Tag: weinergate

Weinergate, one year later.

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

 

Continue reading Weinergate, one year later.

‘alicia_pain18@yahoo.com:’ operative, or nut?

Background: Patterico’s Pontifications and Ace of Spades were blessed, if that’s the right word (it’s not), with an email from ‘Alicia Pain’ that could either be read as a warning to lay off digging in further on the Antony Weiner / Betty / Veronica direct messages story*, or a threat if either continued to do so.  Ace got more out of the author of the email than Patterico did, mostly by responding and using bad language until s/he slipped up and claimed to be working for a client.

Anyway, speaking as a professional, more or less (and for a change)… absent further data, hard to tell.  The email address is throwaway and both Patterico and Ace make their email available but not easily accessible (they’re both Old School), which argues against the ‘random lunatic spouting off’ theory; however, the Internet is full of people who like to make grandiose claims about what they do for a living, what shadowy networks of powerful people they belong to**, and how other people should listen to them when they’re only trying to help.  None of the people really associated with that name on the Internet already seem to be a good fit for either possibility, so I suggest waiting for more info.

Moe Lane

Continue reading ‘alicia_pain18@yahoo.com:’ operative, or nut?

How the Daily Kos did NOT sanitize its Weinergate coverage.

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. Continue reading How the Daily Kos did NOT sanitize its Weinergate coverage.

BREAKING: Anthony Weiner to resign House seat.

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. Continue reading BREAKING: Anthony Weiner to resign House seat.

The Tuesday Weinergate Democratic screaming match.

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. Continue reading The Tuesday Weinergate Democratic screaming match.

Hey, Jeff Toobin! About that Andrew Breitbart thing.

You remember how you went on CNN to attack Andrew about the ludicrous, oh so ludicrous suggestion that Anthony Weiner might have been having private digital conversations with teenagers? You know, this attack:
“This is the silliest little thing.”

Well, it’s also the funniest thing! The Delaware police are now looking into Anthony Weiner’s… private digital conversations with a teenager! Which Weiner is totally admitting happening! Just like Weiner admitted to everything else that Andrew claimed that Weiner did, and that you tried to dismiss! Continue reading Hey, Jeff Toobin! About that Andrew Breitbart thing.

QotD, What’s Wrong With ‘Old-Fashioned?’ edition.

Megan McArdle, on GUESS WHO*?

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that social sanction can be very helpful in assisting us in doing important but difficult things.  Marriage is stronger if people who find out that their friends are cheating don’t say, “Awesome, is he hot?” but “How could you do that to Jason?” Marriage is stronger if people who cheat are viewed with slight revulsion, and so are the (knowing) people who they cheat with.  Marriage is stronger when people who decide not to care for seriously ill spouses are met with an incredulous “What the hell is wrong with you?”, not “Yeah, I couldn’t handle that either.”  Of course it would be nicer if we didn’t need this sort of help.  But we are a flawed species.

[snip]

I’m not saying that we should spend weeks and months torturing the guy–that’s up to his wife, if she wants to.  But I don’t think that the media should have hushed up something that was, um, very public . . . or that it’s somehow out of bounds to say that, unless she was really enthusiastically supporting his desire to text photos of his body parts all across our fair land, this was a really remarkably sh[*]tty thing to do to his wife.

Continue reading QotD, What’s Wrong With ‘Old-Fashioned?’ edition.

#rsrh #weinergate Harden your hearts.

Never forget: if you are a Republican, than this man hates you…

…he routinely lies about you and your motivations; and he wishes you to die in a fire.  Obviously, you don’t have to respond in kind; in fact, I would recommend that you purge yourself of any hate that you might still harbor towards Anthony Weiner.  You can even feel pity.

But he chose his path.

#rsrh Salon throws @RepWeiner under the bus.

I know, I know: you have fatigue.  I have fatigue.  But marvel none the less, my droogies: the Left used to love Anthony Weiner, until he fell to earth.  But now? He’s just a “somewhat holier-than-thou liberal” who has “never actually put much effort into his congressional work;” also, “an ultra-ambitious showman with a knack for generating publicity but little interest in the nuts-and-bolts work that comes with serving in Congress.” And apparently Weiner’s got “performer’s instincts” but not ones that make him want to be “a significant player in Congress.”

All of which I agree with; I’m just shocked that Salon is saying it in the first place… oh.  Right.  The Democrats have an Eleventh Commandment, too:

Don’t get caught.

Moe Lane