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On September 17 2018 06:15 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 06:10 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 06:07 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:02 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 05:53 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 05:48 Doodsmack wrote:
The woman has put her name to it and the therapist notes are basically corroboration because they describe someone high up in washington. It deserves to be investigated. Tellingly, before the woman came forward Introvert said "This all means nothing until this woman comes forward (she must be getting intense pressure at this point) and we can judge her story's credibility." And what do you think we are doing right now? She also said she doesn't remember exactly where or when. So, who can help back up her story? Is one of the accused going to add that? Of course not. She named two other people that were supposedly there. We haven't heard from them. On September 17 2018 05:52 NewSunshine wrote:
If everyone is suspect, the course of action is not then to railroad Kavanaugh through before anyone can react and discuss it. If he truly deserves the highest office in the country, surely he can withstand some scrutiny. That would be more true if we knew this months ago. Months ago Kavanaugh's name wasn't even a fart on the wind. That's how fast this thing has been moving. Do we really think he deserves this much benefit of the doubt? This isn't a case where you go "well, there's no good reason not to go full speed here". It's the Supreme Court. That should be reason enough. If we can't take the time to do it right, don't do it at all. When you catch wind that your candidate is sketchy AF, you slow the hell down and you start asking questions. You don't double down and speed things up even more. The time from his nomination to the scheduled vote is about average, from what I remember. The high stakes make this bad both ways, you get that right? That one party has very good reason to try and stall this past the midterms if at all possible? You have it backwards. One party has very good reason to try and shove him through before the public can voice how they feel about it. If he's really a worthy candidate, he'll make it through anyway. Have some faith if you're so sure. Nope, the party wanting him in followed standard procedure. The only reason the Democrats have a "rush" narrative is because they want to see every document that ever went through the Bush White House for his tenure, an unprecedented request. Now one party waits until all hearings are done, all questions answered, all interviews had, and all oaths taken to leak this to some media outlets and get them started as late as possible.
So we're just going with outright lies now? It's been shouted to the mountaintops from there and back that the documents that have been withheld weren't done to standard procedure.
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On September 17 2018 07:56 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 07:46 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 07:42 KwarK wrote:On September 17 2018 07:09 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 07:02 Gorsameth wrote:On September 17 2018 06:57 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:54 KwarK wrote:
"Maybe it was another high ranking man in Washington and she's just confused" is the weirdest of all takes on this for me. I'd be happier with "fake news" or "she's a deep state agent". Either it happened or it didn't happen. She either fabricated it for some kind of political motive or it's true. The suggestion that it happened, but there's also some kind of mistaken identities involved feels like the compromise 9/11 theory where terrorists took down one tower and Bush took down the other. It's taking a middle ground at the expense of reason. She also said she doesn't know where or when this happened, which is a very large thing people are ignoring. Her memory on this is not unimpeachable. I will reiterate. I don't know with 100% certainty, but nor does anyone else. And everyone else is going 'lets fine out before we confirm him to the highest judiciary position, for life" while your going "meh, why bother, lets go". As for the stalling. Didn't we have this conversation a little while ago where it was decided that its really important to have an election before a Supreme Court nomination so that the people can speak? I guess that only applies when the Democrats would get to pick. Reap what you sowed. I am not being nearly as cavalier as that. I think this was not handled appropriately and now 35 year old accusations almost impossible to prove brought out at the very last second are serious matters and stink to the high heavens, either allowing a vote to maybe be delayed past an election or permanently smearing a new justice, which will have great rhetorical value in the future. On that last point, I will redirect you to two article I've linked before: https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/03/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-nominee-rejections-politics-has-lot-do-it/https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-doesnt-matter-garland-didnt-get-hearing/ I read your articles. "No hearing would have persuaded anyone of anything. The Senate wastes enough time on pointless charades as it is." That's pretty damning for the state of democracy. It essentially reduces the legislative to nothing more than theatre to be played for tribal bases. The argument made was that the process of supreme court nominations is a charade and therefore it can be dispensed with without loss. Even if that is true that should not be something to be celebrated. Not quite, although open hearings, as we saw last week, are just shows. But he is pointing out that the Democratic line "he didn't even get a hearing!" is garbage. Whether they refused Garland with or without a hearing was immaterial. Even if he got a hearing it he would not have been confirmed. So why pretend? and yes, we are in quite a state right now, no one denies that. I guess my issue with it is the abdication of responsibility. The idea that they can shamelessly argue that it doesn't matter that they didn't do their duty to consider nominees because even if they had done it they'd have only pretended to consider him anyway. That's like explaining that it's fine that you stopped showing up to work because you never did anything at work anyway. You still need to take ownership of the first state of affairs, even if making the argument that the second isn't really any worse than the first.
