September 26, 2018

"Kavanaugh’s ‘choir boy’ image on Fox interview rankles former Yale classmates."

WaPo reports on the inner feelings of a large group of human beings.

"... rankles former Yale classmates." There should at least be a "some" in that headline: rankles some former Yale classmates.... 

They're purporting to talk about a set of persons that includes thousands. I'd say "hundreds" if it was only Yale Law School, but this is about Kavanaugh's college years. Within such a large group, of course, you're going to find people who are rankled by Kavanaugh's self-presentation as a paragon of virtue. That would naturally happen even if this weren't a situation where many — most? — people are motivated by larger political goals.

I'm torn between wanting to say how can the Washington Post know what's going on in the nervous system of the set "former Yale classmates" and thinking it's completely obvious and unspecial for almost anyone to be annoyed or suspicious about anyone who tries to put himself across as good to the core. I've said the same thing myself a couple times: When someone relies heavily on his own purity, it makes me wonder about the dark side. Surely, if Kavanaugh were a fictional character, he'd be a secret monster. What's he hiding behind his humble visage?


The WaPo article quotes, first, Liz Swisher, "who described herself as a friend of Kavanaugh in college":
“Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him. I watched him drink more than a lot of people. He’d end up slurring his words, stumbling,” said Swisher, a Democrat and chief of the gynecologic oncology division at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “There’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. . . . But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”
She's a doctor, and there's no "medical way" to say he had blackouts, but she says it anyway, in the form of saying that he can't say that he didn't. Swisher swished that around nicely, not putting her medical credibility at risk at all.
Lynne Brookes, who like Swisher was a college roommate of one of the two women now accusing Kavanaugh of misconduct...
Whoa! I'm surprised that this roommate-of-an-accuser status is revealed only after I've digested Swisher's semi-medical diagnosis.

... said... “He’s trying to paint himself as some kind of choir boy,” said Brookes, a Republican and former pharmaceutical executive who recalled an encounter with a drunken Kavanaugh at a fraternity event. “You can’t lie your way onto the Supreme Court, and with that statement out, he’s gone too far. It’s about the integrity of that institution.”
What's the lie? Kavanaugh admitted he drank. But Brookes is "a Republican," but her assertions are intemperate. The lie in question I infer, reading on, is that Kavanaugh denied ever suffering memory lapses from drinking.

I'm looking to see if there are any other classmates in the set of those rankled by the choir boy image. No. And really, only Brookes spoke in those terms.

Finally, I get back to Swisher and Brookes. Both were roommates with Deborah Ramirez (the woman who told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed his genitalia near her face during a bout of drinking).

The key question, I infer from the text, is not whether the "choir boy" imagine rankled, but whether these women have any evidence of Kavanaugh suffering memory blackouts. I can see the WaPo reporters must have pressed these 2 women on the subject. How could they know? One way would be if they heard Kavanaugh say that he couldn't remember. We're told Swisher "could not recall a specific instance" like that.
But Brookes, Ramirez’s roommate for a year, said she was present one night when Kavanaugh participated in an event with his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. Brookes said she believes there was “no way” he remembered all of the behavior she observed that night, when fraternity brothers pushed pledges to get “ridiculously drunk” and do “ridiculous things.”
Why is there no way he remembered? It seems to be just another way to say he was really really drunk:
Brookes said she remembers seeing Kavanaugh outside the Sterling Memorial Library, wearing a superhero cape and an old leather football helmet and swaying, working to keep his balance.
He was ordered to hop on one foot, grab his crotch and approach her with a rhyme, Brookes said. He couldn’t keep balanced, she said, but belted out the rhyme she’s remembered to this day: “I’m a geek, I’m a geek, I’m a power tool. When I sing this song, I look like a fool.”

“It’s a funny, drunk college story that you remember — at least, I remember,” Brookes said. As she tracked his career over the years, and his rise in the federal court system, she said, “I thought it was so funny to think that’s the Brett who sang that song.”
Yeah, it's funny. But it doesn't mean he had a memory lapse. Or even that he was that drunk. He hopped on one foot, didn't he? All Brookes can say is that he wasn't "balanced." If you were so drunk that you'd necessarily suffer memory loss, wouldn't you fall if you tried to hop? Wouldn't you forget the lines of the rhyme? The inferences to be made from this story are not, I think, that he was blackout drunk, but that he was in thrall to some fraternal hazing.
The Post contacted Brookes and Swisher last week because they lived with Ramirez at different points during their undergraduate years. Neither returned calls or emails until Tuesday. Ramirez previously told neither of them about her allegation... but Brookes and Swisher said they believe her account.
Oh! So the real news here is that Ramirez's roommates won't corroborate her story! They say they believe her, but they were in a position to hear the story close in time to when it allegedly happened and they did not. Back before The New Yorker broke the story, they would not respond to calls and emails seeking to corroborate it. Only after The New Yorker's publication did they answer some questions, and they seem to have been led into bolstering the blackout drunk theory of why Kavanaugh is contradicting his accusers.

NOTE: This is the first post in a series of posts about Kavanaugh this morning. Comments on this post should only be about this article. Here's my post warning you that a series of posts is forthcoming. If you want to draw attention to other articles, do so in the comments section for that post, not this one.

167 comments:

rhhardin said...

You wouldn't be ranked by a choirboy image unless he didn't slip.

RMc said...

Because "Most of Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmates have no problem with his ‘choir boy’ image on Fox interview" isn't a story. (Certainly not in the Washington Post, who's trying so very hard to keep democracy from dying and stuff.)

Craig said...

If you were so drunk that you'd necessarily suffer memory loss, wouldn't you fall if you tried to hop? Wouldn't you forget the lines of the rhyme?

---

No. If you're going to accuse the Washington Post of playing loose with facts, maybe don't yourself play loose with the facts.

Michael K said...

So far, two soap opera women. Do these women know how bad they make women look as sentient agents ?

Darrell said...

When you interview a Lefty for a matter that has critical importance for the Left, you can expect an answer that serves the Left's goals. So you have to tell me the background and current associations of everyone you quote. WaPo, of course, doesn't. So all this is noise until I confirm otherwise.

Unknown said...

So he rankled one room then?

RMc said...

To be fair, "rankles" is a great word. "Rankles" sounds like a villain in a Dickens novel.

readering said...

Kavanaugh did not have thousands of classmates. yale not wisconsin.

mezzrow said...

Rankles? Rhymes with cankles. I'm triggered.

So much hate.

wendybar said...

What "rankles" me is seeing Yale Law School give their students the day off to protest Kavanaugh. Due Process is no longer required. Sad.

TrespassersW said...

Shorter WaPo: "We STILL can't find anyone to corroborate the accusations, so we're taking the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach."

Craig said...

Blogger Craig said...
If you were so drunk that you'd necessarily suffer memory loss, wouldn't you fall if you tried to hop? Wouldn't you forget the lines of the rhyme?

---

No. If you're going to accuse the Washington Post of playing loose with facts, maybe don't yourself play loose with the facts.

9/26/18, 7:54 AM

Also, you seem to be inferring that he didn't fall. But the Washington Post didn't say anything about whether he fell or not -- indeed, the paper reports that he could _not_ keep his balance.

And, why are you burdening the report with the word "necessarily"? Lots of other weaker modals would do the work: "most likely," "almost certainly," "probably," "with high probability." "Necessarily"?! This is not the work of a careful reader committed to cruel neutrality.

Not very careful reading...

readering said...

