Many Working Women Won't See Themselves In 'Women Who Work' Women Who Work Rewriting the Rules for Success by Ivanka Trump Hardcover, 243 pages Spoiler "Let's show the world what it looks like to be a woman who works," says Ivanka Trump, soft-voiced and chic, looking into the camera. She looks good, this woman who works. It's 2014. She gives a little smile, and a shake of her gently waved blond hair, and the screen fades to the serifed logo of her brand. Trump's new book shares a name and a mission with her company's marketing campaign: Women Who Work. Organized into sections with titles like "Dream Big" and "Make Your Mark," Women Who Work is a sea of blandities, an extension of that 2014 commercial seeded with ideas lifted ("curated," she calls it) from various well-known self-help authors. Reading it feels like eating scented cotton balls. "My company was not just meeting the lifestyle needs of today's modern professional woman with versatile, well-designed products," Trump writes, undermining the care she has taken in interviews to avoid appearing as if she's using her position to promote her brand. "It was celebrating those needs, at a price point she could afford." [*]Ostensibly a business guide for women, Women Who Work is a long simper of a book, full of advice so anodyne ("I believe that we each get one life and it's up to us to live it to the fullest"), you could almost scramble the sentences and come out with something just as coherent. In spite of this formlessness, there are distinct, revealing moments here. [*]"Gather wisdom from others" is one of Trump's cornerstones, and that is truly the rock on which she has built her church — at one point she calls writing "wordsmithing pieces of content," a precious phrase that elides the distinctions between writing, editing, and borrowing. "I've curated my best thinking, as well as that of so many others, in the pages of this book," she writes (wordsmiths?), and what she means is that she rehashes her previous writings and borrows heavily from lifestyle gurus and corporate feminist authors like Sheryl Sandberg, while simultaneously claiming Women Who Work offers something radically new, "a hopeful, more authentic alternative to the way work has worked previously." Though there is an extensive bibliography, she's often vague about exactly how much she has taken. But almost any idea, upon investigation, has someone else's work behind it. So it is for obvious reasons that the criticism leveled at Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In — that it was written for rich white women only — applies to this book as well. Invisible hands — nannies, drivers, security, and other paid help — make Trump's lifestyle possible, but barely get a mention. In one of the rare references to her household staff, she writes, "Some of my best photos of the kids were taken by my nanny during the day (I'm sure in ten years I'll convince myself I took them!)." "[P]assion," she writes elsewhere, "combined with perseverance, is a great equalizer, more important than education or experience in achieving your version of success." If only the poor were more passionate. Trump's lack of awareness, plus a habit of skimming from her sources, often results in spectacularly misapplied quotations — like one from Toni Morrison's Beloved about the brutal psychological scars of slavery. "Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another," is positioned in cute faux-handwritten capitals (and tagged #itwisewords) before a chapter on "working smarter." In it, she asks: "Are you a slave to your time or the master of it? Despite your best intentions, it's easy to be reactive and get caught up in returning calls, attending meetings, answering e-mails ..." In a section called "Staking Your Claim," she writes, "Simply put, staking your claim means declaring something your own. Early in our country's history, as new territories were acquired or opened — particularly during the gold rush — a citizen could literally put a stake in the ground and call the land theirs. The land itself, and everything on it, legally became that person's property." Over and over again, Trump's message is: Take whatever you can get, and then print your name on it. Many of the inspiring quotations Trump stakes a claim to here seem to have been culled from apocryphal inspiration memes. For instance, on the subject of asking for a raise, she quotes another black women writing on racism, Maya Angelou: "Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it." But the real, very different line is from Angelou's memoir The Heart of a Woman, and it is a piece of advice about living in a racist world. "Ask for what you want," Angelou's mother tells her, "and be prepared to pay for what you get." At least she doesn't tag that one #itwisewords, too, — I.T., standing, of course, for Ivanka Trump. and this is the smart one
Fourth Estate All the President’s Mice Palace intrigue is ripping apart the White House. Why doesn’t Trump stop it? By Jack Shafer May 02, 2017 For quality trash talk, bury yourself in an eye-gouging, loose-ball NFL pileup. Those who don’t play pro football? The next best alternative would be eavesdropping on the not-for-attribution quotations White House sources have been dishing to the press about other White House sources over the first 100 days of Baby Donald’s presidency. If this were theater, it would be the Grand Guignol. If it were a movie, it would be The Shining with blood bursting through White House elevator doors. If it were a 911 call, it would be the report of a murder. Politics has always had a unique way of converting allies into foes and transforming marginal disagreement into knife-fights. But rarely in the annals of White House palace intrigue have all the president’s anonymice stabbed more backs or spilled more blood than at Donald Trump’s 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The ongoing dog-eat-dog and cat-eat-mouse dramatics at Trump’s