Patterico's Pontifications

12/10/2014

UVA: More Challenges To The Story

Filed under: General — Dana @ 5:52 pm



[guest post by Dana]

I wonder how much longer we will need to say, The story continues to fall apart as opposed to The story fell completely apart? Because after this damning article, it would seem we are just about there.

Jackie’s friends challenge the Rolling Stone story:

The scene with her friends was pivotal in the article, as it alleged that the friends were callously apathetic about a beaten, bloodied, injured classmate reporting a brutal gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The account alleged that the students worried about the effect it might have on their social status, how it might reflect on Jackie during the rest of her collegiate career, and how they suggested not reporting it. It set up the article’s theme: That U-Va. has a culture that is indifferent to rape.

“It didn’t happen that way at all,” Andy said. . . .

They said there are mounting inconsistencies with the original narrative in the magazine. The students also expressed suspicions about Jackie’s allegations from that night. They said the name she provided as that of her date did not match anyone at the university, and U-Va. officials confirmed to The Post that no one by that name has attended the school.

And photographs that were texted to one of the friends showing her date that night actually were pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a junior at a university in another state, confirmed that the photographs are of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hasn’t been to Charlottesville for at least six years. . . . He said it appears the photos that were circulated were pulled from social media Web sites.

Further:

Last week, Jackie for the first time revealed a name of her alleged attacker to other friends who had known her more recently, those recent friends said. That name was different from the name she gave Andy, Cindy and Randall that first night. All three said that they had never heard the second name before it was given to them by a reporter.

On Friday, The Post interviewed a man whose name is similar to the second one Jackie used for her attacker. He said that while he did work as a lifeguard at the same time as Jackie, he had never met her in person and had never taken her out on a date. He also said that he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

The fraternity at the center of the Rolling Stone allegations has said that it did not host any registered social event on the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012, and it said in a statement that no members of Phi Kappa Psi at the time worked at the campus Aquatic and Fitness Center. A lawyer who has represented the fraternity said that no member of the fraternity at the time matched a description of “Drew” given by Jackie to The Post and to Rolling Stone.

Meanwhile, Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Jackie are not responding to media inquiries. Both have their attorneys speaking for them.

In spite of all this, Jackie’s friend explains what she hopes comes out of all of this:

“The main message we want to come out of all this is that sexual assault is a problem nationwide that we need to act in preventing. It has never been about one story. This is about the thousands of women and men who have been victims of sexual assault and have felt silenced not only by their perpetrators, but by society’s misunderstanding and stigmatization of rape.”

–Dana

146 Responses to “UVA: More Challenges To The Story”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  2. I think it was Ann Coulter who said if it is such an epidemic, then why do we have so many hoaxes? That’s what they do. When you have a Preezy who lied about his own mother losing her health insurance (she didn’t) it kinda sets the tone.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  3. Remember when the Ds insisted it was okay to lie if it was just about sex? Good times, good times……..

    East Bay Jay (a5dac7)

  4. looks like another failing in education – kids, stop digging the hole.

    seeRpea (01f6d3)

  5. No pun intended, I’m sure.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  6. And photographs that were texted to one of the friends showing her date that night actually were pictures depicting one of Jackie’s high school classmates in Northern Virginia.

    Catfishing. The only question left is who was catfishing whom.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  7. Is there a word, maybe in German, for an unraveling lie which can only be retrieved by a bigger one, which unravels in turn?

    Emily Yoffe has a story with this feature.

    A young woman goes off to college and indulges in various libertine experiences, including consensual FWB sex, and is uninhibited enough to do so in the presence of the young man’s roommate.

    Her mother discovers her diary. “What’s all this about drugs and sex?” The young woman attempts to retrieve with a small lie–“I didn’t want to, but he kept making me.” The mother calls the university and says her daughter was raped, what are they going to do about it. And now this poor young woman, to retrieve this lie, has to tell more lies to deans and other administrators, meanwhile completely derailing her FWBs college career.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  8. I get the impression she cooked up the UVA beau for benefit of her friends. Can’t be certain but the name given the friends probably did not match the face (which can be found with any reverse engine search and located by Wapo). If that’s so, then no malicious third party cooked him up – she was just trying to answer her friends queries about her date.

    He wasn’t anywhere near C-ville either.

    SarahW (267b14)

  9. I get the impression she cooked up the UVA beau for benefit of her friends.

    The “friend” sent text messages about how hot and awesome she was, and how “he” was bummed that she liked someone else.

    Too bad the fabulation didn’t just stay there–if something awful happened to her why did she put the blame on this imaginary friend? If something didn’t happen to her, why did she choose to escalate the lie to this level?

    It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but most of things plains apes do don’t really make sense, we’re just used to them.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  10. She’s also shown a willingness to “borrow” people to be players in her personal dramatic productions. She took a name she’d heard at work (to fit her aquatic center detail given before).

    SarahW (267b14)

  11. The massive insecurity of that age, when one doesn’t feel acceptable in essentials – that can be overcome with self-discipline and some actual love and some maturity.

    Dopey fibbers can grow out of it. That takes time, and effort and building confidence from doing real things. But here she is, rock bottom for a liar – total exposure. Maybe being unable to hide now will help her throw the habits away.

    SarahW (267b14)

  12. Is it wrong for me to spike the ball re: my answer as to whether or not it was okay for a blogger to reveal her full name?

    What she did put several people in danger of prosecution (or just social contempt) for a crime they did not commit. At this point, anonymity is absurd.

    bridget (37b281)

  13. At this point, anonymity is absurd.

    Since no one is danger of jail time over it, I’d go with no. You want to be careful what kinds of incentives you set up by overreacting to extreme cases.

    Since there are men in prison who can only be freed by women coming forward, I’d want to make it painless to take it back. Then again, if making the accusation is consequence-free, you’ll have more of it in the first place… the moral calculus is beyond me.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  14. The name never bothered me. I think it was the intention for her name to come out, frankly.

    The family doxing and the baseless claim she marched at DC slutwalk with another rape story, bothered me.

    SarahW (267b14)

  15. Well, if there’s one thing we can all agree on as the lesson from this whole unpleasant incident, it’s that rape culture is real, and pervasive, and all other stories of rape should be uncritically accepted at face value.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  16. It was not just her name, but her address, email and phone number… just wrong.

    With that, I now wonder if Erdely and Jackie worked together to perpetrate this hoax (for lack of a better term, although “hoax” seems extreme to push a narrative. Erdely was victim shopping, Jackie, by accounts, had had something happen to her, was seemingly traumatized, etc. Both stood to gain. How utterly callous of me to think along these lines.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  17. @Dana: I think “hoax” is too strong; a hoax is either a joke or a con, and this seems like neither. Seems like a dangerous combination of a needy unbalanced person and an unscrupulous ambitious person.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  18. Don’t forget that Erdely has uncritically reported on rape conspiracies before, but that was when the front-and-center moral panic was Catholic priests and not white college men.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  19. Yes, Gabriel Hanna, you’ve got it. Much better. Thanks.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  20. I’m actually still mad about the Catholic priest thing. Yes, some of them abused their trust and were awful people who did awful things and in some cases their superiors abdicated their clear moral responsibilities. That said, students in public schools are far more likely to have it happen to them, and it gets covered up, and those facts are NEVER, to my knowledge, treated as an indictment of the entire public school system the way that the Catholic church as a whole is treated.