Wonder what Trump, who was a ladies man (dated Candice Bergen once!) in college but alcohol virgin, thinks of Kavanaugh's college history.

CStanley said...

I think this is a good post that lays bare the strategy of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.


At the moment they are working on the line of attack which says that Kavanaugh drank so much that he must have at times had memory blackouts. Their support for that is pretty weak though, with these women saying they think they observed him in a state of drunkenness like that.

My guess is that they’ll now move on from that line of attack. Possibly there will be some musings about behavior during various states of inebriation, with the idea that when people are blackout drunk they really can’t behave in a menacing way or carry out a sexual assault anyway. So, the reasoning will go, that Kavanaugh really never drink to that state but instead just to the point of engaging in these horrible lurid behaviors and is now flat out lying about it.

rehajm said...

False statements made to the press are not subject to criminal penalty, but false statements to Congress are.

No clarification on the status of weasel words, however.

Bay Area Guy said...

"Frat Boy Drank Beer in College 35 years ago" isn't a very provocative headline for a WaPost story. They are running out of hit pieces.

Bruce Hayden said...

Call in yesterday to Rush from Wyoming, if all places. Woman was in the same housing unit as Kavenaugh, at the same time, and she talked about having been pumped by the MSM (NYT?). It appears that they are devoting significant reporter resources to interviewing anyone who remembered Kavenaugh at Yale. The bad was it that the reporter was asking esp leading questions. The good is that she sounded very young, and didn't do that well, esp in appearing anywhere close to unbiased. Which is to say that the MSM seems to have gone through old Yale yearbooks, or otherwise acquired lists of other Yalies who likely knew Kavenaugh, called up as many as they could, asked leading questions until they found people who would agree with them, then reported them as being representative, instead of having been cherry picked.

But I think that they have lost, as long as the worst that they can say is that he was a sloppy drunk. Most of us were at that age.

Gahrie said...

When someone relies heavily on his own purity, it makes me wonder about the dark side.

Please list the impurities of Kagan, Sotomayor and RBG.

traditionalguy said...

Choir Boys implies teenagers. The adult Choirs I was in at an Episcopal Church had drunken BYOB parties on Saturday night that included serious drunken fraternizing with the women there, whether they were married, single or separated for the moment. But they all sang in harmony, recited the General Confession and took Communion together the next morning. And all was well. How else would the Gossip entertainment get new material.

So if there was no gossip about evil sex, than K is innocent.

urpower said...

Funny that "choir boy" is the category he's imagined to not belong to, then ends up singing a song.

Tina Trent said...

Who are these people who humiliate each other as part of membership rituals for future careers? This all sounds grotesque. Most people don’t have the social . . . capital to indulge in serial public stupidity.

When you factor in Kozinski’s behavior, the picture is of incredibly powerful people who never mature because they are coddled with lashings of tenure-protected power. Academicians and judges are apparently, specifically, uniquely, extravagantly above the very workplace standards they are empowered to enforce upon everyone else.

Mike Sylwester said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

This uncomfortable purity test is being foist upon him by a pack of hypocrites who have nothing to say about the moral lapses of Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy and more.

Ray - SoCal said...

I wonder what alternatives JournoList 2018 considered for Anti Kavanaugh stories?

Goal: Stop his nomination, or at a minimum besmirch Kavanaugh’s credibility / reputation

I would categorize this under the prevalent campus rape guilt mythology:
- If your male, and had any alcohol, you are at fault for whatever a woman accused you of.

Very Alinsky smear, since he did drink.



Mike Sylwester said...

Democracy Dies in Darkness!

Michael K said...

Stave Sailor has some thoughts on what is going on.

Mac Donald points out that in 2014 when colleges were first required to report the number of unfounded criminal charges involving their students:

The only unfounded crimes that Harvard reported were rapes—six of them. By contrast, none of the 492 property crimes reported to law enforcement in 2014 were found to be baseless. And those six unfounded rapes represented all of the rapes reported to the Harvard police in 2014—not one survived law-enforcement investigation….


Those Yale women were in college at the peak of the sexual liberation period. The rape epidemic that does not exist followed as day follows night.



Lyssa said...

“Surely if K were a fictional character, he’d be a secret monster.”

I think that people make this mistake a lot. (I know I catch myself doing it on occasion.). There are some narratives that we are so familiar with, are so baked into our conscious, that we tend to expect them from life, we tend to think life will have a narrative story structure. It’s true that the best fiction writers seek to pull from that which appears universal. However, most real stories aren’t going to have a satisfying narrative structure like one created by an author to enthrall a reader. A lot of things just are.

gilbar said...

i vividly remember this one time, at Cy's Roost; i think in was in the summer, maybe 1989 or so. I was SO DRUNK, that EVERY PERSON IN THE BAR *M*U*S*T* have been blacked out. There's No Way that Anyone could have EVER remembered that night. I have it Etched into my Brain how wasted Everyone was. The things that happened then... Well, let me tell you... They must have been bad.

MikeR said...

"Choir boy" image. Why, because he said he was a virgin? Lots of geeks are virgins until they graduate college or graduate school, because they're geeks and not willing to learn how to put in the large amount of effort needed to attract women. At my alma mater, the legend was that most guys end up marrying the first secretary they sleep with after they finish school.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

They're stuck with variations of the great/disgraceful CNN headline: "It's Unlikely, but Possible, that Trump is a Russian Spy." Now: "It's unlikely, but possible, that Kavanaugh 1) regularly or often had blackout drunks 2) had one on at least one of the nights that at least one of the accusers is referring to."
Or: "It's highly likely that Kavanaugh was not the choir boy he makes himself out to be. This doesn't make him a criminal, but it justifies our searching high and low for someone who will incriminate him for something. So far, even though he has always been gregarious and social, we really have diddly."
Or: "choir boy, Catholic Church, alcohol: need we say more, nudge nudge, wink wink?"

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Gosnell killed small black babies.

Anyone one the left give a shit?

rehajm said...

Who are these people who humiliate each other as part of membership rituals for future careers?

Presidents, heads of state, heads of industry.

Michael K said...

the MSM seems to have gone through old Yale yearbooks, or otherwise acquired lists of other Yalies who likely knew Kavenaugh,

Neo has a post on this.

There’s actually quite a bit of information out there about that. For example, one of the authors of the New Yorker article that broke the story, Jane Mayer, gave an interview in which she said the following:

We found classmates had been talking about this for weeks and months since July. There’d been an email chain of Yale classmates of Kavanaugh talking about will this thing come out long before Christine Blasey Ford came forward.

So we know that Yale alums, probably from the classes who attended Yale around the time Kavanaugh attended, have had an email thread going since July. Kavanaugh was nominated by President Trump on July 9th, so it’s pretty clear by the timing that this discussion in the email thread began around the time of his nomination and in reaction to it (or in strong anticipation of it).


Who is paying the lawyers ? This was well organized.

SayAahh said...

Let the first one with no bad habits offer the first accusations.
Let the first one with bad habits offer the first corroboration.

MikeR said...

As I've said here before, lack of memory is very different from, Could have been an axe-murderer. I certainly don't remember all of what I did when I was drunk, but I am very very familiar with the _kind_ of drunk I am. There is no way you could convince me that I did something terrible and can't remember it.

Amadeus 48 said...

I think he was singing "I'm a Deke! I'm a Deke...etc." We're talking Delta Kappa Epsilon here.

Wait! Brookes is a Republican! She must be a liar! So if she says she saw Kavanaugh seriously drunk---she must be LYING! But she says she doesn't remember Wanglegate--so she must be lying about that, too! But she may be lying about being a Republican, which means she is a Democrat, so she must be telling the truth, except she says she is a Republican.

