she's a woman of ambition who makes a lot of men feel emasculated
Maybe instead of constantly running the commercial where David Letterman asked Trump why all of his clothing line is made in China, she could run some ads saying "Hillary Clinton is not interested in your balls, either for or against"?
There really are two Americas: swing states and the rest of us. I haven't seen a campaign commercial yet.
If you like your doctors balls, you can keep them.
My prediction: A special prosecutor within the first year, endless witch hunting congressional hearings, and the press turning on her viciously as soon as she's elected.
And a big enough surge in castration anxiety cases that Obamacare goes broke.
Honest question, since I wasn't paying attention at the time - how vicious was the press to her while she was senator?
A lot of the press wants to be turning on her now, but Trump keeps getting the spotlight back. I presume everyone else is also enjoying reactions to the immigration policy "shift."
Now that people are talking about all the good work the Clinton Global Initiative actually does and how appalling it is to impugn the motives of the Clinton Global Initiative, I realize I had never heard anything before about what the Clinton Global Initiative actually does. Am I alone in this?
8: Yeah, I thought it was just something to keep Bill occupied.
I think the press will turn on Clinton if the FEMA/U.N. relation camps for gun owners don't have enough books on Satanism. Otherwise, she'll be fine.
Relation s/b relocation. I'm having trouble typing today.
"In contrast, I do believe that thing about how Clinton's popularity surges when she's holding office, and crashes when she's aspiring to more power, and I think the pattern will continue: once she's instated and the dust settles, her popularity will surge."
That is an interesting theory. People who work with her like her. I think Kerry is a much better secretary of state, but people in the state department liked Clinton much better.
He never sold his choices very well to the public....
Counterpoint: The public is very, very stupid.
Somebody please explain to me why the hell I need to feel affection towards a politician. If they have a record of doing good stuff effectively, they will earn my respect even if I'm sure I wouldn't want to spend my spare time in their company. I vote for/campaign for people who look like they'll do good stuff well, not people I want to party with. My problem with Clinton is the likelihood that she'll do bad stuff well.
It's like you don't even care about her cookie recipe.
I don't even care where she gets her store-baked cookies.
They're from the Clinton Foundation.
For conflict of interest reasons, I think the Clinton Foundation needs to shift its role. I'm thinking it should rebuilt itself along the line of the Foundation for Law And Government (the Knight Industries spin-off).
15: As a non-American you don't understand the special bond we feel with our President. We want them to be our best friend.
You must live lives full of disappointment. The last US President I would have wanted to remain in the same room with was Carter, and before that probably Eisenhower. Not that British PMs are any better.
Counterpoint: The public is very, very stupid.
In the public's defense, a lot of Obama's policies have been pretty shitty. Less shitty than Republican policies, to be sure. But "a marginally less crappy health insurance system that seems like its barely holding together" is a tough sell. "Race to the top" was a bomb. "Lets deport a whole bunch of immigrants to convince Republicans we are serious about immigration reform" was just stupid. "Bail out the banks but not homeowners" was awful. "Lets worry about the deficit in the midst of a recession," also stupid.
the special bond we feel with our President. We want them to be our best friend.
And beer. We want to drink beer with them.
15: As the Bush II years proved, "Who would you rather have a beer with" is the ideal criterion for identifying capable presidents.
Then again, I would never have wanted to have a beer with GW Bush.
Somebody please explain to me why the hell I need to feel affection towards a politician.
You don't, but people are human and a lot of people do. (Heck, I was a little wary about Obama when he was elected and feel quite a bit of affection for him as he's leaving. Having moments where you see somebody handle a tough situation with grace engenders affection. For example, I would point to Obama's speech after the death of Trayvon Martin as a moment when I thought, "this feels important and like a moment when it really matters that we have a black president. No other president would have the same presence in the moment.")
I will say, I started the guest post as just a collection of links that I thought were interesting. But I think there is something to my final idea that Clinton is an explicitly transactional politician in a year when people want an ideological figure. I'm a little bit suspicious of my own theory because it seems related to the claim that Clinton is an establishment figure during a quote-unquote "change election" and I think that argument is bullshit. But I think I may be on to something.
Bush II was of course teetotal, and thus barred from office, saving the world from his obvious incompetence and evil minions.
15: As the Bush II years proved, "Who would you rather have a beer with" is the ideal criterion for identifying capable presidents.
I was wondering if Bush I would be an example, on the Republican side, of a president who inspired respect but not affection.
You must live lives full of disappointment.
We're famous for keeping a stiff upper lip.
British PMs seem to be unusually loathsome people. The most they can aspire to is to avoid being reviled years after their departure. American presidents, evil as they may be, are at least genial.
27. I always prefer to have a beer with a teetotal politician, because then I can drink theirs as well as mine.
Honestly, Carter's voice just grates in my ear. I'd rather spend time with either Clinton or Obama.
Sounds like a dangerous road to travel, Chris.
Carry on my wayward son. Here's two beers to shotgun.
30. I think that's true, at least about British PMs. Senior British politicians are almost all appalling bullies, for reasons I can't quite fathom. The only human PMs of the 20th century were MacMillan (1956-63) and before him probably Asquith, who was such a notorious alcoholic that his name gave rise to a slang term for drunkenness, but he was, as you put it, genial.
