side” gets worse and worse. As with Biden claiming that Romney was coming back to “put chains” on Blacks (oh, good Lord). And when enough people simply mindlessly mouth bumper sticker thinking (which is the reason I detest the childish nicknames and insults that abound here and in politics), it is easier and easier to move toward violence. There have been posters here who make jokes about killing their opponents.

    Do they mean it? I doubt it.

    But the hatefulness soaks into the body politic, like the psychological sewage it is. It can and will lead to violence.

    The problem, of course, is our Party system with their media handmaidens. The Big Boys and Big Girls on BOTH sides care only about power these days. So the more extreme the headlines, the more clicks. The more over the top the insults, the more outrage, and thus more clicks. Und so weiter.

    We need to be able to talk to one another with respect. Tell each other what we believe in (not shout slogans) and why. Be held accountable for our words. And most of all, to be kind.

    That doesn’t fit the weird pseudo-macho word of politics. But the alternative will not be pleasant. Worse than 1968.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  191. I think that “innocent until proven guilty” should always be the default, but innocence/guilt is only binary in a criminal context. Everywhere else, it’s a spectrum.

    Leviticus (52e1fd)

  192. But I agree with Simon Jester that the major underlying problem in our politics is our two-party system.

    Leviticus (52e1fd)

  193. George H. W. Bush held firm with Clarence Thomas. George W. Bush quietly lobbied for Kavanaugh, though there was nothing in it for him personally, and it did benefit Trump. It’s unlikely that Trump would do anything so magnanimous.

    When Kavanaugh was nominated, he looked like the safest, most establishmentarian choice — not a bold, heroic choice.

    It’s weird to suggest that someone who not long ago favored Democrats was more resolute in getting a relatively conservative justice onto the Court than any lifelong Republican could ever have been, or that any resolve on the part of senators must owe to the inspiring example of Trump’s self-glorifying tweets.

    This is a game that cultists play: claiming that anything good that happens in a Trump presidency could not possibly have happened under anyone else. It’s rubbish. Meanwhile, they’re silent about policy reversals and cave-ins by Trump. The swagger is what matters.

    Radegunda (b0ffbf)

  194. The NYT saw fit to publish this screed from a Democrat strategist, the link at the bottom will take you to a frisking by Rod Dreher, who writes

    “I’d like fair-minded liberal readers to take a look at this op-ed from The New York Times, and consider that this is exactly the kind of left-wing racist rant that drives many of us white people into the arms of the Republican Party — not out of any particular love for the GOP, but out of fear of what this progressive racism would do in power. Alexis Grenell, the author, is a white woman and a Democratic strategist. Here’s the headline on her article. Note well that authors do not choose their headlines. This was written by someone at the Times”:

    “After a confirmation process where women all but slit their wrists, letting their stories of sexual trauma run like rivers of blood through the Capitol, the Senate still voted to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. With the exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all the women in the Republican conference caved, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who held out until the bitter end.

    These women are gender traitors, to borrow a term from the dystopian TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” They’ve made standing by the patriarchy a full-time job. The women who support them show up at the Capitol wearing “Women for Kavanaugh” T-shirts, but also probably tell their daughters to put on less revealing clothes when they go out.

    But the people who scare me the most are the mothers, sisters and wives of those young men, because my stupid uterus still holds out some insane hope of solidarity.

    We’re talking about white women. The same 53 percent who put their racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status in 2016 by voting to uphold a system that values only their whiteness, just as they have for decades. White women have broken for Democratic presidential candidates only twice: in the 1964 and 1996 elections, according to an analysis by Jane Junn, a political scientist at the University of Southern California.

    Women of color, and specifically black women, make the margin of difference for Democrats. The voting patterns of white women and white men mirror each other much more closely, and they tend to cast their ballots for Republicans. The gender gap in politics is really a color line.

    That’s because white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain. In return they’re placed on a pedestal to be “cherished and revered,” as Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said about women, but all the while denied basic rights.

    This blood pact between white men and white women is at issue in the November midterms. President Trump knows it, and at that Tuesday news conference, he signaled to white women to hold the line: “The people that have complained to me about it the most about what’s happening are women. Women are very angry,” he said. “I have men that don’t like it, but I have women that are incensed at what’s going on.”

    I’m sure he does “have” them; game girls will defend their privilege to the death.”

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/progressive-tribalism-beats-the-war-drums/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  195. We had a two party system when prospective justices were interviewed in a professional and adult manner with respect and deference.

    I really only see one side becoming deranged, childish and unlawful regarding SCOTUS nominations, I really don’t see what the number of parties has to do with it.

    I really think Dustin has it right when he says this is all about change. The Dems no way no how want to decrease the liberal weight on the court. The Ford accusations had nothing to do with reality (regardless the strange musings on the weirdness of the ruling class) and everything to do with delay, distort and derail.

    harkin (7f4688)

  196. I think that “innocent until proven guilty” should always be the default, but innocence/guilt is only binary in a criminal context. Everywhere else, it’s a spectrum.

    *rolls eyes*

    Well, good luck adding “the Republicans refused to assume guilt on basically no evidence apart from the accusation because, you know, spectrum” to the eternal list of Democratic grievances.

