Can the Ford v. Kavanaugh story get any more bizarre?

The New Neo Posted on by

I know the answer: of course it can.

I keep trying to get away from this story, but stuff keeps happening. I was happily away from my computer all afternoon, seeing old friends from out-of-town who were visiting the area, and now I see that some alleged excerpts form the yearbooks of Ford’s high school years have been posted on an obscure website, after the copies had been taken off a website where they’d originally appeared. I have no idea whether the excerpts are truly from the yearbooks or are a form of Fake News (no one seems to know for sure at the moment), but the supposed excerpts describe a widespread culture of drunken partying at the school during the years Ford was a student there.

If that wasn’t enough, we have the very curious case of Cristina King Miranda, a classmate of Ford’s (was everyone at the school named some form of the name Christine?) who yesterday posted a letter on Facebook [see *NOTE I below] in which she said, among other things, that “The incident did happen, many of us heard about it in school.” Not long afterward she deleted the entry, as well as the Twitter account on which she’d written:

I graduated from Holton Arms, and knew both Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. Christine Blasey Ford was a year or so behind me, I remember her. I signed this letter. The incident was spoken about for days afterwards in school. Kavanaugh should stop lying, own up to it, and apologize.

After the deletion of that particular tweet, she added that the first tweet had “served its purpose” and that she was deciding which of several interviews she should accept from various MSM outlets.

Now when you go to her Twitter account you get a message that it does not exist.

In the meantime, she did give an NPR interview in which she walked it back:

“In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen],” Miranda told NPR. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”

Miranda noted on Twitter that she did not have “first hand knowledge” of the incident…

Miranda says she played soccer with Ford — whom she refers to as Chrissy — in high school and that she continues to support her. Miranda added that despite not knowing specifics of what went on at the party three decades ago, she remembers that there was a “buzz” that went around possibly on a weekend about the party where an alleged incident involving students from her school and Kavanaugh’s took place.

It is something, she said, that was not surprising to hear given the culture of drinking and partying…

In case this story seems hard to decipher, let me help out.

Miranda remembers having heard some sort of vague rumor once way back when she was in high school that there was a party where something-or-other bad had happened between some Holton Arms girls and some Georgetown Prep boys. Recently, after hearing Ford’s allegations about Kavanaugh, Miranda felt “empowered” to tell the world that he’s a lying bastard who should ‘fess up, because she figured that old vague rumor she once had heard about something-or-other must mean it was actually about Ford and Kavanaugh, or that at least she could pass it off as being about Ford and Kavanaugh. And she never thought—never never never thought—that dropping this bombshell into the mix would cause anyone to want to hear more of what she had to say.

I can’t say this woman is any sort of advertisement for the quality of the education her alma mater offers.

Which brings us to an article in National Review by David French entitled: “Do Democrats Really Believe Christine Blasey Ford Doesn’t Have To Prove Her Claims?”

The answer? Yes, they really believe that. They really believe that their base will be fired up without Ford needing to testify. They really believe they can spin any attempt by Republicans to make her testify into an example of bullying by those mean old white men. Also, they really initially believed that those mean old white Republican men wouldn’t even ask her to testify, so it wouldn’t come up. Yes, they really believe they can say that Ford—being a woman and all—should just be believed because women should always just be believed (despite the evidence to the contrary from women such as Cristina King Miranda, above).

And by the way, anyway who calls this another Salem Witch Trial is being unfair to the Salem accusers. It is my contention that most of them were hysterics who truly believed that what they were saying was the truth. I think some of the current accusers fall short of that standard.

[*NOTE I: The text of Miranda’s original Facebook letter, now deleted, can be found here. From the length of it it’s clear that this was not a spur-of-the-moment impulse, unlike a tweet. The letter took some time to compose. It contains quite a few hints as to Miranda’s state of mind and motives, for example the following [emphasis mine]:

The current situation involving Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh touches a very personal nerve and has unearthed memories, good and bad, that I had buried deep from my time at Holton…

…I remember having a bit of a crush on Mark [Judge, the man who Ford named as having witnessed the incident regarding her, and who has categorically denied this], he had a keen intelligence and sardonic, biting wit when he wasn’t drunk which was often (as were lots of teenage guys from Prep, Landon and girls from Holton, Stone Ridge, Visitation on weekends at parties, during Beachweek, etc). I asked him to go to my junior or senior prom with me…I just remember how horrible I felt when he stood me up because he got bombed a few hours before the prom dinner. He showed no respect and had no remorse. Apparently, in 2018 some things have not changed, unfortunately.