These are deep waters.

DougWeber said...

One thing I am seeing is an assumption that everyone, when very drunk, has memory lapses or black out. I recently have had association with a woman who does drink to excess and at times has blackout. She says so herself the next day. And will say when her memory stops. But when one is with her it is impossible to tell that she has hit the blackout point. It is always a surprise when she says she does not remember anything past some point. I certainly had my share of drunken nights in college. But I remember them all as well as I remember my sober nights(which is not much after this much time).

Hagar said...

Alcohol affect different people differently. At that age, I never lost consciousness of what I was doing and remembered it all the next day and some things I still remember, even if with some embarrassment. Others would black out without nearly that much to drink.

My big sister told a story from her college days, when a couple of guys took her to a bar with the intent of finally drinking her under the table. It wound up with her calling a cab for one of them and hoisting the other on her shoulder and carrying him home, rang the doorbell and delivered him to his mother.

Henry said...

I did a search for Temperance Movement images. There is the famous "Lips that touch alcohol shall not touch ours" poster. But I like this one. I'd like to give the snake that comes out of the bottle a word bubble that says "Don't tread on me."

Or maybe "don' thread on me"

Tina Trent said...

@Gahrie:

Kagan provided Holder and Clinton with the justification for secretly excluding heterosexual female victims of serial sexual killers from being counted as victims of hate crime so they wouldn’t mess up the desired statistics. Raping and killing ten or twenty or fifty women just would not be prosecuted or counted as hate because it’s normative to do that to women, according to Kagan. Even when it includes carving pejoratives on the bodies, they could probably get away with it. Per Kagan. But systematically pick other types of people for torture and murder and it’s a worse crime.

I can’t even see Kagan as a woman after reading those memos. You want to defend that sort of fascist perversion of humanity?

Michael K said...

Blogger readering said...
Wonder what Trump, who was a ladies man (dated Candice Bergen once!) in college but alcohol virgin, thinks of Kavanaugh's college history.


Struggling a bit are we ?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Lots of geeks probably pretended to be sloppy drunk, too.

Is this a disqualification?

Ever watch old videos of Joe Biden all sloppy drunk? I suppose old Joe is considered cool? He was elevated to VP.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Do we get to dig into the college history of all leftists now?

Dave Begley said...

So, he got drunk in college. Who didn't? That doesn't make him a RAPIST.

Logic, people. Logic.

Amadeus 48 said...

I want to know what Kerry and Bush were made to do at Skull and Bones. By God, we are going to get to the bottom of this!

Craig said...

Blogger Dave Begley said...
So, he got drunk in college. Who didn't? That doesn't make him a RAPIST.

Logic, people. Logic.

9/26/18, 8:15 AM

---

Literally no one is saying that his drinking alone is what grounds evidence that he sexually assaulted anyone... Nice try strawmanning though.

mtb said...

Chiorboy image (fact?) nice to see as a contrast to the multiple "wow" lifestyles touted mostly by hollywood and in the media as: here's another example of how you can live not as a married couple family with children but as X and be cool.

readering said...

They had to give their sexual history.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I've been sloppy drunk. I've been hopping on one foot drunk. I've been bad rhyme drunk. I almost fell down once when drunk. But I have never been black-out drunk ever. I am not moved one iota by the accounts of these Yaleys.

No one can answer than question but Kavanaugh.

readering said...

Bush and Kerry at Skull and Bones

Amadeus 48 said...

I bet that what Kerry did at Skull and Bones makes Wanglegate look like a Sunday school picnic.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Kavanaugh admitted to drinking in college. How is that choir boy?
Everything is a trap in corrupt hypocrite leftwing world.

Sally327 said...

I have to assume that all of these "witnesses" to Kavanaugh's behavior in the situations they describe 30+ years later were pretty drunk themselves at the time. If they intend us to believe otherwise then Kavanaugh isn't the only one trying to pass himself off as a paragon of virtue.




William said...

The challenge for the press is to find some documented incident during college for which Kavanaugh has no memory. If they can show that Kavanaugh did something of which he has no memory, then this will be irrefutable proof that he's a rapist.

Levi Starks said...

If you have a classmate who’s a sloppy drunk and you, (of course being sober) don’t step in and prevent that classmate from doing harm to himself or others, then what kind of a person does that make you? A future doctor?

readering said...

Heather MacDonald was in my class. We did not meet for spin the bottle (or whatever the he'll was going on that night in Lawrence Hall).

Amadeus 48 said...

I was teetotal in college. It was a great way to go through school, and I remember everything.

Darrell said...

On the other hand, Althouse should have no problem with Kavanaugh , now. Your problem with him was perfection and he's not perfect, if you believe the storytellers. Nice and dirty, like you like 'em. Or do you belive the "Kavanaugh Bang Gang," now?

urpower said...

The woman's memory of the song: “I’m a geek, I’m a geek, I’m a power tool. When I sing this song, I look like a fool.”

As Amadeus 48 says, the word would be 'Deke', for Delta Kappa Epsilon. She's familiar with fraternity culture?

A similar song in a 1954 yearbook on archive.org: "It's a part of my job / As a Drunk and a Snob, / Because boys, you see, I'm a Deke!"

Darrell said...

*believe*

Birches said...

I can't wait until we start asking women about their sexual history and drinking habits in college.

Oso Negro said...

@Dave Begley - logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.

William said...

I have no memory of whether or not I have no memory of when I was drunk. I do, however, remember several incidents of upchucking. They were shameful. To my way of thinking, a gentleman should never upchuck in public, especially in the presence of ladies. That statement about a gentleman holding his liquor should be taken literally and seriously. Are there any credible witnesses who can testify that Kavanaugh upchucked? If there are none, then this would go a long way in my mind to reassuring me that Kavanaugh is not a rapist.

Sloanasaurus said...

It would be interesting to know how much money and resources the media has thrown into sliming brett kavanaugh over the last week. Probably hundreds of reporters contacting every student at his high school and yale; combing through photos and yearbooks, looking at every house in montegomery county... yet they think one dude from the fbi can do more?

Yet still nothing. Her claim remains an accusation of an incident that happened 35 years agao and there is no proof.

Rory said...

I drank a lot in college. My only knowledge of blackouts concerned someone telling me I had spilled it after I asked who spilled a beer here last night, and someone telling me that I had told them the same story when I came in drunk last night when I was trying to tell them the story the next morning. Never punched by a guy or slapped by a girl or had the police show up at the door or found a kangaroo in my room the next day. From my experience, it seems that blackouts aren't necessarily tied to anything interesting, and absent those two little conversations I'd have gone through life thinking that I had never had a blackout.

Michael K said...

Literally no one is saying that his drinking alone is what grounds evidence that he sexually assaulted anyone..

OK. Give us your evidence.

Speaking of strawmen.

TrespassersW said...

Wait! Brookes is a Republican! She must be a liar! So if she says she saw Kavanaugh seriously drunk---she must be LYING! But she says she doesn't remember Wanglegate--so she must be lying about that, too! But she may be lying about being a Republican, which means she is a Democrat, so she must be telling the truth, except she says she is a Republican.

Norman! Coordinate!

The Crack Emcee said...

Here's a weird question, even if the results would fuck-up my theory of this whole thing:

Can't the Republicans find someone without rape accusations in his past to be a Supreme Court Justice?

It would seem like the way to go.

walter said...

