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[Sergarr]

Ok explain this then :

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8396

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-26/what-we-know-about-wjc-llc-bill-clinton-s-consulting-company

One million dollars from Qatar for Bill's consulting company birthday. And remember, in 2008, Hillary's reported net worth was minus 8 millions dollars. Today, it's 31 millions dollars.
That's a lot of speaker fees.

- Qatar would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti - particularly on education and health. They have allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest. I'm collecting input from CF Haiti team.

Look, even if it was true, a 5% markup in exchange for a project that invests in something actually useful is "extremely little corruption" by my (i.e. Russia's) standards.

[PTTG??]

Here's the problem: It's easy to say that Hillary is a bad person. It's way, way, way harder to say "Hillary is worse than [select a republican]."

It's even harder to say "It's likely that electing Hillary will have worse consequences than [quite a lot of things, such as Trump]."

[Frumple]

Look, even if it was true, a 5% markup in exchange for a project that invests in something actually useful is "extremely little corruption" by my (i.e. Russia's) standards.

Also doesn't give any background behind the 2011 promise. If it was for speaking fees, ferex, that would have covered around 5-ish appearances by bill on the upper end, quite possibly less given where it is. Could have just been a birthday donation of some sort, which wouldn't exactly be unusual for, y'know. A charity organization, particularly one as well known as the clinton foundation. Unfortunately, if there was any news giving reason behind the promised donation before this year, it doesn't seem to be online. And the email says sod all, obviously enough.

Not sure where the -8 million net worth thing's coming from, though. Checking some news from back in '08, it looks more like ~21m. Checking a bit more, it looks like it did hit that back in '01, apparently due mostly to legal fees. Bill brought in ~13m in speaking fees the same year, which at that below mentioned 200k/pop (though it was probably lower that year) would only have been about 65 speaking events.

And it's around 200k a show for bill at this point, isp, apparently. As a base line -- it can fluctuate up and down, obviously enough. One of the higher paid speakers out there, most definitely, but it's not apparently not abnormal by any means. It's probably worth noting that for a few years trump was doing 1.5 million per.

Though, uh. Yeah, per that bloomberg article's actual contents, pass-through type arrangements for businesses (particularly any with much in the way of legal and/or accounting budgets) are... pretty normal. Been long enough I've forgot a fair few of the details regarding those sorts of setups, and don't recall much about that particular sort, but there's at the very least a number of book keeping benefits. Never mind anything involving legal concerns (and before anyone kvetches about that, legal compartmentalization is pretty much literally the primary reason incorporation exists, and it's there for good reason) or taxation.

[smjjames]

Here's the problem: It's easy to say that Hillary is a bad person. It's way, way, way harder to say "Hillary is worse than [select a republican]."

It's even harder to say "It's likely that electing Hillary will have worse consequences than [quite a lot of things, such as Trump."

Only problem is, that depends on who you talk to. There's going to be as many opinions and comparisons as there are people in the US.

There are certainly rational republicans out there, just that none of them ran for president and the GOP is currently hell-bent on the hybrid far-right + alt-right path.

[Sergarr]

Here's the problem: It's easy to say that Hillary is a bad person. It's way, way, way harder to say "Hillary is worse than [select a republican]."

It's even harder to say "It's likely that electing Hillary will have worse consequences than [quite a lot of things, such as Trump."

Only problem is, that depends on who you talk to. There's going to be as many opinions and comparisons as there are people in the US.

There are certainly rational republicans out there, just that none of them ran for president and the GOP is currently hell-bent on the hybrid far-right + alt-right path.

McMullin? People has been saying that he's actually moderate (as in, real "moderate" and not "current GOP moderate"), and he's technically running for President.

But rational Republicans are definitely far from current mainstream Republicanism, that I can agree with.

[smjjames]

Here's the problem: It's easy to say that Hillary is a bad person. It's way, way, way harder to say "Hillary is worse than [select a republican]."

It's even harder to say "It's likely that electing Hillary will have worse consequences than [quite a lot of things, such as Trump."

Only problem is, that depends on who you talk to. There's going to be as many opinions and comparisons as there are people in the US.

