Kimberley Strassel on Twitter: "2) It was response to a Sept. 26 letter demanding withdrawal of Kavanaugh nomination, based in part on Swetnick allegations. Grassley letter begins by noting that yesterday, Swetnick backtracked on basic allegations in interview with NBC news."

Kimberley Strassel on Twitter: "2) It was response to a Sept. 26 letter demanding withdrawal of Kavanaugh nomination, based in part on Swetnick allegations. Grassley letter begins by noting that yesterday, Swetnick backtracked on basic allegations in interview with NBC news."

1) Since my mainstream colleagues are more interested in ice than facts, allow me to provide a few. Today, Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley sent letter to all 10 Ds on his committee.
343 replies6,830 retweets14,013 likes


 
 

Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel

2) It was response to a Sept. 26 letter demanding withdrawal of Kavanaugh nomination, based in part on Swetnick allegations. Grassley letter begins by noting that yesterday, Swetnick backtracked on basic allegations in interview with NBC news.

7:05 PM - 2 Oct 2018

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1. New conversation
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   3) (It was in fact total collapse of her claims, tho he politely refrained from saying so.) Grassley notes he has enclosed another timeline of his actions to investigate all claims, including those that were "frivolous" but that he took up "out of respect for my colleagues."
   17 replies1,327 retweets4,226 likes
   
   
    
    
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   4) That timeline makes clear the Committee reached out within minutes of Swetnick's attorney (Avenatti) Tweeting he had a client with allegations on Sept. 23; yet he refused to supply info/evidence. The next day Committee asks Avenatti again; again he declines.
   13 replies1,439 retweets4,234 likes
   
   
    
    
    
   
   
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   5) Next day (Sept. 25), Committee asks Swetnick be made available for interview; Avenatti ignores request. It asks twice more that day. Also speaks to a "a friend" of Swetnick's, who says Swetnick had "never previously mentioned either Judge Kavanaugh or this alleged incident."
   14 replies1,359 retweets4,148 likes
   
   
    
    
   
   
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   6) Same day, Commitee interviewed another person who had "had a dozen interactions with Ms. Swetnick over a period of four years, who has a negative view of Ms. Swetnick." Sept. 28 Committee then interviews ex-boyfriend of Swetnick's.
   8 replies1,259 retweets3,962 likes
   
   
    
    
   
   
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   7) Oct. 1 investigates email from person who claims knowledge of Swetnick allegations; it also speaks with two employees at a company where Swetnick worked; it also speaks with an attorney for an ex-boyfriend of Swetnick. Oct. 2: Speaks to 4 MORE people who knew Swetnick.
   12 replies1,230 retweets3,908 likes
   
   
    
    
   
   
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   8) Bottom line: Next time someone in the press repeats D claims that nobody is evaluating the Swetnick claims, just laugh. Given how absurd the claims are, that Judiciary is dealing with them at all is a a testament to its good faith effort to investigate.
   33 replies1,917 retweets5,718 likes
   
   
    
    
   Kimberley Strassel‏Verified account @KimStrassel Oct 2
   
   9) Sidenote: To read the entire timeline of actions--dozens of interviews and emails, outreach, questions, all related to Ford, Rameriz and false claims--is to destroy those who claim that an FBI investigation was ever necessary. Senate Judiciary has been working hard..."
   Read all.
2. 1. 

Cory Booker Says It Doesn’t Matter If Judge Kavanaugh Is ‘Innocent Or Guilty’ | The Daily Caller

Cory Booker Says It Doesn’t Matter If Judge Kavanaugh Is ‘Innocent Or Guilty’ | The Daily Caller:

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker on Tuesday told reporters that Judge Kavanaugh’s actual guilt or innocence regarding the allegations against him is irrelevant to the question of whether or not President Trump should rescind his nomination and pick someone else.

Lunch video-----Official Trump @War: Full Movie

Noon-toon

USC Students Demanded a Professor Get Fired For Supporting Due Process and Suggesting That 'Accusers Sometimes Lie'

USC Students Demanded a Professor Get Fired For Supporting Due Process and Suggesting That 'Accusers Sometimes Lie':

Nearly 100 students at the University of Southern California attended a rally at noon on Monday demanding a tenured professor be fired after he sent a reply-all email last Thursday to the student body noting that “accusers sometimes lie.”
“If the day comes you are accused of some crime or tort of which you are not guilty, and you find your peers automatically believing your accuser, I expect you find yourself a stronger proponent of due process than you are now,” emailed Professor James Moore.

