Don’t forget repeated questioning on who paid for this, who paid for that, planting the seed of the misconception that she’s profiting from this without actually saying it.
As somebody pointed out in another of these discussions, there most definitely have been false-accusation missions already: specifically, false-flag accusations designed to discredit real accusations. This article recounts how James O’Keefe of “Project Veritas” recruited a false-accuser with a fake sexual-abuse allegation against then-candidate Roy Moore, and also describes a similar fake allegation against Harvey Weinstein by an operative working for a company hired by Weinstein himself.
So the notion of a deliberately planned false accusation for political purposes is nothing new at all.
In fact, it is disproved by, e.g., the case of Ruben Kihuen (D-NV), who was accused of sexually harassing and touching a female campaign finance director in 2016. AFAIK there was zero documentary evidence presented that actually demonstrated that Kihuen did what he’s accused of, any more than there was in Kavanaugh’s case. But Kihuen’s fellow Democrats believed his accuser and called on him to step down, and he decided not to run for re-election this year.
Sorry Shodan, but you can’t scare liberals by warning us that “our guys” might get accused of sexual harassment too. We’ve already had several cases where “our guys” are accused of sexual harassment, and we are not in fact “flip-flopping” to a Republican posture of disbelief and denial.
Like it or not, Democrats as a group are looking way more ethical and principled than Republicans as a group on the whole sexual-abuse-allegations thing, even if it’s meant that we’ve had to willingly sacrifice some credibly-alleged abusers who were otherwise helpful to “our side”.
…is that what she wanted? Really?
I think you are looking at this through a slanted lens.
Ford didn’t want to come forward. Because coming forward would mean death threats, slander, abuse, being labeled by the media as a liar. It would mean a complete upheaval of not only her life, but her immediate families lives, her friends, her neighbours. Coming forward would mean that many, if not most people would not believe her.
Because “not believing” is the default in society. Its what we do. You can check out the threadin the pit if you want anecdotal examples. Or you could go down to the local police station and talk to their victim support people.
Everything she feared would happen has happened. So her fears were entirely reasonable.
So why did Ford come public?
If we assume for the sake of debate that what Ford has said was true: then how in good conscious could you allow a man who had sexually assaulted her sit on the highest court of the land?
As to why she decided to come forward and stand behind her story?
She came forward because the media had her name and it was only a matter of time before her name came out.
None of this seems unreasonable to me. Does any of it sound unreasonable to you?
These are extraordinary allegations. Feinstein denies leaking the letter. The Intercept denies the letter either came from Feinstein or Feinstein’s staff. Is the Intercept lying? If you have proof that Feinstein or her staff did as you claim I’d ask that you post that evidence here.
Would it surprise you to find out how common this is?
I mean, just spend a few minutes looking at the hashtag.
If this is what bothers you so much then I suggest you focus your attention on finding the real person who leaked Ford’s identity. Let us know when you’ve found the anser.
I hope you spend the rest of your days, roaming the earth, until you find the real leaker and bring them to justice.
“Yeah, them Demoncrats betters be carefull cause the akusations of cereal murder ,child molestatin, and CANABALISM was us puplicans playing nice!!!11!”
CMC fnord!
…I went to look up what I wrote here on these boards about Al Franken when it came out that one of his accusers went on TV to claim that President Obama was born in Kenya. I wrote this:
There were plenty of people in that thread who did demonstrate the kind of hypocrisy that you are talking about. But there were plenty of people, myself included, who did not. And thats the thing. Enough of the “liberal side” stood by our values and we held the line. We didn’t let the hypocrites win. They said “Al Franken should go” and they forced him out.
We don’t see any of that happening here.
Nominations to the Supreme Court are such a rare and important thing that one would expect the Republicans to have taken the process a fuck-load-more-seriously than they have done. There were plenty of other people they could have nominated that would have sailed through without this drama. The only reason the nomination is being held up is because it appears that Brett Kavanaugh seems to be a bit-of-a-dick. If they had done due diligence: if they had nominated someone like Gorsuch we wouldn’t be having this discussion now.
Late to the thread, but apparently Donnie Jr. has given this some thought.
Donald Trump Jr. says #MeToo leaves him more worried for his sons than his daughters
In light of the #MeToo movement, Donald Trump Jr. is worried about his children’s future, but not in the way you might think.
While speaking to The Daily Mail, the president’s son said in reference to the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, “I’ve got boys, and I’ve got girls. And when I see what’s going on right now, it’s scary.” When asked if he’s more worried for his sons or his daughters, Trump Jr. said, “I mean, right now, I’d say my sons,” implying he’s more fearful that his sons will be falsely accused of sexual misconduct than that his daughters will be victims of sexual misconduct.
…
Think about it. He worries that his sons are in greater danger of false rape accusations than his daughters are of actually being raped. I guess this goes double if the sons run for or are appointed to public office. :dubious:
To be fair, I’ve seen nothing in Donald Trump Jr.'s remarks explicitly stating that he thinks that the sexual-misconduct accusations he’s scared his sons will be subjected to will be false accusations.
Maybe he’s just saying that, given the way he’s bringing them up, he feels he has good cause to worry that they’ll be the targets of true sexual-misconduct accusations.
Good point.
