Still Think There’s No Difference Between the Two Parties?

The popular mantra for quite some time was that there was really no difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party so there was no point in voting.

Does anyone still honestly believe this is true?

As a conservative, it has felt that way at times in the past. There have been a number of times I have been totally exasperated by what I’ve seen done (or, usually, not done) by the people I voted for.

But, wow. The past few weeks have clearly shown us that the two parties have taken very different paths. At this point in history, voting for one is not remotely like voting for the other.

I’m a conservative. I believe in the value of the U.S. Constitution. I believe in the rule of law. I am guided by reason and truth. Although I do rely on my intuition at times, that intuition must work within the framework of truth and reason. I do believe in the importance of compassion, but that compassion must be within the framework of truth and reason.

I voted for Ben Carson in the primary and then Trump in the general election. I voted for Trump for two reasons. One, the thought of Hillary Clinton becoming President was absolutely abhorrent to me. Did I have reservations about Trump? Absolutely. But Clinton was a clearly known entity that was simply not an option. I was willing to take a chance on Trump.

The second reason was the Supreme Court. I had many conservative and Republican friends who refused to vote for Trump. They voted third party or simply didn’t vote for a President. I couldn’t do that. I believed that the Supreme Court was too important to take a chance on it. I knew Clinton would fill the court with justices I did not agree with. I was much more willing to take a chance that Trump would follow through and nominate people to the Supreme Court off the list that he released. I am thankful he has followed through on that promise.

While I think this entire Kavanaugh confirmation process has been incredibly distressful, I do believe our country will be better in the long run for it. We needed a tipping point to show people exactly where this country is and where it is headed if left unchecked. Let me explain that by sharing some thoughts and links after following this very closely for the past two weeks. This is not the most organized thing I’ve ever written, but some thoughts that all kind of relate. I’d love to hear what you think as well.

I’m trying to be as factual as possible in this follow-up to my previous post, but I’m not going to include links to everything I write here in the interest of time. But if you think something sounds like I’m exaggerating and you want to see proof (and you do a Google and YouTube search FIRST and can’t find it), ask me in a comment and I’ll find the link.

(I’m also going to write about the #metoo movement, feminism, #believeallsurvivors, etc. and why I am thoroughly SICK of them thinking they speak for all women in another post. There’s just too much to do in one post.)

Just as the election of President Trump has shown us the great levels of corruption in the government, the Kavanaugh confirmation process has clearly shown us what has overtaken the Democratic Party.

I think all conservatives, Republicans, and any Independents and Democrats who are even remotely reasonable have to look at this entire episode and realize that they do NOT want this current version of the Democratic Party in any position of power. The Democrats have been taken over by people who have clearly shown they will destroy anyone who gets in their way. I think this entire episode has made conservatives and Republicans who can’t stand Trump realize that there are truly worse things than Trump. Much, much worse. Bigly worse.

There are Democratic leaders openly calling for people to harass members of Congress, members of the President’s staff, etc. anywhere and at any time. To be relentless and never give them a moment’s peace. People who work in government (such as Ted Cruz and Sarah Sanders) can’t even go out for dinner with their loved ones without being run out of restaurants by angry (paid) mobs. Is that what we want in our country?

We had U.S. Senators from the Democratic Party saying they believed Professor Ford without hearing ANY testimony. Think about that. They believed her because she “had her truth to tell” and she was necessary for what they were trying to do (destroy Kavanaugh and keep that seat open). These are Democratic Senators who overwhelmingly have degrees in LAW.

• Patrick Joseph Leahy – J.D. from Georgetown
• Dick Durbin – J.D. from Georgetown
• Sheldon Whitehouse – J.D. from University of Virginia, former Attorney General of Rhode Island
• Amy Jean Klobuchar – J.D. from University of Chicago Law School
• Christopher Andrew Coons – J.D. from Yale
• Richard Blumenthal – J.D. from Yale
• Mazie Hirono – J.D. from Georgetown
• Cory Anthony Booker – J.D. from Yale
• Kamala Harris – J.D. University of California

The fundamentals of the law meant nothing to them. They said they believed Professor Ford before she said a word. Before they heard ANY testimony on EITHER SIDE. Is this what our judicial system is? They wanted Kavanaugh to prove himself innocent which is the exact opposite of our entire judicial system. And these Senators KNOW that. Or at least they should based on their degrees. But it did not matter. They dug out his HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOKS in order to discredit him.

