Quid pro...Where is the quo? The Troubling Clinton Money Situation and Stuff.

Something for something, that is what Quid Pro Quo means.

So it was revealed that Bill Clinton got upwards of 66 million dollars in speaking fees from people who were approached on behalf of the Clinton foundation by Teneo.
I read a lot of the articles but pretty much stopped when they said something to effect of "Tax records show that all but about $100,000.00 was returned to Teneo" and that Chelsea Clinton fired off emails on her fathers behalf when she found out about the situation (for which she was called a "spoiled brat")  and said that her father would be appalled when he found out.
They did find out what was going on.  How?  They had an internal fraud investigator hired to make sure that everything they were doing was legal.  So the gist of this story is that in 2011 a company that the Clintons (specifically Bill) was close to, solicited funds for the The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.  Teneo, while raising money for them approached them about for profit initiatives without their knowledge or approval. When Chelsea Clinton discovered this after an internal audit, they severed ties....
The right is trying VERY HARD to link this to Hillary Clinton.  The right wants you to believe that Hillary Clinton and her crooked cronies sat down at the kitchen table, rolled up their sleeves and worked late into the night over pots of coffee and piles of cash when in reality it was just a bunch of people trying to capitalize off of their fame.

The problem is the Quo.
Imagine someone paid you $66 million. The right is struggling and I stress STRUGGLING to find what these people got for their money.  There are ifs and maybes, but no "quo"  there is nothing that they can point to that shows any benefit for those contributing.  Show me the quo.
Ron Fornier has been saying "follow the money" show me the Ferrari's and the mansions.  Show me the private jet (Bill Clinton very famously has to hitch rides on other people's jets).
Forget the fact that he gave the money back when he found out what was going on.  Think about the fact that the logic is that he took this money on behalf of an organization that is doing a lot of good work in the world and got nothing for their money.
The devil is in the speculation.  They lead you just to the edge of a conclusion, just to edge of feeling that something is wrong.  They must be doing something horrendous with the money (even though they did not keep it) but we can figure out what it is.

Wiki leaks did not conduct an investigation.  They merely found out about the investigations that the Clintons conducted on themselves.  They are revealing problems that the Clintons discovered internally and solved years ago.

Things that must be happening right now based on Trump's weekend

It has been a wild political weekend to say the least.  There were the debates of course and well, we all know about the video.  Oh my goodness, the video.

Now is the time that we look forward, though.  Trump apologized and that is the end of it, right?  So how are we this fine Monday morning?  There are so many things that must be going on right now, as we speak, based on this weekend's events.

Somewhere, let's be honest, there is a young girl lying flat on her back doing goodness knows what in a porn parody of this whole election.

Somewhere, there is an intern, combing through hours and hours of tapes basically with his or her eyes taped open so that they can find something else as damaging.

Somewhere, there is someone putting together a lot of cash to pay off the owner of the tapes perhaps, to keep them quiet.

Somewhere, there is someone putting together a lot of cash to pay off the owner of the tapes, perhaps, to make them public.

Somewhere, there are people who are constructing elaborate arguments as to why Trump is still viable, spinning his debate performance, and conspicuously avoiding eye contact with their mothers, sisters, and daughters.

All of this is happening right here in America,

The Bots Have Taken Over!

I am going to do something that I normally would not.  I am going to recommend that you go to Donald Trump's facebook page.  Or go to his Twitter feed.  Pick a post, any post.  Then I want you to look at the comments down beneath that post.
I read a lot of articles about politics and lately a lot of articles about the presidential candidates.  There is something that is common to both their sites and more specifically the comments underneath.  Take a look and see if you notice it.
I will go ahead and tell you. The bots have taken over.  Most of them are pro-Trump and if you look at the names and locations there are some very interesting trends.
First, there is the "Only Hillary..." bot.  This is a person who has cut an pasted some speech that someone somewhere wrote outlining a bunch of things that "only Hillary" has done.  So long is this litany of things that few spend the time to research all or any of the things that only Hillary has done.  There is then a mix of people who try in response or who agree with it.  It is just long enough to convey some idea of intelligent research and just short enough to be a sound bite.
Second there is the person who states their agency and attempts to establish that they belong to a group that is known to be anti-Trump and that they have come to their senses and now support Trump for some reason.  I am gay and I support Trump because... I am black and I support Trump because...I am a veteran and I support Trump because...
Third there is just the hater.  The hater just uses a bunch of words...bad and stuff. insults...bad.  The hater has a plethora of Hillary rhymes (Killery, Hitlery, etc.)
Fourth, there is my favorite the hater, denier.  This is a person who is relatively new and bases their replies on the current polls.  If Hillary is up in the polls, then the polls are fake and the game is rigged.  If she is down in the polls it is just a show of how the polls are rigged but the massive number of Trump supporters are overwhelming!
The most interesting thing that we see now is that they are alone.  Really.  When you look and I mean really look, it has become a lot like those old AOL chat rooms where all the real people eventually leave and you just have bots talking to bots. 
The common thread, especially when it comes to CNN is something like the hater comments.  The first thing they say is that no one reads this particular page, article, etc. not recognizing the irony of posting on an article or site that thousands of people are reading.
This leads to a lot of other questions.  The biggest being, what impact is this having?  How many people in middle America are on Twitter and Facebook?  How many believe what they see versus what they read, or what they see, or what they are told?
As of this writing, Hillary Clinton is ahead in the polls and by all accounts rising, but I am surprised at the number of people saying that she is not. What do you believe?

