July 8, 2019

Do models have special powers to see the meaning in other women's faces?

I'm reading...
MELANIA WAS A MODEL. SHE’S WORKED WITH A LOT OF WOMEN. ‘You know that woman is lying, don’t you?’: Melania Trump reportedly did not believe Blasey Ford.
... at Instapundit.

1. Does working with people make you an expert on whether they are lying? Does working with a particular type of person make you an expert on whether somebody else in that category is lying? If so, would a model mainly be good at telling whether other models were lying?

2. Models are always putting on phony faces. It's their job. Maybe a model has special expertise in knowing when another person — maybe especially another person of the same sex — is putting on a facial expression or doing physical gesturing that is an effort at displaying an emotion she is not really feeling.

3. Do female fashion models work mostly with women? I'm seeing that 89 to 96 percent of fashion photographers are male.

4. If you work with people in a particular field, you might form an opinion about how likely they are to lie. My opinion of whether law professors tend to lie is probably different from the views of people who have not spent decades among law professors, but am I really good at looking at a law professor — especially a woman law professor — and detecting lies? When I'm watching the Democratic presidential candidates debate, do I have special expertise in telling whether Elizabeth Warren is lying?

5. I suspect Instapundit is just horsing about, titillating readers with the idea that women are dishonest and that beautiful women have the jump on lesser women. (Is my suspicion more accurate because I'm a law professor looking at another law professor?)

6. If it's true that Melania said to Donald, "You know that woman is lying, don't you?" and also true that Melania has a special power to see that another woman is lying, it's still possible that Melania wasn't telling it straight. She had a motive to dissemble — to support and soothe her husband.

171 comments:

whitney said...

It did not take any special power to know the Blasey Ford was lying

Freder Frederson said...

I have worked with people from the former Soviet Bloc. They tend to be very secretive and also suspicious of others. I imagine it is from growing up and living in a system where everyone lies and you are continually being watched.

If Melania actually said this it probably has more to do with her upbringing than any special skills she acquired as a model.

donald said...

Yeah, didn’t take any special powers of observation. She was either delusional or a paid operative. She did pick up some SERIOUS bank for this and before anybody says anything about Go fund me, just realize it’s going to be used a lot in the future for this type of fraud.

Temujin said...

I'm no model, but yes, she was lying.

Actually, some people do have a better ability to read others faces. Successful poke players are terrific at watching human ticks- not just facial movements, but all movement. Successful business people read others faces and body postures. Detectives. Sales people.

A lot of random people on the street have some ability to read others, if they cultivate it, work at it, they can become very good at it. Also, curiously, my wife is very good at reading lies. It's stifled my normal routines.

And I think that some also have a gut that is pretty good at reading people. Instinct.

But with Blasey Ford- that was just an awful show with a terrible script. Nothing believable about any of it. At least she's a professor teaching young minds.

readering said...

Slovenia was not Soviet block.

tim in vermont said...

"I imagine it is from growing up and living in a system where everyone lies and you are continually being watched.”

Ain’t socialism grand! Kind of like IRL Twitter!

traditionalguy said...

Ah ha. A husband soother. How shameful.

The point here is that Ford was story telling. Lying is merely changing a key fact that misleads the listener. Story telling acting out a complete Mythology created from nothing. I have this special ability to perceive this activity from working with many trial lawyers.

The really good ones are a real beauty to behold. And to the Master Story Teller goes the Jury Verdict. When you get both sides masterfully story telling, it irritates the Judge.

gspencer said...

Even my dog knew Balsey-Ford was lying. And told me so.

Bob Boyd said...

Melania:"Does this dress make me look fat?"

Another model: "No."

Melania: "Shit."

Rory said...

"I'm seeing that 89 to 96 percent of fashion photographers are male."

One model, one photographer. Ten models, one photographer.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Yes. It's proven science. I know these things.

- Lucid-Ideas, BS (detector) and male model.

David Begley said...

Any fair and neutral observer knew CBF was lying. Her story was full of holes.

tim in vermont said...

I kept an open mind on CBF until her story completely fell apart. Now I think something happened to her and she transferred it to a now famous guy who might have known a friend of a friend. I remember once when, as a kid in the early seventies, we never locked our bikes, and almost all of them were stolen one night. One of my friends said that somebody came through the neighborhood with a truck and took them off of people’s porches and loaded ‘em all up. I still have a memory of a white panel truck driving down my street in the middle of the night, back open, full of bicycles, even though it makes zero sense that I ever saw such a truck.

Probably the first tell for me was that you can’t scrub your social media history like that without some serious help from some powerful people, like Google, but that’s just circumstantial.

Second was when all of her witnesses contradicted her.

Well, there is no third, because that did it, but it was sort of interesting that the house she described matched that of a former boyfriend.

wendybar said...

TDS is very real, and the left, and the media (same thing) are blinded by hate. She was lying. if you couldn't see that, YOU are blind.

Shouting Thomas said...

You think it was difficult to tell that Ford was lying?

I assumed from the beginning that she was recruited and paid to lie.

That turned out to be the case. The Dems funneled their million dollar bribe to Ford thru GoFundMe.

Warren doesn't seem to shrink from lying and bribing either. She lied to game the quota system. She advocates bribing blacks and gays for their votes.

Isn't bribing voters illegal?

As to whether this is peculiar to women, the answer is yes. The quota system encourages them to lie. Feminism is a tangled web of Marxist lies. Feminism encourages women to lie in favor of the Marxist class war.

A corrupt system of incentives, that is Marxist feminism and pillaging the quota system, pays women to lie.

rhhardin said...

I'd say it's a delusion, not a lie. Delusion runs deep in women.

The story comes from popular culture. They don't think up their own delusion.

Xmas said...

You have option 7.

As a model, she's worked with women who have been sexually assaulted in their teenage years and with those who partied hard from a way too young of an age. She picked up on some part of Ford's story that rang false to her.

Birkel said...

Does understanding the power dynamic between Leftist Collectivists versus the rest of us give us keen insight into the veracity of Leftist Collectivists?

Yes. Yes it does!

Michael said...

You don’t look at the person you look at the lie. Ford’s story was an obvious lie with too much unprovable detail and none of the verifiable. Jussie’s lie was laughably transparent. The UVA rape story was another lie laden with unnecessary and silly detail. No fraternity in history ever had a glass top table. Ditto the Duke rape case which was believable only to those who know lacrosse players are arrogant privileged assholes and black whores never lie. Melania appears to be a normal person with normal radar.

Henry said...

Maybe Melania assumes that everyone is lying.

"You know that woman is lying, don't you, you lying liar?"

* * *

I do get a laugh out of the "we're all truth-tellers over here and they're all liars" mindset.

It's like a really dumb version of the old logic puzzle. There are two guards on each side of a door. One always tells the truth and the other always lies. You can ask one question to figure out whether you should open the door.

The one on the left is the liar.

Well that was quick.

Mike Sylwester said...

My explanation of Blasey Ford's false testimony is that, during the past decades, she has experienced recurrent dreams about such an incident.

I myself have experienced recurrent dreams about situations when I was in high school and when I was in the Air Force. These dreams are realistic but bizarre. The dreams have continued for decades, to the present.

I no longer know for sure whether the situations actually happened.

The dreams about my high-school experiences involve sexual assault. During my freshman and sophomore years, I attended a Lutheran high school, where about half of the students lived in dormitories. In my recurrent dreams, I hear gossip about sexual assaults in the male dormitories. I myself do not see the assaults; I only hear the gossip.

In real life, I no longer know for sure whether I heard any such gossip at all. Maybe I did hear the gossip, but now my memory of the gossip has been distorted by the decades of recurrent dreams.

When I was in the Air Force, I really did experience a dramatic and consequential situation while I was attending a training course. However, my recurrent dreams have elaborated that situation bizarrely to the point where I no longer know for sure exactly what did happen in real life.

I think that something similar has happened to Blasey Ford.

Henry said...

