RE: She’s also made claims she’s been assaulted by far better men (plural)
I think she's making a difference between "assaulted" and "sexually assaulted".
RE: Reade has also told people about her incident not long after.
In my experience with the mentally unstable they claim everyone not in the room as backing them up. In this case Reade told her (now dead) mother (no, you can't talk to her), and various other people who in person say she was vague and didn't give names.
What really stands out is the following: According to a summary within an Associated Press investigative piece based on interviews with over a dozen of Reade's acquaintances, Reade used "her charm and flair for drama to manipulate those supporting her until their goodwill [ran] out", and "some people who dealt with her found her duplicitous and deceitful, while others found her a heroic survivor."
Add to that her repeated lies in court on various subjects, her constantly changing story, and imho we're in "sympathy vampire" territory.
The thing about personality disorders is she will have been doing this for decades.
1) There is a long list of women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
2) She is also one of 13 women who have accused Moonves.
3) Two other people have said she confided in them shortly after the incident.
4) Trump claimed they'd never met. This might put this into "famous people attract this sort of thing" except that there are photos of them together.
5) On May 9, 2023, a jury of six men and three women found Trump liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. (wiki)
In a July 19, 2023, memorandum opinion, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, demonstrated Trump "raped" Carroll in the plain sense of the word(wiki)
IMHO after we've proven something in a court of law the burden for disproving it is much higher. So muttering something about media bias, or left leaning, needs to get a lot more specific.
No I don't. My claim is that everyone who runs for office needs to expect this sort of thing. Ergo we're selecting for people who deal with it well. Almost by definition that works against very ethical people.
Trump manages this sort of thing very well because he's had so much practice. The way he's gotten so much practice is he's been an unethical scandal ridden slime for decades.
Another side effect is the electorate is conditioned to expect and ignore it. Which means the truth of the allegations matters very little, it's more about how they're handled.
RE: Monica
If memory serves, Monica was young for her age and sex obsessed. In a different context we'd call her a groupie. She was also wondering if Bill would divorce HRC and marry her which makes me wonder what he told her.
My CEO was fired over less than this. Considering Bill stepping down would have meant his (competent) VP stepping in, there is a strong argument Team Blue should have made him step down.
BTW that's a different world where it's thought that the VP is less than competent which has also happened multiple times.
RE: Franken
There was no investigation, this was a moral panic, he was never allowed to give his side of the story.
It's not clear that he did anything. As a comedian, he had a skit where he'd be a sex manic doctor. He did this act for years. None of the other females who played in it reported problems. That's not, they didn't step forward, that's they were called up and asked since it was a small enough number.
The accuser's description of the events seem to be of his skit and his character's behavior during that skit. She also is a professional publicity seeker. A handful of women reported behavior they felt was inappropriate during photo ops, but that's out of tens of thousands and it seems Al did a lot of these in character.
In the best case, Al's behavior was clean for someone who professionally does raunchy sex comedies that cross lines.
I don’t recall such allegations being made against John McCain or Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley or Mike Pence
Romney campaign tells Obama to ‘rein in his supporters’ on Na.zi comments. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/124572-romney-campaign-tells-obama-to-rein-in-his-supporters-on-nazi-comments/
Nikki Haley being compared to Eva Braun (Hit.ler's girlfriend)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2012/09/05/romney-ally-to-dems-stop-trivializing-nazism/
Mike Pence being compared to Hit.ler
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/whoopi-goldbery-mike-pence-nazi-lgbt-rights-row-us-vice-president-a8212516.html
John McCain being compared to Hit.ler
https://rac.org/press-room/madonnas-hitler-mccain-analogy-deplorable
4 of the 5 accusers have admitted their claims are false. The 5th (Ford) has a ton of major red flags, including the problem that she swears she can trivially back date her accusations but refused to actually do so.
they wish that people would not classify them that way.
