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Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Interbane

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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Harry wrote:but back there in the stone ages, these were not taken seriously. Remember it's a lie to assert that the accuser is lying, too, if she is not. "Politically motivated lies" of that type have a long and successful history.
The idea of a politically motivated lie gets more attention than the idea that it might not be a lie. It's as if people think the default is that it's a lie, because there is potential political motive.

But what if it's not a lie?

Shouldn't we hold the people who are given this sort of extreme authority to the highest of standards? Of all the kids partying at Georgetown prep in the 80's, the ones we want are the Neil Gorsuch type(even though I disagree with his views), that eschewed partying in favor of decency and studiousness.

Accusations don't happen in a vacuum. There are facts and circumstances surrounding them, and those matter. The accuser in this case is a college professor whose story lines up with events of the time the event supposedly happened. This isn't a junkie on youtube looking for views. Regardless of party lines, I trust a female professor over an old(53?) white male lawyer any day of the week.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Interbane wrote:what if it's not a lie?
Then we have a problem of interpretation. This story looks like a pair of elite teenagers with no sexual experience, on what was possibly the first sexual encounter for both of them, with the boy expecting the girl to react positively like in a dormitory rumble, and as soon as he encountered resistance he let her go. Her understandable emotional reaction of fear has allowed the incident to grow and fester in her mind, finally now becoming her possible ticket to global political fame, money and influence.

It was definitely Ford, but as to whether it was definitely Kavanaugh there is no way any objective observer would find her motivated political reasoning to be persuasive. Blind hatred of Trump, and of Kavanaugh's previous right wing politics, could easily distort her memory, mixing up some encounter with him with others.

Equating this party fumble with attempted rape or murder is the most absurd political hyperbole you could imagine, and is purely an effort to express Trump Derangement Syndrome, a way to get back at the wewuzrobbed election.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Then we have a problem of interpretation.
You artfully dodge the intent of my question.

What if it was attempted rape, and Kavanaugh was acting maliciously? Your dodge makes it seem as if this isn't an acceptable answer to you. As if her story MUST be either a lie or a misinterpretation. It seems to me that denial of her telling the truth is more politically motivated than the alternative. A case of projection.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Robert Tulip wrote:This story looks like a pair of elite teenagers with no sexual experience, on what was possibly the first sexual encounter for both of them, with the boy expecting the girl to react positively like in a dormitory rumble, and as soon as he encountered resistance he let her go. Her understandable emotional reaction of fear has allowed the incident to grow and fester in her mind, finally now becoming her possible ticket to global political fame, money and influence.
Sorry, but that creativity is not at all a good fit with what we know. She went from gregarious and social to reserved and solitary in a matter of days - other people noted it at the time. Her memory of the incident is quite good. She shared it with a therapist years back. She wasn't just put off or a little afraid, she was traumatized. It interfered with her schoolwork in the near term, and for years afterward with her relationships with men.

[Edit to add:] And excuse me, but whoever heard of having your first sexual encounter with another guy in the room watching? That's what the tie on the door is for. Sorry, that dodo doesn't fly.
Robert Tulip wrote:It was definitely Ford, but as to whether it was definitely Kavanaugh there is no way any objective observer would find her motivated political reasoning to be persuasive. Blind hatred of Trump, and of Kavanaugh's previous right wing politics, could easily distort her memory, mixing up some encounter with him with others.
This "it's all politics" may sound plausible to the victim mentality of the right wing, but "no way any objective observer" would be persuaded is, to put it mildly, not objective. The broad middle of the American political spectrum is quickly getting exasperated with the willed blindness of the right wing, and the incessant claims that normal behavior they don't like is "just politically motivated." Dear Leader has been playing that tune through one lie after another, until finally even folks who resent liberal moralism are finding it impossible to make allowances.

