Al Franken is Gone, Sexual Harassment Allegations are Harming Democrats

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I'm very sure I have side otherwise several times now, I have even said Moore and Trump also deserve due process: a court trial and impeachment hearing. Everyone deserve due process and not be hounded to resign and apologize for crimes they have not been proven to commit.

That sound perfectly reasonable, but what if they are falsely accused? Say to help the otherside win?

Yeah I have linked to that already: half of them are anonymous, 3 of them make baseless unproven claims, ranging from "he touched my butt" to "he squeezed my waist", and the first one is a conservative with every motive to start this off. This is why an ethic committee should have determine guilt. His resignation is a long shot in having helped jones win, and cost us a progressive senator, now Tina Smith needs to somehow prove her self in 10 months as a junior minority senator with no power to do fuck all, meanwhile republicans are just watching the clock for our governor (who has cancer) to die so they can have full control of the state, where they will implement some horrible bills include the de-funding of unions via "Right-to-work" bill.

I want due process, for both democrats and republicans. I do not want democrats forcing out anyone on mere accusation and republicans denying everything including total admission of pussy grabbing sexual assault with impunity as "fake news". Yes the consequences of such strategies is highly in favor of the republicans, but the "moral high-ground" it provides the democrats is a lie. Due process is the moral high-ground, not warlock hunts and not "fake news".

I will take that as an admission of guilt.

A sex offender is one proven by law, if you can call anyone a "sex offender" at your whim, then I can call you a murderer at my whim.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Two cents: So, no analogy is perfect, right? But the juxtaposition is ridiculous: In one case, you have no evidence. In the other, you usually have a body. (To the beeblebrox, I did live in Oregon during the period we tried and convicted a man of murder without actually having a body.)

Still, though, all of this appears a nearly typological combination of two things: The immature "manly" thrill of shitmouthing a woman, and the cheap politicking of an inapplicable analogy in lieu of a substantial argument.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

??

We're not talking literary theory here, I think Barthes is kinda irrelevant to the specific matters (in the broader context, say we're assessing the work of Louis CK, then, perhaps...). Bill Clinton's "transgressions" were, and are, more than just "impropriety."

Again, these standards aren't really "new."

...which is only relevant in the context of legal procedure.

 

Yeah but Bells burned and ate the bodies in a satanic ritual. If you think she did not that because you are also a satanic degenerate as well.

Yeah I'm totally getting off on this... hail satan!

 

Isn't legal procedure, ultimately, what matters? Or are we just interested in the court of public opinion?

She appears to suffer from a scotoma when it comes to understanding this simple fact.

 

And yet you keep doing it:

• "In other words, you don't like the fact that the situation we, as a country, are in is a shitty one with no 'good' outcome, just the possibility of one that isn't quite as shitty, and so you are simply going to refuse to acknowledge it." (#222↑)

• "So you disagree, then - a knee-jerk reaction is, in your mind, the best course of action, regardless of the long term implications for who we are allowing to re-write and re-interpret the rules.
"Got it. (#233↑)​

I think most people would prefer to live in a world where they don't have need to keep fending off sexual violence, but, yeah, as you remind, there is an argument to other one might make asserting necessity according to political aesthetic.

I would laugh at that bit, but at some point we need to consider whether this is some tantrum of your pride, or if you really do intend to present yourself as being so dangerous.

But we should address one thing:

• "If you think you have some way of accomplishing that, then by all means - put it forth and start enacting it."​

Let us take a moment to consider the proposition that "we can't save everyone at this exact moment, we have to start somewhere", and, your bullshit about, "If you think you have some way of accomplishing that, then by all means - put it forth and start enacting it".

And then we're going to revisit the issue of why staining ourselves means giving away what isn't ours (#39↑), and the best you could↑ come up with was, "Okay then - let us hear your proposal on how this should be fixed, perhaps?" Because I did actually offer a response↑. The best part of your answer↑ to that was a basic question: "If we cannot end this problem entirely, do we not at least have the responsibility to put in charge a party that won't make it worse?" And, yes, that's the thing: Just like the passage you were responding to; we make it worse when we reserve aesthetics and circumstance to precedent over principle. Maybe I wasn't explicit enough↑ with the part about how the Democratic failure over the course of the last twenty years on this count is only masked by Republican full-blown rape advocacy, ownership culture, and purity cult shitfire spectacle that utterly blew their exploitation of the exploited to the sort of dust that nothing good can ever be built from. It's not fatalism↑ unless we concede that this stuff is going to go on ceaselessly and nobody is going to stop it. We've been cycling back through this over and over again; go take a look at #195↑ and #196↑. But it's also true, in this latest round, that we're back to #40↑.

