A day after I attempted to troll you all with the Blumenthal stuff, Joe Conason has the story:
HGas Washington learned nothing from Whitewater? The Clintons have spent their entire political lives in the capital dogged by one fake scandal after another. And, as we’ve been reminded this week, the fake villain in many of their fake scandals always seems to be the same: Sidney Blumenthal.
By leaking emails between Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton to the New York Times, the House Select Committee on Benghazi majority staff evidently aimed to frame Blumenthal into a sinister narrative of Libyan intrigue, encouraging dark suspicions about his work for the Clinton Foundation and his relationship with the former Secretary of State. The fact that Blumenthal was paid some $10,000 a month for working at the Clinton Foundation doesn’t change anything: This remains a fake scandal that will fail to turn up any real wrongdoing.
Having known Sid for nearly 40 years, I feel confident predicting that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the committee chair, will find nothing to substantiate the fantasies marketed by his staff to the Times, which set the stage for Blumenthal’s subpoena and deposition in a political show trial that will unfold sometime in the coming weeks. Sid passed along information that he thought might be useful to his friend, the secretary of state—someone he has known for nearly 30 years and with whom he worked closely in the Clinton administration.
As the emails illegally purloined from his computer by the Romanian hacker called “Guccifer” indicate, he kept that role separate from discussions about a Libyan relief project, which was intended to provide hospital beds and medicine. That project never got beyond the concept phase and remained entirely distinct from Blumenthal’s job at the foundation, which involved several projects—mostly concerned with President Clinton’s legacy. Certainly it was no crime for the foundation to pay him for that work.
Unfortunately, the Washington press corps tends toward exaggeration and worse when the subject is Sid—and, come to think of it, often when the subject is the Clintons, too. It was no surprise to see Karen Tumulty declare in The Washington Post that “Blumenthal had business interests in Libya,” as if he was making money there—when the reality is that he was never paid a penny and never asked the secretary for anything.
Stay tuned for the next episode of John trolls his readers, post correction the next day.
On a somewhat serious note, she needs to drop that ridiculous situational southern accent.
TerryC
I’ve got the same situational accent. Born in WV raised in OH. No trace of it in my normal voice except for that I cannot correctly say the word “dog.” However, the moment I hear a southern accent or find myself anywhere mid-Ohio and south, out it comes.
Trentrunner
As long as Hillary doesn’t develop vocal fry, she’s fine.
Valdivia
I stand corrected. Also, this piece by Fallows helped nudge me into a different mind set about this.
Still I am going to stay away from Clinton Wars debates. I am just going to vote for her and keep my mind on the crazies on the other side.
Villago Delenda Est
Fools for Scandal.
Nothing has changed.
Meanwhile, why exactly did Denny “Coach” Hastert pay out $3.5 million to some unnamed individual?
No one in the Village is interested, because “Hastert” is not “Clinton”.
askew
Conason is about as impartial as James Carville or the Media Matters people. Blumenthal is slimy as shit and Hillary definitely went around Obama’s directive to keep him out of State Dept by still passing around Blumenthal’s BS as fact.
On the other hand, it is still less disgusting than Bill Clinton shaking down a charity for $500K so they’d give him an award or him creating a LLC to get around Hillary’s disclosure requirements at State.
Villago Delenda Est
@TerryC: I spent two weeks in Massachusetts once, and I started to sound like JFK.
Villago Delenda Est
@askew: It’s not like you don’t have your favorite for the Dem nomination, the guy cooked the books to make crime stats look better in Baltimore.
Wiesman
My sister has a situational accent. She was born in California but went to high school, college and married a man from Alabama. She now speaks with a Southern accent until she visits California, when it disappears within a couple hours. It’s not on purpose; she just does it because some people naturally (and subconsciously) attempt to better communicate with people they are talking to. Hillary lived in Arkansas for 18 years. I have no trouble believing that her situational accent is completely natural.
(I also would have no trouble believing it’s calculated. The truth is, I don’t know and don’t care.)
samiam
So I guess wr0ng way Cole is now going to hide his stupidity by saying he is trolling.
Just like he was trolling when he voted for Bush twice, and when he defended (and continues to defend) fat bastard Christie. Just like he is trolling when he talks about his worship of Griftwald. Just like when he says Rand Paul has some good ideas. Or like when he repeatedly says Hillary has cooties.
