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This Is the Scenario Dr. Ford’s Lawyer Is Setting Up
So, this is the scenario:
Under Senate rules, in order to reschedule a hearing one week’s notice must be given. A hearing next Thursday cannot happen; at the earliest, it would happen next Friday. With attendant negotiations tomorrow, probably the earliest would be the following Monday, after the start of the Supreme Court’s term. A committee vote for referral to the whole Senate would be later, as would be a confirmation vote. Judge Kavanaugh would miss a significant number of cases. As the Court’s term would have already started, Democrats would renew their cry of “What’s the hurry, now?”
One condition is that only Senators are to be allowed to question Ms. Ford. No staff attorneys are to be allowed to question her. Since no Senator wants to be the bad guy, and since time is broken up, this ensures ineffectual and softball questioning. It also allows her to play the bullied victim for each one. The point is moot, though, as will be shown.
Another condition specified is that Judge Kavanaugh testify first. This would put him in the position of denying vague and speculative accusations, lacking any specificity, and would allow the Democrats on the committee to grandstand with abusive and speculative questions. (Tell me, Judge Kavanaugh, why would she make this up? What grudge do you think she has against you? Don’t you feel her pain? Do you think women should be believed?)
After Judge Kavanaugh testifies, Ms. Ford’s lawyer then informs the committee that watching him deny the accusations was so painful that she simply cannot continue and she cannot testify. The committee is left hanging and the Democrats all emote on cue. Ms. Ford cries on the Capital steps while her lawyer lambasts the unfairness of the proceedings, the bullying Republicans, and the trauma her client has suffered.
Then Ms. Ford gives an exclusive major-network televised interview to a softball reporter amplifying the accusations and crying on screen. Democrats renew their demands for a “fair” investigation. Senator Booker cries.
The Committee should tell the Accusers (yes, I use the plural deliberately) to take their conditions and go to hell. Show up Monday or forget about it.
Published in General
Breaking, additional demands.
Wait, there appear to be a few more.
I believe this is it.
Hold it, hold. Okay all done.
All perfectly reasonable when you think about it.
They need to stick to their guns.
Being the GOPe, they won’t.
If only Judge Kavanaugh’s first name was Joe:
Republicans need to learn that they will never win over the Democrats base. As you say tell them to go to hell and then vote. At least Republicans will pay to their base. The way they are going they wouldn’t have either bloc.
Indeed. It’s all games and delay.
Mike,
A procedural horsesh*t screwjob. Yep, that sounds just like Schumer’s Dems. Send the email right now copying everybody in creation. Either Ford shows up Monday or they are voting for confirmation on Monday.
Regards,
Jim
Instead, they tell their own base to go to hell.
Re the conditions:
Only Senators to ask questions? Ha! Senators should be prevented from asking questions, as all they will do is grandstand. Only experienced criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys should be allowed to ask questions, and the questioning attorneys must be barred from ever seeking elected office.
Kavanaugh to go first? Yeah, that’s perfect fairness, defend yourself against charges we haven’t laid out yet and prove the negative of every scenario we might make up.
You know something? It just occurred to me that the “victim” herself considered the matter insignificant. After all, there was one mention of her talking to her therapist during a therapy session in 2012 or 2013 about this alleged physical assault.
If the matter was so traumatizing, wouldn’t Ford have detailed in her written letter and other statements that she was so traumatized, her therapy sessions dealt with this matter exclusively, for the next several years? Instead all Ford has told us is there was one mention to her therapist about the incident.
Which indicates to me that it was not that significant.
Okay, now these excuses are becoming downright pathetic. This is ridiculous.
Absolutely. Together we stand; divided we fall.
Carol,
Give me your honest opinion. Fifteen-year-old girls are very “social” creatures. They are very aware of who they are friends with and who they are not. She would be totally aware of whose house she was in. We are not talking about a dull-witted person either. She attained her Ph.D. in psychology and she holds a responsible position at a university. This doesn’t add up. Something may have happened to her at a party somewhere sometime that was upsetting. It seems very much more likely that thirty years later she has “acquired” the idea that it “could” have been Kavanaugh and that now she wants to win a political argument by making an accusation that she very well knows isn’t true. It wasn’t Brett Kavanaugh and she knows it.
Regards,
Jim
Also Skype.
Check and mate.
Exactly. Blasely Ford doesn’t have any type of “crime” to report, as there is no evidence. She wasn’t even traumatized by the behavior of Kavanaugh all those years ago – otherwise she would have double booked the therapist she opened up to about it in 2012.
