Woman accuses Kavanaugh of sexual assault decades ago

[TitanTiger 20,472]

1 hour ago, AUDub said:

It was a day of spectacular self owns by conservative Twitter yesterday, and Tom was no exception. He dumped his after being called on it and walked it back. 

I don't follow him so I don't know what preceded this remark.  But it comes back to my earlier question about standards of proof.  We have a claim by one woman from 35 years ago.  Outside of her word we have a polygraph and we have some notes from a therapist that she brought up a sexual assault in high school in their sessions.  She didn't name the person.  Her husband says she said the name "Kavanaugh" during those sessions, but that's not in the notes so it's just his word.  On the other side we (so far) have no other claims of this nature against him and 65 women who've known him from high school testifying to his character and treatment of women.  And he categorically denies the accusations

Is that enough to disqualify him?

[TitanTiger 20,472]

8 minutes ago, AUDub said:

And the self-owns continue. 

Somebody needs to tell conservative Twitter that saying nothing at all is absolutely free. 

But is there a point in there?  Should someone's behavior at 17 define who they are at 53?

[AUDub 11,147]

Here was Tom's initial comment on this yesterday, Titan. He deleted it. 

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37 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

But is there a point in there?  Should someone's behavior at 17 define who they are at 53?

I'm confident I never got blackout drunk and tried to rape anyone in my misspent youth. It's enough to disqualify him from serving on the court.

We charge 16 to 18 year old kids as adults all the time, permanently staining records, and in many cases for relatively benign crimes. This sort of objection from several "law & order" Rs affects me not at all.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

1 minute ago, AUDub said:

We charge 16 to 18 year old kids as adults all the time, permanently staining records, and in many cases for relatively benign crimes. This sort of objection from several "law & order" Rs affects me not at all.

This is a good point and one I actually made here in the office as a counterpoint to the "he was only 17" argument I was making.  On serious crimes like rape, murder (or attempted of either), we often do charge people as adults when they are 17 years old.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

So what it comes down to is, the only reasonable argument to not voting against him or calling on Trump to withdraw his name is that you simply don't believe her, or you don't believe that she's provided enough evidence to warrant penalizing him for it.  

[AUDub 11,147]

3 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

So what it comes down to is, the only reasonable argument to not voting against him or calling on Trump to withdraw his name is that you simply don't believe her, or you don't believe that she's provided enough evidence to warrant penalizing him for it.  

People kept saying 'zero evidence' and "he said/she said." I think both of those things became untrue with the therapist notes.

Those put me over the edge on this. A "sub-optimal" fact if there ever was one. Those lend the accusation a lot of credibility. At this point, the victim seems much, much more credible. The therapist's notes are convincing. Unless she's a time traveler, then all bets are off.

Lie detectors are psuedoscientific bunk and no one should lend those any credence. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

3 minutes ago, AUDub said:

People kept saying 'zero evidence' and "he said/she said." I think both of those things became untrue with the therapist notes.

First of all, do note that I didn't offer a "zero evidence" defnese.  Just a "not enough" one. 

The rebuttal to the notes is that while she did bring up a sexual assault in high school, she doesn't name who it was.  Her husband claims she said his last name in the sessions, but that was not in the notes.  Either the therapist didn't write it because he/she didn't deem it important, or because of some professional ethics over recording the name.  But I don't know that you can simply take the husband's word for it.

 

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Those put me over the edge on this. A "sub-optimal" fact if there ever was one. Those lend the accusation a lot of credibility. At this point, the victim seems much, much more credible. The therapist's notes are convincing. Unless she's a time traveler, then all bets are off.

Lie detectors are psuedoscientific bunk and no one should lend those any credence. 

The notes do lend more credibility.  But I'm not sure if it's enough for everyone and I think it's a point reasonable people can disagree over.

[AUDub 11,147]

6 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

First of all, do note that I didn't offer a "zero evidence" defnese.  Just a "not enough" one. 

It was meant royally. Wouldn't accuse you of such a thing, but there are a lot of gravel knuckled morons out there braying "no evidence, hurr."

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The rebuttal to the notes is that while she did bring up a sexual assault in high school, she doesn't name who it was.  Her husband claims she said his last name in the sessions, but that was not in the notes.  Either the therapist didn't write it because he/she didn't deem it important, or because of some professional ethics over recording the name.  But I don't know that you can simply take the husband's word for it.

The notes do lend more credibility.  But I'm not sure if it's enough for everyone and I think it's a point reasonable people can disagree over.

