Who All Does Congress Want to Question? Abramson's List With Pics And Brief Bio

Let's just get this straight.  From Wikipedia:

"Ten investigations were conducted into the 2012 Benghazi attack, six of these by Republican-controlled House committees. Problems were identified with security measures at the Benghazi facilities, due to poor decisions made by employees of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and specifically its director Eric Boswell, who resigned under pressure in December 2012.[1] Despite numerous allegations against Obama administration officials of scandal, cover-up and lying regarding the Benghazi attack and its aftermath, none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations.[2][3][4][5]"

At worst, investigators believed that the Obama administration, particularly the State Department, headed by then likely 2016  presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, had used bad judgment and were negligent and then covering up what happened.  That is, that they made mistakes and then hid them..  You can read the various conclusions of the many investigations in the Wikipedia link. (They couldn't substantiate the charges.) The basic reason for all these investigations was not to uncover illegal actions, but to sully the reputation of Hillary Clinton.  (I acknowledge that there may have been those who believed their conspiracy theories, but it's my sense that people like Nunes were just attacking a political opponent because they could.

So when you hear Republicans - starting with Trump - complain about the investigations led by Mueller and now committees in the House of Representatives, recognize that Obama would have been impeached by this point in his administration if he and his campaign had done one tenth of what evidence suggests Trump has done.  We normally don't base whether to prosecute on the status of the alleged perpetrator.  (Actually, this may not be accurate.  The famous and wealthy do have the power to sway prosecutors into not prosecuting, into settlements, or other evasive actions.  See the Jeffrey Epstein story as just one example.  Or consider that Trump and his so-called university scammed tens of millions of dollars from students, yet, unlike a petty thief who steals, say, a fancy bike, were able to settle and avoid criminal charges that would put them in prison.

Seth Abramson has been collecting everything public he could find about allegations against Trump for years now and published a book last November - Proof of Collusion - which puts all his findings into a very detailed book about all of the allegations and people involved.  He knows this as well as anyone not privy to what the Mueller team is finding.  And, of course, everyone knows that despite swindling tens of millions from prospective students, Trump and his so called university were able to settle instead of facing criminal charges and prison.

Today Abramson put up a Tweeter thread with the list of people House investigations want to talk to - 61 total - along with pictures and brief bios of those less well known.  Here it is below.  (I'm not sure I'm embedding the whole thread or just the initial tweet.  So here's a link to the thread if it's not all below.) (A Tweet is a single message and a Thread is a group of Tweets 'threaded' together.)

(THREAD) This thread is a guided tour of the 81 PERSONS from whom the House Judiciary Committee is now seeking documents in contemplation of possible impeachment proceedings down the line. These names tell us much about where Congress is headed. I hope you'll read on and retweet. pic.twitter.com/wsErydjzKQ

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 4, 2019

Responding To Oxo Beppo's Comments On Whether Progressives Listen To The White Working Class

In a previous post, I wrote:

". . . Trying to be positive, I was thinking that how I feel now is how many conservatives have felt since Obama was first elected.  I'd like to think that my feeling is more legitimate, but feelings are feelings. They may or may not be tied to a rational, realistic assessment.   But it's clear that progressives haven't really listened to the pain of the working class. . . "

Oxo Beppo took issue (third comment) with that part about not listening:

". . . wait, it's not at all true that anyone can say, 'progressives haven't listened to the pain of the working class'. 
That's not a true statement, progressives are the only people who have paid any attention to the pain of the working class. That hasn't changed.
What's changed is the propaganda from the right has 'trumped' that reality.
We know that unions are good, we know that healthcare for all is good, we know that minimum wage is good. Progressives have and still do champion the working class. The right never has and never will. . . "

I think that he's right and I'm right.  I've sat on this for several days trying to figure out how to articulate what I meant.  It seemed this was getting too long for the comment section, so I'm putting it in a new post.  But do go back and see the old one to see the full context.

