Bill and Hillary Clinton's earnings from 2007 to 2014: $140,937,785.00. pic.twitter.com/vqjxCtmvT4
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) July 31, 2015
Bill and Hillary Clinton's total donations to charity from 2007 to 2014: $14,959,450.00. pic.twitter.com/1kvMFSdOrO
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) July 31, 2015
Figures lie and liars figure, as the saying goes, but allowing for back-of-the-envelope calculations and my own weak math skills, ten percent of the Clintons’ declared income goes to charity. (You can argue over whether the Clinton Foundation is spending their money to its best purpose, but I grew up in the Catholic Church — it’s certainly as “worthy” as another pair of custom Ferragamos for the monsignor.) So, during (yet another) weekend while the Repub candidates trample each other attempting to establish their “faith-based” credentials, the Clintons are on the record as giving some approximation of ten percent of their income to charity.
Back during the (first, I hope) Clinton presidency, rumor was that the NYTimes‘ Howell Raines simply could not forgive Bill for being so successful, that jealousy was the root of the standing NYTimes vendetta against all things Clinton. Raines had worked his fingers to the bone being a “good” Southerner, not one of those vile rednecks… and here came loose-lipped Bubba, Rhodes scholarship in his back pocket and chicken manure on his shoes, one hand clasped on a Big Mac and the other on another man’s wife, Leader of the Free World! The indignity of this refugee from Yoknapatawpha County, charming the birds from the trees and the panties off the women; imagine how an adult Jem Finch would’ve felt, from his hard-earned corner office at an elite NY law firm, if called upon to represent Mayella Ewell’s bastard get in his latest high-dollar libel suit…
And certainly Maureen Dowd, like Sally Quinn and a lot of other Beltway “ladies”, were outraged by Hillary’s “dowdiness,” her “failure to understand Our Town,” her “humorless,” dogged determination to do a real job and represent the needs and wants of the puling masses that Very Serious People wouldn’t have touched with tongs.
As with Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter, I swear part of the media animosity against the Clintons is just that they try too godsdamned hard. The “important” media is full of men and some women who’ve strenuously promoted themselves from the middle-middle-class to the lowest rank of what passes in America for a plutocracy, and a lot of them are prone to what-might’ve-been public regrets about the hard choices they avoided: the war they promoted while dodging the draft, the public sector job they didn’t take because they had ‘family responsibilities’, the story they didn’t pursue because it would’ve made an important advertiser/dear friend of the Senior Managing Director uncomfortable. When a politician — especially a Democratic politician — actually makes an effort to uphold the pieties to which they pay lip service, it’s just not comfortable for the Media Villagers. President Obama, at least, had the wit to pretend that he wasn’t working hard; he was “cool”, and “charmingly off-handed” about both his efforts and his accomplishments. One of the Good Ones, that Obama guy, nothing “too earnest” that might make a Beltway macher uncomfortable with his own modest successes. Why can’t Hillary be like that guy… not the actual President Obama, but the master of the off-the-cuff witticism and the never-let-them-see-you-sweat mannerisms? Or, even better, all those delightfully plugged-in Republican presidents, who gave the press donuts and nicknames (and the back of their hands)?…
David Koch
Mike J
Truman CapoteDill would have loved him.Omnes Omnibus
What’s the retainer?
Bobby B.
The real money’s in corporate deodands .
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve always wondered what drove them at the NYT. As good and entertaining an explanation as any I’ve seen!
Was it Raines who said about Whitewater, where there’s this much smoke, there’s gotta be fire?
trollhattan
@David Koch:
Am so ready to get my Woah on Coah on. Bring it, mister president, bring it with prejudice and great force.
NotMax
Repeated for the overnight crowd.
Good on them:
Mike J
@trollhattan: It ain’t like Hils is gonna win WV or KY anyway. Fuck ’em. When’s the last time you saw a Republican run on increasing money for the National Endowment for the Arts?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: that was Keller, wasn’t it? Adopted the (dishonest) Friedmanesque pose of “reluctant liberal hawk”? Though to my knowledge he never exposed his true feelings and motivations with anything as spectacular and grotesque as “Suck. On. This!”
Brachiator
I don’t know. Raines has been gone from the Times for over 12 years.
Maybe the Executive Editor leaves an envelope in a drawer for his or her successor. On it, “Item Number 4, Hate the Clintons.”
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Or a guy with a smoldering pile and a blanket/fan.
Kropadope
@efgoldman: Right wing ref working?
kc
140 million? Christ.
David Koch
Greatest off-the-cuff witticism evah. They thought they had him trapped, but like Huck and Jim, he escaped.
Greatest never-let-them-see-you-sweat mannerisms
oldgold
It might not be a bad thing for these “stories” to be covered now as opposed to the early autumn of 2016.
