Bill and Hill Prepare to Do L.A.
[guest post by JVW]
Friends, we’re just two days away from the top Los Angeles intellectual/cultural/social event of the spring, nay, entire year. I refer of course to “An Evening with the Clintons,” the resumption of their multi-city speaking tour where they promise — just a second while I check the website — ah, yes, “a one-of-a-kind conversation with two individuals who have helped shape our world and had a front seat to some of the most important moments in modern history.” The Los Angeles leg of their multi-city tour takes place on Saturday night at the Forum, where the Lakers won a bunch of NBA titles a generation ago before they built a more modern and luxurious arena downtown. (You think that might be a metaphor for something, perhaps a certain spent political dynasty?)
The show apparently consists of our ex-President and ex-First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State/Inevitable Next President of the United States reminiscing on their long careers in (*cough, cough, cough*) “public service.” The format doesn’t appear to allow you, the piddling little taxpayer, to directly address Their Clintonic Majesties, so a moderator is brought in order to provide the questions and to keep the conversation moving. And what moderators this tour is using! A veritable galaxy of luminaries and public intellectuals like. . . like. . . like Paul Begala (New York)! And Ben Stiller (Detroit)! And Star Jones (Wallingford, CT — hey, you know you’re big time when you’re playing Wallingford)! And, uh, somebody named Tony Goldwyn (Boston), who must be a huge deal if he was given such a plumb gig as this! Here is an exciting tidbit to keep you on the edge of your seat: the Los Angeles moderator has not yet been announced! What major public intellect might be enticed to tease out the Deep Thoughts of Bill and Hillary? Antonio Villaraigosa? Sarah Silverman? Maybe — dare we hope! — Alyssa Milano? In any case, I’m sure the event organizers will have no trouble finding some out-of-work celebrity to come and keep the conversation moving along through the consistent application of predetermined softball questions handily printed on some 4 x 6 cards clutched tightly in the moderator’s hands.
So by now you’re probably pretty bummed that you missed out on your opportunity to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event. Oh sure, you’re probably thinking, I know I’ve read that ticket sales have been lackluster at other venues, but this is Los Angeles — Hollywood! — where Bill is fondly remembered as a Harvey Weinstein who quit while he was ahead and where Hillary won 72% of the vote just 30 months ago. Obviously this event has long been sold out and anyone who wants to catch the Dissembling Duo in action is going to have shell out the big bucks in the resale market, right? Well, maybe not so. As of 8:00 pm Wednesday night, here is a seat map of all of the available seats, with those still available via the box-office shown in blue and those available via the resale market shown in red:
Note that a whole lot of tickets are being sold via Ticketmaster on a promotion referred to as “National Concert Week” for the modest rate of $15 each, or in leftist terms, one hour’s mandated wage for a entry-level job. Note too that the upper-most decks of the Forum appear to only have the first two rows available for seating, and no seats behind the stage are apparently being utilized for the event. I’m not taking the time to hand-count what’s left, but it would appear that there are at least 1,500 and perhaps upwards of 2,000 seats on sale, in a venue that is probably configured to hold no more than 10,000 for the event. If you go to the interactive map on Ticketmaster, you can take a moment to feel sorry for suckers trying to sell their seats for $100, having probably paid close to that when the event first went on sale, while tickets right next to them are being discounted by the promoters down to $15.
The Clintons do very well for themselves, but almost everyone who goes into business with them ends up broke or incarcerated. Too bad Live Nation took the bait. All that’s left now to see what sort of hagiographic nonsense review appears in Sunday’s Dog Trainer under the byline of Robin Abcarain or Michael Hitzlik.
– JVW
Those two were thisclose to returning to the White House. Wow.
JVW (54fd0b) — 5/2/2019 @ 7:07 am“The Clintons do very well for themselves, but almost everyone who goes into business with them ends up broke or incarcerated.” (you forgot “dead”)
rcw3000 (dbe57f) — 5/2/2019 @ 7:32 amMy best guess is those events are just a way to launder money.
Frosty, Fp (7540e9) — 5/2/2019 @ 8:49 amWhy are the Clinton’s doing this, when Wall Street firms and Overseas Corporations will give them $100-250K a speech. Oh wait, that was when she Sec of State and was a lock on being the POTUS. Never mind.
rcocean (1a839e) — 5/2/2019 @ 8:57 amIts incredible to think these two grifters left the White House In Jan 2001 – 18 YEARS Ago. And they’re still in the public eye, appearing on TV, and acting like someone cares. Amazing.
rcocean (1a839e) — 5/2/2019 @ 8:59 am“Tony Goldwyn (Boston)”
A quick Googling…he played the weaselly bad guy/supposed friend of the dead guy in ‘Ghost’. He also played a morally compromised President on a show named ‘Scandal’. I mean, they may skip over that acting credit when he is introduced at the event. It probably won’t show up in the Playbill.
Apparently he had a #metoo moment, and must have some ties to Boston, because this isn’t his first political discussion gig.