Oxo, I think we’re talking past each other.  I agree with much of what you say.  I’ve been sitting on this while I thought out how to respond.
1.  I shouldn’t have used the term ‘working class.’  I don’t even know what that means any more and the issues I was talking about spread beyond economic class.
2.  Yes, right wing propaganda demonized Clinton.  And there were a lot of people who simply can’t deal with a strong woman, so the emails and all the other charges gave them a non-sexist ‘cover’ to hate her.  But the hate was all out of proportion to the ‘crimes’ she was charged with and how these people have responded to men who have much worse records, including Trump.
3.  Unions?  I agree and disagree.  Unions have done and still do a lot of good for workers.  Historically, they got workers to 40 hour weeks, they got sick leave, and vacation time.  They got health care and pensions.  (Though if health care hadn’t been tied to work, maybe we would have gotten national health care a long time ago and people wouldn’t have been tied to bad jobs just to keep the health care.)  And eventually businesses without unions began matching union benefits and pay to keep unions out.  And as the right has been successful in breaking union power, pay and benefits for workers has lost ground.  So yes, unions have done a lot of good.  But like any powerful institutions, unions also attracted the power hungry and the greedy who took advantage of the fact that most workers didn’t pay a lot of attention to their union politics, or rules that made it easy to keep workers uninformed.  Many people resented paying union dues and corrupt or callous union leaders.  And, most importantly, very few people are even members of unions.   Union membership was 20% of workers in 1983 and now it's 11%.  Today 32% of government employees are unionized and only 7% of private sector employees are unionized.

But the key difference between us is the notion of listening.  Yes, Democrats did all the traditional things that they have done for the working poor, if it was about jobs or health care - pushed for day care, minimum wage, health care, and on and on.  But those aren’t the pains I was talking about.    When the complaints were about blacks and other minorities getting treated better than they were being treated, progressives didn't listen.  And I understand why.  But they didn't even listen; they just dismissed them.

These are the people I was alluding.   People who had fallen out of the comfortable middle class, or had never been in it.  Mostly white people on the margins.  They’d bought into the American dream and when they had money they did what advertisers told them to do - they spent it.  And as they got older, they found themselves without enough money to maintain that life.  Liberals can make all the smug arguments they want - "where is your self-reliance and your belief in the free market?" but that's besides the point.

Many of them came from dysfunctional families where the father was the head of the household and everyone had to follow his rules. [See George Lakoff on this. Scroll down to Conservatism and Liberalism and the two models of family.]  And there may have been physical as well as verbal abuse.  The pain I was talking about is the pain of not being respected, of being condescended to, of not being taken seriously that often stems from parental belittling.   It’s the pain that Palin appealed to and won applause for when she talked about elites, about the college professors, the ‘experts,’ the people who thought they were ‘better’ than ‘us.’

Liberals have supported every group that was outside the ideal American WASP image - blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBT, women, Native Americans, and on and on. Rightfully so.   In an attempt to encourage tolerance, liberals have made racial epithets and other derogatory terms against the rules - sometimes actual enforceable rules, sometimes just social rules of decency.  All the derogatory terms except for slurs for WASPS, particularly poor whites, words like trailer trash, poor white trash, and hillbillies.  It was still ok to use those.  And the people who no longer were allowed to use their traditional epithets in public, found themselves as the only people against whom epithets could be used with impunity.

It’s the anger over that double standard that I’m talking about.  Liberals have not heard those cries to be treated with respect, to not be called stupid and ignorant.

Admittedly, it’s hard for liberals to be accepting of people who make racist and sexist remarks. Rich and powerful racists get deference, but when they aren’t in positions of power that liberal intolerance comes out.

It's a dilemma.  I don’t find racial and sexual discrimination acceptable.  I don’t find treating others badly acceptable.  We have to separate the behavior from the human being.  We can condemn the behavior, but in a way that is respectful of the human being.  And that's strategically difficult.  When you deal with a bully, standing up to that bully is often the only successful strategy.  And after watching Democratic presidential candidates like Gore and Kerry get creamed by bully politics, the Clinton campaign did stand up to every Trump attack.  But for the Trump supporters it was about being respected not about rational arguments.

I’ve talked about being more sympathetic and understanding of people I disagree with on this blog from early on.  The first post that I remember, because I got flak for it, was when I complained about liberals trashing Vic Kohring after he’d been convicted and sentenced to prison.  He still was a human being, he was down and out, and I thought continuing to kick him was mean spirited.

There's the behavior.  But more interesting to me is what personal history deep inside causes someone to be mean and nasty to others based on their race or gender or sexuality or religion.   I'm of the belief that people regularly attack innocent others when they are unhappy about themselves. Being mean and angry and controlling isn't being happy and at peace with oneself. When people understand the source of that unhappiness they have a chance to start changing the behavior.  And parental modeling plays a big role in whether we lash out or talk quietly and rationally.  The quiet rationality, that liberal ideal, can also cause problems if one is suppressing great anger and pain.

What I was trying to say was that Trump heard  those people who felt they were looked down on as stupid, ignorant, bigoted white people.  And he told them they were ok.  He did it by defying liberal standards of acceptable speech.  The very things that alarmed liberals so much resonated with his supporters.  He was saying the things they were thinking but had been told were unacceptable to say out loud.  He said them on national television.  He said them unapologetically.  And he did it as a presidential candidate. He was saying with his behavior - you're ok!   I suspect for many of them who had authoritarian fathers, he had the additional appeal as a familiar father figure.