Omnes Omnibus
@David Koch: Yes, best president of my lifetime. Once in a century politician. Yes, still effective and brilliant as hell. He isn’t going to be the next president. You are eventually going to have to deal with it.
ETA: I enjoyed the hell out of the links.
cokane
10 percent is legit. A buncha ppl will be pissed that it aint more, since that income number is so high.
David Koch
@Omnes Omnibus: he’s got 18 months left. I’m gonna enjoy every “I have no fucks to give” minute of it.
I can’t wait for the day (sometime next year) when Air Force One lands in Havana and Fidel salutes him on the tarmac.
RK
14 mil doesn’t seem like much when you’ve made 140 which is like 90 after taxes? Why keep all that money if you’re genuinely charitable? As with everything with the Clintons, the 10 percent on the nose smacks of being calculated.
Amir Khalid
@cokane:
And someone proves you right only two comments later.
SiubhanDuinne
@David Koch:
That was prescient. And didn’t you love Joe Biden’s big grin?
Omnes Omnibus
@RK: What percentage would have satisfied you? Please be specific.
David Koch
@RK: their combined fed, state, and local tax rate was 45.8 percent.
so they sent 46% to the tax man, 10% for charity, and kept 44%. Not bad.
Peale
@Omnes Omnibus: it’s ine of my peeves. If a liberal has money, they can’t be seen as clearly generous unless they give it away until they have to make their own shoes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Happy birthday, Omnes!
RaflW
@David Koch: Those are the civil rights the Kochs are fighting for. “Free at last, free at last, thank g*d almighty, coal is free at last!” (Free to be mined, that is, not free of charge…)
askew
Are you seriously trying to argue that Obama got easier media treatment than Hillary? That’s deluded.
As for the Clintons, Josh Marshall at TPM summed it up best when he said the media/GOP go overboard with Clinton bashing but the Clintons hand them so much ammunition with their constant need to slither right up to the ethical line and sometimes cross it.
Personally, I am hoping for Joe Biden to jump in. Say what you will about him, at least he isn’t scandal-ridden and ethically-challenged.
Hillary is airing her first two ads in the hopes of raising her untrustworthy #s and disapprove #s. She does everything but where an I heart Obama shirt in it while flashing a picture of her husband. Maybe if she surrounds herself by better, more liked politicians, voters will forget they don’t like her?
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: HBD. I am in a different time zone. Have a wonderful day.
Chris
Before they were made to feel inadequate by a black guy in the White House, the Village and associated Official Washington members were made to feel inadequate by a white trash hick in the White House. Obviously, Obama took it to the next level, but there’s a distinct similarity in the backlash. They both came in and trashed the place, and it wasn’t their place.
p.a.
Meanwhile the Bundrens and Snopses vie for the Republican nomination.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew:
No. No, she wasn’t doing that. OTOH, if you think the Times ever gave the Clintons a fair shake you are delusional.
@SiubhanDuinne: Different time zone. But thanks. I already got wonderful presents including the new and apparently best translation of “Don Quixote.” I am a happy boy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
That just means you’ll be celebrating for another hour after I’ve quit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris:
This.
@SiubhanDuinne: But I have to work tomorrow.
RaflW
@David Koch: And I would imagine they will leave another big chunk in charitable trusts when they die.
10% to charity is far, far better than most rich Americans give. Households with between $2M and $10M in annual income gave in the 3.2-3.7% range. Even the super-rich (+$10M) in the US gave, on average, 5.9% in 2013, per the National Center for Charitable Statistics.
I would argue that all those folks should give more. I’m aiming for a tithe this year, I think I came close last year (haven’t done my taxes yet).
But I think the Clintons are being exemplary in their giving. (And you can look back thru BJ comment threads to see that I am far, far from a Clintbot).
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I am ashamed to admit I’ve never actually read DQ, although over the years I’ve made something of a study of the dozens of musical interpretations of the story.
Did you know that Cervantes died one day before Shakespeare?
Tree With Water
“[General George Marshall] believed that the best type of discipline is self-discipline, developed from within the person and not imposed from without. His utter devotion to the task, a hallmark of his own self-discipline, manifested itself in many ways. One was his refusal to keep a journal or a diary. He did not want to be distracted by having to think about how his actions or decisions might look to historians or a future public (Bland and Stevens 1991, 207–208). This lack of desire to “look good” was the more surprising because he never earned an annual salary of more than $10,000 and the sale of his memoirs could have been expected to ease his retirement years”.
http://academic.udayton.edu/RichardGhere/POL%20318/Pops.pdf
David Koch
Trump is humiliating ¡Jeb!, beating the anointed one n most polls by a 2 to 1 margin. Yet in the fishwrap NY Times we find this debacle to be actually … wait for it…. Great News for
McCainthe “smart” Bush.Yeah sure. Keep whistling past the political grave yard ¡Jeb! The Times can hold you up only for a few rounds.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Exactly.
