Does anyone believe both Dr. Ford and Juanita Broaddrick?

You have chosen a side, you just don't understand the teams. There are two teams on two groups. The top level group are people who are passionate about slowing/stopping sexual harassment and sexual assault vs those who aren't as passionate. This passionate group will believe victims with a lower standard of proof and consider abusers unacceptable to hold public office or other positions of trust or authority regardless of the party they are in. Those who are less passionate, don't see sexual harassment or assault as a big deal and tend not to believe victims using many of the potential caveats you listed earlier unless they see overwhelming proof, but they see allegations as useful to bludgeon their political rivals.

You have posted several posts like this one, where you just can't believe that liberals would actually turn against someone like President Clinton or Senator Franken and that their energy against Roy Moore or Bill O'Reilly is about politics, not sexual harassment. You always get disappointed. Those on this board who routinely speak up about sexual harassment and assault quickly turned on Franken and Clinton when those claims became credible because that is a higher priority for them than political orientation. Have I seen political liberals who don't believe sexual crimes are a big deal? Sure, Clinton and Franken still have plenty of supporters. Are there conservatives who put politics second? Must be because Roy Moore is not in the Senate.

Ideological nonsense, Engineer. You are spouting propaganda. Anyone can play this game.

Trump supporters believe that they are the team who loves America and cares about freedom. And the other team doesn't care about freedom. Anti-Islam groups believe that they are the team that wants to stop ethnic rape, and the other team wants girls to be raped by terrorists.

You are saying Be on our team or you don't want to stop sexual assault or terrorism or whatever scare tactic we are pushing. It is bullshit. This is a tactic used by extremist groups, either support us or support the terrorists/rapist or whatever.

No, I don't have to choose one extreme or the other. I am passionate about stopping sexual harrassment (maybe even more than you are).

I disagree with the political left about how to do that. And I am upset about how sexual harrassment is now a political game piece. I have no respect for people who see sexual harrassment as a way to score political points (not an accusation on you, Engineer, but an overall frustration on what is happening in society at large).

Ok, just don't express surprise that people actually believe Ford and Broaddrick.

What is wrong with looking at an ideology or a set of related ideologies and picking and choosing issue by issue? I don't understand the resistance to this.

Why can't someone say:

- I am against rape.
- I feel like this anti-rape policy is effective.
- I feel like this anti-rape policy is ineffective and not worth the loss of rights.
- I am believe that rape is a serious problem in this environment.
- I looked at all of the studies, and I have concluded that the data says that rape numbers might not be as high as activists claim.
- I believe this story from a survivor.
- I am not sure about this story from a survivor.

These can all be true. Intelligent thoughtful people will have a mixture of beliefs as the judge each question on its own merits... in fact people who think critically will arrive at conclusions to different perspective.

What happens on Able2know (and off) is that when a person gets to the third statement, ideological purists jump on them (forgetting the first two statements) because they believe "Someone can't question an anti-rape policy without supporting rape.".

By the time a person makes the fifth statement (in spite of the fact that unbiased researchers agree with it) ideologues are sure that person is a rapist.

There should be room for nuance, for differing beliefs, for exploration and for independent thought.

Not everything is about ideology.

It shouldn't be.

In many cases people with a conservative ideology reach one conclusion. People with a liberal ideology reach the opposite conclusion. They split along ideological lines in spite of the fact that there is no conclusive evidence for either conclusion.

It is hard to argue that ideology isn't at the core of this split.

Ford’s passion and pain was believable, but lacked proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly she is a woman in pain and something has affected her life.

Kavanaugh’s pain and anger was also believable and justified, considering the severity of the accusation and potential loss of his appointment, much less his personal life. .

This country has done nothing with the information coming out of Hollywood, Michigan State, the Church, Washington - no action plan or steps to remedy . A national conversation needs to take place about elder abuse, human trafficking, child abuse, workplace abuse, and sexual abuse. But the MeToo campaign hitched their star to the wrong cart thinking Ford could be a spokesperson or the impetus for change.

I believe Dr Ford and the other lady, not because i know they are telling the truth but because i know Kavanaugh wasn't.
He blatantly lied about his drinking, why?. He blatantly lied about the phrases in his year book, why?. He tried to paint himself as a choirboy and that has since been shown to be bullshit.
He blatantly misrepresented what the 4 witnesses had said, claiming they had stated the incident with Dr Ford had not happened. Another lie, first off he himself was one of the 4 witnesses and the other 3 actually stated they didn't remember it happening, big difference and this is a Judge saying this.

I mean if was and he obviously was a hard drinking obnoxious party animal in college, why didn't he just admit it?. Only reason i can see is that it would lend credence to Dr Fords story.

Thank you (a million fold)!

God help us if high school yearbooks define our entire lives.

He who has reanimated skeletons in their closet shouldn't run for one of the most powerful political seats in the entire continent of North America.

This is not an valid logical argument. This is another example of starting with a conclusion, and then constructing an argument to support it.

Either it happened or not. Whether he lied about other things doesn't give you any information about this specific incident.

1. If it happened he is going to say it didn't happen (assuming he is a liar).
2. If it didn't happen he is still going to say it didn't happen.

You have no way of knowing which of these two statements is true.

Like i said i don't know if Dr Ford was telling the truth but i do know that he wasn't.
The only reason he lied was the truth would have lent credence to Dr Fords story.
That's blatantly obvious.

Why lie if he had nothing to hide and i have to say his lies were pathetic.

That isn't logical at all. It is easy to see the other reasons that he would lie. A person who is uncomfortable about drinking too much in the past would want to cover that up whether or not the specific story about sexual assault was true.

We have all been in uncomfortable job interviews where someone asked us why we left our last job and the truth was "because I thought my manager was an asshole"... we all figure out ways to try to avoid talking about the uncomfortable truths and redirecting the conversation to our strengths.

Unbelievable

I will make this very simple for you to show you the logical problem in your reasoning. Consider these two possibilities.

1) He sexually assaulted Dr. Ford and he is "lying" to cover up the fact that he is uncomfortable with his drinking habits.

2) He did not sexually assault Dr. Ford and he is "lying" to cover up the fact that he is uncomfortable with his drinking habits.

How can you tell the difference between these two possibilities? Your logic is flawed because you haven't provided any way to determine the key fact in question.

What do you expect? On a thread about college students being told they needed to make sure they obtained consent Max showed his true colours. He's concerned about his own sexual history, of course he'd support Kavanagh.

1) I try to show my true colours on every thread. I express my opinions and I stand by them.

2) I am not supporting Kavanaugh on this thread, or any other.

3) What do you know about my sexual history that I don't?

Only what you've said which was that you were concerned that some of your college activities could be classed as non consensual by 'today's standards,' whatever that means, or words to that effect.

Whether I believe accusations of a sexual nature or not has little to do with the political side of the spectrum the accused reside on. It has to do with how believable I deem the victim to be. I think both of these women were believable, and I'm quite prepared to believe both Clinton and Kavanaugh were sexually aggressive towards these women.