New Jersey Plans a Plastic-Banning Spree - Hit & Run : Reason.com

New Jersey Plans a Plastic-Banning Spree - Hit & Run : Reason.com
"New Jersey is mulling a sweeping plastics ban aimed at reducing litter and changing lives.
Though billed as the toughest plastic prohibition in the country, the bill also includes a number of carve-outs and exemptions that weaken both its impact and the justification for legislative action.
"It requires New Jersey citizens to change their lifestyle," said bill sponsor State Sen. Bob Smith (D–Middlesex) according to Northjersey.com.

• Smith's bill, SB 2776, would ban plastic bags, straws, and polystyrene foam food packaging in the state, and impose a ten-cent fee on replacement paper bags. 

First time violators would be hit with fines of $500, rising to $1,000 for a second offense, and $5,000 per offense from there on out.
As far as plastic bans go, Smith's proposal is pretty onerous..."
Read on.

The Organic Food Industry Gets Fat on Lies | RealClearScience

The Organic Food Industry Gets Fat on Lies | RealClearScience
"In “The Wealth of Nations,” the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith observed about the chicanery of some businessmen, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” 
Nowhere is that truer than in today’s organic agriculture and food industries.
In an August Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled, “The Organic Industry Is Lying to You,” I described the ways those industries misrepresent the benefits of their products and broadcast spurious concerns about modern genetic engineering of crop plants – in other words, mendaciously trashing the competition.
The Journal published two responses to my op-ed from representatives of the organic industry that perfectly illustrate my thesis: Like tobacco industry executives before them, they have to lie in order to defend a flawed product..."
Read all.

#1 This day 1959-----Mack the Knife-Bobby Darin

Your tax dollars pay for this?!!!-----Georgetown Professor: GOP Senators at Kavanaugh Hearing 'Deserve Miserable Deaths'

Georgetown Professor: GOP Senators at Kavanaugh Hearing 'Deserve Miserable Deaths'
A professor at Georgetown University tweeted that "entitled white" Republican senators who were at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's hearing deserve castration and "miserable deaths."

"Look at [this] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement," wrote Carol Christine Fair, an associate professor in Georgetown's security studies program. 

"All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. 
Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? 
Yes."...

Read on.

You ought to know!

DePauw Makes Graduation Benefits Contingent on Attending Left-Wing Indoctrination Lectures | Breitbart

DePauw Makes Graduation Benefits Contingent on Attending Left-Wing Indoctrination Lectures | Breitbart:

DePauw University is forcing its students to attend left-leaning sessions with topics including “white fragility” and “constructions of masculinity” in order to retain “Gold Commitment” status, which provides free classes and career opportunities for graduates.

Epitaph for a Dying Culture | Intellectual Takeout

Epitaph for a Dying Culture | Intellectual Takeout
"The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and their endless sequelae have ended up as an epitaph for a spent culture for which its remedies are felt to be worse than its diseases. 
Think 338 B.C., A.D. 476, 1453, or 1939.

The coordinated effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court required the systematic refutation of the entire notion of Western jurisprudence by senators and much of the American legal establishment. 
And there was no hesitation in doing just that on the part of Senate Democrats, the #MeToo movement, and the press. 
And I write this at a moment in which conservatives and Republicans still control the majority of governorships, state legislatures, the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court and the presidency—a reminder that culture so often is far more powerful than politics.
So, here we were to be left with a new legal and cultural standard in adjudicating future disagreements and disputes, an utterly anti-Western standard quite befitting for our new relativist age:

1. The veracity of accusations will hinge on the particular identity, emotions, and ideology of the accuser;
2. Evidence, or lack of it, will be tangential, given the supposed unimpeachable motives of the ideologically correct accuser;
3. The burden of proof and evidence will rest with the accused to disprove the preordained assumption of guilt;
4. Hearsay will be a valuable narrative and constitute legitimate evidence;
5. Truth is not universal, but individualized. Ford’s “truth” is as valid as the “Truth,” given that competing narratives are adjudicated only by access to power. Ford is a victim, therefore her truth trumps “their” truth based on evidence and testimony.
6. Questionable and inconsistent testimony are proof of trauma and therefore exactitude; recalling an accusation to someone is proof that the action in the accusation took place.
7. Statutes of limitations do not exist; any allegation of decades prior is as valid as any in the present. All of us are subject at any moment to unsubstantiated accusations from decades past that will destroy lives.
8. Assertion of an alleged crime is unimpeachable proof. Recall of where, when, why, and how it took place is irrelevant.
9. Individual accusations will always be subservient to cosmic causes; individuals are irrelevant if they do not serve ideological aims. All accusations fit universal stereotypes whose rules of finding guilt or innocence trump those of individual cases.
10. The accuser establishes the conditions under which charges are investigated; the accused nods assent.