White House would put Machiavelli in stitches. None of the big shots—including Prince Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Gary Cohn—can find sanctuary. Spoiler With annihilation the White House endgame, it makes sense for its players to form alliances and eradicate as many opponents as they can before the president dumps them. In New York Magazine, Olivia Nuzzi collects an anonymouse to look into his crystal ball to foretell the doom of Cohn, the president’s chief economic adviser: “The president has started his love affair with Gary,” another source said, “Gary’s not aware of this: That love affair will end abruptly. Gary Cohn will step on a landmine.” The Wall Street Journal put the same dig more dryly last month. “‘Steve is willing to go to war on policy,’ one person said, adding he was determined to cede no ground to Mr. Cohn.” If the anonymice don’t rip White Housers while they’re working there, they rip them on the way out. The door hit Sebastian Gorka firmly in the ass as he began his departure from the Trump administration over the weekend. A “White House source” told the Washington Examiner’s Sarah Westwood that Gorka had no real national security portfolio. His own known duties were “speaking on television about counterterrorism, as well as ‘giving White House tours and peeling out in his Mustang.’” Anonymity makes all this gratuitous cruelty possible—in fact, nourishes it. If names were attached to the White House insults and slights, honor would require daily duels on the South Lawn to settle the feuds. When Bannonites whisper their not-for-attribution slurs about Kushner to reporters, they give the Kushnerites moral sanction to send unsigned smears of their own to the press about Bannon, powering the cycle for another turn or two. Trash talk, like breast beating, expresses one’s high status and (relative) fearlessness inside a social group. At the same time, trash talk weakens its target, making opponents look foolish and helpless to stop the abuse. As the trash talk has become ubiquitous, the confusion over who said what about whom has forced White House players to adopt reporters as allies, according to POLITICO’s Ben Schreckinger and Hadas Gold. “White House officials have turned to the only people they can trust: reporters, who have started getting calls from senior Trump aides asking whether other senior Trump aides have been leaking dirt on them,” they write. “There is kind of a circle-the-wagons mentality, and if your wagon’s out of the circle for a while because you’ve gotta go do something, you’re out of the loop,” the former adviser told Nuzzi for a Kellyanne Conway profile. “Everyone has their own brand, if you will,” a senior administration official told Vanity Fair’s Sarah Ellison. “Without an ideology or a worldview, all you have is a scramble for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement,” another anonymouse told her. The ripest White House targets have been Bannon and Kushner because of the size of their power portfolios. Bannon has probably attracted more fire than Kushner 1) because of his vocal willingness to play Darth Vader and 2) because Kushner plays everything Perry Como-cool. Long before Trump introduces Cohn to his landmine, a MOAB will land on Bannon, flattening his tubby form before detonating. Much of the trash talk thrown at Bannon appears to come from Prince Jared’s tent, and it comes at such high velocity that logic insists that their coexistence can’t last much longer. “For whatever reason Bannon seems to be allied with Reince, and Bannon seems to be opposed by Jared,” one source told the Atlantic’s Rosie Gray. Which member of Jared’s royal court do you suppose whispered this to Vanity Fair’s Ellison? “I’m not sure Steve does a lot of actual work,” said one person in the Trump circle shortly before Bannon was removed from the National Security Council, a position he had enjoyed for fewer than 10 weeks. Maybe it was the same Judas who spat this out for Nuzzi: “[Bannon is] an intellectual messiah, right? There’s a little bit of a messianic, I’m gonna cure all the ills of the United States—him and Trump are like that together. But what I do think is he’s realizing he needs more allies.” When attacked, the honey badger counterattacks. The Bannon camp’s anonymice appear to have issued their threats to Prince Jared. In Axios, Jonathan Swan writes, “Steve has developed strong and important relationships with some of the most powerful right-leaning business leaders,” said a close Bannon ally outside of the White House. “I see some bad press in [Jared’s] future.” Because what could be crueler than bad press? Prince Jared’s anonymous spear carriers carry a bundle of honey badger genes of their own. Earlier this month, one told POLITICO’s Shane Goldmacher that Bannon wasn’t wise for “taking on a member of Trump’s family so openly.” “For a Svengali, that doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do,” the White House official continued. “I don’t think that ends well for him.” Bad Press and Bad Endings would be an excellent title for a book about the Trump White House. The Bannonites refuse underestimatation, Goldmacher reports. “A White House ally of Bannon noted that despite bumping up against Trump’s son-in-law, he had held sway over the most crucial policy rollouts, such as Trump’s hard line on immigration and trade. ‘Anyone who thinks that Steve has lost his influence, they don’t know what the f--- they’re talking about,’ this person said.” Bannon allegedly called the slender, soft-spoken Prince Jared a “cuck” to his face once, according to the Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng. “‘Steve thinks Jared is worse than a Democrat, basically,’ another official close to Bannon said,” reports Suebsaeng. Team Bannon denied he said it, but counterattacked by mocking Prince Jared’s overreach, which makes it easier to explain what he’s not working on for his father-in-law than what he is. “[Kushner