New SCOTUS Judge

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Hillary's getting stale and tired. The Democratic party needs a fresh new face, and it appears they found one:

“I think he’s the most deplorable, the most despicable human being I’ve ever encountered. After we impeach Trump, we’ll go after Mike Pence. We’ll get him.”
-- Maxine Waters (Sept 6, 2018)​

Although, the word "deplorable" does sound vaguely familiar.

Wrong thread. This has nothing to do with Kavanaugh.

 

[Ziggurat]

No, it really doesn't. You know how this works; this is a skeptics forum. Calling out stupendously fallacious reasoning presented as an argument is relevant.

You’re focusing on what was basically a joke in order to avoid the actual substance of the post. Fantastic skepticism there, tyr. You’ve done us all proud.

 

[tyr_13]

When it comes to embarrassing behavior, we've already adapted, as witnessed by the last presidential election. We have also already had a nude model elected to the senate. (Scott Brown) However, if the behavior was more than embarrassing, i.e. if it could be considered illegal or unethical, I think we will see anything and everything dredged up.

The biggest problem with that is that most of us have some sort of "borderline" behavior. I had a ton of underage drinking, and although I was never arrested, I sometimes drove a car when drunk. (For the youngsters in the audience, times really have changed. It was possible for an underage driver to get pulled over by a policeman, be drunk, and be told to go home. For the record, I think the modern approach to drinking and driving as a vast improvement, but my seventeen year old self took advantage of the much less strict enforcement, and lesser penalties even if caught and prosecuted.) If I run for Senate some day (not going to happen) will someone dredge up that?


Well, probably not. But wait. There are certain conversations that could conceivably have been taped, and I used the N-word. I wasn't even a teenager. I bet it happened as late as, let's say, 25 years old. Oh, noes!


Will every single thing we've ever done be considered relevant to running for office?

I have no idea why you're railing against a hypothetical pillorying when there are so many real life examples of people who have engaged in even worst behavior and still achieving office. Bush had addiction problems. Obama did pot. Byrd was a member of the KKK!

They all acknowledge and owned up to their mistakes...

No, for me, I just wouldn't care, at least not much. It wouldn't be the thing I base the judgement on, unless perhaps it was really, really close to the borderline anyway. i.e. I was going to vote for candidate A, but then I heard about some really bad behavior when he was 17. I can't see myself changing to candidate B because of that unless I was pretty undecided in the first place.

It sees to me that in your hypothetical, one person was caught at 17, punished, publicly repented in the face of social pressure, and went on to lead a decent life afterwards while a second person got away with it, never did anything like it again, probably regretted it but because it never went public no one ever knew about it, but then it was put into public view 30 years later, and we should hold it against him, but not against the one who got caught at 17? No, I'm not seeing it.

If we were to discover that Kavanaugh actually raped someone at 17, maybe it would influence me, a little. In the situation that exists right now with judge Kavanaugh, if we were to discover that he did that, it would influence me, only because he denied it today. If we were to subsequently discover that, well, yes, it did happen, then that would mean he is lying today, and we would be judging him on his behavior today, not when he was 17.

I take personal responsibility a little more seriously. You take comfort in believing the repentant might just have been going through the motions and the silent actually 'regrets' it, while I take that just lacking evidence.

You cannot forgive the unrepentant. You cannot make amends for behavior denied. You cannot learn and grow without owning your own mistakes, and that includes acknowledging them.

(Again, I'm not holding my breath that anything will or should come of this specific case.)

 

[tyr_13]

Amazing how the sex allegation gets all the attention, and not the memogate, etc. from Sen. Leahy. If I were him I'd be pissed at the other allegations stealing the attention away.

I actually think the perjury, especially regarding the stolen documents, policy creation, and nominations, is much more serious than any other issues raised including ideology. The memogate one is completely damning. Either he knowingly used stolen materials, or he's to stupid to know the information was obviously stolen.

But trying to get Trump Republicans to discuss that or even answer that perjury on judicial issues should be disqualifying is next to impossible. Case in point...