@SiubhanDuinne: Harold Bloom’s intro to the book notes the dominance of Cervantes and Shakespeare over Western Lit. I have never read DQ either. That fact and apparent brilliance of the translation led to that being one of the presents in a particular package. Best birthday present ever.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
I think it was because Bush was a Real Blueblood. An (American) aristocrat, who was born into high society, went to the right prep school, and attended the right colleges. He’s everything the strivers could never be, because he was born to it.
Villago Delenda Est
The reason the Village must be destroyed: it is filled with vindictive, petty assholes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: I assume that you have a point. Go ahead and make it.
RaflW
@David Koch: R2R wrote pretty much that headline on a thread here 6 or 7 hours ago. Maybe R2R works at the Times?
Could explain why it has become such a useless peddler of codswallop lately.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Okay. Given that, explain Bush vs. Kerry. Both Yale. Both Skull and Bones. Kerry had every qualification for being an insider as anyone.
Redshift
Some pretty weird formatting by that CNN guy (or, more likely, whatever source he blindly cut and pasted the figures from.) The top numbers all have cents, and the bottom ones don’t, making it look at first glance like they made 1000x as much in ’14 as in ’07, instead of just a little more.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: My cool present for last week’s bday was a PFD. So at least one person would rather I die of hypothermia than drowning.
Based on musical preferences, I believe our birth years as well as days are close.
David Koch
…then there was the time he simultaneously twitter chatted with Buzz Aldrin and Space Station…
Buzz Aldrin @TheRealBuzz 7h7 hours ago
@POTUS @StationCDRKelly @NASA He’s 249 miles above the earth. Piece of cake. Neil, Mike & I went 239,000 miles to the moon. #Apollo11
Retweets
116
Favorites
250
2:34 PM – 2 Aug 2015
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: Belated HBD to you.
ETA: Which day did we miss?
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne (tablet): This. Bush was in the right caste. The Clintons are not, and despite all the protestations to the contrary, that matters to many of those people. My social betters. They’re a lovely group.
I think 10% is great. That should, but will not, resolve the concerns of the Talibangelicals, as it is the required tithe.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: Last Monday, but since I didn’t announce it, I wouldn’t say anybody missed it. I had crab cakes, and any day I eat crab cakes is a pretty good day.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Happy birthday! Indulge some vices. It comes but once a year.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Kerry’s father was an immigrant. Bush’s father was a Bush.
Son of a president, grandson of a senator vs. a nobody, a jumped-up immigrant’s son who married money. And a Papist, to boot, not a WASP.
Now, Dean vs. Bush, that might have been interesting for the NY Times, because Dean has an even better claim to being a genuine Blueblood than Bush does, and rejected it (He went into a trade! He married a Jew!)
As Kathleen Parker was kind enough to articulate in 2008, it’s all about the bloodlines, and Bush had ’em.
craigie
@RK:
Jesus. I have never been much of a Hillary fan, but much more of this shit and I will go full metal HillBot. How much water do the Clintons have to walk on to be treated with some small shred of respect?
ruemara
Anyone seen this article about the go to guy who’s been teaching cops to shoot first, training them in paranoia and providing expert witness to get them off?
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html?_r=1&referrer=
David Koch
Belafon
@Peale: I saw a great quote the other day that someone here got angry about, but I think it still applies: “Money is to Liberals as Sex is to Conservatives”. It’s actually the title of an old diary at Daily Kos, written in 2006.
David Koch
That’s my girl.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Kerry’s father was not an immigrant and he was a US diplomat. Kerry grew up as an insider. He was a Bones Man at Yale. His Catholicism is unimportant.
cokane
@Amir Khalid: Haha! No surprise, BJ commenters are big on moral preening
mclaren
Everything you’ve said is likely true. Withal, I’ve heard Bill Clinton speak. In person. Standing 10 feet away. The guy is extremely smart, unusually charming, and also…a little too slick. There’s just something slippery about the guy — you can tell he’s stretching the truth to try to make his point.
Does Bill deserve the hounding by the press? No. He’s a hound dog and he’s cheated on his wife — join the club of D.C. pols. Bill and Hillary have arranged things so that their world-class charity the Clinton Global Initiative conveniently makes them a lot of money while also doing a great deal of good in the third world, and among American poor people.
I think what the D.C. insiders hate most is that the Clintons have managed to arrange things so cleverly that the various ways they make money are all legal. Chelsea Clinton, for instance, is a member of the board of directors of the CGI, helping disburse some 70 billion dollars of corporate donations for various charitable causes. Naturally, Chelsea gets very well paid. Is she qualified?
