May 19, 2017

Time to talk about Anthony Weiner again.

He's pleading guilty to "a single charge of transferring obscene material to a minor."
A likely result of the plea is that Mr. Weiner would end up as a registered sex offender... The charge carries a potential sentence of between zero and 10 years in prison, meaning Mr. Weiner could avoid prison...
Go to the link to see the artistically hilarious photograph of Weiner the NYT chose to illustrate its article. It's not one of Weiner's selfies, but a portrait by a NYT photographer, Damon Winter, that has Weiner looking greasy and defeated.

73 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Good thing Hillary's classified e-mails were on his hard drive.

MadisonMan said...

That link didn't work for me, but this one did.

From the article, the sentence that made me smile:

Mrs. Clinton recently attributed her election loss in part to Mr. Comey’s announcement.

Because it certainly couldn't be her fault, could it!

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Destroying Donald Trump is all that matters in the newsrooms of the mainstream media

Matt Sablan said...

I wonder if he'll also plead guilty to having possession of secret/classified material. Though, technically, I think, that's a crime for the people WITH the clearances who got it to him. If he didn't have a clearance/training, then if someone gives it to him, he's relatively safe (which is why journalists can publish secret information without punishment, but the hammer can fall on their sources.)

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

(get it? - hard drive)

I'm sure Rachel Maddow will discuss this on her show tonight.

David Begley said...

What if he gets 10 years?

Bay Area Guy said...

I do not relish this conversation about the Weiner........

Matt Sablan said...

He won't get 10 years. I'll be surprised if they give him any time in prison. He's special.

chickelit said...

Weiner looks lubed.

MadisonMan said...

I do not relish this conversation about the Weiner........

And yet you mustered up the courage to comment.

Curious George said...

If he was any kind of a man he would just off himself.

chickelit said...

Just ketching up with Mad Man's humor.

chickelit said...

Curious George said...If he was any kind of a man he would just off himself.

Getting offed with a belt and his pants down?

Bay Area Guy said...

It's hard to understand how a wildly successful man descends into madness like this. I think it went down like this: Huma denied him sex for a year or two, Hillary told him that if he cheated on Huma like Bill cheated on her, then she would cut his nuts off. Blocked from any pathway to garner any real, gentle, physical, warm, female intimacy, he resorted to "sexting" strange girls via his cell phone as "Carlos Danger".

I feel a tinge of sympathy for him, because it seems so pathetic. But I am glad he's a Democrat.

Humperdink said...

Another first class citizen in the Clinton orbit.

Just think what the conversation would be like if Weiner, Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton shared a cab.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

He is special. All D-crooks are special.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Chickel - lolz.

Kevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kevin said...

[Brenda has been at the bus station downtown for so long, she's starving. She tentatively approaches a hot dog vendor]

Brenda: Uh, those are hot dogs, right?

Hot Dog Vendor: Yeah, want one?

Brenda: Mmm, yeah I'd love one.

Hot Dog Vendor: That'll be two bucks.

Hot Dog Vendor: [Brenda hands him a check, he stares incredulously] A check?

Brenda: Yeah, but it's a good check. See, Chris' mom wrote it to Chris 'cause Chris bought her something, I can't remember what. Then I bought Chris some press-on nails, I gave Chris the difference, and she wrote the check over to me. So I'll write the check over to you, you keep the difference, and I'll take the hot dog. So, you got a pen?

Hot Dog Vendor: Get outta here!

Brenda: Wait! I'm starving, you'd rather throw it away than give it to me?

Hot Dog Vendor: I work on a cash-only basis.

Brenda: But it's a perfectly good check!

Hot Dog Vendor: No! I'll make it very clear. You slip me the cash, and I'll slip you the weiner.

Brenda: But I don't have any cash!

Hot Dog Vendor: Then I don't have a weiner!

James Graham said...

It may be OT but a Secret Service man has been sentenced to twenty (!!!!!!!!!!!) years for sending photos to minors.

Yes he deserved prison but 20 years? Rapists and homicide-ers deserve that not a picture sender.

mezzrow said...

That's the portrait of a man who worked very hard to create his own personal hell.

Rob said...

Don't make it sound as if it's a burden to talk about Anthony Weiner again. It's delightful.

Now, according the article, and every other article on the subject, Weiner and Abedin are "estranged." What's the evidence on that? Isn't it the case that they've always shared an apartment? Could it be that, counter-intuitively, "estranged" is a face-saving strategy for Ms. Abedin?

traditionalguy said...