    Not to mention that there has never been the same kind of public moral reckoning with the public schools.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  21. I also am concerned about Jackie cracking under the pressure as more inconsistencies and challenges appear. While I hope she will come clean for the sake of her conscience and get needed help, and come clean for the sake of young men on campuses everywhere, I really hope she doesn’t do any harm to herself. She seems both troubled and unstable.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  22. Fake, but accurate.

    DNF (7b206c)

  23. Gabriel,

    I agree Jackie seems unbalanced, although there have always been people who create stories to get attention. College freshmen who are away from home for the first time, and who don’t have anyone to challenge their stories, may be especially tempted to re-invent themselves. (Back in my college days, co-eds got attention by sharing stories of family wealth, exotic trips, and perfect boyfriends who attended other schools. Maybe times have changed and it takes a more shocking tale to get attention.)

    I also agree Sabrina seems ambitious.

    However, I disagree that hoax is too strong a word for this. It appears that both Jackie and Sabrina pushed the most shocking aspects of the story and carefully avoided anything that undermined the story’s narrative. That sounds like an attempt to deceive and if that happened, that makes it a hoax.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  24. Of course, it’s also possible Jackie was raped or that she engaged in consensual sex and regreted it later. But if the recent reports are correct and Jackie’s story unravels, as it appears it is, then the effort to make what happened seem much worse than it actually was … is what makes it a hoax.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  25. My hesitation in using “hoax” is that while I can see Ederly intentionally being deceptive, it’s harder to see Jackie independently choosing to do so without a big push and lead from the seasoned journalist. Ederly controlled the situation.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  26. @DRJ, Dana: It seems that Jackie said a lot of different things to a lot of different people at a lot of different times, and that she herself may no longer remember what things are true.

    I can find sympathy and understanding for Jackie, but not for Erdely, who was a classmate of Stephen Glass and goddamned well knew better.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  27. Dana,

    I don’t see how any journalist could have written this story if Jackie refused to cooperate. Yes, it took a gullible or ambitious journalist to write the story, but Jackie’s cooperation is what made it possible.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  28. And when she tried to back out? Reporter, sorries too late. You are MY victim now.

    SarahW (267b14)

  29. That was the biggest red flag of all and it whooshed over Erdely’s head.

    SarahW (267b14)

  30. I didn’t say Jackie refused to cooperate. My point was that Ederly is older, much more seasoned and experienced in life and a professional investigative journalist. I believe she would have controlled the situation, the narrative and Jackie herself.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  31. she accused someone who is apparently not guilty, conversely if anyone is responsible, it may be impossible to try them,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  32. Jackie tried not to cooperate and the reporter pressured her into continuing… by telling her it was too late and her story would be printed regardless of what Jackie wanted.

    Kind of story-rapey in a way.

    If the child has said to her, “print one word of my story and I’ll deny it in every particular, and tell people you didn’t care one way or another”. She would have won that powerplay.

    SarahW (267b14)

  33. Dana,

    I didn’t say Jackie refused to cooperate or that you said she refused. My point is that Jackie did cooperate and that made this story possible. It’s certainly possible Jackie is so vulnerable and weak that she couldn’t stand up to a reporter looking for a story. If so, then Jackie is so susceptible to influence or suggestion that we have to wonder even more about the truth of her story.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  34. 13. …Since there are men in prison who can only be freed by women coming forward, I’d want to make it painless to take it back. Then again, if making the accusation is consequence-free, you’ll have more of it in the first place… the moral calculus is beyond me.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/10/2014 @ 6:47 pm

    That rarely happens. I just posted this link on the Charles Johnson thread to a story of a rape lie that got a father a 15 year prison term because an 11 year old got angry at her dad.

    http://tdn.com/news/local/local-girl-lied-about-rape-father-set-free/article_bf9cac36-7c7a-11e1-a9e4-001a4bcf887a.html

    Cowlitz County Prosecutor Sue Baur said Friday she’s never seen a case quite like it. The innocent are sometimes freed after years in prison by the work of pro-bono legal teams and new DNA evidence. But Baur said she’s never known a child to return to authorities a decade later and recant, certainly not with enough credibility to scuttle a case.

    And why did she lie? Because her dad wasn’t the dad she wanted him to be. He sounds selfish and and somewhat of a lowlife.

    …She attended Kalama High School until her junior year, when she dropped out, according to investigative reports. Cassandra said she became addicted to pills in her late teens and worked a few odd jobs, for just a month or two, at McDonald’s and PetCo. By 2010, she was using meth and had felony convictions for burglary and theft, the reports said.

    In January, Cassandra told police she still has fond childhood memories of sitting on her father’s lap as he drove his pickup to collect wood pallets and wire to scrap.

    “I was daddy’s girl,” she said. “I was with my dad!” But, she said, her father wasn’t around much when she was little and that he drank heavily, smoked pot and partied.

    “I wanted him to love me, and I didn’t think he did at that time,” she told the detectives.

    So, Cassandra said, she made up the rape story, largely because her father disappointed her. “He wasn’t showing up. I wanted him away so he would stop hurting me,” she said this year. “I took my own vengeance.”

    In a 2001 interview with police, Cassandra said she wanted her father to take a lie detector test. When an investigator asked her what questions her dad should be asked, none of her suggested queries involved sexual abuse. Instead she wanted police to ask Kennedy: “Do you still smoke pot? Do you like to your kids? Do you still drink?”

    Kennedy never took a lie detector test on the advice of his attorney, according to investigative documents.

    Cassandra said this year that, as a child, she didn’t understand the consequences of her lies. She told police she hadn’t thought Kennedy would go to prison if he was convicted. “I just thought he would go away, you know, go to jail for a little bit, be out of my life,” she said…

    Since it almost never happens that men falsely convicted of rape are set free because women come forward, because they don’t, the calculus to me is clear. Send women to lie about rape to prison. Then maybe 11 year old girls might get the message that it’s not a risk-free way to get back at dad.

    And maybe college girls will get the idea that it’s not a risk-free way to avoid telling your mom the truth. And other women will get the idea it’s not a risk-free way to divert their husband’s attention away from the real reason she didn’t come home after the office Christmas party last night. Etc.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  35. 15. Well, if there’s one thing we can all agree on as the lesson from this whole unpleasant incident, it’s that rape culture is real, and pervasive, and all other stories of rape should be uncritically accepted at face value.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/10/2014 @ 6:52 pm

    Yes, if there’s one group of people you can trust to tell you about the honest reality of rape culture, it’s a crowd of progressive leftists who just finished telling you that as far as they’re concerned the truth just doesn’t matter.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  36. Try this one on. If you are a SJW in a position of, say, university president. You want to strike a blow for the cause and destroy the toxic Greek system that allows so much patriarchy to thrive, but you don’t want to jeopardize that flow of alumni donations. If you could find a young girl, assure her that you personally would see that her time at your school was a whirlwind of awesomeness if she would just help you with this one little thing. Then a discreet call to a reporter through third parties, and PRESTO! you can shut down every single frat and be called a hero for doing it.

    prowlerguy (3af7ff)

  37. @Steve57:Yes, if there’s one group of people you can trust to tell you about the honest reality of rape culture, it’s a crowd of progressive leftists who just finished telling you that as far as they’re concerned the truth just doesn’t matter.

