Thanks! Appreciate the link.
For me, this is no longer even about the alleged assault. It’s about Judge Kavanaugh and his bad temperament. He’s also a liar.
His performance at the hearing was absolutely disgusting. What awful behavior from a grown ass “educated” man.
Well, I don’t think this whole cluster fuck has been well played, but I concede that MMV. I agree that they probably have a good idea as to what the FBI would or could find, especially if just given a week, and I agree that the effect of this, assuming they find nothing will hurt the Dems position. The Dems have painted themselves into a corner with the FBI investigation and a few days thing, but they were almost certainly banking on Trump being to stubborn and stupid to actually do it. I’m not sure they were wrong about that, in fact.
To be clear, the FBI is only going to investigate the Ford assault. Not drinking (if not related), nor anything else Kavanaugh may have lied about in his yearbook, etc. I don’t think it will investigate the other accusers.
Even more evidence that Bush isn’t the sharpest hammer in the tool-drawer. 
Surely he should have known he needed only to call Flake, no?
ETA: Ah, he was calling other senators as well…
Is it a sure thing? I have to admit, I’ve been out of touch today as I don’t generally read a lot of news on my phone. Is the FBI going to investigate the alleged assault for sure?
As to the drinking or whatever, why do you think the FBI would or should do that? 
I get that, I don’t think you can definitively prove attempted rape after 36 years.
However, even if they can “clear” him in a week, anonymous accusations are already making national news, and I can already see a shift towards disqualifying him for being partisan and being a drunkard, none of which are going to improve over the next week.
And I am highly incredulous that the democrats are going to display any sort of satisfaction in a week even if he’s “cleared” of a 36 year old attempted rape (nearly impossible unless they have dirt that Ford’s a proven habitual pathological liar). Any other crumb is that comes out is going to merit investigation too.
Flake should change his name to cupcake.
I have no respect for this pathetic wussy of a man.
Honestly memory, in this case, plays very little role. If you believe that Ford
- Is telling the truth
- Has, and had at the time, a reasonable definition of sexual assault
- Came to the conclusion she was sexually assaulted at the time of the event.
- Saw her attacker clearly
Then you really can’t make claims about the potential effect of memory. Details may change, but the fact that “Kavanaugh sexually assaulted me” is not one of them.
Ashtura I think they have has a one step at a time policy since this became complicated. They obviously needed a hearing to get it out of committee.
They next step is the floor vote. They refused and refused an FBI investigation, and conceded it 30 minutes after it left committee. Presuming, the FBI finds nothing, they can probably force it through the full Senate and it’s game set match.
GOP told White House to investigate “credible allegations.” The White House just said they would investigate.
I don’t more than that.
re: drinking. If people tell the FBI Kavanaugh was known to drink to excess and pass out/etc. during the relevant time period, I think that’s relevant to the incident that Ford is alleging.
I think the Republicans are all in on Kavanaugh. Just think: they’ll have two bitter conservatives legislating on the bench out of spite.
A personal anecdote, FWIW. In high school, my friends and I were goofing around between classes after the bell had rung and a Vice Principal collared us. He must have been having a bad day, because he ranted and cursed at us a lot. I was on the school newspaper, so (immediately after the fact) I thought, “hey, I can write an expose about this guy and how out-of-control he is with students!”
Unfortunately, when I first wrote the draft, I used the name of Vice Principal B instead of Vice Principal A. Both male, similar build, but different races for goodness sake. I knew them both pretty well. I don’t know how I made the initial substitution, but somewhere in writing and editing I came to picture VP B in the incident. 35 years later, I can picture the location, the lockers, etc. pretty well in my head - but with VP B incorrectly as the antagonist.
When the draft was sent to the head Principal, he asked VP B, who of course denied, and I got in a lot of trouble because I literally couldn’t remember to defend myself that it wasn’t VP B. I also was a lousy journalist who didn’t check my sources, the way I figured out afterwards is that after my article was nixed, my friends all said “dude, it was VP A” (It took some convincing but I reluctantly accepted that 4 other friends were probably right).