Hardly. They don't have a duty to have a hearing. They know they will not "consent" as the clause says. That's their prerogative. To me this fits right in line with a large view of legislative power.
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On September 17 2018 07:59 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 06:15 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:10 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 06:07 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:02 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 05:53 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 05:48 Doodsmack wrote:
The woman has put her name to it and the therapist notes are basically corroboration because they describe someone high up in washington. It deserves to be investigated. Tellingly, before the woman came forward Introvert said "This all means nothing until this woman comes forward (she must be getting intense pressure at this point) and we can judge her story's credibility." And what do you think we are doing right now? She also said she doesn't remember exactly where or when. So, who can help back up her story? Is one of the accused going to add that? Of course not. She named two other people that were supposedly there. We haven't heard from them. On September 17 2018 05:52 NewSunshine wrote:
If everyone is suspect, the course of action is not then to railroad Kavanaugh through before anyone can react and discuss it. If he truly deserves the highest office in the country, surely he can withstand some scrutiny. That would be more true if we knew this months ago. Months ago Kavanaugh's name wasn't even a fart on the wind. That's how fast this thing has been moving. Do we really think he deserves this much benefit of the doubt? This isn't a case where you go "well, there's no good reason not to go full speed here". It's the Supreme Court. That should be reason enough. If we can't take the time to do it right, don't do it at all. When you catch wind that your candidate is sketchy AF, you slow the hell down and you start asking questions. You don't double down and speed things up even more. The time from his nomination to the scheduled vote is about average, from what I remember. The high stakes make this bad both ways, you get that right? That one party has very good reason to try and stall this past the midterms if at all possible? You have it backwards. One party has very good reason to try and shove him through before the public can voice how they feel about it. If he's really a worthy candidate, he'll make it through anyway. Have some faith if you're so sure. Nope, the party wanting him in followed standard procedure. The only reason the Democrats have a "rush" narrative is because they want to see every document that ever went through the Bush White House for his tenure, an unprecedented request. Now one party waits until all hearings are done, all questions answered, all interviews had, and all oaths taken to leak this to some media outlets and get them started as late as possible. So we're just going with outright lies now? It's been shouted to the mountaintops from there and back that the documents that have been withheld weren't done to standard procedure.
What they asked for was already outside standard procedure, that's why refusing to wade through them for months was not outside of it.
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On September 17 2018 07:50 ChristianS wrote:
So basically, I see three possibilities:
1. He might be a rapist, but we don't care enough to disqualify him. Confirm him right away.
2. We're not quite sure if he's a rapist/how bad it is, so we'll wait for the investigation before holding a vote.
3. What we know about him already is enough to disqualify him. Vote him down and nominate someone else.
Feel free to tell me where I've got that wrong. Otherwise, it seems like all the Republicans I see are pretty firmly on 1, which means everything else is just distraction. "Maybe she was assaulted by a different Washington guy" or "well Feinstein should have brought this up sooner" or "this confirmation process isn't going any quicker than the confirmations of other justices who weren't accused of secual assault" are all red herrings, because at the heart of the matter, you don't consider the alleged behavior bad enough to give up your new Supreme Court justice. If you did, you'd be willing to wait until we know for sure.
That's where I'm at too. If you know there's questionable things about this guy and you actually care about said questionable things, why the hell are you trying to ram him through ASAP? The only answer I have is that the thought of a conservative majority, with the guy making the majority being some Federalist approved candidate, is so amazing that everything else is irrelevant. Which is actually a decent enough opinion to have but it'd be nice if people were honest with themselves. Assuming this guy was a huge rapist, what do you do if he's already on the Supreme Court?