This woman is in her fifties, and still hung up about a guy standing her up in high school? If in fact that happened at all, either. I feel like I’m wading knee-deep not merely in high school gossip, but in junior high or middle school gossip. Is this really the sort of information a SCOTUS confirmation is supposed to rest on?

Continued:

This incident did happen. Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details. However Christine’s vivid recollection should be more than enough for us to truly, deeply know that the accusation is true.

That’s the reference she explained in her later NPR interview—to a vague rumor of something happening to someone somewhere at some time, a rumor which about 35 years later Miranda decided to plug into Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh, and then to truly, deeply know it to be true.

Continued:

…The drinking ensconced in the puritanism and hypocrisy of that elite, privileged , mostly white, Catholic, Washington society, was completely out of control.

Now that, I can believe. But dearest Cristina, just because there was a ton of drinking during your high school years, it does not mean that Person A committed Act X on Person B.

More:

…In my case, even before Christine came forward, I was and still am completely against [Kavanaugh’s] nomination. I do not want him representing me or making decisions on my behalf in the Supreme Court as he goes against everything sacred to me as woman, mother, daughter, latina, American and professional.

Please forgive me, I cannot resist: this is certainly not the sort of “wise latina” that Sotomayor had in mind, is it?

If Kavanaugh truly has the integrity mentioned by those who support him, then he should be just as courageous as Christine and stop trying to dodge the accusations, admit his actions from so long ago, speak from the heart, and apologize. By doing this, he would be giving the next generation and our kids/teenagers a huge lesson in humility, dignity and humanity…

My heart goes out to all involved who are now whether they like or not, facing their demons, which are never pretty nor easy to dialogue with, but they are necessary in order for us to accept that we are all flawed and ultimately, human.

It would be good if Miranda could now go quietly off and contemplate her own words. in that last paragraph.]

[NOTE II: I’m not sure what to put this next bit, so I’ll just add it here: all preppy white guys look alike to me. Not a good idea, Ed.]

Have Democrats gained or lost so far as a result of the Kavanaugh accusation?

The New Neo Posted on by

This writer says Feinstein got exactly what she wanted out of the Ford accusation against Kavanaugh: propaganda points for the 2018 election.

I tend to be pessimistic as a rule in politics. But I wonder. I don’t see it quite that way, although I would have agreed a few days ago, before Ford’s refusal to testify. I think a lot of people have been turned off by the sinister calculation of the entire Democratic approach, and surprised by the Republicans’ willingness to cooperate by letting Ford testify, and put off by her refusal.

Here’s some evidence that those things may be true.

Yes, of course, the leftist troops are all fired up to get with the program of “Republicans hate women and they nominate rapists to the Court, and conservatives want to take away all your reproductive rights and institute The Handmaid’s Tale.” But I think that’s mainly preaching to the choir. Plus, by the sound of the blogosphere anyway, the right has been energized as well.

Men are probably most upset, but I’m not even sure of that. Many non-leftist women (and who knows, maybe even some leftist women) have an interest in not having their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, male friends, grandsons, nephews, falsely accused and vilified.

Yes, even if confirmed, Kavanaugh’s name will always be tainted. But Clarence Thomas has been quite effective even with that hanging over his head all these years.

The inconvenient accusers

The New Neo Posted on by

For the “believe the women; Kavanaugh is guilty as the day is long” crowd on the left, there remain the inconvenient accusers.

These accusers are female, too, like Kavanaugh’s. In nearly all instances, their stories of sexual wrongdoing on the part of men are more well-documented and therefore more compelling. But the left wants to pretend they don’t exist, and/or to silence them and/or discredit them.

Why, if the mantra is to believe the women? It’s very simple: these women have accused Democrats.

Now, certain Democrats are expendable and therefore their accusers are believed. I bring you Exhibit A: Harvey Weinstein. He’s not a politician, and so he could go, and he was also part of an (ultimately failed) attempt to get Trump.