Sentence of the Day: You shall read the collected works of Foucault without a stop.

buwaya said...

Its a terrible thing to recommend suicide.
Its a problem for disgraced men these days, there is much more limited scope for disappearance and a new start on a frontier or the far abroad. The sort of thing Kiplings "Gentlemen Rankers" did, or they would enter Turkish service, or become colonial administrators in the Netherlands East Indies. The world is too small now.
Maybe he should move to Israel.

William said...

I think we,as a nation, owe him a tremendous debt. I don't know how to quantify it, but his activities certainly had something to do with Hillary's loss. And I don't think his work here is yet done. Apparently Anthony and Huma are moving towards a reconciliation. I look forward to more chapters being written in their storybook romance.

smartsy said...

Where's Inga with a conspiracy theory for his defense? I'm sure we're all waiting with baited breath.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Wow they identified his party affiliation immediately. Weiner looks baked in the photo. Glum.

Kevin said...

Could it be that, counter-intuitively, "estranged" is a face-saving strategy for Ms. Abedin?

It will always be the case that whenever Mr. Weiner is being investigated, charged, or sentenced that he and Mrs. Weiner will be "estranged". Standard journo fact checking cannot abide otherwise.

BarrySanders20 said...

"the artistically hilarious photograph of Weiner . . ."

The photo also gives the viewer the perspective of a voyeur peeping through a keyhole. Creepy peek at the creep.

Matt Sablan said...

"It's hard to understand how a wildly successful man descends into madness like this."

-- He was always there, then his Twitter got "hacked."

Matt Sablan said...

Actually, kind of amusing that Weiner lied about being hacked, and lost big, and then Clinton got for-real hacked.

Michael said...

He is greasy. He is defeated.

buwaya said...

Its "bated breath".
Same root as "abate".
Baited breath is when you are much too fond of anchovies.

Kevin said...

Oh, and nice of them to dump this on a Friday. If he were a Republican, this would have happened Monday morning.

David said...

Light sentence. He still has power. Secrets.

Unknown said...

Bay Area Guy: "It's hard to understand how a wildly successful man descends into madness like this." Greeks had an entire art form devoted to this. Called tragedy. "Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

buwaya: "...a new start." French Foreign Legion was supposedly the way to go. Of course, I once had a job on a geophysics crew where the line-cutters probably had some very interesting personal history.

Virgil Hilts said...

You know, there seems to be kind of a disconnect between our criminal law system and reality when it comes to teenagers or adults sharing nude selfies, or god forbid teens being exposed to nudity or sexual images. Reality (per Psychology Today)-
• 20 percent of mobile-device searches are for porn
• 90 percent of boys and 60 percent of girls are exposed to Internet porn by age 18 (BTW that has to be low)
• Porn sites attract more visitors each month than Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined
• 30 percent of Internet content is porn
That may not be the world our grandparents wanted to live in but deal with it that is the world we live in and, outside maybe North Korea, it aint going to change.
Yeah, AW is a creep but if you support declaring as sex offenders any person that has sent a nude selfie to a teen you are talking about perp numbers in the many millions.

Matt Sablan said...

"Bay Area Guy: "It's hard to understand how a wildly successful man descends into madness like this." Greeks had an entire art form devoted to this. Called tragedy."

-- I think that Hillary Clinton is actually a classic Greek Tragic Hero for the left. She did great things for them, she was elevated to nearly the highest point, and her own hubris brought her down. I'm not even talking the secret server; I'm talking her plan to make Donald Trump the Republican nominee because she could so obviously easily defeat him. The only way she could have been a more perfect fit would be if she lost her re-election so she really WAS thrown down from the highest office instead of just kept from getting there.

rhhardin said...

Child abuse wasn't a public problem before the 60s.

Child sexual abuse wasn't a public problem before the 70s.

They were personal moral failings that upgraded because of improved morality, or ratings. Drunk driving and dangerous dogs are two other changes in the 60s and 70s, that went to public problems, accompanied by media hysteria. Kids who grew up in the 50s have some perspective on these as non-problems. The world did not fall apart.

For the history see Ian Hacking The Making and Molding of Child Abuse.