    Rape culture is realer than rape. I’m afraid that the Revolution is not really in your heart, Comrade.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  38. it’s more fantasy than hoax i think

    happyfeet (831175)

  39. 9. Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/10/2014 @ 6:30 pm

    …. if something awful happened to her why did she put the blame on this imaginary friend? If something didn’t happen to her, why did she choose to escalate the lie to this level?

    It doesn’t make a lot of sense..

    We’re probably missing a few pieces of the puzzle.

    Now to guess what the missing pieces are…

    Sammy Finkelman (f5c867)

  40. I think I made a few good guesses with Michael Brown, although the whole steroids theory may just not be needed. There still remain a number of possibilities.

    And the Eric Garner case is obvious – he had an asthma attack, triggered by the takedown. And he really may have died before he got put in the ambulance. I don’t think they checked his pulse and breathing again, and they waited some time to put him in there, probably thinking for some time that he was being deliberately unresponsive, because after all, he had practically announced, right before his asthma attack, and that was an asthma attack, that he was going to engage in a bit of civil disobedience.

    I think all they really know is he was DOA at the hospital. And the medical examiner got things partially wrong, apparently wanting to include all possible causes of death.

    And the reason the Democrats were trying to game the CBO score, was probably not to fool the American people, as Gruber claimed or surmised later, nor to fool any mmeber of Congress, but to keep the overall score of projected budget deficits from rising too high, in order to not create
    problems for other legislation
    like preventing budget cuts, or extending unemployment benefits or whatever else was on the agenda in 2010.

    The CBO score would matter, because all members of Congress were committed to honoring CBO estimates.

    Sammy Finkelman (f5c867)

  41. It makes more sense now having read the Wa po piece in its entirety. She cooked up trouble because she wanted the affections of a young man who didn’t want any romantic relationship with her.

    Faux upperclassman boy was a character she invented, to the ends of making the real love interest take notice of her feeling the way she preferred.

    No one was cat fishing her, she appropriated a pic of an old HS classmate not in her circle at school, and gave him a new name.

    When it sparked no new interest by Randall, she created a crisis and summoned the aid of friends, love interest included.
    Nothing “happened” except pathological desperation to have a connection with that person ( Randall, per WaPo).

    The story once invented, is over time repurposed and revised for new ends and new audiences.

    WaPos reveal that Randall was never contacted by Erdely is interesting, not just because of the inexcusable failure to attempt to get corroboration of contemporaneous witnesses he night of the “event”, (having something probably to do with Jackies demands) but the insinuation in the piece that Randall had been contacted and declined to participate and be interviewed, invoking his loyalty to his own fraternity as reason for declining. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s nearly certain that jackie, trying to block acces of the reporter to people who would necessarily undermine her present story with inconsistent details, pretended to speak or write to Randall herself and fabricated a response that would get the reporter to back off attempts to contact him.

    I know the Erdely herself could have made up the excuse, but it Jackie I believe responsible for the machinations and the reporter, anxious to believe so she can have Jackies story ….lets it slide.

    SarahW (267b14)

  42. So, do you feel sad for “Jackie”, angry at “Jackie” or both?

    seeRpea (01f6d3)

  43. @SarahW:No one was cat fishing her

    She was catfishing “Randall”.

    I think it’s nearly certain that jackie, trying to block acces of the reporter to people who would necessarily undermine her present story with inconsistent details, pretended to speak or write to Randall herself and fabricated a response that would get the reporter to back off attempts to contact him.

    Stephen Glass did this–why did Erdely not learn anything from his example? She knew Glass in college and wrote an article about where he ended up and how…

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  44. Is there a word, maybe in German, for an unraveling lie which can only be retrieved by a bigger one, which unravels in turn?

    Entschlüsselungwaslüge

    (I just made that up)

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  45. the calculus to me is clear. Send women to lie about rape to prison. Then maybe 11 year old girls might get the message that it’s not a risk-free way to get back at dad.

    Steve57 (1985cb) — 12/10/2014 @ 9:10 pm

    It’s safe to say that child molestation is a far bigger problem than 11-year-olds lying about it is. The exception does not disprove the rule. Chuck Johnson remains a douchebag.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  46. @Sammy Finkelman:And the reason the Democrats were trying to game the CBO score, was probably not to fool the American people, as Gruber claimed or surmised later, nor to fool any mmeber of Congress, but to keep the overall score of projected budget deficits from rising too high, in order to not create
    problems for other legislation like preventing budget cuts, or extending unemployment benefits or whatever else was on the agenda in 2010.

    I think you are correct here, and I think it is not accurate to call what Gruber and the other Obamacare advocates were doing “lying to the American people”.

    Rather, they were consciously deceiving the American people by present true statements that they knew would be misinterpreted in a way advantageous to the passing of the law. I think it is important to hew to the definition of a lie: a statement a) made deliberately, b) known to be false, c) intended to be taken as true, and d) intended to deceive.

    “If you like your plan you can keep your plan”–that was an actual lie. But “the average family will save $2500” is perfectly accurate description of a reality where “no actual family will save $2500, and in fact in the vast majority of cases families will see an increase, but some will see a decrease.” You simply count on the vast majority of people not knowing, or caring, what “average” means and allowing them to misinterpret it as “typical” without bothering to correct them.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  47. That is the most twisted, convoluted explanation I’ve ever read trying to defend a liar, Gabriel Hanna. “The average family will save $2500” is in fact “a statement a) made deliberately, b) known to be false, c) intended to be taken as true, and d) intended to deceive.” If you can’t see that perhaps you need to go into politics where the truth seems to not matter.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  48. Erdely might be able to check her privilege but she is unable to check her assumptions. She learned to do journalism the wrong way.

    When she wants a story to be true, that’s the time to kick it and kick it and kick it and see if anything falls off.

    But that’s not how she does business. Her business is prettily setting out careful narratives to prove those many things she believes that aren’t so.

    SarahW (267b14)

  49. Hoagie, I think Gabriel was making a different point. You know the expression, “There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics”? I’ve given this example before: Bill Gates walks into a restaurant. If you use the mean (average), everybody becomes a millionaire. If you use the mode (most people), Bill Gates is suddenly poor. If you use the median (half one way, half the other), everybody stays the same. Gabriel was not defending, he was fine-tuning the BS meter, saying what is statistically “true” is a damn lie.

    nk (dbc370)

  50. NK – that’s how they came up with the lie, anyway. And justified it to themselves. Because they “needed” to.

    SarahW (267b14)

  51. You may be correct about fine-tuning the BS meter, nk, but you need to explain to me how under any circumstance or method of calculation Bill Gates becomes “suddenly poor” by walking into said restaurant. The rest I catch.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  52. If you use the mode, which is defined as “the value that occurs most frequently in a given set of data”. If you object to people in restaurants being called “poor” then how about “middle income” or “not a billionaire anymore”?

    nk (dbc370)

  53. @SarahW, nk, hoagie: Not a lie, a truth that they knew would mislead people in a way they counted on.

