Distrust the accusations. The sentence is confusing - I was addressing Pop Trash's "due process" concerns. I agree with those on certain cases, but come on, frat boys are famously rapists. The stories fit the man's profile is all I'm saying.
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This isn't a situation where the line was blurry. The question here is simply: Did Kavanaugh pin down a 15-year-old girl and try to take off her clothes while covering her mouth to keep her from screaming? Nothing blurry about that.
Furthermore, it's not as though Kavanaugh said, "I wasn't really going to rape her; I just wanted to scare her. That's why we were laughing." He flatly denies the accusation. So the only question we need to consider is whether or not the accusation is true.
Right. So he says "this 100% never happened" and she says "he 100% did this to me" so you look at corroborating evidence. The FBI investigation might pull up some stuff and his Mark Judge friend might squawk, but I doubt it, since even if it did happen, he would then be implicating himself. The fact that Ford can't remember where it happened, how she got there, who she left with, the date, etc. makes it pretty flimsy.
You can't find corroborating evidence of something like that. Even a rape kit doesn't work a long time after the episode. Which is why powerful people tend to get away with it in these cases.
Corroborating evidence in this case could be witnesses that testify this party happened and Ford was there. Also, if she was able to remember any more key details (like where the house is) the FBI could interview the home owners at the time (presumably the parents of one of the kids at the party) to see if they were out of town or knew any other info. Of course the FBI report is coming out this week, so maybe some of that will be in the report.
The other thing is that if anyone testified they had consensual sex with Kavanaugh while he was in high school or even early college (18-19 yrs old) that would completely nail him and he could be charged with lying under oath. It would also make his "I was a good virgin boy" story fall apart.
The only way for Kavanaugh to escape the numerous credible allegations is if you reinforce the illusion that Christine Blasey Ford's allegations are the only ones out there. This is by design.
Despite the fact that I believe that Christine Blasey Ford's allegations are highly credible, and my gut feeling is that there's a 99% chance that what she is describing actually happened, I do not think that her story alone is enough to prevent Kavanaugh from being placed on the Supreme Court. If a pattern of behavior were established based on accounts by multiple witnesses, and especially if he lied under oath, then that is a different story. Republicans have violated an innumerable number of norms to make sure that the former was not investigated, and are currently silent on the latter.
Speaking of the Christine Blasey Ford allegation as if they are the only elements in play is not fair.I agree with all of your points.
However, the problem with the Kavanaugh "hearing" is that the Repubicans are deliberately violating norms so that "the facts never come in", to reference point #1. If the Republicans violate norms, then the nomination has no integrity. Obstructing the process to seek the truth should be treated as being as upsetting as the worst version of that truth, both because this sort of obstruction is a violation of the principles of government and because common sense indicates that people do not obstruct the process to seek the truth when the truth is of no consequence. The Republicans have moved the goalposts so far that the Democrats' outrage has had to be overwhelming just to get to the point where they could have all the facts to then get outraged about. This is by design, of course: If the facts come in now, and they are awful, the Republicans will now say, "Well, you were already upset before the facts ever came in!" This is because they are peddling the narrative that the violation of norms is of no consequence and obstructing the search for the truth is of no consequence. It is a HUGE deal. In fact, there could be an overwhelming amount of information that is disqualifying for Kavanaugh, and it woulds till not be as upsetting as obstructing the search for the truth. This is by design. The Republicans are willing to and actually sacrificing their integrity for the sake of making Kavanaugh's indiscretions look less significant than their assault on transparency and the norms of governance.
Re:#3, this problem goes both ways, too: People who want to dismiss Swetnick's allegations point immediately to the "gang rape" story and ignore the litany of other charges that are already independently corroborated by journalists. Personally, I round down to avoid this issue.
I dont know if Kavendouche assaulted Ford.
I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt, because of his testimony, he is without a doubt entirely not emotional stable enough, rational enough, or partisan enough to preside over a lemonade stand let alone a lifetime appointment (a position that shouldn't exist anyway).
I could see Jeff Flake flipping. He's not running again and doesn't seem to give AF about the GOP and dislikes Trump. I think if he flips it will be a combo platter of
1) The sexual assault accusation(s) (mostly Ford's)
2) The performance at his "job interview" making him seem too partisan and unstable for the supreme court
3) The long list of evidence that he was, at the least, a very sloppy drunk until at least 1990 or so. Even if you don't believe point #1, the dude has a long paper trail of things like throwing ice after a friend was arrested for a bar fight and making comments on a rental document (or something) about puking. I'm not too judgmental about these things, but an argument could be made that a supreme court nominee should have spent their 20s behaving much more boring than Kavanaugh, esp. when you factor in points #1 and #2.
I think the biggest part of political discourse that drives me batty is the concept in which someone makes about 10 points and someone else sees those 10 points, sees something they disbelieve in one point and then dismisses all 10 points because of that 1 point. Then attempts to echo chamber the 1 point.
I need to say I legitimately do not understand the concepts of boys with be boys or any of that trash. If you fucking did something bad in high school and didn't pay for it one iota then why should you get away with it now? You broke the law but you were in high school and you didn't know any better lol, that doesn't matter for anyone else so why is that the defense that works.
Because people do stupid shit when they are minors. I did. Most of my friends did. Most people I know that had any kind of social life did. Lots of people did cocaine at parties in the 80s. Should someone be disqualified for a job when they are 55 and married with three kids for doing a line of blow back in 1985 when they were 17? I really don't think this should follow you around your whole life. There's a reason why minors' criminal records are kept sealed after they turn 18, but I would even extend that window a certain extent into your early 20s, maybe not legally, but certainly take in to consideration someone's age when said stupid behavior happened.
This is a poor comparison, though, because doing drugs, however illegal, does not really harm others on itself. I mean, Dustin Hoffman got in trouble for saying spicy and inappropriate remarks to a teenager during the filming of a TV movie in the 1980s. It's a slight accusation but one that stuck in the minds of many. If he had been coked out of his mind during the whole shoot a lot of people (including me) wouldn't have cared because he wouldn't have been doing any harm to anyone.
I explicitly mentioned that he lied before that hearing. Do you think that he talked about his high school yearbook under oath in multiple other sworn testimony before the Senate? Is that what you're implying?
His blatant lies in the sexual assault hearing don't include that non-issue. It would be easier to stomach him if that was the extent of it.
Here's a brief list of incidents prior to the sexual assault hearing.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics...le-under-oath/
If the allegations are corroborated, he will be impeached without a doubt.
The fourth estate will do a thorough investigation via long-form journalism, and the truth will come out. It's possible that there will be a race to see which repeat sex offender will leave office first. The blatant nature of the cover up will not bode well for the GOP.
Just to set expectations, impeaching a supreme court justice would require a 2/3 vote in the Senate, which would require at least 50% of the senate republicans to be on board. Not gonna happen with this crop, even if something really terrible is revealed.
The investigation will probably take 6 months to a year. 2020 has a lot of Republican Senators coming up for election. Imagine if the biggest story then is a highly detailed, irrefutable piece of journalism detailing both the preponderance of evidence of the recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice knowingly and repeatedly drugging women and of a group of Republican Senators soon up for reelection that made a concerted effort to avoid finding out whether the multiple allegations made before the confirmation were true. Things are unlikely to go well for them.
Fuck man Neil deGrasse Tyson