Joe Biden and Tara Reade Double Standards

I don't know if presumptive 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate, former Vice-President Joe Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade in 1993. People who dislike Biden will be likely to believe that he did it. 

Alleged sexual harassment or assault aside, Biden does inarguably have a very long and public history of putting his hands on women or girls to whom he is not married and with whom he presumably has not had consensual intimacy. Biden has behaved in a way that in today's corporate world could see a man of lesser status reprimanded or even terminated. Does the existence of smoke mean that there's fire?

Biden partisans or those who just want control of the Presidency will be less likely to believe that Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade. They will scream about Republican dirty tricks, say that Trump's gotta go no matter what, claim that Reade is a (insert contemptuous word for woman of low morals), or simply say that the Biden they know would never have done anything like that.

For too many people across the political spectrum, due process, proof, and skeptical inquiry (especially) for sexual crimes have become concepts that are ONLY to be granted to people that agree with you or look like you. They are NEVER basic human rights guaranteed to people who differ from you politically or have the "wrong" set of chromosomes. 

Woman Bites Other Woman's Face and Ear in Sexual Assault

No means no, right? That is a ubiquitous and correct message that everyone should hear and understand today. You can ask whoever for whatever but if he or she declines your generous offer then that's it. Move on to someone else. Unfortunately one Allison Weaver, a South East Michigan woman, appears not to have taken that common cultural message to heart. It is important to understand that no means no. It is also important to remember that contrary to some other ubiquitous messaging, not all of the violent sex criminals out there are men.

The Oakland County Sheriff was called to the Lake Village Apartments on Norfolk in Rochester Hills around 1:30 Tuesday morning. A neighbor on the first floor reported hearing someone moaning and calling for help. When deputies arrived, they also heard someone calling for help and entered the upstairs apartment. That's where they said they found two partially naked women in a bedroom, covered in blood.

Deputies say one of the woman had numerous bite marks on her face and other facial injuries, and that part of her left ear was bitten off. The other woman, now identified as Weaver, was hovering over the victim and that they were lying on the floor, deputies said. The victim, a 48-year-old woman of Rochester Hills, was taken to the hospital for treatment.

Michigan Prosecutor Sleeps with Rape Victim

You would imagine that most prosecutors of sex crimes would be focused on making sure that justice was done and that the perpetrator of the crime was justly punished. 

You would imagine that a prosecutor would not have to be told that his or her job is to put away the bad guys (gals) and not, repeat not, to get nookie from the victim of the crime. You would imagine that. But for at least one prosecutor in Michigan you would be wrong. 

LANSING — Michigan State Police have launched a criminal investigation into an assistant attorney general who has been accused of having an inappropriate, intimate relationship with the victim in a rape case he was prosecuting. Brian Kolodziej, who was hired in September 2018 under former Attorney General Bill Schuette, was put on administrative leave and subsequently resigned last week after the relationship came to light, said Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“To say I’m horrified and disgusted is really an understatement,” she said. “In over 25 years of practice, I have never before even heard of a situation like this.” Nessel wouldn’t provide details of the situation because it’s still under investigation, but noted that she learned of it after a complaint was filed with State Police. All of the cases handled by Kolodziej will be reviewed by the Attorney General’s Office to make sure defendants received due process.

Gay University of Michigan Professor Accused of Rape

It is important to remember that no matter what we might hear from the more hysterical types in this #metoo era that immoral and criminal behavior can occur among both genders and in any sexuality.

Predation is not by any means something that only heterosexual males do to women. This latest story made me wonder if the University of Michigan might not have some explaining to do and/or even a little housecleaning. As always we should always grant every accused. male or female, gay or straight, the presumption of innocence. This particular alleged incident goes against the preferred media narrative. I have no idea if the powers that be at the University of Michigan knew of the rape allegation or all of the other sexual harassment allegations detailed in the story below. I would hate to think that people turned a blind eye to certain facts because they were eager to score a skilled performer or because they didn't want to be the ones to sound the alarm on a couple who were the poster boys for the country's acceptance of gay marriage. One minute you're on top of the world. The next minute, you're being extradited to Texas, which is not a phrase most people ever want to hear.

A jailed University of Michigan professor and his husband, accused of drugging and raping a man in 2010, won’t fight extradition on charges they face in Texas.

David Daniels, a 52-year-old opera singer, and William Scott Walters, a 36-year-old conductor and singer, both of Ann Arbor, waived their right to extradition hearings during brief appearances in Washtenaw County Trial Judge Carol Kuhnke’s courtroom Friday, Feb. 1.