Not only are humans really bad at telling if other people lie (other than working systematically through their statements and assertions against a broader record), humans are really bad at detecting their own lies.

tim in vermont said...

I like how she says she DID report it to a cop, but he never did anything with it and now he’s dead. I remember reading about a lawsuit once where a guy claimed he had a secret handshake deal with a then dead billionaire to give him $400 million dollars, or something like that.

Marcus Bressler said...

Of course she lied. As soon as she opened her mouth during testimony, I knew it. Why, does The Hostess still believe this femi-crazy was telling the truth? Bwahahahahaha

THEOLDMAN

Birkel said...

It's not hard, Henry. The side that wants power is prone to BAMN lying.

The side that wants to be left the hell alone has less incentive to lie.

Be better so eventually you can be best.

Fernandinande said...

Successful business people read others faces and body postures. Detectives. Sales people.

I researched this issue a while back and found exactly the opposite, that there are no profession whose members are good at detecting deception, including cops and judges and such, so I'd be interested to see a link supporting your statement.

E.g:
"Although the [advanced federal law enforcement] officer samples were more confident about their judgments of deceptiveness than were the students, they were no more accurate than the students. None of the three groups showed a significant improvement in deception‐detection success from the first half to the second half of the test; however, the advanced officers felt increasingly confident about their performance as they progressed through the test."

IOW, The "advanced federal law enforcement officers" were just more delusional and full of shit than random college students.

One rare exception was a study with a small sample of Secret Service agents who were slightly better at detecting deception than some control groups.

Henry said...

As I mentioned, Birkel, the hardest lies to detect are the one you tell yourself.

Fen said...

I have worked with people from the former Soviet Bloc. They tend to be very secretive and also suspicious of others. I imagine it is from growing up and living in a system where everyone lies and you are continually being watched.

If Melania actually said this it probably has more to do with her upbringing than any special skills she acquired as a model.


I think that's the likely answer.

People can also develop a type of "truth sense". Basically, how do you feel when you are 100% certain you are being lied to. Do you grow angry? Do you feel sad for the liar? Once you can recognize how your subconscious reaction to a liar manifests, you keep an eye on it. And when someone is speaking to you, and you suddenly feel anger or pity for no apparent reason, it's an indicator that your subconscious is picking up on tells.

It's not meant to be a lie detector, but that "gut feeling" is a sign that you should scrutinize the speaker more carefully.

It's not an easy trick to learn. For starters, you can't lie to yourself, because that damages your ability to discern truth.

tim in vermont said...

IIRC, Althouse didn’t claim CBF wasn’t lying, she just said that the seriousness of the accusation should force him to retire from public life in disgrace and leave the nomination open until the Dems had a chance to retake the Senate.

OK, after the word “accusation” that’s just me gaming out how it would have turned out if Kavanaugh had followed her advice.

I still get a kick out of the fact that spellcheck refuses to recognize Kavanaugh. It probably comes up ever week on a list of names that should probably be added to the list, and every week some SJW at Alphabet denies it in a huff of self righteousness.

Birkel said...

I mean one side has a subsidiary that named itself BAMN.
How the fuck ignorant does one have to be to deny that party would lie?

tim in vermont said...

“I imagine it is from growing up and living in a system where everyone lies and you are continually being watched.”

Like the US caught up in the throes of TDS? Yeah, she has seen this dynamic before, no doubt.

Fernandinande said...


"An adult sample of novices and a second sample of experts (military intelligence instructors and related military personnel) ... novices were more accurate than experts,"

Birkel said...

Henry,
Do you lie to yourself about the existence of BAMN?
What do you think the 'A' means?

Michael K said...

Blogger readering said...
Slovenia was not Soviet block.


True but it was still communist.

“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

–Charles Dickens

Maybe Melania figured it out when CBF adopted the tiny child voice.

tim in vermont said...

Henry just likes to take contrary positions supported with vague bromides and subtle insinuations of superior intelligence.

Fernandinande said...

People can also develop a type of "truth sense".

I doubt it.

If that were true people who have a professional need to detect deception would be able to do a better job than other people; but they can't.

Eleanor said...

After working with thousands of teens, I have a better than average score of detecting whether they're lying or not, but not when they're on video tape. I have to be in the room where they can see my evil eye. The one that has the secret power to make teens squirm.

Howard said...

Blogger Fernandistein said... Successful business people read others faces and body postures. Detectives. Sales people. I researched this issue a while back and found exactly the opposite, that there are no profession whose members are good at detecting deception, including cops and judges and such, so I'd be interested to see a link supporting your statement.

yeah, but have you researched subconscious emotional triggering truth sense? Sounds reasonable to me by confirming my own bias that I can't be fooled.

Blogger Fen said...People can also develop a type of "truth sense". Basically, how do you feel when you are 100% certain you are being lied to. Do you grow angry? Do you feel sad for the liar? Once you can recognize how your subconscious reaction to a liar manifests, you keep an eye on it. And when someone is speaking to you, and you suddenly feel anger or pity for no apparent reason, it's an indicator that your subconscious is picking up on tells.


Fen said...

And remember that there is evidence Ford coached another women on how to fool a polygraph test. To do that, you have to convince yourself your lie is the truth. You have to pretend, like a model does when she is doing a shoot on a stage with a fake beach around her. If there is a "model angle" here, it may be that Melania recognized patterns that she performed everyday at work.

For example, I'm an expert with a rifle and a recurve bow. I can identify other experts before they shoot, by very subtle mannerisms that others would not perceive, because they don't have those same exact mannerisms.

I would bet that if I brought a Con Law prof to a dinner with Meade-Althouse, after an hour of light conversation Althouse would suspect she was professor of law.

traditionalguy said...

Story Telling is one of the oldest human customs. The audience sitting around the fire hearing for the first time just wants to hear what happened next to a sympathetic character. Mark Twain explains this well in Life On The Mississippi. It is why silent films had an audience. And the Hollywood Studios became so powerful.

In a Court Room it is why the opening statement that first tells the Jury what happened wins the case for the "sincere" hometown lawyer. Out of town lawyers are not trusted. But in any event the winning story has to make good sense, be simple and sound like a Sunday School morality lesson.

tim in vermont said...

Memory is an interesting thing, every time you look at one it’s like picking up an object out of your brain, handling it, and re-inserting it. Memories change the more you look at them. Implanting false memories is a piece of cake for a trained expert. Not to mention that the Democrats felt like the Kavanaugh pick was an almost existential threat to their agenda. Turns out he is probably more of a squish than Garland would have been.

rhhardin said...

The mistake is looking at body language. Look at spirit language.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

1. Does working with people make you an expert on whether they are lying? Does working with a particular type of person make you an expert on whether somebody else in that category is lying? If so, would a model mainly be good at telling whether other models were lying?

Well. Yes. Working with people, many people, lots of different types of people, FACE to FACE with people....if you are observant and you learn to recognized physical clues you can tell when people are lying to you.

Really really good liars can disguise those "tells" but the majority of people can't. Bad liars can't help embellishing the story. Adding too many details. The crap that was being thrown at Kavanaugh...gang rapes? Embellishment. LIES. A regular rape isn't good enough for a bad liar. It has to be more!

Working with a particular type of person? Hell yes. Ever been a cocktail waitress? Bartender? A Front Desk clerk in a hotel? Cashier at a 7-11? Lots of opportunities to recognize the liars.

You don't have to be a "Model" either. Just knowing when the stories don't add up is enough. If it is impractical, aliens came and ate my homework impractical, stories that don't make any sense....hint....a lie.

I don't want to be rude, but sometimes AA can seem rather naive.

Nothing to do with being a model being able to detect lies. I comes from living a life surrounded by liars.

Birkel said...

It is possible that - just as some people are better liars than others - some people are better at detecting lies.
Nobody would argue that the first proposition- better liars - is false.

Fen said...

Sounds reasonable to me by confirming my own bias that I can't be fooled.

No, you can't force it like that. You have to be open.

