So after Thursday, are you going to concede that Ford's statement has the same "authority" as Kavanaugh's?
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So after Thursday, are you going to concede that Ford's statement has the same "authority" as Kavanaugh's?
applecorped
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Meadmaker
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Yes.
Sort of.
I don't think it is the most likely explanation, but I think it's plausible. I think it is extremely plausible that she told a vague story about assault for 30 years, with very few details, and filled in Kavanaugh's name, either in 2012 to her husband, or 2018 in her allegation.
The fact is that her various stories have contradictions. Something has to be false.
The therapists notes say four boys attacked her.
The allegation sent to Senator Feinstein says two boys. That's resolved by saying that the therapist made a mistake. It wasn't that four boys attacked her, it was that there were four boys at the party.
The allegation says that there were four people at the party, but one of them was a girl. Ok. That therapist's notes were way off, or maybe …..well, someone else can fill in all the maybes.
All four of the other people at the party have given statements. All of them deny being present during any such events, or any party matching the description.
Now, we get to what isn't present. She doesn't remember whose house it was. Hmmmm…...she remembers every one of the people who were in the house, but not who lived there? That should be pretty easy to narrow down, shouldn't it?
She doesn't remember how she got home, or how she got there. Hmmm.....four people present. Can we agree that if she had been assaulted by Kavanaugh and Judge, and then had to get a ride home with them, that she might remember that? Well, then, it means she rode with PJ Smyth or Leland Ingham. She remembers they were there, but can't remember which of the two possibilities got her home?
Or, maybe she called a friend.. or....she wouldn't remember being stranded at the party and needing to call a friend to get home? Sounds like part of the trauma to me, but well, ok. It was a long time ago. Or maybe she just misspoke about four people at the party. Maybe she meant she knew four people at the party, but there were actually a lot more.
So, she was assaulted by four boys.....no, she was assaulted by two boys, but there were four boys at the party......no, she was assaulted by two boys, but there were four people at the party......will it next be that she was assaulted by four boys, but there were four people she knew at the party...……….well...…..I suppose we'll see if she can work it all out by Thursday.
I can only come up with one scenario that even remotely fits. I'll share it.
It starts with the fact that she was wearing a swimsuit under clothing. So, it's a pool party, and she was already finished swimming and getting ready to go home, or had just arrived and had not yet gone to the pool or, there's another possibility. The local schools had a tradition of "beach week", a week of drunkenness and debauchery during summer vacation. Let's imagine she goes to a beach party, and proceeds to become very, very, drunk. Her friends know they can't take her home until she sobers up, so a friend volunteers to take her to her house. She's passed out or semi-conscious. When she comes to, she's in an unfamiliar bedroom and Brett Kavanaugh has his hands on her. Eventually Mark Judge ends up on them, and she scampers away, and she really doesn't remember anything else about the party except the presence of Leland and PJ.
That contradicts her stories, but in certain understandable ways. However, it would also mean that her judgement was horribly impaired at the time of the incident, and her memories would be dim and foggy. I am reminded of an incident from my own youth when Sherry, then 15 years of age, was screaming that Chuck, another friend, was trying to kill her. Needless to say, Chuck was doing no such thing, but Sherry was very drunk at the time, and utterly incoherent. Her memories of the incident would be useless, to the point that there would be no way of knowing whether the boys involved were actually attacking her, or just trying to get her into bed where she could sleep it off.
In short, she tells a story that she, while sober, was attacked by two named boys, while in a house that had only two other people in it, but she can't remember any details about locations, dates, or even how she got to or from the house. This all occurred while she was sober, but two people in the house were "stumbling drunk". 30 years afterwards, she told a similar, but slightly different story, but the person she told made mistakes in describing it. A few months ago, she herself made a mistake in describing it. (Reconciling "four boys at the party" with "three boys and a girl" at the party.) No one from her high school days remembers anything that could be used to identify the event.
Nope. Not buying it.
Lying? Maybe. Conflated memories? More likely. Was in a state so drunk at the time that she didn't even know what happened 30 years ago, much less today? Certainly possible. There are lots of explanations, but the explanation of "this is true", seems too far fetched to be believed, at least without further evidence.
Tsukasa Buddha
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ETA: What you are doing is the very thing my post was talking about. You are taking Ford as being a single individual, and asking whether that single individual could do this. The correct question to ask is whether there could exist someone who could do this.
