August 30, 2016

Huma Abedin: The Devoted Mother & Good Wife With Strong Desires To Excel In Hillary World Says 'Enough'

August 30, 2016/ Anne Enke

Huma Abedin, the Good Wife, Reaches Her Limit With Anthony Weiner The Daily Beast

It seems safe to say that Anthony Weiner, he with the stiff dick and compulsive need to take enormous risk making the same selfie mistakes over and over and over, will not rise again in Democratic party circles. Huma Abedin joins a long line of political Good Wives from Eleanor Roosevelt to Jacqueline Kennedy and Mamie Eisenhower.

Or Eliza Hamilton, writes Michael Daly, whose wifely remains lie at the foot of her husband's grave in Lower Manhattan's Trinity Church cemetery. Alexander Hamilton -- memorialized today on New York's 'Broadway' stage -- is honored on his monument as a PATRIOT, SOLDIER AND STATESMAN of such INTEGRITY and VIRTUE that there was no need to mention that he was also "a PHILANDERER who shtupped a twentysomething tootsie in his marital bed while his wife was away on vacation."

When the scandal broke, the political damage to Hamilton was mitigated by word that his mistress’ husband had been blackmailing him and that the whole thing might have been a set-up.

But what really saved him was his wife’s decision to remain at his side, just as Hillary Clinton would remain at Bill Clinton’s side after he was caught playing around with an intern, and just as Huma Abedin remained at Anthony Weiner’s side the first two times he was caught sexting with other women.

I was totally infuriated yesterday to read a well-known, retired culture critic invite his FB friends -- including me -- to address the question: (to paraphrase) "What do we think -- was Huma Abedin sexy enough, pretty enough and sweet enough to hold her man? Doesn't she know that many men have an intense sex drive and need it daily? In summary, his male friends agreed, no wonder Weiner was always running to other women. The commentary left me speechless, and I said so.

The New York Times reported that Huma learned about the third sexting scandal and that the NY Post would soon break the story over the weekend, where Abedin, Weiner and their four-year-old son Jordan were in the Hamptons fundraising with Hillary and relaxing.

By Monday morning, when the Post cover showing Mr. Weiner and his son, Jordan, hit newsstands, Mr. Weiner had left the Hamptons for New York City aware that Ms. Abedin planned to announce their separation, said two people close to the couple who discussed private conversations on the condition of anonymity.

Never one to question another person's decisions around keeping a marriage together or leaving it in divorce, I wondered in July 2016: Has Huma Abedin Overplayed Her Good Wife To Anthony Weiner Role? Thinking Women Wonder Out Loud.

That article chronicled the second Weiner texting expose, as he ran for mayor in the summer of 2013. And it taps into several major pieces written about the Abedin-Weiner marriage, including their May 2013 interview with the New York Times and an essay written by expert Pepper Schwartz who speculated on the glue that kept Huma married to her bad-boy husband. Not quoted in the July 2013 AOC article were these insights that ring true within the worlds of both Abedin and Clinton.

Abedin's behaviors are squarely in the realm of women's high esteem for love, friendship and loyalty, and for tending and befriending the weak and the beleaguered, as described by UCLA psychologist and professor Shelley Taylor. This gives the impression of being a doormat, but the woman thinks of it as being stalwart and noble. Abedin may not be quite in this category -- but she seems dangerously close to it.

Finally, there is the role of family. For some women "till death do us part" means just that. They believe in staying in a marriage no matter what, especially when a small child is involved. If the man is a good father -- and there is every indication Weiner is -- a wife will go to extremes to stay married

The Wife Without a Ring

Huma Abedin On Her Job, Family, and the Campaign of a Lifetime Vogue

I didn't notice that Huma Abedin wasn't wearing her wedding band in the Vogue US interview and images from the August 2016 issue, posted online Aug. 17. Reports now say that she wan't wearing her wedding ring in Nevada on Aug. 4, and the Daily Mail UK reported in April 2016 that neither spouse was wearing a wedding ring.

The majority of this Vogue Huma Abedin interview is devoted to her work and relationship since 1996 working in and connected to Hillary Clinton world. Abedin is very complimentary to her now-separated husband Anthony Weiner, praising him for his parenting skills. Huma does express some concern -- call it mom guilt -- over her long hours at the side of Hillary Clinton.

“It wasn’t so clear in my mind, after my son was born, that I would work with this kind of intensity,” she said. “Many working moms feel this way — there is a lot of guilt. I don’t think I could do it if I didn’t have the support system I have, if Anthony wasn’t willing to be, essentially, a full-time dad.”

“I know Anthony has said this before, but Jordan was the best thing that happened to either of us,” she added. “Our primary concern was the well-being of our son, and ensuring he had everything he needed to feel loved and cared for and to thrive.”

The couple has a full-time network and a devoted family network that has allowed Huma to work at such a frantic pace for Hillary Clinton. Speculation is strong that Huma would be the chief of staff in a Clinton administration. It remains to be seen how the couple will work out all the family arrangements that accompany their separation.

Related: How Is Huma Abedin Still Married to Anthony Weiner? Vanity Fair July 6, 2016

June 24, 2016

Is America Looking At Trump-Style Civil War? The Rhetoric Is Killing!

