Kirsten Gillibrand

[milestogo]

I'll never forget the way she threw Al Franken under the bus. And she wasn't the only one.

I'd rather have Al as my Senator any day of the week.

[SheltieLover]

1. Absolutely! The Swalwell issue stinks of repuke rat fuckery.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

2. Even Al called for a Senate Ethics committee ivestigation.

Into allegations.

As should Eric Swawelll prior to being asked to resign.

Have the Republicans thrown out Tony Gonzales yet?

[LeftInTX]

24. Tony dropped out. There is talk of kicking him out of congress.

I doubt if they will. I doubt if they will kick Swalwell out also. No one wants a special election.
Be careful what you wish for. If Gonzales is kicked out, Abbott will call a rigged special election. He knows how to rig them. Remember he wouldn't call an election after Sylvester Turner died? We had to wait 11 months. And with an R seat, he will get all his cronies togther. Start a shadow campaign, then announce an "emergency election" in two weeks. Meanwhile, they have been campaigning the entire time. That's how Abbott rolls. We have a good chance in Nov with Katie Padilla Stout. Let's not blow it by giving AK Guy "incumbent advantage".

[Nanjeanne]

3. The 'allegations" against Franken were nothing compared to Swalwell. What Gillebrand and others

did to Franken was disgraceful. This is completely different and the allegations are much more serious.

[milestogo]

8. The allegations are serious.

The most serious is the accusation of a rape while under the influence.

Since there was no medical exam done at the time it is unprosecutable.

[ananda]

18. The "allegations against Franken were nothing, period.

It was a comedy photo.

[EdmondDantes_]

19. False. Why do Franken defenders continue to say that?

8 women accused him of groping in addition to Tweeden also having a valid complaint about that creepy photo. The calls for him to resign didn't gain steam until the 7th woman.

https://www.twincities.com/2017/12/07/al-franken-sexual-misconduct-allegations-timeline-senator-minnesota/

Please be honest about it.

[Ocelot II]

28. Read this, and please be honest about it.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken

[EdmondDantes_]

39. I've read it in the past. It didn't change anything for me

Why? Because you still have to explain 8 different women coming forward. What's more likely 1 person lying or 8 unrelated people some of whom told people in their lives at the time?

Also we know that false allegations are rare for a whole host of reasons.

And again, Franken defenders almost always try to ignore the 7 additional women, so there's a fundamental level of dishonesty in the defense that makes it hard to buy into.

The continued defense just demonstrates why women don't come forward because apparently 8 of them aren't equal to the word of one man who literally apologized for giving women reason to doubt him.

[Bluetus]

45. Mob mentality

Charges are not facts and if there are two sides to a story, they both deserve to be heard.

The charges against Swallwell date back 7 years. I understand that some folks enjoy an immediate burning at the stake, but surely taking a few weeks to get it right is surely not too much to ask.

[Ocelot II]

46. One of the alleged incidents occurred in 2024, but of course all of the accusations

must be investigated fairly and even-handedly, regardless how much time has elapsed. These things don't get better with time, though.

[Bluetus]

53. Would you acknowledge any of these 4 things?

1) if there are several different accusers from different time periods, then it is most likely that some third party is actively trying to discover and connect these multiple charges?

2) If there is a person trying to make such a case, they are likely motivated for personal reasons (money, fame, politics)?

3) Considering that this was dropped in the middle of a major campaign, the motives are most likely political?

4) If the motives are political rather than judicial, they may not care whether there is any evidence that would stand up in a trial?

[Ocelot II]

54. Any of those things are possible, which is why a thorough investigation is needed.

[niyad]

56. Thank you for this!

[Cirsium]

29. Franken

I find Franken to be far more credible than his accusers.

“I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies… As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn’t. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There’s more I want to say, but the first and most important thing – and if it’s the only thing you care to hear, that’s fine – is: I’m sorry. And the truth is, what people think of me in light of this is far less important than what people think of women who continue to come forward to tell their stories. They deserve to be heard and believed. And they deserve to know that I am their ally and supporter. I have let them down and am committed to making it up to them.”

“I take thousands of photos at the state fair surrounded by hundreds of people, and I certainly don’t remember taking this picture. I feel badly that Ms. Menz came away from our interaction feeling disrespected.”

“It’s difficult to respond to anonymous accusers, and I don’t remember those campaign events.”

“I can categorically say that I did not proposition anyone to join me in any bathroom.”

"This allegation is categorically not true and the idea that I would claim this as my right as an entertainer is preposterous. I look forward to fully cooperating with the ongoing ethics committee investigation.”

[jfz9580m]

50. I mostly agree with you but not entirely

Last edited Sat Apr 11, 2026, 11:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Humans cannot afford to be robotic and it does harm women, blm, civil rights etc to take rigid positions beyond a threshold.

