Until The Wall gets built ...

Trump wants $5 billion for The Wall.  Congress is only willing to give him $1.5 billion. With Democrats in control of the House in 2019 I’d be surprised if they budget anything for it. 

The question then becomes not when we build The Wall, but will we ever? 

I’m not counting on The Wall ever being built. 

But I have some other suggestions to stem illegal immigration. 

Almost nobody wants to deal with both sides of the illegal immigration question. And there clearly are two sides.  One side is why illegals want to come here.  The other side is why elements in our country keep encouraging illegal immigration. 

The common thread is money.  It’s really that simple. 

Those trying to enter and stay in our country illegally want to make more money; they have little to no interest in becoming citizens, learning English, or assimilating into our society. They aren’t seeking asylum – they simply want better paying jobs and access to free benefits here.    

They aren’t “yearning to be free,” but yearning to enjoy the privileges of a U.S. citizen without the hassle and expense of becoming one through the proper process.

Their lack of interest in becoming a full-fledged participant in the melting pot tradition of the United States also makes them somewhat unique among most immigrant classes in U.S. history. Most prior classes of immigrants wanted the better life the U.S. offered as well, but they also wanted to be part of the American experience by becoming citizens.     

Not this group.  It’s a game to them. See how long you can beat the system; if you can do it long enough without getting caught, you can win. Bring your family along or start one here and after a few years you’re almost guaranteed to find some judge who will give you a pass to stay. 

Even if you get caught and sent back – which is rare – just come back again and start over – the game is rigged in your favor.  Especially if your kids get born here; that’s the golden ticket.   

Those who want more illegals here are also playing a game.

Businesses are the dominant players, from the ag industry to food service, hospitality and construction.  They are all in favor of more illegal immigration.  Illegals don’t demand as much from employers; they’ll work cheaper and are more willing to do less desirable tasks, too. 

Big city politicians and bureaucrats are also big players.  They want more illegal immigrants to boost their resident populations to get more Federal funding and legislative representation based on simple headcounts, rather than citizen counts. 

Again, it’s all about money.

What’s the solution? How do we minimize illegal immigration without The Wall? How can we realistically address and overcome the forces driving illegal immigration?  

First, we have to remove the incentives for illegal immigrants to try to come here.  At the same time, we need to step up punishment for any and all employers who employ illegal immigrants. If we do both we’ll be on the road to solving illegal immigration. 

Everyone knows who is here illegally.  Our Federal government, state and local governments, public school administrators, and business owners all know precisely who is here illegally. The assertion that no one knows for sure is patently ridiculous. As even advocates for illegals acknowledge, if anyone actually wanted to round up illegals everyone knows exactly who and where they are.  

So it would be easy enough to deny Federal benefits to illegal immigrants.

Before anyone claims illegals are already barred from getting government benefits, get real. Their kids are going to our public schools. Their families are getting food stamps. They're taking advantage of a variety of programs.  And some illegals are ballsy enough to fraudulently claim the Earned Income Tax Credit with the IRS – a program designed for low-income citizens – and, get this, the IRS has discovered it already paid out billions to them. 

The sticky part of denying benefits is what to do about children born here to illegals. At birth they are automatically U.S. citizens via the Constitution, regardless of Trump’s assertion otherwise. As U.S. citizens they are entitled to all the benefits afforded other citizens. 

But their parents aren’t.  What would their parents do?  Would they opt to stay with benefits – and public education – only for their U.S.-born children?  Or would they decide to pack it in and head back to the motherland? 

I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care. The message sent is the important part. 

The reality is we’ll never be able to deport the 11-20 million people already here illegally.  Nor could we ever successfully apply these conditions to all of them.  But if potential illegal immigrants knew they’d never be able to collect government benefits or send their foreign-born kids to our public schools, I think that would be a powerful disincentive to coming here. 

The biggest disincentive of course would be to dry up potential jobs.  We need to crack down on bogus Social Security numbers.  In addition, we need to mandate that every employer– no matter how big or small – with a Federal tax ID must use the E-Verify system to vet all present employees and anyone they plan to hire for permanent or part-time jobs.

If any business then gets caught still employing illegals after a reasonable grace period, fine them $1000 for every single one.  No exceptions. 

If big businesses have repeated violations just revoke any Federal contracts, subsidies, or tax credits they currently get and prohibit them from bidding on any future Federal contracts for a period of five years. That would get their attention. For smaller ag-related businesses such as family farms, and for other seasonal businesses, we need to take away their excuse for hiring illegals by coming up with a manageable guest-worker program for temporary legal employment; the key word there being “temporary.”

