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United States24740 Posts
On September 17 2018 11:14 mozoku wrote:
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.
Perhaps, but this is a nomination for the supreme court, and supreme court justices should be squeaky clean. A sexual assault committed decades ago might not disqualify a person from all jobs as public figures, but this is not just any job. There are plenty of equally qualified people who have not committed a heinous crime (presuming the current candidate is not innocent).
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I fail to see why Kavanaugh's alleged actions as a 17 year old speak louder to his competency as a judge than his 13 years of prior rulings.
Ignoring that, I still disagree fundamentally with the assertion that you can reliably predict the character of 53 year old by the alleged actions on a single night as a drunk 17 year old.
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I don’t know how women see the government as sexual assault seriously if the government has so many men that committed sexual assault in the highest office(assuming the allegations are true.)
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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.
I would think the most relevant option is 1.5:
We're not sure if he's guilty, but we think an investigation would damn him regardless of the truth. Given that we can't know, it was a long time ago, and probably not that serious, he might as well be confirmed.
The counter-argument is of course that it's better for an "innocent" man to be denied a seat than for a guilty man to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, but in the interests of walking through the train of thought, the middle school example is a good case study:
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.
I agree with that position, myself; I think your first guy should probably be confirmed and the second shouldn't. However, I think it very unlikely that even your first guy would survive the laserbeam of a trial by media, post #metoo, with probably a half dozen women coming forward and multiple classmates confirming the widespread practice. Nobody could even take your own position publicly without being villainised themselves.
So, starting from the position that your classmate did something inappropriate but not bad enough to be disqualifying, I can see why people who agree and who have an interest in him being confirmed wouldn't want to bother. At the end of the day it would come down to the politics of the confirmation, exactly as it is now, but with tensions even higher.
To be clear, I think Kavanaugh would be a disaster, but i also think this is not particularly high on the list of reasons he's a bad choice. It just happens to be the one that has traction at the moment.
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I think the basic idea is that, despite Trump, we should be able to respect an office as high as the Supreme Court enough to give the job to the right person. Or at least try. I don't see a lot of trying from Senate Republicans who, when given the chance, seemed far more interested in his choice of pen than anything else. They just want their guy on board for that juicy lifetime appointment, and they don't really care if you could find 100 people better qualified for the job. The rest of us would like to see that taken a bit more seriously.
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I mean he has been an US Appeals judge for 13 years, graduated from a premier law school, and was a law clerk for a SCOTUS justice. His legal opinions have surely been scrutinized enough where any serious errors would be widely known by now. You may disagree with his opinions or feel that what he allegedly did as a 17 year old is important enough to disqualify him from consideration. But there certainly aren't "100 people" that are clearly better qualified. I'm not sure there's anyone that is obviously more qualified, though there are certainly other candidates with similar credentials.
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On September 17 2018 14:22 mozoku wrote:
I mean he has been an US Appeals judge for 13 years, graduated from a premier law school, and was a law clerk for a SCOTUS justice. His legal opinions have surely been scrutinized enough where any serious errors would be widely known by now. You may disagree with his opinions or feel that what he allegedly did as a 17 year old is important enough to disqualify him from consideration. But there certainly aren't "100 people" that are clearly better qualified. I'm not sure there's anyone that is obviously more qualified, though there are certainly other candidates with similar credentials.
Suffice it to say that not everyone has been on the record accused of attempted rape. Accepting that he is in fact guilty, it is disqualifying. His brain was capable of attempting the act of rape. And don't tell me that he didn't know right from wrong. He may qualify in the 99.98th percentile of possible Supreme Court candidates, but we can only accept the 99.99th.
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Do note that you can't use the (1) "but I was only 17, youthful indiscretion" excuse if you also use (2) "she is a lying bitch and it didn't happen". To plead youthful indiscretion you have to admit the substance of the charge and say you have changed. Kavanaugh went with the Trumpian Deny Deny Deny (2) strategy which precludes any plays at 17 year old sympathy. He is saying she is lying right now. His (hon)dishonesty at this very instant is the question.
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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?
To me there is little difference between a rapist that forced the full act and a rapist that had to be stopped before s/he could complete the act of rape.
Law may be different on that front (and I'm not sure whether that's ok), but morally, ethically there is zero fucking difference.
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.
Many people have done some shitty stuff. The way they deal with it when it could be a hurdle too high for their next step on the ladder can be interpreted as a sign of the quality of their character.
