Hillary And Young Women

Hillary becoming president is different from Indira Gandhi or Benazir Bhutto becoming Prime Minister, or even Margaret Thatcher. The gender churn that I see following Hillary like a tornado's tail, I did not see with the others. There seems to be a basic structure to sexism that seems to be the exact same across cultures and income brackets and so this churn has global implications and I am uber interested. And to me the most surprising part is why aren't at least 80% women rallying behind Hillary? Gender is more defining for women than race is for black men. Hillary Clinton is not any more dishonest and untrustworthy or unreal than Barack Obama. She is definitely more qualified now than Obama was in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1992, and I am safely quoting Obama on that.

Barack Obama was the most promising president when he started in 2009. Let's face it. There was no other black president track record. It was 100% promise, 0% track record. And even now, eight years later, a black man needs to be super duper qualified to become president. This country remains racist. Trump is proof.

Hillary is the most qualified presidential candidate since the country was founded. The Clintons have attracted so much venom on national stage because these are people from modest backgrounds. There are not too many dynasties in Arkansas. Call it classism. Bill Clinton's origins are quite Democratic.

Martin Luther King had to struggle also against black folks when he fought segregation. Sexism has widespread female support.

If Hillary is at least equally qualified to Barack Obama is it not unfair he became president first? Strictly chronological logic wise, yes. It was unfair. Obama is still a young man. But in terms of race and gender it makes more sense Obama went in first. Being president does not shield you from racism. Hillary needed to see. And she saw. In many ways gender is a tougher nut to crack. The gender churn of the election campaign will likely be eclipsed by the gender churn she will see in office. The churn might be global. But it has to be that way. Gender will be a persistent topic. I don't know of a better way to make progress on gender except by talking about gender. Sometimes it might make tactical sense to talk about other policy issues to make progress, but mostly there will be no avoiding it. And the progress will depend less on how enlightened her views are and more on how much 160 million women are willing to engage and make the call.

This is not about symbolism. This is about making concrete, measurable progress on gender.

Domestic violence is the number one security threat on the planet right now and has been for a long time. There are education, health and micro credit issues. There is plain basic democracy.

This is one planet, one world. No walls are possible or even desirable. On that note, as they say in New York, there is a bridge on the East River I would like to sell Donald Trump.

Women have to want a first female president. How can you not? I so badly wanted a first black president I had precisely zero personal expectations of Barack Obama. He could have snoozed for eight years and I would not have broken a twig. Because a first black president was such a major breaking of barrier. A first female president is a much bigger breaking of barriers. Sexism is sickness. It is a heart disease. It drags everybody down, not just women. Hillary Clinton getting into the Oval Office liberates both men and women. Young men, take note.

Donald Trump is a sick human being. This guy is not just offended by Mexicans and women, he is offended by the very idea of democracy. This is the fascist the founding fathers predicted might come along. And now he is here.

If Donald Trump becomes president, 2016 will be  for America what 1945 was for Britain. America as you know it is over. Britain remained a democracy. America is not going to be that lucky. Modern fascism does conduct elections.

In my personal memory the choice has never been more stark in an American election. And my readings of history say the same thing. Not in the time of Napoleon, not in the time of Hitler, America never flirted with fascism until now.

All human beings have been created equal by the Creator. That eternal spiritual truth was put to test by putting a black man in the White House. And it is time to put a woman in there. Because all human beings have been created special.

Young women and women in general don't struggle with Hillary. What they struggle with is their internalized sexism. The culture is so steeped in sexism, the media in this country is so saturated with sexism, it is but understandable that women have internalized much of the sexism. But they do have to struggle against it. You can kick the can down the road, but for how long?

Emails and Benghazi and pretty much every slob of mud thrown at her for decades now has been facts-free sexism, completely unhinged from facts and logic. The FBI found no wrong doing on emails. Respect the verdict, or fire the FBI. There is not a third option. A population that could not load Windows onto a computer is all riled up about the deep intricacies of one email server that has caused precisely zero harm. On Benghazi, go after the Department Of Defense. If that is not good enough for you, go after the president. The common sense thing would be, though, to hold Al Qaeda responsible.

There was nothing to Whitewater, absolutely nothing, nada, zilch.

Hillary Clinton is a dream candidate. She by now probably knows every side to every issue. She really really knows her stuff. She knows the policy stuff, she knows the politics. She probably knows half the world leaders by name. Most world leaders on stage have already worked with her. That is surreal.

It is tougher to be president of America than it is to be a surgeon. Donald Trump is GED. Don't take this guy to your surgery table. Unless you happen to be suicidal. In that case most definitely keep this dude at bay.

Hillary would be a great person to have as president even if she were male. She just knows her stuff. You could think of her as a political astronaut. She is a rocket scientist when it comes to public policy.

She is much appreciated globally. Like there was this time when Obama was more popular in Canada than in America. Send him over here, they kept saying. God heard them and gave them Justin.

One hopes Hillary's rise in America will see women rise up to high political offices all over the world. Japan might be next after Germany, Britain and, hopefully, America.     

Senator Elizabeth Warrior

Senator Elizabeth Warren's Native American last name must have been Warrior. It got anglicized to Warren. She should perhaps reclaim her original last name, like Calcutta went back to being Kolkata, and Bombay reverted to Mumbai and Bangalore is now Bengaluru again.

