Kavanaugh hearing

[Brian Peacock]

And, whose house was it? PJ's (no). Kavanaugh's (no). Mark Judge (no). Keyser's (no). Was it her own house? (no).

At most, there was one other person there, so it's that guy's house. She doesn't say who that is, though.

She knows there was ONE other male at the party she attended at which she was so traumatically sexually assaulted that it has effected her for her entire life, and it still makes her cry to tell it. She remembers EVERYONE ELSE at the party, except the one person whose testimony could sink the whole thing.

If we knew whose house it was, we could ask that person about it, and maybe find out that there was no such party, or that Ford's account of what went on is not accurate. It's not as if she is being asked to remember one person out of a a party of many people. She doesn't remember the HOST of the party, when she remembers - she says - everyone else who was at the party (well, she remembers now -- previously she had different numbers of people attending, so, who knows...?). You remember four attendees, but not the person who hosted the party.

And, this is at a time in her life when she didn't attend many parties. Remember - she told the committee that she wasn't really allowed out late, and most of this popular group's parties occurred at night when she wasn't allowed out. She was just 15. Were there so many parties that she attended at so many people's houses that this one just blended in? She can't drive -- and she had parents who would really be pissed off if she was "drinking beer with boys" -- so she was terrified to mention being almost raped to them.... she wasn't allowed out late enough to attend the same parties Kavanaugh attended -- but, she was invited to someone's house (the one attendee we don't know is the host of the party) - she was driven there by someone (not anyone at the party) -- and it was early, during the day -- and she remembers she was at "the country club" earlier and left there and was driven to the party (by whom we don't know, but we can be 100% sure she was driven there), to go to the person she doesn't remember's house, and all the other people there have no idea who the bost could be because none of them have any idea what Blasey Ford is talking about....?

And, of course, we don't know who picked her up afterwards (having cut the whole thing short - she was just going to go take a piss -- she wasn't leaving) - and then she runs out of the house. Someone picked her up, she's sure, but we can't possibly figure out who. Nobody comes forward. Or, will she next say that she remember walking for miles on her own, in shock over the incident?

We're supposed to believe this?

So Ms Ford is a mendacious, conspiratorial, lying shill?

It's possible. We are always amazed when fucked up people lie through their teeth (not just about rape or sexual assault). But, she could also be off her rocker.

Mattress girl?
Sabrina Erdely's "Jackie"?
Mary Zolkowski?
Nikki Yolvino?
McMartin preschool?
Duke Lacrosse?
Susan Smith?
Anna Anderson

Some people are nuts, too. Some people think they have relationships with celebrities when they don't. Dr. Ford conceivably may be in need of serious help.

Most people tell the truth. We've been over this before. Even if the allegation was about financial impropriety or a regular assault and battery, or theft of a lawn mower. Most people don't accuse people falsely. However, some people do, whether honestly or dishonestly. This appears to be one of those times.

Hmmm. Back to the 'all people lie' argument I see - the argument of last resort. Of the two, who appeared the least 'off their rocker' in last Thursdays hearing do you think: Mr Kavanaugh or Ms Ford? Now, if she's 'off her rocker' her family, friends, colleagues and the science community she's worked with for 30+ years might be able to shed some light on that. Perhaps you should research what her colleagues say about her, at the least, and then report back. So, are you going to apply your exacting conditional epistemology to Mr Kavaaugh or not, or does he get a free pass?

[Forty Two]

I think I understand your position 42. I just don't agree with your approach here. It's not a criminal court.

Of course it's not a criminal court. However, normal logic and reason still apply.

Can't you just ask for evidence?

Yes, and we can also see that where someone offers two versions of the fact which conflict, they can't both be true. In any other context, that kind of thing renders an allegation of fact less persuasive. Like, if I said, "Sean punched me in the face, last week at my house." And, if Sean responds "that's rather curious, since I was on vacation at the beach last week, 300 miles from your house and I did not get back until yesterday." And, then I respond, "oh, wait, yes, what I meant to say was it was at my BEACH house, which just so happens was near the beach where Sean was on vacation." Don't mind my memory problems, people who suffer trauma are very apt to have trouble remembering things. However, rest assured, I am 100% sure that Sean punched me in the face last week. That's the important part - the rest doesn't matter, and proving my story wrong doesn't effect the fact that the unfalsifiable bit is 100% true. Honest.

I'm not happy about the position they've put us in either. But I'm trying to accept that it will remain an uncertainty. I'm also trying to figure out how we should proceed given that this will remain an uncertainty. By that I just mean what I think the best course of action is, and not that I think we have any say in what actually happens.

