Your new Supreme Court nominee is....

[bmags]

4 minutes ago, ptatc said:

What he deserves is to never have been a judge in the first place. I am not defending him in the least. He should be prosecuted and should have been prosecuted for his crime. By her saying he shouldn't be a supreme court justice is saying it was fine for him to be a lower level judge because it didn't matter until he was a nominee for the supreme court.

I understand this point, but I think it's undeniable that the process for making an accusation at any level is not easy, but she lived most of her life without having to hear/see Kavanaugh in the news. I can list a handful of judges lower than Supreme court, they are not very visible. 

The supreme court however is very visible, and I think that makes it more understandable that there is a line drawn. He would become a capital-H historical figure, and by circumstance one of the most important in years, and so it can bring more urgency to share the way he affected her life.

[Dick Allen]

3 minutes ago, ptatc said:

What he deserves is to never have been a judge in the first place. I am not defending him in the least. He should be prosecuted and should have been prosecuted for his crime. By her saying he shouldn't be a supreme court justice is saying it was fine for him to be a lower level judge because it didn't matter until he was a nominee for the supreme court.

As someone who has not been raped, or had it attempted, it would be hard for me to actually know how it affects someone. But she is hardly the first woman who has suppressed this, hoping it just went away. There is always a chance its BS, but she has supposedly passed a lie detector, and coming out with it now really doesn't make her life any easier. The victim shaming is already at full speed.  Besides, this should wait until after the midterms if we are going to use the same terms the right used with Merrick Garland.

[bmags]

I guess succinctly I mean that for some victims they largely just want to be out of "harms way" from perpetrator, but when they attain a certain level of power or fame, they feel very much back in harms way and some decide to act on that then even if its years later.

The issue, of course, is that people will conflate that action with it being opportunistic. And that is difficult too but that may be the case no matter when it happens.

[ptatc]

9 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

It's her saying she wasn't willing to come forward and face the attacks and never-ending scrutiny over an appeals court appointment 12 years ago. She is well within her rights to decide that things may have changed in the last 12 years for a variety of reasons or that a lifetime SCOTUS position is worth her life being changed forever while the lower court position was not.

No doubt she is within her rights. It just sends the message that the crime of sexual assault wasn't important until he was nominated for this position.  I think that is wrong.  He shouldn't have been allowed to be a lower level judge either. They can have effect on lives as well albeit at a more local level.

She is making it purely about the position not the crime. 

[southsider2k5]

Just now, ptatc said:

No doubt she is within her rights. It just sends the message that the crime of sexual assault wasn't important until he was nominated for this position.  I think that is wrong.  He shouldn't have been allowed to be a lower level judge either. They can have effect on lives as well albeit at a more local level.

She is making it purely about the position not the crime. 

Not really.  Would you get upset with a vet who signs of PTSD don't show up for decades afterwards during say a random fireworks night or huge storm?

[Dick Allen]

7 minutes ago, ptatc said:

No doubt she is within her rights. It just sends the message that the crime of sexual assault wasn't important until he was nominated for this position.  I think that is wrong.  He shouldn't have been allowed to be a lower level judge either. They can have effect on lives as well albeit at a more local level.

She is making it purely about the position not the crime. 

 As a lower level judge, she probably doesn't have to hear his name very often, if at all. As a Supreme Court justice, he will be seen and heard a lot. It's easy to sit back and say you should have said something earlier...but it's not like she is the first to say something later on, and there is better than a 0% chance she is telling the truth.  It just may be he was out of sight and out of mind, so she could live with that, and now that won't be possible. 

[ptatc]

9 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Not really.  Would you get upset with a vet who signs of PTSD don't show up for decades afterwards during say a random fireworks night or huge storm?

No. The optimist in me would like to believe this situation is the same for her. However she has documented proof that she has discussed this in private in the past. So unfortunately the political cynic in me based on the decisive politics of today thinks otherwise.