If we were serious about stemming illegal immigration these ideas would work. 

Without The Wall. And for a lot less. 

In fact, we don’t actually need to implement any of these all the way. The simple threat they would pose would make people thinking of coming here illegally think twice. 

That may be enough.  

We need to Federalize the election process ...

If the last election proved nothing else, it demonstrated again the need for us to Federalize elections once and for all. 

Enough with this nonsense of allowing state and local bureaucrats to set their own rules on who can vote, when they can vote, and what constitutes a “legal” vote. It’s also time to finally enact a national ID for citizens to stop voter fraud once and for all.

I say that as someone in the great state of Florida, where Mickey Mouse is not just a Disney creation but an apt description of how elections are conducted here, at least in Broward and Palm Beach counties.  When you have politicians here – and also in neighboring Georgia as Stacey Abrams did – openly encouraging non-citizens to vote, it’s a clarion call to clamp down. 

When you have a flood of absentee ballots sent in with return addresses, signatures, birth dates and Social Security numbers that don’t match registration records and lawyers go to court to get these counted anyway, it’s a disgrace.  Worse yet, some nitwit judges actually allow mail-in ballots received well after official cut-off deadlines be counted in a clear violation of state laws.   

And when thousands of “lost” ballots suddenly materialize in Democrat-heavy counties, and when a rental car left at the Tampa airport was found to have boxes of blank ballots in the trunk, is it any wonder citizens think there’s voter fraud? 

Well of course there’s voter fraud. Critics on the left say it can’t be proved.  That’s because the state and local bureaucrats routinely engaged in voter fraud say it never happens.  Apparently that’s good enough for the media and politicians on the left. Nothing to see here, right? 

Do we really trust the media and politicians to tell us the truth?  More importantly, do we really trust state and local bureaucrats to fess up that they have no idea who is voting? The truth is, most don’t know but don’t want to admit it. 

Every time someone gets the bright – and right – idea to clean voter rolls to remove duplicates, the dead, vacant lots, and even registered voters who would be over 125 years old according to Social Security records, Democrats and the left go crazy. It makes no difference how the cleaning is designed, including sending letters to addresses on file that bounce back undeliverable three or more times, Democrats and the left scream bloody murder. 

It’s always a plot to disenfranchise minority voters, according to them. So is any attempt to require people to prove who they are – or even that they are alive – to vote.    

Think about why the left and Democrats are so opposed to voter ID.  Why they are so opposed to verifying addresses and signatures of voters.  Why they fight every attempt to ensure that only citizens are voting in our elections.

There’s only one conclusion: Democrats and the left are stuffing the ballot boxes. 

Didn’t you ever wonder why when blue district bureaucrats “find” additional ballots those ballots are almost always overwhelmingly for Democrats?  Or that some heavily Democrat places have more people voting than the number registered to vote? Or that “provisional” ballots almost always favor Democrats over Republicans? 

Are those just coincidences?  Really? 

The media like to say that we are an almost evenly divided nation, politically.

I honestly don’t believe that. I think widespread voter fraud only makes it look like that.

So here’s what I think needs to be done to “true” our elections. 

We need a national ID. Every citizen 18 and over needs to have a unique citizen number and photo ID, on a card chipped with their encoded date of birth, Social Security number, and thumbprint.  A driver’s license or student ID doesn’t cut it. Getting the card would be free and the process would be managed and executed by the Department of Homeland Security. Obtaining one of these fraudulently would be a serious Federal felony.

I don’t want to hear any of the BS about the burden this would place on the old, the disabled, or minorities. If need be, we could send out DHS-staffed mobile units to minority neighborhoods, nursing homes or wherever needed to document everyone.  Whatever it costs would be worth it. 

During the process, cross-check these against existing Social Security records. No valid Social Security number, no ID, period.   

All the data would be entered into a Federal database.  To vote in person anywhere in the U.S. you would need to show that ID and have the chip read.  To vote by absentee ballot that ballot would have to include that citizen number, which could then be cross-checked against the database to insure the filer only votes once, rather than once where they live and another where they might maintain another residence, as I suspect some seasonal residents and college students might be doing. 

Anyone possessing one of these valid chipped IDs would automatically be registered to vote in any and all of their state’s elections, and all Federal elections. The burden of maintaining and validating voter rolls would be taken out of the hands of the states.   

