BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Al_U_Card, on 2018-September-14, 16:06, said:

79 would be just a little older than the average ACBL member

barmar, on 2018-September-14, 08:53, said:

Well he did get Hurricane Florence reduced from a Cat 4 to a Cat 1, much akin to, "this is the day the seas will stop rising" when Obama was elected.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-14, 17:46, said:

Looks like a sign from above.

I cannot adequately decribe how much I wish the link below were not true.
link
I will keep it brief:
I do not doubt for a moment that the events described happened.
I am most sorry that this will be the way this ends.

kenberg, on 2018-September-16, 17:19, said:

More than five dozen women came forward Friday to defend Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh against an alleged high school incident, calling President Trump’s pick for the high court “a good person.”

The 65 women, who claim to have known Kavanaugh for more than 35 years, penned a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee to vouch for his character.

“We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983. For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect,” the letter read. “We strongly believe it is important to convey this information to the Committee at this time.”


The women wrote that while Kavanaugh attended Georgetown Preparatory School, an all-boys high school in Bethesda, Maryland, they knew him through “social events, sports, church, and various other activities.”

So one woman says he tried to take her bathing suit off and 65 other women who knew him at the time say they don't believe her. From my point of view the timing of this bombshell is very suspect. So how do you see it all ending?

kenberg, on 2018-September-16, 17:19, said:

Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings have been so contentious that now even Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is complaining.
Democrats who pulled wild, self-aggrandizing stunts during the Kavanaugh hearings last week should once again hang their heads in shame after Ginsburg remarks condemning the way things have changed since she was confirmed to the high court.
“The way it was was right. The way it is is wrong,” Ginsburg said at a talk at George Washington University Law School Wednesday, according to Amy Wang of the Washington Post.
“I wish I could wave a magic wand and have it go back to the way it was,” the 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice said, reflecting on her own confirmation process before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1993.
The Senate confirmed her nomination by former President Bill Clinton in an amazing 96-3 vote. It seems Republicans did not treat Ginsburg any where near as harshly as Democrats have treated Kavanaugh, with 40 Republican Senators voting for her to be confirmed.
President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee has faced unrelenting scrutiny leading up to a scheduled vote by the Judiciary Committee on Thursday – a vote Democrats will likely try to block. The hearings have been peppered with confrontational questioning of Kavanaugh by Democrats and shouts from protesters.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has even been targeted by progressives with a crowdfunding campaign to replace her if she votes for Kavanaugh.
As liberals panic about Ginsburg’s age and intentions of staying on the bench, she has indicated that her dislike of Trump will keep her going another five years on the high court.
In a lighter moment during her talk at George Washington University Law School, Ginsburg was asked about her famous fitness routine and whether any of her Supreme Court colleagues could do more push-ups than her.
She pointed to Justice Neil Gorsuch as a possibility since he rides his bike to work each day, Ginsburg noted, adding “I think our chief is also a possibility,” referring to Chief Justice John Roberts, according to CNN’s Ariane de Vogue.
Ginsburg’s take on confirmation hearings that have become a “highly partisan show” raised plenty of eyebrows on Twitter.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-16, 18:32, said:

Very informative post. Not about Kavanaugh, not about Blasey Ford, but about chas_p.
Sometimes people who seem to have wonderful personality commit a heinous crime. I thought everyone above the age of 13 was aware of that.

barmar, on 2018-September-14, 08:53, said:

My initial response to your question was tongue in cheek as I'm sure you surmised. Here's what I would have said had I been more eloquent.

cherdano, on 2018-September-16, 18:57, said:

I also thought anyone above the age of 13 understood the concept of "she said, he said." You really are amusing.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-16, 18:32, said:

Firstly, I completely believe her. If evidence arises shwing her to be some sort of psychotic I will re-think this, but reading the article I completely believe her.
And I see it ending badly.
And I never want a story to end this way.