It is the hardest thing -what is absurd purity? What is sleazy, self serving trash trying to disgracefully pass for “nuance”. I saw an exceptionally shameful instance.

This guy - Dave Angus, a Darwin Awards candidate if I ever saw one:

https://www.science.org/content/article/meet-three-scientists-who-said-no-epstein

Why didn’t Agus just tell Epstein why he was unwilling to meet?

“I don’t want to upset a powerful person,” Agus says. “It wasn’t my job to judge him, and I’m not a confrontational individual. I’m also not a moralist, and I don’t pretend to know the whole story.”

“But at the same time, I’m not going to meet with a person with [the] history that I saw online,” Agus continues. “To me, it was very simple: Don’t associate with him.”

What does this guy want? A medal for a no-brainer? This is the type of “nuance” that pisses me off. That Angus guy is a disgrace. If I see one more of these martyrs who turned down Epstein and are trying to make a virtue of a shameful error. You should never ever be anywhere near Epstein.

Otoh even I thought the Tim Hunt thing was an ott response to a joke. A joke that didn’t even offend the women who were present. I have seen creepy jokes - the few human male sexual harassers I have met (a doctor at a clinic in 2010, a creepy defense contractor here in India in 2014, a creep at an Akshaya office in 2016? 2017?) try “jokes” and they were totally creepy.
But the Tim Hunt think just looked clunky.

It always makes one tense when one sees people who are not creeps or jerks and certainly cannot pull off being controversial with finesse fumble bad jokes and set off a firestorm of nontroversy distracting from very real creeps. Everything is finite, the more time that goes into this bullshit and the more it helps actually malicious misogynists use internet bs to go “look feminists are unreasonable”, the worse it gets for women’s rights as these whiny men’S rights types then go and peg “nuance” where rapists and creeps or best case that shameful Angus guy are:


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-hung-out-to-dry-interview-mary-collins

His treatment also demonstrates the innate cruelty of social media, and in particular the savage power of Twitter, which first revealed the scientist’s transgression. The tale also demonstrates how PR departments, in trying to protect the reputation of institutions, often do so at the expense of the individuals who work for or make up those bodies.

That one pissed me off at a time when I know how sleazy a lot of this social media mob type is bts in how “transactional” they themselves are not to mention craven. I never join groups. Well okay very disempowered ones - that is different.
That is not this bullying shit where the actual issue is less important than the joy of bullying.

As far as I know, Tim Hunt has never been accused of any misconduct and importantly his students and postdocs supported him.
I have a clunky mentor like that myself from 2011-2012. Decent guy and not like Angus, but certainly a clunker like Tim Hunt. A lot of the time I am irked at the guy for various things unconnected to misogyny, sexism or creepiness, but a different type of brain damage “You should totally limpidly trust Google!!!” with meninist side-effects..I’ll get right on that!!!! I heart Google!!!! But still I support the guy as he is a good scientist if a bit thickheaded on the managerial side. One of his students, who was decent if a bit of a pill, said as much. Maybe that place turned him into a pill.

We set these things at different places depending on our experiences, but in the end it is not that complicated. The vast majority of men even while insensitive and reflexively all “we men have the right to exist too! MenToo!”are not outright harassers out of a survival instinct if nothing else. In groups bad behavior escalates.

As for the whiny MenToo! types.
Nobody said you didn’t have the right to exist!!!! You still can’t take over everything and set creepiness and grey area standards at the meninist comfort zone level!!! Nice try though idiots!!!!

Totally disingenuous and thinking they can fool all the people all the time. I find it grimly amusing at times.

Lumping in every case and every offence into one broad category is what causes these dynamics of systemic sleaziness and unfairness followed by mob backlashes which the creeps exploit expertly.

I think about this stuff way too much as these grey areas in tech have poisoned my life. And that is so much more intangible than a straightforward grope.

I have a memory of 33 years of a fairly happy and pleasant life in science and education where the system of trust worked in academic science and education far from the types of creeps who take money from Epstein.

And close to 15 now in a loathesome grey area where so much of what I have to assess is mediated by clunky machinery and harassing dynamics, but with no clear human face.

The problem with succumbing to mob mentality and robotically rigid thought processes-hey we all have them - is that in the end it makes life worse for women.

Any robotic ways have been beaten out of me by this excruciating process I underwent.
And in the end policing jokes and language and mixing that up with everything from creepiness that makes women or people broadly uncomfortable (aside from the sort of moralizer who is not truly uncomfortable but wants to police ribald humor, drinking etc in contexts where it is not inappropriate, but a normal facet of human life , in context.) works out worse for all the worst off people.