Others were not so expendable but, after much defense of their integrity by the Democrats, the evidence against them simply became incontrovertible and overwhelming. I bring you Exhibit B: Anthony Weiner.

Others, such as Ted Kennedy, could be contemporaneously ignored or rationalized because it was a long time ago and at this point he is deceased anyway.

But some Democrats, such as Keith Ellison, against whom complaints have been lodged, are men who are both important in the party and very much alive, and the charges are fairly recent. That article I just linked was from two months ago, for example.

Strange how the left has circled the wagons around him. Unfortunately for the Democrats, his accusing ex-girlfriend is still trying to point this out:

Karen Monahan, the woman accusing Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of domestic abuse, responded to a Twitter user on Monday who asked if Democrats believe Monahan’s allegations, saying they don’t, and that she’s been threatened and isolated from her own party.

And luckily for the Democrats, they have the cooperation of the usually-oh-so-woke MSM in trying to get people to ignore or disbelieve what she’s saying:

In response to a question on whether each voter believed the allegations leveled at Ellison are true, 5 percent of Democrats responded “yes,” 30 percent responded “no” and 65 percent were unsure…

The Democratic Party has largely ignored the allegations against Ellison, which he denies.

And, speaking of people who are “still trying to point this out,” we have Juanita Broaddrick:

Juanita Broaddrick has used Hillary Clinton’s own words against her by coming out and demanding that “it seems only fair” that if the FBI is going to investigate accusations against Brett Kavanaugh from three decades ago — as demanded by Hillary Clinton — then the FBI must also investigate her own credible rape allegations against Bill Clinton from the same period.

My own opinion is—as I’ve written many times, including yesterday—not to automatically “believe the women” or any class or group. I evaluate each individual story on its merits.

And I tend toward skepticism with unsubstantiated tales. I believe in innocent till proven guilty, and although it’s only in a court of law that I require a level of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, even in the court of public opinion I require a pretty high level of evidence to believe a story—especially an old one. So you might call me generally a skeptic.

But I’m a skeptic about accusations towards members of either party, people I like or people I don’t like. That means I’ve long had doubts about Broaddrick’s claims, for example, too complex to go into in this post but for some examples of what I’m talking about see this.

I don’t require that people agree with me. But in order to respect their opinion on these matters, I do require at the very least consistency. Logic helps, too, but if people are going to apply illogical and unfair standards like “believe the women” they at least should be consistent in it.

For the most part, they are not.

67 million in the US don’t speak English at home

The New Neo Posted on by

This statistic rates a big headline at Drudge today:

Nearly half of the residents in the nation’s five biggest cities do not speak English at home, choosing instead their native language, according to the latest Census Bureau data that details the impact of a decade of soft immigration policies.

Overall, a record 67 million do not speak English at home, said the bureau. That is nearly double in 27 years.

In its just-released analysis of the Census data, the Center for Immigration Studies said, “As a share of the population, 21.8 percent of U.S. residents speak a foreign language at home — roughly double the 11 percent in 1980.”

The Center added, “In America’s five largest cities, 48 percent of residents now speak a language other than English at home. In New York City and Houston it is 49 percent; in Los Angeles it is 59 percent; in Chicago it is 36 percent; and in Phoenix it is 38 percent.”

It certainly is a graphic demonstration of the increase in immigration, both legal and illegal.

But to me it’s a somewhat meaningless statistic. The far more meaningful one is not reported: what percentage of people in the US not only speak a language other than English at home, but also are not fluent in English and are not engaged in trying to be?

As far as I know, most immigrants used to speak another language at home, even a century ago. That’s why it’s called a “mother tongue.” But they, and especially their children, were forced to learn English if they wanted to function in this country, because their devotion to their original language was not indulged. They did not have access to bilingual education. They did not have translators in 50 languages at the ready. They did not have phone messages in Spanish as an alternative tongue.

I’m not saying we should go back all the way to those days. But I’ve never—even in my liberal Democrat days—been in favor of caving to the bilingualists. I definitely think people need to be nudged out of their dependence on their languages of origin. It’s tough, but it’s necessary.

Neither “believe the women” nor “believe the victims” is a valid form of decision-making

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written about this subject before, and I’ll probably write about it again.

But apparently it requires repeating:

Anyone who says that members of a certain group always tell the truth is lying.

