The problem with Hillary Clinton's anecdotes

    HRCNHAs is her wont, Hillary Clinton is telling tales on the campaign trail. Eight years ago, she cited her landing in Sarajevo during the Balkans war under sniper fire and having "to run with our heads down" from the plane as evidence that she had more foreign policy experience than then-Senator Barack Obama.  Pointing to video of Clinton's arrival in Bosnia that showed her walking calmly on the tarmac with daughter Chelsea at her side, an Obama spokesman claimed that Clinton was exaggerating her role in foreign affairs.  In reply, Clinton exaggerated "I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement".

    While Clinton has left the Bosnia whopper behind - perhaps on a Sarajevo landing strip - she has been telling apocryphal stories in this election cycle as well.  Two describe rejections from government agencies because of her sex.   One hoary yarn dates back well over 50 years while the other allegedly transpired a mere four decades ago circa 1974-75.  In the early 1960s, the first story goes, a 12-14 year old Hillary Clinton, like so many other tweens and teens, besotted by the space program, inquired of NASA whether there might be any openings for her.

    As Clinton related as early as 1992, the space agency's response was blunt and brutal.  "[W]e are not accepting girls as astronauts."  This past July, Clinton told an audience in New Hampshire this July how NASA circa 1961 curtly rejected her with a "Thank you very much, but were [sic] not taking girls."

    Hillary Clinton's other formative brush with sexism occurred in the mid-70s.  In 1994, Maureen Dowd, then a reporter at the New York Times, wrote about a speech the first lady gave to a group honoring woman in the military.  Just after moving to Arkansas in 1975, Hillary told the group, she offered her services to the United States Marine Corps.  The Marines though didn't want them.  "You're too old, you can't see and you're a woman.  Maybe the dogs [the Army] would take you."

    Clinton is telling almost the exact same story right down to the dogs this year.  On November 10, Hillary described to a New Hampshire audience how she approached a marine recruiter about signing up.

    He looks at me and goes, ‘Um, how old are you. And I said, ‘Well I am 26, I will be 27.’ And he goes, ‘Well, that is kind of old for us.’ And then he says to me, and this is what gets me, ‘Maybe the dogs will take you,’ meaning the Army.

    In 2008, Bill Clinton said Hillary actually had tried to join the Army, aka the "dogs" (not the Marines), but was rejected because of bad eyesight.

    Are either of these stories factual?  Maybe.  Both seem awfully pat and well-formed.  Moreover, Hillary's dishonesty when describing her landing in Sarajevo and her wrong-headed insistence that her private email set up at the State Department complied with all pertinent regulations make it tough to give her the benefit of the doubt.

    Still Hillary's chestnuts could be true.  NASA didn't start considering women as potential astronauts until the mid-60s or even later.  A recently-surfaced letter dated February 26, 1962, to a female college student who expressed interest in becoming the first woman in space noted "we have no existing program concerning woman astronauts nor do we contemplate any such plan."

    Hillary's claim that she considered a career in the marines seems far-fetched.  For years, she had been active in the anti-war movement.   By the summer of 74, she was a budding political star.  She moved to Arkansas to be with Bill and she was teaching law at the University of Arkansas.  Is it plausible that pro-peace Hillary would have considered putting her relationship and her legal career on hold for the US Marine Corps?

    Military veterans from the mid-70s say Hillary, with an Ivy league law degree, would have been welcomed with open arms into the JAG Corps regardless of gender and the coke bottle glasses she sported at the time.  Still a recruiter may have brushed her away if he thought she intended to enlist rather than join as a well-qualified officer with an advanced degree.

    Dubious, apocryphal, but possibly accurate, the problem with Hillary's tales isn't their sketchiness, it's their content.  They describe an America that no longer exists.  There have been a number of women astronauts since Hillary's space dreams were or weren't dashed.  Women have served in the marines since 1918 and are now being considered for every aspect of military service.  Simply put, the conflict that defines America today isn't between the sexes. It's ultimately not even between races. It's between those favoring the economic interests of the 1% and everybody else.

    But what about the gender pay gap.  A study just came out saying it's real although it's narrowing.  Here's what the authors told Salon.

