This morning what I'm reading is "Chelsea Clinton’s Frustrations and Devotion Shown in Hacked Emails," by Amy Chozick. I assume the damaging material — which would be right up front in a Trump article — begins to appear many paragraphs down. I'm not going to tarry at the mushy beginning. (The first paragraph reads like a children's book: "Chelsea Clinton was alarmed.")
So let's skip ahead:
Though her housecleaning role had Hillary Clinton’s tacit approval (“My mother strongly agreed,” Ms. Clinton said in one email laying out proposed changes at the foundation)....Ugh! Not far enough! (But let me just say that language-oriented feminists would chide Chozick for that "housecleaning" metaphor.)
Ms. Clinton, 31 at the time, had held various jobs, including positions at McKinsey & Company and Avenue Capital, a hedge fund owned by a major Clinton donor. She had degrees from Stanford, Oxford and Columbia but had not quite found a way to harness all of her academic wherewithal...Translation: Chelsea was at loose ends, drifting, unable or unwilling to make anything out of her long and very elite education. The word "wherewithal" is particularly silly, especially with the mixed-metaphor verb "harness." "Wherewithal," the noun, is usually a polysyllabic way to say money. The unnecessary reaching for polysyllabic words is an old-fashioned form of humor. H.W. Fowler cautioned against it all the way back in 1908. What is this urge, suddenly, to write like George Eliot or Charles Dickens? They were not bullshitting us. Are you?
And the funny thing is, Chozick sees that Chelsea Clinton is dipping into inane polysyllababble*:
Ms. Clinton often gravitated to weighty policy discussions and interspersed statistics and SAT words into casual conversations."SAT words" is putting it kindly. Why would a 31-year-old woman who went to Stanford, Oxford,** and Columbia use words like "anathema" and "behemoth"*** so badly, and why would the only offspring of Bill and Hillary Clinton even feel the need to try to impress her parents in the first place? What did they do to deserve it? Does it have anything to do with why Chelsea was at loose ends so late in her privileged life and why they installed her in their charitable operation?
Hours after the 2012 attack on the United States mission in Benghazi, Libya, she mused about the unrest in Egypt and Libya in a late-night email to her mother. “Such anathema to us as Americans — and a painful reminder of how long it took modernism to take root in the U.S., after the Enlightenment, the 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th amendments,” she wrote. “Much to discuss when we talk, hopefully tomorrow?”
In another email addressed to “Dad, Mom,” Ms. Clinton seemed apologetic, writing, “I hope this mini-behemoth is not rife with grammatical errors or inadvertent gaps; I am sorry if either true.”
Now, the meat of the Chozick piece is the "cascade of grievances, gossip and infighting" that the installation of Chelsea unleashed at the foundation:
Ms. Clinton had already started to fret about the intermingling of foundation business with Teneo, the corporate consulting firm co-founded by Douglas J. Band, one of her father’s closest aides. She suggested an audit of the charity and wrote that she was concerned that Teneo’s principals had been “hustling” business at foundation gatherings....Band fought back with a 13-page memo about all the millions he'd raised for the foundation and Bill Clinton:
“We have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the president and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like,” Mr. Band wrote.That is buried in the center of Chozick's piece, which proceeds into some fluff about a note "from the Bon Jovis" and Bill Clinton "buying clorox wipes" and Chelsea's feeling "profoundly disturbed" about the Haitian earthquake. Remember the headline: The idea is to leave you with an amorphous, generalized empathy for Chelsea with her frustrations and daughterly devotion.
The subtext was clear: Where Ms. Clinton saw a messy overlapping of business and charity that could haunt both of her parents, Mr. Band saw an ungrateful daughter who was naïve about how what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.” made its money, and how her own expensive lifestyle was funded.
“I just don’t think any of this is right and that we should be treated this way when no one else is, only because CVC has nothing better to do and need justify her existence,” he wrote in one email, using the initials for Chelsea Victoria Clinton. Mr. Band, who had already planned to leave the foundation to focus on Teneo, often expressed frustration at the global charity’s nepotism, pointing to Ms. Clinton’s installing her friends in central roles....
But the story from the leaked emails is about the inner workings of the Clinton foundation — how the Clintons got rich finagling in a way that Band justified and Chelsea seems to have been able to see was quite wrong.
_____________________________
* I just coined that word, polysyllababble. But Google tells me it has been used twice before in the history of mankind as revealed by the internet, so let's just say I discovered it independently and I'm surprised I'm in a group as small as 3.
** Note that I, unlike Chozick, use the Oxford comma after "Oxford."
*** The Oxford English Dictionary defines "behemoth" as "An animal mentioned in the book of Job; probably the hippopotamus; but also used in modern literature as a general expression for one of the largest and strongest animals."
Posts
106 comments:
I think you fool yourself that you "get to normal." To paraphrase what Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said in his famous commencement address, once you set out to fool yourself you are fooling the easiest person for you to fool.
but where else am I going to get the news?
The NYT is written for women so it's a good place to get sex difference bloggables, at least.