    The “average” savings on health care plans is just the total amount of saving divided by the number of families.

    It can be achieve by every family getting the same savings, or one family getting all the saving and everyone else having an increase.

    Is it Gruber’s fault if people think “average” means “typical” or “expected” or “normal” or “like most people”?

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  54. Taking it just as you argue, Gabriel, that is by definition a lie. Any half truth with deception as its goal is a lie.

    As Orwell warned, all propaganda is a lie even when its telling the truth.

    Add my own scare quotes around truth.

    SarahW (267b14)

  55. Splitting hairs like that, Gabriel Hanna, can get a man shot. Or arguing that Obamacare is a “tax” before the Supreme Court. Either way the outcome sucks for us. I’ve found in life when one needs to dance around like that one is generally lying and trying to obfuscate the fact.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  56. RE: Obamacare tax:

    One important thing that happened was – and I didn’t know this till I read a recent Wall Street Journal editorial – is that back in 1994, the CBO had defined forced spending (e.g. the individual mandate itself) as a tax, but this was reversed when the PPACA was up for consideration.

    The Wall Street Journal editorial in the Saturday/Sunday November 15-16 2014 Wall Street Journal page A12 says:

    http://online.wsj.com/articles/jonathan-grubers-stupid-budget-tricks-1416009107

    On the tape, Mr. Gruber also identifies a special liberal manipulation: CBO’s policy reversal to not count the individual mandate to buy insurance as an explicit component of the federal budget. In 1994, then CBO chief Robert Reischauer reasonably determined that if the government forces people to buy a product by law, then those transactions no longer belong to the private economy but to the U.S. balance sheet. The CBO’s face-melting cost estimate helped to kill HillaryCare.

    Gruber in one of his speeeches said the mandate (meaning both) was a tax but not called one.

    And when I corrected Patterico, (and then Patterico corrected his post) saying that it was only the penalty that was a tax I was actually wrong.

    True, in the 2012 court case, the penalty, but not the mandate itself, was accepted as a tax by Chief Justice Roberts.

    But Gruber had meant both.

    And in reality the mandate is the same thing as a tax, although I don’t know how you would calculate the amount – how much additional spendingare you forcing? And what about otehr kinds of legal requirements?

    When considered as a tax, this is a (regressive) tax on the middle class.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  57. “@SarahW, nk, hoagie: Not a lie, a truth that they knew would mislead people in a way they counted on.”

    Gabriel – If the underlying gross savings was an azzpull dreamed up by three Harvard professors based on unicorns and pixie dust regarding electronic medical records, administrative savings and preventive care variously touted by Obama as premium savings and reduced health care costs for which there was no basis in fact, who was zooming whom?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  58. Let’s test Gabriel’s hypothesis. To date, there have been no cummulative reductions in costs. There have been some minor claimed decreases in growth, which are in the unicorn category, since the alleged reduction in growth of costs has nada to do with ObamaCare. So, how do you square that circle?

    JD (06633b)

  59. @JD, daleyrocks: I’m sure you both know that everything gets scored by the CBO, and the CBO makes the assumptions that Congress tells them to make.

    The most famous example is the Medicare “doc fix”, that the CBO ignores in every scoring even though everyone knows that the doc fix gets renewed every year.

    Ok, so who’s lying? The CBO makes the assumptions it is ordered to make by Congress. Congresscritters are not above lying, but do they even know what assumptions they collectively order CBO to make? Does any one person make that decision, or have all that information?

    Everyone who is informed knows how the CBO works, and people who don’t know are probably the majority who can be suckered by the CBO scores. But how does that information get from the people who know to the people who don’t?

    It’s mediated by the press, who probably only has a hazy idea about what it’s about, except that it’s been scored by the CBO which is the only recognized authority on it. The press doesn’t ask the right questions because it has neither the knowledge nor the inclination. They just say “CBO estimates it will result in a reduction of whatever % over how many years”–and that’s true, CBO did say that.

    So who, specifically, is lying?

    And maybe a lot of the assumptions Gruber et al made were ones they honestly believed to be reasonable.

    I see why people argue with me about lies having to meet four tests–they want to basically make deception equivalent to lying and therefore “lying” become a redundant word, which I don’t think should happen. But we shouldn’t call “lies” things that people honestly thought they had reason to think were true–or else “Bush lied about WMD”, which I don’t agree he did.

    I don’t find it easy to say.

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  60. last week, Al Sharpton thought he had arrangements to participate in a funeral. This was the funeral of Akai Gurley, the man shot in the unlighted stairwell in a housing project, by a rookie cop, still on probation, who did a vertical patrol with another cop – going down the staircase, with his gun unholstered. The policeman heard a sound, reacted in fear, and the gun went off, richocheting off the wall and into the man’s chest.

    The bulb there had burned out and not been changed for a long time (the city, not being a private business, can do slumlord like things with impunity) The cop’s first reaction wa sthat he was going to get fired. He didn’t know he had hit someone, but just firing a gun would get him into a lot of trouble he knew. Every time a gun of a New York City policeman goes off, theer is whole investigation.

    Sharpton had made arrangements with the unmarried mother of Akai Gurley’s child, whom he was living with. (at least part time) to give the eulogy.

    It turned out he hadn’t contacted the rest of the family – and not being married to him, she had no authority over the body, as long as there were other people around.

    Various other members of the family opposed it. He wasn’t paying for the funeral. His aunt’s union
    had praised $6,000 to pay for flights and a hotel room for Gurley’s mother and other relatives.

    It would turn the funeral into a circus said the aunt. The day it was scheduled, Friday, would not let the dead man’s mother arrive.

    Sharpton withdrew from everything.

    http://nypost.com/2014/12/05/cop-shoot-victims-family-stay-away-sharpton/

    There may not be big protests over this, because one thing Sharpton needs is the co-operation of the family.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  61. Gabriel Hanna @59. I think members of Congress have an agreement not to dispute the CBO, because if they did, the whole budget process would fall apart.

    Actually it did fall apart, as theer has been no budget for six years, because Harry reid found it easier to get higher approrpiations that way.

    And members of both parties like to pretend you can predict the deficit.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  62. “@JD, daleyrocks: I’m sure you both know that everything gets scored by the CBO, and the CBO makes the assumptions that Congress tells them to make.”

    Gabriel – I’m sure you know or can inform yourself if you don’t that Obama’s $2,500 per family of savings came about exactly as I described in 2007 on the campaign trail, not from the CBO, based on the work of three friendly Harvard professors. He had to continue to justify the the fuzzy number once in office as more and more doubters said he was high.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  63. @daleyrocks:Obama’s $2,500 per family of savings came about exactly as I described in 2007 on the campaign trail, not from the CBO

    I used an example of something that is ture but deceptive–unquestionably Obama did lie (“if you like your health plan you can keep your health plan”.) So maybe he lied about that specific one, or maybe those Harvard professors used the same calculation I outlined with assumptions they thought reasonable.

