Congressman Weiner's inappropriate tweet

[Gandalfs Beard]

I'll give you another scenario, one which DOES have some evidence to back it up.

Weiner is a perv. He chooses to follow an inordinate number of young attractive women. The only benefit to following these women is that it allows private messages to be sent between them.

Some critics (@patriotusa76 and @goatsred) who are obsessed with Weiner notice that he's a perv who keeps following attractive young women. They suspect a scandal is lurking in there somewhere, because let's face it, for a congressman to be following lots of young attractive girls IS pervy (and it's not exactly the only evidence to that effect).

So they start contacting these women, hoping to flush out such a scandal. One girl decides to bait them with claims of incriminating private messages, the exact sort of evidence that these guys suspect must be out there somewhere. They jump the gun and announce that a scandal is brewing, even though it's fake.

But then Weiner DOES do something pervy when he tries to send a private message to one of those young women. But it's a different woman, and the message is accidentally made public. And @patriotusa76 stumbles upon it.

No grand conspiracy involved. Only one attention-seeking girl who lied, some obsessive critics who took the bait on a fake scandal before stumbling upon a real one, and one pervy congressman.

So let me get this straight. You have a Vanity Fair article which is based entirely on the word of several (conservative) interns who tattle on each other, and openly confess to forgery....

Things always work out for Diana,” Beth says when Diana is out of earshot. When they were at Fordham “she did an internship at ABC but stopped going because it was too much for her. She had to keep a journal for it and hand it in to the dean … so she just made it up. And her little irresponsibility is contagious because once I was working during the holidays to get money … One day I decided to just keep driving. I went back upstate, I didn’t go back to my job. I never called. And Diana was like, ‘That’s the sort of thing I would totally do!’ Diana helped me come up with a fabrication; she told them [Beth’s employers] I’d gotten mono and could no longer come in—she’s so good at speaking to people.”

The two girls became friends partly because they were the only Republicans in a dorm of eight women—“We were the only ones cheering on Bush during the campaign,” recalls Beth—and partly because they both rowed crew for a year, until Diana got tired of getting up at 5:30 a.m. each day. “We are [both] very concerned about staying in shape,” says Beth. “She’s a little bit more extreme on the vanity side than I am.”


“We often forge our congressman’s signature,” Diana says with a shrug. “And we hand over constituency mail requiring answers to the district office. They can sort out what is valid against what is not.”

....and we're expected to take their word as evidence against Anthony Weiner??? Have they produced the alleged e-mails? Do they have photographs of their trysts?

And your other piece of evidence are the assertions of a conservative blogger??? A conservative blogger who actually confesses to confabbing with Breitbart???

Andrew Breitbart and I have been in frequent contact (within the bounds of accepted journalistic practices). Initially, Andrew called me to discuss the criticisms I had made on Twitter, but in the course of our conversation, he talked about information that he had decided not to use because he was still trying to verify it.

In his haste to defend Breitbart from "unfair accusations," Tommy Christopher posts potential evidence that actually portrays Weiner in a good light, and potential evidence that supports Cordova's claim of Twitter harassments.

Betty’s mother (we’ll call her Mrs. Betty) says that she and her husband monitor all of Betty’s internet usage, and were incensed by this group’s behavior. Rep. Weiner, she confirms, never contacted Betty privately, with the exception of a Direct Message welcoming her to his Twitter stream, a message Mrs. Betty assumed was automatically generated.

A high school friend of Betty’s, whom I will call Veronica (she’s a minor), was also contacted, via Twitter, by a member of the group, Mike Stack (@goatsred). For personal reasons I won’t go into, Veronica saw a means of getting attention, and agreed to follow @Goatsred so that they could speak privately. She told him that she and Betty had incriminating Direct Messages from Rep. Weiner, a claim she now admits was false, and which she made without Betty’s knowledge.
In fact, she was simultaneously telling Betty that @Goatsred had tried to induce her to lie about Rep. Wiener, and to enlist Betty in the plot. Veronica now admits this was also false. Yes, @goatsred did contact her, and she did feed him false information about Rep. Weiner, but this was not at his urging.

