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Time To Smear Kavanaugh's Good Name...
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Originally posted by firstfloor View PostDon’t blame the women.
Don’t presume to judge them.
They have to be grown up and deal with a situation that men helped to create. Your piety is misplaced.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
Sometimes I have to believe you're just being incredibly dense or dishonest or provocative or whatever just for effect.“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
“not all there” - you know who you are
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Originally posted by firstfloor View PostUncompromising positions like “I HATE abortion” deserve to have rocks thrown at them, for the sake of balance.Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom
Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
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I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist
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Originally posted by Mountain Man View PostWhat 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."I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill
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Originally posted by firstfloor View PostUncompromising positions like “I HATE abortion” deserve to have rocks thrown at them, for the sake of balance.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
I'll bet that for the most part this will be studiously ignored by the MSM which was all aflutter that Kavanaugh wanted to push back when he learned of Deborah Ramirez's accusation when the New Yorker started questioning his friends and former classmates about it.
I'm always still in trouble again
"You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
"Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
"Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman
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Originally posted by rogue06 View PostOops.
I'll bet that for the most part this will be studiously ignored by the MSM which was all aflutter that Kavanaugh wanted to push back when he learned of Deborah Ramirez's accusation when the New Yorker started questioning his friends and former classmates about it.
Hence both stories could be true, i.e. Ford was sexually attacked by a highly drunken Kavanaugh, who has no memory of the occurrence and so denies it. But does one want such a man on the Supreme Court?“He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.
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Originally posted by Tassman View PostThe bottom line is that Dr Ford's testimony was credible, as is generally agreed. And Kavanaugh, despite his dishonest contrary story on Fox, was known to be a heavy drinker during his Yale days and would become belligerent and aggressive when drunk...plus very likely subject to blackouts as a consequence. This according to numerous of his Yale contemporaries.
Hence both stories could be true, i.e. Ford was sexually attacked by a highly drunken Kavanaugh, who has no memory of the occurrence and so denies it. But does one want such a man on the Supreme Court?Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom
Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
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I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist
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Originally posted by Tassman View PostThe bottom line is that Dr Ford's testimony was credible, as is generally agreed. And Kavanaugh, despite his dishonest contrary story on Fox, was known to be a heavy drinker during his Yale days and would become belligerent and aggressive when drunk...plus very likely subject to blackouts as a consequence. This according to numerous of his Yale contemporaries.
Hence both stories could be true, i.e. Ford was sexually attacked by a highly drunken Kavanaugh, who has no memory of the occurrence and so denies it. But does one want such a man on the Supreme Court?"I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
"[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein
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Originally posted by Starlight View PostYou 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?
For someone with a philosophy degree, you seem to be missing something. You obviously cannot apply the same argument to the republicans. Let's look again...
1 She had the letter. (not true of republicans)
2 She took no action. (not true of republicans - they acted much more quickly once it was leaked, including volunteering to send investigators to Ford)
3 She didn't leak it. (n/a as they had nothing to leak)
4 She either :
a) believes Dr. Ford. (might be true of republicans)
b) does not believe Dr. Ford (true of some republicans)
c) withheld judgement (true of some republicans)
5 She knew that Kavanaugh would pass the committee and be confirmed along party lines. (true of republicans)
Not all of the conditionals do not hold true for republicans, therefore, the same argument fails against them. They acted when they got the information. They have asked for and listened to testimony. They have asked for/not fought against additional investigation. All of these are the hallmarks of people that want to know the truth. Why do they want to know? Because they do not want to put someone guilty of sexual assault on the SCOTUS.
You haven't shown that my premises are false nor have you shown that the argument was not valid. She may not have consciously or intentionally done it, but I don't see how you can, given the facts that we have, escape the conclusion that she was willing to put someone guilty of sexual assault on the SCOTUS.
You simply cannot say that about republicans using the same argument. Their actions to date are in line with the belief that they want due process and more than unsupported allegations before they make a decision.