Our cultural traditions are being insidiously rewritten in this new Dark Age..."

Read on.

AM Fruitcake

History for October 4

History for October 4 - On-This-Day.com
Rutherford B. Hayes (U.S.) 1822, Frederic S. Remington 1861, Damon Runyon 1884


Buster Keaton 1895, Charlton Heston 1924, Alvin Toffler 1928


1957 - "Leave it to Beaver" debuted on CBS-TV.


1993 - Dozens of Somalis dragged an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. A videotape showed Michael Durant being taken prisoner by Somali militants.

William Clyde Allen III arrested in Donald Trump ricin letter - Washington Times

William Clyde Allen III arrested in Donald Trump ricin letter - Washington Times:

A U.S. Navy veteran in Utah was arrested Wednesday in connection with suspicious envelopes that were sent to President Donald Trump and top military chiefs.

Anti-Kavanaugh Protester Confronts GOP Senator – He Pushes Back | The Daily Caller

Anti-Kavanaugh Protester Confronts GOP Senator – He Pushes Back | The Daily Caller:

Anti-Brett Kavanaugh protesters have flooded Capitol Hill since news of allegations of sexual misconduct against him, walking hallways in protest, holding loud demonstrations and confronting senators in elevators.
One such protester approached Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana on his way through a Senate building walkway Monday. She asked, “Why are you supporting Kavanaugh?” to the brisk-walking senator. Cassidy took the chance to push back, asking her if she would like it if her loved ones were “destroyed” by “uncorroborated” charges.
Cassidy: “Why wouldn’t I support Kavanaugh?”

The way we were-----Laura Branigan - Self Control (1984)

Boob-tube-----First Tonight Show 9/27/54

How the Myth of the 'Robber Barons' Began—and Why It Persists | Intellectual Takeout

How the Myth of the 'Robber Barons' Began—and Why It Persists | Intellectual Takeout
"Capitalism Worked, But We Were Told It Didn't
We study history to learn from it.
If we can discover what worked and what didn’t work, we can use this knowledge wisely to create a better future.
Studying the triumph of American industry, for example, is important because it is the story of how the United States became the world’s leading economic power.
Free markets worked well; government intervention usually failed.
The years when this happened, from 1865 to the early 1900s, saw the U.S. encourage entrepreneurs indirectly by limiting government.
Slavery was abolished and so was the income tax.

Federal spending was slashed and federal budgets had surpluses almost every year in the late 1800s. In other words, the federal government created more freedom and a stable marketplace in which entrepreneurs could operate.
To some extent, during the late 1800s—a period historians call the “Gilded Age”—American politicians learned from the past. 
They had dabbled in federal subsidies from steamships to transcontinental railroads, and those experiments dismally failed.
Politicians then turned to free markets as a better strategy for economic development.
The world-dominating achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt, James J. Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles Schwab validated America’s unprecedented limited government.
And when politicians sometimes veered off course later with government interventions for tariffs, high income taxes, anti-trust laws, and an effort to run a steel plant to make armor for war—the results again often hindered American economic progress.
Free markets worked well; government intervention usually failed.
Why is it, then, that for so many years, most historians have been teaching the opposite lesson? 
They have made no distinction between political entrepreneurs, who tried to succeed through federal aid, and market entrepreneurs, who avoided subsidies and sought to create better products at lower prices.
Instead, most historians have preached that many, if not all, entrepreneurs were “robber barons.” 
They did not enrich the U.S. with their investments; instead, they bilked the public and corrupted political and economic life in America.
Therefore, government intervention in the economy was needed to save the country from these greedy businessmen..."
Read all!

DePauw Makes Graduation Benefits Contingent on Attending Left-Wing Indoctrination Lectures | Breitbart

DePauw Makes Graduation Benefits Contingent on Attending Left-Wing Indoctrination Lectures | Breitbart
"DePauw University is forcing its students to attend left-leaning sessions with topics including “white fragility” and “constructions of masculinity” in order to retain “Gold Commitment” status, which provides free classes and career opportunities for graduates.