    Unquestionably lies were told. But in addition large numbers of true statements crafted to help us lead ourselves to the wrong conclusions were also told, not to mention statements lying between those ends of the spectrum.

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  64. Even though no year since 2008 has seen all apprpropriation bills pass, the CBO score affects how they argue in Congress, and there is a kind of a truce in politics, where all sides have agreed not to dispute the CBO scores. Maybe to argue that things should be scored differently, but not to use their own numbers. Maybe theer can be slight differences.

    This being locked into CBO numbers, prevents some good ideas from coming to the floor.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  65. Gabriel,

    I think the law calls what you’ve described as a “lie by omission” — where you say something true but omit or hide information in a way that results in a misrepresentation. Granted, it can be a difficult standard to meet in court, but elements of truth don’t keep statements from being lies in real life.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  66. I do not recall the CBO supporting Obama’s typical family of four $2,500 savings boast from the ACA. If somebody has a link I would be interested in seeing it. I remember Harvard professor David Cutler pushing the saving hard, as he did during the campaign since he was the source for the $2,500, and attempting to constantly rejigger the justifications for the amount. I also remember the Obama Administration pivoting off the savings aspect of the ACA shortly after passage and attempting to limit damage from cost increases instead.

    I’m happy to be shown evidence of a faulty memory.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  67. “I think the law calls what you’ve described as a “lie by omission” — where you say something true but omit or hide information in a way that results in a misrepresentation.”

    DRJ – If I knowingly left out material information or information which caused the material presented to be misleading in an SEC filing I signed I would have had legal liability for my actions if my company or I were sued. To me it’s not a difficult concept to understand.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  68. The left will believe what they want to believe, and Miss Erdely is now standing as a corollary to the Janet Cooke/Stephen Glass lesson: not only is just plain faking stories a bad career move, but not checking your stories to see if your sources are telling the truth winds up being just the same. The lovely Miss Erdely has just completed her last journalism job!

    As for “Jackie,” she’s done, too. It’s time to bleach her hair and change her name, because this stuff will follow her career forever as well; the internet is not only forever, it’s also unforgiving.

    The journalist Dana (f6a568)

  69. I don’t think the $2,500 figure was something the CBO needed to score.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  70. Sammy – I don’t either. It was propaganda.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  71. @daleyrocks: If I knowingly left out material information or information which caused the material presented to be misleading in an SEC filing I signed I would have had legal liability for my actions if my company or I were sued.

    Sure, but take a close look at my example. Not focusing on if Obama said exactly this, but SUPPOSE he had:

    “Each family will save, on average, $2500 per year”.

    Okay, you find out next year that almost everyone you’ve ever heard of, their premium increased, and you say, “what the hell, Obama”?

    And then he shows you spreadsheet, every family in America’s payment last year minus their payment this year, and the average of that column is indeed $2500.

    And you say, but 90% of these families saw costs go up.

    True, but the calculation is exactly what he said it was. It was you who decided that “average” meant “most normal people” are going to save money.

    So how did he “lie”? What did he “omit”? You came away with the wrong impression, no one disputes it, and maybe he deliberately phrased it so that you might–but what false thing did he say, and what material fact did he omit? Everyone knows how to calculate an average or how to look up how to do it.

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  72. “Sure, but take a close look at my example. Not focusing on if Obama said exactly this, but SUPPOSE he had:”

    Gabriel – I understood your example and am not interested in your mathematical exercise. Obama’s number came from three hypothetical numbers provided by sympathetic Harvard professors. There was nothing particularly rigorous or scientific to me about the SWAG. It was $200 billion of savings from electronic record keeping, administrative savings by insurers, and preventive care all passed on to consumers by the end of Obama’s first term divided by the number of Americans and multiplied by four.

    You can look it up.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  73. @daleyrocks: Fine, you’re only interested in discussing one particular statement.

    But when you object that “There was nothing particularly rigorous or scientific”, I agree, but that’s pretty far from it being a lie. It was a set of estimates, not particulary precise, and I don’t see that it would be a “lie” even by the SEC filing standard you gave as an example of “a lie of omission”.

    And the fact that I can look it up is exactly the point. How the figure was arrived at was not a secret even at the time. It was not given the same prominence as the statement itself, true, but we’re still not in “lie” territory.

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  74. Barack Obama:

    “I also have a healthcare plan that would save the average family $2,500.00 on their premiums.”

    The dictionary definition, as opposed to the mathematical definition) of family is “ordinary, not special.” Thus, it’s fair to claim that Obama was saying an ordinary family would see savings of $2,500.00 on their healthcare premiums. Gruber had warned the Administration that premiums wouldn’t go down and they didn’t for many people, let alone going down for all average families.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  75. “I agree, but that’s pretty far from it being a lie.”

    Gabriel – I think the lie is that anybody who knew anything about the health insurance industry knew it was impossible to mandate more standard coverages for more people without facing price increases. You could gouge young people to reduce overall increases to older people, but overall people would be facing price increases for health costs. That’s what conservatives were warning and that is what has been borne out. I think only hyperpartisan supporters were willing to go out on a limb and say Obamacare was going to reduce costs, but I am willing to be proved wrong.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  76. Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 12/11/2014 @ 1:29 pm

    And then he shows you spreadsheet, every family in America’s payment last year minus their payment this year, and the average of that column is indeed $2500.

    No, it is not like that. That would the amount charged, maybe, or some estimate of it, but not the amount PAID, because the largest medical bills don’t get paif..

    And it probably fairly easy to get it knocked down.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  77. … and that’s in addition to telling us we can keep our health insurance policies.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  78. The “average by mean” household income in the US is ~$60,000. The “average by median” is ~$43,000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

    Gabriel, defend your statistical argument. Do either families, those with $60,000 or those with $43,000, save $2,500 on their health insurance? If not, then it’s not lying by statistics — it’s just plain lying. If they do, it’s the truth.

    nk (dbc370)

  79. The $2,500 in saving started as a campaign promise and turned into a legislative promise on which Obama failed to deliver. Did he know he would break his promise, i.e. was he lying to the public as he repeated his lie. I believe so.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  80. Gabriel – show us the actual calculus that the 2500 dollars savings per family was not a lie. Find us your unicorn concept where if you take this number, divide it by another, etc and it shows that premiums and costs are 2500 less per family.

    JD (86a5eb)

  81. Is one aspect of this discussion about whether being deceitful without lying is OK?

    Recently there was a blurb somewhere about some cable news econ/business analyst woman who was told to shut up when she said the following equation is ridiculous:
    Insuring more people + government bureaucracy = lower costs.

    Now, things I’ve thought about which I don’t know enough about to decide anything, only observe it is a concern:
    There is the idea of “economy of scale”, that doing a little of something is expensive because of a minimal fixed overhead, and if one increases the scale of the operation prices go down. at least that is more or less as I understand it.
    But there is something working against that, which I’ve never heard discussed, but I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of it,
    which is the additional overhead of complexity that comes into play as the scale grows larger and larger. The human brain can do more than the nervous system of a worm, but at a great cost. In my own little experience as a doctor, a small office may have some relatively high overhead per patient seen, but the communication flow and efficiency is much better at a much less investment of energy. If computerization can do anything, IMO, it would be to improve communication and efficiency at no or minimal increased cost. I have no mathematical computer simulation models to prove this, but experience has taught me this is quite true.

