Time To Smear Kavanaugh's Good Name...

[Starlight]

The odds of a fetus becoming a fully functional person are overwhelmingly strong.

Eh? Depends exactly where you are counting from, but if you are counting from fertilization, i.e. sperm meets egg, then there is about a slightly higher than 2/3rd chance of "the new human being" naturally dying rather than developing successfully and being born.

By the time the fetus has developed to the stage where the woman realizes she is pregnant, the subsequent miscarriage rate is down around 10-20%.

Destroying it because of its current condition is, in principle, no different than pulling life support on someone with a 99% chance to recover.

...so I think that 99% number owes more to your imagination than reality.

[rogue06]

While conservatives appear to be willfully ignoring the over a dozen different instances of Kavanaugh perjuring himself during his senate testimony, with false answers ranging from the meaning of terms in his yearbook, to his levels of drinking during college, to whether he had watched Dr Ford's testimony, it's now coming out that there's physical evidence of one of the instances of perjury.

The Washington Post (hardly a conservative source in spite of your imaginings) has debunked most of those so-called instances of perjury awarding the claims multiple Pinocchios

Kavanaugh claimed during the hearings that the first time he heard of the allegations of Deborah Ramirez were after they allegations became public through The New Yorker article. Yet one of Kavanaugh's friends has provided the texts Kavanaugh sent him prior to that trying to co-ordinate their response to the accusation.

It was through the New Yorker that Kavanaugh heard about Ramirez's claim since they were going around asking some of his friends about it. And horror of horrors the left is now up in arms that he reacted to it.

And much like Ford, the witnesses Ramirez cited to the supposed event all dispute it and as been noted if it actually took place nearly everyone would have heard about it and yet nobody can be found who did. These were among the reason that both the New York Times and New York Post passed on the story as not credible when it was offered to them.

[rogue06]

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Moderated By: rogue06

We (and I include myself) are going after each other at a personal level, Christian v. Christian, rather than discussing the evidence. This is wrong plain and simple and we need to stop.

***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publicly complain or whine, please take it to the Padded Room unless told otherwise.

[Mountain Man]

I haven't kept up with this thread at all, but I actually oppose his confirmation now when I had previously seen it as a slam dunk. I don't see any evidence for any of the sexual offense allegations, but it seems clear that he gave inaccurate testimony about the vulgar terms used in his yearbook. A number of his contemporaries have come out and explained what the terms actually do mean. The sad thing is none of this matters. I don't care at all what was in his high school yearbook. Ted Cruz's yearbook alluded to pornography, and while some liberals clubbed him with it, it doesn't affect who he is now and I don't care about it. However, testifying falsely is perjury, no matter how inconsequential it is, and that is completely disqualifying for SCOTUS.

What makes you certain it's not his contemporaries who are lying? As we've seen, those on the left are willing to do and say anything to stop this confirmation.

[Mountain Man]

And now Kamala Harris is presenting an anonymous letter with no details accusing Kavanaugh and an unnamed friend of repeatedly raping a "Jane Doe" in the backseat of a car. The letter claims that "a group of white men, powerful senators" would come after the accuser if she revealed her identity.

It's unbelievable. Literally.

https://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...ne-doe-in-car/

I really hope nobody here is ever the victim of such malicious smears. This has to be taking its toll on Kavanaugh and his family, but the Democrats obviously don't give a crap about that. Anything is fair game to them as long as they can maintain the status quo on the Supreme Court.

[Alsharad]

It's kind of hard to take your 'logic' seriously when you exclude the possibility that Feinstein might have various different issues with all the possible outcomes and be trying to operate in a space where she's not thrilled with any of the options.

These are all facts that she has admitted. The conclusion logically follows from the facts. If you do not like it, then dispute the facts or find a problem with the validity of the logic (it's all modus ponens, which is pretty easy to dismantle).

She can simultaneously not want a sexual assaulter sitting on SCOTUS, want to respect Dr Ford's request for privacy and to not be a public figure, have no proof that Dr Ford's accusations are true or false, and know the political process well enough to know that even Dr Ford testifying credibly might not change the outcome as to whether Republicans vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

Feinstein is / was not operating in an environment where she personally can decide whether or not Kavanaugh is confirmed. So your logic about her options is kind of worthless.

Not really. Without this happening, a party-line vote would have moved him out of committee and then confirmed him to SCOTUS.

The choice that she personally had was of how best to proceed when a constituent brought to her an unsubstantiated allegation but was not willing to go public with it. Feinstein and her staff apparently choose to honor Dr Ford's request to not go public with it and kept the allegation to themselves (reporter Ryan Grimm who ran the story confirms his source for the story wasn't Feinstein or her staff). Now we can reasonably debate which is the better course for someone like Feinstein in that circumstance: To honor the complainant's request to not make her a public figure, with the result that the allegation doesn't end up getting fully aired and the accused ends up getting confirmed; or to air the complaint with the result that the complainant receives death threats and she and her family have to flee their house and hire private security and she has to give a gruelling public testimony in front of the world and have her credibility questioned by everyone, and the accused is reasonably likely to end up getting confirmed by the Republican Senators anyway. Neither of those options is great. You can argue she chose the wrong one and that you would have chosen the other, but I think she was between a rock and a hard place... and I say that as someone who doesn't like Feinstein and who still hopes she gets voted out this November.

