The No Subject Thread - The Bear and Badger

Yossarian

On July 9th, I received a return phone call from the office of Congresswoman Anna Eshoo after Mr. Kavanaugh had become the nominee. I met with her staff on July 18th and with her on July 20th, describing the assault and discussing my fears about coming forward.

Later, we discussed the possibility of sending a letter to Ranking Member Feinstein, who is one of my state senators, describing what occurred. My understanding is that Representative Eshoo’s office delivered a copy of my letter to Senator Feinstein’s office on July 30th.

The letter included my name, but also a request that it be kept confidential. My hope was that providing the information confidentially would be sufficient to allow the Senate to consider Mr. Kavanaugh’s serious misconduct without having to make myself, my family or anyone’s family vulnerable to the personal attacks and invasions of privacy that we have faced since my name became public.

In a letter dated August 31st, Senator Feinstein wrote that she would not share the letter without my explicit consent, and I appreciated this commitment. Sexual assault victims should be able to decide for themselves when and whether their private experience is made public.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7bbe0f719ab9

tin_robot

Whether you believe Ford is lying or not (I'm fairly sure she's not), the bottom line is that it's irrelevant (in the context of the hearing). Kavanaugh has demonstrated he clearly lacks the basic objectivity and cool head required of a supreme court nominee. He failed his job interview, yet it looks like he's still getting the job.

Andy wrote:

I’d be interested to know what you’re basing that on. I’ve not seen many studies that suggest otherwise.

I’m basing it on the fact that the Police do not (and will never) release the full figures. If the real figures for the number of false accusations were released, it would give genuine victims the impression that they will not be believed. It discourages them from coming forward.

I'm pretty sure we've debated this before. I suspect the problem comes down to one of perspectives. Andy has, by the sounds of it, seen lots of people accuse others of sexual assault who, for one reason or another, were seemingly not telling the truth. I'm surprised by that too, but by definition the Police only see the people who come forwards.

The flip-side to those people is that the vast majority of women I see that have been sexually assaulted, never go to the Police at all. Usually because they feel they won't be believed, or are scared about the ramifications if they do so. I'm absolutely certain that the majority of women who are victims of sexual assault tell no-one at all.

WorKid wrote:

Changing subject abruptly. Why did Superman think the best way to maintain his secret identity was to go and work with a load of the country's best investigative journalists?

Because the sheer unlikeliness of it means they won't be looking for him amongst their own. It also means that should they start to get close, he'll know all about it because he works alongside them. It's genius really.

Kow

Or maybe Superman just isn't the brightest spark.

Diluted Dante

It would have remained confidential within the Senate Judiciary Committee. It didnt need to be published on the front page of every newspaper.

monkey

Lois: Isn’t it weird that Superman shows up in Metropolis whenever he’s needed? Maybe he lives here and he’s in disguise a lot of the time. If we ran facial analysis on Superman and cross-indexed that with....
Clark: Er this all sounds like bollocks to me Chief.
Perry: Yeah I’m going with Clark on this one. Lois, go cover the dog show.

Yossarian

Diluted Dante wrote:

It would have remained confidential within the Senate Judiciary Committee. It didnt need to be published on the front page of every newspaper.

Sure it would have.

That morning, Ford alerted an associate via email that Whelan had looked at her LinkedIn page, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Post. LinkedIn allows some subscribers to see who views their pages. Ford sent the email about 90 minutes after The Post shared her name with a White House spokesman and hours before her identity was revealed in a story posted on its website.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kavanaugh-ally-says-he-did-not-communicate-with-white-house-or-supreme-court-nominee-about-theory-of-another-attacker/2018/09/21/88335f1a-bdaa-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html?utm_term=.e14324a1968f

tin_robot

Kow wrote:

Or maybe Superman just isn't the brightest spark.

There's that too.

Yossarian

Dyno: an article about the ‘school reports’ that were ignored in the investigation.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/dozens-potential-sources-information-have-not-been-contacted-fbi-kavanaugh-n916146

I_R

The confirmation process isn't the place to be deciding this sort of issue. There's no way that you could have an exhaustive FBI investigation that came to any sort of conclusion anyway, but a week long investigation is simply a farce.

I think it used to need a two thirds majority for these sort of appointments, but it's now a simple majority, a shift from a broad consensus to a partisan decision. Needing broad support would have made him go away, hopefully before the hearing process even began. Instead they've had another battle in the culture war, where both sides are 100% certain about things they shouldn't be.

It seems to be solidifying the Republican base again as well, bad in itself and a bad example for the White House to latch on to.

Yossarian

I think it will solidify the Democratic base far more.

