It’s a job interview, not a trial. Fair or not, there are plenty of people without the baggage and who can no doubt comport themselves better at the interview. I don’t see any need to “side” with anyone here.
People actually get convicted of crimes based on the testimony of an alleged victim with no corroborating evidence. I have no problem with one guy being denied a promotion, given everything we do know about this Judge.
…we don’t need no “stinkin test.”
Leeann Tweeden was a right-wing conservative who went on national TV to claim that President Obama was born in Kenya. Back when she made accusations against Al Franken I said this:
I accepted Tweeden as more credible than Franken. I accept Ford as more credible than Kavanaugh. I did that not based on the political views of Tweeden or Franken or Ford or Kavanaugh. I did it based on all the information I knew about both cases.
So how partisan do you think I am?
This is mere speculation: I don’t think what actually happened in the real world bears this out.
Or maybe people will stand by their morals and principals and assess the evidence through an impartial lens, as I and many others did with Franken.
The problem with thought experiments is that they reveal more about the person who created the thought experiment than it does about the people the experiment is directed too. We learn a lot about you here from this response. You see things in a binary fashion. You can’t see nuance. You are exceedingly partisan.
Unless you want to take the time to listen then **you **are the one that will remain in an ideological echo chamber, not the rest of us.
The reality is that Kavanaugh should not have even made the shortlist for the Supreme Court even **without **the allegations from Ford an co. And based on everything that we know the Democrats (as they are at the moment) would never have nominated such a ridiculous candidate as Kavanaugh. And if they did: they wouldn’t have held back any emails. They wouldn’t have continued to back Kavanaugh when they found out his true character. Lets stop pretending that “both sides are the same.” We have clear and empirical evidence that “both sides” are not.
We shouldn’t be having this discussion. There are more than enough suitable candidates for the Supreme Court from the conservative side who would have sailed through the nomination process if only they had been nominated.
If Kavanaugh was the pick of a Democratic President and somehow proven with no doubt to be innocent, his behavior during the hearing would still disqualify him for a Supreme Court position, in my opinion, and his colleagues should give him the silent treatment until he withdraws from his other life appointment.
He’s not fit for a position that requires calm, unbiased judgement and thinking.
I don’t believe either yearbook (not his, nor hers) is relevant, but here is a link to the Christine Blasey yearbook:
“Kavanaugh Accuser’s High School Yearbooks Reveals History Of Drunken Promiscuity”
As for the claim that I’m being partisan, can I borrow the same argument up thread (used by others that support the accuser), namely that I am against baseless accusations regardless of party? I stated up front that I am on the judge’s side and would continue to agree with that side, even if the parties were reversed.
Since some are getting into the particulars, I am not familiar with the details of the Al Franken case, but Ford’s GoFundMe is over $700k:
As for the argument that “it’s just a job interview” and “he can easily get a job elsewhere” and “just choose another nominee and that person will slide right through” (I’m paraphrasing), this is problematic for me for the following reasons.
If it were me, my concern would not be about getting the job or not. At this point, it has gone way beyond the job. It’s about a baseless character assassination and trying to redeem my reputation from being forever associated with muck.
And if this were a political hit, caving to it would only demonstrate its effectiveness and you’d get an endless line of accusations torpedo-ing each successive nominee, each more ridiculous than the last, like we saw with Julie Swetnick. Of course, the media will bend over backwards trying to justify each one and the useful idiots will gobble it up.
…no you “can’t borrow those arguments”. Because the accusations against Kavanaugh are not baseless, just as the accusations against Franken were not baseless. I’m against baseless accusations as well. But this discussion is not about baseless accusations.
Talk is cheap. But how you say you would act and how you actually would act are two different things.
Well, there you go. You just revealed your partisan nature. The only possible way to be supporting Kavanaugh at this point is based on partisanship. It is not possible to have viewed his testimony, and in an unbiased way said “Yup, that guy should definitely be on the Supreme Court.” And you can accuse me of being partisan if you like; however, as above, I’m not even American. I don’t give a rat’s behind about Democrats or Republicans. If a Democrat and Republican were running in Canada, then it is very unlikely neither of them would get my vote. Maybe it is hypothetically possible that some Democrat (Sanders maybe?) could get my vote if somehow every other political party in Canada decided to put up somebody worse. I feel bad for Americans, one of your political parties is bad (D) and the other one has gone completely insane (R). Maybe it is time for a change. Have you considered voting for Kang or Kodos?
As far as I know, the accusations are baseless because there’s no solid details and no evidence whatsoever. It’s all based on a rather hazy testimony from Ford and she changes her claims whenever they are demonstrated to be false. The details she provides are suspiciously similar to excerpts from Mark Judge’s 1997 book “Wasted”, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone manipulated Ford’s memories based just on reading that book. The gaps in her knowledge seems to line up with information that Mark Judge did not include in his book, some of it the author intentionally left out. Sadly, one of the fictional characters in the book was unfortunately named “Bart O’Kavanaugh”, which is how we got to today’s circus.