#MeToo Backlash Hits Wall Street

For some Wall Street male movers and shakers, because of the #metoo movement, the Mr. Bean gif to the right could become the preferred model that any man with something to lose will use when interacting with women in the workplace.

No more dinners with female colleagues. Don’t sit next to them on flights. Book hotel rooms on different floors. Avoid one-on-one meetings. In fact, as a wealth adviser put it, just hiring a woman these days is “an unknown risk.” What if she took something he said the wrong way? Across Wall Street, men are adopting controversial strategies for the #MeToo era and, in the process, making life even harder for women. Call it the Pence Effect, after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he avoids dining alone with any woman other than his wife. In finance, the overarching impact can be, in essence, gender segregation.

Interviews with more than 30 senior executives suggest many are spooked by #MeToo and struggling to cope. “It’s creating a sense of walking on eggshells,” said David Bahnsen, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley who’s now an independent adviser overseeing more than $1.5 billion. This is hardly a single-industry phenomenon, as men across the country check their behavior at work, to protect themselves in the face of what they consider unreasonable political correctness -- or to simply do the right thing.

H1-B Visa Worker Assaults Woman on Spirit Airlines

Supposedly India is the most dangerous nation in the world for women. It's difficult to compare sexual assault statistics between the US and India because of different definitions of rape and different cultural expectations about reporting and blame. The official statistics show that there are more rapes per 100,000 in the US than in India. 
I don't know about that. I do know that one Prabhu Ramamoorthy, an Indian national, assaulted a woman on an airplane. Fortunately the woman immediately identified Ramamoorthy as the attacker.

With his wife crying in the courtroom, a Rochester Hills man was sentenced to nine years in prison Thursday for sexually assaulting a sleeping woman on an airplane, sticking his hands down her pants and penetrating her genitalia while his wife sat next to him. As prosecutors put it, Prabhu Ramamoorthy "committed one of the most brazen airplane sexual assaults ever prosecuted in this district" when he knowingly took advantage of a sleeping, intoxicated woman who could not fight back.

The 35-year-old defendant, who chose not to speak at his sentencing hearing or address the victim, will be deported to India when he gets out of prison. He will never be allowed back into the United States. U.S. District Judge Terrence Berg said that he was "concerned" that the defendant offered no expression of remorse, but that he wouldn't hold it against him, noting defendants have a right to remain silent and can't be forced into saying anything.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh: Attempted Rapist???

Do you remember what you doing in high school? You probably do if like the fictional Al Bundy, from the sitcom Married with Children, high school turned out to be the high point of your life. Many of us however may start to forget some details of our high school career, especially once we get beyond our thirties or forties and/or move away from where we went to high school. 

So it goes. But if in high school you were a victim of attempted rape or assault or you committed a rape or sexual assault, I think you would probably remember that. Unfortunately, for those of us who weren't there, it is difficult if not impossible to discover the truth when one person accuses another person or persons of sexual assault thirty some odd years after high school. 

That is what happened to Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Kennedy. An anonymous constituent of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein apparently sent Feinstein and her Congresswoman a letter in July accusing Kavanaugh of attempted rape in the early eighties. Feinstein didn't share this letter with her colleagues until a few days ago.  On Thursday she referred the matter to the FBI. 
On Thursday, Senate Democrats disclosed that they had referred a complaint regarding President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to the F.B.I. for investigation. The complaint came from a woman who accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when they were both in high school, more than thirty years ago.

Police Officer Sexually Assaults Black Man in Washington D.C.

What exactly is the proper protocol to use when someone attempts to sexually assault you? Well there isn't any one correct response for every situation. Some victims may fight back; others may try to escape or run away. Still others may freeze and just attempt to survive. 

It all depends on the victim's perception of his or her circumstances. It's all very easy to say what someone should have done if you're not that person, weren't in their situation, and have never been so violated. Sheep can talk a lot of nonsense about what they would do to the wolves...right up until the time that the wolves show up. 
Stop fingering me though, bruh!” That’s what one Washington, D.C., man told a metro police officer during a body cavity search on Sept. 27, 2017, according to the ACLU. Now the civil rights group is helping him sue the police department, calling video of the incident “shocking and unjustified.”

The lawsuit says it began when officers drove up to 39-year-old M.B. Cottingham and friends as they sat on folding chairs on a public sidewalk. There was an open bottle of alcohol nearby, and they were celebrating Cottingham’s birthday, according to the lawsuit.

Officers pulled up and asked whether the group had weapons, and they said they did not. The lawsuit says it was not clear why the officers pulled up in the first place, as the open bottle of alcohol was “was on the ground at the curb behind a parked car” and not visible from the middle of the street.

