Poor Kavanaugh wants to run for SC judge

Then you need to start listening.

There is a demand for accusations to be heard.

I used to listen. The feminist movement cares only about destroying people who oppose leftist totalitarianism. They use false accusations of sexual misconduct as a weapon to further this goal.

I understand that's your belief.

It's not mine. Nor has it been my experience.

Despite What You May Have Heard, "Believe Women" Has Never Meant "Ignore Facts"

BY SADY DOYLE
NOV 29, 2017

The backlash to the #MeToo movement is here. The groundswell of public transparency about sexual harassment in recent months has only been possible because of the public’s unprecedented willingness to hear out and support accusers rather than shame them. That support was so powerful that a number of formerly untouchable harassers were finally brought face-to-face with the consequences of their actions. But nothing gold can stay. This week, with a failed “sting” operation aimed at discrediting rape survivors, a survivor-shaming op-ed in the paper of record, and mass cultural hand-wringing around the issue of “false accusations,” rape culture is fighting back.

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an editorial titled: “The Limits of Believe All Women.” Its writer, Bari Weiss, argues that “‘[t]he huntresses’ war cry — ‘believe all women’…creates terrible new problems in addition to solving old ones.” Specifically, that the idea that we must “believe all women” is terrorizing men, who now have to fear that false accusations of sexual misconduct will derail their careers or lives: “In a climate in which sexual mores are transforming so rapidly, many men are asking: If I were wrongly accused, who would believe me?”

It’s more than a little bizarre to refer to sexual assault survivors as “huntresses” in the first place; to my knowledge, no-one has actually shot Harvey Weinstein and mounted his head on her wall. Women are coming forward in order to make their work spaces safer, not for kicks, and though the consequences for the accused men have been unpleasant, they’ve been non-violent and, from my vantage point, entirely deserved. The accusers, whose sexual harassment tended to be very violent indeed, cannot say the same.

Of course, if men are genuinely nervous about being called out for harassment due to “transforming sexual mores,” perhaps they will stop engaging in the behaviors that seem likely to offend their female colleagues. That would be good. In the meantime, the cultural shift Weiss envisions more or less boils down to men becoming a bit more considerate in how they treat women. It’s hardly the Bonerpocalypse.

But Weiss fears more than a sudden epidemic of male politeness. She argues that we’re setting ourselves up to believe false rape and sexual harassment allegations. For evidence of this, she points to… some easily, instantly debunked false allegations, including and notably the botched Project Veritas “sting” attempted at the Washington Post.

“Just yesterday The Washington Post reported that a woman named Jaime Phillips approached the paper with a story about Roy Moore,” she writes. “She claimed that in 1992, when she was 15 , he impregnated her and that he drove her to Mississippi to have an abortion. Not a lick of her story is true.” What is true is that Moore’s bid for an Alabama Senate seat has been plagued by a wave of credible sexual assault allegations since November, when the Post printed the first four allegations against him—most notoriously, Leigh Corfman’s claim that Moore had trapped her in his car and forced her to touch his crotch when she was just 14. This has made the Post a target of hostility from Moore’s campaign, which alleged that “[the] Washington Post has already endorsed the Judge’s opponent, and for months, they have engaged in a systematic campaign to distort the truth about the Judge’s record and career.” Conservatives, always eager to bite down on a “fake news” hook, have often portrayed the Moore allegations as a story about liberal media bias. Not only is President Trump firmly in Moore’s corner (claiming that Moore “totally denies [molesting children]” and that “you have to listen to him, also”), conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza has said, “If Roy Moore wins it will be the most demoralizing blow for the media since Trump’s election.”

