* Theater Thursday: Barry Lyndon (1975)
* Transcript of hearing
* Christine Blasey’s fear of flying
* NYT: Brett Kavanaugh and America’s ‘Himpathy’ Reckoning: Rarely has society’s tendency to sympathize with powerful men been so thoroughly on display.
* The Guardian: High school slut-shaming still haunts me. Kavanaugh made me relive it
* NYT: Black Female Lawmaker in Vermont Resigns After Racial Harassment: Kiah Morris, a Democrat, resigned from her seat in the State House of Representatives one month after she ended her re-election campaign over harassment and threats.
* Yahoo: Barbra Streisand to Trump in new song: Don’t lie to me!
* New York Daily News in 2010:
One of the media elite’s most whispered-about scandals went public Wednesday when married CNN correspondent Jeffrey Toobin squared off with a woman who says he’s the father of her baby.
Yale-educated lawyer Casey Greenfield – the daughter of eminent CBS News analyst Jeff Greenfield – had a chilly faceoff with Toobin in Manhattan Family Court.
The ex-lovers barely spoke in the waiting area before joining their lawyers behind closed doors with a court referee to hash out custody and money issues.
Toobin, who glumly sat several rows away from Casey Greenfield before the hearing, is said to have privately admitted to fathering the child, believed to have been born last summer, sources said.
A friend of Greenfield’s said the outspoken Toobin has resisted putting his name on the infant’s birth certificate and hasn’t given his former lover the child support she’s requested.
Greenfield, who wore a magenta blouse and dark tailored suit, has responded by refusing to let Toobin see the baby, the source said.
The ex-lovers and their lawyers declined all comment.
“Respectfully, I have nothing to say,” said Toobin, who was nattily attired in a spread-collar tattersall shirt, striped tie and blue suit.
Greenfield and Toobin appeared to be doing their best to avoid eye contact before the hearing, which was closed to the media.
He had his nose buried in a newspaper. She vigorously typed on her smartphone.
Greenfield, 36, was married to screenwriter Matt Manfredi in 2004 by federal Judge Kimba Wood, who became known as the “Love Judge” after an an affair of her own in 1995.
Manfredi, whose credits include “Crazy/Beautiful” and “Aeon Flux,” filed for separation fewer than two years later.
Toobin, 49, has been married since 1986 to his Harvard sweetheart, 51-year-old Amy McIntosh, who has held top positions with Verizon and the Zagat Survey.
The couple has two teenage children.
Toobin, who weighed in on former President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal in his best-seller, “A Vast Conspiracy,” wouldn’t say whether he and McIntosh are still living together.
He was wearing his gold wedding ring in court.
The legal analyst, who has covered some of America’s biggest court cases for CNN and written for The New Yorker, provoked double-takes from other lawyers in Family Court.
COMMENTS AT STEVE SAILER:
* I don’t think it is very similar to what Anita Hill said. Her claims were far less phantastic, and it would have been plausible that she remembered exactly what had happened.
But now, we have
– an accuser who does not remember when and where exactly an attempted rape decades ago occurred, but she claims to know which schoolboy it was, while there are no witnesses that she ever mentioned it to anyone earlier in her life
– stories about Kavanaugh allegedly being a member of a rape gang
Probably, soon, stories about Kavanaugh eating babies alive will emerge.
It is hard to see in what way this should be more crazy and more evidence-free than the Pizzagate allegations against Hillary Clinton.
This nomination process shows to the whole world how degenerated the political processes in the US have become. People don’t discuss political issues any more, but they accuse their political opponents without evidence of being puppets of foreign governments or of having been members of rape gangs in high school or running pedophile rings.
The Democrats’ cynical exploitation of women who, even if they speak the truth, have such murky memories of the events decades ago that they could hardly know whether the schoolboy they have in mind really was Kavanaugh is also disrespectful towards victims of rape who will have more difficulties being taken seriously after such an instrumentalization of phantasic allegations for political purposes.
* Perhaps running a gauntlet of personal attacks might become a standard hurdle in the careerist trajectory, like getting into the right school, scoring the right internship, chasing the right promotions. If you want to grasp the few coveted prestige jobs (at least in public service) you’ll be expected to survive a humiliating public crucible. It would be a ritual of passage, which may already be operating if you’re a careerist on the Right.
* I think that if Kavanaugh makes it through the confirmation vote, he’ll turn out to be a great justice like Clarence Thomas because of this fiasco.
