Summations Only

In this day and age especially, a U.S. president is far more subject than anyone else to petty, personal attacks that can greatly affect his focus on his job. U.S. presidents have long been called "the most powerful man in the world", but they are obviously also the most hated man in the world. They deserve some protection from petty accusations.You seem to take pride in being an "independent" as if it's some sort of non-partisan badge of honor, but Bernie Sanders claims to be an independent, and he's about as closed minded as any extremely partisan Democrat or Republican. You've clearly shown your far left positions on gun control, global warming, a love of Obama (Message 2472) and a hatred of Trump. It isn't partisan to state facts.

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Since my nomination in July, there has been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything, to block my confirmation.

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You don't agree that that's a fact?

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The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at the hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment...This first allegation was held in secret for weeks by a Democratic member of this committee and by staff.

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You don't agree that the allegation was held in secret? As far as "embarrassment" goes, I haven't noticed David Muir of ABC World News Tonight making any mention of what foreign leaders, both friend and foe, have had to say about this. A cover up of the embarrassment?

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This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.

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Here is a recent column that sums up what's going on today very concisely;https://outline.com/TXW6L8

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For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. America was never that great, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.

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For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the leftRep. Maxine Waters comes to mindare self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.

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and;

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Yet the left is still stalked by obsolescence. There is simply not enough menace to service its demands for power. The voices that speak for the left have never been less convincing. It is hard for people to see the menace that drives millionaire football players to kneel before the flag.

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And it's hard for people to see the news media proudly showing, over and over, two loudmouth women screaming at Jeff Flake as he was getting off an elevator, as if this is the perception a huge majority of the people. It's hard to see Kavanaugh treated as guilty until proven innocent. Now that he's been proven innocent by the FBI, he's still treated guilty by mobs that the news media proudly champions. It's not fun to be falsely accused. I don't think today's left has the market cornered on calmness and civility. Yes I am. You're not? I'd be less partisan if we had a few Democrats like we used to have, like "Scoop" Jackson, or Wendell Ford. These were Democrats who actually spent some of their waking moments thinking about something besides ~growing the size and scope of government~. The two most liberal Supreme court justices we have today, Ruth Ginsberg (confirmed by a 96 - 3 vote) and Sonia Sotomayor (confirmed 68 - 31) saw a lot less partisanship than Kavanaugh just saw, didn't they? Kavanaugh is less partisan than either of them, everybody knows that. Not in the Democrat party that's for sure. It would be nice if the news media would report on just how much of the taxpayers money, and their legislators time and effort, was spent on this confirmation fiasco.

Vice News D.C. Chief Admits There Were ‘Paid’ Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters | Newsbusters

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And that moment with Jeff Flake on the Hill, we talked to one woman who worked for Ultraviolet who was paid. She helped steer people in the right ways to be able to confront senators, she admitted.

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and;

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There were people who were paid by organizations like Ultraviolet to try to harness that energy in a way that would make the viral moments that we ended up seeing, she said.

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Then, in backpedaling, she said this;

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I said there were some official organizations in the mix who have staff & consultants that were part of these protests. And some of them were helping individuals with tactics. That is not the same as ppl [sic] being paid to protest who don’t care about this issue.

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Maybe not, but it's about as close as you can get. And this is provable, who knows what goes on that's kept secret? Then we have this, from the same article;

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[Democrats] can really make his life, you know, miserable, touted Politico Congressional correspondent Rachel Bade as she explained all the ways:

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They want the FBI investigation — they want to make that public. There's a huge stack of tip that is the FBI received that they did not chase that Democrats are going to look into. They're going to talk to potential witnesses that some these women told the FBI to speak with that they did not. They're going to look at his statements to the committee and see if he perjured himself.

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Could both sides play that game?I suspect Kavanaugh, maybe even Trump, behind the scenes of course, could possibly suggest to Politico and some in the rabid news media that maybe we should just drop it all and move on, unless the news media wants some action that they might not be able to handle too well.This article's author, to Kavanaugh;

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Your list is long. NBC, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, The New Yorker, and the parade of individuals of all stripes who cannot resist the lure of the bright lights and cameras to echo and validate your accusers in the media. And to restore some public faith in our profession, include on your list a lawyer named Michael Avenatti, who has abused and demeaned you and our system of justice for personal publicity, fame, and fortune.

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The members of this list, and many others, have demonstrated considerably more than the requisite degree of recklessness in promoting their agendas by accusing you. Their constant republications of unsubstantiated accusations have and will adversely impact your life — and the lives of your family members — for generations. Sue them all.