If there's a way to spend time around other people sober and still enjoy it, nobody has told me about it.
That was an observation and should not be interpreted as a request for information.
36. For a limited subset of "people", you can just engage in energetic sex, which is OK while sober.
As long as you didn't tell me to try open communication, I'm fine.
36: Have you tried telling people how you really feel?
Watching people being beaten up is unpleasant, and it's not unusual to blame the victim for the bad feelings generated in onlookers by abuse.
Under what circumstances is Hillary portrayed neutrally or favorably by the media? Only in circumstances where Hillary controls the event, or (on a few, isolated occasions) when she's being compared to someone more liberal.
Everyone knows that Hillary lacks charisma and is untrustworthy, primarily because everybody knows it, not because it's some kind of objective fact.
I like Hillary. I admire Hillary. There are a lot of people I'd support for president against her, but the idea that she's an unappealing person -- well, I personally can't comprehend it as anything but a silly media narrative that people buy into because people are idiots.
Senior British politicians are almost all appalling bullies, for reasons I can't quite fathom.
They all act like prosecuting attorneys all the time, because they all spend their formative years in those "debating societies" where you learn how to use unfair rhetorical tricks to browbeat and deride people.
Whereas our US politicians almost all ARE attorneys, but not the kind that theatrically shouts all the time.
He never sold his choices very well to the public
???
Huh? This is the world-famous orator who literally has his own in-house media operation running to sell his choices to the public 24/7. His Administration communicates with the public more voluminously than any other White House I've ever seen. This stuff is like bizarre 180 from the actualities, like hearing people describe Obama as "aloof" or "arrogant." Seriously, what in the Hell else was he supposed to do to "sell his choices to the public"?
What happened with Obama was that governing is messy un-euphoric work and the progressive left's expectation that he would wave a wand and fix everything ran headlong into the reality of unhinged racist opposition and a Beltway that discovered just generally that it wasn't nearly as comfortable about this Black guy in the White House business as it liked to pretend. I wouldn't bank on Clinton's numbers improving once she's in office either (they might do during the campaign), although government may become refreshingly functional again if she gets the House and/or Senate into bargain.
Somebody please explain to me why the hell I need to feel affection towards a politician.
King's Two Bodies;sovereignty not based on functionalism or utilitarianism
Without looking it up, my impression is that the Clinton Global Initiative helps fund and organize local educational and service institutions, especially for women and lower-middle class;in a way that sorta globalizes meso-politics to create networks for micropolitics. Neoliberal as fuck; maybe "corrupt;" but look at as a Columbian woman with a marketing degree from Cornell being funded and networked to set up her campaign consulting business and/or school in Bogota, with guest lectures by Carville.
Endnotes Chronicle of Black Lives Matter especially Ferguson.
Not to hijack, but Endnotes (British tiqqun) publishes close to a book once a year some very well thought out material. This is very long, and the one last year (?) on the 2011 London riots was more useful but this is still good.
Linked because the article showed how the Ferguson Riots created a bunch of jobs funded by for instance Soros foundation:
DeRay McKesson, before he became the face of the new activism, had been an ambassador for Teach for America, an organisation that recruits elite college graduates to spend two years teaching in poor inner-city schools, often as part of a strategy to promote charter schools and bust local teacher's unions.63 In general the "community organising" NGOs, whether they are primarily religious or political, are often funded by large foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller and George Soros' Open Society. An integral aspect of the privatisation of the American welfare state, they can also function as "astroturf": supposedly grassroots political movements that are actually fronts for lobby groups (e.g. school reform) and the Democrats.
Somebody asked a while back why the Democrats don't have the grassroots orgs Rethugs do. Dems do, they are just more anarchic, distributed, and ad hoc than right-wing orgs, as we would expect and desire.
This is also to a degree, the Clinton AA base that Sanders couldn't reach, and the black Sanders supporters were "young rebels" excluded from this money and power.
(Sorry for the length)
As the Bush II years proved, "Who would you rather have a beer with" is the ideal criterion for identifying capable presidents.
Again, media brainwashing. How the fuck could someone ask the question "Who would you like to have a beer with" and come up with GW Bush? That stupid, smug asshole is exactly the kind of person that decent, sensible people try to avoid.
What if you asked somebody who was already drunk?
48: I couldn't stand GW either, but the comparison was with Al Gore, who seemed like someone who might use big words and make you feel stupid.
I'm so old I remember when Hillary was supposed to be psychotically liberal. Then psychotically incompetent. Then psychotic for standing with her husband. Then psychotic for for running for Senate independent of him. Then psychotically neoliberal and warmongering.
I personally don't find her to be the most overwhelmingly charismatic politician (though charisma is also shaped by the office -- I saw Obama in 2006 and he did not give off the glow of intense charisma then). But at this point I do identify with the amount of bullshit she's had to put up with. The truth is that many many people hate tough-seeming successful middle aged women in leadership roles. They just do. Often they hate them less when actually having them in charge, because people like having leaders who are competent, but one thing that this election has made clear to me is just how deep the sexist resistance to middle-aged or older women leaders is, including among women. (Preemptively - no this does not mean that Hillary Clinton is above criticism).
