Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Pence is a first order creep. I remain 100% committed to the notion, He Is Worse Than Trump.

Yes. He's that bad. Sexist, backward, provincial, and just smart enough to actually get a lot of terrible things done.

Never, ever, chose a "true believer" over a transactional person. Trump's a hopeless nut, but he has no compass, and he can't get anything done. Pence has an agenda, and a compass. And it's pointing to some very fucking horrible places.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You are a ridiculous person.

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This is where we disagree. Granted, he is smarter than Trump on getting things done.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This one is amazing. I don't like him politically, but I did buy into the supporter of women's rights bit.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's not an issue of the slippery slope. If the voters of Alabama want Roy Moore to represent them, why do the representatives of voters in other states get to reject their choice?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Some states would vote to secede if they were allowed to put it on the ballot. We wouldn't allow that.

Moore is a one-off. He fits within a very limited and almost never used power of the Senate.

My only concession would be, there needs to be a trial in the Senate, and conviction, regarding the allegations, before expulsion. I am not comfortable with abandoning due process based solely on allegations, however solid those allegations are.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Fuck. He was actually a solid moderate on many things, and tried to reach across the aisle.

That photo's awful. But he is a comedian? It looks like it was staged to be silly, rather than something truly sexual?

I disagree on much with Franken, but I think he's smart, and the kind of person we should have in the Senate. I hope he survives this.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I do like him politically, but also, he is/was a comedian and part of a world that's pretty demonstrably terrible to women, so it's a bit hard to be surprised about it.

His "apology" was also terrible. "I have a different recollection of the rehearsal" and "the photo was meant to be a joke but I shouldn't have done it" doesn't cut it.

Had he just said he behaved inappropriately and he's sorry, that might have ended it. His statement most definitely didn't.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It was clearly staged to be silly, but the joke is "look at how I can take advantage of this person" which isn't okay, especially in the context of her claim that it came after she rebuked his advances.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That photo is stupid. He is not touching her in the photo. If he didn't actually touch her, it's just stupid. If he did, in fact, touch her, he deserves whatever he gets.

When it comes to his "differing recollection," he needs to explain himself. It sounds to me like he did, in fact, write a kissing scene and did want to rehearse it. That's enough for me to believe that he manipulated this woman into a situation where he could kiss her repeatedly. That is fucking creepy and he should be ashamed. If he forcibly kissed her and shoved his tongue in her mouth, he deserves whatever he gets.

Jesus. What the fuck?

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Looks to me like he is. At least his finger tips are. It's not a full-on grope, but it looks like he's actually touching.

Which is weird because the "joke" is the same if he's just about to touch her, rather than actually touching her.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You can clearly see his left hand is not touching her, which would make it weird if his right hand was (and it doesn't look like it is).

https://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/newsc...ux-600-480.jpg

Fucking stupid either way, but if he didn't actually touch her, at least it's not assault.

Well, it wouldn't be weird because then the whole point is to grab her breast and pretend like it's just a joke.

We will never know, but I truly hope he did not grope this woman.

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

With apologies to the Sermon on the Mount, what bothers you is not that the enlightenment is belated, it's that the vision of justice is partial. I think your point is a variant of Matthew 7:3-5: Why does the left focus on the beam in the Right's eye instead of the mote in its own? Those hypocrites should first get the mote out of their own eye, and only then will they be in the position to righteously do something about the Roy Moores of the world.

No one is pure in politics, and if you want to dwell on hypocrisy, there's plenty to go around.

It can't have escaped you that conservatives used attacks on Bill Clinton to weaken Hillary Clinton. They said they were doing it at the time. Now, Bill Clinton's fans in the Democratic Party aren't on the left. He scored short-term political points again and again through a succession of Sister Souljah moments, constantly triangulating, more often than not for his own transient purposes rather than to accomplish liberal goals. So a lot of lefties have a lot of complaints about him, and his treatment of women (including Hillary) is only a part of it. But Hillary means a lot to a lot of women (some of whom I live with) and they weren't interested in dragging her down, which is why you are hearing some of this about only now that she has stepped off the stage (is she gone yet?). Is that principled? Obviously it depends on which principles matter most to you, because there are trade-offs.

I never thought that Bill saw women just as women. I never thought of him as a likely rapist, even though I found it easy to see him as a harasser. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's how I read him. With Romney and Pence, something different is at play. With both of them, it seems to me that their religious views make it too easy for them to see women as a different species, and when Romney talks about binders of women and Pence won't meet with women to remain above reproach, both are suffering from a cramped understanding of the essential humanity of half of the species, calling to mind Simone de Beauvoir's quote that "Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male." Neither Romney nor Pence, whatever their other qualities, seem able to see women as fully human. Whatever Bill Clinton's other deficits, his relationship with Hillary suggests that's not his problem. YMMV.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're a lawyer, so I know that you don't need me to point out what the difference is there.

The issue is not whether he committed a crime. It's not about Roy Moore's rights. It's about whether Alabama voters get to pick their senator.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I don't think either palm is touching her, but it looks to me like at least his left ring finger is and probably the rest of his left hand fingertips. Harder to tell on the right.

As you say, stupid, and I'd add gross, either way.