Kavanaugh II - US Supreme Court Nomination

In an earlier post I reviewed the baseless and unsubstantiated accusations leveled at Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh - US Supreme Court Nomination, Ford's Baseless Accusations. That post focused on the lack of evidence presented by the Democrats to support their vile unsubstantiated claims. I didn't delve too deeply into the Democrats lies, smears, bullying, and intimidation. Since then, I ran across an editorial that highlighted the extreme moral corruptness of the Democrats. That editorial appeared in the November/December 2018 issue of "The Philadelphia Trumpet". The Kavanaugh Hearing Reveal America's Lawless Spirit. 

Mr. Flurry, in his editorial, wrote:

"Democrats in the Senate demonized Judge Bork in 1987 because he was a constitutionalist. In 1991, they falsely accused Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual assault for the same reason. Their smears against Brett Kavanaugh are more of the same.

Democrats opposed Kavanaugh and began vilifying him from the moment his name was announced. They tried and failed to fault his judicial record. Then they smeared him personally. Three weeks after President Donald Trump nominated him, a California Democrat named Christine Blasey Ford wrote a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct at a high school party 36 years ago. Feinstein, rather than immediately informing the Senate Judiciary Committee and the fbi, waited until hearings with Kavanaugh ended. The day before the confirmation vote was to be held, she unveiled the accusations in a last-minute ambush.

Ford did not claim that Kavanaugh raped her, or even came close. Still, Democrats insisted that incident should disqualify Kavanaugh from ever serving on the Supreme Court. After a public prosecutor determined that Ford’s account was inconsistent, vague and uncorroborated by the people she said were at the party, Democrats looked for other accusers. They found three more women who accused him of sexual misconduct during high school and college, including absurd allegations of his being involved in gang rapes!

In decades of public service, this man’s moral character had never before been called into question. With zero proof that Kavanaugh was involved in any sexual assault, because of unsubstantiated accusations, Democrats demanded that his name be withdrawn. Senators and citizens insisted that everyone simply “Believe women!” They accepted everything his accusers said at face value and presumed his guilt—even though America’s entire justice system is based on presumption of innocence until proof of guilt. Democrats piled on Kavanaugh, universally treating Ford’s uncorroborated account as proof of a career-ending crime, and ripping this man apart! usa Today sports reporter Erik Brady wrote that Kavanaugh shouldn’t even coach basketball, let alone join the Supreme Court: “[C]redibly accused sex offenders should not coach youth basketball, girls or boys, without deeper investigation. Can’t we all agree on that?

It was astounding to watch the left act like strict moralists, appalled by any whiff of indecency—when they have been dragging America’s morals into the gutter for generations! Their hypocrisy is so monstrous, shameless and bold, it is shocking!"

...

"Hillary Clinton defended this viciousness in an interview with cnn. “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” she said. “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”

What a revealing statement! She says that until the left is back in power, there should be no civility in America! The left should protest, agitate, accuse, confront, scream, fight, kick—whatever it takes to reclaim power!

This woman almost became America’s president! What would have happened if she had? The radical left doesn’t control some of the biggest levers of power right now, yet it is still successfully sabotaging many aspects of American life, morally, culturally, intellectually, educationally and politically! It is astounding!"

The obvious conclusion is that for the Democrats, the ends justify the means. They will literally do anything, no matter how immoral or unethical to win.

The Illegal Immigration Crisis

The caravan of potential migrants seeking to enter the US has reached the US/Mexico border resulting in a spurt of news activity.

One major concern that I have had is that Democrats appear to act like the Borg from Star Trek. They spew only the party line no matter what. Independent thought, for Democrats, seems to be dead and gone. But there is always hope.

So I was hopeful the other day when I heard an interview between Trish Regan and Democrat Rep. Jim Himes.  Ms. Regan introduced Mr. Himes as a "moderate" Democrat from a Northern state well away from states bordering Mexico. So I thought; goody, maybe I will hear some diversity of opinion concerning illegal immigration.  Boy, was I wrong. In typical fashion he spoke of "undocumented" immigrants. Mr. Himes, as with all Democrats, refused to acknowledge that the immigrants were entering the country illegally. Mr. Himes, once again documents that the Democrats are like the Borg. Incapable of independent thinking that is divergent from Democratic talking points.

Switching to another thread now. This past Sunday there was some migrant activity near the Tijuana entry point into the US. The Washington Times and the Washington Post had two radically different takes on this rush to the border and the tossing of some tear gas canisters. The Washington Times had the picture of a bunch of men obviously moving towards the border, but no tear gas was visible. The Washington Times wrote: "The march, however, was dispersed by tear gas after some in the group tried to force their way into the U.S. The Mexican government described Sunday’s events as “acts of provocation” that were “far from helpful” for the migrants’ objectives." Note the reference to “acts of provocation”.