is] saving the government and the Middle East at the same time,’ one senior administration official quipped” to POLITICO’s Josh Dawsey, Kenneth P. Vogel and Alex Isenstadt. There’s much more abuse in the POLITICO piece: One anonymouse voices a “deep concern that Jared is not the person we thought he was—that this guy who is supposed to be good at everything is totally out of his depth.” And still more: “When the White House is planning initiatives on those issues that might offend moderates, one of the senior administration officials said, ‘You can expect to read the anonymous story that Jared and Ivanka are trying to stop it.’” And this embarrassing anecdote conveyed by Ellison in which Kushner sought to escape responsibility for one Trump screw-up by exclaiming, “I’m not a fucking speechwriter. I am a real estate guy.” Things have turned so internecine inside the Trump administration that the alt-right movement has started thumping on Bannon! A source described as “close to the White House” insisted to Nuzzi in this New York piece that Bannon must change to survive: “He’s not achieving anything! What’s he achieving? He’s a zero. He’s incompetent!” the source said. “He doesn’t get back to the people at the Daily Caller. He doesn’t get back to the people at Infowars,” the source said, “I don’t care what you think of their politics, they reach millions of people. Why would you not respond to them?” Dodging the hottest of the hot action has been White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. But in mid-February anonymice crawled up his pants legs and nibbled off bits of his manhood. Trump needed somebody to blame for the poor start of his presidency, and the broad hints were going Priebus’s way. “You’re not going to see Trump come out and say I was wrong,” the anonymouse said to POLITICO’s Isenstadt and Dawsey. “If you’re waiting on him to take the blame, you’re going to be waiting a long time.” By March, the anonymice had gained foothold on Priebus’ face in an Isenstadt-Dawsey piece titled “Knives Are Out for Reince.” “There’s a real frustration among many—including from the president—that things aren’t going as smoothly as one had hoped,” said one senior administration official. “Reince, fairly or not, is likely to take the blame and take the fault for that.” “It’s sheer incompetence,” another White House official told the duo. “There’s a lack of management, and a lack of strategy." How did Priebus escape, his nose and wedding vegetables intact for the next skirmish? Perhaps he’s lucky, perhaps he’s too pure of heart to trash talk and receive trash talk in return, or perhaps he’s unmarked after countless rounds fought in the ring because he possesses political experience that Prince Jared and Bannon lack. Another explanation: He commands no power of his own—he’s a scheduler and message-taker—therefore no threat to either the prince or Lord Vader. Lasting peace can only follow a decisive ending to a war. In recent weeks, the Bannon-Kushner dispute appears to have gone on hold, but not because anything decisive has happened in Trump’s “Yes-Drama” administration, so the anonymous rhubarbary will likely return. Trump can’t be oblivious to the White House double-crossing and treachery. Or, can he? He wants to carry on as if his top aides love one another. In a recent POLITICO piece, he refutes rumors of interstaff discord by summoning his brass to demonstrate for reporters the profound collegiality and accord found aboard the Ship of Trump. “[Trump] called out their names and, one by one, they walked in, each surprised to see reporters in the room—chief of staff Reince Priebus, then chief strategist Steve Bannon, and eventually senior adviser Jared Kushner. ‘The team gets along really, really well,’ he said.” Unreported by POLITICO was whether Priebus, Bannon and Kushner got down on the rug and rolled over and played dead when Trump commanded them. Highbinders infest every White House. Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, who knows a highbinder when he sees one, concluded on Fox News last month that Trump’s aides “have been leaking on each other for weeks” because they had coalesced into three competing tribes headed by Bannon, Kushner and Priebus. “Right now, there’s plenty of diversity of opinion, but there doesn’t appear to be sufficient unity of purpose inside this White House,” Rove said. My preferred explanation would be to place responsibility for all the unattributed attacks on Trump himself. The White House’s verbal hardheartedness flows directly from the top, where our manchild president serves as its headwaters. If his staff is guilty of anything, it’s speaking sotto voce what he says out loud. Just listen to one anonymous official discuss how interchangeable Trump considers people to be in Nuzzi’s New York piece: “You could play golf with this guy for forty years, have a heart attack on the ninth hole, he’ll pick up a new golf partner on the tenth hole like nothing happened. He doesn’t give a shit, ok? Doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you,” the official said, adding, “What happens with all these guys is they get very confident in their relationship with Trump and then Trump blasts them. As soon as you think you’re in Trump’s good graces and you start to be at ease and take that for granted, that’s when you get annihilated.” Sometimes Trumpworld’s cruelness is calculated, sometimes it’s just a reflex. By tolerating anonymity in his White House, Trump encourages it. He has made a show of opposing anonymous sources, but as the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush and Michael M. Grynbaum (and others) have written, he has made a career of downshifting into anonymous mode and leaking to the press when it suits him. White House trash talk? From his mind to their incognito lips. ****** Rodents make good pets. Send pix of your favorite species to email alerts are mice. My Twitter feed is a rat. My RSS feed, a capybara.