Maybe you can take the last time seriously before making a new demand?

By the way—

—is process justice?

(Hint: If that is somehow a difficult question, or one you cannot answer with a simple yes or no, then you're doing it wrong; this is an established answer in the United States.)

 

Is what process justice? Are you asking if legal procedures are or should lead to justice? I would certainly hope they do (or at least strive to do so). If they do not, then they should be examined and corrected.

Does the court of public opinion lead to justice? Possibly, but it can just as easily lead to a witch hunt. It's why having and following an established legal process is important.

You still seem determined to ignore the fundamental flaw in your holier than thou mindset. I'm sure you can figure it out (actually, I have no doubt that you already have, and simply choose to ignore it); the pertinent question is why do you choose to ignore it?

 

Huh, lookit that...

http://time.com/5049665/republicans-democrats-believe-sexual-assault-accusations-survey/

But the poll of more than 2,300 adults also revealed a stark partisan divide in how Americans view sexual assault allegations. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe accusers: 93% of Democrats say they believe the women alleging sexual harassment, compared to 78% of Republicans. Republicans are also twice as likely as Democrats to think that accused men are being unfairly treated by the media (52% of Republicans think the media coverage of the sexual allegations is unfair, compared to 20% of Democrats). And while 77% of Democrats say the #MeToo movement will lead to meaningful change, 55% of Republicans say the movement is a distraction.

The differences between the parties are even more dramatic when the question turns directly to politics. Most voters in both parties agree that a Democratic congressman accused of sexual harassment should resign from office (71% of Republicans and 74% of Democrats). But when the accused congressman is a member of the GOP, just 54% of Republicans demand a resignation, compared to 82% of Democrats. These findings are consistent with a November Quinnipiac poll, which found that 62% of Americans would definitely not vote for a candidate who has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, but Republicans are divided: 42% say they would consider voting for the candidate and 41% said they wouldn’t.

​

 

If I lived in Kansas I would kill my self from the sight of endless field of corn every day. But no for this hypothetical I would not vote for Moore because he thinks "baby killing" and "sodomy" are the problems taking down this country, yes I would vote for an alleged child molester over him. Like I said before I would vote for Bill Clinton over any other republican president all the way back to Ike, or any random homeless person off the street over Trump.

"corroborated by others" how? define that, define "corroborated by others" Also it is not "guilty until proven innocent.

Oh really, last I check the president of the united states was elected despite all the allegations against him, despite his own admissions of sexual harassment, and despite repeatedly saying he would love if he could fuck his daughter. You show me these republicans resigning left and right for sexual offenses.

It would determine if he can remain in office dispute the claims against him, just like companies and colleges fire or expel people after a committee reviews the claims of sexual assault.

The first one that set it off was a conservative with evidence that her coming out was premeditated and planned with other republicans. The rest were the product of the #Metoo sexual hysteria in which anyone can change their memories on an encounter to then post about it and get thousands of likes and appraisal for coming out about surviving sexual assault. And the anonymous ones could purely be made up.

Yeah it is not like in this social media age thousands of people can't gang up on someone, harass him, harass his employer to fire him, hound him across the earth. Sure voice your opinion, your a murderer, not a problem, now if I was to call your boss with such claims, that would be a problem.

So was Satanic Panic right? No one denied due process by your logic there to. Look multiple people "corroborated" satanic child rape there as well.

And once again resigning was not proof of guilt, only that he rather quit then deal with more accusations.

Is that what you told them as you skinned them alive and ate their flesh?

Is a "sex crime" not the same as a "crime"? Does a "sex crime" not require a court of law to prove it, just as any other crime?

 

#rapeculture | #justiceweeps​

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Click because they didn't ask.​

I don't know what to say for Jill Meagher↗; Justice weeps as Justice will. Do you know how stupid I feel? I never looked up the end of the story until now. Then again, it was still going on in high drama as of August; what a fucking mess.

True, I admit I was thinking of Annie Clark ("rape is like football") and Landen Gambill (threatened with expulsion by the University, then harassed by the University on behalf of her accused rapist in order to circumvent a no-contact order); but her name was right there alongside the other two when I looked it up. I was also thinking of Kendall Anderson↗ (a criminal suspect for reporting rape). I was thinking of Meagan Rondini↗ (harassed to death after reporting rape).

If I lit a candle for every due process forsaken because, let's face it, she's a woman, would I burn down the world?

