Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years ago

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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:28 am

If they didn't want to give the impression that they hate women, they would have adapted to modern sensibilities and demographics.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Absentia » Sat Sep 29, 2018 5:33 am

JamishT wrote:The timing is just so perfect. And the indefensible nature of them is suspect to me (it's nearly impossible to establish an airtight alibi for a rich teenager in the 80's). It just seems so convenient.


I keep hearing this argument and I want to address it, laying aside the question of whether any of this is "convenient" for Dr. Ford. She says she wanted to avoid airing this dirty laundry in public (understandable), but when she saw that the guy who assaulted her was about to get placed on the Supreme Court, she felt she had to come forward (also understandable). Is that not a believable story? Is it necessary to infer a conspiracy to explain her actions?

In other words, the fact that she came out with her story when she did makes sense if she's telling the truth and if she's lying, which means it's not really indicative of one conclusion or the other.


For the record, my biggest conclusion from yesterday is that I find Kavanaugh's testimony about his drinking habits to be very shaky, based on the evidence from his yearbook and what his peers say about him. I think he drank a lot more than he admits, and I think his testimony that he never experienced any kind of memory impairment from drinking is a lie. And I'd like to think that in spite of all the murky questions surrounding this situation, we could all at least agree that lying under oath ought to disqualify someone from sitting on the Supreme Court. And that is why, despite the fact that I continue to believe that we will never know with any certainty what happened on that night in 1982, I am more than a little steamed up about the way this has played out.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby JamishT » Sat Sep 29, 2018 5:43 am

Absentia wrote:
JamishT wrote:The timing is just so perfect. And the indefensible nature of them is suspect to me (it's nearly impossible to establish an airtight alibi for a rich teenager in the 80's). It just seems so convenient.


I keep hearing this argument and I want to address it, laying aside the question of whether any of this is "convenient" for Dr. Ford. She says she wanted to avoid airing this dirty laundry in public (understandable), but when she saw that the guy who assaulted her was about to get placed on the Supreme Court, she felt she had to come forward (also understandable). Is that not a believable story? Is it necessary to infer a conspiracy to explain her actions?


I don't think this has been convenient for Dr. Ford at all, it's been convenient for those who seek to block Kavanaugh. As far as I know, Dr. Ford never meant for this to go public, but was betrayed by someone who purposefully leaked the story. It's a believable story, and I understand why she would come forward. It's just that nothing was done about it until it was usable as a delay tactic (if a withdrawal or vote failure doesn't happen). That's the convenient timing I'm thinking of.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby AboveGL » Sat Sep 29, 2018 10:48 am

Jesus Christ, it's been a tiring few days (if not week), and for that, those pieces of shit high up will win.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Fun With Mr. Fudge » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:53 pm

Absentia wrote:I keep hearing this argument and I want to address it, laying aside the question of whether any of this is "convenient" for Dr. Ford. She says she wanted to avoid airing this dirty laundry in public (understandable), but when she saw that the guy who assaulted her was about to get placed on the Supreme Court, she felt she had to come forward (also understandable). Is that not a believable story? Is it necessary to infer a conspiracy to explain her actions?

In other words, the fact that she came out with her story when she did makes sense if she's telling the truth and if she's lying, which means it's not really indicative of one conclusion or the other.


I completely agree with these points. Moreover, she reached out to her local representative while Kavanaugh was on Trump’s shortlist (i.e. before he was officially named as the nominee). I would also add that even if a Democrat with a political agenda leaked Ford's claims, it still has no bearing on whether they're true. Something can be politically convenient and true. (As an aside, Republican Senators behaving as if they're outraged that Ford's allegations became public because the revelation violated her wishes rings incredibly false and could easily be seen as a convenient way to pretend they care about her experience while still backing Kavanaugh).

For the record, my biggest conclusion from yesterday is that I find Kavanaugh's testimony about his drinking habits to be very shaky, based on the evidence from his yearbook and what his peers say about him. I think he drank a lot more than he admits, and I think his testimony that he never experienced any kind of memory impairment from drinking is a lie. And I'd like to think that in spite of all the murky questions surrounding this situation, we could all at least agree that lying under oath ought to disqualify someone from sitting on the Supreme Court.


