“Boys will be boys,” but girls must be goddesses.

[Guinevere]

Governor Kunin (a goddess herself) is right on: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016 ... 3Afacebook

NOW THAT HILLARY Clinton is about to become the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump, let’s examine why so many voters claim they dislike and distrust her. It was not always so.

When Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, she hit a high of 66 percent favorability rating and was consistently voted the most admired woman in the world. When New Yorkers elected Clinton to the US Senate, she had small hurdles to overcome, but gender was not one of them. We are used to electing female senators and have seen them succeed. As a New York senator, her favorability was 58 percent. Today her favorability is 38.2 percent. What happened?


She is the same woman as she was three years ago. She has not changed her genome, her values, or her vision for America. What has changed is that she has emblazoned the word “ambition” on her forehead by declaring that she wants to be president.

When women leaders step into territory traditionally occupied by men, something odd happens, according to research by Victoria Brescoll, a social psychologist at the Yale School of Management. Brescoll cites a case in which a male police chief made a mistake managing protesters and compares his favorability with a female police chief in the identical situation. His mistake cost him a 10 percent loss in favorability; she plummeted 30 percent.

We expect a great deal from a female candidate for president. It’s called perfection. The slightest stumble is magnified ten-fold. Compare Clinton’s e-mail carelessness with any of Trump’s deliberate false activities with Trump University, his bankruptcies, and the complaints from his vendors who still are waiting to be paid. Men wear imperfection comfortably. Some voters are incredibly forgiving of male politicians’ mistakes. “Boys will be boys,” but girls must be goddesses.

I can't help but feel some of the reaction to the DNC's actions is because they were engineered by a woman, on behalf of a woman. If a man did the same, part of me thinks it would simply be referred to as "tactics" or "politics" which we all know ain't beanbag.

[Crackpot]

A lot of it has to do with the fact that she is her own worst enemy. Her attempts to cover up what in reality is a fairly minor lapse in judgement has left her with a serious credibility problem. Her need to defend against every single charge be it fair or not has done more to cause her poor ratings than anything.

[Guinevere]

Read the article. HRC is, of course, the primary focus, but the bias extends well beyond her.

And "her own worst enemy." I call bullshit.

[Lord Jim]

The reason she is widely distrusted today (as opposed to when she was SOS) is because she repeatedly lied to the American people about her mishandling of classified material...

That is what has happened in the past three years to affect the public perception of her honesty and trustworthiness...

It's laughable to say (as the article does) that it's because she's shown herself to be "ambitious" or because she wants to be President...

Those haven't exactly been well kept secrets, and certainly were well known while she was SOS, when she had high approval ratings...

I can't help but feel some of the reaction to the DNC's actions is because they were engineered by a woman, on behalf of a woman. If a man did the same, part of me thinks it would simply be referred to as "tactics" or "politics" which we all know ain't beanbag.

I disagree...

I don't think it would have mattered one whit what the sex of the individuals involved was if it became public that a high ranking party official was proposing that a candidate competing for their party's nomination have their religion used against them in order to help another candidate...The reaction would have been exactly the same.

Prior to the release of these emails, it was very well known that the DNC was favoring Clinton, (all anyone had to do was look at the original debate schedule to see that) but there was no big public clamor about it...

(Except of course from the Sanders supporters, both male and female)

[Burning Petard]

There is also a 'corruption' charge that seems to stick. I think it is based on information and supposition about the Clinton family charitable foundation. A charitable foundation seems to be a favorite tax ploy for people with lots of cash. Very young NASCAR drivers even have them.

So does Trump. The family foundation seems to be the primary employment of one of the Donald's kids. The big difference is that there is damn near no data available about it or anything else regarding Trump finances. There is a long post speculating about 'the Russian Connection' from a liberal news blog on another thread here.

There needs to be more pressure for the Donald to release his tax returns.

[Lord Jim]

There needs to be more pressure for the Donald to release his tax returns.

The latest speculation now is that he doesn't want to release them because they'd show how much money he's getting from the Russkies...

[BoSoxGal]

Pearls before swine, Guin. But I laud the effort!

[Scooter]

There is also a 'corruption' charge that seems to stick. I think it is based on information and supposition about the Clinton family charitable foundation. A charitable foundation seems to be a favorite tax ploy for people with lots of cash. Very young NASCAR drivers even have them.

Except that is not how the Clinton Foundation operates AT ALL, and if people took the time to learn how much purer than Caesar's wife it actually operates because Hillary Clinton was SOS and then a presidential candidate (rather than the "everything the Clintons touch is corrupt" narrative that certain elements of the press have tried to push), then this bullshit would never get any traction.

