The man is an idiot.

On 9/26/2017 at 9:02 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Well, Roy Moore won.

Get ready for the ride of a lifetime. Like Moore's supporters said, the deal is Trumpism, not Trump the man. Trumpism is what they vote for.

And we now a strong precedent is set and we get to witness major history in the making.

It appears that the President does not support the anti-homosexual or/and bizarre theocracy agenda of the Republican candidate ... such is minor history. 

Quote

Trump doesn't share GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore's controversial views, White House says
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters in no uncertain terms that President Donald Trump does not share Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore's views on religion and other issues.

The White House does not see "any parallels" between Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore's controversial beliefs and those of President Donald Trump, said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday.

"I know where the president stands on specific issues, and I don't see any parallels on that front," Sanders told reporters at the daily press briefing.

A bit wishy-washy, but still ...

Quote

Sarah Huckabee Sanders: ‘We Don’t Agree’ with Outlandish Comments from Roy Moore

Huckabee Sanders said she didn’t want to “get into a back-and-forth on political endorsements,” but she was asked whether Trump shares any of Moore’s controversial views.

She said, “Not that I’m aware of. I have not taken a deep dive on every comment that the Senate nominee has made, but I certainly know where the President stands on those issues and wouldn’t see any parallel between the two of them on that front.”

A bit later, when the topic circled back to Moore, Huckabee Sanders said, “I would certainly say we don’t agree with those comments, but in terms of whether or not I’m gonna get into the back-and-forth over another candidate, we’re here to focus on the President, the President’s agenda.”
 

Here is Sarah Sanders explaining that the President does not actually support the bigotry of Roy Moore, in her inimitable manner of speaking.

In other unrelated news, the President may be preparing some discipline for one of his cabinet choices. It looks like the Secretary of Health and Human Services had a taste for expensive charter flights ... (and it turns out he was not the only cabinet member to go just a wee bit wild on the taxpayer's dime. See Zinke, Pruitt, phone booth, charter ...)

According to Dan Diamond of Politico, HHS had a ready response to the posh travel issue. This is from one week ago:

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

In other unrelated news, the President may be preparing some discipline for one of his cabinet choices.

Secretary Price has fallen on his sword, according to the Associated Press ...

Back to Republican candidate Roy Moore. Here is a revealing interview with him, "Roy Moore expresses his views on homosexuality in the U.S."

Somebody said something bad about Roy Moore in the Washington Post ...

I can add a twenty-fifth reason why an Objectivish person might love or support Roy Moore:  he likes his ladies young. Allegations include that he Kevin-Spaceyed  fourteen year old Leigh Corfman into touching his proud member, while he pawed her -- in Weinstein fashion -- through her bra and underpants. Or, as one wag put it, "Somebody said something bad about a hardcore Christian in the Washington Post," with the load-bearing wall being 'Someone [Leigh Corfman] is a liar.'

Quote

The legal age of consent in Alabama, then and now, is 16. Under Alabama law in 1979, and today, a person who is at least 19 years old who has sexual contact with someone older than 12 and younger than 15 has committed sexual abuse in the second degree. Sexual contact is defined as touching of sexual or intimate parts. The crime is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.

The law then and now also includes a section on enticing a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts. That is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

 Now, among the uncounted reasons one might support Roy Moore objectively is that girls lie about sexual abuse, harassment and molestation, and that you cannot trust mainstream media to get at truths. Of course, if the New York Times broke a Harvey Weinstein story, well.  Sauce for the goose, no sauce for the gander. It's OK if you're a Republican.

Funny note on the internets:  people who believed that Hillary Clinton ran a satanic child sex ring from the basement of Comet Pizza are now unable to process the possibility that good old boy Roy Moore got his jollies with a fourteen year old.

From the White House, a note on the allegations ...

Our Milo tried to make the distinction between those attracted to pre-pubescent children and children past the age of puberty. Judge Moore Speaks!

13 hours ago, Notable Pedophilia/Epebophilia Expert said:

In Moore's case, they even got pedophiles wrong. Once a pedophile starts, he doesn't stop. Everybody knows that. And he certainly doesn't like 18 year olds. 

Pedophilia is now -- in some places -- a blob term.