Finally, once someone has been cleared to vote in person, use only paper ballots of a consistent design set by the Federal Election Commission, which should also set uniform early voting times and rules, deadlines for submitting absentee ballots, and deadlines for submitting results, across the entire country.  In short, cut out the state and local bureaucrats entirely. 

Then let’s see if we are really so evenly divided.  I suspect we’re not.

All this would take a act of Congress. I fully expect a wide range of legal challenges, mainly from Democrats and the left, less so from Republicans and the right. 

Big city politicians will scream that the same data could be used to hunt down illegals and deny them Federal benefits. And they would be right about that.

I consider that a bonus.   

Too stupid to vote ...

Once again, Florida is the epicenter of controversy over counting votes. 

And once again, Broward and Palm Beach counties are demonstrating how stupid they are.  How incompetent the hacks supervising the elections there are.  Plus, how stupid the voters in those counties apparently still are. 

It was bad enough when Bush/Gore proved voters there couldn’t understand the concept of a punch card to vote. The instructions then were crystal clear – you must punch out the hole next to the candidate you’re voting for, and only one for each office. 

But did those voters get it? Of course not.  They’re morons.  They’re also overwhelmingly Democrats. That’s not to say all Democrats are morons, but I see a correlation there, at least here in the Sunshine State.    

Then Democrats flew in a horde of lawyers to argue what constituted a punched-out hole.  Was a dimpled mark good enough to indicate what the voter wanted? A hanging chad? What about voters who tentatively punched one hole and then punched another too?

To avoid this nonsense again the state decided to only use paper ballots going forward. Again the instructions – which down here have to be in multiple languages – were crystal clear:  You needed to fill in the circle next to your choice of candidate. And only one per candidate.  That’s it.

Of course that’s too complicated, apparently, for the morons in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Instead of doing what everyone has done on multiple-choice exams and forms for decades, some voters there drew arrows, drew an X, crossed out their first choice, etc.  All of which stymied the machines designed to read the paper ballots electronically. 

About 3.7 percent more voters in Broward voted for governor than for anyone in the U.S. Senate race on the same ballot.  That’s a pretty dramatic undervote, well outside the norm, which also is suspicious. Now some on the left are blaming the design of the ballot itself for that. Guess who designed the ballot? Bingo, the same Democrat hacks running elections there.     

When it came to absentee ballots – always an area ripe for fraud – a lot of voters in those counties couldn’t follow instructions on those, either. Even though those were in multiple languages. According to the hacks running elections there, some “forgot” to sign their ballots or their signatures didn’t remotely match what was on file. Some put a different return address on their ballot than the one they used to register to vote.  Some entered the date they completed the ballot where they were supposed to put their birthdate.  A lot seemed to have ignored that their ballot had to be postmarked by a certain date to be accepted and counted. 

These people are clearly too stupid to vote.  Or perhaps those stuffing the ballot box are. 

I believe every legal vote should be counted.  I also believe no vote cast improperly or by non-citizens should be counted. That includes mail-in ballots postmarked long after the deadlines for sending them in.  And if the address you use, or your signature doesn’t match what’s on file, those votes shouldn’t be counted at worst and investigated for identity theft and fraud at best.    

The bozos running elections in those two counties know the rules. They should, since they’ve been chastised by the courts many times in the past for election shenanigans. 

Yet even now they are defying recent court orders to at least disclose how many people voted in their counties.  Today is November 12th; by Florida law they were required to give a total count 30 minutes after polls closed on November 6th.  And here we are. They still refuse to tell us.  Over 70,000 “new” votes have mysteriously appeared in Broward County since the polls closed.  Thousands more have suddenly appeared in Palm Beach County since then, too.

Huh? 

Now, if you’re not all that familiar with Florida, you might think maybe the irregularities and problems in Broward and Palm Beach counties are because these are poor, backwards places.  They’re not.  They are two of the most affluent and well-educated counties in the state.  Broward has the second largest population of any county in the state. There’s no excuse for this.

But they are overwhelmingly Democrat.  And like too many Democrats everywhere, they feel they shouldn’t be held to the same rules as everyone else. Laws, what laws? Rules, what rules?  In fact they are suing to count all the mail-in ballots postmarked and received after the official deadlines.  They also want to count mail-in ballots that somehow got “damaged” and local polling staff – also Democrats – thoughtfully just filled in new ballots as replacements. Plus they want to count the ballots “interpreted” by local polling staff to decide a voter’s intention. 