See…it’s all a ‘troll’ according to wr0ng way Cole.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Frankly, I’m only mildly curious myself, because Hastert is retired and not running for office and from what I’ve read, the bribery has nothing to do with his tenure as a public official.
Valdivia
Because there are so few Costa Ricans in the US I suffer from a spanish situational accent depending on which Latinos I am talking to. But I swear I never sound Argentinian (Argentinian jokes are a regional pastime)
kc
@kc:
“Bribery” might be the wrong word – it sounds like it could have paying off someone trying to extort him.
Amir Khalid
@askew:
I’m not sure why, but I’m starting to sense that for you Hillary’s glass is always half-empty.
Valdivia
@Villago Delenda Est:
I saw some speculation last night but it seems that part of his deal with the prosecutor was not to disclose the details of his prior bad acts. I am sure they will leak very soon. Buzzfeed seems to be on that trail.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: If you mean that Conason wrote the book on how people ginned up fake scandals to try to take down a sitting president, then you are correct. Literally so. If you want to suggest that writing tha book somehow makes him a less than objective reporter on Clinton related matters, you should probably line up some evidence.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Come on dawg, it’s been all over the damn news.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Please do include Gene Lyons. He wrote “Fools for Scandal” and exposed the NYT as the vile sewer it is.
MattF
@Villago Delenda Est: This little youtube clip is… interesting. Bruce from Yorkville, eh?
jl
@Valdivia: I defend my extraordinarily bad Spanish pronunciation of my half-forgotten Spanish by saying that I spoke it mostly with Argentinians. It is a transparent lie since the sing-song of the Mexican Norteno farm workers I really spoke it with as a kid shines through. But what the hell, I have to make some kind of excuse for it.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Hillary Clinton is going to win the general election by 52%-47% and will have a margin in the electoral college similar to Barack Obama in 2012. The Republicans/FOX News ran a 6 year campaign against President Obama where the level of vitriol increased daily – and it’s still rising – and they weren’t able to get above 48% of the vote in 2012.
As a Democrat, I will happily vote for HRC. There are a number of things I wish she (and Bill) were better about, but Hillary is still a gazillion times better than anything that is going to come out of that right-wing nuthouse. And her support is so baked-in that it will take her killing baby kittens with a hammer while sporting a Hitler mustache on live tv for those supporters to even consider defecting.
For all you folks out there still waiting for your pony, grow up already.
52%-47% with well over 300 electoral votes.
Joy
I was born in the South and moved to Illinois when young (and I ain’t no spring chicken now) but when I’m down South my accent changes dramatically without any realization on my part.
SatanicPanic
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: THIS. Everything about this comment.
sukabi
@kc: my two thoughts were his Turkish connections were coming home to bite him, (that’s not likely, beings as the payee was someone from his hometown that he’s known since his time as high school wrestling coach), so that leaves a former student, a parent, or someone else who had direct knowledge of some improprieties. There were rumors along those lines 15 years ago or so..
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, I should have said co-wrote, but it would have spoiled my rhetoric.
Valdivia
@jl:
I like the Mexican sing-song. It’s also quite contagious I must say. But even if half forgotten, you have the good sense of keeping up with local traditions and blaming the Argentinians :)
raven
@Joy: And I’m the opposite. Born in Urbana and moved to Georgia when I was 35. I can talk that shit just fine down at the bait shop.
Bobby Thomson
@kc: he did cover up the Mark Foley thing.
raven
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: fuckin A Dawg! Get on these mealy mouth scardy cats!
askew
@Villago Delenda Est:
People have slimed O’Malley with that for years and it has been fully debunked multiple times. They went through full audits and one of the reasons O’Malley ran for Mayor was because he found that the crime stats during the previous Mayor’s tenure were being falsified. That was proven unlike the allegations against O’Malley.
Regardless of who I am supporting for president, the Clinton Foundation stinks to high heaven.
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
yes, inquiring minds want to know.
it went back to his high school coach days…….
high school coach.
willing to pay millions.
come on, now…follow the logic…..
only question is….girls or boys…
trollhattan
@Valdivia:
Does it by any chance involve clicking one’s heels together at the end of a sentence? (JK Argentinians, I love me some chimichurri.)