Little appreciated. Public opinion tends to turn against the direction of policy: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/upshot/why-comparisons-between-lbj-and-obama-can-mislead.html. See, e.g., our paper on ACA backlash against House Dems in 2010: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/health-care-vote-effects.pdf. https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1047798616784588800

https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1047840210942349312

Wookienopants

monkey wrote:

Lois: Isn’t it weird that Superman shows up in Metropolis whenever he’s needed? Maybe he lives here and he’s in disguise a lot of the time. If we ran facial analysis on Superman and cross-indexed that with....
Clark: Er this all sounds like bollocks to me Chief.
Perry: Yeah I’m going with Clark on this one. Lois, go cover the dog show.

Perry: Clark! I need you to get on your computer and help out, we have to cover the greatest threat facing mankind right now!
Clark: Luthor? I’m on it Chief...
Perry: No No No! Luthor’s small time, I mean GDPR! I want you to insert a pop up on EVERY page and article you write asking the readers to accept cookies and making them aware of our privacy policy! And make it really irritating! And impossible to get scroll on a mobile device!
Clark: erm chief... I really think that...
Perry: CLARK!! GDPR!!

Frosty

Thank fuck trump didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize.

equinox_code

People cite statistics on false rape accusations as if they are somehow reliable or complete. In reality they will always be somewhat flawed or tainted with a bias.

Of course, I am as certain as one can be that they are rare, and certainly in comparison to genuine accusations. However, from there to state we should abandon the principle of innocent until proven guilty makes no sense. It is impossible that this would not lead to an increase in false accusations. Surely a more nuanced and balanced approach would be to take all accusations seriously, and to investIgate thoroughly without premature judgement or preconceptions or any sort.

equinox_code

Late catching up, evidently.

I don’t see how anyone could have watched those who testimonies and not thought Kavanaugh was guilty.

Yossarian

Nobody is suggesting abandoning the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

mk64

sorry what did this guy to? Can someone summarise it?

Yossarian

Kavanaugh has been accused of multiple (at least 3) instances of sexual assault by different women, ranging from exposing himself at parties up to participating in gang rape.

Yossarian

Incidentally, at least one of these accusations, the gang rape one, was considered outside of the scope of the FBI investigation.

poprock

And during the hearing to see whether these accusations should affect his appointment to the US Supreme Court, he has repeatedly (and provably) lied under oath. Which, in a sane world, would disqualify him from such a position.

trippy

He's as guilty as Crown Prince Guiltor of Guiltland, riding his drunken horse Guiltyhooves, sporting a dirty cloak woven from purest guilt and wearing a pointed hat emblazoned with a giant G atop his rapey-faced head. Allegedly.

equinox_code

Yossarian wrote:

Nobody is suggesting abandoning the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Except that’s precisely what happens when someone cites, for example, the statistic of three quarters of rapes not being reported, or 97% of rapes not resulting in a conviction; they are presuming guilt before innocence, and it raises all sorts of logical contradictions.

Conversely, the opposite approach is typically taken for false accusations.

But again, I’m not wanting to imply that the number of rapes isn’t far higher than the number of false accusations. I don’t see how such an argument could be rationalized. But we should stop pretending our relevant statistics don’t have a wide margin for error, because this does directly lead to people suggesting we should presume guilt before innocence.

equinox_code

It’s complicated. Because despite all that this Kavanaugh chap seems as guilty as can be, and that remains true to me whether it’s ever proven or not

Yossarian

Innocent until proven guilty is about due legal process when a case goes to trial, it’s not relevant to the gathering of statistics, a field which deals in the balance of probabilities all the time and which knows how to do this.

Yossarian

I mean, for sure there’s the opportunity for a wide margin of error and I don’t think many reports would claim otherwise, but there’s no particular reason to suspect that the entire field is as methodologically flawed as you claim. I feel fairly sure that these issues would have been raised and addressed by other statisticians as and when they came up.

equinox_code

Innocent until proven guilty is a term or principle which can be applied in a variety of ways, not exclusively in a legal context. Of course it is relevant to the gathering of statistics. It is impossible to balance those probabilities without a bias.

Yossarian

It’s basically impossible to make any judgments about anything without a bias. At least in a field like statistics, you can publish your methodology so others can check for evidence of bias and that can be fed back into producing better stats in the future.

Kow

Who is accusing him of rape? I thought Ford said she was frightened that was what was going to happen but it didn't. Is there another accuser?

Yossarian

Julie Swetnick.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/politics/julie-swetnick-avenatti-kavenaugh.html

Kow

Ok. But she's not claiming to be the victim?

Yossarian

She said she witnessed Judge Kavanaugh participating in some of the misconduct, including lining up outside a bedroom where “numerous boys” were “waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room.” Ms. Swetnick said she was raped at one of the parties and believed she had been drugged, but did not directly accuse Judge Kavanaugh of raping her.

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