Of The Facts, Of the Truths

While the FBI spends its week investigating Kavanaugh to appease Jeff Flake. we should consider this tiny little tidbit.

How We Know Kavanaugh is Lying, written by Nathan Robinson over at Current Affairs.

Let’s leave aside the procedural questions about if and how an investigation should proceed. Given what we know now, after the hearings, what can we conclude for certain? Let’s just say we do not know whether to believe Ford or Kavanaugh, that we found both of their testimonies equally likely to be true. In a state of uncertainty, we’d be left with a tricky situation. The truth or falsity of the allegation against Kavanaugh is extremely important; if it’s true, not only did he attack a woman three decades ago, but he lied shamelessly about it under oath, forcing Ford through a humiliating public process that led to her receiving death threats. If what Ford says is true, then not only should Brett Kavanaugh not be confirmed to the Supreme Court, but he should be impeached and removed from the federal judiciary entirely, disbarred, and prosecuted for perjury...

I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one...

Let’s begin with Kavanaugh’s denial.

Here is what he says: “I never attended a gathering like the one Dr. Ford describes in her allegation...”

...Kavanaugh says that he never attended any event like this. Like what, though? He never attended a small gathering in Bethesda where people were drinking beer? Kavanaugh submitted his own calendars from the summer of 1982 into evidence for the Senate. As he said himself, “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.” He says that he never attended a gathering like this, but that’s obviously false, because the type of gathering he says he did attend is exactly the kind she describes...

The article goes into focused detail into each element of Kavanaugh's story, so you should read it and then move on to the next set of lies by the judge:

Ford alleges that at the time of the assault, Kavanaugh and Judge were “visibly drunk.” The other allegations against Kavanaugh, by Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, suggest that Kavanaugh participated in a rowdy drinking culture as a young man, and that the abuse occurred under the influence of alcohol. Swetnick says she “observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and physically aggressive behavior toward girls.” So drinking forms a major part of all the allegations, and facts about Kavanaugh’s history with alcohol bear on the plausibility of all three.

Kavanaugh has not only denied engaging in abuse, but has rejected the entire idea of him as having been an excessive and rowdy drinker. In his testimony and his interview with FOX News, Kavanaugh portrayed himself as having been a shy, studious, churchgoing virgin who worked a summer job and focused on community service and team sports...

His decision to present himself as squeaky clean, rather than wayward but subsequently redeemed, brings us to some of the most absurd untruths of Kavanaugh’s whole testimony. The evidence that he was more than an ordinary social drinker is voluminous. His yearbook lists him as treasurer of the “Keg City Club,” and his entry says “100 Kegs or Bust,” apparently referring to a “campaign by his friends to empty 100 kegs of beer during their senior year.” (Not a single senator asked him why his yearbook said “100 kegs or bust,” and the word “keg” doesn’t even appear in the hearing transcript.) It also says he was the “biggest contributor” to the Beach Week Ralph Club, which he admitted was a reference to vomiting. Here’s Liz Swisher, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who is now chief of the gynecologic oncology division at the University of Washington School of Medicine:

"Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him. I watched him drink more than a lot of people. He’d end up slurring his words, stumbling… There’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. . . . But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess."

Here’s Daniel Livan, who lived in Kavanaugh’s dorm:

“I definitely saw him on multiple occasions stumbling drunk where he could not have rational control over his actions or clear recollection of them… His depiction of himself is inaccurate.”

There's too many witnesses to Kavanaugh's drunken ways.

In total, the New York Times cited “nearly a dozen people” who knew Kavanaugh and confirmed he was a “heavy drinker.” Kavanaugh also hosted weekly tailgates while at Yale. [Update: on Sunday another Yale classmate said Kavanaugh was belligerent when drunk, that he saw Kavanaugh staggering from intoxication, and on one occasion “I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”] Kavanaugh’s close high school friend Mark Judge even wrote a memoir called Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, which featured a character called “Bart O’Kavanaugh” passing out from partying and puking in a car. Judge even mentioned “Bart” in the yearbook, suggesting this was probably a high school nickname or inside joke...

