Tag Archives: Credibility

We Can, You Can’t

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Spectator USA posted an article yesterday about the resumption of Trump rallies in the coming weeks. The article illustrates the double standard being applied to large gatherings of people.

The article reports:

Are you ready for the second blame wave? As the country braces itself for an inevitable repeat surge in COVID-19 infections, we’re told red-state governors ‘opened too soon’. The next outbreak, we can be sure, will be something to do with the fact the President decided to resume his political rallies, approximately two weeks from now.

What nobody says is that individual or social behavior is the cause. It can’t possibly be the thousands of people closely together marching down city streets yelling and chanting, some with masks, some not. The guidelines fell completely by the wayside for the Democrats and much of network cable news.

In the middle of May, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser extended her lockdown order through to the June 8. Two days prior to her own lockdown order was to be reviewed, on June 6, she encouraged mass gatherings of protests, in a tweet saying ‘Let’s all meet here soon #BlackLivesMatter’, with a photo showing off her big block yellow letters painted down a DC street. In a press release about a possible spike in coronavirus cases in her city, after two weeks of protests she encouraged herself, Bowser announced that ‘DC Health has confirmed that a new peak was detected in the data, resetting the Districts Phase One count to nine days of sustained decrease.’

Florida congressswoman Val Demings, who features on the shortlist to be Joe Biden’s VP nominee, tweeted on June 8 that she had joined a ‘Healing and Hope Rally last night to speak with our community as America grieves.’ Two days later she scolded the President: planning to hold ‘mass rallies in Florida and elsewhere as we experience a resurgence in COVID cases is irresponsible and selfish’.

Wow! One set of rules for me, and one set of rules for thee.

The article concludes:

Either the funniest or most egregious behavior came from the Grim Reaper himself. Remember Daniel Uhlfelder? He is the Florida attorney who donned a Grim Reaper costume and harassed Florida beach goers with body bags, he secured through funds raised from Act Blue. Daniel was so serious about the deadly virus spreading through a state run by a Republican governor that he turned his novelty act into a traveling show. But those plans were apparently put on hold as he himself joined in and encouraged protests, as he tweeted on June 7, ‘We are here in the Florida panhandle in Deep South where hundreds have turned out for peaceful protest. No peace. No justice.’ Also, no virus, it seems.

These people want you to believe that this pandemic is caused by some magical woke virus, one which somehow skips those who have the right politics. What it actually does is raise the suspicion that Democrats and progressives have wanted to keep the economy shut down and people at home as long as possible to affect the outcome of the November election. Your job and your family or your church (also protected by the First Amendment) are not important. Our joining in large crowds to protest is.

There is almost assuredly going to be a spike in COVID cases and it will also almost assuredly be put on red-state governors and the President holding rallies. But Democratic activists and politicians themselves created this situation. They encouraged the world to disregard lockdown and people will now follow their lead, no matter how much they are scolded by the media. These people think we’re all stupid. We’re not.

What if there isn’t a significant uptick in coronavirus cases as a result of the protests? Would that mean that the past two months of lockdown was unnecessary? What kind of credibility would the CDC have if we simply see the normal increase due to reopening the economy? It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone Who Is Paying Attention

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article that clearly shows how the media alters the news to fit its narrative. The media has worked very hard to ignore the sexual assault charges against Joe Biden. They have mostly buried the story, and when they have reported it, they have put it so far into their publications that no one will see it. Well, they have also added (and subtracted) things from the story to paint a picture that may not be accurate.

The article reports:

The New York Times edited a controversial passage in an article about a sexual assault allegation against former vice president Joe Biden after his campaign complained, the paper’s executive editor said Monday.

Dean Baquet, in an interview with Times media columnist Ben Smith, explained why edits were made to the following sentence, which appeared as follows in the print edition of the paper, on page A20: “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”

Baquet said the Times decided to delete the second half of the sentence, without explanation in the form of an editor’s note, because “the [Biden] campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct.”

Smith asked a number of questions challenging Baquet to defend the Times‘s excessively cautious approach to reporting the sexual assault allegation against Biden—first made public by a former staffer, Tara Reade, on March 25—in light of the paper’s decidedly more aggressive approach to publishing similar allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Baquet failed to muster a coherent response beyond noting that the standard for reporting on such allegations is “very subjective.” He explained that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in 2018, which included testimony from a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in high school, constituted a “hot story” that required a “different news judgement.”

