Tag: republican

HBO Host To GOP Women: ‘Your Whiteness Will Not Actually Save You From What Patriarchy Has For You’

crooksandliars:

HBO guest host Brittany Packnett warned white Republican women that they will not be protected from male oppression just because of the color of their skin.

Packnett, an activist for Teach for America, made the remarks during HBO’s weekly Pod Save American program.

“Let’s talk about our sister Stormy Daniels because she absolutely does not deserve the way that this president has been talking about her,” Packnett said. “But here’s what, frankly, worries me. This ‘president’ – yeah, I used air quotes – he has been talking horribly about women since he was a candidate.”

“He admitted to being a sexual assaulter when he was a candidate and 53 percent of white women went ahead and elected him anyway,” she lamented. “So let me talk to my white sisters for a second. I just want to issue a warning and I hope you are listening closely.”

Packnett continued: “I want you tell your mamas and your aunties and your grandmothers – from me – to stop selling us out! Listen, I know it’s really hard but your whiteness will actually not save you from what patriarchy has for you.”

According to Packett, women should learn from the way Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was treated when she testified against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“Right?” Packett pointed out. “We all know what happened to her when she decided to stand up and be a patriot in this country and try to save the rest of us.”

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HBO Host To GOP Women: ‘Your Whiteness Will Not Actually Save You From What Patriarchy Has For You’

newyorker:

Sinclair is the largest owner of television stations in the United States, with a 192 stations in 89 markets. It reaches 39% of American viewers. The company’s executive chairman, David D. Smith, is a conservative whose views combine a suspicion of government, an aversion to political correctness, and strong libertarian leanings. An ardent supporter of Donald Trump, he has not been shy about using his stations to advance his political ideology. Sinclair employees say that the company orders them to air biased political segments produced by the corporate news division, and that it feeds interviewers questions intended to favor Republicans.

churchaltar:

“…Kavanaugh was setting a tone. Embedded in the histrionics were the unmistakable notes of fury and bullying. Kavanaugh shouted over Dianne Feinstein to complain about the “outrage” of not being allowed to testify earlier; when asked about his drinking, by Sheldon Whitehouse, he replied, “I like beer. You like beer? What do you like to drink, Senator?” with a note of aggressive petulance that is hard to square with his preferred self-image of judicious impartiality and pious Sunday churchgoing. Lindsey Graham eagerly took up the angry-man mantle, using his allotted five minutes of questioning to furiously shout at his Democratic colleagues. What we are seeing is a model of American conservative masculinity that has become popular in the past few years, one that is directly tied to the loutish, aggressive frat-boy persona that Kavanaugh is purportedly seeking to dissociate himself from. Gone are the days of a terse John Wayne-style stoicism. Now we have Trump, ranting and raving at his rallies; we have Alex Jones, whose habit of screaming and floridly weeping as he spouts his conspiracy theories is a key part of his appeal to his audience. When Kavanaugh is not crying or shouting, he uses a distinctly adolescent tone that might best be described as “talking back.” He does not respond to senators. He negs them. His response, when he is asked about his drinking, is to flip the question and ask the senators how they like their alcohol; his refusal to say whether he would coöperate with an F.B.I. investigation brings to mind a teen-ager stonewalling his parents. If Kavanaugh is trying to convince the public that he could never have been capable, as a teen-ager, of aggression or peer pressure, this is an odd way to go about it.”

— Brett Kavanaugh and the Adolescent Aggression of Conservative Masculinity

Dear Anonymous Trump Official, There Is No Redemption in Your Cowardly Op-Ed

DEAR ANONYMOUS TRUMP OFFICIAL,

You claim, on the opinion pages of the “failing” New York Times no less, that senior officials working for the president of the United States “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

“I would know,” you add dramatically. “I am one of them.”

Sorry, what was the point of this particular piece? And what is it that you want from the rest of us? A thank-you card? A round of applause? The nation’s undying gratitude?

Screw. You.