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: Yeah, I’d already seen that, and it is…telling. There is so much being communicated there that is not being said, and Hastert does an admirable job of keeping his face straight.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not everyone can be as cool and level-headed on the subject of the Clintons as you are, Spock.
kc
@Bobby Thomson:
Damn, I had forgotten about that.
ETA: Seems unrelated to the current indictment, though.
Josie
@kc: During his tenure in public office, he pushed hard for the impeachment of President Clinton, which, at the least, shows a bit of hypocrisy, if he did something himself that merited that much hush money.
askew
@Amir Khalid:
Do you have a response to what I quoted about Bill Clinton shaking down a charity for $500K? Not interested in your opinions of me.
Villago Delenda Est
@askew: You say it’s been debunked, but I don’t see any debunking.
Instead, you launch into standard Villager Clinton hate.
You’re O’Malley’s personal advocate here. Time to put up or shut up, Hoss.
askew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I love how posters here are avoiding discussing Bill’s shakedown by taking shots at me.
jl
OK, one side says Blumenthal is a slimy influence peddling business person with shadowy business interests in Libya The other side says he was doing charity work and no business interest at all. I don’t know which is true. I do know which side has a better track record of telling the truth.
My main disagreement with the link is that the WaPo or other journalists have forgotten anything. They know what they are doing. No one who can read and write can be that stupid.
Anyone who might be effective at gathering popular support for policies that will hurt the corrupt crony capitalist oligarchy will be attacked relentlessly. In that respect, Obama is given a Clinton II treatment, and whichever Democrat follows Obama will be given a Clinton III and an Obama II treatment.
They using the famous strategy of an old KGB director: give me that man (or woman) and I will give you the case. We already see that they are getting ready for possibility of Sanders having real influence: he is a Bolshevik preparing the way for violent class war and genocide against the rich. Whatever it takes. As long as it works at the ballot box, the political and media hacks will keep it up.
ruemara
Lord, stop it. Shut up about Hillary. It’s not situational, it’s a slight goddamned accent. Seriously, just stop doing the Hillz story of the day.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Objection sustained, law talking guy! :D
jl
@Valdivia: When I first heard Argentinian Spanish, I wondered who this guy ‘Joe’ was they kept talking about, and why the verb didn’t match up.
Villago Delenda Est
@askew: Yet you’re using the term “Bill’s shakedown” as freely as a Florida summer thunderstorm gets the streets wet.
askew
@Villago Delenda Est:
This isn’t an O’Malley thread. It’s a Hillary thread. You are dragging O’Malley into it because you can’t defend the Clintons’ slimy behavior.
I am not going to dig through the Baltimore Sun and WP archives to find the debunking as it was done in 2005 and 2006. It was a huge part of O’Malley’s 1st governor race and it was put to rest until David Simon decided to re-open his feud with O’Malley to get himself some attention.
rea
Remember when the media outed Sidney Blumenthal for blogging anonymously under the name “Atrios”?
Never, never believe a rumor about Blumenthal.
kindness
John continues to troll his readers on asking Hillary to drop her fake southern accent!
Well it may be fake but would you prefer a Chicago accent? That was her original home center. I’m thanking the FSM that Hillary isn’t weighing in on whether or not that casserole Chicagoians call a pizza is a pizza or not (it isn’t, it’s a very tasty casserole).
jl
” On a somewhat serious note, she needs to drop that ridiculous situational southern accent. ”
Is that true, does she have one? She did, like live in Arkansas for a while.
I’m not taking any West By God Virginian’s word for it, since the charge does involve the English language, not whatever they speak up them thar hollers.
Edit: on a serious note, I think most people who have spent time living in different regions fall into situational accents if given appropriate prompts. Having grown up in CA, home of true accentless proper English, I can tell for sure that is true, myaannn.
Gravenstone
@Wiesman: Yeah, I find I have to consciously suppress an attempt to mimic nearly any accent I am exposed to for more than a few minutes. Probably a more exaggerated case than your sister’s.
Mr. Twister
@askew: Just stop. Martin O’Malley ain’t gonna happen.
askew
@kindness:
Don’t worry we’ll see that one later on this season. Hillary changes her accent based on where she is. Did in 2008 as well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Enhanced accents drive me crazy: Bubba, Gore and Lindsay Graham all turn(ed) up the accent depending on their audience. Graham sounded like Huckleberry Hound during the impeachment hearings, as part of his earnest young man/more-in-sorrow-than-anger schtick
opiejeanne
@Gravenstone: I suffer from that affliction as well, and when I was in England the first time I was embarrassed when I realized I was doing it.