I generally dislike The Atlantic and find it too conservative for my taste. But with a stopped clock conservative insight this is almost the only thing where they catch that. I like Lucien Greaves of the TST unlike Louis CK or that guy mentioned in that article (a total creep). It is always case by case with humans and we are a cooperative and social species (one of our least attractive qualities beyond a point imo), but we do in the end each have to think alone and not like a collective slime mold.
I can’t say I liked these pieces as I hate The Atlantic, but they did nail a few things:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/social-justice-rebellion-satanic-temple/675481/

It is so hard to communicate when that Angus guy also talks about nuance, context, grey areas, morality..when I talk about those things I mean Sunny in Philly or Sarah Silverman, not bloody Jeffrey Epstein.
Or one would have to return to the creepy sanitized morality of Pleasantville.

It is one of the most complicated human things and I resent having to soend so much time on it as someone who is not an HR professional and angry that clunkware is being forced along with gig work over have decent professionals with stable jobs mediate real oversight not the crass PMC style liability culture that is sensitive to mob mentality ot whatever that Angus guy represents, but never actual respect for the spirit of anything.

I actually usually try to avoid all this shit having no wish to annoy the body politic as a “free thinker”. But eventually the nuisance level gets to a point where one glumly wades in, satirically and hopelessly eying this pile of Idiocracy fueled sleaziness wondering how to communicate with a clearly mostly maniacally stupid world. It is just too damn time consuming to attempt Carlin’s “finding the universe in every moron’s eyes”. All one can attempt is use examples from the real world that capture most contexts and human personality types within reason to avoid more shitty ai and endless social engineering and dubious social experiments as hacklike as the FB emotion manipulation and similar fluff.

Carr gets it. Zuckerberg is an idiot:
https://www.roughtype.com/?p=8724

I am glad there people much brighter than me to parse these things so I can figure out what I think but found hard to articulate.

I found this piece profoundly helpful while gloomily brooding over this stuff daily:

https://thehumanist.com/magazine/september-october-2015/features/strange-bedfellows-misanthropy-humanism-the-many-faces-of-george-carlin

[Nanjeanne]

31. Yes exactly.

[SocialDemocrat61]

4. She was one of many

Here are some of the others.

[Amaryllis]

9. Who was one of many what?

[SocialDemocrat61]

11. 39 Senators

called for Franken to resign on the same day including Gillibrand, Sanders, Warren and Harris.

[Amaryllis]

12. Thank you!

[Bengus81]

13. They just KNEW if they played nice and canned Franken then Republicans

would do the same with their congressional members. ROFLMFAO!!!!

Got the football pulled yet AGAIN............

[Maru Kitteh]

37. You speak of playing nice, footballs. Games, teams, and jerseys. R vs. B

As a survivor and a woman, I see you.

[Ocelot II]

30. And since then many of them have said they regretted it.

A remarkable number of Franken’s Senate colleagues have regrets about their own roles in his fall. Seven current and former U.S. senators who demanded Franken’s resignation in 2017 told me that they’d been wrong to do so. Such admissions are unusual in an institution whose members rarely concede mistakes. Patrick Leahy, the veteran Democrat from Vermont, said that his decision to seek Franken’s resignation without first getting all the facts was “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made” in forty-five years in the Senate. Heidi Heitkamp, the former senator from North Dakota, told me, “If there’s one decision I’ve made that I would take back, it’s the decision to call for his resignation. It was made in the heat of the moment, without concern for exactly what this was.” Tammy Duckworth, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, told me that the Senate Ethics Committee “should have been allowed to move forward.” She said it was important to acknowledge the trauma that Franken’s accusers had gone through, but added, “We needed more facts. That due process didn’t happen is not good for our democracy.” Angus King, the Independent senator from Maine, said that he’d “regretted it ever since” he joined the call for Franken’s resignation. “There’s no excuse for sexual assault,” he said. “But Al deserved more of a process. I don’t denigrate the allegations, but this was the political equivalent of capital punishment.” Senator Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, told me, “This was a rush to judgment that didn’t allow any of us to fully explore what this was about. I took the judgment of my peers rather than independently examining the circumstances. In my heart, I’ve not felt right about it.” Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator, said, “I realized almost right away I’d made a mistake. I felt terrible. I should have stood up for due process to render what it’s supposed to—the truth.” Tom Udall, the senior Democratic senator from New Mexico, said, “I made a mistake. I started having second thoughts shortly after he stepped down. He had the right to be heard by an independent investigative body. I’ve heard from people around my state, and around the country, saying that they think he got railroaded. It doesn’t seem fair. I’m a lawyer. I really believe in due process.”

Former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who watched the drama unfold from retirement, told me, “It’s terrible what happened to him. It was unfair. It took the legs out from under him. He was a very fine senator.” Many voters have also protested Franken’s decision. A Change.org petition urging Franken to retract his resignation received more than seventy-five thousand signatures. It declared, “There’s a difference between abuse and a mistake.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken

[SocialDemocrat61]

32. So?

7 out of 39. Big deal.