49. Herbert Asquith would have loved to have a beer with GWB because he could drink Bush's beer as well as his own- is that what you're saying?
You're just saying that because you think Hillary Clinton is above criticism.
49: I am compelled to admit, Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo featured a GW Bush that was both believable and kind of likable.
50 is part of what I'm getting at: I don't feel any shame in admitting that I don't think I'd be equal to running the United States. I want somebody much sharper than me on the job. The fact that e.g. GWB was self-evidently much less sharp than I was made me lose sleep. Is that illogical?
I don't actually think Hillary Clinton is above criticism, but, as in 51.1, I've heard to many inane or poorly justified criticisms of her that I have trouble believing any criticism of her are in good faith. Even criticisms I agree with.
GW Bush should just have hired Josh Brolin to play him full-time. He'd have been vast more likable then and probably more competent.
48 - I know someone who knew Georrge W Bush as a kid/teenager and said that he was definitely dumb but a nice guy and fun to hang out with. I'd buy that in his pre dry-drunk years he was kind of pleasant and entertaining to have a beer with. I always had a hard time hating him personally, though clearly he wasn't in the same zip code as people competent to be President and he had terrible, evil instincts. If he'd stayed a random rich incompetent then he'd have been fine.
If only my parents or grandparents had applied themselves, I would have made a very good random rich incompetent.
Having middle class resources really restrains how freely I can let me incompetence run.
me w/b my.
I'm not constrained such that I can't be incompetent at all.
Vox's Ezra Klein also ran a fairly long analysis of Clinton. One input is that she is much more appreciated and liked once in office than when campaigning. And the conclusion Klein ultimately reached as to why is that she listens really well. American political campaigns reward speaking--see Sanders, who otherwise would not rise to the top--which traditionally has worked against women.
http://www.vox.com/a/hillary-clinton-interview/the-gap-listener-leadership-quality
Assuming this dynamic is real, I wonder if we would see it in a parliamentary system, which seems more to reward political savvy. Perhaps if we had such a system, Nancy Pelosi would have been our first female PM. Conversely, Sanders, who never called himself a Democrat until he needed to to run for president, could have founded his own party or joined a coalition, but would never have stood a chance of rising to the top of a parliamentary Democratic party.
I've liked her ever since she told the 60 Minutes interviewer (Steve Kroft?) "Well if you don't like it then don't vote for him" who was being tediously repetitive asking her and Bill about Bill's pecadillos. "Fuck yeah," then Middle Aged Man thinks to himself, "someone who finally says 'Let's stop endlessly chewing this same shit and move on.'" She had the nerve to confront our media's mindless gpoin g over the same non-news again and again and again in order to fill the endless hours of no-actual-news news programming. Calling Bullshit on bullshit is actually a good trait for a President. Obama has it and does it cleverly, Hillary does it not so cleverly but she's willing to do it every once in a while in the midst of all her other obfuscations and evasions. More power to her.
More power to her.
I think the "Imperial Presidency" has gone far enough.
I'd be curious to hear how female criticism of Clinton is driven by sexism.
Hillary is making a big play to make democrats appear more business-friendly, which I have somewhat mixed feelings about. Would be very good if we could get businesses back on board with a more progressive Keynesianism, though, so I'm trying to stay optimistic.
Politicians don't reach competitive office without relying on strong realtime social skills. Hillary's 'listening tour' at the start of her
NY Senate campaign was a phenomenal extension of 'I feel your pain' Clinton-brand empathy.
The effective criticisms of her also rely on some rather emotional and abstract appeal. From the 'Clinton fatigue' pundit meme to
the 'She reminds everybody of their first wife' Barniclism, criticisms (other than for her home email server) are not rooted
in policy or competence.
#competence worked so well for Dukakis 88.
I will always have a soft spot for Hillary Clinton's op-ed, though.
I'd be curious to hear how female criticism of Clinton is driven by sexism.
I'd be curious to hear a woman answer that, but my feeling is that both men and women allow men more latitude, in terms of public presentation and persona than women.
Consider this from Sarah Kliff. Can you imagine anything like this being written about a male candidate?
My [2008] essay ran under the headline "Sorry, Hillary, but girls already rule." This paragraph is a good summary of the piece:For many women my age, a female president does not seem like change. She doesn't inspire us to chant "Yes, we will!" because, in a sense, we already have: we have taken more Advanced Placement classes than our male counterparts, enrolled at universities at higher rates and graduated with better GPAs. Now in our early 20s, most of us have not yet made any trade-offs between family and career; we're doctors, investment bankers and lawyers in training....
I have aged out of this demographic. I'm not a 23-year-old editorial assistant who lives with three roommates. I'm a 31-year-old deputy managing editor who lives with a fiancé and a dog.
In the past eight years, my responsibilities both at work and at home have increased quite a bit. My friends and I became the doctors, investment bankers, and lawyers that we trained to be. We are starting to think about trade-offs between family and career.
I have a different vantage point in 2016, and now it does seem more revolutionary to think of a woman leading the country.
That's an awful lot of baggage about gender to put on the shoulders of a presidential candidate.