    M Scott Eiland (b16b32)

  197. I am not a lawyer, as you are Leviticus. And I am aware of your long existing unhappiness with the two party system. The current mess has moved me in your direction on this.

    But…I had a loved one falsely accused of racism at a time when they were being considered for a particular administrative position. My loved one did not get the job. There was no recourse. The people who lied besmirched my loved one’s good name. Very few stood up. The people who made the charge never apologized, nor said they were wrong (though they were). So: no consequences for character assassination.

    Thus, I have probably a fevered view of this kind of thing. I saw someone on Twitter saying that Judge Kavanaugh only had a “a couple of weeks of discomforting news.” That made me angry. And that’s independent of whether or not Kavanaugh was a good choice for SCOTUS. This current drive for rumor-mill character assassination has to be stopped, by making the accusers responsible for their actions.

    Which may be impossible, I know.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  198. Oh, and I would love to have someone ask Feinstein and her cohort this question: “Please name a candidate for the Supreme Court of which you feel Republicans would approve. Why?” Because this has turned into some weirdo alphabetism.

    The same needs to be said for Team R, as well. Which “left of center” jurists would be acceptable?

    My fear is that both sides would shriek NONE OF THEM.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  199. 197:

    “Both-sides-ism”, “it’s all tribalism and Tribalism Is Bad” is a tempting solution but ultimately one that either doesn’t match reality or matches it incompletely at best. For instance, this is a head Star Wars writer whose ongoing rape of the English language is still going unanswered:

    https://i.imgur.com/VLcWBMb.jpg

    It is liberals who not only can’t understand conservatives but can’t even insult them properly (can’t ‘meme’, as some would put it) because they can’t even get into their heads or understand their thinking enough to come up with truly cutting insults that hurt them in places where they’re truly weak or failed. (The alt-right, for all its faults, never had this problem, and thus a small number of people were able to culturally and influentially punch way above their weight class by picking up weapons one side was too afraid and the other was too incompetent to deploy!)

    https://www.socialmatter.net/2018/10/01/the-rise-of-cultural-anarchism/

    “This, indeed, is the entire point of the #MeToo Movement. By embracing cultural anarchism, by throwing cultural bombs in crowded places and assassinating anyone who dares speak out against them, #MeToo manages to replicate the tactics of Bakunin’s terrorists transferred onto the new symbolic terrain of the culture wars.

    In the battle to transvalue Western morals, there are few tools as powerfully destructive as the [im]moral terrorism of politicized rape allegations. It can now be said, with reasonable certainly, that there is no earthly reason to live a moral life, to respect women, or to deal with honesty with others, as such a person will be treated the same as if they had done all the opposite. Leftism has done the impossible: they made Thrasymachus’s argument the stronger, and Socrates’s the weaker. It is best to actually be perfectly unjust while appearing to be perfectly just. Thus, this state of moral anarchy paves the way for the Revolution to come.”

    Let me be clear: Never claim collective responsibility when one side is clearly and consistently at fault, that is a slander on the collective and rightly seen as a sign of weakness. Strength is forcing your enemies to be held to account for their actions by any and every means you possess.

    The GOPe found this strength when the left went unequivocally after one of their own. Will this spirit remain the same when fighting for allies, countrymen, and voters, I wonder?

    Pencil-Necked Pundit (ada945)

  200. Both with Anita Hill and Professor Ford, we had women with accusations from well back beyond the normal amount of time that reasonable certainty could be proven, who tried to stay anonymous with the clear intent of trying to force the nominee to withdraw without having to face public scrutiny of their stories. Anonymity is 0 for 2 now. For future situations of this type, if accusers want their story to be given a full investigation with time to give all parties a fair shake in having it be part of the process, they need to come forward early in the process and make their names known–at least to the entire Judiciary Committee with permission to bring the FBI in. No nominee worth their salt is going to slink away into the night from an anonymous accusation–that should have been obvious after the Thomas/Hill hearings and it’s *really* obvious now.

    M Scott Eiland (b16b32)

  201. It’s difficult to find common ground with people who say Republicans will be killing women, forcing old folks to eat cat food as they take away their benefits and healthcare and all the rest of that. I wish that were not the case.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  202. Haiku @201. I love it! I mean the NYT Mean Girl article. My answer is: “From your lips to all women’s ears, honey. Stand with your man, ladies!”

    nk (dbc370)

  203. The first part of this is funny, but cut to the :37 mark for some true crazy: https://youtu.be/X8-4bpDXIiQ

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  204. Colonel, thank you for that link, from the bottom of my heart. Gutfield is always a good laugh, but THAT. WAS. AWESOME.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  205. You’re welcome, Simon, for more fun, cut to the 3:15 mark on this one: https://youtu.be/HlUC6gUfE7g

    There must be some hypnosis involved here, no? They are easily led…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  206. Perhaps – in this case – laughter is the best medicine…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  207. Cheers, Col.

    mg (9e54f8)

  208. “When the judge reacted the way any normal man with a spine would, and punched back against his tormentors, Demorats and the media allies complained about his “temperament,” as if the foremost qualification for public office is how much abuse Kavanaugh could endure — or, to use the mot de jour much beloved by the Left, “survive.” Now they are complaining that the Court, with Kavanaugh’s ascension to its ranks, has lost “legitimacy,” and will continue to smear him with baseless charges, operating along well-orchestrated principles of Leftist argumentation:

    1. Post a counter-factual (Kavanaugh is a rapist)
    2. Argue it as if it were prima facie true
    3. Win by any means necessary”

    — Michael Walsh

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  209. I always thought Eddie Haskell was a fictional character. Obviously, I was wrong.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  210. @198. ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’– eh, Leviticus.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  211. I think that “innocent until proven guilty” should always be the default, but innocence/guilt is only binary in a criminal context. Everywhere else, it’s a spectrum.