This is not any different from any allegation, whether in criminal court or not. It is the rarest of situations where third parties can really know what happened and what's true. Like, if John Doe accuses Jane Roe of copying answers off of him on the test. Is Jane's academic career to be destroyed because John says so? The school should expel her just because John Doe says "I am 100% sure that Jane looked at my test and copied the answers...."? Nobody would do that, and it is very rare - exceedingly rare - for a person to accuse someone of that if it's not true. Almost all such allegations are honest - because almost all allegations of misconduct by one person against another are brought forward honestly. The new conventional wisdom is for some reason that sexual assault is somehow different - that we believe the accuser because most of them are honest. Well.... what does that have to do with anything? Most accusers of any criminal or otherwise wrongful behavior are honest.

Moreover -- here, it's not just that Ford has unverifiable claims - it's that her claims have changed, shifted, and they've done so in response to risks of being falsified. Further, there is motivation to lie here.

People cheered when Senator Blumenthal said if someone lies about a small thing, you really can't believe them about anything. Apply that to Ford - she did not tell the truth about the second door on her house. That was flat out false. So, two options - either she lied, or she honestly believes that she was trying to convince her husband to put a second door on their house in 2012, when the door was put on there years earlier for the purpose of renting part of the house to strangers. If she really believes that, then her connection with reality has an issue. Doesn't it?

[Forty Two]

Hmmm. Back to the 'all people lie' argument I see - the argument of last resort. Of the two, who appeared the least 'off their rocker' in last Thursdays hearing do you think: Mr Kavanaugh or Ms Ford? Now, if she's 'off her rocker' her family, friends, colleagues and the science community she's worked with for 30+ years might be able to shed some light on that. Perhaps you should research what her colleagues say about her, at the least, and then report back. So, are you going to apply your exacting conditional epistemology to Mr Kavaaugh or not, or does he get a free pass?

Well, all people do lie.

However, the argument I was making was that some allegations are false. And, that's not an argument of last resort - that's reality. Some allegations are false. Do you dispute that?

Now you ask me who I found less believable? First - I was examining the nuts and bolts of her story. My posts here have not relied on who I thought delivered a more believable performance. My posts related to whose stories made sense and whose didn't. It doesn't matter how good Ford portrayed herself -- her facts don't add up.

I don't have an "exacting" epistemology - but the same rules apply to Kavanaugh too. But, again, that's a non sequitur. Ford's story falls on its own, and without any reference to Kavanaugh, and for the reasons I stated. And, I have not relied on public opinion or popularity - her story falls apart because her different versions can't be true.

[Forty Two]

”What does that lead you to conclude?”

That 1982 is likely the date. It should mot be difficult for a competent FBI agent to find people that knew both K and F in 1982. There must be some social circles where these prep school kids could interact.

Wait, I'm not getting it - this is what you said the "math" was:

In 1982, Kavanaugh was a senior at elite Georgetown Prep boarding school outside Washington, D.C., where he played on the football team and was also captain of the basketball team.

His accuser was a sophomore cheerleader at Holton-Arms School, an all-female academy with alumni that include Jackie Kennedy and "Veep" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

You now say that this leads you to conclude that the date of the assault was some time in 1982? Kav is a senior at G-Prep and he was a football and basketball palyer.

I mean, are you concluding that something here is "plausible?" Because that's different - sure, they have to be in the same vicinity in order for the allegations to even be "plausible" and there are outside limits, meaning if Kavanaugh is in Yale at the time and didn't come home, then Ford's allegations sort of become implausible. However, since her allegations began with an allegation that she was assaulted in the "mid-1980s" doesn't the shift to 1982 seem all the more suspicious? Or, at least isn't it just as "plausible" that the timing was massaged a bit in order to address the issue of him not being in the State at the time she originally claimed to have been assaulted....?

[Tero]

We’ll solve his calendar problem.

Maybe it says somewhere on the calendar when he was no longer a virgin?


May 5th. Big circles and exclamation marks. Stops assaulting girls at parties. For a while.

[JimC]

I thought you knew. Jim is in the pay of you know who. He can't be trusted.

And I want a pay rise, Sauron (AKA Voldemort). I haven't had one for simply ages!

[Tero]

"It’s time to put this embarrassing spectacle behind us," said McConnell, who reiterated his plan to hold at least a preliminary vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation this week.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “We have no idea if the FBI is doing a real investigation or simply preparing a fig leaf at the direction of the White House for Republicans to vote yes.”

Regarding Wray, Schumer of New York said, "If he’s being constrained by the White House, he has an obligation to let us know."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... naugh-ford

[pErvinalia]

Seabass - Look at what pervin wrote - and then look at what Brian wrote - that's what I'm responding to.

What are they talking about? Beers. A bit of bar room brawling. Did they refer to anything else? No.

There certainly are other issues besides his drinking - but pervin here and Brian both sarcastically referred to the bar room brawl and drinking allegations. Pervin sarcastically referred to as "normal" - meaning he's really suggesting it isn't normal.