I was raised in California but Mom was born in the Ozarks and when I’m in Missouri with my relatives it only takes a day or so before my husband can hardly understand me. My youngest and I visited North Carolina over a long weekend when she was in HS and we delighted in picking up the local accent, but were disappointed to lose it completely on the plane home.
sukabi
@rikyrah: yep
Amir Khalid
@askew:
It’s a Hillary thread noting that the Sid Blumenthal thing is a nothingburger — as quite a few of us suspected. I myself think it best to wait a fortnight to see if anything emerges to make me think there is substance to scandal. This one took about a day to fizzle out, faster than usual.
jl
@ruemara: Excellent reasoning, elegantly argued. I agree completely. The BS is going to pour out on HRC so fast, this will become a Hillary BS gossip blog. Why do we need one of those when we will have the upcoming NYT and WaPo coverage?
And, forgot to say in previous comments, I hope Tu-hhrray Ga-Owwdee fallahs the foowats -stepshuh of Mistayah Issahhh.
Except with more of that proper and impressive preacherman diction, which I do love to hear from him.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: Given that the “shakedown” is really only characterized in that way by one person in the article. A possibly disgruntled ex-employee of the smaller charity. Also, from the article, it appears that the $500k came from Nemcova herself not the charity.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: From the article it sounded like it was offered but not asked for.
Valdivia
@trollhattan:
haha! More about how conceited they are. Though in fairness, if one goes to Buenos Aires one kind of gets why the porteños feel superior. And I love chimichurri, Malbec, Borges and tango.
Along the lines of your joke: I was in Patagonia and half of the people in the little town were Germans who came there right after the war, really quite amazing.
@jl: biggest grin. yes, very very marked that ‘y’ in yo.
RobertB
@TerryC: I have one of those too. I’ve lived in Columbus for more years than I lived in southern WV, but my accent comes back if I’m home for more than a day or so.
The Thin Black Duke
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Bulls-eye. Strike. Nothing but net. Hole in one. Going going gone. Thank you.
Mr. Twister
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Yep.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne: That too.
Gin & Tonic
@Valdivia: yes, very very marked that ‘y’ in yo
And the double “l” as in, say, parrilla. Couldn’t get over the street we stayed on, Callao, being something like “cashao.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Didn’t Che get his nickname due to his Argentine accent?
jl
@Gin & Tonic: I may be rusty, but what confused my about ‘Joe’ was that Argentinian Spanish, or maybe it should just be called ‘Argentinian’ used that pronoun a lot when other dialects didn’t need it at all.
My Portuguese speaking friends tell me I should learn their language rather than trying to relearn Spanish, then I can understand all Spanish accents as degenerate Portuguese and appreciate their parochial charms from a higher viewpoint.
Cacti
The august Select Committe has been operating for 12 months with nothing to show for, and the GOP has been “investigating” Benghazi for about 3 full years now, with the same result.
Their effectiveness must bring a tear to the eye of Ken Starr.
Waysel
@SatanicPanic: Seconded.(Or thirded?)
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: I say boys.
Bill
Situational accent? Doesn’t everyone have one of those?
I grew up in NY and now live in the midwest. Out here I have a very neutral accent, but get me around New Yorkers and I’ll order a “cup a cawfee.”
The woman did live in Arkansas for a good stretch.
Paul in KY
@ruemara: Thank you.
different-church-lady
Jeez, John, you’re missing the point of your darn own trolling: it’s not whether there’s any actual wrongdoing, it’s that there is always the appearance of wrongdoing!
Remember, it goes like this: “HOW COULD SHE BE SO DUMB TO LET SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS HAPPEN?!?”
Kay
@askew:
I didn’t like it either, askew. I wish we could just have all the foundation stories in one week.
Valdivia
@Gin & Tonic:
Exactly. The Y and LL sound the same in spanish and in Argentinian end up sounding like a shhhhhhh. No one else in Lat Am, except maybe Uruguyans, make that sound this way. It’s handy because you immediately know where they are from.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Che in Argentinian slang is the equivalent of dude. Like:
che, que barbara esto todo (dude, this is all so cool)
I imagine Guevara used it ubiquitously in conversation with the Cubans who have nothing like it so it stuck.
