No, I don’t agree that it is certain. How do you prove what someone else means when they use a word?
Same problem, more or less - how do you prove that someone else got blackout drunk? Like I said in another thread, perhaps my own experience is shaping my response (in fact, it almost certainly is). I have been drunk, I drank in high school. I never blacked out, and I never assaulted anyone. So, to me, it sounds entirely plausible that Kavanaugh never blacked out, and never assaulted anyone, and I have not seen any good evidence that he did. And in the case of the alleged sexual assault, nobody except Dr. Ford backs up the accusation. And even she didn’t name Kavanaugh until last July. For thirty six years, Kavanaugh has had an unblemished record, with zero allegations of drunkenness, zero allegations of any hint of misconduct towards women. But just when he is floated as a nominee for the Supreme Court, someone makes an anonymous accusation and wants to dynamite the nomination without backing it up in any way, including making the accusation publicly. And the Democrats leak it to the press, so they can comb thru his yearbook and try to disqualify him for making a fart joke.
ISTM that if you are going to accuse someone of lying, especially about something they said or did, or what they meant when they said something, you need rather more evidence than has been produced. Whether that’s a bug or a feature isn’t always clear.
Should Kavanaugh be disqualified because his enemies are misinterpreting, or putting the worse possible spin on, everything he says? Not IMO.
My question was, was he certainly incorrect in how he described those words? Words have meanings and, for example, Devil’s Triangle doesn’t mean drinking game, or whatever he claimed.
If I had, say, pyramid, in my yearbook entry and I claimed it meant “grain storage device”, I would be wrong even if I wasn’t lying. Was he wrong when he described those terms that way?
On the subject of Kavanaugh’s drinking habits, I believe the exchange has gone like this so far:
I’d be more comfortable saying there was “no good evidence” that “he lied when asked about his drinking habits” than that he “downplayed and misled on the frequency and extent of his drinking”. That difference between “lied” and “downplayed and misled” is somewhat subtle though. I can’t seem to find a full transcript of the hearing, but here are some excerpts:
“I spent most of my time in high school focused on academics, sports, church, and service. But I was not perfect in those days, just as I am not perfect today. I drank beer with my friends, usually on weekends. Sometimes I had too many.”
“I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer.”
“I like beer” X 87
“I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out”
“Passed out would be no, but I’ve gone to sleep. But I’ve never blacked out. That’s the allegation . . . and that’s wrong.”
“We drank beer and . . . so did, I think, the vast majority of people our age at the time. In any event, we drank beer and still do, so, whatever, yeah”
Some of that is probably fairly characterized as “downplaying”. Is there a particular quote you think was “misleading”? I suppose we could also toss in there “evasive” because I think at time he was certainly that.
Would statements like the ones below accurately describe your personal experience, because if not we’re not really talking about the same thing.
“Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker.”
“On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer.”
“He drank heavily, he was a partier, he liked to do beer bongs, he played drinking games, he was sloppy drunk.”
“It is from this experience that I concluded that although Brett was normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time.”
“I do remember Brett frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that while at Yale, he was a big partier, often drank to excess, and there had to be a number of nights where he does not remember.”
Kavanaugh is described by multiple sources as behaving in a manner where blackouts are unavoidable. People can drink, and people can drunk without blacking out. People can’t drink the way Brett Kavanaugh has been described as drinking and avoid blackouts. Physiologically impossible.
While this may unfortunately be true, I personally think its worse in a judicial nominee.
It is believable that a Kavanaugh considered that by telling a few little white lies while under oath it served his greater underlying purpose of getting confirmed to a position where he can push forward his greater judicial philosophy. That in some sense the technical breaches of the law were outweighed by his getting the result he wants.
The problem is that it is precisely to job of the supreme court justice to care about the small technical details. This behavior suggests that as a supreme justice, he might choose to ignore inconvenient technicalities of the law in order to reach the conclusion he wants.
I wonder if Kavanaugh’s supporters perceive bias in the way he has interpreted certain things.
For instance, in his hearing, he repeatedly asserted that Judge, P.J. Smythe, and Keyser denied that the party in question happened. Their statements, however, don’t say such a thing. All three attested to either not knowing or recalling the party in a question. That is substantially different than denying that the party occurred.
A lawyer who is both competent and honest knows you can’t conflate a “do not recall” with “did not happen”, so this leaves us with three options: 1) he’s incompetent, 2) he’s dishonest, and 3) he’s both of these things.