C’mon. it’s nepotism, but that’s pretty mild. The point is that the Clintons don’t go in for the greedy dirty grubby kind of nepotism Joe Biden favors where his son coincidentally gets appointed to the board of directors of a fake Ukrainian oil & gas company in order to grease the wheels on the various deals the company needs to make. That’s just plain thievery. With the Clintons, the CGI does a lot of good worldwide. It’s probably the best-run and most efficient and most effective charitable foundation out there. It also handles so much corporate cash that the Clintons conicidentally find a way to siphon a little off, legally, for themselves. Often in the form of accepting fees for giving speeches to corporate donors, fees which then get donated to the CGI, but with other lesser payments returned to the Clintons for various services.
Setting things up so cleverly creates a great deal of animus inside the Beltway. Bill Clinton is a born seducer and once you’ve met the guy, you can well understand his nickname of “slick Willy.” Overall, though, you get the sense that both Bill and Hillary genuinely have a desire to help people, and while statements like “We left the Oval Office in the year 2000 broke” are disingenuous at best since an ex-president can always make plenty of bucks from speeches, memoirs, and so on, it is a fact that the Clintons spent almost all their money defending themselves in court against various crazy lawsuits and pointless investigations. The Republican congress spent 140 hours taking testimony on Bill Clinton’s christmas card list alone.
David Koch
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Uh, yes, Kerry’s Catholicism is important. It’s White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You can be a Boston Brahmin and be a Catholic, but you’ll never be a WASP. And the NY Times knows it, because they’re the gatekeepers. They still think the Kennedys are jumped-up immigrants who didn’t know their place.
Add in the fact that Kerry’s grandparents converted to Catholicism from Judaism and you’re pretty close to hitting the KKK trifecta of most hated groups. So, no, Kerry does not have the proper bloodlines to be Bush’s equal.
mclaren
@p.a.:
At this point, I think it’s down to the Jukes and the Kallikaks vying for the Republican nomination.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@askew:
Oh, but mclaren-honda is here to contradict you . . .
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t want to link directly to Tow hall, but here’s hilzoy’s post about Parker’s column about “full-blooded” Americans:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/05/full-blooded-am.html
It’s not about where you went to school, or which family you married into. It’s about having the “right” ancestors. Clinton didn’t have them, Kerry didn’t have them, Obama didn’t have them, but as far as the MSM was concerned, Bush did, and that’s why he got a free pass. He had the right blood.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I am saying that Bones means more than Catholic.
And no. No, You cannot. It requires being Unitarian, Congregationalist, or, for the latecomers with money, Episcopalian.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: You are off your nut.
David Koch
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m saying that blood means more than Bones. Do you really think that Boston Brahmins are more restrictive about who counts as one of them than George W Bush’s social class is?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yes, I do.
David Koch
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ooookay. I’m clearly never going to be able to convince you that a Catholic is not a Protestant, so I guess I’ll head off to bed. Good night.
Anne Laurie
@David Koch: I agree(d).
Smiling Mortician
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Not surprised you’re tired. Moving those goalposts is hard work.
Anne Laurie
@David Koch: And they’re not gonna get better in the immediate future, either:
Such a mean lady, picking on that nice bipartisan Mr. Bush!
BillinGlendaleCA
Here’s some photos of my hike to Verdugo Peak.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet): RE: And the NY Times knows it, because they’re the gatekeepers. They still think the Kennedys are jumped-up immigrants who didn’t know their place.
The Sulzberger family serving as the gatekeepers for the WASP Ascendancy? Somewhat unlikely, I think.
I would have similar doubts about the current Executive Editor of the Times, Dean P. Baquet, who is African American.
And Raines, the editor during the Bill Clinton presidency, was kicked out the door 12 years ago. The Times may have a strong dislike for the Clintons, but there may be other reasons for it.
David Koch
@Anne Laurie: Wingnuts are furious – they think Jeb! is a wimp
as a side note, even a media hater like Ingraham sees NYT is in the tank for Jeb!
bargal20
Forget the NYT being jealous of the Clintons earning 140 million since 2007. Taste my disgust that they’ve earned 140 million since 2007.
David Koch
@BillinGlendaleCA: like the piercings.
Tree With Water
@Omnes Omnibus: Marshall chose not to cash in on his public service when it could have garnered him a fortune. It seems quaint nowadays, but In Merle Miller’s interview with Harry Truman, the ex-president pointedly disapproved of General Omar Bradley having cashed-in by hiring out his name to various and sundry corporate boards. Make of it what you will.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: He’s also a Democrat, so would resist lowering their tax rates. And he’s not a draft dodger. Not many in his economic/social class can say that.
Morzer
@mclaren:
That you, Romanov? How is Portland?
And no, what you’ve described is absolutely standard behavior among the political elite of most countries, not an egregious case of vile corruption unique to House Biden.
RK
@Omnes Omnibus: Jesus would say all of it.
