This is already addressed in the OP. This would cause security risks as you must trust the developer of the extension.

I would think this would be fairly trivial for theymos to implement.

Christine Ford has said that she isn’t sure when the incident happened although she believes it was in ‘82. This is what she says regardless of what Wikipedia says.

If Kavanaugh is tried, he would likely be tried as a minor, who sits on the Supreme Court (or the DC circuit court of appeals). Although there may be a scenario in which it is unclear that the juvenile court has jurisdiction if it can’t be proven he was a minor at the time, and the “adult” court may not have jurisdiction if it cannot be proven he was over 18.

Regardless of the above, he isn’t going to be investigated by the police because Christine hasn’t reported the alleged incident to the police. Without a police investigation he cannot be tried not charged. I believe the reason this hasn’t been reported is because Christine doesn’t want to be charged with filing a false police report (which is a similar reason she doesn’t want to testify).

If there was any truth to what Christine has claimed, she would have filed a police report immediately after she went public at the absolute latest. I disagree with Trump that she *would* have absolutely went to the police when this happened, however there is no longer any reason she would no longer go to the police today because the reasons people don’t go to the police after these types of incidents no longer apply.

I have read a report that Christine doesn’t want to fly from CA to DC to testify and therefore must make the drive. If this is true, it would only be one more piece of evidence that shows this was intended to move the vote past the midterms.

Your email will always be visible to you when you are logged in. From your account related settings there is a checkbox that says ‘Hide email address from public‘ and if that is checked your email is hidden from the public. If you report any posts, your email will be visible to any moderator with jurisdiction over that post.

You can check if your email is hidden by looking at your profile from another browser.

I haven’t witnessed this kind of behavior specifically, however I have seen neopotism in other ways among those in DT, namely giving positive trust to friends, and for things like “keeping the good fight”.

If you think you can trust LoyceV in doing this, you should advocate him becoming a mod, and he can be subject to the forum rules in regards to moderation when handing out bans.

If we allow "normal" users to remove merit from others, then we will eventually have corrupt people such as Lauda handing out negative merit to their enemies, handing out negative trust for giving merit to those he does not agree with and saying that he can leave whatever merit to whoever he wants for any reason he wants.

At the end of the day, I don't think it is a big deal if a small number of people can spam with a paid signature because this will only be a small number of people, and will be easier for the mods to handle, and also because there is a limited number of merits available (to spammers), so they can only rank up a limited number of accounts to spam.

If there is a widespread problem of spammers getting a single merit to wear a paid signature, it would strengthen the argument that you must pay in order to wear a signature (and to rank up above a junior member -- in addition to activity requirements).

I was listening to the Radio today (Rush Limbaugh) and it was suggested that Mitt Romney was considering appointing Kavanaugh to the SC, and that Christine Ford's couples counseling session notes may have been inspired by this in an effort to torpedo his nomination in the event that Romney got elected. I tried to confirm this via a google search today, and was unable to confirm any articles from the 2012 election cycle confirming this, however there may have been whispers within legal circles at the time suggesting this.

It appears that Christine Beasley Ford is reluctant to testify under oath, and to my knowledge she has not reported the alleged incident to law enforcement. This is important because both lying under oath and lying to law enforcement is a crime, while lying to a friendly new organization is not. The worse that Christine is liable for is libel, which is difficult to prove, given the circumstances (although if Kavanaugh did sue her for libel, in an ironic twist of events, he may be the second Kavanaugh to be in a position to foreclose on a Beasley house).

I don't expect Christine Beasley Ford to testify, however in the unlikely event that she does, I expect that holes (specifically contradictions) will quickly be found in her testimony, and Kavanaugh will end up getting confirmed.

This is not a good idea. If someone is breaking the rules, then you should report them and a ban will be issued as appropriate.

It would not be appropriate to allow someone to arbitrarily be able to remove certain features granted to users.