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Of course. In fact they deserve a lot of protection from petty accusations. But there's nothing petty about tax fraud, violating the Constitution's emoluments clause, colluding with the Russians, or defamation.About that last charge, defamation, this is the Summer Zervos case where a judge ruled that:

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No one is above the law. Nothing in the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution even suggests that the president cannot be called to account before a state court for wrongful conduct that bears no relationship to any federal executive responsibility.

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Moving on: You're confusing two different senses of the term independent. Bernie Sanders is only an independent in the sense that he is a member of neither party. He actually identifies himself as a democratic socialist, and he caucuses with the Democrats. I am an independent in the sense that I vote for who in my judgment is the best candidate *independent* of any party affiliation. I follow the evidence. The evidence shows that the presence of guns makes people less safe. That is the basis of my position. If has nothing to do with left or right. It's more accurate to call it climate change. I follow the evidence. The evidence shows that climate change is a reality and that the causes are man-made. In today's news: U.N. scientists issue dire warning on climate changeI think it would be accurate to say that I prefer Obama to Trump (or almost anyone to Trump), not that I have a love of Obama (I never voted for him), and certainly not based on anything I said in Message 2472. Since you bring it up, where I do mention Obama in that post is to call you out for a lie, to which you never responded. Maybe you can respond now: Here's a video of Obama's "temper tantrum". Please tell us where in the video this "temper tantrum" happens: Moving on: "Hatred" doesn't capture how I feel about Trump. For a long time in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's I either lived or had family I frequently visited in the New York Metropolitan area where Trump was often in the news. My negative impressions of Trump first formed in the early 1970's when he displayed overt racist bigotry in the management of his properties, in his racist scapegoating of blacks in the Central Park rape case, and later when he used bankruptcy (three separate times) to walk out on his Atlantic City casinos and hotels leaving the city holding the bag (I had family who lived just a short drive from Atlantic City). My dislike of Trump is based on first hand observation of who he is and what he's done. Of course it isn't partisan to state facts. But Kavanaugh didn't state facts. Certainly the Democrats were working to find ways to obtain enough votes to prevent Kavanaugh's confirmation. To characterize that as "a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything, to block my confirmation," as if they were willing to use underhanded means and make up accusations, is clearly partisan and completely inappropriate for any judicial appointee. Of course Dr. Ford's letter was kept secret - that was what Dr. Ford requested. Honoring Dr. Ford's request was what Justice Kavanaugh was calling an embarrassment. His statement was untrue, highly partisan, and inappropriate for an appointee to the Supreme Court. I'm unable to make sense of most of this, and can't see the relevance of the remainder. Justice Kavanaugh's partisan tirade was in essence an opinion piece. Citing another opinion piece titled Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate by conservative Shelby Steele that was published in the Wall Street Journal is not relevant nor a justification for Justice Kavanaugh's partisan outburst. Op-ed columnists are expected to be partisan, Supreme Court justices non-partisan. Justice Kavanaugh accused the left of unfairly stoking fears motivated by anger about the 2016 election and revenge for the Clintons. That's strongly partisan.Face it. The Republicans just put a rightist partisan on the Supreme Court bench whose decisions will be colored more by partisan considerations than by the merits. The Republicans in the Senate (except for Lisa Murkowski from Alaska) and Democrat Joe Manchin are out of step with the American people, a majority of whom believe the women. In Justice Kavanaugh's case, "A more recent poll taken after the conclusion of last Thursday’s hearings found that 60% of those polled found Ford’s testimony believable, compared to only 35% of whom found Kavanaugh’s testimony believable." (from Polls Show Most Americans ‘Believe The Women’) You're confused again. The issue was not to find Justice Kavanaugh guilty or innocent but to determine his suitability for the Supreme Court. It was a job interview. The Senate Judiciary committee's interview found him unworthy, but 50 Senators ignored that and voted to confirm. It's also not fun to have your past catch up with you. There were very similar accusations from three different women who despite no coordination told the same stories of drunken parties, a drunken Brett Kavanaugh, and sexual exploitation of women who in many cases were still girls. The White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee insured that only one of the women testified, and that the FBI only interviewed about 20% of the potential witnesses, including witnesses who actively contacted the FBI expressing a wish to provide information but were ignored. But we're not talking about whether the left or the right is more calm and civil. We're talking about the suitability of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court and whether he exhibited judicial temperament in his testimony before the committee. He did not. I'm partisan in the sense that I'm strongly in favor of people being able to live their lives in freedom without fear of discrimination, partisan justice, economic injustice, gender inequality, violent death, and political machinations. So you don't like Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill or Heidi Heitkamp? I'm against Supreme Court justices speaking up on the issues of the day. I think Ginsberg's comments on Donald Trump, Colin Kaepernick and the #MeToo movement were inappropriate and ill advised. Neither Ginsberg nor Sotomayor has issued any politically partisan accusations. Kavanaugh will be hard put to diminish the perception that he is beholden to a particular political camp. Yes, you are clearly a Republican partisan. This is sort of tongue in cheek, but desiring public office should be disqualifying. Public servants should have to be carried kicking and screaming into office. Let's just say for the sake of argument that too much money was spent on the confirmation process. Is the amount of money spent what's truly important? Or is what's most important insuring that we have the greatest judicial minds who are politically independent serving on our courts?--Percy