    Kavanugh must be innocent of something, Leviticus.

    nk (dbc370)

  212. They want to wipe out our way if life, its the jacobin/bolshevik way, it doesn’t matter what comes after.
    In Brazil the seemingly pure union leader and ex guerilla leader and fir good measure the speaker of the house all were wrapped up in the car wash this is why an unpolished fellow like bolsanero has a chance. Ruth badger ginsburg to use one example thinks the Egyptian nasserite constitution is better than the american

    narciso (d1f714)

  213. Jewel Osco today used a cult-like force to make me buy two bags of Milano cookies. Milk chocolate. It put them on sale.

    nk (dbc370)

  214. Love wins was about having the state force private businesses and persons to sanction conduct deemed at the very least offensive to tradition, believe every women, ask Karen monahan means there is no presumption of innocence
    even when there is no evidence, and so on. In contrast with persons who have engaged in acts like say attend a terrorist training camp, the burden of proof is on the finder of fact.

    narciso (d1f714)

  215. So take Abe zubeydah he was identified in that pdb the deems have waived like a straight a report card.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/410288-booker-we-are-not-defined-by-a-president-who-does-not-believe-women

    narciso (d1f714)

  216. i went to jewel in andersonville earlier this week for to get persimmons

    but they didn’t have persimmons

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  217. @179. Translation for EE, etc., – better to be aboard ship than left behind on the pier at Port Irrelevant, USA. See how they’re scribing after the midterms.

    Our Captain likes to chalk up wins. He’s not a conservative ideologue and w/Ol’Dead Fred’s bucks as a lifeboat, cut deals w/big city Dems all his adult life– for wins. If he can’t buy anyone off or rig the game, he’ll cut deals. He’s a pragmatist. Revisit what defined a ‘Rockefeller Republican’ back in the day. He’s comfortable sailing in those waters; even labeled himself more or less as one in ’88 and plus or minus the personal foibles, wears that windbreaker well. If/when there’s a sea change in Congress and the compass spins, he’ll alter course accordingly. All he has to do is weather Typhoon Mueller. For the wins.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  218. Good link Haiku, I got a very hearty laugh out of the reporter’s bemused little look to the side.

    It’s interesting that both sides say what Christoph is saying about never saying both sides are similar. I bet Alissa Milano says that too.

    but this is an issue where the GOP needs to go ahead and mimic the left. Not to the extent of smearing their judicial appointments with organized character assassination, but with rigorous rejection. I’d love it if the right made Wickard their version of Roe v Wade, and had hearings where they demanded an explanation for it from every democrat appointee.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  219. went to jewel in andersonville earlier this week for to get persimmons

    but they didn’t have persimmons

    happyfeet (28a91b) — 10/7/2018 @ 12:35 pm

    Andersonville?!!!???

    It’s going to a whole lot easier if you fess up right now.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  220. The fanatics who are crowing about the allegedly singular ballsy courage of Trump haven’t seemed to give much thought to the greater courage and fortitude of Kavanaugh. They can’t bear to see credit going to anyone but Trump.

    And it’s amusing how they decided that someone from the orbit of the hated Bushes must be a fantastic choice for S.C. because Trump nominated him (as an apparently safe option). In 2016 there were Trumpistas absurdly claiming that G. W. Bush’s reluctant endorsement of Cruz over Trump was proof that Cruz represented the evil Bushian GOPe cabal. Now Bush has helped get Trump’s nominee confirmed, and the cultists are sticking to their “horrible Bush vs. heroic Trump” formula.

    In the midst of what is otherwise a unifying moment on the right, the cultists insist on reopening division because of their unconditional, personal devotion to Trump, and their hatred of anyone not equally devoted.

    Radegunda (b0ffbf)

  221. Did you know that persimmon trees are where we get ebony wood from? I didn’t know that.

    nk (dbc370)

  222. 225… yes, that would be productive, Dustin. Even enjoyable…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  223. 227… let’s all try to get along.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  224. One of the greatest sounds in golf is long gone. Persimmon and a 1960’s Titelist !!

    mg (f0a1d2)

  225. 220… I have a feeling that Milano cookie would be a tough one to crack.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  226. I saw where they’re calling women who don’t want to see their men falsely accused “Mama Bears”? Anybody else see that?

    nk (dbc370)

  227. Has alyssa been possessed by aliens or Egyptian processes again (outer limits or charmed episode with oded fehr)

    narciso (d1f714)

  228. I honestly don’t know anything about this Alyssa Milano person and I have no intention of Googling her.

    nk (dbc370)

  229. LOL… much preferable to their Shrieking Harpy Donkeys

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  230. https://www.nps.gov/ande/index.htm

    Old white men want to know. And if you listen to Linda Sarsour we get our way, don’t we ladies? Don’t make me slap you.
    .
    No.