Virgil Hilts said...

rhhardin - that looks interesting. I have a sibling who was head of Child Protective Services in a western state about 20 years ago. One of the problems for the agency was that definitions of child abuse developed in the 80s/90s by social workers included disciplinary acts that many men in the state legislature had experienced growing up and, probably in about 50% of cases, inflicted on their own kids.

Rae said...

Yeah, AW is a creep but if you support declaring as sex offenders any person that has sent a nude selfie to a teen you are talking about perp numbers in the many millions.

So change the law. Go down as the guy who wants to make it legal to send dick pics to underage girls.

Balfegor said...

Makes me feel sorry for Huma Abedin all over again. Her elders really steered her badly . . . you would think that Clinton II, of all people, would have been able to advise her against marrying such an awful man. But then, I suppose back then, it seemed to have worked for Clinton II (she had got to be a Senator, after all, and then a serious presidential candidate) so perhaps she thought it was a price Abedin would be willing to pay . . .

Guildofcannonballs said...

"Said what's the time, it's time to get ill.

And what's the time, it's time to get ill.

What's the time, it's time to get ill."

This is a link to the Beastie Boys live, and probably too powerful for most reading here. You have been warned.
Try it Yourself »


buwaya said...

I wanted to avoid the French Foreign Legion option as its too obvious. Still, even if the world were as it was, he is much too old to join that.
He needs a desk job in some backwater where no-one in Washington or New York will hear from him again. Maybe some kindly NGO will send him to the Solomon islands.

Bay Area Guy said...

"Bay Area Guy: "It's hard to understand how a wildly successful man descends into madness like this." Greeks had an entire art form devoted to this. Called tragedy."

Nobody loves the Greek tragedies more than me, but I also adhere to the "Occam's Razor" rule of life. If you have a young beautiful wife (Huma), but you spend time "sexting" 15 year old girls 3,000 miles away, then something has greatly disrupted your sex life and psyche too.

I hypothesize it is lack of sex with Huma the Puma. And, this type of problem (lack of nooky), doesn't quite measure up to the splendid fables of Odysseus, Helen of Troy, and the Titans.

Virgil Hilts said...

Rae said - so change the law. . .
That's such a bad argument. There are all sorts of bad laws that because of the ratchet effect (epitomized by your quip) never get undone by legislators. That's why sodomy and fornication laws stayed on books for decades after they stopped being enforced. My state did not get rid of its "infamous crime against nature" criminal statute until the 1990s.
Per ACLU (describing WA state): "Under current Washington law, even any minor involved simply in consensual sexting with a person his or her own age faces felony charges, up to five years in prison, and mandatory sex offender registration. One cannot understate the severity of these penalties when applied to the very minors the law was intended to protect from exploitation."
Rae, are you really in favor or enforcing this law against every teenager that engages in consensual sexting in the State of WA? If the State managed to seize some snapchat server on which all such exchanges had been inadvertently preserved, are you fine with WA prosecuting and adding to the sex registry the 25% of teenagers in WA who have probably done this? Really?

walter said...

If we are gonna test fanciful hypotheticals, how does HRC do against F*ckface Von Clownstick? https://t.co/nQ43tsesww

— Anthony Weiner (@anthonyweiner)

Thorley Winston said...

I remember when Anthony Weiner was first elected to Congress in 1998. He was featured in a special about the new members of Congress who were elected at the time that Speaker Gingrich was resigning. What I remembered about him was how young he looked and how he was bragging to reporters that Gingrich was resigning because he was afraid to have to go up against him in Congress. And pretty soon he will to be known as “registered sex offender and Clinton confidante Anthony Weiner.”

tcrosse said...

It's a Greek tragedy when the Noble are brought low. Not so tragic when it's the Ignoble.
Hillary's story would probably make a good opera: the fallen Queen, the faithless husband, the loyal confidante, and the hubris. But you'd have to do something about the voice.

John henry said...

I blame Huma and Islamic female genital mutilation (FGM)

John Henry

John henry said...

Blogger Bay Area Guy said...
If you have a young beautiful wife (Huma)

The problem is that young beautiful wife probably has non-functional lady parts. (FGM)

So, as someone else mentioned, no sexual satisfaction at home. What's he gonna do?

I am surprised it was only sexting

John Henry

Bay Area Guy said...

Two years in prison for "sexting"? .

Wow, seems kinda harsh. The victim, I understand, did not want to even press charges.

Poor Weiner. He got mixed up in the Clinton vortex, and is getting whipsawed in all different direction.