 

So we should demand other injustices happen to compensates for those injustices? Does anyone remember SAM and how she felt it was righteous for Palestinians to murder Israeli children, by hand no less, because of what Israel had done to Palestine? Is that where we are at now?

 

As noted, Franken did not admit to what he was accused of.
The question is not whether he is admitting, but what he was admitting. You insist on "it" being the most serious and condemning interpretation of the public accounts. Since you insist on that, Franken did not admit to "it" if responding to you.
He admitted to something, if you read between the lines, but he in fact denied (claimed to remember "differently") some of the specific allegations.

Similar how? Similar disrespect they found out about later?
Note that your description there is already making excuses etc for Franken, in some influential views: the allegation on TV etc is that the picture shows Franken groping - sexually assaulting - a sleeping woman. All that stuff about miming and joking and not touching and flak jacket and other interpretations and so forth is just people attempting to minimize what he did, see. Because they are partisan Democrats, they are defending the powerful man in his perversions and assaults.

I don't think he, or anyone, has any way to "refute" such claims, especially if they are partially true. Could you, if they were made about your past behavior, tomorrow? Refutation would not have been possible regardless of the truth of the matter, and the absence of it is meaningless - the assessment is on credibility, not proof.

Which is exactly as things should be - up to that point.

 

Oh please if there was a picture of Moore doing the same exact thing I would say it is stupid. My contention with Moore or Trump is not the allegations against them, but their policies or lack there of. Have you listen to this man for more then 3 minutes"



The fact 48% of Kansas voted for him is proof that at least 48% of Kanses's electorate are fucking bible thumping morons!

 

One more time around bullshit mountain, driver follow that bs:

The person at issue was female: Hillary Clinton. You were explicitly corrected four times on your repeated attempts to pretend it was about Bill. Hence the observation: you're not posting honestly.

Dishonest.
That wasn't the question, and you were corrected immediately - many repetitions ago.

It's not true.

Ask the speaking women, not me. I thought they were mostly coached and directed agents of bullshit rightwing attacks, actually.

That setup may be the goal of your incessant repetitions of falsehood and dishonesty and slander and so forth - you must have some motive, after all.

They also accused her.

Take a look:

So you are excusing her abuses of those women because of the circumstances. She abused women worse than Franken did, according to the women who spoke up - but that's no disqualification for high office, because of the circumstances, you say.

I'm not. Several women were.

So rightwing women's accusations are often bullshit.
I mean, I agree - but that seems discordant with your posting otherwise.

Dishonest.

Now you are minimizing and denying what the women said she did.

She did far worse, according to the speaking women. Do they have a point? You are the one lumping all this stuff together, after all.

Dishonest.

And so forth. The question is: disregarding the slanders etc, does this fairly common and widely spread approach harm Democrats, in particular? It's far more common in the Democratic Party intellectual wing than the Republican, and it presents an obvious vulnerability to self-destructive behavior in that Party - even induced. It is so one sided in that respect that the inducements and manipulations need not even be overtly Partisan - they are targeted by default. But does that actually do harm?

Note that one can argue upside: the Dems might have been well advised to dump Hillary Clinton on the basis of the unacceptability of what she was accused of, many years ago. It was, after all, of a piece with her compromising political character and triangulating mode of political negotiation.

 

Who witnessed it? name them! I see no evidence of witnesses except for the first one and in that case it was a comedy skit.

Sure they do, but to demand he resign in mass is unheard of, it is a hive mind hysteria of social media. Imagine if thousands of people were calling you a murderer, contacting your friends, contacting your employer, demanding your head, technically that is slander but the shear numbers and anonymity of the internet makes it difficult to prosecute even a fraction of them. Technically Franken has the right to sue thousands of people now for slander, but lacks the money or infrastructure to do so.

Well sorry for the victims but punishing the abuser via due process is more important, also how fucking hard is it to say he touched your butt, to a senate committee? I can say people touched my butt, no problem. Imagine the horror of going to Washington DC and speaking before the senate on CSPAN, broadcast across the world, 15 minutes of fame. And do you not think an ethics committee determining if franken could remain a senator or not would not be good enough? Sure a trial for actual crimes would be nice but that is passed the statute of limitations.

What has been the same? I don't remember Bill Clinton openly proclaiming he grabs pussy and wants to fuck his daughter.

