Advance apologies for this far too long post.

In a dramatic vote made much more uncertain than it should have been, Brett Kavanaugh was finally confirmed to sit on the Supreme Court earlier this month. He began hearing his first arguments the following week. Much of the talk since has centered around the winners and losers from the overheated process. A common theory is that the passions stoked by the ugly spectacle will ratchet up voter enthusiasm and translate into a midterm wave. Both parties seem to think or at least at this point are claiming that such will be the case.  While it remains to be seen how the whole sordid affair will impact the mid-term elections, one clear loser is Brett Kavanaugh.

Yes, Kavanaugh earned his seat on the Court. Good for him, a lifetime of hard work and service did not go unrewarded. That does not make him a winner. His name will forever be linked to the accusation and liberals will cast him as illegitimate for the rest of his career. Just ask Clarence Thomas who is still hounded by liberals over unsubstantiated accusations made by Anita Hill. The same week Kavanaugh was confirmed, a student at Savannah College in Georgia started a petition to remove Thomas’s name from a building. Hysterical liberals have talked about impeaching Kavanaugh citing “lies” in his Senate testimony.

As is generally the case with women claiming sexual assault, Dr. Ford has been treated with kid gloves. Whether out of genuine concern for someone who may be a survivor of sexual assault or at least the need to appear genuinely concerned, few people have dared to call her accusations into question despite glaring inconsistencies and holes large enough to fly the late Paul Allen’s experimental plane through. Like many people, I was reluctant to cast Dr. Ford as an outright liar, partly to avoid creating additional pain for her if she is indeed a victim of sexual misconduct but also partly because I had a hard time reconciling myself with the idea that someone would intentionally destroy an innocent person’s life in an effort to win a political victory.

However, I’m getting over that reluctance as evidence continues to pile up. Before I recount such evidence, I want to focus for a minute on the selfless and principled speech given by Senator Susan Collins of Maine before she did the selfless and correct thing in voting to confirm Kavanaugh. One part, in particular, demonstrated a measured and fair approach to arriving at a consequential decision given murky information. Senator Collins, conceding that the senate’s role in advise and consent was something other than a court room, nevertheless very logically determined a standard not so much for believing the allegation but more importantly a standard for acting on allegations that are not mostly but indeed are wholly uncorroborated.  Her standard—does the evidence suggest the allegations were more likely than not true or accurate. This seems to be to be a very reasonable approach which carefully weighs the accumulation of various bits and pieces of information and determine what they may suggest. Obviously Dr. Ford’s claims could not withstand such a standard. Senator Murkowski would have been wise to follow suit. Instead, she attempted to walk a tight rope with conservatives and the Me Too movement that went something like this: He’s a good man but not the right man. Well. That wistful attempt not to anger anyone is sure to be seen by everyone for the dodge that it certainly was.

Nevertheless, with the high drama of the actual nomination behind us, and given time to reflect on the big picture, it now seems obvious to me, given what we learned during and since that time, that not only is Brett Kavanaugh more likely than not innocent, but also that Blasey-Ford was more likely than not part of an orchestrated effort to stop the nomination at any and all costs.

First, let’s consider her story. For a moment, let’s ignore the inconsistencies and focus on the holes.    Let’s start with her inability to state exactly or even approximately when this happened. She did at some point propose the summer of 1982 but that is really too large of a time frame to even be deemed approximate, let alone helpful. Further, she has repeatedly stated she cannot even be totally sure of that. My Spidey sense tells me this was to protect herself from potential charges of false accusation should Kavanaugh, as he very nearly did, present alibis for the entirety of 1982.

Regardless, this is a big hole, and Brett Kavanaugh’s calendars illustrate why.  Sure, the calendars themselves are not dispositive, but they illustrate why Dr. Ford’s memory lapses are so, ahem, complicating.  Kavanaugh’s calendars suggest in fact that he has a pretty good idea of his activities that summer of 1982—a summer filled with a bevy of activities, many of which could in fact be verified so as to be dispositive proof of his innocence.  Of course, it’s unlikely anyone could account for every minute of every day for even a recent three-month period of time, let alone multiple high school summers from 36 or so years ago.  A date certain, or for that matter, a narrower approximation might have clashed tellingly with verifiable facts. Of course, it might not have. However, if someone was to fabricate an incident and did not have access to the target’s whereabouts, a date certain could be problematic. A memory lapse in such a case might be convenient.  Further, an exact or even approximate date might have allowed an investigation to check if the other named attendees (all of whom have no memory of any such event) could have attended.  It wouldn’t do to say, for example, that Mark Judge was in attendance and then learn he was instead at camp, on vacation with his parents, working at Safeway, etc. The same could be said for Leland Keyser.