The worst paranoid liar America has ever seen has worn out his welcome like the second worst did, referring to Joe McCarthy, and it won't be long til anyone who sticks by the Dear Leader looks like they are wearing their Devin Nunes mask, and has no more credibility than the swamp monster they are trying to defend. Oh, sure, he'll keep 38 to 42 percent approval from people who know which side their bread is buttered on, but that's not the same as having credibility when they defend him.
Robert Tulip wrote:Equating this party fumble with attempted rape or murder is the most absurd political hyperbole you could imagine, and is purely an effort to express Trump Derangement Syndrome, a way to get back at the wewuzrobbed election.
Still sticking with your "antics" version, I see. I suggest you discuss it with female members of your household. Of course it wasn't attempted murder. But the standard for a Supreme Court nominee is not "he didn't actually rape her."
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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The New York Times is trash. An utter waste of pulp. A couple of weeks ago it ran an "anonymous" piece as a lead item, a piece that described how "crazy" Donald Trump is. The Left is now pinning its hopes on the "incapacitation" clause of the constitution, hoping to remove Trump because he's not a levelheaded crack smokin' Marxist like Obama.

Anyway, bad as it is, the NYTimes makes me smile from time to time. Today:

Rod Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment

WASHINGTON — The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit....

...Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes in interviews over the past several months, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments....

nytimes.com/2018/09/21/us/politics/rod- ... dment.html

This is grounds for immediate termination. If Rosenstein's boss, Jeff Sessions, doesn't fire him tonight, then Trump will probably do it tomorrow. Or, hopefully. Rosenstein is one of the larger tumors in our body politic, and he needs to go. So does Sessions, but that can wait. It is so, so good to see the swamp rats beginning to chew on one another.

Meanwhile, Democrats are posing as outraged over the Supreme Court nominee. They won't lift a lip against rapist-in-chief Bill Clinton, yet they thrash about like...well like Obama dosed with nose candy...over Brett Kavanaugh. Senator Ted Cruz made some very good points at the beginning of the Kavanaugh hearings. He reminded people that rarely have Americans approved of a president's Supreme Court appointments in the way that we've approved of Trump's. There was a vacancy on the court going into the presidential election. So everybody knew that, immediately, the new president would have to appoint one judge. And given the ages of the others, he would probably have to appoint a couple more. So voters were keenly aware of what was at stake with judicial appointments, and we voted to appoint conservative judges. Cruz's remarks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_6c2101sGE

This Rosenstein thing is very, very good. He's consistently worked to thwart Trump and the will of the American people. There's no way he can survive this. He attempted to lead a coup against the President of the United States.

You'd Better Put Some Ice On That: How I Survived Being Raped by Bill Clinton by Juanita Broaddrick
amazon.com/Youd-Better-Put-Some-That/dp ... 1981229760
Last edited by KindaSkolarly on Sat Sep 22, 2018 7:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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It would be asking too much of Trump to note the illogic of believing the fake news failing NY Times in this instance. Oh, I see, when that paper reports something favorable to him, it's not fake news. Of course.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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KindaSkolarly wrote:Meanwhile, Democrats are posing as outraged over the Supreme Court nominee. They won't lift a lip against rapist-in-chief Bill Clinton,
You'd Better Put Some Ice On That: How I Survived Being Raped by Bill Clinton by Juanita Broaddrick
It's a good point. Broaddrick and the others should have been believed. At the very least, if there was doubt about their story, and supposedly at the time investigators thought there was, then a lie detector test like Dr. Ford took would have been a good idea.

I realize that's a cheap call to make now. The time to do something about it would have been while Bill Clinton was President, or even while he was a candidate. But I can't convince myself that because Clinton got away with abuse that means that we should put another liar and sexual abuser on the Supreme Court.

Enough. All the men should know that if there is something like that in their past, and even more if it is in their present, they should renounce public ambition. If they think they should be forgiven, let them make a clean confession and leave that to the public and the ones who make the calls.
KindaSkolarly wrote:This Rosenstein thing is very, very good. He's consistently worked to thwart Trump and the will of the American people. There's no way he can survive this. He attempted to lead a coup against the President of the United States.
I'm not so sure. What he attempted to do was put the truth out about the state of our current leadership. Yes, he wanted it to result in the 25th amendment being invoked, but that means he had some reason to believe that the bulk of the cabinet would, if faced with recordings of Dear Leader in action, conclude that the President is unfit. We should let that sink in. No guns, no taking over radio stations, just telling the truth.

He wasn't disagreeing with policy (apparently he had his own ambivalence about Comey being fired) but with the way "decisions" were being made. And frankly, we have all seen that. One week all the FBI files on the Russian investigation are going to be released unredacted, the next week someone has talked the President down from that. Dear Leader has jerked around about trade, personnel, requirements for agreement with North Korea, NATO, and a dozen smaller issues. We haven't seen leadership this erratic and emotional since Bokassa in the Central African Republic.