Dinesh D'Souza
✔
@DineshDSouza
If Roy Moore wins it will be the most demoralizing blow for the media since @realDonaldTrump ‘s election—so let’s make it happen
4:07 PM - Nov 26, 2017

But, in fact, the Post expose was an example of media working the way it’s supposed to. The accusations in the initial piece have been carefully backed up with witnesses and supporting evidence; the mothers of two accusers, Corfman and Wendy Miller, have testified that they saw Moore bothering their daughters. Miller’s high-school yearbook, from the year she turned 16, bears a flirty inscription from Moore. None of this relies on the accusers’ word alone; as CNN anchor Jake Tapper recently noted, “I don’t think a story with 30 sources and four women making the accusations on the record is gossip.” Which is exactly why, when Phillips approached the Post, they were able to catch her red-handed.

According to the Post's account, Phillips’ story raised suspicions due to “inconsistencies in her story and an Internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations.” They were also keyed in to something fishy about the story when “she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.” The Post elected not to publish her story, and kept track of her until they saw her walk into the offices of right-wing lie factory Project Veritas.

Project Veritas, led by James O’Keefe, are notorious malefactors; they produce misleading “sting” videos aimed to make progressive institutions (or those that they perceive to be progressive, but are in fact just media companies) look bad. They’ve hit Planned Parenthood and NPR. This time around, O’Keefe presumably intended to bolster the narrative that the Post was printing false accusations in a deliberate effort to ruin Moore’s career. It’s a vile ploy. But—and here’s the important part—it is also a ploy that didn’t work.

CONTRA WEISS, “BELIEVE WOMEN” DOES NOT ACTUALLY COME INTO CONFLICT WITH FACT-CHECKING SOURCES.

“[It’s] not hard to imagine how this episode might have played out if Ms. Phillips had announced her accusations on, say, Twitter,” Weiss claims. “Or even if she’d taken her story to a less fastidious news organization. In this climate, it would have caught on like wild fire.” Yet Weiss is stuck invoking an imaginary catastrophe, because the fact is, the Post never printed Phillips’ story. Their fact-checking process caught the inconsistencies in her claims, and those inconsistencies were investigated until her lie was exposed.

Contra Weiss, “believe women” does not actually come into conflict with fact-checking sources; there’s a difference between engaging with sexual assault claims in good faith and having the legal grounding to print those claims, and even passionately feminist reporters understand that journalism has to adhere to the second standard. The other accusers’ stories were not discredited by association, as O’Keefe evidently hoped; in fact, they actually look more credible, now that we know they passed through the same rigorous fact-checking process that Phillips’ failed.

Though “false rape accusations” make for a good bogeyman, they are both rare and, according to the best evidence we have, shockingly obvious. Quartz recently published a round-up of the available research on false rape allegations, finding in the most detailed study ever conducted, “out of 216 complaints that were classified as false, only 126 had even gotten to the stage where the accuser lodged a formal complaint. Only 39 complainants named a suspect. Only six cases led to an arrest, and only two led to charges being brought before they were ultimately deemed false.” And furthermore, the research finds that false accusers tend to fit a recognizable profile: “[Almost] invariably, adult false accusers who persist in pursuing charges have a previous history of bizarre fabrications or criminal fraud.” Finally, these accusers usually make claims of exceptionally violent sexual assault—if they want to frame somebody, there’s no point in framing them for a crime that might be dismissed as “minor.”

Unsurprisingly, the woman hired by Project Veritas fits exactly this profile; her false allegation comes from an organization with a history of “bizarre fabrication,” it had obvious inconsistencies, and its violence was exaggerated in comparison to the other accounts—where Leigh Corfman alleged that Moore had forced her to touch him over his underwear, Phillips claimed that Moore had raped her, gotten her pregnant, and forced an abortion on her. From the beginning, it raised red flags for reporters who’d heard more credible allegations.

NOT ONLY ARE FEMINISTS NOT ABANDONING THE NEED TO RESPONSIBLY INVESTIGATE ASSAULT AND HARASSMENT CLAIMS, THEY’RE TURNING THE TENETS OF RESPONSIBLE INVESTIGATION INTO HASHTAGS.