Amusement. So when Biden was forced to pick a black female, he should have explain to Team Blue that there is no such thing? And I've noticed you call me "cis male" more than once like it means something about my opinions.
My opinions here are driven by me being an engineer. The problem we keep running into is what to do with a female penis.
More specifically, and the issue you keep ignoring, is what to do where we've segregated the genders for good reason, i.e. "sports" and "preventing sexual misconduct / rape".
Avi Silverberg claims to identify as a woman and as such she(?) should be able to enter female power lifting events. The current rules actually allow that even though he's clearly not serious.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/
If allowed to continue, everyone who sets women's power lifting records will have a penis.
If you don't have a solution for "what to do with a female penis" other than "born women should lump it", then you're inviting Conservatives to insist there is no such thing and the normal rules apply.
Big picture I'm in favor letting people control their own bodies and technologic advance was always going to allow switching genders at some point.
However maintaining that there is no difference between the genders is not dealing with reality, and asking women/children to just lump it is begging ignorant and self serving politicians to step in.
Constantly changing story. Coworkers say what she is claiming is probably impossible. Multiple claims of other assaults from various other people. Long history of lying under oath multiple times in multiple courts. Defected to Russia in 2023. Multiple times she has claimed in court to be an "expert witness" on domestic violence but apparently isn't.
There are a ton of mental health red flags here. My read is she's attention seeking and doesn't understand that they're lying even though their statements are not correct.
I've had personal contact with two people like that over the decades. I've had multiple conversations with other people who have a lot of experience with them where we try to figure out if they know that they're lying. Far as I can tell that's the wrong question. IMHO their definition of "truth" and "lies" doesn't match the mainstream nor reality. They think they should be able to make stuff up and not get called on it.
If you don't understand that people like that exist then you have been very fortunate.
The flaw in the reasoning was in the "unelectable" part. Nixon and various others simply left. Trump had his empire to amuse himself with, it should have worked.
Whoever runs for President will face Na.zi/rape/etc allegations. The team of the people making those allegations will (pretend to) believe them and there will be zero consequences for them being spurious.
Someone who is reasonably ethical has probably never faced those sorts of claims. If they need to be experienced + skilled + indifferent to those claims, then that says a lot about them.
So... how to change this.
1) We could go to a Parliamentary system where we don't vote for the leader at all.
2) We could punish people who are making up stuff about Trump
3) Blue & Red could be willing to vote for the other side because of their ethics.
However as long as they disagree on what ethics is I'm not sure that works. Reasonable people can disagree on Gaza, Trans, Taxes, Equality, and so on.
Insisting that [your issue] is so important that anyone who doesn't back it is a na.zi is also claiming that you're being ethical by saying anything to stop them from being in charge.
He didn't get disbarred for the adultery. He got disbarred and his license suspended for lying under oath.
We also have a long list of other issues, including selling pardons and having a "charity" which collected money from entities which his wife dealt with professionally as Secretary of State. Money which vanished the moment they lost power.
I would think the federal gov could pass laws to restrict local laws (that's often it's job). I would think that the feds could pressure locals to stop this.
I also think just having the conversation where we point out what's going on would be useful.
Ad hominem fallacy. Also known as shooting the messenger.
If you're trying to claim that large numbers of people want to have their genitals surgically changed/removed then please post your sources.
DavidTC: All ways we have invented of dividing people up are both completely arbitrary...
Gender is "arbitrary"? So if I decide I'm female I'll lose my 6' 8" size and wouldn't be a monster in women's sports? How does that work exactly?
DavidTC: the Republicans moved on denying health care to all trans people
What to do about trans is still something we're working out. The claims that best medical practices are "settled" come from the same people who claim there's no difference in athletics.
IMHO it's not helpful for politicians to use this as a wedge issue but we'll work things out.
DavidTC: Why are people complaining about Jewish art being taken out of museum,
Trying to claim that we're setting up death camps is an effort to avoid having reasonable conversations.
