Well, This Seems Fine

Scott Pelley on CBS just now: "@60Minutes has obtained a letter that indicates" the whistleblower "is under federal protection -- because he or she fears for their safety."

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 29, 2019

Bear in mind who the whistleblower needs protection from -- the crime boss who currently occupies the Oval Office.

But yeah, nothing to see here.




ETA: More detail here

Sounding a Little Desperate

Here's an article from the Guardian about the reactions from Trump's toadies to the on-going impeachment investigation.

• Giuliani says he won't cooperate, unless of course Trump tells him he can
• Jim Jordon repeats the talking point that the whistle-blower is "biased" and that anyway everything they said was based on "hearsay" (I've seen that one repeated about 500 times on FB over the past few days, almost always by people who have no idea what hearsay means, or how to spell it). And, as the Guardian notes, "In fact, the whistleblower cites numerous eyewitnesses in his or her account of Trump’s attempt to coerce Ukraine to dish up dirt on his political rival, former vice-president Joe Biden."
• Stephen Miller, that vampiric bit of scum, claims that Trump is the "real whistleblower," apparently because he's drawing attention to the Hunter Biden faux-scandal, though that's not really clear.

As the article makes clear, there's nothing to the Biden scandal. 

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine, where the son was on the board of a gas company and where the then vice-president pushed for the firing of a senior prosecutor. Joe Biden is a frontrunner in the Democratic race to challenge Trump for the White House next year.

But of course that won't matter to Trump supporters. They're not interested in evidence, only in whatever lies and nonsense will allow them to keep supporting their vile joke of president.

What Dog?

They forgot the most common response -- "Hey! Look over there! SQUIRREL!"

Links

What Americans think about impeachment

Here is the real violation of free speech on campus

An interesting list -- not sure I agree with it, but interesting

Despite Trump's claims, the economy ain't shit for most of us

Full Text of the Whistleblower Complaint

You can find the full text of the Whistleblower document here.

Some key points:

• The whistleblower (we still don't know who they are) says they have received, over the past several months, information from "multiple" U.S. Government officials that Trump is using the power of his office to pressure a foreign country into interfering with the 2020 election.
• The whistleblower notes that AG Barr and Trump's lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, are involved in this attempt as well.
• The report details the phone call made by Trump to Zelensky and the specific requests and threats made during the call.
• The report notes that the various White House officials who overhead the call, and White House lawyers, ditto, were deeply disturbed and spent some time discussing how to treat the call, since they had witness Trump using the office for his personal gain. A dozen such officials and lawyers heard the call (this is normal). None of them expected Trump to do what he did. This tells us that Trump did not plan this -- he is out of control, incompetent, and probably not aware of the scope of his actions.
• After the call, the White House officials did everything they could to "lock down" all records relating to the call. They knew what had happened and how serious it was. This, by the way, is what we call a cover-up. The records of the phone call were classified in order to keep them secret. Trump knew, probably because his lawyers explained it to him in detail, exactly what he had just done, and he was hiding the evidence.
• Giuliani admits that he was traveling to Ukraine on the behest of Trump to pressure the government there to pursue investigations that will help Trump in the 2020 elections.

The report also details the background to all of this, which is Trump's belief that Joe Biden had a Ukrainian Special Prosecutor fired in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who sits on the board of Burisma Holdings. Burisma Holdings and just what has been going on there is a big tangled mess. 

The simple version seems to be that Joe Biden was working with Ukraine during the Obama administration to reduce Ukraine's dependence on Russian fuel. Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, went to work for Burisma to help them straighten out their international division, which seems to have been rife with corruption. Joe Biden, under Obama's directive, pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the government guy who was supposed to be rooting out the corruption and wasn't, a Prosecutor General named Shokin. 

This is at the root of the Big Conspiracy Claim -- Trump and the MAGA Americans, like the good puppets they are, claim that really Biden had Shokin removed because Shokin was going after Hunter Biden, who has been looting Ukraine for his own personal gain. (The new Prosecutor General has investigated Bursima thoroughly and Hunter Biden as well, and found no wrong-doing by Biden, but obviously that just proves Trump's point.)

All this is behind Trump's bizarre phone call. He's heard some silly Q-Anon claim, probably on Fox News, though who knows, he might have picked it up on Twitter, and now it's spinning around in his leaky, wonky head, and so during a phone call he's used the power of his office to pressure a foreign government to interfere in the US elections.

Should he be removed from office for Abuse of Power? Sure, yes.