Xmas (eafb47) — 5/2/2019 @ 9:06 amThere is just something so sad and pathetic about their sideshow tour as it exposes a continuing desperation to remain relevant. They are the modern Nora Desmonds, ready for their close-ups, and befuddled and angered if the cameras aren’t ready for their forced smiles masking the underlying their bitterness at being unable to regain what was owed them.
However, this might have been worth the NY admission price:
Dana (779465) — 5/2/2019 @ 9:09 amI just am curious who had the bright idea of using a 10k seat venue that will look completely empty. Versus a 2k venue that will prove handy when they need to talk about a SRO house. (The Boston Opera House, the site of their Boston gig, seats 2600 people.)
Kishnevi (8c41bd) — 5/2/2019 @ 9:42 amThis is great for Hillary, she won’t need to find a bathroom as she can squat on a street with the other rabble.
Kate (689c33) — 5/2/2019 @ 10:09 amI just am curious who had the bright idea of using a 10k seat venue that will look completely empty.
Which is more important to them, looking good or collecting a lot of money “for their Foundation”?
Kevin M (21ca15) — 5/2/2019 @ 10:19 amThe Clintons do very well for themselves, but almost everyone who goes into business with them ends up broke or incarcerated.
You can say something similar about the current White House occupant.
Which is a sad commentary our current political system and the kinds of candidates that rise to the top.
Bored Lawyer (998177) — 5/2/2019 @ 10:19 amI suspect that this has more to do with remaining relevant. So long as they continue to raise money for the Foundation, they can continue to have their expenses “reimbursed” tax-free AND draw a salary without running afoul of the tax man.
It would be so karmic if they got audited.
Kevin M (21ca15) — 5/2/2019 @ 10:23 am@6. He also played Neil Armstrong in Tom Hank’s ‘From The Earth To The Moon’ – so what’s your point; if you’re gonna go down the road merging character and professions, start with lying lawyers and begin with Baghdad Barr. There’s zero doubt the Clintons don’t know when to leave the stage, but suspect the one to blame for stoking the flame for attention in 2019 is less the former president who won twice but the former presidential candidate who lost out twice: his tiresome wife. Thumb through a vintage copy of Life, June 20, 1969 — fifty frigging years ago— and along with timely stories about Joe Namath, Apollo 10 and groovy Haight-Ashbury, you’ll find among the essays quilled by ‘top’ protesting students of ‘The Class of ’69’ an opinion piece w/photo from some young, cranky feminist at Wellesley College, named Hillary Rodham:
“There’s a very strange conservative strain that goes through a lot of the New Left, collegiate protests that I find very intriguing because it harks back to a lot of the old virtues, to the fulfillment of original ideas.” – Hillary Rodham, Life, 6-10-1969
WTF: pass the bong.
Today, Broadway Joe is retired and two of the three then young men who flew Apollo 10 around the moon are now dead. Half-a-century of b-tching by this old witch is enough. Go away Hillary. Just go away.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/2/2019 @ 12:03 pmYou get the Clintons, we get The Notorious RBG In Song.
nk (dbc370) — 5/2/2019 @ 12:17 pmTony Goldwyn should be in the “A–h-le” White Character Actor Hall of Fame with Gary Cole, William Fichter and Jeffery Jones (with Riann Wilson in contention if he can get a 2nd memorable role besides Dwight Shrute).
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 5/2/2019 @ 12:21 pmAccording to a statement on the Foundation website, none of the Clintons have ever drawn a salary from the Foundation.
As a public charity, the records are open to inspection, and the claim is backed up by these tax documents.
Dave (1bb933) — 5/2/2019 @ 12:25 pmSlush money is down lately and silicon valley is funneling money to biden to down play china’s economic threat. Maybe the fbi can send ms tuck to volunteer for biden campaign.
lany (c10ae2) — 5/2/2019 @ 1:19 pmMy bad the f.b.i. agent sent to spy on trump campaign called herself azra turk.
lany (c10ae2) — 5/2/2019 @ 1:26 pmI heard on the radi that Hillary Clinton was on Rachel maddow on MSNBC, and took a softbball question and the answer was played – and she’s now toying with trying to hint (by careful choice of words) that maybe some votes were stolen from her in Florida in 2016.
And also said:
Didn’t I bring up this idea first on Patterico several threads ago? And somebody argued with me that that was different. Except I didn’t mention China specifically.
Maybe it wasn’t so close:
https://patterico.com/2019/04/22/is-revealing-truth-important-no-matter-where-the-truth-comes-from
Comment 243:
I didn mention Chinese intelligence @261, in connection with the woman who came in with malware to Mar-a-lago . And maybe the claim that Trump’s tax returns are different, (because they are supposed to be public I think was the reason) was on another thread.
It is reasonable to suspect anyway that the Clinton campaign was, in some way, behind the leak to the New York Times of parts of Trump’s state tax returns.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 5/2/2019 @ 2:26 pmhttps://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/01/hillary-clinton-china-tax-returns-1296868
They did, in 1996. But Janet Reno would not appoint a special prosecutor to look into campaign contributions.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 5/2/2019 @ 2:28 pm11. Bored Lawyer (998177) — 5/2/2019 @ 10:19 am
Thisiis the result of complex ethics rules and campaign finance reform.