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.
Oh hey, look! It looks like Dr. Ford may have committed perjury.
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So, I've been mulling over my thoughts on Kavanaugh for a while. This post may seem stream of consciousness for that reason. In truth I feel like this post is more about me trying to get my thoughts in order than something for people to read, so feel free to tl;dr past it all. (also note that a lot of this was written yesterday, so some parts of it may not be up to date)
Let's start with Ford and Kavanaugh's testimony. What do we have as evidence she's telling the truth (or at least believes she is)? Well, she didn't really have anything to gain through all this. Even the idea that it was to politically hurt Trump's nomination doesn't hold up because, from what I understand, she sent in the letter before Kavanaugh was actually chosen.
One thing often pointed to is her seeing a therapist about it, ironically by both sides. The side in her favor says it's evidence that even well before this she mentioned it, the side against her says that the written notes apparently make no mention of Kavanaugh by name--of course, it's possible she did and the therapist just didn't write it down. I think I have to call this one a draw.
The next prominent criticism is that she identified some individuals as being at the party, but none of them remember it. This does not mean her account is wrong, as it's understandable for someone to forget a party, particularly when (to them) nothing particularly important happened, but it is a piece of evidence against.
Much has been made of Mitchell’s memo saying she did not believe there was sufficient evidence for a prosecutor to bring charges or even to meet the preponderance of evidence standard. Now, preponderance of evidence, to my understanding, is the statement that something is more likely than not (less strict than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard). However, I am not sure that is required to deny someone a seat on the Supreme Court. By this standard, someone who has a 49% chance of having committed the crime should not be denied a seat, which seems odd. At what percentage should the seat be given? 40%? 20%? 5%? 1%? I don’t know, but not meeting preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean someone should get one of the most powerful positions in the country. In fact, I would argue that the position of a Supreme Court justice is the most powerful position in American politics after the President. True, each justice has only 1 vote out of 9, but that's obviously a much higher percentage than any Senator or Representative has, and they also serve for life, which in practice generally means a minimum of 20 years (for comparison, the average length of service is 9.4 years for a Representative, and 10.1 years for a Senator). When it comes to this, a much lower evidence requirement should exist, and this was not addressed by Mitchell. This is not a criticism of her, as she assessed it on legal grounds, but that is not ultimately what I believe is the deciding factor here.
And let us note something: Kavanaugh's life will not be ruined if he doesn't make it to the Supreme Court. He will retain his current position, which pays more than $200,000 a year with life tenure. Yes, he's taken a significant blow (correctly or incorrectly) to his reputation. But I don't think being elevated to the Supreme Court will negate that. I suppose that if he doesn't make it, there's some level of perception of that meaning he's guilty, but contrariwise it would make the general public forget about him and the accusations eventually, whereas if he's on the Court he'd stay much more in the public eye.
Nevertheless, we end up with the problem that the allegation is vague on far too many specifics and has no corroboration whatsoever that it actually happened. I think Ford probably does believe what she is saying, but there’s too much of a lack of corroborating evidence and at least some against.
Oh, and while a minor point, why in the world was so much attention paid to her taking a polygraph test? Those things are known to be unreliable.
Now let's move onto Kavanaugh's testimony. He's gotten criticism for being angry. In my mind, anger about all of this if he believes he is innocent is understandable. However, the degree to which he displayed this anger is troubling. Certainly, statements such as saying this was “revenge for the Clintons” did him no favors and sounded outright conspiratorial. I actually feel that showing some level of anger would be a good thing in terms of optics, but the extent to which he did so went too far. In my view, and I know is certainly the view of others, he sometimes crossed the line from giving the veneer of an innocent man simply not wanting to put up with the nonsense anymore into just acting downright petulant and in some ways, too partisan for what's at least nominally an apolitical seat (admittedly, the opposition to him was rather partisan, so it's perhaps understandable, but again it didn't make him look good to go that far). Even if all the anger could be considered justified, I feel from a PR perspective it hurt him more than it helped.