I think you need a more neutral source than an opinion piece from NewsBusters which describes itself as "Exposing and combating liberal media bias." There's not much point to a discussion where each side merely posts excerpts from biased opinion pieces.--Percy

We know that Trump will never tell the truth when a lie will do, so he has lied numerous times that he doesn't drink. This has been shown false any number of times, but here is yet another example from a recent interview aboard Air Force One. Note the red arrow pointing at the half-empty liquor glass hiding behind the phone: AbE: I seem to be the only person who noticed this during the interview. I'm unable to find any news item referencing it.Here's a link to an article that contains a number of pictures of Trump drinking: How often does Donald Trump drink alcohol? - Quora. The article includes a number of reader comments. Some mention the death of his brother Fred due to alcohol-related issues, and that he promised Fred on his deathbed that he wouldn't drink. Of course, he promised Melania he'd be faithful, and we know how that worked out.A couple comments note, like me, that Trump lies about everything and go on to express a bit of astonishment that his statement that he doesn't drink is so blithely believed by so many.Hey, wait a minute, how much of the story about Fred Trump Jr.'s alcoholism comes from Donald Trump? I bet a good bit of it. Here's a NYT story about Fred Trump Jr., and there seems no objective documentation of Fred Trump's alcoholism: For Donald Trump, Lessons From a Brother’s Suffering. All it says was that he died due to complications of alcoholism. What does that mean? The well-known result of alcoholism is cirrhosis of the liver, but I can find no on-line reference to Fred Jr. having liver problems. How did he really die?Here's the part of the story that rings true. The Trump family paid the medical bills for Fred Jr.'s son's medical bills (cerebral palsy), but Fred Sr. left Fred Jr.'s family out of his will. They sued citing undue influence over Fred Sr. by the other siblings, and so Donald Trump cut off the payments for Fred Jr.'s son's medical bills because, as he said, "I was angry because they sued." Sounds just like him.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

I meant to post this last week when this issue of The Nation came out. A Woman Can Never Be Likable EnoughQuote:

From the New York Times: The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. PoliticsPaul Krugman has long been commenting on the anti-democratic nature of the Republican party and the threat they pose to the Republic. In today's column, he writes how the conspiracy theories espoused by prominent Republicans about the Kavanaugh hearings fit into a recognizable authoritarian pattern.

I generally find your references to American news anchors I've never heard of a bit baffling, but assume that perhaps they make sense to Americans. This one, though, is particularly cryptic.It kind of looks like you're suggesting that foreign leaders are talking about what a shambles the nomination process was; and that this is not being covered by US media for ideological reasons.Foreign leaders aren't talking about the Kavanaugh nomination. Maybe the subject comes up with friends and family, but it's not like they're making public pronouncements on it. That would be pretty inappropriate, diplomatically.

See, that's why I find it so hard to talk with conservatives. They know this is an insulting way to refer to my party, but they do it just to 'own the libs'. Why on earth should I try to have a meaningful conversation with someone like you?You put on a good show, pretending to be interested in having some kind of interchange that might be informational. It's a sham the minute you use a phrase like this one.We are the Democratic Party, and I'd appreciate just a little acknowledgement of that fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)Edited by Admin, : Fix link.

