Weiner admits sending the messages, five in total he says, but says they are harmless and inoffensive.

On that point, the girl's family backs him up.

The family member said: “I am angry. This is surreal and unbelievable. It is absolutely crazy. We are just regular people who go to baseball games and basketball games, as ordinary and plain as can be.”

In the past few days, the girl and her family have become subjects of intense interest in the news media. On Friday afternoon, the local police arrived at their home and asked the girl and her mother to bring the girlÂ’s phone and computer to the police station so they could be checked to make sure no crime had occurred.

The family member said the family complied, and did not expect any further action to be taken.

Fair enough. Given the family would be angry at Weiner if there were some bad tweets here, I expect that's actually the truth of the matter.

I still would like to know what the hell Anthony Weiner was doing privately DMing a high school girl. His messages to her couldn't simply be publicly tweeted? "Thanks for your support! The future is made up of people like you!"

That sort of thing. Private? Why?

Posted by: Ace at 07:21 PM | Comments (248)
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Evenin' Moron Nation! Another work week has come and gone. Time to pour yourself a cold one and dive on in to the ONT. Sith style.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:00 PM | Comments (469)
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Just watched Lawrence O'Donnell inform me that NBC was now confirming cops were visiting the 17 year old.

That's all. NBC can confirm that.

Wow. NBC's really on the ball, huh?

You can confirm that? You actually roused yourself to call the police station and ask them if a visit already known to have happened actually happened?

Are you going to give yourselves Pulitzers for your awesome confirmation work?

Well you know what I can "confirm," NBC? I can confirm that I said this on June 6, at Weiner's press conference:

I don't know the ages of the women??!! It was "about six"??!

"TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE THEY WERE OVER 21"??!!? The Comely Coed, in collge, wasn't.

Does the Mother Fucking Media WANT to throw me more traffic for two months? Okay, I'll take it. I'll do your jobs for you again.

The media didn't know the underage girls were a story? That's funny, I've had 30 phone calls ad email exchanges about them this past week.

I guess we were the only ones who saw something a little suspicious here.

But how could we ever investigate? Oh, right, most of this shit was still posted online for whoever dared click a mouse.

Now, I didn't do their jobs for them on this; Patterico did. But honestly, I did mean "we" originally.

Got something wrong, media. Mark it down.

Now, here were my earliest predictions. Sarcastic predictions. They've now come true. It's all come true.

I can now confirm that on May 28, 12 hours or so after the infamous Tweet, I laid down this bold prediction:

My big concern with BonerGate is that the MSM is going to be so on top of this we poor cons won't have a chance at any scoops.

They'll pick all the bones off this story within hours and leave not a single scrap for us. Curses.

Take a bow, media.

With 50,000 of you on full-time staff, all alerted to this story, you could not, or would not, do the job one man -- a hobbyist -- with a fucking brain and a keyboard could do.

One man with -- remember this? -- the desire to pursue a story and go where it took it.

Remember that?

You may have heard someone say that in a movie once.

Now, this Sunday, talk up how the reasons for missing this story were so terribly understandable and really, the public should forgive you your lapses, because they were so goshdarn well-meaning!

I even put it in the most acceptable terms possible to alert you that there really was a huge story here.

You still ignored it. And I know you were reading.

Patterico knew the text messages. So did I.

And so could you have, if you bothered to read for an hour.

But you didn't.

So do tell us all, this Sunday, how the people who missed the story, denied the story, spun the story, ignored the story, botched the story, suppressed the story, denigrated the story, and simply refused to even print the story once other people even typed it up for you are somehow the responsible, credible, professional ones, and the people who've had it right from Hour One are the unprofessional ones without credibility.

Posted by: Ace at 04:54 PM | Comments (288)
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On NBC now.

Even I'm thinking the Stanley Cup Final this late in the year is a little crazy. They really need to cut 5-7 games out of the regular season and wrap this puppy up before Memorial Day. File that under "Yeah but it'll never happen".

Anyway...If you're following the series it's been one of momentum swings. After 2 close games in Vancouver, the Canucks were up 2-0 and it looked like it might be a short series.