How many of us would want who we were in high school to define us in our forties and fifties?

The Left thought that they could get Trump to drop Kavanaugh. The Left thought they could shame Kavanaugh into dropping out by bringing out the most heinous and ridiculous accusations they could come up with. In the previous post I wrote about all of this (I’m Exhausted and Bored and Angry and Stressed and Going There), I shared in the comments that the Democrats were stating among themselves they could not believe Kavanaugh hadn’t dropped already. They had every reason to think this would happen since Republicans tend to fold at the first sign of trouble. But they did not realize that they were dealing with two men who are cut of a different cloth. Trump doesn’t quit and he’s not going to allow himself to be bullied. And Kavanaugh is a Constitutionalist. For that reason, he would never drop out. I never seriously thought he would. He knew it wasn’t just about him. He knew there were much bigger truths at stake beyond his own confirmation. The entire rule of law in our country was up for grabs with this one event.

Something finally slapped the Republicans upside the head and made them realize that their colleagues on the other side of the room were not acting in an honorable or honest way. I don’t know when the lightbulb finally went on for the rest of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but I am pretty sure I can pinpoint when it happened to Lindsey Graham. During Ford’s testimony they took a break. Reporters surrounded Graham in the hallway and he was clearly upset by something he had just learned regarding Ford and Feinstein’s office. It was a short time later he went on his epic takedown of the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. It’s so epic I have to put the video here again. This was Tipping Point 1.

It quickly became evident that Senator Kennedy (LA) and Senator Grassley (Chairman, IA) in particular had seen and heard enough to go full speed ahead on the offensive. I was impressed by the way Senator Grassley handled the entire situation. Senator McConnell also seemed energized during the last week. It was heartening to see them finally go on the offensive and stand up to the bullies and mob because that is what they were dealing with.

The second tipping point that might have quite literally saved the Republic (at least for now) was Senator Susan Collins’ speech on the Senate floor. When she said she would make a statement at 3:00, I was expecting a statement, not an eloquent, carefully thought out explanation. Just as Lindsey Graham changed the trajectory of the Ford/Kavanaugh hearing with his blistering attack on the Senate Judiciary Democrats, Susan Collins changed the tone of the confirmation vote.

That’s what a Senator should look like and sound like. I don’t agree with her on everything, but I respect that she thoughtfully, thoroughly, and powerfully explained her line of thinking. Senators are supposed to persuade and lay out thoughtful arguments, not grandstand and pander to the worst portions of their voting base.

I’m sure the importance of this speech was lost on the unthinking mobs that sent coat hangers to her office and sent her a three foot… Okay, I know this will all sound so unbelievable I have to provide the details and link because someone will ask.

Keeping up with the unhinged tempo of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats have resorted to inundating the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who is an essential vote in Kavanaugh’s potential confirmation, with threatening voicemails and vulgar props, such as a three-foot penis-shaped cutout.

Leftist and abortion enthusiasts against the confirmation of Kavanaugh have ramped up efforts to try to persuade Collins to oppose the qualified judge, including crowdfunding over a million dollars and threatening to give the money to the campaign of a Collins opponent in 2020. Now the threatening voicemails and vulgar demonstrations are pouring in, too.

The Bangor Daily News confirmed on Friday that anti-Kavanaugh callers spewed “profanities and threats” in the voicemails provided by Collins’ office.

“When I have a caller who tells a young staffer in my office who does case work that he hopes she is raped and impregnated, we have really reached a new low,” Collins told the paper on Friday.