I think Chelsea is never going to be America's favorite. There will be no Chelsea in the well story orgy.
LBJ at least had semi-beautiful daughters, and even they never made it big.
Chelsea's best move is probably to enlist for helicopter training in the Marines or something.
"Though her housecleaning role had Hillary Clinton’s tacit approval..."
It would have done her good to clean houses for a living for a few months.
@Big Mike Read what I wrote. I didn't claim my position was normal, only that I tried to get there and I read with an eye toward getting there. I'm talking about a process, a difficult process, not proclaiming myself successful. It's a task that is imposed on me, which I don't like.
That "fool" business is really unjustified.
Chelsea seems to have been able to see was quite wrong.
Any yet it's apparently not wrong enough to refuse the proceeds for her or her friends.
Speaking of news, there's as usual no sensible explanation of Pence's plane off the runway.
Nobody can find a single person able to offer a simple technical explanation.
Hard landing suggests they were either fast or long and in a hurry to get it down to start slowing, which is a pilot error. You're supposed to go around.
Prof. Althouse:
Big Mike can speak for himself, but I'm a big fan of the Feynman speech in question, and although he addressed the line to "you," he meant himself as much as his audience:
"The first rule is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that."
What Feynman was urging the graduates to do is exactly what you write of trying to do. You and Big Mike may disagree about how successfully you do it. Personally, and not trying to kiss up here, I'm just delighted to see anyone trying anymore.
At the Clinton Family Fortune Foundation, Bill is the star and Hillary is the co-star. They own it all and are all.
That leaves Chelsea her old role as a "the child", or at best he has a Doyen role at the Foundation. But she also has great expectations it will all be hers; and she wants to earn it by being useful to it...but her assigned role is a cardboard cutout child to be seen and not heard.
Polysyllababble is an excellent word.
Avoid the Oxford comma unless it resolves an ambiguity.
The comma in a list marks a missing word ("and") which is not missing when the final "and" is there.
Is mini-behemoth an oxymoron like giant shrimp?
Or in the context of these leaked emails, is the better oxymoron an open secret, since all this does is confirm what everybody already knew about the Waddling Criminal Enterprise that is Hillary & Co.
She's like the Penguin from Batman. Yes, the waddling, but also using the Foundation as her Iceberg Lounge - a cover for criminal activity and a source for criminal underworld information/influence peddling.
In my favorite scientific style guide, Matt Young has an entry on False Elegance:
"Using long or pretentious words where common words exist. Many of the entries in this book, for example, using utilization for use, in view of the fact that for because, and therein for in it, are examples of false elegance."
As I read Crooked Chelsea's complaints, it was not that the Clinton Foundation was crooked, it was that some of the folks in the Clinton Foundation were crooked. They were stealing from her mom, dad and her.
She does not seem that concerned about the shenanigans of the foundation itself.
Which is not, BTW, licensed by the IRS to engage in any activities other than a Clinton Presidential Library.
As for helping all those folks in Africa with AIDS? The Clinton Foundation is providing drugs made by the Indian company Ranbaxy. The drugs have no active ingredients. They do have lots of donations to the Clintons.
Because, in the words of one Ranbaxy officer, "Who cares about blacks?" (Quote from memory)
Thinking of voting for Crooked Hilary? Read this article and change your mind
http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/?iid=sr-link1
The author, Katerine Eban has written a lot about product surety in general and ranbaxy in particular over the years. I've met her, she has been at this a long time and is very knowledgeable.
John Henry
Sesquipedelian could be used, except it's not metric.
Personally, ... I'm just delighted to see anyone trying anymore.
Yes, I'll second that.
She uses SAT words badly because she isn't very bright. She got to go to elite schools because she is a Clinton.
"Chelsea seems to have been able to see was quite wrong."
That only proves Webb Hubbell had a conscience.
After 150 years, a word is sesquipedelian.
So Chelsea was so sheltered that she was unaware her parents were first class grifters? Chelsea brought in a law firm to audit the Clinton Foundation? Naive and not very bright for a woman in her thirties.
The Pence Plane pilot is rumored to make short and hard landings all the time. Some joke that he must have been a Navy Carrier pilot.
The reason a pilot comes in hot and suddenly drops it down hard once over the end of the runway is caution about downdrafts from area thunderstorm activity.
So Chelsea for President, right? When she is old enough that is.
The Clintons are behemothically anathema.
This administration reflexively lies to us about the time of day, so you don't believe anything at all without checking it against other sources and then apply "Occam's razor."
That The NYT will slant everything to help Hillary! is not necessarily true. They slant the news to help themselves. They see Hillary! and the Democrat Party as tools to get what they want, but are in no way blind to what they are or in any way enamored of them.
I used to say that I thought that Chelsea was a closet Republican, or, at least, that after her parents are gone, she'll have some interestingly less than positive things to say about them. I've walked that back some of late, as she's become more prominent on the trail. But perhaps I won't be proven so wrong.
"where else am I going to get the news?"
British newspapers all have web sites, which I read to get US news.