It’s against this backdrop that senate Democrats actually suggested Kavanaugh had to prove his innocence.  Seriously. On its own, this memory lapse might be taken as merely unfortunate, but when combined with other lapses, holes, and inconsistencies, let’s just say it’s curious.

Also curious is her inability to narrow down the location of the alleged attack. As with the date dilemma, a firm or even somewhat firm location could have been checked to see how well the location matched the details in her account. For example, who owned the house? Did it belong to someone who conceivably may have allowed one of the party’s participants to use it? Did one of the attendees live there? Were they house/pet sitting? These are things that might lend credence to the story or to the denial. Instead, again, no memory of these details. By not remembering the location, such potentially exculpatory facts cannot be checked. Nor can the architecture. Is the narrow stair case as described? Is there a small bathroom right across from a bedroom?  And by the way, why did Dr. Ford need to go upstairs to use the bathroom? No, this is not blaming the victim. I’m not suggesting that Ford was promiscuous, but that her story here begs questions that need to be answered.  One question is why she would have been going upstairs to use the restroom? Don’t most two-level residences have a downstairs bathroom precisely to avoid that problem? Ironically, Ford’s own explanation of Keyser’s failure to remember is telling – nothing unusual happened to her (except that her close friend and the only other female in attendance disappeared without warning or explanation). Ford on the other hand claims to remember because a traumatic event had seared itself into her hippocampus.  Well, not so much.

Now let’s consider the host of inconsistencies in her story. First let’s return to the question of when it happened.  She states she cannot be sure but has pegged the incident at various times as occurring in the early 1980s and the mid 1980s. She has said in one account it happened in her early teens, while in another she said it was her late teens.  These discrepancies are important.  If something happened to Ford in the mid 1980’s, she would have been in her late teens, and Brett Kavanaugh would likely have been at Yale.  A timeline that puts the incident as occurring in the early teens and early 1980s on the other hand changes that equation.  So, which timeline came first? How was one timeline eventually accepted and the other discarded? Why was there a discrepancy to begin with? The incident was, after all, burned into Ford’s hippocampus.

Next, let’s review Ford’s account of who was at the party. At various times, she has indicated there were four boys in the room, then two. She said four boys were at the party, then changed to three, then said four but she couldn’t remember the name of the fourth. Keep in mind, everyone but Ford denies knowledge of any such party, let alone of the incident. Ford has offered various explanations for all of this.  She claims, for example, that her therapist made an error in the notes. After saying Kelsey wouldn’t remember the party because nothing unusual happened to her, she went on to speculate that her friend’s lack of memory could be explained by her “health issues.” I wonder if her health issues resulted from being thrown under a bus. Seriously, while this might not quite constitute a pattern, it is somewhat, well, curious. Ford and her supporters went so far as to play a game of semantics with whether Keyser “refuted” her claim or just didn’t remember. Come on. Saying “I don’t remember that” is really a polite way of saying, “it didn’t happen.” Honestly, Keyser here is a hero. How easy it would have been to support her friend (as she was apparently urged to do) and say, “Yes, I remember that party. I wondered why Christine left without saying anything.” Can you imagine how differently things would have turned out?

At this point, we’ve arrived at the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for me in terms of affording Ford any benefit of the doubt. Such straw comes in the form of the utterly ridiculous notion that Ford ever wanted or intended to remain anonymous. This claim amounts to something my granddad would have described as equine excrement. To believe such rubbish one would need to suspend any notion of common sense. Ford wants us to believe she came forward (but wanted to remain anonymous) out of a sense of civic duty. Really. Strange that someone who possesses a Ph.D. and a couple of master’s degrees would think that an eleventh hour anonymous charge would accomplish anything whatsoever.  If anonymous allegations were all it took to derail a nominee, no one from either party would ever be confirmed again. Such is the current political climate. Of course, Ford knew this.  That she planned all along to come forward is supported by her decision to hire an attorney and submit to a lie detector test.  Why take those actions if you intend to remain anonymous?  The idea that her name was leaked to the press is actually pretty ridiculous. While it’s true that newspapers seem to be in a frenzied competition to sink to new journalistic lows, doesn’t the publication of a sexual assault victim’s name against their wishes violate about a gazillion ethical norms? Not one word of criticism came from any Democrat or for that matter Ford herself that the media named her. This ridiculous story was a poorly conceived attempt to explain why senate Democrats waited until the last minute to spring the allegations, in hopes that it would at least delay the confirmation (I think they knew all along the story was too weak to stop it), in hopes that Democrats could retake the Senate in the midterms. Feinstein’s excuse for not bringing the allegations forward earlier (Ford wished to remain confidential) is as flimsy as the notion itself. The Senate Judiciary Committee could have conducted a confidential investigation without the public learning anything about it. Feinstein obviously didn’t think Ford meant completely confidential anyway as she clearly shared the information with her staff and both she and Ford obviously spoke to Ford’s attorneys about the matter. Please.

