conuly | Was sleepy.

Then I had to get up to get my mother coffee and ravioli. Then I had to get up to give Ana cash. Now I'm still sleepy, but also hyper.

So I thought, while waiting for my mental state to recombobulate* itself, I'd check on the news.

Not going to post links right now, that can wait, but I do have one thought:

Am I the only one who is appalled/amused by how absolutely stingy Trump's payout to Stormy Daniels was? The man purports to be a billionaire, you'd think he could make his hush money reflect that. (The fact that he apparently didn't even pay back his lawyer for fronting her the cash is just the icing on the cake.)

* Well, I can't think of a better word, can you?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

wpadmirer

Trump is a fucking miser, except when it comes to something for himself personally, and then he still prefers to spend other people's money. Like on the portrait he bought with his nonprofit's donations (none of which were from him).

From:

conuly

Well, that's how one stays wealthy in between bankruptcies.

From:

brokenallbroken

That "Man" definitely subscribes to the "spend less than you make" school of wealth management. Same reason he always stiffs his contractors.

From:

conuly

Yes, but for some reason I thought bribes would come in a different category. She should've held out for more.

From:

steorra

'Recombobulate' is an excellent word. I can't think of a better one.

From:

conuly

Now that I've invented it I'm gonna use it all over the place.

From:

steorra

It's even already invented enough to be on Wiktionary.

From:

marahmarie

I'm a fan of "reconfooble" myself (sort of a take on a word, if not the actual word

av8rmike used over on LJ).

From:

marahmarie

"coffee and ravioli"

Was this her...*stomach twists up*...breakfast?

From:

conuly

Her dinner. My mother always wants coffee before bed, and ravioli was what I was willing to cook at 9pm.

But I don't know that she really ate them at the exact same time. I'm sure she had one first and then the other a bit later.

From:

plicease

Seems plausible that he did reimburse his lawyer from his campaign fund, but that would probably be illegal so we have this absurd explanation.

From:

redbird

The reason this explanation is somewhat plausible is that the lawyer could get in significant trouble for making the payment out of his own funds. (I thought I got this fact and suggestion from loweringthebar.net, but I can't find it there.)

From:

conuly

Better and better.

From:

plicease

Yes, this is more or less the analysis that I read as well.

From:

thewayne

When you consider the number of small businesses that Drumpf stiffed when building his casinos and other businesses, no, I'm not in the least bit surprised at his behavior. People with lots of money are notorious for having bad credit scores because they don't care if they stiff The Little People.

Last week we went to a new (to us) place on base for lunch, coming out I noticed a white board with a word for the day. That day's word was Kerfuffle. I was amused and quite happy, I enjoy putting that word in to play as often as possible, sometimes rearranging my word choice to get it in to play.

From:

conuly

Well, yes, but I don't know, I kinda thought bribes might be different from normal payments. Honestly, I'm surprised she didn't demand more!

From:

redbird

She's suing Trump, and has stated the plausible-to-me theory that the nondisclosure agreement is invalid because Trump never signed it. By "plausible" I mean both the idea that this makes it invalid, even if (say) Cohen signed it, since he doesn't have that sort of power of attorney for Trump the individual (or he'd have used it to get paid back), and that it seems reasonable that "a nondisclosure agreement is a contract, valid only if both parties sign."

It's pretty clear that Trump gave Daniels nothing of value in return for her silence. I am not a lawyer, but I could see a court buying an argument that "the contract says she'll keep silent if he pays her," but "if he pays her" isn't "if someone else gives her a bunch of money, not from Trump's funds, for vague reasons." But with neither his signature on a contract, nor him fulfilling the terms without having signed, it seems unlikely.

From:

archangelbeth

The wording, from what I skimmed, looks like it's a transfer of copyright -- that the photos and texts became Work for Hire. Except I'm not sure it can work that way, because last time I did a Work For Hire, there was apparently some kind of Cross the Ts, Dot the Is bit where the editor had to have Editorial Input on the Outline for the Work in question, rather than me writing the thing and going, "HERE! WANNA BUY IT?"

If it's the case that you can't have Work For Hire without actually having input in the Work ahead of time, then that contract gets even more eyebrow raising.

From:

redbird

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding of "work for hire" is that it's usually for things done as part of a job the person is getting wages or salary for: e.g. Triumph Learning paid me an annual salary as an editor, and any writing I did for them as part of that was a work for hire. In that case, the input ahead of time was something like "

redbird, chapter 5 needs work, to cover this part of the Louisiana standard. Please fix it." And, later, "here's our outline for the book, and a copy of [for example] the South Carolina standard for earth science. While you're editing, if there's stuff missing you can either reuse it from our other earth science books or write something." (One of the ways my then-employer used its ownership of the copyrights was to reuse material: the details of what different states wanted in an algebra review book varied, but there was a lot of overlap. Less so in the social studies book—California wants a lot on the Missions, which New York doesn't care about—and, oddly, grade school science, where they get into things like "these are Texas's important natural resources."

