ROGER SIMON: Susan Collins Saved the Senate (for now).
Archive for 2018
October 5, 2018
COMPARING THIS SAD STORY TO MY OWN TIME AT YALE LAW, I just have to say that today’s Yale Law students are a sad, fragile lot. Also, after going after Amy Chua for Kavanaugh-related stuff, it seems that the attacks have branched out to her husband. Asking someone if they noticed your spray tan is not sexual harassment, sorry.
DIY MUSIC UPDATE: Photoshop for Sound: Izotope’s New RX7 Audio Restoration Software.
LIBBY LOCKE: How It Feels To Be Falsely Accused.
THE INTEMPERANCE OF THE LAW PROFESSORS’ “JUDICIAL TEMPERANCE” LETTER: “To think, just a few short weeks ago, we were getting lectured about how unfair, sexist, and racist it was to judge a woman for expressing anger during a tennis game.”
That’s different, because shut up. But judicial temperance means being temperate when judging. It doesn’t mean a judge can’t curse if he hits his thumb with a hammer in his garage. Or if political opportunists are pushing bogus charges of gang-rape for sleazy reasons. You want a judge to get angry in the face of manifest injustice.
MAYBE TRUMP REALLY IS PLAYING 6-DIMENSIONAL CHESS. So there’s this:
And there’s the strangely assertive Lindsey Graham 2.0:
And it makes me think about what Trump’s game was. I would have rather he picked one of the more libertarian members of his list: Willett, or maybe Kethledge. And because some sort of trumped-up #MeToo thing was almost certain, a lot of people thought he should have picked Amy Coney Barrett. Kavanaugh was a fine, safe pick, but kinda milquetoasty DC Establishment for my taste.
But that was the reason to pick him. Trump knew he’d been vetted enough that there would be no real skeletons, and he no doubt expected that the Democrats would be so desperate they’d invent some. They would have done that with anyone he put up — but, precisely because Kavanaugh was a milquetoasty DC Establishment type, seeing the Democrats go into full batshit assault mode on him galvanized the other milquetoasty DC Establishment types. You could see the lightbulbs go off in their heads: The Democrats don’t hate Trump because he’s Trump. They hate all Republicans and want to ruin them. Even me! And they always will.
The result is that the Kavanaugh affair has welded the Trump and NeverTrump forces (except for a few sad outliers who don’t matter) into a solid force. And it’s simultaneously galvanized GOP voters around the country, closing the “enthusiasm gap,” as the normals become more militant. Plus, it seems that minority voters aren’t as excited about empowering neurotic upper-class white feminists as you might — well, actually, I guess they’re just about exactly as excited about empowering neurotic upper-class white feminists as you might expect, but it seems Dems didn’t give that much thought. So Kavanaugh was, in fact, the perfect pick to trigger this reaction.
I’m reminded of the scene in Absence of Malice where Wilford Brimley asks Paul Newman, who has cleverly set a trap that the press and the rogue DOJ guy fall into, “Are you that smart?”
I mentioned this analysis to the Insta-Wife, a Trump fan who has followed him closely since the 1980s and her comment was, “Of course.”
UPDATE:
MORE: Seen on Facebook: “‘You’ll get tired of winning.’ Yet another failed prediction from Drumpf.”
OPEN THREAD: Share your feelings. Or fart jokes. Whatever.
CONSPIRACY TO VIOLATE CIVIL RIGHTS: Communism sympathizers post numbers, jobs of pro-Kavanaugh protesters.
More: “Further, UT students have threatened violence both if the Young Conservatives take further action defending Kavanaugh, or if there is any action taken against the counter protesters. . . . A massive takeaway from this was illuminated in the full footage of the counter protest, where a female student shouted, ‘UT is a liberal school, what are you people even doing here? We don’t want you here, you shouldn’t be here, we’re educated, and you aren’t. Just leave.'”
I think the Department of Justice and the Education Department should investigate.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Private Moon-Exploration Company Will Work with Canadian Space Agency. “The CSA has signed a memorandum of understanding with Florida-based company Moon Express, which is developing a family of spacecraft with the aim of slashing the cost of robotic trips to the moon and other deep-space destinations.”