The rip on Kavanaugh from the right is that he is a D.C.-born, Yale-educated, establishment Republican — something of a swamp creature. Republicans have been talking about putting him on SCOTUS for years… and he’s only 53. He was a golden boy and probably never saw this coming. He was completely blindsided by it.
Like Clarence Thomas, if Kavanaugh makes it onto the Court he’s going to be so red-pilled about who these people really are that I think he’s going to take the civil liberties of right-wingers and the potential for abuse of government in the hands of the Left very, very seriously.
* Don’t know Kavanaugh. Don’t necessarily believe him a saint, nor the devil. And while I haven’t closely analyzed the tea leaves of his prior decisions on the appellant bench, don’t necessarily think he represents our (i.e.: we, the plebes) best interests.
In other words, I have no dog in this fight other than substantive ones — how will he rule on privacy; first, second and fourth amendment issues; corporate rule…
That said, the Senate should confirm him, if his accuser(s) provide no credible evidence or supporting witnesses at todays hearing. After all, they’ve had plenty of time (over thirty years) to prepare. The standard applied must be the same afforded any other person accused of a serious crime — no evidence, no conviction.
Or in this case, no evidence — confirmation.
If all his accuser(s) offer are a “she said it, so it must be true” argument, it presupposes a woman will not lie or cannot be mistaken, and that there is no larger partisan political agenda in play. Neither supposition is true.
Having dealt with women, attorneys and politicians over the years, it has come to my attention that some will lie if they believe it serves their interests.
Absent a presumption of innocence and exercise of due process to sort through a complaint and determine its merit, those claims become nothing more than a means of attacking another person for whatever reason the claimant desires.
Absent rule of law, we descent into a hell of accusations as convictions — much like we put in place in Afghanistan and Iraq where we imprisoned thousands for merely being accused as “terrorists”…
Absent credible evidence and witnesses supporting these claims against Kavanaugh, vote to confirm Senators — unless, of course, there is some substantive and articulable reason not to do so in his prior decisions or answers to the committees’ substantive questions…
To do otherwise is not merely a slippery slope — it pitches us into the abyss.
* I totally blame Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, and Sue Collins. This whole thing is for their benefit. It gives Flake a shot to screw his constituency one last time, a la McCain. It gives Sue Collins a chance to preen in Friday in front of her purple constituency. I’m not sure what it does for Murkowski, but she is mumbling about the need for a 7th FBI background check for probably the most boring guy in the work.
* I think they view Ford as a win-win. If they block Kavanaugh then great! If not well then it’s the evil misogynistic republicans hating and abusing women angle they can push heavy on a month away from elections.
* Kavanaugh should be the wake up call for everyone who is still in doubt that being religious, faithfully married, have school aged daughters, and live a suburban lifestyle does not protect you from the leftist lynch mob. In fact, it probably incenses them. This is true for all whites, male liberals as well as social conservatives, religious conservatives and neo-cucks. You have been warned.
One of the reasons Trump got so much resistance from fellow Republicans is that it was believed his sexual history would make him a easy target. They were right but did not understand that in this day and age any Republican was fair game to the faithless liberals who have no morals and no compunction. Ironically, Trump was probably the best prepared for this onslaught which is a big reason why we elected him. Every time he would publicly spar with a woman people would gasp while at the same time his ratings would climb (it was the same with race). He was a champion and a man who would fight and not hide in the closet of marriage. Huzzah!
* Reading from a completely prepared statement, zero eye contact, zero details, no emotions other than fear from being on national TV in front of the Senate. She’s lying. Oh, and the only picture we’ve seen of her must be about 15 years old.
* She’s a hysteric.
Grown women of that age don’t lament high school party non sexual encounters with boys as some sort unique burden and lifelong trauma. Farce.
* Fear? No, she looks thrilled to be on national TV. She was smiling before and during Grassley and Feinstein’s opening arguments. She’s loving the attention.
Her voice was tremulous as she recounted this fake event, but the whites of her eyes are unclouded by redness, there’s no blotchiness around her eyes or anywhere on her face and, most importantly, she is shedding NO tears. The latter three symptoms are involuntary, the quavery voice is voluntary.
She is lying.
Oh, she is so thrilled to be on the teevee!
* Vocal fry, ach nein!
It’s a strange affectation for a 51-year-old woman. Most women in their fifties don’t speak with this affectation.
It means Professor Dr. Blasey Ford spends a lot of time around up-talking millennials and emulates her students. It makes her feel young.