I should clarify, Percy was mystified about that comment also; The U.S. News media caters to it's base (Percy as an example) and to those who have "never heard of" them and what they do (you as an example). They are very skilled at appearing objective and unbiased to anyone who doesn't have their eyes fully opened, who doesn't get their news from many sources and averages it all together, as I do.I don't have time tonight to reference all the following exact quotes, so I'll just paraphrase this from memory. A few weeks ago, Trump was speaking to a group of foreign leaders, I'm not sure if it was the U.N. or who it was. He was doing some of his Trump-style bragging, (a little annoying to me, but Trump is Trump). The camera was on him, it wasn't possible to see the expressions, or clearly hear, what these leaders reactions were. But Trump paused, and jokingly said "that's not the reaction I expected", or something similar, and a little ripple of laughter sounded throughout the room. Rational people like myself knew that they were amused by his off-the-cuff clowning around, knowing that he wasn't just robotically reading something, and that they were laughing WITH him, not AT him. David Muir of ABC World News Tonight practically had an orgasm, for not one, but at least two and possibly more evening news broadcasts, he played a recording of that, and jubilantly declared "FOREIGN LEADERS ARE LAUGHING AT TRUMP!!!!! FOREIGN LEADERS ARE LAUGHING AT TRUMP!!!!!Now, a few weeks later, we have a 53 year old dignified, well qualified man nominated for a very high position, that, with only a few exceptions, has in the past gone through an orderly, respected process to be confirmed to that position. But this time, the opposing political party dug up 36 year old dirt, unproven allegations, from when he was a school child, and this actually saw the light of day, including weeks of wasted time and money, from the U.S., a major player in world affairs, a country over $20 trillion in debt. with troops stationed around the world. And sets everything aside to squabble like school children over the actions of school children. To repeat what you said; I'd bet they'd make public pronouncements on it if someone would ask them! If the situation were reversed, Muir would be over there himself with his microphone. If not asking foreign leaders, he'd be asking their citizens. I don't think countries hostile to the U.S. are concerned about diplomacy.During this whole fiasco, it was kept very quiet, or never mentioned at all in the mainstream media, just what Christine Blasey Ford's political affiliation is. Since she's a college professor, it's probably pretty obvious, but yes, not only is she a registered Democrat, she has marched against Trump in the past, and made contributions to Bernie Sanders. So many casual observers of politics in the U.S. don't know this, and never will know it, because it's not being reported to them.

I read your link, I honestly had no idea that Democrats were offended when they were referred to as the "Democrat" party rather than the "Democratic" party. I only do it since it's a more focused way to refer to them, as they get less and less "Democratic" in their ever increasing advocation of ~government~, not people, making their decisions for them. I hope you'll work on trying to keep it that way, rather than moving it to the socialist, or communist party. Would you favor your Democratic party making a list of new government mandates to combat global warming, (you know, the disaster we'll all face if the globe warms 1 degree over the next 10 years), and then putting that to a Democratic vote? Or would you rather the government / scientific community makes that decision for us?

I'm not sure what your point is with this question, but political parties shouldn't be in the business of proposing national Propositions to be voted on during general elections. Are you talking about a system like we have here in California? Just to let you know, generally I am not a fan of our ability to vote on anything that gets enough signatures to be put on our ballot. I usually vote 'no' on all of them.Also, I don't believe your excuse for the use of 'Democrat Party', unless you've lived in a cave since Limbaugh went on the air. But if you promise to use the correct term going forward, then I'll chalk it up to 'lesson learned'.