We also use it in general to ntoe someone is from Argentina
es un che
different-church-lady
@ruemara:
Isn’t it amazing how he can apologize for stepping in one cow patty while simultaneously stomping on the next one?
nfh
Something about political hatreds, that one can seemingly never outgrow. I’d moved long since away from the Repubs. by the time I first became aware of Cole (via Sullivan I’d guess) at which point he was still identifying as Repub., but that Hillary-thing…Yeah.
geg6
@askew:
Dude…I like O’Malley, too, but you’ve gone down the rabbit hole.
As for Hillary’s situational accent, I have found myself doing it, depending on where I’m traveling. When I used to go to Florida every year for a month or two to stay with my sister, I used to pick up a bit of a drawl (despite spending almost all of my time there with northern and eastern transplants) while there which disappeared the minute I hit the tarmac in Pittsburgh. I pride myself on my lack of a Western PA accent, except I develop a heavy one the minute I’m in a state where they don’t really have accents, like CA. I can do a NY or NJ accent like a native and have whenever I’m there. The only one I don’t seem to pick up on is the Canadian/northern midwest accent. Don’t know why that is. But Hillary lived in Arkansas for almost two decades. I would think that is long enough to unconsciously fall into a southern accent whenever she crosses the Mason-Dixon line.
Kay
@askew:
On the plus side, though, there’s a million people like this in the Clinton world:
And we’ll hear a lot from them. She’ll get a lot of, I don’t know, testimonials :)
Bill
Off topic: Various sources are reporting Hastert’s payments were to a victim of sexual abuse during his time as a teacher and coach.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/29/dennis_hastert_sexual_misconduct_reported_reason_for_payment_alleged_in.html
Kay
@Bill:
I always assumed he would be indicted for his corrupt land deals, then I forgot about him when he wasn’t.
Valdivia
and here are the goods on Hastert
or as @Bill: reported
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Valdivia:
When I first moved to California, I had the hardest time understanding people with Spanish accents. Silly gringa me didn’t realize until then that different countries have different accents, so the Mexican and Central American accents I was hearing were very different than the Puerto Rican accents I was familiar with at home. Dur!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT:
I believe Wheaton College was the one (one of the ones?) that changed their insurance coverage to exclude contraception so they could claim Obamacare victimhood.
BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: I also grew up in SoCal, but my dad was also from the Ozarks and mom from southern VA. I tend to slip into those accents. BTW, growing up, did you ever go to Jungleland in 1000 Oaks?
Robert Waldmann
Aw shucks folks like usns born an bred South o the Mason Dixon line* don’t have no problem with Hillary’s situational Southun accent.
* I really was bred in Montgomery County Maryland (among the McGovern/
EagletonShriver ’72 bumper stickers (and one “Reunite Godwanaland” , one “Earth First — the other planets later” and one “My Other Car is a Klingon Bird of Prey”)). I was amazed when my daddy ‘splained to me where the Mason-Dixon line was, and that we were technically in the South.Valdivia
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
The variety of accents around the region is really quite dizzying. Even countries that are very near each other have completely different accents. We Costa Ricans sound nothing like Nicaraguans for example (actually we sound more like Colombians from Bogota). Peruvians sound drastically different from Chileans. And all the Caribbean countries have their own thing. Kind of fun actually for me to try and guess where people are from just from 2 or 3 words. Would make a fun linguistics study, though I am sure someone already did it.
jl
@Valdivia: Com’ ‘sta’ steh?
Ajabu
I speak fairly standard California English until I get around West Indians, then it all becomes Patois again. And if I’m back in the islands for more than a month you wouldn’t recognize it as English at all.
The roots, they run deep…
dogwood
@Valdivia:
My Spannish accent and pronunciation are so bad my 5 year old grandson asked me not to speak Spanish because it hurt his ears. My grandkids were born and raised in Latin America, but summers in the U.S. have reinforced plenty of their gringo side. However, when it comes to Spanish, they are 100% Ecuadorian snobs.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I know we’re supposed to forgive or “go thru the proper channels” but with all the child abuse around there’s something weirdly gratifying about the abused going after the abuser like that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone turning the tables in any way, not just this way.
