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Roger Kimball:
“…In short, the crime was Donald Trump’s election. More precisely, the crime was the fact that Donald Trump was elected without the permission, indeed, over the strenuous objections of that entitled cohort whose members believe it to be part of the natural order of things that they govern. The implications of this conviction—that the primal crime of Trump’s administration was his election, compounded by his infuriating habit of meeting any attack with a potent counterattack—are huge. Among other things, it follows that Donald Trump’s tenure is, for these people, existentially illegitimate. And from that conviction it follows that a policy of resistance, obstruction, and illegality is (in the minds of these people) sanctioned…”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/01/with-the-kavanaugh-fight-political-warfare-escalates/
“…The left’s attack on Kavanaugh involves the following, which I think sets a new standard for chutzpah: take a man with a sterling public record during his entire life, mount an attack on his integrity that involves an unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, impossible-to-defend-against charge of sexual attack (up to and including gang rape), and do it at the pinnacle of his career, unleashing a social media war against him of the most vicious kind, including death threats towards him and his family. Do that publicly while cloaking yourself in self-aggrandizing sanctity, and make him sit there and listen.
But that’s not the “chutzpah” part, although that does take some chutzpah. The real chutzpah part is this: if he acts at all angry in his response to being defamed in that way, say that his anger shows that he doesn’t have the temperament to be a justice, despite the fact that it is well-documented that he has shown an exemplary judicial temperament for his entire previous career as a judge…”
Mollie Hemingway:
“…The media are working overtime not just to prevent the eminently qualified Brett Kavanaugh from being confirmed to the Supreme Court, but to destroy his life as well. One of their avenues is to make it impossible for him to coach girls’ basketball in the future.
USA Today’s Erik Brady wrote:
The U.S. Senate may yet confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but he should stay off basketball courts for now when kids are around…
The nation is deeply divided. Sometimes it feels like we don’t agree on anything anymore. But credibly accused sex offenders should not coach youth basketball, girls or boys, without deeper investigation. Can’t we all agree on that?
The article, which was illustrated with a picture of Kavanaugh and one of the girls’ basketball teams he coaches, has since been dramatically revised. Apparently editors at USA Today realized that calling a human being a pedophile with precisely zero actual evidence of any sexual impropriety was indefensible…”
http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/30/media-sink-to-new-lows-in-their-anti-kavanaugh-smear-campaign/
John Hinderaker:
“…Pretty much all observers expect the Democrats to capture the House in November. If they do, they will impeach President Trump. But the much more serious danger is that they may also take the Senate. If that happens, the Trump administration will be paralyzed. The Democrats likely will refuse to confirm a single significant appointment. I would not rule out the possibility of a constitutional crisis, if the Democrats try to bring the executive branch to a standstill by abusing its “advise and consent” power to insist that President Trump nominate Democrats to key posts in the administration and the judiciary. In the Democrats’ disgraceful obstruction of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, we have a preview of the insanity that will reign if they become a Senate majority…”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/there-is-still-time-to-help-save-the-senate.php
“…The years-old mystery of what’s in President Donald Trump’s tax returns will likely quickly unravel if Democrats win control of at least one chamber of Congress.
Democrats, especially in the House, are quietly planning on using an obscure law that will enable them to examine the president’s tax filings without his permission.
The nearly 100-year-old statute allows the chairmen of Congress’ tax committees to look at anyone’s returns, and Democrats say they intend to use that power to help answer a long list of questions about Trump’s finances. Many also want to use it to make public confidential information about Trump’s taxes that he’s steadfastly refused to release.
“Probably the approach would be to get all of it, review it and, depending on what that shows, release all or part of it,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the No. 4 Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee…”
“…A U.S. Navy warship patrolled near at least two Chinese-held outposts in the disputed Spratly island chain in the South China Sea on Sunday, challenging Beijing’s maritime claims amid growing tensions between the two countries.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur navigated past Gaven and Johnson reefs over the course of a 10-hour patrol in the South China Sea, sailing within 12 nautical miles of both features in what amounts to a freedom of navigation operation, or FONOP.