According to The Washington Post, the senator’s office received a “three-foot-long cardboard cutout of male genitalia, accompanied by a profanity” on Thursday, staffers said.

Sen. Orin Hatch (R-UT) slammed the “abhorrent behavior” from the Left on Twitter: “The left’s campaign to pressure Senator Collins has gone from threats of sexual violence against young staffers to actual sexual harassment. This is abhorrent behavior and (again) deserves to be roundly condemned from the right and left,” he wrote.

This is what we’re dealing with in this country, folks. This is what is driving the Democratic Party now. The mobs railing against sexual harassment and shouting that we must believe ALL women, were threatening sexual violence against Senator Collins’ staff and sending disgusting sexual threats.

THINK ABOUT THAT.

You watch this speech and tell me if she sounds like someone who is going to be intimidated into making decisions based on hangers, people sexually harassing her staff, and crowdsourcing accounts raised to support her as-yet-unnamed opponent in 2020. (For what it’s worth, I’m sure the Republican National Committee will make sure she has all the funds she needs after what she did here.)

https://twitter.com/CarlPaulus/status/1048296119271342082

The Democratic Party is also being driven by people who clearly hate white men and now even hate white women who voted for Trump. This woman is the organizer of the Women’s March (the one with the pink pussy hats). Here is her tweet regarding Susan Collins which is just a small portion of the complete meltdown of the Left due to what Collins decided.

Senator Susan Collins is the mother & grandmother of white women in America who gave us a Donald Trump presidency. The 53%.

She is a disgrace & her legacy will be that she was a traitor to women and marginalized communities. History will not treat her kindly. #CancelKanavaugh

— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) October 5, 2018

And how about this response to her speech?

This is who @SenatorCollins is: pic.twitter.com/U9klDNzeWr

— Women's March (@womensmarch) October 5, 2018

How about this?

Never let Collins have a moment of peace in public again.

— kat calvin (@KatCalvinLA) October 5, 2018

Does anyone honestly think that people who would tweet things like this can follow the thoughtful reasoning of Senator Collins’ speech that references law, precedence, the Constitution, etc.?

Someone calls them out on it.

Beyond parody. pic.twitter.com/KaI6wvyW4R

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) October 5, 2018

Those are the people mobbing and harassing members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Those are the people marching. I don’t for a second believe that moderate Democrats or Independents agree with this. But that is what is driving the Democratic Party now. I truly think all this harassment and the insertion of people like the gang rape accusation lawyer Michael Avenatti did the Republicans a HUGE favor. And note that the Democratic leadership never denounced any of this. If anything, they fanned the flame and kept it going.

Here’s another stellar moment that revealed how the Democratic Party feels about men. Senator Hirono (HI) on the role of men.

There are so many clips of people on the Left speaking about the evils of white men that I can’t even begin to put them all here. They make me so angry. It’s disgusting.

There was something in that supplemental FBI investigation that shook Senator Feinstein to her core. She was pushing for everything to be public and then said that it should not be released. (Senator Grassley is following precedence set by Democrats in not releasing it.) When Feinstien did a press conference with Senator Schumer after they read the report in the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), she looked distressed and not just about losing the vote. She looked shaken. I think this entire Professor Ford and Kavanaugh smear job thing is WAY bigger than we know at the moment.

Bottom line? The Democrats WAY overplayed their hand and got burned by people who stood up to them and their mobs.

That’s it for now. I’ll have to save thoughts about the blatantly biased media coverage for another post. Here are a few more links to things I thought were especially profound in pointing out what has happened to our culture and some stuff I thought was funny at the very end.

For Once, I’m Grateful for Trump from The New York Times

This is a thought-provoking point, but they are all worth reading.

For the first time since Donald Trump entered the political fray, I find myself grateful that he’s in it. I’m reluctant to admit it and astonished to say it, especially since the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford in his ugly and gratuitous way at a rally on Tuesday. Perhaps it’s worth unpacking this admission for those who might be equally astonished to read it.