Now, I am inclined to believe him in that he believes he is innocent. The problem here, however, is that Ford alleges he was drunk, and that can hurt your memory. He said that he had never drunk so much he'd actually lose memory, but that has two problems with that. First, that just means you don't remember such a case, not that one couldn’t have happened. Second, given the amount of drinking he allegedly did, that seems implausible. Not impossible, but implausible. I disagree with those who claim he therefore definitely ”lied" about such a thing, as that's not certain, but the statement is questionable. The same applies to some of his statements regarding what was in the yearbook and what some things meant; some of them seem implausible, but it’s certainly a jump to claim they were definitely false. But it does bother me a little, and this was all stated under oath. As to outside corroboration or contradiction on these matters, I’m unsure because it seems everyone is happy to point to supposed evidence by former classmates both supporting or contradicting his claims. Actually, that might be something that the whole FBI investigation could look into, to try to figure out how well his statements match up with what his classmates say. It’d be more studious than various scattered statements online, which is what we have right now.
For the record, though, while I may have some concerns regarding statements he made in the most recent hearing, past claims about him supposedly perjuring himself on things like the Pryor nomination or receiving the memos are, as far as I can tell, nonsense. For example, the Pryor nomination "lie" requires you to take a statement out of context, and the memo is unsupported by the evidence. Yes, the person who copied the memos gave him information, but there is no proof that Kavanaugh was aware of where it came from. Is it theoretically possible? Certainly. But to move that “possible” to “definite” in the absence of proof is absurd. Ironically, prior to the allegations, seeing those claims moved me into the pro-Kavanaugh camp because I figured if that was the best his opponents could come up with, he’d be a good choice.
And in all my talking, I’ve only been discussing Ford’s allegation. It seems like Ford’s allegation has been worked over with a fine tooth comb, but I’ve seen much less analysis about the other two. Could they also appear in front of congress or be somehow cross-examined? Or interviewed by the FBI? Or maybe they already are planning to do so? Getting all the data together would be important.
But as noted, I’m not sure where I ultimately stand on the subject of whether he should be confirmed onto the Supreme Court, though, based solely on my understanding of the evidence (putting aside things like optics, which I’ll discuss later), I think I’d lean towards a yes. But depending on what’s discovered, that could change.
But there is something that has been bothering me considerably from the conservative/Republican side, and that was the resistance to an FBI investigation. Jeff Flake has gotten a lot of criticism from conservative quarters for this. And this, to be blunt, does not make sense to me. The reasons given for this that I have seen are (1) the investigation probably won't find anything because they've investigated him in the past, (2) as a state crime from a long time ago, this isn't what the FBI normally investigates, and (3) it's a stalling technique by Democrats.
In regards to #1, they've investigated in the past, but given Ford's lack of mentioning to other people what she thinks Kavanaugh did (as well as the other accusers), I doubt the FBI prior to all of this would have found information of such things even if it was trying. Simply put, there is new information that could lead to discoveries that they would have not known to look for earlier. That makes a considerable difference. Indeed, there are so many things I feel could be investigated. One could in more detail investigate the testimony of the alleged witnesses, try to find out if there’s evidence for/against Kavanaugh’s mentions of drinking and the yearbook, look into the allegations by the other accusers, and various other things. I was left after the hearings thinking there were a lot more people who would be good to go up there, and maybe the investigation could do more on that. At any rate, a probability of not finding anything new does not mean there’s a certainty of not finding anything.
In regards to #2, this is only an argument against the FBI being the institution to investigate, but I haven’t seen those who use this argument actually offer an alternate agency, so that seems to fall flat. At any rate, the FBI is still capable of investigating state crimes as necessary.