I suspect Ford has a false memory, possibly implanted by Democratic lawyers, originating from this fictional character. If that is the case, I believe Ford’s testimony in so much that I believe Ford thinks she was sexually assaulted and groped by the character Bart O’Kavanaugh, which she is now 100% sure is Judge Brett Kavanaugh. But then I could also say I am 100% sure Ford was sexually assaulted by Matt Damon and Harvey Weinstein, but Ford mistook them for Kavanaugh and Mark Judge look-alikes. I have the same amount of evidence as Ford, and all accusations must be believed, right?
Look, I admit I might be a victim of my own echo chamber. If there is some solid evidence of the assault, I would love to see it. I haven’t read through all the SDMB threads, so maybe I missed something. The way people post here, it’s like there is some solid proof out there. Care to enlighten this poor ignorant soul?
My god, I don’t even know how that would work.
Why don’t these “Democratic lawyers” start planting false memories in a lot more people and take down the whole Trump cabinet?
This is not anything Congress should be concerned about.
I’m not going to support putting someone on the Supreme Court unless I’m pretty sure he’s not a rapist.
This is not a criminal trial. It’s not even a civil trial. It’s about a lifetime appointment to a position of immense unreviewable power. When someone is appointed to such a position, they have to show their worthiness for the office. It’s not owed to them. I don’t have to support them unless they’ve been convicted of a crime.
And this is not “baseless character assassination”. There’s plenty of basis. People get convicted on the testimony of a single victim all the time. The jury just has to believe the victim’s testimony and discount the defendant’s testimony, if any.
If you’re concerned that if we don’t put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court in spite of this accusation then we prove that accusations work and we’ll be flooded with them, well, if that’s what’s going to happen then you’re going to get that whether you put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court or some other right-wing judge.
But you’re not concerned that if we put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court we’re going to tell everyone “Women, don’t bother reporting when someone tries to rape you, because nobody will believe you, you filthy whore”?
Are you fucking kidding me?
This is what I get for taking your “I’m just asking questions” act at face value.
…that doesn’t fit the definition of the word “baseless.”
Parts of the testimony could be characterized as “hazy.” But many parts of her testimony could not. Its this binary standard you have. It doesn’t allow nuance.
This claim of yours is baseless. I don’t believe we should accept baseless claims in the Elections forum. How about you?
This assertion is baseless. Hilariously baseless. Are you starting to understand how the way you are using the word “baseless” is completely wrong?
And now we are moving beyond the realms of “baseless” and into the realms of conspiracy theories. Holy fucking shit! Are you being serious?
Nah, I don’t think so.
What a fucking roller-coaster! We are really off the rails now! I did not expect this plot twist. But here we are.
Are you being for real, or is this satire?
ROFL!
Nope.
Most definitely.
Welcome to the real world. Where uncertainty exists. In the real world sometimes crimes will exist where there is no physical evidence: where all you have to go on is the world of the accused and the word of the accuser.
You don’t need to read all the SDMB threads to understand the facts of what is happening here.
I would suggest that maybe you are reading things wrong.
Naaah.
You’ve already made up your mind. We aren’t gonna be changing anything. You are as partisan as you can get. You’ve failed your own test.
If the party politics of the situation were exactly reversed in every way, I would want the nominee to step aside BECAUSE I am a partisan Democrat, never mind that it would also be the right thing to do. I think it is extremely likely that Kavanaugh will turn into an electoral disaster for the Republicans, but I think it is absolutely certain that a Democratic version of Kavanaugh would turn into a bigger electoral disaster for the Democrats, as there are some crucial, relevant differences between the demographics of the two electorates and the parties’ internal culture.
If Kavanaugh were a liberal candidate nominated by a Democrat and remained the nominee, Democrats would be fighting bitterly among themselves right now, and a good many of them would choose to stay home rather than voting for any Senator who voted to confirm him. But if Kavanaugh were a liberal candidate nominated by a Democrat, he would also very likely have stepped aside by now; or, if he declined to do so, the president would have pulled the nomination and would likely have already nominated somebody else, because a Democratic president would assume that keeping him as the nominee would have much worse political consequences than pulling him.
I do not know whether Dr. Ford’s accusations are true or not (though the evidence does support her more than him). But I do know both that Kavanaugh has been lying under oath, on multiple topics, during these hearings. And I also know that even his supporters have admitted that his behavior was “passionate”. And both of these are traits that are counterindicative for someone being a judge at any level, much less for a Supreme Court justice.
The hypothetical is a really, really easy one. Not only is it the right thing to do to not give a man like Kavanaugh a seat on the Supreme Court, but the stakes aren’t even very high. If a hypothetical Democratic president had nominated a hypothetical judge with Kavanaugh’s temperament, the President could just withdraw his nomination and nominate someone else
Man, Democratic lawyers have super powers! Implanting false memories… what else can they do? Can they bend steel? Can they start fires with their mind?
Kinda sorry I posted in this mess now.
Yeah, I’m sorry too. Now I remember why I stopped posting to SDMB, it can get toxic rather fast. Enjoy your echo chamber, folks.
Dude, your wrote this:
And it’s our fault things got toxic?
Procrustus nailed it just above this post.
Do you have examples of the echo chamber in this thread?
It is unfortunate you are not willing to be exposed to other opinions when they contradict your own.