I dunno why Republicans didn't go with option 3 from the get go. There are a lot of conservative judges that are available that can still give you a conservative majority AND let you hammer the shit out of Jones/Heitkamp/Donnelly/Manchin/McCaskill. That's a lot of Democratic senators on shaky ground, four of which are up for election in November that can give the Republicans an even bigger majority.
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On September 17 2018 08:01 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 07:59 Gahlo wrote:On September 17 2018 06:15 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:10 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 06:07 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:02 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 05:53 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 05:48 Doodsmack wrote:
The woman has put her name to it and the therapist notes are basically corroboration because they describe someone high up in washington. It deserves to be investigated. Tellingly, before the woman came forward Introvert said "This all means nothing until this woman comes forward (she must be getting intense pressure at this point) and we can judge her story's credibility." And what do you think we are doing right now? She also said she doesn't remember exactly where or when. So, who can help back up her story? Is one of the accused going to add that? Of course not. She named two other people that were supposedly there. We haven't heard from them. On September 17 2018 05:52 NewSunshine wrote:
If everyone is suspect, the course of action is not then to railroad Kavanaugh through before anyone can react and discuss it. If he truly deserves the highest office in the country, surely he can withstand some scrutiny. That would be more true if we knew this months ago. Months ago Kavanaugh's name wasn't even a fart on the wind. That's how fast this thing has been moving. Do we really think he deserves this much benefit of the doubt? This isn't a case where you go "well, there's no good reason not to go full speed here". It's the Supreme Court. That should be reason enough. If we can't take the time to do it right, don't do it at all. When you catch wind that your candidate is sketchy AF, you slow the hell down and you start asking questions. You don't double down and speed things up even more. The time from his nomination to the scheduled vote is about average, from what I remember. The high stakes make this bad both ways, you get that right? That one party has very good reason to try and stall this past the midterms if at all possible? You have it backwards. One party has very good reason to try and shove him through before the public can voice how they feel about it. If he's really a worthy candidate, he'll make it through anyway. Have some faith if you're so sure. Nope, the party wanting him in followed standard procedure. The only reason the Democrats have a "rush" narrative is because they want to see every document that ever went through the Bush White House for his tenure, an unprecedented request. Now one party waits until all hearings are done, all questions answered, all interviews had, and all oaths taken to leak this to some media outlets and get them started as late as possible. So we're just going with outright lies now? It's been shouted to the mountaintops from there and back that the documents that have been withheld weren't done to standard procedure. What they asked for was already outside standard procedure, that's why refusing to wade through them for months was not outside of it.
Heaven forbid they do their job based on how somebody did their job.
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On September 17 2018 07:50 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 06:57 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:54 KwarK wrote:
"Maybe it was another high ranking man in Washington and she's just confused" is the weirdest of all takes on this for me. I'd be happier with "fake news" or "she's a deep state agent". Either it happened or it didn't happen. She either fabricated it for some kind of political motive or it's true. The suggestion that it happened, but there's also some kind of mistaken identities involved feels like the compromise 9/11 theory where terrorists took down one tower and Bush took down the other. It's taking a middle ground at the expense of reason. She also said she doesn't know where or when this happened, which is a very large thing people are ignoring. Her memory on this is not impeachable. I will reiterate. I don't know with 100% certainty, but nor does anyone else. Which of these do you think a rape victim is more likely to remember: 1. Whose party it was at/whose house it was 2. The day/month/year on which it occurred 3. The name and face of the rapist To me, it's obviously 3, distantly followed by 1, then 2. I mean, this seems kinda open and shut to me, so tell me where this is fuzzy to you: She said in 2012 she was almost raped by a guy who is now a powerful person in Washington. That means the