The Gold Commitment is a promise made by DePauw University that students will have the opportunity to either continue taking classes for free or work for the university, if they are unable to immediately secure a job upon graduation.
These services are available to students as long as they are able to achieve and retain their Gold status throughout their undergraduate years...
...Virtually all of the sessions appear to be left-leaning and focused on a subjective view of social justice or political activism. 
Some of the sessions include titles such as:

• Unpacking and Interrogating Constructions of Masculinity
• Living, Supporting, and Learning about DePauw’s LGBTQ+ Community
• Faculty/Staff Campus Climate Survey Discussion
• White Fragility Article Discussion
• Communities Against Islamophobia
• Self Care and Healing: A Critical Practice for Social Justice Change Agents
• Accomplices for Change: Recognizing Racist Dynamics and White Cultural Practices in Daily Campus Life
• Supporting Marginalized Groups: Strategies to enhance support of marginalized groups at predominately white institutions
• Redefined: trans*gen*der*com*mu*ni*ty
• What it means to be white
• Religion, Sexualities and Gender Identities: Living and Engaging at the Intersections

“How can this be a day of dialogue and inclusion if there are no conservative ideas mentioned? 

This is not inclusion if it leaves out a group,” said one student, who chose to remain anonymous..."

Read all.

Do You Trust Kavanaugh’s Inquisitors With Our Future?The American Spectator

Do You Trust Kavanaugh’s Inquisitors With Our Future?The American Spectator:

Men are rightly concerned about Democrats normalizing the idea that raising 30-to-35-year-old charges with no hard evidence and no presumption of innocence can wipe away reputations and careers. Why would any man vote for a political party that is generating this toxic environment? If Democrats win on Kavanaugh, these tactics will be become commonplace. Any man could find himself facing unprovable accusations automatically taken as fact.… Imagine the impact on workplace disputes, divorce proceedings, or any situation in which a man might stand accused, rightly or not.

Diogenes' Middle Finger: The Newest Weapon of the Left - "Credibly Accused"

Diogenes' Middle Finger: The Newest Weapon of the Left - "Credibly Accused"
"When one hears the phase “credibly accused” you might automatically assume that the allegation being made have been examined and there is at least some credible amount of circumstantial evidence that the allegation is true.  
Today, what “credibly accused” has come to mean that there is absolutely no corroborating evidence, no independent corroborating witness, no contemporaneous documentation and, most importantly, no way of verifying the allegations. 
It’s a phrase that reveals less of the accusations veracity than it does about the person using it and his/her animus toward the accused. 
It simply means the person reporting the allegation just *wants* it to be true. 
So it’s nothing more than an attempt to pronounce guilt without having to contend with bothersome issues like, ya know, the presumption of innocence or the need for evidence before destroying a hated target’s life and reputation.
The danger of “credibly accused” metastasizing out of the world of politics is very real. 
This week saw hundreds of law students from Yale and Harvard come out to endorse “credibly accused” as their preferred standard of justice..."
Read on.

Brainwash Your Babies | Frontpage Mag

Brainwash Your Babies | Frontpage Mag
"Quick quiz. 
Find the main difference between these brief excerpts from accounts of the world's two major faiths. 
First, this:

Christians believe [Jesus Christ] to be the Son of God....according to Christian teaching after three days he rose from the dead....Christians believe that there is only one God, but that he is revealed in three different forms.

Next, this:

The Qur'an was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad during [Ramadan]. The actual night that the Qur'an was revealed is a night known as Lailut ul-Qadr ('The Night of Power'). 

The difference, of course, is that while the details of the founding of Christianity are presented as a set of beliefs, the supernatural elements of Islam's founding narrative are recounted as if they were historical fact.
Both of these excerpts are from a BBC website intended for the use of teachers in secular British schools.
After 9/11, it was imperative that people in the West be educated about Islam. 
There was no need to stuff their heads with countless historical and theological details; all that was necessary was for Western leaders to get across the point that Islam isn't just another religion but is, rather, totalitarian ideology with religious elements. 
That never happened. 
Instead, we were all told repeatedly that Islam is a religion of peace, that all those terrorists are misunderstanding it every time they do something naughty, and that the chief victims of their misunderstanding are the overwhelming majority of their fellow Muslims who are thoroughly decent, God-fearing types.
As it happens, these days schools across the Western world do set aside time for Islam lessons. 
But to judge by the teaching materials available online, what goes on during these classroom sessions is the very opposite of education..."
Read all!

Lunch video-----Pilot Flying Under Bridge Almost Ate It Trying To Set World Record - World War Wings

Pilot Flying Under Bridge Almost Ate It Trying To Set World Record - World War Wings:
"The trio (all professional pilots of course) that was supposed to break the world record first gave the crowd a spectacular air show display.
...The problem was that one of them hit the water surface..."
Read on!