There is no such group on earth. I don’t care if it’s a group of Catholic nuns or Buddhist monks. There are liars in every group, at least potentially.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that I’d take the word of an ex-con in the same way I’d take the word of some upstanding citizen of the community. But it means that in any given circumstances—and in particular if that circumstance is a court of law—a person is only as good as the evidence behind him or her.

The difficulty lies when there is no evidence other than a person’s word. Sometimes with sexual harassment or assault claims there is some independent corroborative evidence: an emailed photo, for example. That’s the petard with which Weiner was hoisted. But harassers and abusers aren’t always so dumb as to leave evidence, and then we are left with a hesaid/shesaid scenario. In that case we look at demeanor, before and after behavior, and all sorts of other information that could help us come to a decision.

But never should we rely on something like “being a woman” or “being a man” to tell us whether a person is a truth-teller in each particular circumstance. Nor does membership in a certain race or religion or any other demographic group, including being a child. Even children lie about abuse, sometimes at the behest of a scheming parent and sometimes on their own. It happens, although how often it happens is a matter of some dispute.

In a court of law, charges must be specific to a particular act or set of acts by this particular defendant. Time and place are all not just important, but ultra-important, not only to determine the veracity of the accuser and the accuracy of his/her memory, but to allow the defendant a chance to construct a defense.

That’s what was so powerful about many of Kafka’s works, so much so that it earned him an adjective derived from his name: Kafkaesque. Here are some excerpts from the beginning chapter of his book The Trial:

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. Every day at eight in the morning he was brought his breakfast by Mrs. Grubach’s cook – Mrs. Grubach was his landlady – but today she didn’t come. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an inquisitiveness quite unusual for her, and finally, both hungry and disconcerted, rang the bell. There was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered. He had never seen the man in this house before. He was slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close-fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for. “Who are you?” asked K., sitting half upright in his bed. The man, however, ignored the question as if his arrival simply had to be accepted, and merely replied, “You rang?” “Anna should have brought me my breakfast,” said K. He tried to work out who the man actually was, first in silence, just through observation and by thinking about it, but the man didn’t stay still to be looked at for very long. Instead he went over to the door, opened it slightly, and said to someone who was clearly standing immediately behind it, “He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast.” There was a little laughter in the neighbouring room, it was not clear from the sound of it whether there were several people laughing…

“I want to see Mrs. Grubach … ,” said K., making a movement as if tearing himself away from the two men – even though they were standing well away from him – and wanted to go. “No,” said the man at the window, who threw his book down on a coffee table and stood up. “You can’t go away when you’re under arrest.” “That’s how it seems,” said K. “And why am I under arrest?” he then asked. “That’s something we’re not allowed to tell you. Go into your room and wait there. Proceedings are underway and you’ll learn about everything all in good time.”…

It was much more important to him to get a clear understanding of his position, but he could not think clearly while these people were here, the second policeman’s belly – and they could only be policemen – looked friendly enough, sticking out towards him, but when K. looked up and saw his dry, boney face it did not seem to fit with the body. His strong nose twisted to one side as if ignoring K. and sharing an understanding with the other policeman. What sort of people were these? What were they talking about? What office did they belong to? K. was living in a free country, after all, everywhere was at peace, all laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared accost him in his own home?

Of course, the court of public opinion is not the same as a courtroom, and does not have the same exact standards. But it should have standards nonetheless—and specificity, corroboration, and the ability to verify charges matter. So do character witnesses.

What should not matter and should never matter is the class to which a person belongs: man or woman, black or white, rich or poor. Each individual is an individual and must be evaluated on the strength of the details of his or her story, both accuser and the accused. We should be humble about it, too, and acknowledge the inherent difficulties in making a decision.

And, as with the author of this harrowing story of rape, we should take a middle way:

I cannot tell you if a person’s account of his or her assault is valid or not. I cannot tell you to believe all survivors. But I can tell you that there is a difference between sharing your story and naming a person in an accusation. The longer a person waits to do so, the more scrutiny and skepticism is warranted…

I do not believe we have immunity to accuse without consequence, and…I advocate due process and the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” more now than ever. Don’t blame a person for not reporting sooner, but don’t damn the accused to compensate for it.

