Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Of course, I was responding to your pretense that you mock Republicans (for the shameless emotional appeals -- in this case, the idea that the Clintons were out to get him). Here you had a political moment in which both Democrats and Republicans making emotional appeals that were pitched to broader questions than whether K belonged on the court. Absolutely typically, you felt "obliged" to protest the Democrats, but are now defending the "entitlement" of the Republicans to engage in such tactics.

I think we basically agree on this, but you appeal to some concept of norms (is he "licensed to lie"? by whom?) that is totally bizarre. The law is, the Senate gets to advise and consent on the President's nomination. A majority vote is necessary for confirmation. That's it. Merrick Garland didn't lie, and he's not on the Court. Kavanaugh did, and he is. The norm is whatever 51 Senators want it to be. Susan Collins doesn't care that Kavanaugh is a liar.

There used to be a more accepted norm that nominees would pretend not to have thought about or formed opinions on contentious issues that might come before the Court, like Roe. Everyone understand those were basically lies, too, but there it seemed justified because it seemed like a bad idea to have Justices who would be constrained by what they had said in their hearings. Maybe that was the camel's nose under the tent.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No. The difference is that when I say "whatever," I am trying to say that I am pretty close to indifferent about whether you call what he did "sexual assault" or "attempted rape." I really don't think it makes a difference. If the difference between the two is that you would need to know something about his state of mind and that he intended to rape her, I agree that it would be hard to ever prove that. If you care about the difference, just pretend I said the other term instead. It makes absolutely no difference to the point I am trying to make.

I think she said, "I believed he was going to rape me." That assault was broken up by Judge. If you believe that testimony, it is what normal people would reasonably call "attempted rape." That's all I meant, and I think it's fairly describes what she said.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Do we need another voice here to mock the GOP? Isn’t that job already done for me? Have you read an interesting pile-on lately?

And is my statement that the GOP is filled with lying nihilists ignored (along with Hank)? Need I further and more frequently state my bona fides as a GOP critic?

Or is it possible you just don’t like having someone spit in the punch bowl?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

In a futile effort, I have been trying to show my "friends" that they may have "my side bias." Ilya Somin wrote about it well re Kavanaugh at https://reason.com/volokh/2018/09/25...asoning-and-th

Another new Polish study about abortion beliefs just came out that confirms my biases against everyone else's biases - https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/10/09...disagree-with/

And, in my research i found this article which nailed why I often dislike NPR - it seems like every story starts with a manipulative anecdote. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/06/20...e-a-scientist/

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

“We’re overconfident
Confronted with a scientific claim, another reason many of us find it hard to reflect on it scientifically is that we overestimate our comprehension of the science”. Oh boy, does this speak to everything I’ve felt about many of you. No offense.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

How often has anyone here made a true scientific claim, as opposed to a political, sociological or rhetorical claim? Cite please?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Rarely. Politic narratives (generally progressive, economically neoliberal) are baseline. Those who disagree or are skeptics offer criticisms and thus begins a series of concessions about the parts of the narrative that do not survive scrutiny. This veers from lawyerly (trying to preserve dubious claims via semantic gamesmanship) to angry to what I’d call the “come on...” position, exhibited by Not Bob yesterday (“come on, dude... how can you not be with us on this one?”).

By way of compliment, if you’ve wallowed in email exchanges with right wingers, there’s no concession of any kind. Pure unreality, and hyperbolic anger in response to facts demonstrating the falsity of narratives offered.

ETA: My pet theory is there a couple things causing this age of unreason and unreasonableness:

1. Capitalism run amuck. The current system is savage, creating enormous insecurity at many levels of society.
2. Empathy/grievance fixation. As a result of #1, empathy has emerged on the Left as the most important of virtues. And grievance has become the most urgent and important social expression. Both of these are opposed to capitalism's core ethos - that the market will through sheer self interest and lack of empathy deliver most effectively for all. Grievance fixation has emerged from years of crony capitalism. Those who do not have power have understood how those who do are working to retain it, often through a corrupted largely corporate-controlled state.
3. Lack of baselines. I won't steal Alain de Botton's thunder here, but a lot of this stems from loss of religion and community. The left and right are attempting to craft behavioral standards, values, and sacred notions. But consensus is hard to create in a world where are no more Big Three media outlets, no churches with any centralized authority, and little if any belief in our civic institutions. In the absence of official narratives from authorities, people are creating and holding their own sacred narratives, and they naturally lose their minds when others trample them. I think a lot of people want to connect to others and enjoy that warm feedback from recognizing there are lots of people who feel just like they do. You can see a perverse version of it in those Trump rallies. Those audiences strike me as lost souls looking for a common message. You can see another variant in the most rabid "resistance." People are seeking secular religions, binding narratives.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Since you've now proven you would either simply accept what i say, even though you have no comprehension, or dismiss what i say, based upon accepting what someone else says (hi Ty!!!), what would be the point?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I don't think they do, which is why it's weird that you're placing any value on it.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You keep saying "prove." We are not at the prove stage.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Right. But it makes a huge difference in the conversation. You're throwing around an accusation that someone intended to forcibly penetrate somebody. If you do not see how this differs from the accusation that someone forcibly groped and attempted to disrobe someone, I'm wondering where you were during Crim Law class. (This may highlight the fact that I am highly defense oriented, partly by early training.)

I have believed all sorts of things were occurring and been wrong numerous times. (This often occurs in courtrooms, where you think you're watching a juror buying into this argument or that, and later find out this person thought 180 degrees differently than your assumption.)

You can believe someone believed something was happening. And I believe Ford believes she was the victim of an attempted rape. But that belief is not fact. It's just a belief. And those beliefs alone (both my belief that she believed she would be raped, and her belief that she would be raped) do not logically support an allegation that the thing believed to have been attempted was the thing actually attempted. People are notoriously unreliable narrators, particularly when speculating.

(Had Judge said he agreed with her, different story. Statistically, it would be of significance that two people seeing the same exact event developed the same assumption. I'm not sure it's enough to state there was an attempted rape with confidence, but it would probably be enough to get both statements into evidence.)

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Okay. Well then those people with whom I've been engaged in fistfights when I was a kid? I believe they wanted to murder me. And they might think the same of me. I'm going to see what the SOL on attempted murder is and, if I can, I think I'll file a claim with the police. And maybe they'll do the same.

You can't just run around throwing grievous indictments at people without significant proof. And Ford's belief alone is not enough to confidently assert you believe attempted rape, a crime of intent, occurred.

When you do this stuff, you're engaging in the left wing version of calling Obama a socialist. I can amass all sorts of proof to support that charge. But can I credibly make it? No.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

They don't matter to you because you've no issue with abandoning notions of due process here. Why? Because I think you're quite biased and unable to divorce emotion from reason on these matters.*

I think due process is relaxed outside a courtroom, but that the notion of it should be preserved in all instances. This naturally leads to me frequently citing its criminal applications, where it's used most.

_____
ETA: Or perhaps you're unwilling to rethink elements of certain narratives on this stuff you've found compelling. It's hard to challenge the long ago installed software, particularly when it feels good to use it because people around you accept the same narratives.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The only standard is a political one, and it's within the discretion of the Senate to define it.

Which is another reason that Sebby's parsing is dumb.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Politically, loads of people call Obama a socialist. I shall do so too! #becausepoliticssaysitisokay