The Times (NY and LA) might squeeze a bit in after the obligatory Clinton praise and Trump hate,
Doug Band is absolutely right. He got $200m plus (after tax) to Bill and Hillary. Chelsea is reportedly worth $15m. Band made it happen. They are ingrates!
I saw Chelsea in Omaha. Not impressed at all. Alums of Wisconsin-Whitewater (Meade's favorite) are better spoken. She was pathetic and I so reported at Power Line.
If Prof. Althouse used the old Socratic method on her in class, she would melt. The Dean would have to step in and stop the questioning.
Just getting rid of these three grifters and their buds is reason enough to vote Trump.
"I think: How would the equivalent material be presented in an article about Trump?" Exactly the other way around. Next question.
"I don't have to read The New York Times, but where else am I going to get the news? Everything else is also bad in its own way, and I'm accustomed to the bad that is The New York Times." WSJ is better, in its news pages. At least less blatant in letting reporter biases show.
"What is this urge, suddenly, to write like George Eliot or Charles Dickens? They were not bullshitting us. Are you?" Yes. Next question.
"SAT words" is putting it kindly. Why would a 31-year-old woman who went to Stanford, Oxford,** and Columbia use words like "anathema" and "behemoth"*** so badly, and why would the only offspring of Bill and Hillary Clinton even feel the need to try to impress her parents in the first place?" Because she is an "educated" fool. Contemporary college educations do not guarantee correct usage, and no, you don't get your money back. Next question.
"Does it have anything to do with why Chelsea was at loose ends so late in her privileged life and why they installed her in their charitable operation?" Yes and yes. Next question.
"Now, the meat of the Chozick piece is the "cascade of grievances, gossip and infighting" that the installation of Chelsea unleashed at the foundation: Ms. Clinton had already started to fret about the intermingling of foundation business with Teneo, the corporate consulting firm co-founded by Douglas J. Band, one of her father’s closest aides. She suggested an audit of the charity and wrote that she was concerned that Teneo’s principals had been “hustling” business at foundation gatherings . . ."
Translation: they fought over exactly how corrupt they could be and get away with it. If Chelsea actually questioned the grifters' business model, good for her. But it looks like fiddling in the margins of a $250B influence peddling scheme and a $100M personal fortune accumulation scheme, not counting the sweetheart deals for Teneo and for Chelsea herself.
Next time, you, a law professor (I know, I know), might want to focus on the serial systematic law-breaking here, rather than fisking yet another predictable NYT screed.
Being a grifter that gets a cut of all government contract awards and appointments IS the way one the party Southern States Governors roled when these two were taught the ways of doing it in Arkansas.
The big deal is these two are not selling off favors among locals, or even among areas of the USA like Congress has always done it. They have been selling off favors to our Nation's enemies abroad...like our government is one big Global Cosa Nostra with a GodMother.
"You and Big Mike may disagree about how successfully you do it."
My point is that I am making no assertion about how successful I am, so there's nothing to disagree with me about. I mean I'm disagreeing with people who see me in disagreement...
Why do I get for trying to avoid disagreement? Apparently nothing. It's not noticed.
Q: I am thinking of seeking a high-paying job and would like to develop a power vocabulary. What do you suggest?
A: The Academy of Big Words recommends that, in business situations, you should, whenever possible, use the words "erstwhile" and "penultimate," as follows:
You: Mr. Johnson, that there is a erstwhile tie you got on.
Mr. Johnson: You're hired.
You: Another big word I know is penultimate.
@M Jordan The Clintons are behemothically anathema.
Most excellent!
"Because I think the NYT is terribly slanted" -- like apartment floors in New York City? What else is slanted in New York?
The MSM continues to try to make Chelsea Clinton appear to be an accomplished young woman.
When Chelsea proclaimed her indifference to money I was reminded of this scene.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+aviator+katherine+hepurn&&view=detail&mid=8F6B3AA7C29FBAB7E2D08F6B3AA7C29FBAB7E2D0&FORM=VRDGAR
Skip ahead to 1:22 for the most relevant portion.
"The reason a pilot comes in hot and suddenly drops it down hard "
I wonder about the "burning rubber smell." Brakes are not used unless there engine braking system doesn't do it.
Maybe La Guardia was below minimums.
Maybe that pilot used to work at Asiana Airlines along with the four pilots in that news broadcast.
It's as if a feminine Fredo brought in an outside auditor to demonstrate that the Corleone olive oil business is on the up and up. Sheesh. Too bad the Clintons flushed their natural-born Sonny and Michael down the tubes.
Or maybe from the viewpoint of the American Project, a bit of luck, limiting the damage of Clinton Inc to one generation.
JPS: what you said. Totally love Feynman, especially in this address to 1974 CalTech graduating class. Anybody who hasn't read "Cargo Cult Science" should drop whatever they're doing and go find it...
Another one of her emails. Didn't know disintermediate was a word.
Forcing terrorists to read the email might work better than waterboarding.