Liberals haven’t been able to get past the sexist and racist comments.  They generally overlook the sexism of rap, excusing it because of the context of racist oppression.  But the context of white racism is never treated with the same tolerance.  I’ve talked about listening and needing to talk, and that racists are humans too. (And let's not forget that in the US, everyone has been infected by racism.  For some the symptoms rarely show, but others become full blown racists.  But that's a discussion for another day.)

This post describes just one segment, probably a large segment, of Trump voters.  People voted for Trump for many reasons and Clinton's message and manner didn't swing enough people in enough key states to win the electoral college vote.  That's not blaming Clinton, it's just descriptive of what happened.

I've used the terms liberal and progressive and generally used the pronoun 'they' even though I fall in that category.  While I have advocated for treating conservatives as people and for listening to them on this blog,   I haven’t done a lot about it, so I’m not excusing myself here either.

Trump Attacked For Publicly Saying What He's Thinking; Clinton Attacked For Not Saying Things Publicly

Cue the orchestra for the chorus of "Damned if you do and damned if you don't."


ON THE TRUMP SIDE

Trump's been making Republicans uneasy because he says things that they think he should NOT say publicly.  And polls say this open talk is hurting him.

The message I get from this is:  It's ok to be a racist and misogynist as long as you don't get caught. As long as you don't say these things publicly.  How many other politicians say and do the same things, but off mic?   As long as we don't know about it, no problem.

On the other hand, many of his supporters applaud his free-wheeling tongue, saying it's a sign of transparency and it's a refreshing change from the careful spin of most politicians.    It doesn't matter that what he says is hateful and disgusting.

Now, for some (many?) of his base, probably he's saying out loud the hateful things they're thinking and saying in their closed circles.   They're delighted he's saying them in public.  It validates their thinking.

But some Republicans are cringing as if their fancy shoes can't avoid the dog doo.

And while his supporters admire his openness, they can't seem to mimic it themselves.  Take this example of twisted spin from World Net Daily:

"Mr. Donald Trump is raising the bar of America’s conscience. Apology is often the first step in correcting a wrong. Having moved for [sic]  a position of saying “I don’t need forgiveness,” Mr. Trump is now taking a second look at past behaviors; things that he’s said and done that he regrets. While he is not asking for forgiveness for being human, he is admitting that he’s made mistakes and humbly making apologies."

What's wrong with this?  Trump's raising the bar of America's conscience?  Yeah, sure.  Things he regrets?  Only if they make him look bad, not because they are bad.  What he said was a sincere apology?  How many of his advisors had to pin him down and punch him until he agreed?   There is nothing Donald Trump has publicly done in the last year or so that can be remotely described as "humbly.'  NOTHING.

And Trump's supporters are not being as open and honest as Trump is.

What she's really saying there, and it gets clearer in the rest of it (you can see it here if you must) is, "I don't really care what he says or does about anything, as long as he appoints anti-abortion judges."  That's one of the problems with extremism.  You don't have to be an extremist to dance with the devil now and then.  The US became an ally of the Soviet Union during WW II, so sometimes we have to take those kinds of positions.  But the Soviets played a huge role in the defeat of Hitler.  They delivered.  Why would anyone believe anything Trump promises?  He's only going to follow through if he gets a cut.


ON THE CLINTON SIDE

Clinton's taken a lot of heat for things she and her staffers said that they had every reason to believe were said in private conversations.  Until Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) server  and Wikileaks shared them with the world.

We say a lot of things in private, at work and with friends.  In fact policy debate among staffers is one of the in Freedom of Information Act exemptions (#5), so that agency staffers can speak candidly, play the devil's advocate, and test out policies that they don't really expect to pursue.  They're the kind of things a number of Republican presidents have claimed Executive Privilege to prevent being disclosed. And the DNC isn't even a government agency that would come under the Freedom of Information Act.

But Clinton's been attacked for things that she or the DNC staff never actually said in public.  Now, one could argue that Trump sex assault tape was similar, and once it's public it's fair game.  And there are some things that are inconvenient for Clinton supporters.  But I dare say if we got the same conversations that were held with the RNC, I'm confident there'd be a lot juicier quotes than what we have from the DNC.

As I've said before, I'm not 100% in agreement with Clinton.  I'm troubled by the Clinton Foundation, particularly its actions with relation to Haiti and the appearance, if not the actual fact, of it being used to sell influence.  I'm not happy with her early position on Iraq and her cosiness with Wall Street.  But there are many positions I support fully and she has the experience and the connections to make things happen.  She's had eight years to watch how Republicans obstructed Obama.  I'm betting if she gets a majority in the Senate, we're going to see a lot of legislation passed in the first two years before the 2018 election.  And she's running against Trump.