And then they went to Boston. After two Bruins ass-whoopings the series is tied at 2 but you'd think it was 3-0 Bruins.

The Canucks are a very, very skilled team that simply simply has no ability to stop the bleeding when things go bad. If they are controlling the game, very few teams in the league can play with them. But the second it starts to go bad...it just gets worse.

That's basically the story of their goalie Roberto Luongo as well. He was pulled in the last game after giving up 4 goals (he gave up 8 in Game 3). Watch for him to be on the proverbial short-leash tonight. If he starts to box the puck around and giving up big rebounds...the end is near for him, it's just a matter of time (shoot glove side kids!).

Also watch for the physicality of the Bruins. They are just beating the hell out of the Canucks. As a long series adds to an already long season it adds up.

I'm pretty sure I had the Bruins in 6 so, I'm liking this so far.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:40 PM | Comments (67)
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Let's all agree that everything Libs do, they do it For The Children™.

Like for instance, when Janet Reno ordered the assault on the Branch Davidian compound, that was For The Children, to protect them from reported abuse -- which made it okay that so many of the children were killed.

Or when Elián González was dragged out of a relative's home at gunpoint and sent back to Castro's Cuba, that was For The Children™ -- we didn't want other Cuban mothers getting the idea that sacrificing their lives to ensure that their children grew up in freedom was a winning strategy.

So let's look at a particular child, shall we, and ask what the Libs ought to do in this case For The Children™. Meet Hamza Ali al-Katib. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:16 PM | Comments (69)
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Background first.

John McPhee's book,"The Control of Nature", looks at the struggle against the destructive side of Nature. He examines at 3 episodes. The Army Corps of Engineers against the Lower Mississippi, the town of Vestmannaeyjar in Iceland vs. a friggin' Volcano and a 3rd that you may have seen but not noticed. LA vs. two kinds of floods.

Once upon a time, Los Angeles was routinely flooded. In the 1920s and 30s, the lower parts of town were submerged after heavy rain. You never hear about that happening now - we fixed it.

A truly ginourmous flood control project solved that problem. You know those jokes about the LA River and how it's paved? Yup, that was part of it. It's not pretty* but it worked!

* I'm fond of it but I've grown up with it. I think rivers should flow in concrete valleys! [g]

But there's a 2nd kind of flood problem in the LA area. Massive debris flows in the hilly areas. The hills around LA aren't your typical hills. They're crumbly. Real crumbly. The climb up 30 inches and slide down 20 kind of crumbly. When you get heavy rain truly phenomenal amounts of debris goes on the move.

McPhee's book goes into some detail on the massive and successful projects needed to control those debris flows and the maintenance required on them.

And now we come to my rant.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:00 PM | Comments (86)
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Well, well.

NEW CASTLE, Del. -- Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Two officers from the New Castle County Police Department arrived at the girl's home around 4:30 p.m. and asked to speak with the girl's mother about the daughter's contact with Weiner. Another officer appeared at the home a short time later. A FoxNews.com reporter was at the home when the police arrived.

Tights, cape and shit indeed.

Flashback: Weiner on underage Twitter pals at his presser.

Q: (Inaudible) -- social media has a realm where, you know, certitude, as you say, is not -- is not something that is -- that you can rely on. How do you know that these women are not underage or -- you know, that these women are not truthful about their own selves?

REP. WEINER: I -- you know, I -- of course no one ever knows that. But I know that I never had any intention of having an interaction with underage women, and no information that I have now shows that I did.

Q: But they --

REP. WEINER: But yes, whenever you engage with anyone -- and that's true of -- that's always true in social media -- that you're relying upon their characterizations. And I took them at those characterizations.

Characterizations like talking about being in high school?

Hey stuff happens, right? He's a high functioning male and if that means chatting up underage girls, well, that's a chance he was willing to take. Cause he's a giver.

Congratulations to Patterico for bringing this all to light.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:49 PM | Comments (495)
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See, it was my strategic vision that we should work for my candidacy for president.

