It's also not a notion I advanced. My point, my only point, was that his sin was different than Weiner's. I made no claim that it was lesser. So cut out the straw already.
Please. Here's what you said:
The way he handled it is very much part of the merit. It tells us at least as much about his character as the original event did.
No, it doesn't. If it did, then a guy like Vitter, that does something actually illegal and lives a completely hypocritical professional life, would somehow be redeemed by handling his PR well.
A crime is a crime, a mistake is a mistake, regardless of how the PR fallout is handled.
There you have it. You yourself are an example for why the dichotomy you presented to me is simply false.
Haha, what? Are you actually following along?
You're arguing that
this scandal reveals something about his ability to be a Congressperson. I was responding to a claim about disqualification in general, but you're either of the opinion that something like this would disqualify a person from holding office or you're not.
If someone you previously thought was qualified engaged in this activity, would you then think they weren't? Or would you have already looked into their soul and determined their worth?
And the question supposes THAT I believe what you think I believe. And I don't. A question mark doesn't stop a strawman from being a strawman. You tried it above too.
No, it supposes that you didn't think this through very well. You were so caught up in the penis scandal that you started making bold proclamations and broad claims. You engaged in the same sanctimonious moralizing that the press corps did, and the result is this bizarre standard where someone attempting to hide their private behavior reveals a GRAND TRUTH about the very essence of their being, but lying IN THEIR JOB is just accepted as a natural occurrence.
No, TW. It's far more than that. People's judgment about the morality of lying, what they think can justify a lie, their estimation of whether they can get away with it, etc. There's always a LOT more than your "broad sense" to why people lie, and it's shared between the personal versus the public.
Notice that again you've just offered a bunch of explanation for why we should only care about lies if they're about something important.
Oh no, what would have happened if Weiner got away with it? How would the world be different?
And some lies destroy credibility, and others do not. The distinguishing characteristic is NOT simply the subject matter.
No, it appears to be when you need it to for a crappy argument.
This is just ad hoc nonsense.
I never disagreed. Too bad for Weiner that he made it public. But that's his fault, not mine.
Please. You've rolled around in this muck with a big grin on your face. You've defended the press digging into this non story with enthusiasm. You're a top notch voyeur.
Nice try, but it's simply not true. I never thought that nobody on the right would do something like that (though I will note your dishonest attempt to attribute that to "the right" in general). Rather, I thought it didn't explain Weiner's actions, and that his guilt was evident. And that story, while definitely of interest, doesn't actually change the fact that Weiner was, in fact, guilty of sending that tweet.
Yeah, nice try. You just couldn't see into their soul. Your naiveté and desire to believe anything that reinforced your political bias led you to defend Breitbart and the right wing slime that would have stopped at nothing to destroy Weiner.
It also destroys your ingenuous belief that Weiner's handling of the scandal is what lead to is downfall. I guess your magical power to know who's right and who's wrong by "reading" them is limited by a preconceived desire to bolster those that agree with you.
No I didn't. I said consistently that my evaluation in no way depended on Breitbart. So when you claim I did something I've specifically informed you I didn't, well, that makes you a liar.
Just like you keep claiming that I was "taken" by Weiner's lies when from the beginning I never, for a moment, relied on anything he said, and I also acknowledged that even if he did what was claimed, it wasn't a big deal.
It amuses me that when the sort of blind gloating that you've been engaging in gets turned back on you, you get offended. You were trying to reinvent the debate that went on before Weiner's confession it the most self-serving manner possible. That involved the same malicious recapitulation of my arguments that you just read aimed in your direction.
That's more of this asymmetry. It's funny how much you hate your own arguments when they're directed at you.
Your incredible, almost paranormal, skill for reading my mind clearly has its limits. Because you keep making claims about my position which are simply false.
I guess your "reading" ability needs to re-calibrate its sarcasm detector.
Indeed, refusing to consider a source of information is definitely a recipe for getting the facts wrong.
Yeah, that's you believed the case against Weiner was honest and legitimately his own fault, when it was the result of a concerted smear attack against him that had been going on for some time. THey just lucked into the photo and then pimped the story for voyeuristic folks like you.
That's your job, isn't it? Whether or not you think they're guilty, and whether or not they are guilty. In fact, it would seem that your profession is peculiar in this way: you have a direct incentive to NOT discover the truthfulness of your clients. And for good reason. But why you think that you should extend that to Weiner, well...
Shockingly, you missed the point. It works in both ways. I've watched as, often quite dramatically, prosecution witnesses break down and admit that the story they told the police or district attorneys (on which their case was based) was a lie.
You're not alone in this silly notion that you can "read" people. Investigators that have interrogated hundreds of witnesses over several decades make this mistake. When they base their case on that idiotic approach, they often lose.
This is why I don't care whether I find a politician personally credible. That's a skill that no one has, NO ONE. You cannot reliably tell when someone is lying and when they aren't. Nobody can. Thinking that this is a reliable method of discerning the truth is as primitive as any religious belief. It's should be a relic of a bygone era.
Only an idiot believes that one can always tell when someone is lying.
But evidently only a defense lawyer believes that one can never tell when someone is lying.
First, it's not a matter of belief, your use of that word is more evidence of the silliness of your position. The entire industry aimed at telling when someone lies is a heap of idiotic woo.
No one can consistently tell when someone is lying and when they can't. Thus, basing your opinion on that information will lead to erratic results. You are right simply by chance.
But maybe you should tell the police about this ability of yours. You can just go in the interrogation room with them and let them know if the person is guilty or innocent. It would save everyone a lot of time and effort.