    In the meantime, the administration/business/econ type people keep thinking how computer systems will allow them to analyze data as if people are widgets, and the fact that people are not widgets gets lost and the actual care of individual patients is not helped one bit.

    “Selfish ambition leads to chaos and every vile practice” (or something like that). We would get farther faster if more people simply wanted to improve service a little bit.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  82. attempted rape by boehner and obama, but pelosi has squeezed away.
    stupidity on full display in d.c. tonight.

    mg (31009b)

  83. I heard that Boehner had to get a lame duck to change his vote for it to pass.
    Where can we go to demand that Boehner and McConnell are replaced??

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  84. I know the second I press “submit Comment” I’m gonna be inundated with rebuke but I’m gonna post this anyway.

    I am an economist by training and a businessman of 40 years experience. I am not a lawyer, doctor, scientist, engineer, or skilled at any meaningful blue collar labor. Now, as an economist I’m going to say to MD in Philly the economies of scale have no relevance with anything done by the government. The economies of scale are based on the ability of a free market to adjust to changes in the business model and anything having to do with government: a)is not a business and b) exists based on tax revenue to support it not profit and c) does not respond to the market because it is run by bureaucratic agencies who do not rely on success to gain either revenue nor payment. I will add one final point: the object of any government program is to enlarge itself in perpetuity which is why they never accomplish their stated goals regardless of how much time or money the expend ( I would site “The War on Poverty”). Therefore, the economies of scale are irrelevant.

    Now all you guys who want to point out the million exceptions to my statement can have at it.

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  85. @nk:Gabriel, defend your statistical argument. Do either families, those with $60,000 or those with $43,000, save $2,500 on their health insurance?

    I made no such statement, and neither did Obama, hence nothing to defend. Nobody said families making the mean income, or the median income, would save $2500. You’ve added a bunch of assumptions not present in the original statement.

    @daleyrocks:Did he know he would break his promise, i.e. was he lying to the public as he repeated his lie. I believe so.

    Given that I have no evidence I do not accuse him of lying about it. The available evidence indicates to me that he put forward a vague prediction that was easily misinterpreted.

    @JD: Find us your unicorn concept where if you take this number, divide it by another, etc and it shows that premiums and costs are 2500 less per family.

    It’s not my concept, it follows from the definition of average. Daleyrocks already outlined it: it’s an estimate of the total savings divided by the population, which is multiplied by four to estimate the number of families.

    It’s like “the average American family has 2.3 children”. We all know that no single family has 2.3 children. That’s not what the sentence means. It means, total children / total families = 2.3, and it means nothing more than that. It’s not a lie to say that the average family has 2.3 children when no actual family has 2.3 children.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  86. @MD in Philly:Is one aspect of this discussion about whether being deceitful without lying is OK?

    Not for me. It’s not okay to be deceitful without lying. I am not a supporter of Obama or Obamacare, but I do not like seeing “lie” equated with “any statement that later turns out to be false”, the way the Left did with Bush on Iraq, or seeing “lie” equated with “true statements which lots of people misinterpret or misrepresent”, which is what the Right is doing with Gruber.

    Lies were unquestionably uttered in support of Obama by Obamacare. “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.” When he said it, he knew it to be false, he intended it to be taken as true, he said it deliberately, and he intended to deceive, as made clear by his later apologists who said they removed all the qualifiers to make it easier to sell to the public. “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan if we say you can or if you pay a lot more” isn’t quite as persuasive.

    In the meantime, the administration/business/econ type people keep thinking how computer systems will allow them to analyze data as if people are widgets, and the fact that people are not widgets gets lost and the actual care of individual patients is not helped one bit.

    Computers cannot even predict with accuracy the motion of billiard balls, because under some circumstances even the simplest of physics becomes chaotic–the “butterfly effect”.

    Even if people were widgets, it wouldn’t help.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  87. You fooled me into thinking you understood statistics, Gabriel.

    From DRJ’s link at Comment 74: Obama said “I also have a healthcare plan that would save the average family $2,500.00 on their premiums.”

    nk (dbc370)

  88. @nk: Yep, that’s what he said. Just like the average family has 2.3 children.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  89. And that was, and is, a lie.

    JD (b0e003)

  90. @JD:And that was, and is, a lie.

    Yes, if Obama knew it to be false when he said it, and intended people to be deceived by it, etc. I don’t have that evidence.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  91. Daley laid it out for you, at length, above.

    JD (b0e003)

  92. But 100 average families do have around 230 children, Gabriel. Do 100 average families have around $250,000 in savings? You either don’t understand statistics, or you think we don’t and you’re Grubering us.

    nk (dbc370)

  93. @nk:Do 100 average families have around $250,000 in savings?

    I don’t think that has materialized, no. And Saddam Hussein never did get those nuclear weapons programs back up and running, did he?

    Statements that initially are believed by the speaker to be true are not lies, even if they turn to be false. It is certainly possible that Obama somehow knew that $2500 in savings per family was not going to show up in a few years, but I doubt he had that information. So, like Bush with Iraqi WMD, I’m not willing to call it lies. I think the most that can be said, for either President, is that they should have known to be more critical of the sources of their information, which is a good lesson for any of us.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  94. @nkyou think we don’t and you’re Grubering us.

    Incidentally, nk, where do you get the idea that I’m AGAINST you? Or that I’d want to deceive you into supporting or excusing Obamacare?

    All I am doing is accusing Obamacare, Gruber, and the law’s other supporters and architects of a different moral offense.

    It’s like I’m saying that Hitler wasn’t a cannibal and you accuse me of denying he’s a Nazi.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  95. The left has two kinds of problems: Those they can blame on Bush and those they cannot solve. Have a nice evening, Gabriel.

    nk (dbc370)

  96. @nk: All I know of the Left is what I read about them in the papers, but what you say sounds about right.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  97. Hoagie (4dfb34) — 12/11/2014 @ 5:29 pm

    . I will add one final point: the object of any government program is to enlarge itself in perpetuity which is why they never accomplish their stated goals regardless of how much time or money the expend ( I would site “The War on Poverty”).

    I would think of any kind of capital expenditure.

    They have learned how to spend a lot of money without building anything = replacing or maintence of old infrastucture.

    We don’t even get a courthouse out of it.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  98. Gabriel – you can only conclude that it is not a lie by ignoring his that talking point was arrived at, how it had no basis in reality then, and everything since has proven it to be objectively untrue.

    JD (b0e003)

  99. Hoagie- I see your point, but I guess I was mixing topics. True, part of the problem with ObamaCare is that it is fed govt. bureaucracy and not just layers of admin in a private business, but leaving that part out and just looking at it from running the business of healthcare from that viewpoint, I think there is a problem along the lines I was trying to describe, yes?