allegation wasn't invented for political purposes, assuming the therapist's notes are real, because inventing a sexual assault by somebody and telling your therapist about it *just in case* it'll pay off politically someday is batshit insane. She says it's Kavanaugh. To me that makes mistaken identity very improbable. She would have to go to school with two different guys who became powerful men in Washington, almost get raped by one, and then in the intervening years mix him up with the other one. That's almost as crazy as her inventing it 6 years ago just in case he ever got nominated to the court. What's maybe a little less crazy is if she almost got raped by some other guy in Washington, told her therapist about it, and then saw an opportunity to hold up Kavanaugh's confirmation by saying it was him instead. There's probably dozens of women in the country who have been assaulted by powerful guys in Washington, and many of them are probably pro-choice. A few might be willing to lie for that cause. But it shouldn't take much investigation to confirm that she would have been in the same school/hometown as him, which makes that story way less likely. Maybe she doesn't remember it quite right. It's conceivable that a girl might go to a party for the first time and get drunk and kinda freak out, and then some guy tries to dance with her and she flips out and runs away because she thinks he's trying to rape her. My problem is, that's conceivable but seems way less likely than a guy actually trying something. If a girl thinks a guy tried to rape her it's usually because a guy tried to rape her, especially when you read this guy Judge's recollections about getting blackout drunk and trying to get laid. It seems way more likely that a guy like that at least started grabbing at somebody without permission than that he was actually being perfectly gentlemanly but through some improbable miscommunication she thought she was being assaulted. Then there's Drone's suggestion that as sexual assault goes this maybe wasn't *that* disqualifying. They were young, it was a long time ago, people were drunk, and it sounds from what little I've read it sounds like she got away before it got too horrible. So maybe he did something inappropriate but it's not bad enough to be disqualifying. The problem is, you'd really have to investigate it to know just how bad it was. I mean, guys in my middle school liked to "scoop" girls' breasts without permission. That's assault and should not be tolerated, but if 35 years later one of those guys was a distinguished legal scholar nominated to the court, I wouldn't disqualify him just for a shitty middle school trend. On the other hand, a guy I went to high school with turned out to be a serial rapist. I would absolutely disqualify him from the highest court in the land for that. So to me, you'd have to do an investigation before you knew if this was disqualifying or not. The only way I could see waiting for the investigation not being necessary is if you didn't think even the worst case scenario was disqualifying. So basically, I see three possibilities: 1. He might be a rapist, but we don't care enough to disqualify him. Confirm him right away. 2. We're not quite sure if he's a rapist/how bad it is, so we'll wait for the investigation before holding a vote. 3. What we know about him already is enough to disqualify him. Vote him down and nominate someone else. Feel free to tell me where I've got that wrong. Otherwise, it seems like all the Republicans I see are pretty firmly on 1, which means everything else is just distraction. "Maybe she was assaulted by a different Washington guy" or "well Feinstein should have brought this up sooner" or "this confirmation process isn't going any quicker than the confirmations of other justices who weren't accused of secual assault" are all red herrings, because at the heart of the matter, you don't consider the alleged behavior bad enough to give up your new Supreme Court justice. If you did, you'd be willing to wait until we know for sure.
First, she isn't a "rape victim." Therefore, he is not a rapist, either. Let's slow down. That right there shows where this wall of text is coming from.
I don't know if she is telling the truth, mis-remembering, or lying. He could have been at a party she was at, her inability to recall specifics ups the chances of that. But this is a he-said she-said at the moment. I don't know about how them being young matters, I'm not a fan of it, but I also know that argument is used a lot by people on all sides in non-political contexts.
I suspect the GOP will invite her to testify before the vote, we'll have to see if the Democrats agree. If not then it becomes even more obvious how they are using this.
Anyway, Ive spent a lot of my day on this, may step for a while.
edit: and hopefully for the final time, why is everyone pretending like this is NEW information? A Senator on the Committee knew for over TWO MONTHS. We're just going to pretend that we should obviously delay this now? Is it not obvious what kind of stunt this is, and why it's dangerous to indulge it?
