TomCADem

TomCADem's Journal

September 10, 2016

The Atlantic - "Fear of a Female President"

In the right wing, it was in vogue to blame President Obama for the continued presence of racism. Will the same hold true with Hillary being blamed for the continued presence of sexism if she is elected.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/fear-of-a-female-president/497564/

Except for her gender, Hillary Clinton is a highly conventional presidential candidate. She’s been in public life for decades. Her rhetoric is carefully calibrated. She tailors her views to reflect the mainstream within her party.

The reaction to her candidacy, however, has been unconventional. The percentage of Americans who hold a “strongly unfavorable” view of her substantially exceeds the percentage for any other Democratic nominee since 1980, when pollsters began asking the question. Antipathy to her among white men is even more unprecedented. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 52 percent of white men hold a “very unfavorable” view of Clinton. That’s a whopping 20 points higher than the percentage who viewed Barack Obama very unfavorably in 2012, 32 points higher than the percentage who viewed Obama very unfavorably in 2008, and 28 points higher than the percentage who viewed John Kerry very unfavorably in 2004.

At the Republican National Convention, this fervent hostility was hard to miss. Inside the hall, delegates repeatedly broke into chants of “Lock her up.” Outside the hall, vendors sold campaign paraphernalia. As I walked around, I recorded the merchandise on display. Here’s a sampling:

Black pin reading don’t be a pussy. vote for trump in 2016. Black-and-red pin reading trump 2016: finally someone with balls. White T-shirt reading trump that bitch. White T‑shirt reading hillary sucks but not like monica. Red pin reading life’s a bitch: don’t vote for one. White pin depicting a boy urinating on the word Hillary. Black T-shirt depicting Trump as a biker and Clinton falling off the motorcycle’s back alongside the words if you can read this, the bitch fell off. Black T-shirt depicting Trump as a boxer having just knocked Clinton to the floor of the ring, where she lies faceup in a clingy tank top. White pin advertising kfc hillary special. 2 fat thighs. 2 small breasts … left wing.

September 8, 2016

Salon - Desperately slamming Krugman: Columnist unfairly targeted for anti-Trump, pro-Hillary take

Here the MSM is complaining about being called out on their false equivalency and bias toward Donald Trump with the most recent example being how the MSM plays up innuendos about the Clinton Foundation while downplaying clear evidence of bribes by the Trump Foundation. As we get closer and closer to the election, the MSM is doing its best to normalize Trump while playing up the false narrative of Trump pivoting toward mainstream positions.

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/07/desperately-slamming-krugman-columnist-unfairly-targeted-for-anti-trump-pro-hillary-commentary/

Not only is the establishment press irritated with Krugman’s latest article, “Hillary Clinton Gets Gored,” in which he highlights the journalistic malpractice evidenced in the news media’s amplification of Hillary Clinton’s non-scandal scandals over Donald Trump’s lengthy menu of real scandals and obscene negatives, but also, strangely, a vocal faction of the left believes Krugman is water-carrying for his “beloved candidate” Hillary.

The latter is perhaps as equally confounding as the former, especially knowing what Krugman and others objectively observe as an historically apocalyptic GOP candidate is slowly closing the polling gap with the far more qualified Democratic rival.

After a full month in which Trump’s campaign bungled and botched its way through the first third of the general election and completely absent any newsworthy reason to shift to a “Trump redemption” narrative, the press is rapidly fabricating one. Even though Trump’s charitable foundation was investigated and fined by the Internal Revenue Service for a pay-to-play deal in Florida, cable news is instead emphasizing the Clinton Foundation’s alleged scandal in which nothing illegal has been uncovered.

Worse, we’ve already witnessed the mainstreaming of white nationalism, as political analyst Soledad O’Brien observed on CNN over the long weekend. We’re also beginning to see news segments about Hillary’s alleged health issues — her coughing jag on Tuesday became national news, thanks to Trump and the screeching commandant of his paranoid flying monkeys, Alex Jones.

September 4, 2016

WaPo - "Here’s a tale of two scandals. Guess which one will get more play?" Re Media Bias

This article does a great job of showing how the MSM gives Trump a free pass even though he often complains about his press while going out of its way to invent scandals to fit into the narrative that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/02/heres-a-tale-of-two-scandals-guess-which-one-will-get-more-play/?utm_term=.ec584a9bfca7

Whenever some new piece of information emerges about Hillary Clinton or people close to her, we’re told that it “raises questions” of some kind, which means it’s being shoehorned into a larger narrative that says something fundamental about her: That she’s tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on.

Yet somehow, stories about Donald Trump that don’t have to do with the latest appalling thing that came out of his mouth don’t “raise questions” in the same way. They’re here and then they’re gone, obliterated by his own behavior without going deep into question-raising territory.

* * *
To sum up: An executive at the Clinton Foundation made a request of Hillary Clinton’s aide, and didn’t get what he was asking for. Now maybe there is some real evidence somewhere of corruption at the State Department during Clinton’s time there, but that sure as heck isn’t it.

* * *
Here’s the quick summary: In 2013, Bondi’s office received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they had been cheated out of thousands of dollars by a fraudulent operation called Trump University. While Bondi’s office was looking into the claims to determine if they should join New York State’s lawsuit against Trump University, Bondi called Donald Trump and asked him for a contribution to her PAC.

Now let’s pause for a moment to savor the idea that Bondi, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the state, would solicit a contribution from someone her office was in the process of investigating. She did solicit that contribution, and Donald Trump came through with $25,000.

September 2, 2016

Is media bias helping Donald Trump? Coverage of the candidates' charities offers clues

The short answer is yes, that Donald Trump is actually a big beneficiary of media bias with the media happily to chase down every unsubstantiated rumor he starts while being intimidated from pressing him on stories that he himself instigates such as his flip flops on deportation.

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2016/09/is_media_bias_helping_donald_t.html

Vox's Matthew Yglesias argues that press coverage of Trump and Clinton is not fair and balanced -- to borrow Fox News' phrase -- and that Trump is coming out the better for it. The argument here is that Trump, a natural showman, successfully spins bad press to his advantage, while Clinton, both less adept with the media and saddled by 25 years of scandals (real and invented) about her and her husband, knows only to hunker down, which only further excites reporters. Yglesias' example of this dynamic in action: coverage of the two candidates' charities.

Clinton, of course, has the Clinton Foundation, started by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The Associated Press and other news organizations have taken a hard look at Hillary Clinton's staff emails and her official schedule and speculated that she granted access and favors to foundation donors while she was secretary of state. Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman argued that what the emails "actually reveal is that a few foundation donors wanted access, but didn't actually get it," but that's not the narrative that's seeped into the public's subconscious -- in part because Trump and his surrogates have harped on Clinton running a "pay-to-play" scam out of the state department, a charge for which they have absolutely no evidence.

So that's Clinton's charity. Trump, you may not know, also has a charitable foundation. But it's received very little attention compared to Clinton's.

We don't know a lot about Trump's foundation, but one thing we do know for sure is that it made an illegal campaign contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. And that right after she received the contribution, her office dropped its investigation into Trump University.

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