    The wage gap still persists. It is better, but it is still a problem. But we were also looking at the general wage trends, and when you look at that, you find that the wage gap has narrowed mostly because women are becoming equal, but also because men’s wages have fallen. Men’s wages in 2014 were lower that they were in 1979 [if you adjust for inflation]. Low- and moderate-wage men have been losing economic ground. And we predict that 40 percent of the closing of the gender age gap is due to men’s wages becoming lower — which is obviously not the right way to close the gender wage gap.

    Other quotes.

    The decline of collective bargaining has led to the rise of inequality in this country and is one of the reasons we’ve seen this disconnect between pay and productivity. Women in unions make more than women that are not in unions. The gender pay gap is smaller in unionized workplaces. That is true for women of color, as well. Thinking of unions and how they affect women is important in thinking about increasing the bargaining power of women workers.

    Regarding minimum wage, most of the workers who would be affected are women. The average minimum wage worker is a woman in her 30s who likely has children. People don’t think about the tipped minimum wage, and how we need to eliminate that; women are disproportionately more likely to populate low-wage tip occupations, and are more likely to be servers and waiters.

    In other words the etiology of women's relatively low pay is exactly the same as the low pay of the increasing numbers of poor and working class men - weak and declining unions and a low minimum wage that doesn't cover all jobs.

    Today the U.S. is a land with a few haves and many have nots.  While women, African-Americans, and Latinos are less likely than white men to be haves, a growing number of folks in every demographic (except the rich of course) are barely getting by.  In terms of mental health, the white working class has been especially hard hit in our winner-take-all economy with death rates skyrocketing among this group.

    Far too many American women and (men) are worried about a "sticky floor".  The so-called glass ceiling is almost  unimaginably distant.  In this environment, Hillary's decades-old tales of putative difficulties won't reverberate far beyond their intended audience -  highly educated women who overcame once imposing barriers.

    Worse though than their limited resonance, Hillary's dusty recollections may alienate those  white working-class voters who have abandoned the Democratic party in droves and whose support progressives need if they wish to regain legislative power across the nation.  As noted above, this demographic has suffered psychically worse than any other over the past thirty years.  For them, the early 60s - when NASA rejected young Hillary Rodham - was a golden era.  Even in 1974-75, when a plain-talking recruiter rendered still-born her nascent military career, their wages and influence were much greater than today.

    With the eager help of right-wing media and high voltage preachers, working-class whites are apt to conflate the barriers that Hillary couldn't hurdle with their much better fortunes four decades ago or more.  In other words, this line of thinking goes, when girls and women knew their place, hard-working salt of the earth Americans like us made good middle-class wages, owned our own homes, and sent our kids to the state college.  Now with the government making women astronauts and Army rangers, we're living in trailer parks and lucky to get $10 an hour at Walmart.

    The truth of course is that the mostly abandoned progressive economic policies FDR initiated in the 1930s and 40s led directly to the broad-based prosperity of the 50s and 60s and ultimately to the successes of the civil rights, women's, and environmental movements among others.

    If Hillary Clinton is committed to protecting women's rights and improving their economic lot, she should remind affluent progressive voters that we enacted civil rights laws and reversed policies enshrining sexist attitudes when the middle-class was thriving and the working-class was secure.  She should also explain directly and convincingly to those tens of millions who have been left behind how, if she becomes President, she would pursue the economic policies that brought them economic security.  In other words, she must forthrightly promise to fight for a resurgent union movement, a living wage for all employees, to raise top marginal tax rates, and to reverse free trade policies.  These, not unsubstantiated disingenuous self-aggrandizing tales, can make America truly great for all of us.

    Topics: 

    Comments

    The WACs would have taken her.  With her credentials they would have wavered her eyes because she would have been a JAG officer.  This is the same for the WAVs because right after Vietnam, all branches needed JAGs.  They were actually desperate.  

    Women were not fully integrated into the services until 1979.  Women could only be in the Air Force Reserves before that.  The Marines never had a women's corps but did allow women in certain jobs.

    A "meat head" recruiter would have called the Army "doggies." Dogs" in those days would have been ugly women. Remember a marine is always a gentleman. Recruiters were held in a high standard. 

    I went through basic training at the age of 35 on a waver.  There were 2 other women also that was older then me.  One was a nurse and didn't need a waver and the other going into the JAG Corps. I was going into the Signal Corps.  

