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

There are (almost) no swing voters.

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

I've probably taken over 500 depositions in 20+ states, but I can't remember the last time I read the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure either. I mean, I'll check a particular rule (like Rule 68 - Offer of Judgment or Rule 36 - Requests to Admit) every once in a while, but I'm not sitting in my leather recliner with a glass of 12-year and the FRCP once a year.

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

I've probably taken over 20,000 depositions in over 70 states, 500+ countries, and on all 11 continents and, until this very moment, I was unaware that there even were "Federal Rules of Civil Procedure." But if we want to limit our judiciary to pathetic rule-following (and rule-reading) sheep, then we get what we deserve.

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

I bet you didn't even know that the UCI revised its cyclocross rules in June 2016.

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

The UCI can suck me (this is not a solicitation). If I want to pivot through a U-turn by holding onto the stake holding up the course tape, then that is what I'm going to do.

caption, please
 

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

Alright, I’m gonna say it: I don’t know who this Omarosa person is.

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

Also, while we are getting explanations, can someone explain to me why the end of net neutrality means that Youporn might stop being free?

Re: caption, please
 

"I want Omarosa out. Make it happen, Donald."

I have no idea who Omarosa is either.

Re: caption, please
 

"There are (almost) no swing voters."

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

It's all about bandwidth now. Someone's got to pay for all that streaming.

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

You all who don't know who Omarosa is missed some quality reality television in 2004.

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

But some, at least, civil rights can be intentionally and knowingly waived. For example, the right to an attorney or jury trial. Similaarly, one waives some Fiat Amendment protection by working for the government.

And, as an aside, they are not inalienable. Governments change, law changes, and those "rights" become alienated

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

I don't think you see the rights alienated as much as you see the laws enacted to protect them altered.

One area where the current laws should be pared down is fee shifting. If you bring a discrimination case and lose almost all of your numerous claims, the award of attorneys' fees should be similarly adjusted. I don't understand how it's equitable for a plaintiff's lawyer to receive fees for working on claims he or she lost.

Simple math would work nicely. Bring four claims and win two, you get half of your claimed fees (or some amount that can be credibly tied to the successful claims).

Fee shifting seems more an arbitrary "lawyer's right" than anything else. You need some of it, but it should be reasonable. No one should get paid by a defendant for working on claims he or she lost.

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

I worked under a partner years ago who was clearly on the autism spectrum. He sat across from me and with a straight face said that in my free time, I should read the rules of civil procedure. Just to get the best grasp on them.

Right. And when that's done, on to my dishwasher's user's manual, all of my social media users' agreements, and then the critics' footnotes to the unabridged Atlas Shrugged.

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

Nah uh. They come from G*d, not the government, stupid.

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

I think there is a principled difference between waiving a right and selling it. OTOH, you have a right to a jury trial, and you essentially sell it when you agree to contractual terms that specify arbitration. I think the key difference between that and where we started is that if you agree to arbitration, you don't undermine the right to a jury trial -- you just forego in the instance. But if employers can look for employees who agree to be harassed, it has an obvious, systematic effect of making things worse for everyone else (but for harassers).

If the drafters of the Declaration of Independence had really held those truths to be self-evident, they wouldn't have needed to point it out, no?

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

Don't we have some criminal issues in here, too? It's one thing to waive a personal right, but we generally view criminal acts as societies to enforce, not the victim's. Les can't agree to let Ty shoot him in the knee for money. Les may want the money, and Ty might really enjoy kneecapping Les, but it's not something we as a society wish to permit.

Re: He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind.
 

Another way of saying this is, whether there is enough to file a claim for discrimination.

That really does sound like an extraordinary set of coincidences. I wonder if the employee thought they were all just coincidences also. I'd love to hear about how these coincidences aligned in such a way that they had an ironclad discrimination claim worth 7 figures. I'm all ears.

TM

Re: He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind.
 

This reminds me of that time that Sen. Corker didn't know anything about that provision stuck into the tax bill late at night in a backroom right before he switched his vote that would result in him saving several times over his senate paycheck. It was just a series of coincidences.