The two outposts are among seven where China has built heavily fortified artificial islands since 2013, raising fears among its Asian neighbors and in the U.S. that Beijing could use them to enforce its claims to almost all of the South China Sea…”
“…Trade ministers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada have reached a deal to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trump administration announced late Sunday night.
The new pact, which is being called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, is a major step toward completing one of Trump’s signature campaign promises and gives the president a concrete policy win to tout on the campaign trail this fall. It also sets the stage for what is sure to be a high-stakes fight to get the agreement passed by Congress before it can become law.
The Trump administration already formally notified Congress at the end of August of its plans to sign a new pact and faced a deadline of the end of September to provide a draft of the agreement.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in late August that officials are planning to sign with their Canadian and Mexican counterparts by the end of November — a date that would also satisfy Mexico, which is eager to have current President Enrique Peña Nieto sign the deal before his successor takes over Dec. 1.
“It’s a great win for the president and a validation for his strategy in the area of international trade,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters late Sunday.
People briefed on the outlines of a revamped deal described changes in language governing dairy imports, dispute resolution between countries, limits on online shopping that can be done tax free, and limits on the U.S. threat of auto tariffs…”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/30/nafta-trade-canada-819081
JONAH GOLDBERG: The Moral-Panic Phase.
Why the Hell are people losing their minds? I don’t know. Why did St. Vitus’ Dance sweep Europe? Why did tulips get so expensive during the Tulip Craze? Why did the witches hang?
I suspect what’s happened is a convergence of things. First the #MeToo movement, which mostly has been a force for good, is entering its moral-panic phase. Second, the Internet accelerates groupthink and extremism for all the familiar reasons. Third, a lot of Democrats have concluded that the only way to win the party’s presidential nomination is to prove you can be the most fearless jackass in the herd (See, Cory “Almost Spartacus” Booker) and the presence of Michael Avenatti in the market has put inflationary pressure on everyone’s asininity. Fourth, as I keep writing (even at book length), we are turning politics into a form of tribal entertainment where it’s easy to convince ourselves that our opponents are existential monsters.
And fifth, as politics has become a secular religion, the Supreme Court has become like a Roman Temple and people are terrified that Kavanaugh is a less indulgent priest. If the Supreme Court wasn’t the institution where a single swing justice — not coincidentally the one Kavanaugh is slated to replace — decides how human beings should define themselves in the world, people wouldn’t be freaking out nearly so much.
Read the whole thing. In his New York Times column this week, Ross Douthat concludes that “we all sense that in this political disaster, we’re seeing a glimpse into a cultural abyss.” What comes next?
A column by Barton Swaim in the Weekly Standard that Glenn linked to earlier today argues that “The Sexual Revolution Is Over:”
What comes next probably won’t be some 21st-century form of Victorian public morality. But neither, if I’m right, are we likely to advance further into the realm of sexual chaos urged upon our society by young radicals a half-century ago. Everything comes to an end, including revolutions.
Thursday’s hearings also “may be a watershed moment in Identity Politics,” a blogger at Maggie’s Farm writes:
This was a great example of how identity has been weaponized for political gain. Don’t think this is the end of Identity Politics, though. The Democrats need identity to survive. Mao’s Cultural Revolution relied on hearsay and Identity, and was implemented shortly after the Great Leap Forward had failed to propel the nation forward economically. The Democrats are failing massively. They are launching their own Cultural Revolution. I’ve warned friends of mine who are sympathetic to the ’cause’ to be careful. Movements like this eat their young.
In any case, as Rod Dreher writes, it’s also “The End of a Trusting Society:”
Look at what Brett Kavanaugh now has to put up with: an Erik Brady column in USA Today saying he shouldn’t coach his daughter’s basketball team because he might be a pervert. Excerpt:
The nation is deeply divided. Sometimes it feels like we don’t agree on anything anymore. But credibly accused sex offenders should not coach youth basketball, girls or boys, without deeper investigation. Can’t we all agree on that?
“Credibly accused”? This is beyond disgusting — and it’s in a major American newspaper. How does it differ from this, had USA Today been around in 1954:
The nation is deeply divided. Sometimes it feels like we don’t agree on anything anymore. But credibly accused communists should not work in Hollywood without deeper investigation. Can’t we all agree on that?