We can be found on Twitter at @writlargepodcst

This ad is why Black People Support Hillary and here is a hint, it is not the ad itself...

This ad is powerful and not for what it says, but for the fallout and the comments.  The most powerful result of this ad is what people are saying about it. See a lot of the reaction is from white people and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
When I first saw this ad on Facebook, I thought it was very compelling and it made me think.  Then, I looked at the comments underneath.   The range is spectacular.  The vast majority of them were what blacks see on a regular basis. 
First, there are those who change the subject to attempt to mitigate its power. There are comments about her emails, Benghazi, the usual.
Second, there are those who inform blacks that Hillary is only using them.
Third, there are those who try to light things up by saying things like "these people need to go back where they came from..."  and they stop just shy of saying anything related to color.
The first two camps have a singular goal, no matter how benign it seems on the surface.  The goal of one and two are to remove agency from the black population.  It boils down to people saying to black people that they do not know what it means to be black.  It is a rhetoric that tells blacks their experience is invalid and "Don't let Hillary Clinton tell you that you can think for yourself, let us tell you that she is trying to control you so that you will vote for Trump."
The third camp is a group that ties themselves in knots trying to say this is all about race while not using terms like African American and black or "nigger".  This is the same group that uses terms like monkey to describe our current president and have spent the past 8 years saying that he was a Muslim born in Kenya.
The interesting thing is the fourth group.  I read through all of those comments and I found a voice that was missing was ...wait for it... the voice of many black people.  This ad is going to circulate.  It is going to gain ground but it is not going to circulate in the places frequented by people in those first three groups. 
It is like when Trump went to those huge rallies and spoke to predominantly white crowds to talk about what he had to offer black people.  Or the way he brings out Omarosa et al to talk to us about how sensitive he is to the plight of the black man!
So, people can attack the ad and swamp the comments section, but the problem is and always will be that you are not talking to the people you think you are talking to. You are preaching to the choir.  I read the comments because I have an interest in this, but for the most part, it is a bunch of people talking to themselves.

Kim What's-her-name is a hero!

Kim Kardashian is a hero.  We all know that she was robbed and that Kanye West had to abruptly leave a concert to rush to her side.  It was amazing and much like the rest of their lives, like something out of a b movie.
When I say she is a hero, I mean that she is a hero to the world for going through that ordeal and showing us who we are.  See, the majority of the fallout came in the form ridicule and derision from the internet because 9 or 10 million dollars worth of stuff was stolen.

The new face of social justice

I watched as people piled on with comment after comment with little care for a human being who had a gun pointed at her.  Everyone who knows me knows that I read articles for the facts and the comments below for a feel about how the nation or the world deals with things and this time the interwebs did not let me down.
The Kardashians overall put us in a strange place in our zeitgeist.  Women should be free to show off their bodies, except the Kardashians.  Women can sleep with whomever they want, except the Kardashians. They are the American royalty that we love to hate.
I subscribe to elite sites like Huffington Post, CNN, and NPR.  Imagine my surprise when I saw oh so much Kardashian related news showing up in my feed.  Truth be told I know very little about  either them Kanye except what could be gleaned from cultural osmosis.  I could not pick any one of them out of a police line up but if I saw one walking down the street, I would know them by the throngs of people following them to take pictures, talk to them, and then say they hate them.
She is a hero, not for surviving the incident.  She is a hero for bringing to the surface, once again, what is wrong with the world.  We do so often lose our humanity in small ways, but this one is different.
The Kardashians exist, in all ways, in their own little world.  We love them because it is ok to hate them and that is fascinating.
Trolls are going to come out.  It is inevitable. When Patton Oswald lost his wife earlier this year, so many people offered condolences and the vast majority of people in the cyber world were horrified and saddened.  Still there was a contingent who just had to be heard and they did not care how they were heard, just that they were heard. Whatever the discussion, there was always one or two people who would take the opportunity to say the most horrible, disgusting, and insensitive things to Patton Oswald.
This is not that.   What we have here is a group feed.  People seemed to take one of three positions.  First and most abundant, there were the people who were just so angry that this was even in their feed.  They hated that major news organizations were even reporting on it.  The Kardashians had fallen so far down their well of care that they were irritated by their push into their world.
Then there were the people who were sensitive to the whole thing and were defending and praying or Kim and her family.  Many took it a step further and went on to admonish those who were picking on her .
By far, the majority read this story and said, "Fuck her. She's rich.  She shouldn't have been showing off"  They all came out of the woodwork and were made bolder by the fact that huge crowds were piling on and the frenzy ensued.  Nearly an entire nation indifferent or angry at the threatening of a woman's life. 
Rosa Parks...MLK... JFK... Kim Kardashian? 
You can follow us on twitter at @writlargepodcst

How Mika Brzezinski Helped Me Understand Racism.

