Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[薔薇語]

For an investigation to take place, there needs to be some investigatable facts. That brings us back to the issue I raises above with Mega, we don't know anything that could be reasonably investigated yet: Time, Location, other's present, etc. Prof Fors has yet to say any of that info leaving us all to ungrounded assumptions. 

 

La Rose. 

[Pattern Ghost]

I haven't read either woman's statement, just poor summaries and out takes in various articles. Been to busy with other stuff this week to bother.

[薔薇語]

I just caught a clip on CNN. Jake Tapper says that there were four people named by Prof. Ford as being present t the party. The Judge, Mr. Judge, Smyth (spelling?), and a female friend of Prof. Ford. All four people have denied any such actions having taken place where they were. Prof Fords own friend said that she can't recall ever being at a party with both Prof. Ford and the Judge. 

 

Immediately following this, one commentator said that this denial of events actually fits what the Prof. claimed. If that isn't a catch 22, I am not sure what is. 

 

Given the information we have now on the alleged event, what kind of progression could any investigation take? There are 4 relevant witness plus Prof Ford. All four say the claim is incorrect. 1 even says she didn't attend any joint party with the two. Unless Prof Ford can offer up more investigatable information, what can be done that wouldn't be a very long and expensive fishing expedition?

 

La Rose. 

[TheDarkness]

6 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

I agree with you, was just being a bit pedantic in the interest of keeping the facts straight about the claims. Sorry if I suggested otherwise.

No problem!

[TheDarkness]

6 hours ago, 薔薇語 said:

 

I do not know if she is completely right or wrong. I worry there may be some confusion regarding the actions or people involved. 

 

Why do I say this? Because there are cases where this exact kind of thing has happened. I recall learning of a story of a man who was arrested for rape on the strength of the victims testimony IDing him as the attacker. It wasn't until many years later that the man was released from prison because the DNA evidence exonerated him and pointed to a different person. Even then the woman couldn't get over the belief that he was indeed the rapist. Did she do that maliciously? No, I sincerely doubt that. But these kinds of concerns are why we have to be careful with claims and look for as much supporting evidence as possible. Currently Prof Ford has not provided much in the way of investigatable facts so it is still 'he said, she said'.

 

La Rose. 

 

 

Cavanaugh literally said he was a virgin as a defense and attempted to portray himself at that time as not being a heavy drinker. Everyone on all sides of the issue from that period seems to say that's not true at all, and that heavy drinking was a major thing for him and his circle back then. I think his own conduct in defending himself is suspect, because it clearly involves obfuscation and an attempt to cover up the drinking.

 

I'm not sure why one would only look in the accusor's accounts for inconsistencies, that's not how investigations work. A lot of people get caught in crimes because of their response to the accusations. I'll again cite Roy Moore, with his whole 'I had the parent's permission'.

 

Are you saying Brett Cavanaugh has been honest about his and his friends' behavior back then? If you do, how do reconcile that his friends paint an entirely different picture?

[薔薇語]

16 minutes ago, TheDarkness said:

Cavanaugh literally said he was a virgin as a defense and attempted to portray himself at that time as not being a heavy drinker.

 

This is something I have seen in headlines but have yet to actually read. I can't claim particular familiarity for the claim of his virginity.  

 

As to referencing the veracity of the allegations made against him, I would hope we all recall a very basic tenant of judicial conduct: innocent until proven guilty - forgetting that has caused us some great headaches in the recent past. We are free to assess the claims the Judge has made so far as well, but I will note that regardless of his virginal status at that time, none of that proves he committed any of the acts alleged.

 

La Rose.

[Ternaugh]

4 hours ago, 薔薇語 said:

I just caught a clip on CNN. Jake Tapper says that there were four people named by Prof. Ford as being present t the party. The Judge, Mr. Judge, Smyth (spelling?), and a female friend of Prof. Ford. All four people have denied any such actions having taken place where they were. Prof Fords own friend said that she can't recall ever being at a party with both Prof. Ford and the Judge. 

 

Immediately following this, one commentator said that this denial of events actually fits what the Prof. claimed. If that isn't a catch 22, I am not sure what is. 