Though Weiss waves her hands in the direction of kangaroo courts and character assassination campaigns, she’s unable to come up with any concrete example in which our current cultural support for survivors has led to an undeserved negative outcome for the accused man. Both of her other “false allegation” examples center on Senator Al Franken (D-MN), who has apologized for groping Leeann Tweeden, saying that although he recalls details of her account differently, “you have to respect women’s experience.” In one, a conservative radio host claimed Franken “stalked” her after he called her on the phone three times; this was widely decried as an opportunistic exaggeration. In another, the New York Post claimed to have unearthed photos of Franken “groping” Arianna Huffington; this was debunked by Huffington herself, who confirmed that the photos were staged, writing that “[Franken] was no more ‘groping’ me than I was ‘strangling’ him.”

Arianna Huffington
✔
@ariannahuff
Just got more photos from the same “scandalous” photo shoot. Here instead of Al Franken “groping” me, I'm “strangling” him. I hope the statute of limitations has expired! #lockmeup
7:51 PM - Nov 21, 2017

Defending the honor of Al Franken is a dubious quest to begin with. But even our current cultural emphasis on “believing women” has not translated as an increased willingness to believe overtly spurious claims about him. And in the second instance, “believing women” actually meant believing Huffington when she said she was not abused.“I believe that it’s condescending to think that women and their claims can’t stand up to interrogation and can’t handle skepticism,” Weiss writes. “I believe that facts serve feminists far better than faith.” That’s fair. But Weiss seems to have forgotten to include the part where she shows that supporting survivors is incompatible with a respect for facts.“Believe all women” has never been a slogan for anti-rape advocates. Human nature being what it is, false rape claims are always possible. The phrase is “believe women”—meaning, don’t assume women as a gender are especially deceptive or vindictive, and recognize that false allegations are less common than real ones. And, as a matter of fact, neither of those phrases is the actual rallying cry of the current moment. That slogan is #MeToo—which is, itself, a reference to a verification tactic. It’s “me, too” as in “he did it to me, too:” A powerful man’s abuse can be more credibly exposed when multiple victims correlate each others’ accounts. Not only are feminists not abandoning the need to responsibly investigate assault and harassment claims, they’re turning the tenets of responsible investigation into hashtags.

“False rape allegations” are nowhere near enough of a threat to justify derailing #MeToo and its quest to bring justice to survivors. False allegations exist—but they’re rare, they’re bizarre, and they’re easy to expose. Sexual violence, meanwhile, is neither rare nor strange. It happens every day, mostly to women. Those facts should bring some solace to any innocent man who is genuinely terrified of being falsely accused. But they also mean that when a normally trustworthy woman gives us an ordinary-sounding account of assault or harassment, she is probably not making it up. It means, in other words, that you should believe women—not because you have an obligation to ignore the facts, but because the facts say women aren’t lying.

I am pretty sure tha Kavanaugh will win. He will be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

I think that the resulting protests will do more damage to the Democrats than to the Republicans in the long run. Of course, the Democratic base will be outraged beyond belief, but they are already in an agitated state. But political battle line runs through middle America, and the angry screaming people in pink hats aren't going to do any good with the voters who will decide subsequent elections.

There is a real risk here, if Trump falls ( i.e. gets impeached or resigns, a possibility that is looking more and more likely), the Republican establishment gets a chance to brand themselves as the reasonable centrist alternative against the angry left.

I don't think the outraged left is doing itself, or the Democratic party, any favors.

Impeach simply means to indict. That takes a simple majority in the House. It is entirely possible that the Democrats could take over the House in November. If they were to take over the House, it would be incredible folly to impeach the fat boy. It is highly unlikely that the Senate would convict him--and even if they did, the new president would be that fundamentalist clown who is now the VP. (People seem almost always to forget the running mate; Pence is scary.)

The Democrats need not only to win big in the mid-terms, they need to be patient. They need to prepare for 2020.

For those who don't get it about impeachment, this is from Article One of the constitution:

The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.

Two-thirds, sports fans--that means a lot of Republicans would have to vote for conviction. Anyone who thinks that is likely might be interested in a very nice bridge I can let them have for a bargain basement price--cash only.

Yes, that is correct, I was unclear.