The issue is not the lack of moderation, the issue is the way people give out merit. The posts that receive merit are not necessarily not deserving merit, but rather that there are posts with potentially unpopular opinions that do deserve merit, or posts with opinions that do not align with those in power that lack merit.

This is why I believe the merit system should be trashed, and that rank/signature abilities should be determined with activity plus a payment.

You are describing a different flaw in the merit system.

Merits should be given based on the effort put into the post, not based on your agreement with the content of the post.


The problem is that it is very common for people to receive merit based on the merit sender agreeing with the content of the underlying post. I have previously argued this encourages groupthink, and drowns out dissent of those who are powerful.

Christine Blasey Ford said in her Washington Post interview that she gave all the details she can remember and that she has nothing further to add. As it stands now, Christine has not spoken to the FBI about the incident, nor has she given any details of the incident under oath, both of which, she must tell the truth, or else be breaking the law. All that hearing her testimony would do is give Senators the opportunity to potentially find her less credible. Other than her stating her claims under oath, there isn't anything she can do to booster her side of the story.


I don't think we will see the same circus that we saw in the previous hearings, as I suspect either they will not be public, or an outside counsel will ask the questions rather than the senators. All of what you mention will likely be brought up though.

The lie detector polygraph test does not prove anything, assuming she was not lying, all it potentially shows is that she believes what she said, however it also possible to "beat" a polygraph even if you knowingly lie. My understanding of the specific polygraph test she took is that she stated that she believes a summary statement of her allegation is true, and I am not sure about other details in regards to how the test was conducted to look for inconsistencies, such as the measurement of baselines for both telling the truth, and for her being scarred.

The notes from the therapist (which were recorded contemporaneously with her conversation with her therapist, indicating they are an accurate reflection of the conversation, unless the therapist is otherwise shown to be unreliable) reflect that Christine said the incident involved 4 boys, not the two she is now claiming. This changed detail is only going to make her a less reliable witness. She also described the people responsible for the incident very broadly.

The reason why democrats want to delay the vote until after the midterms is because Democrats running for reelection in "red" states are under pressure to vote to confirm him by their constituents. Thus far, they have not committed one way or another. These democrats will have a lot of pressure to vote to confirm Kavanaugh even if only 47-49 Republicans are voting yes.


Generally speaking, people who commit these types of crimes are repeat offenders, and it is unusual for there to only be exactly one accuser decades after the fact.

Actually she will not. She has already said she doesn't remember what year the alleged incident occurred, how she got to the party, who else was at the party, or how she left the party. She doesn't even know where this happened other than it was in Montgomery County, MD, which is where she lived at the time.

If you are referring to Roe being overturned, then I would say that Roe was wrongly decided as the right to an abortion is no where to be found in the constitution. I don't think it will be overturned because of stare decisis. My opinion on abortion is off topic for this thread, however if the country believes this is an important right, then the country should amend the constitution (after making the case to other voters this is the right thing to do) to explicitly allow for abortions.

This is a very interesting detail, and IMO should be empathized. I believe it is evidence that she was planning on coming forward at the last minute as she did, and she wanted some credibility when she did.

 
Christine, through her Democrat activist lawyer has said she will not testify before the FBI investigates her accusation. The FBI does not have jurisdiction over the incident as there is no allegation of a federal crime, and I have heard reports that the Montgomery County, MD police is not investigating because they have not received a complaint about the incident by Christine.

The records she has is notes from her therapist describing an incident involving a different number of boys she is not claiming were involved. The notes, and conversation were over 30 years after the alleged incident, and do not mention Kavanaugh by name. She also did not tell any of her friends about the alleged incident for over 3 decades after the alleged incident. She does not know most of the relevant details surrounding the incident. If anything, this is a substantially weaker case than usual. 


I don't think there is enough time for her to be nominated, and sufficiently vetted in a way that will result in her getting 50 votes before the midterms. The senate can hold a vote 5 minutes after she is nominated, however I believe many senators will be hesitant to vote for someone for a lifetime appointment to our country's highest court without looking into her closely for several months.