#3 is probably the one that has the most teeth to it. But let's suppose it is stalling. To what end? Even if the Democrats are somehow able to stall all the way to the election, I’m not sure it's even to the detriment of the Republicans to have it after the election. The main counterargument I can see is that if they lose the Senate, it'd look really bad to then vote Kavanaugh through during the lame duck congress, particularly after they delayed Merrick Garland. Even if true, there's still about a month before the election, so a delay of even several weeks doesn't disqualify anything.
At any rate, as noted above, a seat on the Supreme Court is a position of extreme power, and I do not think it is unwarranted to make some attempts to make sure all the information is in prior to the vote. Perhaps something important will turn up. So I find this temporary delay to be entirely reasonable. Remember, once confirmed, it is extremely difficult to remove someone, particularly in our current partisan environment. Making sure things are in order before making such a decision seems warranted. I therefore find the sheer amount of opposition to it by some Republicans or conservatives, coupled with some of the extreme criticism I've seen towards Jeff Flake for insisting on it, concerning. On a somewhat more personal note, while I have no intention of voting for the Democrat incumbent Senator for my state, I have been on the fence as to whether I should vote for the Republican challenger (or just sit it out entirely—there’s not even a third party candidate for me this time). They were very much on the side of “FBI investigation bad, confirm now” which hurt them in my view. For the record, though, while I've criticized Republicans/conservatives for this (obviously not all, of course), I don't blame Kavanaugh for not directly requesting any kind of investigation during his second hearing. He was pretty forthright with saying that if the committee wanted to do it, they could do it, which seemed reasonable. Unlike how some have tried to characterize him, he wasn't really standing in the way or anything.
But let’s suppose that nothing new turns up, Democrats complain and want to do more investigating, and then we go to the vote. As in, exactly what we had before the investigation, so what's the harm? I see it as worth it in case something does turn up, and from a PR perspective I feel it looks a little better to engage in this rather than refusing to do it. Who knows, maybe evidence will emerge to better support Kavanaugh. Once again, the importance of this position, to me, demands at least a token effort be made here. The downside seems negligible, the upside seems considerable in regards to the potential of finding more information one way or the other. The opposition to this, I believe, looks bad.
A criticism often made is that the Democrats set this whole thing up intentionally, such as Feinstein sitting on the letter and only using it to thwart what seemed like a certain confirmation. While some aspects of such criticisms are speculative, it seems hard to deny that the Democrats have not been acting in good faith. However, while that may be how we got into the current situation, that does not change the situation we are in, so I do not consider it particularly relevant to the question of what to do about Kavanaugh.
But let's set aside everything I wrote before for a bit, and not concern ourselves with the question of the probability that Kavanaugh is guilty of anything he has been criticized of. Let's look at this solely from a political perspective. From a political perspective, should the Republicans confirm Kavanaugh? I must confess, from a political perspective I'm having difficulty seeing upside to doing so.
Kavanaugh does not seem to be popular. Polls indicate more opposition to his confirmation than previous justices, and while people can of course say “lol polls” this matches up with some anecdotal experience of mine. Not only that, the level of dislike among those who oppose him is alarming. Now, it’s true that any plausible pick of Trump’s would be opposed to some extent by Democrats and liberals. But the dislike towards Kavanaugh goes beyond that; Gorsuch certainly didn’t get anything close to this. This is why I’ve mentioned things like better PR or optics, because those could at least improve general opinion of Kavanaugh a bit (I’m under no illusion that the liberals would ever embrace them, but it could be possible to at least lower the level of opposition). So with Kavanaugh clearly not being particularly popular. Therefore, his confirmation could hurt Republicans in two notable ways. The first is in elections, but the second is in the Supreme Court itself. At some point, Democrats will manage to, like Republicans did in 2016, gain the trifecta of Senate, House, and presidency, putting them in position to pass any kind of court packing law they want. Court packing isn’t a particularly popular idea, but the dislike towards Kavanaugh could very easily lend support to the idea if the Republicans force him through in a narrow vote. If that happens, the “Republican majority” on the Supreme Court vanishes, meaning by appointing Kavanaugh the Republicans took one step forward and several steps back. Granted, this part is a bit speculative, and it’s of course possible the Democrats would try to do such a thing anyway. But in our current environment, a Kavanaugh confirmation certainly makes such a scenario more likely. Even if we aren’t talking court packing itself, Supreme Court appointments have been on a partisan ramp by both parties for a while now, even before Merrick Garland. Continuing on that escalation could have big problems.