Maybe I’m missing something here, but in the era of ‘me too,’ aren’t ” hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable” considered sexual harassment? Brett Kavanaugh had no history of questionable behavior around women–in fact, his reputation was just the opposite. Joe Biden has a history of strange behavior around women and children. You can easily find examples of this on various internet sites.

Any credibility The New York Times has left as an unbiased news source has been totally destroyed in the recent past. They are responsible for misleading and dividing Americans.

Another Lie Exposed

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The Gateway Pundit posted a video of some of the White House Defense team’s testimony before the Senate this morning. The focus was on facts–not ‘I presumed’ or ‘I felt’ or ‘it seemed to me.’ The article includes a short video of the testimony of Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin.

This is a partial transcript of that testimony:

Patrick Philbin: What changed? At first Manager Schiff agreed we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the whistleblower. But then he changed his mind… There was something else that came into play. And that was something Manager Schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower.

Schiff: (TV clip) Uh, we have not spoken directly to the whistleblower. We would like to.

Patrick Philbin: And it turned out that statement was not truthful. Around October 2nd or 3rd it was exposed that Manager Schiff’s staff – at least — had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint. And potentially had given some guidance of some sort to the whistleblower. And after that point it became critical to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower… And Manager Schiff was in charge. He was chairing the hearings. And that creates a real problem from a due process perspective, from a search for truth perspective. Because he was an interested fact witness at that point. He had a reason. Since he had been caught out saying something that wasn’t true… It was he who ensured there wasn’t any inquiry into that… The Mueller Report… determined there was no conclusion. That wasn’t true… Chairman Schiff has made so much of the House case about the credibility of interpretations that the House managers want to place, on not hard evidence, but on inferences. They want to tell you what President Trump thought. They want to tell you don’t worry about what Zelensky said we can tell you what Zelensky actually thought… It is very relevant to know whether the assessment of evidence he’s presented in the past are accurate.

Facts can be very inconvenient things to liars.

A Few Notes On A Previous Post

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Yesterday I posted an article about the latest attack on Justice Kavanaugh published in The New York Times. As more information comes out, it becomes even more obvious that this is a political hit job. Below are a few sources and quotes.

From The Daily Caller today:

The Washington Post passed on a thinly sourced, unproven allegation about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh before the New York Times published it in a misleading article in Sunday’s paper that has since been corrected.

From The Federalist today:

The New York Times has finally admitted that the premise of its much-hyped story about an alleged incident with United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was false, as the alleged victim says she has no recollection of the incident in question.

The admission undermines what was an already weak story of dubious credibility.

From PJ Media yesterday:

On Saturday, The New York Times ran a story repeating allegations that Brett Kavanaugh was drunk at a party in college and had his genitals thrust into a woman’s face. The allegation has not been confirmed, and friends of the alleged victim say she has no recollection of the events. The man telling the story, Max Stier, represented Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was accused of exposing himself to a woman in a hotel room.

The mainstream media used to do investigative reporting. The fact that they no longer investigate allegations against conservatives or Republicans is one of the reasons the alternative media is flourishing. The New York Times story is a prime example of a political hit job disguised as a news article.

As I have previously stated, there should be a penalty for making unsubstantiated allegations against any public figure.

This Is A Scary Statement

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On Wednesday, The Independent Journal Review posted an article that included a very interesting quote.

The article reports:

Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) claims that having strong emotional reactions could be grounds to disqualify Judge Brett Kavanaugh from serving on the Supreme Court.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Booker said that Kavanaugh should not be confirmed, regardless of the conclusion of the FBI investigation.

“Ultimately — not whether he’s innocent or guilty, this is not a trial … have enough questions been raised that we should not move on to another candidate?” said Booker.

The senator questioned if the uncorroborated accusations against Kavanaugh were enough to deny him a seat on the Supreme Court. He also brought up Kavanaugh’s emotional testimony and labeled it as shocking.

“Is this the right person to sit on the highest court in the land for a lifetime appointment — when their credibility has been challenged by intimates, people that knew the candidate well as a classmate, when his temperament has been revealed in an emotional moment where he used language that, frankly, shocked a lot of us?” asked Booker.