I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I’m grateful because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life, and never more so than in the face of sly moral bullying. I’m grateful because he’s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.

A few moments have crystallized my view over the past few days.

The first moment was a remark by a friend. “I’d rather be accused of murder,” he said, “than of sexual assault.” I feel the same way. One can think of excuses for killing a man; none for assaulting a woman. But if that’s true, so is this: Falsely accusing a person of sexual assault is nearly as despicable as sexual assault itself. It inflicts psychic, familial, reputational and professional harms that can last a lifetime. This is nothing to sneer at.

Rifts Break Open at Facebook Over Kavanaugh Hearing from The New York Times

Facebook is beyond words. This is just the beginning. You really have to read the entire article. It’s appalling. They aren’t just friends. They were in each other’s weddings.

“I want to apologize,” the Facebook executive wrote last Friday in a note to staff. “I recognize this moment is a deeply painful one — internally and externally.”

The apology came from Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy. A day earlier, Mr. Kaplan had sat behind his friend, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, when the judge testified in Congress about allegations he had sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford in high school. Mr. Kaplan’s surprise appearance prompted anger and shock among many Facebook employees, some of whom said they took his action as a tacit show of support for Judge Kavanaugh — as if it were an endorsement from Facebook itself.

The unrest quickly spilled over onto Facebook’s internal message boards, where hundreds of workers have since posted about their concerns, according to current and former employees. To quell the hubbub, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, last Friday explained in a widely attended staff meeting that Mr. Kaplan was a close friend of Judge Kavanaugh’s and had broken no company rules, these people said.

Yet the disquiet within the company has not subsided. This week, Facebook employees kept flooding internal forums with comments about Mr. Kaplan’s appearance at the hearing. In a post on Wednesday, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive, appeared to dismiss the concerns when he wrote to employees that “it is your responsibility to choose a path, not that of the company you work for.” Facebook plans to hold another staff meeting on Friday to contain the damage, said the current and former employees.

Friend of Dr. Ford Felt Pressure to Revisit Statement from The Wall Street Journal

It’s called witness tampering. It’s illegal. This needs to be dug into by the Senate Judiciary Committee and whoever else has the power to do so. This story is not over. I’m more and more convinced that this is a WAY bigger set-up by the Left than some random professor coming forward to “share her truth” about a guy from high school. Reference the last few comments I shared on the previous post about Ford’s ex-boyfriend who made a statement. The woman he mentioned that Ford coached about polygraphs is the same woman who pressured Leland Keyser about changing her testimony.

A friend of Christine Blasey Ford told FBI investigators that she felt pressured by Dr. Ford’s allies to revisit her initial statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh, which she later updated to say that she believed but couldn’t corroborate Dr. Ford’s account, according to people familiar with the matter.

Okay, I have to have a little bit of fun at the end because I have followed this entire thing pretty closely and there haven’t been many “fun” moments in the past two weeks. Lindsey Graham has given us a couple of spectacular moments in the past week. He’s now officially known in the media as Lindsey Graham 2.0.

This guy took a video and pulled this shot from it. As soon as I saw it, I told David it was going to be a big meme.

I WITNESSED BASED LINDSEY GRAHAM IRL

Graham was walking to his car. Protesters followed him screaming that they would remove him from office.

Graham spins around & says: “Well, please move to South Carolina."

Then looks back at me & smiles.

Cryinghttps://t.co/3LuzaR6Adh pic.twitter.com/J8mI2X8b2u

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 5, 2018

The meme

I title this masterpiece:

“The Ownership Of The Lib” pic.twitter.com/0rZFOC5Vei

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 5, 2018

This is my favorite.

You can see a bunch of them here.

Wild.

People are sending me photo of my @LindseyGrahamSC pic on the back of their iPhones, Apple watches, framed in their offices & art galleries (i know its photoshopped but still amazing).

I'VE GOTTEN HUNDREDS.

SEND MORE

ps

Dammit I love the internet. pic.twitter.com/71zBJ9hNHY

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 6, 2018