What? She drank with him until he was sloppy drunk and he didn't try to rip her clothes off?

Sebastian said...

But K didn't present himself as a choir boy. He stuck to a small set of specific denials.

In the hearings, he did accentuate his virtues as an adult, for which much evidence was presented, and none to the contrary, apart from the Althouse smear that his excellence must hide a dark side.

FIDO said...

How is a doctor who says 'there is no way to medically determine' and then unequivicobly asserting he MUST have been, any different than a person, say a legal scholar, saying that the evidence doesn't support one side or the other...but she says the woman is 'closer to the truth'?


But Althouse is particularly snarky at this Doctor of Humors but sees not the planks in her own eyes.

Lyssa said...

Birches said “I can’t wait until we start asking women about their sexual history and drinking habits in college.”

Shouldn’t be long - just as long as the woman’s a Republican.

Amadeus 48 said...

Crack--when Kavanaugh was nominated, there weren't rape accusations. They came up after the fact. But you raise an interesting prospect. Will there ever be another Republican nominee without after the fact rape accusations?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Crack - No.

There is no squeaky clean R. All D's including Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton, ARE squeaky clean. They've been washed clean by the hack press. If ANY and ALL R's ever annoyed someone or did something stupid as a teenager, that action will be trumped, plumped up and used against him/her in the distant 30+ year future.

narciso said...

so none of these are like the gay virtue signaler maddaleo, or the other guy clairborne?

FIDO said...

How is 'he's too good to be true' any different than 'he looks like a criminal so he must be one in THIS instance'?

Both assert a characteristic undisplayed.

It's sad that Althouse seems to feel that this is in any way a valid tool for judgment.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The standard for any R is perfection - but even then, a leftwing liar can do lots of damage with a single idea or opening.

All D's are allowed any past, without any curiosity. No digging by leftwing press. D's are above the law. See Bill and Teddy.

Just watch as Harvey Weinstein beats his rap.

Tom said...

It sounds like Brett was being hazed by the Dekes and this women did nothing to stop it.

Anyone know who else were Dekes at Yale? Anyone? Anyone?!

Basil Duke said...

re: the caller to Rush Limbaugh's program yesterday: The reporter who contacted the Wyoming lady - who lived in the same dorm as Kavanaugh - was 28 years of age, and from the Huffington Post. When the caller refused to play along with the woman's leading questions and admonished the reporter for her role in smearing a good man's name and possibly derailing his Supreme Court nomination, the reporter replied: "Yeah, but he'll still have a good job [if his nomination fails]." Disgusting, activist bitch.

Saint Croix said...

What's interesting about these two accusers is that they are both accusing him of public acts of indecency.

People keep saying it's "he said, she said," like there are only two people involved.

But that's not the case at all. There were multiple people involved in both incidents. These were public acts, with witnesses who were there and can tell us what happened.

It's rather striking that nobody has come forward to confirm these accounts. Not one person.

MikeR said...

@CrackEmcee "Can't the Republicans find someone without rape accusations in his past to be a Supreme Court Justice?
It would seem like the way to go."
No, they can't. There is no such thing any longer. Pick anyone you like, they have associated slightly with thousands of women in their lifetimes. Any one of those women can come forward with a story at the very end of the nomination process, based on no evidence at all. They don't need to have had a known relationship. It can be from more than thirty years ago, can be when they were juveniles. No one needs to have heard of it before - at least not with the nominee's name attached. The accusation doesn't need to be checkable: no place, no time, no names. Or give a couple of names - but it doesn't matter if all of them deny it absolutely.
The Republicans did what you say. That's what happened here. If the Democrats get away with this there will be no way to ever vet a nominee again.

readering said...

Tom: both Bushes.

Freeman Hunt said...

"Birches said...
I can't wait until we start asking women about their sexual history and drinking habits in college"

Heh.

CStanley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
FIDO said...

But once again, argumentum.

Say he DID drunkenly grope a girl at 17. Does this speak in any way to his skill and intelligence as a Judge, or is it just an excuse to say 'no' to Kav.


We know the answer to this. After all, a murderer can be a Lion of the Senate, a Rapist can be President, and a Grand Wizard can be the 'Conscience' of the Senate'.

Ann asserts (decades later) that she has been consistent the entire time, but I'd like more evidence of that. I don't believe women without evidence.

Here is the issue: Ann has been asked about her opinion on the tactics of protestors, if Ford is credible, if the motives of the accusers pass her sniff test as a Lawyer...and she has remained stonily silent on this.

Well, Qui tacet consentit "Silence implies consent" on legal questions.

Her approval comes from silence, PARTICULARLY when her opinion has (so many times) been solicited.

Biff said...

The Crack Emcee said..."Can't the Republicans find someone without rape accusations in his past to be a Supreme Court Justice?"

From here on, probably not. I suspect the same will be true of the Democrats when they get their turn. We've crossed the Rubicon.

iowan2 said...

The Dr, that opines that Kavanaugh 'drank so much he could not possibly remember what happened.' is suspect on its face.
The good Dr, despite her medical degree is wholly ignorant of the affects of alcohol. Not surprising, the vast majority of medical Dr have no more than casual street level understanding of alcohol and alcohol addiction. To assume that passing out, and blacking out are even similar is just stupid, or maybe an outright lie, using a position of supposed expertise to push her preferred political narrative, is intentionally confusing the conversation. That is a very slimy Doctor indeed.

walter said...

Well Crack, there's Amy Conen Barret...of loud living dogma etc.
There will always be something if there is a perceived threat to leftward legislating from the bench and Roe specifically.

Darrell said...

A recap--so far.
(1) The first two women--Ford and Ramirez--are liars. The only evidence that checks out is a spatial and temporal connection to Kavanaugh. Both women have associations with Leftist Soros-connected groups. All of their stated witnesses deny knowing Kavanaugh, much less seeing him during the incident in question. No rape was mentioned in either incident.

(2) The yearbook? The two men that contacted the media are both Lefties--one just ran for elected office and lost. Both have anti-Trump social media postings.

(3) A fellow classmate said he was a sloppy drunk--while saying words that a friend wouldn't use. No information about political associations or pro-choice groups.

CStanley said...

I’m not sure if this is the best place to leave this comment but it is is relevant and if it also applies to later posts I may make the point again if time permits....

I am the same age as Kavanaugh and his classmates. I attended a prep school, though not an “elite” one in terms of money and privilege (it was a top ten ranked high school, and we were heavily recruited by the ivies but it was a public charter school in New Orleans so students were from all over the socioeconomic spectrum.)

The culture of that time for high school and college students definitely included a lot of alcohol. I was in many ways a straight arrow but did not consider it immoral to drink, even fairly heavily, as long as one could still be accountable for actions done while under the influence (I look back and think it was naive to think we had that ability to draw the line.)

But this makes me relate to Brett Kavanaugh. I don’t see his squeaky clean image being at odds with drinking at parties. I also know that even as a kid who feels comfortable being “square” (that wasn’t our term, I think we’d have said “nerdy”) there was still always pressure to fit in to social norms and to reiterate, that included going to keg parties. I can also imagine for guys, if they were virgins, it might have included making claims that weren’t true that would make other guys believe you weren’t a virgin.

I imagine that Brett Kavanaugh was viewed one way by kids who knew him well (the squeaky clean oersona) and another way by people who socialized with him only at parties. It doesn’t surprise me that the latter group might assume that he was more like them than he really was, and confronted now with the idea that he had a higher moral standard they disbelieve it.

walter said...