[ptatc]

2 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

 As a lower level judge, she probably doesn't have to hear his name very often, if at all. As a Supreme Court justice, he will be seen and heard a lot. It's easy to sit back and say you should have said something earlier...but it's not like she is the first to say something later on, and there is better than a 0% chance she is telling the truth.  It just may be he was out of sight and out of mind, so she could live with that, and now that won't be possible. 

Its possible. See my last post as to why I think it is less likely than the cynical version.

[StrangeSox]

9 minutes ago, ptatc said:

No doubt she is within her rights. It just sends the message that the crime of sexual assault wasn't important until he was nominated for this position.  I think that is wrong.  He shouldn't have been allowed to be a lower level judge either. They can have effect on lives as well albeit at a more local level.

She is making it purely about the position not the crime. 

SCOTUS is undoubtedly more important a position than DC Circuit. I wouldn't disagree at all that she thinks that this high-profile, decades-of-precedent-setting position is worth the risk/challenges in her life and that the DC Circuit position wasn't. I don't see why that's supposed to be unreasonable or damage her. Coming out this way means she's going to be dragged through the mud publicly for a bit and, more likely than not, harassed for the rest of her life. Calculating when it's worth it to bring that on yourself with public accusations isn't nefarious.

Like bmags said, this position for Kavanaugh is very high-profile and he'll be in the public for decades to come if confirmed. I don't think any of us could name the rest of the DC Circuit judges beyond Kavanaugh or Garland. Now that Richard Posner's retired, I couldn't tell you the names of any of the 7th Circuit judges that cover Illinois. Yes, these are still important positions, especially the DC one, but SCOTUS is that much more important.

Many, if not most, sexual assaults go unreported. That doesn't make them "unimportant." This was important enough that she sought therapy for it and it's stuck with her for decades. Making the decision on when to make a public accusation doesn't speak to the importance of the crime of sexual assault, it speaks to what our society puts accusers through.

 

[StrangeSox]

Let's say the "cynical" version, that she's deliberately timed this to sink Kavanaugh's nomination to the SC, is true. Let's even grant that it somehow diminishes the seriousness of sexual assault charges in general, at least in some people's views.

So what? Unless you're accusing her of lying and starting to create a trail of the accusation years ago, what does that matter? Even if it had been Feinstein's team that dug this up and then strategically held off until after the confirmation hearings (which makes no sense, but for the sake of argument...), would that really matter? Shouldn't we still have a full public investigation into the allegations to either make sure we don't put an attempted rapist on the SC for life, or so that we clear his name?

It's all just another way of telling an alleged victim to sit down and shut up.

[ptatc]

11 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

SCOTUS is undoubtedly more important a position than DC Circuit. I wouldn't disagree at all that she thinks that this high-profile, decades-of-precedent-setting position is worth the risk/challenges in her life and that the DC Circuit position wasn't. I don't see why that's supposed to be unreasonable or damage her. Coming out this way means she's going to be dragged through the mud publicly for a bit and, more likely than not, harassed for the rest of her life. Calculating when it's worth it to bring that on yourself with public accusations isn't nefarious.

Like bmags said, this position for Kavanaugh is very high-profile and he'll be in the public for decades to come if confirmed. I don't think any of us could name the rest of the DC Circuit judges beyond Kavanaugh or Garland. Now that Richard Posner's retired, I couldn't tell you the names of any of the 7th Circuit judges that cover Illinois. Yes, these are still important positions, especially the DC one, but SCOTUS is that much more important.

Many, if not most, sexual assaults go unreported. That doesn't make them "unimportant." This was important enough that she sought therapy for it and it's stuck with her for decades. Making the decision on when to make a public accusation doesn't speak to the importance of the crime of sexual assault, it speaks to what our society puts accusers through.

 

What you say is undoubtedly true. I guess just because I can't name the circuit court judges doesn't mean that it isn't an important position. This proves the point that it's more the position not the crime. 

Your view on it could be accurate for her intentions. As I said earlier I hope her motivation is that this position is finally important enough to take the risk. However, I think it minimizes the crime and the political cynic in me take over.