I’m not making this up. That’s how bad it is.

For the life of me I can’t decide who is more stupid – the voters there, the hacks in charge in Broward and Palm Beach counties, or state officials who seem powerless to stop this craziness.  

Right now we're going through mandatory recounts for the Senate seat, the race for governor, and the race for the State Agriculture Commissioner.    

I suspect at some point Federal courts will intervene, perhaps even the SCOTUS. Then Democrats will whine and complain that the SCOTUS “stole” the election.   

It’s just par for the course in the two most heavily Democrat counties in the state.  

Why I can't vote for Democrats ...

I’m not crazy about the Republicans, but Democrats are too crazy for me. 

Between chasing Republicans from restaurants and frantic outbursts from supposed leaders in the Democrat party to “get in the face” of Republicans and administration officials wherever they are, and calls to overthrow the government, it’s all too much. 

Seriously, that party’s been taken over by lunatics.  And often violent lunatics at that. Plus, they aren’t honorable – by that I mean you can’t trust them to keep their word.  Or tell the truth. 

Perhaps the final straw is that I can’t abide their willful ignorance. You can fix a lot of things in this world but you can’t fix stupid. If they don’t understand how the balance of power in our government is supposed to work, what’s in the Constitution, or the role of the Supreme Court, then they should do us all a favor and STFU until they do.

All that information is readily available, but they don’t want to know any of this because it gets in the way of what they “feel.”  They truly believe their emotions trump everyone else’s rights.   

You can’t reason with them, any more than you can with a petulant four-year-old, which is how they act too often these days.  They pout, they shout, they throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. Even when they get their way they take that as a sign of weakness and press for more concessions.  It’s a never-ending siege in which they will never be satisfied. 

Honestly, it’s exhausting to deal with them. There’s no such thing as social intercourse with them; they are too Hell-bent on ideologically raping you. That’s why so many of us sadly now avoid former friends who’ve become strident Democrats; as much as we try to keep our political opinions to ourselves in social gatherings, they can’t resist attacking us because we might not agree with them.   

It’s more than bad behavior.  It borders on insanity.

I was at a social event not long ago when someone – apropos of nothing – started blaming Trump for why they made a crappy salary as a teacher 10 or so years ago.  Think about that.  10 or so years ago. Everybody was afraid to bring up that Trump had nothing to do with it, for fear that person would go even further off the rails, as they had done many times before. Others tried valiantly to change the subject, but the person wouldn’t let it go. This is all too commonplace. 

The Kavanaugh hearings fully exposed the reality of today’s Democrats and their supporters. It wasn’t a good picture.

Democrat Senators on the Judiciary Committee displayed their complete and utter ignorance about the Constitution and the rule of law.  Then they pulled a trick play – the unfounded and uncorroborated Ford allegations they’d known about for months but never disclosed until then – after the hearings were officially over. Talk about ignoring the rules. 

They demanded a delay to hear Ford tell her story. That was granted.  When Kavanaugh rebutted Ford’s story, they went back to his high school yearbook to try to find something incriminating.  Then they demanded an FBI investigation that, in their words, should only take a few days.

They had Democrat activists and other alleged “survivors” of sexual assault flood the halls of Congress to get in the face of Senators on the Judiciary Committee right before the critical vote. At the last moment, a Republican Senator caved under the pressure and the tearful urging of Democrat Senator Coons.  The request for yet another FBI investigation was granted. 

When after those few days the FBI couldn’t corroborate any of Ford’s story, or of two other alleged assault “victims” that had suddenly appeared, they accused the White House of a coverup. 

Kavanaugh got confirmed, despite their best efforts to slime him, and is now an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.  But as the swearing in was underway, Democrat protesters pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court, screaming. That’s a tantrum.    

So the new approach from the Democrats is that if they take back the House majority, they will conduct additional investigations of Kavanaugh – a sitting Supreme Court Justice – with the goal of impeaching him and removing him from the Court.

Of course, they also plan to impeach Trump.

They are nuts.  They also don’t know what’s involved in removing someone from the Supreme Court or the White House.  There’s no point in educating them; they aren’t interested. 

To show how out of touch they really are, after all their violence and threats of violence, they claim the only way to bring back civility is for Democrats to take back the House.

If that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is. 

I can’t vote for any of them.  

