That Ain't Lucky, Brendan. That's Good!

In the ongoing exchange between Sarah Palin and certain lemon-sucking press scolds who consistently, sometimes dutifully carry water for the left wing, it seems to me that "Sarah Barracuda," the little state championship point guard from Wasilla, AK, has still got game, now hasn't she?

The way I count it, that was two in a row for her on her road tour way up here into the historic northeast. Two victories on the road, and deep in enemy territory! Wow! First, there was the Paul Revere ride incident, and then she seems to have blanked 'em on the email flurry.

Was she lucky?

Well . . . as for those 24,000 pages of emails, I'd say this:

Never in the course of media events, has so little been gained, by so many, from so much. Those 13,000 emails of hers were all snooped through, pored over and second guessed repeatedly . . . all to no avail.

Now, you really cannot count the recent Palin tour itself as a separate victory, but the image of a few bloodthirsty scribes actually grousing at her about the possible dangerous conditions created by their decision to follow her bus around from town to town, all whilst grubbing for any tiny tidbit to trash her with, is just priceless. "Her American Flag is too large," they crowed. "It's illegal!"

Can you imagine?

Harken back with me for a moment, dateline Boston, to the risible claim by that stuffy local Boston University history professor, Brendan McConville, who, unable to bring himself to just concede the score about Paul Revere to Sarah Palin, instead improbably sniffed that she was probably just "lucky" when she correctly pointed out one of the lesser-known fact about Revere's famous ride through the Massachusetts countryside. As was reported well by the Boston Herald, quoting McConville:

. . .
"Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, 'Look, there is a mobilization going on that you'’ll be confronting,' and the British are aware as they're marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That's accurate."

. . .

McConville said he also is not convinced that Palin’s remarks reflect scholarship.

"I would call her lucky in her comments," McConville said.

McConville could have been an honest gent about the whole thing and said something like, "Looks to me like Mrs. Palin and her handlers took the time to bone up a little on their American History, or she was paying very close attention during a tour. Either way, good for her. She made her point, and her critics came up short."

But he just couldn't bear to acknowledge her score, and instead he improbably concluded that she must have just gotten lucky. Sure, Brendan! It happens every day, doesn't it? Come on!

So as a result, right there in the Boston Herald, Sarah ended up with the basket and the foul, for a three point conversion.

Anyway, I keep envisioning Sarah appearing at some future event -- or perhaps even making a TV appearance -- with a big smile on her face, sporting a large electric blue political button that simply says, "Lucky!" in big, bold white letters. Or, perhaps we can imagine her husband Todd wearing a tee-shirt saying, "I'm With Lucky!"

When I was a child, acronyms played a far more limited role in popular cultural than they do today, given the recent explosion of texting and and limited keystroke social media, like Twitter, all of which seems to have leapfrogged on the shoulders of frequently abbreviated commenting on story threads, or in emails . . . FYI, LOL, LMAO, WTF, STFU . . . the list is endless.

Probably the most catchy acronym from way back then, was the marketing shorthand for Lucky Strike cigarettes . . . L.S.M.F.T. -- Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. It worked well for them for many, many years.

As kids, naturally such expressions quickly morphed into our own popular re-phrasings such as Loose Suspenders Means Falling Trousers, and other ones that tended to be a little more risque.

But, as also noted there in the Urban Dictionary, at one point in the late '40s the acronym took on a political dimension, even in the years before being printed on the side of the packs of cigarettes . . . "Lord, Save Me From Truman" was indeed a popular rephrasing amongst some Republicans at the time.

How, then, might someone put it as a way to describe the recent out-and-out media effort to get former Governor Palin with the dumpster-diving inquiry onto her years of emails when she was Governor, an effort that, as described in The Telegraph by Tony Harnden, backfired "on her media antagonists."

The trove of more than 13,000 emails detailing almost every aspect of Sarah Palin’s governorship of Alaska, released late on Friday, paints a picture of her as an idealistic, conscientious, humorous and humane woman slightly bemused by the world of politics.

One can only assume that the Left-leaning editors who dispatched teams of reporters to remote Juneau, the Alaskan capital, to pore over the emails in the hope of digging up a scandal are now viewing the result as a rather poor return on their considerable investment.

If anything, Mrs Palin seems likely to emerge from the scrutiny of the 24,000 pages, contained in six boxes and weighing 275 pounds, with her reputation considerably enhanced. As a blogger at Powerline noted, the whole saga might come to be viewed as 'an embarrassment for legacy media'."
. . . . (link in original)

Yeah. There you go. Let's translate:

L. S. M. F. T. in Sarah Palin parlance.

Lame Stream Media Fails Totally!