 

Given the information we have now on the alleged event, what kind of progression could any investigation take? There are 5 relevant witness plus Prof Ford. All four say the claim is incorrect. 1 even says she didn't attend any joint party with the two. Unless Prof Ford can offer up more investigatable information, what can be done that wouldn't be a very long and expensive fishing expedition?

 

La Rose. 

 

The only things that Mr. Judge (Kavanaugh's friend) says is that he can't remember about the incident.

 

He's also written in his book, Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk, that he's suffered blackouts due to heavy drinking during that period, and there's additional material in his memoir that references an O'Kavanaugh* getting drunk enough to puke in a car while partying, and Mark Judge getting aggressive towards women while drunk, and not remembering.

 

His Georgetown Prep yearbook included the Noel Coward quote, "Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs." His other writings frequently included statements that supported aggressive behavior toward women. Kavanaugh's yearbook is now being looked at, after it was revealed that an inscription in it was basically a brag that he (and others on the football team) had sex with a certain girl, and for other statements found within.

 

Professor Ford's attorney has asked that Mr. Judge be subpoenaed to give testimony in front of the committee, but that is highly unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the Republicans on the committee don't want to have this information put into the record.

 

 

 

*While this is probably Kavanaugh, it would be good for Mr. Judge to clear that up on the record.

[Sociotard]

So, remember how one of the founding arguments of "Make America Great Again" was that the world laughed at us? 

 

 

Well good. I hope that laughter echoes in his dreams. Also hope he's less okay with it than he seems.

[Hermit]

1 hour ago, Sociotard said:

So, remember how one of the founding arguments of "Make America Great Again" was that the world laughed at us? 

 

 

Well good. I hope that laughter echoes in his dreams. Also hope he's less okay with it than he seems.

 

I don't know, we're talking about the jackass who said Puerto Rico wouldn't become a state because the Mayor of San Juan hurt his precious little feelings.

 

Not that it's UP to the President mind you, but given that attitude I suspect some nation will be denied international aid because they're part of the UN that laughed at him and made him feel bad

[DShomshak]

As part of its coverage of the Kavanaugh hearings, the public radio program All Things Considered asked a former FBI agent whether Prof. Ford's allegation could be investigated, given the paucity of details. He said that yes, there's plenty the FBI could investigate to find whether Ford's claim is plausible or not. As Ternaugh mentions, other people are already doing some of this: Interviewing people who knew either of them, any documentary evidence from that time (such as yearbooks), and so on.

 

Such evidence probably could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Kavanaugh committed the assault. But this is not a criminal trial. It is merely enough to find sufficient evidence that Ford's allegation has a strong likelihood of being correct.

 

So, why does it matter? What does Kavanaugh's conduct in high school and college have to do with his skill at legal reasoning?

 

Nothing, directly. But if it can be shown that he's probably lying about sexual assault -- the more his squeaky-clean image can be shown to be a fraud -- well, the less he looks like a high-minded, sincere legal scholar and the more he looks like a squalid political hack being put on the court to advance a squalid political agenda. That he cannot be trusted to judge cases fairly.

 

Republican senators may decide they want their five reliable conservative justices so badly they don't care about political blowback from voters. Possibly they imagine that they'll have won so completely that voters won't matter anymore.

 

Democrats, meanwhile, are rather obviously trying to run out the clock in a long-shot hope that they can delay appointment of a replacement Supreme Court justice until after the midterm elections, and maybe they will control the Senate then. If they do, they refuse to confirm Kavanaugh or any other Trump appointee, using the Republicans' refusal to confirm Merrick Garland as their precedent. Then they hope that in 2020 they can take the White House and keep the Senate, and ram through whatever nominees they want.

 

Neither side is acting from high principle here. This is politics as knife fighting.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lawnmower Boy]

Honestly, this Kavanaugh thing is ridiculous. This is not a sex assault trial. It's a hiring committee. You're looking at a candidate for one of the best, and most tenure-protected jobs on Earth. It's okay to red-flag a CV! that is, and I cannot emphasise this enough, how hiring committees work.

. . .

It was also so completely avoidable. The Federalist Society maintains a fully investigated, cleared a short list of 10 members of America's obscenely narrow list of papabile, conservative Supreme Court candidates for just this reason, and expanded it to 20 at the President's request. (I bet that it would be a much better list if they were allowed to include graduates from historically conservative schools, but t that's just my wild ass theorising.) Kavanaugh did not make the short list, or the long list, and while there might be other reasons for that, it was no secret that he was a hard-drinking 80s frat bro. If I were the Federalist Society, I'd have excluded him, too! 

