“I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh”
What she saw and what she experienced are different things. Experience covers all 5 senses, plus common sense. 6 senses is a lot. Sounds, are very important, to a persons orientation, but also the “context”, events around it, would be other sense indicators. It isn’t just visual evidence that you are trying to respond to.
Right, it’s entirely possible they thought it was the bagel line. So, sure, “rape” is an inference. And the fact that there was a drunk girl inside the room is just a strange coincidence.
But you characterized her statement as “She saw him outside a room.” In fact, she characterized him as standing in a line outside a room waiting to do “something” inside (where there was a drunk girl). Not randomly standing, but waiting in line.
OK, I see now that AK’s link provides the cite that she says she saw it herself. But we’re still left wondering how show knows, 36 years later, that the guys were standing in a line in order to rape the girl. It’s certainly possible they were, but how certain is it?
She didn’t actually see the drunk girl though…or any girl. Your bagel reference discounts other, more likely possibilities. Sex workers spring to mind. I have serious doubts that Kavanaugh et al could rape multiple women (girls really…we are talking highschool here) at multiple parties (which she claims) over the course of a year without a whiff of this ever getting out. Sure, some girls are going to be intimidated enough not to ever want to come forward, but all of them? For over a year? Not one of them came forward…or was battered enough by a freaking line of boys that their parents didn’t notice or take them to the doctor to get checked out? None of them became pregnant or caught something nasty from being gang raped by a line of boys?
I was not counting on Avenatti and I do think Kabanaugh is likely to become a supreme court judge, but there is something to say about the ‘victory’ the Republicans will get.
Well I am a no longer that junior lawyer(:() with a real law degree.:D;)
Absolutely.
No. None of the claims is connected, they are not mutually supporting. Frankly, the best you can say about all of them taken at their highest is that maybe they prove he drank and partied too much when in High School.
Of the three allegations, only Ford’s seems to suggest actual specific wrongdoing by Kavanaugh. The other two, Ramirez draws inferences that it was Kavanaugh who exposed himself but is unable to state that with any certainty and Swetnick simply connects him with some wrong doings which she either did not witness or the one she experienced he did not have any participation.
For all we know, he might be a sexual predator. But the allegations proffered thus far are not sufficient to make that determination.
That’s all covered in “Why they have investigations.” You got to get down to serious work if you want to make a case on “Why they don’t have investigations”
Weinstein was able to systematically victimize dozens of women over several decades without being punished. Same with Cosby.
We shouldn’t be surprised any more that these kind of terrible things could happen without sanction. They could and did. Our society is supremely fucked up. You shouldn’t be surprised by this stuff anymore.
Yeah, I get that. But here we are talking about purported gang rape happening frequently to high school girls…rich or at least solidly middle class white high school girls. And we are talking about the 80’s…not exactly the dark ages here. Sure, things are different today and all, but they aren’t that much different. I can see this happening once, but repeatedly (presumably with different girls) and not a whiff of it in 36 years? :dubious:
A hell of a lot of people knew Weinstein was using his position to get sex, and a lot of people knew Cosby was using drugs and coercion to force sex and rape women. And a lot of people have talked about the Hollywood casting couch…hell, there have been movies about it. It certainly happens, and I wouldn’t be surprised by any rich or powerful person using their position to force or coerce sex in the past and even today.
Jeet Heer: 1. This is something that’s been gnawing at me. Leaving aside the sexual assault allegations against him, Kavanaugh is just a massive, shameless liar, as seen by his Fox interview.
There are multiple witnesses of Kavanaugh’s hard drinking behavior in college and in high school. Yeah, high school. Justice Kavanaugh poses as a choir boy.
Details and nuance are provided by Josh Marshall: https://twitter.com/MeasureMeasure/status/1045025788737740801 The biggest one is this. What’s become clear over the last week is that Kavanaugh was a big drinker in high school and college. He was also a belligerent and aggressive drunk. Yet he has presented himself as a school focused church going kid who was a bit of a choir boy. These differing accounts here are hard to press down to specifics. He doesn’t say he never drank. He doesn’t say he never went to parties. But lots of people who knew him say he was a hard partying kid who frequently drank to excess and was a belligerent drunk. He denies that. He’s lying. That’s not a worse lie than lying about sexual misconduct or assault. But it’s crystal clear. There aren’t three witnesses. There seem to be dozens. It’s okay to be a hard partying kid. It’s certainly not something that precludes you from later government service. But he’s clearly lying about it as part of his defense against these vastly more serious allegations. Actually, it’s not ok to be a hard partying kid in my view: high school binge drinking is not ok. It is, however, forgivable. But lying about it? Bald faced lying in the face of overwhelming evidence? That’s in the present. It’s incredible that folks believe this political operative is an appropriate candidate for the Supreme Court.
But not totally incredible. Repeat quote from Paul Krugman: A thought: the Kavanaugh mess has structural roots. Rs needed someone who was both ideologically reliable and at no risk of developing a conscience when it came to defending Trump against rule of law. So it had to be a bad person, which meant good odds of nasty stuff surfacing https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1043199669688512513
While I have the mike, I’ll link to a tweet essay by an expert on adolescent sexual assault: Thread Reader App
Seeing as how she herself was gang raped at one of these parties, even if it was sex workers at some of them, it clearly wasn’t sex workers at all of them.
Yes and no. Certainly sexual abuse goes unreported a lot and it did with the two celebrities you mention. But the allegations here are that they happened in public, at a party with multiple witnesses. That’s a significant distinction. And the latest allegations don’t include any actual claims of sexual assault by Kavanaugh against the claimant.
Are you fucking kidding me? Everyone and their uncle knew about Weinstein, so much that people actually joked about it. For years. Spacey rumours were around for years, actually fairly detailed ones. Even with Cosby, it was known that he was a skirt chaser despite his fatherly image.
Well, Kavanaugh was at the party where she was raped. And she was drugged for the rape, so she doesn’t recollect her attackers. And he had been a participant in rapes* at earlier parties. So there’s certainly an implication.