No, re-fuck him. Between him and Sinema, they killed the attempt to carve out a filibuster exception for voting rights.
Yeah. I could understand, but not agree with, his decision to do this if he thought that it would hurt his reelection prospects. But given that he ended up not running, then there is no excuse. If you aren’t running for reelection you fuck political considerations, and do right right thing dammit.
Let’s say that we have two crazy people, Alfred and Minnie who are part of an HOA.
Alfred thinks that we should douse the building in gasoline and light it up when we need heat. Minnie thinks that we should go out and assemble all the homeless people in the city to come in with us, so we have more bodies producing heat and, as a side bonus, we’re helping the needy.
Alfred’s plan is mutual suicide. It’s wildly worse than Minnie’s plan. That’s not even a question. Minnie’s plan would even, actually, work even if is a silly and overly complicated methodology with some serious negatives. No one doubts any of that. We all know that Minnie’s plan is better and that Alfred’s is death.
But the vote is purely between Alfred and Minnie and, with only two people to vote and no possible chance of compromise between the two, we’re looking at freezing to death.
Now we can all look at each other and think, “Minnie is a fast talker. I bet we could make a new rule that whoever says their plan faster gets it”. And then we all will be saved from a freezing death this winter.
And yeah, maybe that works for this one specific item on this is specific day. But I would put it to you that if we all control the rules - even if we don’t control the vote - then making that rule the solution is dumb. Maybe Alfred is going to come up with something short and easy to say, one day, and we’ll all get murdered before we’re able to change the rules to undo what he decided. Faster is the winner is a really shortsighted answer that really glosses over everything practical.
The problem isn’t that we can’t come up with a reasonable solution, it’s that we’ve got two unreasonable people with wild ideas making the decisions. Making them mutually powerless is the right call because that’s what they deserve. Correcting that doesn’t improve the situation, it degrades it.
There’s lots of suggestions and ways to improve the quality and sanity of the people in office. If you’re not voting for those things and you’re letting immediate policy options supercede the systemic foundations, and you do that long enough, eventually you end up with Alfred and Minnie running the show.
We don’t need to enfranchise more voters. We need the current voters to step back and look at the bigger picture. Don’t hire anyone who aided in the development of a gerrymander. Don’t hire anyone who blocked insider trading rules on Congress. Don’t hire people who’ve plausibly been accused of taking bribes. If you get good people in, no one will be blocking enfranchisement because you finally got your shirt together and you stopped hiring cranks and wannabe dictators.
There isn’t some point where you keep accepting Minnie’s argument that at least she’s better than Alfred where something truly good happens.
I’ve never seen Manchin say nor propose anything that didn’t seem pretty reasonable. If he comes across as the crazy person, you might want to ask people why there isn’t 100% endorsement of Minnie across the board. Maybe you’ve just learned to accept that there will never be anything better than crazy.
October 2018 —Joe Manchin votes to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
I wouldn’t have voted for Kavanaugh. There seemed to be evidence that he was present in the place and at the time indicated and sufficient evidence that he may have been drunk enough at the time to have done something to his fellow student that would be regrettable.
People can have different views of the same event. A person might say something as a joke and its interpreted or misheard as a slur. Kavanaugh might have genuinely attacked Ms. Ford, exactly as she said. He might have been pulling some stupid prank - entirely non-sexual in nature - and she misinterpreted it. He might not know the answer, himself.
I’d expect that someone serving as the most supreme justice in the nation is able to set aside his personal interest in the matter, admit the potential that he may have done something while drunk, certainly admit the potential that he harmed her - whatever the intent might have been - and so on. I’d expect him to be humble and empathetic.
Kavanaugh was not that.
That all being said, if I’m interviewing someone to be a plumber, and I find out that the man pulled a little girl’s hair when he was a kid and he doesn’t feel sorry about it because - after all, he was just a kid - I’d have to admit that shit happens in life and his ability as a plumber has fuck-all to do with the hair pulling incident. He could be a god of the pipes and it’s just overthinking the matter to pay too much attention to the hair story. If you look through anyone’s life, you can probably find something that they’ve done that’s regrettable, If perfection is the minimum bar, you’re never going to hire anyone.
If Kavanaugh is knowledgeable and competent in his chosen occupation, doesn’t have any wild or crazy legal views, and seems to be a stolid and boring man then I could easily see someone deciding to hire him for the job. My high standards are very high and, possibly, too high to hold and have any hope that we’ll ever hire someone to serve on the Supreme Court. Maybe, Manchin knows that it’s a hopeless mission and you have to compromise a little bit.
And, likewise, maybe Manchin traded this for healthcare for the whole nation, to keep West Virginia under the power of the Democratic party, or otherwise made the choice based on some necessary sacrifice. Obama got real good at killing people in office. You don’t always get to just make softball, nice and friendly moves in the real world.
Manchin did not hire Lucifer, the Lord of Darkness onto the Supreme Court. He hired a guy who knew his shit and who was widely regarded as perfectly competent into the role. I wouldn’t have hired him, but that may just be on the basis of not knowing as much as Manchin or not having as many concerns to balance.
