Headline of the Day
State Dept: Security clearances for Hillary Clinton, Cheryl Mills & 4 others have been ‘withdrawn’
“Winning”
Political add of the Year
“…Steve Ferrara is a veteran, a doctor, and a conservative candidate for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District. He could cover up his balding head with a toupee, but he doesn’t. Why? According to his latest ad, because “he’s a badass.”
He also holds men, and fixes dolphins…”
Unhinged Mob
The Character Assassination of Brett Kavanaugh by the Cowardly Senate Democrats
Fred Barnes:
In 1987, when Robert Bork met with Senator Edward Kennedy on the eve of his nomination as a justice of the Supreme Court, it was an awkward visit. Kennedy said his response would not be personal. He said that several times.
Instead he gave a speech that brutally and dishonestly caricatured Bork’s judicial philosophy. It became infamous for capturing the thrust of the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee’s treatment of Bork, a practice known to this day as “borking.”
Here’s part of what Kennedy said:
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
Bork was denied confirmation, 58-42. And for decades, his treatment stood as the most unfair and hostile thing that could happen to a High Court nominee. It was ideological assassination.
Now there is worse—the character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. The Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had 306 opinions by Kavanaugh from his 12 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia from which to consider how he evaluates and rules on cases. Few nominees have ever offered such a sweeping look into their judicial philosophy.
The committee’s 10 Democrats largely ignored this record. For their purpose—blocking Kavanaugh by any means necessary—his judicial opinions were a dry hole. They needed to blacken his reputation, raise doubts about his honor, and challenge his truthfulness. If all that failed, they could try to delay the hearings past the midterm election on November 6, in which Democrats might, if they are lucky, take control of the Senate.
The 11 Republicans were the majority, but Democrats had one big advantage. The media were on their side, ready to help derail Kavanaugh in any way they could.
Here’s what Democrats, the press, and their allies threw at Kavanaugh:
(1) Disruption. Democrats created havoc at the hearing from the moment it started. They demanded so many irrelevant documents that examining them could take months—a fatal delay. When Chairman Chuck Grassley refused, Republicans were accused of hiding information.
(2) Conspiracy. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the committee, sat for six weeks on a secret letter from a woman accusing Kavanaugh of assaulting her when they were both teenagers. Then it leaked. Many Democrats said they believed her. Her story was uncorroborated and was falling apart as the nominee was confirmed.
(3) The “bad temperament” trap. Kavanaugh saved his nomination with an emotional speech defending himself against slanders. He criticized his twin antagonists, Democrats and the media. They retaliated, declaring Kavanaugh lacked the proper temperament to be a Supreme Court justice. They cited his speech as evidence. It wasn’t. An emotional speech in defense of one’s own reputation doesn’t qualify as an example of a bad temperament.
(4) Perjury. In his testimony on the most petty matters—his high school yearbook, his youthful beer drinking—Kavanaugh was sometimes lawyerly. The subject matter was an embarrassment to him and should have been embarrassing to the senators who questioned him. Instead, they accused him of perjury. Kavanaugh testified that he may have had too much to drink but had never blacked out. Several long-ago acquaintances claimed he had. That’s a disagreement, not perjury.
(5) No presumption of innocence. Democrats figured since it wasn’t a court of law, the burden of proving he hadn’t assaulted Christine Ford fell on Kavanaugh. This was Soviet-style logic. But Democrats seemed comfortable with it.
(6) An unexamined accuser. Ford was not investigated, though she had no contemporary witnesses and didn’t speak of the alleged assault until she participated in a therapy session three decades later. Ford and her lawyers refused to release the notes from that session.
All in all it was a disgrace. But Kavanaugh refused to back down, and Republicans stiffened their spines just in time. Maybe they remembered Bob Bork. His mistake was engaging with Democratic senators on judicial philosophy, treating their questions as if they were asked in good faith.
Democrats knew they couldn’t “bork” Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge with an impressive record. So they personally brutalized him instead. Bork was banged around unmercifully, and his thinking was savaged by the likes of Ted Kennedy. That was unforgivable, but what was done to Brett Kavanaugh was worse.
