Kavanaugh Hearings

[VanGnome]

12 minutes ago, thedestroyerofworlds said:

I some questions for the Kavanaugh defenders:

 

Would you pet a dog that might have bitten other people?

 

Would you let someone stay in you house who might have stolen property from other people?

 

Would you have unprotected sex with someone who might have been exposed to an STD?

 

Are you OK with BK and the questions of his character sitting on the highest court in the US for decades?

 

OR

 

Would you require a lot more digging into the past of the dog, etc. before petting the dog, letting the person stay in your house, having sex with that person, and letting BK sit on the Supreme Court?

I've never once defended Kavanaugh. Also, I penalize you for lack of originality. Those questions were the same ones used in the SNL episode with Matt Damon as Kavanaugh. To answer the question, the answer is no. But I'm not defending Kavanaugh, one of my first posts was "I don't really care which way the decision goes, and if he gets the job or not" (paraphrasing myself).

I'm as objectively as possible looking at each party involved and determining the veracity of who's doing and saying what. Why does that default to me having to unequivocally support/believe Blaisey-Ford? Do false accusations not occur? Does misrecollection not also occur? Yes. And if this was an actual criminal trial, these things would be vetted properly, and prosecutors being able to fully question people without having Senators meddling and interfering.

[Aladeen]

3 hours ago, VanGnome said:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4952137/Rachel-Mitchell-s-analysis.pdf

Read the report for yourself, there is way too much in there to just copy/paste.

That said, I don't know if there was a report generated regarding her thoughts on Kavanaugh that I am incredibly interested to read as well. But more to the point this is about Ford's credibility specifically, and in reducing her credibility to nothing, it does not imply that Kavanaugh therefore has more credibility. I've said before, I believe that both of them are less than credible.

I have read the report thoroughly and it is literally grasping at straws. There is definitely no shredding of testimony or credibility anywhere in that document. 

 

1. 1st the consistency of when the assault took place: The only inconsistency was in the initial text that read "mid 80's" but in reality there is no reason to be precise in a text message especially considering Mitchell doesn't give the context in which the text was sent. Everything else is consistent as early 80s and 1982 would fit. Also she was consistent with the season being summer and the explanation for the precision may be simply her working to recall the incident more now than she ever has before. 
2. Not identifying Kavanaugh as the assailant previously: in Mitchell's own words: "Delayed disclosure of abuse is common so this is not dispositive." Hardly shredding her testimony there but acknowledging the fact that non-identification is common for abuse cases so this is at worst meaningless one way or the other.
3. Changing of the description to sexual assault and physical abuse: Are they both not true? If what she said happened did in fact happen, both ways of describing the incident are correct. 
4. No memory of specifics: this is again super common for people who go through a major traumatic incident. Certain memories are heightened and others are blanked on. I have dealt with many many individuals that can remember oddly specific things about a trauma while having no recollection about other general things. As an example I have worked with one lady who survived an IRA bombing many years ago and she can remember the song that was on the radio in her car at the time and a man with a handle-bar mustache staring at her with vivid clarity, but not what kind of car she was in or where her brother was sitting at the time or even why she was there. 
5. No recollection from named individuals: There are two simple reasons why this may be the case, either 1 they were party to the assault and don't want to incriminate themselves or 2 they didn't suffer any sort of trauma whatsoever and it was just another mundane day to them where nothing actually stood out. Not recalling an incident does not equal these people saying that they weren't there or this didn't take place. Not recalling DOES NOT equal Denial. 
6. Inconsistent assault details: look at what Mitchell is saying in this section she is not talking about the assault itself but what transpired after the trauma had happened. It's not like the variation in the details are completely opposite as to what she initially stated, she just corrected the fact that she may have made a logical assumption about a conversation taking place afterwards rather than outright hearing it. Hardly shredding her credibility once again. 
7. Accounting of who was at the party: They are referencing notes not made by her, it would be easy for a therapist to write down that 4 boys were in the room when in fact she was meaning that there were 4 boys at the party. She can't be held accountable for discrepancies that may be the fault of therapist who didn't write it down exactly as it was laid out. I work in a similar field precision is not necessary so long as all of the most important information is recorded. Easily chalked up to a misunderstanding of the layout of the house on the therapists part. As far as a 4th boy coming forward, why would he? Especially if he was party to it, at best this 4th boy failed to tell authorities something illegal happened at worst he was the 2nd boy in the room. 
8. Failing to recall recent "important" events relating to her allegation: I would say a lot of those things are not important but rather minor details that could be cleared up by asking the people who received them rather than Dr. Ford. Was it a portion of the notes? All of the notes? In reality it may simply be that she doesn't know, did she get every single note from her therapist or just some? On July 6 did she have the notes before contact with the post was initiated or shortly after? Who cares? Hardly relevant, maybe she acquired them on July 7 or July 5, what difference would that make in any way shape or form? She can't explain how she is able to contact a congressperson vs a Senator? Again who cares about that? generally congresspeople are more accessible to the public than Senators. Was she filmed was she audio recorded during the lie detector? Again who cares, the information to that is available no doubt and she probably already knows the answer, it's not like Dr. Ford is setting up all the A/V equipment for her lie detector test. 
9. Refusing to give the committee therapy notes: It's interesting Mitchell puts this under failing to recall recent events heading and maybe Dr. Ford should have done so but in reality it is every person's right to refuse that without a court order. There is a lot of personal information in those notes that you tell in confidence to someone to expose that to the world could feel absolutely terrible for some people.