In contrast, the Washington Post ignored the provocation. Instead they had a picture of a mother and crying child with the sob-story caption: "A little girl from Honduras stares into the camera, her young features contorted in anguish. She’s barefoot, dusty, and clad only in a diaper and T-shirt. And she’s just had to run from clouds of choking tear gas fired across the border by U.S. agents." Nevertheless, the Washington Post is clearly seeking propaganda to generate emotional outrage

But why react to the Washington Post's obvious propaganda? The reason is that Amanda “Mandy” Ferguson Weyant was killed by an illegal immigrant on Thanksgiving day. The Washington Post has apparently ignored this story and the story of others who have been killed by illegal immigrants. So the Washington Post wants us to be concerned about this woman and her child being tear gassed while attempting to enter the US illegally, but has no concern over the emotional wreckage that illegal immigrates may generate in the US should they commit heinous illegal acts.

The Progressive Left's Inability to Accept the Results of a Popular Vote When They Lose

The progressive left maintains that it represents the people. I have always been amazed at this arrogant assertion since the people don't always vote for them. Should the people not for them, the progressive left cannot accept the reality of the people rejecting them. They whine (with great heart-wrenching anguish) that something must be wrong since the people could not possibly reject them.

The 2018 midterm election is over, the Democrats will soon assume control of the US House of Representatives. While watching the TV, a commercial came on. In that commercial the claim was made that the Congress now represents the people. What?

The Congress, when under the control of the Republicans somehow did not represent the people? It was the people who elected a Republican Congress. An unbelievable refusal by the progressive left to accept that the people could have voted for a Republican Congress in 2016.

The 2018 midterm election has also resulted in the progressive left actually making the claim, that if they didn't win; that the election was stolen. Take the case of Stacy Abrams who ran for Governor in Georgia. CNN ran a headline: Stacey Abrams says 'democracy failed' Georgia as she ends bid for governor. CNN quoted Abrams as saying:

"So let's be clear -- this is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper," she said. "As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But, my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy. Now, I can certainly bring a new case to keep this one contest alive, but I don't want to hold public office if I need to scheme my way into the post. Because the title of governor isn't nearly as important as our shared title -- voters. And that is why we fight on."

...

"Make no mistake, the former secretary of state was deliberate and intentional in his actions," Abrams said. "I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired affect on the electoral process in Georgia."

Even Hillary Clinton made the very public assertion that if the election was "fair" that Abrams would have won. The Hill had the following headline: Hillary Clinton: Stacey Abrams would've already won ‘if she'd had a fair election'. However, sanctimonious Hillary (when running for President and expecting to win) publicly declared that anyone questioning the 2016 election results would be a "threat to democracy". See my post: Hillary Clinton - The Threat to Democracy. So when Hillary believed that she would win, the election process was fair and sacred. Now that Abrams has lost, Hillary's position (and by extension, the Democrat's position) is that the voting process was corrupt and that democracy has failed. The obvious conclusion from this is that the only fair democratic elections are those where the progressive left win.

Random Casual Observations on Voter Legitmacy (2018 Midterm Election)

Since the Republicans took control of the government in 2016 the Democrats have been making sanctimonious prostrations that every vote counts and that the integrity of the voting process needs to be protected. That has continued into the 2018 midterm election. The Democrats have now regained control of the US House of Representatives.

Of course every vote counts. However, what we have seen and continue to see are the Democrats aggressively pushing an agenda that creates opportunities for fraudulent voting. Whether fraudulent voting is a problem or not, is not known. However, my point is that the Democrats (despite their smug language) really do not want voters to be appropriately vetted and the voting process to have verifiable integrity.

1. Democrats routinely use the court system to stop the clean-up of the voter registration roles. The resulting inability to clean-up the voter registration roles makes the integrity of the voting process questionable.
2. Democrats do not want the citizenship of the potential voter to be questioned. Since posting point #2, I ran across an article where the Democrats are in the process of suing the Department of Commerce to have a proposed Census question on citizenship status deleted from the Census, even-though this question has histrionically appeared on numerous Census questionnaires. Deleting this question would obscure who is and who is not a citizen. The elimination of this question potentially hides citizenship status so that uncovering the illegal voting of non-citizens would be difficult and would reduce the integrity of the election process.
3. Democrats are opposed to voter ID requirements which obviously they should be in favor of based on their pious claim that every (legitimate) vote should count. If the potential voter is not properly vetted, the integrity of the voting results are suspect.
4. Democrats push for same day registration and voting, which makes voter verification difficult.
5. Democrats push for long periods of early voting and liberal policies concerning absentee ballots. On the surface this sounds great. After all everyone is being given an opportunity for easy voting. A commendable goal.