In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the anti-employment discrimination laws applied to trans. Yes, that Supreme Court.
I count the pro-life movement as a separate issue because even the authors of Roe claimed it was a separate issue.
They could (and imho should) have concluded the 14th AM prevents a woman from being enslaved by her fetus. Instead they flinched away from that because they wanted to preserve the gov's ability to meddle.
So what we're arguing about now is how much meddling is appropriate.
DavidTC: It’s extremely hard to enforce oppression against women if people are allowed to exit that category.
The vast bulk of people have zero desire to "exit their category".
It seems reasonable to think trans-women shouldn't be in female sports. Trying to claim that this is "fascist" is an effort to avoid having reasonable conversations.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “He Got Away With It”
RE: She’s also made claims she’s been assaulted by far better men (plural)
I think she's making a difference between "assaulted" and "sexually assaulted".
RE: Reade has also told people about her incident not long after.
In my experience with the mentally unstable they claim everyone not in the room as backing them up. In this case Reade told her (now dead) mother (no, you can't talk to her), and various other people who in person say she was vague and didn't give names.
What really stands out is the following: According to a summary within an Associated Press investigative piece based on interviews with over a dozen of Reade's acquaintances, Reade used "her charm and flair for drama to manipulate those supporting her until their goodwill [ran] out", and "some people who dealt with her found her duplicitous and deceitful, while others found her a heroic survivor."
Add to that her repeated lies in court on various subjects, her constantly changing story, and imho we're in "sympathy vampire" territory.
The thing about personality disorders is she will have been doing this for decades.
"
RE: Carroll & Trump
1) There is a long list of women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
2) She is also one of 13 women who have accused Moonves.
3) Two other people have said she confided in them shortly after the incident.
4) Trump claimed they'd never met. This might put this into "famous people attract this sort of thing" except that there are photos of them together.
5) On May 9, 2023, a jury of six men and three women found Trump liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. (wiki)
In a July 19, 2023, memorandum opinion, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, demonstrated Trump "raped" Carroll in the plain sense of the word(wiki)
IMHO after we've proven something in a court of law the burden for disproving it is much higher. So muttering something about media bias, or left leaning, needs to get a lot more specific.
"
Yes. No serious negatives. No serious positives.
You can't beat something with nothing.
"
But you still need to demonstrate...
No I don't. My claim is that everyone who runs for office needs to expect this sort of thing. Ergo we're selecting for people who deal with it well. Almost by definition that works against very ethical people.
Trump manages this sort of thing very well because he's had so much practice. The way he's gotten so much practice is he's been an unethical scandal ridden slime for decades.
Another side effect is the electorate is conditioned to expect and ignore it. Which means the truth of the allegations matters very little, it's more about how they're handled.
"
RE: Monica
If memory serves, Monica was young for her age and sex obsessed. In a different context we'd call her a groupie. She was also wondering if Bill would divorce HRC and marry her which makes me wonder what he told her.
My CEO was fired over less than this. Considering Bill stepping down would have meant his (competent) VP stepping in, there is a strong argument Team Blue should have made him step down.
BTW that's a different world where it's thought that the VP is less than competent which has also happened multiple times.
RE: Franken
There was no investigation, this was a moral panic, he was never allowed to give his side of the story.
It's not clear that he did anything. As a comedian, he had a skit where he'd be a sex manic doctor. He did this act for years. None of the other females who played in it reported problems. That's not, they didn't step forward, that's they were called up and asked since it was a small enough number.
The accuser's description of the events seem to be of his skit and his character's behavior during that skit. She also is a professional publicity seeker. A handful of women reported behavior they felt was inappropriate during photo ops, but that's out of tens of thousands and it seems Al did a lot of these in character.
In the best case, Al's behavior was clean for someone who professionally does raunchy sex comedies that cross lines.