#BELIEVEWOMEN: Dems Fundraised With Cardenas Months After Molestation Charges Against Him Became Public. “The head of the House Democrats’ re-election campaign and several Congressional Hispanic Caucus members have continued to appear at fundraising events with Rep. Tony Cardenas (D., Calif.) months after a lawsuit was filed alleging that he drugged and molested a 16-year-old girl in 2007. Some of the same Democrats over the last two weeks have continued to criticize Republican handling of the sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh while remaining silent on the charges Cardenas is facing.”
DAVID FRENCH: The Complete Case For Kavanaugh.
THE KAVANAUGH EFFECT: THE NEXT ANDREW BREITBART IS WATCHING.
“I didn’t understand how Ted Kennedy … THE Ted Kennedy from Chappaquiddick fame … how Howard Metzenbaum and Joe Biden, a series of privileged white men, could sit in judgment of this man who was the son of grandparents who were sharecroppers who raised him. And he went to Yale Law School. He did everything right. I did not understand how it could be that these white men of privilege were attacking this black man who was in this historic position while the mainstream media took him down.”
Sound familiar? Much has been said of the “Kavanaugh effect” and how this tawdry melodrama will translate to votes in November’s midterms. But there may be a longer-lasting Kavanaugh effect that the left and the media are not even considering. Like Breitbart in 1991, millions of Americans have witnessed a handful of Democrats willing to take down and destroy Brett M. Kavanaugh in the same setting for the same reason. Judge Kavanaugh, like Judge Thomas, went to Yale Law School and “did everything right.” With Judge Thomas, they were painting him as a sex-starved pervert; with Judge Kavanaugh, no less than a gang rapist. And it was fair game because, after all, Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance.
And like the Thomas hearings, the media are the full and willing partners in this character assassination. Millions of Americans are watching. How many of them are the next Andrew Breitbart?
Read the whole thing.
BRETT KAVANAUGH: The Surprise Ending. “Kavanaugh saved himself. The staggering turnabout in polls in different races in different parts of the country makes that clear. Privately, Republican campaigns report they have never seen a sleeping body politic jolt awake in this way. You don’t like the politics of it? For those otherwise sympathetic to Kavanaugh’s plight who think he took it too far, you simply have to understand that had he not done so, he would have been known forever as the gang rapist who lost his Supreme Court gig. And for those unsympathetic to his plight, for those who decided (even if they believed every word of Ford’s claims) to play this high-risk last-minute hand—you overplayed it. Your bluff was called. Brett Kavanaugh himself called it.”
The Democrats thought the threat of scandal would be enough to make Kavanaugh withdraw. They chose . . . poorly.
MIXED RESULTS: Does CoEnzyme Q10 Reduce Statin-Related Muscle Aches? I take CoQ10 and I think it improves my energy level. But if your statin is giving you muscle aches you should probably try a different statin or quit altogether.
AT AMAZON, fall savings in Automotive.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Title IX Complaint Filed Against Prof Who Called for ‘Miserable Deaths’ of White Senators.
THIS IS CNN: Melania Trump’s new white hat evokes colonialist comparison.
As James Taranto likes to say, if you can hear the dog whistle, you’re the dog.
THIS FROM RICHARD FERNANDEZ EXPLAINS A LOT ABOUT WHY THE LEFT WENT CRAZY WHEN TRUMP WON:
ITS CAMPAIGN AGAINST KAVANAUGH EXPOSES THE ACLU AS A MASSIVE HYPOCRITE.
But they’re far from the only organization on the left-hand side of the aisle that’s been discredited by going all-in to destroy a man, as Sohrab Ahmari writes at Commentary.
FILTHY LUCRE: Notes and coins harbor life threatening bacteria, including MRSA and VRE. I suspect that our ability to detect exceeds their ability to infect.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND #METOO: ‘Make them scared’ website posts uncorroborated sexual assault claims against male students.