Hello John, Cheryl, Victoria and Jennifer - Although I continue to respond
to people's sharing of their concerns about the Foundation and/or my
father's world by telling them that 1) I hope they will share their
experiences/concerns/hopes/fears with Victoria and her team candidly and 2)
that it is critical that as we move to professionalize the Foundation for
the future that professionalism starts with this process - people continue
to share things with me. Although I continue to not respond or engage
beyond what I outlined above, I do think - and my mother strongly agreed as
a lawyer - that I should pass along to you Victoria and your team and to
you John and Cheryl the below as more information (factual or suspected or
imagined). Particularly in advance of what I understand will be an
intermediate conversation with Doug tomorrow. I continue to want - and to
try - to disintermediate myself from this muddle, edify the corporate audit
and existential process we are in - while also being a responsible board
member, daughter and person.
In that vein, I was told or experienced the following since we had our
meeting last week Victoria:
- today that Doug reached out to someone at Harry Walker (who represents
my father on all speaking arrangements), to ask for a full list of all his
speeches, how much he was paid for each speech, and told the contact person
at Harry Walker that all speeches should now go through him, not Terry
Krinivic (the scheduler)
- that Ilya physically saw/caught Justin a couple of days ago reading his
bberry and loading the same spyware onto his computer that he loaded onto
Bari's computer
- a secret service agent told Marc (my husband) that Justin had asked
another secret service agent to lie about the parking pass absurdity [we
can talk about this really ridiculous anecdote offline]
- multiple people shared with me how upset they were at hearing how Justin
referred to my father in the last week - in very derogatory ways widely
sadly
- Oscar told my father he knows Justin reads his emails
- my father was told today of explicit examples at CGI of Doug/ Teneo
pushing for - and receiving - free memberships - and of multiple examples
of Teneo 'hustling' business at CGI - and of people now having quit at CGI
- that Doug told Jon Davidson he was never going to forgive him for not
reporting that Dad met with John (ie you John) on Sunday and that how could
Jon forget who he really worked for
- Doug told Terry Krinivic she would never work again in this town if she
didn't back him up on everything
- Ilya believes Hannah and Justin have taken significant sums of money from
my parents personally - some in expenses - cars, etc. - and others directly
As ever, on some of the above I am sure there are three sides as my
grandmother would say - his, hers and the truth. On others, it seems more
clear. All of it makes me very sad. Thank you all for your help. The only
people I am sharing the above with are you, my mother and my father. Please
let me know as ever if you have any questions or advice.
Thank you,
Chelsea
Many of the entries in this book, for example, using utilization for use,
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. utilize:MadisonMan::garner:althouse
Chelsea is your run of the mill idiot scion. You could give every kid in the Detroit public school system her education and 60% of them would exceed her capabilities.
But progressives want aristocracy. They want a permanent wealthy class chosen by government and heredity because they are not competitive any other way.
I suppose Bill and Hillary gave Chelsea a job at the foundation because their wealthy friends were starting to balk at giving money to her husband to "invest."
Chelsea is, among other things, a polysyllababbler.
Prof. Althouse:
"Why do I get for trying to avoid disagreement? Apparently nothing. It's not noticed."
I'm tempted to disagree with you there. But you're a patient host, and I don't want to abuse that.
Which reminds me of this scene.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=trading+spaces+bookies&qpvt=trading+spaces+bookies&view=detail&mid=D35D782673118CFAE4CCD35D782673118CFAE4CC&FORM=VRDGAR
You could give every kid in the Detroit public school system her education and 60% of them would exceed her capabilities.
This is what "Regression to the mean" is all about. That, of course, assumes the parents are really intelligent. I suspect Bill is but I don't know about Hillary. She has always struck me as a plodder with credentials.
Martha said...
So Chelsea was so sheltered that she was unaware her parents were first class grifters? Chelsea brought in a law firm to audit the Clinton Foundation? Naive and not very bright for a woman in her thirties.
10/28/16, 10:03 AM"
The cynic in me advices that is a CYA move to protect against indictment of herself. Mom, dad, nothing personal. Strictly business.
Doug Band is a professional influence peddler, and he has many more clients and associates than the Clintons.
Go have a look at his own outfit, Teneo.
"and why would the only offspring of Bill and Hillary Clinton..."
There has never been any demon offspring to these two pieces of human garbage. Webb Hubbell is Chelsea's father.
She has always struck me as a plodder with credentials.
I think the whole mail server thing proves she isn't that bright. Seriously, that's her best scheme to get around the law pertaining to government correspondence?
And the people who she surrounds herself with is another indication. Yes men and women who are not going to challenge her in any way because they know if they did they would be gone in a second and they owe their position in life to her good graces.
And yelling at the people in her protection detail. Not exactly the act of even a moderately intelligent person. I personally would be trying to be best buds ever with someone responsible for taking a bullet for me.
It's been my experience that people who use a big word where a small one will do are not showing off a great intellect, but trying to hide a small one. It's to Chelsea's credit that she feels some shame for her privilege and how it is sustained. It's not her fault that her parents are grifters, but they did something right if she has enough moral sense to realize she doesn't deserve her status.