 

Edited September 17, 2018 by ptatc

[bmags]

25 minutes ago, ptatc said:

What you say is undoubtedly true. I guess just because I can't name the circuit court judges doesn't mean that it isn't an important position. This proves the point that it's more the position not the crime. 

Your view on it could be accurate for her intentions. As I said earlier I hope her motivation is that this position is finally important enough to take the risk. However, I think it minimizes the crime and the political cynic in me take over.

 

It is about the position, and for her it is about denying him that position. What I do not think it is about at all is denying republicans the position.

This, after all, did not happen for Gorsuch.

[Balta1701]

30 minutes ago, ptatc said:

What you say is undoubtedly true. I guess just because I can't name the circuit court judges doesn't mean that it isn't an important position. This proves the point that it's more the position not the crime. 

Your view on it could be accurate for her intentions. As I said earlier I hope her motivation is that this position is finally important enough to take the risk. However, I think it minimizes the crime and the political cynic in me take over.

 

Doesn't having it never come out and having there never be any consequences minimize the crime more?

[bmags]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-claim-against-kavanaugh-is-not-a-suspicious-11th-hour-bombshell-because-were-not-in-the-11th-hour/2018/09/17/cfe86460-ba74-11e8-a8aa-860695e7f3fc_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.267490e9aa9e

I think this is right. One, there is no binary choice for voters in this. This is about a lifetime appointment so the idea that there is an imminent clock running is wrong.

[ptatc]

46 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Doesn't having it never come out and having there never be any consequences minimize the crime more?

No doubt.

[ptatc]

51 minutes ago, bmags said:

It is about the position, and for her it is about denying him that position. What I do not think it is about at all is denying republicans the position.

This, after all, did not happen for Gorsuch.

I think it should be more about the crime than this position.

The Gorsuch case has nothing to do with this unless he committed sexual assault and got away with it.

[bmags]

1 minute ago, ptatc said:

I think it should be more about the crime than this position.

The Gorsuch case has nothing to do with this unless he committed sexual assault and got away with it.

Well, unfortunately sexual assault is a crime very much requiring the participation of the victim that is often a very painful and not healing experience, and coming forward has shown to be difficult for many.

Had Kavanaugh run her over with a car it would be more likely she charged him right away. To flatten everything as “crime”, is too simplistic imo.

[caulfield12]

Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones are more famous to the general public than most Supreme Court justices.

Why would any woman want to put herself through that willingly if there wasn’t any truth to the allegations?   It’s not like the Jones case where there is money involved for the complainant, either.  This is more about weighing personal/reputational cost versus the opportunity cost of not doing anything and knowing this guy might have been the key vote to overturn Roe.  How many women, though, would do the same?  She’s a Stanford professor with an established career, after all.

And it’s also not like anyone can control the next nominee’s view/s on this issue, although we can all theorize they might be more moderate.  Knowing Trump, he’s just as likely to do the opposite...pull Kavanaugh and attempt to jam someone through (even before November elections) that’s more conservative.

Or put another way, what would you do if your wife was the accuser...with this allegation going back 36 years to high school...?  Tell her to let bygones be bygones after all the therapy she has been through? It’s an incredibly complicated decision for any family, especially if you had children, no matter what age/s.

Edited September 17, 2018 by caulfield12

[StrangeSox]

...how is Kavanaugh denying that he was at a specific party when the claim of exactly when and where it took place hasn't been made yet?

 

 

This guy is a serial liar

 

 

at least for Sen. Hatch, it doesn't actually matter if he did it or not:

 

 

Edited September 17, 2018 by StrangeSox

[GoSox05]

I love how some conservatives are like who cares that he tried to rape someone, it was a long time ago.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

McConnell has zero shame

 

 

[StrangeSox]

21 minutes ago, GoSox05 said:

I love how some conservatives are like who cares that he tried to rape someone, it was a long time ago.

 

 

 

What's the Venn diagram between the people saying this about kav and the people who advocate for trying juveniles as adults and blame Tamir Rice for his own death

[StrangeSox]

 

 

[StrangeSox]

 

[Kyyle23]

16 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

McConnell has zero shame

 

 

why does this continue to surprise you?