"Let them eat gay cake" (Politics thread)

by **Monkeyboy** » Mon May 18, 2015 19:55:14

Houshphandzadeh wrote:she didn't do anything while she was a senator. she commemorated some highways

I've heard conservatives on multiple occasions say that she was a hard worker and that she didn't come in there acting as if she was special. She's earned what she has. I personally would rather vote for someone else, but I know I'll like her politics more than I will Jeb or Walker or whoever.

Besides, I was just defending her from the constant GOP investigations that lead nowhere. And I was commenting about the psychology of what they are really trying to accomplish. The truth doesn't matter. The act of investigating is enough.

by **Bucky** » Mon May 18, 2015 19:56:04

(h/t MattS):

Retweeted Bill Clinton (@billclinton):
Welcome to @Twitter, @POTUS! One question: Does that username stay with the office? ‪#‎askingforafriend‬

by **slugsrbad** » Mon May 18, 2015 20:47:34

Bucky wrote:(h/t MattS):

Retweeted Bill Clinton (@billclinton):
Welcome to @Twitter, @POTUS! One question: Does that username stay with the office? ‪#‎askingforafriend‬

President Obama ‏@POTUS 4h4 hours ago
Good question, @billclinton. The handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in @FLOTUS?
Details

by **Werthless** » Mon May 18, 2015 20:53:48

Monkeyboy wrote:They probably saw how much good the Foundation is doing and are now trying to turn a positive into a negative (disclaimer: I have no idea what the foundation does)

I actually LOLed. Well done.

by **Phan In Phlorida** » Tue May 19, 2015 05:11:13

Monkeyboy wrote:(disclaimer: I have no idea what the foundation does)

The Clinton Foundation is sort of a central repository for philanthropic efforts and causes aimed at improving the lives of people across the world. It's estimated that The Clinton Foundation has had a positive effect on about 5% of the world's population.

Here's a brief list (google copy/paste) of some of the stuff they've done.

Obviously, THE CLINTON FOUNDATION IS EVIL AND MUST BE DESTROYED!!!

by **Bucky** » Tue May 19, 2015 07:39:37

I guess the key question to ask about this and all other organizations that redistribute funds to good causes: What's the ratio of money collected to money expended on these causes? (I think there's a term for that but I forget it)

by **drsmooth** » Tue May 19, 2015 08:43:21

Bucky wrote:I guess the key question to ask about this and all other organizations that redistribute funds to good causes: What's the ratio of money collected to money expended on these causes? (I think there's a term for that but I forget it)

if this were about cleaning up nonprofits - and cleaned up they should be - the conversation would be about more than the Clintons. But it can't be and won't be, because this is just the screeching of the dimwit brigade who are eager to fund/run/drum up votes for passengers on this cycle's klown kar

by **TenuredVulture** » Tue May 19, 2015 09:18:57

If the Clinton Foundation really is doing good work, calling attention to it might backfire. Since this is driven by the supposedly Republicans who in fact probably benefit from having a Democrat in the White House, there is reason to suspect that's the intention.

by **Soren** » Tue May 19, 2015 09:24:10

I mean, if the GOP can continue to fabricate stories they can sell the narrative that there's too many skeletons in the Clinton's closet, nevermind that they're the ones that put them in there.

by **Houshphandzadeh** » Tue May 19, 2015 09:28:21

no she also just has lots of skeletons

from Drudge Report favorite Harper's Magazine:
http://harpers.org/archive/2014/10/stop-hillary-2/

by **Monkeyboy** » Tue May 19, 2015 11:41:10

Werthless wrote:
Monkeyboy wrote:They probably saw how much good the Foundation is doing and are now trying to turn a positive into a negative (disclaimer: I have no idea what the foundation does)

I actually LOLed. Well done.

As I said a few weeks ago, I no longer take any attack on Clinton or other major Dems seriously if it comes from the GOP/Fox News. Their credibility is shot. They are the boys who cried wolf over and over and over. You know what makes me lol? Anyone paying attention is seeing right through it. You're now the party of the misinformed. Congratulations.

by **Werthless** » Tue May 19, 2015 11:47:28

Monkeyboy wrote:
Werthless wrote:
Monkeyboy wrote:They probably saw how much good the Foundation is doing and are now trying to turn a positive into a negative (disclaimer: I have no idea what the foundation does)

I actually LOLed. Well done.

As I said a few weeks ago, I no longer take any attack on Clinton or other major Dems seriously if it comes from the GOP/Fox News. Their credibility is shot. They are the boys who cried wolf over and over and over. You know what makes me lol? Anyone paying attention is seeing right through it. You're now the party of the misinformed. Congratulations.

This is delicious. You take your admitted ignorance (I have no idea about X), and use that state of ignorance to springboard you to criticize a group of people for being misinformed. And you're not even doing this ironically. I'm not even mad, I'm impressed!

