Hillary Email: The Motherlode



Well there is celebration in Trump-land today but, to me, it all seems just a bit too convenient. All along Republicans have promised to assault Hillary with her rumored crimes all the way to the 2016 election and they have made their promises come true in spectacular fashion. Perhaps they have hit the email motherlode. Perhaps they will finally be able to prove, once and for all, that Hillary is the monster they say she is, and a traitor to boot. Perhaps Hillary will end up in jail.

But I have a lot of questions about the way this all has happened. Here we have a “eureka moment” based on evidence that, to my mind, is tainted and a chain of evidence that is, possibly, problematic. I certainly do not want to get into any trouble with the FBI. I have no insider information. I am just sitting here speaking from my vantage point in the cheap seats offering up a different take on this possibly game-changing Friday night email news dump.

First of all, the fact that a letter was delivered to Congress and the news of this hit on a Friday guaranteed that the media would have their proverbial field day speculating about this for an entire weekend. It also guaranteed that the story would continue to dominate the news cycle because the media stars coming back from their weekend activities would have to weigh in. That timing gave the story major legs, and Trey Gowdy got to be on Joe Scarborough once again where his stunning list of Hillary’s stumbles (he means crimes) even made Mika gush about how damning things look.

Second, pardon me for being skeptical, how serendipitous! The dream scenario is delivered unto the Republicans at the last possible moment. But doesn’t it seem just a bit too convenient? And isn’t Donald Trump just a bit too happy. Finally he gets the media off his possibly criminal sexual exploits and onto the easier to litigate exploits of Anthony Weiner. He gets to crow that he was right all along about Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton. Whenever Donald Trump is crowing I am miserable.

Third, here we have a laptop of a man who is in the clutches of the courts, who looks like he has been caught in a serious crime, whose wife is leaving him, and who is, therefore, under great duress. This is a man who would make a deal. This is a man who could be talked into anything that might help him stay out of jail. Things could be planted in his laptop, perhaps Wikileaks documents (so they could be leaked from a more acceptable source) or even faked documents (although now that there are 650K of these emails phony documents are not so likely). Huma says that she did not have any access to that laptop but she may have had an email account there, even one opened by her husband. We know that anything can be downloaded into a computer through a thumb drive. I think there are ways that those documents could have been placed on that computer after Weiner was arrested.

I have no evidence, just the gut feeling that something is very fishy about this whole new email motherlode twist. All we can do is speculate while we face the increased possibility that we could end up with Donald Trump as the President of the United States of America. Then I am guessing, we will truly see what bad judgment brings when it is practiced on a grand scale.

My New Book is Now Available on Amazon

My new book is more a pamphlet than a book. It is quite short, almost in the style of those Federalist Papers that have had such great publicity lately in the Broadway show Hamilton. It is a bit pricey also because I wanted to have it printed in color. My book shows how the Republicans have been quietly attempting to rewrite huge sections of the US Constitution by stripping away the body of laws, amendments and traditions that have been added to it over the past two centuries plus.

You can find my book by following this link:


Title: The US Republican Constitution

Subtitle: A Nonfiction Constitutional Thriller




Running Out of Time


We do not have time to legislate morality and it is not even appropriate to do so in America. We have issues of life and death to consider like how to reverse climate change on our planet, how to get off our planet if it becomes impossible to survive here. We need to decide what we will do if the air becomes un-breathe-able, if the water becomes undrinkable.


We don’t need to go back over things that have already been decided. We don’t need to rethink birth control, or a woman’s right to make decisions about her life and body including being able to have an abortion if she so chooses. Deciding exactly when life begins is irrelevant in these circumstances where the population of earth is well over 7 billion.


We need to plan for how we will feed the world’s people. We need to enlist everyone’s help make some tough decisions about our survival as a species.


We don’t have time to revisit whether or not the US will become a religious nation. It was already decided by our forefathers. We keep our government and our religion separate because our nation believes in freedom of religion and there are not different ways to parse this.