I didn't say anything about drinking. Don't misrepresent what I said for your dodgy rhetorical purposes.

God alfuckingmighty. I said you referred to the fucking bar room brawling, and Brian referred to the drinking. The bar room brawl incident involved drinking, too, by the way. I was very clear, and quoted you both. Fuck the fuck off.

You said we both referred to the drinking allegation. I was responding to the fighting allegation. And yet again we find you totally unable to accept your own fucking words. Dickhead.

[pErvinalia]

Hate speech laws have been in effect for decades. Where have they been used to silence political opponents? If they haven't been used so far, what would make you think they all of a sudden would be?

MANY AMERICANS WHO long for Europe’s hate speech restrictions assume that those laws are used to outlaw and punish expression of the bigoted ideas they most hate: racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny. Often, such laws are used that way. There are numerous cases in western Europe and Canada of far-right extremists being arrested, fined, or even jailed for publicly spouting that type of overt bigotry.

But hate speech restrictions are used in those countries to suppress, outlaw, and punish more than far-right bigotry. Those laws have frequently been used to constrain and sanction a wide range of political views that many left-wing censorship advocates would never dream could be deemed “hateful,” and even against opinions which many of them likely share.

France is probably the most extreme case of hate speech laws being abused in this manner. In 2015, France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 pro-Palestinian activists for violating restrictions against hate speech. Their crime? Wearing T-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel — “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel,” the shirts read — which, the court ruled, violated French law that “prescribes imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000 for parties that ‘provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.'”

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in- ... iewpoints/

While I, personally, am generally a supporter of Israel's right to exist and to defend itself, I think it is an abomination for there to be a law restricting persons from provoking discrimination, hatred or violence toward a peron or group on the ground of their origin, etc. - as it necessarily will include allegations that boycotting Israel, or Palestine, or saying white power, or black power, is doing just that. We need a world where Louis Farrakhan is allowed to spew his hate, not because he gets a special right to talk shit to power because he's a member of a disfavored group, but because each "individual" has the same right to speak as everyone else.

Ok. Is that a "political opponent", though?

[pErvinalia]

And, Galaxian is not on meds.

That much is obvious, and explains pretty much everything..

[Cunt]

pErvinilia, the quality of your posts makes me believe everyone else above you.

You regularly argue about the argument without making your own point anyway, so nothing lost really.

If you took a position, it might be found incorrect though, so I understand your fear.

[pErvinalia]

Wut? Who cares what you think?

[Joe]

Funny thing about that bar room brawl. It corroborates the accounts of people who said Kavanaugh misrepresented his drinking in his Senate testimony, and rather than just being a memory, there's a police report that documents that an altercation took place and Kavanaugh was involved.

That's probably not enough for most GOP Senators, but might influence some of the waverers. Who knows?

Actually, that police report does not corroborate the account of the person reporting the incident now. According to the unredacted police report, Kavanaugh's friend was arrested. The most Kavanaugh is accused of doing is throwing some ice.

It does not corroborate the account of anyone who said Kavanaugh misrepresented his drinking. Kavanaugh never denied drinking. He never denied drinking heavily. He only denied blacking out. His denial of blacking out is supposedly contradicted by people who say he drank heavily and was a mean drunk? How so? Does drinking heavily and getting rowdy when drunk mean one blacks out?

Being in an altercation is not a refutation of Kavanaugh's testimony about his own drinking. Kavanaugh didn't deny drinking. He didn't deny drinking heavily. He didn't deny being involved in the events of that altercation -- the police say he threw ice. Ludington says he threw his beer at the guy.

Jesus fucking Christ. A 20 year old college kid is in a bar with a group of guys, and an altercation breaks out because some asshole says something assholeish to some other asshole, and Kavanaugh's involvement in the scuffle is "thew ice at one of the assholes" (maybe, the report says Kavanaugh didn't want to say either way - probably trying to remain silent at the time).

This is where we are with this charade?

Now, Jean Luc Picard couldn't become Captain of the Enterprise...

"I stood toe-to-toe with the worst of the three (Nausicaans), and I told him what I thought of him, his pals, his planet, and I possibly made some passing reference to his questionable parentage..." - Jean Luc Picard, describing his bar fight, occurring during a night of drinking and gambling.

That definitely demonstrates a failure of temperament for the job of Starship Captain, and certainly for Admiral, which Picard later becomes. Racist Jean Luc, not only insulting a foreigner, but insulting the Nausicaans' planet itself - probably called it a "shithole planet." And a passing reference to "questionable parentage?" What's that supposed to mean, Picard? The Nausicaan's parents weren't married, or weren't of good enough stock?

Picard said, "I was an undisciplined, loud-mouthed, opinionated young man who was way out of his league."

Actually, it nicely corroborates the account of Chad Ludington, Kavanaugh's classmate at Yale.