Gosh, I can’t imagine why Judge Kavanaugh was upset in his testimony, can you?
This is the world we are creating for ourselves.
“…After an exhaustive study, analysts have declared that TV news is “rigged” against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
“During the twelve days since Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein publicly announced the existence of an unspecified allegation against Brett Kavanaugh, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows have spent nearly six hours (344 minutes) regurgitating various unproved allegations against the Supreme Court nominee,” wrote Rich Noyes, a senior analyst for Newsbusters.org, a conservative press watchdog.
“But only a tiny percentage of that coverage — a measly eight percent — has been devoted to Kavanaugh’s denials and the lack of corroboration for his accusers’ accounts,” he said.
Analysts combed through coverage from Sept. 13-24 to find that most of it centered on allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford; another 39 minutes went to three other accusers, the study found.
“Amid that sea of coverage, our analysts found the networks devoted a minuscule fraction on the key points that support the Supreme Court nominee’s case,” Mr. Noyes said…”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/26/broadcasters-grant-only-4-of-brett-kavanaugh-news-/
Doris O’Brien:
“…In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” – published in 1948 and later made into a film – a rural community holds its annual drawing, after which the unlucky winner is stoned to death. This pagan-like ritual presumed personal culpability for whatever ills had befallen the town since the last lottery. Jackson’s chilling tale is one of superstition and human sacrifice practiced on behalf of self-interest.
To be fair, the story’s lottery made no distinction among townspeople based on sex, race, wealth, opinion, occupation, or popularity. In the piece, it was a woman with a sterling reputation who met her end at the willing hands of her neighbors. To that extent, it seems less shocking than what has happened in the current “lottery” to choose a Supreme Court justice, since in the present ordeal there is implicit bias based almost entirely on a progressive ideology built on by “identity politics.”
In this latest Kavanaugh scenario – in which the ultimate objective is to stone to death the object’s reputation by way of advancing one’s own political interests – the white conservative male is most likely to have the lottery tickets stacked against him. The Democrat leadership has methodically assembled its own stockpile of societal, racial, ideological, and sexual missiles to hurl at the accused. These liberal insurgents are by no means innocent Davids taking aim at Goliath. Rather, they are power-hungry government “servants” out to vanquish a well reputed conservative Republican with as many smooth stones as it takes.
Now that the “Me Too” movement has become rooted in our consciousness, Democrats are eagerly harvesting it for selfish political gain. Any resistance to the assumption that an accusing woman is not immediately and totally to be believed is no longer tolerated. The very idea has become, in itself, a form of guilt. We all know the framework of Judge Kavanaugh’s ordeal. What we lack are the details, which no longer matter to those out to destroy him.
Democrats seem to presume that by coming out categorically in favor of females – at least when it comes down to sexual encounters – they will secure the hearts, and more importantly, the votes, of all women. But this is not happening. Many of us are astute enough to see beyond the case at hand to the frightening prospect that our men – our husbands, fathers, sons, and friends – will be likewise scarred for life by unsubstantiated scandal and innuendo.
Even if we cannot grasp the danger of this unfairness spreading elsewhere, there is cause for women to decry the tactics, timing, and unsubstantiated claims of accusers like Christine Blasey Ford. Naturally, that’s a pretty tough call for the sisterhood to make, since women are expected, without qualification, to be “emotionally supportive” to other women, especially those who claim to be victims of sexual abuse. If we fail to do that, we are immediately accused of being insensitive and incapable of “feeling their pain.”
The flip-side of “boosting,” is “belittling.” That is what Professor Blasey Ford has done to women. She has made our sex look less capable and more vulnerable than we deserve to. On the one hand, young women in today’s America are told they can be anyone and do anything. Certainly, we have made amazing strides toward that end. More of us now attend college and graduate school than boys do. Aspiring and talented women have axed through class ceilings, strode boldly into boardrooms, flown into outer space, juggled job and family, etc. We bought into the old ad, “You’ve come a long way, baby!” – even as we stopped smoking the product it promoted.
