Author Topic: US Politics 2018  (Read 9794 times)

Jubal

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #30 on: October 17, 2018, 12:23:17 PM »
No, a different view on whether what took place was "due process" and what we can learn from it. I entirely agree with innocent until proven guilty, but I'm very uncomfortable indeed with how fast they rushed the additional investigations and the fact they didn't even interview Judge Kavanaugh during them. As such I don't think we really learned much about the truth from the whole process. I also don't think that if the vote had gone the other way it would necessarily have meant anything about due process given that there were multiple other reasons why one could have perfectly reasonably voted against the nominee. I think all it mainly showed us was that the GOP have a Senate majority and can use it to put judges they like in place, which we kind of knew already.
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comrade_general

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #31 on: October 17, 2018, 12:47:40 PM »
Due process in our system means innocent till proven guilty.

Well yeah, that's how the Senate works. And the Democrats knew they couldn't block him with the vote so they came up with this chicanery hoping that the media armadillostorm would be enough. Fortunately one person's accusation is not enough to do anything legally.

Pentagathus

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #32 on: October 29, 2018, 12:31:25 PM »
Cowman do American schools not usually have To Kill a Mockingbird on their reading lists?

comrade_general

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #33 on: October 29, 2018, 04:46:39 PM »
My school always had it.

Pentagathus

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #34 on: October 30, 2018, 09:44:46 AM »
So do you reckon the "believe all women" crowd were rooting for the Ewells?

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #35 on: October 30, 2018, 11:08:20 AM »
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 12:02:57 PM by comrade_general »

Jubal

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #36 on: October 30, 2018, 11:58:30 AM »
So do you reckon the "believe all women" crowd were rooting for the Ewells?

No, and I think this strawmans what people mean when they say "believe women". Nobody (at least nobody I've seen) is arguing that due process shouldn't take place in a court of law setting. What people are arguing is that allegations should be taken seriously, investigated thoroughly, and should be taken with respect to the fact that evidence suggests rape is a drastically under-reported crime, such that the balance of probabilities in an accusation case initially is likely, just in simple statistical terms, to be in favour of the woman telling the truth. That's not at all the same as saying that people should be convicted of crimes on the basis of hearsay, which seems to be what you're suggesting people think.

In addition, like with any other area of life, outside a court of law setting different evidence standards apply, and for good reason - if you're at a job interview and you have three references saying you, I dunno, have a habit of taking a dump on the floor, you probably won't get hired, and your prior employers are not obliged to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you did so. Similarly, if I run an organisation I'm not obliged to prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone, say, shouted racial slurs at another member before taking a process to kick them out, in general having the balance of evidence one way would be sufficient in that case. Suggesting that people should take a pattern of past allegations of sexual misconduct into account where one exists, even if a criminal conviction couldn't be sought for those, is in line with how we treat basically any other sort of allegations of misconduct. Again, respecting what women who come forward have to say, and taking what they say into account in disciplinary matters, is entirely different from suggesting that due process shouldn't take place in criminal matters.

I think the tendency should be to start off with a position of initially believing and respecting people who make the difficult step of coming forward to talk about their assaults, precisely because so few women feel able to. I think that after that, appropriate levels of investigation should take place in whatever setting allegations are brought forward in, appropriate action taken depending on the setting, and I think that where cases come to court that full due process and proof beyond reasonable doubt should always apply. I don't think that should be an especially controversial position.
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comrade_general

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #37 on: October 30, 2018, 12:10:38 PM »
Brett Kavanaugh = Tom Robinson

Jubal

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #38 on: October 30, 2018, 12:25:00 PM »
Hmm, I feel like getting appointed to a 250k per year job for life, which is also one of the most powerful positions in the country, is just a teensy bit different to getting wrongfully convicted and then shot while escaping from prison, but OK, whatever.

Unless of course you meant Tom Robinson the songwriter, bassist and LGBT rights activist famous for the hit "Glad to Be Gay", who I'm sure is a role model that Brett will be trying to emulate...! :)

Anyway, as usual I think I've said my piece on this, don't really have the energy to argue it any further.



General numbers update: house looks tight, senate looks like staying red. My baseline expectation now is that Dems narrowly take the house (gain of about 25 seats), and the GOP pick up maybe 2 senate seats net, the Dems have been fading in the closing stretch a bit in some of the Senate race polling (if pushed I'd guess they'll lose North Dakota, Missouri, and Indiana, but pick up Arizona). Governor races are looking decent for Dems with several really tight midwestern ones, especially Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa, and some really likely pickups too (the Illinois Dems managed to screw up the state government finances horribly and thus ended up losing the governorship there last time round, they seem on course to re-take it this time after the GOP guy also failed to solve the problem).
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 12:31:38 PM by Jubal »
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comrade_general

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #39 on: October 30, 2018, 12:42:09 PM »
See, you keep looking at it from a political perspective. When you look at it objectively it's full-on, undeniable chicanery, as was the Robinson case.

