Nope, you have a made a good case to call women liars as you see fit and not believe them because they happen to be friends with Hannity. You want to keep the status quo environment that kept women from coming forth with their #metoo stories in fear of being scrutinized.

I’m sure Bill Maher would be happy to learn he gets 1 Free Rape without Consequence, so long as the target is Ann Coulter. I mean, she’s a conservative and just one person, and from what I hear that means she can’t be trusted if he were to sexually assault her.

I like these rules that we're making up on the fly to excuse the behavior of a democrat. It’s not shameless and disgusting at all.

I think the picture is hilarious, mostly because I feel like I can detect the slightest hint of doubt in Franken's eyes. "I'm going to regret this someday, aren't I?"

PI has the Dems a favorite to win a senate seat in Alabama because of Moore's behavior. Possibly the lesson is that having principles and holding your elected officials to standards is good?

These people work for you, you don't work for them. You don't have to bend your brain into pretzels to convince yourself that a physical assault is NBD because it serves your political party (maybe!). All signs indicate that there is an epic housecleaning job coming up for Congress. It would be a shame if everyone decided that principles are too inconvenient to have right when we're starting to make progress.

If "as I see fit" means "when I think they are lying" then, yeah, sure.

Although, there's also space on the
Call liar<----------------------------------------------------------->Believe immediately spectrum

that you steadfastly refuse to occupy.

Second part, okay. Whatever you say I guess. I do not think that encouraging people to come forward is worth not scrutinizing stories that deserve scrutiny.

lol

I mean, if [whoever] runs for democratic office and then Ann Coulter comes out and says he raped her, I probably am going to doubt it's true? Like, if you torch your credibility by being a well known idiot, your credibility is torched. It doesn't magically come back just because you're claiming sexual assault.

That's like saying, " I don't remember doing that, but its possible because I did stuff like that all the time."

If you never in your life did something like what is accused, you know it, you don't have to recall the incident.

You keep repeating your asinine argument like it will make it true or something. Dude, you're the problem, not me. You have offered no reason besides "friends with Hannity" to think the woman is lying. Even when Franken offered and apology made the statement inside that apology "he didn't know what was going through his mind."

You're basically ikesing here.

Case B just started. It usually takes one to break the ice before others find the courage to step forward as well. Maybe in Case B this will be the only time who knows.

This just isn’t true. People construct completely false memories that are not based in reality. People can completely block events from their memory, too. I’m not an expert on that stuff, but I do know that eye witnesses have believed they saw events happen that never did. It is certainly completely reasonable for two people to have different memories of an event they both participated in. I mean, literally every event we have witnessed is colored by our perspective. This isn’t some crazy statement.

Uh okay? You keep repeating this like it will make it true or something.

She's obviously not lying about the photo (I can see the photo!) I have no idea about the kiss thing. How should I know?

It's not my fault you can't read (you're the problem, not me), but my position is not "she's lying".

It's:

There's a lot of conversation going on in this thread trying to reconcile their doubt about this with their "always believe women" principle. A lot of it makes people look like idiots or hypocrites. Their problem is not that the have doubts, it's like, they've ****ed up by planting themselves on the far right of the:

bitches be lying<-------------------------------------------------------->always believe women
call liar...........<-------------------------------------------------------->immediate believe 100%

spectrums

The correct position is like,
<--------------------------------------------------------------------------->
.................................................. ..................................^
.................................................. .................................here

Then you can doubt in peace, no hypocrisy required.

In b4 rape culture blah blah

Well in the last year Republicans elected an admitted pussy grabber and a guy who assaulted a reporter, so basically Moore has to lose for this all to mean anything at all. I know the polls look good and rn and it would be a huge swing but I won’t be the least bit surprised when Moore wins by 5+ and nothing changes, expect that Dems are somehow made to look bad yet again for any impropriety. My stance is that you should do the right thing but I’m not convinced it actually gets us anywhere...yet. More likely there will be an epic house cleaning of Dems while the alt-right gains more and more purchase in the government.

