Time To Smear Kavanaugh's Good Name...

[Starlight]

Buzz I'm hearing:

Ford left a bad impression; Kavanaugh hit a grandslam.

That's a funny joke. Didn't know you had such a sense of humor.

[Tassman]

I certainly do.

Then advocate for an FBI enquiry and subpoena character witnesses to describe Kavanaugh's behaviour when drunk and get testimony from his close friend at the time, Mark Judge...who by all accounts is or was far from being an admirable character.

Why have hearings? Somebody git a rope!!!

If there are going to be hearings as much information as possible should be available, this is what's being deliberately avoided by those determined to push Kavanaugh through come what may.

You didn't like him from the beginning - you NEVER thought he was suitable for SCOTUS.

diddums.

Yup - always comes down to the murder of innocent children and homosexuality for you. And I don't believe he's going to overturn either. This is more fearmongering.

What it comes down to in the unseemly rush to appoint Kavanaugh, is the implementation of the Evangelical social agenda.

What a steaming pile of horsie poo.

Your self-reflection is to be admired.

[Mountain Man]

That's a funny joke. Didn't know you had such a sense of humor.

This strikes me as one of those overly loud nervous laughs before realizing that nobody else is laughing with you

[Mountain Man]

Then advocate for an FBI enquiry and subpoena character witnesses to describe Kavanaugh's behaviour when drunk and get testimony from his close friend at the time, Mark Judge...who by all accounts is or was far from being an admirable character.



If there are going to be hearings as much information as possible should be available, this is what's being deliberately avoided by those determined to push Kavanaugh through come what may.



diddums.



What it comes down to in the unseemly rush to appoint Kavanaugh, is the implementation of the Evangelical social agenda.



Your self-reflection is to be admired.

Give it up, Tass. It's over. Democrats had their chance today and blew it.

[NorrinRadd]

Someone on Capitol Hill just doxxed Republican Sens. Mike Lee, Orrin Hatch, and Lindsey Graham

Somebody working from a House of Representatives office is editing the Wikipedia pages of Republican senators to post what looks like their home addresses.

woah

Best evidence that Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed.

[Cow Poke]

Then advocate for an FBI enquiry

All that is is a phony stall tactic. But feel free to play the games.

[NorrinRadd]

I readily admit that I have a sarcastic streak a mile wide.

I somehow lost this t-shirt. Must put it on my Wish List for Christmas.

tact_sarcasm_tile_coaster.jpg

[NorrinRadd]

All that is is a phony stall tactic. But feel free to play the games.

Yes. Dersh is wrong for continuously advocating for that, even though he was right about the incompetence of the GOP hired-gun lawyer.

[Cow Poke]

It became obvious during the hearings that the Dems' last best hope was goading Kav into agreeing to an FBI investigation, which would only delay things and give them more time to drag a $100 bill through the trailer parks of America.

I think Tass is volunteering to do the dragging.

What amazed me was that they allowed Stormy Daniels' lawyer to be the face of another accuser.

[NorrinRadd]

Text from my wife:

They are trying to rip Kavanaugh apart over his high school year book and what he wrote in it... What is the world coming to? Why are they judging him over this stuff? No one will ever pass that kind of scrutiny!

Smart lady. Did I mention she's my wife?

I'd pass.

But I'm not the ambitious, outgoing sort who would ever aspire to any kind of public office.

There may be some relationship between those facts.

[Psychic Missile]

False accusations are so incredibly rare so as to be a general non-issue. Accusations are evidence, especially in multiples. Did you miss the entire #MeToo thing?

[Terraceth]

I'm actually not sure either is lying, in which case one of the two must be mistaken (an awfully big thing to be mistaken about but it can happen). Given the fact everyone else identified as being at the alleged party where it happened has denied the party occurred, it would seem to me that, absent any further evidence on the matter, it cannot be considered a credible enough accusation to prevent confirmation. If it can, then every nomination should be able to be derailed by just one person making an accusation, which is simply a recipe for disaster.

So to me, the only remaining question is the credibility, or lack thereof of the other two accusations (the fourth is anonymous and therefore irrelevant). I don't think either of the accusers has volunteered to testify and, unless that changes, I would therefore have to consider it to not be credible enough either barring some kind of evidence being offered outside of the accusation itself, particularly as (as far as I am aware) there wasn't a whiff of any of this beforehand.

