Moe Lane

…Bless his heart.

“Look, I made some big mistakes and I know I let a lot of people down,” Mr. Weiner said in an online video. “But I’ve also learned some tough lessons. I’m running for mayor because I’ve been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance to work for you.”

I know, I know: the jokes write themselves: and they will be written, I assure you.  Buuuut here’s the problem, though: when it comes to the Democratic primary, Anthony Weiner’s probably the best of a bad bunch who could actually win.  And if he wins the primary then he’s in good shape to win the election, unless of course the New York GOP suddenly gets replaced with sinister android doubles secretly devoted to a master plan for world domination*.  In other words, I’m faced with a situation where I may have to sigh a lot and say Well, he’s better than either Bloomberg was, or Quinn would have been.

Which isn’t hard, of course.  I’d offer some advice along those lines to Weiner, except that I actually happen to despise the smug son of a bitch.

Moe Lane

*Said plan would presumably involve the state GOP winning critical races in New York, which would at least make for a refreshing novelty.

I admit it, I admit it: I’m kind of conflicted, here.

Disgraced pol Anthony Weiner is potentially climbing back into politics after recently spending more than $100,000 on campaign consulting and polling — and sources tell Page Six that one person he’s looking to prove wrong about him is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who urged him to resign in 2011. “Weiner is still fuming over his downfall, and he blames Nancy Pelosi,” said a source. After Weiner’s sexting scandal, he announced he was going to get psychological treatment and take a leave from the House, but Pelosi released a statement calling for him to resign after he’d informed her of his plan to deal with the situation.

(Via JMF & Instapundit)

On the one hand, I don’t want to encourage anybody to think that they should be allowed to avoid responsibility for their own actions, which is what Anthony Weiner is trying to do here. On the other hand, pretty much everything can be ‘blamed’ on Nancy Pelosi, from why the Democrats didn’t take the House back to why FISA was reauthorized.  On the gripping hand, Nancy Pelosi was right.  If Weiner had tried to brazen it out he’d have lost anyway.

So I dunno.

Moe Lane

PS: The NY Post does so love its headlines.

I applaud the efforts of Democratic politicians to ensure that I never run out of things to write about.  Particularly if Weiner runs on an explicit campaign of Shaddap about my past bad life choices and I’ll shaddap about yours. I mean, after three terms of Nanny Bloomberg New Yorkers have no right to complain about how somebody’s mere candidacy is degrading the dignity of the office of Mayor of NYC.  The man tried to ban extra-large Cokes, people.

And New Yorkers let him do that.

Seriously.  What the [expletive deleted] were you people thinking, anyway?

It’s a beautiful thing, really.

We hear Anthony Weiner is testing the waters for another political run. Our headline writers couldn’t be happier nyp.st/T27fWO

— New York Post (@nypost) January 29, 2013

NO! Anthony, I was talking about the situation! Put it back! Put it back*!

Via Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt.

Moe Lane

*I quote Robin Williams: “When in doubt, go for the d*ck joke.” Which is not as good a life lesson as “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you’re making too much f*cking money,” but it’ll do.

I… don’t know what to say.

Could former Rep. Anthony Weiner be preparing for a political comeback?

The Democrat’s latest filing with the New York City Campaign Finance Board, published Tuesday, may send some subtle messages.

His mayoral campaign committee, created ahead of his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in 2005, reported spending just one dollar shy of $37,000 in the last six months. It brought in $27,400 in the same period, largely through a transfer from a previous political committee.

Actually, I do know what to say: if this happens, I will never have a lack of things to write about in 2013. (more…)

The video below isn’t from Memorial Day weekend itself, but I have to agree with AoSHQ: hands down but this was the best part of the whole thing.  Background: former Rep. Anthony Weiner was caught on Twitter showing his, there was two weeks or so of people doing their best to deny that fairly straightforward piece of objective reality, Weiner eventually decided to do a press conference when the naked truth came clear, and – he showed up late for his own press conference, presumably so that he could do some last-minute spin-planning.  Only… Andrew Breitbart happened to be there, and the press decided to take the time to ask a few questions.

And hi-jinks ensued.  Remember: the below took place while Anthony Weiner was apparently hiding offstage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=msUZHBTZVtk

(more…)

Which is to say, they have the Republican candidate in NY-09′s special election (Bob Turner) being comfortable enough to say stuff like this – about himself:

“Suddenly,” Mr. Turner said of voters, “they are faced with the most brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, Scott Brownesque candidate,” referring to the Massachusetts senator. Or, he added, people are so angry with the president “that they can put up some tired old guy with no political experience and he could actually win.”

