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

August 29, 2016

Trump Adds Huma Abedin & Anthony Weiner Split To List Of Hillary Risk Factors

August 29, 2016/ Anne Enke

Trump Campaign Successfully Finds Way To Blame Hillary Clinton For New Anthony Weiner Sexting Scandal New York Magazine

Republican nominee Donald Trump decided it was necessary for his campaign to release a statement on Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin's decision to separate and presumably divorce Anthony Weiner. Trump -- who has no pristine record with women and wives himself -- offered his unsolicited opinion on Huma’s decision, saying: “I know Anthony well, and she will be far better off without him”,

Then Trump the cat pounced. tying the sexting habits of Weiner into a condemnation of Hillary Clinton's leadership, saying:

"I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgement. It is possible that our country and security have been greatly compromised by this."

Trump's new aim: Poison a Clinton presidency Politico

"The trick out of Brooklyn isn't just to make Hillary Clinton win but to make her win as something other than a brain-damaged crook who stole the election and will spend the next four years selling out the government from her deathbed," writes Politico.

Donald Trump’s campaign is in the bunker in an Obama-birther-type project to de-legitimize Hillary Clinton as a candidate for office but also as America's future president. So rabid is this Trump agenda that Hillary hate has seeped beyond extremist chatrooms into “lock her up” chants on the Republican convention floor and daily Trump rallies, into Trump's assertions that he's really leading but the national polls are rigged, and voters are doused with Hillary-health images as former New York mayor challenges America's citizens to go on the Internet to see Hillary about to expire or needing to be carried up the stairs.

The Clinton campaign has deliberately refused to defend against these absurd attacks, preferring its surrogates to redirect the fire back onto Trump. Given the absurd letter from Trump's own physician, he's hardly in a position to challenge Hillary Clinton's health. “It holds up a mirror to Donald Trump and what his campaign is about, and says everything you need to know about Donald Trump and where these kinds of crazy conspiracy theories are coming from,” one campaign aide told Politico.

Still, the Democrat’s professional team is aware of how these daily accusations might live beyond November and into a Clinton presidency.

“Some of the campaign and allies' conspiracies are designed to delegitimize her personally. Most are simply designed to spread fear and mistrust. And I am sure if she wins, the right wing will continue to spread these theories,” said Clinton senior adviser Jennifer Palmieri. Palmieri is in favor of ignoring most of the wackiness but warned: “Just because they may have zero basis in truth doesn't mean they can't be corrosive. So in this cycle I believe you have to call out the truly destructive theories calmly, but aggressively, and in real time.”

President Barack Obama and his allies spent eight years being sandbagged by Donald Trump and his obsession with the president's birth certificate, his-middle-name’s-Hussein attacks, and a mountain of accusations that all boil down to the same thinking now hounding Hillary Clinton: "he’s a fake, his presidency either doesn’t count or is a Moorish-style Trojan Horse."

“It’s a longer strategy. It’s not that people believe that he wasn’t born in the United States,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), recalling how this played out for Obama and sketching the parallels she sees facing Clinton now. “It was the relentless negative attacks on him that really created a backdrop to pressure Republicans and hold them accountable not to work with him.”

Michelle Kwan Is Working for Hillary Clinton New York Magazine

Olympic figure-skating star Michelle Kwan has the unique role of being both celebrity surrogate and Clinton campaign staffer. Kwan’s official role with the campaign is “surrogate outreach coordinator,” which requires her to identify and solicit support from high-profile backers like Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, and Meryl Streep, all of whom have made appearances this year on behalf of the candidate.

Most people don't know that Kwan became a public-diplomacy envoy on behalf of the United States, working for the State Department in 2006. Kwan continued this role into the Obama administration, joining the Clinton State Department in a formal capacity in 2011 as a senior adviser for public diplomacy and public affairs. Kwan's undergrad and graduate degrees are in international relations and political science.

Brazile on Clinton Foundation: 'I don't see where the smoke is' Politico

"This notion that, somehow or another, someone who is a supporter, someone who is a donor, somebody who's an activist, saying I want access, I want to come into a room and I want to meet people, we often criminalize behavior that is normal," she said in an interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "I don’t see what the smoke is."

How The Clinton Campaign Is Foiling the Kremlin Vanity Fair

Staffers from the Clinton campaign were instructed months ago to use a special app called Signal, when communicating about Donald Trump. The app, which uses end-to-end encryption is "Snowden-approved".