Brett Kavanaugh

False Memory Candidates – Hypnosis Update!

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE For years I have known that hypnosis as a psychotherapy is dangerous. Most of the “alien abduction” stories, or contacts with spirits or past historical figures comes from some altered state of mind. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus mentions hypnosis in her TED-TALKS which I edit into the below audio a bit. I mentioned to a cyber acquaintance that I wonder if part of her (Christine Blasey Ford) therapy included hypnosis. This is what he said (I will emphasize the main point):

  • The timing of the specificity of her memories is certainly disquieting, but unless we learn more about her therapy, it will be hard for this to be more than speculation. It seems very likely that the name “Kavanaugh” never in fact came up until this summer, despite reports to the contrary.

True dat. HOWEVER, new information has come forward to bolster the hypnosis angle. Here is a great post by GATEWAY PUNDIT:

Christine Ford has not turned over her therapist’s notes to the Senate regarding her suppressed memories about Judge Kavanaugh abusing her decades earlier. This may be because if the memories were revealed through hypnosis they would be “absolutely inadmissible” in the court of law in many states, including New York and Maryland.

>>> Editor’s Side Note: (1) Dr. Ford released any confidentiality when she shared her therapy notes with the Washington Post, and (2), the FBI needs to view her therapy notes.

[….]

One of Christine Blasey Ford’s research articles in 2008 included a study on self-hypnosis. The practice of self-hypnosis is used to retrieve important memories and “create artificial situations.”

My cyber acquaintance’s response after reading the story above? “Wow” Continuing on now with the previous post:

  • If I’ve learned anything from my decades working on these problems, it’s this: Just because somebody tells you something and they say it with lots of confidence, detail, and emotion does not mean that it really happened. We can’t reliably distinguish true memories from false memories; WE NEED INDEPENDENT CORROBORATION. Such a discovery has made me more tolerant of friends and family who misremember. Such a discovery might have saved Steve Titus. We should all keep in mind that memory, like liberty, is a fragile thing. — Dr. Loftus

The only book I have read from years ago is “Confabulations: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families.” I would be curious to know if some of the counseling for Dr. Ford included hypnosis. I would also like to know the factors used to “recover” Ms. Ramirez’s memory. There have been many more studies based a lot more in control groups and the scientific method:

  • The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory
  • Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial
  • The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse
  • Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die
  • Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives

National Review has an excellent article regarding the issue of false memories, “‘False Memories’ Are More Common Than You Think”. In this excellent radio segment by the JOHN & KEN SHOW I add video and end in humor to embolden the idea herein.

 

Three Accusers | No Evidence

Published by Papa Giorgio

Wednesday on the radio, Mark Levin addressed the latest sexual assault allegations raised against Judge Brett Kavanaugh and pointed out a pattern:

  • “No witnesses, no corroboration, no evidence. That’s the pattern.”

CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD

BREAKING! WRONG GUY

Holy moly the news just gets more wild and crazy. Now there’s a man who has come out to say that Dr. Christine Ford has confused an interaction HE had with her, and accidentally blamed Kavanaugh for it!!!!

[….]

WOW ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?

That would completely wipe out her credibility, on the evening before she’s set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Unbelievable. We’ll update as this story develops…

UPDATE: THERE ARE NOW TWO MEN!!!

“Whoa. Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans say they have spoken to two men who think they, not Kavanaugh, had the 1982 encounter that formed the basis for her sexual abuse claim. (These tables are from a timeline the committee majority published 15 minutes ago.)”…

(RIGHT SCOOP)

NO WITNESSES

  • All of Ford’s named witnesses of the party, both male and female, have now denied any recollection of attending such a party.

(WEEKLY STANDARD; CNN, POWERLINE, NATIONAL REVIEW, WESTERN JOURNAL, WASHINGTON TIMES). 

