Originally a comment by Arnaud on 10 beans a day.

I am so angry that I… I don’t know what to say.

Every time this government acts, or fails to act far too often, I swear that they have reached rock bottom; surely they can’t go lower than this? And every time they do.

But in truth I mean, we should have been prepared for this fiasco, after this intervention by a Tory MP a couple of months ago complaining that food vouchers effectively went to crack dens and brothels! This was clearly preparing the ground for later moves!

In the wider scheme of things this is part of a trend to basically assess-strip the UK; the pandemic has … Read the rest

Originally a comment by latsot on 10 beans a day.

I read that Chartwells made £2bn profit last year and paid tax on about 2% of that. Needless to say, they are big Tory donors, their CEO is friends with ex Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, and there was no tender process for this contract. This is rife. It’s nowhere close to exaggeration to say that the Tories are using the current catastrophe to divert very large amounts of money to themselves and their friends. At last count there were exactly umpteen companies with no prior experience in the provision of PPE or meals or whatever, and which were losing money, who were suddenly awarded contracts worth tens of … Read the rest

One Democrat pointed out that they were debating impeachment in the crime scene.

“We are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said Wednesday morning, discussing House Resolution 24, the measure that would impeach President Trump for the second time. He was speaking in the same chamber that was evacuated one week ago as a mob of pro-Trump extremists breached security and flooded into the halls of Congress.

The chamber where members crouched on the floor when the police started shouting “Get down, get down!” Which must have been pretty terrifying.

Recalling the events of last Wednesday, McGovern said Congress was disrupted as it was performing one of its core duties in

… Read the rest

Mofo is impeached, AGAIN. First ever to be impeached TWICE, because he’s such an evil monstrosity.

The Democratic-led U.S. House delivered the historic rebuke to Trump on Wednesday afternoon — exactly one week after his supporters stormed the Capitol building in a rampage that led to five deaths, including that of a Capitol police officer.

The article of impeachment charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection.”

Some 13 months ago, all House Republicans voted against the president’s first impeachment. On Wednesday, 10 GOP members joined with all Democrats to impeach Trump.

…

Ten Republicans broke party ranks to vote in favor of impeachment, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who chairs the House Republican Conference.

“None of this would have

… Read the rest

More on the plans for next week:

Thousands of armed pro-Donald Trump extremists are plotting to surround the US Capitol ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to a member of Congress who was among those briefed late Monday on a series of new threats against lawmakers and the Capitol itself.

Then they were kind of silly to tip their hand last week. Law enforcement is awake now, so I don’t think their plotting will translate to a triumphant encirclement of the Capitol.

Two Democratic lawmakers who participated in the briefing told CNN that they were walked through several scenarios on a call Monday and officers were sober about the threats. An effort was made to emphasize how different

… Read the rest

Meanwhile there is also the future to worry about – the future as in next week. The Feds are seriously alarmed.

(I still wonder why they failed to be alarmed last week.)

Meanwhile Tuesday on Capitol Hill, representatives from the Secret Service and the Defense and Homeland Security departments briefed lawmakers on security concerns.

Afterward, a group of Democratic House chairs issued a statement, saying they “have grave concerns about ongoing and violent threats to our democracy. It is clear that more must be done to preempt, penetrate, and prevent deadly and seditious assaults by domestic violent extremists in the days ahead.”

The chairs — including the Oversight Committee’s Carolyn Maloney and the Judiciary Committee’s Jerrold Nadler, among others

… Read the rest

Consequences:

Last week’s storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has already resulted in charges against 70 people, according to the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who said he expects the number “will grow into the hundreds.”

In the first public briefing by the Justice Department and the FBI since Wednesday’s riot, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin and Steven D’Antuono, director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, outlined what Sherwin called a long-term investigation.

“Everyone is in for the long haul,” Sherwin said.

He said his office has already opened 170 subject files of people who potentially committed crimes in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds.

You mean it’s illegal to smash windows, batter … Read the rest

Rs still going out of their way to be bad malevolent people. I guess that’s their brand now and they’re happy with it?

Several Republican members of Congress grew angry on Tuesday over new security systems implemented at the Capitol. The safety measures, which included metal detectors and physical pat-downs in some instances, were introduced after last week’s deadly insurrection at the complex.

And it wasn’t the Democrats who cheered that on, or inspired it in the first place.

“You are creating a problem you do not understand the ramifications of,” Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas was heard yelling at police who were conducting the check, according to a press pool report.

Yelling at police??? What is he, antifa?… Read the rest

Kathleen Stock asks what’s going on here when academics sign an open letter “which wouldn’t look out of place in the Salem Witch Trial archive.”

How can these academics look at the parts of the gender identity debate that concern me – for instance, vulnerable female prisoners being housed with male sex offenders; young lesbian women like Keira Bell regretting the effects of puberty blockers and voluntary mastectomies by the time they are 20; a loss of academic data about sex-associated patterns of discrimination, and so on – and conclude that I’m not only wrong, but that I should be publicly shamed?