On “Trumped”
RE: "too focused on cultural issues"
Ouch. Arguably all three of those are "it's the economy". Of course that's swing voters and not the social justice warriors.
However nothing prevented Harris from Blue virtue signaling AND ALSO doing less word salad with how she'd deal with economic issues.
On “He Got Away With It”
I don’t recall such allegations being made against John McCain or Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley or Mike Pence
Romney campaign tells Obama to ‘rein in his supporters’ on Na.zi comments. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/124572-romney-campaign-tells-obama-to-rein-in-his-supporters-on-nazi-comments/
Nikki Haley being compared to Eva Braun (Hit.ler's girlfriend)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2012/09/05/romney-ally-to-dems-stop-trivializing-nazism/
Mike Pence being compared to Hit.ler
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/whoopi-goldbery-mike-pence-nazi-lgbt-rights-row-us-vice-president-a8212516.html
John McCain being compared to Hit.ler
https://rac.org/press-room/madonnas-hitler-mccain-analogy-deplorable
"
RE: Kavanagh
4 of the 5 accusers have admitted their claims are false. The 5th (Ford) has a ton of major red flags, including the problem that she swears she can trivially back date her accusations but refused to actually do so.
"
Sexual assault is a real thing and a real problem.
False accusations are also a real thing and a real problem.
Biden's accuser has a lot of red flags that we see with false claims. Carrol managed to prove hers in a court of law.
On “Trumped”
they wish that people would not classify them that way.
Amusement. So when Biden was forced to pick a black female, he should have explain to Team Blue that there is no such thing? And I've noticed you call me "cis male" more than once like it means something about my opinions.
My opinions here are driven by me being an engineer. The problem we keep running into is what to do with a female penis.
More specifically, and the issue you keep ignoring, is what to do where we've segregated the genders for good reason, i.e. "sports" and "preventing sexual misconduct / rape".
Avi Silverberg claims to identify as a woman and as such she(?) should be able to enter female power lifting events. The current rules actually allow that even though he's clearly not serious.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/
If allowed to continue, everyone who sets women's power lifting records will have a penis.
If you don't have a solution for "what to do with a female penis" other than "born women should lump it", then you're inviting Conservatives to insist there is no such thing and the normal rules apply.
Big picture I'm in favor letting people control their own bodies and technologic advance was always going to allow switching genders at some point.
However maintaining that there is no difference between the genders is not dealing with reality, and asking women/children to just lump it is begging ignorant and self serving politicians to step in.
On “He Got Away With It”
Constantly changing story. Coworkers say what she is claiming is probably impossible. Multiple claims of other assaults from various other people. Long history of lying under oath multiple times in multiple courts. Defected to Russia in 2023. Multiple times she has claimed in court to be an "expert witness" on domestic violence but apparently isn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_sexual_assault_allegation#
There are a ton of mental health red flags here. My read is she's attention seeking and doesn't understand that they're lying even though their statements are not correct.
I've had personal contact with two people like that over the decades. I've had multiple conversations with other people who have a lot of experience with them where we try to figure out if they know that they're lying. Far as I can tell that's the wrong question. IMHO their definition of "truth" and "lies" doesn't match the mainstream nor reality. They think they should be able to make stuff up and not get called on it.
If you don't understand that people like that exist then you have been very fortunate.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/4/2024”
My expectation is it was more "[Trump supporters are] white supremists so f*ck them, we need to help normal people first".
The social justice warriors want to fight racism and na.zis. Ergo whoever gets in their way is branded that.
"
It's been suggested that this was planned and there was no "trigger point".
"
Having watched Harris campaign for a few months, I find it very hard to believe that she "would have been stronger" if she'd gone through the primary.
Much more likely that she wouldn't have won.
On “He Got Away With It”
The flaw in the reasoning was in the "unelectable" part. Nixon and various others simply left. Trump had his empire to amuse himself with, it should have worked.
"
I guess we can’t even clear that low bar.
The incentives are wrong.
