The Boy Scouts didn't teach CPR in my day, but the rest was standard stuff.
I've had many clients accused of things they didn't do. Adopting the Mike Pence policy wouldn't have helped any of them. For a lot of them, hiring a videographer to follow them around all day, which would have been even sillier than wearing a football helmet, wouldn't have helped either.
While it would be foolish to underestimate the Democrats' ability to f**k things up, I keep mulling over a couple of questions:
1. What state is Trump likely to take that he didn't in 2016?
2. What constituency that Trump didn't do well with in 2016 is likely to show increased support for him in 2020?
3. Is there a reservoir of Trump-leaning voters that didn't turn out for him in 2016 and will be motivated to come out in 2020, or did Trump get essentially all of his supporters?
4. Will voters of color turn out better than they did in 2016?
I think the answers are: None, none, no, yes. Unless the Democrats f**k up, which they well might.
It's not "Chris," Dave. Otherwise I agree entirely. As an aside, lawyer tricks work only when the witness is being evasive or tricky, or otherwise trying to pull something. It's like the old saying: "You can't cheat an honest man." A bit of an overstatement, but there's a lot to it.
What makes you think I was not a Boy Scout other than whatever cultural stereotype you may assign to me? In fact I was, for several years. I enjoyed it immensely, wasn't sexually abused, and live by the motto "Be Prepared" to this day. But I prepare for things based on an assessment of actual risks. Seat belts and football helmets. I know that requires judgment and judgment is a hard, adult skill, but I learned a lot about it in the Boy Scouts.
He was never a social liberal, just an opportunistic libertine. At best, he didn't give a shit what other people did unless there was something in it for him. When he was a real estate developer/TV celebrity, there was nothing in it for him. As a politician, there is.
I wouldn't argue with that number -- though I'm not sure we need to quantify the difference between what justifies buckling up your seat belt and what justifies walking around town constantly wearing a football helmet. What really matters is situational judgment. How likely, given the people you work with, your own behavior, your spouse's trust in you, and other largely local factors, are you to become the target of a believable false accusation? Are you a movie producer? Then maybe someone should be in the room when you talk with starlets about casting. Are you a CPA working on a big company's taxes late into the night in early April with an attractive assistant of whatever sex you're into? Probably not, but that will depend on other local factors. Seat belts and football helmets. With the added complications that sometimes your precautions can hurt someone else. Good judgment can't be reduced to a formula. But it has to be based on more than "it has happened somewhere and could happen to me."
The “accidentally fired” thing isn’t real, which doesn’t mean it will never happen, to someone, somewhere. Everything happens. But we cannot worry about everything, nor scrutinize every possible public policy to that degree. Applied consistently, this would lead to no laws, no regulations, no policies, nothing but the war of all against all.
So why are some people worried about it? I mean, these are smart, “data driven” types. They know this isn’t an actual problem.
I've wondered about this myself, and my attempts to tease it out sometimes raise hackles.
I've driven over a half-million miles over the last 40-plus years and literally never been in a situation where it would have made a damned bit of difference whether I was wearing a seatbelt or not. But situations where it would be useful are far from uncommon, and strapping in is no big deal, so a risk-averse person is fully justified in buckling up and nobody thinks he or she is weird or misguided.
I've wandered the streets of cities perpetually under construction or renovation for decades. People sometimes die after being hit in the head by falling tools or masonry. Not often. Still, it happens somewhere, because something always happens somewhere. But if I wear a football helmet every time I go outside, people will think I'm nuts, and rightly so. Saying I'm risk-averse and it sometimes happens wouldn't wash as an explanation. Still, I'm not doing anyone else any harm, so who cares?
I've worked many late nights when on trial with attractive female co-counsel and no one else in the office. Some woman somewhere has falsely accused a man of sexual misconduct. If, for that reason, I refuse to work with my co-counsel without witnesses present, am I simply risk-averse, or a paranoid asshole, or Mike Pence? And unlike my silly football helmet, which is a harmless eccentricity, this behavior hurts my clients and damages my co-counsel's career prospects. But don't dare call anyone on it, or ask for an explanation of why this is a reasonable response to the risk.
This happens all the time when I examine witnesses. They think I am aiming for X, they vigorously deny it, and, in the process, give me Y, which is what I was after all the time.
The last thing I thought was that there was anything nefarious going on, yet both you and Maribou jumped on the assumption that that was where I was going. To be clear and explicit, I did not and do not think there is anything nefarious behind your self-described precautions. What I thought was that there was nothing behind them. And that, it seems, is the case.
Your witness.