That seems precisely backwards.
In any event, are we also supposed to view Kavanaugh as whether there exists people who sexually assaulted people while drunk as a teenager? Do we compare the probabilities?
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Regnad Kcin
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Yes, earlier I requested you support this, since I hadn't found anything. Is there a cite, a source, a transcript? It'll be helpful, and we can see if he was also questioned on this testimony you state "we know."
Right now.
Tsukasa Buddha
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You are forgetting what she said when she went for the lie detection (obviously I don't believe in the validity of such things). Given so much of what we are getting is secondhand, I think analyzing for contradictions or speculating about what actually happened is a pointless exercise.
This isn't quite accurate. "No recollection" is not the same as a denial.
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The Big Dog
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Grassley’s spetember 19 letter to Feinstein
Meadmaker
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Yes, we should view Kavanaugh that way. Because we know that these sorts of things happen, and the perpetrators lie about it, we can say that her story about being assaulted at a party is plausible.
Because we know that people lie about celebrities, we know that his story is plausible.
Since we have two stories, both of them plausible by themselves, but both of them cannot be true, we have to look elsewhere to see if there is any evidence we can use to decide the falsehood of one or both stories. Examining the total body of evidence available to us, I have to conclude that her story, as told, does not fit with the total body of evidence. There are too many contradictions, and too many things I would expect to see, but don't.
Of course, as you point out in the post after the one I quoted above, there is additional evidence we haven't seen, and we can assume there will be more evidence after the two of them testify, so we aren't done yet. However, in my opinion, the story she has told so far is not likely to be true.
Did she get assaulted at some point? I think it's likely. By Brett Kavanaugh or Mark Judge? Possibly. In a house with four people she knew, while she was sober, but she can't remember which of the four lived in the house, or which of the four drove her to or from the party? And told different variations over the years about who was present? But no stories before 2012? That's too much of a stretch for me.
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Stacyhs
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She didn't talk about it for 30 years at all. She never told anyone until 2012. Very few details? Come now. They've been listed. What are the odds that what she said would just happen to coincide with Brett Kavanaugh? She did give Kavanaugh's name to her husband unless you want to believe her husband is involved in a conspiracy against Kavanaugh.
Ford provided the therapist's notes to Feinstein. She knew what was in them and knew the therapist had written down four boys. Ford was the one who pointed out the mistake instead of just going along with it and claiming she didn't remember who the other boys were so they could not be identified. Instead, she corrects it putting her in the position we now see: people claiming she must be lying because the therapist's note contradicts her.
No, the allegation said there were four people plus Ford. The therapist's notes were not "way off". She made a mistake regarding the two vs four involved in the attack. Ford was discussing the attack and the other people not involved in the actual attack were superfluous. Ford may not have even mentioned that one of the attendants was a girl, simply saying there were four other people there. Ford mentioned no names to the therapist. The doctor mistakenly inferred they were all boys.
Would it shock you that Kavanaugh and Judge could be lying about the attack or may not remember it due to being highly intoxicated? By their own admission they were extremely drunk a lot in high school.
Why do you assume she would remember which of the other 3 boys' house it was? Did she even know at the time?
Or...maybe she walked.
In all of this you don't bother to mention the facts that don't support your own imagined scenario. You just disregard them as if they don't exist. You ignore that Ford described the boys as attending the same "elitist all boys school" that Fords' school interacted with and that they were now prominent in the DC social scene, and that she identified by name the two boys to her husband six years ago. Funny coincidence, too, that the two she names and describes as being highly inebriated just happened to be two guys who admitted they were huge drinkers at the same time. I'd like to know what the Vegas odds are on all of those just being coincidences.
ETA:
She never told different variations over the years because she never talked about it to anyone until she told the therapist. What variations has she told exactly? Please, do not say she told the therapist that four boys attacked her. I've addressed that already.
You don't think assault victims repress their assault and hold it in for years? Hoooo, boy. I suggest you do a little research. You are speaking from ignorance.
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Meadmaker
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Of course they do.
I don't think their memories of those events are reliable 30 years later when they finally talk about it. (ETA: In other words, what they say could be true, because their memories could be accurate. On the other hand, it could also be false, because some aspects of their memory might be inaccurate, and it is also possible that hey would lie about it 30 years later.)