Re: He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind.
 

What is cause even anyway? Does it have anything to do with effect?

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

Kinda surprised to see people redistributing this article so favorably:

It sounds like Driver doesn't think there's anything Damon should say. Tone deaf? Systematically part of the problem? If men simply cannot understand what abuse is like on a daily level, what are they supposed to do? Is there anything the Drivers of the world could do to bridge the gap?

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

Nobody is conflating a pat on the butt with rape or child abuse, yet this is something people are very desperate to express the need not to conflate. Seriously, I'm seeing it everywhere. Why? Because they want to be able to say what is or isn't abusive, usually totally free from any context.

Yes, it's part of the pattern of dismissing certain conduct as no big deal.

I think she meant don't rather than can't, in which case she's absolutely right that it's very hard, for some reason, for most men to understand how the pat on the butt relates to the rest of that crap that women experience continuously. Looks, comments, judgments, suggestive comments, the potential for violence, etc. What men can do is listen to women and try to understand.

And try to be more of aware of it around them. When you start to see it, it's everywhere.

Apparently she's not supposed to point out its existence.

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

Moore defenders were falling all over themselves to say, "Yeah, but what about Franken?" Isn't this evidence of the very conflation you say nobody is engaging in?

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

The only effective remedy right now for sexual harassment is for a person to love their job (or career, for people like Louis C.K. and Garrison Keillor). Here's what Damon said:

I take his point to be that those two (and Harvey Weinstein and Al Franken and Matt Later) engaged in different sorts of behavior and yet the consequences in each case are the same. I think that's a bad thing, and one thing it reflects (among others) is that the judicial system has pretty much failed to address this conduct, such the we resort to alternative private punishment to punish people who do bad things. It would be better if there were other societal sanctions to apply. In addition, not instead.

Now, where he goes with that is to suggest that he found Louis C.K.'s apology (or "apology") to a sort of positive sign that he was taking responsibility, which I don't buy at all. So I don't mean to defend everything Damon said.

I don't actually believe he did that, but maybe I missed it and you can explain.

What she said is, "They [most men] simply cannot understand what abuse is like on a daily level." If so, then listening to women and trying to understand is pretty futile. I take it that you agree with me about what she said, which is why you are suggesting she didn't mean it.

"Apparently?" According to whom? Do you think that's what I just said? For an advocate of listening and understanding, you're not setting a very good example.

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

One thing that article misses is the total tone-deafness of the Damon interview. He talks about "no body knew" on Weinstein - ah, yeah, right bub. Sorry, lots of people knew. Lots of women in particular, but other folks as well. He talks about the pictures of Franken being a "bad joke". He seems to excuse almost everyone he mentions. He certainly excuses himself for not recognizing Weinstein for what he was.

Minnie Driver is saying, you don't get to identify and excuse the distinctions, bro, you need to listen to us on what they are, and not just excuse what you and your bros have done. Because all of it is pretty damn bad, and you are minimizing 90% of it.

I suspect all Damon needed to do to recognize what Weinstein was was to listen to his girlfriend, Minnie Driver, a little more closely.

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

This is indeed the conflation going on.

What we need to do is realize that some of these things are things people ought to lose their job or their career over. Some are much worse, and ought to lead to prison time. For some, I'd like to see castration in the public square.

The men losing jobs are getting the light punishment here, not the serious punishment.

That having been said, I think the most profound think Driver said was that this really is the time for men to listen rather than speak, and I should stop now.

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

I didn't watch it. On the basis of the partial transcript I linked, I can see what you mean. He says some things I flat out disagree with, and doesn't say much that seems particularly insightful. I agree that with him that what Franken did was, more or less, a bad attempt at a joke. I don't believe it's accurate to say that Damon was "just excusing what you and your bros have done," based on what I read.

Here's the thing: I don't think Damon said anything much that's interesting. I also don't agree with much of what Driver said. I didn't retweet (or the functional equivalent) either. I don't want to have to agree with one or the other. It seems to me that neither has much to say that is worth repeating, and I don't think what either said would get any attention at all if they weren't celebrities with a history. Which is why I said that I didn't get retweeting of her.

