I’ve been checking in, and appreciate Huerta’s updates as he finds and posts things I haven’t seen.
I think there is a bit of a lull, and not as much to discuss right now unless there is drastic news or charges dropped, etc. But then I think the thread should be revisited.
Well, looks like I’m outvoted. Enjoy your blogging, Huerta88!
Likewise - nearly all of Huerta88’s posts have been informative and his points tightly argued.
And, as BabaBooey says, this has dropped off the front pages. And the media doesn’t seem to have any setting between rubbing our noses in it, and ignoring it.
The case for the prosecution seems to be collapsing like an amateur’s souffle.
Regards,
Shodan
Bwhahahahaha!
Originally Posted by you with the face:
You don’t seem to be fighting very hard to pull yourself out. If its such a wasteland, why don’t you move on?
Yea, excepy Huerta’s posts have done a remarkable job at presenting information and opinions backed up by cites. I don’t buy all his conclutions, but at least he’s backed up what he posts. You, on the other hand, have done nothing but hold your breath and stamp your feet saying over and over “lalalalalalaI’mrightI’mright”. Laugh all you want, but in this thread, he has waaaay more credibility than you do.
Why not focus on the number of viewings rather than the number of responses? I think his posts are adding value and I am continuing to read them. This is a non–starter and your should drop it.
You know, I tried to make a souffle the other day, and it looked great for a while, and then turned into a sort of soupy bready thing. Just like in the sitcoms. And just like the case against the Duke players!
Why are you laughing? Huerta88 backs up his posts with cites, and argues reasonable inferences from those cites. I’m not sure I’m completely on-board with everything he’s said, but he’s made a very good case for himself.
Then, in contrast, there’s your performance in this thread, which has been… um… less than that.
Just seconding this. This thread has been way more informative in a meta-information sort of way than any of the single news sources on the story. I say keep it up.
Thanks for your reasoned participation in this thread, Bricker. It warms my heart to see such a staunch defender of truth and objectivity coming into the tail-end of a thread like this, determined to live up to this board’s credo of fighting ignorance instead of disappearing for a dozen or more pages with nothing substantive to add to the discussion.
And it also pleases me that you, a lawyer, see nothing wrong with how this rape accuser–a potential rape victim–has been tried in the media, including this message board, almost as if it is she and not the defendants who have been charged with a crime by the state of NC. Yes, it brings me warm fuzzies to know that you see no problem with branding people “lying whores” as Ellis Dee and others have done, even though they are only privy to one half of the story, and even though the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”–a kindergarten concept–extends to both sides of the case.
It makes me good to know that I’m in a country where if I happen to be a black woman and I identify a white male as an attacker, my race will be taken into account when folks on the sidelines are determining the plausibility of my claim. To be told by Huerta, that such a claim is fishy, on its face, because it is “statistically unlikely” based on data that does not say that at all. It makes me feel so very fucking fantastic. I can’t stop smiling. I’m also glad that Bricker, who is supposed to be very smart, can’t see why there is anything wrong with that. The math must go over his head or something. That fills with glee, as well. Because it tells me that if Bricker doesn’t get it, then there are others who don’t get it either. And it’s probably a lot of them. Joy!
I’m also glad that you are not alone in your assessment, Bricker, and that there are others who think Huerta has argued his case well just because he has pulled up cites (nevermind that they’re not very credible or relevant…he’s got cites, dammit!). It makes me feel like people aren’t as moronic as I thought they were.
I’m going to get something to drink now. Keep on posting, Huerta. We love you!!!
Count me among those still interested and reading.
And it’s fun to watch you with the face’s blood pressure spike as she throws her childish tantrums, so there’s always that.
Oh for fuck’s sake face, get off the cross already. Neither Bricker nor I said that we bought Huerta’s position 100%, but we did note that we found it well argued and supported by cites, logically proceding from the data presented. You, STILL, refuse to do anything other than repeat over and over “I don’t believe it”. Fine. You may not believe it, but unless you present some evidence to support your lack of belief, you’re not going to convince many people here.