@Althouse, the problem isn't how successful you are, it's how successful you could possibly be given your starting point. The Times of today is not the Times of when you were a law student at NYU. I think there's a level at which you recognize that, but if you're starting point is bad then it's going to be difficult to get to a finishing point that isn't also bad.
For one thing, what if the Times chooses not to cover something at all because it reflects poorly on the Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular? How do you get to a fair and balanced* position when there's no starting point?
___________
* Yes, I know who tries to pretend that they are "fair and balanced."
If chelsea had just gotten a real career she wouldn't have set the emails in motion that were published by Wikipedia's.
Jonah Goldberg understands what Chelsea does not:
"The Clintons always wanted to get back into power, and for a self-styled royal family in exile, the foundation served as a brilliant way to keep all of the retainers, courtiers, and henchmen employed."
It was also a great way to funnel money to their highly credentialled, but not that capable, daughter. She should have followed Jake's advice and done as little as possible. Instead she tried to actually run things, hijinks ensue!
From yesterday's Wikileaks article in the Times, we learned that as far back as 2011, Chelsea Clinton had a chief of staff. Let me repeat that. Chelsea Clinton. Had a chief of staff. The entitlement of these people, the way they've internalized the White House modus operandi, is gobsmacking.
This is what infuriates me about this whole Clinton Foundation thing. It used to be that someone was successful and became wealthy, then went into politics. Nowadays, it seems that people go into politics, then become successful and wealthy.
The various members of the Clinton Clan have never held down a job where they were expected to produce anything, or be held to standards, or generate value from their labors. Yet now they're stinking rich. You could say the same thing about a lot of politicians, on both sides of the aisle. Get into office, set up a "non-profit" associated with members of your family, then steer contracts to it.
Yet our Fourth Estate, our Tribunes of the People, never seem to question this or find it odd. Is personal enrichment while in "public service" now to be considered the new normal in the US?
If it's such hard work reading the NY Times, why bother?
Oh, give a girl credit - she named her quiet, thoughtful little dog after Kierkegaard!
Is personal enrichment while in "public service" now to be considered the new normal in the US?
Yes.
"edify the corporate audit"??
Oh my. This...this may not be a smart person. This may be a person who is told she is smart and genuinely believes she is smart, but who is not smart.
why would the only offspring of Bill and Hillary Clinton even feel the need to try to impress her parents in the first place?
I wonder if the former SoS has quite the temper.
@Fernandinande: Someday I'll learn to use "penultimate" correctly, even if it's the next-to-last thing I ever do!
There's a certain irony here that can best be described by the aphorisms 'Birds of a feather flock together', 'There's no honor among thieves', and 'Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered'. Bill and Hillary are grifters. They desired to get a cut of the money they purportedly raised for charity. Rather than doing it themselves, they chose a fellow grifter, Doug Band, to help with the shakedown. There appears to have been suspicion on Chelsea's part that Band was taking is own cut. Her criticism smacks of either ignorance and naivete, or greed. Either she really didn't understand that the Clinton Foundation was designed for the personal benefit of the Clinton Family; or she was so greedy that she didn't want Doug Band to get a piece of pie. Either of these are a sad commentary on a someone who is 31 years of age. Ignorance and naivete might be excused of someone aged 18, but at 31 and as part of the Clinton family it could suggest that the ignorance is willful, or that Chelsea is not very observant or insightful. If it is the alternative, and she is denying the laborer the fruits of his labor, then that is even sadder.
It's cargo cult intellectualism: if I use big words, I'll be smart.
Greg
The MSM defense of the Foundation RICO grift is that there is no proof of official acts or favors to donors. MSM completely ignores the Haiti cell phone deal for Irish telecom donor. Willful ignorance, advocacy and laziness by the MSM.
Hillary! does not have so much in the way of "credentials." She is a plodder with an awesome willpower.
Blogger Michael K said...
"This is what "Regression to the mean" is all about. That, of course, assumes the parents are really intelligent. I suspect Bill is but I don't know about Hillary. She has always struck me as a plodder with credentials."
I think Bill is smarter than most with particular strengths in empathy and social skills. Many rapists are similarly endowed and their predatory actions are based on feelings of superiority. It is no surprise bill preyed on subordinates.
I think you are dead on with hillary. Massive determination and focus. Not that bright. Consumate lawyer. Being a sociopath gives her an edge in politics.
How unfortunate that the mediaswine have chosen to ignore the numerous emails detailing Hillary's and the other Clintons' faults and bad behavior in favor of those that are fodder for absolution and fluff pieces.
Not only does Trump receive far different treatment, but I remember a time when WaPo, and I believe the NYT, advertised for volunteers to sift through Palin's emails for dirt.
This election is not just about a corrupt media pimping for Hillary during the campaign, it is also about the virtual certainty that they will "Pravda " for her if she is elected. Corruption surrounds this women like water surrounds a fish.
Let us then look at this as a math problem.