Edit if you're interested in reading why people are critical of the Clinton foundation:
The Clinton Foundation admitted it made mistakes and broke its own rules:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.2199606

We'll see what the book "Clinton Cash" turns up. There are allegationsthat some of Hillary Clinton's decisions as Secretary of State were immediately preceded by large donations to the Foundation, from people/institutions effected by those decisions. When combined with the above revelation, that the Foundation failed to reveal certain foreign donations, it could be a story that matters in the general election.

by **Monkeyboy** » Tue May 19, 2015 12:03:35

I had heard the criticism of the foundation and I knew it was set up to help people. I didn't know exactly what they did (the stuff in pip's list).

My point is that I don't need to know anything about it at this point because the GOP has no credibility in drawing my attention to supposed misdeeds. I can be completely ignorant of what the foundation does and still know the allegations aren't worth reading about at this point. I won't waste my time reading about something that will almost certainly, based on past experience, turn out to be nothing. If the allegations end up being investigated a bit and turn out to be more than nothing, I'll then read about it.

Sorry I didn't explain it more clearly, and less ironically, the first time.

by **jerseyhoya** » Tue May 19, 2015 12:15:07

To posts from soren, pacino, others from yesterday

-I do think money equals speech, and it is important that the ability to spend on political speech is protected under the first amendment. Without the ability to publicize your ideas with $$ the first amendment is useless. You're allowed to speak, apparently, but not allowed to buy a megaphone. When the presumptive Democratic nominee for president says that overturning Citizens United is going to be a litmus test for her Supreme Court appointments, it should be mentioned that Citizens United was a case about publicizing a movie against Hillary Clinton while she was running for president. This is important stuff that citizens of the United States should be allowed to band together and produce and promote. The attempts to smother this type of speech under BCRA or other means are an attack on the core of the first amendment.

-I agree with my beloved governor that the solution is to move to a system where you can donate unlimited amounts of money to a candidate or cause, but it is disclosed within 48 hours. The current system is very flawed due to dark money, but this does not mean the proper solution is to ban most of the spending. Money will always find a way into the political process as long as the political process holds control over money.

-I think many concerns about donations leading to corruption in political decision making are overblown because most donor support stems from already shared common ground with the candidate the donor is backing. This does not mean that politicians are immune to bribery or following donor wishes, but most of the relationship between donations and candidates flows in the direction of donors supporting politicians who are in agreement with their preferred issue stance.

-One area where the research is pretty clear is donations lead to access. I think it is a reasonable distinction to draw if you think it should be constitutionally required for Americans to be allowed to donate money to political campaigns and causes, but highly suspect for foreign governments to give large sums of money to a politically connected charity. At minimum, I think the foreign governments thought they were buying increased access to Hillary as Sec State/potential future president. I don't believe the Clintons would be swayed to be nicer to Saudi Arabia or whatever due to them giving money to the foundation, but with the uranium story from a few weeks ago it seems like there's reason for skepticism about the endeavor generally.

-The first four dashes are pretty much irrelevant to the NYT article I posted yesterday, and the responses from y'all were nothing more than deflecting. Anyone who thinks the bit about Blumenthal and Hillary and Libya is related to Citizens United or money in politics (as the phrase is typically used) didn't read the article. Blumenthal is not known because he is a Clinton donor. He did not curry favor with Hillary through campaign funding and use this to open the door to contracts in Libya. Blumenthal is a long time Clinton crony who was doing work for Hillary on the side in spite of the fact that the Obama administration did not seem to want him working for the State Department. It is interesting that it appears Clinton was able to get around this in part using money from the foundation to pay him, but that's something of a sideshow to the story. Blumenthal's motivations - trying to get Hillary the best info, trying to set the situation in Libya up for his business partners, some combo of a and b - are unclear in the article. Whether Hillary even knew Blumenthal wanted to be engaged in Libya after Gaddafi through business projects was also unclear. Hopefully if he testifies before the Benghazi committee more will come to light. It does seem clear to me anyway that Hillary trusting him while he was passing along crappy info and her making sure this got to the various principals in government as a source close to the Secretary was not a great thing. I would think pretty much everyone who reads the article would find it troubling, but I've been wrong before.

by **jerseyhoya** » Tue May 19, 2015 12:16:03

Monkeyboy wrote:I had heard the criticism of the foundation and I knew it was set up to help people. I didn't know exactly what they did (the stuff in pip's list).

My point is that I don't need to know anything about it at this point because the GOP has no credibility in drawing my attention to supposed misdeeds. I can be completely ignorant of what the foundation does and still know the allegations aren't worth reading about at this point. I won't waste my time reading about something that will almost certainly, based on past experience, turn out to be nothing. If the allegations end up being investigated a bit and turn out to be more than nothing, I'll then read about it.

Sorry I didn't explain it more clearly, and less ironically, the first time.