You’re focusing on what was basically a joke in order to avoid the actual substance of the post. Fantastic skepticism there, tyr. You’ve done us all proud.

I would be proud if it were at all difficult to get you to argue against your own behavior. All I have to do is a Zigg impression with flipped sides, and you come out swinging against your own tactics. It's impressive in a way.

I'll answer your question when you answer mine.

 

[Arcade22]

The friend who is said to have participated, Mark Judge, also denied the episode ever happened.

“I never saw anything like what was described,” he said in an interview after being informed that he was named in the letter.

Further, he said, it did not match Mr. Kavanaugh’s character: “It is not who he is.” He said that the two were around each other constantly in high school, and recalled him as a “brilliant student,” who was very into sports, and was not “into anything crazy or illegal.”

Mr. Judge, an author, filmmaker and journalist who has written for the conservative Daily Caller and The Weekly Standard, said that the students were raised in Catholic homes and taught that the kind of behavior as described in the letter would not be tolerated. “Something like that would stick out,” he said, “which is why I don’t think it would happen.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/us/politics/kavanaugh-assault-allegation-letter.html

Because indoctrination with catholic teachings and dogmas is a foolproof way to inoculate someone against them attempting rape or otherwise committing any crime at all.

More importantly: if they were ever to do anything illegal or otherwise disreputable then of course they would "stick out" and they wouldn't be able to pass as good Catholic, which Kavanaugh is.

 

[Ziggurat]

I would be proud if it were at all difficult to get you to argue against your own behavior. All I have to do is a Zigg impression with flipped sides, and you come out swinging against your own tactics. It's impressive in a way.

Your post hoc rationalizations are bull **** since you went off the rails in response to a post that wasn't even mine.

 

[tyr_13]

Your post hoc rationalizations are bull **** since you went off the rails in response to a post that wasn't even mine.

Nope. My response to Slings and Arrows was not in your style, and was not 'off the rails'. Do you really think the reasoning they presented was valid? It was not. If you think that's 'off the rails', well, please do tell everyone. I won't stop you.

And you cut out an important bit from my last post there again, which shows you're doing what I did in an even MORE extreme form BEFORE I did; avoiding salient questions. I have to get my impersonation better, I was not dishonest enough. Instead of saying I wasn't saying anything about the truth of the accusation, I should have just snipped that part of your post when I replied.

Would you still support Kavanaugh if perjury (on salient judicial issues as has been alleged) is proven? Do you at least entertain the possibility that he is unsuitable regardless of the motivations of those arguing he is unsuitable? I'll answer your question if you answer mine. I did ask first.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/us/politics/kavanaugh-assault-allegation-letter.html

Because indoctrination with catholic teachings and dogmas is a foolproof way to inoculate someone against them attempting rape or otherwise committing any crime at all.

More importantly: if they were ever to do anything illegal or otherwise disreputable then of course they would "stick out" and they wouldn't be able to pass as good Catholic, which Kavanaugh is.

Funny story about Mark:

In his opening statement at his confirmation hearing this month, Kavanaugh referenced his time at the Catholic institution with great reverence: “The motto of my Jesuit high school was ‘Men for others.’*  I’ve tried to live that creed.”

But the school Judge has described in his books is a very different sort of place. In his 2005 book, God and Man at Georgetown Prep, which is now out of print, Judge apparently paints the school as overrun with gay priests who promote a form of liberalism that wrecks Catholic education. He also describes an institution where alcoholism was rampant, a theme he detailed in his 1997 addiction memoir, Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk.

That book chronicles Judge’s time as a teenage alcoholic. Like many works of the genre, it devotes a lot of ink to the kinds of debauchery that leads to AA and recovery. While there’s nothing in the book that resembles the incident reportedly described in the private letter given to the FBI, Judge says his own black-out drinking while he and Kavanaugh were Georgetown Prep students “reached the point where once I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated.”

He describes, for instance, what happened after a night of heavy drinking with friends at a Georgetown bar. “The next thing I knew, I was lying on a bathroom floor. I was curled up in the fetal position with saliva running out of the side of my mouth,” Judge writes, explaining that he had inexplicably woken up inside a nearby Four Seasons Hotel. He writes that he called his mom for help getting home. “I must have come over here and passed out,” he tells her.

The amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking might suggest that his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable.

In Judge’s telling, Georgetown Prep students were forced to do community service, not because of the school’s commitment to the poor, but as a way to try to curtail late-night drinking and Sunday morning hangovers. Judge and his buddies spent a lot of time in the book trying to get laid, but that’s nothing unusual for a story about high school boys.

Judge has changed the names of many of the people in the book to protect their privacy, and he renames Georgetown Prep as “Loyola Prep.” But Kavanaugh seems to make a cameo.

Linky.

There's a "Bart O'Kavanaugh" that makes a cameo in the book being describes as puking in someone's car and passing out after a party.

I don't think its relevant to anything, but I enjoy hearing tales from "Catholic" institutions.

 

[The Big Dog]

Funny story about Mark:



Linky.

There's a "Bart O'Kavanaugh" that makes a cameo in the book being describes as puking in someone's car and passing out after a party.

I don't think its relevant to anything, but I enjoy hearing tales from "Catholic" institutions.

So you are saying ALL Catholics are homosexual alcoholics?

 

[Belz...]

So you are saying ALL Catholics are homosexual alcoholics?

Wow, that is particularily spectacular rule of so.

 

[Ziggurat]

Nope. My response to Slings and Arrows was not in your style, and was not 'off the rails'.

It was definitely off the rails. You attacked what was basically a joke while avoiding the actual substance of the post.

And you cut out an important bit from my last post there again, which shows you're doing what I did in an even MORE extreme form BEFORE I did; avoiding salient questions.

There's nothing salient about it. Everyone, including the poster you replied to, knows that there can be more than one objectionable thing about someone. You're trying to create an issue out of something that simply isn't one, in order to avoid talking about something that's embarrassing for your side.

I have to get my impersonation better, I was not dishonest enough.

You are always dishonest. tyr. You don't have to try, it comes naturally to you. You consistently argue in bad faith, as you are admitting to here.

Would you still support Kavanaugh if perjury (on salient judicial issues as has been alleged) is proven?

We weren't talking about perjury. We were talking about this absurd claim that Kavanaugh was making a dog whistle about birth control.

Do you at least entertain the possibility that he is unsuitable regardless of the motivations of those arguing he is unsuitable?

Sure, it's always possible that someone I don't know every single thing about has some terrible secret. But so the hell what? Nothing on offer comes close to disqualifying, especially this alleged dog whistle.

I'll answer your question if you answer mine. I did ask first.

If you want to go in order of when they were asked, it's now your turn, since I answered your first question. Hell, I even threw in a few bonus ones.

 

[tyr_13]

It was definitely off the rails. You attacked what was basically a joke while avoiding the actual substance of the post.

There wasn't any actual substance of that post. It reported the accusations but the only 'substance' in that post was the 'reasoning' I mocked. Anything else is you projecting a justification onto (much like all the Trump-translators letting us know what he really meant).

There's nothing salient about it. Everyone, including the poster you replied to, knows that there can be more than one objectionable thing about someone. You're trying to create an issue out of something that simply isn't one, in order to avoid talking about something that's embarrassing for your side.

Slings and Arrows has made no indication that they know that. Their only response was to accuse me of having a dog in the fight; an ad hom if it actually completed the implication and argued I was therefore wrong. Far be it from Trump Republicans to actually make a fully formed argument though.

You're the one making this an issue. The reasoning I mocked is moronic, but you can't leave it at that. Attacking what you imagine my motivation to be doesn't make me wrong.

You are always dishonest. tyr. You don't have to try, it comes naturally to you. You consistently argue in bad faith, as you are admitting to here.

I consistently get you to expose your bad-faith, as you continue to exhibit in this very post. Trump Republicans love projection though.

We weren't talking about perjury. We were talking about this absurd claim that Kavanaugh was making a dog whistle about birth control.

Oh yes we were talking about perjury when you (and theprestige) decided not to answer a simple, very salient, question more than a week ago.

Your objection to them doing their job because it helps them politically to do their job is very telling.

