Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 853

Nobody is saying you’re responsible for anyone’s suffering. You’re the one who gets offended at the drop of a hat around here, and you can’t even grasp that others might be offended by a poorly worded statement on your part?

That elevator incident was hard to watch. I had to change the channel. If that woman was an actor, she should be in movies.

Jay said:

Warbler said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Warbler said:

I am also pissed at being accused of offending victims of sexual assault and misogyny. No reasonable ration person should be offended by what I said earlier.

You don’t get to decide who your words offend.

I do have the right to have an opinion on what is and isn’t reasonable to be offended about. The mere mention that something that is possible is in fact possible is not something that should offend anyone.

What’s offensive and what isn’t is entirely subjective. You’re free to say what you want and others are free to be offended. Being offended that others are offended, which is what you seem to be, is hypocritical.

Believing in due process means assuming everyone’s innocence until proven otherwise. That includes the women who approached Sen. Flake in the elevator. You had no reason to suggest they might be paid actors and you’re being called out for it. As they say, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

Of course, what the stories those women shared have to do with a completely separate accusation, I have no idea. I’m saddened they were assaulted, but their pain isn’t relevant to Kavanaugh and Ford. One person’s unsolved murder doesn’t make someone else’s murder suspect guilty.

It’s relevant to all the elected idiots who started saying Ford was confused or mistaken right off the bat. Then there was the congressman who made the Ruth Bader Ginsburg joke about her being groped by Abraham Lincoln. The old gentleman’s club on capitol hill just doesn’t have an effing clue.

Warbler said:

If it is perceived as callous too bad. Whatever suffering whichever women have gone through is not my fault. People shouldn’t be offended at the mere mention that it is possible that two women we have never seen or hear of before and know nothing about could have been put up to what they did yesterday. I can’t believe I even have to be explaining that!

If I said that it’s possible that the Jewish globalist conspiracy faked Sandy Hook in order to steal people’s guns, would you still defend that statement as just a possibility, too bad if it’s insulting? Oh, that’s right, you pretend not to read my posts so I won’t get a response to this. And your victim card is a joke that no one is buying, just so you know.

Possessed said:

I was sexually taken advantage as a young lad (16-17 somewhere in there) (assaulted is a strong word, it wasn’t physically forced more like mental manipulation) but I didn’t bother telling anybody because I knew I’d just get laughed at or made fun of about it.

I’m sorry this happened to you.

CatBus said:

In the end, this may very well amount to no difference for all involved. But procedurally, it may help solidify a precedent. Anita Hill’s accusations yielded an investigation (followed by a confirmation). Similarly, although it wasn’t looking like this way until the very last minute, Ford’s accusation will be afforded the same degree of respect, at least in terms of an investigation. Probably to be followed by a confirmation as well.

But the precedent will be harder to ignore next time. The next time a credible accusation of a serious crime is made, the argument of “we can’t afford to waste a few days investigating, we have a letter right here that says nothing happened and that’s good enough for us, so let’s vote right now!” will seem even more spurious than before.

The histrionics of Sen. Graham’s dire warnings aside, the man still had a point. The next time a Democratic president nominates a judge, and that judge faces a credible accusation of criminal behavior, there will be payback. That judge quite simply will have to suffer the indignity of an FBI investigation. And good. That sounds like the way it ought to be for everyone.

Never the hell mind – I was wrong, there’s no sane precedent being made here. Partisan trench warfare continues unabated.

Looks like Hill’s claims got an investigation, and Ford’s claims get an “investigation”. Where the White House counsel provides the FBI with a list of the only people they are permitted to interview and shit like that, no joke. Want to talk to Judge’s former employer as a means of verifying those elements of Ford’s story? Too bad for you, that’s not in the White House-approved script. The lack of an investigation and lack of calling witnesses to testify is what made this whole affair smell at the start, not the accusation itself. Hamstringing the investigation like this now makes it stink. It’s hard not to conclude that both the Senate and the White House are working very, very hard to prevent people from actually performing the investigation that could be used to clear Kavanaugh, and to wonder what sort of advantage such a heavily biased process could possibly give to an innocent man.