I never said it was, only that the practical consequences of warlock hunts is to empower the very party that wants women back in the kitchen making sandwiches and babies while the men work to death to support their hetersexual god fearing christian nuclear family, no butt sex either. See there are moral problems and then there are practical problem, for example when dealing with the Alt-Right's demands to expel all non-whites the practical problem of kicking out hundreds of millions of people needs to be pointed out first, the moral problems take longer to explain. Likewise the practical problems of using masses of people's opinions to punish people outside the law is easier to understand than the moral problems. You for example have no moral problem with murdering and eating children, so it is going to take awhile if ever to get you to understand the morality, but the practicality is easier to understand.

Yeah, can you not interpret? Spell checker error to much for your brain?

No, many vote democrat for a variety of reasons, and I don't think the #MeToo sexual hysteria added to voter turnout for democrats.

I think some women lie. I will tell you why: because women are people, and people lie. People lie for attention, people lie for power over others, people lie for vengeance, people lie because they are insane, etc, etc.

Of the thousands of people who have been in frankens direct intimate presents, including my self, 4 named women have come forward to complain claiming he touched their butt, waist, french kissed during a comedy skit. Perfectly possible most of them are lying or have mis-remember in the context of taking advantage of the #MeToo sexual hysteria, the rest are simply anonymous people that may or may not even exist and the first one is a conservative with real motive to lie.

Oh so your protected, therefor not a problem for the employed then? How about your neighbors? Any of them missing children?

What credibility? As for the democratic party, yes his resignation was a play, a stupid one at that.

Some people on this thread seem to think it was proof. As for this never being an issue of due process take that with Tina Liebling.

I expect you to understand the concept of how you should not call people criminals without proof. Look it's real simple: stop calling Franken a sex offender, and I stop calling you a murderer.

No, I think you should not call people names like that without a court of law proving it. The rest is your strawman. Opinions and slander are not the same thing.

 

Process and Justice, Pride and Prejudice

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Click for a time capsule.​

Okay, look: Opinions are as opinions will, and no, nobody needs to know everything because nobody can. But there is a reason I said it's a yes or no answer, and I expect there is be a reason you either failed or refused to deal with that point.

The answer is that process is not in and of itself justice.

This is a known value.

Thus, one might call for "due process", or another might ask, "Isn't legal procedure, ultimately, what matters?" And someone might counter by pointing to this known value: Is process justice? No, it is not.

"Is what process justice?" You just flunked.

As you point out↑, there is a question of statutes of limitations.

And when you stop and think about all the untested rape kits, unexamined evidence, and reports generally not acted upon, we should remember that the call to due process is intended to help harassers get away with it.

Meanwhile, in a general question of legal process, is process justice, and the proposition is incapable of answering this point.

But here is a problem with your orientation in this dispute: Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, you and I could probably agree that, technically, Bill Clinton got some manner of due process. None of his alleged victims did, and there are multiple important points, there, but none of them suit your superficial political aesthetic. And the thing is this: No matter what the question, the answer is that it's the woman's fault. And when Hillary Clinton's opponents dragged up Bill's name during the campaign, Sanders supporters and Republicans alike were happy to make it all about her. The historical lessons of Bill Clinton's sex scandals remind that Republicans never cared. And no matter how much Democrats call that behavior sleazy, we just saw last year that plenty are perfectly willing to be sleazy. In all of this, the point of noting Bill Clinton's sex scandals is to attack women. Eventually, this fact becomes glarlingly apparent, and the only reason to refuse it is because one wants something out of doing so.

So, legal procedure in Florida, for instance, would put a teenage girl in the custody of a convicted murderer and accused child molester as a safety measure because her mother is a lesbian who might someday decide to abuse her. Legal procedure in Florida says it's not rape depending on what clothes she wears. In Seattle, we recently had a case in which our female police chief, shortly after arriving, finally oversaw the retirement of a police officer accused of serial sexual harassment. Two notes about that seem really important: First, there was a "legal procedure" at every stage of the process that prevented the officer from ever having to answer in an actual legal proceeding: Internal review, union regulations, and so on. He was allowed to retire instead of being dismissed for cause. At any rate, when the department finally intervened, they had over a hundred reports from one victim, one woman he had used his authority to stop and harass over a hundred times.

So I ask you again, sir: Is process justice?

And it is a known resolution: Process is not, in and of itself, justice in these United States.

Do you know the words "kangaroo court"? Do you know what the term means?

That's why process is not, in and of itself, justice. We're Americans; we literally fought a war about this. And there are some pissy people in Alabama, for instance, who might assert we've fought two.

And, hey, as long as I'm thinking of the South, we should consider how it was before anyone gave a damn about the untested rape kits: In a time when employers complain about a minimum wage of three dollars and thirty-five cents an hour, police would not start a rape investigation without the rape kit, which ran about twelve hundred dollars, and was paid for up front. If the woman couldn't afford twelve hundred dollars in the Deep South in the 1980s, there wasn't going to be a rape investigation.