I've been in probably nearly a hundred or more subsidized housing areas hint, they're not comfortable and I'm ashamed as an American because the vast majority of people living in them are physically or mentally disabled thats how we as americans decided they should live if they can't work, or are working the shit low pay jobs no one else will, and its gross
Comey admits Huma and Weiner were emailing and printing top secret info and then says they closed the investigation after that. . . . . . This is a corrupt system where the elites have proven time and again they can do anything they want. Disgusting.
AHCA might make it out of the House as the numbers are getting tight. Senate isn't lining up against it and will likely add a bunch of their own changes/amendments. Sending it back to the House. Going to be a long road but politically having a vote tally for a bill that, just one factoid, will increase premium costs for someone who has a history of cancer by ~$150k is a good thing.
The military got too PC and turned in to more of a baby sitting service trying to micromanage. They strayed from their goal of being an effective fighting force in my opinion. It's why I got out and people are continuing to get out in droves. The lifestyle is awful as more and more politics become involved. I agree that I like that Trump is listening to more of his generals needs.
The norm has always been conceal iirc. Comey should explain/describe the political climate that was created around the FBI which made 'speak' a more tenable decision than the operating norm of 'conceal'.
Comey made the distinction that one case was already in the public arena and one wasn't. I think he subconsciously realizes he fucked up, but doesn't want to admit it
Trump appoints woman who believes abortion causes breast cancer to top post at HHS Spoiler By Kelly Macias Friday Apr 28, 2017 · 12:32 PM CDT 2017/04/28 · 12:32 Here we go again. Pretty much all of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments are troubling and problematic so it’s hard to know where exactly to start with this one. On Friday, he announced that he will be appointing Charmaine Yoest as the assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is the former president of the anti-abortion group, Americans United for Life: Yoest is currently a fellow at American Values, a conservative group that opposes abortion and supports “traditional marriage.” She got her start in politics during the Reagan administration. From there she moved to the ultra-conservative Family Research Council and later served on Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign. While she served as president of Americans United for Life, one of the most well-known anti-abortion groups in the country, Yoest was a prominent leader for the anti-abortion movement. As the New York Times noted in a 2012 profile of Yoest, AUL was responsible for one-third of state legislatures’ anti-abortion bills between 2011 and 2012. Yoest’s stance on abortion isn’t particularly surprising given that Trump’s cabinet is shaping up to be a veritable smorgasbord of deplorable, out of touch folks who seem hellbent on taking women’s rights back to the era of Mad Men. But her views on science … now those are downright scary. In 2012, Yoest told the New York Times that she believes abortions can cause breast cancer. When the Times noted that data show that claim isn’t true, Yoest would not back down and said that scientists are “under the control of the abortion lobby.” “As a breast cancer survivor, the spin on abortion and breast cancer really troubles me,” she told the Times. “Why can’t you report what the research actually shows?” This is a position that does not require Senate confirmation—which probably wouldn’t have mattered at this point anyway. And in her new role, Yoest will be responsible for helping to craft the communications strategy for HHS. This is not good news. A woman who actually believes that abortions cause breast cancer and that once described IUDs as having “life-ending properties” is now the top communicator for the government agency responsible for protecting the health and well-being of all Americans. Wake us up when this nightmare is finally over.
Been saying it for a few years, we forgot what the purpose of the military is. Today its all about PT belts and power points. ROEs in combat are a joke and have been since Nam. If Trump lets actual military minded people make the plans/decisions all the better. Welcome home, btw.
entertaining a different group of trumptards today I see? Is it rules' turn on the schedule tomorrow, followed by an end of the week Shu appointment?
LOOK LOOK LOOK I think I need to give you class work ? why not gfa and everyone .. you think your smart evidently and have a diverse opinion . so why not balance the budjet ? prove you can do something as a collective .
I do find it funny that anyone who disagrees or has different view points than the left is automatically Farva.
Irony of gubbs post is that the fiscal conservatives haven't even gotten close to balancing the budget since most of us on this board have been been alive. Slick Willy on the other hand...
We are not going to survive these 8 years. The Russian connection isn't gonna take him down so we have to hope for the Democrats. This nightmare just seems to be getting worse.