Bye, bye Mick

Yet another person has been fired by Donald Trump late on Friday night, the infamous time for what is known as the ‘Friday night dump’, when administrations do things that they do not want much attention paid to. This time it was his chief of staff Mick Mulvaney who was fired. Mulvaney is a truly awful person, a liar and someone whose ambition was to stick it poor people and help the rich, such as his strenuous efforts to gut the work of the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau. You would think that this would make him a soul mate of Trump but even being a groveling toady is never enough to please someone as self-centered as Trump.
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Medicare For All would boost wages and create new jobs

A new analysis shows that Bernie Sanders’s’ signature proposal of Medicare For All would be a net positive for the economy and jobs.

A new analysis of the economic impact of a Medicare for All health care reform, like the signature policy proposal of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, suggests that such a plan would not only increase wages for workers but also create additional jobs.
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Birds of a feather …

Guess who has come out in support of Chris Matthews, who resigned from his MSNBC show Hardball following many allegations of inappropriate behavior towards women, not to mention his highly inflammatory and offensive Nazi analogies against Bernie Sanders?

Yes, it is that champion of free speech and critic of political correctness, Bill Maher. The way he minimizes Matthews’s conduct is typical of such apologists.
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Some progressive down ballot candidates to watch

The Democratic party leadership is center-right in its ideology and hopelessly locked into the corporate-military structure. It needs to be transformed by getting more progressives elected at all levels. While much attention is being paid to the Democratic race to be the party’s presidential nominee, we should not ignore the progressive candidates who are vying to replace either right wing Democratic incumbents in safe Democratic seats or Republicans. They face tough odds because the party establishment supports these Democratic incumbents even though many of them vote with Republicans on key issues, especially when it comes to the rights of women, the LGBT community, and minorities. Defeating those incumbents would send a strong signal to the party leadership of the need to change and give a shot in the arm to a stodgy party, similar to the way that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did.

Here are some new faces that are worth following.
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Great moments in mathematics

Michael Bloomberg spent $500 million on his campaign. The US population is 327 million. How much does that work out to per person? Brian Williams and his guest on MSNBC seem to be working with pundit math rather than the mathematics that ordinary people use.

What is astonishing is that this was not an off-the-cuff mistake that anyone can make, though one would have thought that the figure was so outlandish that it would have given them pause before saying it on air. This had been thought of before the broadcast aired, as can be seen by the fact that they had prepared a graphic of it. So the many people involved in putting these shows on also did not notice the glaring error.

Meanwhile, in Israel, major post-election shenanigans

While the US election process goes on and on through a single election cycle, over in Israel they have been having multiple elections in rapid succession as no party has been able to form a working majority. As Yossi Gurvitz writes, the latest election that was held on Monday resulted in a some bizarre maneuverings as early exit polls were misleading.

To understand what is going on, bear in mind that the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to go on trial in less than two weeks on corruption charges and so he is desperate to not lose his premiership since he is hoping to pass laws that grant him immunity as long as he remains in office.
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The problems with Human Rights Watch

Alex Emmons reports on yet another disturbing piece of news concerning Human Rights Watch.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH accepted a sizable donation from a Saudi billionaire shortly after its researchers documented labor abuses at one of the man’s companies, a potential violation of the rights group’s own fundraising guidance.

Human Rights Watch recently returned the gift from Saudi real estate magnate Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, which came with the caveat that it could not be used to support the group’s LGBT advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa. The controversial donation is at the center of a contentious internal debate about the judgment and leadership of Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth.

After The Intercept began investigating the donation, the rights group published a statement on its website saying that accepting the funding was a “deeply regrettable decision” that “stood in stark contrast to our core values and our longstanding commitment to LGBT rights as an integral part of human rights.”
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In 2012, Roth signed a memorandum of understanding with Al Jaber containing language that said the gift could not be used for LGBT rights work in the region. He was later pictured next to Al Jaber at a 2013 ceremony to memorialize the funding.

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Elizabeth Warren bows out

She has announced that she is dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination. Her fall from popularity is still somewhat of a puzzle. At one point she seemed poised to take over the leadership of the progressive movement from Bernie Sanders as her poll numbers rose and his fell. Some analysts have suggested that her backtracking on support for Medicare For All and the support that she got from a shadowy dark money Super PAC tarnished her image of a reformer and caused some of her supporters to defect. She has said that she will not run for president in 2020. But at the moment she must be exhausted and disappointed and things can happen in the next two or three years to cause her to change her mind.

Her statement is here.
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