Noon-toon

Cotton says Feinstein will be investigated over leaked letter by Kavanaugh accuser | Fox News

Cotton says Feinstein will be investigated over leaked letter by Kavanaugh accuser | Fox News:

Sen. Tom Cotton said Sunday that Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office will be investigated to determine whether or not they leaked the confidential letter from Christine Blasey Ford that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

8 Frightening Characteristics of Propaganda | Intellectual Takeout

8 Frightening Characteristics of Propaganda | Intellectual Takeout
Daniel Lattier | August 21, 2015     
"Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1965) has been called “a far more frightening work than any of the nightmare novels of George Orwell.” 
In it, the French philosopher and sociologist dispels some of the popular notions about propaganda and exposes how it really operates in the modern world.
In the first chapter of the book, Ellul describes some of the characteristics of modern propaganda. Eight of them appear below:
1) It Prevents Dialogue.
“To be effective, propaganda cannot be concerned with detail... Propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins… it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion.”
...3) It is “Total”
“Propaganda must be total. 
The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal – the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. 
Modern propaganda must utilize all of these media. 
There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls; that is not propaganda.”
...Does this sound like anyone’s playbook today? 
Read all.

The Lickspittles' Tale | Unexamined Premises

The Lickspittles' Tale | Unexamined Premises

"Ask any reporter of my generation -- I got my first newspaper job in 1972 -- why he or she went into journalism and the answer is very likely to be: to change the world. 

Journalism was the default option if you didn't want to, or couldn't get into, law school, and it was viewed as a way to right wrongs by bringing them to public attention. 

...How times have changed. 

Today's reporters may still think they're helping save both the human race and the planet, but the context is now completely different. 

Unlike the older reporters, who generally had majored in the liberal arts in college and often drifted accidentally into journalism, they've been schooled in it, and not just in journalism but in the entire panoply of contemporary Leftist issues, including environmentalism, feminism, and the moral rightness of the Democrat Party, which they view as the locomotive of the civil-rights movement and thus forever on the side of the angels. 
They are not just reporters out for a story; they are in service to a Cause..."

Read all.

#1 This day 1955-----The Four Aces - Love Is A Many Splendored Thing..

Sexual Predators and Their Accomplices Go After Kavanaugh | Frontpage Mag

Sexual Predators and Their Accomplices Go After Kavanaugh | Frontpage Mag
"Hillary Clinton, the spouse of a serial sexual predator, did a tour of the morning shows to attack Republicans and Brett Kavanaugh.

On MSNBC, Clinton told Rachel Maddow that the benefit of the doubt belonged not to the accused, but the accuser.
In a smarmy chat session with Stephen Colbert, whose old boss and patron was just forced to resign for numerous counts of sexual harassment and at least one outright sexual assault, Hillary insisted on an FBI investigation.
"It would be very easy for the FBI to go back and finish the background investigation, to investigate these charges," insisted a woman who had described her own husband's accusers as "bimbo eruptions".
Juanita Broaddrick, who had accused Bill Clinton of raping her, also accused Hillary of threatening her.
Bill Clinton’s alleged assaults were not carried out in high school. 
But there will be no investigation of what a powerful politician did. 
There’s no interest among Democrats in revisiting the Clinton case. 
And yet Hillary’s hypocrisy in demanding an investigation of Brett Kavanaugh, despite her work covering up her husband’s victimization of women, is typical among the Democrats and their media allies..."
Read all.

You ought to know!

Obama Endorses Socialist Ocasio-Cortez | The Daily Caller

Obama Endorses Socialist Ocasio-Cortez | The Daily Caller:

Former President Barack Obama included support for New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a slew of new endorsements for the midterm elections announced Monday.
Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic primary against incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in June in an upset that shook the party establishment.

Thousands of Tests at VA Hospitals May Have Been Cancelled Improperly - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Thousands of Tests at VA Hospitals May Have Been Cancelled Improperly - Hit & Run : Reason.com: 
"It's happened again and again—about 250,000 times since 2016, in fact. 
A patient arrives at a Veterans Affairs hospital for a CAT scan, an ultrasound, or some other diagnostic procedure. 
Then he or she discovers that the service had been cancelled. 
And no one is sure why.
Jeff Dettbarn, a radiology technologist at a VA hospital in Iowa City, started documenting such cancellations early last year. 
Since then, VA Inspector General Michael Missal has announced an audit for nine VA medical centers in Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and California. 
...What happened? 
Lisa Bickford, an administrative staffer at Dettbarn's hospital, has testified that the hospital's chief radiologist instructed the employees to "clean" incomplete orders in an effort to address a growing backlog. 
Thousands of diagnostics orders were then cancelled over the span of a few weeks..."
Read all.

AM Fruitcake