Do I believe Ford? If I had to vote, I would say I strongly believe her story is untrue. I believe that she may believe she’s telling the truth, however. And I believe that it is at least possible that she is telling the truth, although highly unlikely.

I believe that her story has been used by ruthless politicians who will stop at nothing to destroy the opposition. At the moment it looks as though they have been foiled, but that could change at any minute.

And that’s where we’re at now.

The first act was different: Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill

The New Neo Posted on by

If Kavanaugh and Ford is the second act, Thomas and Hill was the first.

Please don’t quibble with me. I know that Bork preceded that. But I’m talking about sexual allegations mounted against a SCOTUS nominee after the initial hearings, precipitating a call for more hearings, in which the public would be invited to decide about the truth or falsehood of a “he-said/she-said” set of allegations and vociferous denials.

So, what were the differences? Well, one big difference has been intervening events. After Thomas and Hill we had the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the escalation and success of various sexual allegations against many politicians (Herman Cain, just to take one example, and Roy Moore, to take another), and the well-publicized #MeToo movement.

Another big difference is that there was a much-watched hearing in which Anita Hill did testify; we don’t know yet if Ford’s refusal to testify will stand, but at the moment it seems to be that way. Another difference is that while Hill’s allegations were old—as much as ten years old—they were nowhere near as old and potentially unverifiable as Ford’s (approximately thirty-six years old). Another difference is that both Hill and Thomas were fully adult rather than teenagers at the time the events were said to have transpired, and therefore they reflected their adult behavior and personalities.

But another difference I did not initially remember, but one that I discovered when I looked the Thomas hearings up recently in light of current events, is that Clarence Thomas was confirmed despite the fact that the Democrats controlled the Senate 57 to 43 at the time:

The final floor vote was not strictly along party lines: 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats (Dixon (D-IL), Exon (D-NE), DeConcini (D-AZ), Robb (D-VA), Hollings (D-SC), Fowler (D-GA), Nunn (D-GA), Breaux (D-LA), Johnston (D-LA), Boren (D-OK), and Shelby (D-AL) now (R-AL)) voted to confirm while 46 Democrats and 2 Republicans (Jeffords (R-VT) later (I-VT) and Packwood (R-OR)) voted to reject the nomination; John Glenn was particularly vituperative in his rejection. Ironically Packwood himself would later be engulfed by sexual harassment allegations which ended his Senate career.

Can anyone imagine that happening today?

I think it’s a sign of the obvious change in the political climate in the 27 years since those hearings occurred that I, for one, cannot even imagine such a thing happening today. There are not eleven Democrats who would vote for Kavanaugh (or Thomas, for that matter) if the Democrats held the majority in the Senate and had the power to deny either man the right to be a member of the Supreme Court.

Granted, since the Republicans control (barely) the Senate right now, some Democrats in reddish states might yet vote to confirm Kavanaugh, since they know they can’t stop him by voting “no,” and if they feel that a “no” vote would be political suicide. Live to fight another day and all that. But I cannot believe that, if the Democrats had a chance to stop him, eleven (or any number close to that) would hesitate to do so.

The times they have a-changed, and not for the better.

In a move that should surprise no one, Christine Blasey Ford now says that she won’t testify until the FBI completes an investigation

The New Neo Posted on by

Ford’s position conforms quite nicely with the Democratic strategy of “we need to postpone the vote on Kavanaugh till something happens—like maybe a new Senate is elected that is Democratic, or enough Republican senators bow to the pressure and refuse to confirm him.” It’s all quite neat, and the delaying tactic is exactly what so many people on the right predicted when Feinstein dropped this bombshell at the very last minute. Many people called it a Hail Mary pass, but I think another sports metaphor is really in order: trying to run out the clock.

Here’s what Ford is saying:

The woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault says the FBI should investigate the incident before senators hold a hearing on the allegations.

In a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and obtained by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys argue that “a full investigation by law enforcement officials will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner, and that the Committee is fully informed before conducting any hearing or making any decisions.”…

“She will talk with the committee,” Banks said. “She is not prepared to talk with them at a hearing on Monday. This just came out 48 hours ago.”