Yet when it came to a scary sexual encounter that did not physically disable her, Blasey Ford demonstrated just the opposite. In a pinch, she failed to muster the moral strength, the will, or the wherewithal to even now put such a predicament behind her. Instead, Kavanaugh’s accuser became so instantly mortified that she could not even share her story with trusted adults. Presumably, she kept it bottled up inside her for years on end, paralyzed with unspeakable fear from a single long-ago encounter that did not – according to her – involve rape.
Admittedly, it is hard to walk in another’s shoes. Yet this octogenarian finds it important to believe that had such an incident happened to me during my youth, I would not have remained silent and thereby complicit in the affront. I choose to think that, despite my fear and inexplicable “shame,” I would have “told” on the rat-fink…blabbed to my parents or to a minister or a good friend or ultimately to the police. I would have taken such actions in order to prevent the predator from doing the same thing to others. It’s important to me as a female to believe that I would not have allowed myself to remain a silent victim for decade upon decade of my life.
I have more disdain than sympathy for Professor Blasey Ford. Despite lecturing to college students on a daily basis, she still claims to be cowed by the prospect of being questioned by other adults. Psychologist, cure thyself.
There are legions of women who have overcome far more than what is contained in Prof. Blasey Ford’s claims – women who have undergone intolerable existences, survived horrors like the Holocaust, lost their health, their resources, their loved ones, yet persevered with extraordinary courage. Still, they are rarely celebrated for their heroics with the same insistent reverence given to a middle-aged snowflake who came seemingly out of the blue to rescue the Democrat Party.
In my first year of college, almost 70 years ago, I learned something on this subject that I have never forgotten. It was a Saturday night, and co-eds were returning from their dates to a freshman dorm on our all-women’s campus. On the second floor, a classmate could be heard sobbing loudly, and many of us ran to her room to see what was wrong. She was lying on her narrow bed, weeping, blurting out that her boyfriend – a young man she had known from her hometown in the Midwest – had suddenly tried to “take advantage” of her during their evening out. (That was the language back then!)
We all liked her boyfriend, who was a polite, promising student at a nearby Ivy League college. But in light of her accusations, we immediately disliked him, empathizing with her and urging her to end the relationship.
Suddenly, to our surprise, she jumped off the bed, started to laugh, and told us it was all untrue – just something she had made up as part of an assignment for her psychology class. (I hope she got an “A”!)
This small incident taught me a larger lesson about how easy it is to be deceived – and how quickly such deception can lead to turning a good man into an evil one. Oh, by the way, that classmate and her boyfriend married after graduation and have been together ever since. It’s ambiguous whether Judge Kavanaugh will enjoy so happy an outcome…”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/prof_ford_flunks_as_a_female_role_model.html
“…She still can’t recall the home where the assault took place, how she got there or how she got home that evening. She has no witnesses who say she told them about the alleged assault at the time—until she first spoke of it at a couples therapy session 30 years later in 2012. Mr. Kavanaugh’s name doesn’t appear in the notes of her therapist.
As for Judge Kavanaugh, his self-defense was as powerful and emotional as the moment demanded. If he was angry at times, imagine how you would feel if you were so accused and were innocent as he says he is. To deny the allegations as he did—invoking his children and parents and so many others who know him—and be lying would mean that he is a sociopath. If he were found to be lying, he would be impeached and probably prosecuted. Nothing in his long record in public life betrays the kind of behavior he is accused of against women.
Had he not been as forceful, his opponents would have said he looked guilty. Because he called the Democrats out for their character assassination, the critics now say he lacks the right temperament. The truth is that there is no answer, and no demeanor, that Brett Kavanaugh could offer that the left would credit. Their goal isn’t the truth. They want to destroy Judge Kavanaugh.
* * * * * * * *
Senate Republicans should understand that these are the real political stakes. This nomination isn’t only about the fate of a single man whose reputation can be discarded like some tabloid celebrity. This is about the future of the Supreme Court and who will control the Senate. If Republicans reject Mr. Kavanaugh based on what we know now, millions of voters will rightly be furious.
But as important, a rejection will bring dishonor to the Senate. It will validate the ambush and smear politics that Democrats are using. And it will turn Supreme Court nominations over to the justice of the social-media mob and the politics of accusation. It’s time for Senators to stand up and confirm Brett Kavanaugh…”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confirm-brett-kavanaugh-1538089143