Republicans may use the excuse to go after Rosenstein for standing by the rule of law. But they know they have to wait til after the midterms if they want to avoid showing themselves to be opponents of the rule of law. With the Senate in the balance and the House already most likely going Democrat, I kind of think they won't drink that kool-aid.

It's interesting how much is waiting til after the midterms. The Medicare cuts they have called for in their budget resolution, the rest of the gutting of the ACA, and the complete rejection of accountability for the Thief in Chief - all will be happily adopted if they keep both houses of congress. And maybe they will shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, just to make sure the message is clear.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Harry Marks wrote:men should know that if there is something like that in their past, and even more if it is in their present, they should renounce public ambition. If they think they should be forgiven, let them make a clean confession and leave that to the public and the ones who make the calls.
That is a completely unrealistic standard. "Something like that" opens the gate to distorted recollections and venal motives of others. In responding to the revelations of the extent of sexual assault, one alleged incident as a minor, in which no physical harm occurred, does not meet an acceptable standard of "something like that" to disqualify a Supreme Court nominee. Unfortunately, the vitriol in public debate means that your call for clean confessions would elevate allegations above their real weight.
Interbane wrote:
Then we have a problem of interpretation.
You artfully dodge the intent of my question. What if it was attempted rape, and Kavanaugh was acting maliciously? Your dodge makes it seem as if this isn't an acceptable answer to you. As if her story MUST be either a lie or a misinterpretation. It seems to me that denial of her telling the truth is more politically motivated than the alternative. A case of projection.
No dodging or projection, the point here is that the claim of a single incident of unwelcome harassment 35 years ago when a minor, which otherwise seems out of character for Kavanaugh, does not meet the burden of proof required to reject a Supreme Court nominee who sixty million American voters expected to be appointed.

I am not accusing Ford of lying, but cannot rule out that her memory may have grown, especially considering the massive interest in this appointment and her clear political opposition to Kavanaugh. Her traumatised perception as a fifteen year old may have misperceived the intent, since it seems she left the room very soon after making clear her lack of consent.

Denial or acceptance of Ford's story is equally political, based on whether or not people think it is right to attempt to stymie every action of the legitimately elected American President. It is not calling Ford a snowflake to point out that many politicians are willing to exaggerate sexual accusations for political motives. That is not to excuse sexual assault, only to recognise the political context.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Robert Tulip wrote:
Harry Marks wrote:men should know that if there is something like that in their past, and even more if it is in their present, they should renounce public ambition. If they think they should be forgiven, let them make a clean confession and leave that to the public and the ones who make the calls.
That is a completely unrealistic standard.
Yes, unfortunately it is. We have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of accusations in the last year about sexual abuse. A few have not resulted in additional victims also coming forward. Not a single one has turned out to be manufactured for attention (because who doesn't like death threats?) or the schadenfreude of taking down the powerful.
Robert Tulip wrote: "Something like that" opens the gate to distorted recollections and venal motives of others.
This is like "guilt-proofing" the powerful. If the charges are not going to be taken seriously, with interviews of witnesses under oath, etc., and apparently they are not, that means a victim's concern for the public and the integrity of its officials counts for nothing next to the impunity of someone in the public eye.

We all know that a lie works best when it is kept simple, short and just gets us by until the attention passes. The supposedly horrible prospect of a brazen liar manufacturing a lifetime of pretend trauma so that she could take down a possible public servant is not really all that credible. But it plays well to political partisans.
Robert Tulip wrote: In responding to the revelations of the extent of sexual assault, one alleged incident as a minor, in which no physical harm occurred, does not meet an acceptable standard of "something like that" to disqualify a Supreme Court nominee.
Sorry, but I strongly disagree. "He didn't actually rape her" is not a standard for the Supreme Court. If someone had only pretended a lynching, or only sent a blackmail letter as a joke, it would still mean their character is on the wrong side of the law for one of its chief officers.

I think Kavanaugh is probably not such a bad person. His judgment in a number of high-level positions can be questioned, but in general his character has been good and it's probably no accident that no other women have come forward to accuse him. He probably never did anything like that again. But that is not a reason to ignore it when choosing a Supreme Court Justice. His pattern is of drunkenness (and probably gambling) and a wink-wink pretense that it doesn't count, which really should disqualify him for that alone. But more seriously, this incident still puts him squarely on the side of privilege, where he has been with essentially every decision where it is an issue.

