Reply #165: That's been explained several times.

[Igel]

With pretty much the same plausible explanation each time.

Yes, the stretched screen capture is wider than the unstretched pic of Obama. The explanation admits as such. When you have an image that's stretched to wide-screen, that's precisely what happens. "Wide screen" doesn't imply "tall screen", just "wide screen". This is precisely what's been explained several times. Restating the issue in precisely the same terms doesn't make a new explanation necessary, nor does it constitute reasoned discourse.

The stretching is possibly an accident. Possibly not. All that's necessary for people of good will is to show that it's a plausible mistake; the explanation goes further to say that it's at least plausible, and might well be a probable mistake. At that point, the issue isn't whether it was done, but the presence of a motive. Those that wish to ascribe ill motives to HRC do so, which allows them to say that the stretching was intentional; they then turn around to say that the stretching proves that HRC's motives were foul. This is called circular reasoning, which is all the worse because the initial step--assuming that anything that can be interpreted negatively must be interpreted negatively--is often tacit. But all that you get out of it is a tautology--the simple statement that the person making the attempt at an argument believes in HRC's bad intentions, with a corollary that there's some fact that may--but probably isn't--justification for the belief. However, it can be assembled into a narrative to justify the belief--not substantiate it, but justify it--so it is. It's a simulacrum of the scientific method, it's called abductive reasoning. It's fine for producing a hypothesis, but hardly constitutes valid reasoning.