In some quarters, pedophilia covers the waterfront, anything between Pizzagate!-age toddlers and girls or boys fourteen to sixteen. Milo Yiannopoulos is one of those people tried in the court of public opinion for 'a defense of pedophilia.' He did not at any time defend pedophilia in so many words, but went on record with an opinion that sometimes boys past the age of puberty can give informed consent to a sexual relationship with an adult. That does not stop anyone from denouncing him as a pedophilia-defender, but hey.

The word that Milo did not utter was ephebophilia.  We are acquainted with an 'ephebophilia defense' here at OL -- in relation to the scandal about James Peron and his expulsion from New Zealand. See The Smearing of Jim Peron.

Anyway, setting aside the hoopla in alternative media about a family friend of Jason Douglas Lewis's wife who purportedly recorded a 'pay to accuse' ploy from a reporter named Beth, I'd rather establish whether or not Roy Moore at one time enjoyed dating "young ladies." I am assembling a sound file from yesterday's Sean Hannity interview with Moore, and will lock this entry until I upload it later today. The major Moore denial -- he says he never even met the person who was purportedly 14 when he Kevin Spacey-ed her pudenda.
 

Highlights:

Hannity: You don’t specifically remember having a girlfriend that was in her late teens even at that time?

Moore: I don’t remember that and I don’t remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother.

...

Hannity: Would it be unusual for you as a 32-year-old guy to have dated a woman as young as 17, that would be what, a 15-year difference, or a girl 18—do you remember dating girls that young at that time?”

Moore: Not generally no. If I did, I’m not going to dispute anything, but I don’t remember anything like that. 

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Pedophilia is now -- in some places -- a blob term.

William,

LOL...

That might be, but in my meaning, and in a "some place" like the general mainstream of our culture, a pedophile means an adult who seeks children for sex because he or she feels an urge to do so--and even then, in this meaning, the urge is optional. An adult who tries to have sex with kids is enough.

If you are having trouble groking how a concept like that could get into the mainstream, may I suggest mainstream TV shows like To Catch a Predator, Law and Order: SVU, and so on? The gotcha crew keeps hammering that pedophilia is a psychological term yada yada yada and doesn't apply to all the sting subjects of those shows, but the general public thinks, man, look at those pedophiles.

Some people even say the word has turned into a blob term.  

I guess the general public thinks words can have more than one meaning (like on any page of any dictionary), especially when they have conceptual referents like TV shows.

Dictionaries and eyeballs must burn the hell out of gotcha folks...

Michael

EDIT: btw - When Milo spoke his infamous words, he spoke from the perspective of a victim when he was a kid who is now trying to justify what the hell happened to him, not as him being an adult who seeks kids for sex. That should mean something, although, I admit, many folks in the general public who use the broad meaning above are not impressed by the difference. 

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Anyway, setting aside the hoopla in alternative media about a family friend of Jason Douglas Lewis's wife who purportedly recorded a 'pay to accuse' ploy from a reporter named Beth,

If nobody followed the link above, it goes to this tweet:

-- that tweet is the first of a series. In follow up tweets, some detail was filled in.

One interesting thing about Jason Douglas Lewis's Twitter personality is claims made about his family and their military service. Here is one:

His second brother Richard?

He is talking about military medals, having claimed at various times to have had two and/or four Purple Hearts and one or two Bronze Stars. So he has a dead brother Richard, and another living brother Richard ...

Another brother -- or maybe the same dead-alive brother:

-- among my favourite Doug Lewis tweets is this one:

There is more in the Twitter thread ... but the gist of it is that Mikael Nassen is Devin Kelley.

The image on the right is taken from a Swedish engineering and project management company, Arega. Doug says there were contact lenses used to change the look.  I don't know ...

Yup.

"Did I mention that my non-forensic expert brother, with or without legs, just happens to be a border guard?

This isn't to disparage his many dead and/or alive brothers. Although two managed to work happily as experts and guards, a couple of other brothers were less lucky, it seems.

Lucky homeless vet brothers!  In other Doug Lewis news, did you know that his trucking company sent a huge aid shipment to both Texas and Florida? Well, now you do ...

A true patriot indeed.  The name of his company, he says, is Wolfpack Trucking. I will report back with more detail ...