This I also completely agree with. I would also like to point out that the judge said repeatedly under oath that Ford's three fact witnesses (i.e. people Ford named as being present at the party in question) said “it didn't happen.” That is blatantly untrue. With the exception of Judge (who is accused if witnessing and laughing at Ford during a sexual assault and who submitted a letter that was signed by his lawyer giving a weak denial) the people Ford named said they did not recall the party in question, which is a huge distinction. I assume that as a jurist Kavanaugh knows this and yet was being misleadingly self-serving with his interpretation of their statements. I consider that a knock against his credibility and his suitability as a judge.

It seems pretty understandable that Ford's friend Leland (who said she did not recall the party but says she believes Ford) and Kavanagh's friend P.J. would have no reason to vividly remember the night of the alleged assault. Ford only claimed that the judge and Judge were in the room with her. And even if Judge tells the FBI he doesn't remember the event, let's not forget that Kavanaugh said repeatedly that Mark Judge was an alcoholic, so maybe it's possible that he was super drunk and forgot.

Also, I would like to note that the sex crimes prosecutor recruited by the Republicans got ditched after asking Kavanaugh about a specific date on his calendar, July 1. While Kavanaugh claimed during his testimony that he had never been to a party of the kind Ford described, she claimed he and Mark Judge were really drunk at a gathering they, their friend P.J., and at least one other guy attended. According to Kavanaugh’s own calendar, on July 1, he supposedly went to "Timmy's" house for "skis," which in this case means beers, as did P.J., Mark Judge, and a couple of other guys. Is that circumstantial? Sure, but I also found it important for four reasons:

(1) Kavanaugh’s calendar is at least partially consistent with Ford’s claim that in the summer of 1982 Kavanagh attended a gathering with Mark Judge, P.J. and another dude, which means Kavanaugh’s claim that no such party happened seems suspect. I also wonder how Ford could have specifically named those people if there wasn’t at least some truth to her claims.

(2) Ford said she ran into Mark Judge at a Safeway supermarket 6 to 8 weeks after the alleged assault and Mark Judge’s book about his rowdy high school days (albeit somewhat fictionalized) specifically mentions him working at a local supermarket in August, which could fall 6 to 8 weeks after the alleged assault.

(3) During Kavanaugh’s hearing, he argued that if he had been partying, it would have been on a weekend, which would make Ford’s claims unlikely, since Kavanaugh spent many weekends away. But July, 1, landed on a Thursday. I found it extremely odd that Kavanaugh focused so much on weekends, knowing that on at least one weekday he drank (and possibly partied) with two of the exact people Ford named.

(4) It was after the prosecutor started asking Kavanaugh about this date and that gathering that Lindsey Graham had his huge outburst and Republicans decided to take over their end of the questioning. Maybe they also realized how bad this may have sounded (especially if Kavanaugh got pressed for more details and gave bad answers). Of course I can't know, but maybe all the rage and accusations against the democrats served as a panicked distraction.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby SandTea » Sat Sep 29, 2018 10:30 pm

I have to admit that I am appalled at how many people (in the world) think Ford is just a weapon to be wielded.

I am though, also ecstatic about how large my list of 'People Who I Can Wave My Dick At' has grown.

Anyways, one party doesn't want an investigation. That is the sketchy bit to me, not the timing. R.I.P. scotus. You had a good run pretending to be neutral. I look forward to my inevitable endless battle with your anthropomorphized avatar in Valhalla, for you surely are on your way to being Ragnarok.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby JamishT » Sun Sep 30, 2018 6:26 am

I assume it seems like I'm in support of Kavanaugh being confirmed. I was very disappointed in the section of his opening statement where he went very partisan. It's an open secret that the Court has been partisan for a while now, and Justice Kennedy helped keep that secret with his swinging vote. I would like potential justices to show that partisanship won't affect their rulings, and from what I recall, Kavanaugh made those assurances earlier in the questioning portion of this process. But he blasted himself in both feet when he veered into partisan attacks in his defense.

TL;DR: I don't think he's fit for the Supreme Court, and if I were a Senator, I'd vote no.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:03 am

I didn't interpret you as being pro-confirmation, Jamish.

Republicans have been pushing several lines of talking points to promote his confirmation and you only cited a few talking points from one of them.

