Supreme Court Nominee

[bluesneakers]

Why is it women are always expected to have something to gain by telling the truth? Is personal gain the only motivation they can possibly have?

 

[kimlynn]

I watched them, too. I remember. And yes, sadly, not much has changed in how women are viewed. It's depressing and infuriating.

Let that be a lesson to us as women to keep our mouths shut and put up with it.
At least many probably felt that way after the second assault of AH. IMO

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

What Anita Hill went through should put to rest the sad line women do this to get famous or get attention, or to advance their careers. They come forward as victims who are putting their livelihoods (and sometimes lives!) at risk to help protect other women. To speak the truth. To hold men accountable. But they are called liars and treated like pariahs.

I seriously believe anyone who hints at a woman doing something like this for attention needs to take a trip back to 1991 to witness what she went through and see exactly how it affected her career and personal life.

She did the right thing, and what did she get for it?

Just sharing a bit of trivia, I guess, at this point: Women's rights groups crowdfunded to endow a professorship at the University of Oklahoma. But then the state legislature killed it and even tried to shut down OU's law school. Hill, who taught there, resigned under pressure in the late '90s.

However, victims of sexual harassment started reporting it. Claims to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose something like 50 percent (!!) in the years immediately following her testimony before the judiciary committee.

Maybe she helped launch the first ripples of #metoo?

 

[EuTuCroquet?]

I voted it depends. It depends on what happened. I am specifically thinking of the Martha Moxley case where one of the Kennedy cousins were involved in her murder but wasn’t arrested for years.

The times were different when this incident took place. What was a 15 year old girl doing at this party where drinking was heavily going on? Why can’t she remember how she got home? How did she get to the party? Was this the group of kids she normally hung around with? She apparently didn’t go with a boyfriend. Why did she go with Kavanaugh when he led her out of the main party room?

I’m sorry. I see too many areas for questionable guilt on her side. Me thinks she wanted to be in the “in crowd” with this handsome guy. She got his attention and her mind let go of her common senses! Had she been drinking?

Did he actually rape her? From what I’ve read, it doesn’t appear he did.

If not, then the experience in the bedroom scared her to death and that’s when she realized the mistakes she had made by following him.

This is my interruption of what happened. I may be 100% wrong! If this is the way it happened, why bring it up and what does she expect to gain? Anita Hill had lots of evidence, and it didn’t help her.

Reading her account will answer many of your questions.

California professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault

 

[bluesneakers]

Reading her account will answer many of your questions.

California professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault

By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.
...
As pressure grew, the New York Times reported that the incident involved “possible sexual misconduct.”

By then, Ford had begun to fear she would be exposed. People were clearly learning her identity: A BuzzFeed reporter visited her at her home and tried to speak to her as she was leaving a classroom where she teaches graduate students. Another reporter called her colleagues to ask about her.
...
As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being chipped away. Her calculation changed.

“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she said, explaining her decision to come forward. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”

 

[kimlynn]

I voted it depends. It depends on what happened. I am specifically thinking of the Martha Moxley case where one of the Kennedy cousins were involved in her murder but wasn’t arrested for years.

The times were different when this incident took place. What was a 15 year old girl doing at this party where drinking was heavily going on? Why can’t she remember how she got home? How did she get to the party? Was this the group of kids she normally hung around with? She apparently didn’t go with a boyfriend. Why did she go with Kavanaugh when he led her out of the main party room?

I’m sorry. I see too many areas for questionable guilt on her side. Me thinks she wanted to be in the “in crowd” with this handsome guy. She got his attention and her mind let go of her common senses! Had she been drinking?

Did he actually rape her? From what I’ve read, it doesn’t appear he did.

If not, then the experience in the bedroom scared her to death and that’s when she realized the mistakes she had made by following him.

This is my interruption of what happened. I may be 100% wrong! If this is the way it happened, why bring it up and what does she expect to gain? Anita Hill had lots of evidence, and it didn’t help her.