You have is a function NYT(x), and you know the value of NYT(x), but what you really want to know is, what is x?
BUT the problem is, not all functions have an inverse function and even if they do, the result may not be unique. For example, if the function is y=sqrt(x) and you know y=4 then you also know that x can be either +2 or -2, but, you have no way to know which because that information has been lost.
How, then, might one characterize the function NYT(x), where "x" is a real-world event? And, assuming you even know what NYT(x) is, what makes you think it's even possible to determine what "x" is if/when you know what NYT(x) is?
Greg Hlatky said...
. . .
Get into office, set up a "non-profit" associated with members of your family, then steer contracts to it.
. . .
I keep telling people that this 'foundation' crap is the equivalent of a title of nobility. It's not just politicians doing it. You endow a foundation, appoint a board or control the appointment process, give it orders, and stand back and say 'it's not me, it's the foundation" when you want to. It outlives you and control of the foundation gets passed on to your heirs.
OK, sorry, I meant "square," not "sqrt."
Of course Chelsea is concerned about the Clinton foundation, it's her trust fund.
Caroline Kennedy, another upper-class twit, was not available for comment. Smart move by Obama to send her to Japan. If we had an embassy on Uranus, he would have sent her there.
To fix the NYT (mostly), prosecute Carlos Slim.
Yesterday there was a web piece comparing the NYT above-the-fold dominated by the usual Trump bashing with the U.K. Mail's extensive coverage of Europe preparing for war with Russia. The piece observed that the Times was busy fighting the real enemy, Republicans.
And the Professor gets "the news" from the NYT. Old habits die hard.
Chelsea's choice of the word "hustling" to Band was great.
" Not exactly the act of even a moderately intelligent person. I personally would be trying to be best buds ever with someone responsible for taking a bullet for me."
Indira Gandhi, could not be reached for comment on pissing off your bodyguards.
She was walking through the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1, Safdarjung Road in New Delhi towards the neighbouring 1 Akbar Road office.[1]
As she passed a wicket gate guarded by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, the two opened fire. Sub-Inspector Beant Singh fired three rounds into her abdomen from his sidearm.[5] Satwant Singh then fired 30 rounds from his Sten gun into her after she had fallen to the ground.[5] After the shooting, both threw their weapons down and Beant Singh said "I have done what I had to do. You do what you want to do."
Why would a 31-year-old woman who went to Stanford, Oxford,** and Columbia use words like "anathema" and "behemoth"*** so badly, and why would the only offspring of Bill and Hillary Clinton even feel the need to try to impress her parents in the first place?
Because she's way less intelligent than she wants to portray?
"14th, 15th, 16th and 19th Amendments"??
The 16th Amendment reads:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
Did CVC really like income tax, or mess up, or was this an in joke, like intentionally saying "interweb"?
By the way, the need for the 16th Amendment hints at why, despite desires to "tax the wealthy", there is no wealth tax.
Greg Hlatky, 10:48:
"Get into office, set up a 'non-profit' associated with members of your family, then steer contracts to it."
What I find interesting is that Charity Navigator went from saying, "Um, we really don't know how to rate this - it's not a charity" to, "Yep, sorry, we were just a little confused there, but this is a fine charity" just in time for Mrs. Clinton to start saying "world-renowned charity" and for the fact-checkers to "debunk" the claim that Charity Navigator wouldn't rate them.
If we weren't talking about public servants of such impeccable integrity as the Clintons, I might wonder whether someone in that Foundation took a carrot-and-stick approach to making sure they got a rating, and a good one.
I have an entirely serious suggestion for you, Ann. Instead of using the New York Times as your basic news source, switch to the Wall Street Journal. Yes, I know they are business and finance oriented, but they have an excellent and reasonably unbiased news team and some decent editorial writers. They report stories that everyone else seems intent on hiding. I quite reading the New York Times when I noticed their anti-Bush bias was seeping into everything --even travel and food stories!! Honestly, why waste your time with that rag?
Band is correct, though- Chelsea Clinton isn't complaining about how her family and friends are benefiting from the corrupt activities of the Foundation- no, she is complaining how non-Clinton family and acquaintances are hustling for money within the boundaries of oundation activity.
I have know quite a few people like Chelsea Clinton in my life- they are people who are just a tad above average intelligence, but have been raised to believe they are much smarter than they really are. You end up noticing it precisely because they try too hard to be eloquent.
@Michael K
Had not thought about that.
But absent that, there is the fraction of a second difference between someone enthusiastically placing themselves in the line of fire and reluctantly doing so. When bullets are flying, a fraction of a second is all it takes.
And that reminds me of this:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-segment---bill-clinton/n10878
they are people who are just a tad above average intelligence, but have been raised to believe they are much smarter than they really are.
You just described 80% of Ivy League graduates. Those not in STEM majors.
Whereas this paper shows what real high IQ does.
Look at this guy's history:
With an undergraduate degree in physics and a Masters in plasma engineering (both earned while studying in Tehran, Iran), and now PhD work in chemical engineering that includes machine learning, Alizadeh's background allows a unique perspective on this line of research that draws on all three, combining the physics of Zernike moments with the challenge of data mining with the realities of gathering data from human cell lines.