It's difficult to get a Leftist to understand, like explaining drowning to a desert nomad.

tim in vermont said...

Probably the thing that turned me 5X5 against Bill Clinton was when I believed him in the famous denial. I said to myself that anybody who can bypass my truth detectors that effectively needs to have his every statement examined carefully in light of the available evidence. Hint: Doing that will make you a Clinton hater in pretty short order.

tim in vermont said...

Forget it Fen, it’s Howard. He may not actually be an imbecile, but he plays one on the intertubes.

Fernandinande said...

Sounds reasonable to me by confirming my own bias that I can't be fooled.

If you can't trust your own subconsciousness's opinion of itself, what (or who) can you trust? Measurements and snooty control groups and numbers are tools of the racist patriarchy, so what's a poor grrrl supposed to do ?!?

Fen said...

Really really good liars can disguise those "tells" but the majority of people can't. Bad liars can't help embellishing the story. Adding too many details.

Exactly, and if you aren't sure, you "deal into it", go along with their lie, let them believe you are easily deceived, then watch them like a hawk and see what else they will try to get away with. They will lower the amount of effort they put into deceiving you and are easier to catch.

Mike Sylwester said...

An excerpt from the new book Justice on Trial.

[quote]

At this point, [Christine Blasey] Ford reiterated a request for caffeine she had made before she began reading her testimony. Bromwich, seated next to her, added, ‘a Coke or something.’

As they walked out of the hearing room during a later break in Ford’s testimony, multiple staffers heard Senator Hirono tell Senator Harris that it was a great idea to have Ford wear a blue suit and ask for a Coke as a throwback to the Thomas-Hill hearings. One of the unsubstantiated claims Hill had made against Thomas involved a Coke can.

Senator Hirono had also mentioned Hill repeatedly in her media appearances as soon as the initial Post report was published.

[end quote]

Fernandinande said...

Well. Yes. Working with people, many people, lots of different types of people, FACE to FACE with people....if you are observant and you learn to recognized physical clues you can tell when people are lying to you.

I doubt it.

If that were true people who have a professional need to detect deception would be able to do a better job than other people; but they can't.

Fen said...

multiple staffers heard Senator Hirono tell Senator Harris that it was a great idea to have Ford wear a blue suit and ask for a Coke as a throwback to the Thomas-Hill hearings.

And that's another tell that makes her suspect - if your cause is Just, you don't need to prop it up with manipulation.

rhhardin said...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Successful business people read others faces and body postures. Detectives. Sales people.

Fernadistein said: I researched this issue a while back and found exactly the opposite, that there are no profession whose members are good at detecting deception, including cops and judges and such, so I'd be interested to see a link supporting your statement.

Not evidence but anecdotal. When I worked for AT&T I went through a 5 week course on sales. Training to do sales for the company. One of the biggest components, surprisingly, wasn't the actual products or services we were to sell....but was HOW to do a sale.

In the HOW TO part they stressed body language and disconnects between the body language and the desired results. In other words does what the person (YOU or the Client) do match the words they are saying.

If the client is saying yes, but their body, facial expressions are saying no...you are not doing it right. If you are not getting through to the client...take a look at yourself. Are you putting out clues to the client to not trust you? (in other words being a bad liar yourself)

We had hours of watching ourselves in sales scenarios to fix our own problems in 'sales'. It was illuminating and rather terrifying.

All this "sales" training, made me a much better communicator and really more sensitive to whether someone is lying. Thankfully that position was soon eliminated when the Bell System was broken up in the early 1980's

Some people don't need training. They are just naturals.

rhhardin said...

You can't fool all the people all of the time, but if you can do it just once, it lasts for four years. - Roger Price 1950s

Fen said...

If that were true people who have a professional need to detect deception would be able to do a better job than other people; but they can't.

You can keep repeating that, but your source is a "study" from a discipline now notorious for being unable to replicate 1/3rd of their studies.

Several people have explained how it has worked from them, from personal experience. If you don't want to believe, that's fine. I would be skeptical too if I didn't have direct experience with it.

I admit I might have developed a hyper-sensitivity that's rare as a result of being raised by two alcoholics. I had to learn to read a room at a very young age whenever I came home from school to figure out if my mother was home or if the Monster was.

I have no need to convince you, and you can't convince me against something I know firsthand, so...

Rory said...

40 years ago, a great college professor included a great quote as part of his lecture. I always thought it was a great quote, though I couldn't recall who the original source was. The internet came along, and I occasionally tried to nail the quote down, to no avail. Finally, I reached out via email to the now-emeritus great professor to ask the source. His reply: he's never incorporated the quote in a lecture, never heard the quote, and has no idea who might have said it.

I'm guessing now that I read the quote some book, and injected that into my memory of the great professor. But that's just a guess. Memory doesn't work like people think it does.

narayanan said...

Cruel Neutral Feminista Law Professora Emerita with no court experience(?) {by that I mean serious search for truth in real world to see justice served}

Nice try with
6. If it's true that Melania said to Donald, "You know that woman is lying, don't you?" and also true that Melania has a special power to see that another woman is lying, it's still possible that Melania wasn't telling it straight. She had a motive to dissemble — to support and soothe her husband.

(You said without seeing her face!?)

Now do the same with Hillary and bimbo eruptions to soothe her husband (her face has been seen often enough) and also a woman lawyer like Elizabeth Warren

The sticking point for any honest person should be : was the question you would have asked come up in the hearing!

As spectators we are not following the dictum only ask questions you know the answer to.

I am not big fan of Kavanaugh - I just want some decency and honesty in US Senate

Joy said...

No special powers need to know she imagined it into realness. I would add as a man that I feel there a some other men that I can tell are lying or exaggerating based on a lifetime of dealing with other men who display similar tells that expose them.

tim maguire said...

Despite near consensus here, I couldn't come to a conclusion whether Ford was lying. But it's clear to me the Democrats didn't believe her. My guess as to the most likely situation is:

1) Ford is unstable and an unreliable narrator.
2) Ford may have experienced a sexual trauma in high school but likely misidentified the perpetrator.

Which means not lying, but wrong. The real villains are the Democrats, who didn't believe her either, but cynically used her to achieve a goal by any means necessary, with no regard to the effects of their behavior on Ford's mental health or on our nation's civic health.

rhhardin said...

Never lie and your life is stress-free, but you won't be PC.

Fernandinande said...

Exactly, and if you aren't sure, you "deal into it", go along with their lie,

You're supplying very amusing examples of someone lying to himself.

Birkel said...

Fernandistein thinks a normal distribution of lie detecting skills is unlikely.
That seems anti-science.

Maybe normal distribution curves are tools of the matriarchy.

rehajm said...

Anyone can spend ten minutes with a Ted talk and a few hours with Caro’s book of poker tells and be trained to spot a lie. CBF hit most of the major ones. Not just the body language or the voice stuff or the duping behavior from CBF but her accomplices in congress and the media.

You don’t have to be Melania to figure it out.

I recall a strong dividing line with Althouse too. From CBF is entirely credible to I won’t admit I didn’t see something so obvious. As if there was a realization of being duped. But I’m no expert.

Heartless Aztec said...

The cute we impute as astute.

Gahrie said...

Wow..Melania is the first woman I've ever heard of who claimed powers of intuition and perception.

Fen said...

What I find interesting is that most the people I've known who are good "readers" are also very easy to read. I think it's because, when you put up a shield it works in BOTH directions. When you are fake or pretending to be something you are not, to do it effectively you have to shut down that part of your brain that would give you away. But it's also the part that gives OTHERS away to you. I've never know a reader with a good poker face. It's like they have to be completely open to read another person.

traditionalguy said...

Also, the runway model and glamour shot models are silent screen actresses. They use their expressions and body language to tell us the story. Some are better than others. The Slovenian Mother Goddess is one of the best practitioners ever seen.

Fen said...

Wow..Melania is the first woman I've ever heard of who claimed powers of intuition and perception.