    Wait.

    That’s Keith Ellison.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  231. 235… watch the video, all you need to know…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  232. Meanwhile over in France weinstein is spelled tariq ramadan, the fellow Hillary fast tracked the visa for.

    narciso (d1f714)

  233. 234, the Dodgers got tired of passing her around. The Dodgers also serviced the Go-Gos.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  234. My lips are sealed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3kQlzOi27M

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  235. After the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas hearings more than a majority believed Clarence Thoomas and not anita Hill so the matter was dropped. Although slowly over the years they have bene convincing people Anita Hill told the truth.

    Here’s it more divided so Nadler may be almost forced to start an investigation of Dedms take the House..

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  236. Here you go, nk, from the NY Post:

    In Huntsville, Ala., mom Vickie Freeman had wept for joy as she watched Brett Kavanaugh testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    And now that he’s been confirmed as the country’s 114th Supreme Court justice, she has a name for herself and other Republican moms galvanized by the tense and partisan confirmation process.

    “We are the ‘Mama Bears,’ absolutely,” Freeman told The Post. “And it has really fired us up to vote.”

    The bruising Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings fueled feminist fury and Democrat disgust across the country — but the hearings also gave the GOP, and Republican mothers in particular, a sense of righteous anger that could turn midterm congressional races red.

    The concern for every mother – no matter what political stripe – should be that if a man can be found “guilty” based on unfounded allegations and unsubstantiated claims, then that means *every* male that “mama bears” care about, are in danger. This is a horrible path we are on.

    Further, if indeed, evidence and where it leads no longer matters, then kiss it all goodbye.

    Dana (023079)

  237. The fanatics who are crowing about the allegedly singular ballsy courage of Trump haven’t seemed to give much thought to the greater courage and fortitude of Kavanaugh. They can’t bear to see credit going to anyone but Trump.

    The cool thing about praise is that it’s not a zero sum. When praise does seem like a zero sum, that means there’s something insincere about it. I agree that Kavanaugh showed a lot of spine. No doubt he got some of that from a White House communicating support. We’ll never know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but I am sure Trump was telling Kavanaugh he had his back.

    In the midst of what is otherwise a unifying moment on the right,

    Hey, I’m right there with you. Same few bloggers as usual are using this the same way they use everything, to blast Nevertrumpers (like me). On the other hand, I was blasting Trump for making #metoo a thing, leading to Kavanaugh. It’s a two way street, and if we really do want to unify the right, we need to prioritize. There will never stop being opportunities to divide. A lot of the conservatives bashing other conservatives are actually being manipulative. I don’t mean a grand conspiracy of liberals (though there is that) but like Avenatti, happy to destroy his cause if he benefits personally).

    This episode really needs to be a wake up call. The political movements that would stomp on people really shouldn’t succeed, and can only succeed if we let it happen because we’re busy fighting each-other.

    Anyway, Kavanaugh on the Court means it’s 5-4 conservative. It’s replacing Kennedy with Kavanaugh. That’s a huge win. It’s much bigger than the last or next election day. I’m probably going to vote straight Team R, which I wouldn’t have said a month ago. Not because Trump is a great leader… he isn’t. Because we are really fighting something dark that let the mask slip this past month.

    No, I’m not naive and I was clear on who these guys were before this episode, obviously, but it’s one thing to see evil elements in both parties. It’s another to see them work so openly, like a lynch mob, to reshape policies that have nothing to do with the issue they are manipulating.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  238. The democrat/soros/media/google/facebook/Bezos party deserves time behind bars. No fines just time.

    mg (9e54f8)

  239. When you are right, you’re right.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  240. Proud to be part of the deplorable bitter clinging tribe.

    mg (9e54f8)

  241. i didn’t know about the ebony wood

    yes yes i live one neighborhood over from andersonville and it’s an easy walk there’s a produce place there called edgewater produce

    i went there to check for the persimmons first and jewel is right across the street from there

    both of them let me down

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  242. 250… we need a secret handshake!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  243. 238 – Oh Canada.

    Looking at most of the ‘men’ supporting tha #meetoo banshees is instructive.

    harkin (adce92)

  244. @244. “Mama Bear” ‘Republican mothers’ and ‘Democratic mothers’ as well, may want to revisit Bart’s own letter and associated tales w/hard drinking buddies from away back down the trail of that ‘horrible path’- back when he was just a playful cub, fresh out of the cave- before feigning fears or outrage:

    ‘I think we’re all unanimous that any girls we can beg to stay there are welcomed with open… . Anyway I think we’re all set. Remember that the eight of us are in charge – we get beds and we kick people out – no one else. The danger of eviction is great and that would suck because of the money and because of this week has great potential. (Interpret as wish.) I’m leaving for Ireland on Wed – the 8th so someone has to volunteer by then to be in charge of the money and signing lease. (It will still be in my name.)  FFFFF, Bart. P.S. It would probably be a good idea on Sat. the 18th to warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go 30 miles if…’

    “Through his lawyers, Judge Kavanaugh declined to comment for this article, other than to say of his letter: “This is a note I wrote to organize ‘Beach Week’ in the summer of 1983.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/brett-kavanaugh-georgetown-prep.html  

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  245. 252- with a firm grip!

    mg (9e54f8)

  246. Lol… yes

    Colonel Haiku (1fcc64)

  247. 254:

    “It’s much bigger than the last or next election day. I’m probably going to vote straight Team R, which I wouldn’t have said a month ago. Not because Trump is a great leader… he isn’t. Because we are really fighting something dark that let the mask slip this past month.”