We do not have time for a new civil war over nonsense like whether our government will be large or small, whether it will be all white, all male or all diversified as to gender and race. Diversity is here and we don’t have time to reverse it. That cannot be a priority.


We don’t have time to worry about people’s sexual orientation. It doesn’t really matter.


We don’t have time for sectarian violence and all the ideological/religious chaos around the world. It is time to pretend that aliens have attacked us and we must unite to repel them. Of course, so far there are not any aliens, but nevertheless the planet is under attack and being destroyed. The reports about what we are doing to the earth are never good these days.


We don’t have time for climate deniers and Creationists. If they have their way we will lose the freedom we need to adopt laws that will help us meet the need of humans without destroying the home planet we are unable to leave.


We do not have time to fight about whether we should buck up the poor or let them die off if they can’t take care of their own needs. Perhaps someone from those humans at the bottom of the economy may offer valuable ideas that will help us all. We cannot afford the instability that will ensue if we no longer support our poorest citizens. We need to concentrate on human survival on earth. We need to expand our space program drastically so that, if we can’t save the planet, we can send some or all humans to a new planet to insure survival of the species.


We do not have time to attack our schools and make war on education. We can’t un-eat that apple from Eden, reverse that original sin. Ignorance will not bring back our innocence. It can’t be considered acceptable that keeping people uneducated will create a more malleable underclass. Who, except modern Republicans, thinks like that?


Maybe I’ve gone off the deep end and things are not nearly as dire as they seem to me, but it can’t hurt to try to create a better future through conservation, better organization, cooperation and thinking way outside the box. Perhaps there is so much distraction, escapism, and division all around the world because somewhere, at our core, we recognize that we are living in an age that represents a turning point, a pivot. We will either pivot back to a more primitive, less populated, and simpler life (if this is even possible given the state of our natural resources) or that pivot will deposit us in the future. Right now that primitive thing looks more likely.


I think a representative world body with some clout that spent its time brainstorming and collecting ideas, conducting research, and coordinating a space program and even an implementation of that much maligned Agenda 21 are starting to look like a pretty good way to start.


This could be our World War III, a cause larger than any one of us that brings us all together.


Social Class and Hillary



I like to maintain a certain age anonymity but I must confess that I lived through the same times as Hillary Clinton. We both left our families and went forth into the larger world just about 50 years before this election is taking place. I understand the sexism she had to ignore to do the things she has done. My high school guidance counselor steered me away from a career as an architect by telling me that I was a woman and my math was not strong enough.

Well, she was right about my math skills, and it would have been a struggle, but tutoring probably could have overcome my lack of quantitative strength. Looking back though, I can see that architecture was probably no career for a poor girl because there is a long, arduous apprenticeship before you become an actual architect and are able to earn enough to pay for the education and the time served in the ranks. You also have to be certain that you can build buildings that won’t fall down and it takes a strong ego to back that up. Strong egos are often hard to come by in poor families.

But I also know that, although Hillary’s family was not as poor as mine, Hillary had to ignore a class system that was much more rigid than it is today. In fact, in high school, I wrote a paper about social class in America. In case you haven’t noticed we still have social classes. Today on Morning Joe, Joe and Mika mentioned one of the new names used to designate the upper crust. Some rich folks are now called “coastal elites”, meaning people on the east and west coasts of America who attended elite schools and came from elite families. My family was poorer than Hillary’s family. In fact it was a real dilemma for my family that I wanted to go to any four year college at all, even a state university (we have very good state universities in New York). But Hillary’s ambitions were higher than mine. My family was a lower class blue collar family. Hillary’s father owned his own business and as such was white collar, middle class. But he was still no coastal elite.