If living with a dog changed her to a Hillary Clinton supporter, Clinton must be good. Dogs are good judges of character.
Yes. If you're like their own poop, they'll eat you.
I've had a glass of wine with HRC, and would gladly do so again. (Well, *I* drank wine; I don't remember if she did.) We talked about a few things -- only one of which I remember, and that's how I know when it was: she was teasing our host (a senator from another state) about the baseball playoff game between teams from their states that we were missing. If either was feigning interest, they did well at that.
Our worthless press has it in for her, and if the Republicans had gone with Rubio or even Bush, we'd see one whispered accusation against Clinton after another.
It's funny that we're supposed to be out of the era of the instinctual Democratic crouch*, and yet the chorus is nearly unanimous from Dem-friendly writers that the Clinton Foundation should be shut down because, while there's no sign of actual corruption (or even anything closer than what applies to every single pol in America), it could be a source of "attacks". Keep cowering, Chait! They'll stop hitting you once they see you really fearful!
*or, at least, we're supposed to have frankly liberal media that aren't crouching
"Worthless" radically understates the malevolence of the press about her. And the big national press is worst of all.
Vox had a followup today on why, even though the AP story was utter garbage, Clinton should still shut it down, and it was entirely goo-goo good government types talking about how it's a symbol of the money-in-politics that's utterly ubiquitous. There was not the slightest suggestion that shutting down CGI would materially improve corruption in American politics, just that it's, you know, a bad symbol.
I'm sure millions of AIDS patients now getting their meds through CGI would be thrilled to know that a symbolic victory against money in American politics has been struck, and be happy to give their lives for such a noble cause.
I realize I had never heard anything before about what the Clinton Global Initiative actually does. Am I alone in this?
FWIW, when it was set up and getting some news, I got a feel for what it was doing, and it was very much in line with what I've heard lately. But if you'd asked me a year ago, I would have shrugged and mumbled something about AIDS in Africa.
Hot take: Contrary to (cynical) expectations, WJC hasn't used the CGI for an endless series of headline-grabbing photo ops with African orphans and such, therefore the press has A. ignored what CGI actually does, and B. assumed that it's a pure scam, like wingnut welfare (not that they ever acknowledge that wingnut welfare exists).
God, yes. "Fuck you, AIDS patients, lthe more important thing is that I be able to ignore that rich people sometimes call other people to unsuccessfully get something."
That s/b "ask for" I guess. Whatever, fuck everyone.
24, 25, and choosing a candidate by "who would you rather have a beer with?"
I recall an op-ed from long ago, I think the 1972 campaign, when a woman was writing about the assertion that women choose a candidate by answering "who would you rather sleep with?"* My recollection of her argument was that on reflection, it was not such a bad way to make a choice: if a woman could see herself happily sleeping with a candidate, it must mean you felt good about his character and judgment. I was about 15 at the time, and I think in that era, it was likely thought (at least in polite, respectable company) that only males felt pure, unbridled lust, were ruled by their little brains, etc., etc. Probably relatively liberated for the era since she was allowing for the prospect of a woman's wanting to sleep, or at least being willing to sleep, with a stranger, someone who was not husband or lover.
*Apparently this assertion was sufficiently widespread that someone thought an op-ed was needed to respond it. Yeah! let's hear it for the 1970s, a kidney stone of a decade, as Mike Doonesbury put it.
One of the things that's most maddening about the AP BS is that they had on their hands an honest-to-god man-bites-dog story: "HRC shockingly unresponsive to multimillion dollar donors." I mean, AFAICT, no one has been able to identify anything beyond what a Congressional office would deem constituent services*, and there's story after story of Huma running interference so that HRC never even heard the ask. It's really clear that the SOP was to listen politely to CGI-related requests and only pass them on insofar as they were actually State-relevant.
But journalists don't think that sort of story is part of their job, and they would never write it about a Clinton. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
*I'm thinking of help with visas, and even there it seems that she did the bare minimum. Indeed, everyone saw that story by the woman who got cancer and had Mount Sinai send a collection agency after her, and then Sen. Clinton took care of it for her? If that random constituent had been a CF donor, AP would have treated it like the freaking Pentagon Papers. Instead, as SecState, she didn't do 1/100 of that for any donors.
80. Saudi Arabia is a blight upon the earth, they pay truly horrible imams throughout the world, are currently propping up a bloodthirsty and repressive puppet regime in Egypt. But they care about poor female foreigners enough to give the Clinton Foundation $10M. Creating this avenue for this money is problematic. Letting someone else administer this much money and keep track of who is giving IMO makes sense, in the same way that keeping the president's assets in a blind trust makes sense.
I agree that the anti-Clinton hate is crazy, I believe that she'll be a competent president domestically who does more net good than harm.
But the stance that there's nothing wrong with the screwy incentives of the (Clinton Foundation : Clintons in government) is IMO a clear mistake.
80/81
The outrage generated by this is also one million times greater than by actually existing, publicized and prosecuted corruption and embezzlement by businesses and political figures alike.
Liberals have to stop with this fucking nonsense.
??? Tom DeLay and Ted Stevens both lost power, eg, DeLay did get prosecuted. Lee Fang has written a lot about Chinese donations to Jeb Bush's campaign.