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  100. Notre Dame will be offering a white privilege seminar to 10 lucky boys and girls, so they can learn how racist they are.

    http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2014/12/11/notre-dame-will-offer-white-privilege-seminar-in-2015/

    JD (b0e003)

  101. Oops, wrong thread

    JD (b0e003)

  102. Gabriel,

    As early as 2008, Obama’s economic advisers had to engage in a significant amount of objfuscation to even get close to an “average” savings of $2,500, and even then they weren’t sure they could get to that number:

    Mr. Obama’s economic policy director, Jason Furman, said the campaign’s estimates were conservative and asserted that much of the savings would come quickly. “We think we could get to $2,500 in savings by the end of the first term, or be very close to it,” Mr. Furman said.

    They also started moving the goalposts:

    The Obama advisers said that while not all of the savings would translate into lower premiums, consumers would gain in other ways. The savings to employers would be passed along as higher wages, they predicted, and the savings to government would eventually mean either lower taxes or added benefits.

    Obama isn’t an idiot. He was aware of this debate and he decided to gloss over any inconvenient facts and problems. I call that a lie by omission.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  103. @DRJ:He was aware of this debate and he decided to gloss over any inconvenient facts and problems. I call that a lie by omission.

    It was especially frustrating when we had just seen the press bring out all their green eye shades for Social Security reform and Medicare Part D.

    One of the best arguments for electing Republicans is that the press is always challenging them.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  104. I can’t believe that we actually had to debate whether the 2500 bucks in fictional savings was a lie.

    JD (86a5eb)

  105. It was something for which the people making that claim knew was created by making the most favorable, and sometimes questionable assumptions, but for which they could show a spreadsheet justifying it, if pressed.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  106. Morning Jolt linked yestertday to something that may indicate that Sabrina Rubin Erdely outright lied (or otherwise some sources are lying now)

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

    The Rolling Stone article also said that Randall declined to be interviewed, “citing his loyalty to his own frat.” He told The Post that he never was contacted by Rolling Stone and would have agreed to an interview. The article’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, did not respond to requests for comment this week.

    “Jackie” and “Randall” actually could both be lying. It needs more details

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  107. No. Here’s what happened – or what seems pretty obvious. Jackie gets in touch with Randall, (or rather the 419 scam version of fake Randall), and givens a second hand report to Erdely, sworn to leave these folks alone or else!, of what (fake) Randall said.

    I’m betting Jackie even proffered email(s) to Erdely to show the shallow perfidy of the people who dropped everything to help her out long ago evening. People who also fell for Jackie’s machinations.

    Probably she did this little scam for the benefit of Erdely, for all the friends.

    Erdely just rolled over for it because she is a fool, and had bad motives.

    SarahW (267b14)

  108. I mean if she had already played Nigerian Romance scam to impress her friends and mostly Randall, why wouldn’t she repeat the strategy, in a pinch, for Erdely?

    SarahW (267b14)

  109. Erdeley was chastised for being a “fabulist’ at Penn (I think) by her editor, Stephen Glass.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  110. Col. Haiku

    She is a big ol’ liar. One heck of a journalism school they went to… I hope there are big fat crazy lawsuits everywhere just because I want to see the new lies they can come up with.

    Maybe the careful elisions of who actually was supposed to have talked to the “friends” (Randall, Cindy, that other one, “Andy” I think) was more like a perfect storm of phonies with a little bit of Jackie faking and Erdely faking. Or Erdely just made a pretence of due diligence and “patched up” the holes in her source-less-except-for-jackie account of the friend-rescue.

    SarahW (267b14)

  111. Either is capable of the deception. Both have a pattern and practice of it. Of course one is a mixed up kid, barely out of her teens, who wanted out of the story, who, with some help and some time to retrieve her character, might learn to cope with internal shame, and intense reactions to perceived judgment without trying to invent a phony image; the other a snake in the grass with years of experience and a long track-record under her belt to suggest there can never be any reformation.

    SarahW (267b14)

  112. Scott Beauchamp call your office.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  113. Uh oh. The “friends” whom Jackie appears to have remade as frenemies with help of the Rolling Stone, are going on the record with Wapo, using real names.

    I think they are a little ticked off. I think this might mean lawsuits – especially since the phony names were no shield for them on campus, though they might have been with the general public.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/12/12/rolling-stone-begins-fully-reporting-its-rape-story/

    The un-subtle “slut shaming” of “Cindy” was one of the striking oddities in the Rolling Stone piece.
    I wonder which one of them came up with that. If Jackie, I think Erdely missed another waving red flag.

    SarahW (267b14)

  114. “Jackie” – if that’s even her real name – could probably do worse than to spend a wintry Saturday engaged in the productive manufacture of Momofuku Compost Cookies I think, and I know something about this campus rape hoax christmas cookie type situation, mostly from reading the internet

    here’s my favorite recipe I found for them cause it really opens up the ingredients and captures the whimsical momofuku-ness of this endeavour

    but for those of you in chicagoland, we need to have a further discussion about christmas cookies

    so what happened is I went over to the Park Hyatt for their cocoa bar

    LAME

    it’s at NoMI – the seventh floor restaurant – and the staff there is about as festive as Santa’s annual rectal exam, and the lukewarm cocoa is syrupy sweet already so adding any marshmallows and other stuff from the underwhelming “cocoa bar” just makes it nauseating

    huge waste of money, but it was worth a shot i guess

    but they do have a boutique on the first floor selling christmas stuff – and they have this lil $3 christmas cookie you can get what features 6 kinds of chockit

    it’s SUPERLATIVE and makes a nice lil stocking stuffer type gift

    that was the only thing that looked worth a try really and it’s super easy to pop in and buy a couple cause nobody’s there except a few tense and humorless stick-figure middle-aged one-percenters

    happyfeet (831175)

  115. Stroll over to Hellas Pastry Shop at Lawrence and Talman. You won’t be disappointed, I promise. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hellas+Pastry+Shop/@41.968415,-87.694857,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xf2973b3899abe927

    nk (dbc370)

  116. ok i’ll go monday to have some treats to bring into the office on tuesday

    today I’m achieving peak unpackedness!

    happyfeet (831175)

  117. I just ate a whole box of inferior swedish chocolates but I’m open to chocolate wheel of fortune bars.

    SarahW (267b14)

  118. oh that’s awesome Mr. nk they have savory stuff as well

    i think this place might serve the same way my armenian bourekas place did in california

    happyfeet (831175)

  119. i can’t find any chocolate wheel of fortune bar recipes

    happyfeet (831175)

  120. “they have this lil $3 christmas cookie you can get what features 6 kinds of chockit”

    Mr. Feets – I make a Dutch Oven dessert with as many different kinds of chockit chips as I can find at the time wif a crushed graham cracker crust, cook with coals on top of and under the dutch oven, preferably around a camp fire. Creates a big sugar buzz so the lads are bouncing off trees right before night night time.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  121. that sounds tasty and resourceful Mr. daley

    ack my youtube is on strike today i probably need to reboot

    happyfeet (831175)

  122. You can see what was afoot with Miss Nigerian love scam.

    Ryan says he found Jackie outside her dorm ‘crying and shaking’ and that she told him she was forced to perform oral sex on five men in the frat while a sixth watched.