 

So my advice to the Senate Judicial Committee is, "Do what any hiring committee would do." You had hearings. You found a problem with the candidate. It doesn't have to rise to "no reasonable doubt" standards, because you're not trying to decide whether Kavanaugh belongs in jail. You're trying to decide whether he would be better at the job than a member of the 20 person long short list that came in above him. The answer to that would seem to be, by definition, "No." At this point, the Committee is basically going to the country with the argument, that "We owe this guy a job." And, just to be clear, America does not. Owe. Him. A. Job. .  

[Old Man]

How many of the Federalist Society candidates are on record as saying that foreign entities should be allowed to contribute money to U.S. election campaigns?  Or that the POTUS is immune to prosecution?

[archer]

22 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I thought the questions would be easy for you to answer, but whatever.

 

I would have been willing to answer any and all questions if you weren't using the questions to deflect from the fact that you couldn't defend your statement.

 

If you would either defend or recant your statement, I am more than willing to answer, in full, all the questions you posed to me.

[Old Man]

Sure, I'll play.  Remind me which statement you're having trouble with?

[archer]

31 minutes ago, Old Man said:

How many of the Federalist Society candidates are on record as saying that foreign entities should be allowed to contribute money to U.S. election campaigns?  Or that the POTUS is immune to prosecution?

 

The argument that a president should be immune to prosecution is silly and can't be defended from the Constitution.

 

As for the Federalist Society candidates, I assume that you mean the potential Supreme Court nominees which the Federalist Society put on it's list of twenty.

 

I don't offhand know whether any of them have made a public statement on that issue or not. If you have some knowledge on the subject, I'd be interested in seeing it. I'd imagine that Trump is hip deep in illegal foreign campaign donations just as Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign was with the Chinese and Obama who turned off the credit card protections on his campaign website which would have stopped donations from credit cards issued by foreign banks.

 

But if any of those potential candidates have said anything favorable about foreign entities donating to federal election campaigns, that'd make me not want them to sit on the court. Knowingly accepting foreign donations is illegal for a presidential campaign, and that's a very good thing in my opinion.

 

I don't mind money in politics, though I'd personally advocate partial public financing of campaigns. But I object strongly to foreign money being in US campaigns.

[archer]

3 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Sure, I'll play.  Remind me which statement you're having trouble with?

 

Going back to your original statement which to this point you still haven't attempted to defend, you said

 

"Seems to me that if we were interested in finding verifiable facts one way or the other, we’d allow the FBI to conduct an investigation. To do otherwise logically concedes that Kavanaugh is either guilty or has something else to hide."

 

I'll go ahead and get the conversation off on the right foot by pointing out that your wording implies that the FBI is eager to conduct an investigation and that "we'd allow" them to do so when what you meant to say is "that if Trump were interesting in finding verifiable facts one way or the other, he would order the FBI to conduct an investigation.To do otherwise logically concedes that Kavanaugh is either guilty or has something else to hide."

 

Trump is the person who is making the decision, "we" are not. And the FBI probably has no desires on the matter one way or the other, but honestly we have no mechanism for finding that out for sure.

 

Getting back to my statement, I stated that it does not "logically concede that Kavanaugh is either guilty or has something else to hide".

 

Please demonstrate that your statement is logically true.

 

If you at long last make some attempt to do so, I'll demonstrate why that you are wrong and we'll continue to have a polite conversation about the subject.

 

 

[DShomshak]

Today's episode of The Daily, a public radio program of news analysis associated with the New York Times (host's name is Michael Barbaro, to help with finding it) had a nice guide to Republican reactions to the allegations against Kavanaugh. The analyst said reactions fell into three general categories:

 

1) Okay, maybe he did it, but he was a drunken teen, move on. Kavanaugh, however, has declared absolutely that it didn't happen. Therefore the issue is not just whether Kavanaugh committed a drunken sexual assault, but whether he is lying about it now, which is perhaps more immediately relevant to his fitness for the Supreme Court.

 

2) We don't know one way or another, but it's serious enough we can take the time to look for more information. Let Prof. Ford testify, do some investigation. Some people in this group think it's possible Ford has confused Kavanaugh with someone else and evidence for this might be found. This is perhaps the lowest stakes viewpoint, as it leaves options open.