@craigie: The Clintons walk on water? That’s something I haven’t heard before.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
There is an excellent online class on Don Quixote – Professor Roberto González Echevarría at Yale
I read the novel and watched the lectures a few summers ago. I had a great time with it. If you’re short on time and the whole course is too much, I’d still recommend the intro lectures.
BillinGlendaleCA
@David Koch: Ah, but you can’t see the latest one…An industrial in the right ear.
LT
99% of the Clinton’s charity donations went to…the Clinton Foundation.
That’s some fucking funny right there.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/31/politics/hillary-clinton-tax-returns/
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: Boom! It’s the Obamapocalypse!
Side note: I find it interesting that environmental groups mainly stayed quiet while Obama engaged in this slow work, while GLBT group, despite being party to high level meetings during his 2008 candidacy, called Obama names and threw floor-pounding tantrums until DADT was repealed.
When you go to enviro blogs it seems to be all panic all the time, so this is doubly interesting.
(And while Obama was completely mum on Keystone, just slo o o o ow walked it to give the activists a chance to organize, during the year before DADT repeal was a done deal Obama openly discussed his strategy and you still had hotheads chaining themselves to the WH fence.)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Redshift: I noticed that too. It’s really, really sloppy and something that only takes a couple of clicks to fix.
What other bits of sloppiness are they not fixing?
“Are there no editors?!?” /Scrooge-voice
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Holocene Human
@cokane: But they’re hypocrites because the average is like 3%.
Most people with more actually give less. It’s true at churches (the middle class churches do all the giving, obvs the poor churches are always struggling for funds because as Jesus observed often that willingness is there but the means are lacking) and I’m pretty sure it’s true more broadly as well, though I don’t have a cite.
Another Holocene Human
@LT: And most of Gates’ money goes to the Gates foundation.
Heck, on this very blog, someone argued we should excuse Carnegie’s crimes because what about the Carnegie Foundation?
I’m not going to say it’s a little questionable with his wife still in politics for Bill to be involved in that kind of work … but why doesn’t anyone question JEB! and his family’s “giving” and investing and shmoozing and shit?
Like it’s gauche when the Clintons do it, but politics as usual when others do it. Sure I prefer Obama (any Obama) to a Clinton any day, but isn’t this exactly what this thread is about–somehow, everything is worse when a Clinton does it?
I really don’t want to be blanket defending the Clintons. I have plenty of beefs with both of them. But this seems silly.
Another Holocene Human
@Tree With Water: Harry Truman would have! And we love him for it.
Joel
@Brachiator: the reason is, in part, a sustained campaign of intimidation by right wing nuts.
Another Holocene Human
@bargal20: They give talks. People pay them.
People pay good money to hear GW Iraq War Bush speak. I’m supposed to be outraged some people paid up to have a chat with Bill?
Btw, have you heard Bill speak? No, seriously, that guy is world class entertainer good at drawing in an audience. I don’t think anyone got ripped (except when the Colbert Report booked him and he was pissy about Colbert’s attempts to run the interview–boo, hiss Bill)
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: hehehehe
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: Wait … you’re defending a Democratic politician?
Wha…..?
Who are you and what have you done with mclaren?
Another Holocene Human
@ruemara: What the hell? No, I hadn’t seen that. NYT paywalled me. Sounds like their racist counterterrorism training.
Funny, in the UK cops have to sign out guns. They don’t just roll around town armed like that.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Oh, Barack Obama has them too, through his mom. He’s a close cousin to half the Bush II admin.
Aimai
@askew: fuck off you moron.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t have an explanation–maybe you do–for why the media thought Kerry windsurfing was roll off the couch funny while Bush’ myriad scrapes with recreational devices–bicycles, segways, pretzels–were relegated to the back pages of the internet (and eventually YouTube).
Kerry doesn’t come off super charming in person, so maybe he’s “too serious” and this is all about the Village wanting to be entertained and rejecting the “nerd”. I don’t know.
Bush was nasty under that “charm”, yet they ate it up.
Emma
@Omnes Omnibus: He was a blood-traitor. One of their own, who sided with the enemy.
Sherparick
@Villago Delenda Est: Agreed. Also, the Village has pretty much loathed Obama as exemplified by the way those leading Villagers constantly try to portray him as a “failed President” despite winding up two ground wars; enacting the plan that provides near-universal health insurance and care which no liberal/progressive politician since Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it had been able to get done; engineering the end of the Great Recession, the worst economic event since the Great Depression despite having to drag the anvils the Austerians in Europe and the Tea Party Congress (and his own and his advisers neo-liberal aversions to deficits) with what is now over 24 quarters of economic growth and the lowest U-2 unemployment rate since 2001. But to Ron Founier, John Dickerson, Maureen Dowd, and the Village he is “failure” because he was unable to reach a “compromise” with the Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare and ensure the 1% like them have low taxes forever.