    It was never leadership that the Republican party lacked. Plenty of leaders in the pipeline. It was fighting spirit, in the face of all possible attacks the Democrats could throw at them. Without that, all the leaders in the world can’t lead you anywhere.

    The Democrats may have reprehensible representatives across the board but they’re motivated by their own enforced alienation from normal society and the need to constantly lie to themselves and have others lie about them to motivate their own will to power.

    And only a strong and unapologetic preference for normality as such can bring enough populist energy to empower leaders whose preference is to otherwise placate, triangulate, and facilitate their own electoral destruction (as long as they get paid a good retirement at the end of the term!)

    254:
    ““Mama Bear” ‘Republican mothers’ and ‘Democratic mothers’ as well, may want to revisit Bart’s own letter””

    Reality Alert: They already know darn well what went on in college and they know darn well from personal experience who’s lying about it. When the Michael Avenattis of the world extrapolate from boilerplate frat boasting to THE NERDIEST AND WHITEST PREP SCHOOL BOYS AT THE NERDIEST AND WHITEST SCHOOL YOU KNOW WERE RUNNING ALL-YOU-CAN EAT RAPE TRAINS AT EVERY PARTY, you have the most direct counterexample possible to the old phrase ‘Rape is never funny’ even before Christine Ford put on the ‘chirpy recovering ditz’ act.

    Pencil-necked Pundit (e41917)

  248. “In the midst of what is otherwise a unifying moment on the right, the cultists insist on reopening division because of their unconditional, personal devotion to Trump, and their hatred of anyone not equally devoted.”
    Radegunda (b0ffbf) — 10/7/2018 @ 1:08 pm

    Right. Meanwhile, in the spirit of a “unifying moment”, the anti-Trump witch hunt continues, unlimited in scope and time….

    Munroe (235115)

  249. @257. Not to quibble, PNP, but believe you’ll discover that 1983 letter was quilled by a then recent HS graduate who had yet to attend college. Whether he was living at home during prep school is undetermined. Not that it matters anymore.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  250. All these suburban liberal mothers are real upset about Kavanuagh’s beer habit in HS and College and Trump’s consensual pu$$y grabbing. What will they ever do??

    So angry their uterus can’t be vacuumed! THE HORROR!

    I guess they will just pop a few more opiates, swill down a few bottles of wine then proclaim they recaptured virginity in all things vice while watching replays of the nut-jobs clawing away at the SCOTUS doors during confirmation.

    Bob the Builder (9af831)

  251. Nothing worse than white liberals from wealthy family. Especially the ones over 40.

    They’d be the first …

    Bob the Builder (9af831)

  252. They seem to have gone into I am legend mode at the court.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  253. Palate cleanser… https://youtu.be/IsWM-5670Rc

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  254. Narciso, she sold out and Pin (and Pen, for that matter) need to arrange an intervention
    – …http://uproxx.com/music/taylor-swift-midterm-elections-instagram/

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  255. “Not to quibble, PNP, but believe you’ll discover that 1983 letter was quilled by a then recent HS graduate who had yet to attend college. Whether he was living at home during prep school is undetermined. Not that it matters anymore.”

    The phrase you’re looking for is ‘not that it ever mattered.’ Mastery of the wink-wink nudge-nudge varsity voice in high school was ubiquitous back then and any other time and treating it as DARK EVIDENCE OF DIRTY DEALINGS absent any corroborating accounts is lazy, lazy, lazy.

    Pencil-necked Pundit (2c3f6d)

  256. Well, someone should have traced the miscreant’s Oxy (the benign kind of yore) or Clearasil purchases…usually an inverse relationship with “action” gotten.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  257. Sigh, I thought she was a sensible one.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  258. How is Justin Bieber voting?

    nk (dbc370)

  259. He’s Canadian, is my understanding.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  260. Then he should use a VPN when he comments on the internet. because in Canada he can be prosecuted for political incorrectness.

    nk (dbc370)

  261. There was an outbreak of bieber fever on Miami beach some years ago, class 4 pathogen.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  262. Depends if the uncles have more pull then the dad or the mistakenly assumed to be uncle Adam.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  263. Because I thought I saw the dead horse’s right ear twitch, I’m going to add one more rule reference, for which credit goes to frosty48, which mentioned it without elaboration in his #175 above. It’s Rule 602 of the Federal Rules of Evidence (which has close counterparts in many state compilations of evidentiary rules too), and it provides in pertinent part:

    A witness may testify to a matter only if evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter. Evidence to prove personal knowledge may consist of the witness’s own testimony…..

    This operates hand-in-glove with Rule 901 that I quoted above (#160) regarding authentication or identification of evidence: The predicate, or foundation, for a testimonial assertion must be based on personal knowledge, meaning something the witnesses has seen or done himself, and which therefore excludes hearsay and speculation.