So let me get this right. A man accused of a vicious crime with no supporting evidence reacts to the charges. Therefore he is unfit to serve on the Supreme Court. Imagine if this set a precedent for future Supreme Court hearings. Find someone the person knew in high school and make up a great story. Professor Ford may have been telling the truth as she believed it, but it is telling that there were a few obvious lies in her testimony–she is obviously not afraid of flying, the front door was to run a business out of her house, and she had previously coached a friend for a lie detector test. Interestingly enough, that friend is a former FBI agent who was present at the hearing, sitting behind her. It is also interesting that all the people that she claimed as witnesses denied the story.

This whole charade was a little too much like the Salem Witch Trials to belong in today’s America. Hopefully there will be enough of a backlash so that the Democrats do not do this to the next Supreme Court nominee.

There Are Some Precedents Being Set Here That Are Dangerous

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There are some legal aspects of the charges against Judge Kavanaugh that are being left out of the discussion. A lawyer friend of mine posted a few comments on the subject on Facebook:CNS News posted an article about the attempts to give the accused a chance to face his accuser.

The article reports:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told a news conference Tuesday that Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser “certainly does deserve a right to be heard,” but at the same time, he called it “disturbing” that Democrats decided to withhold her accusation until the last minute.

Later, an attorney for the accuser, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper her client “is prepared to cooperate with the committee” — but not on Monday, and not until the FBI does a full investigation. “There shouldn’t be a rush to a hearing,” attorney Lisa Banks said.

The FBI has already done extensive background checks on Judge Kavanaugh for his previous positions. None of these charges have ever surfaced. Now, when the Committee was ready to vote, the accuser comes forward, not remembering the year, the place, or how she got home. There is also a discrepancy between what she told her therapist and what she is saying now (four boys in the room instead of two boys in the room). The whole thing looks like a delay tactic. It is also really scummy to bring forth a thirty-five-year-old charge that cannot be proven one way or the other. The accuser has also refused to appear before Congress to confront Judge Kavanaugh until an FBI investigation has been conducted. There is no way the FBI can investigate a thirty-five-year-old charge where the accuser doesn’t know what year it was, where it was, and is fuzzy on the details. That is ridiculous.

This is a portion of Senator Grassley’s letter to Professor Ford’s attorney:

Ranking Member Feinstein first received a letter with allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh from Dr. Ford in July. However, Feinstein neglected to notify Committee Republicans of the letter until the day of the first Committee markup, six weeks after receiving the letter and well after the vetting and hearing process had concluded. Feinstein referred the letter to the FBI, which added it to Kavanaugh’s background investigation file. She should have treated these allegations seriously, as Grassley has done, in immediately acting upon hearing of them.

The FBI has indicated to the committee and in public statements that it considers the matter closed. The FBI does not make credibility determinations. The FBI provides information on a confidential basis in order for decision makers to determine an individual’s suitability. The Senate has the information it needs to follow up with witnesses and gather and assess the relevant evidence.

Grassley’s staff has sought to work with the Democratic staff to reach out to relevant witnesses. The Democratic staff declined to participate in a follow-up call with Judge Kavanaugh Monday regarding these allegations. And they have declined to join efforts to conduct a bipartisan investigation of the allegations.

I have a few observations. I know the Republicans are afraid that if they move forward, they will lose the women’s vote in the mid-terms. I have a word for the Republicans. As many women can identify with the idea of a woman coming forward with a career-destroying accusation against their husband thirty-five years later as can identify with the accuser. If the Republicans do not move forward with the vote immediately, they will lose more votes in the mid-term than they gain. Radical feminists are not going to vote Republican anyway, and they are the only women who ascribe any credibility to this charade. Republicans, this is your moment–either you have a spine or you don’t. If you don’t, you will lose more votes than you will gain.

Rewriting History

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One of the problems with the Internet is that whenever you say something it can be instantly checked.

McClatchy is reporting that today President Obama stated that he did not draw a red line concerning the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government.

The article reports the statement:

“I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line,” Obama said. “My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’ credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.”

Well, there is an inconvenient video that was posted on YouTube a year ago:

The statement about the red line comes at about 1:54 in the video.

It would have been nice if a grown-up President had confirmed his previous statement and stood by it. I don’t support military action in Syria, but I certainly would have more respect for the President if he were more honest about his previous statements.

The problem with the statement made today is that the President typically refuses to take responsibility for his previous statements. There is no reason to assume that in the future he will take responsibility for his actions.

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