About the other 65 women, that's easy. When I was 15 I came fairly close to killing another 15 year old. It was after he had come fairly close to blinding me. He had been behind me. grabbed me by my head with his fingers deep in my eye sockets, clawing in deeply as he lifted me and swung me about me about. He had done it once before but this time the fingers went far deeper. When he let go I bounced on the ground and went for him. I threw him down on his back, sat on his chest, put my left forearm across his windpipe, my right hand on my left wrist, and leaned forward and pushed down. I got a hold of myself and let him up, but I think it was pretty close. I am sure I could find 65 students who were not there who would say that as far as they knew me I was not a violent person and they had never seen me do anything like that during my high school days or later in life.
So I am not saying he did this regularly. But I believe the woman.
Adolescence, especially male adolescence, is a dangerous time. I was not closely supervised, not at all, but as a high school student I was never at a party where there were girls, boys, booze and no adult supervision. Honestly, I think you had to be of the wealth and social class that sends the kids to classy private schools to have that sort of idiocy. This was enabled idiocy of the privileged class.


If we were all judged by the worst moments of our life, especially if this included our teen age years, a great many of us would not look very good. So I am not happy. But I believe he did it.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-16, 19:25, said:

Kavanaugh is just following the Dennison playbook.

Bob Woodward book says Dennison offered advice to a friend who admitted 'bad behavior' toward women: 'Deny, deny, deny'

kenberg, on 2018-September-16, 19:33, said:

I understand. I had a similar experience. After a guy attacked me I was determined to beat his brains out by banging his head up against a school bus and likely would have had a teacher not broken it up. Perhaps Kavanaugh is guilty. I don't think I ever knew a teenage boy who didn't want to get his hand into a girl's britches. But the timing of the revelation....35 years later after he's been nominated to the SCOTUS and considering the Dems' behavior in the committee hearings...is what I find suspicious. And disgraceful.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-16, 19:59, said:

Of course this would never have come up if Kavanaugh was an ordinary guy who was a plumber and in line to be promoted to chief plumber. Would you say that a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is when a nominee's record needs to be thoroughly examined or should they get a pass?

And of course, the top Republicans in the White House/Senate knew about this episode long before the hearings since they had already lined up 65 women who hadn't been attacked by Kavanaugh to sign a letter in his defense.

If things are fully investigated, maybe Kavanaugh will be cleared, or maybe not.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-16, 18:32, said:

So he wasn't a serial rapist. That doesn't mean he didn't do it.

Quote

Is it really suspicious timing? Until Kavanaugh was nominated, she had no reason to say anything to someone outside her husband and therapist. The article also says that she told her therapist about this several years ago. Was she just setting him up to corroborate her claim in case Kavanaugh ever got nominated to a high position?

I'd respect Kavanaugh more if he just came clean and said something like "I was a stupid teenager, I was drunk, I got carried away, I'm really sorry." Or even "It's been 30 years, I don't remember everything I did when I got drunk at parties when I was a kid; if I did that, I'm sorry." Teenage boys do incredibly stupid things like this, that doesn't reflect their character 30 years later.

I don't drink, and never drank at any of my high school parties, but I still can't remember anything specific that did or didn't happen at them. Who remembers such specific details from 30-40 years later, unless it's especically traumatic, like being the victim of an assault?

kenberg, on 2018-September-16, 19:33, said:

We had parties like this all the time when I was in high school in the 70's, in a middle-class Long Island suburb. There was usually a parent somewhere in the house, but not actively supervising.

"7 Minutes in Heaven" was a popular party game. It's certainly possible that some of the boys got overly aggressive when they were alone with the girl they were paired with. I wouldn't hold it against them now.

Chas_P, on 2018-September-16, 19:13, said:

Let me try this less provocatively.

1. Do you think it is more likely than not that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick?

2. Do you think that at the time these allegations became public, Clinton defenders could have produced a letter signed by 65 women vouching for Bill Clinton's character, who knew him during the time this rape allegedly took place?

3. If you answered yes on 2., does it at all influence your thoughts about 1.?

(In case you are wondering, my personal answers are Yes, Yes, No.)

Edit: Here is a genuine good-faith attempt by a conservative writer to judge the likelihood Ford is telling the truth: https://www.national...-but-not-solid/
He thinks it possible Kavanaugh is guilty, but he deems it more likely than not that he is innocent. Fine, I disagreee, but I can see where he is coming from. And you know how many times he mentions the letter signed by 65 women? Zero.