    And finally: This bit was written by someone who insisted that I am, or perhaps that the law is, being overstrict in insisting that identifications have foundations like other evidentiary assertions:

    Actually, the best I could do would be with a real cute (and smart) girl in 1st or 2d year Spanish, whose name (both front and back) is long gone, but who was (as I say) very good looking, smart as a whip, and (now that I think of it, or imagine that I remember) was one of the better students.

    This is far, far more of a predicate for an identification of the writer’s subject; even without her name, we could cross-check the writer’s school records from 1st or 2d year Spanish, and look at the yearbook pictures, and check the grades from that class; we can at least attempt the effort to find corroboration.

    Again, what this shows is how ridiculously easy it is to lay some kind of predicate to show that an identification of a person isn’t based on speculation or guesses, but on facts; and again, as with Ford’s predicate for how she knew Chris Garrett too well to confuse him with anyone else, it’s the kind of association that a truthful witness testifying from memory (rather than guessing or speculating) typically has no trouble coming up with when there’s a dispute over an identification.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  264. Do either Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber have fans who are old enough to vote? For that matter, does Kanye West have fans who are not barred from voting due to legal disability?

    nk (dbc370)

  265. because in Canada he can be prosecuted for political incorrectness”.

    Didn’t some of those laws get watered down due to people like Mark Steyn speaking truth about a certain religion and fighting it in court?

    harkin (7f4688)

  266. And yet she couldn’t up with anything, Whelan in what I think was a presumption among someone he thought a friend, cane closer to the truth.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  267. For Beldar, in return for the 28 trombonists. Or, if you wish, a “white suburban voter” flash mob.

    nk (dbc370)

  268. Steyn was reviewing a dystopian novel by Robert ferrigno, just like he was agreeing with what another national review contributor was saying re mann

    Narciso (d1f714)

  269. Whelan’s theory wasn’t actually the ‘nonsensical conspiracy theory’ that everyone latched onto it as but half-formed hypotheses like it should really be given to the pre-de-vetted Jim Hofts and Mike Cernovichs and Thomas Wictors to merrily disseminate in the public consciousness so the mainstream media sharks can studiously ignore them unless they actually end up having merit.

    Pencil-necked Pundit (f41f19)

  270. …while Chicago get stuck with the Bucket Boys.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  271. I’m glad nk sounds like he gives two splits about Walkaway.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  272. 277-nk
    Bravo

    mg (9e54f8)

  273. MEANWHILE IN BRAZIL: Apparently they’re no fans of what happened in Venezuela and Lefty stabbings bring red waves far beyond the wound entry point-

    “Glenn Greenwald

    Verified account

    @ggreenwald
    4h4 hours ago
    More
    It’s hard to overstate how wildly and radically inaccurate all polling data was in Brazil – the most reliable polls off by 20 or more points consistently, across the country. A huge far-right wave magnitudes beyond what all polls predicted.”

    The Third World imbibes all the leftist “Big Data” and pollaganda dirty tricks and tactics taught in the West, except they’re so crude and incompetent at it that when they fail they’re exposed far more hilariously and comprehensively.

    And of course, it’s extremely ironic that Brazil, the state that so many globalists sought to set up as their preferred model for the US (so large a population, so many beautiful baked-in ethnic conflicts that technocrats could easily exploit,) is now having a Right resurgence that dwarfs the US!

    A single vulnerability in a one-sized fits all globalist model means that if one country can stop it, every single sovereign nation in the world can! Let none despair!

    Pencil-necked Pundit (4f675d)

  274. Thank you, mg. I’m emailing it to people, also.

    nk (dbc370)

  275. The Kavanaugh confirmation made me a die-hard Republican, urbanleftbehind. The only Democrat I will ever vote for again is my one friend who is a judge and that’s just a “Yes” on the retention ballot.

    nk (dbc370)

  276. That was fun to watch and listen to, nk! I loved the bass fiddles on the escalators. I confess, though, that particular music always puts me in mind of that great conservative woman, Bo Derek.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  277. Beldar, excellent points but we still don’t know if Ford could not establish a proper predicate or if she could have said more but it was deliberately withheld or carelessly ignored. The question is why withhold the details: Because they could have been easily rebutted? Or because they weren’t helpful to the Democrats’ delay strategy? Or something else, e.g., it wasn’t an issue to develop her story because no one cared if it was provable or true.

    DRJ (15874d)

  278. Because it was never intended as an accusation to be litigated, just one to drive kavanaughs from the race.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  279. I never saw that movie, except snippets. I was kind of a bluenose, back then. So, last year, my daughter went to Cabo San Lucas for Spring Break and came back with the Bo Derek hairstyle. I thought it looked great on her and told her so. She didn’t have the nerve to wear it to school — she took it apart. I still don’t know whether to be disappointed or proud. 😉

    nk (dbc370)

  280. incidents have started to take place by enraged democrats so far nobody hurt.

    lany (f33e9d)

  281. @ DRJ (#287): Fair points all. My set of inferences — that Ford had practically nothing on any remotely relevant topic to offer that might have bolstered or better knitted together her tale and rebutted the recent fabrication suspicion (which always must attend three-plus decades of utter silence about an alleged crime) — is premised on my assumptions, admittedly based on thin observation, about the general competency of the lawyers advising and handling Ford.