[Lord Jim]

A lot of it has to do with the fact that she is her own worst enemy.

There is also a 'corruption' charge that seems to stick.

The core of the problem for the Clintons, (both of them) has always been their arrogance and belief that the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to them...

That's the attitude that lay at the heart of the decision to set up this private email system in the first place, and also what led Hillary to tell so many lies about it once it was revealed...

This attitude has also led them to be completely dismissive of the appearance of impropriety where they are concerned...(Which is how you wind up with a book showing the temporal proximity of state department decisions overlaid with contributions to the Clinton Foundation and appearance fees being paid to Bill)

It's the attitude that leads you to believe it would be perfectly alright to lie to the family members of the victims of the Benghazi attack about the reason for the attack, on the very same day that you are telling your daughter and an aide privately the truth about it...

In one of the David Frost interviews, Richard Nixon, when discussing his political enemies said, "I gave them a sword...and they stuck it in and twisted it with relish..."

It's certainly true that the Clintons have political enemies, but it's also true that they've been in the sword distribution business for a long time...

Paula Jones' lawsuit was financed by Clinton political opponents, but if Bill doesn't drop trou' and try to get head from Paula Jones in a hotel room, there's no lawsuit to finance...

If he doesn't fool around with Monica in the Oval Office, he doesn't commit perjury in that lawsuit...

If he doesn't commit perjury, there's no Impeachment...

If you look at most of the controversies that have gotten the Clintons in political hot water, (aside from the truly crazy stuff like the Vince Foster accusation or the drug smuggling charges...which were never taken seriously enough to really cost them anything politically) at the base you will find one or the other of them either having complete disregard for "how it looks" or doin' somethin' they shouldn't oughta been doin'....

That is certainly true regarding the latest "honest and trustworthy" damaging controversies Hillary has found herself embroiled in...

[Burning Petard]

The house initiated impeachment proceeding against the president, with four articles. Two did not even get out of the house, and the senate defeated the other two. The senate vote was not even close, compared to the impeachment vote for the first President Johnson.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

SG, just to clear this up...

Bill Clinton was Impeached...

As you point out two Articles Of Impeachment were voted out of the House...Under the Constitution, that constitutes "Impeachment"...

He was NOT "convicted and removed from office" by the Senate...

Impeachment is roughly equivalent in criminal terms to an indictment...

[Econoline]

Interesting theory:

America loves women like Hillary Clinton—as long as they’re not asking for a promotion

It’s hard to remember these days, but just a few years ago, everybody loved Hillary Rodham Clinton. When she stepped down as US secretary of state in January 2013 after four years in office, her approval rating stood at what the Wall Street Journal described as an “eye-popping” 69%. That made her not only the most popular politician in the country, but the second-most popular secretary of state since 1948.

The 2012 “Texts from Hillary” meme, which featured a sunglasses-clad Clinton scrolling through her Blackberry aboard a military flight to Libya, had given rise to a flood of think pieces hailing her “badass cool.” The Washington Post wanted president Barack Obama to give vice president Joe Biden the boot and replace him with Clinton. Taking stock of Clinton’s approval ratings, Nate Silver noted in a 2012 piece for the New York Times that she currently held “remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.”

How times have changed. “The FBI And 67 Percent of Americans Distrust Hillary Clinton,” booms a recent headline in the Huffington Post. Clinton’s favorability ratings currently hover around 40.8%. Bob Woodward complains that “there is something unrelaxed about the way she is communicating.” “Hillary’s personality repels me,” Walker Bragman writes in Salon.

How can we reconcile the “unlikable” Democratic presidential candidate of today with the adored politician of recent history? It’s simple: Public opinion of Clinton has followed a fixed pattern throughout her career. Her public approval plummets whenever she applies for a new position. Then it soars when she gets the job. The wild difference between the way we talk about Clinton when she campaigns and the way we talk about her when she’s in office can’t be explained as ordinary political mud-slinging. Rather, the predictable swings of public opinion reveal Americans’ continued prejudice against women caught in the act of asking for power.

We beg Clinton to run, and then accuse her of feeling “entitled” to win. Several feminist writers have analyzed the Clinton yo-yo. Melissa McEwan sees a deliberate pattern of humiliation, which involves “building [Clinton] up and pressuring her to take on increasingly prominent public challenges, only to immediately turn on her and unleash breathtaking misogyny against her when she steps up to the plate.”

If you find this hypothesis unlikely, there’s Ann Friedman’s explanation: Clinton makes people uncomfortable by succeeding too visibly. Clinton is trapped in “the catch-22 of female ambition,” Friedman writes: “To succeed, she needs to be liked, but to be liked, she needs to temper her success.”