    He says he then called Stock, but that Jackie asked the student identified as ‘Cindy’ not to come. That student has revealed her name to by Kathryn Hendley, and says she came along with Alex anyway, but stood back from the group while Jackie told her story to the two boys.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2871096/Friends-hell-misrepresented-UVA-Jackie-s-three-friends-featured-heavily-Rolling-Stone-article-criticized-failure-report-rape-tell-story.html#ixzz3LoOhvxsy

    The boyfriend was cooked up mainly for Ryan’s benefit, and the “uninvited” Kathryn was not only competition but a potential threat who could help stupid boys recognize stupid lies.

    From her purported pin-board: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/293648838178254213/

    Yeah.

    SarahW (267b14)

  123. tina fey isn’t a nice person

    if bad things ever happen to tina fey i will be secretly pleased

    happyfeet (831175)

  124. I don’t know much about Fey, except her daughter is a little micro-twin.

    Meanwhile, young guy still not quite recognizing that he was taken in.

    http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/12/uva-gang-rape-accusers-friend-shares-new-details-in-interview/

    SarahW (267b14)

  125. she says caustic things about fellow celebrities a lot

    kinda like how Jennifer Lopez rolls

    it’s tacky

    not that caustic things shouldn’t be said about celebrities, just unless you’re a Joan Rivers or someone equally comedically adroit and clever you just come off as unselfaware i think

    you know like Matt Damon

    happyfeet (831175)

  126. SarahW – Friendzoned revenge!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  127. She let all of them be portrayed as frenemies who had seriously let her down, though they all went out of their way to come to her aid the night of her “trauma.”

    She seems to have been happy to add the detail that she called them all to come to her aid, when she really only called the boy she wanted to be closer to. press him into white knighthood, insist he comfort her, use her arts and allurements to draw him in.

    She even insisted the interloper girl stay away. (She came anyway.) Hey gurls stop sabotaging me.

    Working theory: trauma was probably nothing more that feeling really awful about her concocted boyfriend and how her plan had not worked at all and she was depressed and maybe even heading into cutting/jump off a cliff mode.

    SarahW (267b14)

  128. She hit it off with Ryan according to Ryan; they got on like a house on fire but he didn’t want her for a girlfriend and it was a big scene. She cried and cried he said.

    That’s too much crying for a boy you just met.

    SarahW (267b14)

  129. she just seems kind of cray and also cray

    one of those wide berth people

    i think of wide berth people a lot these days, especially when I find myself walking on a narrow platform between random chicago people and subway tracks

    happyfeet (831175)

  130. el tracks

    happyfeet (831175)

  131. l tracks?

    happyfeet (831175)

  132. “el” tracks. Like Christmas. No el.

    nk (dbc370)

  133. I think it’s from “elevated”.

    nk (dbc370)

  134. If you see it “L” someplace, it’s from the same type of person who thinks “niggardly” is a racist term.

    nk (dbc370)

  135. they say ‘l’ in some of the signage on the trains, but it feels sort of like an aimless branding exercise

    happyfeet (831175)

  136. SarahW (267b14) — 12/12/2014 @ 4:48 pm

    Jackie gets in touch with Randall, (or rather the 419 scam version of fake Randall), and gives a second hand report to Erdely, sworn to leave these folks alone or else!, of what (fake) Randall said.

    If it is second hand, is there any need for a fake Randall? Or do you say this because you think actually there was probably at least a fake e-mail?

    SarahW (267b14) — 12/13/2014 @ 2:37 pm

    ….she really only called the boy she wanted to be closer to. press him into white knighthood, insist he comfort her, use her arts and allurements to draw him in.

    She even insisted the interloper girl stay away. (She came anyway.) Hey gurls stop sabotaging me.

    Working theory: trauma was probably nothing more that feeling really awful about her concocted boyfriend and how her plan had not worked at all and she was depressed and maybe even heading into cutting/jump off a cliff mode.

    I am not that solid on the cast of characters.

    Who was the boy she wanted as a boyfriend?

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  137. Sammy, the boy she was love-struck with was one of the three friends who came to her assistance that are portrayed rather negatively in the Rolling Stone piece.
    He is called “Randall” in the RS story. His real first name is “Ryan”, per ABC and Wapo. Erdely notes in the Rs story that he refuses to participate in the interview, and some shade is thrown: she invokes “loyalty to his own fraternity” as a reason to decline participation in the article Erdely wrote.

    However, he was never contacted by Rolling Stone, and he says he would have participated or agreed to be interviewed if he had been.

    If you follow the links in some of the posts, you will find the newest interviews of the three friends, by WaPo and ABC.

    Jackie in the first couple of weeks had been smitten with Ryan, whom she met at orientation. They got along and rapidly formed a friendship. However, he had no interest in a romance. This seemed to hit Jackie hard, there was a scene, and copious Jackie tears, all in Ryans presence.

    The “catfish” talked about was apparently for his benefit, to make him regret his choice- the imaginary boyfriend’s talk seemed to revolve around Ryan more than makes sense.

    These machinations were having no effect on Ryan, and her friends began to doubt they were actually talking with “Drew” the upperclassman who Jackie was telling them was totally in to her.

    There was a date she told them about.

    The night of the date is the night she called Ryan to come rescue her.

    Ryan called another boy, “Andy” in the RS story, Alexander in real life. A third person, a female called Cindy, Kathryn in real life, Jackie told not to come. Kathryn came anyway, and they all drove out to get her; Kathryn hung back while Jackie told her rapeytale to the two boys.

    SarahW (267b14)

  138. Ryan, btw, has never belonged to a fraternity, and therefore probably has no loyalty to “his” fraternity to keep him from interviewing.

    Since Jackie has played at least one known 419 scam on her pals, I don’t doubt she is capable of doctoring up some message from a “fake ryan” to keep Erdely from talking to him and finding out about all the discrepancies.

    It’s always possible Erdely just took a shortcut to assuage concerns of editors.

    SarahW (267b14)

  139. The real gang rape at UVA – 1984:

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/16/i-was-gang-raped-at-a-uva-frat-30-years-ago-and-no-one-did-anything.html?via=newsletter&source=CSAfternoon#

    At the same house that jackie claimed it happenned at.

    Looks like we may have a case of plagiarism here.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  140. http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=353802

    Phone Numbers Provided by Jackie for Her Imaginary Boyfriend Were Created on Website That Enables Cellphone Spoofing

    This sounds like Stephen Glass and the Jukt Electronics telephone number, which turned out to b a cellphone, with a recorded message recorded by Stephen’s brother, except that 16 years later, you don’t need a separate cellphone account.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)

  141. UVA Jackie’s friend, Emily Renda, who brought Jackie’s story to Erdely’s attention, testified before Congress in the spring when she told Jackie’s story (but changed the name to Jenna then) and also was an intern for UVA President Sullivan and worked at the White House, and also claims to have been raped on campus in her freshman year, according to a comment at Ace, at the post linked above..

    Did she invent the story? I mean, she;s more likely than Jackie to have known about the 1984 gang rape.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.1584 secs.