However, with the 2018 midterm election there were a couple of Republicans who "won" based on in-person voting at a brick and mortar voting location. They were even declared the winners by the media when the poles closed. Later, these Republicans eventually lost when the early voting, provisional ballots, and absentee ballots were counted.

Without going into extensive why-did-it-happen research, it would seem logical  that the early voting and absentee ballots results should match the percentage results derived from in-person voting. It didn't. So one has to question why? I am not going to get into the "why" question, that would make for a lot of research. The quick easy (non-conspiracy) answer is that Democrats won in this manner because they had the better get-out-the-vote organization. Consequently, the Republican need to learn from this and to adapt.

Inappropriate Judicial Activism

Hurricane Micheal is relentless bearing down on Florida's Panhandle. A weather disaster is about to happen. The Washington Times reports: "Fla. Dems sue to extend voter registration period as hurricane approaches". Sounds reasonable on the surface considering the disruptions that hurricanes can create. But it is not.

The role of the court system is to interpret the law, not to modify it. It is up to the Florida State Legislature and the Governor to establish the voter registration period. Considering the adverse effects of the hurricane to disrupt the voting process, the Florida State Legislature and the Governor need to have an emergency session to extend the voting registration period. It is unknown if a Florida court has or has not acted to extend the voter registration period. Judicial activism needs to be extinguished. 

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Update 10/11/2018: According to CBS news: "Judge rejects Florida voter registration extension - A federal judge rejected a push to extend Florida's voter registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael, saying there's "no justification" to do so. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled late Wednesday against the Florida Democratic Party, which called the Republican-led response to the storm's disruption confusing and inadequate."

 

Kavanaugh - US Supreme Court Nomination, Ford's Baseless Accusations - Follow the Money

The Washington Times recently published the following story: "George Soros-funded network drives anti-Kavanaugh activism". In reading that story it occurred to me that the Democratic Party has numerous resources available to it, such as contributors, money, private investigators, lawyers, etc. These resources could have been put to use by the Democratic Party to find "dirt" on Kavanaugh. Given the significance of the Kavanaugh nomination and the wild cacophony of the Democrats, it would seem to be a no-brainer that all these available resources would have been put to use.  Whether they actually were or were not put to use is not known by by me. Nevertheless, the logical assumption would be that the Democrats would have put these resources to use and were unable to find any "dirt" that would otherwise corroborated Ford's (false) accusations. Since the Democrats were unable to find "dirt" it would appear that Ford's allegations were false. (Of-course the absence of corroborating data does not mean that there couldn't be some proof somewhere.)

Moreover, the Democrats have whined and howled in indignation that the FBI and/or Senate Judiciary Committee investigations were incomplete. Do not be fooled. Soros and the Democrats, as explained above, had the time and resources to find the supposed "dirt" on their own, if any existed. They failed.

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Since posting, another thought came to mind. This post focused on the Democrats inability to find supposed corroborating evidence that would add legitimacy to Ford's unsupported accusations even though they had that capability. Since this kerfuffle exploded onto the national stage, the media has also become involved in investigating the legitimacy to Ford's unsupported accusations. So far, to my knowledge, they have also not uncovered any new "dirt". Given the media's extensive capabilities in digging up "dirt" and their inability to do so, this would add further credence that Ford's allegations lacked substance.

Android Casting Observations

A few months back we cut our cable TV and subscribed to HULU. Recently, we took a trip were we were able to use the casting feature of Hulu and our Android tablet on a variety of TVs. The short answer, it works.

Observation #1
 When the Android tablet is shutdown, casting to the TV still continued. The obvious implication is that the router transmits directly to the TV and bypasses the tablet. Good news to a degree.

Though casting continued continued with the tablet shutdown, it seemed that after a while the router would "lock-up". Especially, the next morning after casting on all night.  Getting the TV functional again simply required rebooting the TV.

There was one TV where casting, for unknown reasons, could not be implemented for a time span of approximately one hour. Very frustrating. After a while and doing some experimentation we simply accepted this "feature" (flaw).


Observation #2 
When casting HULU from the Android tablet to the TV, casting at times was flakey. It seems that this degradation was due, in part, to multi-tasking with the tablet. This was resolved by closing the HULU application on the tablet. This allows the user to use other applications on the tablet.

Of course closing the HULU application on the tablet prevents switching to a different channel (program). This was resolved by temporarily reactivating the HULU application on the tablet. After switching to the new channel (program), the HULU application was shut down.