I'm not speaking for anyone else, just myself-- IMO creating a huge fund like this really is a bad idea. That bad idea doesn't make either Clinton a monster.
Agree with a lot of what's said about the double standard for Clinton but at the same time, CGI has got to stop taking foreign and corporate money. Long past time really.
What's this speech HRC is delivering that everyone is tweeting about? Anyone have a link to a transcript? It seems like she's tying Trump to the white supremacist element that he's well, tied to. Smart play.
Vox had a followup today on why, even though the AP story was utter garbage, Clinton should still shut it down, and it was entirely goo-goo good government types talking about how it's a symbol of the money-in-politics that's utterly ubiquitous. There was not the slightest suggestion that shutting down CGI would materially improve corruption in American politics, just that it's, you know, a bad symbol.
I saw that and it pissed me off.
I'm not speaking for anyone else, just myself-- IMO creating a huge fund like this really is a bad idea. That bad idea doesn't make either Clinton a monster.
I do think that's correct -- and that the recent announcement that they would restructure the Clinton Foundation if Clinton wins seems like a good plan.
However, it does also seem really lazy that much of the reporting about the Clinton Foundation treats it as if it is, essentially, a vanity project (in a way which directly feeds all the "appearance of corruption" stories) and I think it's worth pushing back against that and also, as JRoth points out, saying loudly and clearly that the existing evidence suggests that requests by Clinton Foundation donors were mostly kept away from HRC by her staff.
Anyone have a link to a transcript?
Vox has one (I haven't read it yet).
So, are people buying Yggles' theory that Clinton's recent rhetoric--highlighted again today--claiming that Trump, and in particular his racism, is different from traditional Republicanism is politically astute, even if liberals want her to repeat endlessly that the GOP has been the party of racism for 40+ years?
I, of course, believe the latter wholeheartedly, but it's a lot harder for me to see a path by which it leads to long term Democratic success. By contrast, it's pretty clear how Clinton's actual rhetoric works.
In general I think Dems need to point out, often, that the Party of Lincoln is now the Party of Calhoun. But I think that, at this moment and with this candidate, it wouldn't help at all. Backlash against HRC would be swift and unanimous, and it's hard to believe it would do any short term electoral good. Far better to define Trump as an outlier (and loser) now, and have him as an albatross around the neck of any prominent Republican who supports him now. Ideally, for 20 years you'd have an implicit "Do you reject racism/nativism/etc., or were you a Trump Republican?"
If actual Republican candidates were running away from him en masse, then I'd be worried, but in practice they're not, and their records will be quite clear.
But I'm certainly willing to hear another argument (as long as it isn't "see? this proves she's a secret Republican!")
I'm reading the speech right now and think it's really good. I think she does a good job of both attacking Trump as an outlier and also making the argument for why the sort of comments he makes are an attack on American tradition and values.
And he'd ban Muslims around the world - 1.5 billion men, women, and children -from entering our country just because of their religion.
Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.
But in Trump's America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, "What is your religion?"
And then what?
What if someone says, "I'm a Christian," but the agent doesn't believe them.
Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?
Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.
Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.
86 Thanks! Reading it now, it's very good. She's sticking the knife in deep.
83: But what DeLay got prosecuted for was actual corrupt acts. Everybody knew that he handed out tobacco checks on the floor of the House to get Medicare Part D passed, and it was somehow OK; it was the Abramoff stuff* that got him jail time. But an actual organization that does massive good in the world should be shut down lest there be an appearance of an opportunity for corruption? Holy crap, what a stupid standard.
I'm amenable to blind trust arguments, but what I see being argued for is "shutting it down", as if there's no downside.
I really don't have any respect for goo-goo types; I don't think they have any coherent theory of government, and at least half the time their initiatives make things worse, like how jungle primaries are going to force WA to elect a Republican treasurer against the will of voters, and how the elimination of earmarks helped destroy Congress as a functioning entity.
We've had 14+ years for someone to come up with evidence of CGI actually corrupting anything, but instead we're supposed to shut it down based on "some rich people are bad." Well holy shit, then shut down every charity on earth.
*not entirely unrelated, but my point is that the tobacco checks should have been sufficient, yet weren't
Still reading, I was a bit surprised when I got to this paragraph -- she's willing to be quite pointed.
Of course there's always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it's never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.
I'm fairly familiar with (some parts of) the Gates foundation, in my mind they're fairly similar although I don't know if that's actually true.
Between this and my earlier Pokemon related insight into French racism I could be a reporter for the AP. (I thought the hack- Fournier?- who used to run AP wasn't there anymore, but they're still acting the same.)
Trump likes to say he only hires the "best people." But he's had to fire so many campaign managers it's like an episode of the Apprentice.
That made me laugh.
90. I was responding to the claim that actual corruption gets only microresponses. America is pretty clean all in all, and should IMO stay that way. A charitable organization funded by outsiders is in structure a slush fund. Having one of those should not be standard practice.
being argued for
Personally, I don't much care what columnists write.
I don't understand enough about large NGOs to have an informed opinion on how much duplication of effort by them is useful. Not zero.
The Gates Foundation gave a lot to the Clinton Foundation.
I know that the Clinton Foundation has been active in Haiti, where the UN's intervention has been terrible and the local government even worse.