Every accusation is a confession? What he isn't telling us might be something about the possibly toxic culture of his employer, an actual experience, either his own or a co-worker''s, with a false accusation, or some other tangible fact that might explain what seems otherwise seems like an extremely exaggerated fear.
Nothing cheap about any of that.
Most of the rest of us don't feel the need -- and more to the point, don't have the need -- to do anything like this. There must be something you're not telling us.
This makes good sense, but it won't prevent still more posts and comments that boil down to: "Yes, Trump is deplorable, and we're eager to vote against him as long as the Democrats nominate a Republican." And no fair asking what, specifically, they think actual Democrats will actually do that is so horrible.
Ask him what he would do if he was told you said something offensive online and it was traced back to the company’s IP and demonstrated you made the offensive comment while on the clock.
The boss would probably say "What the fuck are you doing making a public ass of yourself on my dime?" And he would be right, regardless of whether your public assholery was alt-right or SJW style. Anyone have a problem with that?
All in all, I think the commonplace labeling as evil of individual people based on their politics is a fairly new phenomenon.
It must be wonderful to be so young. I remember it as an already old story 50 years ago.
What do conservatives want? For people to act like they give a shit. To not get dunked on when they ask why things that used to be easy are suddenly hard.
As far as I can tell, everyone wants this. And nobody -- nobody -- has ever been good about it. The only difference now is that the people who used to be in a position to do it all the time have seen the tables turned ever so slightly.
If your notion of "pressure" is telling immigrant people that they have to do what they have to do, just like everyone else, then I guess we don't have a disagreement. Odd notion of "pressure," though.
And some of us are "deeply suspicious" of folks who are unwilling to let nature take its course and talk about vague kinds of "pressure" they are unwilling to specify.
On “A Polish Joke”
The Boy Scouts didn't teach CPR in my day, but the rest was standard stuff.
I've had many clients accused of things they didn't do. Adopting the Mike Pence policy wouldn't have helped any of them. For a lot of them, hiring a videographer to follow them around all day, which would have been even sillier than wearing a football helmet, wouldn't have helped either.
On “The Trouble With Incumbency”
While it would be foolish to underestimate the Democrats' ability to f**k things up, I keep mulling over a couple of questions:
1. What state is Trump likely to take that he didn't in 2016?
2. What constituency that Trump didn't do well with in 2016 is likely to show increased support for him in 2020?
3. Is there a reservoir of Trump-leaning voters that didn't turn out for him in 2016 and will be motivated to come out in 2020, or did Trump get essentially all of his supporters?
4. Will voters of color turn out better than they did in 2016?
I think the answers are: None, none, no, yes. Unless the Democrats f**k up, which they well might.
On “A Polish Joke”
It's not "Chris," Dave. Otherwise I agree entirely. As an aside, lawyer tricks work only when the witness is being evasive or tricky, or otherwise trying to pull something. It's like the old saying: "You can't cheat an honest man." A bit of an overstatement, but there's a lot to it.
"
What makes you think I was not a Boy Scout other than whatever cultural stereotype you may assign to me? In fact I was, for several years. I enjoyed it immensely, wasn't sexually abused, and live by the motto "Be Prepared" to this day. But I prepare for things based on an assessment of actual risks. Seat belts and football helmets. I know that requires judgment and judgment is a hard, adult skill, but I learned a lot about it in the Boy Scouts.
On “Two Cheers for William Weld”
He was never a social liberal, just an opportunistic libertine. At best, he didn't give a shit what other people did unless there was something in it for him. When he was a real estate developer/TV celebrity, there was nothing in it for him. As a politician, there is.
On “A Polish Joke”
I wouldn't argue with that number -- though I'm not sure we need to quantify the difference between what justifies buckling up your seat belt and what justifies walking around town constantly wearing a football helmet. What really matters is situational judgment. How likely, given the people you work with, your own behavior, your spouse's trust in you, and other largely local factors, are you to become the target of a believable false accusation? Are you a movie producer? Then maybe someone should be in the room when you talk with starlets about casting. Are you a CPA working on a big company's taxes late into the night in early April with an attractive assistant of whatever sex you're into? Probably not, but that will depend on other local factors. Seat belts and football helmets. With the added complications that sometimes your precautions can hurt someone else. Good judgment can't be reduced to a formula. But it has to be based on more than "it has happened somewhere and could happen to me."
"
The “accidentally fired” thing isn’t real, which doesn’t mean it will never happen, to someone, somewhere. Everything happens. But we cannot worry about everything, nor scrutinize every possible public policy to that degree. Applied consistently, this would lead to no laws, no regulations, no policies, nothing but the war of all against all.
