Bookworm Beat 9/18/2018 — the Kavanaugh fraud edition and open thread

Leftist responses to Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh indicate pretty strongly that they know they’re fraudulent, plus much more on current topics.

KavanaughOn the Kavanaugh accusations, the Left’s line is “don’t ask so we won’t have to tell.” Actually, that’s not quite what Clown News Network reporter Chris Cillizza said. When reminded that Republicans would like to investigate the huge holes and inconsistencies in Christine Ford’s narrative, this is what he said:

Remember, in the Left’s America, the standard is the due process rights do not extend to Republicans. This is because they know that, in the face of fraudulent accusations, due process would expose the fraud. The only way to prevail on stale, uncorroborated, vague accusations is to use a new standard, one that applies only to conservatives, never Leftists:

Ford has nothing to gain? Really? Except for the fact that, as a hard Left person, she may effectively knock out a conservative Supreme Court nominee. Or even if he gets appointed, she will have tainted him in the eyes of half of America, not to mention his own children’s eyes.

And she has everything to lose? Really? When we know she’ll be endless feted on the Left, with invitations to A-List Leftie parties, huge book deals, etc.? I mean, look at the traction a sleazy porn star gained from smearing Trump.

And women never lie? Really?

Apparently a simulacrum of due process is passé for our media solons when they can profit off smears against conservatives.

Debra Katz, Ford’s lawyer, adds a new wrinkle to how due process plays out in Leftist America (emphasis added):

During the interview, Katz revealed that there was another girl present at the party, which allegedly took place in 1982 while Kavanaugh was attending Georgetown Prep. Ford previously told the Washington Post that there were four boys at the party but never indicated if there were other girls beside herself.

“While we have you, perhaps you can help us fill in the blanks on some of her story. She says that she was at a party in probably 1982 in Montgomery County, Maryland. She says that there were four guys there, these are high school students, as was she. There were four guys there. Were there any girls there that day?” anchor Alisyn Camerota asked.

“Yes, there was another girl at this party, yes,” Katz said.

Camerota asked if Ford has tried to talk to any of the other partygoers to see if they will corroborate her story, but Katz declined to place the burden of proof on her client.

“That’s not her job to do that. If this is going to be investigated, it should be done by investigators,” Katz asserted.

Having put out a vague, uncorroborated, confusing narrative, Ford’s job here is done. It’s up to Kavanaugh to prove a negative attached to a gossamer allegation that can be rejiggered to fit any time line and location in the early 1980s.

But in the race to the bottom, Ana Marie Cox may still beat out both Katz and Dowd:

We need to judge Brett Kavanaugh, not just by what he may or may not have done, but how he treats a woman’s pain. And that is something I’m going to be paying attention to on Monday. How does he respond to what’s happening. Whether or not he agrees that this happened with her, does he take her pain seriously? Do the people interrogating her pain take her pain seriously? Now, I’ll give you a spoiler alert, I don’t think Brett Kavanaugh takes women’s pain very seriously, and I know that because of the decisions he’s made as a judge.

Ben Shapiro has the correct take on that outrageous statement:

This is a morally abhorrent statement. So if a woman falsely accuses a man of rape, we don’t judge him based on whether he actually raped her – we judge him based on whether he feels the pain of a person falsely accusing him of rape. The real question of the Duke lacrosse case, by this standard, wasn’t whether a stripper was actually raped – the question is whether the members of the Duke lacrosse team were sensitive to her feelings while she was falsely accusing them of rape.

That would be an insane statement enough. But Cox goes even further: she already knows that Kavanaugh won’t meet her standard of sympathy because he hasn’t decided cases how she likes on key “feminist” issues, presumably like abortion. Now, never mind that Kavanaugh hasn’t actually signaled that he’d be willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. Think about the underlying contention: we can tell whether you are a bad person by your level of sympathy for a rape accuser whom you believe is lying about you, and we can judge your level of sympathy by looking at your political decisions. The logic is simple: if you’re a person who disagrees with Ana Marie Cox, you can be slandered as a rapist, and any attempt to rebut such accusations will amount to a lack of sympathy.

And do remember that, despite all the shrieks of outrage from the left about a hazy 35(ish) year old uncorroborated story with holes large enough to drive a freight train through, the Left has been utterly silent about recent, credible, corroborated claims against DNC apparatchik (and AG candidate in Minnesota) Keith Ellison:

Moreover, not only haven’t they believed the woman, they’ve set out to destroy her.

