Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 26, 2018
CHARLES C.W. COOKE SUMS UP THE SCOTUS MESS: “It’s beyond tiresome.”
HARDBALL: U.S. sanctions Venezuela officials, Trump slams Maduro.
The measure sanctioned six officials in Maduro’s “inner circle,” including Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, and “blocked” a $20 million private jet identified as belonging to a front-man of a top official.
The move adds pressure to a government already widely criticized for economic collapse and undermining democracy. But it does not materially change Washington’s efforts to pressure Socialist Party stalwarts who have shown no willingness to hand over power or negotiate a transition.
“Today, socialism has bankrupted the oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty,” Trump said in remarks to the United Nations General Assembly.
It’s always nice to see the S-word properly applied.
SEAN TRENDE: Sizing Up the Montana Senate Race.
Montana fits into this category of “strange” states. At the presidential level, it is blood red. Voters backed Trump by 20 points in 2016, and Mitt Romney by 14 points in 2012. Yet beneath the presidential level, the politics of the state are significantly murkier. Montana has sent only a handful of Republicans to the Senate since popular elections were adopted. It routinely elects Democratic governors.
Even at the presidential level, the state can be unpredictable. John McCain only won there by two points in 2008. Silver Bow County, in the mountainous west, has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1956, while Deer Lodge, just to its northwest, last voted Republican in 1924 (it favored Calvin Coolidge over Progressive candidate Robert LaFollette by 19 votes that year).
From there, things just get weirder.
PAUL SPERRY: Eight big problems for Christine Blasey Ford’s story.
1) For starters, Ford still can’t recall basic details of what she says was the most traumatic event in her life. Not where the “assault” took place — she’s not sure whose house it was, or even what street it was on. Nor when — she’s not even sure of the year, let alone the day and month.
Ford’s not certain how old she was or what grade she was in when she says an older student violently molested her. (But she doesn’t plead inebriation: She described having just “one beer” at the party.)
2) Ford concedes she told no one what happened to her at the time, not even her best friend or mother. That means she can rely on no contemporaneous witness to corroborate her story.
3) Worse, the four other people she identified as attending the party, including Kavanaugh, all deny knowledge of the gathering in question, including Leland Ingham Keyser, who she calls a “lifelong friend.”
Five more at the link.
REMINDER: Bruce Carroll’s “Expose The Media’s Skeletons” GoFundMe is still active.
It’s incredible that this campaign is close to $20,000 in just 48 hours. I’m glad to know that people are supportive and as serious about the lack of journalists’ accountability as I am. I’m actively looking for a legitimate private investigation firm to work on this project. If you happen to know any — please email me: .
I do not want to hire a politically involved person or organization. I want someone with impeccable credentials to take on these investigations.
I donated on Monday, and Bruce pitched in $1,000 of his own money.
FROM A MEMBER OF THE PARTY WHICH DESTROYED URBAN PUBLIC EDUCATION AND OPPOSES SCHOOL CHOICE TO ESCAPE IT: Obama’s Education Secretary Says Not in Trump’s ‘Best Interest to Have a Well-Educated Citizenry.’
MICHAEL WALSH: Frustrated Media Stamps Tiny Feet. “Why is GOP still supporting Kavanaugh? Snowflakes demand answers!”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Eight big problems for Christine Blasey Ford’s story.
1) For starters, Ford still can’t recall basic details of what she says was the most traumatic event in her life. Not where the “assault” took place — she’s not sure whose house it was, or even what street it was on. Nor when — she’s not even sure of the year, let alone the day and month.
Ford’s not certain how old she was or what grade she was in when she says an older student violently molested her. (But she doesn’t plead inebriation: She described having just “one beer” at the party.)
2) Ford concedes she told no one what happened to her at the time, not even her best friend or mother. That means she can rely on no contemporaneous witness to corroborate her story.
3) Worse, the four other people she identified as attending the party, including Kavanaugh, all deny knowledge of the gathering in question, including Leland Ingham Keyser, who she calls a “lifelong friend.”
Keyser’s lawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “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.” . . .
4) Her own immediate family doesn’t appear to be backing her up, either. Her mother, father and two siblings are all conspicuously absent from a letter of support released by a dozen relatives, mostly on her husband’s side of the family.
The letter attests to her honesty and integrity. “Why didn’t her parents and brothers sign the letter?” a congressional source familiar with the investigation wondered.