In the words of the cowboy poet Harry Reid justifying his lie about Romney: “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

what the shit show is really about:

Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement released Tuesday night. "The goal is to de-politicize the process and get to the truth, instead of grandstanding and giving senators an opportunity to launch their presidential campaigns.

Indeed.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

Say he DID drunkenly grope a girl at 17

The accusation is assault and attempted rape. Not just groping.

Attempting to rape someone disqualifies you to the Supreme Court.

Again, IF it's true.

Darrell said...

A common Leftist trick is to flood the zone with coverage. People get so sick of hearing about something so they just want it to go away. People think "where there is smoke, there is fire," but it's just Lefty assholes with smokebombs.

LilyBart said...

Literally no one is saying that his drinking alone is what grounds evidence that he sexually assaulted anyone... Nice try strawmanning though.

Literally no one has any evidence he assaulted anyone either. She has a decades old memory, which she never shared with anyone until 2012. And everyone she's named as being at this party has no member of such a party or assault, with the last one her own friend saying she'd never met Kavanaugh and had never been to any party where he was present.

LilyBart said...

Pick anyone you like, they have associated slightly with thousands of women in their lifetimes. Any one of those women can come forward with a story at the very end of the nomination process, based on no evidence at all

This is the problem with saying, 'Hey, there is a cloud of suspicion, let's just dump this guy and move on'. Setting aside the fact that we've just ruin a man with no evidence he tried to rape someone, any future nominee is vulnerable to uncorroborated accusations.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

A thin allegation against any R is much better than thick evidence against any D.

Related: Americans think the media is really biased.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

The minimum number you can describe as classmates is two. They quote two. And quibbling about the order of paragraphs on the information the two were her roommmates. And where’s the story his freshmen roommate is telling? In another post yet to come.

Michael K said...

Will there ever be another Republican nominee without after the fact rape accusations?

Amy Barrett, but they will find something.

Too Catholic, I assume.

The Democrats forgot Machiavelli's rule. "Never strike a Prince unless you kill him."

Kavanaugh is a reliable vote now.

walter said...

More Wapoo:

The letters appeared within days of Christine Blasey Ford’s name becoming public. One was from her high school classmates. One was from her colleagues at Stanford University. Her Palo Alto neighbors wrote another letter. Groups of attorneys, statisticians and teenagers wrote too. Then came a letter that began, “As members of Christine Blasey Ford’s family . . .”

It was signed by a dozen people. But none of them were related to Ford by blood. The letter was from the relatives of her husband, Russell Ford.

Christine’s own parents and siblings — the Blaseys — have not released any similar statement of support. As their daughter and sister has become the country’s most talked-about woman for accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault while both were in high school, the Blaseys have strategically avoided the press. Voicemails, texts, emails and letters from reporters have gone unanswered. Friends of the family have politely declined to comment on what they are going through.
Reached by phone on Tuesday, Ford’s father, Ralph Blasey Jr., offered a brief endorsement of his daughter. “I think all of the Blasey family would support her. I think her record stands for itself. Her schooling, her jobs and so on,” he said before hanging up. Moments later, after picking up the phone a second time, he added: “I think any father would have love for his daughter.”Ford’s mother-in-law, Ruth Guthery, said she has “no idea” why the Blaseys have not shown public support for Christine. Guthery is also a Republican, and she voted for Trump. But she did not hesitate to sign the Ford family letter describing Christine as a woman of “impeccable character.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/christine-blasey-fords-own-family-has-been-nearly-silent-amid-outpouring-of-support/2018/09/26/49a3f4a6-c0d6-11e8-be77-516336a26305_story.html?utm_term=.2d01167d2bfc

Krumhorn said...

I’m missing the part where any of this is relevant to the qualifications of the man to serve on the Supreme Court. If it’s about abortion, then let’s make that clear and say that it’s necessary to discuss anything so long as women can keep killing babies. Otherwise, none of this makes any sense.

- Krumhorn

Bay Area Guy said...

I thought the whole point of going to college was to drink beer and get laid.

Hmm. Perhaps, my priorities were a bit screwy.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

This only proves that Yale has a lot of Dems.

Bruce Hayden said...

I was in a fraternity in college. If anyone there didn't drink at all, I sure don't remember it. I think that maybe 80% of us gave that up mostly upon graduation from college, or maybe grad school. Of the remaining 20%, maybe half were already on their way to alcoholism. You knew who they were, but just thought at the time that they were just better at drinking, We had a full bar in the basement, and beer (along with pop) in the pop machine (cans of either went for $.25, with about $.05 of cross subsidization of the beer by the pop). Yet, most of us didn't use either that much. It was, of course, the parties every couple weeks when the normally conservative studious majority would let loose. Most of the proto-alcoholics didn't get much worse on party nights, because they were drinking hard liquor routinely already. And, indeed, everyone there I knew who ended up as an alcoholic was drinking mixed drinks nightly the n college, and most of those who were doing so ended up with alcohol problems. Interestingly, several of them were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Several even graduated Summa cum Laude.

Most of us never really blacked out and forgot about what had happened the night before. We knew that because we would talk about our antics the next day, after those parties, and those who couldn't remember were razzed accordingly. The two times I got close to passed out drunk, I remember decently well, at least until I climbed into bed. Once was on my 21st birthday, when I pulled up the door handle to lean out and hurl, on the way back to the house, and had forgotten that we got in on the driver's side. It was ok though, because the driver was the guy who had bought me two gin martinis. Last time I ever drank one. The other was right after an initiation, where there was a running competition between presidents on how many Boiler Makers they can drink. I didn't have a chance, with a guy two years ahead of me having been one of those Summa alcoholics I mentioned above. You really don't want to know what he ended up doing. He downed better than twice as many as I did, when it was my turn to compete. It took most of a decade for my stomach to behave, when smelling warm whiskey. My favorite blackout story was my second pledge son (first one was a budding alcoholic, and didn't come back sophomore year). He pledged in the fall, when we normally didn't have a pledge class, so had the entire fraternity buying him drinks that night. I remember leaving him on a sofa in the living room, with a trash can by him. Didn't see him for maybe three days. He apparently didn't remember anything between when he lay down there, and woke up sitting in cold water in a tub at his apartment, two days later. He had started college allergic to alcohol, and never really liked drinking, even after having that problem medically addressed.

The Crack Emcee said...

Republicans Are Standing By Kavanaugh Just To Own The Libs

If there's no squeaky clean Republicans, how'd Gorsetch (sp?) get in?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

I Believe Kavanaugh

in vino veritas

chickelit said...

A photo of Kavanaugh doing a keg stand would really put him on the stand.

Biff said...

I'm a Yale alum. I wasn't in Kavanaugh's class, but I was acquainted with him through some mutual extracurricular activities, like intramural sports and a tutoring program for local kids. We weren't particularly close, but my main impressions of him were that he was a very serious, focused student and that he fit in with the tutors (and their students) and with the decidedly amateur athletes that participated in intramurals. The DKE frat had an unflattering reputation as a hard-partying place, but I have no experience with Kavanaugh in the DKE context.

There are a lot of Yale alumni Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, mailing lists, and so on. From the moment Kavanaugh was nominated, there have been the usual snarky comments, requests to sign open letters and petitions opposing Kavanaugh, and other sorts of activism that take place all the time. A few of the posts have been along the lines of "So-and-so reporter from such-and-such news outlet is looking to talk with people who knew Kavanaugh. Here is their contact info if you'd like to dish." It really isn't hard to drum up people who would be willing to speak about public figures these days, especially when they are from a community with such a high percentage of liberal activists.

