Because I Know What’s News

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“Has there ever been more manufactured and phony hype about a certifiable non-issue than so-called WeinerGate?”
— John Guardiano, “Weinergate: What’s the Big Deal?” Frum Forum

Few things annoy me more than having my news judgment questioned. Disagree on policy or doubt me on politics — we might argue, but such arguments do not call into question my competence as a professional journalist. And, by God, after 25 years in the news business, I know what’s news.

So I don’t mind the good-natured kidding I get about being all-Weiner, all-the-time for an entire week. While I initially reacted to Anthony Weiner’s apparent Twitter faux-pas as a mere joke, as soon as I began researching the background of last weekend’s incident I realized, Hey, there’s a legit news story here.

What’s more, there was a perfect opportunity to get ahead of the story, because the mainstream media had been initially reluctant to report it. Saturday afternoon, I checked Google News and there was zero, zilch, nada from major news organizations. Yet I anticipated (correctly) how the story would develop, and so began hoovering up every fact I could find online and aggregating every tidbit of information other bloggers were reporting.

Simple fact: Weiner is from New York, home of America’s best tabloid press. If you thought the NY Post and the Daily News weren’t going to make this front-page news, you’re crazy. And while no one could have predicted the spectacular awfulness of Weiner’s Tuesday press-conference meltdown, once it happened, it was blood-in-the-water time.

The story continues to develop. CNN’s Dana Bash reports Democrats are unsatisfied with Weiner’s response to the scandal so far:

Members of the House Democratic leadership have talked repeatedly to Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-New York, to try to get him to end what several Democrats call an unwelcome political distraction, a member of the party’s leadership tells CNN.
“It’s frustrating because we’ll talk to him, and say clean it up, and then he goes out and does stuff,” said the member of the House Democratic leadership, who declined to speak for the record about private discussions with Weiner.
“He’s got to put the period at the end of the sentence,” said the Democratic source, “it’s painful.”

And the story’s the same in the New York Post:

Rep. Anthony Weiner’s onetime Democrat allies were quick to abandon the lawmaker yesterday, just hours after he admitted it certainly could be his bulging crotch shot that was sent to a cute co-ed from his Twitter account.
Party backers in New York and Washington publicly criticized the randy rep’s attempts at damage control and his inability to shake the scandal. . . .
And in a major blow, some pols said outright that Weiner has crushed his dream of becoming the Big Apple’s next mayor — and may even have undermined the next election for his Brooklyn-Queens congressional seat, which he has held for six terms.
“Something like this better be put to rest,” said power broker Vito Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic chairman.
“If it’s left outstanding, it could have damaging impact, even if it means the difference of 3 or 4 percent of the vote in a very competitive four-way or five-way race,” Lopez said about Weiner’s chances in a mayoral contest.

You see what I’m talking about? As silly or as trivial as the whole situation may seem, Weiner has painted himself into a corner and it’s hard to see a good way for him to get out of it. Here’s an Associated Press video:

The one way out is the way Weiner has refused to take — call the cops:

There’s one way Rep. Anthony Weiner could show that he didn’t send a salacious photo to a female college student from his Twitter account: Ask law enforcement to investigate.
The New York congressman has so far declined to ask for an investigation into the photo, saying it’s not a worthy use of government resources. The U.S. Capitol Police said it would not launch an investigation unless requested.
In asking a private security firm to investigate instead, Weiner won’t be able to prove his innocence by obtaining logs from Twitter showing where his account was accessed from. Twitter says it requires a subpoena or court order to hand over such information. A subpoena or court order would have to be initiated by police or the FBI, not private detectives.

And, with hat-tips to Ace of Spades and Iowahawk, here’s the latest viral video sensation:

Finally, all the possibilities surrounding the role of “@PatriotUSA76” in WeinerGate are hashed out by Ace of Spades.

UPDATE: Simple explanation:

I’m a girl. I’ve been on Twitter over two years. I know exactly what happened. . . .

Read the whole thing. What’s up with guys getting drunk and tweeting their junk? Is it really that common?

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This Just In: Obamanomics Sucks

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Are folks on Wall Street finally figuring out what the folks on Main Street have known for two years?