The Matt Patricia Situation

First impressions can often be lasting ones. New NFL Detroit Lions Head Coach Matt Patricia, who has barely been on the job for three months, is battling to make sure that his public persona remains the bearded wunderkind coaching phenom rarely found without a pencil behind his ear and not the fraternity guy who skated on rape charges two decades ago. Patricia, who left the New England Patriots to take the Detroit Lions job found himself having to explain a 1996 indictment on rape charges and how he had never communicated that to his employers in New England or Detroit. The Detroit News did some digging into Patricia's past and discovered this information.

She told police they met on a Texas beach, fellow college students visiting South Padre Island during spring break 1996. She was a 21-year-old college student at a large university; they were two football players and Theta Chi fraternity brothers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. On the evening of March 15, 1996, the woman told police that two men burst into the upscale hotel room where she was sleeping and took turns violently sexually assaulting her, according to court records and a news account at the time. They were arrested, charged and later indicted by a grand jury on one count of aggravated sexual assault — but they never stood trial and were not convicted.  One of the indicted men was 21-year-old Matt Patricia, who was hired as the head coach of the National Football League’s Detroit Lions in February. 

Harvey Weinstein Accusations

Harvey Weinstein is a famed award winning Hollywood film and television producer and distributor. He has produced and/or distributed such movies as Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting, Clerks, The Crying Game, Shaolin Soccer, Silver Linings Playbook, and Sex, Lies and Videotape among others. He is the executive producer of Project Runway. He also has a book publishing company. Weinstein provided an internship to Malia Obama, President Obama's daughter. Although Weinstein's recent films have not been as critically acclaimed or as profitable as they have been in the past, Weinstein has over the years built a well deserved reputation as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He's worth hundreds of millions.

Like several men who fit that description, Weinstein has had business relationships with some of the world's most beautiful or successful actresses and models, including such women as Heidi Klum, Jennifer Lawrence, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, Ashley Judd, and Uma Thurman. Weinstein has allegedly used his power within the entertainment industry to make women put out or get out in the classic casting couch/sexual harassment sense. I was aware of a few isolated past accounts of settlements and accusations concerning Weinstein. But the New York Times recently ran an expose detailing numerous settlements going back decades. The story included women who were willing to go on record about their experiences with the satyric Mr. Weinstein. 

Update: The Weinstein Company’s board has fired Harvey Weinstein after reports of sexual harassment complaints against him. Two decades ago, the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview. “How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” Ms. Judd said she remembers thinking.

Trans Community, Consent and Scapegoating

Recently a comedian named Lil Duval appeared on a radio show and made a clearly hyberbolic/comedic threat of violence against any transperson who tricked him into sex/intimacy. There was an immediate backlash from some members of the trans community as well as from some liberal people who often appear to have a stick up their behind concerning heterosexuality, which they never tire of labeling as hegemonic or toxic or problematic or any of the other popular academic circle insults. I wouldn't really care at all about what amounts to a catfight but for the fact that both NBC news and the New York Times seized this opportunity to insult the black community, or to be precise, black heterosexual men, as violence prone, hypermasculine, and backwards when it comes to trans issues.

NBC, the New York Times and a fair number of people yelling at Lil Duval used black brute stereotypes straight from Birth of A Nation. They just repurposed them for a liberal agenda.

But when DJ Envy asked Lil Duval what he would do if a woman he had sex with later said she was transgender, he responded, “This might sound messed up and I don’t care: She dying.” The hosts quickly told him that killing a transgender person was a hate crime and that he could not do that. But Lil Duval continued to make jokes and said it was about manipulation and taking away his choice. Charlamagne Tha God, the show’s most popular host, agreed with that point, saying that by not disclosing she is transgender, a woman is “taking away a person’s power of choice,” and he added that “you should go to jail or something.” In a statement to The New York Times released through his publicist on Saturday, Charlamagne Tha God denounced all prejudice and hate crimes, emphasizing that he wholeheartedly believed that violence against transgender people was wrong. 

“Nobody should be killed just for existing,” he said. What needed to be discussed further, he added, was whether transgender people should disclose their gender identities to sexual partners. “To me, anytime you take away someone’s power of choice, it’s criminal,” he said. “Let me decide for myself if this is what I want. But if a trans person doesn’t disclose until after sexual acts have occurred, they shouldn’t be killed for it.”

I don't give a flying fig what people do in private. Not my business. If you want to cut off your male organs, get surgery and ingest/inject chemicals to attempt to give yourself a feminine appearance, that's you. If you change your name from a masculine one to a feminine one and demand to be addressed by the feminine name, I will call you by your new name. If you want to walk or talk like your silly stereotype of what a woman walks or talks like, fine. Yawn.