That said, work for hire, or any copyright transfer, doesn't actually seem relevant: the copyright is on how you say it (or on a specific photo or drawing of something), not on the subject or underlying facts, and it's about publishing things, not disclosing their existence.

Transferring the copyright on a photo shouldn't stop Daniels from showing a copy to people, if she still has one: what she'd have given up is the right to publish/reproduce the photo. So, if she kept one (she might be honest, or naive, enough not to have), some kind of NDA might still apply, but copyright wouldn't stop her from saying "Donald Trump did thus-and-such with/to me. I sold his lawyer the photos for a six-figure sum, but if you leave all your electronics in another room I can show you my phone text messages...."

Then we could get a by-lined article in the Daily Planet in which Lois Lane writes "Stormy Daniels told the Planet that Trump did XYZ. She also says that Trump has the photos. However, this reporter has seen the text message exchange...."

From:

archangelbeth

Freelancers do WFH as well -- me, for instance. The contract also had a "turn over all copies" provision, separate from the "right for DD to create derivative works" paragraph.

Sent from my iPhone

From:

redbird

And all the above got away from what I originally meant to say, which is that I have seen publishers misuse "work for hire" in the context where the work was a commissioned book review, and the "payment" was the actual book in question (which was the actual incentive for the reviewers) plus the fact that the publisher was publishing the review with their name on it (the part that seemed dubious to me).

From:

archangelbeth

...that sounds a lot like Vanity Scum Press, as a friend and I long-ago termed the "we will publish your poem! If you just buy 2 copies of the book it's in! So your family can have one!"

(We tested their "poetry contest" by submitting something terrible. They offered to publish it. We wrote something even worse. We never heard back...)

From:

cactuswatcher

Trump thinks he is the world's best negotiator. But mostly he's a lying, scheming tightwad. Yes, several of his businesses have gone bankrupt, but since those are all corporations none of that has affected him personally. He takes his money from the deals and figuratively runs. Like the North Korean Kims he'll happily negotiate deals which he no intention of upholding his end of, if he doesn't feel like it. He's lucky that he's already so old, and probably would step aside from daily operation of his businesses anyway. His methods are on display every day he's in the White House, and the circle of big spenders who he depends on for his own wealth, who'd like to do private business with him no doubt is shrinking fast.

When another rat deserted the White House circle yesterday, Trump boldly proclaimed everybody wants a job in the White House. While I don't doubt there are many who are dense enough or corrupt enough to want a job at the Trump White House, I don't want one, and I doubt you want one, so the list is somewhat short of everyone.

From:

marahmarie

He also said he has a choice of "anybody", which I recall because it made me think: "Uh, not me and not lots of other anybodys - he might want them, but we don't want him."

Of course, I could see working this to one's advantage say, as a mole or underminer of some sort in his administration (yes, finally - a job for literally "anybody" so inclined!), but otherwise it's more like, Naaaah buddy, you can keep whatever sort of opening you have.

From:

wendelah1

Sadly, no. I am not surprised at all. She should have held out for more money, for sure. Getting involved with a man like him doesn't show good judgement. To say the least.

From:

silveradept

An analysis I listened to suggested that Stormy Daniels thought her story would be worthless once the election was decided. Had she been able to predict the outcome, I think she would have been able to get more out of him.

From:

marahmarie

Sometimes it pays to just hold your cards, right?

From:

zesty_pinto

re: money, I'm actually laughing my butt off at how Trump literally pulled a Dr. Evil when he wanted China to reduce their debt with the US by 1 billion dollars when he originally was supposed to ask to reduce it by 100 billion.

Actually, not really laughing because Austin Powers is old and overplayed, but after wondering how the hell Dana Loesch thought quoting Hillary Clinton and The Sun being upset that kids defended Frankenstein's monster because they actually got the symbolism of the story tells me this year seems to be one giant satirefest.

From:

gwydion

He never willingly pays his subcontractors. I think this is yet another example.

From:

conuly

Clearly, but... it's a bribe! I just can't stop thinking that!

From:

gwydion

He's deeply entitled and not bright.

From:

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

I haven't really been following Stormy Daniels' story, but yeah, Trump is cheap and chintzy in all the ways: living proof that having money and having class are not the same thing.

* No, the word is quite apt in context, but seems to imply a root word, 'to combobulate', which doesn't technically exist:

https://apwood.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/why-can-you-be-discombobulated-but-not-combobulated/

... not that that appears to be stopping anyone from using it. Weirder English for the Win!