This is difficult for me, so please bear with me.
It was in 1988. I was at a party at a duplex at, I think, Franklin and Pleasant in Minneapolis.
I was there with a woman, a friend of mine. We’d been drinking.
A lot.
Suddenly, and without warning, Dianne Feinstein, Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Al Franken, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris walked into the room and grabbed her butt. Each of them, in order.
Yes, it looked strange, but it was Minneapolis in the ’80s. Anything could happen. Or that’s how I remember it.
My friend was really hammered, so she didn’t really react as 10 future Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary committee (and one future former member) grabbed her in an act that is considered Sexual Assault when committed by anyone but Bill Clinton.
It’s a memory I recovered, coincidentally, only yesterday, after three decades of aggressive therapy. But I believe accusers, even accusers I haven’t seen in three decades.
I won’t diviulge my friend’s name, but her father was a guy from Newark, New Jersey, named “T-Bone”, as I recall.
YOU TOO?
Or should I write: #YouToo?
An anonymous NYT source deep within the Trump administration corroborates your story!
Hey, I was at that party. I saw it, too. I didn’t think anything of it, at the time, ordinary Democrat behavior. But now that I’m WOKE, I realize how terrible it was. So my recollection is corroboration for yours.
You know, I think I might have a photograph of the incident. The original was a little grainy so I ran it through Photoshop, you know, to enhance the background, same as they did with President Obama’s birth certificate. So that’s documentation proving it happened.
And I’m pretty sure I wrote a letter to a friend in which I mentioned the incident (sadly, the friend has passed away and can’t be questioned about the letter). I remember in those days, I was using Microsoft Word and changing the font, same as Dan Rather’s fake-but-accurate letter. So that’s a contemporaneous account proving my testimony is not a recent fabrication.
Wow, with all this evidence, we hardly need an investigation at all. But I suppose for fairness, we should have them all step down from their positions until we can have a full and fair hearing, maybe some time after the elections. Certainly nobody could object to that.
Momma told me not to come.
There was this girl at work back in the 80s. She always wore snug little sweaters. I thought about her boobs.
I am so ashamed.
Much ado concerning the polygraph taken by the girl whose name I can’t remember. Wait about 30 years and it will come back to me. Seriously, though: as all SITD stalwarts realize, a polygraph is NOT a lie detector test. Such a test does not exist. Polygraph results are not admissible in court. Cops sometimes use them as tools to try to rule out suspects. I read somewhere (maybe the Internet) that OJ’s lawyers gave him a polygraph and he failed. A polygraph relies on human interpretation, another confounding element. Recall George Costanza of “Seinfeld”, who famously said: “If you believe it, it’s not a lie.” Good for a cheap laugh, and also spot on as far as polygraphs go. A skilled sociopath, lacking a conscience, might be able to produce an apparently truthful response. A person convinced of the veracity of his case could probably do the same. From personal experience: I once had connections through a colleague to the manager of Target Center. I could get very good comp tickets to musical events. Until the day that ended. However, believing that I had two great seats reserved, I went to the Will Call window and talked my way into the tickets, even though there were, in fact, none there for me. I’m normally a terrible liar. Can’t win at poker. But I believed the tickets existed, and therefore, in my mind, I was not lying. Lots has been written about recovered memories. Most of it bad and most of it true. The Dems have found themselves a vulnerable, sick patsy in their final (?) Hail Mary attempt to block Kavanaugh.
Lie detector test results are admissible for background checks and this is not a trial, it is a hearing with Senate rules.
Come back when you have something to say
So Emery thinks lie detector tests are reliable.
Pretty funny.
Both the US Congress and the NAS have found polygraph tests to be unreliable.
If the woman had failed the polygraph, do you think that we would have been told that she took a polygraph and failed? The Dems say that she passed one test. How many did she fail?
If you shop around for polygraph testers, you can find one that will pass you, eventually.
The victory of ideology and superstition over reason and science.
That is our Emery.
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Polygraphs are designed to detect lies, not the truth. That is why they are not called “Truth Detectors”.
Woolly: “NAS”? Surely you meant: ‘NSA’?
Our model here are the Stalin Moscow show trials with Grassley standing in for Beria.
Ah, there it is, Diversion Tactics #2, Projection.