Brooke Lajiness Pleads Guilty to Sex Offenses

Is it just me or does it seem as if there are more and more women getting busted for molesting or raping young boys? Perhaps I had a slightly sheltered childhood all those years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth but I don't seem to remember so many cases where adult women were seeking sex with underage males. The most recent one took place in SE Michigan. The age of consent in Michigan is 16, which is probably too young but even that tender age was just too old for a 38-year-old married woman of Lima Township, Michigan named Brooke Lajiness. Perhaps, as some have said, this crime is about power more than it is about the sex. Either way although people have pretty routinely made jokes or songs about doing stuff with someone who is 16 or 17, there's nothing to joke about when it comes to 15,14 or 11. That kind of thing is pretty despicable no matter which state or subculture you come from. 

ANN ARBOR, MI - A 38-year-old Lima Township mother has pleaded guilty to having sex with a 14-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. Brooke L. Lajiness admitted on Monday, June 26 during a pretrial in front of Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge David S. Swartz to having intercourse and oral sex with the minors.

She pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct for oral sex with a 15-year-old, two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for intercourse with a 14-year-old, one count of accosting a child for immoral purposes and one count of furnishing obscenity to children for sending nude photographs of herself to a minor. Through a plea agreement, 10 other counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a person between 13 and 15 years old will be dismissed at sentencing, Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney John Vella said.

Fun and Games in Michigan: False Accusations and No Nonsense Judges

It shouldn't matter but because people often jump to conclusions based on misunderstanding or disliking an argument I would like to point out that I do know people who have been sexually assaulted or molested. It's a horrible crime, almost as bad as murder. As we recently noted the seriousness of sexual assault shouldn't be minimized. But in a time where people are judging movies by what crimes their directors were acquitted of or trying to decide if a Presidential candidate assaulted women, it is important to remember that although we don't like to admit it, some women really do lie about sexual assault. There is debate as to how frequently this occurs. Most reputable studies suggest that only a small percentage of accusations are ever proven to be false. Just because some women lie doesn't mean most women do. In this recent story Leiha Artman lied about being raped and kidnapped. The lie was evidently detected before someone was arrested, charged and convicted. So from what I can tell right now no unfortunate soul who "fit the description" was hauled into court based on Artman's lies. Contrary to the current zeitgeist, women are just as capable of immoral behavior as men are. Just because someone makes a charge doesn't mean that the charge is true. If someone denies a charge or vigorously defends himself we can't assume his actions indicate hatred of women or promotion of rape. Our justice system hinges on the idea that the burden of proof is on the person making the accusation. No one is entitled to be believed automatically without evidence. There are all sorts of reasons someone would lie about being the victim of a horrible crime. To reach the truth it's imperative that the hypothesis that a crime was committed be challenged, tested, poked and prodded. Nothing is perfect. There will be some guilty people who go free and some innocent people who go to jail or prison. In some cases we'll never know what happened. And beyond reasonable doubt doesn't mean beyond all doubt. But ideally our system is designed to minimize the number of innocent people who are convicted. I am glad that in this case the criminal is going to jail. If anything I think her sentence is too light. She could have gotten six years. I definitely would want to give her a sentence that would impress upon her the wrongness of her actions.

A mother has been jailed for making up an elaborate kidnap story claiming she was abducted and raped by four black men. Leiha Artman from Muskegon, Michigan, claimed she was abducted when the men stopped to ask her for directions while she stood in the driveway of her home in March.

The 25-year-old said they threw her in the trunk of their car, beat and sexually assaulted her. During the two days she was missing, her boyfriend received photographs of her in which she appeared gagged, bound and bleeding from the head. She was sentenced to one year behind bars on Wednesday after admitting to one count of making a false report of a felony.

Artman has a 2014 conviction for resisting and opposing a police officer, as well as a felony breaking and entering a building conviction in 2007 when she was a juvenile. She also was sentenced in June to two days in jail and 12 months probation for financial transaction device fraud.
Artman was sentenced in Oceana County in February 2015 for larceny less than $200 and agreed to testify against a co-defendant in return for the dismissal of a breaking and entering a building, the Oceana County Press reported.  LINK1  LINK2

Fortunately I have not had reason to spend much time in courtrooms. However I have noticed that judges as a group can be very possessive of what they call "their courtrooms". Technically that courtroom belongs to the people but society has given judges a tremendous amount of leeway to regulate behavior in the courtroom. Getting into an argument with someone who can send you to jail or prison just because he or she doesn't like your looks or attitude isn't very smart. Jacob Larsen, an accused stalker and definite big mouth, forgot that needlessly irritating a judge when you are in his court, is a sub-optimum choice.