I think the saying "Damned if you do and damned if you don't" is appropriate here.  Trump gets hit for saying what he's thinking and Clinton gets hit for not saying what's been said by her party in private.  But in balance, what Trump's been saying has been so over the top, that many in the political party he hijacked are abandoning him.  Clinton's email sins are run-of-the-mill back room political strategizing.  But nothing really damning, unless you're a Republican strategist trying to find anything that might stick and to get the negative attention off Trump and onto Clinton.

Election 2016: What The Glass Ceiling Looks Like

[This started out fairly focused, but the causes of the glass ceiling for women aren't simple.  Nor do they explain everything in this election.   This isn't intended to be the final treatise on obstacles Hillary Clinton faces in her campaign because she's a woman.  But it is intended to give it some context.  The basic point is this:  Because she is a woman she has more hurdles on her way to the White House than a man would and here are some reasons why and some numbers.]


Rarely are women kept out of higher positions simply because they are women.  No, it's because they aren't aggressive enough, or they're too aggressive.  There are gaps in their resume, or times when they weren't in the office when we needed them (maybe because they took off time to have and care for a child while the fathers stayed at work.)

Deborah Tannen has spent her career as a linguist documenting the differences between men and women's talk and why they handicap women in male dominated institutions.

Norming is one of her topics. [I can't find a good overview.  Try checking out her book Talking 9-5.] The norm has traditionally been a white male in a suit.  That's what leaders are supposed to look like.  And people who don't look (and act) like a white male, have trouble moving up out of subordinate roles.  Not so much because they are women, but because they aren't men. They don't match our image of the Norm.    Individuals who differ from that norm stand out.  They don't fit in.  The more they differ from how we expect them to look and act, the harder it will be for them to succeed.  Maybe they're just not part of the team, like the white males who don't wear a suit or don't go out drinking with the guys.    Blacks stand out, because they're not white.  The whiter they are, the less they stand out.

Women stand out in a lose-lose sort of way.  The more they try to look or sound like men - cut their hair short, wear suits, raise their voices, talk dirty - the less they look like the women men think they should look like.  We've all seen the lists of descriptors for men and women who behave the same way.  When women act like men act, they're punished for it.   Where men are seen as strong, women are seen as pushy.   Women just don't fit our images of what the ideal leader should look like and men (and women) don''t see this as discrimination.  For them it's simply 'the truth.'

Here's a clear example of how 'norms' play a role in Americans choosing people who look like our ideal of a leader from a 2012 article on The American College President Study:

"In 1986, the first year of ACE’s college president study, the demographic profile of the typical campus leader was a white male in his 50s. He was married with children, Protestant, held a doctorate in education, and had served in his current position for six years.
Twenty-five years later, with few exceptions, the profile has not changed."

The study does note that the percentage of women presidents in those 25 years rose from ten to 26.

But underlying this, I would argue, is the fear of change, of losing power that men have in our (and most other) society.

C. Jane Kendrick on Weekend Edition today gave one reason why this happens as she talked about campaigning for Clinton in Utah:

". . . when I think about how people feel about Hillary here in Utah, it's not simply that they disagree with her. It's that they hate her. I think there's a character assassination that happened in the 1990s, long before she ever ran and I think long before Bill was president, that started with questioning women's roles and gender roles. I think she really pushed Utah's buttons.

". . . she poses a huge threat to the system that works in Utah. I think she poses a threat to the patriarchal system. She poses a threat to gender roles. Everything that I was taught to hold dear is the opposite of what Hillary has - who she is, except for, you know, being a grandmother and a mother, which I think a lot of women here, in my past, growing up, would say perhaps she didn't do enough of that."

Sure, people who strongly believe in the free market as the perfect system, who believe abortion is murder, and that guns are as essential an extension of the human anatomy as a cell phone, all have 'rational' reasons to oppose Clinton.  But to hate her?  To make her into a demon?

The Republicans have been smearing their  male opponents with sophisticated propaganda too.  Their crowning achievement was the Swiftboating campaign that took Kerry's heroic war record and made him into a traitor with lies and innuendo.

And that's what they've been doing with Hillary Clinton since Bill Clinton walked onto the national stage.

A PEW study discusses the top qualities people look for in a leader and perceived gender differences in those qualities. Honesty comes out on top among the top four traits.  And women are perceived as far more honest than men.  There's little doubt in my mind that's why the Republicans' most constant sound-bite on Clinton is about her being dishonest.  Just as they worked hard to whittle away John Kerry's war hero advantage over the draft dodging George W. Bush, they are pounding on Clinton's honesty.