When a tipster, Adam Shriver, sent me a screenshot of this Direct Message from Veronica, from @goatsred’s public YFrog account, I confronted Betty about it, and Mrs. Betty called Veronica’s mother. That’s when Veronica admitted she had been lying.

According to Veronica, she never even followed Rep. Weiner, nor did he ever follow her. “I saw many other girls in the news and I wanted to be famous,” she says. “Nothing I told goatsred was true. I’m sorry to everyone for lying and for embarrassing my mom.” Both girls’ parents are livid that these grown men contacted their daughters in this way, knowing they were underage, and according to the girls and their parents, neither ever had any contact with Rep. Weiner, beyond that welcome DM.
We now know that when Dan Wolfe emailed Breitbart the Weinergate screenshots on Saturday (The Smoking Gun has the email)*, he told Breitbart “We have more!”

Among other things, Veronica’s false allegations were part of the “more.”

*The blogger, Tommy Christopher links to The Smoking Gun, a site which also posts "Birther" articles.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/barack-obama/birth-obama-certer-movement-098513

When Rep Weiner followed my daughter the one and only message he sent her was welcoming her to his twitter followers and suggested he go to his website for more information. My husband and I were delighted with this message as it furthered our daughter’s interest in learning about government. We were very grateful to Rep Weiner for this and saw nothing wrong or inappropriate with this message.

This was the one and only message that Rep Weiner sent our daughter. Our daughter sent a message thanking Rep Weiner for following her and thanking him for the welcome message. This was the one and only message our daughter sent to Rep Weiner.
Soon after she was following Rep Weiner, a group of grown men and a few grown woman who described themselves as “concerned mothers” began harassing my daughter. I can assure you, as a mother, I’ve never heard of such disgusting behavior. My daughter, with our permission, responded to these attacks on Rep Weiner following her with grace and maturity – which is something that cannot be said for these “mothers” and their fellow grown men involved in the attack.


These mothers and their grown male friends attacked the intentions and character of Rep Weiner to our daughter and suggested that he was somehow perverse for following her. This disgusted myself and my husband. They were attacking a man, who has done nothing to them and has done nothing wrong.
Ultimately, Rep Weiner had to unfollow our daughter as a favor to her so these attacks would stop. We were sorry that these bullies caused this and we were disgusted to see that even after he unfollowed her, this group of so called mothers and grown men — continued to try and contact my daughter.

So thank you very much for providing evidence that Weiner is NOT a perv. And thank you for providing evidence that a bunch of conservative bloggers had contacts and/or links to each other.

And thank you for providing evidence that supports Cordova's claims of Twitter harassment.

GB

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

Sorry, perhaps I didn't make my intention clear. I was being ironic about the brand of skepticism we're getting from some of Weiner's accusers.

My apologies. I missed the sarcasm.

GB

 

[Ziggurat]

You're suggesting that Weiner - if he's guilty - is being evasive on this particular issue based on the infinitesimal chance that if he lies about it, he could be caught in that lie.

I don't know that the chances of him getting caught are infinitesimal. Neither do you. And more importantly, Weiner may not think so. It's even possible that he knows the chances aren't infinitesimal.

And yet - again, if he's guilty - he is perfectly comfortable denying he knows the girl or sent the tweet

Why do you keep bringing up him not knowing her? That's not the issue. We can take that as a given.

And the pic being him is far less problematic than the tweet having been sent.

So if Weiner did in fact tweet a lewd photo to a college coed, why would he adamantly deny only certain aspects of the incident, and not simply categorically deny the whole thing?

If he didn't, how'd the hackers get a picture of his junk?

And if the chances of proving it's him in the pic are truly infinitesimal, why not just say it's not? Your analysis cuts both ways: if you're right, he has no reason not to deny it's a photo of him, whether or not he sent it.

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

When will you learn to read? I never claimed speculation was evidence. My quote that you criticize was in regard to suspicious behavior. Something that is painfully obvious with Weiner's handling of this event.