Whoever runs for President will face Na.zi/rape/etc allegations. The team of the people making those allegations will (pretend to) believe them and there will be zero consequences for them being spurious.
Someone who is reasonably ethical has probably never faced those sorts of claims. If they need to be experienced + skilled + indifferent to those claims, then that says a lot about them.
So... how to change this.
1) We could go to a Parliamentary system where we don't vote for the leader at all.
2) We could punish people who are making up stuff about Trump
3) Blue & Red could be willing to vote for the other side because of their ethics.
However as long as they disagree on what ethics is I'm not sure that works. Reasonable people can disagree on Gaza, Trans, Taxes, Equality, and so on.
Insisting that [your issue] is so important that anyone who doesn't back it is a na.zi is also claiming that you're being ethical by saying anything to stop them from being in charge.
"
Impeaching the unelectable ex-President seemed like political pain for no gain.
"
Our current political process punishes people who are uncomfortable with slime being thrown at them and doesn't reward morality.
Trump is a lot more comfortable and experienced with this than most. The reason he's comfortable with it is because he is really slimy.
If we want people with super ethical images to be president then we need to figure out away for that to be an advantage and not a disadvantage.
"
Trump got away with it. Same as OJ. My ex-wife too. I'm sure that's not a short list if we go down it.
Sometimes there is little justice. It's annoying, but I'm going to let it go and try to not have it be upsetting.
"
...consensual adultery...
He didn't get disbarred for the adultery. He got disbarred and his license suspended for lying under oath.
We also have a long list of other issues, including selling pardons and having a "charity" which collected money from entities which his wife dealt with professionally as Secretary of State. Money which vanished the moment they lost power.
On “Trumped”
I would think the federal gov could pass laws to restrict local laws (that's often it's job). I would think that the feds could pressure locals to stop this.
I also think just having the conversation where we point out what's going on would be useful.
"
DavidTC: Says the white straight cis man.
Ad hominem fallacy. Also known as shooting the messenger.
If you're trying to claim that large numbers of people want to have their genitals surgically changed/removed then please post your sources.
DavidTC: All ways we have invented of dividing people up are both completely arbitrary...
Gender is "arbitrary"? So if I decide I'm female I'll lose my 6' 8" size and wouldn't be a monster in women's sports? How does that work exactly?
DavidTC: the Republicans moved on denying health care to all trans people
What to do about trans is still something we're working out. The claims that best medical practices are "settled" come from the same people who claim there's no difference in athletics.
IMHO it's not helpful for politicians to use this as a wedge issue but we'll work things out.
DavidTC: Why are people complaining about Jewish art being taken out of museum,
Trying to claim that we're setting up death camps is an effort to avoid having reasonable conversations.
In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the anti-employment discrimination laws applied to trans. Yes, that Supreme Court.
"
I count the pro-life movement as a separate issue because even the authors of Roe claimed it was a separate issue.
They could (and imho should) have concluded the 14th AM prevents a woman from being enslaved by her fetus. Instead they flinched away from that because they wanted to preserve the gov's ability to meddle.
So what we're arguing about now is how much meddling is appropriate.
"
Philip: ...despite all the rhetoric about price inflation being the major driver,
If the leadership is proclaiming a female penis is more important than my pocketbook, then they're out of touch.
I don't care what other people do with their bodies. I don't approve of lots of things, but if it doesn't affect me then it is hard to care.
Philip: a hierarchy that makes cisgendered male the top and everyone else subserviant.
The amount of racism and oppression is so low that new forms had to give social justice warriors something to do and oppose.
A lot of people see that as a power grab.
"
DavidTC: It’s extremely hard to enforce oppression against women if people are allowed to exit that category.
The vast bulk of people have zero desire to "exit their category".
It seems reasonable to think trans-women shouldn't be in female sports. Trying to claim that this is "fascist" is an effort to avoid having reasonable conversations.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.