The more we learned about Dr. Ford ...

The more it points to the inevitable conclusion that she’s either crazy at worst, or delusional at best.  I don’t believe she’s lying – that would require her to know what she’s saying is untrue. I’m not saying that; I think she really believes her story.

However, just because she believes it doesn’t make it true.

“True” to her, perhaps. But not objectively true.   

Nobody can corroborate her original story.  It’s becoming clear that she’s now backfilling parts of that story. Once again, none of her more recent revelations have been corroborated.  What’s actually happened is the gulf between her testimony and verified reality has widened. 

In Ford’s defense, many believed it’s possible something traumatic may have actually happened to her when she was 15, but perhaps not by Kavanaugh. I was one of those. I didn’t want to believe she made up everything, because that would mean she was a calculating liar or crazy.  

Then I saw her testify. 

A calculating liar would have been more focused. She was all over the place and couldn’t stick to what she said were her “details,” or even explain the inconsistencies in her prior statements. Her supporters will defend her by saying she was terrified, but she didn’t seem terrified to me. If anything, she was smiling and friendly.

And, to be kind, ditzy. At times, incoherent. To me, she wasn’t in the least bit credible given what she alleged and the complete lack of evidence. Sympathetic maybe; believable, not at all.    

After seeing her performance, I wondered why nobody ever asked for a competency hearing on Ford, which seemed warranted.  Or at the least probed how she suddenly remembered – in 2012 – what she now claims happened. It all came out, according to her, in a couple’s therapy session then.  How?  Was it a spontaneous epiphany?  Was she “guided” by the therapist to “recover” the cause of all her problems?

Nobody had the guts to ask.

Everybody was afraid to appear to be attacking her.  She had the armor of a “victim of sexual assault.” She was to be believed, no matter what.  All women were to be believed.   

Even now, nobody has the guts to confront her with sworn testimony from others. 

And nobody is willing to raise the most obvious question: is she at best delusional? 

I think she is. Not her fault; she can’t help it.  But nothing she’s said makes sense.

It’s as if she had a dream – or an artificially induced “recovered memory” – in 2012 and decided: “Aha – that’s why I’m a basket case. That’s the cause of all my problems. It’s not my fault at all.”  Everything fell into place for her after that.  She’s fully invested in that answer. 

It’s disgraceful that the left and Democrats exposed her to public scrutiny for purely political purposes.  They had to know she was going to have her alternate reality challenged.  Perhaps they hoped she would present such a pathetic image no one would notice how flimsy her evidence was. 

She was no more than a sacrificial lamb, to appease their more extreme elements.

And an unwilling sacrificial lamb, at that.

They should be ashamed. But of course they won't be. They'll keep using her as a rallying point for the mid-terms and beyond.  

They've even promised that if they take the House they'll investigate her claims further and try to impeach now-Justice Kavanaugh.

The torture of Ford will continue. I'm truly sorry for her.    

Everyone's afraid to say this about Dr. Ford ...

Even though it’s painfully obvious. 

The woman’s got serious mental problems. She’s had them her entire life. Still does. 

Now, something may have happened in her youth to aggravate these.  Or maybe not.  But it’s pretty clear she’s still desperately searching for a reason – something or someone she can blame – for why she’s been an emotional basket case all these years. And still is.   

Before anyone thinks I’m victim shaming, I’m not.  Sexual assault is a serious matter. It takes a lot of courage for a victim of sexual assault to come forward. Some victims believe they are somehow responsible for their assault. I understand why victims are hesitant to go public. 

At the same time it’s unrealistic to believe nobody – nobody – ever lies about being assaulted, or misrepresents an event that may or may not have happened. Sometimes it’s for revenge.  Sometimes – as in the Duke Lacrosse team fiasco – it’s a desire for a payoff.  Sometimes – as in the bogus “rape culture” at UVA reported by Rolling Stone – it’s to push a false narrative. 

Sometimes it’s also just after-the-fact remorse – you realize you made a really bad decision one night to have consensual sex with someone you wish, in hindsight, you hadn’t.   

And, to be perfectly honest, sometimes it’s to create an ever-ready excuse for why you have emotional or relationship problems for years. Whether or not anything ever actually happened, or to what degree, people will almost always take your word and have sympathy.  Sadly, that’s why some have falsely claimed to have been sexually assaulted.       