Yet it seems odd that even when Clinton ascends to ever-greater positions of power—from first lady to senator, from senator to secretary of state—we start liking her again once she’s landed the job. It’s not her success that seems to arouse ire, but the act of campaigning itself.

This issue is not specific to Clinton. As Slate writer Jamelle Bouie has pointed out on Twitter, even progressive demigod Elizabeth Warren was seen as “unlikable” when she ran for the Massachusetts senate seat. Local outlets published op-eds about how women were being “turned off” by Warren’s “know-it-all style”—a framing that’s indistinguishable from 2016 Clinton coverage. “I’m asking her to be more authentic,” a Democratic analyst for Boston radio station WBUR said of Warren. “I want her to just sound like a human being, not read the script that makes her sound like some angry, hectoring school marm.”

Once Warren made it to the Senate, she was lionized—right down to a Clinton-esque moment in which supporters begged her to run for President. Yet seeing Warren engaged in the actual act of running seems to freak people out.

Campaigning is not succeeding. It’s asking for success, and for power. To campaign is to publicly claim that you are better than the others (usually white men) who want the same job, and that a whole lot of people should work to place you in a more powerful position. In other words, campaigning is a transgressive act for women.

Women often find self-promotion difficult even outside the realm of politics. For example, a 2011 study found that men are four times more likely to ask for raises than their female co-workers. Women are much more likely than men to under-estimate their abilities. When they apply for jobs, they often refuse to even submit a resume unless they’re certain they have 100% of the requisite qualifications. (The qualification threshold for men is only 60%. Think about that the next time you wonder why on Earth Donald Trump thinks he should be president–or, for that matter, when Bernie Sanders insists that his lack of foreign policy experience compared to Clinton’s doesn’t matter, because he has better “judgment.”)

Articles on women’s workplace behavior are littered with tales of the “confidence gap” and “impostor syndrome”–that is, the recurring belief among high-achieving women that all of their achievements have been somehow accidental and are therefore undeserved. But the rare, lucky women who do manage to apply for higher-level jobs, advocate for fair wages, and feel good about themselves in the meantime may find that the “confidence gap” is less personal neurosis than sadly justified risk assessment. Women who put themselves forward in the same assertive, confident style as men are routinely found pushy, “bitchy,” or unlikable, and professionally penalized for that, too.

In politics, the pattern is no different. The so-called “ambition gap” begins in college. In both 2001 and 2011, women were 16 percentage points less likely than men to say they had thought about running for office, according to a study of nearly 4,000 Americans published in 2012 by the Women & Politics Institute. Women consider themselves less qualified for politics (again, men with the exact same qualifications as those women describe themselves as “very qualified” for the same positions), less interested in high-level positions and less likely to run for them.

When women do overcome the ambition gap, we punish them for it. One Harvard study found that “when participants saw female politicians as power-seeking, they also saw them as having less communality (i.e., being unsupportive and uncaring), while this was not true for their perceptions of power-seeking male politicians.” Power-seeking men were seen as strong and competent. Power-seeking women were greeted by both sexes with “moral outrage.”

Thus, the single worst thing a female politician can do to herself is to look for a job in politics. We can accept women in power, but not women’s desire for more of it.

Would a victory in the primaries or general election cool down public anger toward Clinton—or increase it to record levels? As Friedman pointed out to me in conversation, there’s no way to know: “When you get to the level Hillary is at now … there’s no data. It’s just her.” As the only woman to ever be a leading contender for president, Clinton is the only case study we have about how gender impacts frontrunners. This gives us an incomplete picture, as Friedman notes, because it erases any complexity that arises from Clinton’s status as an individual, and imperfect, politician.

Personally, I think that we’ll start liking Clinton again sooner rather than later. After all, she can’t keep campaigning forever. If she loses the Democratic primaries or the general election, she’ll have run out of rungs to climb. The loss would let us forgive her. And if she makes it to the top, she’ll have reached a vantage point that she—and we—have never seen before. Up there, everything may look new.

http://qz.com/624346/america-loves-wome ... promotion/

See also this article from Vox.com:

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/11/12105960/hillary-clinton-popularity-poll-approval-ratings

Sample quote from that one:

"When I have a job, I have really high approval ratings," she told Vox’s Ezra Klein in an interview. "When I’m actually doing the work, I get reelected with 67 percent of the vote running for reelection in the Senate. When I’m secretary of state, I have [a] 66 percent approval rating. And then I seek a job, I run for a job, and all of the discredited negativity comes out again, and all of these arguments and attacks start up."