On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi- hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man's face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail

It must suck to get caught in a lie, people dismiss everything else you say. Kavanaugh's been caught in a lot of them. Seabass posted an article that gave an extensive account of his lies under oath. I haven't seen anybody disprove it.

In this case, when we examine the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford honestly, impartially, and carefully, it is impossible to escape the following conclusions:

Brett Kavanaugh is lying.
There is no good reason to believe that Christine Blasey Ford is lying. This does not mean that she is definitely telling the truth, but that there is nothing in what Kavanaugh said that in any way discredits her account.
I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one.

Let’s begin with Kavanaugh’s denial.

Here is what he says: “I never attended a gathering like the one Dr. Ford describes in her allegation.”

And here is the gathering as Ford describes it:

After a day of diving at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember specifically being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, a boy named P.J., and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I also remember my friend Leland attending. I do not remember all of the details of how that gathering came together, but like many that summer, it was almost surely a spur-of-the-moment gathering… People were drinking beer in a small living room/family room-type area on the first floor of the house.

Kavanaugh says that he never attended any event like this. Like what, though? He never attended a small gathering in Bethesda where people were drinking beer? Kavanaugh submitted his own calendars from the summer of 1982 into evidence for the Senate. As he said himself, “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.” He says that he never attended a gathering like this, but that’s obviously false, because the type of gathering he says he did attend is exactly the kind she describes.

Coverage of Ford’s allegations has often implied that the “party” at which she alleges she was assaulted was a kind of large Bacchanalian house party. This is a crucial part of Kavanaugh’s “calendar” defense: If there had been a big party, lots of people would have been there, it would probably have been on his summer calendar under “PAR-TAY!” It would have been notable, and since nobody seems to remember it and he even wrote far less significant events on his calendar, Ford must be misremembering.

But Ford has been clear: She is not talking about a big event. She is talking about a few friends and acquaintances hanging around drinking some beer in a living room:

It was not really a party like the news has made it sound. It was not. It was just a gathering that I assumed was going to lead to a party later on that those boys would attend, because they tended to have parties later at night than I was allowed to stay out. So it was kind of a pre-gathering.

It’s impossible to believe Kavanaugh when he says he never attended any event “like the one Dr. Ford describes.” It was a very typical low-key high school event, and it would have been shocking if Kavanaugh never attended such a thing. Indeed, he admits it himself.

Okay, so this was a weird lie to tell, because everyone goes to these sorts of events and he had them on his own calendar. But okay, maybe you think that he wasn’t trying to subtly reinforce the impression that Ford was alleging some kind of noteworthy event. Maybe you think he just meant “I never went to this kind of small gathering with the people Ford says.” Indeed, Kavanaugh says:

[N]one of those gatherings included the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified. And as my calendars show, I was very precise about listing who was there; very precise.

Well it’s hard to misinterpret that. He was very precise. Who, then, is the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified? From her testimony:

There were four boys I remember specifically being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, a boy named P.J., and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I also remember my friend Leland attending.

So presumably, if we looked at what Kavanaugh’s calendars show, we wouldn’t find an event with Mark Judge, P.J., some other boy, and Leland. Instead, he gives examples of the kinds of gatherings he did attend:

I [was] in D.C. on Saturday night, August 7th. But I was at a small gathering at Becky’s house in Rockville with Matt, Denise, Laurie and Jenny. Their names are all listed on my calendar. I won’t use their last names here. And then on the weekend of August 20 to 22nd, I was staying at the Garrets’ (ph) with Pat (ph) and Chris (ph) as we did final preparations for football training camp.

None of these names are the names Ford cites. Clearly she knows nothing about his summer. But wait: Let’s look at the entry for July 1st, one Kavanaugh did not cite in his list of “parties with people who are not the people Ford cited.” On July 1st, Kavanaugh planned to go “to Timmy’s for skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.” There’s Mark Judge! There’s P.J.! So he gathered for [brew]skis with 2 of the 3 people Ford says she remembers being there. Small gathering? Beer? Judge, Brett, and P.J.? Check, check, and check. So when Kavanaugh says none of the gatherings on the calendar include the people Ford says, and implies that Ford was just conjuring names of people he would never gather with, that’s false. In fact, she cited a small gathering with P.J. and Judge before he released his calendar confirming it.

Alright this is going to briefly get complicated, but I don’t want to draw actual conspiracy-diagrams, so bear with me: There’s another person who was at “Timmy’s”: a mysterious man named “Squi.” Squi was, in fact, a man named Chris Garrett, whom Ford says she went out with and who introduced her into Kavanaugh’s social circle. Garrett has attested to Kavanaugh’s good character, but because none of this has been properly investigated, we have no idea whether he admits to having gone out with Ford. If he did, that would cast doubt on Kavanaugh’s assertion that he had absolutely no idea who Ford was and she didn’t move “in his circle”: It would still be possible that they never met and Kavanaugh never heard her name, but there would be a clear connection.