    I think they’re obviously more capable than Avenetti, who’s a clown who couldn’t litigate his way out of a paper bag; his client’s story ended up being so ludicrous that it ended up detracting from Ford’s rather than inferentially bolstering it, so clearly so that even the mainstream media talking heads had to acknowledge that (while relentlessly repeating Swetnick’s fantasies anyway). They had a multi-week head start. Just looking at this in terms of the tactics of the craft, Ford’s lawyers got away with everything important to them, and navigated their client’s short appearance in the limelight to the Dems’ (but not necessarily her own) best advantage. My gut tells me they were counting from day one on her never being seriously questioned — and she wasn’t, and won’t be. So I think these were capable lawyers.

    Those facts shout at me, when others may find them just an odd observation of no deductive value at all. It’s just that as a trial lawyer, this is a whole kennel of dogs not barking, and they’re not barking very loudly, at least to my peculiar ears.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  282. (The exception — the dog barking when I expected it to, with the kind of yelp I would have expected all along from other dogs — being the predicate-laying for her ability to ID Chris Garrett, aka Squee. But I’m repeating myself just to extend a metaphor, which probably means I ought to bid y’all g’night and sweet dreams.)

    Beldar (fa637a)

  283. Beldar – With a multi week head start were they over confident or blindsided?

    mg (9e54f8)

  284. @265. You might want to pass that along to the marketing team at the JCN and the FS– financed by the Wellspring Committee. Do let us know if you shed some light on the sourcing for their ‘Dark Money.’

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  285. Wouldn’t releasing the FBI report be a most excellent October Surprise?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  286. Demand justice, first, seems to the Clinton foundations new catspaw, Brian Fallon, feinsteins aide herzner.

    narciso (d1f714)

  287. One thing I have noticed from the lefter parts of my twitter — there is much gnashing of teeth that the sourcing of the Ed Whelan twitter hypothesis was not explored by the Judiciary Committee (presumably by Dems asking questions during their final confrontation with Kavenaugh). On one of these threads, I posited the idea that the Dems may have not wanted to raise the issue, because they did not want the “mistaken identity” theory raised.

    Wondering about the thoughts of this esteemed assembly. The problem with the Whelan threading was not the rampant theorizing (which is, after all, a twitter specialty), but the naming of somebody as an alternate assailant. But I am curious about where Whelan got all the evidentary mish-mash he posted, before going all Perry Mason.

    Appalled (96665e)

  288. I, too, assume they are competent lawyers who understand their forum. They knew they had political and media cover. Their goals were to dominate the headlines, dribble out the story to delay the confirmation, and muddy the waters. The last thing they wanted to do was bring legal clarity.

    DRJ (15874d)

  289. I’m curious how a limousine which crashed in upstate New York resulting in the death of 20 people, yesterday was a wedding party and the bride was among the victims, but today is a birthday party and four sisters were among the victims.

    They are ALL #FakeNews fictioneers. Don’t believe anything reported by the news media. Any news media media. It is all for entertainment purposes, and to advertise consumer products and services.

    nk (dbc370)

  290. @298. That would mean they were not really representing Ford or this was also Ford’s goal. Either of those are situations where someone should be in some hot water.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  291. Katz seems to have a career running interference for democrat pols. Bromwich otoh gives the game away

    narciso (d1f714)

  292. This is why the New Trier baseball cap gets worn to the polling place (reminiscent of how I wore an old Minnesota Twins hat in March 2016 :
    http://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-announce-pro-ethanol-measure-tuesday-ahead-iowa-133319268.html

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  293. I think two of the couples were married in June so the initial reports focused on that. After the media learned these were friends and family celebrating a birthday, that became the focus.

    DRJ (15874d)

  294. @303. The beauty to having DJT on board with ethanol subsidies is that they just might get the negative press they deserve.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  295. Terrible tragedy and it will probably lead to more government regulation of the private hire business in NY.

    DRJ (15874d)

  296. He owes Grassley.

    DRJ (15874d)

  297. Why it was the idiot who drove the wrong way two caused the travesty.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  298. in New York you have a corrupt mafia governor who’s more concerned with the global warm-warm hoax than stuff like safe roads

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  299. Failed to stop, heck was barrelling through a T at 60mph. When I first saw the chryons/headlines, I thought it was “ranch”.

    urbanleftbehind (61ee40)

  300. You never can tell, anymore,

    Narciso (d1f714)

  301. Everything is mma even confirmation hearings.

    Narciso (d1f714)

  302. whaaa?

    we’ve already blown through almost the whole morning without some rando rape-hoaxing metoo chick boofing out an evidence-free allegation on anybody

    is CNN Jake Tapper fake news broken

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  303. Yeah, like I heard you say “Happy Columbus Day!” either.

    nk (dbc370)

  304. Hall Monitor
    @JamesLWilliamss

    BREAKING:

    In one day on the bench, Justice Kavanaugh has now hired as many African-American Supreme Court clerks as Justice Ginsburg has in her entire SCOTUS tenure (and her 13-years on the DC Circuit, too).

    harkin (7f4688)

  305. Columbus oh my goodness

    that’s exciting!

    he was such a great explorer and you know why?

    he was a very optimistic person is why plus he was real good at not getting scurvy

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  306. Mediterranean diet. Have you ever read about anyone getting scurvy that was not British?

    nk (dbc370)

  307. Didn’t Popeye come down with that once?

    Colonel Haiku (1fcc64)

  308. It was an old limo as a last minute replacement for a broken down bus, and there was a report one of the riders had texted her family the limo was in bad shape. Did the brakes fail? Whatever happened, it will lead to more government regulations. Maybe it should. I still don’t understand why cars have to have seat belts but limos and buses don’t.

