Your Tacitly Corrupt Open Thread

by Ugh

Corruption is the new black!  

Is it corrupt to profit from your public office if all the profit comes after you held the office?  In my professional circles, you can go work for the government for a few years and then leave and go make a bunch of $$ working for an accounting or law firm in the specific sub-discipline you worked in at the government.  It is generally understood that you are forgiven for any sins you may have committed against the private sector during your public service, but I sometimes wonder if things are being held back or positions are not taken that might benefit the public for fear of harming future employment prospects.

Also, apparently the 2016 Olympics of Doom Opening Ceremony is, what, today?  I think maybe it should take a decade off.  When does Usain Bolt run the 100M final? This is still amazing.  I hope he's clean.

Any good new music out there?  Books?

Golf sucks without Tiger.  Go Nats, but bring on the NFL!

Comments

[Countme-In]

The better the news gets, crime rates down, less war, unemployment at record low levels, the more Americans the armed Republicans who surround Trump are going to kill if they lose in November:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/vincent-bordini-lawsuit-trump-campaign-gun

If they win in November, they'll have the entire state apparatus at their disposal for mass murder.

But Hillary is a little slippery with the truth, so it's a tough call.

[Marty]

"And it especially needs repeating in the midst of a political campaign like the current one, which is based relentlessly around fear. "

Although this campaign has an element of fear of physical harm, from terrorists, much of it is fear of change.

I believe the fear of change is much stronger if less articulated. It is also more real, change is happening all the time so no one has to make it up.

Unfortunately the two choices we seem to have are doubling down on the change that has proven ineffective in raising the perception or reality of economic security, and going back to an era where that security wasn't very evenly distributed.

And then all those other things the candidates talk about.

[wj]

I believe the fear of change is much stronger if less articulated.

I'd say that fear of change is actually behind much of the ostensible fear of violence as well. Violence merely being an extreme kind of change. And it is easier for others to understand and sympathize with your concern over it. Your concern that there's a new ethnic restaurant in town, maybe displacing the Burger King that you are fond of? Much harder to get any sympathy on that.

[Sebastian H]

Sapient, cnn does its usual hash of reporting in the linked article, but the underlying investigation started with Clinton appointing Clinton Foundation donor Rajiv Fernando on the International Security Advisory Board for no reason except that he wanted to be on it. See here.

To my mind, if Trump wasn't the other option, that level of corruption looks serious enough to be disqualifying. It illustrates the way too close ties between the allegedly separate Clinton Foundation and Clinton's political operation as well as showing the kind of buy your way onto sensitive government boards idea that pretty much defines my idea of how corruption functions in modern America.

[cleek]

i agree that it looks like nepotism.

but do note that the "sensitive government board" is a group of people who do not work for the government, who meet quarterly and send reports to the State Dept. they're an independent think tank sponsored by the State Dept, not a top secret brain trust.

[Sebastian H]

Word digression, I've always thought of nepotism as applying to hiring family members or getting favors for family members, does it have a more expansive usage?

[cleek]

according to Google's dictionary ('cause i double checked before i used it), nepotism includes friends, too.

[cleek]

also, Kevin Drum has had just about enough of this Clinton email BS.

[Countme-In]

This is awful. Another black mark on the Clintons' habitual black characters:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clintons-pay-ton-taxes-000000855.html

Youda thunk, for a couple of sociopaths, they woulda used every trick in the book to squirrel away their money a couple of mail drops down the vault from Romney's money and nearly every corporation's patriotic tax dodges.

Or maybe just cheated outright under the table like so many fine Americans to keep the baby's head under the bathwater.

Given the lucre they've apparently unwittingly given up to the dreaded, jackbooted IRS, you'd think they must want to pilot a small aircraft into IRS headquarters as so many filth Americans dream of.

Come war or perhaps invasion of the U.S., I do think these two commies ought to be protected first by our military, ahead of the piker vermin who preach and practice tax bullshit.

How low can two people go?

Grover Norquist, the anti-American c*cksucking enemy of America, needs to get on this and espose the Clintons for what they really are.

Faithful taxpayers.