Not an Ivy League school in there,
"I have an entirely serious suggestion for you, Ann. Instead of using the New York Times as your basic news source, switch to the Wall Street Journal. Yes, I know they are business and finance oriented, but they have an excellent and reasonably unbiased news team and some decent editorial writers. They report stories that everyone else seems intent on hiding. I quite reading the New York Times when I noticed their anti-Bush bias was seeping into everything --even travel and food stories!! Honestly, why waste your time with that rag?"
WSJ doesn't work for blogging. The NYT lets me give links that will get you through to the article, past the pay wall. WSJ does not, so it's not a regular stop for me. Too bad, but it's their choice. I used to subscribe, but they don't provide usable links.
Perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part, but I got a damn with faint praise vibe from the quotes Althouse supplied. It's fun to fantasize about what the Times would have made of Wikileaks if Hillary was running against someone like Obama. Then you would have gotten the real story , and it would have been given its proper emphasis.......Well, maybe after the election. I think Hillary will have the shortest honeymoon with the press on record. Some of this stuff is just too gross and salacious to ignore for long. The left was willing to ignore famines and show trials, but the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact was a bridge too far, at least for some of them.
"past the pay wall."
Nope, not for me. I get 5 or 10 "free articles" a month and then have to pay. Most of those are links you put in posts which I clicked in a moment of weakness. About half way through the month, they will not let me look.
"WSJ doesn't work for blogging."
It's a shame because Kimberly Strassel has an important column today — "Grifters-in-Chief"
"Nope, not for me. I get 5 or 10 "free articles" a month and then have to pay."
1) Open 'incognito browser window'
2) Paste NY Times (or WaPo) URL into incognito go to field
3) Enjoy access
The only problem is that your browser plugins and addons won't won't work in the incognito browser window.
If Hillary becomes President can she pardon herself?
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8:
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.
I think Greg and Tim (and others) have it right. Chelsea's e-mails suggest an average or slightly above average intellect trying to act like a significantly above average intellect. The funny thing is that significantly above average intellects usually try hard to act "normal" (e.g. Feynman, a plain spoken man who loved being intelligent but had little time for intellectuals).
Chelsea's flitting among hedge funds, consulting firms and media to ultimately land at the foundation supports this. It suggests her name was enough to land her jobs but her capability not enough to keep one - or alternately not enough to advance her to the level she felt she deserved. McKinsey are probably happy to spend $200k a year to give Chelsea a bullshit do-nothing senior associate job and keep the Clintons on-side, but hell if they'll make her a partner without more quid pro quo than Mommy and Daddy were willing to put up.
"John Constantius said...
I think Greg and Tim (and others) have it right. Chelsea's e-mails suggest an average or slightly above average intellect trying to act like a significantly above average intellect."
Obama's letter to HLR supporting affirmative action. It's the unnecessary adjectives and adverbs that get to me.
I’d also like to add one personal note, in response to the letter from Mr. Jim Chen which was published in the October 26 issue of the RECORD, and which articulated broad objections to the Review’s general affirmative action policy. I respect Mr. Chen’s personal concern over the possible stigmatizing effects of affirmative action, and do not question the depth or sincerity of his feelings. I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review’s affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review. Indeed, my election last year as President of the Review would seem to indicate that at least among Review staff, and hopefully for the majority of professors at Harvard, affirmative action in no way tarnishes the accomplishments of those who are members of historically underrepresented groups.
http://hlrecord.org/2008/10/record-retrospective-obama-on-affirmative-action/
"Because I think the NYT is terribly slanted toward helping the Clintons, I read everything with an eye toward getting to normal," writes Althouse.
That part is easy for those of us who don't give Hillary any attention - just don't read the articles. It occurs to me, however, that slanted reading can also cause the reader not to look into excellent articles by the New York Times' lone conservative editorial writer, Ross Douthat. who hit a home run last Sunday. His editorial is entitled "Trump and the Intellectuals" and it exactly presented the Donald Trump problem, at least to my way of thinking, and that is important to most of us.
And while bringing current my Trump reading , I think that the level-headed Megan McArdle at Bloomberg takes a serious glance at a Republican future after Trump with "Trump Is Not the Modern Goldwater."
As I think about it, the only reasonable uses of "behemoth" these days are to describe a fat chick, reference the biblical character, or reference the character from Master and Margarita (the latter two extremely limited and specialized).
I struggle to think of any situation where the word "anathema" is apropos (see what I did there?) unless you were referring to a band, movie or book title.
By the way, the need for the 16th Amendment hints at why, despite desires to "tax the wealthy", there is no wealth tax.
I point that out to leftists whenever they tell me that we need to tax the wealthy, and then have great fun watching as the hamster falls off the wheel in their head.
