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Adam Serwer: ‘There’s No Coup Against Trump’

From The Atlantic:

“The biggest open secret in Washington is that Donald Trump is unfit to be president. His staff knows it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows it. House Speaker Paul Ryan knows it. Everyone who works for the president, including his attorneys, knows it. But they all want something, whether it’s upper-income tax cuts, starving the social safety net, or solidifying a right-wing federal judiciary. The Constitution provides for the removal of a president who is dangerously unfit, but those who have the power to remove him will not do so — not out of respect for democracy — but because Trump is a means to get what they want. The officials who enable the Trump administration to maintain some veneer of normalcy, rather than resigning and loudly proclaiming that the president is unfit, are not ‘resisters.’ They are enablers.”

Read the entire article.

Chuck Todd: ‘It’s Time for the Press to Stop Complaining — And to Start Fighting Back’

Chairman and CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes (1940-2017)

From The Atlantic:

I’ve devoted much of my professional life to the study of political campaigns, not as a historian or an academic but as a reporter and an analyst. I thought I’d seen it all, from the bizarre upset that handed a professional wrestler the governorship of Minnesota to the California recall that gave us the Governator to candidates who die but stay on the ballot and win.

But there’s a new kind of campaign underway, one that most of my colleagues and I have never publicly reported on, never fully analyzed, and never fully acknowledged: the campaign to destroy the legitimacy of the American news media.

Read the entire article:

Jay Michaelson: ‘If Brett Kavanaugh Wins, the Supreme Court Loses’

From The Daily Beast:

The likely confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will be yet another blow to the Court’s legitimacy, at a time when our democratic institutions are already under intense strain.

This is not because Kavanaugh is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative (which he is) or yet another justice handpicked by the Federalist Society and its Machiavellian boss, Leonard Leo (which he also is).  Presidents pick Supreme Court justices, and the Senate confirms them — and when, in this case, both offices are controlled by conservatives, a rightward tilt is a feature, not a bug.

If liberals had really cared about reproductive rights, LGBT equality, voting rights, etc., they would have supported Trump’s opponent more fervently, instead of ranking the Supreme Court near the bottom of their priorities, as reflected in 2016 polling.  (The Christian Right, of course, placed it near the top.)

Nor is the issue Kavanaugh’s temperament, conduct, qualifications, or intelligence, all of which are, by all accounts, superlative.  Brett Kavanaugh is not Clarence Thomas.

Rather, the Kavanaugh confirmation threatens the Court’s legitimacy for three reasons: Russia, Roe, and — as was pointed out repeatedly during the first day of confirmation hearings on Tuesday — the redaction of his records.

Read the entire article.


I mentioned Brett Kavanaugh in an earlier post of mine.  

Traci G. Lee: ‘“It’s Not a Movie”: Why “Crazy Rich Asians” Wants to Be More Than Just Another Rom-Com’

From NBC News:

LOS ANGELES — In a Beverly Hills hotel near the end of February, the cast of Crazy Rich Asians has been trading stories about auditions — both the good ones that have led to successful roles, and the bad ones filled with exaggerated stereotypes.

“I’m very new to the whole auditioning thing,” admitted Henry Golding, the Malaysian-born Hollywood newcomer who will make his film debut in Crazy Rich Asians this August. “I’ve seen some notices for ‘ethnic’ roles, but…”

“They just need you to not be white,” Awkwafina explained.

“Because the lead is white,” Constance Wu added.

There’s a sarcasm to their conversation, but beyond that are numbers to back up a well-documented truth: A report released earlier this year by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA found that 1.4 out of 10 lead actors in film are people of color. Of the 174 theatrical films released in 2016 that the report looked at, Asian actors and actresses made up 3.1 percent of top film roles.

Read the entire article.