[I meant to mention that Doug has mastered nine languages, including Japanese, Russian and English, and that he served 22 years in the Navy, some of that time in the Seals, served twice  in Vietnam, that he was also in the US Secret Service, and received a military "rating" as a Mass Communications Specialist. He is 74, has beaten colon cancer, and has a collection of AR-15s, and canvassed for Trump with all his (and his dead-alive brothers) medals on his chest.]

Some might say that this is a fabulist, but not me ...

On the other hand, when you do a little arithmetic on his claims of military service (joined the US Secret Service after 22 years in the Navy), he apparently joined the armed forces at age five. 

William,

All that's interesting... fabulists will fabulize... but... any news on the recording he claimed the friend of his wife has of WaPo reporter BETH offering her money to make a false claim against Moore?

That is, if he has a wife?

If he is a real person?

If he's not a misdirection or honeypot account to hide a different investigation?

If James O'Keefe and Jerome Corsi are really following him?

If?... If?... If?...

Man, this conspiracy stuff is dizzying...

Michael

Originally ...

22 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Looks like there's a tape of a Wapo reporter offering a woman in Alabama $1,000 to say she was sexually abused by Moore. According to the alt media grapevine (see here), this tape is already in the hands of the DA and FBI.

The sole source of the "grapevine" reporting is Jason Douglas Lewis and his tweet series.  Whether or not to believe his telling is subject to rational inquiry.

5 hours ago, WSS quoted somebody, said:

Once a pedophile starts, he doesn't stop. Everybody knows that. And he certainly doesn't like 18 year olds. 

The reason I highlighted this is that I didn't quite grok it. "Everybody knows that" is not evident. That "he [Moore] certainly doesn't like 18 year olds" is also not immediately evident to me. You may or may not want to supply some warrants for the two claims of knowledge.

*******************************************

-- I am still editing the four main Milo Yiannopoulos appearances (from the Drunken Peasants podcast, the Gavin McInnes show, the Joe Rogan Show, and from his apology), piecing together video and audio. I think it bears listening to, considering the full remarks. But until I get that together, here is the thing about pedophiles that Milo said on Drunken Peasants:

"You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty."

Now, as to the Roy Moore allegations, I don't believe for a moment that he is or was a pedophile. That he sought to date teenaged girls in his 30s seems more likely than that he is sexually-attracted to girls below the age of puberty. That he invited young Leigh to touch his genitals is ... disputed.

I do think that a Roy Moore in the Senate is something an Objectivish person might defend on purely democratic grounds: if the voters in the special election choose him, that is one of those "the people have spoken" moments. On any other grounds ... well, I think the 24 reasons above are more than needed to be repulsed by the guy, on reasonably Objectivish grounds. 

So, Michael, if you do support Roy Moore for Senate, I think I get it on democratic grounds. 

As for the sole source announcing a 'tape' of Washington Post bribery ... there is no trucking company in Florida by the name he published. There is slightly different named company some hundred miles from his presumed home in Apopka ... this is it:

A former colleague of Roy Moore's (from the time he worked in Gadsden courthouse) is seen by some people as corroborating the notion that he liked to date the "young ladies," even if Leigh is a dirty bankrupt liar ...

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

The reason I highlighted this is that I didn't quite grok it. "Everybody knows that" is not evident.

William,

Once again, I refer you to popular culture.

A phrase like "everyone knows that" refers to a popular understanding, not a scientific one. (In fact, everybody knows that, except people who post in O-Land.  )

If I had more time, I could probably point you to about 200 mainstream TV shows or so where the quote of mine you posted is stated as fact by the authority or law enforcement characters in the respective story. It's about as evident as you can get for a semi-taboo topic in the popular culture.

If someone is going to try to nail Moore for being a pedophile and expect this to result in votes, it occurs to me they might want to look into how voters understand the term.

In communication, this is called message to market fit.

So I speak about groking popular understanding. You may not agree that popular understanding is valid for anything--not even propaganda and smears, but it is what I am talking about. And I say anyone who ignores popular understanding and tries to do propaganda or wage a smear campaign with that same public is just plain incompetent. It's not hard to predict their failure...

Michael

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Now, as to the Roy Moore allegations, I don't believe for a moment that he is or was a pedophile.

William,

btw - Here you seem to understand perfectly what pedophile means according to popular understanding. Just by your tone you see how ridiculous it feels to say that.

So imagine the incompetence of the idiots who are promoting that as a smear.

Michael

Thread split ... 