Don’t trust claims that Ford’s friends are corroborating her story. Two friends of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Kavanaugh of attempted rape, are now claiming that she told them the story before it went live last week. The implication for headline readers is that they’ve known about it for years. But that’s wrong. They’re not contemporaneous witnesses who heard the story back in 1980-whatever, when Ford claims it happened. Instead, the stories date to . . . July 2018. That’s not corroboration; that’s Ford practicing for live testimony.

Ignore claims that 200 women from Ford’s school support her claim. The way the report is framed, it sounds as if 200 women who were at school with Ford back in the early 1980s know what happened and can stand as witness:

More than 200 women who attended the same all-girls school as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser have signed an open letter supporting her allegations of sexual assault when they were both high school students.

The letter says the women — who graduated from the private Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Md., between 1967 and 2018 — believe California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford “and are grateful that she came forward to tell her story.”

“Dr. Blasey Ford’s experience is all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton,” the letter says.

“Many of us are survivors ourselves.”

Drilling down into the letter though (which you can’t do now because it’s been pulled), it turns out that some of the signatories graduated decades after Ford. They’re just generic Lefties putting their names on anything that involves hating men and hating conservatives.

Lefties aren’t Spartacus; they’re Nero. Lawyer and Rabbi Dov Fischer took a break from preparing for the High Holidays to write a scathing indictment of the Lefties and their corruption, as seen through the prism of the Kavanaugh hearings, while contrasting it to the true sacrifice of Spartacus and his followers. It’s long, but I guarantee that you won’t regret the time spent reading it.

The Deep State is real, but it’s not spectacular. It’s sleazy, arrogant, smug, and unconstitutional. It shows itself in ugly smear tactics against Republicans, in its effort to destroy a Republican presidential candidate (and president), and in this marvelous video, the first of many, from Project Veritas:

And yes, I know that this smug little communist is a mere pimple on the Deep State’s butt, but we all know how Project Veritas works: Get everyone’s attention, elicit the obvious rebuttals — e.g., small potato — and then keep escalating.

By the way, you do know that Lisa Page has testified that the FBI hadn’t seen any evidence of collusion when Mueller got appointed?

FBI officials had not seen strong evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government by the time Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page told Congress in July.

Congressional sources say that Page made the admission during a line of questioning about a text message that she exchanged with Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who led the Trump-Russia probe.

“You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there,” Strzok wrote to Page on May 18, 2017, a day after Mueller was appointed special counsel.

In the text, Strzok was contemplating whether or not to join the Mueller team. He eventually did so, but was removed from the investigation in July 2017 after his anti-Trump text messages with Page were discovered.

Page testified that Strzok’s text message reflected his uncertainty with the outcome of the investigation.

This is true Soviet politics: It’s not “see a crime; nail the culprit.” It’s “find the political opponent; destroy him.”

Trump’s efforts on the Korean peninsula continue to pay dividends. I’m sure Obama will claim that he did it, but this didn’t happen on Obama’s watch. It happened a year-and-a-half into the Trump presidency, after he embarked on initiatives that every Democrat castigated:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greeted South Korean President Moon Jae-in with a lavish welcome ceremony Tuesday at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, as the two leaders kicked off their third summit this year.

Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, hugged the first couple from the South at the red-carpeted airfield as a crowd of thousands lined up to cheer for them — some holding national flags, some holding unified-peninsula flags and some holding colorful plastic bouquets.

Trump applied both stick and carrot, and now, because he knows when to check his ego, he’s leaving those two leaders to work it out and get the glory on their own.

Bert and Ernie, closet gay lovers. Okay, let me start by saying that Sesame Street had the decency to disavow the gay lover claim:

However, that hasn’t stopped one of the show’s writers from saying that the puppets were the physical manifestation of his own gay love life:

A former writer for Sesame Street is revealing that the characters of Bert and Ernie were gay – at least for the two decades he was writing for the children’s program – but Sesame Street has shot down his claims.

In an interview with Queerty, Mark Saltzman was asked the question that many have wondered for years, and in a touching response shared for the very first time that Bert and Ernie were an analog for his own relationship with his late partner, Arnold Glassman.

He also said in the interview that Mr. Snuffleupagus was written like a ‘closeted’ homosexual, and expressed his remorse about never being able to write the iconic show’s first gay storyline.