As to the case in question, I think it stinks. And not because the accuser is black, or because the accused were rich or anything like that. I think it stinks because the accusation holds together about as well as a wet piece of toilet paper. You seem to think that the prosecution has some magic bullet that they are going to pull out at trial to vindicate the persecution of these lacross players. Ask a lawyer about the rules of something called “discovery” (I dunno, maybe Bricker could help here) that make that an impossibility. The accuser has changed her story numerous times, no colaborating evidence has been found supporting her claims, and in fact the DNA that was found came from one of three guys she had fucked that day, none of them a Duke lax player! I think “Lying whore” may be a generous description of her at this point. It’s just as racist to believe her nonsensical story in the face of all evidence because she happens to be black as it would be to discount her claims of rape without investigating them because she’s black.
What is well argued? I’m raking my brain here, thinking of what you could possibly be talking about, and I have no idea. Articulate his position, whatever it is, please.
I’ll tell you what I saw him arguing WRT the race angle. He said that, absent other forms of proof and coroborating evidence, it was acceptable to consider the statistical likelyhood of a given event when trying to determine just how truthful the accuser was being. In this case, where there is no DNA evidence to support the accuser’s claims, no photos, no witnesses and a story that changed daily, along with plenty of evidence contradicting the accusation, he pointed out that white on black rape is statistically a very rare crime, and presented cites to support that claim (shocked the hell out of me too). He indicated that, when taken together with all of the other evidence (or lack thereof), this statistical fact made the accused version of the events even more unlikely. As far as I can tell, that’s all he said. If you believe otherwise, please present what he said differently (along with the appropriate quotes, of course), and I’ll retract my summary. An analogy might be something like this. Suppose you come to me and tell me that a little boy had stolen and eaten an ice cream bar from your store. I look at the boy and he has no ice cream on his face, no wrapper in his pockets, no popsicle stick on the ground beside him and no sticky residue on his hands. In spite of all that, I would lend considerable weight to your accusation because I know that 99 out of 100 little boys really, really like ice cream. OTOH, exact same situation, but you tell me he stole and ate liver. Not only do I not find evidence of liver on or around the boy, but I also know that 99 out of 100 little boys hate liver. That certainly doesn’t mean that this little boy didn’t steal and eat liver, but it does make it a much more unlikely scenario.
Huerta, you wanna take a shot at this? I’d hate to put words in oyur mouth, even inadvertently.
Agree.
You got it in one.
The strawman argument that this graceless loon persists in making is that I have argued only, always, and everywhere about race, and have relied only upon the racial patterns.
Of course, that was not the first point I made in the thread. Nor has the rarity of white-on-black rape figured much at all in my posts of late. Why? Because I’ve always adopted a totality-of-the-circumstances, what’s-suggestive-about-the-facts-we-do-know, approach. Recently I’ve been much more concerned with the criminally (and I mean that just about literally) inept and corrupt and stupid way the DA has handled this case, and, even more recently, with the belated production of the documents and materials (that’s all the documents and materials) that the prosecution has and has finally turned over to the defense. Yes, the defense “is partisan” and could be “mischaracterizing” this evidence, but every characterization they have made to date is accurate. We now have more data points. The recent non-existence (essentially) of white-on-black rape (loon screams about trillions of unreported rapes, white serial killers burying black prostitutes by the dozens, etc.) no longer plays nearly as large a role in my handicapping, now that, for instance, I’ve confirmed that the “genital injuries” were merely swelling almost certainly caused by the three consensual bonings she took that day – though of course the other data points are consistent with the doubt-inducing nature of the claims.
The DOJ report sent this poster over the batshit, raving edge. There is no question in my mind that she believed, or was heavily inclined to believe, the accuser’s initial allegations (bullshit faux-Solomonic we-don’t-have-all-the-evidence cop-outs and attempts to equate investigating or discussing fishy circumstances NOW with somehow “trying . . . in the media” the “victim,” who faces no liability, aside).
There is little question in my mind that she nodded sadly and sententiously and believingly at the notion that an unreformed culture of slavemaster-era white-on-black sexualized power-induced violence persisted on a significant scale in the U.S. Never, never will she forgive the messenger for robbing her of this sick delusion.
My arguments and observations here have never been all, or even mainly, about race (though that is of course the element of them that elicited the most citation-free vitriol). They’ve been about a case that has smelled fishy from beginning to end and that is bidding fair to slot itself into a pattern set by the Tawana case. My submission has been that we should learn from any such patterns which allegations to take seriously (hint: not so much the ones in which the story keeps changing or is chronologically impossible or there’s no physical evidence or the fact-pattern is almost unheard of), and which less.