It’s easy to accuse someone of sexual assault, especially in this day and age. Accusers, male and female, have come out of the woodwork because of the #metoo movement.  In a perverse reversal of traditional standards, the accused are now automatically deemed guilty and have the burden to prove they are innocent. That’s not how justice works or has for centuries here. 

Rape and attempted rape are serious crimes.  They are felonies for good reason. Accusations of rape and attempted rape need to be investigated by law enforcement. Sexual harassment is also covered by law.  Unwanted groping and grinding are more difficult to prove but still against the law.  No one should take lightly allegations of any of these.    

While it's easy to accuse someone of sexual assault, it takes guts and determination to prove it.  It also takes evidence, however. The name and description of the assailant.  The circumstances.  Details about the time and place.  At least some corroboration about when and where it happened.  Who you told afterward, and when. And if possible a police report. 

Admittedly, that’s a lot to ask of someone who has just been sexually assaulted. It’s almost impossible to prove alleged sexual assault 30 or more years later, short of a confession by the accused or a credible eyewitness to the assault. 

Just as it was impossible to prove by Ford. She couldn’t confirm the time, the place, who else was there, or provide corroboration by the people she named as witnesses to her claim.

Did she make it all up? I don’t know.  We’ll never know.  I’m certain she believes it happened.  To her it was all very real and very traumatic.  Although she never told anyone about it for 30 years.  It only came up in a couple’s therapy session in 2012. 

And she was in couple’s therapy, by her own account, because she and her husband were arguing about adding a second front door to their house.

Yes, they were in couple’s therapy over a door.  

She said she wanted the second front door because she was claustrophobic, which is also why she says doesn’t like to fly.  It all stems – she says – from the time she claims she was held down and groped by a drunken Brett Kavanaugh when she was 15.

Something that only came out in couple’s therapy in 2012. 

Now she also blames that same event for why she had difficulty in her first two years at UNC, which would have been three to five years after the alleged sexual assault. Why she’s had trouble with relationships ever since.  And, I suppose, why she needed therapy over the years, culminating with the need for outside counseling to deal with a disagreement over a door. 

Watching her testify the other day saddened me.  I felt sorry for her because she obviously believes the alleged assault by Kavanaugh is the cause for all her mental and emotional problems. She has so much invested in that belief that’s the reason for everything in her troubled life. 

Even when obvious contradictions in her testimony and ever-changing accounts were revealed, she never wavered. That’s how strongly she needs to defend her premise.  It’s everything to her belief system. Her whole world crumbles if she concedes she might be wrong. 

The inconsistencies in what she and her attorneys have said are not minor. They are glaring holes that call into question just about everything else.   

For someone supposedly terrified to fly, and why she needed much more time to drive cross-country to a hearing, she admitted she flies a lot to domestic and overseas destinations, including at least twice in the days leading up to her appearance. When she was reminded that Grassley had offered to fly the committee and staffers out to her to accommodate her alleged fear of flying – an offer widely reported by every news outlet and certainly communicated to her attorneys – she insisted she never heard of the offer.  When her best friend from high school flatly refuted Ford’s assertion that she was at the same party that night, or even that she and Ford had ever been at a party with Kavanaugh, Ford dismissed that as understandable because her friend was dealing with health issues. 

The longer this stays open, the more she “remembers” about the event. She now “remembers” the layout of the house, but not roughly where it is, how as a 15-year-old she got there or how she got home, or even which and how many boys and girls were there. 

She now “remembers” she saw Mark Judge – someone she claims participated in the assault, and who has repeatedly said he has no memory of the party, much less the assault – at his job about five to six weeks later and he was visibly shaken to see her.  She wants his employment records so she can narrow down when the alleged assault happened; in effect she wants to use where he worked and when to try to get an approximate date for the alleged assault, since she’s not even sure what year it was, or the time of year, either.         

Sorry, but no.  This has gone on long enough.  Every “new” revelation by Ford seems manufactured. Some directly contradict what she said earlier. In short, it appears she’s now evolving and embellishing memories on the fly.

Nobody wants to say this, but I will: none of this makes any sense at all except to her and her supporters.  I don’t find her allegations about Kavanaugh credible at all.  I don’t doubt for a minute she believes what she’s saying, however.  But belief and proof are different. 

It’s not just a case of “he-said, she-said.” It’s more a case of absolutely no evidence except a “recovered” memory 30-some years later, versus sworn testimony from everyone the alleged victim claims could corroborate her story, including her best friend at the time, that they don’t remember anything about it, or even being at some party like this with her.

