I’ve all along found the idea of Hilary becoming president utterly laughable, a neo-con paranoid fantasy.
But the more I think about it, if Bush gets 4 more years to impose his scorched-earth policies (direct from the Almighty, no less! And this guy doesn’t scare the shit out of you people?), I can easily imagine the American electorate being so shell-shocked that they will happily flee into the arms and comfort of the name Clinton, no matter what the genitalia.
They aren’t hers to donate. They belong to her publisher, and I doubt that their altruism extends that far. It’s frankly a pretty pathetic defense at this point still to insist that the DNC is not distributing her book. You can fool yourselves if you like, but that’s about it.
Damn you Stoid! Now you’ve got me thinking about Clinton genitalia.
How’d this thread jump from crazy, paranoid O’Lielly (thank you Al) to Hilary’s clitoris?
P.S., Aren’t Republicans a little tired of the crazy, paranoid pundits? Sure, us liberal-types have Michael Moore (who I used to love until I read Stupid White Men and realized he joined the foaming at the mouth, crazy and paranoid ranks), but Sweet Fancy Moses, those right wing guys all seem to be living in John Nash’s beautiful mind.
You may doubt it, but you still haven’t proven it, which is what you claimed you did.
Please point out who said that, and where. I’ll give you a hint; you won’t be able to find it anywhere in this thread. The claim was laid that the DNC was buying huge quantities of Hilary’s book – that a “good amount” of her 1.25 million sales “didn’t count” because of this. The OP asked where the evidence of this was. Diogenes said there is none. You come in with a link showing the DNC is including copies in a gift basket of sorts and claim that this is evidence of bulk buying. They may very well have bought a few hundred copies. They also many have received them as a donation – by Hilary, her publisher or someone else. You can pretend you’re being impartial in the quest to fight ignorance all you want, but if you keep defending your cite when it’s pointed out that it doesn’t show what you say it shows, then you’re really not just “correcting a factual error,” you’re continuing to perpetuate a rumor without the evidence to back it up.
And frankly, even if we assume that they “bought” 1,000 copies (doubling the only mention of any quantity at all from that site), that amounts to 8 one-thousandths of a percent. How this qualifies as a “good amount” I’ll never know. But hey, if you want to go on fooling yourself, more power to ya.
Let’s face it: even if you got Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea drunk as a clove of skunks, any one of 'em would still be a smarter choice for President of the United States than George W. Bush.
Publishers donate books all the time, particularly if a printing is large. The first printing of Living History was an unusually-high 1,000,000 copies. Demand in the first week prompted a second printing ordered of 300,000 copies. Even if publisher Simon & Schuster donated 10,000 of the books (which isn’t supported by any evidence I’ve seen), that’s less than one percent of what they printed. Chances are more likely that they would have donated 1,000 or so to causes Hilary liked, which is less than one-tenth of one percent of the printing so far.
That being said, I think it likely that the DNC copies were purchased in bulk from Simon & Schuster. John Edwards has done something similar for his campaign.
It’s pretty pathetic that you’re holding onto a cite which includes no concrete numbers so tightly. Sure, the DNC is distributing some copies of the book – maybe 500 (the only number your cite shows), maybe 1,000, maybe even 5,000. That’s barely a dent in Living History’s lead over O’Lielly’s book, however, and your implication that this somehow gives credence to the pundit’s claims is disingenuous at best.
In the end, the DNC cite doesn’t really matter much. Unless you can show that about 650,000 copies of the copies Living History has sold (the number by which it has outsold O’Rielly’s lastest opus) were purchased by the DNC, pointing out that some 500 or 1,000 copies are being given by the DNC is really just misleading. By the way, the lead Hilary’s book has over O’Rielly’s represent more copies than O’Rielly’s book has sold in the first place. Nice little statistic, that.
However, take note that the numbers Drudge cites are from BookScan:
In English, this means that the BookScan numbers Drudge used do not include bulk sales, which are purchased directly from the publisher at reduced rates.
As far as I’m concerned, O’Rielly’s the truly pathetic one to try to hold onto the myth that his book is actually selling better. Living History had all the markings of a bestseller even before it was published: a memoir by a high-profile and still-active figure in American politics, one which has been at the center of national controversy for a long time. O’Reilly’s book, by a man quite convinced of his own importance, seems destined for the bargain shelves. I expect to see it at Barnes & Noble for $5.95 (in hardback) by this time next year.
Sorry… to be fair, just wanted to point out that the bolding on the BookScan cite was added by me, and the book referred in the Edwards cite is his own book, Four Trials, not Clinton’s book.
Slight hijack- The dianetics thing is the reason that, at least when I worked there, Waldenbooks would not do bulk book orders. Always thought it was kind-of an interresting story, and I wonder about it when I see those top sale lists.
As to Hillary. No offense but I don’t think she’s a winnable candidate. Too much baggage for her between Whitewater and her husband. Oh sure she can win some of the hard core left, but ALL the conservatives (and many of the centrists) will be against her. OTOH things may change in 4 years.
Personally, I’ll never vote for her. Primarily because of the way she behaved during her Chairing the Health Care Reform Task Force. It’s eerily reminiscent of Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force.
So you’re on the record, Mr. Elucidator, as holding the belief that wealthy people never sell out, eh?
Interesting…
Well, I imagine some people could be concerned about artificially inflating the apparent popularity of a product. Kinda thing that L. Ron Hubbard’s ilk would pull off, y’see. Though I, too, am puzzled as to why he’s latched onto this subject so fervently… is he gonna get upset that Alec Baldwin’s made more movies’n him, too? Or that Babs put out more albums, horrid though they may be?
I’m starting to get the impression that liberals would defend Hillary Clinton if she marched into a room, Uday Hussein style, and began clubbing to death the food taster.
All I did was contradict this statment:
There is no evidence that the DNC is buying any bulk orders at all.
Well, in fact, there is some evidence from the DNC’s own site. I didn’t say that I proved anything. I said that I corrected a factual error, and I did. I also said that I wasn’t defending O’Reilly, and I’m not. So you can save your sanctimoniousness for someone who gives a shit. Why would you trust what her publisher says anyway? They already lied about the number sold. Why wouldn’t they lie about their dealings with the DNC?
I’m frankly amazed that a man of Diogenes’ character has not already admitted his error.
Oh, you are “starting to suspect”, are you? This novel notion just occured to you, did it?
Well, let’s be fair. Sauce for the goose, and all that. We will concede that the DNC may have purchased some of Hillary’s book for free distribution, thus constituting a “bulk order”, and you will concede that GeeDubya is a man whose every act is a misdeed, his every thought a corruption, and his every word a flask of pure weasel juice.
The first time any variant of the word proof or prove was used with respect to what I said was by Shayna. I never said I was proving anything. What I said was that I was correcting a factual error, which anyone with a scrollbar on his screen can verify.
I would hardly call $29.95 a month “free distribution”, unless you also think that you can make a $60 donation to PBS and get a handsome tote bag for free.
Anyway I don’t understand why bulk sales “don’t count”, as long as the books end up in the hands of members of the general public who have forked over money to receive them. Why does it matter that there was a middleman?