What has been interesting is how few responses these posts have been getting. Normally, when folks post political messages in these groups, they get a lot of "likes" and "You're so courageous!" comments, while the more conservative group members generally keep their heads down and their mouths shut. The recent Kavanaugh posts seem to be getting just a handful of "likes" and very few supportive follow-ups. It's purely anecdotal, and I hesitate to speculate on whether it's even real, but there does seem to be a "dog that didn't bark" vibe. I suspect that most alums realize that Kavanaugh is eminently qualified from the academic/judicial perspective, and perhaps there is some tiny remnant of discomfort with making judicial confirmations so nakedly political, at least among classmates who aren't hard-core activists.

walter said...

Gorsuch was Scalia's replacement. This time there's more in the balance. If RBG needs replacing during Trump era, the shit show will be full plexi.

AndyN said...

I realize this is only anecdotal, but I have a good friend who's an alcoholic who somewhat regularly gets blackout drunk. One thing I've noticed is that when she does, she will routinely fill in the blanks with "memories" that correspond to what she'd like to think of herself and her behavior.

Kavanaugh's accusers may not be lying. They've both admitted to irresponsible drinking habits. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that they have in the past gotten blackout drunk and have filled in the gaps in their memories with events that they now really want to believe actually happened.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

We are all surprised Gorsuch got in without the witch trial.

The D's didn't fight dirty enough for their crazed base.

Seeing Red said...

What difference, at this point, does it make?

Francisco D said...

"Can't the Republicans find someone without rape accusations in his past to be a Supreme Court Justice? "

I guess you have not been paying attention, Crack.

No one has accused Kavanaugh of rape, either formally or informally.

No one has formally accused him of anything because they have yet to swear out a complaint under oath.

I wonder why that is.

Known Unknown said...

"Wonder what Trump, who was a ladies man (dated Candice Bergen once!) in college but alcohol virgin, thinks of Kavanaugh's college history."

Irrelevant?

Michael K said...


I was in a fraternity in college. If anyone there didn't drink at all, I sure don't remember it. I think that maybe 80% of us gave that up mostly upon graduation from college, or maybe grad school.


I was, too. It was the cheapest place to live at the time. Drinking in the house was not allowed but we did so anyway. It was a bit like the scene in Animal House when Dean Wormer walks into the Delta House.

I did a lot of partying and years later, I ran into the "Graduate Advisor," who was an Engineering grad student and a real nerd. He asked me what I was doing and, when I told him medical school, he didn't believe me.

My "Big Brother" and chapter president was one who became an alcoholic. When I was an intern, he met me for lunch and had been in an alcohol rehab place. It was really sad. Sadder was his wife, who was a pretty sorority girl that I had a crush on. She died of alcoholism about ten years later.

tim in vermont said...

I knew a couple of people in college who got blackout drunk. Everybody knew about it and it happened semi frequently.

Gretchen said...

Really? I doctor? Certainly I have been drunk enough to slur words, and might not remember specifics of a conversation, or a chain of events, or who said what, but I remember the overall events. Kavanaugh would remember pulling his pants down or groping a girl. People react differently to alcohol.

iowan2 said...

Blogger Steve M. Galbraith said...
Say he DID drunkenly grope a girl at 17

The accusation is assault and attempted rape. Not just groping.

Attempting to rape someone disqualifies you to the Supreme Court.

Again, IF it's true.


No, not even close to factual. Play a little mind game. I am accused by family members of shooting and killing their dad and husband. Murder if you will, facts show I did indeed shoot and kill the man.
Case closed.

Ooops, not so fast, Law enforcement talked to me, got my side of the story, talked to witnesses and determined that I acted in self defense. No charges were ever filed. So while some are quiet ready to state I murdered a man, (shot and killed) it was legally never murder.
The point of this exercise is, the victim is not the person to determine the charge. This is the center of the whole campus sexual assault fiasco. Allowing the female to determine the charge. Why, if the woman, and the man, are both drinking, only the male faces "charges" ? 'Because reasons, and now you can shut up.'(paraphrased ,Sen. Hirono)

This is all a moot point in the specific case. No evidence places Kananaug and Ford in the same place. I hate with a passion the notion that anyone plays the stupid 'well, if it did happen, it's not so bad' No, never happened. Accusation is not fact.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

R's are supposed to be choir boys - ripe for mocking in all directions.

D's can commit rape and bully people.

Gretchen said...

If Kavanaugh goes down, Trump should reach across the aisle and nominate Bill Clinton, assuming Republicans retain control of the Senate. That would be fun. I've kind of given up on this process being anything but theater.

Bruce Hayden said...

"Well, Qui tacet consentit "Silence implies consent" on legal questions."

Just quibbling, but not always. My father was an attorney for most of a half century, but rarely tried cases. He argued before the CO Supreme Court three times: won, lost, won. For the third case, he had hired a trial atty who argued, and lost, at the trial and appeals level. So my father did the arguing at the Supreme Court. The question that got Cert was whether a mortgage (hypothecation of real property to secure a loan) was an interest in real property, requiring a writing (Statute of Frauds). The appeals court had accepted a subordination based only on silence. Unfortunately, for CO law, their Supreme Court never got to that question, because they held that silence only implies consent when there was a duty to respond. There was no duty to respond in that case, so no subordination, thus leaving the appeals court holding in place essentially that a mortgage doesn't require a writing, therefore is not an interest in real property in CO.

mockturtle said...

Wow, college boys getting 'sloppy drunk'! The horror!

While I am not acquainted with Dr. Swisher I am an alum of the University of Washington, one of the most feminazi institutions in the US. The female profs are ruthless in furthering their agenda.

tim in vermont said...

he accusation is assault and attempted rape. Not just groping.

Isn’t the accusation that she was AFRAID he was trying to rape her? Didn’t she go to the party in a one-piece bathing suit, good strategy, BTW, because she was afraid before she even went? That’s bad strategy, to go to that kind of party in the first place. It seems like we are substituting her fears for his motives.

Not to mention that she seems to hate Republicans viscerally. Memory is a funny thing. Psychologists, as an experiment, have implanted false memories in subjects. It’s not that hard to change somebody’s memory. Anybody who has been married a long time knows of events that they recall differently than their spouse. Lots of siblings remember childhood events completely differently. This is ridiculous.

JAORE said...

"WaPO reports..." should be read as "WaPo opines".

You'll be right a LOT more often than wrong.

tim in vermont said...

It’s said that a memory is like an object in your mind that every time you examine it, it’s like you pick it up, and change it in some ways, and then set it down again. Memories are kind of like grooves in old records that way, except that they can change completely.

TreeJoe said...

Can someone explain to me - in real terms, not political terms - why we have an allegation of sexual abuse with a named accuser-victim and a named perpetrator in a state with no apparent statute of limitation on such a criminal allegation.

Yet what is being recommended by "serious" people is:

1. The correct venue to air this allegation is a public senatorial hearing with no prior organized investigation.
2. The FBI should investigate it even though they neither have jurisdiction nor has this turned up in their multiple exhaustive background checks on the Judge.
3. No evidence, or really any specifics, are tied to the allegation yet this should be taken with the utmost sincerity.

....

If I was a feminist I would be outraged at this. This damages other women's claims. This is going to hurt the #metoo movement and cast doubt on other women with perhaps more substantiated, recent allegations but with similarly weak stories (i.e. they told no one and there's no physical evidence).