     


    I can speak for that particular branch or that particular time, but I attempted to join the army in 1991 (21 at the time) but was rejected explicitly because my eyesight was worse than 8 diopters (uncorrected). Note that I had a BS in Physics from Georgia Tech, so I wasn't going to be placed in the front lines.


    I want to add that you did a better piece this time.  

    There is a poll that came out that shows, 14% of Bernie supporters will not vote for Clinton in the general. Another 17% might hold their nose and vote for her but are not enthusiastic about that. I am tired right now so I am not sure if that was a percentage of Democrats or just Bernie supporters. Either way she has a problem and will need Bernie supporters in the general.  There is a campaign for Bernie supporters to write in his name in the general election. I don't expect all the Democrats to fall in line if she gets the nomination. 

    I won't be helping her campaign in the general.  I figure it will be up to her handlers to figure out how they are going to get people up off the sticky floor and vote for her. 


    It's too bad Bernie's supporters don't try and follow Bernie's lead.  He has said time and time again that a Democrat must win.  If he doesn't win the primaries he'll be working hard to make sure Hillary--and every other Democrat up for election--wins and wins big.  If he loses, the very first thing he'll be telling his supporters is that it's a big mistake to try to write him in.  He'll beg them not to do it, and I hope to God they listen.


    We went through the same scenario in 2008. PUMA supporters were not going to vote for Barack Obama.

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/04/puma-founder-obama-is-de...


    Oh, my!  The Hillary supporter and "lifelong Democrat" ends up voting for McCain/Palin!  Boy, did he snooker those PUMA folks.  I can see that sort of thing happening again.  Hate to say it, but I can.  On both sides.  So much for solidarity.


    Ramona, rmrd's link is an article about one person with no statistical data to back up his claim that any other PUMA "member" or Hillary supporter agrees with him.


    Some are not going to vote for her.  People voted for the promise of healthcare in 2008 but instead they lost their job and their home through no fault of their own.  And in many cases still don't have any health care. They did not all vote in 2010 because the democrats did not deliver the help they needed.  

    Banks got bailed out and the rich got richer.  They watched family and friends lose home through robo signing and fraud.  Then more of the same political bs and hearings. Their kids went off to college and did well but ended up in debt that will follow them the rest of their lives and now can only find work in a foreign country or minimum wage job.

    No one went to jail for bank fraud and the banks got bigger. Half the young adults have grown up in poverty and went to schools that had all their funding cut down to nothing.  They had lock down drills at school and police assigned to their schools.  They have known minority friends that have been put in prison or shot by police.  

    People are struggling to make ends meet and find a way to help feed their families at the same time work more then one job. Do you think for one minute they care about a glass ceiling or who sits on the Supreme Court when they are worried about car repairs?  They live in neighborhoods that are over policed and a crazy gun hoarder lives down the street.  Do you think when they go to bed at night they worry about what is going on in the middle east? They are worried about their undocumented parents and what will happen if ICE shows up. 

    Sanders is the only one that has offered them solutions that actually resonates with them and they know he is honest.They hear Clinton nibbling around the edges to solutions that is needed.  They know big money and corporations are paying for her campaign.  

    So if Bernie doesn't make the nomination and tells his supporter that they must vote for Clinton and that a Democrat must be in the Whitehouse, not all of them will do as he says.  They will go back to concentrating on trying to make through each day. They will watch her swing to the right to woo the center right. They will feel forgotten and lose all faith in the process.  Why take off work and lose wages to vote when nothing will change?  

    Just keep in mind that this is reality for some. If Hillary wants to be president then it is up to her to convince them to vote. 


    I can feel your pain, your anger and the passion that drives you, like so many in this country. My instinct is to say I'm sorry - but I'm not different from you. Sure, momoe, we all have our separate circumstances and the problems we face daily vary. Yet do you think that you're talking to privileged people only? Not everyone that supports Hillary is outside of your field of vision; there are many -if not most - that have the same concerns that you and your neighbors have.

    Support Sanders if he's your choice, but please don't treat me like I'm clueless if I don't.


    Trking, thank you for adding your voice to this conversation.  We need to remember why so many people still at the bottom are disappointed and furious because nothing really has changed for them.  If anything, it's only gotten worse.  Much of that lies in the hands of the Republicans, who fight against every social program that might aid the poor, but the fact is, the Dems haven't fought hard enough to push back.  It's outrageous that the things you note here haven't been taken care of..