But this is against the backdrop of women not looking like our norm for leadership.  After all, Catholics still won't accept women priests, let alone a Pope.  Orthodox Jews still segregate men and women, and Fundamentalists tell us women should obey their husbands.

Of course, Clinton's being a woman is only one of the many obstacles she has faced in her quest for the presidency.  We only pick a president every four years.  That's a possibility of 25 slots per century if no one were ever reelected.  The odds are extremely low for men too.  But even lower for women.

And while I have doubts about some of Clinton's past and how it would play out in a Clinton presidency, I've had those doubts in every election since I first got to vote for president in 1968.  Nobody's ideal candidate is ever on the ballot.  All candidates have warts.

But in my observation of presidential election for the last 50 years or so, no basically well qualified male candidate's election, given an opponent like Trump,  would still be in doubt.  Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, whose policies were not nearly as bizarre as Trump's and whose character was not in question.  Not even marginally qualified male candidates with an opponent like Trump would have anything to worry about.

We have memes that talk about women (or substitute whatever group that doesn't fit Tannen's idea of the American leader norm) having to work twice as hard as men, such as Charlotte Witton's:

 "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."

I'm sure lots of men dismissed this because of what they would have called her smart ass conclusion.

What's particularly telling when this double standard is applied to women, are that facts that women belong to

• the richest and poorest (and all those in-between) economic classes, 
• the best and worst educated, 
• every different religious denomination
• every ethnic group

AND they make up slightly more than 50% the population.  Yet

• 0% of US presidents have been women
• 4% of Fortune 500 company presidents are women in 2016
• 6.9% of generals and admirals in the US military are women in 2016
• 5.2% of commercial airline pilots are women
• "Women occupy just 6.3 percent, or 10 out of 160 head chef positions at 15 prominent U.S. restaurant groups analyzed by Bloomberg."

I can't find numbers on the percent of women heading labor unions, but this article begins:

"Why do unions have so few female leaders? On the face of the facts, that doesn’t make sense. After all, 45.5 percent of unionists are women."

I already mentioned that only 26% of university presidents.  You get the picture.


Where are women doing 'better'?  An Education Week article titled "Women on par with men in principalships" tells us:

"Looking at data for the 2007-08 school year, the report shows that 50 percent of public school principals and 53 percent of private school principals were female that year."

But that doesn't look all that good when you consider that men made up less than a quarter of the public school teachers, the pool from which principals are drawn.*

While women might not get top head chef positions, according to QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) magazine in 2011

"more than 50 percent of restaurants are now owned by women"

And the book Supervision in The Hospitality Industry*  tells us that

"more than two-thirds of the supervisors in the food service industry are women"

Which makes sense, but is a dubious achievement,  because the New Republic lists the food service industry as the lowest paid in the nation.  

When you consider that just over 50% of the population is women, these numbers show that more is going on than "they aren't as good."  There are paths to many jobs that women haven't been able to get on.  Many commercial pilots, for example, got their training in the military when women weren't allowed those jobs.  Trade apprenticeships didn't take women.  And so on.

But think about this.  Until very recently, every married man was married to a woman.  And many, if not most, had daughters.  They all had mothers.  Yet they continued to make decisions and to support a system that made the women in their lives second class citizens.  

This is deeply embedded in our psyches, and we still have a lot of self-reflection to do. This campaign has started some of that.   Just as no one expected Nixon to start the US talking to China, no one expected Trump to start us talking about the prevalence of sexual assaults. (A key difference was that Nixon went to China consciously and purposely.)  

But when anyone says they can't vote for Clinton because she's not honest, or because of emails, or the Clinton Foundation, start asking them about what they know about male candidates of the past and the baggage they had.  Ask them specifically what they know about her dishonesty, or is it just a word they associate with her.  Then ask them about their fathers' treatment of women.  Ask them about their fathers' attitude about family.  Their own ideas about families.  You might prepare by reading what George Lakoff says on that. Go down to where he talks about conservative and liberal conceptions of family.

You can also see Deborah Tannen's take on the election before the Democratic primary was over.
And here she's discusses the interruptions in the first debate.

I'm reasonably confident that Clinton is going to win, but I shouldn't have any doubts about it given the qualifications of these two candidates.  And if you think things got bad when we elected a Black president, just wait until we have a woman president.  All the misogyny that's bottled up will come exploding out.  And only when it's all out in the open for everyone to see, will we be able to process it and move on.  