“Asking her to come forward in four or five days and sit before the Judiciary Committee on national TV is not a fair process. If they care about doing the right thing here and treating this seriously as they have said, then they will do the right thing and they will properly investigate this, and she will work with them in that investigation and also to share her story with the committee,” Banks said Tuesday night.

Excuse me while I snicker bitterly.

It just “came out” 48 hours ago because Ford’s letter to Feinstein—that was sent and received last July—was only revealed by Feinstein a couple of days ago, at the proverbial eleventh hour. Ford wasn’t blindsinded, Kavanaugh was. Ford knew about this all along. She just hoped her identity wouldn’t be revealed, but she should have been prepared for that. And then she hoped her story itself would do the trick, but she should have been prepared for the fact that it wouldn’t.

Ford should have been prepared since at least last July, when she publicized her story to the powers that be in the person of Senator Feinstein.

Oh, and another little detail—the FBI has already declined to investigate this 36-year-old allegation that is so nonspecific that it’s not amenable to investigation, so old it’s also unresolvable, and not a federal issue anyway.

What I think Ford was not prepared for was the Republicans calling her bluff by allowing her the courtesy of testifying before the Senate. Maybe that’s what surprised her so much; maybe she’d never considered that possibility.

Of course, this might just be her initial gambit in response to the invite. She may change her mind and testify, if the Senate doesn’t cave to her wishes, which I don’t think it will. But even Flake doesn’t appear to be entertaining that thought:

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, sits on the Judiciary Committee and had previously said the committee should hold off on voting until they hear from the accuser. However, Flake said Tuesday that if Ford fails to appear at the hearing scheduled for Monday, he would support his party’s push to move forward on a vote on Kavanaugh.

“I think we’ll have to move to the markup,” he told CNN.

Flake said he’s hopeful Ford will accept the committee’s invitation and speak at the hearing. “I hope she does. I think she needs to be heard,” he said.

Trump declassifies FISA documents and text messages

The New Neo Posted on by

This news has been long-predicted and long-awaited:

President Trump on Monday ordered the declassification of several key documents related to the FBI investigation of Russian actions during the 2016 presidential election, including 21 pages of an application for a renewed surveillance warrant against former campaign aide Carter Page, and text messages from disgraced FBI figures Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump had ordered the documents released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Justice Department “[a]t the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency.”

The documents to be declassified also include all FBI reports on interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all other applications to surveil Carter Page.

Trump also ordered the Justice Department to release text messages from a number of the key players in the Russia investigation “without redaction” — including Ohr, Strzok, Lisa Page, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe…

The 21 pages only make up a small part of the 412 pages of FISA applications and warrants related to Page released by the FBI earlier this year in heavily redacted format.

The usual Democrats have the usual objections. They love it when they are in control of the unofficial leaks, but having the GOP in control of official releases is a no-no.

The trouble with all of this, however, is its complexity. How many people are willing to follow it in any detail? Most people still rely on the MSM to filter it and report on it, and that is a very biased source. Of course, it’s difficult to find an unbiased source (except yours truly, of course).

This is the sort of thing that drives me nuts

The New Neo Posted on by

On many blogs on the right I see commenters saying things like, “If Corker and/or Flake cave on Kavanaugh, that’s it for me. I’m voting third party and the GOP will be dead to me forever.”

That makes zero sense. But I’ve heard that sort of thing for years from the right.

Why do I say it makes zero sense? Because Flake and Corker are two people, not the entire GOP. The remedy is not to surrender power to the Democrats, which is exactly what the Democrats (and the MSM) want you to do, and exactly what will happen if you follow that path. The remedy is to elect more, and more conservative, Republicans.

That seems so obvious I would think it doesn’t need saying. But apparently it needs saying. I’ve been saying it for many years.

The only reason that Corker and Flake have such power is that the Senate is almost evenly divided between the two parties. That magnifies the influence of a single vote yea or nay. Corker and Flake love that power. But if, for example, there were 55 GOP senators to 45 Democratic ones, or an even greater disparity, their votes and their RINOism wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t be able to hold the entire party hostage.

Now, you might say that McConnell should be able to control them in the way the Democrats are controlled by their leaders. But the GOP doesn’t do the party line thing as well as Democrats, and that is for temperamental and philosophical reasons. However, that would be moot if there were more Republicans in the Senate, with more room for a few dissenters.