And, as far as I can tell, why isn't CBF subjecting herself to a potential civil lawsuit even if Kavanaugh was rejected?

Birches said...

Let's also realize that any woman OBGYN is most likely in the Abortion now, Abortion tomorrow , Abortion forever camp. She is not an uninterested observer.

walter said...

"Not to mention that she seems to hate Republicans viscerally. Memory is a funny thing."
Online presence wiped "like with a cloth".

Bruce Hayden said...

"I was, too. It was the cheapest place to live at the time. Drinking in the house was not allowed but we did so anyway. It was a bit like the scene in Animal House when Dean Wormer walks into the Delta House."

Our fraternity house was cheaper than the college dorms, but came out about even when you factored in dues, which included a social fund that paid for maybe one decent party a month (one big one a semester). Which made sellng the fraternity to my parents
easy, since they were paying for it. But then my brother came along, joined a different fraternity, which was in a college owned house, where they paid dorm prices - and had dues on top of that (that paid for the best parties on campus, often with more than half the 1500 member student body attending). Which my parents dutifully paid, after having set the precedent of paying my fraternity dues.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Yeah - I'd like to see more of her on-line quotes.

Are they vanished?

Mr. Majestyk said...

Being a virgin in high school and for several years in college doesn't mean you're a choir boy.

Rick said...

They're now arguing he can't be on the Supreme Court because he managed to have fun while in college. This is fucking stupid.

Don't kid yourself for a second that these new questions won't be posed to every future Dem nominee. They won't trigger the outpouring of hysterical former acquaintances since such would suffer retaliation instead of advancing their careers for doing so. But the resulting commentary from WAPO et al criticizing these these questions as inappropriate will only further delegitimize left wing institutions.

Carry on douchebags.

Craig said...

Blogger Michael K said...
Literally no one is saying that his drinking alone is what grounds evidence that he sexually assaulted anyone..

OK. Give us your evidence.

Speaking of strawmen.

9/26/18, 8:32 AM

---

I don't think you know what "strawman" means...

JML said...

It is easy to hate the 'perfect person' who has an obvious character flaw they refuse to acknowledge. Human nature. But every so often, a person comes along who is damn near perfect, has no discernable character flaws, strives to do their best, know they are blessed and remain humble. It is human nature to hate them too, because you know no matter what, you can never be as good as that person, so, per human nature, F them. Brett Kavanaugh is a good man. F those who fail or refuse to see that, and F those bent on destroying him.

Michael K said...

Craig seems to be another lefty troll.

tim in vermont said...

When Trump is that careless with language, all hell breaks out in the media, putting the worst possible interpretation on it.

Michael K said...

Our fraternity house was cheaper than the college dorms,

At SC, when I began, the only men's dorms were for the band and the football team.

It was the fraternity house or an apartment. It was pretty cheap. They did not serve meals on weekends but the price was good.

I was on a scholarship which allowed $500 a year for living expenses. That was about half the annual dues of the fraternity.

I was paying the rest. Nothing from parents. My father said "Get this idea of college out of your head."

He refused to fill out a financial statement, which resulted in no National Merit Scholarship and I could not go to Cal Tech where my dorm room was assigned.

Known Unknown said...

"I don't think you know what "strawman" means..."

And drinking in college/high school is evidence of what exactly?

tim maguire said...

Kavanaugh probably did go too far when he said he was a virgin. Even if true, it's suspicious. Especially for a drinker.

But this black out thing? I call bullshit. Some people are more prone to blackouts than others. It's irresponsible and unprofessional for Dr. Swisher to offer that opinion. Like a therapist diagnosing someone who is not a client.

readering said...

We agree about the blackout thing

Darrell said...

I had been drunk when I was a virgin. And drinking had not too do with me losing my virginity. Both of us were sober--no alcohol or drugs involved.

TreeJoe said...

I was drunk several times, including black out drunk 1-2x, in the years proceeding my loss of virginity.

How is that suspicious?

gilbar said...

now people are saying that bret and his deke brothers,
SPIKED THE PUNCH WITH GRAIN ALCOHOL!!!!!
my GOD! what sort of choirboy would belong to a frat that SPIKED THE PUNCH WITH GRAIN ALCOHOL?

Innocent helpless and ignorant womyn, would go to these frat parties, expecting harmless good fun; and INSTEAD! They discover that the demon frat boys SPIKED THE PUNCH WITH GRAIN ALCOHOL!

mockturtle said...

SPIKED THE PUNCH WITH GRAIN ALCOHOL!!!!!

Gee, that's never been done before or since! Not even at Oxford or Cambridge./s

John Pickering said...

Ann seems to be right about the choir boy image; Kavanaugh now walking back his Fox interview:

“In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,” he said.

Why does so much of Ann's aging white flyover tribe keep supporting this drunk elitist beltway preppy? There must be dozens of potential judges out there who would ban abortion without having to be such an entitled schmuck about it.

Also, many of you can already tell Kav's a fucking coward and wimp. He almost started to cry the other night on TV; I bet he starts crying on the stand tomorrow. Come on, you guys, grease the skids for this loser.

LA_Bob said...

The Crack Emcee said, "If there's no squeaky clean Republicans, how'd Gorsetch (sp?) get in?"

I think the Democrats were still shell-shocked (or maybe blacked out) after the 2016 fiasco.

Regarding your previous post, there haven't been any rape accusations. There have been sexual misconduct accusations. And "sexual misconduct" means anything the accuser says it means.

FullMoon said...

Which is to say that the MSM seems to have gone through old Yale yearbooks, or otherwise acquired lists of other Yalies who likely knew Kavenaugh, called up as many as they could, asked leading questions until they found people who would agree with them, then reported them as being representative, instead of having been cherry picked.

Guaranteed they have contacted and are contacting every person in the yearbook they can, not just the known K associates.

As to the question of who is paying the lawyers, rich leftists, obviously. What difference does that make? Maybe goes to the validity of the claims, I guess?
High powered lawyers putting pressure on women to go public with a thin claim of abuse.

Greg P said...

The main problem with your headline, Althouse, is that it's false to fact:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brett-kavanaugh-choir-boy-straw-man/

This morning we have seen the arrival into the Kavanaugh Saga of a giant straw man: namely, that Brett Kavanaugh told Martha McCallum that he was a sober, dull “choir boy” in high school and college, and that this claim demonstrates that he is a liar. Along with the Washington Post, Paul Krugman has jumped on this bandwagon, proposing that “Kavanaugh has lost all credibility by portraying his young self as a ‘choir boy.’” “If Kavanaugh were now saying ‘Yes, I drank and partied hard, but I didn’t do that’ it would be different,” Krugman writes. “But he’s claiming to have been a strait-laced, sober young man — which we know he wasn’t. Credibility gone.”

But Kavanaugh claimed no such thing. Indeed, in his interview with Martha McCallum, Kavanaugh said precisely what Krugman suggests that he should have said. At no point did Kavanaugh say he didn’t go to parties; on the contrary, he said he did. At no point did he say he didn’t drink, or even have “too many” drinks; on the contrary, he said he did. And at no point did he say he has no regrets; on the contrary, he says he does. Rather, he said that he never got blackout drunk, and that he never committed sexual assault — two very specific claims that are in no way interchangeable with the ones that Krugman and co. are pretending he declined to make.