gvg
@Omnes Omnibus: Kerry’s father was an immigrant. Later he was also a diplomat. Wiki
“Early life and education (1943–1966)
John Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 in Aurora, Colorado, at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. He was the second oldest out of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a Catholic-raised son of converted Austro-Hungarian immigrant Jews, and Rosemary Isabel Forbes, an Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister named Margaret (born 1941), a younger sister named Diana (born 1947) and a younger brother named Cameron (born 1950). The children were raised in their father’s faith; John Kerry served as an altar boy.[1]
Kerry grew up a military brat[2] until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps, causing the family to settle in Washington, D.C. in 1949.[3] While In Washington, Richard took a spot in the Department of the Navy’s Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department’s Bureau of United Nations Affairs.[4]
While his extended maternal family enjoyed a great wealth as members of the Forbes and Dudley–Winthrop families,[5] Kerry’s parents themselves were upper-middle class, and a wealthy great aunt paid for him to attend elite boarding schools.[1]”
I am not sure bloodlines explain the whole Times antagonism to Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton. Frankly I don’t really understand and conservatives love for hateful behavior. Why don’t they just yawn about these things they get worked up about on other people’s behavior that doesn’t hurt others? Hating gays, Jews, blacks, women’s equality, unions etc….why? I know they do but I don’t get it. And the Times is not the only entity or individual that seems to have a particularly silly hatred of Hillary. Back when Bill was elected and I heard all the hate for her, it sounded like an attack on my mother. Woman who worked while raising kids. Looks nice without being knockout gorgeous and young. Just insulting.
Chris
@Emma:
Yeah, I think this is how the Village views Democrats. Either they’re low class trash, or they’re class traitors.
Emma
@Chris: I think that, with Kerry, it was a double-dose. Your family didn’t really qualify but we let you into the club out of the goodness of our hearts and this is how you repay us. It’s truly a class war with them. We miss that because in America we focus on the most obvious issues: race and gender.
Citizen Alan
@David Koch:
To be fair, Trump is beating JEB! currently because there are 17 candidates and no one has managed to make the case that they are the “anti-Trump” around whom all anti-Trump support can coalesce. For all his current success, I think Trump’s support will max out at (wait for it!) around 27% of the GOP electorate. Which will be a disproportionate amount of the primary electorate, but not enough to overcome the anti-Trump faction once it picks a candidate.
Chris
@Emma:
You can probably factor Vietnam into that. Kerry did the unthinkable and not only got down in the mud with the proles, but then he came home and threw in his lot with the DFHs that were calling out the “establishment.” He was already a class traitor (or a traitor to the class that was “letting him in out of the goodness of their hearts” in his twenties. No wonder the media had such a field day with the swift boaters.
TerryC
@SiubhanDuinne: In college, for a lark, I read the entire unabridged original version in Spanish. It came bound so that I had to cut pages free as I read. Wow, even though I was never good with Spanish, the humor was definitely better. I may have to go get this new edition. (Can no longer pretend to read anything but stop signs in Spanish.)
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
My boss back in 2004 told me that he hated Kerry for the fact that he married a woman significantly wealthier than himself. Hated. I never had the opportunity to ask him what he thought of that gigolo John McCain whose beer heiress wife owns all of the eight (or so) houses he claimed to own.
Emma
@Chris: And they probably even hate him more now. They threw him out, and the “uppity mudblood” in the White House picked him up and look what he’s done! (I never realized how well Harry Potter speak works in this situation!)
Cervantes
@Emma:
On this mother’s side Kerry is descended from ancient and aristocratic Boston families: Winthrop, Dudley, Forbes, and others.
Cervantes
@TerryC:
Well, then you know that the actual original was in Arabic!
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Cervantes:
And yet, as Omnes pointed out above, Kerry does not actually qualify as a Boston Brahmin because he’s not Congregationalist, Unitarian, or even Episcopalian. He’s Catholic.
Once you get up to elite circles on the East Coast, those things matter. Kerry may look to outsiders like he qualifies as a Brahmin, but the real elites know he’s just a wannabe whose social-climbing father tried to marry his way to the top.
Paul in KY
@efgoldman: Helping out Likud Israel.
wuzzat
@Another Holocene Human: Look, I actually like Kerry and happily voted for him for both senator and prez, but let’s be honest. The problem isn’t that he’s “too serious.” The problem is that he’s got slightly more charisma than a wet sock and refuses to suck up to the media. You can maybe get away with one or the other of those, but not both.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Bush would stomp on the Arabs more, Kerry would not.
Paul in KY
@ruemara: God, what a scumbag.
Emma
@Cervantes: His father didn’t. Irish Catholic from a converted Jewish family. Please.
Chris
@wuzzat:
And that he’s a Democrat. In a town wired for Republicans. That, alone, is a huge black mark. It takes Lieberman-esque levels of “centrism,” “moderation,” and “reaching across the aisle” (read: carrying water for Republicans) for the Village to be willing to overlook that.