‘I can remember pitching to the education department, the gatekeepers of the curriculum, gay content, just to get it off my conscience. And I can remember being stonewalled in a way that it made me think it was a lost cause,’ said Saltzman.

One lunatic wanted to take over the asylum, but apparently there were a few sane people who understood that not everything needs to be sexualized, especially in the world of small children.

A reminder that it may be time for a Travis Allen write-in. Because California has open primaries, conservatives have a very limited choice when it comes to electing a Senator: Democrat or Democrat? With that choice in mind, which I think is unconstitutional, I suggested a couple of months ago that Californians sick of one party rule write in Travis Allen’s name on their ballot.

I think conditions are even better now than when I floated the idea in July. First, John Cox is running neck and neck with Gavin Newsom, which ought to inspire conservatives to go to the polls. Vote for Cox!!

Second, although a Dem, up until recently, Feinstein seemed kind of, sort of, slightly sane. However, with the revelations that she had a Chinese spy on her staff for 20 years and her utterly disgraceful, disgusting conduct regarding the Kavanaugh hearing, she is not the lesser of two evils. She is just as bad as hard Left, race-faker Kevin de Leon (who changed his name to enhance his ethnic creds).

The ballot is what it is, but a write-in campaign is a meaningful, loud noise. Moreover, Travis Allen fully deserves to bring his intelligence, strong conservative credentials, and happy warrior persona to the service of, not just Californians, but all Americans.

Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy and incredibly dangerous. This excellent Prager U video is a short, informative primer about Hezbollah — where it comes from, its animus to America, its existential threat to Israel, and the crimes it commits around the world:

Honoring Ari Fuld. On this, the eve of Yom Kippur, I’d like to take a minute to honor Ari Fuld, an American citizen, resident in Israel, who, despite being fatally stabbed four times in the back, had the strength (and the gun) to chase and shoot his attacker, saving other people from death and injury:

Heartbreaking.

During life, Ari was a fighter for liberty. No wonder thousands attended his funeral. Ari was a lion, and the world is less for his loss. I would say “may your memory be a blessing,” but that goes with saying. Hashem brought a warrior home.

Don’t spend money on organics. Organic foods are big business, especially here in Marin. Sometimes they do taste better because, if they’re local, they’re allowed to ripen longer in the fields. However, if you think you’re being spared pesticides when you eat them, think again.

Also, keep in mind that modern farming techniques, including pesticides, are the primary reason our lives are no longer short, ugly, and brutish. Just as wind and solar won’t successfully power America, it’s almost certain that organic food won’t successfully feed it.

When Google said “don’t be evil,” it lied. Google is partnering with the totalitarian Chinese government to increase its capacity to spy on its citizens. Vijay Boyapati knows all about that:

It’s reasonable to believe that Google already has that technology and is using it here.

I love Google products. I don’t want to change my email address; Google maps have saved me more times than I can count; the Google calendar is wonderful; and Google flights is the best way to search for flights. These are marvelous innovations, but the evil company that creates them needs to be a busted trust.  It’s too powerful and threatens democracy, not just at home, but everywhere.

San Francisco perfectly demonstrates why you cannot trust socialists with money. Maggie Thatcher famously spoke about socialists and other people’s money: “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.” San Francisco is now exhibit A in grotesque Leftist “money management”:

Officials at San Francisco Unified School District may have acted prematurely in raising wages for around 3,600 teachers before the revenue stream to pay for them — generated by a parcel tax voters approved in June — actually kicks in.

In a letter sent to SFUSD Superintendent Vincent Matthews on Friday, Mayor London Breed called the timing of the wage increase an issue of “great concern,” given unresolved questions about when the money generated by Proposition G will be available, or if it’ll be available at all.

That could mean that the school district is spending money to raise teacher wages while anticipating revenue that might never materialize.

Death has its way. Do you know the Mesopotamia story “Appointment in Samarra”? It’s short and the best retelling is from W. Somerset Maugham, writing in 1933:

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

I thought of that, when I read this sad news report:

A Texas man who said he was given a second chance of life after surviving a mass shooting at a video game tournament last month in Florida has died in a car crash.

Ryen Aleman, 25, was killed Sunday in a single-vehicle wreck near Corpus Christi, according to The Texas Department of Public Safety.

Death was looking for Ryen and finally caught up with him. RIP, Ryen.