My opinion is: the possibility that Trump will leave office early due to resignation or conviction is more likely. A few Republican defections in the Senate is all it takes, and Trump is stupid enough to push them over the edge (by firing Mueller for example).

The big difference between Pence and Trump is that Pence is intelligent. He is definitely far right of center but he is not going to make the political blunders that Trump is making. If Pence gets elevated to president, he has the opportunity to portray himself as the responsible leader against the extremes on both sides.

I suspect that the American left (the screaming masses in pink hats) is making a political blunder by alienating middle America. The Democrats are putting themselves in a difficult place. (I think the Democrats will do very well this year because Trump keeps blundering, the danger is that they will fall flat on their faces in 2020).

You don’t like the screaming women in pink hats?


I’m SHOCKED that YOU (of all people) are criticizing how woman are choosing to protest. Just shocked.

Two thirds of a Senate quorum would require quite a few Republicans to vote for conviction. No Democrats would miss the show, and therefore, all the Republicans would need to attend, even if they had to crawl from a sick bed. That means 67 Senators would have to vote for conviction. This is so typical of your posts--you pretend to concede that you were in error, and then you just repeat what you said before. It is highly improbable that Plump would be convicted by the Senate, and therefore the Democrats would be well-advised not to make the attempt. I seriously doubt that Plump would resign--he's too puerile, vain and combative.

By the way, that "screaming masses in pink hats" comes from our self-described paragon of liberalism.

I am equally critical of screaming men in red hats.

I don't believe that White people screaming at each other in colored hats is productive.

I think you’re wrong. Or if I’m being charitable I think you’re not understanding the goal of the red and pink hats.

We will see if I am wrong or not. If it happens, I am going to enjoy your snide comments. After all, it has happened before. Things change quickly if Republican leaders feel that they would be better off without Trump. Given Trump's blundering, I suspect most of them already feel this way.

Give them cover for their constituents... it is a distinct possibility that most of them flip.

Yes, I understand the goal of colored hats perfectly. They are to show the anger, frustration and outrage of people who feel that they are being oppressed by an unjust system and that the government isn't representing them or addressing their concerns.

The Republicans were naive under Nixon, and didn't understand that he was the victim of a witch hunt over nothing.

The Republicans of today are not so naive, and are not going to go along with a witch hunt against an innocent president.

At least you agree with me that the comparison between Trump and Nixon is a valid one.

The Women's Wave: Backlash To Trump Persists, Reshaping Politics In 2018

September 24, 20185:00 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Danielle Kurtzleben - square 2015
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN

Editor's note: NPR is examining the role of women in the 2018 midterm elections all week. To follow upcoming coverage and look back at how the role of women in the 2014 midterms was covered, click here.

More than a year and a half ago, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, millions of women worldwide took to the streets in fury over his election. It was a massive show of resistance — likely the largest protest in U.S. history, as the Washington Post reported at the time.

One of the biggest questions that loomed over the demonstrations that day: could the energy last?

Amy Chomsky, an ophthalmologist from Nashville, attended the demonstration in Washington, D.C., and she wanted to make it clear that she and her fellow marchers were serious in their anger.

"We're not just crazy protesters," she said the day of the march. "It's a shame that we have to still be fighting for women's rights or saying that we have a right to decide on our own reproductive health. We have a right to equal pay. It's a shame that we're still doing this."

And for Chomsky, that energy has lasted, making her more politically active than ever before.

"I really in the past was kind of like, 'Eh, the right person will win, I'm sure,'" she told NPR last month. "I voted probably in several presidential elections. I rarely voted in either local or midterm and things like that. Now I really try to vote on all of those."

In addition to that, she says that for the first time she has yard signs, is making political donations, and helping put on a fundraiser for a Democratic Senate candidate.

And that makes her a prime example of the surge in energy among Democratic women this year.

"What you're seeing is just this harmonic convergence where women are running, women are volunteering in campaigns, women are making record numbers of contributions," said Celinda Lake, Democratic pollster. "And women are voting for Democrats, especially women Democrats."