Part of me’s actually kind of curious to see what would happen if Trump was the Republican nominee in 2016. Like, how Official Washington would react to a candidate that they actually do see as “the wrong kind of Republican,” instead of nice, East Coast Establishment approved “moderates” like Romney, McCain and Bush (when was the last time that happened? Reagan in 1980?) Would they actually be willing to punch into both sides for once, or would the principle of “only Republican governance is legitimate” still apply? I’m leaning towards the latter, but I imagine the dynamics would still be different from the last few elections.
Kerry Reid
Sally Quinn literally slept her way to the top (well, such as it is these days) and thinks the CLINTONS lack class? Fuck off, Lola. (Story is that when she was bedding Ben at the Post, the other staff writers and editors would croon “Whatever Lola Wants” from “Damn Yankees” just out of earshot when she passed by.)
Paul in KY
@LT: Like Hillary & will be voting for her if nominee. However, I think giving money to your own charitable trust is not really ‘charity’. Not in the same way as giving it to organizations you have no control over.
If Paul in KY gives all his charitable dollars to the ‘Paul in KY Charitable Trust’, who employs Paul in KY as a paid director, etc. etc. that is jus not as ‘charitable’ (IMO) as giving those same dollars to Red Cross or Doctors without Borders.
Paul in KY
@wuzzat: Sad to say, but (IMO) ‘sucking up to the media’ is something you just have to do as a politician (if you want to reach the height of your ambitions).
Wish VP Gore had sucked a little more…
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Wow. This is just crazy. Almost as crazy as the Republicans who hated Kerry’s wife even though she previously had been married to a Republican Senator, John Heinz III.
To be fair, I don’t think McCain ever claimed to own the houses himself.
Kerry Reid
@Chris: I swear that Maureen Dowd, et al, were convinced that Obama HAD to have some problems with his “appetites,” wink wink! Because if the “first black president” had those problems, then OF COURSE Obama was going to be exposed eventually as all libido and then Dowd could get another Pulitzer for writing tripe about “Lookie! Lookie! The President Is Doing Naughty with His Pee-Pee!”
And then she pouts because he treats her with contempt? That just speaks further to his good judgment of character in my view.
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
Whoa?! What?? I think that this is one of the levels of joke and punning that infuses the novel, a metafictional conceit.
But it’s been a long time since I read the novel. The online course sounds like fun.
Whenever I hear a name like Winthrop, I think of the bigoted fuddie duddies in the movie “Trading Places.”
James E Powell
@Paul in KY:
However, I think giving money to your own charitable trust is not really ‘charity’. Not in the same way as giving it to organizations you have no control over.
Can’t really agree unless you are going to make the case that the Clinton charities are a sham.
And consider this. If you are an extremely famous person, and if you have plans to run for office again, can you really give money to strangers and just hope they don’t do anything “newsworthy” with it? Are you sure?
askew
@LT:
Oh for fuck sake. They are absurd.
Paul in KY
@James E Powell: I guess it’s mainly because I don’t/can’t do that. I still think you are more ‘giving it away’ if you give it to some entity you have no control over.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
Well, no. Even though there is the Clinton Foundation, it is a separate entity. The Clintons do not control how the money is spent.
Red Cross is a bad example. There are accusations that they horribly wasted donations for their efforts in Haiti.
Also, a charitable trust and a an entity like the Clinton Foundation are two very different things. And typically, funds you place in a charitable trust are not given to the charity until after you die.
But if you want to have some fun, look at the Walton Family Foundation
How do they do this? Glad you asked.
The Clintons, by contrast are practically rubes who donate their own money.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: Substitute some worthy known charity (not affiliated with multi-millionaires/billionaires) for ‘Red Cross’.
That said, you do have some good points. I would assume that the Clintons (and Waltons and Gates, etc. etc.) do retain some control thru persons placed on boards, etc. Just not direct control, I assume.
LongHairedWeirdo
The expression I heard is that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure”.
If the cost of flour, water, sugar, and salt and reasonable expenses are $50 per hundred loaves, and the baker is selling them at $55 per hundred loaves, that’s 5 cents a loaf profit. Figures don’t lie.
Oh, but reasonable expenses include another 5 cents a loaf to the “expansion expense’ which is actually a savings account intended to purchase additional equipment as time goes by. This is retained earnings and counts as profit – the real profit is ten cents a loaf. The figures didn’t lie, but a liar did the figuring, to make the profit margin look far worse – 9% (5/55) instead of 22% (10/45).
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
The Clintons could not legally take a deduction for a charitable donation if they retained control over the donation or could direct how the donation was to be used, if it conflicts with the rules of the foundation.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Don’t.
Just please don’t.
Tell me anything you want about movies, say, and I’ll likely believe you because I know much less than you do about the subject.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
You’re right.