Observation #3 
The HULU applications offers the opportunity to "stop casting".  When done with casting from the tablet to the TV, it seems that taking the "stop casting" option is the appropriate action. As noted in Observation #1 above, simply turning off the tablet does not stop casting. If casting is allowed to continue, after a period of time the router tends to "lock-up" effectively degrading casting.  Taking the proactive step of stopping casting when done resolved this issue.

Mysterious Ghost Printer - Printer Rejecting Jobs

Back in 2017 a mysterious ghost printer appeared, with the caption that it was rejecting jobs. See the image below.

After much research, I found the solution for getting rid of the ghost printer in the following post: How do I get rid of a ghost printer in Gnome?

The reason for publishing this post is that a new version of "avahi" was released this April (2018) which overwrote the "/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf" file. This recreated the problem of the ghost printer. Fortunately, I remembered how to resolve this problem. But tweaks, after a period of time has elapsed, are easily forgotten.  Finding the solution again can be frustrating and time consuming. Hence this post. Below is my addition to "/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf" file as recommended in the post cited above to eliminate the ghost printer.

#----------------
#modified 6/27/2017
#https://askubuntu.com/questions/676863/how-do-i-get-rid-of-a-ghost-printer-in-gnome/70021
#restart service with; sudo service avahi-daemon restart
enable-dbus=no
#----------------

Note: Prior to overwriting the "/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf", the "avahi" upgrade does ask for permission. I let it overwrite the file as I wanted to see if the new version may have resolved the ghost printer problem. It did not.

Also when adding tweaks, I tend to add comments that identify where the tweak originated, other useful comments, and the date it was inserted.

I am also using Ubuntu 16.04, so I don't know if this ghost printer problem exists in other Linux distributions.

Update (March 32, 2020): Turned out there were unintended negative consequences with the solution posted above. I accidentally discovered that when I happened to examine the /var/log/syslog file.  That file showed two errors related to avahi: "avahi-daemon.service: Failed with result 'timeout'." and "Failed to start Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack.". Removing the line "enable-dbus=no" eliminated those error messages, but the ghost printer, as shown at the top of this page, has returned. I have elected to "live" with the ghost printer over having error messages in the /var/log/syslog file. Sometimes you can't win.

Update (July 7, 2020):  Turned out that a modification to the /etc/samba/smb.conf filte resolved the ghost printer issue.  Please see this post by altair4: Samba and Mint20, for a full explanation. The short version:

[1] Override the default setting of Samba and reinstate SMB1 ( Samba calls it NT1 ) on all your Linux machines.

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and right under the workgroup = WORKGROUP line add these:

Code: Select all

client min protocol = NT1
server min protocol = NT1

Then reboot your box.

The Facebook Kerfuffle, A Huge "Nothing Burger"

Recently the eyes of the world fell like an exploding nova on Facebook concerning its privacy policies and the release of private information. This has led to a wave of hysteria concerning how private companies acquire and use information that is ostensibility private. What is surprising is that the collection and selling of private information has been going on for years, and until now has been virtually ignored. Over the years I have posted my concerns. I have several pre-Facebook kerfuffle posts concerning how companies abuse privacy and sell your personal data. So why has this seemingly neglected issue of privacy all of a sudden exploded into a hysterical cause célèbre?

When a relatively unknown issue explodes into the public consciousness with extreme outrage and vehemence, there is usually a trigger. A black swan event occurred arising out of the use of Facebook's data by Cambridge Analytica by  the Trump campaign.

Time for the tinfoil hat. A large percentage of the media and Democrats are vehemently, to the point of irrationality, anti-Trump and suffer from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).  The media and the Democrats upon hearing of the apparent data abuse by Cambridge Analytica began salivating at how this disclosure could be used to bring an end to the Trump administration. So the media and Democratic war drums began to beat ever more loudly and intensely.

As an ironic aside and as an example of duplicity. When the Obama campaign used social media to enhance its campaign, this was considered "innovative", "brilliant", etc. The Trump campaign, seeing the success of the Obama campaign, copied the use of social media. Now the use of social media information is considered "criminal", "a violation of privacy", etc.

The Facebook kerfuffle finally highlights the abuse of personal information by private companies into the public's consciousness. But that is not is not the real reason for why this issue is being discussed. It is an incidental tool being used by some to manipulate the mob (public) and to bring down the Trump administration. As such this kerfuffle is a "nothing burger".  Nevertheless, for now the issue is similar to exploding nova were the incidental public outrage could result in private companies implementing better privacy policies.

Perhaps too soon to tell. A lot will depend on whether a new cause célèbre will soon be hatched to replace the transient Facebook kerfuffle. In any event, private companies will hopefully view this "nova" as a wake-up call and revise their privacy policies to be more cognizant of their customers rights.