Our Dear Leader's views on the subject are revealed by his call for the death penalty for the so-called "Central Park Five" who were later shown to be innocent. If you are in the elite establishment of people destined to make money, you are untouchable and your lawyers will see to that. If your skin is brown and your bank account shallow, we will fry you to take out our frustrations. And Kavanaugh has set himself firmly in that mentality over his years in office.
Robert Tulip wrote: Unfortunately, the vitriol in public debate means that your call for clean confessions would elevate allegations above their real weight.
Which means you conclude that public officials should choose denial and perjury rather than be judged publicly. Well, that's more realistic, but it is less moral, and less committed to law.
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Re: Draining the swamp - Thank you Donald Trump

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Harry Marks wrote: We have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of accusations in the last year about sexual abuse. Not a single one has turned out to be manufactured for attention
Sorry to dwell on this Kavanaugh case, but I find it fascinating as an example of culture war. There should be no question that the recent recognition of the human rights of victims of sexual assault is an overdue corrective to a previous culture of impunity. I have myself made numerous comments about the pathology of abuse in churches, and what a depraved culture this pattern of conduct indicates. But such correctives do have a tendency to swing the pendulum too far in some cases. Some studies have found a high proportion of rape claims to be false, as detailed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape The assumption that a victim will be automatically believed brings a severe moral hazard. This obviously traumatises victims when their honest accounts are disbelieved, and yet avoiding punishment of the innocent and preventing vexatious accusations are important public goods.
Harry Marks wrote:"guilt-proofing" the powerful.
That is absolutely not the case. Weinstein has hardly been ‘guilt-proofed’ and nor should anyone with a clear history of assault. But the Kavanaugh case is far from clear, as an isolated incident where false perceptions are possible, backed by a Democrat horde baying for blood against Trump.
Harry Marks wrote: If the charges are not going to be taken seriously, with interviews of witnesses under oath, etc., and apparently they are not, that means a victim's concern for the public and the integrity of its officials counts for nothing next to the impunity of someone in the public eye.
The context here is that a short delay could remove Trump’s nomination power, with massive effect on American public policy. I don’t get the impression people think Ford should not be taken seriously, just that she should not be made an excuse for Democrats to game the system. This incident is very minor on the scale of crime even if proven, which it can’t be while Mark Judge sides with Kavanaugh. I see she will testify this week, although her camp is trying to stall the process.
Harry Marks wrote: We all know that a lie works best when it is kept simple, short and just gets us by until the attention passes. The supposedly horrible prospect of a brazen liar manufacturing a lifetime of pretend trauma so that she could take down a possible public servant is not really all that credible. But it plays well to political partisans.
No doubt Ford was traumatised, but the possibility of misperception on her part is a legitimate question.
Harry Marks wrote: "He didn't actually rape her" is not a standard for the Supreme Court. If someone had only pretended a lynching, or only sent a blackmail letter as a joke, it would still mean their character is on the wrong side of the law for one of its chief officers.
What looks most probable in this case, assuming the incident occurred as described which is still unproven, is that Kavanaugh fully believed that Ford was consenting and let her go as soon as she made clear she did not consent. It is perfectly understandable that her perception was different. Perpetrators with a pattern of such conduct are very different from someone who experiments once as a youth and immediately learns about appropriate boundaries.
Harry Marks wrote:He probably never did anything like that again. But that is not a reason to ignore it when choosing a Supreme Court Justice.
And nobody is suggesting anyone ignore it, since it has been front page news for several weeks. It is about weighing the evidence and forming an opinion. It is wrong to say that if you don’t like the decision you have been ignored.
Harry Marks wrote:this incident still puts him squarely on the side of privilege
and that is why Democrats hate him, as he is a primary target for the war on inequality, with this Ford case just the most convenient delaying tactic.
Harry Marks wrote:,
that public officials should choose denial and perjury rather than be judged publicly [is] more realistic, but it is less moral, and less committed to law.
Realism in politics is not a sin, when it means a capacity to weigh the moral worth of rival factors and likely reactions. To be ‘judged publicly’ in such a case is the equivalent of being lynched.
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