For Clinton, this could be an optimistic way of looking at her approval woes. It lets her believe the campaign is a rough patch, and that if she’s elected her popularity will rebound.

Looking back over Clinton’s popularity during her many decades in public life, there might be something to this theory. But it’s deeper than the one she presented. It’s not that Americans like Clinton when she’s working — it’s that they like her least when she’s ambitious, when she’s breaking barriers and engaging in political fights. They like her most when that ambition is thwarted and she’s relegated to a more familiar, traditional role.

It’s a pattern that’s virtually unique to Hillary Clinton — or at least, the one woman with a pattern of public service like Hillary Clinton’s.

[Gob]

I give up.

[Lord Jim]

it’s that they like her least when she’s ambitious, when she’s breaking barriers and engaging in political fights.

Or maybe it's that they like her least when she's caught lying repeatedly to the American people about her mishandling of classified information....

Just a thought...

[Guinevere]

Not theory Econo, verifiable fact.

Interesting how virtually every man on this board denies it. Yet, I see it almost every day in local government and politics and again at the state and national level.

Massachusetts is a progressive state. When did it they elect its first woman governor? How about first woman in the Congressional delegation?

[Econoline]

Not theory Econo, verifiable fact.

Interesting how virtually every man on this board denies it.

Not me: I posted it and I believe it. (I thought it might get a few more comments if I called it an "interesting theory". )



ETA: Relativity, evolution, and gravity are also interesting theories, as evidenced by scientists' continued interest in them.

[rubato]

Not theory Econo, verifiable fact.

Interesting how virtually every man on this board denies it. Yet, I see it almost every day in local government and politics and again at the state and national level.

Massachusetts is a progressive state. When did it they elect its first woman governor? How about first woman in the Congressional delegation?

They are having as difficult a time admitting that Hillary, a woman, is better than they are as they did admitting that a black man is better than they are and they are using dishonest tactics, empty rhetoric, and flat out lies just as often.

Obama is not a Muslim.
Obama is a citizen.


Hillary did not lie about the emails (in fact).
Hillary was not responsible for Benghazi.

Yrs,
Rubato

[Lord Jim]

Hillary did not lie about the emails (in fact).

LOL

Once again, rube demonstrates his Trumpian regard for facts:

Did she lie?

Now that's an easy one:

Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie: The Quick List of Clinton’s Eight E-mail Lies

Here are those eight lies, debunked.

1. Lie: She didn’t send or receive any e-mails that were classified “at the time.”

Clinton told this to reporters at a press conference March 10, 2015. She repeated it at an Iowa Democratic fundraiser July 25 and at a Democratic debate February 4, 2016.

Once the investigation into Clinton’s e-mails began, the FBI began retroactively classifying some of the work-related e-mails she had released. So Clinton probably opted to dodge the issue by qualifying her statement, saying that no e-mails she sent were classified “at the time.”

Truth: Comey said that the FBI found at least 110 e-mails that were classified at the time Clinton sent or received them — 52 e-mail chains in all, including eight Top Secret (the highest classification level) chains.

2. Lie: She didn’t send or receive any e-mails “marked classified” at the time.

Clinton made this claim most recently July 3, 2016, on Meet the Press. She first made the claim August 26, 2015, at an Iowa news conference. She repeated it at Fox News town hall March 7, 2016; at a Democratic debate March 9; at a New York news conference March 1; and on Face the Nation May 8.

Clinton again appeared to spin the facts emerging in the investigation. This time, she suggested that even if the FBI were now classifying some of her e-mails, she couldn’t be held responsible since the e-mails lacked any mark of classification at the time they were sent or received. Some wondered what she even meant by “marked” classified, while others pointed out that lack of markings was no defense for mishandling the information — which the secretary of state, of all people, should have judged to be sensitive.

Truth: Comey confirmed suspicions about Clinton’s claim by noting that a “small number” of the e-mails were, in fact, marked classified. Moreover, he added: “Even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

3. Lie: She turned over all of her work-related e-mails.

Clinton said this on MSNBC September 4, 2015; at a Fox News town hall March 7, 2016; and at a New York press conference March 10.

It’s important to remember that Clinton made this claim about the 30,000 e-mails she and her attorneys chose to provide to the State Department. After turning over paper copies of these 30,000, she and her attorneys then unilaterally deleted another 32,000 that they deemed personal.

Truth: The FBI found “thousands” of work-related e-mails other than those Clinton had provided; they were in various officials’ mailboxes and in the server’s slack space. Clinton’s attorneys “did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails,” Comey said. “Instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014.”