As far as I can tell, the lines of justification are:
  1. This is a Democratic conspiracy that would apply to any judge that Trump nominated and the only reason they didn't do it to Gorsuch is because he wouldn't change the makeup of the court.
  2. What ever happened to due process, the presumption of innocence, and proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
  3. A great injustice has been done to Judge Kavanaugh by putting him through this. He can never be made whole, but a SCOTUS seat would be a good start.
  4. Judge Kavanaugh is qualified on paper and that is all that matters.
  5. Liberal tears taste so sweet.
Your comments resemble the early stage talking points in 1), but you never approached the later talking points and rather insane conclusion that a lot of Republican commentators are drawing.

Personally, I would not have voted to confirm Kavanaugh anyways because of his views on tribal sovereignty and executive power: he seems to be a big believer in "might makes right." However the hearings convinced me he is utterly unqualified for his current job, and while I am not sure if impeachment (given there is no way he will be removed) is worth it, he definitely does not deserve a promotion, and I have not been this angry about something in politics since the Iraq War, and I was a teenager when that happened.

The naked partisanship Kavanaugh displayed when he lost his temper isn't the only reason I think he is unfit to be confirmed, nor is his blatant contempt for the process, though I think both of those are disqualifying for a promotion. I am 75:25 on him being a sexual predator, which is also disqualifying but not why I think he is unfit for his current job either. As I see it, the biggest issue is that he definitely probably lied under oath about a whole shitton of stuff in the hearings, a rather large proportion of which it should be easy to prove he lied about if the GOP Senators really wanted to. If one instance perjury is enough to impeach Clinton, a reckless disregard for the truth while under oath should disqualify anyone from being a judge.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:50 am

I've been seeing a lot of arguments on Twitter and in dueling op-eds about Kavanaugh's conduct at the hearing. Some folks on the left argued that Kavanaugh's behavior was disqualifying or that it made Ford's allegations more credible. Folks on the right have responded almost to a man that liberals are just assuming he's guilty and any innocent person so publicly accused of something so heinous would be angry and emotional.

As is often the case, I get the sense both sides might be talking past each other. When I was falsely accused of sexual assault as a teenager, I confronted my accuser after school the day I found out what he was saying. I was so scared and angry I was physically shaking like a leaf. When he refused to talk to me, I followed him down the street and demanded answers, staring him straight in the eye even as he tried to avoid my gaze. At one point he lost his temper and started punching me; I put my guard up until he stopped, then resumed badgering him until he finally decided to talk to me. I wasn't just angry; I was aggressive. I was right in his face and wouldn't let go.

Thing is, though, in the midst of the hurricane of negative emotion I was feeling, I had one overriding goal: get to the bottom of this. Unlike Kavanaugh, I'd never drank at the time and the alleged rape had supposedly happened the previous weekend, so I had no reason to doubt my memory. However, I was in a relationship with the girl, and this guy was her ex and they still talked, so over the course of the day I'd wondered if maybe I did something that freaked her out and she didn't feel comfortable telling me, but told him. So by the time I confronted him there was a nugget of self-doubt that tempered my response: instead of wanting to tear the guy's head off immediately, I wanted to know if he knew something I didn't. Obviously I still acted inappropriately (if Kavanaugh had followed Feinstein down the street the day after the letter was leaked demanding to know more about the claims and where they came from, he'd probably have been arrested), but I acted inappropriately in the pursuit of getting to the bottom of what had just happened. I wanted to be absolutely 100% positive of what had happened before going off on anyone, which is why I didn't, say, punch the guy back when he hit me. I was emotional as all hell, sure, but I didn't want revenge when I confronted him. I wanted information, and through information, hopefully vindication. Everything else was secondary.


That all being said, watching Kavanaugh at the hearing bothered me, because of the way he was acting. Not because he was angry or because he shouted or because he interrupted people--I fully expect an innocent man in his situation to be severely emotional, and I expect severely emotional people to be rude even if they're trying not to be. It's hard to modulate your voice when every muscle in your chest is at maximum tension, the amygdala thinks you're under immediate lethal threat and shuts off higher brain functions to allow for faster physical reactions, blood rushes to the face and the arms tense in a way that looks instinctively threatening, and so on. I get all that. None of that is weird to me. It's also not just that he displayed an underlying contempt for the Democratic Party as sellers mentioned--he did, and I didn't much like it, but I'm under no illusions about SCOTUS being a nonpartisan, apolitical body, nor about career partisan operatives holding the opposing party in high esteem.