LOL. But yes, how many stories have we heard about women who, out of nowhere and with no evidence, suspected their husband of cheating. And looked closer at him and discovered he was indeed cheating.

There is something there.

Michael K said...

We had hours of watching ourselves in sales scenarios to fix our own problems in 'sales'. It was illuminating and rather terrifying.

After I retired, I spent 15 years teaching medical students how to examine patients and to take histories. In many cases, especially in the first year, we used actors and actresses to depict typical histories drawn from faculty cases. The students would be in a group of six or so and one student would interview the "patient." We could stop the interview and talk about what to do next. The actor would stop and go silent while we talked about how to proceed.

Some of the actors were terrific and we would see them on TV commercials. The students learned a lot about interviewing,. Some of the sessions were videoed.

Oso Negro said...

What popped in my mind is that Melania herself is likely to have experienced unwanted sexual advances or even assault, and has clear memories of it. The certainty of Blasey Ford, with its attendant lack of detail, was very suspect in my mind. Throw in the little girl voice and it was just too fucking much to believe. And that is excluding the fact that she is a Democrat, who, while they have no monopoly on lying, certainly are associated with the biggest lies going.

Francisco D said...

Successful poker players are terrific at watching human ticks- not just facial movements, but all movement.

Professional poker players have a LOT more data to evaluate than facial movements. Facial movements are the least reliable of all indicators than someone is lying. There is a situation and a pattern of actions that they evaluate.

If you evaluate CBF's actions and statements in context, it was OBVIOUS that she was lying. Her presentation was also a tell, but that pales in comparison to the other available data.

I find it beyond absurd that anyone can believe CBF. I understand that some women who have been sexually abused have a hard time getting over it and tend to give CBF the benefit of the doubt. However, you need to understand that you are being emotionally manipulated.

rehajm said...

It’s funny but CBF was likely chosen in part for her ability to manipulate without having to lie. Lying to congress is a punishable offense. You need to develop a scenario where it looks like you’re lying but you’re not because you aren’t saying what you’re implying you’re saying. ‘I don’t recall’ sure comes in handy.

Fen said...

Fernandistein: You're supplying very amusing examples of someone lying to himself.

No, I'm describing a common tactic that police and detectives use.

But you seem to be taking this conversation very personally, as if something important is riding on it. Why?

dreams said...

I'm going to enjoy reading about this liberal slut's sordid history, Trump's people had a lot of dirt on her but didn't want to be perceived as smearing her. Enquiring minds want to know, it's all going to come out. Enjoy and MAGA.

Gahrie said...

I hate to be the one to break it to Althouse....but tens of millions of Americans reacted exactly the same way that Melania did. It wasn't hard to figure out if you weren't invested in hating Kavanaugh.

Mike Sylwester said...

This is a good opportunity to repeat my opinion that Senator Dianne Feinstein would not have arranged for Christine Blasey Ford to perform her televised circus act if the nominee had been Jewish.

If the nominee had been Jewish -- even if nominated by President Trump -- then Feinstein would have followed proper procedures and treated the nominee fairly.

Bret Kavanaugh is Roman Catholic, and Feinstein thinks that Roman Catholics should be kept out of federal judge positions that might affect abortion policy.

Because of the US Constitution's penumbra and emanations, all abortion policy in the USA is decided by federal judges. In particular, state legislatures and governors have absolutely no effective say about abortion policy.

In such a situation, Feinstein will use unfair tactics to keep Roman Catholic out of high federal judge positions. Because she herself is Jewish, however, she would not subject Jewish nominees likewise to unfair tactics.

Anonymous said...

"...and also true that Melania has a special power to see that another woman is lying, it's still possible that Melania wasn't telling it straight."

Turtles all the way down, eh? I'm satisfied stopping at the top turtle: the alleged quote from Melania was pulled out of someone's arse.

My specially honed powers of lie-detection tell me that it's probable that Mrs.Trump though CBF was a liar, based on the same inferences everybody else drew from the latter's words and behavior.

Fen said...

Fernandistein: Professional poker players have a LOT more data to evaluate than facial movements.

That's easy to refute. If half of what you say has merit, then why do professional poker players wear SUNGLASSES at the table that hide all of their eye expressions?

It's why I could never get into watching the Poker TV games, it's lame and a cheat. Might as well let them use thoroughbred race horses in the Decathalon.

TrespassersW said...

It did not require Sherlockian powers of observation to deduce that Blasey-Ford was not telling the truth.

Hell, Joey Tribbiani would have figured it out in seconds. A minute, tops.

Rory said...

"In many cases, especially in the first year, we used actors and actresses to depict typical histories drawn from faculty cases."

Wouldn't the main training be that you're supposed to listen to what the person says, to evaluate that, and keep engaging until your mind is settled that you understand the situation? Not so much if the person looks you in the eye or not?

Chuck said...

What did Melania’s truth-detector day about Stormy Daniels? And the Trump Organization checks to Michael Cohen?

Fen said...

narayanan:
Nice try with
6. If it's true that Melania said to Donald, "You know that woman is lying, don't you?" and also true that Melania has a special power to see that another woman is lying, it's still possible that Melania wasn't telling it straight. She had a motive to dissemble — to support and soothe her husband.

(You said without seeing her face!?)

Now do the same with Hillary and -


Or just do the same with "gaydar". I'm sure her son has many friends who claim they can easily pick up on mannerisms or some vibe that indicates who is gay.

Phil 314 said...


“I suspect Instapundit is just horsing about”

Don’t you mean “horsing around”?

“ Horse around probably comes from horseplay, and it in turn came from the old-fashioned verb horse, which was once used to mean "play crazy jokes on." Experts aren't sure how it came into use, or what horses have to do with it.”

Birkel said...

It's relatively easy to read poker hands when you're not involved in the hands.
It's harder with professionals but not particularly difficult.

It is hard when you're involved in the pressure and have something at risk.

But, hey, you cannot win an argument against people who think normal distributions are unlikely.

narciso said...

I think the evidence severing turned up is more important than adhominems at our host, dont you think?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Maybe she was thinking “I don’t really care, do you?” Interesting that you folks like to imagine what’s really in Melania’s mind.

Swede said...

OMG! I could totally be a model!

I knew she was lying before she even went on tv!

That must make me a Super Model!

Bruce Hayden said...

“I would bet that if I brought a Con Law prof to a dinner with Meade-Althouse, after an hour of light conversation Althouse would suspect she was professor of law.”

I don’t think that you give her enough credit, unless maybe you prohibit her from asking what type of law they teach. I can almost always detect attorneys fairly quickly by the way they talk and analyze things. I have spent my lifetime around them, from growing up with an attorney father, many of whose best fiends were of the faith, to having joined it myself at some point in my checkered past. They have weird thought patterns. Not everyone seems to have this ability though. I remember the night that I met my Austin GF of a year or two. It was a pre formal get together, so everyone was dressed nice, like they had successful business careers. After about five minutes with her, I asked her out of the blue what type of law did she practice. What? I repeated my question, and she answered “environmental”. That fit perfectly. It was awhile later though before she got out of me my profession.

I think that Melania would very likely agree with my partner who has said that most models are insecure airheads. Maybe not at the top of the profession, and definitely not Melania. The only First Lady in my lifetime who can come close to her rock solid confidence that her ensemble, or her design, is exquisite, was Jackie. A stark contrast to several of her predecessors who had various people dressing them, and in particular, Crooked Hillary, whose dressers picked out some quite bizarre outfits over time.

But, on the other hand, much of modeling and the beauty industry is fake. There are innumerable tricks that women use to make them look different than they really are. And a former model like my partner sees right through them, because they were the stock in trade of her profession. Or one profession, the other being dance. In both, the women will sabotage you in a heartbeat. I expect the guys are as bad with each other. And if Melania has any superior ability to detect female deception, it was developed there, in self defense, when most of the other models are pretending to be your best friend, but are trying to stab you in the back at the same time.

Fen said...

I'm guessing now that I read the quote some book, and injected that into my memory of the great professor. But that's just a guess. Memory doesn't work like people think it does.