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On September 17 2018 08:02 Womwomwom wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 07:50 ChristianS wrote:
So basically, I see three possibilities:
1. He might be a rapist, but we don't care enough to disqualify him. Confirm him right away.
2. We're not quite sure if he's a rapist/how bad it is, so we'll wait for the investigation before holding a vote.
3. What we know about him already is enough to disqualify him. Vote him down and nominate someone else.
Feel free to tell me where I've got that wrong. Otherwise, it seems like all the Republicans I see are pretty firmly on 1, which means everything else is just distraction. "Maybe she was assaulted by a different Washington guy" or "well Feinstein should have brought this up sooner" or "this confirmation process isn't going any quicker than the confirmations of other justices who weren't accused of secual assault" are all red herrings, because at the heart of the matter, you don't consider the alleged behavior bad enough to give up your new Supreme Court justice. If you did, you'd be willing to wait until we know for sure. That's where I'm at too. If you know there's questionable things about this guy and you actually care about said questionable things, why the hell are you trying to ram him through ASAP? The only answer I have is that the thought of a conservative majority, with the guy making the majority being some Federalist approved candidate, is so amazing that everything else is irrelevant. Which is actually a decent enough opinion to have but it'd be nice if people were honest with themselves. Assuming this guy was a huge rapist, what do you do if he's already on the Supreme Court? I dunno why Republicans didn't go with option 3 from the get go. There are a lot of conservative judges that are available that can still give you a conservative majority AND let you hammer the shit out of Jones/Heitkamp/Donnelly/Manchin/McCaskill. That's a lot of Democratic senators on shaky ground, four of which are up for election in November that can give the Republicans an even bigger majority.
My theory: that Kavanaugh is a squish on female consent is why he was picked by Trump even though he wasn't on the Federalist society list at first. Nothing says loyalty like being a part of the soft-on-consent club. Trump has had to oust several consent squishes from his cabinet already when they got caught.
EDIT: think back to some other #MeToo scandals. Every time they have a kind of similar pattern.
Time0: initial Ronan Farrow story
Time1: first big WaPo/NYT piece
Time2: furious partisan defense and smearing of the first credible accuser
Time3: floodgates of other credible accusers
We are currently at Time2. Nothing about Kavanaugh suggests he is going to break this pattern. If he gets confirmed, he is just going to be the #MeToo rapist on the bench at Time3. On the other hand, Anita Hill was telling the truth and it didn't matter then, but maybe it will now?
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5930 Posts
And like a lot of people are saying, this "stunt" wouldn't be a problem if the Republicans didn't pick a garbage candidate. There are five red state Democrats who can absolutely get hammered by Republicans if they were smart enough to choose a candidate that didn't have a house full of skeletons, imagined or not.
I previously brought up Gorsuch because there wasn't any reason for Democrats to oppose him besides his interpretation of the constitution. That lets Republicans hammer Red State Dems if they refuse to vote for him, four of which are up for election in months. But instead Republicans have picked a potentially compromised candidate that give all four potential cover for voting against. Mitch McConnell isn't a dumbass, the majority of reporting suggested he was trying to convince Trump to put up Kethledge or Hardiman for a reason.
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On September 17 2018 08:11 Wulfey_LA wrote:
We are currently at Time2. Nothing about Kavanaugh suggests he is going to break this pattern. If he gets confirmed, he is just going to be the #MeToo rapist on the bench at Time3. On the other hand, Anita Hill was telling the truth and it didn't matter then, but maybe it will now?
It won't.
Watching this is depressing. Reading Introvert's posts is a wonderful insight into how little this will matter to many conservatives, hell, how little it'd matter if we had 100% confirmation Kavanaugh had done this. The president has admitted sexual assault and that didn't matter. Why would this? The republican senate could watch their SC candidate rape a woman in front of them and they'd say it'll take too long to process the evidence and all vote to confirm.