So with the information currently available, I do not see the accusations as sufficient reason to not confirm him. I am left wishing someone else had been nominated so we could have avoided this debacle, but it's too late for that now. I worry strongly about the precedent set if he is not confirmed on the basis of this. It is, admittedly, entirely possible someone's decision to vote against him was for other reasons, but the perception would be that all it takes is an accusation not backed up by witnesses to thwart a nomination.

My conclusions aside, I have issues with how it was conducted. It almost felt that after the opening statements were given, the whole thing might as well have just ended because not that much was added in the questions. I'm pretty sure everyone on the Judiciary Committee already has their minds made up on how to vote, so why even bother with them asking questions? Why not get some of the Senators whose votes might be undecided? That way, their questions might actually be about figuring out the truth rather than just posturing.

The five-minute mini-interview format wasn't very good either. As the woman the Republicans got to do the questioning pointed out, short five-minute interviews are really not particularly conducive to actually trying to figure out the accuracy of someone's memory. The whole format fell a bit flat to me. Granted, that's a bit of a problem with the way the Judiciary Committee does things anyway, because for some reason it's considered necessary for everyone to get a round in. Instead of constantly switching every 5 minutes it would have been better if we had a shorter number of rounds but longer ones.

Then again, did that hearing really matter, when you get down to it? From what I've seen, people's minds didn't shift in either direction, they went into it with preconceived conclusions and left with those same preconceived conclusions.

[Terraceth]

False accusations are so incredibly rare so as to be a general non-issue.

Even if they are rare (and I would be interested in evidence that is the case), I don't think that is particularly comforting to the people who have had their lives destroyed by accusations later shown to be false.

Accusations are evidence, especially in multiples. Did you miss the entire #MeToo thing?

Most of them, from what I recall, had the person who was accused actually admit to it.

[oxmixmudd]

False accusations are so incredibly rare so as to be a general non-issue. Accusations are evidence, especially in multiples. Did you miss the entire #MeToo thing?

They are not a non-issue. I am reminded od the players at Duke University that went through he'll before enough evidence came to light the accuser could be shown to be a lyer. When it happens it is devastating. Which is why you can't convict on an unverifiable accusation.

But you do have to hear an accusation, and they have to be investigated to see if there is evidence to support the claim.

In this situation, any honest look at either side is completely lost in the politics, in the circus, and in the hatred springing from both sides of the Isle one for the other.

Just the sort of absolute chaos the president loves and strives to surround himself with.

And there is certainly nothing happening in the conversations here that is not also fully given over to the same polarizations and vitriol we were seeing today in the capitol.

So the Donald is winning. He has set the tone, fed the fire, and gradually the entire nation is being divided into two sets of people that literally see only demons in the other 'sides' eyes. So much so that calls for decency and compassion are 'phariseeical venom' and anyone raising any caution or calling for any ratcheting down of the rhetoric is clearly an agent of the 'other side'

Great nations often fall from within through the corruption of decency and goodwill.

We are well on that road.

Jim

[Starlight]

Kavanaugh's ongoing willingness to lie about even basic things to Senate committees continues to astound me. Today in the hearings he was asked about the meanings of 4 terms on his yearbook page and he lied about 3 of them to make them sound innocent. His own classmates contradict him on 2 of them, but support him on a 3rd. On the 4th term (Renate alumnus) Kavanaugh changed his own story (from previously being that he'd given Renate a friendly kiss goodbye at the end of a party) to simply meaning that he was friends with Renate, whereas the term (which appears on numerous boys' pages that year) is an obvious reference to an alleged sexual conquest.

Previously Kavanaugh has lied to the committee about all sorts of other things ranging from whether he ever saw stolen democrat documents to how involved he was in shepherding another SCOTUS nominee through the process.

So while I would say it's theoretically possible that Kavanaugh was so drunk at the time that he doesn't remember attempting to rape Professor Ford, I would tend to say it's much more likely that this guy's just a serial liar who's used to being able to lie his way out of this sort of thing.