I've done that too.

Once with a quote from the 1994 Crime Bill, the Violence Against Woman Act: "...plaintiff has a right to any and all information that establishes a pattern of predatory behavior in the workplace on the part of the accused". But I can no longer find that quote.

Another was something about one of the signs of a nation in decline being the acceptance of homosexuality. I thought I had read it in Plutarch but have never been able to source it.

Also, I keep telling my wife I was Magneto and my superpowers are slowly returning, but she says none of that could have happened, because she won't allow me to have superpowers. Or a Monster Truck. Or WMDs.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Blasey Ford is a liar. That was clear from the moment she opened her baby-talker mouth.

Big Mike said...

When I'm watching the Democratic presidential candidates debate, do I have special expertise in telling whether Elizabeth Warren is lying?

Nope. Is her mouth open, and are her lips moving? If either or both are true then Liz Warren is lying.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Interesting that you folks like to imagine what’s really in Melania’s mind.

Who are you speaking to? Althouse?

6. If it's true that Melania said to Donald, "You know that woman is lying, don't you?" and also true that Melania has a special power to see that another woman is lying, it's still possible that Melania wasn't telling it straight. She had a motive to dissemble — to support and soothe her husband.

Howard said...

Blogger Fernandistein said...

Sounds reasonable to me by confirming my own bias that I can't be fooled.

If you can't trust your own subconsciousness's opinion of itself, what (or who) can you trust? Measurements and snooty control groups and numbers are tools of the racist patriarchy, so what's a poor grrrl supposed to do ?!?


Touche.

Fen said...

I don’t think that you give her enough credit, unless maybe you prohibit her from asking what type of law they teach. I can almost always detect attorneys fairly quickly by the way they talk and analyze things

Huh? I may have been unclear - I'm saying that Althouse would have an easy time figuring out her guest was a law professor, for the same reason you give.

Or have I misunderstood?

Howard said...

Blogger Fen said...

Fernandistein: You're supplying very amusing examples of someone lying to himself.

No, I'm describing a common tactic that police and detectives use.

But you seem to be taking this conversation very personally, as if something important is riding on it. Why?


You brought your alcoholic, abusive monster father into the mix and are claiming Fredandethylstein is being personal. At least you gave your biggest tell that explains your posting "style"

Michael K said...

Blogger Chuck said...
What did Melania’s truth-detector day about Stormy Daniels? And the Trump Organization checks to Michael Cohen?


Blackmail, Chuck. I gather you are in favor of it. That makes you a colleague of Avenatti. Same ethics,.

Ann Althouse said...

I deleted a long comment that copied material that I'm quoting in a separate post. Please take that subject to the other post, 2 up from this one, here.

Andrew said...

@Michael K,
Mandatory Seinfeld reference here:
https://youtu.be/wLRlbsBJhio

dreams said...

Also, some of us are just better judges of character and if you think about, you'd expect conservatives to be better at judging character. Liberals are basically dupes.

Fen said...

Howard, you can't hurt me. And you're just going to choke on all that anger.

Surrender now, Dorothy.

Francisco D said...

That's easy to refute. If half of what you say has merit, then why do professional poker players wear SUNGLASSES at the table that hide all of their eye expressions?

Fen,

You obviously have little experience with poker, as a viewer or a participant. Only amateurs or beginning pros wear sunglasses because ... it doesn't matter what their facial expressions show.

I will repeat ... there is a LOT of data to make it obvious that CBF was lying and intended to lie from the beginning. Her facial expressions only confirmed the blatantly obvious.

Michael K said...

Andrew that was a good one.

We had a lot of fun with those sessions and the students learned something,. Not quite that dramatic, though.

tim in vermont said...

Subconsciouses are good at emotion, lousy at logic. Maybe they can give a hint that somebody might be lying, but they can’t prove anything any more than your dog can prove it didn’t eat the loaf of bread off of the counter. Still, a wise man tries to stay at peace with his subconscious.

I had a dream last night about a cat I had ten years ago dropping kittens as it ran out of a room, then it ran back in to grab them, eating the first so that it could grab the second. That’s the kind of stuff that occupies my subconscious mind. But I am pretty sure it’s a decent driver, as sometimes I drive for miles with no recollection of having done it.

tim in vermont said...

Experts have never seen horses play, I guess.

I remember once seeing deer play in a winter cornfield and I thought “That’s what the song is about!"

narayanan said...

Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

–Charles Dickens

He definitely knows how true that is by own life experience and actions.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Also, some of us are just better judges of character and if you think about, you'd expect conservatives to be better at judging character. Liberals are basically dupes.”

Hahahaha, Trump.

Bruce Hayden said...

“3. Do female fashion models work mostly with women? I'm seeing that 89 to 96 percent of fashion photographers are male.”

My understanding is that men do better work in this area, and partly it is because of how the two sexes interact with each other. For one thing, time is money in that field, and my partner was popular as a model because she was all business when she would show up for a shoot. Which meant almost no chit chat, just pose, pose, pose, pose, done, and gone.

I will ask her though about the percentage of gay men versus straight in fashion photography when she gets up. I do know that she didn’t like working with female photographers, but I don’t know if it was because they were too talkative, weren’t trustworthy, or that she has never really liked women (likely because they were mostly immune to her charms).

Ann Althouse said...

Phil 314 questioned my “I suspect Instapundit is just horsing about”: "Don’t you mean “horsing around”? “ Horse around probably comes from horseplay, and it in turn came from the old-fashioned verb horse, which was once used to mean "play crazy jokes on." Experts aren't sure how it came into use, or what horses have to do with it.”"

This is the kind of pedantry that gets my attention. Is there an about/around distinction here? I check the OED and find, under "Horse," the verb: " a. To make fun of, to ‘rag’, to ridicule; to indulge in horseplay; to fool about or around. orig. U.S.13." From the examples, most have "around," but there's also "about."

1959 Punch 10 June 776/2 The professor thought I was horsing about and came down to me.
1961 P. G. Wodehouse Ice in Bedroom vi. 47 When you've cleaned up pretty good, you don't want to be horsing around down in the suburbs.
1961 J. Heller Catch-22 (1962) xxxii. 340 They were having a whale of a good time as they helped each other set up their cots. They were horsing around.

I don't see the difference between "about" and "around" here. It's like with "running" — you can be "running around" or "running about." It's the same thing. Or "fooling" — you can be "fooling around" or "fooling about."

Birkel said...

Why would anybody develop the skill of lie detection? After all, it's not like that would have given an evolutionary advantage to our forebears. Everybody agrees with Fernandistein, yes?

Standard distribution curves are tools of the oppressive matriarchy!

Howard said...

Fen: Nothing but tough love for you, brother.

Birkel said...

This -- and only this -- skill of lie detection is perfectly equally distributed.

Thanks, Fernandistein, for solving the mystery.

Ann Althouse said...

Maybe people don't remember, but I have never stated whether or to what extent I think Christine Blasey-Ford was lying or confused or mistaken. If it were my job to issue an opinion, I would want her competently cross-examined and much more evidence and due process.

The hearing was about whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed, so the standards were tuned to that function. In the end, I did think he should be confirmed, but that didn't require me to believe Blasey-Ford was guilty of perjury. I'm not going to state an opinion on that. I think that would be wrong. I don't think what she said was 100% correct. I'll say that.

dreams said...

Well, I think she wanted to be a hero for the liberal agenda and I'll trust my judgement.

Paul said...

If Joe Kenda can tell when they are lying... no doubt Melania could to. Just so much experience working in a field where lies are common.

dreams said...

Hero, heroine or whatever.

mockturtle said...

I think women have 'special powers' to tell when other women are lying or misrepresenting themselves. Even leftist women. It's not that they believed CBF's story but that it fit their narrative.

dreams said...

“Also, some of us are just better judges of character and if you think about, you'd expect conservatives to be better at judging character. Liberals are basically dupes.”