 

3) Lies! It's all evil Democratic partisan lies! The analyst said this camp is actually growing at the expense of the other two, as tribal passions are aroused and the herd closes in to defend one of their own. As the analyst put it, Kavanaugh is proving he has the right enemies. Confirming him has become a matter of poking a finger in the eyes of Democrats.

 

It does occur to me (my own thoughts here, not from any expert's view) that Democratic strategy may have a second branch: That if Republican senators are seen ramming him onto the court and brushing aside allegations, it may disgust enough independent and moderate Republican women voters to switch their votes to Democrats or at least to stay home -- maybe enough to flip a few states or districts from red to blue. Cynical but, like I said, this is knife fighting.

 

(The analyst on The Daily is less cynical than I am. He thinks it is possible that all concerned do believe they are acting from high principle... while noting that we all tend to have principles that tend to follow our interests, even if we aren't consciously aware of it.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, archer said:

 

 

"Seems to me that if we were interested in finding verifiable facts one way or the other, we’d allow the FBI to conduct an investigation. To do otherwise logically concedes that Kavanaugh is either guilty or has something else to hide."

 

If you at long last make some attempt to do so, I'll demonstrate why that you are wrong and we'll continue to have a polite conversation about the subject.

 

 

 

Well, at the risk of repeating myself: if Kavanaugh is innocent of the accusations, all he needs to do is request that the FBI investigate.  He isn't, therefore he isn't.

 

Moving on, I'm losing count but I believe we're up to four women who are accusing Kavanaugh of some form of sexual assault, and numerous additional witnesses attesting to the general frat-house drunken misogyny that he and his friends were famous for in high school and college.  I assume Kavanaugh will continue to deny any and all allegations--he has little choice given that he already answered "no" to Mazie's questions under oath.

[csyphrett]

 Heidi Bond has said Kav knew about Kozinki's harassment of female clerks but did nothing.

CES 

[Pattern Ghost]

5 hours ago, Old Man said:

if Kavanaugh is innocent of the accusations, all he needs to do is request that the FBI investigate. 

 

If you get pulled over on a routine traffic stop and the police officer asks you if he can search your vehicle, do you let him?

 

I don't think it's an indicator of guilt if you don't volunteer to be investigated. Nobody in their right mind wants to be investigated.

 

That said, I think we have plenty of other indicators of guilt or at least bad character here, and if the people deciding this had any integrity, they'd have already tossed Kavanaugh out.

[Badger]

22 hours ago, 薔薇語 said:

I just caught a clip on CNN. Jake Tapper says that there were four people named by Prof. Ford as being present t the party. The Judge, Mr. Judge, Smyth (spelling?), and a female friend of Prof. Ford. All four people have denied any such actions having taken place where they were. Prof Fords own friend said that she can't recall ever being at a party with both Prof. Ford and the Judge. 

 

Immediately following this, one commentator said that this denial of events actually fits what the Prof. claimed. If that isn't a catch 22, I am not sure what is. 

 

Given the information we have now on the alleged event, what kind of progression could any investigation take? There are 4 relevant witness plus Prof Ford. All four say the claim is incorrect. 1 even says she didn't attend any joint party with the two. Unless Prof Ford can offer up more investigatable information, what can be done that wouldn't be a very long and expensive fishing expedition?

 

La Rose. 

 

Wait a minute, the commentator actually implied that the fact a friend couldn't remember such an event, it means the event happened.

 

What the insane troll logic is that?

[薔薇語]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

 

Wait a minute, the commentator actually implied that the fact a friend couldn't remember such an event, it means the event happened.

 

What the insane troll logic is that?

 

I meant to links this when I got home the other night on that post but forgot. This is the clip I am referring to:

 

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/23/sotu-panel-1-full.cnn

 

La Rose. 

 

 

[Greywind]

Personally, I think this level of investigation should occur into the past of any and all public and elected officials. Any of them have anything remarkable sketchy in their past should not be eligible.

 

...and there goes our entire government.

[Starlord]

Good luck with that...we can't even get some people to release their taxes.  

[Greywind]

As for that, my taxes are between me, my preparer and the IRS. Nobody else's business.