Great speech. Really smart play.
I agree, and would add, in the context of this thread, that part of what makes it so strong is that there's nothing defensive about it. Consider the paragraph I quotes in 91 (and the few paragraphs that follow it), she talks explicitly about "racial resentment", "Racists", "White Supremacists" and, "the paranoid fringe" without any caveats or soft-peddling.
The speech, as a whole, may be designed to let Republicans off the hook (as Yglesias argues) but I appreciate that it takes the existence of racism for granted and doesn't feel the need to bracket that out in some way. Perhaps that's a sign that my expectations are too low, but it caught my attention.
Here ya go: Clinton foundation, corruption, Democrats, Woman Power Fuck yeah!!
Campos at LGM Cut and Pastingmost of it because Hillbots wanna cheer, and make me cheer
And few entrepreneurs have done more to disrupt the provision of life-saving drugs than Mylan CEO Heather Bresch. In 2007, Bresch added EpiPen to Mylan's portfolio. At that time, the emergency epinephrine-injector pens sold at an average wholesale price of $57.Now, EpiPens aren't a new, sexy drug. They've been around for more than four decades. And, traditionally, drugmakers have been reluctant to drastically raise the price of the penlike devices because so many American children rely on EpiPens to protect against fatal allergic reactions.
But where less daring executives saw an obstacle, Bresch saw an opportunity: If some people rely on EpiPens just to survive, surely they'd be willing to pay more to access them. After all, isn't $57 a disgustingly low price to put on the value of a human life? . . .
Over the course of nine years, Bresch gradually brought the price of EpiPens in line with their true worth. To do that, she thought outside the box and made sure to use every tool at her disposal -- including her familial connections on Capitol Hill. In 2012 and 2013, Mylan spent $4 million lobbying Congress to pass the 2013 School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act, which encouraged schools across the country to stock up on her product. The act was passed by the House and Senate (where Bresch's father, Joe Manchin, works) and was signed into law by President Obama.
In total, Bresch raised the price of EpiPens by over 400 percent, to an average wholesale value of $317.82. That helped Mylan triple its stock price, from $13.29 in 2007 to $47.59 in 2016.
But that's not all: Bresch also found time to disrupt her company's tax burden by officially "relocating" it to the low-tax Netherlands, even as the company maintains most of its offices in Pittsburgh.
By itself, that record would make Bresch a great entrepreneur. But what makes her a true hero is what she chose to do with her company's increased profitability. You see, for Bresch, making it easier for poor kids to die from allergy attacks is about something a lot bigger than herself. That's why she chose to take a huge bite out of America's gender pay gap by increasing her own salary from $2,453,456 in 2007 to $18,931,068 in 2016 -- an increase of 671 percent!
Still, as impressive as Bresch's accomplishments are, it's important to remember that they're only possible because of the system we all created together. And if that doesn't make you proud to be American, then maybe you should "relocate" to the Netherlands, too!
"Increased scrutiny of the company over the past few days has revealed that Bresch is the daughter of Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and that Mylan has been a donor to the Clinton Foundation."
Somebody bet me $500 that Obama and Clinton have never had dinner with Heather Bresch.
Aids drugs to Africa? Who's making them, who's paying for them, who profits from the deal?
The above on Bresch to me is the everyday Clintons. Doing a little good, and sharing metric fucktons of money with their allies in the process
"The price of entry to see Hillary Clinton on Sunday evening was $50,000 per person, a sum that got you an al fresco meal of tomato and mozzarella salad, lobster, strawberry shortcake and an intimate conversation with the possible next president of the United States" [WaPo]. "'It was the easiest event I've ever done,' said Elaine Schuster, a longtime Clinton friend who hosted the soiree at her waterfront home on Cape Cod, Mass. 'Everyone wanted to come.'" Well, everyone who is anyone...
And the latest Yglles puffpiece is what enraged me.
If you want to win the House, you tie downballot Repubs to Trump as tightly as possible. At least that is what Dems have been saying for months. Now suddenly, Clinton is "demoralizing" the opposition?
Bullshit. She is helping Repubs keep the House by letting them distance themselves from Trump and split their tickets. She and Obama love some divided gov't.
This isn't Heather's first brush with controversy. It was a local story not too long ago that her MBA at WVU wasn't really earned. Three cheers for nepotism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_University_M.B.A._controversy
That's scandalous that Senator Clinton voted for the 2013 act! Oh wait, she wasn't a senator then? Well, it's terrible that HHS Secretary Clinton recommended Obama sign this this healthcare-related policy. Oh, Clinton had nothing to do with health policy? Well, surely the donation to the Clinton Foundation influenced Barack Clinton... wait, what are you going to tell me now?
I know! You're going to tell me that it passed the House by voice vote and the Senate by unanimous consent so Barack should have vetoed it, the bastard!
I'll take making things better while rich people get rich every fucking day. Because the alternative is NOT rich people not getting rich, it's making things worse while rich people get rich anyway. Stop living in a fantasy world.
If you want to win the House, you tie downballot Repubs to Trump as tightly as possible. At least that is what Dems have been saying for months. Now suddenly, Clinton is "demoralizing" the opposition?