There are certainly rational republicans out there, just that none of them ran for president and the GOP is currently hell-bent on the hybrid far-right + alt-right path.

McMullin? People has been saying that he's actually moderate (as in, real "moderate" and not "current GOP moderate"), and he's technically running for President.

But rational Republicans are definitely far from current mainstream Republicanism, that I can agree with.

He has a 'snowball's chance in hell' though of getting any electoral votes though, except maybe Utah. Which does open up the (tiny, but non-zero) possibility of winning if nobody gets to 270.

Speaking of Mcmullin... http://media.wix.com/ugd/3bebb2_98fe8b3559f64960a573ecad7dc22ec9.pdf (look at Utah) The probability is real. Anybody know of a place that calculates ties when a third party is in play? McMullin is technically republican, but for all intents and purposes, he's a third party the same way as Teddy Roosevelts 'Bull Moose' party was.

[mainiac]

Ok explain this then :
One million dollars from Qatar for Bill's consulting company birthday.

The man attached his name to a foundation so that his fame could be leveraged to solicit donations exactly like this.

And remember, in 2008, Hillary's reported net worth was minus 8 millions dollars. Today, it's 31 millions dollars.
That's a lot of speaker fees.

As pointed out you were wrong about the 2008 net worth.
Yes, it is a lot of speaker fees.  It's also a lot of book sales.  Because she is a person who people would pay money to hear speak and buy the book of.  Because she is an interesting person in very high demand.

Now I have a question of you:
Will you take these explanations, you have just found yourself crying wolf.  Will you accept that maybe you were crying wolf other times?  Or will you insist that you being wrong this time has no bearing on all the other times and you were right all those times as well?

This by the way is why I hate Bernie Sanders.  Yes there is truth to the idea that elite individuals like Hillary Clinton occupy a position of privilege.  Not only should be pay close attention to how they use that privilege, we should consider the idea we allow such positions in the first place.  But it is a radically different idea to be concerned about elitism and throw around words like corruption.  When you talk about corruption you make people think that people like Hillary Clinton are enriching themselves at the expense of the public.  Even when Clinton is acting altruistically she is attacked that way.  The Sanders campaign created an ugly monster and we are going to be stuck with it for a long time.  But people are so caught up in this mythical Saint Sanders that his legend will keep feeding the monster.  He could, if he cared, kill the monster that he created but he wont for whatever reason.  Maybe because it would invite upon him the sort of anger he has unleashed on other people.

Unfortunately the circumstances that would let him win Utah also likely seal the deal on Clinton, so he might win Utah but he won't win the Presidency.

It'd still be a hell of a thing, though, for him to win Utah.

538's article on the subject said that his chances of winning Utah are pretty much independent of Clinton vs Trump elsewhere.

[mainiac]

Hey maybe they are wrong.

[smjjames]

Unfortunately the circumstances that would let him win Utah also likely seal the deal on Clinton, so he might win Utah but he won't win the Presidency.

It'd still be a hell of a thing, though, for him to win Utah.

Yeah, since he's splitting the republican vote and how much he'll split the vote outside of Utah is a big unknown right now. Trump would have to win several Democrat leaning states in order to come close to winning.

Also, there's been a couple of polls besides that LA one which are showing a very close race nationally, but there's still more than two weeks to go. So, we'll eventually see how things turn out.

Hey maybe they are wrong.

It's entirely possible that they're wrong, this entire election has been volatile and a bit unpredictable (most of that is provided by Trump though)

[Leafsnail]

Political compasses are stupid.  There is some value but they are massively overused.

Most of them are just blatant propaganda to try and push people towards Libertarianism but this one is mostly just silly and is fairly even-handed.

You'll note that Gary isn't on that list, hence I'll assume that he's completely honest and therefore the best candidate. Feel the Johnson 2016!

I guess if you have zero knowledge about anything you technically cannot lie.

[mainiac]

fairly even-handed.