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On September 17 2018 08:04 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 07:50 ChristianS wrote:On September 17 2018 06:57 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:54 KwarK wrote:
"Maybe it was another high ranking man in Washington and she's just confused" is the weirdest of all takes on this for me. I'd be happier with "fake news" or "she's a deep state agent". Either it happened or it didn't happen. She either fabricated it for some kind of political motive or it's true. The suggestion that it happened, but there's also some kind of mistaken identities involved feels like the compromise 9/11 theory where terrorists took down one tower and Bush took down the other. It's taking a middle ground at the expense of reason. She also said she doesn't know where or when this happened, which is a very large thing people are ignoring. Her memory on this is not impeachable. I will reiterate. I don't know with 100% certainty, but nor does anyone else. Which of these do you think a rape victim is more likely to remember: 1. Whose party it was at/whose house it was 2. The day/month/year on which it occurred 3. The name and face of the rapist To me, it's obviously 3, distantly followed by 1, then 2. I mean, this seems kinda open and shut to me, so tell me where this is fuzzy to you: She said in 2012 she was almost raped by a guy who is now a powerful person in Washington. That means the allegation wasn't invented for political purposes, assuming the therapist's notes are real, because inventing a sexual assault by somebody and telling your therapist about it *just in case* it'll pay off politically someday is batshit insane. She says it's Kavanaugh. To me that makes mistaken identity very improbable. She would have to go to school with two different guys who became powerful men in Washington, almost get raped by one, and then in the intervening years mix him up with the other one. That's almost as crazy as her inventing it 6 years ago just in case he ever got nominated to the court. What's maybe a little less crazy is if she almost got raped by some other guy in Washington, told her therapist about it, and then saw an opportunity to hold up Kavanaugh's confirmation by saying it was him instead. There's probably dozens of women in the country who have been assaulted by powerful guys in Washington, and many of them are probably pro-choice. A few might be willing to lie for that cause. But it shouldn't take much investigation to confirm that she would have been in the same school/hometown as him, which makes that story way less likely. Maybe she doesn't remember it quite right. It's conceivable that a girl might go to a party for the first time and get drunk and kinda freak out, and then some guy tries to dance with her and she flips out and runs away because she thinks he's trying to rape her. My problem is, that's conceivable but seems way less likely than a guy actually trying something. If a girl thinks a guy tried to rape her it's usually because a guy tried to rape her, especially when you read this guy Judge's recollections about getting blackout drunk and trying to get laid. It seems way more likely that a guy like that at least started grabbing at somebody without permission than that he was actually being perfectly gentlemanly but through some improbable miscommunication she thought she was being assaulted. Then there's Drone's suggestion that as sexual assault goes this maybe wasn't *that* disqualifying. They were young, it was a long time ago, people were drunk, and it sounds from what little I've read it sounds like she got away before it got too horrible. So maybe he did something inappropriate but it's not bad enough to be disqualifying. The problem is, you'd really have to investigate it to know just how bad it was. I mean, guys in my middle school liked to "scoop" girls' breasts without permission. That's assault and should not be tolerated, but if 35 years later one of those guys was a distinguished legal scholar nominated to the court, I wouldn't disqualify him just for a shitty middle school trend. On the other hand, a guy I went to high school with turned out to be a serial rapist. I would absolutely disqualify him from the highest court in the land for that. So to me, you'd have to do an investigation before you knew if this was disqualifying or not. The only way I could see waiting for the investigation not being necessary is if you didn't think even the worst case scenario was disqualifying. So basically, I see three possibilities: 1. He might be a rapist, but we don't care enough to disqualify him. Confirm him right away. 2. We're not quite sure if he's a rapist/how bad it is, so we'll wait for the investigation before holding a vote. 3. What we know about him already is enough to disqualify him. Vote him down and nominate someone else. Feel free to tell me where I've got that wrong. Otherwise, it seems like all the Republicans I see are pretty firmly on 1, which means everything else is just distraction. "Maybe she was assaulted by a different Washington guy" or "well Feinstein should have brought this up sooner" or "this confirmation process isn't going any quicker than the confirmations of other justices who weren't accused of secual assault" are all red herrings, because at the heart of the matter, you don't consider the alleged behavior bad enough to give up your new Supreme Court justice. If you did, you'd be willing to wait until we know for sure. First, she isn't a "rape victim." Therefore, he is not a rapist, either. Let's slow down. That right there shows where this wall of text is coming from. I don't know if she is telling the truth, mis-remembering, or lying. He could have been at a party she was at, her inability to recall specifics ups the chances of that. But this is a he-said she-said at the moment. I don't know about how them being young matters, I'm not a fan of it, but I also know that argument is used a lot by people on all sides in non-political contexts. I suspect the GOP will invite her to testify before the vote, we'll have to see if the Democrats agree. If not then it becomes even more obvious how they are using this. Anyway, Ive spent a lot of my day on this, may step for a while. edit: and hopefully for the final time, why is everyone pretending like this is NEW information? A Senator on the Committee knew for over TWO MONTHS. We're just going to pretend that we should obviously delay this now? Is it not obvious what kind of stunt this is, and why it's dangerous to indulge it?