Sarah was subsequently asked about the "gotcha" squads from media central in an interview by former NJ Superior Court Judge, Andrew Napolitano, on the Fox News Channel:
(video source, ht, William Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

Folks, that ain't lucky. It's good!

Media Message . . . "You Betcha!"

Behold the Enmity of the Elites!

06/10/2011 -- The New York Times and the Washington Post: have each furiously primed the "Palinater Pump" with their direct "crowdsourcing" appeal soliciting the public to help them "investigate" here (NYT), and "contextualize" here (WaPo) the large dump of emails to and from the former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. The documents are being released today by the State of Alaska in response to FOI requests:

Sez Me in reaction to these two media outlet requests:

Someone please tell me how we are not now in the throes of a full blown ideological war here in America?

This action is not just compelling evidence of these two newspapers openly and brazenly enlisting themselves on the side of a political party movement . . . which would itself be a unique and foreboding event in modern American history!

No . . . heretofore, these two news-gathering outlets had tried to maintain at least a pretense of objectivity, a wall of separation between their news and editorial expressions.

This action much more than just further blurs that ever-crumbling line! It is a case of two "elite" news organizations deliberately provoking an electronic mob.

The NYT and the WaPo have just cast aside the last vestiges of their own senses of civility and haughty superiority, couched all these years in claims of pursuing a "higher purpose."

Note the tentative and telling "first offer" from the WaPo . . . the proposed limitation to 100 select deputies . . . which was just as quickly cast aside by them in the face of the NYT open invitation to all! They obviously had at least some initial misgivings, but "monkey see, monkey do" has held sway.

Fingers stabbing away, they both have just pointed accusingly -- out across the angry crowd of nasty little ginned-up ideologues -- at "the hated one."

Nakedly and shamefully demonstrating their own inadequacy to the task, they have each gnashed their teeth, and shouted out loud over the little mob of haters:

"There she is! GET 'ER!

Behold the ugly face of the Enmity of the Elites!


* * *

(The above statement of mine was first posted by me as a portion of a comment on a thread at a post on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion blog describing the actions of the New York Times and the Washington Post in openly soliciting the assistance of legions of Palin-haters on the web to sift through and target items from the large release by the State of Alaska, supposed 24,000 pages of emails to and from Sarah Palin dating from her tenure as the Governor of Alaska.)

He Doesn't Dissemble Well!

(UPDATES (2), below:) Regarding Congressman Anthony Weiner's elusive yFrog account, the one in which the supposedly "hacked-in" photo resided:

In an interview, Congressman Weiner specifically told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the following regarding "his" yFrog account:

"As far as the yFrog account, I'll be very honest with you, I didn't really know for sure what that was until this thing popped up, and I clicked on it, and then it directed me to where these photographs were being kept, an and I, I kind of quickly deleted it and moved on with my life."

(his verbal emphasis in original).

Listen for yourself at 2:10 to 2:25:



Remember now, this took place right at the time of the incident!

So, like Curious George, the Member sees the photo of a member, clicks on it, suddenly discovers he has a yFrog account, with photos in it, and deletes the photo and/or the account!!

So, if there is any proof at all that he, a known social media "technophile," created the yFrog account, and especially if there were any (many?) prior instances of his having sent or "tweeted" photos being kept in that yFrog account, then Weiner was simply dissembling in his interview with Maddow, and she missed, or ignored the obvious opportunity for a follow-up question.

UPDATE: There is proof that he used the yFrog account (some including using the function from his Blackberry), on a few occasions recently -- several uses less than one month before making that comment to Maddow! Having myself posted some of the key information herein in a comment responding on a post at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, another commenter there, @VetHusbandFather quickly researched the issue and responded on the thread by identifying three such instances, two of them on May 5th, and one on February 25th. Therefore, it became clear that, contrary to what he told Rachel Maddow, Congressman Weiner was quite familiar with the yFrog photo posting application!

Details below of his frequent yFrog use, below.*

Now let's turn for a moment to the June 1, 2011 NY Times story "Lawmaker Denies Sending Suggestive Photo but Doesn’t Rule Out It's of Him" written by Raymond Hernandez.