Again, sorry seems a little disjointed, but the world I'm writing about is also disjointed.  There's no simple cause and effect.  Lots of factors play roles in this first US election with a woman as a candidate from a major party.  

*I'd note that in 1970 I taught 5th grade for a year in Los Angeles.  I was one of very few male teachers, though the principal and the vice principal were both male.  One day, the vice principal invited me to go to an event for male teachers.  He explained that this was the route to become a principal. 

Using Your Fame To Prey On Women Is NOT The Same As Defending Yourself From A Woman Sleeping With Your Husband

Marjorie Dannenfelser is the president of the pro-life organization, the Susan B. Anthony List.  She was interviewed this morning by reporter Steve Innskeep on NPR's Morning Edition.

She strongly objected to Trump’s words about assaulting women on the tape that was released last week.

 “What we just heard . . . is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable.  It is not to be set aside.  The assault and offense of women.  You know for any woman who has ever been assaulted, this is a trigger moment for them.  It brings back a flood of memories that are horrible and that’s no excuse. ”

But then she goes on.  

“For any woman who has been assaulted  and then ignored, or blamed, they should be upset by Hillary Clinton’s behavior and her treatment of the women that in a serial fashion, went through her husband’s life.  She then blamed and destroyed, ridiculed, ignored.  When you think about the women on college campuses today who often are having that happen to them, that’s a trigger moment for them.” 

Steve Innskeep interjects to say that fact checkers only have evidence that Clinton did publicly attack Jennifer Flowers, but they found no evidence that she had attacked other women who’d had relations with her husband. 

Let’s get this straight.  

Clinton, a married woman, ‘attacking’ a woman who had an affair with her husband, IS NOT anywhere near a moral equivalent to Trump’s bragging about using his celebrity and power to get away with sexual assaults on non-consenting women.

These are totally different behaviors, with totally different motivations and consequences. 

In fact Dannenfelser’s wording - in both cases she talks uses almost the exact same phrasing - raises questions for me about who helped her script this interview.  

About Trump:  “for any woman who has ever been assaulted, this is a trigger moment for them.”

About Clinton:  “For any woman who has been assaulted  and then ignored, or blamed . . . When you think about the women on college campuses today who often are having that happen to them, that’s a trigger moment for them.” 

That grammatical symmetry is not accidental.  These comments were scripted to make them sound like the moral equivalent of each other.  

It also helps her rationalize that despite Trump’s behavior - and we have to remember it’s not just this tape but his behavior throughout the campaign and his business career that is being challenged daily - her single issue of ending abortion is important enough to overlook everything else in Trump’s record.

I'd note that our polarized culture - and the media have assisted in exacerbating people's ideological differences - makes it hard for people like Dannenfelser to consider the possibility that working with her 'enemy' might actually help reduce the number of abortions.  Planned Parenthood - the icon the anti-abortionists use as the enemy - counsels women on birth control and does a significant job in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

I'd argue that Trump as a candidate has been a role model for increasing the number of, in Dannenfelser's words, "outrageous and unacceptable" behaviors among his followers that will lead to unwanted pregnancies.  And as president, Trump's model would probably cause the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions to go up.  

Life is complicated.  The simple cause and effect relationships that people glom onto, tend to be far more complex.  Think about the Three Strikes You're Out legislation that was supposed to cut down on crime, but instead swelled the US prison population, hugely increasing the costs, and ruining the lives of countless people who were no danger to anyone.

The anti-abortion movement has the same perverse consequences.  They throttle the most effective anti-abortion organization because 3% of its work involves abortions.  And they send the most reactionary, bigoted men to Congress, simply because they say they oppose abortions.  

But that is exactly what the larger script writers intended.  To get those who think in simple cause-effect relations into voting Republican.  Talk about trigger words - the conservative movement has been masterful in creating sound bites to get people angry and voting.  

Of course, it plays well with Trump’s hardcore supporters, many of whom, I’m guessing, were not offended by the tape.  Clinton’s supporters dismiss it as soon as they hear who Dannenfelser is, perhaps even without even listening to and parsing it out. 

And I doubt such arguments work any more with independent voters.  

Extrovert Advantage For Presidential Candidates, Introvert Advantages For President

Lots of factors that affect who gets elected president in the United States.  One, that seems to have a disproportionate impact, is the introversion/extroversion factor.  It's no surprise to anyone if I say that Hillary Clinton is much more introverted than Donald Trump.

And it's an issue important enough that a Rasmussen Reports survey actually asks people which candidate they'd rather have a beer with.  And it's not surprising that Trump comes out ahead.  (The large lead with men overcomes the small lead Clinton has with women on this question.)

