This is just a quick note to say my dog is feeling under the weather, and right now my mind is distracted because she is old — and I don’t know how serious this is. We have a vet appointment today. Wish us luck.
Once she gets back to a routine, I’ll write more.
Story suggestions always welcome — video links preferred.
Senator Craig spoke to Matt Lauer on NBC last night for an entire hour during prime time. Did you see it?
For the past six weeks, since the story broke, I felt there was little reason for me to write about Senator Craig, because most people seemed to be suspicious of his behavior, and didn’t believe his story. I don’t think you need eyes-for-lies to see through Senator Craig. And while I don’t think that has changed, I thought it might be helpful for people to see why I don’t believe him, now that he has spoken publicly.
Senator Craig is a smooth man who is good at debating, according to the Boise State University debate team, and I concur. They said Craig was “an excellent deflector” and “he was very calculated.” Another debater, named Judy, stated that “There were a lot of contradictions.”
But no one elaborated as to why. I see many, many, many red flags in Senator Craig’s behavior when he spoke to Matt Lauer, and I don’t quite know where to start. I could probably write a book on just his interview. With that, I will start with the bigger, more general hot spots that I see, and then I will talk a little about the interview.
When people are deceptive, however, they don’t feel normal, natural emotions—They don’t feel anger when they should. Furthermore, deceptive people often put on a front of smiles and niceness to help convince people that they are good as well as incapable of wrongdoing. Innocent people, when they are wrongly accused, could care less about any of this. For them, getting the truth out is paramount, and their true feelings of violation are not hidden. Their feelings may be tamed or subdued, but not hidden altogether and replaced with a smiling front.
If I wrongly accused you of stealing from someone, are you going to be embarrassed? Or are you going to feel mad? Again, his emotions and words are inconsistent with a man wrongly accused.
When we are caught doing something we are embarrassed or ashamed of, we don’t want to discuss it—we want to hide it. We don’t want to tell one single person, because the embarrassment is overwhelming. We want it to go away, and we will do anything to make it go away. Clearly, you can see Senator Craig was willing to do whatever it took to sweep this under the rug and keep it there. He was even willing to plead guilty! This is very inconsistent behavior as well.
You can watch Senator Craig’s interview with Matt Lauer:
Larry Craig tells his bathroom story
Listen to Senator Craig’s response (time marker 1:27) “No. No, never happened to my knowledge, ever.” The words “to my knowledge” are interesting because they show someone who is not certain. Yet, oddly, he tacks on the word “ever”, as if he were certain. This is contradictory: You either know or you don’t know. “To the best of my knowledge” suggests hesitation. People who are dishonest often say these qualifiers like “not to my knowledge”, or “not that I recall”, or “not that I remember”.
Later on in the interview (which is not online at MSNBC but shown on last night’s show), when Craig is talking to the police, many more inconsistencies pop up. When the undercover police officer recounts the story and asks Craig specific things, suddenly Craig doesn’t know, can’t recall, doesn’t remember. Then he admits to the fact that his foot did go under the stall divider. I think most people realize this is not an easy task to do when normally using the toilet in a stall, yet Craig’s only explanation is that he is a “wide” guy.
While I could go on and on, I will stop at this point. I think most people see Senator Craig and have their doubts. Hopefully, I have given people some good food for thought. I do not trust Senator Craig, but I think that is very clear at this point.
You can watch more excerpts of the interview here:
Sen. Craig on bathroom scandal
Update:
I found this interesting video of Senator Craig back in the 1980s. At the end of the clip, watch how Senator Craig denies any involvement. Notice his anger here!
Every now and then, I go back through cases that I have reviewed to see where things stand. I reviewed the case of the Coral Rose Fullwood back in June of this year. I specifically was asked to look at Dale Fullwood by a reader of my blog, and I didn’t like what I saw.
I had major concerns and saw many, many red flags even though police have DNA from the crime scene that doesn’t match Dale Fullwood. I do not trust Dale Fullwood’s story at all.
People were also looking at Dale Fullwood’s wife, Ellen-Beth Fullwood at the time.
After I gave my opinion on Dale, I was then asked by a reader in the comments section to share my insight about Ellen-Beth Fullwood as well –which I did here in the comments section as well.
I am happy to report that the Naples Daily News is reporting as of September 17, 2007, that Beth-Ellen Fullwood has been cleared by police. The same, however, cannot be said about Dale Fullwood though he has never been formally declared a suspect in this case.
News reports from October 3, 2007, are now reporting that both ex-husbands of Paige Birgfeld have been cleared by police as persons-of-interest in her missing person case — even though Beigler was the last person to see Birgfeld before she disappeared.
If you aren’t familiar with the story, you can read my first post about it here.
Back in August, when Beigler was still considered a person-of-interest in this case, I wrote that I believed Beigler on ABC’s Family Secrets series when he said “I’m not the least bit worried about them coming after me for this.”
Police have now identified a formal suspect, Ralph Lester Jones. You can read details here. Unfortunately, Mr. Jones has not come forward and spoken publicly. If anyone sees him speak, please feel free to contact me.
When I see honesty, and I try to show other people, I am not always able to get what I see across to other people. I don’t know how to, actually. How do you, for example, point out sincerity when you see it? How do you identify a genuine expression?
It’s a bit of a quagmire for me.
When someone lies, I can usually point out the clues that I see that support my hypothesis, and usually people will see some of them. I can identify inconsistencies in fact, and behavior. I can point out smirks as well as smiles that don’t make sense, or that have odd timing. I can identify inordinate pauses in speech, strange word usage, or clues to fear when no fear should be present. But with truth, there is nothing to point out. There are no red flags, no oddities, nothing unusual. The behavior in question is normal, as expected. The emotions are genuine and sincere.
Read moreMany times when I watch people who are trying to identify honesty, I detect an emotional bias that skews their ability to register emotions, and facts correctly. Because of their belief system, they want to see something, yet no matter how hard they try to scale their fundamental beliefs, they are unable to do so. People will even speculate that the person speaking didn’t mean exactly what they said, and the person I am watching won’t think twice about rearranging the spoken words to make the message mean what they think it should mean.
Other times, people are not able to interpret emotions: they misinterpret the subtle expressions of sadness, and mistakenly assume that the sad person is callous and cold and showing no emotions. Many times, people miss the expression of contempt completely, as if it never had flashed before them.
One thing is for sure: I think our emotions are one of the biggest obstacles we have to seeing the truth. That is one reason I avoid writing about, or talking about politics and religion—two highly emotional subjects that no matter what is the truth, we will convince ourselves our beliefs are correct, and that others are misjudging the true meaning of what really is…