Okay, "sexual assault victim." You've still totally dodged the main point, which is that she has enough evidence to make the allegation credible, and knowing for sure would take time. The only reason not to take that time before voting is if you don't actually care what the investigation would turn up, in which case, why play games? Just say it, you'd favor confirming him even if he turned out to be guilty of sexual assault or worse. Otherwise there's nothing to be lost from delaying the vote.
It being a "stunt" has no real bearing on that logic. If the allegation weren't credible/backed up by evidence, then sure, it could be a politically motivated fabrication and we can't stop what we're doing any time someone makes an accusation without evidence. But it the allegations are true and the Democrats timed the release of information for political gain, the allegations are still true. And if they're fabricated, let's go prove it. I'll vote against Feinstein if it turns out she invented this whole thing, and I do live in CA. But with current evidence, it looks very unlikely to just be manufactured.
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It is funny to watch Republicans run from their previous logic that it was the accuser's anonymity that meant the accusation shouldn't affect his nomination.
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On September 17 2018 08:02 Womwomwom wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 07:50 ChristianS wrote:
So basically, I see three possibilities:
1. He might be a rapist, but we don't care enough to disqualify him. Confirm him right away.
2. We're not quite sure if he's a rapist/how bad it is, so we'll wait for the investigation before holding a vote.
3. What we know about him already is enough to disqualify him. Vote him down and nominate someone else.
Feel free to tell me where I've got that wrong. Otherwise, it seems like all the Republicans I see are pretty firmly on 1, which means everything else is just distraction. "Maybe she was assaulted by a different Washington guy" or "well Feinstein should have brought this up sooner" or "this confirmation process isn't going any quicker than the confirmations of other justices who weren't accused of secual assault" are all red herrings, because at the heart of the matter, you don't consider the alleged behavior bad enough to give up your new Supreme Court justice. If you did, you'd be willing to wait until we know for sure. That's where I'm at too. If you know there's questionable things about this guy and you actually care about said questionable things, why the hell are you trying to ram him through ASAP? The only answer I have is that the thought of a conservative majority, with the guy making the majority being some Federalist approved candidate, is so amazing that everything else is irrelevant. Which is actually a decent enough opinion to have but it'd be nice if people were honest with themselves. Assuming this guy was a huge rapist, what do you do if he's already on the Supreme Court? I dunno why Republicans didn't go with option 3 from the get go. There are a lot of conservative judges that are available that can still give you a conservative majority AND let you hammer the shit out of Jones/Heitkamp/Donnelly/Manchin/McCaskill. That's a lot of Democratic senators on shaky ground, four of which are up for election in November that can give the Republicans an even bigger majority.
I assume the republicans didn't go with option 3 because Trump likes Kavanaugh; either because of an arrangement with Kennedy, or just cuz Kavanaugh favors giving extreme leeway to the executive and would effectively help cover trump (even, no quid pro quo, just that kavanaugh's stated positions are highly favorable to an embattled executive).
unrelatedly, I wish we had better conservatives to present an actually reasonable conservative point of view to debate with.
User was warned for this post.
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United States43758 Posts
On September 17 2018 09:19 JimmiC wrote:
I think Introvert is doing a good job defending and explaining his position. I disagree with it, because something this important I would like it to be properly investigated but I do think he is being clear and I think providing good insight on what Republicans are thinking on this issue.
I agree and have always valued Introvert as a poster here.