 

The rest of the document is a timeline of events and even if it is completely accurate in no way shape or form discredits anything that Dr. Ford testified to. 

 

Did what Dr. Ford say happened actually happened? I have no idea. Only her, and BK know that for certain, but nothing in there gives any sort of shredding of her credibility in the slightest and, in my opinion as little as its worth most of is actually consistent with someone who went through a major traumatic event. 

 

 

[thedestroyerofworlds]

Just now, VanGnome said:

I've never once defended Kavanaugh. Also, I penalize you for lack of originality. Those questions were the same ones used in the SNL episode with Matt Damon as Kavanaugh. To answer the question, the answer is no. But I'm not defending Kavanaugh, one of my first posts was "I don't really care which way the decision goes, and if he gets the job or not" (paraphrasing myself).

I'm as objectively as possible looking at each party involved and determining the veracity of who's doing and saying what. Why does that default to me having to unequivocally support/believe Blaisey-Ford? Do false accusations not occur? Does misrecollection not also occur? Yes. And if this was an actual criminal trial, these things would be vetted properly, and prosecutors being able to fully question people without having Senators meddling and interfering.

Didn't watch the episode, so fine, you got me there.

 

However,

 

I penalize you.  Did I accuse you of defending BK?  No.  I haven't looked though all the pages in this thread and my post was directed to those who were defending BK.

 

I too am as objective as possible.  The whole reason why this whole thing is a sham has to do with the GOP and their insistence that this happen before the midterms.  I'm fully aware that criminal cases have a higher burden of proof.  This whole process is not criminal, and therefore has a lower burden of proof.  If the GOP was concerned about getting qualified, "good" people on the bench, they would have taken more time an care in who was put forward.  Don't blame Ford and the Dems for how crazy this is.  That falls squarely on TRUMP!! and the GOP.

[Curmudgeon]

Whether or not Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Ford can never be definitively proven. What can be proven is Kavanaugh's lying about his drinking behaviour, his sexual activity, boofing, devil's triangulation, FFFFFF, Bart O'Kavanaugh, being a mean and aggressive drunk and other details too easily disproven by people who were actually there. Quite simply, his lies, his quickness to anger and his belligerent attitude, for me, are disqualifying. 

[OneSeventeen]

Three points regarding the Fox report: 

 

1. Fox repeatedly used doctored footage to propagate a false stories about ACORN and Planned Parenthood. When an investigation found that the videos were doctored Fox issued no retraction or apology. This is just one example of the many times that Fox has repeatedly misled views

 

2. A study Fairleigh Dickinson University found that Fox viewers are more uninformed. See What you know depends on what you watch: Current events knowledge across popular news sources. 

 

3. Fox criticized Obama for wearing a tanned suit and having mustard on his burger. 

 

Fox openly lies to deceive its audience. Their partisan perspective leads to utter nonsense. They have no intellectual integrity to the truth or reality. I won't dignify an argument based on a Fox report with anymore time. 

Edited October 3, 2018 by OneSeventeen

[JM_]

1 hour ago, VanGnome said:

I've never once defended Kavanaugh. Also, I penalize you for lack of originality. Those questions were the same ones used in the SNL episode with Matt Damon as Kavanaugh. To answer the question, the answer is no. But I'm not defending Kavanaugh, one of my first posts was "I don't really care which way the decision goes, and if he gets the job or not" (paraphrasing myself).