Any therapist worth their salt anonymizes their notes. That's the proper thing to do ethically and is SOP. If you have one that does not, it's time to find a new therapist. 

It's a silly reason to discount the notes. That they don't name her attackers doesn't really mean much to me. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

4 minutes ago, AUDub said:

It was meant royally. Wouldn't accuse you of such a thing, but there are a lot of gravel knuckled morons out there braying "no evidence, hurr."

Any therapist worth their salt anonymizes their notes. That's the proper thing to do ethically and is SOP. If you have one that does not, it's time to find a new therapist. 

It's a silly reason to discount the notes. That they don't name her attackers doesn't really mean much to me. 

I don't know that it "discounts" the notes to say that we have nothing on record anywhere that connects him specifically to the alleged assault that took place.  One could conceivably believe she's telling the truth on being assaulted in HS but not being truthful on it being Kavanaugh who did it.  Or at least that the notes without a name aren't enough to conclude it was him.

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It takes some real logical leaps to assume the notes not naming him mean anything. These are the only options I see.

1) She planned therapist notes in case she ever wanted to falsely accuse someone from her high school.

2) She was assaulted by someone else at age 15, and is leveraging that to hurt Kavanaugh.

3) 2, but she mistakenly ID'd them as Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. 

By the way, I’d suggest looking into Mark Judge. As a witness, he’d do way more harm than good to Kavanaugh. He wrote about how they used to get black out drunk together all the time in high school. Think of the implications of that. Moot point since Kavanaugh unequivocally denied the accusation, but had he said “I do not recall,” it’s possible that wouldn’t have been a lie. 

[AUDub 11,147]

Somebody needs to turn Erick off and back on again. 

 

[AUDub 11,147]

Good thread

 

[homersapien 11,367]

 

Why God Is Laughing at Brett Kavanaugh

American politics is about power, not principle. If anyone should know this, it's Brett Kavanaugh.

..........Fairness is rooted in the idea of principles, precedent, proportionality. Few people in American life witnessed at closer range than Kavanaugh the modern reality that when things really matter—in the way that the balance of the Supreme Court matters—all these fine notions matter less than the cold, hard exercise of power.

So here was Kavanaugh—who spent his early 30s as a Ken Starr warrior pursuing Bill Clinton for the political and legal implications of his most intimate moral failings—now in his early 50s facing a political crisis over disturbingly vivid, passionately contested, decades-old allegations about Kavanaugh’s own possible moral failings.

Few prosecutors, it seems likely, would ever open an assault case—36 years later—on the basis of Christine Blasey Ford’s account of being pinned down on a bed by a drunken Kavanaugh, then 17, and being aggressively groped until a friend of his physically jumped in.

But few prosecutors in the 1990s would have pursued an extensive criminal investigation over perjury into a middle-aged man’s lies about adultery if that person had not been President Bill Clinton. In his zeal at the time, Kavanaugh, like Starr, may have worked himself into a belief that this was about sacred principles of law, but to many others—and ultimately to a clear majority of the country—it was obvious that the case was fundamentally about political power.

Kavanaugh’s fate, too, now depends on precisely the same thing: Do the allegations change the calculation for the perhaps half-a-dozen senators—including Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—whose minds were not already made up by earlier political calculations?

With the benefit of hindsight, Kavanaugh later concluded presidents should be shielded from criminal investigations of the sort he helped wage against Clinton. At the time, however, he was filled with righteous indignation. “It is our job,” he wrote colleagues in Starr’s office in an email, “to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear—piece by painful piece.”

Can Kavanaugh and his supporters really be surprised that opponents of his nomination will feel similarly righteous in wanting to examine allegations against him piece by piece?

 

Read the full piece at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/17/kavanaugh-supreme-court-ford-sexual-assault-219983

[AUDub 11,147]

Sigh

 

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

I would love to see this woman's bank account transactions after this is over. Too much coincidence for me. But to each his own opinion. So similar to Anita Hill coming forward against Clarence Thomas at the last minute. Both women are die hard liberal Dems. The latest is also a professor at a liberal school in liberal California. I won't believe her unless she testifies under oath and risks perjury.

And everybody believed the girl at Duke who falsely claimed, in a case much like this, that she was actually raped by lacrosse players at a frat party after heavy drinking. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc., made it highly visible before the truth was known. Unfortunately the damage to the players was irreversible.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

2 minutes ago, Proud Tiger said:

I would love to see this woman's bank account transactions after this is over. Too much coincidence for me. But to each his own opinion. So similar to Anita Hill coming forward against Clarence Thomas at the last minute. Both women are die hard liberal Dems. The latest is also a professor at a liberal school in liberal California. I won't believe her unless she testifies under oath and risks perjury.

