I haven’t had much time to explore the few comments of the entity “marduk” since it began fairly indiscriminately throwing “1” ratings at my posts here. I have some time today, so I went looking for its posts. There are very few, all comments and replies.

I found an interesting one on Booman’s Sept. 5 post The NYT’s Focuses on Wrong Candidate’s Charity, an undoubtedly well-meaning attempt to defend the Clinton Foundation from what he and a number of other centrists see as “unfair reporting.”

Read on for more.

Dataguy commented about the following:

Re: The NYT’s Focuses on Wrong Candidate’s (none / 0)
Another shoe has dropped. Bill got a huge pile of cash from a for-profit college. From the WP today:

The guest list for a private State Department dinner on higher- education policy was taking shape when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a suggestion.

In addition to recommending invitations for leaders from a community college and a church-funded institution, Clinton wanted a representative from a for-profit college company called Laureate International Universities, which, she explained in an email to her chief of staff that was released last year, was “the fastest growing college network in the world.”

There was another reason Clinton favored setting a seat aside for Laureate at the August 2009 event: The company was started by a businessman, Doug Becker, “who Bill likes a lot,” the secretary wrote, referring to her husband, the former president.

Nine months later, Laureate signed Bill Clinton to a lucrative deal as a consultant and “honorary chancellor,” paying him $17.6 million over five years until the contract ended in 2015 as Hillary Clinton launched her campaign for president.

The sleaze never ends. Harry Truman refused to sit on corporate boards after the end of his presidency. Jimmy Carter has built houses and ended the scourge of the guinea worm.  Bill set up a barker stall, and sold his influence, and the Secretary of State office, every chance he got.

These people are so tacky and tawdry, it make me puke. The Clinton Foundation did good works, but mostly it was just a big con to get Bill and Hill really good dinners.

Booman claimed it was “old news.” He also mentioned how the Washington Monthly…his own primary employer…has gone after for-profit universities and colleges and (to be fair) further said that this for-profit college was not like the others because it was international in scope rather than national. This immediately rang “CIA!!!” bells of the “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” kind only updated…you know…exporting U.S. “culture” as an economic imperialist tactic… but I have not yet had the time to do much research on the subject.

Dataguy replied:


Re: The NYT’s Focuses on Wrong Candidate’s… (none / 1)

It’s today’s headline in the WP. It’s breaking news to amateurs like me. For pros like you, you’ve seen it all before.  I don’t follow stuff as closely as you do; I’d never heard of it.

From the WP today:

Politics
Inside Bill Clinton’s nearly $18 million job as `honorary chancellor’ of a for-profit college

By Rosalind S. Helderman and Michelle Ye Hee Lee September 5 at 6:51 PM

And marduk the 1-rater chimed in with:

This isn’t corruption. At worst, it’s Bill taking money to promote a company that perhaps doesn’t deserve his endorsement.

Booman is correct here. You’re confusing “a thing I don’t like” with “a thing that is corrupt.

I would be interested to hear marduk’s definition of “corruption”.

Here is a fairly mainstream definition from Google Search:

corruption:

dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.
“the journalist who wants to expose corruption in high places”

synonyms:    dishonesty, unscrupulousness, double-dealing, fraud, fraudulence, misconduct, crime, criminality, wrongdoing; bribery, venality, extortion, profiteering, payola; informal graft, grift, crookedness, sleaze
“political corruption”

Hmmmmm…

Let us count the (so far non-indictable) ways that this action…and many more from the Clintons…fit the above set of synonyms: (All under the heading of “political corruption” as far as I am concerned.)

dishonesty

unscrupulousness

double-dealing

venality

profiteering

payola

informal graft

grift

sleaze

It is never “old news” when an ex-president of this country shills for shady enterprises, especially when his wife is currently running hard for his old position. And even more importantly, when their entire multi-billion dollar enterprise (Call it a foundation if you wish, but it is a for-profit enterprise in the long run. Up close, personal Clinton profit and power. Bet on it.) is under close scrutiny by a number of interested parties for consistently taking large donations from and returning large favors/powerful positions to people who represent foreign powers in one sense or another.

The whole system under which we now labor is absolutely latticed with corruption, like a cheese that has been in the fridge too long. It starts with little patches of green on the outside and initially you can cut the spoiled parts out and off, but eventually no matter where you cut the same corruption has penetrated.

That is a state of corruption that tells any honest cook knows that it is time to throw out that cheese!!!

But of course…we cannot throw it out because the mechanisms for rotten cheese-throwing have themselves  been penetrated by said disease.

So…here we jolly well are, aren’t we?

Previously “progressive” thinkers of all types…and a number of conservatives as well…flocking to the cheese in place no matter how rotten it may be because the only available alternative looks to be an even worse choice…tasteless, crudely made and quite possibly deadly poisonous.

Now…some people actually like to eat smelly cheeses. I am a fairly broad eater, but there are places where I draw the line. Smelly cheese is one of them. As the great proto-feminist writer George Eliot once wrote:

I don’t have much more to say. I am not going to vote for either major presidential candidate; nor am I going to vote for any minor candidates either.

Not this time.

My own position?

Simple.

Like dat.

if this cannot be done…and soon…the U.S. is in a world of trouble.

Burgeoning social unrest will continue and intensify, and so will attacks from the rest of the world…as will internal attacks from its own citizens.

Sorry, but there it is.

Deal wid it.

Later…

AG