Right! Suspicious behaviour that you speculate is due to his guilt.

Thanks for playing.

GB

 

[Ziggurat]

And your other piece of evidence are the assertions of a conservative blogger??? A conservative blogger who actually confesses to confabbing with Breitbart???

Tommy Christopher is a conservative blogger confabbing with Breitbart?

Yeah, um... no. Tommy Christopher is a liberal. Complete and utter fail.

In his haste to defend Breitbart from "unfair accusations," Tommy Christopher posts potential evidence that actually portrays Weiner in a good light, and potential evidence that supports Cordova's claim of Twitter harassments.

Congratulations: you've just proved that Tommy Christopher doesn't fit your assumptions. Which you'd know if you paid any attention. Which you obviously didn't, since you thought he's a conservative.

So thank you very much for providing evidence that Weiner is NOT a perv.

Yeah, that didn't happen either. I provided evidence that the evidence those two guys THOUGHT they had doesn't exist. That doesn't mean Weiner wasn't a perv.

And thank you for providing evidence that a bunch of conservative bloggers had contacts and/or links to each other.

Two guys. Two guys had links to each other. And they contacted Breitbart.

And? That's supposed to scare people?

And thank you for providing evidence that supports Cordova's claims of Twitter harassment.

The fact that Cordova was harassed makes those two guys look like complete jerks. But them being complete jerks doesn't mean Weiner didn't send that tweet. I know this may be hard for you to understand, but those aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

Of course. I just mean that typically you see the politician trot out their visibly upset wife and say "I love my wife, I'll never make a mistake like this again, she loves me, etc." It took at least a little bit of fortitude to say, "Look dude, this is how my life is. I'm gonna try and make the best of it."

You might have a fair point. But his apology speech was little longer and a bit more convoluted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntUHXeKt54E

GB

 

[A'isha]

The blogger, Tommy Christopher links to The Smoking Gun, a site which also posts "Birther" articles.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/barack-obama/birth-obama-certer-movement-098513

That's not a Birther article. It's mocking Birthers.

 

[A'isha]

The fact that Cordova was harassed makes those two guys look like complete jerks. But them being complete jerks doesn't mean Weiner didn't send that tweet. I know this may be hard for you to understand, but those aren't mutually exclusive.

The fact that the guy who first spread the story about Weiner's tweet was previously involved in an attempt to gin up a false scandal about Weiner using fraudulent evidence is a good reason to be more skeptical about the current story, not less.

 

[Ziggurat]

That's not a Birther article. It's mocking Birthers.

Yeah, he's got problems recognizing obvious differences.

 

[Ziggurat]

The fact that the guy who first spread the story about Weiner's tweet was previously involved in an attempt to gin up a false scandal about Weiner using fraudulent evidence is a good reason to be more skeptical about the current story, not less.

Well, no. The guys didn't know the claim from that minor was fake (so no indication that they were trying to be dishonest), they weren't fed the offending tweet (so no indication that someone being dishonest exploited them), and it explains what was previously one of the best counterclaims by Weiner defenders (that they must have planted it because they knew ahead of time a scandal was coming).

 

[Neally]

Right! Suspicious behaviour that you speculate is due to his guilt.

GB

He is guilty of providing evasive answers which is proof of him being evasive. That leads to asking, "why?" The logical answer is that he's trying to hide something. That "something" is looking more and more like a public Tweet that was supposed to be private. The excuses are rapidly heading to the level of Larry Craig's "wide stance" lameness.

We all get that you are a hard core Weiner defender and apologist. Weiner has only himself to blame for letting a minor embarrassment turn into a media event as the result of his handling of this.

 

[TraneWreck]

He is guilty of providing evasive answers which is proof of him being evasive. That leads to asking, "why?" The logical answer is that he's trying to hide something. That "something" is looking more and more like a public Tweet that was supposed to be private. The excuses are rapidly heading to the level of Larry Craig's "wide stance" lameness.