"Hahahaha, Trump."

Indeed.

Dude1394 said...

She doesn’t have special powers. It was obvious to all sentient beings that she was lying.

Fernandinande said...

I think women have 'special powers' to tell when other women are lying or misrepresenting themselves

Apparently it's exactly the opposite.

In addition, those who underwent training were less accurate than naive controls—though they were more confident and cited more reasons for their judgments.

Moderator analyses revealed larger training effects if the training was based on verbal content cues, whereas feedback, nonverbal and paraverbal, or multichannel cue training had only small effects.

The bogus training group [vs 'real' training or no training] was most accurate in Study 1, but this finding failed to replicate in Study 2.

Arresting the Beliefs of Police Officers, Prosecutors and Judges
Judging from self-ratings, the presumed experts admitted knowing close to nothing about scientific research on deception.

The police officers failed to detect deception better than chance. There was no difference in accuracy between police officers interrogating live and observing video.

Who killed my relative? police officers' ability to detect real-life high-stake lies

The [fifty-two uniformed police officers] did not perform better than could be expected by chance. Additional analyses showed that accuracy was unrelated to confidence, age, years of job experience in the police force, or level of experience in interviewing suspects. There was, however, a significant positive correlation between having experience in interviewing suspects and being confident in detecting deception. Finally, men were better at detecting deception than women. (but they all averaged out to "chance").

the prison inmates outperformed the students in terms of detecting lies, but not in terms of detecting truths.

Research on the detection of deception, via non‐verbal cues, has shown that people's ability to successfully discriminate between truth and deception is only slightly better than chance level. ... Further, police officers held as many false beliefs as did lay people.

Officers had a very strong tendency to judge the statements as deceptive; this made them less accurate than the students in judging the truthful accounts, while both groups reached a similar accuracy when judging the deceptive ones. ... No significant correlation between estimated ability and accuracy was found for either sample.

Results indicate that detection accuracy was significantly higher when the judge was left-handed, the target was unattractive, and the target and judge were of opposite genders.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Huh? I may have been unclear - I'm saying that Althouse would have an easy time figuring out her guest was a law professor, for the same reason you give.”

Sorry. It wasn’t supposed to give that impression. I wasn’t disagreeing that she could detect other law professors, but rather that you were probably overestimating how long it would take her. That was all, and it was done in humor, not malice.

I read an interesting article yesterday that might have interested you. The general assumption on the right has been that they have most of the guns, and most of those who know how to use them. The author was analyzing some armed Antifa, and noted why he thought that they did know what they were doing, from how they wore their plate carriers, to the arms they were carrying, both make and wear, to how they carried their spare magazines, to how they were standing with their rifles slung across their chests, etc. A bunch of little things that I suspect, from an earlier post, that you would instinctively recognize, and I would not.

dreams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fen said...

but rather that you were probably overestimating how long it would take her.

Oh. LOL my bad. And yes, I probably am.

Fen said...

I read an interesting article yesterday that might have interested you. The general assumption on the right has been that they have most of the guns, and most of those who know how to use them. The author was analyzing some armed Antifa, and noted why he thought that they did know what they were doing, from how they wore their plate carriers, to the arms they were carrying, both make and wear, to how they carried their spare magazines, to how they were standing with their rifles slung across their chests, etc. A bunch of little things that I suspect, from an earlier post, that you would instinctively recognize, and I would not.

Yes, I would appreciate a link or source. Thanks.

JAORE said...

Maybe it's because the story had more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

Maybe it was because she could not remember numerous key points.
Maybe it was because her therapist notes, used for collaboration, failed to match her testimony.
Maybe it was because the witnesses she named did not agree with her.
Maybe it was because issues like, You left your girl friend alone among rapists?" rang so false.
Maybe it was because she changed her testimony so many times.
Maybe it was the way the Senator from California rolled this crap out looked like last minute hail Mary material.

Maybe it's because Melania has more sense than a goat. (A bar "D" members of the Senate Committee failed to clear.)


Francisco D said...

In the end, I did think he should be confirmed, but that didn't require me to believe Blasey-Ford was guilty of perjury. I'm not going to state an opinion on that. I think that would be wrong. I don't think what she said was 100% correct. I'll say that.

Yes. In order to firmly believe that someone is breaking the law (and should suffer consequences), one needs more evidence. CBF is likely protected from further evidential inquiry by a predictable "blame the victim" complaint.

In that sense, the charge of perjury is a moot point. However, what interests me is whether women with a past history of being sexually harassed/abused wonder if the CBF staged presentation was meant to manipulate their vulnerable emotions.

Fen said...

"Liberals are basically dupes.”

Inga: Hahahaha, Trump.

Mueller? Mueller? ... Mueller?

Jeff Brokaw said...

Adding to the stories above about the inaccuracy of memory, just one week ago I watched some show about Jeffrey Dahmer and it said he was arrested in 1991.

I say to my wife, “That’s impossible, I remember clearly where I lived when I heard this news — it was 1982-83 and I was in college”.

Nope. Even though I could clearly see in my mind a scene including where I lived and also hearing about it on the TV news, and details about my actual life at the time (college girlfriend, major, etc) — and it was quite shocking news so you’d think that kind of thing would be accurate — my memory is just wrong.

It’s a very unsettling feeling, but there it is. Our memories lie to us all the time. Scott Adams talks about this a lot.

rehajm said...

That's easy to refute. If half of what you say has merit, then why do professional poker players wear SUNGLASSES at the table that hide all of their eye expressions?

Spot the logic fallacy here...

Poker relys on much more than facial expressions. Scenario dependence, history, 'putting a hand' on an opponent. Go read Caro...

The Godfather said...

I don’t think you needed special powers to figure out that Ford’s story wasn’t true. All you had to do was pay attention to the details of the story. It was implausible, it lacked key details as though it was designed to be uncheckable. I think it’s even possible that Ford believes her story by now; that would fit her emotional illness.

In other words, I could detect the lie, and yet I’m not a Slovenian model.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Also, some of us are just better judges of character and if you think about, you'd expect conservatives to be better at judging character. Liberals are basically dupes.”- dupe

"Hahahaha, Trump."-me

“Indeed.”-dupe

Good example of lying to yourself.

Bruce Hayden said...

“The hearing was about whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed, so the standards were tuned to that function. In the end, I did think he should be confirmed, but that didn't require me to believe Blasey-Ford was guilty of perjury. I'm not going to state an opinion on that. I think that would be wrong. I don't think what she said was 100% correct. I'll say that.”

What I think is confusing, maybe, to some, is that Ann thinks like a lawyer, or maybe even more so, because her job was, at least partially, to teach her students to think like lawyers. Double negatives don’t equate to a positive, just like two wrongs don’t make a right. And, indeed, one of the critical skills that you really need to have learned by the time you graduate LS is to detect the difference between the double negative and the positive. To see what the other party has not said or given up. There is a critical difference between what it sounds to the laity that an attorney says, and what they actually say, and law students need to learn to see the latter, to recognize the limitations imposed by the attorneys’ statements. And what they don’t say and admit. Then, one day, you wake up and realize that your significant other doesn’t understand that you really didn’t commit to doing something, just not not doing it. That you weren’t rejecting her request, but that didn’t mean that you had agreed to it either.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Leftist females swallow whole the lies that are fed to them by other leftist females. Wish facts are real.

*rachel*

Laslo Spatula said...

"I've got to admit that if I had to say right now, who is more likely to be telling us what is closer to the truth — no stakes, no burden of proof, just who is more likely — I'd have to say her."

I am Laslo.

Anonymous said...

Smashed-into-the-wall hag Inga believes other smashed -into-the-wall hag. Amazing!

My favorite “Dr” B-F lie was the one where the door for her illegal Palo Alto accessory dwelling unit was an escape hatch no one could understand why she needed.



Fernandinande said...

I think women have 'special powers' to tell when other women are lying or misrepresenting themselves.

