This is something that's a few days late, but it only clicked in when I saw the actual graphic that the Associated Press put out to promote their story about the number of meetings with Clinton Foundation donors that Hillary Clinton took as Secretary of State. I hadn't seen this exact phrasing, but when I did, something seemed instantly terribly wrong. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State for four years. And when I read this, the thought that immediately occurred to me was -- does the AP actually believe or want me to believe that in four years as Secretary of State, traveling around the world and on just daily business overseeing the foreign policy of the Unites States of America, that Hillary Clinton in those four years Only Met or Had Phone Conversations with just 154 people??? Seriously? Hey, AP, I meet or have more phone conversations with more people than that in four years. Hillary Clinton probably meets or has that many phone conversations in a month, if not less. As it turns out, the Clinton campaign has had a big push-back on this article and the numbers, and there's been significant coverage about how the AP screwed up. Unfortunately, the story and headline is out there and got all the big news. That it's been discredited -- and that the story itself isn't especially damning (the "big reveal" was meetings she took with Muhammad Yunus...a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Congressional Gold Medal winner and World Food Prize-winner, who had been pressured by a foreign government to resign from the board of bank he was investigating) -- is alas a minor issue compared to the attention it got in the first place. The bell has been rung, and it's not possible to unring it. When one actually reads the article, it turns out that what they write is different from what the Big Promo implies. The article refers to only those with "private interests." (Though even that is selective cherry-picking.) The larger point is that what they promoted -- what most people only saw, as it got passed around and spread like wildfire on social media, is that card above. Implying that it's all the people who the Secretary ever met or spoke with on the phone. All 154 of them in four years... Journalist Matt Yglesias has an excellent and detailed article on how poor the AP reporting was. You can read it here.
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I don't think this completely qualifies as an "adorable video," though the end may justify it, so we'll go with that. A tour boat in British Columbia was doing some whale watching when they spotted a dozen orcas swimming around -- but then went into hunt mode. Soon after, a terrified but pretty smart baby seals leaped onto their boat to escape them. However, feeling that it was safe, it jumped off back into the water. But quickly realizing its hasty mistake, it jumped back on, yet again, and snuggled to a safer spot. (The people posting the video suggest that the baby seal may have fallen off.) A problem for those on the boat was that the baby seal was close to the motor, and so they didn't want to turn it on. There's a jump in the video, and it appears that the baby seal tried again to get back into the water (or fell off...), and again realized it was a mistake...but this time seems to be hiding underneath the motor. All the more problematic. And then there's yet another jump in the video, but from the description of an article I read, what appears to have happened is that the baby seal got back on the boat, and was far enough away from the motor that the tour boat could start up again and get out of the area. And once safe, and as the people posting the video write, after the orcas gave up after 35-40 minutes, they released the baby seal back into the water. Of course, there's no way of knowing the fate of the little fellow, but one can hope that such a determined and clever creature found his way back to his clan, or they to him. Or found a new one. Or just went off on an adventure. Or... I was having a conversation with a friend about the election campaign. He's not a fan of Hillary Clinton, though has said he would vote for her if the election in his state was close. Since the state he lives in is blue, however, and not close, he feels safe voting for one of the third-party candidates.
But he does not like Ms. Clinton. He has a lot of theories about what he doesn't like about both her and her husband. And while I understand his points, I don't remotely agree with them. Most of his quibbles are about maybes and "there's all this smoke" and what-ifs and questions. But he's never brought up anything specific that points to actual, real-life wrong-doing. As you might imagine, he brought up the Clinton Family Foundations and all the questions that were raised about potential conflicts-of-interests and actions. I acknowledged the questions, but said that's all they were. Questions. His concern was that public policy could have been changed because of donations, which is a fair concern, except that I said there's absolutely no evidence that any ever was. And besides, I added, what on earth would she have to gain from it?? It's not money that goes into her pockets. It's a charitable foundation! And one with an A-rating from CharityWatch, which says that 88% of money raised goes to the charity programs it runs. And the Foundation gets so much in donations, significant amounts of money, from so many different sources, what was there to gain from screwing around because of any single donation, which the Foundation could get along just fine without, no matter the dollar amount? Besides which, she wasn't even a director of the Foundation until after she resigned as Secretary of State. Well, my friend said, she and Bill get salaries, so the more money the Foundation raised, the more they could enrich themselves. It's a swell-sounding point, with just one pesky problem. Bill Clinton does not receive a salary at the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton didn’t either when she served on the Board of Directors. So, there was no enriching themselves even that way. There was even less of a reason that my friend's concerns had any merit, and I sent him an email to let him know this. So, what was his argument now to that? He wrote back to say that he didn't mean to suggest that the Clintons themselves got a salary directly from the Foundation. (Though, yes, he did suggest exactly that -- and said it.) He said what he was referring to was large salaries that could go to their workers and cronies and whoever else. To be fair, he noted correctly that the Clintons made $10 million last year, mostly from speaking fees, and have become wealthy from that over the years. So, they wouldn't even need salaries from the Foundation. And he added that they admirably give a lot of that money to charity - but then he had to toss