One more person: Leland. Leland is Leland Ingham Keyser, Ford’s friend. Kavanaugh repeatedly cited her statement that she couldn’t remember this gathering. Her lawyer’s statement to the press read: “simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.” Kavanaugh relied on this statement repeatedly. Two instances:

KAVANAUGH: All four witnesses who are alleged to be at the event said it didn’t happen. Including Dr. Ford’s long-time friend, Ms. Keyser, who said that she didn’t know me and that she does not recall ever being at a party with me with or without Dr. Ford.

KAVANAUGH: All the witnesses who were there say it didn’t happen. Ms. Keyser’s her longtime friend, said she never saw me at a party with or without Dr. Ford…

Do you notice something? THIS IS A BALD-FACED LIE. Keyser never said it “didn’t happen.” She said she didn’t remember being at a party with him and doesn’t know him. But in an interview with the Washington Post, Keyser said she believes Ford’s allegation. Keyser says she believes it happened, Kavanaugh tells the United States Senate that she said it didn’t.

Another fact about Keyser: She may not remember him, but he seems to remember her. When asked, he became extremely cagey and imprecise:

MITCHELL: OK. Do you know Leland Ingham or Leland Keyser?

KAVANAUGH: I — I know of her. And it — it’s possible I, you know, saw — met her in high school at some point at some event. Yes, I know — I know of her and, again, I don’t want to rule out having crossed paths with her in high school.

If you don’t remember her from high school, there’s a simple answer to this question: “I know of her now, but I don’t remember ever meeting her then.” If you of course remember her, but that would provide a direct social tie between you and the woman you allegedly assaulted (whom you say “did not travel in the same social circles” as you), then you give an answer like the one Kavanaugh gave: Don’t specify when you heard of her, fudge it with the present tense (of course you know of her now, the question is whether you knew her then), and stutter your way through.

I want to dwell just a little longer on Kavanaugh’s statement that “all the witnesses” said it “didn’t happen.” Even Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s close friend who allegedly participated in the assault, pulled a bit of a shady “don’t recall”: “I have no memory of this alleged incident. Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.” That last bit is a denial that Judge himself participated in or witnessed such an assault, but here’s P.J.:

“I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh.”

Kavanaugh says P.J. denied that the event happened. That’s not what the statement says. Kavanaugh is a federal judge, a real smart cookie. I hope he knows the difference between the absence of an awareness of an event and an awareness of the absence of an event.

This may seem like hair-splitting. But (1) “I don’t recall such a thing” should always raise suspicions and (2) Kavanaugh, for all his righteous weeping and insistence on his honesty, is not presenting the evidence accurately. He’s trying to suggest that it’s more unfavorable to Ford than it actually is. Saying “Everyone she says was there denies it” is far more effective than the truth: “Nobody she says was there remembers it, though one of them believes it happened.” Kavanaugh concluded that “Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers. Refuted.” It wasn’t refuted in the least. (Kavanaugh also plays a canny trick with the word here: “refuted” can mean both “denied” and “disproven,” so it’s true to say that Mark Judge “refuted” Ford in the sense of denying involvement, but not true that Judge’s denial actually disproved anything. By using refuted this way, one can blur the distinction and imply to the audience that an accusation has been disproven that has merely been denied!)

Briefly, let’s look at two more ways in which Kavanaugh massaged facts about the event itself in order to make Christine Ford’s claim seem impossible and treat Ford as completely detached from reality. Have a look at what he does here:

I did have the summer of 1982 documented pretty well. The event described by Dr. Ford, presumably happened on a weekend because I believed everyone worked and had jobs in the summers. And in any event, a drunken early evening event of the kind she describes, presumably happened on a weekend. If it was a weekend, my calendars show that I was out of town almost every weekend night before football training camp started in late August. The only weekend nights that I was in D.C. were Friday, June 4, when I was with my dad at a pro golf tournament and had my high school achievement test at 8:30 the next morning.

Kavanaugh quickly tries to restrict the range of possible dates to weekends, and on weekends he largely has alibis. “Presumably” this event happened on a weekend he says, because they were hard-working kids and drinking wouldn’t happen on a weeknight. But he actually has precisely such an event on his calendar! The July 1st brewski-evening with P.J., Judge, et al. happened on a Thursday, according to his own record. Kavanaugh tries to get people to avoid scrutinizing weekdays, by immediately “presuming” that this had to occur on a weekend, when he was—conveniently—frequently out of town. 1982 Kavanaugh has proven clearly that 2018 Kavanaugh is misleading the Senate about how he used to spend his weeknights.