    DRJ (15874d)

  309. @ #292: “they were counting from day one on her never being seriously questioned”

    This was never about a trial…and establishing facts….and laying predicates….it was about #MeToo….and the potential specter of old white men interrogating an “abuse survivor”….about running out the clock. It was about how we felt about each “witness”….not what is reasonable or unreasonable…or the fallibility of memory. Like much of Reality TV and Social Media, this was about our own emoting and confirmation bias. Right now, we are unfortunately not a very serious people.

    AJ_Liberty (165d19)

  310. Columbus was an exemplar of virtu while other sought to attain virtue

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  311. that’s a good point about the diet

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  312. and file this under What a Waste (Google the name and see what I mean)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45777948

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  313. what’s nice is how dirty government astronaut trash are going extinct like dodo (tasty bird animal)

    real people working for real companies will do that job now and not be near as gay about it as the nasa ones

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  314. Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh – including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school – as “a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.”

    i love how honest and perspicacious President Trump is

    hoax is the perfect word for the silly rape joke Ford Feinstein and Flake tried to play on everybody

    man these people

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  315. They furthered the lie about Tucson and the huntress clear enough.

    narciso (d1f714)

  316. Meghan McCain hails father with tears on return to ‘The View’

    all the other view chicks have to be rolling their eyes

    but then except for the huntsman chick they didn’t need their daddies to get this job for them

    so they probably don’t understand what it’s like when you have no talent and you can’t count on your daddy to set you up with jobs anymore

    it’s very startling and it’s a lot to get your head around

    it takes months if not years

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  317. Hope Trump has Rosenstein’s office raided while he is on Air Force One.

    mg (9e54f8)

  318. that guy’s as rotten and creepy and corrupt as john koskinen Mr. mg

    and just like with koskinen, everybody knows rod-rod’s corrupt and dirty

    just like how everybody knew christine ford was lying about her hoax rape

    there’s something deeply unhealthy about this pattern

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  319. agree, happyfeet. Trump needs to super expose these hacks.

    mg (9e54f8)

  320. Off-topic: Congrats to newlywed Barbara Pierce Bush and her proud father.

    Dubya’s daughter was married yesterday in a private ceremony at the family home in Maine.

    Dave (9664fc)

  321. Inevitably, Hitler weighs in… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkmrgnk3RIc

    Colonel Haiku (1fcc64)

  322. 1,000,000,000,000,000 millikohns of stupid…

    @sallykohn
    My sense is that if Trump wins, Hillary supporters will be sad.
    If Hillary wins, Trump supporters will be angry.
    Important difference.

    — Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) November 9, 2016

    Colonel Haiku (1fcc64)

  323. I always thought Babs was the hot daughter.

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/03/2d/4c032d0499c2b865480db2e65b2177d1.jpg

    harkin (adce92)

  324. Heh, Haiku, let’s not wake them up! Let them go on in their bubble, thinking that they did everything right and “Congress Bungled The Kavanaugh Confirmation” (actual WaPo headline).

    nk (dbc370)

  325. @317. Talk turkey, Mr. Feet; it’s Thanksgiving Day in Canada, or do they feast on Canadian geese?!

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  326. why’s milk from canada moos so damn expensive

    it’s so expensive

    i blame prime minister pipsywizzle

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  327. you can’t trot out a mentally ill popsicle-licker like Christine Ford to lie about getting raped every time President Trump does something you don’t like you know

    that’s not a tenable strategize

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  328. We call him zoolander, but hes more like Hans.

    Kaitlin Collins come on down, your the next contestant on you bet your career.

    narciso (d1f714)

  329. incidences have occurred by angry democrats. republican door knockers threatened by angry democrats. Mormon kid nearly run over by car while putting up republican campaign sign.

    lany (f17574)

  330. Really takes lots of #fauxrage and hoaxes to drain their rage battery levels.

    Think might be first Monday in 2 years without some fake news to slam Trump.

    Guess the Kavanaugh hoax really has them sleeping in a bit.

    Bob the Builder (9af831)

  331. @343. In other words… Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

    frosty48 (6226c1)

  332. 345 you got it right! better good government establishment limousine liberals act like punching bags so they can lead the democrat base in ways that are no threat to to corporate establishment deep state. they want chucky, nancy and hillary to deal with not alexandra ocasio-cortez. this may surprise you but ocasio=cortez didn’t get any campaign money from soros but her defeated opponent sure did!

    lany (f17574)

  333. I always thought Babs was the hot daughter.

    Late bloomer.

    Dave (ff78ad)

  334. http://www.newser.com/story/265766/brettkavanaughcom-bought-years-ago-finds-a-purpose.html

    Years Ago, Someone Bought BrettKavanaugh.com

    Three years ago. Bought by Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court.

    https://fixthecourt.com/

    BrettKavanaugh.com is a webpage titled, “We Believe Survivors.” They also want to “end rape on campus”

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)


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