You be the judge whether you think Kanvaugh / Weinstein / Cosby handle it appropriately.
And I also think p6's point with lifelong detention (or even just excessive ones) for juvenile deliquents do not conincide well with judges of all people getting a free pass on past amoral and criminal behaviour.
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On September 17 2018 14:22 mozoku wrote:
I mean he has been an US Appeals judge for 13 years, graduated from a premier law school, and was a law clerk for a SCOTUS justice. His legal opinions have surely been scrutinized enough where any serious errors would be widely known by now. You may disagree with his opinions or feel that what he allegedly did as a 17 year old is important enough to disqualify him from consideration. But there certainly aren't "100 people" that are clearly better qualified. I'm not sure there's anyone that is obviously more qualified, though there are certainly other candidates with similar credentials.
Merrick Garland is more qualified.
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On September 17 2018 15:28 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Do note that you can't use the (1) "but I was only 17, youthful indiscretion" excuse if you also use (2) "she is a lying bitch and it didn't happen". To plead youthful indiscretion you have to admit the substance of the charge and say you have changed. Kavanaugh went with the Trumpian Deny Deny Deny (2) strategy which precludes any plays at 17 year old sympathy. He is saying she is lying right now. His (hon)dishonesty at this very instant is the question.
Exactly, aside from the whole "we can and should find a better candidate" thing, for him to have changed and 'be a better man' now he would first have to admit that he did it and that it was wrong.
You can't both deny the act and say the act that never happened was an impulse of youth that will never happen again.
And just for the record. If he were to take that angle now its way way to late.
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On September 17 2018 18:47 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 15:28 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Do note that you can't use the (1) "but I was only 17, youthful indiscretion" excuse if you also use (2) "she is a lying bitch and it didn't happen". To plead youthful indiscretion you have to admit the substance of the charge and say you have changed. Kavanaugh went with the Trumpian Deny Deny Deny (2) strategy which precludes any plays at 17 year old sympathy. He is saying she is lying right now. His (hon)dishonesty at this very instant is the question. Exactly, aside from the whole "we can and should find a better candidate" thing, for him to have changed and 'be a better man' now he would first have to admit that he did it and that it was wrong. You can't both deny the act and say the act that never happened was an impulse of youth that will never happen again. And just for the record. If he were to take that angle now its way way to late.
Well, you could admit to getting blind drunk and not remembering what you did. Then apologize for any evil you did while drunk, and promise your binge drinking days are over.
That way he could apologize without admitting anything. It wouldn't satisfy anybody, but blaming the bottle is a tried and tested method of avoiding consequences.
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since you had asked us to assume his guilt, the idea that there might be no one more qualified is nothing short of ridiculous..
apologies in advance if you had mentioned as much having moved on from the idea.
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There are easily a hundred+ candidates for SCOTUS who have nowhere near the amount of political stink hanging around Kava-naugh-I-didn't-do-it, to suggest otherwise is to ignore the many lifetime judicial and legal civil servants/attorneys who take every precaution in adhering to the principles of neutrality that are considered integral to a functioning judiciary.
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On September 17 2018 19:05 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 18:47 Gorsameth wrote:On September 17 2018 15:28 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Do note that you can't use the (1) "but I was only 17, youthful indiscretion" excuse if you also use (2) "she is a lying bitch and it didn't happen". To plead youthful indiscretion you have to admit the substance of the charge and say you have changed. Kavanaugh went with the Trumpian Deny Deny Deny (2) strategy which precludes any plays at 17 year old sympathy. He is saying she is lying right now. His (hon)dishonesty at this very instant is the question. Exactly, aside from the whole "we can and should find a better candidate" thing, for him to have changed and 'be a better man' now he would first have to admit that he did it and that it was wrong. You can't both deny the act and say the act that never happened was an impulse of youth that will never happen again. And just for the record. If he were to take that angle now its way way to late. Well, you could admit to getting blind drunk and not remembering what you did. Then apologize for any evil you did while drunk, and promise your binge drinking days are over. That way he could apologize without admitting anything. It wouldn't satisfy anybody, but blaming the bottle is a tried and tested method of avoiding consequences.
That's the Kevin Spacey defense (without the coming-out-of-the-closet part). It didn't work very well on the original. The only possible course of action for Kavanaugh is to deny deny deny, hope no one else comes forward, hope that Senate speeds up his confirmation and wait until the next Trump scandal so that everyone forgets about him.