There are numerous other gaffes that just make the whole account stink.  There is the remodeling project with the apparent disagreement that led (six years later!!) to the therapy wherein Ford finally divulged the attack. This is so silly it hardly warrants response, but we’re four pages into this now, so why not?  By Ford’s story she was trapped beneath Kavanaugh but managed to escape (out the bedroom door to a bathroom). Her story does not suggest the bedroom door was blocked or that a second bedroom door would have been a help. Plus, it turns out, that many homes in the area where Ford lives have been modified to add a second door to allow homeowners to take advantage of the ridiculous housing costs in the area and rent out part of their homes to tenants or for operating a business. Ford’s remodel seems to better fit this scenario and in fact, has served both purposes.

Another part of the Ford narrative that has now been thoroughly debunked is her supposed fear of flying. This was even said to be directly linked to the attack. Media speculated that an airplane represented the ultimate confined space. Yet, it turns out that Ford flies frequently both for business and for pleasure. A long time boyfriend shared that she never expressed a fear of flying or closed spaces and stated she had flown frequently including in small prop planes. Still, this fear was given as the reason she needed more time to travel to Washington (she ended up flying anyway). When questioned at the hearings she admitted to flying frequently “unfortunately” and said she had worked up the gumption to fly to the hearings. She noted she would have preferred that the committee come to her, and claimed ignorance that such an offer had been made. Nonsense.  The discussion of Ford’s supposed fear of flying was all over the news as was Senator Grassley’s offer to bring the committee to her. She would have been better off saying she just decided she needed to go to Washington, but instead, caught flatfooted, she feigned ignorance. Likewise, she was supposedly ignorant of how to contact her senator. Yes, this is what credible looks like to our biased media.

Similarly, the notion that Ford had nothing to gain by making a false accusation is simply ludicrous. Of course Ford had many things to gain, and she will gain by this claim regardless of its veracity. Just for starters, if Ford is, as her past political activity suggests, a committed liberal, she had to gain the stopping of a judge who she and other leftists believe will tilt the court opposite their ideologies.  Remember, a Democrat senator on the Judiciary Committee had already called Kavanaugh “evil” and accused his supporters of being “complicit to evil.” Another said “millions” would die as a result of his confirmation.  If Ford believed this heated rhetoric, she might have fancied herself saving millions of lives. Ultimately, the Democrats hoped the delay would be followed by a midterm upset in the Senate at which point they could block ANY Trump nominee to the Court until at least after the general election in 2020 election and hopefully permanently assuming a Trump defeat. Not only would Democrats get even with republicans for icing the Merrick Garland appointment, but they could potentially gain the majority and further advance their liberal agenda.  Further, Ford will be lauded (this has already started) with awards and acclaim for her “brave” actions throughout academia and liberal society. This in fact has already started.  How long does anyone think it will be before a book comes out? A movie on the Oxygen network? Nothing to gain? Sure.

The only thing more disingenuous than the claim that Ford had nothing to gain was the relentlessly repeated refrain that “all” Democrats wanted was an FBI allegation. Democrats hammered this point incessantly, even goading Kavanaugh to join in on their request if he was “really” innocent and wanted  to “clear” his good name.  “Uhm, yes, Senator, I see your point.  After watching my family endure death threats as loons literally came out of the wood work with every salacious allegation they could dream up, I was hoping to put them through another couple of week of hell. I wonder though, could you lay off the ‘evil’ comments for a couple of weeks?”

Just submit to another FBI investigation and we can move on, they said. Well, almost. They left out a few words. All they wanted was an FBI investigation that accomplished their goals.  Anything else was destined to be labeled a sham and right on cue they did so. The investigation was supposedly a sham because the FBI didn’t interview Ford or Kavanaugh again (two sworn statements and several hours of testimony before the judiciary committee apparently not being sufficient). Democrats and their media lapdogs immediately labeled the investigation a sham. The FBI which they had previously lauded as the only organization capable of getting to the bottom of the allegations was suddenly a pawn of the Trump administration. That’s right, the FBI is now carrying water for the same Trump administration that daily does battle with the Justice Department and has been critical of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton as well as their actions in the 2016 campaign. Initially, Democrats and the media screamed that the full FBI report should be made public, though interestingly, not Diane Feinstein. However, that narrative quickly died, as word leaked out that the investigation, far from corroborating Dr. Ford’s allegations, actually cast new doubt on her truthfulness. An eerie silence has followed. Curious.