We all get that you are a hard core Weiner defender and apologist. Weiner has only himself to blame for letting a minor embarrassment turn into a media event as the result of his handling of this.

Excellent work, Encyclopedia Brown.

Remember that Craig's excuse was delivered after he was arrested.

"Suspicious behavior" means nothing. It's what people who have nothing of substance deploy when they realize they have no case.

It means, "they didn't behave like I think they should behave in this situation that I've never been in and 100 people will react 100 different ways, meaning I can basically criticize anyone at any time."

They do this to rape victims all the time: "she reported it too fast, can't be rape." "She waited too long, can't be rape." It's useless muttering.

 

[A'isha]

Well, no. The guys didn't know the claim from that minor was fake (so no indication that they were trying to be dishonest),

They were seeking information about Weiner that they thought would be scandalous, setting themselves up to accept and believe fraudulent stories merely because those stories were what they wanted to hear. Remember, the lies of the girls weren't uncovered by these two guys, but by the Mediate writer. Wolfe himself seems to have thought the girls' story was legit at the time he alerted Breitbart to the tweet containing the package pic.

they weren't fed the offending tweet (so no indication that someone being dishonest exploited them),

We don't know that. The source of the tweet and the yfrog image are still unknown, and despite Gooding's claims, Weiner never used TweetDeck to post any images, and yfrog had permission to access his Twitter account, since back in February a tweet containing a yfrog link was posted from yfrog to his Twitter account. So we know that Weiner's accounts were open to the exploit.

and it explains what was previously one of the best counterclaims by Weiner defenders (that they must have planted it because they knew ahead of time a scandal was coming).

They wanted a scandal, and were almost gulled once by fakers willing to give them a false one. Then suddenly they stumble upon another scandal, one that could easily be fake as well?

I'm suspicious. They could have been the victims (or perpetrators) of another faked scandal.

However, Weiner's bizarre reactions to the whole deal also make me suspicious. He could have posted the tweet and pic, and is scrambling to deal with it.

There are enough oddities and inconsistencies with both explanations that I honestly don't know which one is the truth, or even which is more likely. Frankly, I won't be surprised if either one of them turns out to be the case.

 

[leftysergeant]

He is guilty of providing evasive answers which is proof of him being evasive. That leads to asking, "why?" The logical answer is that he's trying to hide something. That "something" is looking more and more like a public Tweet that was supposed to be private. The excuses are rapidly heading to the level of Larry Craig's "wide stance" lameness.

No. We do not know how the sludge monster and the failed husband got hold of the tweet, but can assume, given their known level of integrity, that it was by such unethical means that it is probably garbage and Weiner is right to tell people that he does not wish to discuss it.

We have, really, no right to know exactly what happened, because there is no suggestion of criminality or corruption on Weiner's part.

We all get that you are a hard core Weiner defender and apologist. Weiner has only himself to blame for letting a minor embarrassment turn into a media event as the result of his handling of this.

No. We have a major pervert to blame for the whole thing. That we know as an absolute fact that the sludge monster was out to get Weiner makes anything that passes through his hands absolutely valueless in condemning Weiner in any way.

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

Tommy Christopher is a conservative blogger confabbing with Breitbart?

Yeah, um... no. Tommy Christopher is a liberal. Complete and utter fail.

His "liberal" reputation is more and more dubious. Which is partly why I referred to him as conservative.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-p...elevate-pseudo-con-david-frum-biblical-status

Is it possible to be so wrapped up in a media culture that one could minimize a sacred religious holiday in a shoddy attempt to write a clever headline? Mediaite's Tommy Christopher and his editors seemed to have pulled this feat off.

Christopher, who has had a much-publicized run-in with Andrew Breitbart, has a new hero, former American Enterprise Institute scholar David Frum. Christopher elevated Frum to messianic status in a Good Friday April 2 post headlined "Did David Frum ‘Die' For GOP's Sins?" specifically praising the former AEI scholar for his appearance on Comedy Central's April 1 "The Colbert Report."

