Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Friday, September 28, 2018

A National Disgrace

So I watched the "hearings" if you want to call it that. What they were consisted of Senators largely making campaign speeches. Democrats, Booker and Harris in particular, were particularly hostile to the presumed innocent Kavanaugh as if they were personal witnesses to what allegedly transpired over 30 years ago.

I watched because I also so distrust media that I did not want second or third hand reports. Here are a couple of things that stood out to me:

1) To Fly or Not To Fly.

When this whole thing came to public light, Ford refused to come to DC because she claimed she was afraid of flying. We now know that not only did she fly to the area in late July, but that she also has traveled extensively, by plane to various vacation locations. You'd think that someone who thought her "civic duty" to report would have mustered up the courage to take THAT flight. Are flights to Tahiti more important than "civic duty"? I wouldn't think so.

Ford also stated that she had no knowledge of the offer to either interview her remotely OR for members of the committee to come to her location. This offer was known on the internet within an hour of it being made. So if Ford is not lying, then her council did not inform her of this offer. If not, why not?

Well; the obvious answer is the reason for this entire disgrace in the first place. Democrats have wanted to stall this hearing from the get go. The plan is and has been to push this nomination past the mid-terms. Democrats expect to take up majorities in both the House and Senate (something that happens often when the presidency switches parties). Once that has happened they would plan on stalling or not approving of any nominee that is, in their opinion, "extreme". That's the plan. That is what is underlying everything we are witnessing.

In a court of law, under rules of evidence, the plane trips and lack of knowledge of the "come to you" offer, would be used by the defense to great effect. But that's not even the worst of it.

2) Not A Care About Other Women:

Let's assume for a minute that Ford's story is 100% accurate. Let's assume she was in fact assaulted by Kavanaugh at the house, in the manner that she says. She stated that she was so traumatized by the experience that it gave her PTSD, which she apparently has not healed from. Under questioning, she said that there was no other "environmental" cause for her PTSD and that everyone has underlying biological factors. Since this event was SO traumatic, we should be asking why, as an adult, it took her until late July to come forward.

By her own admission and testimony of her husband, she knew that Kavanaugh was a judge and may have known he was involved in high levels of government by at least 2012. That's 6 years ago. Having revealed to her husband and therapist that Kavanaugh assaulted her, why didn't she do her "civic duty" and inform her congressperson? Why didn't she inform the Bar Association? Had she seen fit to do her "civic duty" and report a man who had so egregiously assaulted her as to cause 30 years of PTSD, Kavanaugh wouldn't have even been on the SCOTUS shortlist in 2018.

The only logical reason for her not reporting then, is that she didn't see the assault as badly as she now says. If Kav had put a knife to her throat and attempted to kill her would she have sat on that? What if he had burned down her house? No the reason is she had politics on the brain and she admitted as such. She said that she was OK with sitting on the claim so long as it seemed that Kavanaugh was going to fail during the hearings or the Democrats would have succeeded in delaying the vote until after the mid-terms. She said that once she saw that he was highly likely to get past the hearings that she decided to move.

After that May 2012 therapy session, I did my best to ignore the memories of the assault, because recounting them caused me to relive the experience, and caused panic and anxiety. Occasionally, I would discuss the assault in an individual therapy session, but talking about it caused more reliving of the trauma, so I tried not to think about it or discuss it. But over the years, I went through periods where I thought about the attack.

FORD: I do not recall each person I spoke to about Brett’s assault. And some friends have reminded me of these conversations since the publication of the Washington Post story on September 16th, 2018. But until July 2018, I had never named Mr. Kavanaugh as my attacker outside of therapy.

This changed in early July 2018. I saw press reports stating that Brett Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of a list of very well-qualified Supreme Court nominees. I thought it was my civic duty to relay the information I had about Mr. Kavanaugh’s conduct so that those considering his nomination would know about this assault.

On July 6th, I had a sense of urgency to relay the information to the Senate and the president as soon as possible, before a nominee was selected. I did not know how, specifically, to do this.

Her own words. She did not feel a "sense of urgency" until July 2018. She didnt' feel that someone she thinks is a rapist should be reported before then. She wasn't bothered by his government work, where he would be in contact with women, be judging women was important enough to report.

This stinks. It stinks. And this is assuming her claims to be 100% true. And we don't even know that.

Previously I posted about the innocence project. I quoted from a case where the witness was 100% sure that her attacker was a particular man:

On February 7, 1978, a 19-year-old student at the College of William and Mary was sexually assaulted at gunpoint. As soon as the rapist left, the victim called the police. When investigators arrived, the victim told them that her assailant weighed 145 pounds and was 5’6” tall. There had been a number of other rapes in the area during this time.

One week after the attack, the victim was shown a photo array. The victim picked Barbour’s photo out of the lineup, and then picked him out of two live lineups (consisting of the same people in different orders). The next day, Barbour was arrested.

At the trial, the principal evidence against Barbour was the eyewitness testimony of the victim, though he did not match the victim’s initial description, and no physical evidence tied him to the crime. His alibi, that he was watching television with his family and neighbors that night, was corroborated by three witnesses at trial. In spite of all of this, Barbour was convicted of rape on April 14, 1978 and sentenced to ten years in prison. According to the post-sentence report, the investigators from the case still had doubts about Barbour’s guilt, and were reportedly continuing investigation.

Here is a victim. Who reported right after the event and yet still she picked the wrong man. This is just one example of many where the victim or alleged victim was "100% sure it was him" and the facts and the evidence showed that it was 100% NOT HIM.

This is why we have courtrooms and trials held by legal professionals rather than approval seeking politicians like Booker, Harris, Flake and Hinosa.

How bad can "victim testimony" be? Check this Ted Talks video:

So we have people who are induced to believe they have had traumatic events that did not happen. We have people who were assaulted under stressful situations who fail to identify who actually attacked them. We have professionals who just by using certain words can get people to "remember" details that never happened or things that were never present. Yet if you were to hook them up to a lie detector, they would pass because they believe 100% in what they said they saw, heard and felt.

This is why you don't simply believe a claim made by anyone.

This whole shit show is a disgrace. It shows clearly that Democrats are only concerned with power. They don't care about Ford. They don't care about Kavanaugh. They don't care about you either. As I've said before, the very principle of innocence until proven guilty was tossed aside by every Senator in that room who failed to use the word "alleged". By every senator who spoke to Kavanaugh as if he was guilty and had to prove his innocence. They repeatedly claimed, correctly, that the hearings were not a trial. Well since it wasn't a trial, then it wasn't about getting to the truth was it? No. It was not. This was a smear campaign that made the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings look like an episode of Mr. Rogers.