Kavanaugh and Ford

Brett Kavanaugh says he did not grope Mrs. Ford at a party when both were teenagers.  She says he did. The  one person she says was also there sides with Kavanaugh.  She says she cannot remember where or in which year the groping happened or how she arrived at the party or left it.  Her present version contradicts the story she told a therapist in regard to the number of people present at the groping and perhaps other things. She is a leftist opponent of Trump and the Republicans.  She found her two question lie detector test to be almost too emotionally stressful to handle. She was reported to have recently travelled to Hawaii but was reluctant to come to Washington because of a claimed fear of flying.  He produced a detailed calendar of his activities showing no such party, while she produced no evidence at all.  Another man has stated that he may have been the one who groped her when they are teenagers. While one can never know for sure, the preponderance of evidence supports the conclusion that Kavanaugh is probably telling the truth, and Ford is probably  lying and/or mixed up to the point of being delusional.

  Beyond that it is surely fair to ask why this accusation matters at all.  At most a horny teenager tried to cop a feel at a probably drunken high school party from a girl in a swimsuit and got rebuffed. There was no rape. No one was beaten or slapped.  No one’s clothes were removed.  One does not have to condone it to believe it would be irrelevant to a person’s  character or qualifications thirty or forty years later or to see the hypocrisy of Democrats who claim  to be scandalized by it but excuse their own likely actual abusers of women from Bill Clinton to Keith Ellison.  (The same thing was true about the dispute between Clarence Thomas and  Anita Hill. The sensible reaction to a charge that an adult man made a suggestive wisecrack or two to an adult woman is “who cares?”. )

One can write the awful behavior of the Democrats in the senate off as only typical political nonsense, but I am afraid that would be a mistake.  Things are getting rough, not 1850s or even 1930s rough, but rough enough to be very worrisome. That sort of thing can get out of hand.

Getting Less Trigger Happy

In the last few years there have been  a number of stories of policemen shooting people who did not need to be shot. The shootings  have ranged from panicky overreactions to criminally negligent mistakes to murders.  In some cases  officers have fired as many as fifteen rounds at unarmed suspects.  Training cops better and holding them responsible for their actions  in the same way a civilian would be held responsible for his are obvious things which could help make bad shootings  less likely.  So, I think, would changing the way policemen are armed. I would like to see police give up their large magazine semiautomatics and go back to revolvers. With a fifteen round magazine  in a semiautomatic, there can be a tendency to bang away as fast as one can pull the trigger without much thought.  Target shooters talk about seeing people  going trigger happy with  semiautomatic pistols (or rifles) at public shooting ranges.  With a six shot wheel gun, particularly one  fired single action to increase accuracy, there can be a tendency to think and aim before shooting and between shots. Revolvers are perfectly adequate sidearms that served police well for many years. For those who accept the claims that the .38 special round is not powerful enough for police work,  there are  the .357  and  .44 magnums which surely have adequate stopping power. Making this change seems a minor thing, but it would not hurt and could help some.

Sunspot

Conspiracy fanciers have  had a lot to work with lately concerning  activities at the Sunspot Observatory south of Cloudcroft, New Mexico.  The feds shut the observatory down for over a week for what was first called a “security issue”, kept the public and local police in the dark as to why,  and then announced that the it was really only an ordinary investigation into one of the janitors suspected of having child pornography on his computer.  The observatory has re-opened after being closed for eleven days, and, as of reports from  last week, neither  the suspected janitor nor anyone else has been arrested.  

That may be all there is to it, but one does not have to be a conspiracy buff to conclude that it surely smells like a cover story, and a fairly lame one at that.  One only has to pay attention. It is well known that officials including people in the FBI lie to the public when it suits them. There is  news all the time about employees at businesses, schools, or government offices being arrested for having or dealing in child pornography without any stories of disruptions of their employers’ activities.  In many of the cases state and local cops are mentioned as working with the feds on the investigations and arrests. I cannot remember news of another case being handled as this one was said to have been.  It is no wonder the conspiracy theorists are out there theorizing like crazy. 

As to what really went on and perhaps still is going on,  one can only guess.   Sunspot is fairly close to Fort Bliss, Holloman Air Force Base,  and the White Sands Missile Range, and not too far from the Mexican border.  It could be that the original story about security was mainly true – whether involving espionage or only worries of someone seeing or hearing something he was not supposed to. It could have to do with concern over  something recorded through the telescopes, though it seems unlikely a solar observatory would detect anything  out there worrisome to the authorities.  It could be something else altogether. It could even be that the official version is no cover story at all, but on the facts as reported, that does not seem to be the way to bet.  

McCain's Reputation

One can understand the immediate reason for the adulation of John McCain by those in the traditional media and the political establishment easily.  His death and the observances following  it provided a fine and safe  opportunity for digs at Donald Trump – partially masked in  encomia to bipartisanship, reaching across aisles, careers in public service, what politicians call civility, and eschewing what politicians call divisiveness.

It is more interesting to speculate on  why he became so famous and such a favorite of such people in the first place.  One can accept that he behaved well in captivity in Vietnam. Charges to the contrary from political opponents lack evidence, and men such as Bud Day have vouched for him. However many others did and endured as much or more including some such as Denton, Stockdale, and Sam Johnson  who also went into politics after coming home from Vietnam. Yet McCain was the one who got the spotlight from the media most often. 

Similarly the amount of attention in the media he got while in the senate seems far out of proportion to his skills or accomplishments as a senator. One  reason for that is obvious. He was often very willing to denigrate conservative Republicans and others whose opinions were unacceptable to the left and to jump over the aisle to take the side of Democrats. That alone was enough to make him a “maverick” and a newsworthy guy in the reporting of the traditional media. (There are no maverick Democrats in the senate. They are all expected to go along with the herd.)  Still he was such a favorite that it seems there might be more to it  than that.

His reputation as a saintly patriot of a  politician who stood above  pettiness and  put the good of the country ahead of  all else is also odd,  given his behavior.  For example  he double crossed his colleagues, reneged on his promise to the voters in his state, and went against his stated beliefs when he cast the deciding vote to preserve Obamacare after campaigning to repeal it.  Despite some silly doubletalk about preferring a bipartisan solution, the apparent reason was his hatred of Trump and his unwillingness to give him  a victory.   He certainly had reason to dislike the president. Trump’s statement that the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton were not heroic was despicable and  naturally probably  particularly offensive to McCain. However many of people  have had despicable things said about them  by ignorant loudmouths and jackasses.  A responsible adult takes them in stride and goes ahead with his life and job. (Ted Cruz has been able to get past Trump’s suggestion that his father may have been involved in shooting President Kennedy at least to the extent of working with the president when his principles and duties call for it.)  A  serious, consistent  patriot does not shirk his responsibility and go back on his word because somebody hurt his feelings.

Fame and reputation are often  funny, and how and by whom they are gotten often  puzzling.