Hillary’s decision to go to Wellesley College shows a lot of moxie. She had to know that she was smart enough to apply, be accepted, and succeed. She picked a college where her own social roots would make her somewhat of an outsider. Apparently her own parents did not even want her to go to Wellesley. Was Hillary unaware that her classmates might look down on her as an arriviste of sorts, a fish out of water, or was she totally aware of the social risks involved but felt confident that she would be accepted on her own terms? Hillary continued on to Yale Law School. Is this the kind of confidence that has stayed with Hillary as she tackled positions way above the comfort level of most women from a similar middle class background. She did not take refuge in the intelligentsia where many less socially confident bright women might take refuge.

What is it like for an activist from Wellesley to marry a Southern boy and go live in Little Rock? This is the stuff of novels. It is not always easy for a northern liberated girl to make herself welcome in a Southern city where people have known each other forever. Did Hillary ever feel socially awkward when she first went to live in Little Rock? Was she ever really accepted there as an elite because of her Wellesley degree? Bill Clinton’s mom had no easy life and his stepfather was an abusive alcoholic so he was no elite either. He was very bright, however, and he was able to get a degree from Georgetown University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in England. It is possible that he was born with that charisma which has been his ticket into elite political circles.

Hillary married Bill Clinton in 1975 and he became the Attorney General of Alabama in 1977 so it is possible that being married to a man in public office made life in a southern town easier for this woman born and raised in suburban Chicago. These two seem to have been able to enter the echelons of the upper crust, or become “coastal elites” by way of the colleges they chose to attend, but it may be possible that they have never really been accepted as anything but “nouveau” interlopers.

How much does the fact that Hillary (and Bill) occupy a social position well above their humble origins contribute to Hillary’s unfavorable ratings? Is America snobbish? Are some of us jealous? We don’t seem to always like people who were born wealthy and powerful and yet we don’t seem ready to accept people who made the climb up the social ladder through, well, social climbing, either. Hillary seems to have climbed through academic choices and activism and people are not at all sure that the ways in which the Clintons got their money were in line with either their avowed beliefs, or were accomplished by means that were totally uncorrupt. In fact some people seem to see them as nothing short of “cons” who stole from the poor to give to themselves. Why do so many of us seem to like this version of the story in spite of the fact that there is little proof that it is true?

So Hillary gets the triple whammy of sexism, ageism, and classism along with a more than healthy conspiracy theory mill that spins crimes and near crimes for her to be guilty of day after day. People think she should be further ahead in the polls. With all these headwinds to push against it is a wonder she is as strong as she is. It is pretty sad that someone who has worked so hard to be of use to the nation she loves is possibly only winning because her opponent is a man who should never be the President of America. And that has everything to do with a lack of class, social or otherwise.

I do not know what kind of President Hillary Clinton will be if she is elected. If she doesn’t get a left leaning Congress she will be sidelined and unable to do much more than act as a figurehead of a first female president. If she does get a Congress that leans a bit left what will she set out to accomplish for Americans and will she be successful? But because we came up through the same cultural times in our nation and because we both experienced that reality as women I feel we sort of had to swim in the same ocean, and I admire her because she has been a much stronger swimmer than I. I have faith that she has at least one more strong marathon swim in her.

Sharknado Live, Death Throes of the Dominant Male



The sharks are circling all around the world. Are these the final death throes of the dominant male? Have most men evolved so much that there are only a few of these critters in existence? Are they fighting against their inevitable extinction? The list is long. We have Kim Jong un in North Korea, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with ISIS, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines; all sharks, all circling, all trying to preserve a style of government (male dominated dictatorship) that is becoming increasingly obsolete (and good riddance). Even in America we have Donald Trump who wants to swim with the sharks and has a few dictatorial moves of his own waiting to be implemented right here in the heart of our Democracy.

We have plenty of smaller sharks lurking close to home in the tepid waters of the American Congress, still very much dominated by men, some of them scarily un-evolved, most for some reason lurking around in the GOP. These men have made it clear that they like their women submissive or focused on the next life, waiting for the Rapture. They form all male committees to discuss issues that deeply affect the lives of women and they do not find this the least bit unnatural or sexist.