According to Christopher, Frum still wants to be a conservative and hasn't converted to the liberal ideology, like others have before him. He argued that lends credence to Frum, who is more known for levying criticisms about conservatives and Republicans, and not his conservative world view. (As if being popular with the liberal blogosphere was a badge of honor.)

So Tommy Christopher loves David Frum, and has gone from baiting Breitbart to shilling for him. What a liberal.

Which is, oddly enough, not dissimilar to the path Breitbart himself took.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart (pronounced /ˈbraɪtbɑrt/; born February 1, 1969) is an American publisher,[2] commentator for the Washington Times, author,[3] an occasional guest commentator on various news programs who has served as an editor for the Drudge Report website. He was a researcher for Arianna Huffington, and helped launch her website, The Huffington Post.[4] He currently runs his own news aggregation site, Breitbart.com, and five other websites: Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/people/tommy-christopher#ixzz1OG3k9KPA

Congratulations: you've just proved that Tommy Christopher doesn't fit your assumptions. Which you'd know if you paid any attention. Which you obviously didn't, since you thought he's a conservative.

The problem with your statement as that you assume I'm a liberal. I'm a Leftist. From my point of view, we have two conservative parties in the US, one more extreme than the other (Weiner himself is from the minority progressive wing of the Democratic Party). And as I have demonstrated, Tommy's "liberalism" is increasingly suspect.

Yeah, that didn't happen either. I provided evidence that the evidence those two guys THOUGHT they had doesn't exist. That doesn't mean Weiner wasn't a perv.
The fact that Cordova was harassed makes those two guys look like complete jerks. But them being complete jerks doesn't mean Weiner didn't send that tweet. I know this may be hard for you to understand, but those aren't mutually exclusive.

The problem is, neither source you linked to actually provides evidence for your speculation that Weiner is a "Perv." Or that he actually sent the tweet. Both of which are the crux of your (unsupported) argument.

In fact the article you linked to actually provides potential evidence that supports the claims of Cordova and Weiner. Which, is ironic as it is provided not to let Weiner off the hook, but as a defense of Breitbart.

I didn't mention it in my last post because it didn't seem particularly relevant at the time. One of the ironies of you referencing a Vanity Fair article, is that one of VF's contributors is a lefty-ish type turned Neo-Con--Christopher Hitchens.

Whenever alleged Liberals and Leftys start promoting Conservatives and conservative ideas, I tend not to consider them as Liberals or Leftys anymore.

GB

 

[johnny karate]

I don't know that the chances of him getting caught are infinitesimal. Neither do you. And more importantly, Weiner may not think so. It's even possible that he knows the chances aren't infinitesimal.

Those chances rely on a scenario in which Weiner was freely sending out a picture of his junk to people who could now potentially expose him.

Perhaps you think this qualifies as being more than infinitesimally possible, but considering there is absolutely no foundation to believe such an outlandish accusation, I'll have to disagree.

Why do you keep bringing up him not knowing her? That's not the issue. We can take that as a given.

Fair enough.

And the pic being him is far less problematic than the tweet having been sent.

I agree.

If he didn't, how'd the hackers get a picture of his junk?

I don't know. But at this point we don't know if the picture is of him, so it's a moot point.

And if the chances of proving it's him in the pic are truly infinitesimal, why not just say it's not? Your analysis cuts both ways: if you're right, he has no reason not to deny it's a photo of him, whether or not he sent it.

Embarrassment or a sense of privacy would both be strong motivators.

But either way, what my analysis does establish is that the leap some people are making from "odd behavior" to "suspicious behavior" to "He's guilty!" is specious at best.

Weiner may be handling the situation poorly, but a logical examination of his statements seem to indicate that at some point or some level he was the victim of sabotage.

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

He is guilty of providing evasive answers which is proof of him being evasive. That leads to asking, "why?" The logical answer is that he's trying to hide something. That "something" is looking more and more like a public Tweet that was supposed to be private. The excuses are rapidly heading to the level of Larry Craig's "wide stance" lameness.