But my team felt the proper strategy was to work for Rick Perry's candidacy.

A quote from Gingrich, still pitching this as a struggle of the Outsider Grassroots against the Insider Establishment, in which he is... dreadfully miscast.

“There is a fundamental strategic difference between the traditional consulting community and the kind of campaign I want to run. Now we’ll find out over the next year who’s right,” Gingrich told reporters in a video recorded by ABC News.

This really isn't fun. I have always liked Newt a fair amount. But the Titanic just emailed me to say, "That's a shaky, shaky launch. Whoo! Douchechills."

Something about Gingrich's manner of speaking bothers me. First of all, when he makes a statement, he usually begins, "Look."

"Look, it's not any secret that the Washington Power Establishment feels threatened by a genuine grassroots transformative candidacy."

Then, at the end, he usually adds an intonation-rising coda, usually of the type "And that's just common sense."

Or: "And the American people understand this."

Like: "Look, this is what we're going to be seeing, the threatened establishment undermining a determined revolutionary. (Rising intonation.) And the American people understand this."

The other thing is that he tosses in buzzwords like "fundamental," "transformative," etc. These are the sorts of words you see in a blurb for an Alvin Toffler book (and, if I recall right, Gingrich was a big fan of Toffler). His speech is always studded with Futurist buzzwords. And I often find My Ears Glazing Over because, well, too many adjectives, and too many of the same kind of adjectives.

Like:

"Look, when a transformative figure promising truly revolutionary change to the fundamental conception of the core principles of ordered Constitutional liberty, the Washington Power Brokers are naturally going to react in fear. And that's just common sense."

I'm more of tangible, gut guy. I like Anglo-Saxon-derived words for their immediacy and tangibility. I tend to not like the abstract, Latinate-through-the-Norman-Invasion words.

Just saying. Just a preference.

And the American people understand this.

Ah, Yes. That Is A Strategic Difference. Commenters, whose names I don't know but whose genitals I have all seen, inform me that the key strategic difference here is that the staffers wanted to be paid, and Gingrich didn't want to do enough to bring in money in order to pay them.

I have had numerous strategic disagreements like that in my time, generally involving landlords, or banks, or car financing companies.

Look, these people have to understand I'm a truly tranformational figure, with a fundamentally different concept of the idea of "repayment," and of course they feel threatened when confronted with a grassroots insurgency challenging their bizarre, frankly unamerican fetish of timely payment.

And that's just common sense.

Posted by: Ace at 12:13 PM | Comments (293)
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A liberal writer attempted to guess at what Palin was thinking, and guessed it was something like "The Tea Party is mine! All mine! Muhahahaha!"

Politico thought this was how people actually talk. At least, how conservative Designated Villains talk. And they "quoted" Palin.

Now they've apologized.

Sorry for failing at life.

Related: Breaking headline from Politico:

Paul Ryan: I Shall Slay All Seniors, And Bathe In Their Blood, Before The Children of Babylon!

Damnit! I was hoping he'd keep the whole Children of Babylon thing on the q.t.

Journalism

We all have our parts; we all have our lines. If you deviate from the script we'll simply rewrite. This Morality Play isn't going to produce itself, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 11:18 AM | Comments (255)
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This must be something people are interested in, right?

Before I heard about WeinerGate, I wrote a piece on Mamet's movies, and his political conversion, which I actually intended to be most of my output that Memorial Day weekend. That didn't work out as I thought it would.

Good piece, I think. And there's some good counter-trolling in the comments, as I admit to "erg," little by little, that I am, in fact, a Time Traveler.

"I admire your cajones, baby."

Mamet's explanation of what began his process of the ideological reboot: "I finally met a conservative."

Palin fans should note that they're both fairly positive (with some criticism) of Palin. Sort of a mixed, realistic view, lean towards the positive.

Oh, and they're both going kookoobananas over Hayek's Road to Serfdom.

More Mamet? Hobbitopoly tells me Mamet will be on Limbaugh at 2pm.

Miller: Weiner a "Nasty Piece of Work:" At Breitbart.tv, natch.

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (135)
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