If it is provable that he committed perjury during his previous confirmation, would you support him still?

And you here, in this very post, dishonestly dodge answering the question again by pretending it wasn't on topic, the EXACT behavior I reflected back at you and you subsequently called 'bad faith'. So was I acting in bad faith by not giving a meaningful answer before to the 'dog whistle' question, meaning you are also acting in bad faith here, or not?

You, by your own standards, are dishonest. I have no idea if you had to work hard at it or if it comes naturally, and frankly I don't care. It wouldn't be worth engaging with you at all if you didn't represent the 'thinking' Trump Republican.

Sure, it's always possible that someone I don't know every single thing about has some terrible secret. But so the hell what? Nothing on offer comes close to disqualifying, especially this alleged dog whistle.



If you want to go in order of when they were asked, it's now your turn, since I answered your first question. Hell, I even threw in a few bonus ones.

You did no such thing as answering the first question. Your bad faith will not be rewarded.

 

[Ziggurat]

Oh yes we were talking about perjury when you (and theprestige) decided not to answer a simple, very salient, question more than a week ago.

Bwahahahahaha! That's what you're referring to? Jeeze, tyr, give it a rest. Hell, I can't remember if I even saw your question, and I sure as hell don't remember it anymore if I ever did. I figured you were being more sensible than that, and were referring to this question:

Do you dispute that accusing person of action A does not mean you are not accusing them of action B?

And that question I did answer. But I can't answer a question I don't know, and I'm certainly not going to go digging for whatever the hell you're referring to from that long ago.

And you here, in this very post, dishonestly dodge answering the question again by pretending it wasn't on topic

There's nothing dishonest about it. The topic for this little exchange was about the alleged dog whistle, not perjury. That topic ended a while ago.

So was I acting in bad faith by not giving a meaningful answer before to the 'dog whistle' question, meaning you are also acting in bad faith here, or not?

No, tyr. First off, again, how the hell am I supposed to know you've got a bur up your ass about a week-old question? That's irrational and obsessive.

Second, no, your fundamental dishonesty isn't due to refusing to answer a question. It's that you put forth arguments that you don't even believe, because you think you can prove some sort of bull **** point by doing so.

You, by your own standards, are dishonest.

You keep claiming this, but it's always been projection.

You did no such thing as answering the first question. Your bad faith will not be rewarded.

You say that like your answering my question is some sort of reward. I got news for you: it isn't. You don't actually grace us with your presence and wisdom.

 

[tyr_13]

Amazing. You still didn't even try to answer.

 

[Ziggurat]

Amazing. You still didn't even try to answer.

Answer what, tyr? You referred to some question from a week ago, but I have no idea what that question is, and I'm not going to go on a wild goose chase for it. Ask again, if you care that much.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Author Of Brett Kavanaugh Letter Breaks Silence

The woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault in a confidential letter to members of Congress has come forward to tell her story.

Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University in California, told The Washington Post that she feared Kavanaugh “might inadvertently kill” her while holding her down and groping her while they were both in high school around 1982.

Kavanugh has denied any wrongdoing.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...ult-letter-author_us_5b9e93d9e4b04d32ebf979c3 (Sept 16, 2018)

Hey Brett, you should have kept your promise: "I'll give you a call. Maybe we can do this again sometime."

It really pisses them off when you don't come back for more.

 

[Bob001]

Link above is based on this WP story.

Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.

Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.

While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...bd52dfe917b_story.html?utm_term=.ed04c5ccef1d

She says she told her husband and a therapist about it years ago.

 

[Bob001]

Hey Brett, you should have kept your promise: "I'll give you a call. Maybe we can do this again sometime."

It really pisses them off when you don't come back for more.

You think attempted rape is funny?

 

[Slings and Arrows]

You think attempted rape is funny?

"Risky Business" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" were funny. But Christine Blasey Ford getting groped by a teenager? Yawn!

 

[Bob001]

"Risky Business" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" were funny. But Christine Blasey Ford getting groped by a teenager? Yawn!

She describes quite a bit more than a grope. If you don't get that, you're part of the problem.