As a non american. Just came here to say wow.

when i was 5 they aired like happy days and bigs bunny and tom and jered and i love lucy then when i was ~15 they put on friends. it was the first time i felt old

Manuel for discrediting accusers: nitpick minor details for which you are too lazy to find a plausible explanation. Now focus the debate on those minor details.

It's not like Polanski protecting euros don't have their Prince Andrews.

Roy Moore Is Poison In The Republican Bloodstream

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/...incart_m-rpt-2

As crazy as this sounds, I'm not convinced that the Roy Moore pedophilia thing is going to cost him the election.

The average Trump supporter is stupid (or at a minimum, has zero critical thinking skills, even if they are able to perform technical work), angry, has massive doses of confirmation bias, is extremely hostile to the "left wing media" and suspicious of what they perceive as manufactured controversies, and relies upon Fox News to tell them what to think.

To put it simply, I think there's a very good chance that the average Republican simply won't believe this, facts be damned. Or they'll find some way to justify it. Will be interesting to see what the ultimate outcome is here.

Call me an elitist country club liberal if you must, but you gotta be pretty damn creepy to be too creepy for the YMCA.

That doesn't sound even slightly crazy.

Not sure if anyone here is a listener to the 538 podcast and I'm not active on Twitter and so too lazy to tweet @NateSilver538, but he basically caped for right-wingers in just this way -- tut-tuting at woke liberals for indicating that this has anything to do with Alabama and conservative values, partisanship is strong and it's completely rational to vote for Moore. He even did the whole "well, if they had a choice..."

But they had a normal deplorable choice: Luther Strange

But the incredibly deplorable Moore won.

Surprising how much traction this apologetic gets. As I said, it's first or second level thinking. True enough on its face. But when do Republicans, the right, conservative Christians, etc. have their reckoning for nominating someone like Moore? The whole primary fight was about how brazenly unfit Moore was -- temperamentally, philosophically, politically -- for office. A bunch of elites in his own party said that (granted those 'elites' are basically now disrespected swamp creatures; also the point).

As has been documented: Roy Moore ignores SCOTUS orders, thinks gays should be prosecuted, thinks Muslims can't hold office. Then we find out he did what you might predict people with incredibly loathsome mindsets that dehumanize wide swaths of humanity and disrespect legal boundaries might do, and then we ...finger-wag at liberals for drawing any systemic conclusions about collective moral rot from this kind of **** parade. IF ONLY REPUBLICANS HAD A CHOICE. WHATAABOUT YOUR PARTISANSHIP

sigh

You are wrong, synth_floyd. If "most people" in Alabama liked Roy Moore and what he stands for, the race wouldn't even be close. As it stands at this moment, the polling has tightened with a few of the polls showing Doug Jones ahead or pulling ahead. I'm an admitted (biased) "librul" who intends to vote for Doug Jones, but I sense the [political] earth moving underneath our feet. People are listening (and paying attention) to the various reports. They're processing the information and making their own judgments as to who's telling the truth - and who's lying. I have a sense that women, especially, are paying attention. People are not talking about this, at least not the people I'm around, but they're definitely paying attention and evaluating. This is the kind of thing that resonates, the kind of thing that provokes heavy voter turnout.

Roy Moore definitely has supporters in this state who will vote for him come hell or high water. His "base" is significant, but his base is not monolithic or an outright majority. (According to AL.com, approximately 49 percent of registered voters in Alabama identify themselves as evangelical Christians.) These allegations have to be deeply troubling to a subset of his base. The question will boil down to how many of Roy Moore's base believe Moore's accusers and are troubled enough [about the accusations] to either vote against Roy Moore - or not vote at all. That number is not zero.

With a race as close as the polls are indicating, a heavy Democratic turnout combined with as little as 5 percent of Moore's voters staying home could make the difference. Plus, nobody knows what the news will bring tomorrow. Mark Shields, the syndicated columnist, is famous for observing that in politics a day is a week, a week is a month, and a month is a year. Maybe this is wishful thinking more than a cold hard assessment of reality, but I get the feeling that the tide is turning against Roy Moore.

Five-Thirty-Eight: How Roy Moore Could Lose Alabama's Senate Race

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...s-senate-race/

This is one of the best (most insightful) analysis I've read yet. What's more, it just might be correct.

Whether or not he actually signed the book is a minor detail? As it turns out there's a video from the Young-Allred news conferance showing the yearbook's date of 1977. So the yearbook comes out at the end of the school year in 1977 and 6-7 months later she's trucking it to the restaurant where she works and having people sign it? Maybe since it was Christmas and 1977 was so great for her that she wanted some Christmas memories in year high school yearbook? Or maybe she had it sitting around the restaurant where she worked having customers sign it 6 to 7 months later? Maybe the yearbook came out half way through the school year?

I am willing to believe Moore is at the very least a flawed character. Btw his wife is 14 years younger than he is so she was 24 when they were married. So him pursuing 16,17 and 18 year olds at age 32 seems highly probable. However, this newest allegation is at the very least questionable. Pretty sure hand writing "experts" will weigh in with some claiming it is his signature and some claiming it isn't.

i think doug jones will win and im willing to bet pocket change on it.

In Alabama that's called "going' a-courtin'"

maybe the yearbook came out around christmas.

regardless, I remember many people getting their yearbooks signed throughout their senior year. often kids would wait to sign a yearbook until a special even. like, omigod, sally, you are my bestie, I want to wait until our totally rad spring break trip to sign your yearbook. or, danny loves me so much and we are gonna get married, I want him to wait until after our super romantic homecoming (or prom) to sign.

some kids made good friends with someone during their senior year and then asked for a yearbook signing, which could obv happen at the middle or end of the year.

tldr, at my school yearbook signing was srs biz and did indeed happen all year for various reasons.

and even further, given the accusations thus far, and scuttlebut from his hometown, yes this is a minor detail.

"Handwriting analysis" is basically a debunked forensic science at this point.

Quick, does anyone know the melting point of the book binding?

you cant melt that binding with jet fuel

No one is forcing you to go to bat for a pedophile just because he's a Republican. You can just...not do it. Unless you live in Alabama, you don't even have to decide whether or not to vote for him.

Adios,

What is a reasonable alternative explanation for that signature in your opinion?

She kept a yearbook for 40 years and then forged it herself last week after the allegations came out to make herself look good? You think if someone went through all the trouble to fake it then they decided to date it with a time that raised your spidey sense?

Or someone wrote that as a joke 40 years ago and were waiting just for this moment to bring it out?

lol adios

He asked her to sign it at the restaurant where she worked. He even put 'Old Hickory House' on the entry. A grown ass adult asking to sign girls' yearbooks should send off all kind of alarms imo.

Also:

Also, if you were to forge a yearbook signing, why the **** put a December date? It would be weird and attracts attention. It reminds me of the ID I used to have when I was just turning 21 -- it was 8 random numbers that lined up in a way that every single person who saw it would say something about it. A couple times buying beer I got crap about it and they thought there was no way an ID would have generated a number like this -- but if I really made a fake ID, why do something that draws attention to it?

Today, adios learns that not every single school in the entire country is exactly the same as the school he attended.

Tomorrow he will be shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that not everyone in the country needs sprinklers because some people have yards made from rocks.

Yes, but he knows it's so likely to send off alarms that there's no way if he's guilty he ever would have signed the yearbook, see? That signature just proves he couldn't possibly be a pedo!

Adios, why is it so difficult for you to believe Roy Moore is a scumbag? You're really struggling itt. Did you have the same sort of struggle accepting Foley and Hastert were scumbags?