There is no redemption; no exoneration for you or your colleagues inside this shit-show of an administration. You think an op-ed in the paper of record is going to cut it? Gimme a break. You cannot write an article admitting to the president’s “anti-democratic” impulses while also saying you want his administration “to succeed.” You cannot publish a 965-word piece excoriating Donald Trump’s “worst inclinations” while omitting any and all references to his racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism.

You did find space, however, to heap praise on yourself and your fellow officials. “Unsung heroes.” “Adults in the room.” “Quiet resistance.” “Steady state.”

Are you kidding me? Where were your “unsung heroes” when this administration was snatching kids from their parents and locking them in cages? Drugging them and denying them drinking water?

Where were your “adults in the room” when this administration left 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico to die because, apparently, it is an island “surrounded by water, big water, ocean water”? Where were they when the president was denying that Hurricane Maria was a “real catastrophe” and lobbing paper towels at the survivors?

Where was your “quiet resistance” when the president was extolling far-right racists as “very fine people” and blaming the violence in Charlottesville on “both sides”? How “quiet” were you when he later disowned his half-hearted and belated denunciation of the “KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” as “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made”?

Where was your “steady state” when the president fired the director of the FBI because, he told NBC News, “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story”? Or when he sacked Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Sally Yates, the acting attorney general? Or when he tweeted, earlier this week, that Attorney General Jeff Sessions shouldn’t have indicted two Republican allies of his over alleged financial crimes?

The reality is that you and your fellow officials are enablers of Trump; you are his protectors and defenders. You say it yourself. Why were there only “whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment,” which provides for the cabinet to remove the president from office if he is unable to do the job? Why not invoke it and let Mike Pence take over? (Are you, by the way, Mike Pence?)

If as you claim — and we all agree! — that the president you serve “continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic” with “misguided impulses,” then how can you advocate for anything other than his swift removal from office?

Your defense is that “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.” Seriously? You don’t agree with former Secretary of State John Kerry that we’re already in the midst of “a genuine constitutional crisis,” given your own op-ed outlining his “erratic behavior” and “reckless decisions” and Bob Woodward’s new book describing “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” at the center of the Trump White House?

You are keen to remind the liberal readers of the New York Times that yours “is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left” and that you believe this administration’s policies have “already made America safer and more prosperous.” You cite “historic tax reform” and “effective deregulation” as the supposed “bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture.” But by tax reform, do you mean the Trump tax cuts that give the richest 1 percent of Americans almost half of the benefits? And by deregulation, do you mean the rescinding of Obama-era protections for the oceans; the lifting of controls on toxic air pollution; and the green light to Wall Street to once again cause havoc in the financial markets?

What is it, then, that you object to? Well, it seems, your biggest concern is “not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency,” but how Americans have “sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.”

You’re joking, right? The widespread dishonesty, the rampant corruption, the brazen racism, the growing authoritarianism, the accusations of collusion — none of that tops your list of Trumpian abuses and infractions? But the “civility” of our discourse does? Fuck civility.

Also, what did you think would happen when you signed up to work for a reality TV star who was accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, and of rape by his first wife? Who stiffed hundreds of contractors, ripped off Trump University students, cheated on his third wife just months after she gave birth, and cut off health care coverage to his own nephew’s sick baby in a fit of rage?

You knew all of this and yet you still chose to work for him at the highest level of government. You now acknowledge that “the root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” But how about your own amorality? I hate to agree with your boss, but you are “gutless.” You’re a shameless coward, a cynical opportunist.

Don’t hide behind anonymity. Don’t pretend that you have “gone to great lengths” to restrain Trump and “put country first.”

Tell us your name. Quit your job. Call out this president in public.

Call him out for his bigotry, his mendacity, his sheer mental and emotional unfitness for the office he occupies. Call him out in front of a congressional committee. Or a court of law.

Otherwise, I say again: Screw. You.

Sincerely,

Mehdi Hasan

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/06/dear-anonymous-trump-official-there-is-no-redemption-in-your-cowardly-op-ed/

Dear Anonymous Trump Official, There Is No Redemption in Your Cowardly Op-Ed