Are the sharks so nervous at the idea of having a woman as the President of the United States that they feel the need to circle closer and closer trying to unnerve the unlucky first applicant for the position? How long ago did they start working on the various conspiracy theories that they have circulated in order to take big bites out of that first hapless female candidate? Of course, you may argue that the sharks had an easy job of it because the Clintons lived in such a target-rich environment, but at least the Clintons have tried to accomplish good things out in the world, even while they also focused on winning the 2016 election. What have the sharks in suits, who have spent the past 8 years sitting in the US Congress pining for power and whining at the loss of it, done for you lately, or for anyone? They have obstructed, that’s what they have done and it has cost Americans lots of tax dollars and, I’m thinking, a good deal of  potential job growth.


Hillary Clinton, Up Against Misogyny, is a Fight Girl



I am looking forward to having our first Madam President. But there are a few things to say about the explosions of misogyny that have characterized a lot of the media coverage of the 2016 election.  You would expect this to be a normal election even though it could end in a landmark historical moment, but it has been anything but normal. At this point many may put a finger (not that finger) in the air to signify “wait a minute” or “I have just one point” and they would say, “if only that first woman wasn’t Hillary Rodham Clinton”. But it is, and despite all the cries of “fixed elections” and “rigged systems” and email and Benghazi and the Clinton Foundation she has wended her way through our complex and overheated election process to be where she is now, and I would say that she did not use the system in any way that it has not been used by men. Even if you are one of those who argue that the system needs reform, it has not been reformed yet and she has had to understand and compete within our election process as it currently is configured, flaws and all.

Psychologists tell us we all have a fight/flight instinct. We need both because there are times to flee and times to fight. But often one impulse is stronger depending on the individual. Women have fight or flight wiring too. Hillary is a fight girl. She doesn’t knuckle under, not even in her personal life. When women succumb to her husband’s charms she attacks. She is a fight girl. Women understand this and applaud it in movies, in commercials, on the internet, and when Carrie Underwood sings about it. Why do they expect Hillary to hold back when her career could be on the line?

Perhaps women resent a woman so focused on success and career. But women have had enough oppression, conscious and unconscious from men; you would think other women would understand Hillary’s ambitions. Do you think Hillary would be running as the first major party candidate for the Presidency of the United States if she hadn’t been pretty single-minded, and perhaps even a bit ruthless? We still expect women to be nice. We all like “nice” people. But there is some proverbial wisdom about this – “nice guys finish last” – and even though it has the word guys in it, the sentiment is generic. Whenever I get a load of her opponent I am glad that this is a strong woman with a well-developed fight response.

I don’t even know if it was by chance or by design that this first and very prepared woman candidate did not get to trade ideas with a real politician but instead had to take part in the Donald Trump side show, which was on the media day and night because no serious talk was interesting enough to compete. The media even replaced women commentators with men who they believed had more gravitas and could get higher ratings, which of course they did. So the only women we got to listen to were the “expert” journalists and campaign people who joined the round tables, and since someone like Kellyanne Conway pulled in higher ratings than any of the Clinton surrogates or supporters the female voices we heard most often were anti-Hillary. How did it happen that Republican men were able to make Hillary the key “monster” exhibited in the DT side show while the really freaky show stopper got away with being treated as nearly normal?

I heard the media people express some guilt about covering Trump events day after day. It is true that he held big rallies and Hillary tended to favor smaller and less spectacular events which did not qualify as “good TV”. Still the media clearly understood that Trump was using them and saving lots of ad money in the process. I suppose their jobs were on the line. But while Hillary slogged it out in a real political campaign the Trump show assailed us all nonstop. Some may not see any misogyny in this but just the fact that a ridiculous and dangerous man like DT was treated better in the media than the woman who had spent her life learning how to be a political leader suggests otherwise. After the displays men have been putting on lately I can’t wait to have a woman in the White House and as many women in the Congress as we can elect. I hope it happens in 2016. After all, Hillary Clinton is a fight girl.