    I love Bernie's passion to get this done and I can understand why people would want to take his message to the White House.  It's a powerful one and totally honest, but is it workable?  In a sane world he might even get more done than any other Democrat, but this is not a sane world.

    I'm supporting Hillary because I honestly think she's the one who can work best against the crazies and manipulators on the other side.  They think so, too, which is why they're fighting so hard against her.  It doesn't help to have people on our side working as hard against her as the Republicans.

     A lie is a lie is a lie.  She is NOT in bed with Wall Street, no matter how much she takes from them in campaign donations.  There is no evidence that she will work in their favor if she wins.  There is also no evidence that she will turn her back on the poor once she gets in the White House.  She's tough and pragmatic but I don't believe for a minute that her only motive for becoming president is to sell us out.  That's not who she is, no matter how many people want us to believe that.

     


    I linked in the "news" about the recent history of this sort of thing. Definition of insanity, eh?


    Another good one going into my folder.  Thanks, barefooted.  I remember the 2000 "election" all too well.


    People say things to pollsters in the midst of a fight that they don't end up following through with. I doubt there are that many stupid Sanders supporters. There may be a few but not nearly that many. If 14% of Hillary supporters didn't vote for Obama he wouldn't have won given that Hillary got more votes in the primary than Obama.


    You can't compare this to '08 because there has been 7 years of economical depression for some and that is a big difference. The economical bottom third of the Democratic party is not in a good mood. They are fed up with oligarchy. Clinton has Wall Street stamped all over her campaign. Call them stupid if you want to.  For some Sanders is the only reason they are interested in voting because they have given up with the system. A system that doesn't work for them. 


    I think most of the democrats who voted for McCain when Obama won voted their racism whatever they told others and maybe even themselves. I think most of the Sanders supporters who might actually sit out the election if Hillary wins are voting their misogyny what ever they might tell others and again, perhaps even themselves. No intelligent liberal Sanders supporter can possibly believe there's no difference between Hillary and Trump, or Cruz, or any other republican. So if they don't vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination they're either stupid or a misogynist.


    Well, no, HIllary doesn't have "Wall Street" stamped all over her campaign.

    Her opponents would like to stamp "Wall Street" all over her campaign, so that's one of the angles they bring up at every opportunity.

    Just like they bring up Hillary as "liar" and "untrustworthy" at every opportunity, whether the facts support it or not.

    The WaPo hit piece lumping in Clinton Foundation money ($2 billion) with total Bill + Hillary Clinton campaign contributions ($1 billion) vs. Hillary's own contributions ($500 mill, primarily for a tense presidential race in the much more costly modern era) was just one of many egregious examples of how there's a cottage industry of Clinton-sliming. 

    If you recall, Hillary had good support in 2008 in the Appalachians areas, including Ohio, Kentucky, etc - areas with rather poor people, and it wasn't that she was just appealing to whites with guns & Bibles - she had an economic message. She did speak out in 2008 against the mortgage situation and need for relief, especially for low-income home owners - Bernie did not invent compassion for the poor, and Hillary's campaign themes & career in office (including her quasi-formal one in the White House) wasn't primarily about helping out Wall Street, despite all the insinuations. And judging from the polls, there are a lot of folks who don't believe the smear. NIce try, guys.


    "I want to add that you did a better piece this time."  Thanks - I think.


    Oh, Hal.  All I can say is, don't ever try giving this speech in a room full of women my age--or Hillary's age.  If you insist, don't say I didn't warn you.  This is the kind of hapless nit-picking we've had to deal with all our lives, and especially in the mid--20th century, when we were trying our wings and the men around us saw uppity womanhood at every turn.  

    Hillary, despite what you say about her privilege, was one of us.  It's men like you questioning her every move, her every dream, her every ambition that brings it all back.  If you have a problem with her ability to govern, go for it.  But please shut the hell up about who she was when she was young.  You weren't there and you weren't a woman.  You couldn't possibly know what it was like.


    You go, girl. Exactly my reaction.


    Ramona, we closed this door. Our breath is wasted here.

    Unless the battle has been engaged ... in which case I'm in. ;-)


    Barefooted, that door will never be closed.  The battle is still on.  Glad you're in!


    Wow . . .

    It's a wonder Hal didn't dredge up the Dan Calabrese horse manure from March 31, 2008 relating to Hillary getting "fired" from the Watergate Committee investigation team. It's a real doozy of a read...