“You can pick your poison,” he said. “I suspect that behind it is a great deal of discontent in the district.”

I imagine so, myself. It’s still a tough district to win for the GOP… but oddly enough, Democratic voters in NY-09 apparently may not be pleased with a political party whose members have been known to forward pictures of their genitalia to young women. Much like Republican voters in NY-26 apparently were not pleased with a political party whose members have been known to advertise (shirtless, no less) for adultery on Craigslist.  But when you put it that way then people find it harder to find a deeper meaning in any random Congressional election.

Bob is running in the special election called to replace Rep. Weiner after, well, delicacy prohibits me from finishing that sentence in the way that it deserves. Anyway, the election in question is next month, and is already surprisingly close, this early out.  Turner’s Democratic opponent David Weprin is only leading 48/42 in the latest Siena poll, which frankly demonstrates a startlingly weak lead in a district that Siena found to be 61% Democratic: couple that with Turner getting both Ed Koch’s and Rudy Giuliani’s endorsement, and we have ourselves a race here.  We talked about that a bit:

Bob’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

And why you should care.

It all started when I decided to drink some of the pain of the Activist Left.

I was reading Mickey Kaus – who himself is no slouch when it comes to despising the activists that have essentially destroyed his current and my former party – when he linked to this in-retrospect-unfortunate Tweet by Kos referencing dKos’ rather embarrassingly wrong conspiracy theory about what was going on with Anthony Weiner and pictures of his genitalia*. Tasty, tasty spinning of what was in the end a straightforward, if sordid situation involving a Congressman with too much of a sense of entitlement… but I kind of wanted to see some more wrongheadedness. I freely admit it: there is schadenfreude involved here; I’m not yet a Buddha.

Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of tags you can do things like search for related stories, so I clicked on the #twitterhoax tag. No entries show up. So I scroll down to the search function, punch in ‘twitterhoax,’ and discover that ‘#twitterhoax’ brings back 14 entries, and ‘twitterhoax‘ brings back 1. But none of the ‘#twitterhoax’ entries can actually be called up, while the ‘twitterhoax’ one can be. In other words, an entire set of (embarrassingly wrong) stories just happen to have had their tags not working. (more…)

Alternative title: ‘Weiner pulls out.’

Unconfirmed as of yet, but it’s honestly the only option that the man has at this point, especially since his own party was publicly throwing him under the bus. Presumably somebody offered him a sufficiently lucrative golden parachute.

Moving along, let us first get the obligatory parting shot out of the way…

…as you might have guessed from the picture and the subtitle, there is a strict upper limit to the amount of sympathy that I – or my colleagues at RedState – are going to show towards soon-to-be-former Rep. Weiner for not only his transgressions, but his rather transparent attempts to cover them up. For that matter, the kind of commentary and tone that he’s demonstrated in the past means that he richly deserved the slow-motion destruction of his life, career, and personal dreams over the last few weeks. But Weiner’s supposedly got a kid coming, so I will say this: take this opportunity to revisit your life choices, Tony. You can still salvage your family from the wreck. You want to do that.

Because, really, at this point you have nothing else left. (more…)

If you have ever wondered why the GOP leadership’s first instinct in time of scandal* is to immediately jettison the offenders (whether they like it or not)… well, there’s a reason for that: it rarely gets better if you let things fester.  Case in point… Politico reports that a Democratic caucus Tuesday devolved into a bit of a screaming match; Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey felt obligated to chastise Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania over the latter’s call for Weiner’s resignation.  Pascrell has appointed himself as Weiner’s unofficial defender, which means that he apparently feels entitled to dictate to others (especially, well, female others) what is or is not an acceptable response to Weiner’s poor life choices.

Anyway, it got so bad that they had to send the aides out of the room, lest they gossip and leak – which didn’t help, of course.  It never does.  What does help in these cases is clear-headed pragmatism and the moral courage to accept a bit of pain now to avoid more pain later… which is why the Democrats are still in this mess (they haven’t even stripped this guy of his committees yet!), because their leadership is apparently incapable of either.  It’s enough to make an outside observer want to give two for flinching. (more…)

A simple question, with teeth in it:

The Anthony Weiner scandal has created a dilemma for female Democrats who are turned on by his politics but turned off by his sexual shenanigans.

…Why?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via JammieWearingFool, via Hot Air.