Like I said, I am trying to be even handed in this. I would not want to be in Feinstein's shoes. I agree that it was a tough call no matter what. I don't like her either, but don't think that she was really given a fair deal to begin with. Dr. Ford put her in a bad position. However, the facts still remain that she withheld the letter (the reasons don't matter at this point in the argument) and took no action (even to verify the claim). The logical conclusion is that she was at least willing to let someone guilty of sexual assault to ascend to the SCOTUS.

Now, she may have reasons that justify her decision. She may have not been able to move forward without bringing Ford into the limelight. She may have wanted to hold this for political reasons. She may have just not known what to do with it. These might be reasonable justifications or they may not, but no one is even asking her that I am aware of.

[Alsharad]

Eh? Depends exactly where you are counting from, but if you are counting from fertilization, i.e. sperm meets egg, then there is about a slightly higher than 2/3rd chance of "the new human being" naturally dying rather than developing successfully and being born.

By the time the fetus has developed to the stage where the woman realizes she is pregnant, the subsequent miscarriage rate is down around 10-20%.

...so I think that 99% number owes more to your imagination than reality.

Have a little charity. I am sure that you understood the point. Let's take your highest miscarriage rate (20%) and the argument still holds. If you pulled the plug on a comatose patient that had a confirmed 80% chance of survival, I don't think that anyone would consider that moral. If you did it because of selfish reasons, then it would be even more morally circumspect.

And by your silence on the matter, am I correct that you concede that it is a human at the fetal stage of development? Calling it a fetus is a shortcut, but to equivocate that it is somehow NOT human is false. There is no point where a fetus becomes a human. Fetus is a stage of development for humans, nothing more and nothing less.

[Starlight]

The logical conclusion is that she was at least willing to let someone guilty of sexual assault to ascend to the SCOTUS.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that Feinstein doesn't control the nomination process, the Republicans do. Feinstein might have been unwilling to let Brett Kavanaugh ascend to SCOTUS prior to finding out he was a possible sexual assaulter. She might have been even more unwilling once she believed he'd committed sexual assault. She can, and has, voted against his confirmation in the committee, and will presumably do so again once this reaches the senate floor.

Your concern would only be relevant if she had real power in the situation, like, say Chuck Grassley does. He, and his fellow Republican Senators are actually the ones who have to decide if they are willing to let someone that most of the country believes has committed sexual assault sit on SCOTUS. They are the ones who will make this decision, so your logic should be applied to them, not Feinstein who has voted against Kavanaugh. If you think Feinstein is at fault for sitting on an allegation of sexual assault due to the request for confidentiality, how much more are the Republicans at fault now that the allegation has been publicly aired and the accuser acknowledged as a credible witness (even by the Fox News hosts) at fault for their apparent willingness to put a sexual assaulter onto SCOTUS?

Given Trump's own video-taped admission of sexual assault that was released prior to his election, if the Republicans vote to put yet another sexual assault accused onto SCOTUS (in addition to Clarence Thomas) they will simply cement their reputation as the party of sexual assault in the eyes of the nation, and be openly admitting they are willing to put sexual assaulters on SCOTUS just as they are willing to put them into the Presidency.

[firstfloor]

It is a woman's right to have a safe way to murder her own unborn child!

Women should have a safe, inexpensive and convenient way to do three things: prevent pregnancies, detect pregnancies and delete pregnancies. They are entitled to our support in these matters because “it takes two to tango”.

Calling it murder is the summit of extremely bad manners.

Think couples, not women, and you might begin to see the issue clearly.

[Starlight]

Have a little charity. I am sure that you understood the point.

Do you understand the point that the vast majority of fertilized eggs naturally die and fail to survive to birth? Even the highest rates of voluntary human abortion in any country come nowhere near to the number of embryos that 'nature' / 'God' / the natural processes kill off.

If you pulled the plug on a comatose patient that had a confirmed 80% chance of survival, I don't think that anyone would consider that moral.

Sure, but I don't see any moral equivalency whatsoever between a comatose adult and a developing embryo. One has higher brain functions, personal relationships, memories, hopes and dreams and as-yet unfulfilled goals, the other is just a bunch of chemicals that is itself minimally different to any of the cells in my own body in the process of developing into something different.

And by your silence on the matter, am I correct that you concede that it is a human at the fetal stage of development? Calling it a fetus is a shortcut, but to equivocate that it is somehow NOT human is false. There is no point where a fetus becomes a human.