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On September 17 2018 19:46 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2018 19:05 Acrofales wrote:On September 17 2018 18:47 Gorsameth wrote:On September 17 2018 15:28 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Do note that you can't use the (1) "but I was only 17, youthful indiscretion" excuse if you also use (2) "she is a lying bitch and it didn't happen". To plead youthful indiscretion you have to admit the substance of the charge and say you have changed. Kavanaugh went with the Trumpian Deny Deny Deny (2) strategy which precludes any plays at 17 year old sympathy. He is saying she is lying right now. His (hon)dishonesty at this very instant is the question. Exactly, aside from the whole "we can and should find a better candidate" thing, for him to have changed and 'be a better man' now he would first have to admit that he did it and that it was wrong. You can't both deny the act and say the act that never happened was an impulse of youth that will never happen again. And just for the record. If he were to take that angle now its way way to late. Well, you could admit to getting blind drunk and not remembering what you did. Then apologize for any evil you did while drunk, and promise your binge drinking days are over. That way he could apologize without admitting anything. It wouldn't satisfy anybody, but blaming the bottle is a tried and tested method of avoiding consequences. That's the Kevin Spacey defense (without the coming-out-of-the-closet part). It didn't work very well on the original. The only possible course of action for Kavanaugh is to deny deny deny, hope no one else comes forward, hope that Senate speeds up his confirmation and wait until the next Trump scandal so that everyone forgets about him.
Not even remotely similar. Kevin Spacey (allegedly) repeated the offense multiple times. Moreover, it wasn't between 2 17-yo, but between a 26-yo Keven Spacey and a 14-yo victim.
Claiming "hey, I got drunk and tried to do something horrible this one time, then I wised up and never got that drunk again, and swear I would never repeat such a horrific offense" is not the same as claiming "hey, I got a bad case of the gays, and couldn't keep my willy in my pants these 15+ times, but I swear I will never do it again".
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On September 17 2018 13:11 Belisarius 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. I would think the most relevant option is 1.5: We're not sure if he's guilty, but we think an investigation would damn him regardless of the truth. Given that we can't know, it was a long time ago, and probably not that serious, he might as well be confirmed. The counter-argument is of course that it's better for an "innocent" man to be denied a seat than for a guilty man to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, but in the interests of walking through the train of thought, the middle school example is a good case study: Show nested quote +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. I agree with that position, myself; I think your first guy should probably be confirmed and the second shouldn't. However, I think it very unlikely that even your first guy would survive the laserbeam of a trial by media, post #metoo, with probably a half dozen women coming forward and multiple classmates confirming the widespread practice. Nobody could even take your own position publicly without being villainised themselves. So, starting from the position that your classmate did something inappropriate but not bad enough to be disqualifying, I can see why people who agree and who have an interest in him being confirmed wouldn't want to bother. At the end of the day it would come down to the politics of the confirmation, exactly as it is now, but with tensions even higher. To be clear, I think Kavanaugh would be a disaster, but i also think this is not particularly high on the list of reasons he's a bad choice. It just happens to be the one that has traction at the moment.
That's a bizarre position I guess I hadn't considered. So you think he did assault her, but that's all he did and that shouldn't be enough to disqualify him. But you also don't want to investigate more because you think the investigation will only turn up lies and fabricated accusations, which everyone will interpret as truth because the first one was true, and he'll be torpedoed.
Why do you assume the investigation would be incapable of detecting at least some of the false accusations? More importantly, what if he actually is a serial offender? It's certainly a lot more likely if we already agreed he probably assaulted/attempted to rape someone once. We're not even allowed to investigate the possibility because you have so little faith in our ability to discover truth here?
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On September 17 2018 22:06 JimmiC wrote:
Just listened to Howard Stern on the issue and I agree with what he said. Which was basically, the place at the supreme court is so important to America and the person must be so pristine that it is important to hear what she has to say. After Anita Hill she knows it is not going to be pleasant so she must really care to be willing to do it. Also, if it ends up that he is not the right guy, Trump can pick a different conservative. Which is his right as president. It just does not have to be this guy with this cloud hanging over him.
But Trump has another problem there. To change his pick for Supreme Court Justice, he would have to admit, even implicitly, that he made the wrong choice with Kavanaugh. And admitting that he did anything wrong is something that will never, ever happen.
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EPT