I'm as objectively as possible looking at each party involved and determining the veracity of who's doing and saying what. Why does that default to me having to unequivocally support/believe Blaisey-Ford? Do false accusations not occur? Does misrecollection not also occur? Yes. And if this was an actual criminal trial, these things would be vetted properly, and prosecutors being able to fully question people without having Senators meddling and interfering.

no, you're not. You've been using your interpretation of what you think is credible for an assault victim, when you can't possibly know whats going on in her personal case. We have objecitve evidence that her behaviour is consistent with many known victims, but seem to refuse to acknowledge that. You're giving equal weighting to reports from all sources when they are not all equal in credibility. 

[VanGnome]

15 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

no, you're not. You've been using your interpretation of what you think is credible for an assault victim, when you can't possibly know whats going on in her personal case. We have objecitve evidence that her behaviour is consistent with many known victims, but seem to refuse to acknowledge that. You're giving equal weighting to reports from all sources when they are not all equal in credibility. 

And when this fiasco blows over and in 6 months time a different story comes out and she is utterly discredited we'll reference back to this thread. The point is when there is a claim of sexual assault, it's absolutely the most important thing to determine the veracity of the claims, as well as the credibility of how the claims are articulated. You also have to take into account extenuating circumstances and everything else beside just the claim in and of itself.

The current legal standard is innocent until proven guilty. Sexual assault victims regardless of gender should have their stories heard, but it should go through the correct channels beforehand and not straight to the press. In this case, everyone is quick to jump to the defense of this woman who is claiming that something happened over 30 years ago, but only... now is it supremely important. What about 6 years ago when Kavanaugh might have been nominated had Romney won the presidential election? Why wasn't this worth pursuing at that point?

The worst thing to do is to unequivocally take claims regardless of who is making them at face value, much less to have this testimony described in the public domain for this kind of scrutiny to even gain legs. There should have been a private investigation long before any public hearing to allow the FBI to do it's job, what it's actually tasked to do. If the claims have merit then and only then should the information become public... but instead her first instinct, 6 years after first outing this to her therapists was to.... call the tip hotline of the washington post?

You do realize who actually owns the Washington Post right? It's Jeff Bezos, known detractor of everything Republican. This woman also has extensive expertise in psychiatry to the point that she has a very prestigious career with Stanford School of Medicine (implying that she understands what people in her exact situation go through, regardless if she is able to internally manage her own psyche). She is a lot more intelligent in this way than your average Senator, and theoretically knows how best to manipulate people. There's too much here to simply take this at face value as a sexual assault claim.

[Warhippy]

7 minutes ago, VanGnome said:

And when this fiasco blows over and in 6 months time a different story comes out and she is utterly discredited we'll reference back to this thread. The point is when there is a claim of sexual assault, it's absolutely the most important thing to determine the veracity of the claims, as well as the credibility of how the claims are articulated. You also have to take into account extenuating circumstances and everything else beside just the claim in and of itself.

The current legal standard is innocent until proven guilty. Sexual assault victims regardless of gender should have their stories heard, but it should go through the correct channels beforehand and not straight to the press. In this case, everyone is quick to jump to the defense of this woman who is claiming that something happened over 30 years ago, but only... now is it supremely important. What about 6 years ago when Kavanaugh might have been nominated had Romney won the presidential election? Why wasn't this worth pursuing at that point?

The worst thing to do is to unequivocally take claims regardless of who is making them at face value, much less to have this testimony described in the public domain for this kind of scrutiny to even gain legs. There should have been a private investigation long before any public hearing to allow the FBI to do it's job, what it's actually tasked to do. If the claims have merit then and only then should the information become public... but instead her first instinct, 6 years after first outing this to her therapists was to.... call the tip hotline of the washington post?

You do realize who actually owns the Washington Post right? It's Jeff Bezos, known detractor of everything Republican. This woman also has extensive expertise in psychiatry to the point that she has a very prestigious career with Stanford School of Medicine (implying that she understands what people in her exact situation go through, regardless if she is able to internally manage her own psyche). She is a lot more intelligent in this way than your average Senator, and theoretically knows how best to manipulate people. There's too much here to simply take this at face value as a sexual assault claim.

Claims Bezos so it must be biased

 

Claims fox report with unknown person with ridiculously incorrect timelines is reason enough to discredit said alleged victim.