I have real sympathy for victims of sexual assault.  Honestly I do.  But sympathy alone doesn’t cut it, especially given the gravity of the claims she’s made against Kavanaugh.

Unless she or the FBI can present some incontrovertible proof – besides her memory, which has shown to be spotty at best – I’m more inclined to believe Kavanaugh.  

Timid little mice ...

It’s no wonder Democrats always get their way.

Republicans are afraid of them. 

All it takes is for Democrats to say Republicans are racist, sexist, hate gays, hate immigrants or whatever and Republicans fold.  Doesn’t make any difference what the issue is, Republicans will always cave. Democrats can count on that.  

Republicans are so, so afraid people won’t like them. They’re afraid they won’t be able to get Democrats to help them pass a budget or anything else, even when Republicans have the majority.  Most of all they’re afraid women, Hispanics and blacks won’t vote for them.

Honestly, it’s pathetic.

If Trump’s election proved anything, there’s no reason to be afraid. More women, Hispanics, and blacks voted for him than anyone expected, despite the nonstop drumbeat from Democrats and the media that he was prejudiced against all those groups.  Even now, after more than two years of unrelenting attacks on Trump, his approval ratings have increased.  Do people like Trump?  Not really, but do they like what he’s accomplished?  Yes.

In short, being liked is highly overrated; doing your job is more important. 

The latest cave is over Dr. Ford’s unsubstantiated accusations that Brett Kavanaugh groped her at a party some 36 years ago. Ford can’t remember where it was, when it was, how she got there, or how she got home.  She only remembers how traumatic it was.  But she didn’t tell anybody at the time, even her closest friends, nor anyone else over all the intervening years, and only “remembered” it in couples’ therapy in 2012. And of course six years later when Kavanaugh was about to be confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, and after extensive questioning by Democrats who knew about the accusation but said nothing, asked nothing of Kavanaugh about it, until the hearing officially ended. 

No prosecutor would ever bring something like this to court, given how vague the accuser is on the details.  Ford and her growing army of Democrat strategists advising her know this. That’s not to say she doesn’t believe something happened to her 36 or so years ago – she’s not sure about what year or time of year either – but there’s absolutely nothing to substantiate her claims.

Everybody she claimed was there or participated in the event has denied being there, or even that there was such a party.  They’ve done that under oath, something Ford hasn’t done.

Scared as ever, Republicans have tried to make a deal to have Ford testify. Her side has bargained from a position of strength, which baffles me since she doesn’t have a case.  Ford’s side has blown off every attempt at getting this done quickly and impartially. Ford’s side is controlling everything – the date she’ll maybe testify, and that’s a weak maybe – and have demanded a host of ridiculous conditions for the privilege of giving her a platform to trot out her alleged assault. Which, BTW, has gone from being portrayed initially as attempted rape to now simply groping, in her side’s own words.

The gutlessness of the Republicans has allowed this to happen.  So afraid. So worried about how they’ll be perceived. So unwilling to do their job. If they had closed the hearings as scheduled and had the vote, despite the last-minute parlor trick of the Democrats, we might have been spared all this insanity. Instead, they quaked in fear at being seen as insensitive to women who’ve been sexually assaulted. 

They should have, for once, called the Democrats’ bluff. They would have won. At worst they would have forced the Democrats to put up or shut up immediately. But they didn’t.     

Whether Ford testifies or not – and I honestly believe she’ll play Lucy to Charlie Brown at the last minute and not show up – the damage has been done. Just as Democrats wanted and the media wanted all along.  They knew Republicans wouldn’t have the guts to stand up to them. 

Worst of all, Democrats have been saying all along that if by some miracle Kavanaugh gets confirmed, they plan to impeach him if they take the House. So if he doesn’t get confirmed, Democrats win.  And if he does get confirmed, Democrats win.

Nice work Republicans. You spineless weasels

Re-elect no Republicans. Let the Democrats take the House in 2018. Hell, let them take the Senate, too.  Let them start the impeachment proceedings against Trump, and if he’s lucky, Kavanaugh.  Democrats will never get enough votes in the Senate – it takes 67 out of 100 – to make impeachment stick, so those are bullshit threats and should be dealt with as such.   

Then when all those lost Republican House and Senate seats come up again, elect people with the fortitude to withstand the Democrats’ bullying tactics. 

Sooner or later, you have to stand up to a bully, or it never ends.