My question is why doesn’t this disqualify from the SC? How can anyone support a nominee who mischaracterizes evidence so blatantly that even a child could spot it?
Well, not really, because that is pretty well-poisoning. I really am curious to understand the supporters on this, since his (probable) lying seems so disqualifying to me. I wouldn’t want to hire, work with, or associate with someone who was so (at best) misleading or (more likely) completely dishonest, and I certainly wouldn’t give someone like that a lifetime post.
Others feel differently and I’m curious why. Your phrasing makes it much less likely that I’ll gain any understanding.
I’d love to hear from UltraVires before this thread goes completely off the rails (where it seems to be headed, unfortunately). He’s a lawyer and a pretty heavy Kavanaugh supporter – would he want to try a case in front of someone like Kavanaugh? What does he think of the (possible) lying?
BTW, RitterSport, kudos to you for doing your best to keep this thread civil. If it does turn into a shitshow, it won’t be because you didn’t try your best to be fair and open-minded and hear the other side.
OK, prove that Devil’s Triangle didn’t mean a drinking game at Kavanaugh’s high school in 1982. That’s what you have to do before you can claim certainty. Sure, I am asking you to prove a negative. But that’s the point - Kavanaugh is being asked to prove a negative.
OK, prove it. When did it happen, what was Kavanaugh’s BAC when it happened, and how do you know it?
First you claimed there was no good evidence. Then when presented with good evidence you demanded proof.
Second it can be proven that Kavanaugh blacked out out without a specific date or a BAC. There is such a thing as non-constructive proof and that’s exactly what we here. Kavanaugh’s drinking behavior, as described by numerous independent sources which include Kavanaugh himself, have established, beyond a reasonable doubt, a pattern of behavior where blackouts are unavoidable.
I am confused by the posters claiming they have been drunk many times and have never blacked out. How would you know? The salient characteristic of blacking out is that there is some period of time when you were conscious for which you have no memory.
I was not a drinker in high school, except for glasses of wine on Jewish holidays. Always a bit of a timid rule-follower, I didn’t want to get in trouble for breaking the law (I graduated high school shortly before I turned 17, and it was right around the time that drinking ages were starting to rise in the early 80s). I loosened up a little in college, but didn’t actually get drunk until late in my freshman year, when I chipped in to pay for a party in one of the dorm suites–the suite had a couple of seniors who were legal to buy the booze. Since this was my first hosting experience, I wanted to taste everything. That was a tactical error. I remember the party (vaguely–it was roughly contemporaneous with the Kavanaugh allegation), having a nice time, then waking up on the couch in the common area and running to the bathroom to puke, repeatedly. I don’t remember the moment of falling asleep, but that’s not remarkable, even when sober. One could say that I “passed out”, and that would be accurate.
What I learned later was that I had been introduced to a woman, a high school senior who was a prospective freshman and a friend of a friend, and I greeted her by kissing her hand (it seems my inner desire was to be a 19th century dork). If no one had told me, I would most certainly be entirely unaware that I had done that, and I also would be unaware that I had a gap in my memory. We only know for sure that we black out if either someone tells us we did something of which we have no memory, or if there is some other extrinsic evidence that we have lost time (e.g. not remembering anything about the trip home after drinking). I was so embarrassed when I found out what I did (as relatively harmless as it was) that I apologized for it. And while I can’t give you a date of that party or the names of more than half a dozen people who were there, and I don’t remember kissing that woman’s hand, I sure as hell remember the embarrassment I felt after being told that I did it. Strong emotions cement memories.
So Kavanaugh may honestly believe he never got so drunk as to lose some memories. But I think it’s therefore quite likely that the events were so unremarkable to him that they didn’t merit remembering. Which I find quite disturbing.
So, for those who say it’s credible that he never blacked out because you never did either: How do you know?
(NB: I’ve never been that drunk again. My limit now is usually one drink in an evening, two if I’m feeling wild.)
“Boof,” on the other hand, has no “legitimate” definitions in English, AFAICT. When I was in high school (like Kavanaugh, I was in the class of 1983, at an all-boys high school), boof was clearly, and exclusively, known as a term for anal sex.
Hey, I remember a recent party where I went to bed in one bed and woke up in another with no memory of what happened between. I quite firmly remember that I had a blackout after my grad party, where I said some horribly insensitive things to a friend of mine (who was not a friend of mine after said party), but I don’t remember how, what, or why. It’s not hard to notice when you had a blackout.
We were assured by an expert commentator on FoxNews that “all” teenage boys assault girls. Are you calling the FoxNews reporters liars?