Not NSA, NAS. National Academy of Science. 2002 study.
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10420
Emery, technically “admissible” means for court actions, so you are incorrect that polygraphs are “admissible” for anything. They can, sometimes, indicate a level of stress that indicates the person is lying, but they do not suss out the person who can lie with impunity or the person who actually believes what they’re saying. And as Joe’s note indicates, even their use for background checks is dubious, contrary to your assertion.
All we can say about this case with regards to it is that there is a significant likelihood that the complainant believes what she is saying, or that she knows how to lie with impunity.
I have an anonymous source deep within the Trump White House that says Emery donated to Harvey Weinstein’s GoFundMe defense fund….
Why don’t they just dunk Kavanaugh in a pond; if he floats he is a sex offender, if he sinks he is innocent.
Monty Python ~ She’s a witch!
https://youtu.be/zrzMhU_4m-g
Why did the woman even take a polygraph? And when? She was remaining anonymous as late as last Friday. Anonymous letter writers don’t need to have polygraph tests. If the test was before Friday, it indicates that despite her statement about want to remain anonymous, she planned on being public.
And she passed. Fine. What questions were asked? Her name? Her birth date? Her place of birth? Got a 100%. A truthful statement that she passed a polygraph test doesn’t necessarily mean that the questions were germane to the issue.
I admire Emery and his threadjacking ability.
Telling in the immediate aftermath or years later, people will blame the victim either way. That’s why so many women stay silent.
Ah yes, polygraphs.
Back in undergrad, I had a minor in psych. That meant being forced to “volunteer” for studies. One was wicked cool as an early instance of hepatic feedback for a helicopter system. I did well enough on that one that they actually paid me to keep coming back past the time I needed to do to meet the requirements.
One of the others was an attempt to test an improved polygraph. They wanted folks who could fool the original polygraph to see if the improved polygraph would work so they taught us to “beat” the polygraph even with a very experienced operator. It is trivially easy to make a polygraph examination useless with any knowledge. The key that makes polygraphs only slightly better than random chance in the TLAs in the government is that the operators (a) have great authority and the fear/respect of their subjects and (b) have the ability to recognize the common methods of beating a polygraph and will generally fail anyone trying to use them and bring down consequences upon the subject (see (a) above).
So no, I have no respect for a polygraph. Any even reasonably competent professor of psychology (as Ford is) should know the methods to beat a polygraph, so between the uselessness and unreliability of the instrument and the fact that she has the ability to make it unreliable makes the mere examination an irrelevance to me.
Keep in mind that EVEN if polygraph results were reliable (they’re not) those results would be easily manipulated by THE QUESTIONS ASKED. GIGO!!!
NAS = National Academy of Sciences.
You never bothered to address any of the points that I made, so I know that you are holding a weak hand.
Emery, you seem to have victim and perpetrator confused. There is no evidence that Ford was ever assaulted by anyone. Feminists would like women to have the power to have any accusation they make against men to be accepted at face value. This is ridiculous and un-American. Women are just like men in that they can be crazy, dishonest, vindictive, and lack decency. If you give them this power it will be abused.
Convince me otherwise.
nerdbert
polygraphs are a common Hollywood McGuffin – a theatrical device.
The left, tied and profoundly dependent, as it is to Hollywood, expects their audience to be unquestioning in their commitment to the cultural verities Hollywood has established and reinforced for the last 60 years, so yes, for a great swath of the electorate (and the especially benighted Emery) passing or failing a polygraph is dispositive fact, consequently they pay no subsequent attention to any assertions to the contrary.
The modern left is run by baby boomers, people who are enchanted by their own wonderfulness and are supremely confident that what they “know” is in fact true because they are the ones who originally “spoke truth to power”
“That’s why so many women stay silent.”
In the case of some of the Hollywood #MeToo incidents, it appears that they “stayed silent” because they properly felt shame at trading sexual favors for career advancement.
You don’t believe that happens?
I remember one day back in ’82. I was jogging on a rural road in Chisago County when suddenly I heard strange sounds emanating from a pasture nearby. I stopped and looked around. Then I saw it. A guy wearing a Doctor Strangelove mask had his pants around his ankles and was having intercourse with a goat. I’ll never forget the noise, especially when the guy screamed “Come back when you have something to say.” Then again, maybe it wasn’t in Chisago County; it might have been Washington County. I am pretty sure it was in ’82, but it might have been ’79. And I might not have really been jogging, but I’m certain I was moving at a brisk pace. I never wanted to speak of it, but the incident had haunted me for years and I’m really glad my therapist helped me sort through it all.