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

1. Retweets are not endorsements

2. I agree. Damon, like most of us men, is boring on this.

3. I disagree. Driver is worth listening to. Even if you disagree with her.

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

Referring back to what I was responding to in my original post on this, how so?

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

Listen to her, not me. I'm not the one who has experienced these things.

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

If men are supposed to be listening but not talking, does that mean that they shouldn't say "you're fired" to someone who has been doing bad things, or is that a sort of a exception to the be-quiet-and-don't-say-anything rule?

Also, having not only listened to her but also linked to that article so that more people could partake of her views, I don't react all that well to the idea that I'm not listening to her. We're only having this exchange because I brought it up. If you say something now in addition to what I linked, does that somehow make me unhear what she has to say?

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

I didn't say you weren't listening to her, I said she was worth listening to, in response to your post saying, essential "meh" to them both. I'm not going to try to convince you why though, I'm just going to refer back to her words for that. I don't think Minnie needs GGG channeling her to be understood.

As to the firing, my personal view is I wouldn't be making a firing decision without involving women in it right now. That said, there are times that responsibility is inescapably mine because of position, and at those times it is a process issue as to what I do and who I consult before making that decision.

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

You said "listen to her," which I took as a I suggestion that I wasn't. YMMV.

Nicely done, but that is of course not responsive to my point.

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

Ah, yes, later post. I was suggesting the answers were not in your humble fellow poster but in the text we were both analyzing. I defer to Minnie on the answer to your question.

I think it was responsive actually.

It is very hard, isn't it, to be quiet and deferential? I have trouble with it. I wonder how so many women managed to handle it for so long without going crazy?

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

Uh oh -- it turns out that text was written by a man, one Edward Helmore. So I guess we ought to stop paying attention to it.

Men like you who are in a position to do some good ought to open their mouths and do some good, rather than keeping quiet in circumstances when it does nothing to give women a better chance to be heard. And listening and respecting the views of other people, particularly including women, doesn't mean one accepting misguided ideas. Simone de Beauvoir said man is defined as a human being and woman is defined as female. Respecting what Minnie Driver has to say means responding to it like it was said by a human being, not fearing that her thoughts are so delicate that they can't stand criticism.

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

Meh. I listen to enough men. All day. And I speak plenty. It's hard to shut me up a lot of the time.

Watching the Driver fall out on twitter I thought the most apropo little zing was one that compared Matt Damon's interview to someone reminding us the day after a mass shooting that there are lots of people not killing anyone.

I think more men need to really work at listening, which is why, when a woman both criticizes a man and refers to him in the same interview as a good man, I'd like to listen and spend some time thinking about it.

So thank you for posting it, though, of course, I'd already retweeted it.

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

Who you picking? One of the 50% of white women that voted for Trump?

Last night my wife and my daughter, two very strong women (both me too people), had a fight over whether Franken deserved better. Here's the thing, if it only takes one woman to fry, every man is toast. And not just on the underlying behavior, which is all vile, but the nuance with which you discuss it?

And it's all fun when it's big hollywood and political types going up in flames, but that same standard won't apply to Acme Welding and McDonald's franchises in Iowa and those are the places where the volume problems lie. And if there isn't some way for men to understand how can we expect it to get better?

See, my wife and daughter's "me too" men were not in congress and have never been nominated for an Oscar. The real war is further from the spotlight, and a man talking about his take like Damon helps others sort out their own world, doesn't it?

Re: He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind.
 

1. No it’s not. It’s whether there’s enough to get to a hearing or trial. If this is limbo, it’s putting the bar just shy of a basketball rim.

2. Let’s say a group of people suffered adverse action because they all joined in circulating the same thing. Looks like they were all targeted. In reality, truth is, people from the same backgrounds tend to have exclusive groups where they communicate things (sometimes prohibited things) with each other.

Half of litigation is getting paid where it’s undeserved and getting nothing where payment is deserved. Hence my enormous respect for the law.

Re: He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind.
 

Well, I'm convinced. Or I'm done with this. In any case, 2 above is written in a foreign language.

TM