Cry me a river

I am frankly sick and tired of Republican politicians quietly spreading the word that they are disgusted with Donald Trump’s words and actions while publicly supporting him to the hilt.

A former GOP lawmaker on Thursday spilled the beans on what his ex-colleagues in Congress are saying about President Donald Trump in private.

Ex-Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) acknowledged in an interview on “CNN Newsroom” that Republicans are in public “standing with the president for the moment,” despite the impeachment inquiry prompted by the Ukraine scandal.
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A former GOP lawmaker on Thursday spilled the beans on what his ex-colleagues in Congress are saying about President Donald Trump in private.

Ex-Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) acknowledged in an interview on “CNN Newsroom” that Republicans are in public “standing with the president for the moment,” despite the impeachment inquiry prompted by the Ukraine scandal.
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Earlier in the interview, Dent said he would have certainly “voted for the impeachment inquiry based on the facts as I understand them now” and “would probably support” the impeachment of Trump.

If there was ever a bunch of unprincipled politicians, it is the current Republican members of Congress. They are political cowards on the grandest scale and they should not be allowed to get away with their attempt to have it both ways.

The missing cryptocurrency queen

Some people have made a lot of money in the tech world. Some have done it by creating companies, others by investing in them. But there are others who wish that they had invested in successful companies early on and made a lot of money but didn’t and now feel that they missed out. These people who are on the lookout for the next big thing so that they can get is early and cash in too. Such people are easy prey for con artists who know that the sales pitch of ‘buy now before it is too late’ can drive people to rash decisions and invest in something they may know little about for fear of missing out again.

We have seen this scenario play out so many times before and blog reader Jason Wessel sent me a link to this extraordinary story about someone who managed to scam people out of millions of dollars by promising them great rewards with a new cryptocurrency called OneCoin that she claimed would put Bitcoin out of business. The scam was based on the multi-level marketing scheme used by companies like Amway whereby people are recruited to sell both a product and also recruit new people to sell the product. Part of the sales proceeds of the new recruits goes to the person who recruited them, all the way up the chain. This is a version of a pyramid scheme and, like all such schemes, the few people who get in early make the most money while those lower down the chain can lose whatever they invest.
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Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving day in the US where family and friends get together to set aside differences and share food in a spirit of harmony. So what could be more appropriate than to hear Donald Trump rant in an unhinged manner about a non-existent war on Thanksgiving?

Seth Meyers walks us through this latest nonsense as well as update us on the impeachment process.

Jeremy Corbyn accuses Boris Johnson of secret deal to sell the NHS

The rumors that the Conservative party will seek to use the National Health Service as a bargaining chip in getting a trade deal with the US after they leave the EU has been around for a long time. The Conservatives and Boris Johnson have vigorously denied it because for all the grumbling about its shortcomings (mainly caused by insufficient government finding) people are fond of the NHS and would fiercely resent giving it up and letting the poisonous American private health system be foisted on them.

But Corbyn says that they have received a leaked dossier that shows that Johnson has already been in negotiations with the US to put the NHS up for sale.
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Pete Buttigieg’s smug complacency on race issues

Via Pharyngula I came across this article by Michael Harriot that looked at how oblivious people like Pete Buttigieg are when it comes to understanding the issues that black people face in this country.

“Kids need to see evidence that education is going to work for them,” Buttigieg explained whitely, when he was running for mayor in 2011. You’re motivated because you believe that at the end of your education, there is a reward; there’s a stable life; there’s a job. And there are a lot of kids—especially [in] the lower-income, minority neighborhoods, who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t someone who they know personally who testifies to the value of education.”
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I want to be clear: Pete Buttigieg is a lying motherfucker.

This is not a misunderstanding. This is not a misstatement. Pete Buttigieg went to the best educational institutions America has to offer and he—more than anyone on the goddamned planet—knows that everything he just said is a baldfaced lie.
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Mayor Pete’s bullshittery is not just wrong, it is proof.

It proves men like him are more willing to perpetuate the fantastic narrative of negro neighborhoods needing more role models and briefcase-carriers than make the people in power stare into the sun and see the blinding light of racism. Get-along moderates would rather make shit up out of whole cloth than wade into the waters of reality. Pete Buttigieg doesn’t want to change anything. He just wants to be something.

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Solitary confinement for children

Putting people in solitary confinement for extended periods is recognized to be a form of torture. So what does it say about us that in the state of Illinois, school districts have been using this form of punishment as disciplinary measures for decades, even with very young children, though giving them benign-sounding euphemisms. ProPublica investigated these practices and issued a damning report.
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The kiss of death

Neoconservative warmonger Bill Kristol is wrong about pretty much everything and this tweet from him should give the rest of us a good idea of whom NOT to support in the Democratic primary.

So that rules out Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomber, and Klobuchar. The fact that he gives a lukewarm endorsement of Elizabeth Warren should make her pause to try and understand where she is going wrong.

I think it is safe to say that, by omission, Kristol hates Bernie Sanders and that should be taken as a very good sign for Bernie.

Tom Tomorrow has some thoughts on this.

Saving the internet

The internet is under siege, its initial promise of providing free global access to everyone on a level playing field under attack from governments, big businesses, and secretive, anti-democratic forces. Tim Berners-Lee, one of the key creators of the World Wide Web, has been involved in a consortium that has come up with proposed measures to save the internet in a document titled Contract for the Web.

He discusses the plan in an interview.
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Film review: The Report (2019)

I saw this film yesterday that is based on real events and found it to be very gripping. It stars Adam Driver as Daniel Jones, a member of Senator Diane Feinstein’s staff, who was assigned by her to investigate reports of torture by the CIA. Despite the fact that the CIA refused to cooperate with him, over five years he and a small team painstakingly built up a dossier of all the illegal and immoral actions and war crimes that were committed under the justification of ‘keeping us safe’. They produced a comprehensive torture report that the CIA and the White House of Bush and Obama tried to avoid releasing.
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The last debate moderators panel framed their questions in right wing terms

It has been noted in many places that the Democratic debate held last Wednesday was the first to feature all female moderators. Unfortunately, Sarah Lazare writes, rather than being a victory for feminism, this did not lead to ay improvements in the nature of the questioning.

The idea that women’s representation in itself — regardless of who those women are — is a boon to women everywhere is hardly new to US political discourse. But what makes the fawning over the November 20 debate particularly tone-deaf is that the moderators’ questions were both inane and right-wing. Their inquiries were almost entirely premised on defending the benevolence of US empire, marginalizing political positions deemed too far left, and asking “gotcha” questions from the right on issues from health care to immigration. Trapped within these ideological constraints, the debate actually struck a blow against feminism — and was a blessing to the forces of chauvinism and austerity.
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