There are reasons why we're falling back to demanding the accused get the process and procedure they evaded and escaped. And when people speak of the ethics process in Congress, for instance, yeah, no wonder: The staff director for the Office of Congressional Ethics, who is also its chief counsel, stands accused of using his office to compel the arrest of others after he found himself in a fight because those people intervened in his alleged verbal abuse and physical assault of women in a Milford, Pennsylvania; one of the arrested has already seen his charges dropped and record expunged because of this. But he literally got "taken outside" for his conduct; now that law enforcement understands why, they are much less willing to charge those others. Yeah, that's the chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics↱.

And as we learn about secret slush funds to pay off sexual harassment and abuse survivors, and requirements to nondisclosure in order to hide predatory behavior, we don't even bother asking ourselves if process equals justice because it is already a known value: No, it is not.

The famous line is that democracy is the last refuge of the scoundrel. When process is the last refuge of the scoundrel, well, justice may be blind, but She hears this bullshit.

The accused can certainly invoke legal procedure on their own behalf.

Meanwhile, appeals to process and procedure ought not ignore that process and procedure often can, and in this range of consideration very much does, forestall justice because that is what such processes are for.
____________________

Notes:

Garcia, Eric. "Report: Head of Congressional Ethics Office Sued". Roll Call. 14 December 2017. RollCall.com. 17 December 2017. http://bit.ly/2BqZnu7

―End Part I―​

 

Part the Second

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Click just because.​

I would ask you to imagine for a moment that you and I are police officers. One day we encounter a black suspect and, you know, being a cop is scary, so we draw our firearms and point them. I then tell him to do one thing, and you tell him to do another. He very carefully attempts to do both as we continue shouting directly contradictory instructions at him. But he's not being fast enough about it, so I step up and physically assault him. And then we shoot him to death for falling over because being a cop is scary. People object that we can't do that. So we say, yes, we can, and look, here's the proof he had a gun; you can see it in the crime scene photo. But someone makes the obvious point: There is no gun in the photo. Yes there is, right by the evidence tag marking the gun. There is no evidence tag marking the gun. Oh, well, hey, just a second, I need to go get a new crime scene photo. Okay, okay, so, here's the new photo. See? I told you so.

At any rate, the inquest jury—a process most people don't get—was asked two questions. The first returned an answer that the jury could believe the officers were frightened for their lives when they shot the victim. That was one of the questions they were asked; not whether there was proper cause, but whether they could believe the police were frightened. The second question brings reality around: The victim was shot to death while obeying police instruction. There will be no charges filed, because the officers were scared when they shot a man to death for the crime of following their contradictory instructions.

And that is process.

Is it justice?

†​

Quite frankly, I would ask you to take a look through your posts in order to survey the amount you're reaching out to for brotastic political solidarity.

That is what it is, but it also separates your posts from questions of utility.

How seriously do you want anyone to take you for making shit up as you go in pursuit of self-gratification? People can watch the masculinist argument in all this looking around and grasping after solidarity. It's not just a political argument you're putting up, it's an identity fight; look at #266↑: Two paragraphs; thirty-three words. Six words ask a relevant question, but then there another eleven attending a juxtaposition that destabilizes the question. The second paragraph is fifteen words affirming a known troll for the sake of insulting a woman you disdain for your inability to comprehend a situation outside the context of your most immediate regard for self-interest.

You spent forty-seven percent (forty-six and seven-eighths, to be precise) of a post in which you are actually incorrect insulting a woman who disagrees with your arguments to preserve sexual harassment in the workplace. Those six words? That eighteen and three-quarters percent of your post? Those actually can lead to a substantive discussion, but you couldn't answer the next question without rewriting it. It's easy enough to take you seriously, and accept that when you ask about legal process you have no real idea what you're referring to—

—except then there is this manner of bullshit and, yeah, there is a point at which the only reason you as a human being are worth taking seriously is the danger unto your fellow human beings you so deliberately and recklessly posture.

You might wish to reconsider wasting anyone's time with self-righteous bawling when undertaking such effort to present yourself as not smart enough to understand the issues. This is one of those issues about which playing stupid is really, really dangerous. At some point, the smart precaution will be to accept as genuine such postures of dangerous stupidity.

Clearly you don't like the way some respond to your posts, but it's also quite clear you don't give a damn about the implications of what you're saying.

―Fin―​