 

Also.  Timeline.  30 years ago.  Veracity and authenticity of the story.  Innocent until proven guilty

 

 

Just sayin

Edited October 3, 2018 by Warhippy

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, VanGnome said:

And when this fiasco blows over and in 6 months time a different story comes out and she is utterly discredited we'll reference back to this thread. The point is when there is a claim of sexual assault, it's absolutely the most important thing to determine the veracity of the claims, as well as the credibility of how the claims are articulated. You also have to take into account extenuating circumstances and everything else beside just the claim in and of itself.

The current legal standard is innocent until proven guilty. Sexual assault victims regardless of gender should have their stories heard, but it should go through the correct channels beforehand and not straight to the press. In this case, everyone is quick to jump to the defense of this woman who is claiming that something happened over 30 years ago, but only... now is it supremely important. What about 6 years ago when Kavanaugh might have been nominated had Romney won the presidential election? Why wasn't this worth pursuing at that point?

The worst thing to do is to unequivocally take claims regardless of who is making them at face value, much less to have this testimony described in the public domain for this kind of scrutiny to even gain legs. There should have been a private investigation long before any public hearing to allow the FBI to do it's job, what it's actually tasked to do. If the claims have merit then and only then should the information become public... but instead her first instinct, 6 years after first outing this to her therapists was to.... call the tip hotline of the washington post?

You do realize who actually owns the Washington Post right? It's Jeff Bezos, known detractor of everything Republican. This woman also has extensive expertise in psychiatry to the point that she has a very prestigious career with Stanford School of Medicine (implying that she understands what people in her exact situation go through, regardless if she is able to internally manage her own psyche). She is a lot more intelligent in this way than your average Senator, and theoretically knows how best to manipulate people. There's too much here to simply take this at face value as a sexual assault claim.

What is that supposed to mean? what extenuating circumstances? 

 

Of course there should be proper channels, so why didn't the GOP do that? 

 

You keep trying to use time as a factor to discredit her, I don't know why you keep doing that, it has no bearing on Kavanaughs guilt or innocence. She wasn't able to come forward before, she's doing so now. Thats all we need to know to investigate.

 

The FBI was irrelevant to this case before now, how could they possibly know to investigate something if no one had come forward yet?

 

Give me a break with the conspiracy theory stuff please. So she went to the Washington Post, again that has no bearing at all on the facts. 

 

I'll say it again, the only person so far that has been proven - not theoretically, actually proven - to not be 100% truthful has been Kavanaugh.

 

[VanGnome]

On 10/3/2018 at 5:06 PM, Warhippy said:

Claims Bezos so it must be biased

 

Claims fox report with unknown person with ridiculously incorrect timelines is reason enough to discredit said alleged victim.

Actually I said the report from Fox News is enough to warrant questions into the credibility. The fact that she chose to go to the Washington Post is just odd, or did you not care to read the rest of the supporting argument, and instead continue down this pitiful strawman line of argumentation? Lol this is beyond ridiculous.

There's bias no matter where you look, and at times yes I have colored my remarks with my own personal bias, but so have you and everyone else. I'm continually talking about the entire context, both sides of the case but the prevailing theme here is her credibility since if not for her doing what she's done to this point none of this would be front page news.

Everyone else is circle jerking in a "leave Brittany alone" pity party. I'm trying to foster a discussion on the possibility of things that are not that outlandish, and it's not at all in defense of the other side.

Edited October 5, 2018 by VanGnome

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, VanGnome said:

Actually I said the report is enough to discredit, the report from Fox News is enough to warrant questions into the credibility. The fact that she chose to go to the Washington Post is just odd, or did you not care to read the rest of the supporting argument, and instead continue down this pitiful strawman line of argumentation? Lol this is beyond ridiculous.

There's bias no matter where you look, and at times yes I have colored my remarks with my own personal bias, but so have you and everyone else. I'm continually talking about the entire context, both sides of the case but the prevailing theme here is her credibility since if not for her doing what she's done to this point none of this would be front page news.

Everyone else is circle jerking in a "leave Brittany alone" pity party. I'm trying to foster a discussion on the possibility of things that are not that outlandish, and it's not at all in defense of the other side.

So what have we learned then about the "two sides"? which one has been shown to be more untruthful about their history? or the one that needs fake reports? 

[Gurn]

To me, I don't need to believe there was an assault to believe Brett  is not suitable to be a Supreme Court Judge. All I had to do was watch his testimony after Ford spoke.

[VanGnome]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

What is that supposed to mean? what extenuating circumstances? 

 

Of course there should be proper channels, so why didn't the GOP do that? 