The New York Times had a front page story about Biden’s son Hunter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html
It looks to me like Hunter would not be implicated, bt the company, Burisma Holdings hired him (and maybe other Democrats) as protection. He did nothing. he got paid as high as $50,000 per month
for being on the Baord of Directors and adbisingh them about good corprorate governance.
Hunter Biden was not a target. And Joe Biden probably knew nothing. It is not like Manafort who evaded U.S. taxes. But never was charged for any work he did in Ukraine.
The company was perhaps thought of a as corrupt. So was the prosecutor.
Giuliani started spreading the story because he thought or was told it was a counter to Russian influence.
You knw. that sounds like a big red herring, possibly spread by some Democrats.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 5/2/2019 @ 4:37 pmRe: Venezuela: Have they learned nothing from the Bay of Pigs? That didn’t fail because Fidel Castro was popular but because of lack of any U.S. military support whatsoever.
This one at least has most military forces neutral. The CIA is claiming Cubans aren’t running things. I suppose like it really was a independent group in Benghazi.
I think the discussions with high level people in Maduro’s government are real, but they are taking advice entirely from China, which has a fallback plan, to get their money etc. unlike Russia, whcih doesn’t. They were only going to switch sides if Maduro’s cause was absolutely lost but try to make it look like they decided it.
A plane probably was on the tarmac ready to take Maduro to Cuba but that doesn’t mean he was that close to evacuating.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 5/2/2019 @ 4:42 pm@20 We already had an independent counsel in 1996.
Why are we talking about the Clintons at all? It only extends their relevance.
Nic (896fdf) — 5/2/2019 @ 6:23 pm@19 It’s interesting that she picks China for the joke.
Frosty, Fp (7540e9) — 5/2/2019 @ 6:43 pmHRC wants some of that coming her way next time: http://heavy.com/news/2019/05/yusi-molly-zhao-yusi-zhao/
urbanleftbehind (3fa806) — 5/2/2019 @ 6:49 pmBut will the subject student end up getting pimped out and passed around like Zhang Ziyi?
OT — BOOM!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scz-fFZT-dI
SpaceX finally admits “anomaly” destroys their Dragon crew spacecraft last month in a static ground test engine firing at the Cape– after ‘leaked video’ confirms explosion. ‘Anomaly’ is the understatement of the year; had this explosion occurred in flight, the crew would have been killed. It’s a setback for crewed Dragon flights by SpaceX, contracted by NASA, planned for later this year to be sure. Unfortunately, it’s this kind of corporate reticence – being less-than-forthcoming when a problem occurs – that becomes a strike against increased privatization of government run HSF operations. Boeing’s issues w/problems around the 737Max reinforces this kind of misguided mindset managing problems as well.
Destruction of spacecraft in testing is nothing new- several early Mercury spacecraft suffered similar fates; that’s why they test. But the failures weren’t cloaked w/corporate secrecy. Had this been a full-fledged NASA run ground test- [as w/Apollo 1, for instance] the public would have known almost immediately of the failure rather than being forced to try to figure out what that plume of smoke was rising from the test stand. They’ll fix it and eventually fly, but the public best keep a wary eye on privatized projects and programs of scale.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/2/2019 @ 7:14 pmI keep telling you but you don’t believe me: Ellon Musk is a con man; his glorified golf carts are nothing that was not already obsoleted by the time of the 1932 Ford coupe; and his space program is best compared to remaking Daniel Boone’s flintlock rifle with ABS and titanium furniture in place of wood and brass.
nk (dbc370) — 5/2/2019 @ 7:22 pmNic @23
Each one was assigned a spcific case. Janes Reno allowed Keeth Starr to expand into the Monica Lewinsky case because federal judges were going to do that anyway.
She had refused to appoint one to look into the 1996 campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy
She also prevented the independent counsel investigating Mike Espy and Tyson Foods from following up leads involving Bill Clinton.
Obstruction of justice by a president never succeeds. Because, when it succeeds, none call it obstruction of justice.
The Clintons know how to do this – most of the time.
Sammy Finkelman (30b6b6) — 5/2/2019 @ 7:27 pm@27. Well, he always chases government funding as seed money to be sure. The vehicle that exploded was the same spacecraft flown on the cargo run earlier this year. Space folk chatter suggests salt water got inside the systems compartment after splash and corroded a fuel tank or lines to same but no ‘official’ cause yet. The vehicle was supposed to be reused on the in-flight abort test later this year but obviously, those plans have gone up in smoke. But it’s the corporate reticence which remains a bit of a red flag for me w/these sort of ‘privatized’ projects of scale.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/2/2019 @ 7:33 pm@28 We also had a Republican congress who could (and did) investigate.
Frankly given the amount of time the Clintons have been under investigation and the results of such investigations, my conclusion is that Republicans have an unhealthy obsession with the Clintons and I can’t say that at this point I believe any conspiracy theory about them because the number of times that Wolf! has been yelled only to end up discovering that there were no wolves, maybe a chihuahua somewhere in the next county, has left me supremely unconvinced that the Clintons are anything other than roughly average in their political lack of ethics.
Nic (896fdf) — 5/2/2019 @ 8:59 pm