Solution: Divorce Huma, remain involved in your son's life, abandon all designs on politics, move to Tacoma Washington or somewhere similar, get normal job, after 5 years of stability, write really juicy book on what actually happened.

Todd said...

Curious George said...

If he was any kind of a man he would just off himself.

5/19/17, 9:11 AM


I believe that is at the root of his problem, his "offing himself".

Bada bing, mic drop...

Interested Bystander said...

It's almost sad to watch the slow motion self destruction of a man. Even a slimy turd like Wiener. This guy was on his way to big things, already a major power broker in the Democrat orbit. He wasted it all because he couldn't stop himself from exposing himself to teenage girls. American will forgive almost anything given enough time. Look at Mel Gibson (racism) or even Richard Nixon (being a Republican, being a powerful Republican). But not when you get caught, apologize, then get caught again. He must have a pathology working in there somewhere.

buwaya said...

"The problem is that young beautiful wife probably has non-functional lady parts. (FGM)"

Her parents were Indian Muslims and she was born in the US. This is not a general Indian or Pakistani practice IIRC. She has rather good scholarly genes on both sides and probably should have married another academic. In another universe she would have a couple of kids and would be a prominent volunteer mom in civic life in some college town.

I think she married down, frankly, and that may be at the root of all this. She hooked up with a grifter on his way up, probably influenced by her false mentor Hilary. More than one person has been led astray by evil friends,.

Rob said...

And at the Washington Post, the story is reported by a Miss Bever. Perfect.

walter said...

I doubt she would have hooked up with a horndog like Carlos if she had an issue with sex. But maybe she deserves an Oscar...."Yes Carlos! Yessssss!!!!"

Rob said...

(In an unusual twist, Bever is hard on Weiner.)

Snark said...

It's always possible he just did what he did because he wanted to, but a behaviour THAT compulsive means it has to be considered that it was a means to modulate his anxiety, his emotions - an internal brokenness of some kind. A deeply formed habit can become a weakness of the brain rather than a weakness of the mind ora moral weakness. Either way, this legal result tempers some of my disgust to pity.

James K said...

And pretty soon he will to be known as “registered sex offender and Clinton confidante Anthony Weiner.”

Don't forget "Chuck Schumer protégé."

Todd said...

Rob said...

5/19/17, 1:01 PM


Hat-tip to Rob, well played sir, well played indeed!

John henry said...

Buwaya,

Huma's father was born in New Delhi, mother born in what is now Pakistan.

Huma was born in US but raised from age 2 to about 17 in Saudi Arabia. Her mother is a professor of sociology in Jeddah Saudi Arabia.

Her mother has written favorably about FGM in her Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (which Huma was editor of until 2008)

I think the logical assumption is that she was FGM'd by her mother (or with Mom's particpation) in Saudi Arabia where they practice a fairly extreme form of it.

I think we need to see some photos.

It would also be nice if someone could look into Huma got a security clearance and how she had $400,000 to buy a DC townhouse for cash when she was still an intern.

But that's another issue.

John Henry

Rabel said...

Let's all sing!

Somebody should have baked a few more cookies.

Big Mike said...

Time to talk Anthony Weiner again.

Oh! Please say it's not so, Professor. The world has seen too much of Anthony and his weiner already.

Infinite Monkeys said...

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Bill Clinton quoted this, or misquoted. He said, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make angry." You would think that a Rhodes scholar would know that it's the British "mad" = crazy, not the American "mad" = angry.

I remember him saying it during a speech, but I can't find the transcript now. I did find where he said it in an Oprah interview - http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/oprah-interviews-president-bill-clinton/all

It's been 20 years since he made the speech and it still bothers me. I don't know if he's ignorant or thinks we are. Could be both.

Earnest Prole said...

Huma denied him sex for a year or two, Hillary told him that if he cheated on Huma like Bill cheated on her, then she would cut his nuts off. Blocked from any pathway to garner any real, gentle, physical, warm, female intimacy, he resorted to "sexting" strange girls via his cell phone as "Carlos Danger"

I can't recommend the documentary Weiner highly enough. Huma's withering, eye-rolling contempt for him is palpable in every scene.

readering said...

I just saw Tosca. I like the idea of an opera!

Bay Area Guy said...

Huma the Puma files for divorce.

Tony, buddy, being subjugated, humiliated and then discarded, carries a heavy burden, Bro.

But, you can redeem yourself. We are a forgiving people. We like second acts.