I like politics and though I am not a huge fan of Morning Joe, I like listening to their daily podcast and their banter.  Some days it is pretty entertaining.  Some days, they teach you a little something.  A few days ago, Mika Brzezinski of Morning Joe filled in some of the blanks about Keith Scott, the man shot and killed by police in Charlotte two weeks ago sparking riots there that went on for days.
Mika reported that according to court papers filed a year ago by his wife, Mrs. Scott applied for a restraining order against him alleging that he had a gun and that he was threatening to kill his family with it.  Scott's lawyer stated that whether or not Keith Scott had a gun should have no bearing on whether or not the shooting was justified.
Mika said that she doesn't think you can discount that...
One of her co-hosts stepped up and said that it had nothing to do with the police shooting though.
This is where it gets a little strange, to me at least.  Mika goes on to bring up the fact that his wife was saying, on the video she was shooting, "Keith don't do it."  Which is true.  But she is also telling the police not to shoot and that [in her assertion] "He's unarmed!"  Mika leaves this part out.
The co host says, "that is a big jump from..."
and he is interrupted by Mika and Joe Scarborough almost instantaneously, each essentially saying that Scott's background is relevant to the shooting.
Joe ups the ante by asking "What if the black cop's wife had written that about him?"   Scarborough claims that if the cop had a history of violence that would have come out then he would have been skewered and the Left or Liberals would have rejoiced.
Mika says that it would have "sealed the deal for them [the cops]."

Let's take a moment, shall we?
I think the first thing that has to be said is that there is respect for cops by and large, though it may not seem like it.  The reason it does not seem like it is that people are angry right now.  I am often annoyed by the police, but I have no ill will towards the vast majority of them. (This is the disclaimer that every person who says something negative about any police officer anywhere must give lest they be labeled a cop hater.)

Now that that's out of the way, let's look at the thing that pissed me off about the exchange.  There are some things that we have to get straight right off the bat.  The first being the over arching assertion that cops and criminals are on equal footing.  They are not.  A criminal is  criminal and not necessarily held to any code of ethics whereas the officer is a duly appointed law enforcement officer to whom we as a community issue a badge, gun, taser, etc.

The co-host (Willie Geist? [I am unsure because I listen to the podcast, I do not watch the show and it is hard to tell voices]) was absolutely right.  Keith Scott's background is irrelevant for one major reason, the cops were not there to get him.  They were there to serve a warrant on someone else apparently.  One officer claims to have seen Scott in his car with a gun and a joint and then he and his partner went to get their vests and arrest him.  There are things that do not match up from there but at this point it would be conjecture on my part.

The point is that they have no way of knowing anything about his past.  His wife obviously had forgiven him or whatever occurred because she was right there begging, pleading, and at times ordering the police not to shoot him and saying that he has a TBI (traumatic brain injury).  His past is not the issue.  The debate is about whether in that moment, for that instance, was he a danger to himself and to others.  If someone says yes, I will beg to differ, but what Mika and Joe and many others are not getting about this situation and many others is what is at the core of why there are riots etc.

Blacks obviously do not have the privilege that whites do in this instance and instances like this.  Yes, he was shot by a black cop and yes it can still be construed as racism because more often than not white people do not face the same scrutiny that blacks do by any race of cop.  The issue is not who is doing the perceiving, the issue is that the perception exists and the narrative becomes "hey, there is a black guy who has not done anything, let's pull him over. stop him, run his license, frisk him, whatever."  Let's get him or her in custody, and we'll figure out what they did after the fact.  In fact, a number of the encounters, the encounters themselves bring charges to the individual.  It is odd to think of the number of men and women who are tackled to the ground screaming and thinking, "what did I do?"

During the exchange on Morning Joe, they said that there were things that they just did not know yet and that the investigation was ongoing and that it was good to have as much information as possible.  The problem is that she did not even know the things that we already know.  There was no cursory study of the incident or keeping up with the story as it unfolded.  She DID know that Scott's wife had once filed charges against him.  She knew all the parts of the video where the wife was saying "Don't do it." but did not know the rest.

This whole thing has put things in perspective.  Blacks have done something.  We just have to figure out what it is.

We are going to be writing a lot more about a lot of issues.  We are going to get a lot deeper and try to clarify some issues and get more voices out there.  Slowly but surely...
Follow us on twitter at @writlargepodcst