in a "dig" that the charity that they gave most to was the Clinton Foundation. And he added that the Foundation sustains their very wealthy lifestyle, so it does indeed pay for that part of their lives. And noted that I probably wouldn't agree with him. Well, he was at least right that didn't agree with almost anything he wrote. So, I replied -- First of all, I said, if the scandalous case that a person is trying to make has come down to “They’re making money for other people who are doing great work for a charity,” then I think one is losing the argument. And given all the money the Clintons do make from speaking -- $10 million last year alone! -- no, I don’t think the Foundation does anything for their lifestyle. And seriously…their lifestyle? Their freaking lifestyle? That's the complaint now? All coming from this magnificent charity that most observers say does profound good. (And I won't even bother to make the comparison to Donald Trump's "lifestyle," since that's not a standard one should go by.) And to make an actual complaint that the money they give to charity goes to their own charity...seriously?? By all accounts, even their critics, the Clinton Family Foundation is A Great Charity. So, they're reinvesting their money in a charity that they know does so much good -- and with their added money will do even more good. Seriously? What I left out was a "Sigh..." I understand there are questions. Questions are fine. But whenever I hear someone, especially pundits on TV or print journalists go on about how we have "all these questions," and all this "smoke" that's there, and we have questions, questions, there are question, what I always want to say back at the screen and say -- Right, there are a lot of questions. So, you're a journalist, look into them. Track down the answers. Do some reporting. And if you actually ever find something, anything that is literally bad...then great, report it. And at that point you can have a real, serious investigation. But if you don't find anything, after all your reporting, then in the end -- they're just "questions." And questions by themselves are meaningless. Anyone can ask "questions." Hey, I can ask a dozen questions to any journalist, any pundit, any person, to you reading this, even to me without putting much thought in it, all of which would sound like something devious is going on. Who did you vote for? In what ways does that affect how you report on the candidate? How do we know? What do your papers shows? What charities did you give money to? How does that impact what you write? How many times have you moved in your life? Why so many times? How many different jobs have you had? Can we see your performance reports from you jobs?. And on and on and on. And all those questions are silly and meaningless. But...they're questions. We have questions. A lot of questions. There's all this smoke, billows of smoke from the heat of the barrage of questions we're asking. Smoke, more smoke, and all of these questions. We have questions! So, fine, ask them. And look intot them. And if there's no story there, if you can find no actual wrong-doing, then move on. But just having "questions" and thinking that that by itself is substantive is not "where there's smoke there's fire," but rather smoke-and-mirrors and about as empty as you can get. Other than maybe being bothered by someone who raises a lot of money for charity so that others doing noble charitable work can be well-paid. Because if your complaints comes down to that, boy howdy you have lost the high-ground. Sigh. One of my Broadway disappointments is that although there was a planned TV production of Annie Get Your Gun to star Reba McEntire, it never got made. McEntire had never been on Broadway before, nor as far as I know had done much acting. But she was convinced to take over the role of the revival that had started with Bernadette Peters. And by all accounts, she was amazing in the role. So much so that there had been no talk of a TV version, but it only occurred after people saw her. I don't know why it didn't take place -- some reports say that the network didn't offer enough money, and she didn't want to do a barebones production. Other reports say that after a couple TV musical failures, TV got (no pun intended) gun shy. Whatever the reason, it didn't happen. And it's made all the more disappointing because there is bootleg footage of her entire performance, and she is indeed tremendous in the role. I even broke a rule and posted one particular song she does, "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun," because it SO great, and because there were no alternatives to see it, and that it was a part of theater history. The problem with that bootleg footage, besides being bootleg, is that the quality is awful. Well, I just came across an eight-minute medley of Reba McEntire in the production, and it appears to have been filmed professionally by the show itself, and is excellent quality. It's not enough -- not nearly. But it beats having nothing, and so, here (starring opposite John Schneider) it is. By the way, being a medley, this only includes short excerpts from the songs. If you want to see her perform the full version of that aforementioned, "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun," which she signs the bejeepers out of, you can watch it here. (The full clip is excellent, with several songs, but for those who want to see this particular song only, it begins at the 5:50 mark.) I liked this article, which comes from a lawyer who was hired by Donald Trump to work with him on a real estate project, and describes the experience. It wasn't a good one. In fairness, he only worked on this one project, and it was in 1987, almost 30 years ago. So, this can't be taken as a definitive look at the Republican nominee for president. But it's certainly an inside look, and seemingly valid for the events.
What's notable about the piece, though, is not so much the specifics of what happened, but that the author, Thomas M. Wells, breaks it down into 20 lessons he learned from his time with Trump and how they pertain to his run for the president. For instance, how at any opportunity, Trump would not hesitate to lie. Or that the presidency is about addressing all the people in the country, and Trump almost exclusively talks about "I." And much more. You can read the whole thing here. This week's contestant is June Echols from Richmond, Virginia. Happily, I got the composer style, which isn't always the case. But I just couldn't guess the hidden song, in part I think because I was so focused on the composer style. I only had one guess, and it seemed wrong. The reason it seemed wrong, it turns out, is that I had the right song, but had a brain freeze and gave it the wrong title.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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