Reading below, keep in mind that all bifurcations can grossly oversimplify and that people fall somewhere on a continuum from very introverted to very extroverted.  And I've just picked a list of characteristics I found online that seemed consistent with other things I've read on this.  The list was aimed at introversion and extroversion advantages at work.

As you go through the list, you'll probably quibble about the description as it applies to either Trump or Clinton.  For instance, in the Extroverts column, "have excellent communication and verbal skills.' I would say that Trump is very fluid and quick on his feet when talking, though I'm not sure that always translates to 'excellent communication.'

Basically, the extrovert sounds more comfortable speaking to strangers and crowds.  And for many, that translates into more honest, more genuine.  They are more comfortable coming up to strangers and talking because they can talk at that superficial level that one uses until you get a better comfort level with someone.  Introverts tend to hate 'small-talk."  They want to talk about serious stuff.  And, at least theoretically, people think more of people who think deeply.  I get lots of hits still on a 2011 post about the Eleanor Roosevelt quote "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."


For the extrovert, talking is about connecting with other people more than about the content.

For the introvert, talking is about the content more than connecting with other people.  

So here's the list I got from My Star Job:

Introverts

Extroverts

Care about their job and their organisation  Concentrate well in quiet atmospheres  May know more than they reveal  Have very good attention to details  Love to handle long and complex problems  May seem aloof and quiet  Dislike interruptions and intrusions  Work well with little supervision  Always think and reflect before taking action  Do not like to attract attention to themselves

Always keep abreast of what is happening at work  Formulate good ideas through discussions and interactions  Socialise and network well  Have excellent communication and verbal skills  Love to be a part of everything  Get bored and impatient when work gets slow and repetitive Are fantastic at marketing themselves and their organisation  Thrive on attention · Are good at multi-tasking  Respond quickly to requests and always aim to find quick solutions

I think the best candidate AND the best president is balanced enough to be able to at least act as an extrovert and as an introvert as the occasion warrants.  But I also think most people are more comfortable with extroverts than with introverts.  And that seems to be the consensus.

Susan Cain's book Quiet:The Power of Introverts, reports her research on the topic.  Cain identifies many ways that our society encourages extroversion over introversion.  One example she gives is being pressured to put away her book and join the group activities at summer camp.  Our society is biased to favor extroverts.  From Ted Talks blog:

"That bias, she claims, is everyone’s loss. While the world certainly need extroverts, it also needs introverts doing what they do best. It’s a bias that has no name. To understand it, we need to understand that introversion isn’t about not being social, it’s not being shy, it’s about how someone responds to stimulation. While extroverts crave social interaction, introverts are much more alive while they’re alone. Cain brings in her thesis with the insight that, 'The key to maximizing talents is to put yourself into the zone of stimulation that’s right for you.'”

When we consider our current presidential campaign and the debates, I'd suggest we include in our discussions of the candidates, this factor of introversion and extroversion.

Clearly Trump is a raging extrovert - so much so that it's something of a problem.  But Clinton is definitely an introvert who, as a candidate, is forced to act in an extrovert role.  That's why she doesn't seem genuine, because she can't be her natural self while campaigning.  And all the time in front of crowds of people surely is taking its toll on her energy level.  As an introvert, she needs quiet alone time to recharge.  So our American bias against introverts hurts people's perception of Clinton.  It's even worse than it was for someone like Romney (also an introvert) because women are expected to be extroverts more than men are.

For those struggling to understand how Trump is still statistically in the presidential race, this is clearly a factor, and one we should be talking about.

(Though the years of right wing media attacks and congressional hearings on Benghazi and on emails have also had their effect in making people feel Clinton is more dishonest than past candidates for president. )

Because The Conservative Machine Is Swiftboating Hillary Clinton, We Must Share Videos Like These . . .

[This post is about the video.  I encourage you to watch it.  The intro has gotten longer than intended, so skip it if you will and watch the video.]

Every time the Republican nominee tweets 'crooked' in front of our future president's first name, 'crooked' embeds itself a little deeper in people's brains. He knows that repetition of a lie eventually becomes truth for many people.

Benghazi hearings and email 'scandals' show how little the other side has on Clinton.  The 'crimes'  she's been accused of are, at worst, minor offenses compared to what the Bush administration did regularly.  They really have nothing serious on Clinton.  Well, being a woman is probably her most serious crime in many Republican eyes, but most know they can't say that directly.

All the attacks so far on Clinton are part of the political weaponry of the Republicans - honed by people like Roger Ailes, who has just stepped down as head of Fox News for decades of sexual harassment.