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On September 17 2018 08:01 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 07:59 Gahlo wrote:On September 17 2018 06:15 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:10 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 06:07 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 06:02 NewSunshine wrote:On September 17 2018 05:53 Introvert wrote:On September 17 2018 05:48 Doodsmack wrote:
The woman has put her name to it and the therapist notes are basically corroboration because they describe someone high up in washington. It deserves to be investigated. Tellingly, before the woman came forward Introvert said "This all means nothing until this woman comes forward (she must be getting intense pressure at this point) and we can judge her story's credibility." And what do you think we are doing right now? She also said she doesn't remember exactly where or when. So, who can help back up her story? Is one of the accused going to add that? Of course not. She named two other people that were supposedly there. We haven't heard from them. On September 17 2018 05:52 NewSunshine wrote:
If everyone is suspect, the course of action is not then to railroad Kavanaugh through before anyone can react and discuss it. If he truly deserves the highest office in the country, surely he can withstand some scrutiny. That would be more true if we knew this months ago. Months ago Kavanaugh's name wasn't even a fart on the wind. That's how fast this thing has been moving. Do we really think he deserves this much benefit of the doubt? This isn't a case where you go "well, there's no good reason not to go full speed here". It's the Supreme Court. That should be reason enough. If we can't take the time to do it right, don't do it at all. When you catch wind that your candidate is sketchy AF, you slow the hell down and you start asking questions. You don't double down and speed things up even more. The time from his nomination to the scheduled vote is about average, from what I remember. The high stakes make this bad both ways, you get that right? That one party has very good reason to try and stall this past the midterms if at all possible? You have it backwards. One party has very good reason to try and shove him through before the public can voice how they feel about it. If he's really a worthy candidate, he'll make it through anyway. Have some faith if you're so sure. Nope, the party wanting him in followed standard procedure. The only reason the Democrats have a "rush" narrative is because they want to see every document that ever went through the Bush White House for his tenure, an unprecedented request. Now one party waits until all hearings are done, all questions answered, all interviews had, and all oaths taken to leak this to some media outlets and get them started as late as possible. So we're just going with outright lies now? It's been shouted to the mountaintops from there and back that the documents that have been withheld weren't done to standard procedure. What they asked for was already outside standard procedure, that's why refusing to wade through them for months was not outside of it.
There is no standard procedure a nominee being accused having committed a crime. Acting like this is normal is an argument in bad faith. The last year of Obama’s term has proven there is no rush, the seat can stay empty as long as the leadership wants. If they move forward without letting this play out, it is because it is “normal”. It is because they don’t care.
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Assuming the allegation is true for the sake of discussion: is there not a point where one overcomes a past failing? Are we really all at the mercy of our dumbest high school moment for the rest of our lives? Even if we've ostensibly acted reasonably ethically by all known accounts for the entirety of our adult lives?
If Kavanaugh turns out to be a serial offender, then I wouldn't support his nomination. But, assuming this stays a standalone incident, I don't see it as sufficient to end his nomination over.
Funnily enough, I remember raising a hypothetical very similar to this months ago and I was told I shouldn't worry about it because all #MeToo defendants had been clearcut creep cases up to that point.
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On September 17 2018 10:16 mozoku wrote:
Assuming the allegation is true for the sake of discussion: is there not a point where one overcomes a past failing? Are we really all at the mercy of our dumbest high school moment for the rest of our lives? Even if we've ostensibly acted reasonably ethically by all known accounts for the entirety of our adult lives?
If Kavanaugh turns out to be a serial offender, then I wouldn't support his nomination. But, assuming this stays a standalone incident, I don't see it as sufficient to end his nomination over.
Funnily enough, I remember raising a hypothetical very similar to this months ago and I was told I shouldn't worry about it because all #MeToo defendants had been clearcut creep cases up to that point.
I never attempted to rape anyone, and anyone who did, even once, is inherently and deeply flawed in their character.
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you don’t think this means there are better people for the job, or that there are and we don’t deserve it?(under the assumption)
there are so many reasons
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The Supreme Court has ruled that junvial offenders can be sentenced to life without parole. It is very like that our boy Brett would uphold that ruling. So that being as it is, he can not have a lifetime appointment if this accusation has teeth.
There are other judges that never committed sexual assault.
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I'm of the opinion that I am a wholly different person than I was when I was 17, and I expect that's probably true for anyone over 30.
I also expect that if adult Kavanaugh was so deeply flawed a character as to believe what he allegedly did was not inappropriate, there would be signs as such surfacing all across his adult life. They have not.
I think that the more we expect public figures to meet the increasingly unreasonable level of scrutiny from the voting public, the less of a meritocracy our democratic process becomes and the more it devolves into the political food fight it has turned into.
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EPT