That the New York Times is now on Team GOP comes as welcome news.

by **pacino** » Tue May 19, 2015 12:20:54

a 'megaphone' drowns out other speech

and of course it was about money in politics, Blumenthal is a long-time advisor (one man's advisor is another man's crony and vice versa). She apparently showed his findings but they did not act on it. There's no actual governmental issue other than his private access to her accrued through years of political friendship which she apparently did nothing with on her end. and he was paid by the Foundation. So, money.

where are you on all the neocons swirling about Jeb, no doubt ready to pounce and get back in power both in and out of government? Where were you on Halliburton and Cheney? Where were you on how many revolving door nominations, board memberships, lobbying, etc for countless politicians and bureaucrats?

AND IT IS NOT ELECTION SEASON. We are still 1.5 years away from the election. Can everyone please stop?!

edit: I just realized the hilarity in getting on Blumenthal for peddling bad info...

by **pacino** » Tue May 19, 2015 12:24:38

in the meantime, in actual important news, the Patriot Act is up for reauthorization. It's going to be met by quite a group of people; there may actually be some debate. Great!!!

by **Soren** » Tue May 19, 2015 12:43:36

jerseyhoya wrote:The first four dashes are pretty much irrelevant to the NYT article I posted yesterday, and the responses from y'all were nothing more than deflecting. Anyone who thinks the bit about Blumenthal and Hillary and Libya is related to Citizens United or money in politics (as the phrase is typically used) didn't read the article. Blumenthal is not known because he is a Clinton donor. He did not curry favor with Hillary through campaign funding and use this to open the door to contracts in Libya. Blumenthal is a long time Clinton crony who was doing work for Hillary on the side in spite of the fact that the Obama administration did not seem to want him working for the State Department. It is interesting that it appears Clinton was able to get around this in part using money from the foundation to pay him, but that's something of a sideshow to the story. Blumenthal's motivations - trying to get Hillary the best info, trying to set the situation in Libya up for his business partners, some combo of a and b - are unclear in the article. Whether Hillary even knew Blumenthal wanted to be engaged in Libya after Gaddafi through business projects was also unclear. Hopefully if he testifies before the Benghazi committee more will come to light. It does seem clear to me anyway that Hillary trusting him while he was passing along crappy info and her making sure this got to the various principals in government as a source close to the Secretary was not a great thing. I would think pretty much everyone who reads the article would find it troubling, but I've been wrong before.

She was taking bad advice from someone whom she had some level of entanglement, financial or otherwise, with and took advice and actions that weren't optimal or in everyone's best interest. Or, as you point out probably more the more serious is ignoring the Presidents request not to do so. I agree, that is troubling. Where we disagree though is in whether this situation, where a career filled with Clinton cronyism is in anyway related or similar to Citizens United, where large donations from unknown sources are fairly clearly having an impact on the voting impact of politicians.

In any case, did you get the sense from the article that there was anything seriously nefarious going on or just some guy who was angling to get dibs on whatever "charitable" opportunities would open up in Libya?

by **jerseyhoya** » Tue May 19, 2015 14:03:57

Soren wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:The first four dashes are pretty much irrelevant to the NYT article I posted yesterday, and the responses from y'all were nothing more than deflecting. Anyone who thinks the bit about Blumenthal and Hillary and Libya is related to Citizens United or money in politics (as the phrase is typically used) didn't read the article. Blumenthal is not known because he is a Clinton donor. He did not curry favor with Hillary through campaign funding and use this to open the door to contracts in Libya. Blumenthal is a long time Clinton crony who was doing work for Hillary on the side in spite of the fact that the Obama administration did not seem to want him working for the State Department. It is interesting that it appears Clinton was able to get around this in part using money from the foundation to pay him, but that's something of a sideshow to the story. Blumenthal's motivations - trying to get Hillary the best info, trying to set the situation in Libya up for his business partners, some combo of a and b - are unclear in the article. Whether Hillary even knew Blumenthal wanted to be engaged in Libya after Gaddafi through business projects was also unclear. Hopefully if he testifies before the Benghazi committee more will come to light. It does seem clear to me anyway that Hillary trusting him while he was passing along crappy info and her making sure this got to the various principals in government as a source close to the Secretary was not a great thing. I would think pretty much everyone who reads the article would find it troubling, but I've been wrong before.

She was taking bad advice from someone whom she had some level of entanglement, financial or otherwise, with and took advice and actions that weren't optimal or in everyone's best interest. Or, as you point out probably more the more serious is ignoring the Presidents request not to do so. I agree, that is troubling. Where we disagree though is in whether this situation, where a career filled with Clinton cronyism is in anyway related or similar to Citizens United, where large donations from unknown sources are fairly clearly having an impact on the voting impact of politicians.

In any case, did you get the sense from the article that there was anything seriously nefarious going on or just some guy who was angling to get dibs on whatever "charitable" opportunities would open up in Libya?

Nothing nefarious. I think Blumenthal probably thought he was helping. Problem is the Clintons have their group of loyalists, and they trust them and rely on them even in areas like this where it would seem they have no qualifications for being involved. Blumenthal was there for them during the Lewinsky scandal, so he's worth listening to about internal Libyan political dynamics. Arguably not an appealing trait in a potential president, but pacino has deemed this unimportant, so I will move on.

by **pacino** » Tue May 19, 2015 14:14:24

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