[Ocelot II]

33. How do you know the other 32 didn't also regret it?

The article is long and detailed. I suggest you read the whole thing.

[SocialDemocrat61]

34. I don't

Have any of them said so? If not there is no reason to think that they do.

[Skittles]

43. no reason to think that they don't, either

[SocialDemocrat61]

47. Is there evidence

that they don't? Otherwise, we can only go by their last statements on the issue.

[FakeNoose]

14. I don't see Chuck Schumer on this list - WTF?

It was Schumer's idea to throw Al Franken under a bus. Schumer never liked Franken, and never lifted a finger to help him while he was in the Senate. Most of these Senators voted against Franken because Schumer told them to.

[SocialDemocrat61]

22. Schumer probably directed things

from behind the scenes.

[Skittles]

17. SHE LED THE WAY

Last edited Sat Apr 11, 2026, 07:49 PM - Edit history (1)

yup

[orleans]

20. same here. nt

[SocialDemocrat61]

21. By less than 5 minutes

It was obviously an effort coordinated by leadership.And not even the first to do so on national television.

Plus she’s not dead to the people of New York. They have re-elected her twice since.

[Skittles]

25. editing

cannot say what I really think of her

[SocialDemocrat61]

27. You are entitled to your opinion

But it’s just opinion.

[Skittles]

36. aren't they all?

[EdmondDantes_]

40. Some are more supported by facts than others.

For example pretending Gillibrand was out there all alone, is an opinion unsupported by the facts.

[Skittles]

41. I never said she was alone, I said she LED THE WAY

THAT IS A FACT

[SocialDemocrat61]

48. No its not

We don't know what went on behind the scenes so we don't know who led the effort. By Franken's account of the events it sounds more like Schumer was leading.

[Skittles]

51. well like you said THAT'S YOUR OPINION

DONE here

[SocialDemocrat61]

52. No.

That’s the facts. We don’t know what happened behind the scenes. If you have evidence of what occurred from a credible source, please present it. As far as Franken’s own account, are you accusing him of lying about Schumer?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. I'd rather have Tina Smith, thanks. She's been fantastic.

[Autumn]

6. No and they won't.

[Amaryllis]

10. Who won't what ? Indefinite pronouns. Cant tell what your references refer to.

[aeromanKC]

7. +1000

[LiberalLovinLug]

15. The whole conservative establishment in the party has to go

They use any excuse to get rid of progressives. And Al was more progressive.
They push out David Hogg, deny AOC the top Democrat position on the House Oversight Committee. And Booker and Schumer have more than worn out their welcome,.

We need new blood in leadership to keep up with the times and savvy with social media, and as well reflect the dept of the anger and frustration with rank and file Democrats.

[ZDU]

26. Hear, hear!

[ABC123Easy]

16. Good memory!

[EdmondDantes_]

23. Why isn't the responsibility on the man who had 8 accusers?

Several of the victims told people at the time what happened. At least one was a Democratic staffer. Franken apologized for giving women reason to doubt him. Why are we still blaming Gillibrand or that?

If you believe all 8 victims are lying, blame them. If you believe the victims blame Franken. Those are the only two real options and one of them requires a substantial rejection of statistics on false allegations to believe.

[Polybius]

38. Why can't believing them and still not wanting him thrown out be an option?

I frankly don't care about the picture he took.

[EdmondDantes_]

42. I admit I didn't think anyone would say he groped a bunch of women and it's not a fireable offense as an option

I can't say I understand it either. I'd be fired from my job if I did that. Even if you want to claim it was all accidental, as someone who's been trained and paid to coach people and required to physically spot people, I was absolutely taught where to not put my hands unless it was in the moment safety and whenever possible to tell people where I was going to put my hands and get permission. Just basic respect for people's autonomy and comfort.

And that picture was incredibly creepy. I can't say I understand accepting that either. But I'd be more open to looking past that if it wasn't accompanied by 8 women saying he couldn't keep his hands to himself.

But the average Franken defender doesn't hold that he did anything wrong. You occupy a unique space which is interesting.

[Polybius]

44. But he didn't do it on the job, it was alleged to have been years ago

While I've seen no proof that it was intentional, I'm a staunch believer in the statute of limitations. As for the pic, I was a 90s teen. I've seen plenty of stuff like that back then. Porky's/Benny Hill style humor was a product of its time. I agree that it's not cool today.

[SocialDemocrat61]

49. One of his accusers

was a democratic congressional staffer, so he did do it on the job.

[tinrobot]

35. Thanks for reminding us of something that happened 8 years ago.

But maybe we can talk about current events instead.

[Faux pas]

55. I'm with you!

I wish he'd run again

[niyad]

57. KNR and bookmarking for later.