But she didn’t. She mentioned once and only once about the alleged assault. This event was a minor event – otherwise we would assume that a decent therapist would want her to spend time on the subject and it would have been discussed.
And a true victim most likely would not even hesitate to continue to talk about the incident, if it truly was assault… Someone who had been attacked would have welcomed the ability to have professional help from her therapist so she could get over the trauma,.
How many of us have suffered a horrific traumatic event, and later could not remember the year, or the location, or exactly who was there? What a crock.
I would be the last person to know about normal HS life based on my own experience. I had very restrictive parenting while in HS.
Much of what passes for normal HS youth behavior is not correct. Logically, legally, or morally. Who would condone the drunk driving that went on over weekends by HS youth in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s? I doubt you or I would want to condone it.
I don’t want to condone piggish behavior of the guys who were mashers either. Also I have no way of knowing if this event was actual or one that later on was made up… But if was a serious event, I assume the woman would have spent more than one session in therapy discussing it. (Unless her therapist was out to lunch for a long time.)
I did an editorial/data collection assist for a book on dating violence. The # 1 contributing factor to a young woman, high school age, being assaulted sexually is her being at a party or gathering where the guys are drinking. And the odds of being assaulted go up if the young woman is at the party or the gathering alone. And if she has been drinking herself, the statistics are very high, indicating that sooner rather than later the young woman will be the victim of someone taking advantage of her. (This was based on questionnaires filled out by Catholic HS girls in Chicago in the 1990’s.)
The above is offered to clue today’s parents in. The thing about the above circumstances that is truly tragic – the young woman won’t tell her parents about what occurred because she would have to admit to being somewhere she lied about not being, and she may have to admit to her drinking as well.
Carol,
You’re still missing my point. She would know whose house she was at. Of course, she might have had a bad experience that was something like what she described. However, if she gives location and details then it would probably be obvious that it wasn’t Kavanaugh. She can have her cake and eat it too this way and go on with a completely false accusation where she conveniently remembers certain details that make it as lurid as possible while forgetting other details that would allow her allegations to be refuted.
Regards,
Jim
That’s what I can’t get over. She is at a party, and she has seemed to indicate it wasn’t Garrett’s house, but she didn’t come out and say so. She said it wasn’t him, they are good friends. Is there something there?
Agreed. The courtroom of the public opinion is central to the defeat strategy. If the polls show support for confirmation weakening, who knows which Senators will change their votes? A delay strategy combined with a media blitz allows time for opposition and doubt to grow and be reflected in new polls. All of this is being done now without any testimony on Ford’s part. So, who knows whether she will or won’t testify? Since her goal is to bring down the nomination, she needs to consider whether testifying is likely to get her nearer or farther away from it. If she’s gonna get cross examined by a high powered lawyer, she might consider not showing. Who knows?
What needs to happen here is governance, and what that means is that Grassley needs to guide this nomination out of the Committee and onto the floor for an up or down vote in a timely way which does not permit Ford or her lawyers to hijack the whole thing and fly it into a ditch. The Senators at that point can recapitulate their reasons why or why not the nominee should be confirmed in lengthly detail. But if Ford and her lawyers string Grassley along with delays…it’s not good for Republicans’ chances of holding the Senate or for confirming the nominee.
The more you think about this, the more you realize that sooner rather than later, a stake needs to be driven into the assumptions behind #metoo: it’s monstrous. It looks like we are now a the point where people can be destroyed without any proof. It looks like we are now at the point where secret notes denouncing others constitute credible testimony to back up charges that allegedly occurred decades. This would be bad enough. And all of it is weaponized further with politics. It would be fitting for the Senate to do this stake-driving public service. (None of this is to say, obviously, that women should not come forward and report sexual assault and rape. It is merely to say that society demands that they furnish proof.)
One very important item has been ignored: If she had this horrible experience with him she would have told her friends to avoid this guy like the plague. It would have been all over her school in short order. The fact that none of her fellow students have said everybody knew about his bad reputation in high school is extremely telling. My oldest daughter is 50, one year younger than Ford, and she told me all her friends knew who to avoid.
I’m still waiting for proof that she ever even met Kavanaugh. A picture, something written in her yearbook, a friend who knew them both hell anything would do for a start. All we have is a purported incident with no place, no time and no clear idea of who might have been there.
This stinks to high heaven.
I agree in so far as she most likely would know whose house it was where the party was held. However, in the world of young people who are out driving around in cars, a teenager goes out with a friend, and they meet up with another friend. You can end up at a house that is not related to any home you have been to previously.