> That said, which four have been shown to be lying?
I posted a separate source for each of the four above. The two you're missing are the "rape on a boat" allegation and the woman who initially corroborated Ford's allegation on Facebook before backtracking after questions arose.
Keep in mind that at the time, the pressure was on to just drop him as a mere result of a large number of allegations. These allegations weren't intended to stand up to scrutiny--just to mount political pressure to drop him.
> I do believe something happened with Blasey Ford, although ultimately I don't know if her memory of the events will fully gel with what happened, or with what Kavanagh thought was happening at the time.
Agreed.
> Yes, I would have expected him to keep his cool even under such intense pressure.
I think he was in a no-win situation. If he had kept his cool, he would have appeared inhumanly cold. It would have been spun as him being uncaring and confident he's getting away with his sexual assaults.
That's kind of why I find this so disgusting, though. This is essentially the "new normal" of high-stakes politics. You're going to be put under a microscope as we hang "potential gang rapist" around your neck for weeks, and then win or lose, we'll move onto the next news cycle without even acknowledging how explicit this character assassination was, or the effect on future nominations.
And there will still be people who don't see this as reprehensible.
> Boof is farting and devils triangle is a drinking game?
Devil's triangle did end up being a drinking game, though [1]. It's not even weird or unexpected that high school boys would name a game after an explicit sexual act.
That the rest are being grouped in under "presumed lies" isn't fair, either, and the fact that this stuff is even being discussed is more an indictment of this circus of a process than the judge. We can expect future candidates to keep as many secrets as possible, be as vague as possible in answers, and we're all worse off for it.
I agree that a lot of the main stream media, and particularly social media, can whip up a shitstorm over unfounded allegations.
However, the root of the allegations against Kavanaugh did have merit, as in they deserved to be looked into. After they were made a number of other allegations were made with less merit, or outright lies. However, just as there's an issue with rushing to judgement when a number of allegations are made, there's also an issue of letting unfounded allegations cast doubt on other allegations.
The mere existence of unfounded or fabricated allegations shouldn't negatively impact on different allegations, just as the existence of an uninvestigated allegation shouldn't discount him as a candidate. If either or these thing were true it would be too easy to either destroy a candidate or invalidate all allegations against them.
Although a number of anonymous allegations shouldn't mean anything, I think you'd agree that if 10 Blasey Fords came forward with similar stories that would be a big problem. Obviously this is counter-factual, I'm not talking about Kavanaugh only how these situations can be dealt with in the future. I agree that this can get out of hand, but I can't see an alternative. Ignoring Blasey Ford did not seem like a viable option.
Regarding future candidates being vague, this could just be rejected. I don't have an issue with the path to the SC being a difficult and fairly grueling process.
To my eyes the Democrats severely wounded their stance by waiting until the last moment before revealing Blasey Ford. The Republicans lost it during the post Ford Kavanaugh questioning, choosing to grandstand instead of letting the prosecutor they'd specially brought in continue. Both of them fairly disgraced themselves. And let's not forget that the only reason this didn't happen with Garland is because the Republicans abused their power to avoid even having a hearing.
I posted a separate source for each of the four above. The two you're missing are the "rape on a boat" allegation and the woman who initially corroborated Ford's allegation on Facebook before backtracking after questions arose.
Keep in mind that at the time, the pressure was on to just drop him as a mere result of a large number of allegations. These allegations weren't intended to stand up to scrutiny--just to mount political pressure to drop him.
> I do believe something happened with Blasey Ford, although ultimately I don't know if her memory of the events will fully gel with what happened, or with what Kavanagh thought was happening at the time.
Agreed.
> Yes, I would have expected him to keep his cool even under such intense pressure.
I think he was in a no-win situation. If he had kept his cool, he would have appeared inhumanly cold. It would have been spun as him being uncaring and confident he's getting away with his sexual assaults.
That's kind of why I find this so disgusting, though. This is essentially the "new normal" of high-stakes politics. You're going to be put under a microscope as we hang "potential gang rapist" around your neck for weeks, and then win or lose, we'll move onto the next news cycle without even acknowledging how explicit this character assassination was, or the effect on future nominations.
And there will still be people who don't see this as reprehensible.
> Boof is farting and devils triangle is a drinking game?
Devil's triangle did end up being a drinking game, though [1]. It's not even weird or unexpected that high school boys would name a game after an explicit sexual act.
That the rest are being grouped in under "presumed lies" isn't fair, either, and the fact that this stuff is even being discussed is more an indictment of this circus of a process than the judge. We can expect future candidates to keep as many secrets as possible, be as vague as possible in answers, and we're all worse off for it.
[1] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/devils-triangle-drin...