What were the 17 year old boys doing at a party where drinks were being consumed?
Even if she had been drinking that doesn't make her the guilty party.
By her account she went to use the restroom and once she reached the landing the two shoved her into a bedroom where the assault took place.
As for her fuzzy memory on the small details that could be the result of trauma and shock after the event. She may have also blocked some of it out to a certain extent.

 

[rosemadderlake]

Anita Hill effected big change as a result of her testimony. Thomas still lives with the shadow of doubt. Corporations starting writing sexual harassment policies, memos of conduct, I know I worked in one, and executives were worried. Women like Feinstein and many more ran for office. RBG, consummate advocate for equal rights gets confirmed to the SC in a 97/3 vote.

Professor Ford is rightly worried about bringing her allegation to light in this current climate. John Dean said this women needs witness protection so she can testify without worry from things like death threats. He said he was in and out of WP for eighteen or so months during the watergate hearings. This is a high profile hearing. My feeling is Ford really grappled with coming forward and knows she is speaking about an incident that speaks to the necessary character of such a position as a justice on the SC.

Some prosecutors interviewed tonight were hoping that Ford will attend the hearing on Monday to testify in protest. To advance her reasons for wanting the FBI to get involved. I hope she does. Kavanaugh should want that too if he was not at the party, like he says. One woman was talking about the kind of Qs that can help get to the truth, coorborate the assault, like when did she put Kavanaugh's identity to the assault. Did she know him or was that the first time they met, and she identified him later. Did someone see her directly before or after? Did she make notes or a diary as she processed what happened. Details about who else was there. Kavanaugh worked in the White House, Bush administration around the same time she told her therapist about the assault twenty years later. Did that re-trigger the trauma, then?

So, someone is not telling the truth? And what are the consequences? Who gains, who has everything to lose, who has lost already? Why are we handling a serious allegation this way? We as a country, as a society might be finding out something much more consequential than just the deadlines come next Monday. -jmo

 

[Elley Mae]

Kavanaugh's accuser and the curious George Soros links

Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford and the links to George Soros

Debra Katz, the attorney representingKavanaugh’s accuser — Christine Blasey Ford — is vice chair of the Project on Government Oversight, an organization that has been directly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

...

This is all I need to know.

No I don’t believe her.

 

[MamaTiger]

...

So, someone is not telling the truth? And what are the consequences? Who gains, who has everything to lose, who has lost already? Why are we handling a serious allegation this way? We as a country, as a society might be finding out something much more consequential than just the deadlines come next Monday. -jmo

A thought: Maybe they both think they are telling the truth. That is the issue of a 36 year gap between the incident and the accusations. As you said, did she know him? If not, could she in her being traumatized think it was him but it was actually someone else? Was it him and he not remember it, because in his mind she was a willing participant (wires crossed, they both had been drinking., a bunch of other maybe situations, OR one of them could be out and out lying. That is the problem with memories from the past. From everything I have ever watched or read regarding eyewitnesses to a crime, they are unreliable at the time of the event, imagine 36 years later. There will be things they remember vividly, there are things that they have thought into existence.

 

[mickey2942]

I graduated HS in 1982, I would seriously be unable to accurately account for many specific incidents. And was the accuser drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana? We don't know. How many people could an investigation even find at this point in time? Who was at the party? Where was it? Date? Time?

If an investigator knocked on my door to ask me about my recollection of a specific party I went to in high school, and the events, I probably wouldn't know, because I was probably high.

 

[Elley Mae]

"That it happened or not, I have no idea," Cristina King Miranda told NPR's Nina Totenberg. "I can't say that it did or didn't."

That's different from what Miranda wrote Wednesday in a now-deleted Facebook post that stated definitively, "The incident DID happen, many of us heard about it in school."


