University Diaries, comme vous le savez bien, loves fascinating plagiarism tales. Plagiarism being the life blood of this and almost all other nations, there are huge gobs of unfascinating plagiarism tales – the new school superintendent (yawn), the new school superintendent (did I already say that?) …
But when this nation’s Savant of the Secondary Market, when our Genius of the Jumbo Loan, turns out to have plagiarized from obscure earlier texts in his Billionaire’s Road Map to Success… well, UD sits up and takes notice.
At least 20 pages of the Trump Institute book were copied entirely or in large part from “Real Estate Mastery System.” Even some of its hypothetical scenarios — “Seller A is asking $80,000 for a single-family residence” — were repeated verbatim.
That’s why you pay so much for the Secrets of the Master at Trump Institute/Trump University!
June 30th, 2016 at 7:35AM
gonna guess the real donald never even read the book even tho he is named as author.
June 30th, 2016 at 8:02AM
dmf: I’m sure the real Donald knows nothing at all about the entire enterprise. Selling your name to the highest bidder isn’t all that smart.
June 30th, 2016 at 3:01PM
heh, that’s been his whole MO, part of why I chuckle when he brags about making great walls, man never made anything concrete.
June 30th, 2016 at 3:44PM
“I’m sure the real Donald knows nothing at all about the entire enterprise. Selling your name to the highest bidder isn’t all that smart.”
Of course Hillary is above all that.
June 30th, 2016 at 4:05PM
AYY: Hillary hasn’t done that, but as I’ve made clear on this blog, she’s done plenty of other questionable stuff.
I’ll happily vote for her – and I’m thrilled she looks like a winner at this point – but I’m not a Hillary enthusiast.
June 30th, 2016 at 7:09PM
Well, whether Hillary is “above all that” is in this context fairly confirmable. What private sector products or services does Hillary Clinton have her name on, and what is the level of oversight on those products or services?
I’d aver that Hillary IS in fact above all of that. What is her equivalent to Trump Steaks? To Trump University? To Trump Vodka?
July 1st, 2016 at 11:07AM
UD, The point is that the things you say about Trump apply even more to Hillary than to Trump.
Derek, You have a point. In fact you have more than a point, Hillary hasn’t done anything in the private sector except make a ton of money in the cattle futures business, and make the world safe for Goldman Sachs.
But no, Hillary is not above all that. Published reports are that she’s jeopardized national security with her email scandal, has blood on her hands over Benghazi, and that she used the State Dept for personal aggrandizement. There’s also the slight matter of the $55 million dollar State Dept contracts given to the educational company that paid Bill $16million. There have also been published reports that she’s been physically abusive to Bill.
We can go back much further if you want. Putting her in the highest position in the country is a recipe for disaster. She’s not called “Crooked Hillary” for nothing.
July 1st, 2016 at 4:08PM
She’s largely called “Crooked Hillary” by the people who have made an industry out of calling her crooked, which is why there have never been any actual allegations that have stuck, and why the criticisms have always consisted of shifting the goalposts and shifting from one non-scandal to another. So yes, she’s called “Crooked Hillary” for the precise reason that knuckleheads have called her Crooked Hillary. That’s not evidence, it’s tautology.
Let’s do discuss Benghazi, and emails, because it is clear that you haven’t the foggiest idea what you are talking about on these issues. What “published reports” indicate that she’s “jeopardized national security”? And I’d prefer you not link some op-ed piece from the wet dreams of the conservative hive mind, but actual concrete examples of where she jeopardized national security with the attendant “reports.” So far there isn’t evidence of any such thing. And how many Benghazi hearings and reports have we have that have explicitly been unable to link Hillary to blood in Banghazi — a situation that while tragic, was no more tragic than the (at minimum) 13 embassy attacks with many times more deaths under the Bush administration, and that has more to do with the conservative defunding of things like embassies than it has to do with a thing that Hillary did. How many hearings were held on embassy attacks during the Bush years?
And what are these “published reports” about Hillary being “physically abusive to Bill”? The long ago discredited Secret service tell all?
You seem to put a whole lot of faith in “published reports” that you don’t seem interested in citing, largely because they would be revealed for the fraudulent nonsense that they are. Like the State Department Arms Deals nonsense, which have been crushed by any sentient person who cares about things like “evidence” more than innuendo. The State Department, for example, did give money to countries that had donated to the Clinton Global Initiative — all of which had also received money from the Bush State Department. Some of them received more money from the Obama Administration! And many of them received less. Why, it’s almost as if people like you don’t actually have a clue as to the complexity of government, and how, for example, contracts from State have input from myriad agencies in and out of the Executive, including Treasury and DoD, and a little body known as Congress. Indeed, I’m guessing you’re not familiar with Foreign Military Sales Act and the Arms Exports Control Act because if you did, the allegations of quid pro quo would have been a lot harder for you to make. Then again, a cultivated lack of understanding seems to be a feature and not a glitch on the right.
I’m not surprised, mind you. There has been an entire industry geared toward this kind of crap for going on three decades. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Because people with a straight face want to claim that Hillary is worse than Trump when it comes to non-truth, when it comes to corruption, when it comes to onanistic self-absorption.
But please, do tell us about all of these “published reports.”
July 1st, 2016 at 4:09PM
State didn’t give money, it awarded arms deals. Sorry.
July 1st, 2016 at 4:29PM
AYY: There’s a reason Trump’s campaign is collapsing, even among Republican party stalwarts. Unlike Hillary (who is indeed capable of being mercenary and self-serving), Trump is an ideologically chaotic conspiracy theorist whose fundamental approach to other human beings is cruelty. Decent folk of all stripes find his character disturbing. I believe that if he loses the election as overwhelmingly as some are predicting it will be less because of his lack of a coherent political program and more because of his lack of simple decency.