June 24, 2016/ Anne Enke

Will Trump Swallow the GOP Whole? The New York Times

Every week or so during the spring, I met with Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, at the party headquarters on Capitol Hill. We fell into a familiar routine. I would enter his office, usually chaperoned by Sean Spicer, the R.N.C.’s chief strategist and head of communications. Priebus has a healthy appreciation for gallows humor, which is not a bad thing for an R.N.C. chairman these days. “I haven’t started pouring Baileys in my cereal yet,” he says often enough that it has become a signature line. I would regularly break the ice with something sarcastic, like asking Priebus how his party’s Hispanic outreach program was going on the morning after the committee’s head of Hispanic outreach resigned rather than work another day for Donald Trump’s election. “The scent of party unity is in the air,” I said in May when Paul Ryan reported that he was “not there yet” on supporting Trump. “No, that’s incense,” Priebus said, pointing out that he had been burning some behind his desk.

As suits a man occupying what might be the toughest political job in America, Priebus does his best to stay availed of serene distractions. He plays jazz piano at home late at night and gazes into the 29-gallon saltwater fish tank that he keeps next to his desk. “You see that big eel?” Priebus asked one day, pointing out a black slithery creature on the bottom, before noting others. “That’s a yellow tang, hippo tang, a spotted puffer. There’s an anemone. An urchin. An orange clown fish.” He took a hunk of shrimp from a refrigerator and dangled it with a set of tongs into the water. A race to the bottom ensued as bits fell away and the fish vied for pieces of flesh. It was difficult to look away from the feeding frenzy. The big orange clown fish flailed at front and center. I asked Priebus if it reminded him of anyone. “That’s not funny,” he said with something between a slight grunt and chuckle.

Trump: More Goebbels Than Hitler?

Donald Trump Isn't Hitler - He's Like Goebbels The Daily Beast

It's too easy and a total exaggeration to compare Donald Trump with Hitler, writes Clive Irving. But to say that Trump shares a remarkable understanding of how to use the media to convince the populace to support his ideas with media genius Joseph Goebbels is not an exaggeration.

Goebbels was Hitler’s indispensable genius of spin. Long before the Nazis came to power, Goebbels understood what had to be done to gain that power. Fundamentally the German public needed to be made to happily acquiesce in the idea that the nation needed a demagogue to right its grievances.

Related: Why Trump Can't Become a Dictator Politico

Taking Down Huma Abedin (Again)

Trump Ally Clinton Aide Could Be Terrorist Agent Politico

As America faces the very real prospect of returning to the McCarthy era, Trump ally Roger Stone continues the top tactic of politicos in that era: guilt by insinuation.

Hillary Clinton chief aide Huma Abedin has already been accused by Republicans in 2012 of having pernicious ties to radical Islam and an anti-American agenda. Sen. John McCain condemned the attacks on Abedin.

Still, it's clear that Trump intends to attack Huma Abedin and HIllary Clinton visciously, holding his own modern-day McCarthy hearings by making speeches and calling into the morning shows, where he has a much larger platform.

“I also think that now that Islamic terrorism is going to be front and center, there’s going to be a new focus on whether this administration, the administration of Hillary Clinton at State was permeated at the highest levels by Saudi intelligence and others who are not loyal Americans," Stone said. "I speak specifically of Huma Abedin, the right-hand woman, now vice-chairman or co-chairman of vice—of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign."

Abedin was born in Michigan to an Indian father and a Pakistani mother. She moved with her family to Saudi Arabia at the age of two, and attended a British girls' school before returning to the United States for college.

Stone remarked upon reports from the likes of Breitbart, as well as Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and Harper's that Abedin "has very troubling ties to a man who was directly tied to funding terrorism, Abdullah Omar Nasseef. Now I have a very hard-hitting piece coming up in Breitbart that lays this out chapter and verse," Stone said, teasing out an upcoming article. "It’s not just Huma. It’s her mother and her father who are, who are hardcore Islamic ideologues, her brothers—“

After Orlando, It's Clearer than Ever: This Election Is a Civil War by Rebecca Traister New York Magazine

"On the night that Omar Mateen killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Donald Trump’s friend and former campaign adviser Roger Stone wrote a post on his website that was seemingly unrelated. It concerned Huma Abedin, a close aide to Hillary Clinton. In the brief post, Stone idly wondered if, in addition to being Clinton’s “chic gal pal,” Abedin might not also be a “Saudi Spy? ... Foreign Spy?” or “Terrorist plant?”

On any other day, after any other week, Stone’s comments might well have been written off as nothing more than his readily expressed bigotry. But at this juncture, they seemed in sync with the larger message that Stone’s compatriot Donald Trump was about to push through major media. Appearing on Fox News the morning after the shooting, Trump said of President Barack Obama’s refusal to use the words “radical Islamic terrorism”: “Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”

You don’t need to recall that Donald Trump got his political start with Republicans by waging a lengthy campaign to force our first African-American president to cough up a birth certificate to understand the Republican nominee’s suggestion that Obama is working with or supporting or at least sympathetic to Islamic terrorism. And you don’t need a roadmap to understand his ally Roger Stone — who on Monday took his show to the airwaves, arguing in a radio interview that “now that Islamic terrorism is going to be front and center, there’s going to be a new focus on whether ... the administration of Hillary Clinton at State was permeated at the highest levels by Saudi intelligence and others who are not loyal Americans” — was trying to cast similar doubt on the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, in this case via her long-time aide. “I speak specifically of Huma Abedin,” Stone said on Sirius radio, “the right-hand woman, now vice-chairman or co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” He went on to describe Abedin — whose background is well known — in birther-esque terms of mystery. “She has a very troubling past. She comes out of nowhere. She seems to have an enormous amount of cash ... so we have to ask: Do we have a Saudi spy in our midst? Do we have a terrorist agent?”

These suggestions from both Trump and Stone are so brazen and grotesque in their bigotry and dishonesty that they might take your breath away were they not so in keeping with the tone and substance of the larger electoral war being waged around us as we turn a perilous corner toward the fall."