I suspect the bottom line is that people who wanted to believe this woman thought this case was in some sick way a feather in their caps because it “proved” things they wanted to believe or have believed about rape and class and race, and they don’t like the prospect of not only having this cause celebre snatched away, but having the case actually prove something that’s a net detriment to their account in the bank of race-baiting and victim politics – that black women are, thank God, safe from widespread rape by whites, and that slutty nutty women sometimes (if it turns out to be true here) do lie about rape, as they did in Tawana’s case.
Sherlock Holmes called it:
Uh, that’s obviously not a reference to Weirddave, sorry if it read that way . . . .
again, apparently because I failed to agree w/ the position/argument posted by huert, there is an erroneous assumption that I simply failed to understand it.
what bugged me, was his extrapolation that since he found data that says that white males are rarely convicted of raping black females, that (yes, absent any other info about the case) somehow, that should give us some useable info about **a specific ** case.
and I don’t agree that it can.
In addition, and more to his detriment, Bricker & dave seem to also forget that in the very same data set that he was relying on to suggest that the claim was somehow less believable (absent any other data) because it was white male and black female,data also existed that said that in cases of gang rape (which was also alledged in this case), white males were more often convicted than other categories.
In other words, he simply failed to explain why only the data point of white males raping black females was significant in this case (which supported his position), vs the gang rape data which did not.
he also seemed to continue to contend (as he seems to do here, though I may be reading too much into his post) that if some one disagreed w/his argument, that meant we believed the woman. Certainly wasn’t true in my case, I just thought the point about white males raping black females was irrelevant.
And do you understand my refutation to his argument? Do you understand what an epidemiologist does for a living and why I might know a little bit about why his approach is flawed? I broke it down so many times. Carefully and slowly. Do you still not understand why I consider him an idiot for stubbornly holding onto his position?
The presence or absence of evidence is a moot point, guys. We are talking about prima facie determinations, which assumes the absence of evidence. I fail to be impressed by all these qualifiers about “absent any other evidence”. Well, duh, we are talking about what something looks like, on its face.
It’s his initial assessment of unlikeliness that is wrong to begin with. The addition of other evidence doesn’t change the fallacious nature of his first conclusion.
How do you know this? I know this is a hypothetical and all, but unless you have a book of random facts and numbers just sitting in your pocket at all times, I doubt you’d know that 99% of boys like ice cream. If you need stats to make a prima facie determination of likelihood for everything, then you’d really be in bad shape in the real world.
But regardless, Weirddave, I’ll work with your hypothetical. The boy is accused of stealing ice cream. That sounds plausible given that children are known to do things like steal from time to time, and there’s no reason why I’d doubt he’d steal ice cream, seeing how I have anecdotal evidence that kids like sweets. No biggie. Keep in mind that I didn’t have to consult (or invent) any stats to reach this conclusion.
In this Duke case, Huerta and friends have made prima facie determinations of unlikeliness based on the race of the players involved. But why should race matter? Why would race be any more relevant than looking at music preference, religion, or favorite holiday foods? It would be like looking at this boy in your scenario and deciding that we should use his eye color as a relevant consideration in determining whether he stole the ice cream. Huerta and friends maintain, through their stubborn application of DoJ stats, that the race of the participants imparts some negative influence on the likelihood that the girl got raped, but they have not explained why or how. They just make that assumption and think that it is all so obvious that it is right.
The things that we do know about this case suggest that race should not be a major factor in our assessment of plausibility. Why would a bunch of white guys go out of their way to hire not one but two black women to perform for them, if race mattered so much to them in a sexually repellent way? Unless you assume that they didn’t know they were black (yeah, okay, reaaaal plausible…you shell out hundreds of dollars for two strippers and you have no idea what you’re getting when you order them?), the answer to this question should kind of tell you that maybe those numbers shouldn’t factor into our prima facie assessment, but rather common sense.
Sorry, but I’m not seeing why the allegation looks so unlikely, on its face. Throwing race in there and claiming that it adds anything substantive to the equation is illogical (in addition to other things). The absence of evidence linking the guys to the crime certainly makes the claim look suspect, but not the fact that she is black and they are white.
Notice how no one, including myself, has argued with Huerta about all the latest articles he’s been posting and his accompaning commentary. It’s because nobody cares about it. I do care about the stuff I’ve been responding to, because it’s the kind of thinking that leads to all kind of societal problems. Like police profiling and racial disparities in convictions and sentencing. Too many people in this thread don’t get that. They think I’m defending the accuser, when I’m not. I’m defending something a lot bigger than that.