Cervantes
@Emma:
That’s why I referred only to his mother’s side.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Yes — as one is informed repeatedly in the course of the work, it is a translation of a history by the Moor Cide Hamete Benengeli.
mclaren
@Morzer:
I never said that Joe Biden’s family’s grotesque corruption and nepotism were “unique to House Biden.” That doesn’t make Joe Biden’s family’s corruption any less egregious or vile.
Let’s be clear here, folks: Barack Obama is uncorrupt. He is not putting any members of his family on the board of directors of fake Ukrainian oil and gas companies. No members of Obama’s family are lobbyist with close and lucrative ties to the kinds of companies Obama has sponsored legislation to help. Barack Obama is a pretty squeaky-clean guy, as far as scandal and corruption are concerned.
People on this forum act and talk as though thoroughly corrupt bribe-taking sleazeball Joe Biden is just like Barack Obama. He’s not. Biden is deeply corrupt. That’s what I’m saying.
I don’t give a damn if you think that kind of outrageous corruption is “absolutely standard behavior among the political elite of most countries,” I’m going to keep pointing out these facts about Joe Biden until everyone realizes…hey, this guy would not make a good president. He’s been a disaster as a senator, a trainwreck as a Vice President, and he’d be a catastrophically bad president.
That’s what I’m saying. And I’m going to keep on saying it until the facts get through.
Emma
@Cervantes: At the risk of getting a lecture from the folks who dislike personal anecdote from intruding in the discussion, let me give you the small-town example. My mother comes from a farming family; her father was the manager of several large farms for a very wealthy family. My father came from a family that had a degree of prominence in our town but no wealth. When they married, a subset of the “upper crust” in our town, including some in my father’s family, refused to accept my mother, because she was the “wrong sort,” even though in crass terms, her family was as financially secure as his.
I’ve seen the dynamic work itself out with friends also, two of whom belong to the damn highest in certain circles that to the South are the equivalent of Boston Brahmin. No matter how well thought of you are, such a mesalliance makes the children suspect. Stupidity, but there you are.
mclaren
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ll go farther in defending Bill and Hillary Clinton and their charity the Clinton Global Initiative. The assertion that “Bill and Hillary Clinton’s earnings from 2007 to 2014: 140 million dollars” is deceptive as best, an outright lie at worst.
Fact: some of that money came from Bill Clinton’s best-selling memoirs. If memory serves, Bill Clinton got paid an advance well over ten million dollars for that one. No one mentions this, but it’s a significant contribution to his earnings.
Fact: much of the money from speeches that Bill Clinton (and HIllary Clinton) make gets donated directly to the Clinton Global Initiative. That may be “earning” money, but it’s not keeping it. No one mentions this.
Bill and Hillary Clinton deserve to get slammed for a bunch of things — Bill Clinton was the president who started the unconstitutional illegal process of “extraordinary rendition”…AKA shipping prisoners overseas so third world dictators with whom America is chummy can torture them at our behest. Bill Clinton enthusiastically dismantled the financial protections erected during the Great Depression, protections like the Glass-Steagall Act that prevent banks from corrupt self-dealing in the stock market. Bill Clinton appointed a bunch of Wall Street insiders like Rubin and Summers who gave uniquely bad advice in the 1990s. Summers, for example, presided over the disastrous conversion of Russia’s economy to the free market, and Summers pretty much destroyed Russia, handing over its entire wealth to 9 billionaire oligarchs.
Hillary Clinton is a warmonger who never saw an endless unwinnable counterproductive foreign war she didn’t like, and her daughter is married to a Goldman Sachs hedge fund trader. Hillary loves Orwellian panopticon surveillance and wants more of it.
So there are plenty of things to criticize Bill and HIllary Clinton for.
Greedy corruption is not one of them. Bill Clinton’s setup and association with the Clinton Global Initiative is legal, and what’s more, it’s mainly ethical. I don’t know the microscopic details, but the CGI is not one of those fake charities that spends only 1% of its income on charitable works. The CGI actually spends all its money on charity, it’s ruthlessly goal-targeted, it uses hard metrics for its projects, and charitable projects that don’t meet stringent standards get terminated. Compare with garbage charities like Bill Gates’ phoney “school reform” charity — AKA a scam to provide cover for expanding H1B visas so Silicon Valley companies and collude to get cheap slave labor from the Third World and fire more qualified American engineers and programmers.
Cervantes
@Emma:
Madam, there is no equivalent of the Boston Brahmin, least of all in the South.
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
I figured that you had to be aware of the joke, but just in case ….
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Thanks.
Emma
@Cervantes: So they think in Boston –Virginia and Kentucky have other ideas.
pandera
You’re a great writer Anne. When you’ve got a full head of steam, nobody can touch you! More please.
Cervantes
@pandera:
Seconded!