5) This summer, Ford tried to reach out to old friends from high school and college to jog her memory. They couldn’t help her. “I’ve been trying to forget this all my life, and now I’m supposed to remember every little detail,” Ford complained to one friend in July, according to an account in The San Jose Mercury News. . . .
7) Ford contends that notes her therapist took in 2012 corroborate her account. But they don’t mention Kavanaugh.
They also point up inconsistencies in her story. For instance, her shrink noted that Ford told her there were “four boys” in the bedroom, not two as she now says. The notes also indicate Ford said she was in her “late teens” when she was assaulted. But Ford now says she may have been only 15.
8) In another inconsistency, Ford told The Washington Post she was upset when Trump won in 2016, because Kavanaugh was mentioned as a Supreme Court pick. But Kavanaugh wasn’t added to Trump’s list of possibles until November 2017, a full year later.
Read the whole thing. I think the fact that the press is now moving on to generic accusations of drinking and partying in high school indicates that they know her story is weak.
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Attorney Avenatti releases new affidavit from woman describing Kavanaugh at parties.
Plus: Michael Avenatti names new Kavanaugh accuser; Meet Julie Swetnick.
THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE VULNERABLE AND THEY KNOW IT’S BULLSHIT: Red-state Democrats refuse to come out against Kavanaugh.
The Democratic Caucus’ clutch of moderate senators, who mostly hail from conservative states where voters could punish them for opposing Kavanaugh, is under more pressure than ever from a liberal base furious over the sexual assault allegations.
So most of those intently watched Democrats are deferring their public stance until after Thursday’s scheduled hearing with Ford and Kavanaugh. They’re worried about taking unnecessary political risk by taking a stand amid a swirl of unproven charges and uncertainty about whether the GOP even has the votes to confirm the 53-year-old appeals court judge, according to senators and aides.
Still, Democratic leaders are confident of a unanimous “no” vote against Kavanaugh from their caucus, especially if Ford comes off as credible, according to more than a half-dozen senators and aides.
Ford will have to show up tomorrow if she’s to have a shot at credibility, and even at this late date her appearance is still in doubt.
BOOM: House Panel To Subpoena DOJ For McCabe Memos.
Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the Judiciary panel, said Sunday that he would subpoena the memos if the Justice Department did not provide them by Tuesday. A House Judiciary Committee aide told TheDCNF that the subpoena process is underway.
The forthcoming subpoena suggests that DOJ did not turn over the documents in full.
McCabe’s memos took on a new significance on Friday, when The New York Times reported that he claimed in some of the documents that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire during conversations with President Donald Trump. McCabe also reportedly wrote that Rosenstein discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. (RELATED: Report: Rosenstein Discussed Wearing A Wire In Meetings With Trump)
Rosenstein vehemently denied the allegation, and Justice Department sources have asserted that he was joking about spying on Trump.
The real question is what happens if Justice doesn’t deliver.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Grassley Has Had Enough and Much, Much More. “Is this Ford accuser lady going to show up or not? I don’t think she will and even DiFi doesn’t know. DiFI is upset because the Senate Judiciary Committee is finally acting like these newly discovered victims are a stalling mechanism so the committee will move forward and has scheduled a vote. The Democrats are upset because they want to stall.”
YOU DON’T SAY: Google to acknowledge privacy mistakes as U.S. seeks input.
“We acknowledge that we have made mistakes in the past, from which we have learned, and improved our robust privacy program,” Google chief privacy officer Keith Enright will say in written testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee. Google will testify alongside AT&T Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc and other companies amid growing concerns about data privacy.
Just yesterday I linked to a story about an all-new privacy concern involving Google’s ubiquitous Chrome browser.
The Democratic politician has been hit with a series of allegations since November [2012] that he and a prominent donor frequently traveled by private plane to the Dominican Republic where they paid multiple prostitutes to attend their sex parties.
And yesterday, Robert Menendez empahticaly denied the allegations as the FBI raided the home of donor and wealthy Florida eye doctor, Salomon Melgen, who also denies the claims.
The email is part of a chain of whistle-blowing exchanges between CREW and a concerned American citizen who claims to have knowledge of Senator Menendez and his attendance of sex parties in the Dominican Republic.
Included in the exchange is an email from one of the girls who claims to have participated in these orgies and was paid by the senator for sex.