 

You keep trying to use time as a factor to discredit her, I don't know why you keep doing that, it has no bearing on Kavanaughs guilt or innocence. She wasn't able to come forward before, she's doing so now. Thats all we need to know to investigate.

 

The FBI was irrelevant to this case before now, how could they possibly know to investigate something if no one had come forward yet?

 

Give me a break with the conspiracy theory stuff please. So she went to the Washington Post, again that has no bearing at all on the facts. 

 

I'll say it again, the only person so far that has been proven - not theoretically, actually proven - to not be 100% truthful has been Kavanaugh.

 

Wrong again bud. Do some research on this. When Romney was in line to potentially win the presidency in 2012, Kavanaugh's name will surface from a $&!# ton of search results (if you can wade through the current results) from 2012 as Kavanaugh was widely reported as having been a potential nomination then. In 2012 is when this was first brought up to her therapists. So because Romney didn't win, what it's not important enough to come forward with?

This is not my personal point of view, but it is merely a theoretical "well that's convenient". Perhaps the Republicans caught onto it then, with Trump having been president now they decided to move forward first with Gorsuch, then bait the waters this time around with Kavanaugh a second time and the Democrats took the bait? I don't know if that's at all plausible, but it's not far fetched when you take into account the Democrats inability to not &^@# up the simplest of things (ie nominating Clinton over Sanders).

At this point I hold nothing out of the realm of possibility, but everyone seems to get so damned tunnel visioned with directly what's in front of them.

[VanGnome]

Just now, gurn said:

To me, I don't need to believe there was an assault to believe Brett  is not suitable to be a Supreme Court Judge. All I had to do was watch his testimony after Ford spoke.

Yeah that's pretty much where I stand. I just find the circumstances surrounding all of this to be incredibly fascinating, as well as the direct testimony of Ford.

[VanGnome]

1 minute ago, Jimmy McGill said:

So what have we learned then about the "two sides"? which one has been shown to be more untruthful about their history? or the one that needs fake reports? 

Well there's also the fact that she knowingly misled people to think that she has severe psychiatric issues with regard to claustrophobia and flying... when she flys all the time to far away places. That supposedly was why she couldn't go to Washington to originally give her testimony in person. The Republicans also offered to go out to California to meet with her to take her testimony in person, but then it was insisted upon that it had to be a public hearing.

That would make me ask questions about what else has she not been completely honest about.

[VanGnome]

https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/30/politics/court-romney-list/index.html

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, VanGnome said:

Wrong again bud. Do some research on this. When Romney was in line to potentially win the presidency in 2012, Kavanaugh's name will surface from a $&!# ton of search results (if you can wade through the current results) from 2012 as Kavanaugh was widely reported as having been a potential nomination then. In 2012 is when this was first brought up to her therapists. So because Romney didn't win, what it's not important enough to come forward with?

This is not my personal point of view, but it is merely a theoretical "well that's convenient". Perhaps the Republicans caught onto it then, with Trump having been president now they decided to move forward first with Gorsuch, then bait the waters this time around with Kavanaugh a second time and the Democrats took the bait? I don't know if that's at all plausible, but it's not far fetched when you take into account the Democrats inability to not &^@# up the simplest of things (ie nominating Clinton over Sanders).

At this point I hold nothing out of the realm of possibility, but everyone seems to get so damned tunnel visioned with directly what's in front of them.

No its you who are wrong, again. It doesn't matter at all from a legal pov that she didn't come forward before. It has no bearing at all on the legal side or her credibility. 

 

Look at the logic pretzel you are trying to create. Seriously, why do that? 

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, VanGnome said:

Well there's also the fact that she knowingly misled people to think that she has severe psychiatric issues with regard to claustrophobia and flying... when she flys all the time to far away places. That supposedly was why she couldn't go to Washington to originally give her testimony in person. The Republicans also offered to go out to California to meet with her to take her testimony in person, but then it was insisted upon that it had to be a public hearing.

That would make me ask questions about what else has she not been completely honest about.

No she did not. You can have a genuine fear of flying and still sometimes be able to get on a plane. Buddy, you really know how to step in it. 

[Gurn]

I'm not a big fan of getting into an elevator, but if it means not having to walk up 20 flights of stairs, I get in and hope for the best.

[HerrDrFunk]

1 minute ago, Jimmy McGill said:

No she did not. You can have a genuine fear of flying and still sometimes be able to get on a plane. Buddy, you really know how to step in it. 

@VanGnome I genuinely believe I'm going to die every time I get on a plane and you know what? I do it anyway because it's a necessity. FFS.