So why are some people worried about it? I mean, these are smart, “data driven” types. They know this isn’t an actual problem.
I've wondered about this myself, and my attempts to tease it out sometimes raise hackles.
I've driven over a half-million miles over the last 40-plus years and literally never been in a situation where it would have made a damned bit of difference whether I was wearing a seatbelt or not. But situations where it would be useful are far from uncommon, and strapping in is no big deal, so a risk-averse person is fully justified in buckling up and nobody thinks he or she is weird or misguided.
I've wandered the streets of cities perpetually under construction or renovation for decades. People sometimes die after being hit in the head by falling tools or masonry. Not often. Still, it happens somewhere, because something always happens somewhere. But if I wear a football helmet every time I go outside, people will think I'm nuts, and rightly so. Saying I'm risk-averse and it sometimes happens wouldn't wash as an explanation. Still, I'm not doing anyone else any harm, so who cares?
I've worked many late nights when on trial with attractive female co-counsel and no one else in the office. Some woman somewhere has falsely accused a man of sexual misconduct. If, for that reason, I refuse to work with my co-counsel without witnesses present, am I simply risk-averse, or a paranoid asshole, or Mike Pence? And unlike my silly football helmet, which is a harmless eccentricity, this behavior hurts my clients and damages my co-counsel's career prospects. But don't dare call anyone on it, or ask for an explanation of why this is a reasonable response to the risk.
"
If I were transparent about what I was after, I wouldn't get it.
"
This happens all the time when I examine witnesses. They think I am aiming for X, they vigorously deny it, and, in the process, give me Y, which is what I was after all the time.
The last thing I thought was that there was anything nefarious going on, yet both you and Maribou jumped on the assumption that that was where I was going. To be clear and explicit, I did not and do not think there is anything nefarious behind your self-described precautions. What I thought was that there was nothing behind them. And that, it seems, is the case.
Your witness.
"
Every accusation is a confession? What he isn't telling us might be something about the possibly toxic culture of his employer, an actual experience, either his own or a co-worker''s, with a false accusation, or some other tangible fact that might explain what seems otherwise seems like an extremely exaggerated fear.
Nothing cheap about any of that.
co-worker's, with a false accusation
"
Most of the rest of us don't feel the need -- and more to the point, don't have the need -- to do anything like this. There must be something you're not telling us.
"
If people are going to "lengths" to avoid having #metoo moments at work, they're doing it wrong. It's not that hard.
"
This makes good sense, but it won't prevent still more posts and comments that boil down to: "Yes, Trump is deplorable, and we're eager to vote against him as long as the Democrats nominate a Republican." And no fair asking what, specifically, they think actual Democrats will actually do that is so horrible.
"
Ask him what he would do if he was told you said something offensive online and it was traced back to the company’s IP and demonstrated you made the offensive comment while on the clock.
The boss would probably say "What the fuck are you doing making a public ass of yourself on my dime?" And he would be right, regardless of whether your public assholery was alt-right or SJW style. Anyone have a problem with that?
"
All in all, I think the commonplace labeling as evil of individual people based on their politics is a fairly new phenomenon.
It must be wonderful to be so young. I remember it as an already old story 50 years ago.
"
Now greginak, no fair bringing facts into the discussion.
On “A Familiar Stench Wafts Up from Alabama”
Maybe, but people said the same thing before.
On “A Polish Joke”
What do conservatives want? For people to act like they give a shit. To not get dunked on when they ask why things that used to be easy are suddenly hard.
As far as I can tell, everyone wants this. And nobody -- nobody -- has ever been good about it. The only difference now is that the people who used to be in a position to do it all the time have seen the tables turned ever so slightly.
On “The Revolution Will be Televised on Fox News After All”
Why do people treat the Republicans' lack of appeal to minority groups as a bug to be fixed rather than the feature it obviously is?
"
That might sound good, but it doesn't explain why that's the rule both when the Democrats are out and when they are in.
On “The Immigration Debate is Over”
I suppose I'll have to decide whether to take your word for it, since you won't say what you mean.
"
Depends on what "it" is.
"
If your notion of "pressure" is telling immigrant people that they have to do what they have to do, just like everyone else, then I guess we don't have a disagreement. Odd notion of "pressure," though.
"
And some of us are "deeply suspicious" of folks who are unwilling to let nature take its course and talk about vague kinds of "pressure" they are unwilling to specify.
On “Wednesday Writs for 4/17”
I do the same thing. I always warn the clients.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.