* Diane Feinstein personally asserted in her opening statement– neither directly quoting nor evincing that she was intending merely to paraphrase the accusation by another– that Judge Kavanaugh had exposed himself to Ms. Ramirez, thus making the accusation Senator Feinstein’s own. She read a veritable laundry list of other unsupported accusations belatedly leveled against Judge Kavanaugh, knowing full well that those accusers were not to be witnesses before the committee, at least not during this hearing itself. She was rightfully chastised by the committee chairman (who otherwise seems rather cringe-worthy in his inability even to read his own opening statement without fumbling for the words that are sitting in front of him).
* Christine has lived a more comfortable, privileged life than 99% of the people on the planet.
Yet, according to her, that is still not good enough.
* Ford is a boozy, floozy broad and is most definitely supported by others in this attack on Kavanaugh. She is a middle-aged woman who has aged horribly (which I can tell is due to her wild, younger days – when even then she was not attractive – and not anything Kavanaugh did to her). She looks like she’s on Prozac or Ambien right now.
* KMAC: Christine Ford is a nutcase emotional wreck. Maybe she should be allowed to take a warm bath with candles while testifying. She obviously doesn’t want to testify, or if she is willing, it will be under the least stressful conditions.
* Blasey strikes me as typical neurotic post-menopausal female. If she were here testifying to her abduction by space aliens or that she wore tinfoil inside her pussy hat to protect herself from Trump mind control beams she would sound exactly the same.
Female logic is a sight to behold – I was afraid that someone might break in and assault me in my home so I made sure to put in lots of doors to provide extra points of entry. The woman, despite her semi-illiterate letter, possesses a certain degree of intelligence but it’s clear that she is rule by emotion rather than reason, so her powers of reason are wasted on her. If it were possible, she would donate some of her wasted IQ points to some deserving ghetto child.
* Her critical mistake was this: she avoided remembering any falsifiable details, like where the assault took place, when it took place, or how the hell she even got home.
* I think that she loves having the nation’s attention while she tells us that she is so irresistibly hot that men lose control and force themselves on her.
* She comes across as a burned-out Valley Girl, who’s still living off her dead daddy’s money. THE VIEW crowd must be eating this crap up and loving it. If Kavanaugh survives this steaming pile of shit, he’s one extremely lucky bastard. Once again, the Republicans wind up getting beaten like a red-headed step-child by shoddy Dem tricks. The GOP simply don’t have a political Game in any way shape or form.
* It’s about an hour into her testimony and I have come to understand why she had a psychotherapist. She looks a little off. Not normal. Not wholesome.
But I’m a Republican. The Democrats see Joan of Arc and the Republicans see a scheming neurotic who has triumphed in her quest to smite Trump and to appear on national TV.
* Would love to know if this woman talks with this much vocal cry all the time. Seems put on. I think she has convinced herself of some of her purported details but not others. It could even be true. Of course, I don’t care if it is true.
If it is true, it’s an allegation against a literal minor. It is way too dangerous of a precedent to set to hold people accountable for unproven childhood dalliances. Ludicrous to consider it. Confirm him and move on.
* That was mind-blowing. She was treated with kid-gloves from start to finish. More than anything she came across as dim. She has made massively terrible accusations on the basis of no evidence and the witnesses she named could not corroborate what she said.
She has a PhD! I have one of those, and I now almost feel ashamed of it
At the end of that content-free mind-fart she was told that she had taught America an amazing lesson.
The female population of America will now cry in sympathy and vote Dem in November.
* I wanted Grassley (or another) to end by asking:
“Given your memories of this experience, what advice did you give your daughters (or nieces) to help them avoid this sort of situation?”
When she–inevitably–starts whining about and providing advice for men, cut her off:
“I didn’t ask about advice for men. Traditional Christian men, know they should not taken advantage of a woman. And we’ve all heard–endlessly–lectures from feminists both that all men are rapists and that when women go out to get drunk and “have fun” it is the duty of the drunk men, to make sure that the drunk women get home and tucked into bed safely and unmolested.
“No i asked about advice to young women. Based on your memories of this experience as a teenager, what advice can you offer young women to avoid getting groped or being in a situation where she is worried about being raped? What should young women do to be responsible for their own safety?”
* Its all about her feelings. Thats a losing topic. Very light on facts. If you’re viscerally revolted by Hillery, Ford is disgusting. K better be ready to defend himself.
* The uptalking, the vocal fry. The whiny, phony tears and shaky little girl voice.
So many fingernails across the blackboard. It is detestable.
But it is our future.