U.S. stocks fell Friday to cap their first five-week losing streak since July 2004, as a dismal jobs report added to the drumbeat of investor concerns about a slowing economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 97.29 points, or 0.8%, to 12151.26, led lower by Alcoa, which dropped 28 cents, or 1.7%, to $15.92. The blue-chip index has dropped 5.1% during its five-week losing skid and closed Friday at its lowest level since March 23.
Friday’s declines come after the DJIA had slumped 321 points in back-to-back sessions. The average registered its biggest three-day drop since March 16.

Meanwhile, the D.C. press corps — which would be crediting Obama as a miracle worker if the economic picture was looking up — must instead endeavor to exculpate him from blame:

What can Obama do to fix
the economy? Not much.
— Politico

See how this works? You can be sure that if a Republican were in the White House and unemployment was at 9.1%, there wouldn’t be any “Don’t blame the president” headlines in the newspapers. Here’s a video report from Associated Press:

Wow! Strange Plot Twists in #WeinerGate’s Third Act

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A sentence you won’t see me write very often: Tommy Christopher has done some excellent reporting.

Tommy’s story about @PatriotUSA and a 16-year-old girl who (falsely) claimed her friend was involved in Twitter “sexting” with Rep. Anthony Weiner is an absolute must-read. (BTW, Mediaite has posted Tommy’s story as five different pages, without a “single page view” or “print all” function, which annoys me, but that’s not Tommy’s fault.) One quote that stood out to me was this:

“I saw many other girls in the news and I wanted to be famous.”

Yeah. The desire to get fame for fame’s sake — fame without talent, fame without achievement, fame you don’t actually have to work for — is one of the great evils of our age. Nowadays, I’m often reminded of a line from Gone With the Wind, where Scarlett O’Hara says of one of her envious rivals: “She’d walk down the street naked if she thought anybody would look twice at her.” But we’ll save Ginger Lee for later . . .

I should probably write an essay about the underlying lesson here: How inexperienced, irresponsible and unscrupulous people, trying to play citizen-journalist, muck things up for everybody else in the “Army of Davids.” On the other hand, maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if the regular media could be trusted to do their job with minimal competence and fairness.

The statements from the girls and one of the girls’ parents are, I think, subject to criticism, but I will leave that to others for now. The failure of Markos Moulitsas to respond promptly to Tommy Christopher’s e-mail warnings is also likely to get enough criticism from others without me jumping on the dogpile.

Responsible reporting requires a sense of news judgment, even if that sometimes means foregoing a possible scoop.

Last Saturday, when the WeinerGate story first broke, some people sent me DMs or e-mails with phone numbers for Gennette Cordova and I thought to myself: Should I call? Continue reading Wow! Strange Plot Twists in #WeinerGate’s Third Act →

Unexpectedly! Unemployment Hits 9.1%

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“U.S. hiring slowed dramatically in May and the unemployment rate kept rising, adding to concerns the jobs market will take years to heal as the economy remains weak. . . . . The jobless rate . . . unexpectedly rose to 9.1% . . .”
— Wall Street Journal

“May’s job gain was about a third of what economists had been forecasting. . . . ‘The economy clearly just hit a brick wall,’ said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics. ‘It’s almost as if it came to a complete standstill.’”
— New York Times

Why is it that economists — at least the “expert” economists who do all this forecasting for the media — have been so reliably surprised by bad news the past couple of years? And where do the media find these idiotic financial journalists like the guy who, as The Lonely Conservative notes, tried to blame U.S. unemployement on the Japanese tsunami?

It’s almost enough to make you think that the people who run the media are unusually stupid.

More at Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain just issued a statement:

While this administration promised job creation and an unemployment rate under 8 percent with the passage of the stimulus spending packages, based upon today’s unemployment report, the unemployment rate still hovers around 9 percent. We have yet to see the positive results from the billions of taxpayer dollars spent in that process.
Wednesday’s jobs figure shows only 38,000 new private sector jobs were created, a number significantly less than the projected 177,000 in previous forecasts. Experience has taught me that government cannot create jobs. Instead, government is responsible for creating a favorable environment for businesses to thrive and succeed.
If we are to fix this problem,we must focus our efforts on increasing access to capital and availability of new markets, adjusting unfavorable regulations for corporations and, in many instances, retooling and retraining our workforce.
It’s time we have a discussion about real job creation and what must be done to raise consumer confidence and create stability in the marketplace. Real results are needed now.