‘In the beginning he seemed so serious, because he never spoke to anyone, but he is just like the others and has just about the same tastes as the doctor, very refined. I think they were taking us more often to get us checked [medically] because of him,’ wrote the girl.
Her name is being withheld by MailOnline because she may have been a minor when her alleged encounters with Menendez occurred.
Why Menendez, a Democrat, hasn’t been hounded out of office by members of his own party is a question which answers itself.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: A Nasty Brexit Threatens the West.
Many Brexit opponents, both in the U.K. and on the Continent, hope that the chaos of a “no deal” Brexit will bring about a second British referendum. Next time, they hope, a chastened British public will vote to remain. But repeating the referendum until the people vote the “right” way is more likely to fan the flames of populist anti-Brussels sentiment around the EU than to quell them.
The U.S. has so far not been involved in the discussions between the U.K. and its EU partners. This is not because it has no interest in the matter. From America’s standpoint, a no-deal Brexit that weakens Britain and poisons EU-U.K. relations would be a disaster. It would undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and one of America’s most important and valued allies. And if a radicalized Labour Party takes power in the wake of a Brexit calamity, the survival of the trans-Atlantic alliance could be at risk. The U.K. itself could come apart. It is crucial from the U.S. perspective that any divorce settlement maintain Western and allied cohesion in a dangerous world.
Some Europeans may view Brexit mainly as a matter of economics, but it is also inescapably a major security concern for the West. The relationship between post-Brexit Britain and the rest of the West cannot be evaluated simply as an internal matter for the EU. Britain may be leaving the EU, but it is not leaving the American-led Western alliance. The implications of a nasty and brutal Brexit for the Atlantic community are too consequential for Washington to ignore.
Yes, but apparently Brussels thinks it’s just fine to ignore the consequences, as busy as they’ve been poisoning the negotiations.
BELIEVE THE FACTS, NOT NECESSARILY THE WOMEN: 10 Red Flags About Sexual Assault Claims, From An Employment Lawyer.
It’s not nice or politically correct to say, but people do sometimes lie to get money, revenge, power, attention, or political advantage. False allegations of sexual assault have been documented. Even the most pro-accuser advocates acknowledge that 5 percent of the claims are simply false.
When the complaint is “he said/she said,” we should not helplessly acquiesce to coin-flip justice that picks winners and losers based upon the identity politics profile of the accused and accuser. Experience with a career’s worth of complaints in hearings, depositions, and negotiations has taught me some tells, red flags that warn that an innocent person stands accused.
Without naming any particular accusation, I offer these factors for consideration to the fair-minded who remain open to the possibility that guilt or innocence is not simply a question of politics. I also remind the reader that politicizing these accusations have allowed men like Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves, Bill Clinton, and Keith Ellison to escape accountability. Nobody seems to care if they walk the walk so long as they talk the talk.
The very first red flag in the Read-the-Whole-Thing™ list is: “The accuser uses the press instead of the process.”
HMM: U.S. powerless to fight drone attacks, top official says.
CBP officers fly drones along the Mexican border looking for people attempting to cross illegally, but also for something else: drones used by drug cartels or terrorist organizations looking to surveil – or even worse – harm the U.S.
Pegues walked part of the border with DHS’ top intelligence official David Glawe and Customs and Border Patrol Chief Rodolfo Karisch.
“If you want to move people, narcotics, God forbid weapons of mass destruction, or anything else over the border, you have a surveillance location that can be now automated with drones at a very inexpensive cost by organizations outside of the United States,” Glawe said.
Maybe we need something like NORAD to surveil our southern airspace.
ROBERT SPENCER: “Banned Books Week” Only Features Leftist Books. “Want to fight book banning? Read conservative authors.”
September 25, 2018
THIS LIST IS SUSPECT FOR NOT INCLUDING STEAK ‘N SHAKE: 5 Chain Restaurants That Define America.
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? Dunkin’ is officially dropping the ‘Donuts’ from its name.
THE NEW CIVILITY: “You should be embarrassed for existing.”
I DON’T UNDERSTAND FASHION: Models with Three Breasts Just Walked the Runway at Milan Fashion Week.
BLUE WAVE? The Return of the “Broken Glass Voter.”
SCRAPPLEFACE: Senators Seek Sexual-Assault Claims Against Selves.