Speaking of new doubts, we’ve recently learned that Dr. Ford’s testimony about not having knowledge of how to prepare for a lie detector test and not having coached others to take lie detector tests is likely untrue. Not only does Ford’s work as a psychologist cast doubt on this claim, but one of Ford’s old boyfriends swore under penalty of felony that he witnessed her helping friend and former FBI agent Monica McClean prepare for a polygraph (He also helped her find a tiny apartment in Hawaii after she apparently overcame her fear of small confined spaces, at least temporarily.  Initial reports are that it had only one door). Now it has been learned that Ford’s friend, Leland Keyser told the FBI that she felt pressured by McClean to change her statement. Ford’s attorneys and McClean have called the claims lies and vicious smears. They don’t deny contacting Keyser, just pressuring her. So now, Keyser is lying about how she feels? I guess it’s those medical issues again.

Finally, the whole idea that Ford was “credible” is a fitting testament to this whole ugly charade.  Ford’s story has zero corroborating evidence other than therapists notes made 30 years after the alleged incident that do not even mention Kavanaugh’s name, differ from Ford’s account due to the therapist’s “mistake,” apparently do not mention Kavanaugh by name, and have yet to be produced. Let’s see if I follow this correctly. Ford wants to use as her only corroborating evidence something that she herself says is flawed, is based on her recollection that she came to understand during therapy, and that she won’t produce. Wow. Oh, yes, and her husband recalls her mentioning the name Brett Kavanaugh during the therapy, apparently another mistake on the part of the therapist. You cannot make this stuff up. When it comes down to it, the only thing people have to rely on when it comes to determining Ford’s credibility is her own testimony and the “emotion” she displayed, except that she came off about as believable as Kevin Costner’s British accent in the movie Robin Hood. Seriously. Even a three year old knows how to produce a lilt in the voice to simulate the holding back of tears. Parents generally fall for it for about ten minutes. First of all, the idea that she would be on the verge of tears describing a 36 year old attempted assault is a little rich. I’ve watched interviews of women who were held prisoner for years and repeatedly raped who sounded less frazzled. It felt a lot like someone trying to put themselves in the mind of a 15 year old victim who had never in fact been one. Sorry, that’s what it felt like.  Nowhere was a genuine tear, sniffle, or tissue observed. Contrast that with Kavanaugh.  Now that was emotion. Several body language experts have chimed in agreement.  When she wasn’t choking up, Ford was alternately giggling and playing the look at me, aren’t I cute card. She doesn’t wear it well.  What I saw was someone who could hardly contain her excitement at being the center of the national spotlight. I haven’t seen someone act so puerile while testifying before Congress since Sandra Fluke.

Now that the Kavanaugh fight has ended, Democrats and their media accomplices have shifted to a new narrative-the potential for packing the court with more judges should they ever (God help us) take back control of the White House and Senate. This should serve as pretty clear evidence of their intent all along – win at all cost. This approach is nothing new. It was first employed by Harry Read, who over then minority leader McConnell’s warnings was the first to jettison the judiciary rules around cloture. House and Senate Democrats followed suit ramming through the Affordable Care Act (better known and more accurately named as Obamacare) using reconciliation, and through executive orders that even then president, Barak Obama had previously called unconstitutional.  No, the willingness of liberals to eviscerate judicial nominees is hardly new (see Robert Borke and Miguel Estrada), but the conviction of Republicans to stand up to this nonsense is. That is why liberals are getting wackier with every passing day.

I want to close this far too long post by re-emphasizing that I abhor people who commit abuse against others, especially abuse of a sexual nature.  This should go without saying, but because anyone who asks for evidence or, shame, advocates for a presumption of innocence is labeled an abuser themselves complicit in the alleged behavior, must be endlessly repeated. Done. However, it is a scary world where accusations alone can destroy a man’s reputation and career. This is not just something for white men to fear, it is something we all should fear. White males are not the first group to be unfairly targeted in this way (many black males have suffered under a similar burden of proving innocence to name just one example), nor will they be the last if this travesty is allowed to stand. The truth is, as I stated on a previous post, no one but Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh will ever know for certain the truth about her allegations. However, as I stated earlier, absent the ability to know for certain, I am adopting Senator Collins’s approach. To that end, given everything I know, I believe that Christine Blasey Ford is more likely than not a liar.