Another Tweet of the Day
Taylor Swift
Tweet of the Day
More on McConnell
Mitch McConnell Playing Good Hardball on Judges
Leader McConnell✔@senatemajldr
The Senate has confirmed President Trump’s judicial nominees at a historic pace – 84 total, including Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, 29 circuit judges, and 53 district court judges.4:24 PM – Oct 11, 2018
Nearly one out of every six circuit court of appeals judges has been appointed by @POTUS and confirmed by this Republican Senate
Montgomery Heads To Sea
PACIFIC OCEAN (June 26, 2018) The littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS 8) departs Naval Base San Diego to conduct routine operations and training in the Pacific Ocean. Littoral combat ships are high-speed, agile, shallow draft, mission-focused surface combatants designed for operations in the littoral environment, yet fully capable of open ocean operations.
Facebook just shut down the ‘Right Wing News’ page with its 3.1 million followers
Facebook continues to censor conservative speech ahead of the midterms.
Mitch, you magnificent bastard! Libs are PISSED at Senate Dems for agreeing to this deal with McConnell
“…While most of the media spent the day losing their collective minds over Kanye West being at the White House, Leader McConnell spent the day getting 15 more judges set for confirmation by the Senate. Senate reaches deal on confirming 15 judges (3 Circuit, 12 District) as price for Democrats to go home and campaign…”
Media Say ‘Time Is Running Out’ to Save Planet 30 Years After Previous Warning
“…In a simpler time, not so long ago, environmentalists talked about saving forests for hiking, streams for rafting and clean air for the pure enjoyment of breathing it,” the Los Angeles Times reported in October 1989. “Now, as the 1990s approach, the talk has turned to the science of survival—saving forests for oxygen, keeping streams from spreading toxic pollutants, cleaning the air to avoid catastrophic global warming.”
At the end of the 1980s the message was the same. They just called it “global warming.”
“The threat of environmental cataclysm is replacing nuclear holocaust as the most frightening menace to civilization,” the LA Times said, warning we must stop polluting or else.
“By many measures, time is running out,” the environmentalist group Worldwatch Institute warned. “Oceans would rise, deserts would spread, forests would die. People would starve,” the LA Times said.
Sounds familiar, probably because we’ve heard it regularly in every decade since. We heard it in 1992. And 1993. And 2007. And 2017…”
https://freebeacon.com/blog/media-say-time-running-save-planet-30-years-previous-warning/
Major Hollywood Studio In Upheaval After Putting Out Leftist Bomb After Leftist Bomb
Or “Get Woke, Go Broke”
PAUL BOIS:
Billionaire heiress Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is reportedly getting stiffed on her father’s cash flow after her film studio, Annapurna Pictures, lost a significant amount of money by producing bomb after bomb in leftist propaganda films.
According to The Wrap, Annapurna Pictures has run into financial difficulties as of late, culminating in the “jettisoning of two upcoming films with marquee talent” and the exit of its film division head.
In the past 18 months, Annapurna has released a slate of hardcore leftist films that stoked racial divisions between black and white Americans, from Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit” to the Lakeith Stanfield vehicle “Sorry to Bother You.” More from The Wrap:
The studio has produced or co-produced many prestige projects that have won accolades — from Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master’ to Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ to David O. Russell’s ‘American Hustle’ — but insiders say that Ellison has overspent on many of them.
The challenges have been exacerbated by Annapurna’s decision to launch its own distribution division last year instead of working with the majors as co-producers and distribution partners and spreading the risk.
‘Detroit,’ a prestige 2017 project by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, cost $40 million, but made only $16 million at the box office and lost the company tens of millions of dollars after a major marketing spend, according to two knowledgeable individuals.
Most recently, “The Sisters Brothers,” starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, earned just $730,000 after the studio purchased the North American rights for $7.5 million.
Coming in December, Annapurna will be releasing the Christian Bale star vehicle “VICE,” another leftist propaganda film in which Bale plays former Vice President Dick Cheney opposite Sam Rockwell playing President Bush. The film is reported to have cost a “bloated $60 million to produce” when it should have cost only half that. Factor in marketing cost and the film hasn’t got a prayer.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/36986/major-hollywood-studio-upheaval-after-putting-out-paul-bois
Unintended Consequences
Gail Heriot:
PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE: Argh! Despite the change in administrations, the EEOC continues to followthe policies developed during the Obama Administration, which declared it to be “race discrimination” to decline to hire job applicants with criminal records.