That's the worst about of this thread - that we usually get the shittiest versions of pro-Trump arguments, even when it is possible to make a reasonable case for the Trump/conservative viewpoint.

barmar, on 2018-September-16, 21:01, said:

For me it goes like this: I have scattered, very scattered, memories from when I was 4. I remember much more from when I was 10, but still pretty scattered. From my teen age years my memories are pretty substantial. An example with no trauma: I was reminiscing with my friend Roger about a road trip we took. I recalled it as being the summer after I bought a car in April of 1954. I was 14, you could do that then. He thought it was 1955. I recalled that we had seen The Caine Mutiny at a theater in Duluth. He agreed that we had. The movie was made in 1954. So we agreed we did this in '54. I remember quite a bit. Not everything, but quite a bit. I suppose the movie might have been a re-run, but I am pretty sure our trip was in '54.

barmar, on 2018-September-16, 21:07, said:

In my neighborhood it could not happen. The house that our house was on was 40' by 120', neighbors to the left, neighbors to the right, across the street, across the alley. I mentioned in a different context that the guy next door came over to talk to me about the language used by my friends as we worked on our cars in the back. I put up a sign saying "No foul language by order of neighbors" and I enforced this rule. When my grandmother died I was 16. We went to the funeral in the northern part of the state and then I took a train back on my own to get back to school while my parents did whatever legal things needed doing. An old lady neighbor later told my parents I and the guys had girls in the house. They asked, I said no, no girls, and the guys were only in to clean up. They believed me, and it was true. A drunken party with boys and girls would have been completely out of the question. What did these parents think was going to happen? Games can gt out of hand? No kidding.

barmar, on 2018-September-16, 21:01, said:

This is the part that I really would like to see discussed. It has long seemed obvious to me that there are a lot of good people out there who would never consider running for anything if their lives are going to be put under such intense scrutiny. We tend to think in black and white. To say that what he did when a drunk teen should not define his life is not the same as saying that it's not a problem. It's more like saying "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". The story I told about me at 15 occurred in a gym class in school. The gym teacher set up a game: A waste basket at either end of the gym for scoring points, two teams, no rules except you had to "play the ball", and then he left the room. Looking back I figure he had a planned rendezvous with the school nurse. Or something. But a guy sets up a game like this for adolescent boys and then leaves the room? What the hell did he think would happen? The game got out of hand. Yeah.

We have to have standards and especially for a position such as Supreme Court Justice we must look very carefully. I very much wish I could believe the accusation is false, but I believe it is true. So the issue of how much responsibility a 53 year old has for what he did as a drunk teen is front and center. Some might find the answer, whether one way or the other, to be far clearer than I do.

kenberg, on 2018-September-17, 07:19, said:

TBF as a fellow 53 year old, I can remember what I did at every teenage party, and nothing like that happened. Why ? because alcohol was nothing taboo in my house, my parents often had wine with meals and gave us a sip and then onto shandies and the like, so it had no particular "forbidden fruit" properties. I've always been fairly large and I know that drinking enough to get me drunk might well put me in hospital, so while I've done some silly things, nothing that would stop me being a senior member of the judiciary.

It goes back to good and bad supervision.

It says something about the mood of the country that possible criminal behavior during his time in the Bush administration (and directly lying about said behavior to the Senate) seems not to matter to Republicans while allegation of a teenage sexual assault might stall the process. I’m glad we’re paying more attention to sexual assault than we used to, but the fact that we seem not to care about stealing documents from political opponents and lying about it anymore is quite troubling.

It seems like a judge will fall into one of two types:

1. Try to impartially rule based on the law, but might be biased by their own political opinions.
2. Rule based on their own political opinions and twist the law however is necessary to suit those opinions.

Obviously every judge wants to be seen as 1 and not 2, so that’s what they’ll say when asked. And everyone wants to think judges who agree with them politically are just doing 1 and the ones who disagree are doing 2.

But in Kavanaugh’s case there is some evidence of 2. He has radically changed his position on whether a president can be investigated/prosecuted depending on the party of the president (Clinton could be and Kavanaugh was very involved in doing so, Bush and now Trump cannot be). He’s also shown willingness to break laws (using stolen documents to help get Bush judges approved) when it suits him politically.

This guy’s a political hack, whether or not he attempted rape as a drunk teen.

awm, on 2018-September-17, 08:56, said:

Here is a slight different lens:

The victim of the alleged sexual assault is a telegenic white professional women who has stated that she is willing to testify before the Senate

Despite stiff headwinds and the worst Senate map in recorded history, the Democrats now had a viable path to retake the Senate. Think of the optics from a weeks worth of old white Republicans bashing a sexual assualt victim on National television...

Would not be at all surprised to see the nomination get yanked.