Brutal. Simply Brutal.

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Something I hadn’t previously noticed is how Rachel Maddow employed the word “creep” against Anthony Weiner:

(Hat-tip: PoliticalPAW.) Meanwhile, the latest spin on WeinerGate provokes Ace of Spades to lay down an incredibly brutal interrogation on the Prime Suspect — an instant blogospheric classic.

And, yeah, I’ve got a new WeinerGate column up at The American Spectator that includes props for Ace and Andrew Breitbart, which I hope you’ll go read.

LIVE AT FIVE – 06.03.11

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TOP NEWS
Weiner Now Silent Over Lewd Photo

Some schmuck from New York

Support goes limp; will this be more than a brief obstacle to his Grace Mansion thrust?

Moody’s: If Debt Deal Fails, US Risks Ratings Downgrade
Welcome to Weimar America

Russian Chief Doctor: No Lifting Of EU Vegetable Ban Until All Info Made Available
Bears don’t like it when the answers aren’t forthcoming



POLITICS
Romney Launches 2012 Presidential Campaign

Mitt Romney throws down hardcore

The return of the misery index

Christie, State GOP Reimburse State For Helicopter Flights; Governor Has Harsh Words For Critics



Obama, House Democrats Vow To Battle GOP On Medicare

Valedictorian Fight’s Judge’s Ban On Graduation Prayers

California Assembly To Be Docked Pay If Budget Not Passed By June 15

Unabomber Journals Sell For $40,000 At Auction



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Groupon Files For Public Offering; Limits Of IPO Mania To Be Tested
Treasury To Sell Remaining Chrysler Holdings To Fiat
For-Profit Education Stocks Up As Regulation Pared Back From Original Draft
Weak Retail And Jobless Reports Pull Stocks Lower
Chevy Volt Dealers Hoist Prices, Keep Tax Credits
Google Hack Gives Way To Diplomatic, High-Tech Tensions
Microsoft Offers Incentives For Chipmaker/Boxmaker Standardization
Apple’s ICloud Free – For Now
Trailer Park: Duke Nukem Forever (NSFW, obviously)



SPORTS
As Eighth Circuit Hearing Looms, NFL Deal May Be In Works

NFL lawyer Pash (L), commissioner Goodell (2nd L) discuss issues

Compromise collective bargaining agreement at long last?

Canucks Star Avoids Ban After Bite In First Game

Endy Chavez Gets Four Hits To Lead Texas Over Tribe



Justice Department To Meet With BCS

Pirates Choke, Blow Seven-Run Lead, Fall To Mets 9-8

Candace Parker Looks At Her Team, And The Sparks Fly



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video “Inexcusable”, Parents Group Says

Pop star Rihanna

Singer defends video as “empowering”

Pregnant Pink Ready To Pop

Blake Lively Is In None Of These Pictures

NBC Reviving “Fear Factor”

Chelsea Handler Done With “Chelsea Lately”?

Jane Lynch To Host 2011 Emmys

Selena Gomez Bows To Pressure, Cuts Pink Horses From Video



FOREIGNERS
Little Known About E.Coli Strain Behind European Outbreak
Yemen’s Chaos Good News For Al Qaeda
Syrian Violence Tests US
Afghan Jihadis Clash With Pakistani Forces
Four Dead, One Injured After Chevron Refinery Blast In Wales
Ex-Bin Laden Aide Nabbed In Afghanistan



BLOGS & STUFF
Weasel Zippers: Boehner Gives Obama Two Weeks On Libya – Either Comply With War Powers Act Or Withdraw US Forces
Maggie’s Notebook: Palin Puts Romney On The Spot; Expects Explanation On Mandates
Jawa Report: MI6 Pwnz0rz Al-Qaeda With “Operation Cupcake”
Neo-neocon: Unions Ungrateful To Obama?
JustOne Minute: Bracing For The Big Lift
Don Surber: Liberal Math

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Finally, Weiner Calls the Police!