One more obvious act of manipulation:

When my friends and I spent time together at parties on weekends, it was usually the — with friends from nearby Catholic all-girls high schools, Stone Ridge, Holy Child, Visitation, Immaculata, Holy Cross. Dr. Ford did not attend one of those schools. She attended an independent private school named Holton-Arms and she was a year behind me… Dr. Ford has said that this event occurred at a house near Columbia Country Club, which is at the corner of Connecticut Avenue in the East-West Highway in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In her letter to Senator Feinstein, she said that there were four other people at the house but none of those people, nor I, lived near Columbia Country Club. As of the summer of 1982, Dr. Ford was 15 and could not drive yet and she did not live near Columbia Country Club. She says confidently that she had one beer at the party, but she does not say how she got to the house in question or how she got home or whose house it was.

Here Kavanaugh tries to undermine Ford with his superior specificity of location (he knows exactly which corner the street is), and by suggesting that Ford simply wouldn’t have encountered him because he was far away.

Alright, here’s a map:

This is the Bethesda area in Maryland. From the top to the bottom is about five miles. The red marker is Kavanaugh’s school, Georgetown Prep. The purple is Ford’s school, Holton-Arms. The blue markers are two of the Catholic girls’ schools whose students Kavanaugh said he did encounter socially. And the green is the country club. I am not presenting this map to show anything elaborate or conspiratorial, I swear. I just want you to note that all of these places are within a very short distance of one another. Ford’s school is not remote, it’s in exactly in the area where Kavanaugh did meet students from other schools. And the country club is pretty close by.

Kavanaugh also doesn’t mention another salient fact, which is that his father and Ford’s father were members of the same golf club. Kavanaugh leaves details like this out, because he wants to create the impression that there was some considerable distance between the Bethesda prep-school community that Ford inhabited and the one he himself inhabited. But hang on, where did all these people live? Oh, turns out we have a map of that too:

Kavanaugh, who scoffs that he didn’t live near Ford’s country club, lived closer to it than she did!

So Kavanaugh’s testimony about the event itself is shot through with both outright lies and calculated manipulations of the facts. Now let’s look at some of the ways in which he deceived the Senate about the early part of his life in an attempt to discredit Christine Blasey Ford.

Ford alleges that at the time of the assault, Kavanaugh and Judge were “visibly drunk.” The other allegations against Kavanaugh, by Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, suggest that Kavanaugh participated in a rowdy drinking culture as a young man, and that the abuse occurred under the influence of alcohol. Swetnick says she “observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and physically aggressive behavior toward girls.” So drinking forms a major part of all the allegations, and facts about Kavanaugh’s history with alcohol bear on the plausibility of all three.

Kavanaugh has not only denied engaging in abuse, but has rejected the entire idea of him as having been an excessive and rowdy drinker. In his testimony and his interview with FOX News, Kavanaugh portrayed himself as having been a shy, studious, churchgoing virgin who worked a summer job and focused on community service and team sports. Here’s an abbreviated version of an exchange with Patrick Leahy:

LEAHY: Now, you’ve talked about your yearbook. In your yearbook, you talked about drinking and sexual exploits, did you not?

KAVANAUGH: Senator, let me — let me take a step back and explain high school. I was number one in the class… [crosstalk]

LEAHY: I thought we were in the Senate […]

GRASSLEY: Let him answer. […]

KAVANAUGH: I’m going to talk about my high school record, if you’re going to sit here and mock me. […] I busted my butt in academics. I always tried to do the best I could. As I recall, I finished one in the class… I played sports. I was captain of the varsity basketball team. I was wide receiver and defensive back on the football team. I ran track in the spring of ’82 to try to get faster. I did my service projects at the school, which involved going to the soup kitchen downtown — let me finish — and going to tutor intellectually disabled kids at the Rockville Library. With the church — and, yes, we got together with our friends.

Leahy asks a straightforward question. In your high school yearbook, did you mention drinking and sexual exploits? Kavanaugh does not reply “Of course! I was a sports jock!” Instead, he replies “Let me tell you about my grades, and the times I volunteered at the library, with intellectually disabled kids.” You’ll notice that this (1) does not answer the question and is (2) incredibly fishy. If you ask someone “Were you a drinker?” and they reply “I went to church and helped children,” you are not dealing with a forthright person.

Kavanaugh says that he was then, and is now, deeply pious. He says that church doesn’t appear on his extremely precise summer calendar because “going to church on Sundays was like brushing my teeth, automatic.” He only ever socialized with good Catholic girls from Catholic high schools. He tells the Senate that his daughters have prayed for Christine Blasey Ford. Which I am sure she appreciates.

