New York Times Editorial, "Emails Again, This Time With Anthony Weiner": When Two Scoundrels Ran for President

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Apparently, Hillary and friends failed to smash or bleach all of the computers and communication devices housing her emails, and now a new treasure trove of emails has turned up in a computer shared by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. It appears that the FBI discovered these new emails as part of an investigation of allegations concerning the use of the computer by Weiner for purportedly exchanging explicit messages with a minor.

In an editorial entitled "Emails Again, This Time With Anthony Weiner," The New York Times concludes:

"Mr. Comey’s failure to provide any specifics about a new, potentially important development, less than two weeks before Election Day, is confounding. As Mr. Comey put it in July, 'The American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest.' They deserve details even more urgently today."

Comey's failure to provide "specifics" is "confounding"? Not at all. He is not the brightest light, as revealed by his responses on July 7, 2016 to Representative Trey Gowdy during the House Oversight Committee's hearing into the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. He is also exceedingly cautious.

What's in this latest treasure trove of emails? The messages obviously include classified US government communications, otherwise Comey would not have informed Congress that they are "pertinent." If there was any way that Comey could have avoided this disclosure, I'm certain he would have done so.

Where does it all go from here? A pity that Americans cannot be granted a mulligan and be provided the opportunity to choose different presidential candidates.

It just can't get worse.

Gail Collins, "Trump Meets the Mean Boys": Will Hillary Soon Meet the FBI?

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Two weeks ago,  I observed that The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, Yahoo News, Bloomberg and UPI had all published articles concerning the State Department subpoena served on the Clinton Foundation, but The New York Times decided to ignore the matter entirely. I asked whether the Times is still a newspaper, or, if it has become a highly politicized, self-serving propaganda machine. Well, it now appears that the Times has belatedly woken up to the stench emanating from the Clinton campaign. First, there was Thursday's editorial asking that Hillary make the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, et al., available to the public. And yesterday, in a Times article entitled "Unclassified Clinton Emails May Have Consequences for a Key Deputy" by Steven Lee Myers, we were told re the Hillary home email server imbroglio:

"Even admirers of Mrs. Clinton’s record as secretary of state acknowledge that the use of the server had consequences for her select circle of confidants. They include Mr. [Jake] Sullivan, who as director of policy planning and a deputy chief of staff, handled the most pressing policies and international crises during her tenure as secretary. Others were Cheryl D. Mills, her chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, who was then also a deputy chief of staff, and other senior diplomats who sent messages to her now under scrutiny.

. . . .

Several of the emails released so far make clear, even in redacted form, that officials understood the protocol for discussing classified information, including Mrs. Clinton herself."

Can the FBI cannot avoid recommending indictments? I don't think so. This could get very nasty for Sullivan, Mills and Abedin, and later, for their beloved boss.

On the subject of "nasty," Gail Collins has graced us today with a tepid New York Times op-ed entitled "Trump Meets the Mean Boys." Collins again fails to mention any of the "nastiness" involving the Clinton campaign, and instead directs her barbs at the feud that has erupted between Rubio and Trump. Collins, who once received from Trump a copy of her column with "The Face of a Dog!" written over her picture, writes:

"You can understand why Rubio felt that getting personal was the only way to go. Trump has been breezing through the campaign without making any discernible effort to come up with coherent policies, or even to keep his stories straight."

Collins's conclusion:

"The great moment of debate night, as far as I’m concerned, came after the actual debate was over, and Trump suggested in a CNN postgame interview, that the I.R.S. might audit him a lot 'because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian … and maybe there’s a bias.'

Then in a CNN post-postgame interview Trump took it all back. ('I don’t think it applies.') As only he can."

However, Collins misses the point: Trump is a bully sans substance, and finally someone, i.e. Rubio, has shown the courage to needle this flimflam artist, whose Trump University has been exposed as a fraud. Let's hope that it is not too late.

Christie's endorsement of the Republican poster boy for narcissistic personality disorders? Sic [New Jersey] transit gloria mundi, with the emphasis on "sick."

Susan Jacoby, "Weiner’s Women": Welcome to Our Brave New Narcissistic World

In a guest New York Times op-ed entitled "Weiner’s Women" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/opinion/weiners-women.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1375261720-HN38mVWZdCEtqYLKF1H5Mw), Susan Jacoby, a renowned best selling author who tells us that she is a feminist, writes:

"The morality of virtual sex, as long as no one is cheating on a real partner, is not what bothers me. What’s truly troubling about the whole business is that it resembles the substitution of texting for extended, face-to-face time with friends. Virtual sex is to sex as virtual food is to food: you can’t taste, touch or smell it, and you don’t have to do any preparation or work. Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography."

"Diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content"? Query: Is it only about "sexting," or does this diminution of human contact also occur when we engage in compulsive texting? Or does it also involve manic fixations with Facebook, which has turned "friendship" into a numbers game?

I am reminded of the picture of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin working at their dining room table, each talking on a cell phone, with his and her computers (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/anthony-weiner-and-huma-abedins-post-scandal-playbook.html?pagewanted=all). This is marriage in the 21st century?

Is their all-consuming quest for power, symbiotic at best, any different from that of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have redefined marriage?

And was there any more "human" substance to Eliot Spitzer's liaisons with prostitutes?

Yes, as we become more involved with ourselves, it becomes increasingly cold out there.

Winter is indeed coming.

Maureen Dowd, "Quit Is the Way to Roll": Can You Catch a Virus from Sexting?

Definition of VOYEUR
. . . .
2: a prying observer who is usually seeking the sordid or the scandalous

- Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/voyeur)

And so, Maureen Dowd has now shifted her attention from the Whitey Bulger racketeering and murder  trial in Boston to the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal in New York. Discussion by Maureen of the George Zimmerman verdict? Too hot to handle. Leave it to Charles Blow.

"Weiner . . . has turned shamelessness into performance art," Dowd quips in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Quit Is the Way to Roll" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/opinion/dowd-quit-is-the-way-to-roll.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1375244043-nRHIm8MpinbcUqHZQLJTNg). Questioning "whether cyber-sex is more or less forgivable than illicit sex the old-fashioned way," Dowd writes:

"Aside from being a gift to clowns, hacks, punsters, rivals and the writers of “The Good Wife,” Carlos Danger is also a gift to political-scandal survivors. His behavior is so outlandish and contemptible — the sort of thing that used to require a trench coat and park — that it allows Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton to act huffy."

Hmm, didn't she really mean to say, "Aside from being a gift to clowns, hacks, punsters, rivals, the writers of 'The Good Wife' and . . . Maureen Dowd"?

Maureen continues:

"Some people say Spitzer’s transgressions are more understandable because they were time-immemorial victimless transactions with well-paid humans in the flesh, while Weiner’s digital compulsions with women he didn’t know were peephole exhibitionism and insanely 'reckless,' as the new [New York City mayoral] front-runner Christine Quinn charged."

Yup, Weiner's behavior was just as stupid as Quinn's decision to put on a hoodie and declare that George Zimmerman was a criminal, prior to the jury verdict that acquitted him (see: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/blinded-hoodie-article-1.1399158).

Who will be the next mayor of New York, Weiner or Quinn? I wish I could care.

Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing in the race Thomas Friedman, who recently wrote "I Want to Be a Mayor" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-i-want-to-be-a-mayor.html), if it would mean an end to his vapid Times opinion pieces.

What does this all come down to now? Could Anthony and Huma's ties to the Clintons reawaken the Monica Lewinsky scandal and cast a pall over Hillary's 2016 presidential aspirations? Will Hillary again need to declare:

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Stay tuned.