You might also say that if there were more Republicans in the Senate, more would be going the way of Flake and Corker. I don’t think so; that’s not historically the way it’s been, although unfortunately there haven’t been all that many times in recent history that the GOP has had a really strong majority in the Senate.

But one thing I do know is that allowing Democrats to win—by either not voting, or by voting third party—is not the answer. In my opinion, it’s a dangerous indulgence in juvenile anger, a form of tantrum, and I fear it will happen in the 2018 elections and jettison all of Trump’s conservative nominees.

Memory and witnesses/victims

The New Neo Posted on by

There are a lot of problems with the Kavanaugh accuser’s story, including the fact that she may be deliberately lying for political reasons.

But even if she’s not purposely lying, there are many problems connected with the phenomenon of memory itself, particularly after all these years.

In other words, even if she truly believes it happened just the way she says it did:

It may not have happened at all.
It may not have happened in that particular way.
It may have happened, but the perpetrator was someone else.

Juries set great store by eyewitness testimony of all kinds, and in particular by that of victims. But victims—bona fide victims—can be very wrong, and in sex crimes there have been many imprisoned men convicted by witness/victim testimony who have later been exonerated by DNA testing. It is very troubling indeed.

Research tells us about it [emphasis mine]:

The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.” Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate recall.

Many researchers have created false memories in normal individuals; what is more, many of these subjects are certain that the memories are real. In one well-known study, Loftus and her colleague Jacqueline Pickrell gave subjects written accounts of four events, three of which they had actually experienced. The fourth story was fiction; it centered on the subject being lost in a mall or another public place when he or she was between four and six years old. A relative provided realistic details for the false story, such as a description of the mall at which the subject’s parents shopped. After reading each story, subjects were asked to write down what else they remembered about the incident or to indicate that they did not remember it at all. Remarkably about one third of the subjects reported partially or fully remembering the false event. In two follow-up interviews, 25 percent still claimed that they remembered the untrue story, a figure consistent with the findings of similar studies.

More here [emphasis mine]:

The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. Furthermore, witnesses can distort their own memories without the help of examiners, police officers or lawyers. Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose. Every act of telling and retelling is tailored to a particular listener; we would not expect someone to listen to every detail of our morning commute, so we edit out extraneous material. The act of telling a story adds another layer of distortion, which in turn affects the underlying memory of the event. This is why a fish story, which grows with each retelling, can eventually lead the teller to believe it.

I will add here that many of us “tell” stories of our memories over and over to ourselves, and that affects the story as well.

Continued [emphasis mine]:

Once witnesses state facts in a particular way or identify a particular person as the perpetrator, they are unwilling or even unable—due to the reconstruction of their memory—to reconsider their initial understanding. When a witness identifies a person in a line-up, he is likely to identify that same person in later line-ups, even when the person identified is not the perpetrator. Although juries and decision-makers place great reliance on eyewitness identification, they are often unaware of the danger of false memories…

Bias creeps into memory without our knowledge, without our awareness. While confidence and accuracy are generally correlated, when misleading information is given, witness confidence is often higher for the incorrect information than for the correct information. This leads many to question the competence of the average person to determine credibility issues. Juries are the fact-finders, and credibility issues are to be determined by juries. The issue then arises whether juries are equipped to make these determinations.

At least in a court of law there are various protections built in to help the defendant. The Kavanaugh accuser’s story—as it stands now, without important details, and of such antiquity—could not stand in a court of law even if a statute of limitations weren’t operating and it could be brought to trial. But even if, between now and some hypothetical trial, the accuser managed to flesh out more of those details (in the law biz it’s called having your memory “refreshed”), she would be harshly criticized by a defense attorney for having suddenly “remembered” the details she couldn’t come up with years ago or even a few months ago. That would be highly suspect.

However, in testimony before Congress, there are no such protections for the accused, and people tend to see what they want to see. The standard of proof and the burden of proof is very different than the legal standards, and are more likely to favor the accuser. That’s one of many reasons why this particular situation is so pernicious.