His faith was so important to him that he remained celibate through the entirety of high school and college:

I never had sexual intercourse, or anything close to it, during high school, or for many years after that. In some crowds, I was probably a little outwardly shy about my inexperience; tried to hide that. At the same time, I was also inwardly proud of it. For me and the girls who I was friends with, that lack of major rampant sexual activity in high school was a matter of faith and respect and caution.

Here he is again, in his FOX News interview, talking about what a good, sweet young man he was:

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.

And again:

I was focused on trying to be number one in my class and being captain of the varsity basketball team and doing my service projects, going to church. The vast majority of the time I spent in high school was studying or focused on sports and being a good friend to the boys and the girls that I was friends with.

I’m giving you so much of this in order to illustrate how central Kavanaugh has made it. Kavanaugh tells us that we should doubt Ford’s allegation because it is inconsistent with who he was, that it is absurd to think of him as having been a boozing, aggressive teenager. If Kavanaugh is not telling the truth about this, then, it significantly damages his credibility vis-a-vis the accusation itself. As Kavanaugh broke down in tears before the senate, he portrayed himself as not just innocent but an innocent, a man for whom drunken lechery would have been utterly unthinkable and appalling.

Kavanaugh does say that he had some drinks in high school. But his confession is not really a confession at all:

My friends and I sometimes got together and had parties on weekends. The drinking age was 18 in Maryland for most of my time in high school, and was 18 in D.C. for all of my time in high school. I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone. There is a bright line between drinking beer, which I gladly do, and which I fully embrace, and sexually assaulting someone, which is a violent crime. If every American who drinks beer or every American who drank beer in high school is suddenly presumed guilty of sexual assault, will be an ugly, new place in this country. I never committed sexual assault.

I almost admire this. If being a beer-drinking American is a crime, then I say lock me up. Democrats are trying to punish Kavanaugh for the crime of having a few drinks in high school. They must be desperate. Kavanaugh says he freely admits to doing things that were “goofy or stupid,” but that he doubts he is alone in this. (If having flaws is a misdeed, who among us is innocent?) I was reminded here of what Jian Ghomeshi did in his infamous essay for the New York Review of Books. Accused by 20 women of harassment and violent abuse, he wrote: “What I do confess is that I was emotionally thoughtless in the way I treated those I dated and tried to date.” Since we’ve all been thoughtless, this is not actually an admission of anything, but it makes you seem contrite.

Kavanaugh is very careful to admit to only the most minor and excusable of mistakes in high school. So he won’t even acknowledge that he drank underage, saying the “drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there.” Only the legal ones had beer. Now, Kavanaugh was simply wrong about the drinking age: It was raised to 21 in Maryland when he was 17. (Coincidentally, it was raised on July 1, 1982, the very day Kavanaugh was knocking back a few brewskis with P.J., Squi, and Judge.) And since Kavanaugh was 17 rather than 18, what he says doesn’t even matter, because either way he was drinking underage! Some people have called this a lie, but perhaps studious young Brett, who only ever took the smallest of sips, was simply unaware of the state’s laws. I’m more interested in the way Kavanaugh won’t admit to anything that could undermine his image as a straight-A choirboy type.

His decision to present himself as squeaky clean, rather than wayward but subsequently redeemed, brings us to some of the most absurd untruths of Kavanaugh’s whole testimony. The evidence that he was more than an ordinary social drinker is voluminous. His yearbook lists him as treasurer of the “Keg City Club,” and his entry says “100 Kegs or Bust,” apparently referring to a “campaign by his friends to empty 100 kegs of beer during their senior year.” (Not a single senator asked him why his yearbook said “100 kegs or bust,” and the word “keg” doesn’t even appear in the hearing transcript.) It also says he was the “biggest contributor” to the Beach Week Ralph Club, which he admitted was a reference to vomiting. Here’s Liz Swisher, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who is now chief of the gynecologic oncology division at the University of Washington School of Medicine:

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… 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.

Here’s Daniel Livan, who lived in Kavanaugh’s dorm:

“I definitely saw him on multiple occasions stumbling drunk where he could not have rational control over his actions or clear recollection of them… His depiction of himself is inaccurate.”

James Roche, Kavanaugh’s freshman year roommate at Yale, says Kavanaugh was “frequently incoherently drunk,” and that “he became aggressive and belligerent” when he was drunk. Here’s Republican ex-pharmaceutical executive Lynn Brooks, another Yale classmate who roomed with Kavanaugh’s second accuser, Deborah Ramirez:

“He’s trying to paint himself as some kind of choir boy… You can’t lie your way onto the Supreme Court, and with [his self-description in the FOX interview], he’s gone too far. It’s about the integrity of that institution.”

Brooks remembered a particular incident when Kavanaugh participated in a drunken event with his fraternity, in which everyone was “ridiculously drunk” and had to do “ridiculous things.” Here’s the Washington Post account:

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.”