22 hours ago, william.scherk said:

[H]ere is the thing about pedophiles that Milo said on Drunken Peasants:

"You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty."

Now, as to the Roy Moore allegations, I don't believe for a moment that he is or was a pedophile. That he sought to date teenaged girls in his 30s seems more likely than that he is sexually-attracted to girls below the age of puberty. That he invited young Leigh to touch his genitals is ... disputed.

The Milo video+audio is here: Milo and the third rail.

Here is a summary quote that might underline why an Objectivish person (or an Ayn Rand-influenced person) would not support the candidacy of Roy Moore ...

"Moore, an Alabama native and a Vietnam veteran, has been motivated for his whole career by primarily by one belief: that his evangelical interpretation of Christianity should govern society." 

Heh.

Now I know what the "Likes" number means.

It means how many tweets I have liked, not how many people liked my account.

Wow... Look at how many times I have liked tweets by President Trump. And didn't do jack on Twitter otherwise.

Michael

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism! Pusillanimous Pussyfooters! Effete corps of impudent snobs!

On 11/11/2017 at 3:54 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

My gut tells me it's a fake account used to flush out anti-Trump folks and, possibly, send clandestine messages or whatever. I might be wrong, though. For all I know, it could be an anti-Trumper trying to mimic a Trump supporter with rube caricature features. Or it actually might be a dude with too much time on his hands. Who knows?

I am not the only one doing a bit of research** work with the account. But it looks like the attention was unwanted ...

_________________

 ** minor Twitter nabobs @15c3PO & @scott_gs -- along with medium-sized nabob @AdamWeinstein -- did some significant digging and analysis. I am mostly convinced now that this is a real American #MAGA supporter, but one who got tangled up in the fronds of his own fabulism. 

It happens ...

Meanwhile, in the Hoopla industry ...

Spoiler

 Seung Min Kim / Politico:

McConnell: ‘I believe the women’ accusing Roy Moore  —  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday that Alabama Senate GOP candidate Roy Moore should leave the race, saying he believes the women who have accused Moore of sexual misconduct.  —  “I think he should step aside …

Discussion: ABC News, Taylor Marsh and Political Wire

RELATED:

 Greg Sargent / Washington Post:

Ignore the spin.  Trump and the GOP have made a devil's bargain with Roy Moore.  —  THE MORNING PLUM:  —  Top White House officials have now made President Trump's position on Roy Moore absolutely clear: Trump does not believe that the allegations that Moore initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old …

Discussion: Courier-Journal, ABC News, ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, New Republic, Business Insider, The Daily Caller, New York Times, NPR, NBC News and Washington Free Beacon, more at Mediagazer »

 Travis Gettys / Raw Story:

'There's more to come from this creep': MSNBC panel disturbed by Roy Moore's remarks to Sean Hannity  —  MSNBC's “Morning Joe” addressed the continuing fallout from revelations of Roy Moore's decades-old sexual relationships with teenage girls — and the Republican Party's response.

 David Zurawik / Baltimore Sun:

How Sinclair compromised the news on an Alabama station it owns to support Roy Moore  —  I have been writing a lot lately about the way Sinclair Broadcast Group has become a leading player in the right-wing echo chamber that includes Fox News and Breitbart.  —  This is a dangerous development …

Discussion: The Montgomery Advertiser, RedState, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Shareblue Media, New York Times, Breitbart, USA Today, Daily Kos, Right Wing Watch, The Daily Caller, AOLand Refinery29, more at Mediagazer »

 Associated Press:

Moore threatens lawsuit over story that threatens campaign  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Alabama Republican Roy Moore says a lawsuit will be filed over the newspaper report carrying allegations that he had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl four decades ago and that neither Democrats nor Republicans …

Discussion: RedState, Bangor Daily News, Axios, Daily Kos and Joe.My.God.

 Clare Foran / The Atlantic: 
Keith Ellison Believes Democrats Will Take Back the House and Senate

Discussion: Washington Post, Washington Free Beacon, New York Times, FiveThirtyEight and No More Mister Nice Blog

 Paul Gattis / al.com: 
Roy Moore says he will file lawsuit against The Washington Post

Discussion: CNN, Washington Post, New Republic, NBC News, Media Matters for America, The Federalist, USA Today, Weekly Standard, Washington Blade, Washington Free Beacon, TVNewser, New York Times, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Alabama Political Reporter, The Daily Caller, Mediaite and TheBlaze

 Brian Beutler / Crooked Media: 
BREITBART'S COMING EXPLOITATION OF THE BELIEVE WOMEN MOVEMENTNEW!