The other person the Christine Beasley Ford claimed to be in the room described her allegation as "nonsense" and that such an incident never happened. There is not even evidence that the three of them were ever at a party together, and her lack of details make it difficult to outright disprove her story.


What evidence is there, exactly? There is a single uncorroborated, unspecific accusation by someone with political motivations to block the nomination, who went public with her claims at the politically best time. Both of the witnesses to the alleged incident have denied the incident took place. The WSJ editorial board argued that the evidence does not even warrant additional hearing, and they are right.

One person is making an unsubstantiated claim about something from 35 years ago, that she told no one about for over 30 years, and two people say it didn't happen.

If merit is sold, then some spammers might be able to post garbage and earn money via a signature campaign their purchased merit would allow them to participate in. However this will not be a widespread problem because moderators would retain the ability to ban these spammers and if this happens the spammers would lose out on the money they spend on the merit.

Further the idea that people will distribute sMerit for reasons none other than “post quality” without corruption is just ridiculous. If merit is given based on post quality then someone who is corrupt but has the ability to make good posts will “earn” merit indefinitely and can potentially sell said merit.

It isn’t realistically possible to moderate this because of off site communication channels and there isn’t anything to stop someone who is selling merit to occasionally give merit to random people to hide who they have sold merit to.

Hopefully you can access that board so you can post in all those threads where the merit pours.

The timing is clearly political, and will probably result in all accusers of these types of crimes having less credibility.

The claim in itself is not credible IMO, it is missing too many details and it doesn’t look like it can be corroborated.

I think there will be pressure on a small number of democrats to vote for him who represent “red” (leaning) states.

I think this might have had a bigger chance of derailing the nomination if it didn’t come out at a clearly politically motivated time.

Apparently many people are coming to meta to beg for merit:
Even theymos is trolling the spammers with a (mostly) nonsense post of his own:

Based on the number of people that “agree” with “each other” in this thread, I think it should be fairly clear.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote This will help you wear a signature.

Even your petition was made with nearly zero effort....

Is this supposed to be one of those garbage posts we are trying to stop?

I think it is a requirement that you be wearing a paid signature to write that kind of post, preferably advertising some kind of scam ICO whose bounty campaign is being run by an extortionist.

My concern with the merit system is that I don't think it necessarily identifies "good" posters, but rather identifies posters whose opinions align with those who are considering awarding merit to a particular post.

My concerns are not necessarily regarding needing one merit to achieve Junior member status, in fact I would think it would be net beneficial to require a $10 payment to participate in a signature campaign, although a smaller nominal fee may be beneficial to prevent things like spambots and those who are getting paid to bump ANN threads, although changes to the ordering of threads is probably a better way to address the later issue.

My concern is more surrounding the number of merit required to rank from Member up to Full Member, and higher. Very few people to date have received sufficient merit to rank up to Full Member or higher. I would argue that if someone pays for the benefits of a Full Member status, they have incentives to continue to make not-garbage posts.

I don't think we should do away with the activity system, and believe that activity should continue to play a role in users' ranks.

I currently have received more merit than everyone in the forum except for 218 people, and I have not received sufficient merit to achieve Senior Member status, but am a Legendary member only because I was grandfathered in. However I have pretty much always been able to obtain above market rates for signature deals (even after receiving negative trust) when I have been active and been trying to actively sell my signature. Surely there are more than 220 people who make sufficiently good posts to be a Senior Member.

An ideal system in my view would be for someone to pay maybe a dollar to become a junior member (that would not allow signatures of any kind), pay $10-$20 to become a Member/Copper Member, and from there, can pay some additional amount to rank up further provided they have sufficient activity, perhaps even sufficient activity after becoming a Copper Member to become a Full Member, and so on.

Edit:changed full membership to senior member. However I have barely received sufficient merit to become a full member.

Most of the last three pages of your posts are nothing more than 1-2 lines. It seems you also often say that you agree as part of these 2 lines of a post.