Sure. If a bunch more people come forward, you won't see me defending Franken.

I mean, even just the photo is obviously inappropriate. It just doesn't rise to the level of the Moore allegations.

ok, but the moore allegations make him unfit for office, like as in literally unfit to walk into an office anywhere in america, business or otherwise. Or a school. Or a daycare.

What we know from Franken, the image, seems to be pretty close to inappropriate for elected office, at least if we're taking sexual harassment seriously.

It sounds like you're disagreeing with me, but I agree with this 100%.

sure, i'm just saying it makes no sense to bring up the moore thing here. it's irrelevant to this case

You're on par with Ikes. Your omission of relevant things like Franken's apology is telling. You're either being intentionally obtuse like Dvaut mentioned earlier or you're flat out in denial there's evidence that's been put out there the "friend with Hannity" maybe telling the truth. It seems you just want to be asinine and chide people for taking default positions like believing women when they come forward. When we have statistics that tell us a ****load of rape and sexual crimes goes unreported and you're itt begging people to doubt women or look else you'll look like an idiot or hypocrite it isn't a good look.

Like do you even realize you're presenting an either/or case?

These whatabouttisms and "but Moore" isn't the line people on the left should take.

Lol at you.

The post that mentions Moore is a RESPONSE TO A POST DOING WHATABOUTISMS about Moore. Like, read the stuff you respond to, it will help, I promise.

I absolutely do want to chide people who think that "position A is the default position" => "you can never take position !A"

Rara's post wasn't a whatabouttism. So lol you.

No one is saying people can't take other positions

I don't think that's happening here.

And we make different moral judgments based on what the sex thing is. Like blowing kisses at someone on the street is different than being Jerry Sandusky.

Maybe Franken should resign, but there is obviously a huge difference between the stuff Moore was doing and what we know Franken has done (so far), and that difference matters a lot.

If the bar to clear is "did sex thing" then we are kinda letting Moore off light in a roundabout way.

I don't know, I guess I just figure force kissing a woman is a line you would remember if you've ever crossed or not. Believing (rightly or wrongly) that you never crossed that line would be a reason to doubt her account.

The **** does Moore have to do with the Franken ****?

You may want to read some of the prior posts. I wasn't the one who introduced Moore itt in recent times. It was something along the lines of TD saying "x-amount of women accused Moore and only 1 person accused Franken..." and rara followed it up by pointing out the Franken story is only a day old.

It is tiresome having to handhold people who can't ****ing read. Care to explain how my post, about Moore, responding to other people bringing up Moore, is "whataboutism" and saying "but Moore"?

Follow the conversation if you want to play.

Dvaut is right that people are being triggered by Hannity et al, and I sympathize with those triggered. I think DVaut is mostly correct, but I also think it's OK to be extremely annoyed by the fact that people who have done much worse **** will end up Senators and President and the people who put them there will lecture us while we force Franken to resign. That's frustrating to think about, and hell -- we're not the DNC workshopping some response in here; I think we're just grappling with the bull**** before settling on the inevitable (Franken should resign).

I disagree a little bit that Franken's response is completely illogical and therefore disingenuous, though, even if he is both admitting wrong-doing and saying investigate me. I mean, if he's done worse or he's a serial offender or even if he's just lying about remembering it differently, then the following can be disregarded. But assuming none of that is true, I can see this being somewhat reasonable:

1) I am sorry. I did behave like a heel and she was/is right to be outraged.
2) Although what I did was bad, I don't think it warrants me resigning from my position.
3) While I'm not going to shout her down or call her a liar, I don't remember things the same way.
4) So, I welcome an investigation and if the findings support her version then I'll respect those findings and step down.


However, for people commenting on his behavior, even that is all moot if you find the photo to be damning enough on its own. That's a tricky question that it seems reasonable people can disagree about.