It places Hillary Clinton, someone whose voting record lists as among the most liberal senators, as occupying a place to the right of liberalism.  It has the republican party as being as far right wing as south american dictators who had regimes of murder and terror in order to break the peasants.  And of course it does the old trick of calling libertarianism the exact opposite of oppression which leads to funny things like calling the most libertarian regimes in history as the least libertarian on the compass.  Oh hey and let's not forget calling Hitler a centrist.  Y'know the guy who rounded up leftists and put them in death camps, started a war of genocide against a leftist regime and welcomed right wing politicians into his government.  Totally a centrist, guys!

It's not even handed.  It's just that the bias you see is a familiar bias.

[Starver]

It's even harder to say "It's likely that electing Hillary will have worse consequences than [quite a lot of things, such as Trump."

Someone I know (IRL) is absolutely convinced that Hillary will attack Russia, causing WW3. He's intelligent and knowledgable and has researched this kind of thing quite thoroughly. I also think he has been fed far too much Alt-Right and/or Web Brigade and/or crackpot Youtuber stuff whilst discounting out of hand (or circularly reading as an example of their true awfulness, conspiratorialness, manipulation of the media, etc) the counter-position sources.

Used to be that we'd both laugh at Trump's behaviour (even though we were already out of step with Clinton), now he considers him the very best businessman (despite all the proof that he really isn't, if not because all the media sources who are telling us this are all colluding together to support Clinton, possibly under her control...) and one who would be a superb President.  But mostly he thinks that Clinton would be the worst.

I don't like arguing over this. When he tells me that Clinton laughed about the rapist she defended (she did, but not at the victim - it was, as hindsight, at details such as the moment she realised the polygraph test taken by the defendent  she had been assigned to wasn't worth the paper it was scribbling upon...) I leave it. It goes nowhere good if I fight.

He hasn't got a vote in the contest. Neither have I. Thus my assumed licence for joining in on this conversation.  Not to try to balance him, wherever he is busy trying to radicalise poor vulnerable 'Merkins, but I must say that dampens down any qualms I have about involving myself in the discussion over who should be a President of a foreign country. Never mind the fact that the foreign country tends to shape a large proportion of the planet (if not all), so I'd like a US that is capped off with an experienced player of the World Politics game, not someone who would abdicate all responsibility the instant after he goes and nixes all its historic promises to honour its debts.  Friend-of-mine wants anything but Warhawk Hillary, but would be quite satisfied with someone who will slash taxes on corporations in the hope they'll not just grin as they shovel the saved money into the owners' pockets, but maybe at least hire some extra accountants to increase employment (and find more ways to exploit the same loopholes that Trump is hiding in the tax codes to aid his own concerns, naturally).

Hmm, downer ending to that... Sorry, sort of drifted from what I was going to try to say.

[Leafsnail]

It places Hillary Clinton, someone whose voting record lists as among the most liberal senators, as occupying a place to the right of liberalism.  It has the republican party as being as far right wing as south american dictators who had regimes of murder and terror in order to break the peasants.  And of course it does the old trick of calling libertarianism the exact opposite of oppression which leads to funny things like calling the most libertarian regimes in history as the least libertarian on the compass.  Oh hey and let's not forget calling Hitler a centrist.  Y'know the guy who rounded up leftists and put them in death camps, started a war of genocide against a leftist regime and welcomed right wing politicians into his government.  Totally a centrist, guys!

It's not even handed.  It's just that the bias you see is a familiar bias.

I guess putting Hillary and Trump in the same box is classic "both sides bad" bullshit, but it at least mocks right-Libertarians in all their squares. That has to be worth something. I took it as mocking the entire idea of a political compass but thinking about it more I guess the person who made probably regards themselves as left-libertarian.

Honestly the entire idea of a political compass is really stupid. Left/right definitions change over time and are generally specific to any given country, defined largely by the policies of the two major parties and their supporters.

[LoSboccacc]

eh you might want to give more thought at why seemingly intelligent people are now thinking the "unthinkable"

[smjjames]

@Starver: Certainly less likely than some of the other republican candidates during the primary.

Yes, she's a warhawk and anything tougher than the current stance is inevitably going to heighten tensions, but honestly, we need anything better than Obama's weaksauce 'multiple red lines that are okay to cross' foriegn policy. One can still be dovish while having a strong hand, you know, like 'talk softly and carry a big stick'.