Discussion: Boing Boing and The Hill

3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

My predictions are sometimes shit, so I will go out on a limb:  I predict Roy Moore will weather the storm, be elected to the Senate on December 12, and take his seat, and not be expelled by a 2/3 vote of his colleagues. One guy who wants an Evangelical Kingdom in America will not do appreciable damage to the Republican brand ... nor will a Senator Moore be a drag on GOP votes in 2018.

William,

That is my prediction, also.

There are many reasons to not want Roy Moore to be elected. So why resort to making stuff up or impossible to prove if real? I smell desperation and arrogance. 

Here's what I mean. How's this for starters?

Hey, Alabama! Nobody denies Judge Moore's character and beliefs. He's a good man. But do you really want a lawmaker who won't follow the law? This man had to be removed twice as judge. Why? He wouldn't follow the law. Will he be different as Senator? Will he last if elected or will he refuse to follow the law again? A lawman cannot decide which laws he likes. His swears an oath to the law. That is the way of our great country. We are a nation of laws, not men--not stubborn men who deny the law. Roy Moore might mean well, but the road to hell is paved with good stubborn intentions. We are a nation of laws, not tyrants. We the people make the law and we the people follow the law. That's what makes America great. Do the right thing and elect someone who upholds the law. (Then talk about the opponent.)

This is something Scott Adams calls the "high ground maneuver." Alabamans agree with law and order and you appeal to that as their hero's weakness. 

I can do other anti-Moore messages, too, and I believe they would resonate.  But the main problem I see with Moor's opponents is that they have contempt for typical Alabamans. Here's an indication of what I mean:

They just couldn't help themselves, poor things. A chance to mock rubes?  

Don't expect this to win any elections soon in Alabama. The folks who hold this view of Alabamans might get a chuckle and feel superior as they yuk it up at the SNL skit, but don't expect them to be elected to a major office in Alabama.

There are way too many people who oppose Moore who do yuk it up and they don't hide it--even as they talk to Alabamans. So I don't give them much of a chance of taking Moore out.

I, also, don't give much of a chance for sleaze to do the job. That is, unless Moore confesses and I don't see that happening. WaPo, Allred, etc. are considered sleazy to conservative Alabamans. Having the very essence of sleaze in their minds accuse their hero of sleaze is such a persuasion mistake, I stand in awe that the establishment is trying it. This comes from arrogance, contempt and breathtaking communication blindness.

I don't expect WaPo, Allred & Co. to have such self-awareness, though. I think they would find being looked down on as sleazy by the backward ignorant hickey hick hicks in Alabama--by their inferiors who should know their place--as too incredible to believe.  

Michael

btw - In the dark corners of the Internet, I keep hearing it said that Karl Rove is the one behind this eruption of women accusing Moore.

Michael

On 11/13/2017 at 10:39 AM, william.scherk said:

I am not the only one doing a bit of research** work with the account. But it looks like the attention was unwanted ...

-- as readers will note, none of the Tweets from Doug Lewis quoted upthread has survived till today.  That is because the account holder deleted the whole damned set of tweets ... and the account itself.  As Gomer Pyle might put it: "Surprise Surprise!" 

Now, has the Gateway Pundit revised their original story entirely based on this apparent fraud/fabulist?  Hmmm**. What they have done is select from another Twitter account, a self-styled handwriting analyst whose usual area of expertise is World War I flamethrowers.  He has established -- for the conspiracy-minded -- that the yearbook inscription from Roy Moore is a FORGERY.  That's right.  

Gee, who is to be believed?  

Here's the full transcript of the minute-and-a-half 'press conference.' Moore's mother was in attendance, too. pic.twitter.com/X9jk2eaRmt

— Elaina Plott (@elainaplott) November 13, 2017

___________________________________

[I did not screen-grab any of the Doug Lewis tweets that so enthralled the world of skepticism. But I did use OneTab to bookmark some interesting tweets, and OneTab kept saved the text within the now disappeared account:

https://www.one-tab.com/page/JuFiBh_KQwiZIYHw02jnsA