In total, the New York Times cited “nearly a dozen people” who knew Kavanaugh and confirmed he was a “heavy drinker.” Kavanaugh also hosted weekly tailgates while at Yale. [Update: on Sunday another Yale classmate said Kavanaugh was belligerent when drunk, that he saw Kavanaugh staggering from intoxication, and on one occasion “I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”] Kavanaugh’s close high school friend Mark Judge even wrote a memoir called Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, which featured a character called “Bart O’Kavanaugh” passing out from partying and puking in a car. Judge even mentioned “Bart” in the yearbook, suggesting this was probably a high school nickname or inside joke. (Interestingly, Wasted also provides a timeline of Judge’s job history consistent with Ford’s own memory of it.) When Senator Leahy asked whether “O’Kavanaugh” might have been inspired by a certain real-life individual, Kavanaugh replied that the book was an attempt to help Judge recover from an addiction, and:

KAVANAUGH: I think he picked out names of friends of ours to throw them in as kind of close to what — for characters in the book.

LEAHY: So you don’t know — you don’t know whether that’s you or not?

KAVANAUGH: …So, you know, we can sit here [and] make fun of some guy who has an addiction.

Leahy says Is this based on you? Kavanaugh replies How cruel you are to make fun of my friend’s addiction.

So it’s in the yearbook, in his friend’s memoir, and multiple fellow Yalies have eyewitness accounts. Now let’s look at what happened when he was asked about the discrepancies between this evidence and his self-description:

WHITEHOUSE: Let’s look at, “Beach Week Ralph Club — Biggest Contributor,” what does the word Ralph mean in that?

KAVANAUGH: That probably refers to throwing up. I’m known to have a weak stomach and I always have. In fact, the last time I was here, you asked me about having ketchup on spaghetti. I always have had a weak stomach. […] this is well-known. Anyone who’s known me, like a lot of these people behind me — known me my whole life — know, you know. I got a weak stomach, whether it’s with beer or with spicy food or anything.

WHITEHOUSE: So the vomiting that you reference in the Ralph Club reference, related to the consumption of alcohol?

KAVANAUGH: Senator, I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. Worked my tail off.

Ah yes, the judge from Keg City definitely got into the “Beach Week Ralph Club” thanks to his delicate stomach’s intolerance for spicy food. And look, another glorious non sequitur: Q: Was the ralphing alcohol-related? A: I went to Yale. The implication here, of course, is that you couldn’t have gotten to Yale and Yale Law School and have been some kind of heavy-drinking, belligerent bro. Speaking as a fellow alumnus of Yale Law School, BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (One trivial footnote here is that Yale’s acceptance rate then was about four times higher than it is now, and it would have been especially easy for someone who went to Georgetown Prep. [Update: It turns out Kavanaugh’s grandfather also went to Yale, even though Kavanaugh lied and said he had “no connections” there.] Still, I do not doubt Kavanaugh when he says he did well in school. He very much seems like the type who would.)

Senator Whitehouse continued to try to get a straight answer out of Kavanaugh about the ralphing-all-over-the-beach club:

WHITEHOUSE: Did it relate to alcohol? You haven’t answered that.

KAVANAUGH: I like beer. I like beer. I don’t know if you do…

WHITEHOUSE: OK.

KAVANAUGH: … do you like beer, Senator, or not?

WHITEHOUSE: Um, next…

KAVANAUGH: What do you like to drink?

Kavanaugh is asked if the ralphing pertained to drinking. He replies that he likes beer, which is irrelevant, because lots of people like beer and yet aren’t given prizes for Outstanding Contributions to Vomiting. Kavanaugh then goes on the attack: I am a loyal beer-drinking American. Are you? Whitehouse is cowed and moves on.

This is typical of Kavanaugh’s answers about alcohol. Here, he is asked to be more specific about what he meant when he said he sometimes had “too many” beers:

MITCHELL: What do you consider to be too many beers?

KAVANAUGH: I don’t know. You know, we — whatever the chart says, a blood-alcohol chart.

Needless to say, this is an attempt to avoid giving any detail about what condition he is actually admitting he ended up in. Also needless to say, there was no follow-up.

I think a lot of people might agree with Ludington

And I do believe that Brett's actions as a 53-year-old federal judge matter," Ludington said. "If he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences. It is truth that is at stake, and I believe that the ability to speak the truth, even when it does not reflect well upon oneself, is a paramount quality we seek in our nation's most powerful judges."

I figure you won't, but you'll have to do a better job of making a credible counterargument before I consider it more than your usual blind partisan blather.

And Forty Two...Picard? Really?

[Tero]

This will surely prove Ford lied about EVERYTHING! She flies planes as often as possible! She uses doors, goes inside rooms!
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/christ ... unds-alarm

[Cunt]

Wut? Who cares what you think?

I can tell by the quality of the posts you make, that you don't care what anyone thinks of them.