One of the things that appealed to me about Clinton as a potential presidential candidate is that she is well-positioned to be responsive to the needs of down-ballot candidates (because she's well-connected, values network building, and has enough experience, and a sufficiently experienced staff to keep their eye on that ball). I don't know for sure that she's been doing that, but I need more than just your opinion to believe that she's breaking with Democratic strategy.
Kevin Drum has a theory about Clinton's speech which is slightly cynical.
I'll propose a different explanation: [Clinton] was giving the press permission to talk about Donald Trump's racism. So far, they've tiptoed around it. But once the candidate herself calls it out, it invites a thousand think pieces about Breitbart, the alt-right, the GOP's history of tolerating bigotry, Trump's troubling background, and dozens of other related topics. Surrogates can blather all they want about this, but it doesn't truly become a mainstream subject until the actual candidate for president makes it one.
This is part of the agenda-setting power that presidential candidates have. Donald Trump has used it endlessly, and now Hillary Clinton is using it too. Trump has made his bed, and Hillary is making sure he has to lie in it.
103: Didn't actually discover EpiPens or anything. It's pure deadweight loss.
Clinton isn't letting Republicans off the hook. She's making them walk the plank: either they embrace Trump and alienate women, minorities, educated men or they reject Trump and alienate non-college educated white men.
Praising past Republicans, rather than burying them, is a pretty well trodden path.
Also, a good business model for a duplicitous funeral home.
Here's a thing that has to happen sometime. Gary Johnson is running at 23% of the vote among people under 30, based entirely on the message "Guess what, there's a candidate who wants to legalize pot". Legalizing pot is the default position of all people under 40 and all Democrats under 65, but the Democratic politicians continue to not admit it. Remember how Obama was opposed to gay marriage in 2008? Politicians pretending not to want to legalize pot is going to end soon. I guess Hillary doesn't need to run the risk (?) of mentioning this during the campaign, but I think she and the Democrats will come out in favor of it by 2020 if the Republicans come up with a real candidate. One party or the other is going to come out in favor of it, anyway.
107-107: Wrong. The only way to tie Republicans to Trump is to follow the example of the people who, unlike professional politicians and their advisors, actually know about persuasive rhetoric -- the lonely, angry men of the Internet.
110 We don't have gay marriage treaties with Singapore, Thailand and Japan. Legalizing pot nationally has problems.
111: Or Ip lawyers. I'll trust Clinton like I trusted Obama in the critical two years before the Census/redistricting election? You're telling me Clinton will get us the House? I am relief and enthusiasm.
So she walks in the door tonight and says:"I had to renew my Epipen and you won't believe...."
$700. Thanks Obama. Thanks IP lawyers.
I believe the Clinton Foundation shamed the drug companies so that poor countries could buy one year of HIV drugs for ~$150 per person (instead of at unaffordable rich-country prices). An immense achievement.
Does the Epipen price gouging have much to do with intellectual property? Ephinephrine has got to be off patent. I'm sure the injector design is patented, but there are other ways to stick a needle on a spring.
Don't ask me, I only know about important intellectual property, like TV shows aimed at 3-7 year olds.
Apparently somebody said, "Fuck it, let's make Voltron again." You could use some new ideas, is what I'm saying.
115: What I read is that they kept making little tweaks to keep it patented, but then a generic alternative looked ready to get FDA approval so they jacked up the price to squeeze as much out of their monopoly as possible before it disappeared. But then the generic didn't get approved, so they kept their monopoly and the high price. I forget where I read that, though.
It seems like the right thing to do is spin the Clinton Foundation off so that it is independent of the Clintons. One would think that the infrastructure that has been established to run the organization is a valuable thing, and its a shame to waste it by suddenly choking off all its funding.
On the other hand, probably all of the people working there will leave for jobs in the new administration, so I guess putting it into hibernation makes sense on that level.
But then the generic didn't get approved, so they kept their monopoly and the high price. I forget where I read that, though.
I've read various memes saying, more or less, "This is all the FDA's Fault" for not allowing competitors into the market. You see, because a company acting in a market without competition is morally bound to engage in price gouging, so certainly its not their fault.
I can talk to you about needles on springs all day. 118 is more or less right insofar as it's more of an FDA approval problem than an IP problem. I'm not sure Mylan ever had a meaningful right to exclude epinephrine auto-injectors for patent reasons. The tweaks to keep it patented are a marketing device you use when generics come on the scene, it wouldn't have prevented the development or introduction of generics.
There was a longer article here not long ago, but Wikipedia was easier to find and much, much shorter. There was an Epipen competitor that got recalled for not working right. And another one that doesn't work as well because you need to have training to use it.
How many needles can dance on the end of a spring?
Also 122 can be read in accord with 120. The price-gouging is egregious (and strangely timed) it's just that in this particular case the ability to price-gouge is a more a function of regulatory morass than it is of squirreling away patents.
I'm on vacation so I shouldn't be commenting about patents but I figured using the word "squirreling" balanced it out and made it a nature/vacation comment.
The head of Mylan was raised by bees.
Wow, impressive long game by the bees.
The real trick was getting the future governor of West Virginia replaced by 50,000 bees in a white-guy suit.