    Original eRumor as it appeared in 2008:

    Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton
    Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior

    by Dan Calabrese

    As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

    The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

    Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

    Why?

    “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

    How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

    Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

    The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

    The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.

    “As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.

    The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?

    “Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.

    The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

    Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

    Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.

    But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.

     

    And finally. . .

    From Snopes: False

    A pair of articles published during Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency in 2008, one by Northstar Writers Group founder Dan Calabrese and one by Jerry Zeifman himself, asserted that Zeifman was Hillary's supervisor during the Watergate investigation and that he eventually fired her from the investigation for "unethical, dishonest" conduct. However, whatever Zeifman may have thought of Hillary and her work during the investigation, he was not her supervisor, neither he nor anyone else fired her from her position on the Impeachment Inquiry staff (Zeifman in fact didn't have the power to fire her, even had he wanted to do so), his description of her conduct as "unethical" and "dishonest" is his personal, highly subjective characterization, and the "facts" on which he bases that characterization are ones that he has contradicted himself about on multiple occasions.

     

    The last I recall, Zeifman is an author and resides in Connecticut and Calabrese has the great distinction of rattling off right-wing crap at Herman Cain's CainTV site.

     

    ~OGD~

     


    Thanks, OGD.  I wonder how many people still find Hillary's accusation of a "vast Right Wing conspiracy".laughable.  Those guys know exactly what they're doing.  They're scared to death of Hillary and if she wins the primaries they'll go after her big time.  We're going to be disputing claims against her--both old and new--right up until the last minute.  Adding this to my folder.. 


    The vast right wing conspiracy wasn't laughable back when she said it!  Heck, David Brock, another of Hal's favorite, worked for it!


    This blog is irritating. And, Hal, one of your most basic problems here is that you make old war stories a human frailty of some kind---join the human race, most of us tell them.

    The conflation of her stories with what inner regrets working class people might have is a real stretch.

    And of course her stories don't preclude her statements of progressive ideals---as you seem to suggest.


    I didn't get that connection, either.  Thank you for explaining that it wasn't just me.


    The truth is that Hilllary's embodiment of the struggles of women is nearly epic. To suggest otherwise is to ignore history---in my opinion.

    Did she raise all boats? Of course not. But to demean her for not doing so is contrived---in my opinion.

    Ramona, let's fast forward to next November.


    If only!  In the meantime, maybe we could pay some attention to the Republicans.  They're up to something and I have a feeling whatever it is won't be good for any of us..


    Ramona, Jeb Bush! has just said that if he is nominated he will take "it" to Hillary and "whup" her.

    This coming from a man who cowers before Donald Trump.

    Why the f@@k don't we just tie Hillary to the stake and get on with it.

     


    Wow, he really said that?  I'm kind of heartened by that.  They're all going to get so reckless they'll be following Trump into the sewer.  Let it rip, boys!  Get it all out!


    Hillary 3:16 Says I Just Kicked Your Jeb!



    Simply put, the conflict that defines America today isn't between the sexes. It's ultimately not even between races. It's between those favoring the economic interests of the 1% and everybody else.

    And that's the bottom line, because a white man said so.


    I just go with Turkey and Bull.


    It's not surprising to see a Sanders supporter make this claim since this was one of Sanders problems until BLM wised him up. He seemed clueless that racism was still a problem and what ever small lingering effects of it could be solved by dealing with income  inequality.

     


    I don't know about the Hillary Clinton stuff. But I am pretty sure that the changes in our society can not all be attributed to FDR initiatives. Those initiatives weren't put forward because they were morally perfect. They were put forward when all the previously established means of organizing economy had disappeared by their own overreaching. I have a lot of respect for those choices but they banked on many forms of exploitation in their own right. Those were desperate times.

    And there is this war to consider. It was a pretty big war. That was also a big part of the change in our culture.

    Bringing up the above is not for the purpose of arguing against any particular statement you make. There are many things to talk about. Labor, Race, Feminism, Environmentalism, etcetera. If you are going to mix it up with the women equal rights thing, you are going to have to cast your mind back a bit. We didn't make up modern society in the last sixty years.


    Oh bloody hell. First, if you ever use Maureen Dowd as evidence, you're just proving you're an ass. [Dowd who filed a New Hampshire dateline piece from Israel, or managed to contradict her own paper's reporting on Susan Rice multiple times or made up the Beau Biden deathbed scene....] 