So what would be the disadvantage in passing on Kavanaugh (either due to a withdraw—by Kavanaugh himself or by Trump—or by the Senate not confirming him)? Politically, I don’t think there’s much. The base might be annoyed but get someone else in there and they’ll be appeased. Pick a woman and you’d probably even get (slightly) less resistance from the Democrats.
There are two possible “disadvantages” to Kavanaugh not getting through. The first is obviously for Kavanaugh himself, but as noted before I am not sure that, at this point, it would really hurt his reputation any more than it already has been. I’ve seen people say it can hurt his career, which confuses me because his career would be just fine staying where he is. Still, while that’s obviously important to him, that’s less important in terms of politics.
The second, and more concerning (particularly as it can affect more people), is that it could create a problematic precedent in which any nomination could be thwarted by someone throwing out an accusation, even if it’s regarded as not having much backup. Don’t like a nominee? Find someone to make up an accusation. That’s not an unreasonable point, but in this case, even if one thinks the allegation is on very shaky ground, the evidence indicates that she believed this about Kavanaugh before he got the nomination, so the idea she made it up to go after him doesn’t make sense here (Democrats, of course, I expect saw it mostly as a way to go after Kavanaugh than any real desire to get to the truth). But, I concede that this is a problem I don’t have a good answer to. Of course, one possible “answer” is this: In our current era, perhaps a single allegation putting a nominee in problematic straits has become the norm and thus this would be the case for future nominees even if Kavanaugh does make it onto the court. At any rate, this is more of a future concern than a present one. Someone could say that the next nominee could just have someone accuse them, but simply selecting a woman should obviate that concern, and it’d put Democrats in the amusing situation of having to argue against making the court more gender-neutral.
So again, setting aside everything else and concentrating on the politics and optics, it seems like there’s much more advantage for the Republicans to put someone different on the court. Whether or not this can or will be achieved is another matter, of course. Obviously, simple optics shouldn’t be the only factor. But if you can get the same desired result (get someone from Trump’s list onto the court) while having better optics, that’s obviously better. Maybe I'm focusing too much on this, but it does feel like a confirmation of Kavanaugh could easily hurt the Republicans. But as I said earlier in this paragraph, whether there's actually a good route to having someone else get it without screwing other things up is less clear. The “best” to me would be for Kavanaugh to withdraw himself (saving Senators the question of what to do about it) and have another person get onto the court, as that would gain the Republicans what they want but with less potential blowback, but even that's not without some problems (not to mention it's not likely to happen anyway).
So I don’t really know at this point. I honestly feel kind of depressed by the whole thing, because I’m not really seeing a plausible route from here that could be satisfying. Probably wasted my time writing out all of this when I could've been doing something else, especially with my lack of conclusions, but I guess it felt a bit therapeutic to put my thoughts all into order, in a sense.Last edited by Terraceth; 10-02-2018, 11:40 PM.
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Originally posted by One Bad Pig View PostI am truly impressed that you managed to come away from rogue's post with the idea that Dr. Ford's testimony was credible after everything he quoted poked holes in it. Never let the facts get in the way of your beliefs, eh?
Originally posted by Starlight View PostYep. And more problematic is the number of different perjury allegations against Kavanaugh, with numerous friends and acquaintances of his poking holes in his claims under oath.Last edited by Tassman; 10-02-2018, 11:52 PM.“He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.
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