Or he should be removed under the 25th Amendment. Whichever at this point, frankly.

ETA: Yes, this:

The complaint,citing multiple US officials, alleges that White House lawyers have been stuffing politically troubling records of presidential calls into highly classified storage to hide them from scrutiny throughout Trump’s presidency. This just got much bigger.

— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) September 26, 2019

Incompetent and Hilarious

Okay, this is kind of hilarious.

Apparently the White House sent this document of Talking Points to their boot-licking puppets at Fox News:

And then they also sent it to the House Democrats.

And then they realized what they did, and sent a follow-up email saying oops, send it back, plz.

Here's a screenshot of the White House asking House Democrats to please disregard the talking points on Trump/Ukraine they just emailed them pic.twitter.com/55HgOESWyL

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) September 25, 2019

It's both hilarious and horrifying. They've fucked up the country so much. Imagine what they could do if they were both evil and competent?

ETA: As a reminder, THIS is what Trump is trying to get is to pretend is no big deal:

That @realDonaldTrump thought it a good idea to release this transcript is a staggering testament to the endemic corruption of his administration. He and his close advisers have lost the ability to even see what’s incriminating. https://t.co/eXDJs0uKrZ

— Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower) September 25, 2019

A Helpful Graphic

Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/9675/what-an-impeachment-would-look-like/

Tweet of the Week

It’s been 243 years since 1776. Who would have thought that the UK would end up with a functioning Supreme Court and the US would end up with King George? https://t.co/akZAMThrgA

— Jeff Blattner (@theblatt) September 24, 2019

WTH, Amazon?

Amazon's algorithms need work.

Here's what they recommended to me today.

I mean, not only is it utterly absurd, if I even had $1400, that's not what I would spend it on, not in this universe or any other. Jeez. (Do you know how many books you could but for $1400?)

Also, that this is available at all tells me some people have waaay too much money.

ETA: And notice that people are buying these. Here's one of the five-star comments:

Love this wine dispenser. Keeps two bottles at the perfect temperature, ready for a fresh pour at will. Perfect for entertaining, and easy to use. Bought another for our second home!

Links

Buying our courts

Abortion rates at a new low. Why? Obamacare. (Also the terrible economy, but)

A look at the future

Similarly with all those ever so touching stories about the tender feelings of Trump voters

Weird childhoods

Epistemic injustice, defined

This is very cool:

Retellings of the Inland Sea: TOC Reveal

This anthology, Retellings of the Inland Seas, is the third from Athena Andreadis; her first two each contained multiple award-winning stories.

The first, The Other Half of the Sky, had my story, "Velocity's Ghost," in which we met a certain ship's crew. I'm in this one, too, with my story, "Little Bird," set in the same universe but some years before the Velocity stories.

This one is an anthology of science fiction stories that mythic retellings from the Mediterranean area. Go here for more. The TOC is impressive -- I'm pleased to be in such a crowd.

If Only

If only leftwing college profs were as powerful as conservatives think we are.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) September 16, 2019

Thread

You will probably not enjoy this thread as much as I did unless you are addicted to books.

The Corruption of the Trump Adminstration

Two F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Ramirez, telling her that they found her “credible.” But the Republican-controlled Senate had imposed strict limits on the investigation. 

More here 

Teaching Criticial Thinking

In the spring, for the first time in a long time, I'm teaching Comp II, the second half of our year-long writing class which every student is required to take.

In the first half, Comp I, we teach students how to evaluate evidence, how to tell a good source from propaganda*, how to construct an argument, and how to support it with what they (now know) is reliable evidence.

In Comp II, we have them write longer papers, and we have them read a long work, and write a paper about that work. Usually it's a work of fiction, but it doesn't have to be. I'm thinking of using a nonfiction book, one that makes an argument, and having them write their longer paper in response to or in tangent to that argument.

One book I'm considering is one I reviewed here recently, On the Clock. Another is one I haven't read, but which I'm picking up from our library today, American Prison.  There's also Everybody Lies, but that might be a little too meta.

Anyone have any other suggestions?




*We give them the tools they can use to do that, I mean, and require them to use those tools in writing papers for our class. Whether it transfers to their outside life, yeah, well. I've had students come back after a semester or after six years to tell me that what they learned in that little first year class changed their lives; but I've also watched what I knew students could do slide off their backs like oil off waxed paper. I guess the lesson here is that you can give people all the tools you like, but you can't force them to use those tools.