Some of these studies say the opposite.
(I'd made a bigger post with the damned links inserted, and it disappeared. Never trust a computer!)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(199612)10:6%3C461::AID-ACP413%3E3.0.CO;2-2
Research on the detection of deception, via non‐verbal cues, has shown that people's ability to successfully discriminate between truth and deception is only slightly better than chance level.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1098611104264748
The police officers failed to detect deception better than chance. There was no difference in accuracy between police officers interrogating live and observing video.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(199612)10:6%3C461::AID-ACP413%3E3.0.CO;2-2
Further, police officers held as many false beliefs as did lay people

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10683160308138
Judging from self-ratings, the presumed experts [Police Officers, Prosecutors and Judges] admitted knowing close to nothing about scientific research on deception.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316031000095485
the prison inmates outperformed the students in terms of detecting lies, but not in terms of detecting truths.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/135532501168217https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/135532501168217
The main findings were that (1) both interrogators and observers were poor at discerning truth‐tellers and liars

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10683160108401791
Who killed my relative? police officers' ability to detect real-life high-stake lies
The [52 uniformed police] did not perform better than could be expected by chance. Additional analyses showed that accuracy was unrelated to confidence, age, years of job experience in the police force, or level of experience in interviewing suspects. There was, however, a significant positive correlation between having experience in interviewing suspects and being confident in detecting deception. Finally, men were better at detecting deception than women. (yet the average was "chance")

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-15260-007
Results indicate that detection accuracy was significantly higher when the judge was left-handed, the target was unattractive, and the target and judge were of opposite genders.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10570310500202355
The bogus training group was most accurate in Study 1, but this finding failed to replicate in Study 2.

rcocean said...

Melania is a woman who is intelligent and worked in modeling. She probably has more insight into whether Blaisy Ford was putting on an act. She seemed phony as a $3 bill to me, especially with that whispy up-talk voice.

rcocean said...

The burden of proof is on Blaisy Ford. Fact: She barely knew Kavanugh. Fact: She never talked to him after the "event". Fact: None of the people who were supposedly there came forward and supported her story under oath. Fact: She couldn't say where or when the attack took place. Fact: She had no contemporaneous evidence. IRC, she didn't even tell her mother. Fact: She's a left-wing Democrat.

Again, the vagueness is deliberate. Give a place and a date, and Kavanaugh could prove he wasn't there and therefore innocent.

Big Mike said...

@Fen, go here, and get motivated to get out to the range and practice. If you don't have recent training and the right gear, get trained and buy a first aid kit capable of dressing a wound, plus canteens and extra mags and carriers for the mags..

Or shut up about how you can hit center mass at 500 yards. If the guy has his center mass properly covered with a plate you've wasted the round. Head shot only.

I mean to tell you that unless the "I AM ANTI FASCIST" shoulder patches have been photoshopped on, this is one scary article. I am not a fan of either the Glock (no safety!) nor the AR platform, but ...

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, Glenn's actual comment was "MELANIA WAS A MODEL. SHE’S WORKED WITH A LOT OF WOMEN." (caps in original) You are focused on the first sentence; consider instead the second.

The most fundamental reason for disbelieving Blasey Ford was that women who have actually been sexually assaulted say they recall every detail about the incident -- where it happened, when it happened, right down to what they had been wearing. This comes across to me as akin to PTSD, which makes sense. In marked contrast, the only details Blasey Ford could remember were the supposed identities of her attackers, she claimed not to recall precisely where it happened, nor even when it happened, not even to which year it happened. Melania is a beautiful woman who knows a lot of other beautiful women, and they would be targets of assault. She would know their stories and be able to compare and contrast with Blasey Ford's bullshit, and detect the odor.

(It has not escaped my notice that Melania herself may have been the victim of an attempted assault, though I hope not, and she would then be especially able to tell that there was no verisimilitude in Blasey Ford's story.)

Fernandinande said...

If half of what you say has merit, then why do professional poker players wear SUNGLASSES at the table that hide all of their eye expressions?

If anything you say is true how come only one of the 5 or 6 people at the Full World Poker Tour Gardens Main Event Final Table is wearing sunglasses? And apparently no sun-glass wearers here (pokerstars.com)

Biff said...

I regard Althouse's 6th point as the most significant one: "it's still possible that Melania wasn't telling it straight. She had a motive to dissemble — to support and soothe her husband." It's been my experience that when my significant others have offered interpretations of other women's behaviors in situations that had some impact on me, the interpretations may or may not have been accurate, but they almost always were passed through multiple motivational filters that often defied simple analysis.

rcocean said...

Hello Ms. Ford, you were assaulted by Mr. Kavaunaugh?

Ford: Yes. It was horrible, It changed by life and led to trust issues.
When did it happen?
Ford: I don't remember. Sometime in the early 80s.
Where did it happen?
Ford: I don't remember. Probably at a friends house -somewhere near DC.
Were you Drunk?
Ford: No, I only had one drink.

LOL!

rcocean said...

We met at nine, we met at eight, I was on time, no, you were late
Ah, yes, I remember it well
We dined with friends, we dined alone, a tenor sang, a baritone
Ah, yes, I remember it well

That dazzling April moon, there was none that night
And the month was June, that's right, that's right
It warms my heart to know that you remember.

Fen said...

LOL even the fricken <advertisements at the start of those vids have one of the 4 cartoon characters wearing sunglasses to hide their eyes. That's how common it is.

Fen said...

(I'd made a bigger post with the damned links inserted, and it disappeared. Never trust a computer!)

No, the same thing just happened to me. I saw my page of counter-links posted and now its gone. Weird.

Fen said...

Spot the logic fallacy here...

Poker relys on much more than facial expressions. Scenario dependence, history, 'putting a hand' on an opponent. Go read Caro...


It's relies on multiple things. So why is it a logical fallacy to point out that professional pokers seek an edge by eliminating one of those by hiding eye tells behind sunglasses?

Fen said...

If anything you say is true how come only one of the 5 or 6 people at the Full World Poker Tour Gardens Main Event Final Table is wearing sunglasses? And apparently no sun-glass wearers here (pokerstars.com)

I responded with a list of 12 links each showing professional poker players wearing dark sunglasses indoors at the table. It got disappeared. But I think you made my point for me. One in six professional players that made it to the main event find it necessary to hide their eyes from their opponents, because...?

SDaly said...

How, exactly, is the Daily Caller different from the Washington Post, CNN or MSNBC in having headlines (or chyrons for television) not called for from the substance of the story? Seriously. Which new source was better in reporting the facts of the Russia collusion hoax?

Fen said...

(I'd made a bigger post with the damned links inserted, and it disappeared. Never trust a computer!)

No, the same thing just happened to me. I saw my page of counter-links posted and now its gone. Weird.


Probably a spam filter. Post too many links in one post and it gets shelved for moderation.

Fen said...

I mean to tell you that unless the "I AM ANTI FASCIST" shoulder patches have been photoshopped on, this is one scary article.

I'm skeptical of that pic. Several reasons:

1) the guy looks like an operator, SEAL or SWAT. Doesn't fit the Antifa look. I googled up other antifa armed goons and none of them have that "merc" look.

2) the "patches" look more like name labels, paper and glue. That doesn't make sense, why wear identification that will brush off at first contact?

3) if it's printed for mass consumption, it only shows up here once.. I googled Antifa patches, stickers and buttons and did not find any other examples of that particular "patch", although there is a wide variety. If you can find it, I would be happy to be proven wrong.

4) it seems odd to me that, if they were going to display their "colors", they would only do it one way though the one "patch". As individuals, you would expect to see other small displays of Antifa allegiance on their gear. A button here, a patch there. Some black and red stripes, etc. If I missed something like that please let me know.

All that said, my search returned articles similar to yours, with video. They don't have the "merc" look or the attention to detail as the pic in that article, but the ARE gearing up and closing the gap between us. Something to be very concerned about.

Fen said...
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Fen said...

Edit on #4, I sharpened up the patch on his torso and found a match:

"White Trash Against Facism"

And it does not look photo-shopped in.