JACKSON, MI – Clearly growing agitated, Jackson County Circuit Judge John McBain threw off his robe and helped tackle to the ground a defiant man during a hearing on a personal protection order violation.

"Tase his ass right now," the judge shouted as he rushed toward Jacob Larson, who had been talking back to the judge and blamed his alleged stalking behavior on the woman he was pursuing. McBain had ordered the man to spend three days in jail, a period that quickly jumped to 93 days as Larson continued to aggravate the judge during the December hearing.

The resulting takedown was a rare instance of a judge using physical force, one Jackson County Chief Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson said was allowable. "A judge has the power to take whatever action is necessary to maintain order in the courtroom," he said and noted circuit court judges have arresting powers.

Wilson had seen the court recording of the hearing, but there is no review process for such incidents, he said. When McBain's court officer went to take Larson into custody, he resisted. McBain said he was "hand fighting" the officer, Jared Schultz, then a deputized law clerk. Larson would not cooperate, tensed up and made a fist as though he was trying to fight, said Schultz, now working for the state Court of Appeals. McBain noted that he "pretty clearly and unequivocally" warned Larson to avoid contact with the woman.
"She's instigating it," Larson replied and talked about pictures she posted wearing a lot of makeup and with her "hair done and all that stuff, the full nine." He repeatedly made statements about how she would not directly tell him to leave her alone.

Speaking of sexual crimes, let's not forget that this nonsense all could have been avoided in the first place if Larson had stopped contacting his stalking victim either when she asked or when the judge told him to do so. If someone asks you to stop talking to them or sending them emails or calling them or bothering them then you should probably do that. But some people always want to do things the hard way. So it goes. A hard head makes a soft behind.

LINK 3

Twerking, Sexual Assault, and Double Standards

We've previously discussed the differences between men and women insofar as who's more likely to initiate declarations of sexual interest (men) and who's more likely to reject them or become offended that someone said something offcolor (women). I believe that these tendencies are virtually hard coded between the genders though obviously there are coy men who play hard to get and aggressive women who demand immediate no strings attached sex. But generally men initiate (often after a woman sends a signal) and then women respond. I think that's just the way humans are made. Obviously each culture regulates this dance of life differently.  Some men get in trouble by misreading signals that were meant for someone else or seeing signals that weren't even there.  Serious protocol violations can lead to verbal/physical conflict, police involvement or worse. On the flip side some cultures attempt control over all expressions of a woman's sexuality to the point that her travel is restricted. And in some areas an accusation that a woman was speaking to a man who is not her husband or relative can have very negative results. We generally give negative attention to men in public spaces who shout out double entendre salutations or ruder statements to women. In some quarters this is called "street harassment". Men who do this rarely seem to achieve their desired result though as with lottery winners there's no doubt someone out there who has hit the jackpot. Most women seem to dislike this verbal attention though paradoxically some women who complain about it the most also complain when they no longer receive it. Whatever. Everyone's different. Although reasonable people can disagree about the timing and propriety of approaching a woman on the street, no one could disagree that putting hands (or other body parts) on someone without her permission is grounds for assault charges. It's just not something you do. Well the door swings both ways.
Recently, in what appears to be a "man bites dog" event two women in a Washington D.C. gas station decided to physically harass a man who was rather obviously not interested in buying what they were selling. And selling is probably not a figure of speech here. At least one of the women has been charged with prostitution before. The women ground themselves against the man and touched his chest, backside and manhood. The man claimed that he feared for his life.  One of the women has since been charged with third degree sexual abuse. On a local radio station some hosts derided the man's "feared for my life" claim or the idea that the women should be criminally charged.  


The way I see it Mr. Tharpe, a middle school teacher, had no idea who those women were, if they were armed, or where they had been. He didn't know if this was a police sting operation. He didn't know if the women had pimps or other associates who were watching him and preparing to rob/extort him. And would you want some street hooker of either gender making a grab for your privates? I'm thinking not. Perhaps for any of a thousand reasons Tharpe doesn't want to be touched by or have sex with nasty women whom he does not know. That is his right, after all. The idea that men should always be (ahem) "up" for sex at any time for any reason with anyone is balderdash.  As he explains it was a lot more than twerking.

So society should be just as intolerant of unwanted touching/abuse/assault from women as from men. I don't think that we're there yet though. I don't know why it is so difficult to get people to understand that you need to keep your hands to yourself. It's a very simple concept. Ask first. That will usually clear up any unpleasant misunderstandings. Or if you make a move and someone reacts as if they just touched a live wire and starts screaming for their Mommy, chances are they aren't interested in doing anything with you. Take the hint.