Re: Coincidences. She described the people who were present in such a way that they matched the social scene where she attended high school. If she had said she was at a party and assaulted by a street gang, that would seem very unlikely, because she didn't attend those sorts of parties. That she attended parties with boys from an elitist school who went on to become elitists of the Washington social scene is hardly surprising.
As an aside, I have no idea whether Brett Kavanaugh was, in recent years, part of any particular social scene. He was a judge. I don't know whether he attended parties or galas or anything else "social". It's an interesting way of describing a federal judge.
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There are a couple outcomes here:
1. The allegations are true and an attempted rapist is confirmed to the highest court in the land for life, and may cast the deciding vote on women's reproductive rights.
2. The allegations are false and Kavanaugh goes back to his old job and nobody remembers him in two months.
Her accusations are credible. Both of these outcomes are plausible, but which outcome has to be prevented at all costs? Right. There can't even by a tiny chance that an attempted rapist becomes a justice. SCOTUS is more important than one man. Nominate someone else, preferably a woman, since there are only three on the court anyway, and one is in her 80's.
1. The allegations are true and an attempted rapist is confirmed to the highest court in the land for life, and may cast the deciding vote on women's reproductive rights.
2. The allegations are false and Kavanaugh goes back to his old job and nobody remembers him in two months.
Her accusations are credible. Both of these outcomes are plausible, but which outcome has to be prevented at all costs? Right. There can't even by a tiny chance that an attempted rapist becomes a justice. SCOTUS is more important than one man. Nominate someone else, preferably a woman, since there are only three on the court anyway, and one is in her 80's.
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Meadmaker
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Number 2. If the membership on the Supreme Court can be decided based on false allegations (Note: Your outcome number 2 stipulates that the allegations are false.) with no evidence beyond the testimony of the accuser, the nomination process will never again function.
ETA: With regard to possibility number 1, there will be a judicial conservative nominated to replace Kennedy. The fact that the conservative is also an attempted rapist (as stipulated in possibility number 1) would really have no additional effect beyond the nomination of any other conservative. Therefore, there's really no reason to prevent it at all costs.
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Of course it will function. You think every justice nominated after this will have credible accusations of attempted rape levied against them? When has a woman in high office EVER had to face these kinds of accusations? This is exclusively a male problem.
You can't be serious. You think an attempted rapist can fairly adjudicate the constitutionality of laws relating to women? If Kavanaugh gets nominated after Thursday, and the Dems gain back control, they'll pack the court. Guaranteed.
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Stacyhs
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Good grief. You are accusing her of making up a sexual assault lie and telling it to both her therapist and her husband (complete with names) 36 years later? And people wonder why women don't come forward with their sexual assault experiences?
You're a man, right?
The Big Dog
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Anyone find the fourth boy she told her therapist about?
By the way, right now it is: he said he said he said she said/ she said
By the way, right now it is: he said he said he said she said/ she said
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LSSBB
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And...?
Meadmaker, if you were hiring someone for a clerk job at Piggly Wiggly, and the person had credible accusations against them of attempted rape, and you have a hundred other qualified applicants, are you telling us you would still hire the person? I call BS on that. You would go with the safe option.
And... that means she's probably not lying, unless you subscribe to Meadmaker's sorry argument that she's one of these rare people who deviously plots for years to take down a guy and waits for just the right time.
So if she's not lying, she's either very mistaken or Kavanaugh tried to rape her. I don't think she's any more mistaken about this than an altar boy is about the priest that molests him.
If this were Chris Ford accusing Father Kavanaugh of molestation after 30 years, and Chris had confided in a therapist years ago before going public, you would not be questioning his story.
Minoosh
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I don't think that's inevitable. Besides which, the nomination process was already broken - by the GOP, which refused to consider any Obama appointee.
I think it's fair enough to put this process on hold until after the midterms. After all, Mitch McConnell championed that concept. We'll never know what GOP senators would have done if Hillary had been elected president. Refuse to consider anyone for another 4-8 years?
The main question I have about the Kavanaugh allegation is that predators usually or at least very often have a pattern of such behavior. So while it's not exculpatory - obviously one attempted rape is one too many - IMO it's another factor to consider.
Why are Republicans in such a rush, anyway? This is a serious question. They actually might be doing themselves a favor if there's any voter backlash over Kavanaugh's confirmation. I doubt there will be much of one but you never know.
If Kavanaugh is confirmed the one hope I have is that he will show an independent, moderate streak. IOW that he will be a good judge.
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