[McKinneyTexas]

Trump is the worst presidential candidate in my lifetime and I've been voting since 1972.

Il Douche is, from HRC's POV, the gift that keeps on giving.

Obama founded ISIS.

Damn.

[Marty]

Well, if they counted all their income, who knows?

[cleek]

Obama founded ISIS.

IMO, what's truly awesome about this isn't that he made that particular ludicrous assertion - that's blog-standard wingnuttery. what's awesome is that he then doubled-, tripled-, quintuple-, quattuordecupled-down on it - even to friendlies like Hugh Hewitt. but the next day he says "no, i was clearly being sarcastic". "it's just a joke" is becoming his standard escape route.

it's like he really wants people to know he's a bullshitter and that nothing he says should be assumed to be true or even sincere.

i so hope the RNC fails to talk him out of staying the course.

[Countme-In]

"i so hope the RNC fails to talk him out of staying the course."

Never fear, they have a phenomenally deep bench of bullshitters.

Except for Paul Ryan. When he looks you in the eye and promises to place 20 million Americans (OK, he's low-balling that number, I'll give you that) in the way of penury, chronic suffering without access to medical care, and early death, you can count on his word meaning precisely that.

Integrity was his mother's maiden name. When she was a maiden, which didn't last long, after Social Security Supplemental Income took her last shred of pride away and caused her children to become sniveling plutocrats.

ISIS:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/11/who-founded-isis-abu-musb-al-zarqawi-started-the-terror-group.html

See, I love that CNBC feels it must patiently explain this sh*t, like Trump's assertions are somehow "opinions about what the truth is" and deserve any consideration whatsoever, let alone equal billing.

Trump merely confirmed the bullshit permanently imprinted on a good part of the electorate's primitive brain stems about the Muslim Kenyan in the White House.

Just as Roger Stone's insistence that the election will be rigged by Clinton is a fact, merely by his saying it.

He and Trump are summoning black, bloody violence after November.

It's amazing all of the weaponry in conservative America's hands, and yet none of the armed conservative and libertarian Trump-haters (so they say, Bradley baby) among them have lifted a finger to gun these filth down.

Liberals certainly aren't going to do anything.

What then are all the guns for, since the NRA tells us the Second Amendment protects us predominantly against tyranny, and yet here it rears its head close-up for easy aiming.

Cat got your bullets, people?

Thank conservative pigf*cking media for holding a good 40% of the electorate upside down by the pant legs and shaking until their pea brains scattered down the sewer.

"Well, if they counted all their income, who knows?"

How much didn't they count? Make it a big number so we have something to sink our teeth into.

[Countme-In]

What worries me about the Ailes effect, is all of the FOX news anchors, those comely blondes and brunettes showing plenty of leg as they smile like dental assistants and lie like rugs, who have NOT come forward to admit that Roger came on to them in exchange for rescuing their "journalism" careers.

There are dozens of them.

I mean we know Hannity has spent a good part of every high-level FOX News staff meeting over the past 20 years under the table with his face firmly buried in Jabba's the Hut's ample and fragrant crotch, but what of the others?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Well, if they counted all their income, who knows?"

Clearly, the BILLIONS of dollars funneled to ACORN is only accounted for on a secret IRS form that wasn't disclosed.

[cleek]

ACORN's going to steal the election for HRC, donchano.

[wj]

But to disclose those IRS forms would be to reveal their existance. Those forms are secret -- HRC might be cavalier about stuff that the State Department classifies as secret, but messing with IRS secrets is another matter entirely.

I mean, next thing you know someone might start agitating for Trump to reveal his copies of those forms. Where would it all end???

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Rumor has it that HRC sent in those Secret IRS forms by email, so there are CC copies on her Secret Private EMail server.

No, not the "private email server" that everyone is all exercised about, the SECRET one.

I've already said too much.

[russell]

"Obama founded ISIS."

I'm still holding out for bastard love child of Angela Davis and Malcolm x.

that makes the born in Kenya thing hard to explain, but he'll find a way.

maybe ufos will be involved.

[russell]

Hilary Rodham Clinton - the long lost third child of Julius and Ethel rosenberg.

you read it here first.