She's offering to testify before Congress so you might get your wish.

Also, just to be clear, she didn't come forward at the last minute.  She came forward back in July when Kavanaugh was said to be on the short list of nominees.  

 

 

[AUDub 11,147]

2 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

She's offering to testify before Congress so you might get your wish.

Also, just to be clear, she didn't come forward at the last minute.  She came forward back in July when Kavanaugh was said to be on the short list of nominees.  

 

 

Can't be stated enough how badly Feinstein handled this. 

EDIT: And I hope the Rs have a healthy respect for how much worse this could get. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

Just now, AUDub said:

Can't be stated enough how badly Feinstein handled this. 

Why do you suppose she waited?  Is it simply that the accuser requested to remain anonymous and so Feinstein honored her request?

[AUDub 11,147]

46 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Why do you suppose she waited?  Is it simply that the accuser requested to remain anonymous and so Feinstein honored her request?

I think she wanted to set off a grenade before the committee vote. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I doubt it. 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

2 minutes ago, AUDub said:

I think she wanted to set off a grenade before the committee vote. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I doubt it. 

That was my initial thought and I said so a few days back.  But then I thought perhaps she was trying to do her best to honor the accuser's request for anonymity but gave in to pressure from her fellow Dems.  Now I'm back to feeling like it was just a Hail Mary pass and it looks like it might actually connect.

But then, the person who ends up being confirmed might be a good bit more conservative as a result.

[AUDub 11,147]

Just now, TitanTiger said:

That was my initial thought and I said so a few days back.  But then I thought perhaps she was trying to do her best to honor the accuser's request for anonymity but gave in to pressure from her fellow Dems.  Now I'm back to feeling like it was just a Hail Mary pass and it looks like it might actually connect.

But then, the person who ends up being confirmed might be a good bit more conservative as a result.

Pretty much a risk I’m willing to take. My objection to Kavanaugh is now more moral than political.

I’m not too sure the Rs will play this smartly. Trump wants Kavanaugh, and they’re probably going to fight hard for that before folding. 

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

She's offering to testify before Congress so you might get your wish.--That would be great but if they both do who should we believe? The only other person there say he don't remember and there seems to be lot she don't remember. The FBI has already investigated Kavanaugh several times and found nothing.

Also, just to be clear, she didn't come forward at the last minute.  She came forward back in July when Kavanaugh was said to be on the short list of nominees. --she gave a letter but didn't come out in person until now. Why wasn't the letter brought to light until now. Kavanaugh's strong denial outweighs her shaky accusation for me right now. But if more facts surface I'll be more than happy to get the truth if that's possible.

 

 

 

[TitanTiger 20,472]

6 minutes ago, Proud Tiger said:

That would be great but if they both do who should we believe? The only other person there say he don't remember and there seems to be lot she don't remember. The FBI has already investigated Kavanaugh several times and found nothing.

I don't know.  It may come down to how they answer certain questions, how consistent they are on their stories, and if questioning reveals any other details.  

 

6 minutes ago, Proud Tiger said:

she gave a letter but didn't come out in person until now. Why wasn't the letter brought to light until now. Kavanaugh's strong denial outweighs her shaky accusation for me right now. But if more facts surface I'll be more than happy to get the truth if that's possible.

According to her, she initially she wanted to remain anonymous.  She feared the impact going public would have on her family and she just wanted those asking questions during confirmation to be aware of it and perhaps some investigating would turn up other instances with other women.

We've been discussing the letter not being made public - it seems like a bad strategy or decision on Feinstein's part.  The woman said she didn't want to come out publicly and Feinstein at least partly seemed to be honoring her wish.  Then at the last minute, Feinstein lobs the grenade just to see what would happen.  Both me and AUDub agree it was a really poor decision by Feinstein and reeks of politics rather than a moral decision.  And as reporters began digging the rumor mill got going and the woman was being approached.  She decided finally to come out herself and control the timing rather than continue to be pestered about it and remain quiet.

I don't know that there's anything based on what we know right now to declare her accusation "shaky" and his denial "strong."  

[TitanTiger 20,472]

I think this discussion is being handled reasonably by all involved so far.  Anyone object to moving this to the regular politics forum to keep things going that way?