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No, he didn’t ask the cops to start an investigation of the insidious hackers who stole his crotch-photo and Tweeted it to a 21-year-old. But when a reporter for WCBS-TV in New York started asking questions . . .

Weiner’s Office Calls The Police
After CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer
Asks For An Interview

As you can imagine, Ace of Spades has loads of fun with this news. Meanwhile, CNN’s Jack Cafferty is asking another question: Can Weiner survive this scandal?

Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress has an excellent round-up of today’s WeinerGate news and commentary. And by “excellent,” of course, I mean: He linked me.

UPDATE: Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg see — what else? — a vast conspiracy!

Scott Whitlock has the transcript at NewsBusters.

UPDATE II: Linked by If You Seek Peace — thanks!

UPDATE III: Linked by Nice Deb — thanks! — and this story is now the top thread on Memeorandum.

#WeinerGate: Who Is @PatriotUSA76? @AndrewBreitbart Wants to Know

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Much suspicion in the WeinerGate scandal has focused on the Twitter user @PatriotUSA76, who identifies himself as Dan Wolfe, but who is unwilling publicly to confront questions about his role.

It was @PatriotUSA76 who, some weeks ago, specifically predicted an online sex scandal involving Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), and then quickly spotted the Friday photo-Tweet that launched the scandal. Several liberals have accused Wolfe/@PatriotUSA76 of having “hacked” Weiner’s account to create a hoax, which Wolfe denies. But, as the Smoking Gun reports today, Wolfe “claims he is fearful that his leading role in ‘Weinergate’ will focus attention on a multitude of his own ‘major personal problems’ that he is “afraid…will all come out.'”

Some have claimed that Wolfe is part of a right-wing conspiracy involving Andrew Breitbart, whose Web site BigGovernment.com first broke the story Saturday that the photo of a man’s crotch had been Tweeted from Weiner’s account. Breitbart strenuously denies this, and yesterday began asking if anyone knows anything about the mysterious Wolfe, and pushing @PatriotUSA76 to come forward:

Meanwhile, independent filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. shares his own e-mail exchanges with @PatriotUSA76, shedding light on the mystery man whose role in the WeinerGate scandal is arousing curiosity among journalists in Washington, New York and elsewhere:

Anyway, I firmly believe that the accused has a right to face the accuser. Even for someone as despicable as RAW. Without that, anyone could be tormented for life by anonymous creeps and sock puppets. . . .
When Patriot and I were originally e-mailing on Sunday and Monday, I was under the impression that he was just a guy seeking to expose corruption in higher office. Cool. But the more I started looking at the story, and the more I started looking at his cyber-behavior, the more I realized that he-she-it was using tactics I am thoroughly against. He ceased communications with me entirely when I pressed the urgency of going to the FBI and discarding the mask and tactics of the anonymous Twitter stalker. . . .
Come out of the shadows, point with index finger to the sun and shout, “J’accuse!” And get it the hell over with. Alas, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. . . .

Read the whole thing. I expect to have much more later today, as several other people are now following this same angle on the WeinerGate story. If you know anything about @PatriotUSA, you can send tips to me by Twitter ( @rsmccain) or send tips to @AndrewBreitbart.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades excoriates lazy reporters for refusing to fact-check Weiner’s assertions about what happened (and when) on Friday:

Weiner has now lied repeatedly about this tweet going out “while I was tweeting about hockey.” Not only has he lied serially about the timing, but the Make Believe Media, not citing him but asserting as fact based on its own investigation, has claimed this, repeatedly.
I think they just took Weiner’s flack’s word for it and said “Eh, that’s probably right.”
Um, it’s now six days since the story broke. Can you now check the actual time-stamps and determine if this claim is, what is the German word for it….?, true?In fact, it is not true. Weiner was publicly silent for three and a half hours before the dic-pic tweet. He blogged about the tivo eating his hockey game four minutes after that event, thinking, I guess, that would be a nice cover for him.
Assuming the Make Believe Media wouldn’t even check.
And by God, he was right, wasn’t he? . . .

There’s much more where that came from. Apologies to readers for my having fallen behind on WeinerGate coverage today but, as I explained in a wee-hours message, my wife is sick and that required me to spend time tending to family business. Your tip-jar contributions will be greatly appreciated, and thanks to those who have already given to help this reader-supported journalism project.