Tree With Water
“On a somewhat serious note, she needs to drop that ridiculous situational southern accent”.
In a volume of his LBJ biography, Robert Caro wrote of Johnson’s proclivity to speak “more southern” the further south of the Mason Dixon line he found himself. He made a speech somewhere down there in which he used an obscure colloquialism that prompted the remark (I paraphrase), “Hell, no one’s spoken like that around here for a hundred years”.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Unless it was a man, not a boy, which I guess is possible. Then it’s just blackmail.
geg6
@Kay:
Based on what’s out there already, I’m guessing the guy was a kid when it happened but the payments were made when the kid had already become an adult.
Goblue72
@geg6: So, Hastert is a pervert who had sex with an underage boy. Full stop.
And he was Speaker of the House for 8 years.
Kay
@geg6:
Right, but do we know it was a student? I can’t tell. It might have been an adult at the school.
If it was a student that’s just wild- waiting like that and then going that route. I honestly cannot think of a time I’ve heard of the abused going outside normal channels like that. I read that Hastert never made any money until 2007 or so it’s almost like laying a trap.
I really did think he was going to be indicted for the land deal. It stunk to high heaven. It was during the “culture of corruption” years and they were all getting indicted. I thought he was next.
Valdivia
@dogwood:
:)
but practice is the only thing that makes perfect so I would say keep on talking! Or listen to one of the many wonderful spanish podcasts around to keep the language skills up. I highly recommend this one, best story telling about Lat Am around.
The Andean accents are super cool so I imagine your Ecuadorian snobs know a thing or two.
Valdivia
@jl:
now you’re stumping me, I might just need to hear it to know ;)
Goblue72
@Kay: it was with a student – http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dennis-hastert-indictment-fed-say-cover-was-related-sexual-misconduct-n366776
You don’t pay millions just to cover up some grownup gay sex. Not in 2015.
Kay
@Goblue72:
Thanks. I figured. If there’s one, there’s more.
Tree With Water
George McGovern: “Are there any skeletons in your closet that could hurt the ticket”?
Tom Eagleton: “Of course not”.
Then there was John Edwards, and need I say more?
Apparently there was a great deal of scuttlebutt about Hastert while he was Speaker. In a partisan spirit (“The GOP must be destroyed”), I therefore ask, “What did the republican party know about Hastert, and when did they know it”?
geg6
@Kay:
You may be right, but my guess is it was a kid. Pure speculation on my part, but I can’t imagine he’d pay out those kinds of sums all these years later, after he’s out of politics, to an adult male lover. I just can’t see it.
JustRuss
@askew:
I don’t think you understand what the term “shakedown” means. It requires coercion, a threat. Bill didn’t coerce anybody, he said “I’ll come to your event if you donate 500 grand to my foundation”. Now I hope you’re sitting down, but this happens literally all the time, and frequently the person collecting the check negotiates to keep it rather than donating it to their favorite charity. Now you might feel this is the most awesome charity ever and everybody should donate their time to it gratis, but that puts no obligation on Clinton or anyone else. He named a price for his participation, they agreed. I can’t see how that makes him a monster, even if Even The Liberal New York Times does.
jl
@Valdivia: that is supposed to be Cuban. That is how it sounds to me.
Valdivia
@jl:
yes, there is definitely an eating of vowels in Cuban. My guessing seems to be limited to auditory experiences though :)
sukabi
@JustRuss: dems aren’t supposed to have, make, solicit anything period, that is reserved solely for the repubs, and there isn’t any amount that they can’t take, appropriate, or steal that’s not within their rights to do so. The Clintons got wealthy, and continue to be extremely popular, that’s what makes them monsters.
different-church-lady
@sukabi: Nothing makes a “progressive” more angry than when a democrat does something halfway normal that said “progressive” previously shrieked about in a republican.
As in: “IF THIS WERE A CONSERVATIVE YOU’D BE UP IN ARMS ABOUT IT!” No, that’s you, actually, not me.