According to an article in Forbes, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts has received twelve ethics complaints about Justice Kavanaugh stemming from his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27th, 2018. That's the testimony Kavanaugh gave after Dr. Ford testified where he was first intemperate, injudicious, rude and angry, then lied about his high school and college drinking, and his treatment of women, some of whom were girls at the time. There is no shame in drinking to excess as an intemperate youth, and one might even be forgiven for stepping beyond the bounds in treatment of women during those young years, but it is grossly disqualifying for a judge to lie about it all as an adult.Justice Roberts referred the allegations to the chief circuit judge of Denver's Tenth Circuit, Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich, whose options are to handle the complaints himself, dismiss them, or appoint a special committee to investigate them.According to the article Supreme Court justices are not subject to any misconduct rules associated with such allegations, so many might wonder if there is any point. There are two, but one of them is small. If any of the complaints are found true then there will always be an asterisk next to Justice Kavanaugh's name. In the minds of many an asterisk is already there, identical to the one next to Clarence Thomas's name. The Supreme Court nomination, approval and appointment progress is so broken that in the span of a mere 27 years Republicans have managed to seat two sexual abusers, one of them also incompetent (at the Supreme Court level), the other also highly partisan. Judge Tymkovich's decisions will determine whether Justice Kavanaugh receives a second asterisk.The second reason this investigation matters is that if the Democrats take over the House in November then a committee will certainly investigate the Justice Kavanaugh appointment, and the outcome of Judge Tymkovich's investigations will serve as evidence for the committee. Impeachment is a possibility, though a meaningless one since the Republicans are likely to retain the Senate where the trial would be held.Both Thomas and Kavanaugh were nominated by Republican presidents, who are proving to be really bad at appointing Supreme Court justices. They select judges with a dark vision of America where women receive coat hanger abortions in back alleys, workers are at the mercy of their employers, the poor and needy are told to assist themselves, retiree benefits are reduced, the rich are taxed less than anyone else with the difference made up on the backs of the people, those who can't afford insurance just don't receive adequate healthcare, and our message to the desperate beyond our shores is "go home and die."It would be a refreshing development if we could see some objectivity from the Republican partisans here. I myself am an independent. It doesn't matter to me which party you are, you must all follow the same rules. I immediately called for Senator Al Franken's resignation when his sexual abuse allegations came to light. I condemned Justice Ginsberg publicly commenting on issues of the day. But to Republican partisans all conservatives are angels and all liberals are demons, and they don't even see that that isn't possible and that they are operating under an enormous weight of bias.--Percy

Long-time conservative George Will's op-ed piece in today's Washington Post cites a brilliantly written exposition on how ideas are validated (Trump’s presidency is one giant act of trolling). George almost sounds like a scientist:

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This apercu comes from the Brookings Institution’s Jonathan Rauch. His essay, titled The Constitution of Knowledge, in National Affairs quarterly is his response to Trump’s guiding principle, as stated by Stephen K. Bannon, whose body but not whose mentality has left the White House. Bannon says: The way to deal with [the media] is to flood the zone with shit. Rauch says: Trump’s presidential lying, which began concerning the size of his inauguration crowd, reflects a strategy, not merely a character flaw or pathology. And the way to combat Trump’s epistemic attack on Americans’ collective ability to distinguish truth from falsehood is by attending to the various social mechanisms that, taken together, are the method of validating propositions.

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Modernity began when humanity removed reality-making from the authoritarian control of priests and princes and outsourced it to no one in particular. It was given over to a decentralized, globe-spanning community of critical testers who hunt for each other’s errors. This is why today’s foremost enemy of modernity is populism, which cannot abide the idea that majorities are not self-validating, and neither are intense minorities (e.g., the Elvis lives cohort). Validation comes from the critical testers who are the bane of populists’ existence because the testers are, by dint of training and effort, superior to the crowd, no matter how many are in it.

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Think, says Rauch, of the constitution of knowledge as a funnel: At the wide end, millions of people float millions of hypotheses every day. Only an infinitesimal fraction of new ideas will be proven true. To find them, we run the hypotheses through a massive, socially distributed error-finding process. Only a tiny few make it to the narrow end of the funnel. The authors of those that do receive the prestige of recognition and the enmity of populists, who worship the many in order to disparage the few. Disparagement is the default position of all levelers.

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That's a long quote but well worth reading.Will, unfortunately, drifts off message and into partisan error at the end, casting disparagement at both Trump and his opposition as if they were both doing the same thing:

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Ominously, in the most important of these, the colleges and universities, serious scholars are not the dominant voices. Trump, bellowing fake news and sham this and rigged that, is on all fours with his leftist, often academic and equally fact-free despisers who, hollering racist and fascist, are his collaborators in the attack on the constitution of knowledge. No wonder, Rauch writes, much of the public has formed the impression that academia is not trustworthy. Imposing opinions and promoting political agendas, many academics have descended to trolling, forfeiting their ability to contest he whom they emulate.

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The left is full of "equally fact-free despisers"? Where, George, where? I notice you provide a link for your condemnation of Trump, but for your condemnations of the left you've provided nothing in support, nada. Despite your dislike of Trump, you can't complete an opinion piece without dubious and baseless attacks on the left. Attack the left all you like, George, but without that idea distilling funnel Rauch talks about you're just another troll for the Trump you dislike so much.--Percy

You need to watch it again. Trump made some outrageous claim, like "Our administration has done more than any previous administration" and the foreign leaders immediately started laughing. Trump wasn't clowning around, he was being serious. They laughed at him. After they laughed at him he then said "That's not the response I was expecting". Watch it. Two words for you. Merrick Garland.