LIE DETECTOR TEST – Different Story

LIE DETECTOR TEST – Only 2 Questions

  • Ford’s lawyer took her to a polygraph examiner who concluded she was not being ‘deceptive’ with claims about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh
  • Attorney sent the results to Senate Republicans but refuse to show them a therapist’s notes from the sessions where Ford first discussed it
  • The polygraph test consisted of two yes-no questions
  • Ford and Kavanaugh are scheduled to testify in a Senate hearing on Thursday
  • Polygraphs, so-called ‘lie detactor’ tests, are generally inadmissible in court

The California woman who first accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault passed a ‘lie detector’ test in August that consisted of two questions.

Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys sent Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans a report from a polygraph examiner who interviewed her on August 10.

But they refused on Wednesday to provide the committee with copies of notes from her psychotherapy sessions. Ford has said she first spoke to a therapist in 2012 about her memories of an ordeal.

‘Any request that she expose her private medical records for public inspection represents an unacceptable invasion of privacy,’ attorney Debra Katz wrote.

Katz, however, handed over the polygraph results to buttress her client’s accusation.

The test examiner asked Ford to write down a description of what happened to her at a high school party in the early 1980s, where she claims a drunken teenage Kavanaugh groped her and tried to remove her clothing while pinning her to a bed and covering her mouth.

AFTER INTERVIEWING HER ABOUT HER STATEMENT, THE EXAMINER ASKED HER A PAIR OF YES-OR-NO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WRITTEN NARRATIVE.

‘IS ANY PART OF YOUR STATEMENT FALSE?’ HE ASKED, FOLLOWED BY: ‘DID YOU MAKE UP ANY PART OF YOUR STATEMENT?’ FORD ANSWERED ‘NO’ TO BOTH QUESTIONS.

The report doesn’t mention questions about any specific parts of her story.

The polygraph examiner wrote that her two responses were ‘not indicative of deception,’ and that the chance she was lying was a tiny fraction of one per cent….

(DAILY MAIL | emphasis added | editor’s note: there were no comparison questions asked in differing ways to create a baseline)

DEBORAH RAMIREZ

NEW YORK TIMES – No Evidence/Witnesses At All

The New York Times reported on Sunday that it was unable to corroborate the claims of a second accuser who says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to her in college.

Deborah Ramirez alleges that Kavanaugh thrust his penis into her face while she was drunk at a Yale University dormitory party. The New Yorker ran with Ramirez’s allegation on Sunday despite being unable to produce any firsthand witnesses or confirm that Kavanaugh was at the party where the incident was said to have occurred.

The New York Times noted several paragraphs deep in a report that it chose not to report on Ramirez’s allegation because of a lack of corroborating evidence.

“The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge,” the NYT’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos reported. “Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.”….

(DAILY CALLER)

CLOSEST COLLEGE FRIEND DENIES

…However, a woman who described herself as Ramirez’s best friend at the time told the New Yorker that she never heard about the story: “I was never told this story by her, or by anyone else. It never came up. I didn’t see it; I never heard of it happening.”

(BREITBART)

RAMIREZ NOT SURE – ONE

The Washington Post and other news outlets had attempted to report out Ramirez’s story in the days before the New Yorker report. She declined to speak with the Post. The New York Times could not corroborate it,

 saying It also said that some potential witnesses hadn’t seemed certain about the alleged perpetrator when Ramirez called them about it recently:

The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.

(WASHINGTON POST)

RAMIREZ NOT SURE – TWO

…Confronted with a New York Times report indicating Ramirez expressed doubts about Kavanaugh’s guilt to former Yale classmates, Mayer said Ramirez shared those doubts before they published their bombshell report on Sunday.

“To Ronan she said she wasn’t absolutely certain, she needed to make certain before she was going to say anything publicly. She remembered the specifics, the graphic specifics, and she tried to remember for sure who that man was who was in her face,” she told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.“With all due respect to the New York Times, which is the best paper in America, just because they couldn’t get the story and speak to her or find the person that we found, who remembered it from back then, doesn’t mean it’s not true.”…

(NATIONAL REVIEW)

SIX DAYS OF INTENSE PRESSURE

The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.

(AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE)

JULIE SWETNICK

NEW YORK TIMES – No Corroboration 

…The New York Times noted that it could not independently corroborate the third Brett Kavanaugh accuser’s allegation that he engaged in “abusive” behavior toward girls at parties in high school.

“None of Ms. Swetnick’s claims could be independently corroborated by The New York Times, and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, declined to make her available for an interview,” the Times wrote in a story Wednesday….

(DAILY CALLER)

CRAZY PAST – Threats and Taxes

REPORT: Kavanaugh Accuser’s Ex-Boyfriend Filed Restraining Order After They Broke Up

…A Miami-Dade County court docket shows a petition for injunction against Swetnick was filed March 1, 2001, by her former boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy, who told POLITICO Wednesday the two had dated for four years before they broke up.

Thirteen days later, the case was dismissed, not long after an affidavit of non-ability to advance fees was filed.

According to Vinneccy, Swetnick threatened him after they broke up and even after he got married to his current wife and had a child.

“Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time,” Vinneccy said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. “I know a lot about her.”

“She’s not credible at all,” he said. “Not at all.”

Vinneccy, 63, is a registered Democrat, according to Miami-Dade County voting records….

(POLITICO)

OWES MONEY – Lied In The Past

Swetnick also claims to have a security clearance with the IRS despite having recently had a $40,000 judgement against her for unpaid taxes. She settled a $40,303 IRS judgement on March 23 of this year, according to a public records search. Maryland court records show a $62,821 tax lien filed against her on Oct. 2, 2015.

Swetnick has also been involved in civil cases in Maryland and Oregon.

In November 2000, she was sued by Webtrends, a web company in Portland that Swetnick worked for from December 1999 through August 2000. It is not clear how the case was decided or what Swetnick allegedly said to defame the company. Webtrends did not respond to a request for comment.

Swetnick filed a personal injury lawsuit against the Washington, D.C. Metro in September 1994. The outcome of that case is also unclear.

(DAILY CALLER | DAILY MAIL)

NO CONFIRMATION RAMIREZ AT PARTY

This is amazing —two male students who were allegedly at the party, the wife of another male student, and three other Yale classmates all tell Ronan Farrow that there is no way Kavanaugh assaulted Ramirez.

[….]

And here’s the kicker… Ronan Farrow could not confirm Kavanaugh was at the party Ramirez describes.

(GATEWAY PUNDIT)

1991 Democrats vs. Today’s Lot

Published by Papa Giorgio

In 1991, the presumption was with the accused:

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) declared that Donald Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, does not deserve the presumption of innocence when it comes to sexual assault allegations against him — because she disagrees with his judicial philosophy.

You got that? If you’re one of those dastardly “conservatives”, you don’t get any presumption of innocence! (See more at PJ-MEDIA). BUT WAIT! We aren’t done. Even if all four people named by an accuser say they were not at a party with Kavanaugh, that proves Dr. Ford’s claims.

…No really:

Mark Steyn Talks To Joe Concha About Media Malpractice

Published by Papa Giorgio

INFO UPDATE:

  • All of Ford’s named witnesses of the party, both male and female, have now denied any recollection of attending such a party.

(WEEKLY STANDARD; CNN, POWERLINE, NATIONAL REVIEW, WESTERN JOURNAL, WASHINTON TIMES). 

Mark Steyn filled in for Rush on Friday, and I caught this interview that discusses just how bad the media has gotten in regard to anything Republican. Joe’s article can be found at THE HILL.

An extended excerpt from Joe Concha’s article:

The examples of misleading tales are apparent for all to see, mostly on the anti-Kavanaugh side.