As for false memories that emerge in therapy:

Some memory errors are so “large” that they almost belong in a class of their own: false memories. Back in the early 1990s a pattern emerged whereby people would go into therapy for depression and other everyday problems, but over the course of the therapy develop memories for violent and horrible victimhood (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994). These patients’ therapists claimed that the patients were recovering genuine memories of real childhood abuse, buried deep in their minds for years or even decades. But some experimental psychologists believed that the memories were instead likely to be false—created in therapy. These researchers then set out to see whether it would indeed be possible for wholly false memories to be created by procedures similar to those used in these patients’ therapy.

In early false memory studies, undergraduate subjects’ family members were recruited to provide events from the students’ lives. The student subjects were told that the researchers had talked to their family members and learned about four different events from their childhoods. The researchers asked if the now undergraduate students remembered each of these four events—introduced via short hints. The subjects were asked to write about each of the four events in a booklet and then were interviewed two separate times. The trick was that one of the events came from the researchers rather than the family (and the family had actually assured the researchers that this event had not happened to the subject). In the first such study, this researcher-introduced event was a story about being lost in a shopping mall and rescued by an older adult. In this study, after just being asked whether they remembered these events occurring on three separate occasions, a quarter of subjects came to believe that they had indeed been lost in the mall (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). In subsequent studies, similar procedures were used to get subjects to believe that they nearly drowned and had been rescued by a lifeguard, or that they had spilled punch on the bride’s parents at a family wedding, or that they had been attacked by a vicious animal as a child, among other events (Heaps & Nash, 1999; Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999).

More recent false memory studies have used a variety of different manipulations to produce false memories in substantial minorities and even occasional majorities of manipulated subjects…

Some people resist false memories, but a “substantial minority” are vulnerable to them. It’s a very troublesome phenomenon. And a substantial number of that substantial number emerge in the context of therapy. In order to judge the likelihood of a memory of trauma being a false memory, one would have to know many details of the therapeutic sessions to see how much leading was done by the therapist, how the story emerged, and in what initial detail. It is literally impossible to judge the veracity of any story that comes out in a therapeutic session unless there’s a lot of independent corroboration.

The Kavanaugh accuser’s story came out in marital therapy. We know nothing about the dynamics of the revelation and no details whatsoever, except that the therapist’s notes did not include any names of the alleged perpetrators, and differed from the accuser’s current story as to the numbers.

This is telling, and suggests at the very least a mutable, changeable memory.

Is a Congressional hearing any way to discuss these very important and very troubling issues? I can’t imagine that it would be. For one thing, questioning the veracity of the memory opens the questioners up to the charge of “disbelieving and re-traumatizing the victim.” But alleged victims lie—sometimes without even knowing it.

And lie detector tests don’t do a particle of good. They are notoriously unreliable. And furthermore, if a person believes a false memory is true, that person would be likely to pass a lie detector test with flying colors.

I want to ask you…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the following question:

Why should I, or anyone else, care what the 53-year-old Brett Kavanaugh did in high school, short of a criminal act?

And even certain criminal acts would be okay—for example, Obama’s doing coke—if the person has reformed in adulthood.

Let me make it clear that I do not think Kavanaugh is actually guilty of what Christine Blasey Ford has alleged. But if he is, I don’t much care. And I would say that no matter what his political persuasion, left or right. It wasn’t rape. It wasn’t even attempted rape. It’s the sort of thing that happened quite a bit when I was a girl (especially when people were drinking, which teenagers often do), and although it’s not a good thing or an admirable thing, there’s no reason it should matter any more if there is no pattern of such behavior in adulthood.

I think our current puritanism is absurd. Teenage indiscretions are just that. People grow up—at least, most people do. It’s the American public that’s becoming more and more juvenile.

But as I said before, the anti-Kavanaugh forces will not stop here. If Ford’s accusations don’t work, they’ll come up with others. And if old accusations don’t work, they’ll find someone who has worked with Kavanaugh more recently who can tell some sort of story a la Anita Hill.

Speaking of Hill, now may be the time to say that back then—1991—I was a liberal Democrat. I watched some of the hearings concerning her accusations against Clarence Thomas, and whether or not she was telling the truth (I didn’t know), and despite my liberal political persuasion, I wondered exactly why we should care if Clarence Thomas (or any other justice) had told a bad joke about a pubic hair on a Coke.

[NOTE: Just to let you know that I feel this way no matter what political persuasion the supposed perpetrators belongs to, please see what I had to say about Al Franken.]