Telling in the immediate aftermath or years later, people will blame the victim either way. That’s why so many women stay silent.
It seems that in Emery’s world, questioning the veracity of an accusation and/or demanding proof of accusations before destroying someone’s name, reputation, etc. is equivalent to “blaming the victim.”
Duke Lacrosse? UVA? Tawana Brawley? Mattress Girl?
There are plenty of instances where the “victim” either changes his/her story or is caught lying. So we should treat every accusation as serious and investigate the claim thoroughly. But remember what Denzel Washington’s Alonzo says in Training Day: “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove.”
My new philosophy is that when it comes down to he said/she said, you have to believe the man. Why? Men, as a group, have a history of being exploited and abused by women. Look around the country. How many women do you see getting by on her man’s paycheck? How many women do you see getting by on public assistance? Everyone knows men pay more in income taxes and social security than women do. It’s also true that although men pay more in social security taxes, they collect less, because they tend to die at a younger age than women do. Men are oppressed by women across the country, on a daily basis.
When a man accuses a woman of abuse, the woman needs to stay silent. We’ve heard enough from you women. Let the man speak, and listen. It will be good for you.
Mr. D – I saw that, too! But with a goat, you say? I just thought he was thread-jacking.
But with a goat, you say? I just thought he was thread-jacking.
Operationally they are quite similar, but sometimes the thread-jack requires a Google search.
Emery is worried we’re trying to “blame the victim.” That’s what all the Duke professors said about the fraternity gang rape that . . . never happened.
You can’t blame a victim of a crime that never occurred, that’s blaming the perpetrator of a hoax, a slander, a liar, for helping tarnish an innocent person’s reputation. That’s entirely justified. If only the Left were as worried about the rights of the unjustly accused as they are about signaling virtue.
MP – at least you might live longer because you stared at her boobs!
Woolly: The MeToo movement needs to decide what to do with the many cases where one party claims there has been abuse or assault, but there is not sufficient evidence to prosecute, which is common. Up to now, there seems to be a desire to punish the accused anyway. That won’t work without abandoning the presumption of innocence, and men won’t support it. There is a limit to what a justice system with imperfect knowledge can do, but we can still treat victims better.
IF they’re victims, Emery. That’s the point – she might not be.
Anybody can say “I was abducted by aliens. I’m traumatized. Society should coddle me.” But if they weren’t really abducted, then society shouldn’t coddle them; instead, society should commit them to receive the mental health treatment they need.
Similarly, any woman can say “I was molested. I’m traumatized. Society should coddle me.” But if she wasn’t really molested (for example, mattress girl), then she doesn’t deserve the sympathy we give victims, she deserves the back of the hand for lying about it.
Perhaps you are eager to excoriate society for failing to be more sympathetic because your Liberal bent predisposes you to believe any calumny against a Conservative, no matter how fanciful?
Emery: your 7:24 is mealy mouthed. Are you for due process? Are you against non-judicial punishment? Take a stand, for God’s sake.
While I agree the accusations aren’t convincing enough at this late hour. It’s not going to convince anybody to change their vote, and arguably it shouldn’t. If it did, any nomination could be defeated with an impossible-to-verify accusation.
Transparency and caring for victims is going to create a better consensus than punitively demanding more from our justice system than it can provide without sacrificing judicial standards. Zero tolerance has never worked long term (The drug war, 3 strikes and you’re out sentencing, stop and frisk, etc.). If the stress is on treating victims and encouraging transparency, we’ll know who the repeat offenders are by reputation, and we’ll reduce the psychological harm done. That’s a realistic goal which will last after the anger fades over the high profile cases, as anger always does.
Two important facts: Ford does not want to testify and be questioned before a bipartisan committee, and Feinstein refuses to release the unredacted letter she originally received from Ford.
What does that tell you? Use your power of critical thinking.
This is not about some attempted sexual assault that may have happened thirty five years ago. We are talking about the party of Ted Kennedy & Bill Clinton. What were they up to thirty five years ago?