A record number of women have run and won primaries for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and governorships this year, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, and a record number of women have also won nominations for state legislatures; the vast majority are Democrats.

Women turn out — and this year, they're very Democratic

It's nothing new for women to be politically active — women's turnout rate has outstripped men's in every presidential election since 1980, and in every midterm election since 1986. (In terms of raw numbers, women have outvoted men in every national election since at least 1964. These days, that gap is several million every election year.)

In that sense, every year is the "year of the woman."

But in 2018, polls show women have swung even more Democratic than usual, while men remain nearly evenly split, or leaning slightly Republican. According to an NPR analysis of recent likely-voter polls, this year's gender gap could be even bigger than those in 2014 and 2016, with women far more Democratic than in either of those years.

"Republicans heading into the midterm need to be concerned about the gender gap," says Republican pollster Christine Matthews.

Expanding the gap: Education and race

That larger gap may be here to stay, Matthews says, in part because it's inseparable from other longer-term political trends.

"Whereas the Republican Party used to primarily be comprised of college educated voters, college educated voters — particularly college educated women — have been becoming more Democratic," Matthews said. "What happened is the 2016 election sped that up."

Among the most energized of Democratic voters are women of color, says Aimee Allison, president of Democracy In Color, a group that does multiracial organizing among progressives.

"We have the possibility of women of color for the first time getting recognition for Democratic Party successes out of the midterms, and people taking a good look at those numbers and saying, 'Oh my goodness, women of color made the difference,'" she said.

In particular, Black women have relatively high turnout rates, and they vote heavily Democratic.

Black women in Alabama propelled Democrat Doug Jones to a Senate seat — a remarkable political upset — in a December special election, and they also helped push Ralph Northam to a win that was larger than predicted in most polls in his 2017 election for the Virginia governorship.

In Allison's opinion, that kind of energy among progressive voters of color — especially women — should be enough to get some Democrats who might be tempted to see moderation as a winning strategy to change their minds.

"I don't know how many losses political consultants need to have in order to say we're going to stop chasing Trump voters, or white moderates, and start looking at the math that says we actually don't need them in order to win," she said.

"The new coalition that is part of the playbook includes white voters, but it doesn't center on trying to attract moderate white voters," she added.

Republican women sticking with Trump

While many women are swinging Democratic, women who supported Trump when he first took office stuck with him over the long term.

Women voters who voted for Trump largely maintained their "warm" feelings toward him as of March 2018, according to an August study from the Pew Research Center.

Cindy Moser is one woman who has stuck with the president. The retired teacher from North Carolina attended Donald Trump's inauguration, and she stressed then that she's not alone in being a woman who supports Trump.

"I was on his train from day one," she said then. "One by one, all my family and friends hopped on. My mother was the worst. Now she looks at me, she says, 'I told you he was going to be good.' I just have to laugh."

And she's still on that train.

"I absolutely adore him," she told NPR recently.

Moser added that she doesn't really empathize with women who dislike Trump.

"I've always been a strong woman. If I wanted something I found a way to get it. Nobody has stopped me," she said. "It's just the way I am. I don't feel victimized by Trump."

That sets Moser apart from many American women, 62 percent of whom disapprove of Trump, and half of whom strongly disapprove, NPR and Marist found in a recent poll.

And that may affect how they vote in November. For her part, Amy Chomsky is hoping that means they'll vote.

"I think this is a pivotal time," she says. "I just feel like we need to get as much Democratic vote as we can. And I think the more people who can get out and vote in these midterms is gonna make a difference."

And that intensity is coming from a woman who doesn't remember voting in a midterm before.

Michael Avenatti, attorney for a person he describes as a "witness and victim" of Brett Kavanaugh,
talks with Rachel Maddow about his client presenting her allegations to the public in the next 48 hours
and the need for an FBI investigation of Kavanaugh accusations.

Published on Sep 24, 2018

BREAKING: Michael Avenatti Says His Client
Can Sink Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Published on Sep 24, 2018