There is now a Memeorandum thread about the @PatriotUSA76 mystery, and many more developments that I’ll be aggregating in updates here throughout the afternoon.

UPDATE II: We all know that there are two ways that Anthony Weiner could end this scandal:

  1. Call for a law-enforcement investigation of who “hacked” his account; or
  2. Admit that, indeed, it was he who sent the crotch-photo Tweet.

But he won’t do either of those two things, which is angering somebody’s mother:

The furious mom of the Seattle college coed at the center of Weinergate yesterday demanded that the cocky congressman come clean about the lewd photo.
“I’m really upset. I feel like he’s a person of power and influence, who can make a statement and make all this go away,” Carol Mizuguchi said, blasting Rep. Anthony Weiner for his continued snarky sidestepping.
“As her mother, I’m really upset,” Mizuguchi told The Post. “I’m pissed off at that.”
Mizuguchi’s 21-year-old daughter, Gennette Cordova, got the surprise package — a close-up of an underwear-clad crotch — over the weekend in a tweet from Weiner’s account.
After days of dodging, Weiner yesterday admitted he “can’t say with certitude” that the photo isn’t of him.
But he continued to deny he sent the picture.
The pol’s refusal to clarify things has made a bad situation more difficult for her daughter, Mizuguchi said.
“It’s a distraction [for Gennette],” she said. “It’s during her finals and she’s 21 years old.”

Hat-tips to Ace, Jammie Wearing Fool and Hot Air Headlines.

UPDATE III: Joe Brooks at Wire Update also exchanged e-mails with @PatriotUSA76.

UPDATE IV: Mickey Kaus jumps aboard the Who Is @PatriotUSA76 Bandwagon. This is, perhaps, a sidetrack to the main story — i.e., when will Weiner do the right thing? — but it is important, if you take seriously the left-wing bloggers who claim that @PatriotUSA76 orchestrated a hoax.

And doesn’t everybody take left-wing bloggers seriously?

The Media Research Center provides this video compilation of Anthony Weiner dodging the key question of whether the now infamous Tweet-photo is actually him:

And the editors of Big Government say that Weiner’s private investigation of this incident is insufficient:

Hacking into private accounts, impersonating a federal elected official, and deleting evidence that may be subject to federal investigation are each criminal offenses. Failure to report suspected cybercrime is also a breach of House of Representatives rules.
The American people deserve to know whether these violations, having been alleged or described, actually occurred.

UPDATE V: Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review joins the call for an investigation:

Congressman Weiner is no doubt a strong supporter of Attorney General Holder’s aggressive efforts to root out computer crime. He could perform a valuable public service by doing what the government he is part of encourages all citizens to do: Report this outrage to the authorities!

UPDATE VI: While I was out today running errands (i.e., with the wife sick, I’m on taxi duty for the kids), I stopped in at a convenience store and picked up a copy of the Washington Post, which played WeinerGate on the bottom of the front page:

That’s a story by Karen Tumulty and Felicia Sonmez, the online version of which is headlined, “Anthony Weiner’s plan to cool Twitter furor backfires.” It’s a good summary of the story up through Wednesday evening, but includes little that you didn’t already know, if you’ve been following the story online. The Post also had a story on the front page of their popular Style section:

That’s the Post‘s dating-advice columnist Carolyn Hax, and the online version of that story is headlined, “Listen up, fellas: Naked man-parts? Not so sexy.”

Just sharing that because (a) what you see online may not give you a good idea of how the story is playing out in the actual dead-tree newspaper, and (b) #WINNING!

Which is to say, how many people on Saturday, when this story first broke online, believed it would be front-page news in the Washington Post on Thursday? Like I said, they can’t ignore it. Weiner’s too big for his own good.

However, Jimmie Bise Jr. is disappointed and frustrated:

At this point, I’m actually angry that this story has dragged out for so long and I’m convinced that the only reason it has is because the subject of the story is media darling Democrat Anthony Weiner. If some Republican had sent a crotch picture to a co-ed, the MSM would have his scalp on the wall today. Don’t even think of arguing with me on this. You know it’s true.

Yes, that’s true. But they can’t just brush this off, and it’s not going away. Just enjoy the ride, man.

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