From the story, there is this little tidbit:

. . .
Jack Levin, the chief executive of yFrog, the Twitter-affiliated image and video service that was used to upload the photo, said in an interview on Wednesday that his company did not have reason to believe that its user passwords were exposed or stolen. He said it was possible that the photo could have been sent from Mr. Weiner’s yFrog account through his Twitter password or through a yFrog password.

Mr. Levin said neither Mr. Weiner's office nor any law enforcement authorities had contacted him or his company to inquire about the photo.
. . . .

So, Congressman Weiner claims in an interview with Rachel Maddow that he knew nothing about the yFrog account. Yet his investigators, as of yesterday, had not even contacted yFrog with any inquiries whatsoever about the account, including when it was created, and by whom!

Nor have they inquired about when the specific "offending" photo was uploaded and by whom?

Nor, presumably, have they asked about other photos that were residing in the account?

He doesn't dissemble well!

# # # # #

* UPDATE details: Here are the links to several "tweets" (including two of the three identified by commenter @VetHusbandFather) demonstrating Congressman Weiner's familiarity with the yFrog photo-forwarding application associated with his Twitter account. It turns out that he sent four tweets with yFrog photos attached on May 5th alone, here, here, here, and here. Readers should note that in his hasty response to the public posting of the "underwear shot" from his "yFrog" account, the Congressman apparently deleted several, but not all of the photos from the yFrog account. There is absolutely no question that he is very familiar with the yFrog application and functioning. His statement to the contrary to Rachel Maddow was completely misleading.

In the meantime, Michelle Malkin has also explored this Congressman's familiarity with the yFrog application, and she has identified at least 6 uses of the function in which he uploaded photos from yFrog using his Blackberry.

From her post: (links in original):

Six of these instances were photos tweeted directly from his Blackberry to Twitter. Yfrog has a Twitter app for Blackberry phones and is a default photo host for the Blackberry Twitter app. In other words, Yfrog’s set-up allows a Twitter user to authorize Yfrog as one’s primary photo-hosting site — and bypass a separate sign-in process to the Yfrog site. You can snap a pic with your phone, upload it as part of a Twitter message, and have the yfrog link automatically generate and appear in your tweet.

Weiner’s backers argue that he has no familiarity with Yfrog because he never manually logged into its stand-alone site.

Once again, lets review what he told Rachel Maddow:

"As far as the yFrog account, I'll be very honest with you, I didn't really know for sure what that was until this thing popped up, and I clicked on it, and then it directed me to where these photographs were being kept, an and I, I kind of quickly deleted it and moved on with my life."

(his verbal emphasis in original).

It's not just his backers making the claim. It's him!

Weiner is a guy who relishes an opportunity to crack one-liners. That one, it seems, was downright risible -- even though he didn't intend it to be!

UPDATE II:

Not to belabor the point, but Michelle Malkin made absolute mincemeat of his claim of unfamiliarity with yFrog by pointing out at least 6 instances where he uploaded photos to the application and sent them using Twitter where he was apparently using his "official" Blackberry!

This information has particular relevance to his utterly disingenuous statement to Rachel Maddow during the interview.

So, I suppose this really raises a few pointed questions for the Congressman, and let's get specific:

Congressman Weiner, a number of messages were quite recently sent from your Twitter account having items attached to them, including digital photos, uploaded from your yFrog account.

Blogger Michelle Malkin has specifically documented a significant number of such messages, including 6 messages sent from your Blackberry.

If, as you said to Rachel Maddow, "As far as the yFrog account, I'll be very honest with you, I didn't really know for sure what that was until this thing popped up . . ." then could you please explain how is it that you were familiar enough with the operation of your yFrog account application to be able to take, upload and attach items from the account on a significant number or prior occasions, including very recently from your Blackberry, and to successfully send the photos out publicly via Twitter?

For example, two such photos you tweeted on May 5th were taken at a Presidential event on the street, both using your Blackberry.

One of them included a candid, up close photo of President Obama himself speaking to a police officer. A second photo, presumably taken at the same event while awaiting the arrival of the POTUS, was also sent from your Blackberry and even contains the twitter "hashtag" #SoIsTheOfficialTweeter."

How do you square these "tweets" with attachments with your statement claiming unfamiliarity with yFrog to Rachel Maddow?

Also, are you "#SoIsTheOfficialTweeter" -- that is, did you create that hashtag?

As a national public figure, you have a significant reputation as a "technophile" when it comes to "social media," and you have recently said you personally did the "tweeting" from your account.

Did you also personally create your yFrog account, and if so when?