This looks like bizarre linguistic semantic games to me. Given your other posts you seem to quite like logic... my advice as someone who has a degree in philosophy is that you should try not to get tangled up in word-games. Words are fuzzy things which often don't have strict lines around the edges of their meanings, and are often thought about by people in terms of the level of similarity to exemplars.

Usually when people use the word "human" they are thinking of a capable individual, and if asked questions such as "can humans walk?", "can humans reason?", "can humans talk?" would answer "yes". But if you start to push at the edges of the definition and say "what about a very very old person who's super-senile and can't walk or reason are they human?" then the answer gets into the "sort-of... um... they're biologically a human individual but they lack the functions we typically associate with humans etc" type territory, where whether the case falls inside or outside of the fuzzy edge of the definition is more a question of what exactly you're trying to achieve with the category. A fetus is a similar case - they have many of the attributes we associate with humans and equally lack many of the attributes we associate with humans. Whether we would want to label them humans or not is more a function of what we are aiming to achieve with our categorization scheme than anything else. Would you call a cell in my body a human? It's a lifeform that has human DNA and a lot more in common with an embryo than the embryo has in common with me.

I get quickly bored of the "well if I can call a fetus a human, then it must be immoral to kill it" brigade. I don't think the morality of an action is particularly related to whether you feel like it's appropriate or not to stick the label "human" on something. And I get rapidly bored of what I usually view as disingenuous and/or misguided word games. In my view morality is related to the level of mental functions, personal relationships, and goals for the future, not to the biology. Those things apply regardless of whether the being in consideration is a dog, a human, or an alien.

[Mountain Man]

Women should have a safe, inexpensive and convenient way to do three things: prevent pregnancies, detect pregnancies and delete pregnancies. They are entitled to our support in these matters because “it takes two to tango”.

Calling it murder is the summit of extremely bad manners.

If it is "bad manners" to call evil what it is then let me be known as a slovenly boor on that account.

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"

[oxmixmudd]

Does the unborn child have rights that ought to be protected, as much as those of humans already born? Obviously there are rights on both sides. Roe v Wade arrived at the correct balance in my view.


“The Court divided the pregnancy period into three trimesters. During the first trimester, the decision to terminate the pregnancy was solely at the discretion of the woman. After the first trimester, the state could “regulate procedure.” During the second trimester, the state could regulate (but not outlaw) abortions in the interests of the mother’s health. After the second trimester, the fetus became viable, and the state could regulate or outlaw abortions in the interest of the potential life except when necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother”. Cornell Law School.

Ah - but that is not how it is implemented. And that is not what is demanded by those advocating for pro-choice. Primarily, any limitations on abortion imposed by states are fought tooth and nail, with the goal being to be free from any restraint on killing the baby, even by the most grotesque means possible, right up until mere hours before it would be born. This is the only acceptable answer to those fighting for 'women's rights' in this area.

I understand there can be debate over when the growing child reaches a state where its rights demand an imposition on the mother's rights. But without the recognition and enforcement that at some point that happens, that at some point this is another human life with its own rights, it is legalized murder at the convenience of the mother. Indeed, what hypocrisy is it for a mother, 1 week before birth, to be able to have the same baby killed by a doctor that 1 week after birth would put her in jail for years as a murder/infanticide? There is no significant physical difference between the two babies in terms of viability or any other measure of humanity we might use to define it. The doctor can take the baby out 1 week before just as easily and now its a person that can't be murdered.

It's really a very sad statement of who we are as a people that we don't step up to this hypocrisy and change how we deal with this situation. We feed our teens images and stories of sexuality and passion day in and day out. Everything they hear and see says go for it. Porn is everywhere rampant to feed those appetites day in and day out without any real or enforcable limits. Movies that glorify the very same lifestyle that Kavanaugh is now criticized for and which could produce instance after instance of the alleged assault on Ford. And on every corner are hundreds willing to fight for their rights to be this way, and to kill the unwanted product of it even if it is another human life!

There is a much better way Tassman. It's called being responsible. Responsible with our entertainment. Responsible with our lives. Responsible with our children. And Responsible for our choices.

Jim

[One Bad Pig]

Women should have a safe, inexpensive and convenient way to do three things: prevent pregnancies,

I hear abstinence works pretty well: it's safe, inexpensive, and convenient, just like you want. Since you've got the first step covered, there's no need to worry your pretty little head about the other two.

[firstfloor]

If it is "bad manners" to call evil what it is then let me be known as a slovenly boor on that account.

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"

Blame yourself, not the women who have abortions.

[lilpixieofterror]

Women should have a safe, inexpensive and convenient way to do three things: prevent pregnancies, detect pregnancies and delete pregnancies. They are entitled to our support in these matters because “it takes two to tango”.

Calling it murder is the summit of extremely bad manners.

Think couples, not women, and you might begin to see the issue clearly.

Women should be able to kill their own children at will. What a lovely world you live in.