The blatant sexism and racism which not only Sean Duffy displayed today but the entire Trump administration displays on an ongoing basis, is disturbing. Just two days ago Karoline Leavitt made an incredible statement. But one that is all too normal nowadays. She said, “When you’re flying with your loved ones, do you pray that your airplane lands safely and gets you to your destination or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color? I think we all know the answer.” That is blatant racism.
The clear implication here is that IF a pilot is Black, Asian, female, whatever, that person got the job because of that fact — not because they’re qualified pilots who just happen to be Black, female, etc. That’s the ugliness of this insistence on DEI being to blame. Now as you’ve probably heard, the helicopter involved in the fatal mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport was flown by a woman and so of course this is the reason for the DEI narrative. And it’s the reason her family didn’t want her name released initially. they saw this coming a mile away.
Rebecca Lobach was unqualified to fly the helicopter, even thought she had over 500 hours, simply because she was a female — according to DEI dogma. In the real world, women in capable positions have worked twice as hard to get to that position as a man works, and basically every woman knows that and men know it, too, even if some of them don’t want to admit it.
So into this tinderbox along comes the dancing darling of DOT, the Department Of Transportation, playing the blame game. Trump is in no way responsible for this accident, nor the Republicans, although the evidence is clear that Trump fired the FAA director and the Republicans voted to cut FAA funding. This, logically, is something to be explored when looking for the cause of this tragedy. But no, let’s talk about DEI, social justice and incredibly, the environment.
And Tapper is basically apologetic when he interjects, with shrugged shoulders, “there’s no evidence, right?” Tapper makes $7 millon a year and CNN does not want to offend Mad King Donald, as you have doubtlessly heard.
But this is what you are going to hear going forward. The template for Trump II is that everything is the fault of either Biden or Obama, directly, or lacking that it’s the fault of DEI or immigrants. And we mean everything. The taxes will shoot up in the wake of Trump’s insane tariffs and tax cuts for the rich and the stage is set to blame that on immigrants.
Sen. [Rand] Paul wrote earlier on Saturday on X, “Tariffs are simply taxes. Conservatives once united against new taxes. Taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices.”
When Rand Paul is the voice of sanity on an issue, that’s a red flag.
Donald Trump has chosen not to listen to bipartisan economists, his fellow Republicans, and even The Wall Street Journal. […]
Americans did not vote for a tax increase because that is what a tariff is. A tariff is a tax. Mexico and Canada won’t be paying the tax. The tax will be paid by American consumers.
American companies are not going to lower their prices because of the tariff. The opposite is going to happen. American companies will raise their prices because Donald Trump has given them the green light to do so.
Canada and Mexico already have retaliatory tariffs ready.
Illegal immigrants and drugs have nothing to do with the tariffs. Illegal immigrants and drugs aren’t the reason why the tariffs were imposed.
The tariffs were imposed because Donald Trump refused to understand how a tariff works. His ignorance has resulted in one of the most significant tax increases in American history.
Many voters wanted cheaper eggs. Now, they’ve got higher taxes.
Yeah, now they’ve got higher taxes and no eggs, at any price, in some places. Maybe eggs will become like illicit drugs, something to be obtained on the black market. I guess we can forget about Easter. All the eggs will have to be chocolate because at least that’s obtainable. Or maybe Faberge eggs, ya think?
Remember what Joseph Goebbels said: tell a big lie, make it simple, and keep repeating it. After you’ve repeated it a thousand times, it becomes the truth. We’ve seen this come to pass. There are a stunning number of Americans who believe Obama was born in Africa. That was Donald Trump’s first big lie but far and away not his last.
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yes maga voters wanted and voted for tariffs because that’s what Trump said over and over and over again at his campaign rallies. they cheered him on as he claimed that tarriffs will fix inflation and high costs and more manufacturing at home. even Harris said at her rallies that tariffs will cost tax payers $4600 a year and maga still voted for Trump tarriffs ok?
🤬😵💫 The same old hypocritical gobsmack! Sean Duffy is part of a government group that wants to erase massive amounts of our language, but he wants to say that a few changes to aid inclusivity are a detriment to merit and excellence! Cow flop!! Even aviators (who identify with that word; not airmen) cannot agree on why cockpit is the common word for where pilots work. Most believe it was simply borrowed from the nautical area where the cockswain navigates. I don’t for a moment believe that women would have requested the change to “flight deck” because they don’t have “cocks” or are overly sensitive to the word. I think it became an issue because men with stunted development, like Sean Duffy and Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump, constantly misused the word and went full Beavis/Butthead whenever a woman came near a cockpit or said they are, or want to be, a pilot. Women were simply sick-to-death of it.