Colony collapse is a hoax concealing the fact that most bees are currently disguising themselves as human governors.
That's why Mike Pence can't shut up about clovers and honey when he's out on the campaign tour.
105 doesn't sound "slightly cynical" so much as blindingly obvious.
130: Frank Herbert wrote that scifi novel: The Green Brain.
I'm a little mystified about the idea that Hillary needs to tie Trump to the Republican Party -- the very party that nominated him to be president of the United States.
What Hillary needs to do is what she seems to be doing: saying straightforwardly that Trump is a racist, and that his racism is, in some important respects, a break with the past, and that Republicans can and should oppose this without giving up any of their non-racist values (whatever those might be).
This is the exact opposite of what some folks feared: That Hillary would try to lure Republicans by tacking to the center and making substantive concessions -- by splitting the difference between her and Trump. Instead, she is highlighting the differences.
The job of tying Trump to the Republican Party is an ongoing project that has been taken up by the Republican Party itself. Hillary couldn't meaningfully advance that. Her best approach is to publicly try to encourage Republicans to disassociate themselves from Trumpism -- and to mostly fail.
Well-meaning people say demonstrably false shit about race all the time: "American values are inconsistent with racism" or "The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice." It's not true, but that doesn't make it wrong. It's aspirational. Hillary would like to see a less openly racist Republican Party, so she pretends (not entirely implausibly) that such a party could exist.
Yglesias gets it right:
Even though Clinton is letting the conservative movement off the hook intellectually for Trump, the abnormalization of Trump doesn't actually let specific individual Republicans off the hook unless they disavow Trump entirely.
She's stopping Trump from moving the Overton Window for racism.
Trump supports broken Overton windows policing.
136: Right-o. The media reaction, unfortunately, has been horrible.
I watched two networks (CBS and NBC) this morning explaining this matter as "both sides do it" and exploring only the strategic implications. From both networks I learned:
1. Hillary and Trump are calling each other racists.
2. This is, therefore, an unusually nasty election.
2. This will have implications for the horse race.
We have two candidates with decades of history on racial issues, but that fact was barely hinted at.
As often happens, Hillary is doing the right thing while the media bends over backward to not acknowledge that.
On the plus side, the networks weren't around during World War I so we didn't have to see "Both sides have troops in Belgium".
Both sides are practically Hitler.
This is the exact opposite of what some folks feared
Uhh no,the lefty sites have feared exactly this: that Clinton would make the campaign about racism/immigration (and sexism)
Thus those Republicans, the coming House majority, are just pretty ok who disavow Trump and renounce racism and...
...probably compromise on a decent immigration bill
...and support bombs away in the Middle East
...support Paul Ryan's psycho budget
...sign on to trade deals that can't get Democratic votes
As long as Rethugs aren't racist, well, they are kinda acceptable and tolerable. Right? I hear tell Bill Kristol, Brooks, and the Koch's have renounced the totally unique unprecedented and chimeric OrangeSatan.
IOW, making sure that the campaign is tightly focused on social issues keeps from embarrassing and alienating Repubs on economic and foreign policy issues and keeps the door open for neoliberal deals after inauguration.
Deals she couldn't get with a Democratic House.
OT: While walking back from lunch, I stopped to catch an Electrobuzz. As one does. And two students doing the same thing very politely asked "Did you catch him, sir?" I did catch him, but I think they were making fun of me.
I think stopping open, explicit racism is obviously and greatly more important than trade. I don't understand the argument to the contrary.
142: If you catch Electrobuzz, does that mean they can't? Or is that rare scenario, where you can eat the cake and the cake is still there?
I think we could have all caught Electrobuzz. Mine was 1000 CP. Because of neoliberalism, they probably got weaker ones.
1000 CP! Awesome!
(was that an appropriate response?)
I don't know. It won't be enough to take over the gyms around here.
It would have been on Monday. I blame the kids coming back.
Does anybody actually hold gyms for a significant amount of time? I've had one for about 4 hours now, and that's close to the best I've done, but I think you need to hold it for 21 hours to collect any reward.
I held one for like 15 minutes and got 10 coins.
My kids found a hack app that lets you teleport anywhere in the world, as well as an app that tells you everywhere any kind is spawning. They've captured almost everything now. Kind of ruined it for me to play after that, which my wife is very happy about.
A gym in the city we're in has been held for the last four days for my team (sadly not by me) as a level 9.
You get 10 immediately upon placing, more if longer but you can't collect again for another 21 hours, so if you put one in another gym during that period you don't collect unless the timer runs out on the first collection.
If she didn't take joy in your discomfort, why would she have married you?
I often tend to take the other side of this, but I thought this made a worthwhile argument.
That was really long for a Friday afternoon.
Is it just me or does Steve Bannon look like Chris Farley is he managed to cut back on the heroin?
I often tend to take the other side of this, but I thought this made a worthwhile argument.
I admit, I was half-expecting something trolling from you, but that is a good post, and matches my perceptions of the Clintons.
Is MGK blogging regularly again? He was mostly on Twitter for a while and so I stopped checking.
I never heard of MGK before, but I stopped checking Twitter for other reasons.
He's sort of infrequent, I dial past him every day but there's only a new post about once a week.