EDIT: Oh who the hell knows anymore. People verify McGahn indeed hamstrung the investigation, but then Trump tweets that it never happened. Does that mean McGahn’s restrictions get reversed, or it’s just another round of gaslighting and business as usual? The story will surely reverse itself tomorrow regardless.

https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/1046248077949063168?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1046248077949063168&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2018%2F9%2F29%2F1800137%2F-BREAKING-FBI-Investigation-NOT-so-Limited-says-Trump

Jay said:

Possessed said:

Warbler you should really have a beer man

Yeah.

CatBus said:

It’s hard not to conclude that both the Senate and the White House are working very, very hard to prevent people from actually performing the investigation that could be used to clear Kavanaugh, and to wonder what sort of advantage such a heavily biased process could possibly give to an innocent man.

What do you think they could possibly find at this point to clear him? Short of a plane ticket stub and passport stamp that shows he was out of the country that entire summer, I doubt there’s anything that would prove to any Democrat he’s innocent.

“Clearing” means finding no evidence of guilt (i.e. innocent until proven guilty). So by not finding anything, they clear him (that doesn’t necessarily disprove Ford’s accusation either, it just fails to prove it). However, if they don’t find anything because they were instructed not to investigate, that’s another matter entirely. That’s the difference between “not guilty” and “coverup”. And “coverup” just screams “guilty”, whether it’s true or not.

Innocent or guilty outside the legal definition is a partisan playground. The FBI cleared Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing with regard to e-mails, and most people are fine with that. And clearly there’s still a fringe of people who think she’s guilty of something. Certainly the same will be true for Kavanaugh. But “all Democrats”? That’s extreme. It’s like saying all Republicans believe in Mailghazi. It’s just not true.

The press and Democrats were particularly up in arms about this issue precisely because it wasn’t being investigated. With an investigation – one not circumscribed by the White House – people will go back to disliking his politics, or his propensity to commit perjury and spout conspiracy theories. They’re not going to start liking him, that’s fairly certain, and they will continue to say bad and even mean things about him, but this particular issue would fade in importance. If they actually find evidence disproving the accusers’ testimony entirely, the issue would drop to Pizzagate levels of support among Democrats.

I agree it’s unlikely they’ll find much. There’s a little more evidence to sift through in this case than a “he-said/she-said” scenario, but it is just a little more. Failing to find anything at all (most likely scenario), he’ll be cleared, but Ford’s accusation will remain plausible. There’s a legal distinction between “innocent” and “not guilty”, and people may have a hard time finding him innocent. But most people (Democrats included) would recognize that the legal process would nevertheless have found him effectively “not guilty” (technically: not enough evidence to charge, but close enough), assuming that legal process is permitted to happen… which is unfortunately still very much in question.

Jay said:

Regardless of what the FBI finds, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, most Democrats will believe we have a sexual predator on the Supreme Court. I feel totally comfortable using the word “most”.

If the FBI finds nothing, but possibly because they were instructed not to look for certain things that would be reasonable for such an investigation, I’d have a hard time not joining that number, though I’m not a Democrat anymore. As I said, cover-ups scream “guilty” even when it’s not true. The “dirty defense” as you call it would be entirely to blame for people’s misperceptions if he’s actually innocent.

I quite honestly haven’t seen any sign of that. The existence of crazies on both sides is not proof that crazies are running the show on either side – otherwise they’ve always been running the show. There is, however, some political advantage in throwing bones to the crazies so that they show up to the polls, but that’s also been a feature of democracy since forever.

EDIT: There are clearly Democrats who are fact-resistant – vaccines, cell phone radiation, etc – and I happen to live in a town with more than its fair share of them. But they’re still very much a tiny minority, and safe to ignore. The good and bad thing about Democrats is it’s pretty much impossible to get any reasonably large number of them to agree on anything much more complicated than “water is wet”, and I’m sure you could get some LaRouchites in there to argue that one.

Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court is horrifying whether he’s a sexual predator or not. The damage he will do to American rights and liberties is something that anyone who actually gives a fuck about this country should be worried about.