    Second, your own article confirms HIllary's claim on the Marines, so all your "far-fetched" stuff is simply wrong and scandal-mongering:

    Yet our former colleague David von Drehle reported that Clinton’s friends at the time “confirmed the story, though they were hazy on the details.” Diane Blair, who passed away in 2000, told von Drehle, “All I can remember is that she looked into it.”

    Another friend, then University of Arkansas professor Ann Henry, said she recalled the incident happened in the context of the lack of opportunity for women. Sometimes female faculty members went out to conduct “tests” of access to various careers seemingly closed to women, Henry told von Drehle.

    Reached by phone after Clinton’s latest remarks, the now-retired Henry said that she still recalls the discussion about testing the limits. She said conversations grew out of the state’s Commission on the Status of Women, which was created in 1971 and chaired by Blair, then known as Diane Kincaid. Henry said there were Marine recruiting offices on campus, and so Clinton could have easily stopped by one to conduct such a test.

    Regarding NASA, the surrounding situation is also confirmed by your link:

    Neither the Clinton campaign nor NASA could produce the correspondence. But NASA spokeswoman Lauren Worley said the agency has “no reason to doubt its authenticity.”

    “In 1962, the requirements for being an astronaut included being a military test pilot with a degree in engineering,” Worley said. “More than 50 years later, NASA’s astronaut corps reflects our nation’s diversity. The latest class of astronauts is made up of 50 percent women and 50 percent men.”

    If NASA rejected Clinton because there was no astronaut program for women or immediate plans for one around 1961 or 1962, the response would have been consistent with the agency’s policy on female astronauts at the time, according to agency officials.

    NASA officials supplied relevant research about the debate at the time over female astronauts — a contentious public policy issue in the years 1961-1964. In 1963, the Soviet Union’s Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the first woman to fly to space, yet the United States still had restricted astronaut qualification to men.

    This excerpt from NASA research provides important context:

    Dr. Randy Lovelace had been running (in 1960/61) a private screening program for potential women astronauts that was abruptly terminated in September 1961. That fall, there were many questions raised about why the program had been ended — with many fingers in the press and on Capitol Hill pointing at NASA. In the summer of 1962 there were congressional hearings on the topic.

    What had actually happened in September 1961 is that Dr. Lovelace had tried to run further tests on his women astronaut aspirants at Pensacola Naval Air Station. (It should be noted that most of the women weren’t completely aware the Dr. Lovelace had no official backing for this effort.) Before committing resources to these tests the U.S. Navy asked NASA if this was an official program. Surprised NASA officials said no, and the Navy refused to let Dr. Lovelace run the tests at Pensacola.

    In discussions between NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden and U.S. Navy officials that fall, Dryden’s position was that “NASA does not at this time have a requirement for such a program” but that it might investigate the possibility “at some time in the future.” This was the official policy on women astronauts and NASA response letters to women throughout the 1960s reflect this perspective.

    [I won't debate whether the 1 old-looking letter from NASA is authentic, as it distracts from the basic fact that Hillary could have easily written such a letter and the rejection she describes is likely what she would have gotten]

    So all your massive amount of verbiage does is confirm you're a Trump-like blowhard that says, "I remember a group of Muslims cheering" even as the rest of the world notes you're wrong. Bravo - you're a real great example for Bernie - a "Hillary truther" who accepts no evidence contrary to your continual scandal-mongering. Maybe you were thinking of these movies as evidence NASA did take women?

    PS - funny cited "evidence" that women's pay in the 70's was good times, and that forget talking about pay inequality now because dudes are getting paid less. I'm relatively speechless.


    I have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton. She is somebody I have known for 25 years. I am not going to be engaging in personal attacks against her. I’m not going to be engaging in personal attacks against her. She and I disagree on many issues. The American people want a serious debate about serious issues, not personal attacks.


    That's easy for a card-carrying shotgun-toting communist to say. The rest of us want nekkid mud-rasslin' - how about you 2 oblige? It's going to be boring enough once the generals roll around, so we might as well get our kicks while we can. I've got your "serious issues" right here, up against the turnbuckle.


    No wrestling fans here?

    Ahem.

    Love her. Though I tend to prefer a bit more power.


    I've always liked you, Bernie.  You know that, right?