I wrote about that very wrongheaded policy back during the Obama Administration. And yesterday I linked to new research that indicates that making it difficult for employers to ask job applicants about their criminal records ends up hurting low-skilled, young African American males (since it encourages risk-averse employers to avoid hiring from pools they perceive to be high-risk).
So far it would be difficult to tell the Trump Era EEOC from the Obama Era EEOC.
Here’s one idea for how to start moving in a new direction.
CNN Segment Calls Kanye ‘Token Negro’, ‘Attention Whore’, and ‘What Happens When Negroes Don’t Read’
They told me if Trump was elected president open racism would return to the U.S., and they were right!
Kanye West, an outspoken Trump supporter, has dared to think for himself and instead of being respected for his opinion, Hollywood and the liberal talking heads are ridiculing him in the most despicable ways.
The Kavanaugh Fight Exposed Feminism’s Identity-Politics Problem
ALEXANDRA DESANCTIS:
“…During the 1960s and ’70s, second-wave feminists promoted their agenda of sexual liberation, and third-wave feminists radicalized further by propounding turn-of-the-century gender theory, a realm of sociology that seeks to explain the entire female experience through the lens of patriarchy and oppression. Now, feminists have fully assimilated the ideas that were once en vogue only in academic departments, and today’s feminism is nearly identical to the most militant form of progressivism. In large part, this compact was the natural fruit of the feminist movement’s emphasis on sexual license, a priority that the Democratic party has embraced for decades, most notably in its support for unlimited abortion, the ultimate guarantor of consequence-free sex.
This alliance between feminists and the Left has materialized politically in an especially potent way over the last decade. In 2012, Barack Obama ran for his second term on the promise of providing government-funded contraceptives. He made good on his vow by compelling employers to subsidize birth control regardless of their religious belief. In 2016, Hillary Clinton ran for the presidency on a Democratic platform that, for the first time in history, vowed to erase the Hyde Amendment and allow taxpayer dollars to directly facilitate abortion procedures.
With their social agenda thus wedded to the progressive movement, feminist thinkers have taken a nosedive into corrosive identity politics, asserting their influence based on the notion that all women necessarily share their viewpoint, that women as an identity group (and a voting bloc) are united in a fight against patriarchal oppression. Feminist claims to political power are therefore premised on the fiction that all women are shackled by men and that all women should be united around one liberating platform — the progressive one…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/kavanaugh-confirmation-fight-progressive-feminist-hypocrisy/
Izumo And Reagan Working Together
PHILIPPINE SEA (October 9, 2018) The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter destroyer JS Izumo (DDH 183) are underway alongside each other during a cooperative deployment.
Journalism!
I am a sexual assault survivor, and I don’t want you to just take my word for it
Kelsey Kurtinitis:
“…There must be a standard, otherwise no one is safe from having their life destroyed by a wayward accusation. Due process is not an obstruction to justice, it is a foundation of the American rule of law and was meant to be a barrier to hasty judgment and conviction by public opinion.
The Kavanaugh controversy has turned the world upside down. Talking heads and Twitter mobs have already dubbed him “the attacker” despite having seen no proof that the events described by Ford even occurred.
This sets a terrifying precedent for the future, no matter which side of the political aisle you find yourself on, especially in an age where victimhood is currency and everyone is buying.
Ford made allegations that deserved to be investigated, and while she may have had the right to be heard, she does not have the right to be blindly believed.
Nobody does…”
Democrats have unleashed a red wave of Brett Kavanaugh-believing women voters
Margot Cleveland:
“…The Democrats declared war on Brett Kavanaugh in the name of women’s rights. But not only did the left’s attempt to deny Kavanaugh a place on the Supreme Court with last-minute allegations of sexual misconduct fail, the tactics employed have also wrought immeasurable and long-term damage on victims of sexual assault.
Since Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that now-Justice Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 36 years ago, while they were both high school students, Democrats have portrayed her mere allegation as proof conclusive of Kavanaugh’s guilt. “We must believe survivors,” became the battle cry. And Democrats, such as Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, citing the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, warned that Kavanaugh’s confirmation will “send a message to every victim of sexual violence that their pain doesn’t matter, that they do not deserve justice, and that for them, fair treatment is out of reach. This will only serve to drive victims into the shadows, and further emboldening abusers.”…”