He hired a drunkard and a probable rapist, whose previous decisions included one that a corporation breaking the law was sufficient to shield it from consequences, to a position on the highest court in the land. Yeah, that’s pretty bad.
Ford did not accuse him of rape - just of grabbing her and holding her down for no good reason. He may have been intending to rape her and decided otherwise a moment after beginning the act. That may not have been the intent at all. Their friends were, as I recall, making out on the couch on the first floor. Maybe his friend asked him to keep her up on the 2nd floor, and he didn’t know what to do, when she started to go for the door. We can imagine a lot of scenarios from the given information. There’s no way to know which is the correct one, though we should trust that Ford’s interpretation is the one that she has genuinely believed all of this time.
There’s no indication that, post-College, Kavanaugh is a drunk.
Lots of criminals get away with crimes, due to completely unremarkable and unquestioned parts of the law.
Which case was this? Was it appealed and overruled?
And grinding against her and trying to take her clothes off. She seems to think he had a reason to hold her down.
I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was so drunk, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under my clothes. I believed he was going to rape me.
If you believe that there’s sufficient evidence to send him to jail for the crime of rape, and that you would send any other person with an equivalent level of evidence against them for any particular crime to jail, then I’ll accede to your individual right to call Kavanaugh a rapist.
Is that your position?
Making this your analogy to what happened to Ford is not cool. If what happened to Ford happened to a woman in your life that you cared about, I strongly doubt you would be making this bullshit “kids pulling hair” minimizing comparison about it.
My position is that your statement that he “held her down for no good reason” entirely ignores the clear sexual aspect of what he did. and reduces what was likely attempted rape or at the very least attempted sexual assault to just rough housing.
As for sufficient evidence to get a conviction, that is a very high bar, particularly in this area. But when you have multiple women accusing him of a pattern of behavior regarding a complete disregard of for consent and bodily autonomy, then I would be very wary of having placing this person in a position where he is the final arbiter of right and wrong in the country.
Well, there was probably only one person in all of the US qualified for that spot, so what choice did they have? I’m sure most employers would wave in potential employees (lifetime employees) with lots of doubt about their past.
If he clearly attacked her for sexual purposes, then he should go to jail. That is a crime and sufficient evidence will put you away for it.
So again, if you are willing to hold that the evidence is sufficient then, by all means, disagree with Joe Manchin. But you need to be confident that the evidence doesn’t allow for any of these possibilities:
- Ford swapped in the wrong person in her memory, later.
- Kavanaugh stumbled, fell on her, was disoriented, and ended up pulling and pushing on things that he shouldn’t have, unintentionally. She misinterpreted.
- Kavanaugh was asked to keep her upstairs by his friend, so that he and his girlfriend could have some private time. Kavanaugh saw Ford trying to leave, grabbed her, she tried to get away, he tried to hold onto her clothing as a means of not touching her anywhere intimate, and she misinterpreted it as an attempt to pull her clothes off.
- Various other options of similar ilk.
Now, none of this says that Ford is anything but human. We read intention into things that aren’t correct every day. We mistake things for other things, regularly. There’s no shortage of evidence across the centuries of people blaming the wrong people with exactly zero ill intent.
Kavanaugh may well be guilty. Ford may have gotten everything correct. I have no evidence to say otherwise. But I am confident that she’s not a mind reader and I am confident that she’s human. I’m also confident that you weren’t in that room, that you aren’t a mind reader, and that you’re human. If you’re very confident then, by all means, go live outside Kavanaugh’s house with a sign that blames him for rape and “boo” him every time he comes out. Petition to get standards of evidence lowered and statutes of limitations laws dropped from the books.
Personally, I think we should just remove that whole law that 12 of 12 jurors have to agree to guilt. Surely, life would just be easier and better if you only needed 6 of 12 or whoever said it fastest.
What the shit is wrong with you?
Kavanaugh is a fucking Republican; that should be enough reason for anyone to no want him in any position of public responsibility or power.
But hey, how about that Manchin? What a sorry excuse for a Democrat, am I right?
Discussion can be continued in this aptly named thread.
[deleted post] hit send too soon still composing.
And also in the wrong thread.
I was a little concerned about Judge Kavanaugh’s financial situation, but as I recall the answer was that Mom and Dad bankrolled him.
Senator Manchin didn’t trade his vote for anything except perhaps to appeal to a few Republican voters in that year’s election. And he did win that election by a 3% margin. I cannot imagine Manchin losing more than a handful of votes because of a symbolic vote to approve Kavanaugh. Senator Collins decided Kavanaugh would be the next Justice before Manchin committed to a vote. Manchin jumped on the bandwagon. The final vote was 50-48. 49 votes were necessary for a majority. If you believe Manchin’s vote was anything but symbolic, you’re just as naive as Manchin claimed to be when Dobbs v. Jackson was decided.
“I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans.” That was unreasonable, given Judge Kavanaugh’s dissent in Garza v. Hargan, 874 F.3d 735 (2017).
~Max
Manchin takes offense at a protestor calling him a “sick fuck.”