    Bernie,
    .
    I greatly admire your position as a candidate, but I think it's wrongheaded with regard to the American people as a whole. It is just as important for the American people to examine the shortcomings of a person who aspires to become President of the United States as their assets - maybe even more so. That's what primaries are about. There's no such thing as bad knowledge, and Hillary Clinton scares me, for a number of reasons.


    Hal,

    This is a great, well-written, and balanced article - at least, from my point of view.  I trust neither Bill, nor Hillary. I think they're closet fiscal conservative corporatists, and much more interested in their own interests than they are the interest of the American people.  Hillary doesn't even know how to PRETEND to be less than remote from the American people. Everything she does seems to be calculated for effect. I don't like people like that, either personally, or as politicians. Nevertheless, if she wins the Democratic nomination, I'll hold my nose and support her, because I don't subscribe to the Ralph Nader/Cornel West philosophy of being so frustrated with the Bogey Man that I leave the backdoor open for the Devil.  But even if Hillary wins, I'd consider it Republican lite. I'd love to see a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket. I think it would be unbeatable.  Bill and Hillary Clinton are yesterday's news.  They can't even trust each other, so why should we? 


    As noted above, this demographic has suffered psychically worse than any other over the past thirty years.  For them, the early 60s - when NASA rejected young Hillary Rodham - was a golden era. 

    For women?  Seriously? Wow! That's news to every woman I know.

    The 1960's certainly brought changes for women, but it is not considered a golden era at all. There were many things women were barred from in the 1960's. Women  in the 1960's could not:

    1. Get Credit,

    2. Serve on a jury 

    3. Obtain an Ivy League education

    4. Get equal pay for equal work

    6. Keep their jobs when they got pregnant

    7. Report cases of sexual harassment

    8. Run in the Boston Marathon

    9. refuse to have sex with her husband

    10. get a divorce

    11. Have a legal abortion

    12.Legally use contraceptives  

    13. Practice Law, Until 1971, women could be denied women the right to practice law, even if they had qualified as lawyers, purely because they were women. Barring women from practicing law was only prohibited in the US in 1971.

    14. Live with their boyfriend. 

    It wasn't a golden era for us, and some of those things above we are still fighting for Hal. I don't know, you have some weird thing about women identifying with Hillary Clinton.  

    A note to you personally Hal, Hilary Clinton's NASA anecdote reminds me of the time I took my first physics class in engineering school, ugh, I've told this story so many times... Anyhow, it was August of 1981, and I arrived in my freshman physics class, Physics 104 with Prof. Lowery.  His very first announcement was, if you are a woman in my class you will not pass. He was not fired for this, the four women in the class were offered a spot in Prof. Western's class.  Every single woman I know has a different but similar story.

    You cannot Atwater her Hal, it simply isn't going to work. 


    It's worse than that. In context, he clearly isn't referring to women - it was the "golden age" for white working class men. Apparently when Clinton mentions how women have always had, and still have, to fight for our rights it turns a key demographic away from Democrats; reminding them that their lot was so much better when "girls and women knew their place".


    I didn't even catch that, but you are right barefooted. 


    Re-reading this, it's like "if you persistent talking about the glass ceiling, even though you're driving away a lot of core (male) Democrats, make sure you realize how we gave you equal rights during the Civil Rights era (really? I thought that got postponed) and you MUST loudly check every group like unions etc that I decree essential to a politically correct statement, because Hillary's only speaking to rich gals while I'm protecting the underclass(men)". Real progressive guy, this Hal - women can have their rights as long as they make sure every other liberal interest group gets its rights at the same time (or first). I guess fixing us a sandwich while you're at it wouldn't hurt.

    You're so right, Teri. I remember it all with way too much clarity.  But I'm still trying to figure out which one of Hillary's "dusty recollections" is going to turn off the voters.  And why.


    Ramona, T-mac, I've rewatched every Leave it to Beaver and Dobey Gillis re-run, and I haven't seen NASA mentioned anywhere, so I think Hillary's making it up. And in Gidget, Sally Fields was in such a good mood, it must have been a great time for women. Think of all those bridge clubs and Tupperware parties - men weren't allowed to do that.

    LOL, 


    I think Barefooted is right, Hal seems to be saying that blue collar men don't want to hear this. I just don't think most of those men are quite as shallow as Hal is intimating. 


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