The name change can wait. But the fight is now. She is 100% committed to seeing the first woman president. She should tweet a few times a week from now until that magic day in November. That will be enough to neutralize the venom and irrationality and megalomania that is Donald Trump. No one does it as good as Warren. She gets the theatrics just right.

I thought this guy was just stupid. He is a fascist. The only thing more dangerous than a fascist is a stupid fascist.  

America And Democracy

America is not just another country like Ireland. It is an idea. The idea is democracy. The idea is that all human beings have been created equal by the Creator.

America was founded with the goal of a total spread of democracy. What is the progress report? It snatched western Europe from the fascists and Eastern Europe from the communists, but is that it? White America saved white Europe. Is that it? Does democracy have a white skin? Does equality have a skin color?

Human beings have been created in the image of God, all human beings, everywhere.

This has to become a country where blacks and Latinos and Asians and women of all stripes feel equally at home, otherwise this country is going to fail at its founding mission of a total spread of democracy.

Nobody more un-American has ever run for the presidency of the United States than the clown Donald Trump. Clowns can be dangerous. Trump is proof.

Muslims have to feel at home in America before democracy will spread in the Muslim countries. America is that kind of a country.

Christians For Hillary

Christians feeling disenfranchised by a Republican Party hijacked by Donald Trump and who feel like they have hit a political stalemate by revisiting abortion and same-sex marriage every election now have an opportunity to leave the GOP and champion for issues such as, poverty, human rights, gun control, and climate change which are surprisingly led by Democrats.

Hate toward another human being created in the image of God is a violation of the greatest commandment, “to love the Lord with all your heart mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Christians have always believed in protecting God’s creation and today more Christians are taking a stand on climate change.  Christians arestrong advocates of helping refugees and have broken away from their political base on the Syrian refugee crisis to voice their concerns, sending a clear message that neither party should politicize people in need.  

What Is Sexist About Trump's White "Nationalism"

Women should be more offended than Mexicans. For Trump's "white nationalism" to make any sense, Hillary would have to be black, or Hispanic, or some other version of non white.

What Trump refers to as white nationalism and others refer to as racism is but rabid sexism. A woman is not capable of projecting cultural pride. You need a bad mannered boorish man.

Hillary's New Deal

Hillary's New Deal: How a Clinton Presidency Could Transform America

This is the choice Americans face – between alternatives as starkly opposed to each other as in any election in our history, excepting the one in 1860, which led to the Civil War.

There on the convention stage was Sanders himself, railing against "the 40-year decline of our middle class" and "the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we currently experience." There was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, explaining how the system is rigged for CEOs and predators like Trump. And there, too, was Hillary Clinton, proclaiming that "Democrats are the party of working people," but the party needed to show it better; then saying, "Our economy isn't working the way it should because our democracy isn't working the way it should"; and touting a government program funded by targeted tax hikes on the rich, the "biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II," to rebuild America's infrastructure.

Clinton's program for battling economic inequality is another series of reinventions in the broad New Deal tradition. Her proposals include middle-class tax credits to be covered by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans and by closing tax loopholes; raising the federal minimum wage by 66 percent to $12 an hour, while supporting a $15 minimum in individual cities and states; protecting labor unions' collective-bargaining rights; and reducing child-care costs. To address the problems of climate change unimaginable to earlier generations, she has called for the installation of half a billion solar panels by the end of her first term, with the goal of providing clean renewable energy to every household in the country by 2027.

Unfair Coverage

Unfair To A Woman

Running for president is both exhausting and stressful; in 2004, John Kerry also came down with pneumonia during his presidential campaign. 

Clinton's e-mails now rival the Watergate scandal as one of the most reported stories in political history.

The offensive against Hillary Clinton fits into the context of a much larger cultural and political assault: the Republican-led "War on Women," a term that's been maligned and in some ways overused, but nonetheless speaks to the lengthy and concerted effort on the part of the GOP to control women's bodies and wages in order to reduce women's power. It's mostly forgotten that Republicans, not Democrats, were the original champions of women's rights: leading the charge for women's suffrage and also backing the Equal Rights Amendment from its inception in 1923 to its proposed ratification in 1972. This changed toward the end of the Nixon administration, which seized the opportunity to exploit cultural fears of women's liberation – much in the way it embraced racism in the South – for political gain.

If the State Department e-mails reveal anything, it's evidence of the kind of garden-variety access and favoritism that, unappealing and corrosive as it may be, is not only what Washington runs on, but what most industries run on, including journalism. Perhaps a more damning example of favoritism would be what Vice President Dick Cheney showed for Halliburton, the company he once ran, which went on to become one of the main profiteers of the Iraq War that Cheney so aggressively pushed for. Halliburton, dogged by allegations of corrupt billing practices, made $39 billion off Iraq. Cheney, accused of many things, including pay for play, rarely saw his capacity to lead called into question.

Feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan is fascinated by the dislike that young women, in particular, seem to have for Hillary Clinton. "They project on her the same kind of contempt they used on each other in seventh grade," she says. "And when you ask why, you hear, well, it's e-mails. It's that she stayed with Bill Clinton. But the reasons they give never explain the intensity of the dislike – and what's more, there's permission for that; they don't have to explain it."

"This entire race is about gender," says Gilligan, who continues to marvel at how many obstacles exist for women in America. "Those are the issues that are playing out now, through Hillary Clinton."