A term like airman being changed really shouldn’t be controversial. Most of the time, the change gives us a better descriptor of the job itself. They aren’t stewardesses…they are flight attendants and their union name reflects that (although I think just dropping the ess and being flight stewards would have also worked). There are no mailmen; there are letter carriers and their union name reflects that.
I have never understood adding feminine forms to professions that describe the work. A host hosts…why separate a hostess? A waiter waits upon your table; why waitress? (although I sometimes use the general term server, it does seems servile.) A fisher is someone who fishes whether man or woman (I get to quote Jesus on that one..he made his disciples “fishers of men,” not fishermen of men!).
How well I remember the gnashing of teeth when Ms. become a choice. I loved it and made the switch immediately. I still use it after marriage for the two reasons it was developed. 1) bias based on whether a girl (Miss) has “found” a man, and 2) Mrs. denies autonomy…I use my husband’s last name but I am not the Mistress (Mrs.) of his house, I am his partner and an individual.
Choices in wording are pretty easy. Discrimination shouldn’t be!
I totally agree with you. I think the problem is that the people in charge now, are pinheads.
They don’t grasp nuance or that 2 things can be true at once. Like being female and/or a person of color and excelling at your chosen profession. So they attack anything that conflicts with their understanding that white males are superior.
After mulling over our comments, I realized something. It seems their arrogance and egos won’t let them think any differently. If I’m off base, please let me know.
Before I got married she asked me a question she seemed to know the answer to, but just wanted to confirm. Given she worked for a non-profit with national outreach and was known around the country by her birth name would I object her continuing to use that name at work? Hell, I didn’t care if she changed her name after marriage or not, so he continuing to have her birth (last) name on business cards, and using it at work didn’t bother me at all. In fact it made sense to keep being know by it and I said so. She replied she thought that’s what I would say, which led to a bit longer discussion. I said it didn’t matter to me if she changed her last name or not. Again, she said she figured I felt that way and had even broached the idea with her mom who freaked out. We had a good laugh over that and got practical. It was mainly for credit reasons and one day buying a home that she felt it would be better to legally change her last name to mine. We both knew couples (we were both in our latter 20s by then) who’d kept separate names and had to jump through extra hoops when getting a mortgage.
As for other things like qualifications for jobs if a person can do the work then they are qualified regardless of gender, skin color, religion or whatever. The ONE woman aircrew member involved in this crash was highly qualified AND experienced. I might add that in addition to her she had an instructor pilot in the other seat (it was an annual RE-certification flight) AND a crew chief, both good ole American WHITE MALES also looking out the front of that chopper, and there are no indications of ANY disputes going on in the cockpit about the flight path including altitude. Traffic with the ground suggests all was normal and that they had the aircraft the tower warned them about in sight.
We they looking downriver at another aircraft lining up for a landing? That’s quite possible and we might never know for sure. There is so much we DON’T know yet but one of the few things we DO know is that every aviator involved in the crash was highly experienced. And that the Blackhawk crew was very, VERY familiar with that airspace and the route they were flying. Probably, almost certainly more so than the crew of the passenger jet who lest we forget had made a last minute maneuver to land on a different runway than had been planned. However they seemed to have taken the request in stride and were getting well positioned for landing when the tragedy took place.
At that point there was little they could have done to avoid the collision even if they saw the approaching chopper. It was a small airliner and at quite low altitude and losing speed fast to touchdown speed. That aircraft couldn’t bank like some fighter jet, nor could it make a sudden “dive under” maneuver either. Nor could it, being a jet rapidly increase speed enough to do a sudden and steep climb.
I could write about this for days. In part because even though the Marines thought I was too old (26) to go to OCS and then on to earn my own wings as a Naval Aviator I do know a lot about how all this works. Both jets and choppers. Had I gone through and gotten my wings I honestly can’t say whether I’d have chosen jets or choppers. Two Naval Aviators from my small hometown (they were best friend in h.s. and a few years older) took different paths. Drew flew f-14 Tomcats for the Navy so he urged me towards jets. Charlie started off in A-4 Skyhawks but they were already being phased out, Instead of switching to another jet he instead chose to become a “Rotorhead” – a chopper pilot and he of course encourage me to fly choppers! I soaked up a lot from both of them and never really stopped trying to learn more even after my dream of earing my wings got killed.
One of my managers warned me that “upstairs would have me appoint the village idiot if it suited their agenda and then wash their hands so that I would have to manage them until they retired”. Their advice was always to appoint the best and smartest, use them with a loose enough rein, learn from them and keep them motivated. On sick leave, my deputy inveigled into appointing the said village idiot who took up more supervisory time than the whole team and who, because of the business’s politics was shunted around until a quiet backwater was found. As far as I know, they’re still there after20 years and the rest of us have moved on.