Jubal

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #40 on: October 30, 2018, 01:30:11 PM »
I mean, it is a political appointments process we're talking about here, not a court case, and that does make a difference because the outcomes and assessments of evidence aren't in any way the same in the two situations - but I don't think, even in that context, that what I'm saying is particularly partisan or even at all controversial. Literally all I'm saying is "when something bad might have happened,  whoever the accuser and whoever the accused, it should be investigated fully so people can take it into account when they make decisions, especially when a powerful lifetime appointment rides on it". It's pretty weird to me that you seem to be arguing against that point.
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comrade_general

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #41 on: October 30, 2018, 01:43:09 PM »
Are you kidding? It was on the news for like a month and everything was scrutinized to the death. In the end the only evidence was one highly inconsistent narrative of events vs multiple character witnesses for the defense.

What I mean by chicanery is the fact that it was only brought up to block him from a political position. It wasn't for justice, or to "protect the people from a vicious sexual predator", it was only because he was on the political opposite.

I just hope someone doesn't pull a dirty trick like that on you some day, but I'll gladly be one of your many defending character references. :)

Pentagathus

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #42 on: October 30, 2018, 07:51:36 PM »
Whew lad.
First of joobs I'm not suggesting that some people think the burden of evidence should be swapped around in rape cases, I am saying so outright as I've heard the view expressed explicitly by multiple nutters. Not that I'd say there's any real chance of that happening, they are obviously not the norm even among the left (I sure hope so anyway).
As to the actual Kavaunagh hearings I've mostly got to agree with the cowman. There's no way these allegations would result in a criminal conviction as they had litterally no corroborating evidence behind them at all, they should not be used to prevent his appointment. His behaviour in the court perhaps should have been (pretty sure he lied about the word boof and he blatantly tried to dodge a question without answering it) but the dems weren't arguing that. They were trying to fling all the armadillo they could at him and made sure this would be a dirty partisan armadillofest. The woman heading the inquisition (soz forgot her name) genuinely claimed that his anger at the accusation, inquisition and death threats etc  was a sign that he could be guilty. That's flat out disgusting, as has been much of the leftwing media coverage (no I'm not saying mainstream is left-wing, I mean the obviously left-wing). After all of this what do you think the fall out would be if he was blocked from the court? I'd be willing to bet a whole lot of cash that the next time a democrat got to pick a sc appointment there'd be dozens of allegations flooding in, because when you make this crap an effective political tool it will be used as one.

Jubal

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #43 on: October 30, 2018, 08:50:36 PM »
I just don't feel at all convinced that we properly know the state of the evidence given that the supplementary investigation into the claims was only given a week and didn't involve interviewing either Kavanaugh or Dr. Ford, let alone other potential leads and sources of evidence. Media "scrutiny", and indeed public hearings, don't and can't make up for a proper investigation by people who actually know what they're doing. The Republicans, if they'd wanted to actually ensure this was cleared up, could have set up a four to six week investigation window and then run the confirmation in late November or December (at which point it's still the same senators voting, so it doesn't even undermine their majority for the nomination - the new Senate takes office in January). I really feel like the GOP had the chance to clear their nominee, if indeed they believed that no further evidence would come to light, and it troubles me that they just decided to stick two fingers up and fail to do so.

I also don't think it's true that Dems were primarily making their case on the basis of this - most Democrats had already given their statements and reasons for voting against Kavanaugh well before the hearings, and most people who gave their reasons during or after the hearings did not primarily do so on the basis of the allegations - looking at the key Democrats, Senator McCaskill explicitly stated that the allegations weren't her voting reason, Sen. Heitkamp made her case on the grounds of his temperament & behaviour in the hearings, Sen. Donnelly said he felt a more full investigation was needed, and Joe Manchin voted for Kavanaugh anyway. Parts of the left-leaning media ramped up this aspect of it, but it's not factually true to say that "the Dems weren't arguing that" - actually, key Democrats were. Outside those swing-vote Democrats the majority of Democrat senators, if you look at their statements, clearly gave their reasoning regarding his ideological positions on presidential power, his partisanship & past record as a Republican operative, and his past decisions as a lower court justice. Media reporters on either side of the aisle may not have bothered to read most of those voting statements, but I don't think one can fault the actual senators for that.

I certainly think that process was badly handled all round, and that it's a process that's in desperate need of improvement, as we've already seen (both bearing in mind the problems around Kavanaugh's appointment, and that the last Democratic SC nominee was blocked basically on the grounds of the GOP going "we have a majority so we're not even going to give your nominee a hearing, portugal you guys"); really I suspect it needs a constitutional amendment to require supermajorities for these appointments, and/or put in retirement rules to ensure turnover of judges and give every president 1 or 2 SC picks guaranteed rather than it being random, so then you end up with a permanently more moderate/less partisan Supreme Court where everyone's had decent bipartisan support.
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comrade_general

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Re: US Politics 2018
« Reply #44 on: October 30, 2018, 11:16:25 PM »
But all that assumes there is even a hint of civility or common sense in politics lol