For example, MSNBC goes heavy with a story affirming the allegations from Ford’s classmate based on a Facebook post. The classmate later admitted to not even knowing Ford or hearing a story firsthand. The national news outlet covered this without, apparently, any reasonable vetting.

“I did not know her personally but I remember her. This incident did happen,” Ford schoolmate Christina King Miranda wrote. “Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details. However, Christine’s vivid recollection should be more than enough for us to truly, deeply know that the accusation is true.”

This was enough for MSNBC and other outlets to run with the story.

Third-party tale? She didn’t know Ford directly? Screw it. Let’s go with it anyway.

It’s gossip treated as gospel.

MSNBC would later in a subsequent tweet note that King Miranda had removed the post without deleting the initial tweet, which was retweeted nearly 900 times.

The follow-up tweet was retweeted less than 100 times, or nine times fewer, for those keeping score at home.

“That it happened or not, I have no idea,” King Miranda told NPR on Friday. “I can’t say that it did or didn’t.”

“I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter,” she later added.

Meanwhile, CNN anchor Jim Scuitto tweets out an incomplete claim about how and where Ford could potentially be interviewed, publicly or privately or in Washington, D.C., or California, where she lives. The tweet’s omission is egregious enough that committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley’s (R-Iowa) office is forced to respond to.

“The offer to #ChristinaBlaseyFord is blunt: testify in public six days from now while under death threats or your allegation will be ignored in the confirmation of a SCOTUS nominee. That is quite a choice,” Scuitto wrote in a tweet that is retweeted more than 7,600 times and liked 17,000 times.

“This is not close to the offer to #ChristinaBlaseyFord,” replied Grassley’s office to Scuitto, a former Obama State Department official. “Chairman Grassley offered an open or closed hearing, reached out to discuss timing that would work for Dr. Ford, has even offered to send staff to California. This deserves a correction.”

More than 20 hours later, Sciutto sends a second tweet clarifying his original tweet. That is retweeted just 134 times and liked just 320 times.

[….]

Washington Post bureau chief Philip Rucker also was lambasted for a story involving a photo showing a ritual that Kavanaugh’s fraternity at Yale participated in back in 1985 involving a flag woven together by women’s underwear.

[….]

[….]

One small problem: The photo doesn’t have Kavanaugh in it….

(Read it all at THE HILL)

POWERLINE notes another glaringly wrong media story (see Kimberley’s TWITTER for more):

The Way It Was – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Published by Papa Giorgio

WEASEL HAT-TIP

GOP WAR ROOM:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticizes how Judge Brett Kavanaugh was treated during his SCOTUS confirmation hearings. Discussing the modern Supreme Court confirmation process, Ginsburg called the hearings a “highly partisan show” and “wrong” while speaking at the George Washington University Law School on 9/12/18. Be sure to like, subscribe, and comment below to share your thoughts on the video.

More Evidence the Left Has Lost It

Published by Papa Giorgio

Two MUST READ stories:

  • Malicious Attack on Zina Bash Shows How Deranged #Stopkavanaugh Has Become | Social Media Mob Goes After Half-Mexican, Half-Polish Jewish Grandchild of Holocaust Survivors for Supposedly Flashing A White Power Hand Sign. (LEGAL INSURRECTION)

…We’ve already covered today the antics of Democrat Senators trying to abort the hearings by repeatedly interrupting, the disruptions by Linda Sarsour and crew, and the stage and phony claim that Kavanaugh refused to shake the hand of the father of a Parkland school shooting victim.

All those things were stupid political theater.

But there is an evil attack on a former Kavanaugh law clerk, Zina Bash, which shows how malicious #StopKavanaugh has become….