Re the Oxford comma: The AP style book is against its use, but the Chicago Manual of Style and the University of Oxford style guide recommend it. So it's no wonder something like this happened: 4 Copy Editors Killed In Ongoing AP Style, Chicago Manual Gang Violence
The demographics of the country have already shifted, making it numerically impossible to assemble a big enough coalition to restrict immigration and trade in the way that Trump’s supporters want.
Professional Republicans knew this, which is why they kept as far away from those issues as possible.
I see you subscribe to the "relax and enjoy it" school of thought.
I'm not so sure but readily acknowledge that I don't know what is going to happen.
The problem with the Douthat and the McCardle pieces are that they assume that Hillary offers competence. She does not. I keep asking people who believe that a Trump presidency would be a train wreck why they believe a Hillary Clinton presidency would not be a train wreck. She has shown mere competence in no field of human endeavor. The only elective office she has held was the junior senator from New York, and she only got that job because her husband got it for her. As junior senator she did what Chuck Schumer told her to do. As Secretary of State, her greatest achievement was the overthrow of Moamar Ghadafi. She didn't bother to get congressional approval for this and the result has been a failed, terrorist-ridden state and the death of a US ambassador.
How can anyone believe that if we elect Hillary we have dodged a bullet?
I seem to recall that "behemoth" (or "bahamut") is literally a plural noun signifying "the beasts." The idea is of a creature so vast that no singular noun does it justice.
Chelsea. The delightful combo of dim-witted and entitled. She was born on third base and thinks she kicked a field goal. Anyone who saw one of her (three?) NBC pieces knows she was a dullard.
Chelsea is a grifter TOO—from HOT AIR:
Don’t get too hung up on “Chelsea’s warning,” either. As Daniel Halper wrote two years ago in Clinton Inc and reported by Maureen Callahan at the New York Post, she didn’t shy away from demanding her own income stream from Bill Clinton Inc. When she didn’t get it, that’s when the issue of potential conflicts of interest arose — and got leaked to the media:
All was well until an early meeting with Bill; when Band arrived, he was surprised to find Chelsea and her husband in the room. According to Halper, the couple wanted not just equity in Teneo but a salary for Chelsea. She saw Band — not inaccurately — as selling access to her father.
When Band refused her, the book notes, he was not long for ClintonWorld.
“A number of articles began to appear, in The New York Times and elsewhere, about financial improprieties at Clinton’s various foundations,” Halper writes. “All of them were one way or another overseen by Doug Band.”
As Halper notes, a particularly damaging piece on Band was written by Amy Chozick, one of the only journalists who was given access to do a profile of Chelsea.
Suddenly, the media-averse Chelsea was allowing her thoughts on the matter to leak: A September 2013 piece in The New Republic said that “Chelsea, who once felt only fondness for Band as a trusted member of her family’s circle, came to worry that the overlap between the foundation and Band’s business interests could backfire on the Clintons,” with another source saying, “I don’t think Chelsea was wrong.”
Someone I know was speculating that Mr. Band will be yet another person peripherally associated with the Clintons who winds up committing suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head -- twice.
She had degrees from Stanford, Oxford and Columbia but had not quite found a way to harness all of her academic wherewithal...
See, here's something people miss about grad school. Having three degrees isn't an education, it's a career path. And in this case it's a career path Chelsea wasn't very committed to.
If you read a resume, Stanford, Oxford, and Columbia followed by McKinsey and a hedge fund is a very specific biography. It's a young striver who wants it all but hasn't really identified who they are or what they're good at. They stick with the big brand names and keep making it through competitive admissions procedures, but they haven't actually made a choice yet.
McKinsey in particular is a job you take in order to get another job -- management consultants are bright young things who get exposed to the upper management of many different companies, so they have an easy time getting hired if they find a company they like. Going from McKinsey to a hedge fund means she didn't find a company she liked and just went to a place that had a lot of money, instead.
The reporter sounds surprised that Chelsea could be a dilettante with such an impressive resume, but it's a dilettante's resume, through and through.
I wandered away from my point, so I'll try to make it another way. Going into college, most kids are bright but directionless. Going with a big brand name like Harvard or Stanford keeps options open, and is indeed a nice entry on a resume.
When you go to grad school, though, you're choosing a profession. Keeping your options open isn't really possible, because the rest of the people in the program want to do that for a living. Some people realise it's not for them and leave early -- this is actually a good decision. Doing that twice suggests someone who doesn't have a lot of follow through. Following it up with management consulting is a big flag saying "this person doesn't know what they want to do with their life!" The hedge fund is just the exclamation point: after all that training, she chose a high paying job that uses none of her education and has no connection to management consulting. This is the resume of someone who's adrift.
"Another big word I know is penultimate."
"Penultimate" is actually a good word because it replaces three: "next to last." Along with using simpler words in place of fancy words--a guideline, not a rule always to be followed--it is considered best to use fewer words in place of more.
Of course, many misuse it, thinking "penultimate" means something like "super-ultimate," or "mega-ultimate." They think it adds a superlative to a superlative, (in that "ultimate," meaning "the end," is also used to mean "the most" or "the best").
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