It is the vicious fabrication of lies to bring down an honorable candidate.  They took war hero John Kerry and 'swiftboated' him until their draft-dodging candidate beat him in 2004. Such irony!  The party of the military, the party that despises draft-dodgers, the party that exalts 'war heroes,' slandering a hero so their draft dodger president would win.

Swiftboating is now part of the American political lexicon, like gerrymandering. Wikipedia says:

"The term swiftboating (also swift-boating or swift boating) is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from the name of the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" (SBVT, later the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) because of their widely publicized—and later discredited—campaign against 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry."

No candidate is perfect.  You can't reach the political level of a presidential nomination from a major party without having had made compromises along the way.  Nixon actually was a crook.  He authorized breaking into Watergate and physically stealing files from the Democratic party files and lied about it repeatedly.

Today, it appears Russian government sponsored hackers electronically broke into the Democratic party files and leaked them the day before the Democratic convention.  And the bigger fallout is on candidate Clinton, not on the Russians, or the Republicans who are hoping to benefit from this.

That's not to say Clinton is without flaws.  None of us are.  We have to weigh the strengths and weaknesses in each candidate and figure out who will be the best president.  The Republicans are swift boating her flaws into capital crimes.

But her opponent's flaws are so numerable and egregious and his strengths are so few that leaders of the Republican party - including former Republican presidents - stayed away from the convention.  Clinton is one of the best qualified candidates we've ever had, yet much of the American public thinks she's a crook, and  one delegate at the Republican convention called for  a firing squad.  (Does he know that we don't use firing squads any more?)

But I would argue that Hillary's skills, like any woman who reaches the highest levels in her field, are at least 50% better than most males at this level and her heart, as the video below demonstrates, is in the right place. (Her opponent's heart?  Does he even have one?)  Her fight with Sanders was mainly about policy, particularly about economic policy - PPT and regulations of the financial industry.  I lean with Sanders on those issues.  And even though the emails show bias against Sanders, it's nothing like the bias against Trump inside the Republican National Committee was.

What's probably most galling for the Republicans is that they FAILED to stop Trump even while trying to change the rules to do so.  Meanwhile the Democrats' SUCCEEDED in stopping Sanders because their rules already included super delegates.  What I've seen revealed in the emails so far happens in every campaign.  Newsflash:  People in DNC had favorites among the candidates.  Is anyone really surprised?  Officials have to appear neutral, but they mostly know who they favor.  It's no surprise.  What's surprising is that the media is treating this like a major scandal.    In any case, Clinton's the candidate now and has to be the choice in November for and people with the USA's best interests at heart. (I'll give a pass to people living in states like Alaska where the outcome is clearly red or blue already.)

The faithful's minds are set - on all sides.   But the undecided and leaning folks are reachable.  . So while the Republicans make foibles into indictable offenses and launch a fleet of swift boats against Hillary Clinton, we need to share those tributes that show a different Clinton than the Republicans would have voters believe.  I urge you to watch this video and share it.



Meryl Streep tells us of the side of Hillary Clinton that we normally don't hear about - how she visits women leaders of grass roots organizations in all the countries she visited as Secretary of State, and how important that was for women everywhere.

[I proposed in a previous post that the Republican candidate's name should not be voiced at the Democratic convention this week.  I'm going to try to follow that suggestion here this week as well.  Nothing could disturb him more.]

[Sorry, reposting - Feedburner stuff.]

How About A Trumpless Democratic Convention?

I have two suggestions for the Democrats as they prepare for their convention next week.

1.  Go Trumpless

Trump has managed to get hours and hours of free media coverage for the last year.  The media has found his outrageousness both irresistible and profitable.

The Democrats shouldn't continue that.  'Trump' is a word that shouldn't be uttered once.  They can talk about about what they would do and how they would do it.  They don't have to spell out how different their vision is from Trump's.  Trust the viewers to fill it in themselves.

You know, nothing would upset Trump more than being totally ignored.  Well, they can't ignore him, but they don't have to mention him and that will have the same effect.  A Trump free media week will show Americans how wonderful that is.  Though by Thursday night, probably Trump will be trying to crash the convention just so someone has to say his name.


2.  Include the lowliest delegates in the prime time programing.

Trump said

"I alone can fix it."

Clinton belittled that idea today when introducing Tim Kaine.  Well, her nominating convention should demonstrate she really means it.  

I'd also suggest that instead of non-stop celebrity talking heads, they also let the convention delegates  be more than a mindless crowd of extras that cheers, boos, holds signs, and chants slogans.


Take some of that prime time to put the delegates in the spotlight.  Let them form small discussion groups and have the cameras follow real discussions of real issues by real people.  Highlight the voices of the people who are Clinton's partners in getting her elected.