Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

God, you are so whiny.

One minute you’re talking shite about your badassery, the next you’re Joy Behar again.

Bless your SO. You’re a handful.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Is it possible for me to criticize the Clintons from the left without being lumped with bank-hating Bernie Bros.? I would have thought so. I have defended the work the Clinton Foundation did on several occasions here, so I don't think my bona fides in that direction can fairly be questioned. But setting aside the good work that they did, you can't get away from the appearance that much of the money appeared to come with an implicit quid pro quo by which the public stature of the donor would be laundered by association with the Clintons, such as in this case (which I found somewhat randomly using Teh Google). On top of that, the promise of real social change is pretty much lost with any initiative that depends on the largesse of foreign autocrats. The parallels with the Clinton's approach to governance are not subtle. Sure it's better than the Republican alternative -- should that really be enough?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Obama spoke to some bankers. This was a non-issue, aside from that it looked bad to some people who don't like banks, and you. I don't think you're someone who doesn't like banks, which is part of why I do not understand why it looked bad to you, unless you were concerned about how it looked to people who don't like banks.

It's perfectly reasonable to argue that we need to care about what those people think for political reasons. Heck, maybe it's even right.

Personally, I didn't think it helped to legitimize those anti-bank sentiments, even if I sort of agreed that we need support from those anti-bank people.

Isn't that the very definition of a charitable foundation?

I'm not so sure about that. It's possible for money to be money, and to not be dependent on the next large one-off gift. But I'll grant you that the Clintons are not exactly who you'd want in charge to prevent it.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If you didn't understand what I said here before, there really isn't any point in my repeating it now. Note that my most recent post, the one you're responding to, referred to Clinton, not Obama. That was because I thought I'd say something about Clinton, not Obama. I'm not quite sure yet what Obama is doing with his post-Presidency, but he doesn't seem to be following Clinton's roadmap.

No, but it's not uncommon either.

I'm not sure in what sense that's possible, but the conversation quickly becomes interesting only for semantic and philosophical reasons, not for any practical application.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I know it's popular in all parts of the spectrum, from Bernie Bro to whatever Ty wants to be to neo-Liberal, neo-Con, and neo-Sebby, to full out Trumper, to see everything all foreign autocrats (other than, in Trump's case, Putin) as full out in all setting evil, but I've actually discovered that the Saudi Royal Family, whom I despise and blame for enormous amounts of misery in the world, is one of the major funders of the Aids fight in Africa, for reasons of their own.

I hate it when shit gets complex.

As to criticizing the Clinton's from the left, first of, what kind of misogynist pig lumps spouses in together and views the wife as inseparably tied to her husband, and how could someone who does that possibly describe themselves as "left", and secondly, um, no, especially not if you do that shit. The only one who can criticize Hilary from the left without being called a Bernie Bro is Obama, who still deserves a couple shots on her, which he'll never take, for the way she ran the end game in her post-super-Tuesday campaign against him.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I would hate it too if I had been denying that the Clinton foundation did good work.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Look, maybe the first one wasn't clearly tongue in cheek enough, it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, and my apologies, but, surely, you could see the second was?

I hate this world in which it's hard to tell when someone is saying something ridiculous in jest.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Well, they are crooked. Crooked fucking degenerates. Bubba executed a retarded man to placate tough on crime voters and his wife went along with his racist shit in the South in 2008.

Sleaze. First order.

But also great stewards of govt. Bill being the best President of the last 30 years, whom I’d vote for again in a second.

And his wife being a far better statesperson than the idiot who beat her.

But corrupt? Fuck yes. Engaging in subtle, plausibly deniable quid pro quos? Come on... of course.

But as Hunter said, calling politicians scumbags is handing out speeding tix at the Indy 500.

There are few heroes in the squalid world of politics. The response to the “Clintons are corrupt sleaze” story is, “That only tells you they’re probably qualified to run. They’re actually pretty decent statespeople, too. Which is the best and only mitigation in that arena!”

ETA: Like you, I also sleep well despite having taken money from certain people I didn’t like. We’re all adults, and that’s life, but that shrugging? It’s not the better part of our personalities. I’m not sure you can be any more or less bought than more or less pregnant.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You are surely a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. You have borne me on your back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Hamlet,

Well, to answer your question seriously, of course you can criticize Hilary from whatever side you want to, but if you choose an argument that was made a centerpiece of the campaign / ego trip by the great finger-wagger and that is pushed mainly by the likes of Cillizza, Thrush, and Yglesias, as well as Russian twitter-bots everywhere, you are indeed going to have difficulty distinguishing yourself from the Bros. I say this as someone who does think both you and Yglesias often have very good things to say.

If you chose an argument that was not so much part of the Bro-hood, like the argument that Hilary, exactly like Bernie, tried to appeal to whites through racial animus when it was convenient to her, then you are less likely to find yourself lumped in with the Bros.

Alas --

Poor Yorick

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I really don't like the lumping of the "Clintons" together. Yes, they have supported each other, which should not surprise anyone. But I like Hill a hell of a lot more than Bill.

It's not hard to compare administrations. In terms of corruption in office, Bill's was likely better than the one that came before and the one that came after, but not at all on par with Obama, who probably ran the most honest administration we'll see in our lifetimes. The lack of corruption was astonishing. And Hill was part of that.

Yes, it's a matter of degree, almost always is, and God save us from those who believe they are pure. But overall, frankly, even Bill is just not on the scale of a Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, and certainly very very very very far from what we have now. And Hill, despite being pilloried constantly, is as close to Obama levels of purity as you are likely to see.

Here comes the waterfall...
 

If this guy is in the hot seat, I can only imagine how much dirt the right and left tribes of DC are dusting off (or amassing) to throw at each other. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b0bfa88c1ca584

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Funny that you've used two examples of compromising their supposed values because it was politically expedient to do so to substantiate "crooked." I'll take hypocritical or false liberals or whatever, but you kind of need graft to get to "crooked."

You know, like directing federal dollars toward businesses you own or something.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I agree Bill wasn't as bad as LBJ or Nixon. Or Bush II (our worst President, based on his lying blunder into Iraq). And from what I've heard about HRC, the public and private person are, sadly, much different. In that regard, I think she's a bit of a tragic figure. Her meanest critics can't dispute that she was eminently qualified and would have been a highly competent leader. I think her problem was she was a technician, a chess player... She was a strategist first, hardened by years of attacks. Where Obama could overcome with soaring rhetoric, she was worried about how her words would be parsed.

But the point of my harsh rhetoric wasn't to uniquely assail HRC or Bubba. The point was more a recognition of the degradation of our democracy. I don't think either of us, or anyone here, is arguing about whether a politician is sleazy. We assume that's the case. The wise and weary of us would say that's how it's always been, going to back to the establishment of Ur in Mesopotamia. "There are always appalling compromises to be made..." Of course.

But maybe it's gone too far? Maybe the pragmatism and cynicism (of which I'm enormously guilty, and are most here) aren't wise anymore? Maybe we've reached a moment where the solutions lie outside traditional politics and markets?

Re: Here comes the waterfall...
 

Legislative bodies are all cesspools. There will be many more casualties.