So yah. Get some range time in.

Michael McNeil said...

I'd made a bigger post with the damned links inserted, and it disappeared. Never trust a computer!

A basic part of “never trust a computer” — at least a powerful first line of defense — is to always select your post and copy it to the clipboard before you hit “publish your comment.” Then it will always be there if Blogger screws up.

This is easy to do on laptops and smartphones. For instance, on a Mac laptop or iPhone/iPad phone (via a bluetooth keyboard), simply hit Cmd-A then Cmd-C to select the entire posting then copy it to the clipboard. Otherwise — lacking a keyboard with one of the foregoing Apple mobile devices — hold down your finger somewhere in the posting, then when the menu comes up select “Select All” then “Copy”.

On a Windows laptop, type Ctrl-A then Ctrl-C to accomplish the same thing. (Android devices too must have a way to do it, though I forget how. Look it up!)

Just do that every time, before posting, and your Blogger troubles will (mostly) cease — or at least cease being so annoying!

I also like to copy significant postings to (e.g.) Evernote to save it for, if not posterity, then possible future reference.

Yancey Ward said...

"As I mentioned, Birkel, the hardest lies to detect are the one you tell yourself."

And you know this is true, how exactly?

Jim at said...

One doesn't have to be a woman OR a model to recognize a bullshit story when he/she sees it.

Yancey Ward said...

"Adding to the stories above about the inaccuracy of memory, just one week ago I watched some show about Jeffrey Dahmer and it said he was arrested in 1991.

I say to my wife, “That’s impossible, I remember clearly where I lived when I heard this news — it was 1982-83 and I was in college”."


I have exactly one savant-like ability- I can identify a song, the title, and the artist from the opening bar just about 100% of the time if I have heard the song in the past more than 4-5 times, and if the song was a hit between 1978 and 1988 (junior high until I graduated from college), I can tell you when it was a hit right down to the season/s and year/s.

A couple of years ago, I misidentified the year that "West End Girls" by the Pet Shop Boys was a hit in the US. I remembered the song as being a hit in the Spring of 1985- I literally had what seemed a concrete memory of listening to it with a girl I only could have listened to it with in my freshman year in college, and that we listened to it over and over during finals week of the Winter/Spring semester- May of 1985. However, my guess as to the year was contradicted by the person quizzing me who told me that it reached #1 in the US in May of 1986. And when I checked the Billboard charts, my friend was correct- it hit #1 in May of 1986. I was dumbfounded, and couldn't explain what was clearly a false memory. I spent a good day trying to reconcile that memory with some other song that reminded me of "West End Girls", and failed. However, I learned just the other day that the song was released in North America in two different versions- first in 1984 and then again in late 1985. So my memory wasn't as faulty as I feared.

I guess, what I am saying, is that you are probably misremembering a name from 1982 that you have mixed up with Dahmer. I would, if I were you, look to see what other serial killers were identified in the media in 1982.

Achilles said...

Bruce Hayden said...

I read an interesting article yesterday that might have interested you. The general assumption on the right has been that they have most of the guns, and most of those who know how to use them. The author was analyzing some armed Antifa, and noted why he thought that they did know what they were doing, from how they wore their plate carriers, to the arms they were carrying, both make and wear, to how they carried their spare magazines, to how they were standing with their rifles slung across their chests, etc. A bunch of little things that I suspect, from an earlier post, that you would instinctively recognize, and I would not.

The easies t guide I could give people is how high are they carrying their plates.

If they look too high they are right. If they are covering the belly button they are huge plates or wrong. If they are big enough to cover the collar bone and belly button you can't bend over or run. So wrong. Side plates crammed up in the arm pits etc. Nobody cares about your love handles.

Where you put your reload mags is totally choice and practice. They can go anywhere and be pointed most any direction as long at they don't fall out. It doesn't matter where you put them. It matters how many times you practice your mag changes.

The other difference is going to be a range kit vs. a field kit. A field kit is going to have things that seem odd like scissors and strap cutters and tourniquets and water bottles/camelbacks hatchets knives etc. Parachute cord will be in abundance. A mag bag is useful.

narciso said...

you are the weakest link:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/452024-trump-says-he-will-no-longer-deal-with-the-uks-ambassador-to-the-us

Otto said...

The one thing that seems to be emerging from this is that Ford's reputation amongst her peers in high school was that she was the school whore and a drinker. She probably was sexually assaulted in a gang bang while being intoxicated given her traits. Also why her family was quiet throughout hearings.

Mark said...

Everyone knows that women have a special power -- with men at least -- of seeing "that look."

rehajm said...

So why is it a logical fallacy to point out that professional pokers seek an edge by eliminating one of those by hiding eye tells behind sunglasses?

Because you didn't just 'point out', you refuted the premise that poker players rely on multiple factors. That's easy to refute, you said.

Poker players have more data than facial movements is false because some poker players wear sunglasses.

It's the Reduction fallacy.

Amadeus 48 said...

Blasey Ford’s story was impossible to disprove: she didn’t know when, she didn’t know where, she didn’t know who. The people she said knew about it didn’t know about it. K had an impeccable record with female colleagues and clerks, and he had been in public life for 25 years.

Melania just applied common sense.

Biff said...

Might the "horsing about" vs "horsing around" question be about US vs British English? I know a few people who use the "about" form (also with "messing about" vs "messing around"), and they all are from either England or Scotland. I can't recall any of my American acquaintances using "about" in preference over "around", aside from one who is an extreme anglophile.

(In case it's a regional US thing, I've resided all of my life in the northeastern US.)

Fen said...

you refuted the premise that poker players rely on multiple factors. That's easy to refute, you said.

I was refuting the assertion that lairs are not given away by subconscious tells. To prove the point I referenced the number of professional poker players feel a need to wear sunglasses to hide the expressions their eyes give.

In no way was I trying to say poker players don't rely on multiple factors. Having actually played poker, I know what a ridiculous statement that would be.

Fen said...

Achilles: The easiest guide I could give people is how high are they carrying their plates.

The author implies he is a subject matter expert and says the are carrying them correctly, avoiding mistakes that amateurs would make.

We only wore kevlar vests in the Marines, so I have no experience with plates to speak with any authority on the subject. Maybe you can check out the article and see if it rings true.

Fen said...

Poker players have more data than facial movements is false because some poker players wear sunglasses. It's the Reduction fallacy.

And you are using that wrong. The fact that poker players have more data than facial movements does not preclude them from eliminating whatever data they are sending; in this case, where their eyes move and what expressions they give away.


"reduction fallacy,[1] is a fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes"

Now, you COULD accuse me of reduction fallacy because I am assuming the only reason they wear sunglasses indoors is to mask their eyes, when other factors like glare from the lights or a bad hangover could come into play. But that's not how you are using the term.

Fen said...
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Marcus Bressler said...

Smokey Robinson shopped AROUND, not ABOUT.
That's all I need to know.

THEOLDMAN

Fen said...

We only wore kevlar vests in the Marines, so I have no experience with plates to speak with any authority on the subject.

Something else to look for is uniformity. It's difficult for me to look at their gear placement to determine if its "right" because in the Marines we had no individual choice in how our gear was worn, everyone was forced to wear it exactly the same way.

But there is a reason for that. If your buddy goes down or you need to get into his gear, you knew exactly where on his body to look for exactly what. So if the Antifa goons look uniform in gear placement, it's a good tell that they have been practicing Small Unit Tactics, learning to engage as a team instead of as individuals.

rehajm said...

What I remember was this: Now, I've watched the entire opening statement by Dr. Ford. She seemed very credible to me. Though she was reading, she seemed to be reliving a real, traumatic experience. It's hard to imagine that she could be infusing her speech with that kind of emotion phonily. Even an excellent actress would have difficulty affecting that kind of emotion

I watched Somehow Ann got from that to I have never stated whether or to what extent I think Christine Blasey-Ford was lying or confused or mistaken.

Hmmmmm....