And, most importantly, you have some leverage to make it happen. $5 Million big ones for a tell-all book. I know we can get it. You'll have some time to write it in the joint. I'll take my standard 6%. We'll hire some good editors to story-board it. I gotta guy named, Laslo, to spice it up a bit. He's a literary genius. We'll make a fortune. Let's fight back, Tony, baby. You can do this! Get back at these a-holes who kept you down for so long!

StephenFearby said...

"...Yet I remained in denial even as the world around me fell apart.”

“I — I had hit bottom. Through treatment I found the courage to take a moral inventory of my defects.” He said he began a program of recovery and mental health treatment that he was continuing.

“I accept full responsibility for my conduct,” he told Judge Preska. “I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse.”

'...Mr. Devlin-Brown said that his client had “accepted full responsibility” for his conduct...[and] Mr. Weiner would have no further comment and “remains focused on his recovery.”

Like the Cannibal Cop, Weiner engaged in activities that made his brain feel better. We all do that. Except the more rational among us try to avoid doing stuff that can result in jail time.

Weiner is obnoxious but not a dummy...except he's now going to the slammer.

Do you think that the obligatory proffer that he has engaged in both talk therapy and horse therapy ("equine assisted psychotherapy, a relatively new branch of psychotherapy in which individuals interact with horses to help them learn skills in communication, trust and discipline")...

'...After he failed to get the halter on any of three horses in the ring, one of the Garfield students, Taquon, 15, was asked if he thought the process would help him.

“No,” he said. “I don’t like horses. They’re crazy. I don’t trust nobody. I just don’t. I don’t trust the horses, either.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/09horsenj.html

...has changed the way Weiner's brain works? Probably not in a material way.

I recently posted on a non-pharmaceutical intervention that had pretty dramatic positive results on personality disorder (a really tough nut to crack). If Huma-Huma is reading this, she might consider advising Weiner to give it a try.

Clin EEG Neurosci. 2009 Jan;40(1):5-10.
QEEG guided neurofeedback therapy in personality disorders: 13 case studies.

"...RESULTS: Twelve out of 13 antisocial personality disorder subjects who received 80-120 sessions of NFB training showed significant improvement based on SA-45 questionaries, MMPI, T.O.V.A. and qEEGlNx Link data base results, and parent interviews (mean age: 41.6, SD: 5.8).

When we compare the brainwaves of personality disorder subjects with normals we see abnormal brainwave patterns.

All the subjects with personality disorders had excessive frontal alpha, theta and beta abnormalities in their qEEG compared with normal peers through the neurometrics. Alpha, theta and beta coherence abnormalities were also noted."

'...NFB treatment is provided by psychologists who are not involved in any conversation with the subjects other than to explain how to control their brainwaves. This approach was welcomed by the subjects, and all of them admitted that this treatment was different from previous ones, because no one advised them what to do with their life, and our approach did not seem "a challenge to them.'

https://tinyurl.com/labp3k5

There is now something also out there called QEEG-guided pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which may be used in conjunction with QEEG-guided neurofeedback. It can reduce the number of training sessions (to address abnormal brain amplitude and connectivity issues) quite a bit.

YMMV


Rae said...

Rae, are you really in favor or enforcing this law against every teenager that engages in consensual sexting in the State of WA? If the State managed to seize some snapchat server on which all such exchanges had been inadvertently preserved, are you fine with WA prosecuting and adding to the sex registry the 25% of teenagers in WA who have probably done this? Really?

Honestly, I think we could do with probably 90% fewer laws in this country. But the government has to enforce the laws on the books, otherwise we are no longer in a nation where rule of law matters a whit. So change the law. And suffer the consequences, if you think it worth the effort.

Rae said...

...and I really don't think you should text your junk to underage girls.

Gabriel said...

@Virgil Hilts:Rae, are you really in favor or enforcing this law against every teenager that engages in consensual sexting in the State of WA?

What would be wrong with changing the law so that only legal adults like Weiner can go to jail over it? That you didn't acknowledge this possibility and discuss it means you either didn't think very hard about Rae's position, or were arguing in bad faith.

So I ask you, what would be wrong with changing the WA law so that only legal adults like Weiner can go to jail over it? That way creepy perverts get punished while minors don't have their lives ruined.

So, up or down, should be legal for people like Weiner to engage in sexting with underage girls?

walter said...

Ole Huma waited till now to not wait any time at all.
Weird...