The Smell Test

So, not surprisingly, two more Kavanaugh accusers have come forward. Let's apply the smell test to this, shall we? You know, that test where, if something smells like poo ...

So the second accuser - after Dr. Christine Ford, who was probably recruited by Dianne Feinstein to accuse Judge Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to remove her clothes at a party in 1982 - or was it 1983? or 1984? She just can't remember - has said that Judge Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while they were students at Yale.

Except she can't remember much about it, either. She admits she was drunk, and she can't recall for sure whether it was Kavanaugh, or someone else. Or when it happened.

Now, there's a third accuser. This one is quite the prize. First, she was introduced to the world by none other than Stormy Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, the sworn never-Trumper who has admitted to having presidential aspirations of his own.

Cory Booker, anyone? Please.

And second, her claims are ... well, incredible.

Before we get to that, let's move on to the smell test. Recall that, prior to Kavanaugh being selected by President Trump as a Supreme Court nominee, prominent Dems from Pelosi to Schumer to Durbin to Feinstein to Blumenthal (that guy makes cadavers look good, by the way) vowed to block any nominee Trump put forth. So they're predisposed to blocking any Trump nominee to the high court (which they proved with the Gorsuch nomination).

Trump nominates Kavanaugh. Those same Dems vow to vote against him, even before the confirmation hearings. So does Booker. So does Kamala Harris. So does the sexist pig from Hawaii. (I feel comfortable calling her that, because she recently said all men should shut up. If I said that about women, I'd be labeled a sexist pig. Ergo, she is a sexist pig.)

True to their word, the Dems throw every ludicrous tactic in their playbook at Kavanaugh during the joke of a confirmation hearing process, which is obviously nothing more than a campaign event; why else should Judicial Committee members have 30-minute opening statements, after all? From Kamala Harris' nothing-burger questions about some mysterious conversation about the Mueller investigation with a Trump lawyer that never took place, to Booker's ridiculous claims of a Spartacus Moment, nothing can shake Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh shines. He's a shoo-in. The most likely candidate to the bench since ... well, forever.

Then Dianne Feinstein reveals the letter from Dr. Christine Ford that she's supposedly had for several weeks. Except, as the Curmudgeon surmised in a recent post, she hadn't - it was likely recruited at the 11th hour, from a pink hat-wearing anti-Trump Feinstein constituent.

Ford demands an FBI investigation, except private citizens don't dictate what the FBI investigates, and the FBI certainly doesn't investigate half-baked, unfounded claims from 30 years ago. The FBI, having investigated Kavanaugh six times and found nothing untoward, declines. Ford demands that Kavanaugh testify first before the Judiciary Committee. Except that flies in the face of judicial practice. Ford demands that no lawyers can question her. Except that ignores the fact that the Senators on the committee know nothing about sexual harassment claims. (And thanks to her for sparing us that s***-show, of having a bunch of Democrat Senators use the questioning process to continue to campaign - can you imagine Cory Booker's tactics in that scenario?)

Committee Chairman Grassley schedules a hearing, one in which the Committee can hear from both Ford and Kavanaugh. He brings in a seasoned female lawyer with experience in such matters to do the questioning. He lets Kavanaugh go last, as is the case in any legal proceeding, where the defense presents its case only after the prosecution has laid down its arguments.

And Ford's lawyers have a pucker moment.

So in waltzes accuser #2, who claims Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale, except she's fuzzy on the details, like who it was that actually exposed himself to her, or what year it happened.

That looks like it's going to fall flat, so literally at the 11th hour - two days before the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing - a third accuser surfaces.

Brought forth by the aforementioned Trump-hating attention whore Avenatti. If you look up "smarmy" in the dictionary, you'll see his face. That alone taints her credibility.

But, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She claims that Kavanaugh and his buddies spiked the punch at high school parties back in the day so that young women would get so drunk that the boys at the parties could gang-rape them.

A heinous accusation, and for the record, I'd never condone such behavior, or marginalize the trauma of any legitimate victim of it.

But again, let's apply the smell test. This accuser claims that she attended ten such parties where these gang-rapes occurred. Then, she went off to college. Then, she returned home and went to another such party, where she herself fell victim to this heinous act.

Let's be realistic. If you're a young woman in high school, and you attend a party where the boys spike the punch and gang-rape the girls, do you go back? Ten times? Isn't that a little like playing Russian roulette? And how many college kids go back to high school parties? Especially ones where they know this kind of activity is going on? Sorry, it just doesn't pass the smell test. Avenatti should have done a better job of client prep. Sure, spin your story, but don't make it so incredible as to be unbelievable.

Don't misconstrue me; I'd never say that a woman who put herself in that situation deserved what she got. But I will argue that no reasonable woman would put herself in that situation, ten times, and then again after she went off to college. I don't know any women who would do that. So I'm not condemning her for it having happened, I'm simply saying that it's highly, highly unlikely that it would have happened.

None of these claims are corroborated. True, Dr. Ford has people ready to testify on her behalf. But their testimony will be that she told them it happened. In the legal system, that's called hearsay, and it doesn't carry much weight. She's likely to be shredded in questioning by a competent attorney, one who has built a career on successfully prosecuting claims of sexual misconduct. Get that? She's got the best attorney she could have asking her questions, one that has a track record of getting convictions in these matters. But she's going to fall flat, because she has nothing to back her up but the claims of people who can testify to nothing other than that she told her story to them. It still does nothing to corroborate the story.

And what of the fact that she passed a polygraph? Sadly, most of America doesn't understand what a polygraph indicates, any more than they understand due process or the presumption of innocence until proven guilty - proven guilty, meaning that the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. I personally know a man who was wrongfully convicted of a capital offense who was later exonerated. It happens.

A polygraph does not prove that an event took place. It can only validate that the subject believes that what they're saying is true. It's inadmissible in many jurisdictions. And it's only as good as the person administering the test. We don't know who that was, or what was asked. Could she pass a polygraph administered by an expert of Kavanaugh's lawyers' choosing? We don't know.

In the end, I don't know what will happen. This is what we've come to, and it's pathetic. I don't know why I even vote anymore. I vote for a candidate who will appoint qualified, originalist justices to the Supreme Court (and as I've noted before, I didn't vote for Trump), and he does what the voters wanted him to do, and then this crap happens. It's insanity, and it has nothing to do with democracy.

So if this is the world we now live in, I offer my services to the RNC. I will testify, under oath, that I have been sexually molested by any female Democrat candidate, nominee or appointee. As for the males, I will testify that I was present and observed them committing all manner of depravity. All you have to do is obtain their calendars, find open dates they can't account for, compare those with my calendar, and I'll testify that I was present, and was either a witness to or a victim of these events.

Apparently, this is the new battleground on which political wars will be waged, so I'm happy to do my part for the conservative cause. Perjury and ethics matter not to the Democrats, so they will no longer matter to me.

One caveat: I will not agree to admit to having been sexually assaulted by Nancy Pelosi. No matter how drunk I may have been at any point in my life, I do have standards.