So what is my problem then? I don't know that I quite have my finger on it yet, but one niggling question comes to mind. Kavanaugh (again, presuming he's innocent) has some reason to doubt himself just as I did, but he doesn't seek evidence or appear remotely interested in investigating his memory. For instance, he didn't watch Ford's testimony, and one of the tenser moments during his questioning was when a Democrat tried to get him to call for an FBI investigation or to have the other named witnesses questioned. Another occurred when Sen. Klobuchar (who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Ford allegations and is widely viewed as a consummate gentlewoman) probed him about his drinking habits and he angrily turned the question around on her. He's not deploying anger to get information, but to hide it. Moreover, he opted to be judged in the court of public opinion under a cloud of doubt rather than by the FBI with all the facts known, and apparently he's quite strong in that preference, which is utterly incomprehensible to me if he's innocent and takes allegations like Ford's as seriously as he claims to.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Fun With Mr. Fudge » Sun Sep 30, 2018 2:08 pm

Crimson, before I make my point, I just wanted to say I'm sorry for what you went through. That seems awful.

Secondly, the judge's use of anger to distract from facts was also very disturbing to me. Okay, now for this:

Crimson847 wrote:It's also not just that he displayed an underlying contempt for the Democratic Party as sellers mentioned--he did, and I didn't much like it, but I'm under no illusions about SCOTUS being a nonpartisan, apolitical body, nor about career partisan operatives holding the opposing party in high esteem.


I would fully agree with this if it weren't for the way in which Kavanagh attacked Democrats. The conspiracy theory was especially alarming because it says to me that Kavanaugh, a guy who will be asked to weigh facts, does not care about facts when drawing conclusions. He offered no evidence for his conspiracy claims besides "Democrats don't like me" and possibly "I went after Bill Clinton over sexual impropriety." That is incredibly troubling just from the standpoint of trying to imagine how he has decided and might continue to decide cases. Is he going to argue (or secretly think) that it's okay to overturn a legal precedent because Democrats want to preserve it? Granted, one might argue that my problem isn't Kavanaugh's partisianship so much as his reasoning, which brings me to my next thought.

The partisan conspiracy theory also tells me that Kavanaugh doesn't care much about logic. As I stated earlier, even if Democrats had conspired to ruin his image, it doesn't make Dr. Ford's testimony false. Unless Kavanaugh is actively calling Dr. Ford a liar as well, which he (and the other Republicans) took great pains not to do, then he has to accept that she sincerely believes her own testimony. If that's true, then the conspiracy theory is irrelevant.

And since I'm on the topic of Kavanaugh's really bad arguments... In his testimony kept implying he drank legally in high school because Maryland's drinking age was 18, according to him. This is problematic on two levels. Firstly, if he was drinking at age 17, it doesn't matter if the legal age was 18. He still drank illegally. Secondly, Maryland's drinking age was raised to 21 when Kavanaugh was 17, so he still drank illegally when he turned 18. There was no need for him to suggest he legally drank in high school because it has no real relevance to Ford's accusations. Yet he seemingly tried to bolster his image by making misleading and irrelevant claims. And if Kavanaugh believed he drank legally in high school, then his memory isn't as reliable as he's made it out to be.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Windy » Tue Oct 02, 2018 5:26 pm

So after Kav gets confirmed, the blue wave doesn't happen, and trump becomes president for life, how will TCS continue to find ways to blame society for not being able to see how enlightened their conspiracy theories are?
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Aquila89 » Tue Oct 02, 2018 6:30 pm

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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Kivutar » Tue Oct 02, 2018 6:48 pm

If Trump becomes president for life, that will pretty much confirm the conspiracy theories. :P
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 02, 2018 7:24 pm

This Atlantic piece is interesting, and could explain why male Republican Senators' determination to rush him through, though not why Collins seems to be on board with him.

I will note though that "what Kavanaugh did is not a big deal anyways" is not an argument I've seen from conservative pundits. I've seen it from people who claim to be conflicted about this, and from some red state "person on the street" interviews I've seen. This suggests to me that maybe the pundits arguing for Kavanaugh know that it is a bad look and are trying the other tacks I've seen (though it is interesting that the liberal tears people don't seem to be using it) but it may still reflect what they and a lot of GOP politicians are thinking.

Also, @Windy: Trump is only become president for life because he gets re-elected and dies from a contaminated taco bowl right at the end of his second term.
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Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Oct 02, 2018 7:36 pm

Brett Kavanaugh may not end up as a Supreme Court Justice, but he can always be made Sergeant of Booze.
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