We all get that you are a hard core Weiner defender and apologist. Weiner has only himself to blame for letting a minor embarrassment turn into a media event as the result of his handling of this.

All you have proven is that he is being evasive. I am not contesting that.

You have not provided evidence that proves Weiner's evasiveness is due to guilt. You are speculating.

If you look back through my posts on this thread, you will find one in which I publicly declare that I was wrong about one aspect of this story.

If it is eventually proved that Weiner wasn't hacked, and that he did indeed send the tweet; I will publicly declare I was wrong.

It will not, however, bother me in any way; because Rep Weiner's policies are more important to me than his love life.

GB

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

That's not a Birther article. It's mocking Birthers.

Really? You should let Rush Limbaugh know! I definitely noticed the sarcasm in the article, but it was targeted at those who mock Birthers.

There are also articles on that site which go after Trump for problems with his birth certificate.

The way I see it, the site has an equal opportunity policy. Which is fair enough. Some of their articles are more credible than others certainly. And others would harshly mocked in the Conspiracy section of JREF.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoking_Gun

GB

 

[Nova Land]

Surely the appropriate apples-to-apples comparison would be women-who-are-neither-politicians-nor-journalists-whom-Weiner-follows with men-who-are-neither-politicians-nor-journalists-whom-Weiner-follows. Yes?

So, what you are saying, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is that Weiner has told you personally that he is a bi-sexual perv? Fascinating.

I'm not clear whether you are attempting to be funny and just aren't very good at it or if you really are having that much trouble understanding what I wrote. Probably the former; but just in case you really are having that much trouble understanding what I wrote, let me try again.

1. Ziggurat made the claim that Weiner follows on Twitter an inordinate number of women, and provided a list of women.

2. Cleon pointed out that the number of women Zig listed was 28, out of 198 people total whom Weiner follows, and compared that to his own ratio of 61 out of 223.

3. Zig said that was not the right comparison. Many of the people Weiner follows are politicians and journalists; Zig was excluding them, and counting up the people who were women but were not people Weiner would be following due to their professional status.

4. My point was quite simple: before we can say Weiner followed an "inordinate" number of women, it would be useful to know what percentage of the non-professional people Weiner followed were women and what percentage were men. If, for instance, Weiner followed 28 women and 28 men, that would indicate that gender was probably not a factor in how he chose who to follow. If Weiner followed 28 women and 0 men, that would indicate gender might be a factor in how he chose who to follow.

"Inordinate" in this context indicated Zig thought the ratio of women followed to men followed was excessively high. But Zig did not provide the ratio.

That seems like a very obvious point to me. I'm sorry if it wasn't obvious to you.

 

[Gandalfs Beard]

I'm not clear whether you are attempting to be funny and just aren't very good at it or if you really are having that much trouble understanding what I wrote. Probably the former; but just in case you really are having that much trouble understanding what I wrote, let me try again.

1. Ziggurat made the claim that Weiner follows on Twitter an inordinate number of women, and provided a list of women.

2. Cleon pointed out that the number of women Zig listed was 28, out of 198 people total whom Weiner follows, and compared that to his own ratio of 61 out of 223.

3. Zig said that was not the right comparison. Many of the people Weiner follows are politicians and journalists; Zig was excluding them, and counting up the people who were women but were not people Weiner would be following due to their professional status.

4. My point was quite simple: before we can say Weiner followed an "inordinate" number of women, it would be useful to know what percentage of the non-professional people Weiner followed were women and what percentage were men. If, for instance, Weiner followed 28 women and 28 men, that would indicate that gender was probably not a factor in how he chose who to follow. If Weiner followed 28 women and 0 men, that would indicate gender might be a factor in how he chose who to follow.

"Inordinate" in this context indicated Zig thought the ratio of women followed to men followed was excessively high. But Zig did not provide the ratio.

That seems like a very obvious point to me. I'm sorry if it wasn't obvious to you.

Can anyone explain to me why it makes any difference how many women and men follow each other on twitter? And how it's actually relevant other than to fuel even more speculation about Rep Weiner?


GB