Oh, I don’t think the Dems will ‘display any sort of satisfaction’ with the investigation, but it will appear that the Pubs are at least trying to appease them, so they will be in a difficult spot if they wish to push forward the attempted rape angle. Of course, they can still say that they aren’t voting for him because of his drinking or his partisanship…those are totally valid reasons, especially from their perspective. But they won’t be able to claim that this was rail roaded through without a pause, so they will be in a weaker position, while the Pubs will be in as strong a position as they can be in this cluster fuck with this candidate. My guess is that as with Thomas the whiff of bad odor will cling to Kav for his entire tenure, but as with Thomas it will fade to the background over time, just brought up from time to time.
Left Hand of Dorkness:
In middle age? Not off-hand. In general, I suppose there’s Tawana Brawley, though it’s hard to say what actually came from her mouth and what Al Sharpton may have falsely claimed she said.
But it’s hardly unheard of for witnesses or victims of a crime to finger a specific person and for that person to get exonerated later. Given some spare time, I could probably come up with a few specific examples, and specifically where the mistaken/deceptive witness was of middle age, but I’m sure that you’ve heard of such things yourself as well.
Here’s one, the witness is probably not what you’d call “middle age”, but not so young you’d consider her inherently unreliable.
Here’s another, it doesn’t say the age of the witness/victim, but describes her as a young mother of three, how young could she possibly be? Mid-20s, at least, I imagine.
I could certainly see that happening with peripheral details, but not the memory of a specific person hurting you.
If your entire childhood was fairly unremarkable except that one time Uncle Fred molested you in the basement when you were 10, I can imagine that over time your memory might be hazy or incorrect about a number of details, like your age at the time, events leading up to the incident, what time of day it occurred, the whereabouts of others in the household, etc. But I can’t see you getting Uncle Fred wrong, particularly if this incident is something you’re regularly replaying in your head.
I think people are conflating the way regular memories work with traumatic memories. Apples and oranges. If you asked me to recall my high school graduation, I will be able to recall some things with precision, but for the most part everything is vague. Details are vague not just because it’s a long time ago but because I’ve had no reason to constantly reflect back on that day over the course of my life. How I spent my afternoon four Saturdays ago is almost as vague as the night of my graduation, so time is not the only factor that matters when it comes to memory recall.
As a counterpoint, ask me what my family was eating for dinner the night my sister monstro almost choked to death, and I can recall that with crystal clear clarity despite it happening more than 30 years ago. It was rotisserie chicken that my dad picked up from Winn Dixie. I remember this because every time grocery store-prepared rotisserie chicken comes up in conversation (and in my line of work, it’s not a rare occurrence), I flashback to the night my sister was choking on the stuff. When the incident occurred, my mind made a permanent association between choking and rotisserie chicken, and this association is what enables me to retrieve the memory behind it. It’s not a “planted” association because it has been there from the beginning.
For Ford to falsely remember Kanavaugh as her attacker, one would have to assume she completely stopped thinking about the incident shortly after it happened, and then out of the blue, many years later, she started piecing together details from memories that had long been archived. But from her testimony, I get the sense this memory has been a burden on her mind since the beginning. It was never archived and allowed to collect dust like most of our long term memories do.
I don’t know how embittered Thomas is, but if Kavanaugh gets confirmed there will definitely be five right-wing ideologues, one of whom will have all the calm impartial demeanor that we saw on display at yesterday’s hearing. Honestly, Kavanaugh seemed unstable and scary as all hell. I would have thought yesterday’s performance alone would have disqualified him. Surely I’m not the only one who caught solid vibes of crazy emanating from the man like waves from a radio tower.
I think you could be mistaken here. It’s open to “current, credible accusations.” This article seems to imply the other two are open for investigation -
Under pressure, Trump orders FBI to investigate Kavanaugh amid sex misconduct allegations
Seems like an odd mistake to make, but it was a relatively casual incident in the large scheme of things. I’m no expert, but ISTM that if one experiences something extremely traumatic at the close-range hands of a specific individual, the identity of that individual would be the last thing you would ever forget.
“ISTM” isn’t much of a factual basis for asserting something.