Though Comey denied he saw evidence of ill intent, he said: It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them. . . . It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery. (Remember the “server-wipe” speculation?)

4. Lie: She wanted to use a personal e-mail account for convenience and simplicity, streamlining to one device.

Clinton said she used one device on CNN July 7, 2015, and at a New York press conference March 10.

Truth: Clinton used multiple servers, administrators, and mobile devices, including an iPad and a Blackberry, to access her e-mail on her personal domain. “As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways,” Comey explained. “Piecing all of that back together — to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work — has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.”

5. Lie: Clinton’s use of a private server and e-mail domain was permitted by law and regulation.

Clinton made this claim in an interview on CNN July 7, 2015; in a campaign statement in July 2015; and at the Democratic primary debates in Las Vegas on October 13, 2015.

Truth: No: A May report issued by the State Department’s inspector general found that it has been department policy since 2005 that work communication be restricted to government servers. While the IG allowed for occasional use of personal e-mail in emergencies, Clinton used her personal e-mail exclusively for all work communication.

6. Lie: All of Clinton’s e-mails were immediately captured by @.gov addresses.

Clinton made this claim at a New York press conference May 10, 2015.

Crucially, Clinton told reporters that she exclusively used her personal e-mail because she thought her messages were always saved in the e-mail threads of senior department officials who used @.gov accounts.

Truth: The State Department did not begin automatically capturing and preserving e-mails until February 2015, two years after Clinton left the State Department.

7. Lie: There were numerous safeguards against security breaches and “no evidence” of hacking.

Clinton made the “safeguards” claim at a New York press conference March 10, 2015, and her former tech aide made the “no evidence” claim March 3, 2016.

Truth: Among the “safeguards” of Clinton’s server were Secret Service members — but this is no safeguard at all where the Internet is concerned.

Further, Comey noted:

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government — or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Which is to say: Your Gmail account is more secure than Hillary’s personal e-mail.

There is some evidence of a possible breach.

Comey said:

Hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account. Clinton’s “no evidence” claim is less of a bald lie than a concealment of strong possibility.

She also failed to report several hacking attempts.

8. Lie: Clinton was never served a subpoena on her e-mail use.

Clinton said this in a CNN interview July 7, 2015.

Truth: The next day, July 8, the chair of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Trey Gowdy, accused Clinton of lying about not receiving a subpoena. Gowdy said in a statement:

“The committee has issued several subpoenas, but I have not sought to make them public. I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice in order to correct the inaccuracy.”

[MajGenl.Meade]

She and her husband - equally repulsive liars.

Our ruling

Hillary Clinton said she and Bill were in debt and dead broke when they left the White House. The public record shows that they possibly had more liabilities than assets, but it doesn’t show that conclusively. More important, a balance sheet does not tell the full story and the experts we reached said the Clintons’ earning potential had a real economic value that the financial sector traditionally acknowledges and is willing to bank on.

A few weeks before they left the White House, the Clintons were able to muster a cash down payment of $855,000 and secure a $1.995 million mortgage. This hardly fits the common meaning of "dead broke."

We rate the claim Mostly False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... ead-broke/

[Guinevere]

And yet, far more truthful than almost any other politician/office holder. So you're repulsed by what, exactly?

Donald J. Trump’s record on truth and accuracy is astonishingly poor. So far, we’ve fact-checked more than 70 Trump statements and rated fully three-quarters of them as Mostly False, False or “Pants on Fire” (we reserve this last designation for a claim that is not only inaccurate but also ridiculous). We haven’t checked the former neurosurgeon Ben Carson as often as Mr. Trump, but by the percentages Mr. Carson actually fares worse.

Carly Fiorina, another candidate in the Republican race who’s never held elective office, does slightly better on the Truth-O-Meter (which I sometimes feel the need to remind people is not an actual scientific instrument): Half of the statements we’ve checked have proved Mostly False or worse.

Most of the professional politicians we fact-check don’t reach these depths of inaccuracy. They tend to choose their words more carefully.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, for example, has ratings of Mostly False, False and Pants on Fire at the 40 percent mark (out of a sizable 117 statements checked). The former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s negative ratings are at 32 percent out of 71 statements checked, a percentage matched by two other Republican contenders, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Senator Rand Paul.

In the Democratic race, Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are evenly matched at 28 percent (based on 43 checks of Mr. Sanders and 140 checks of Mrs. Clinton). Outside of the primary campaign, we’ve continued checking the public statements of Bill Clinton since 2007; he comes out slightly ahead of President Obama in his truth-telling track record.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opini ... .html?_r=0