At two points in the interview, Kavanaugh painted a picture of himself as a good guy. But — and this is important — he did so in response to the charge that he ran a gang-rape club while in school. Moreover, he then adds onto his defense the acknowledgement that he went to parties, and drank, and did “things we look back on in high school and regret or cringe a bit,” all while insisting that this has nothing to do with the allegation in question, which is of sexual assault. Look at the transcript:

MACCALLUM: Michael Avenatti says that he has significant evidence and another accuser, who claims that you and Mark Judge, at multiple house parties in the Washington, D.C., area during the 1980s, would participate in the targeting of women with alcohol and drugs to allow a train of men to subsequently gang-rape them.

There are multiple witnesses that will corroborate these facts, and each of them must be called to testify publicly. Did you ever participate in or where you ever aware of any gang-rape that happened at a party that you attended?

KAVANAUGH: That’s totally false and outrageous. I’ve never done any such thing, known about any such thing. When I was in high school — and I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, a Jesuit high school, where I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship, friendship with my fellow classmates and friendship with girls from the local all-girls Catholic schools.

Greg P said...

John Pickering said...
Ann seems to be right about the choir boy image; Kavanaugh now walking back his Fox interview:

“In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,” he said.

Why does so much of Ann's aging white flyover tribe keep supporting this drunk elitist beltway preppy? There must be dozens of potential judges out there who would ban abortion without having to be such an entitled schmuck about it.


Poor john Pickering. So very unhappy that the press can't bully the GOP any more

Keep on f'ing hat chicken, John

PhilD said...

So once again it is;
- he was a choir boy, that can't be right. Everyone does things one shouldn't do
- he did things he shouldn't have done: crucify him

Damned if you are, damned if you aren't

FullMoon said...

The Crack Emcee said, "If there's no squeaky clean Republicans, how'd Gorsetch (sp?) get in?"

Because it was an even trade, Gorsuch for Scalia.
This one may create an occasional lean rightward.

Jim at said...

Getting drunk is college is now a disqualification for SCOTUS nominees.

Good to know.

Can we apply that standard to each and every member of Congress, too?

Jim at said...

No. If you're going to accuse the Washington Post of playing loose with facts, maybe don't yourself play loose with the facts.

Yes. Let's all listen to Craig. He's the one who's unsure if this is a political hitjob.

Go on, sir.

Rick said...

Come on, you guys, grease the skids for this loser.

Kavanaugh is finally paying off by proving the left are conspiracy nutters.

“Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Jim at said...

Can't the Republicans find someone without rape accusations in his past to be a Supreme Court Justice? - Crack

No. That's the fucking point.

There are no Republicans without rape accusations.

steve said...

This is the Russian dossier all over again. "Sure, we have no PROOF that Trump did these gross things, but knowing what we know about him, it's PLAUSIBLE."

Jim at said...

Biff @ 9/26/18, 9:18 AM

Interesting perspective. Thanks.

Darrell said...

There are no Republicans without rape accusations.

Especially when you don't need evidence.
They should make it unlawful to even check if the two have ever been in the same cities at the same time. You don't need to complicate things.

John Pickering said...

Ann, whose reading sems to be pretty scaterr-shot, hasn't apparently noticed the new accuser, represented by Avenatti. Weird, but not unusual. Nor has she noticed that president Trump is now comparing himself to Kavanaugh, which isn't a good sign. Anyway, from another commenter that Ann hasn't read:

Trump’s involvement, on the other hand, poses a serious risk for his party. Kavanugh’s allies have been straining for months to keep him quiet, to keep the Trump stink off their once-pristine nominee. Having a confessed sexual assailant and symbol of retrograde misogyny compare Kavanaugh to himself is the last thing they need.

On what possible grounds now can Republicans maintain their current stance, which denies the need for either a renewed FBI background check into the charges or the testimony of alleged accomplice Mark Judge? All three accusers have now asked to testify before the Senate. Do Republicans deny some of them? Or do they let their planned he-said-she-said show devolve into he said-she said-she said-she said?

As the heady brew of threatened male prerogative — the principle that withdrawing Kavanaugh would expose any man to such charges — and partisan tribalism wears off, cold calculation will soon set in. The odds that many people are conspiring to lie about Kavanaugh are growing ever more slender. And the odds are growing that Kavanaugh committed to a lie, and sunk ever deeper into it, knowing that he would either have a lifetime appointment to the most prestigious legal job in America or be disgraced, and that is why he has refused to concede even an inch. That, too, is why he dodged a question from Fox News about letting his friend, Mark Judge, testify under oath. And Republicans will realize that there are always more Federalist Society–groomed conservative lawyers without his long trail of allegations.

Greg P said...

John Pickering said...
Ann, whose reading sems to be pretty scaterr-shot, hasn't apparently noticed the new accuser, represented by Avenatti. Weird, but not unusual.

Let's see, that would be the woman who graduated three years before Kavanaugh, kept on coming back to high school parties, noticed that the boys were spiking the punch and using it to rape women, and did nothing about it?

Not even warning anyone?

Just didn't drink the punch herself?

Yes, like every sane individual, Ann is avoiding that one

Kevin said...

So the real story must be how a serial rapist and known blackout drinker could survive six FBI background checks and serve on the second-highest court in the land.

How many people's complicity or incompetence must have been required?

And how many will lose their jobs and pensions now that "the truth" has come out?

Greg P said...

The delusions of the Left, as presented by John Pickering:

1: The FBI, which has conducted 6 background checks without finding any of this, needs to "investigate" a 7th time.

Here's Joe Biden on the stupidity of that claim: https://twitter.com/elliosch/status/1044713343569858562

2: All three accusers have now asked to testify before the Senate.

All three "accusers" have been given multiple chances to talk with Senate investigative staff, under oath

All three have declined.

Ford's lawyers have repeatedly offered significant poison pills with her "offers to testify"

So this is another lie

3: As the heady brew of threatened male prerogative — the principle that withdrawing Kavanaugh would expose any man to such charges

You are painfully stupid if you think that only men can have false allegations lived against them.

The Left wants this to co forward, because they think they control the press, so it can only be used against people they hate

They are stupid to believe that, too

See Bork -> Garland

John Pickering said...

If all these women are lying, why doesn't the FBI investigate and prosecute them? Why don't Republicans insist on getting to the bottom of their conspiracy? They've all signed sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury. Why are the Republicans such cowards and wimps that they suffer these horrible calumnies but are too scared to do anything about it?

Greg P said...

John Pickering said...
If all these women are lying, why doesn't the FBI investigate and prosecute them? Why don't Republicans insist on getting to the bottom of their conspiracy? They've all signed sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury

More lies from Pickering

No, not ONE of them has testified to anything under penalty of perjury.

We'll probably see Ford refuse to testify tomorrow, because that would put her under penalty of perjury


I'm curious, are you Lefties just so stupid you don't understand the difference between Article One (that would be the Senate, providing its advise and consent) and Article Two (that would be the Executive branch, that the FBI is part of)?

Did you not watch Biden explaining the issues, are you too stupid to understand what he says, or are you just a lying Leftist hack?


Any honest person, making honest charges, would be working hard with the Senate Judiciary committee investigators to prove their claims.

Not playing lawyer and delay games.

By their actions shall you know them.

We know the accusers, the Senate Democrats, and you: all a bunch of shameless liars

MayBee said...

I know a lot of people who misbehaved and drank a lot in middle school, high school, and college. And I wouldn't badmouth single one of them to the press in the wake of a SCOTUS nomination.
What is wrong with these people?

Greg P said...

I think Instapundit hit it on the nose with this one: The Avenatti charges are the PizzaGate of the Left

Expect on the right, PizzaGate was for lunatics

On the Left, their PizzaGate is required believing