I also think there’s an undercurrent of “being accused of rape (whether false or true) would be more damaging to my son who might be accused than to my daughter who actually endured rape.” And to further extrapolate (granted: perhaps going too far), “After all, she’ll get over it, but his career could be destroyed.”
I think I better pack it in for the night. My cynicism is getting out of control. Tomorrow is another day. (What will IT bring?)
That’s what she said she wanted, yes.
That’s what I said.
No, it sounds perfectly reasonable.
It is being investigated, or at least investigation into the leak is being suggested.
Somebody leaked it. I don’t think anyone believes it was a Republican who leaked it. Therefore…
I doubt very much if anything will come of the investigation. Washington is a city of leaks, and both sides have a vested interest in not looking too closely into when the other side does it, for fear of being found out when they do it.
But, to be clear, things happened exactly as you (and I) described. Ford made the accusation anonymously, and didn’t want to come forward, or have the matter pursued any further than an anonymous accusation could take it. It didn’t achieve anything, because anonymous accusations don’t get or deserve much traction. So Feinstein announced the accusation publicly, knowing that her staff, or the staff of the Democratic Representative that originally received the allegation, would or already had leaked the accusation. If you want to believe that Feinstein or the other Democrats were shocked - shocked! - that leaking was going on, feel free, but that sounds to me to be a little on the naïve side.
But we agree on the circumstances. Ford made an anonymous accusation, nothing could be made of it, Feinstein did not AFAIK attempt to bring it up with any of the open or closed sessions with Kavanaugh, nothing was sticking and the hearings finished, then Feinstein announced the accusation publicly, the Democrats leaked the accusation, and here we are.
Regards,
Shodan
…cite please.
Naaah, you really didn’t.
Therefore you have no evidence it was leaked by either Feinstein or by her staff. The Intercept have categorically denied it came from either Feinstein or her staff. What you “believe” isn’t relevant. Its what you have claimed in this thread that is relevant: and what you claimed was:
Are you standing by this claim?
Nope. I want you to either back up your claim or withdraw it.
From your cite -
So no, it does not appear that the circumstances were all that similar. Unless you can find hundreds of contemporaneous text messages documenting the accusation against Kavanaugh, the four other people Ford told about it, or some instance that Ford named Kavanaugh earlier than thirty six years after the fact.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m reminded of the fact that, back when I used to drink heavily, I thought EVERYONE bought a case of beer on their weekly trip to the grocery store, and drank it before the next trip. I imagine a lot of people who cheat on their wives, mistreat women, whatever - feel the same. EVERYONE does it. You know what? MOST people DON’T.
Gorsuch has political/social/religious views every bit as reprehensible as Kavanaugh’s (well - absent the Starr/Bush connection), yet he WASN’T a mean drunk who disrespected women. How hard is it to pick an odious candidate who supports your partisan agenda - WITHOUT such obvious baggage?
Hell, why not take obvious sexual predation off the table and nominate more women?
Sure, it’s crazy to believe that there’s a vast left-wing conspiracy out to get people to make false accuastions against key Republicans. It was also crazy to believe there was a vast right-wing conspiracy “dragging a $100 bill through a trailer park” to do the same.
Once the cat is out of the bag, well, who can “leak” the cat?
I’m not sure what you are saying here.
Are you saying that you believe Ford et al., and that you believe that Kavanaugh is unfit for the bench due to their allegations and that the democrats had better make sure their house is in order and vet their candidates and nominees very carefully? If so, I agree.
If you are saying that you do not belive Ford et al, then you are saying that you are advocating that your party start making up allegations in order to harm their political opponents.
If I were to find out that Ford et al were put up by democrats in a fraudulent effort to discredit republican nominees, I would condemn those actions. Would you do the same if it were your party, as you predict it will?
Yeah, this is one of those topics where conservatives clearly aren’t thinking things out very well. If they want to argue that Corey Booker needs to step down because Kavenaugh… have they not followed this to the logical conclusion of what must happen to Trump?
I mean, seriously, it takes like a fifth grader to follow this Encyclopedia Brown mystery of where this is all heading. And I’m fine with that, too.
In favor of investigating things, now, are we?
P.s., your standards for believing “someone on Feinstein’s staff” leaked the letter seem ridiculously lower than your standards for believing any of the accusations against Kavenaugh. Curious.
How do you think they found Paula Jones?
At least someone in that family can think ahead.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but AFAICT the alleged text messages weren’t produced as evidence by the time that Democrats were demanding Kihuen’s ouster, if indeed they have yet been so produced rather than just alleged to exist by the accuser.
What you said was “if and when allegations with the same level of evidence are made against a liberal nominee, the sides will flip-flop instantly”. And to the best of my knowledge, the accusations against Kihuen that produced the Democratic outcry against him were made with exactly the same “level of evidence” as those against Kavanaugh: namely, the accuser’s claim unsupported by documentary evidence of the alleged actions. And other Democrats did not in fact instantly “flip-flop” to Republican-style denial and deflection.
You can of course try to wiggle around that by judicious goalpost-shifting after the fact, where you argue that “same level of evidence” must imply the exact same 36-year interval, exact same number of confidential communications prior to the accusation, etc. But it doesn’t really change the fact that your assertion was mostly incorrect.