HOT AIR notes the response from Zina Bash’s husband, U.S. Attorney John Bash:

  • The Craziest Liberal Freakout Of All Time (POWERLINE)

…I had no idea this dog-whistle racist symbol was so widespread. Like most grand conspiracies, it is everywhere…

Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro Discuss Brett Kavanaugh (SCOTUS)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Ben Shapiro was on the Glenn Beck Show discussing the possibilities of Brett Kavanaugh sliding Left or Right. Ben seems to think he will be closer to Alito rather than be another Roberts. Which is good. The best woman was not chosen, but Trump may have another go at it this term! At any rate, now that reality has set-in, you get to hear the real Ben Shapiro.

Brett Kavanaugh

Published by Papa Giorgio

I think it was Prager or Elder… but they were saying that it is only Justices put on the court by Republicans that slide Left. A Justice put on the court by a Democrat typically stays reliably Left. So, I am worried about Kavanaugh. Mark Levin doesn’t like him. Neither does Ben Shapiro. But these two, while right on on a lot of things, are not my favorite shot-callers. NATIONAL REVIEW has a good response to Shapiro.

Here are some headlines that make me happy (from NEWSBUSTERS):

  • ABC Knocks Kavanaugh as ‘Not a Slam Dunk’ Will Cause ‘Battle Royale’
  • MSNBC Immediately Freaks Over ‘Right-Wing,’ ‘Conservative’ Kavanaugh
  • CNN Host Badgers Trump SCOTUS Adviser, Picking ‘Right-Wing Extremists’
  • Celebrities, Media Melt Down Over ‘Cruelly Regressive’ Brett Kavanaugh

However, Trump seems to be on a roll… so why should I doubt his pick before taking seminal cases on the Court?

THERE IS GOOD NEWS… here are some Tweets via LEGAL INSURRECTION and RIGHT SCOOP:

POWERLINE still has reservations like we all do:

…Kavanaugh is well-known in D.C. legal circles. There’s wide agreement among the people I know who know him that, in terms of judicial philosophy and temperament, he falls somewhere between Chief Justice Roberts and the late Justice Scalia. Some say he’s closer to Roberts. Others say he’s closer to Scalia.

Either way, Kananaugh will make a good Justice, if confirmed, though I hope the folks who say he’s closer to Scalia are right….

The FEDERALIST makes us think twice as well!

BREITBART however notes the solid reasoning that most likely pushed Trump in Kavanaugh’s direction:

…But it is Kavanaugh’s consistent rulings on immigration, the central issue of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, that set him apart from the other top candidates for the Supreme Court. Always referring to illegal immigrants as such, he explicitly sided with American workers in his major immigration opinions. “[A]n illegal immigrant worker is not a lawful ’employee’ in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote in a dissent in which he would have excluded illegally employed aliens from American union elections.

In 2014, another Kavanaugh dissent, Fogo de Chao v. Department of Homeland Security, expounded an understanding that American immigration laws exist to protect American workers and rejecting the “jobs Americans won’t do” ideology of open-border groups and the pro-cheap-labor business lobby:

But the “Americans can’t learn to cook” proposition is a factually unsupported stereotype that finds no home in the specialized knowledge visa program. And the “Americans won’t cook” proposition in the end is just an economic argument.

Like other restaurants, Fogo de Chao must compete in the chef market by offering better wages or benefits to attract quality chefs. Fogo de Chao undoubtedly would save money if it could simply import experienced Brazilian chefs rather than hiring and training only American chefs to cook at its steakhouses here in the United States.

These attitudes helped Kavanaugh rack up the support of advocates for America’s “forgotten men and women” like Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance and conservative author and columnist Ann Coulter. White House Counsel Don McGhan, the president’s most senior lawyer, also reportedly pushed Kavanaugh as his favorite among the president’s shortlist.

As Loyola University Maryland political science professor Jesse Merriam put it Friday in a Real Clear Politics op-ed, “Judge Kavanaugh is the only candidate with a demonstrated legal understanding of the political issues that inspired millions of forgotten Americans to come out to the polls and vote for Donald Trump. Judge Kavanaugh is the America First choice.”……