Kavanaugh Accuser Classmate: 'That It Happened Or Not, I Have No Idea'

 

[BetteDavisEyes]

*Breaking News* (CNN) Blasey-Ford is willing to testify if her personal safety is assured and if terms of interview are fair.

 

[BingoBongo]

This entire situation is such a joke. If she has pinpointed the right person (and there seems to be some doubt about that), and she is not outright lying...

I know of, at least, 8-10 men, and women, who did stupid things in high school but who have led EXEMPLARY lives since. Including myself.

Am quite sure that if we base our supreme court on the high school/college actions most of those currently sitting, they'll all have to go.

 

[BingoBongo]

He doesn't respect women's rights. Not raping most women, he has been around in the last 30 0r 40 years, is a low, low bar.

Nor did he rape the woman in question. Who said he doesn't respect women's rights now, and for the last 30 or so years?

 

[BingoBongo]

You only have to rape one time and you are a rapist is my book.

However, I am a strong advocate for the wrongfully accused and accusations such as this need serious evidence backing it up.

We cannot let accusations of sexual assault become a weapon. The implications of that are extremely dangerous. Not to mention the damage it does to legitimate victims of sexual assault.

HE DID NOT RAPE ANYONE! This is a dire problem in this country...rape is horrid, and turning a groping session (especially when the accuser herself was admittedly inebriated) into "rape" is a serious belittlement to those who were ACTUALLY raped.

I graduated in 10 years before Kavanaugh...I was "groped" in a similar manner at least twice...and I am pretty straight-laced! Trying to get to "second base" as we used to call it, is NOT rape.

 

[mickey2942]

I am NOT a "rape apologist", but one thing I do know, is that horsing around in high school, back in the '80's, was significantly different. No one was educated in political correctness at that time. It was a far different era.

And if I was investigating this alleged incident, I would ask if the accuser, actually verbally told the accused that his behavior was unwelcome and inappropriate. Or was she silent? Men are not mind readers. Silence is often interpreted as "consent". Had either of the people involved been drinking? That also clouds interpretation.

 

[kimlynn]

This entire situation is such a joke. If she has pinpointed the right person (and there seems to be some doubt about that), and she is not outright lying...

I know of, at least, 8-10 men, and women, who did stupid things in high school but who have led EXEMPLARY lives since. Including myself.

Am quite sure that if we base our supreme court on the high school/college actions most of those currently sitting, they'll all have to go.

Sure most of us have probably done stupid things, but caused only damage to ourselves and not another. There is a difference between being foolhardy and assault.IMO

 

[kimlynn]

HE DID NOT RAPE ANYONE! This is a dire problem in this country...rape is horrid, and turning a groping session (especially when the accuser herself was admittedly inebriated) into "rape" is a serious belittlement to those who were ACTUALLY raped.

I graduated in 10 years before Kavanaugh...I was "groped" in a similar manner at least twice...and I am pretty straight-laced! Trying to get to "second base" as we used to call it, is NOT rape.

This wasn't a groping session and she didn't consent to being thrown into a room by the two males.
According to her she had one beer. IMO

 

[kimlynn]

I am NOT a "rape apologist", but one thing I do know, is that horsing around in high school, back in the '80's, was significantly different. No one was educated in political correctness at that time. It was a far different era.

And if I was investigating this alleged incident, I would ask if the accuser, actually verbally told the accused that his behavior was unwelcome and inappropriate. Or was she silent? Men are not mind readers. Silence is often interpreted as "consent". Had either of the people involved been drinking? That also clouds interpretation.

She wasn't silent. She screamed and as a result Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth!

 

[BingoBongo]

Sure most of us have probably done stupid things, but caused only damage to ourselves and not another. There is a difference between being foolhardy and assault.IMO

I would challenge you to ask every 30+ year old male you know if he's ever tried to hug, kiss, pinch, grab a boob, etc. and been told to stop...and did he stop immediately. Any who say they did not, you take them to court for assault. She how that pans out.