Origuy
The Wikipedia article on Spanish variants is pretty good, AFAIK. I learned Mexican Spanish in school in Indiana. When I went to Spain, Castillian wasn’t too hard to adjust to. One of the differences is that LL is historically pronounced LY, but that is apparently disappearing.
opiejeanne
@BillinGlendaleCA: No, I never did visit Jungleland but I remember the ads for it when I was a kid. We lived in the San Gabriel Valley so it would have been a bit of a trip for us, and Dad adored Disneyland and liked Knott’s Berry Farm. I remember that it cost a quarter to park on the grass under the trees at Knotts, and there was no general admission, you just paid for rides or activities that you used.
Wasn’t there something out in Tarzana, too?
gelfling545
@Wiesman: My great aunt had the same. She was raised in a German-speaking household, in Brooklyn & moved to Texas at about age 30. It’s a wonder she could speak at all. My Dad, her nephew, spoke no German except to his Grandmother, who even after many years here still felt uncomfortable with English. If anyone else were to address him in German he was clueless. Language works weirdly on the brain.
*or Queens. It was a long time ago & some details fade.
tones
@samiam: I for one will be glad when you tire of trolling this site.
J R in WV
It took me 90 minutes or more to write this post, as fixing dinner was in there. But I finished it, only to see that the thread is dead, but that doesn’t matter to me, as I will say what I intend to say about this.
They really do hate the Clintons, now, don’t they?
I grew up in southern West Virginia, but my family worked hard to speak correct English, to not have that Appalachian twang, all of them. But when you grow up down there, you do grow up knowing how to talk with the folks you are with.
And when we moved out into the woods of rural West Virginia, our neighbors spoke an even older twang, almost Elizabethan in ways, and when I spoke with the brothers, sitting on their back porch, or eating lunch with them as I worked to help them get their cash crop up and ready to market, I talked like someone who had never been to town, or at least not more than once every 5 or 10 years.
And of course when I meet someone who talks like that, I idle down the educated sound of someone who went to school away, and talk just like he does. So you will have to work pretty hard to make me question Hillary and her speech patterns, in any way. Fk that talk, I say!
I’m so tired of the Repubilcans, most of whom are just like Denny Hastert, willing to do any thing that thrills the cockels of their black hearts, trying to pin anything actually illegal or immoral on the Clintons.
I mean past that B-J his of-adult-age, beautiful and educated Intern gave him of her own free adult will. How illegal was that? Speak up, I’m not hearin’ you!! Not very.
Or words to that effect, anyway. Low Life bastards trying to do wrong to one of the best Presidents of our adult llves. And his wife, First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, and going to be first freely elected female President of the United States. They treated her worse than they did him, and will for the next 10 years. Low life bastards! No gentlemen there, not at all.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: amen to all you said.
TEL
@J R in WV: Excellent comment! I too am getting tired of the very different standards that so many people have for the Clintons (and for Obama) than for the average Republican presidential candidate.
Emma
If situational accents make you crazy my sister would drive you nuts. She is a natural, unconscious accent mimic. She was 5 when we got to this country and grew up in Chicago. On a daily basis she has that flat-but-not-quite sound. Until she meets someone who has an accent and slowly shifts. She’s even taken to warning people about it happening.
Funniest of all was our driving trip through the UK. She went from US to BBC English to Yorkshire, to Lowlander to Highlander in two weeks.
hidflect
Hillary has too many cracks in her foundation to win. And I’m not just talking about her face. What’s she gonna do? Come on stage in her powder blue, double-breasted pantsuit, hair quaffed to perfection, her diamond rings and gold bracelets glinting gently in the floodlights gauzed to soften her face, stand up to the mike with her grimaced little, liver-lipped smile and say, “I feel the plight of the inner-city Blacks..”?
Whatever she she gets up and says, there’s a leering horde of millions in the media’s audience on the left and the right ready to tear apart the Madame of Fraud that she is. Basically, she is Romney. Right down to the hairspray. Anything these corpo-robots ever mouth in emulated emotion is given the jaded eye of cynicism. That’s why she’s said basically nothing for months. Her handlers have their heads in their hands furiously trying to work out how to put better lipstick on this pig. Turning over daily issue after issue in their minds trying to imagine an optic that doesn’t end up an awkward and embarrassing backlash.
She’s sold out to so many donors and wealthy parties that she’s known like butter on toast, coast to coast (as the salesmen say). Unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. And for every issue that’s crafted for her to babble into the mike, there’s a hundred comments like this one slapping her down, and deservedly so.