Why take Kavanaugh's word when so many others have been consistent in describing him and his behaviors not only now but in stories told years before now?

'Cause here's a few more stories about him:

Let us turn to two more lies, which both appear minor but have important implications. First is the case of poor Renate.

Renate Dolphin was a contemporary of Kavanaugh’s when he was at Georgetown Prep and she was at school nearby, and initially signed a letter supporting him. In Kavanaugh’s yearbook, some of the football players, including Kavanaugh, used the cryptic phrase “Renate Alumni.” Two ex-Georgetown Prep classmates told the New York Times that boys were bragging (truthfully or not, probably not) about sex with Renate. Sean Hagan said that Kavanaugh and his teammates “were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate. I can’t express how disgusted I am with them, then and now.” Dolphin herself didn’t know about the yearbook page when she signed the support letter, and when she discovered it was horrified...

But instead of admitting that they had been terrible to Renate, four of the football players said that the references to her in the yearbook “were intended to allude to innocent dates or dance partners.” Kavanaugh himself blamed the dirty-minded circus media for taking a sweet tribute and construing it as something obscene:

“That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media’s interpreted the term is related to sex. It was not related to sex.” … “She’s a good person. And to have her named dragged through this hearing is a joke. And, really, an embarrassment.”

Renate herself certainly didn’t interpret it as a display of friendship when she found out about it. But if you’re credulous enough to believe Kavanaugh’s denial, the definitive proof that it’s horseshit is that elsewhere in the yearbook, one of the boys has printed the following charming ditty:

“You need a date / and it’s getting late / so don’t hesitate / to call Renate.”

There can be no doubt that not only were the boys trying to obliquely call Renate a slut (whether or not any sex actually transpired is irrelevant), but Kavanaugh is now rather despicably trying to pose as the defender of a woman he unrepentantly humiliated...

I remember in high school the same kind of story-sharing alluding to certain girls as sluts whether they were or not. When I look at the story about Renate, it reminds me exactly the sick rumors spread about Tarpon High.

Also:

Shall we do one more lie? I know it’s getting late, and there is more that needs to be covered. But let’s talk about the Devil’s Triangle. This is common slang for a threesome between one woman and two men. Kavanaugh’s yearbook page contains the phrase, which presumably seemed amusing to sneak into print. When he was questioned about it, however, Kavanaugh replied:

WHITEHOUSE: Devil’s triangle?
KAVANAUGH: Drinking game.
WHITEHOUSE: How’s it played?
KAVANAUGH: Three glasses in a triangle.
WHITEHOUSE: And?
KAVANAUGH: You ever played quarters?
WHITEHOUSE: No (ph).
KAVANAUGH: OK. It’s a quarters game.

Senator Whitehouse (of course) then moved on. But Kavanaugh’s testimony is more significant than someone who hadn’t heard the phrase before might think. That’s because nobody seems to have heard of such a drinking game. It doesn’t exist. Kavanaugh made up a fictitious game in order to sustain his phony image as a high schooler who knew nothing about sex and therefore could never have attempted to rape a woman (or, as Ford alleges, coerce her into a threesome, sometimes called a “Devil’s triangle.”) Kavanaugh’s falsehood here was blatant, and a supporter rushed to edit the Wikipedia page for the term to fabricate the existence of such a game and pretend it had existed all along.

It's not only that Kavanaugh is lying about a Devil's Triangle - I'm an honest-to-god virgin and even I know it means a threesome - but in order to cover it up he has to admit he's a regular enough drinker when he was 17 years old to partake of drinking games. His lie about Devil's Triangles betrays his lie about never being a drunk in prep school.

Kavanaugh, so desperate to win a Supreme Court seat he has no temperament for, is lying at every conceivable moment to make himself look good against every factual evidence out there, even at odds with his own testimony. A decent county prosecutor could take him apart on the stand within minutes.

It is that simple a truth that Kavanaugh should not be a judge.