That is, not only wrong but wicked, malevolent, deliberately harm-doing, cruel, witchy. I wonder that too. How … Read the rest

I saw that Jack Monroe was raising the roof yesterday on the subject of insultingly meager and worthless lunch parcels for children to replace school lunches during lockdown, handed out by people who pocket far more money than the parcels can have cost. The subject exploded and now it’s all over the UK news, with good results.

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1348944771226755073 https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1348935927943602177

Clearly the plan is the children will eat the sandwich of one piece of nasty processed “cheese” between two pieces of nasty processed sponge bread, and a potato. On banner days they will be allowed an apple.

The Guardian has more:

The government and the catering companies it has hired have come under fire after photographs of free school meal

… Read the rest

Remember Jonathan Ichikawa’s open letter to blame Kathleen Stock for everything? (Not literally. Literally it blamed her for being awarded an OBE, and not reciting the “trans women are women” oath 100 times every morning. Ok that last bit isn’t literal either. Just the first bit.)

There’s an open letter defending the idea that people can decide for themselves what they think.

A number of academic philosophers have taken the unusual step of publishing an “Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy,” singling out Professor Kathleen Stock of the University of Sussex for condemnation. The reason? Professor Stock’s writing, speaking, and political activity regarding proposed changes to the UK Gender Recognition Act and more general issues of sex and

… Read the rest

Pompeo gets the big snub.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancelled his Europe trip at the last minute on Tuesday after Luxembourg’s foreign minister and top European Union officials declined to meet him, European diplomats and other people familiar with the matter said.

Why would they? He’ll be gone in a week anyway, and he speaks for a disgraced fascist administration. Conversation would be stilted at best.

Pompeo, a close ally of Trump, had sought to meet Jean Asselborn in Luxembourg, a small but wealthy NATO ally, before meeting EU leaders and the bloc’s top diplomat in Brussels, three people close to the planning told Reuters.

Pompeo had originally planned to go to Luxembourg, but that leg of

… Read the rest

This guy – I saw the clip several times on the day of the attack and was confused about what was happening. Now it’s been explained.

A police officer is being hailed for his role steering an angry mob away from the Senate chambers during Wednesday’s deadly storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, identified by CNN reporter Kristin Wilson, could be seen in video footage distracting rioters away from the chamber as police raced to secure the area.

In the confrontation, Goodman puts himself between a man wearing a black QAnon T-shirt and a hallway leading to the Senate chambers, then shoves the person to induce him and the crowd to

… Read the rest

Even Deutsche Bank has booted him.

Deutsche Bank became the latest large company to cut ties with Donald Trump, with the firm that has propped up the Trump Organization for two decades reportedly announcing it would no longer do business with the disgraced president.

…

The relationship has survived various scandals. In 2008, Trump sued the bank’s real estate division after he defaulted on a $40m repayment, used to fund the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. He accused Deutsche of co-causing the financial crisis and demanded $3bn in compensation.

Instead of dumping him as a client, Deutsche’s private wealth division stepped in and loaned him more money to pay off the existing debt. Deutsche

… Read the rest

They’d better be.

US officials are strengthening security measures in Washington DC and across the country as the FBI said far-right groups – many using social media – were continuing to threaten plots before Joe Biden’s inauguration as president on 21 January.

I wonder what they’re hoping for. Reinstatement of slavery? Repeal of all minimum wage laws? Sealed borders? Flat tax? Death penalty for abortions?

Probably.

The outgoing homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, said on Monday that he had moved up the timing of the “national special security event” for Biden’s inauguration to Wednesday, instead of 19 January citing the “events of the past week”, along with an “evolving security landscape”.

The events of the past week, triggered by … Read the rest

Another gruesome bit of fallout from the insurrection:

Three lawmakers who had to shelter for safety during the US Capitol riot have tested positive for Covid-19.

Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, announced her positive result early on Tuesday, while chastising Republican colleagues who refused to wear masks while they waited in a secured room for more than five hours.

She’s the Democrat from Seattle; I’m in her district and of course voted for her. It’s simply disgusting that the Republicans refused to wear masks. Disgusting, contemptible, murderous, inexcusable.

The New Jersey representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, also a Democrat, said she decided to get tested because of the possibility of exposure and tested positive. She also tweeted that

… Read the rest

Fascist Don regrets nothing.

An unrepentant Donald Trump has denied inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol last week, claiming his speech before the violence was “totally appropriate”.

So he’s saying it’s totally appropriate that five people were killed.

“So if you read my speech, and many people have done it, and I’ve seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television, it’s been analysed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate,” Trump insisted at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, ahead of a trip to Texas.

No, “people” didn’t. A small minority of Trump fans may think that, but generic “people” do not.

Shortly before noon last Wednesday, the president gave an incendiary

… Read the rest

Medal of skunkery, it should be. Shirtsleeves Jordan gets his gong:

President Donald Trump on Monday awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the outgoing president’s fiercest GOP allies.

And by “fiercest” PBS means most dishonest, most bullying, most shameless.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, established by President John F. Kennedy, is meant to recognize those who have made an “especially meritorious contribution” to national security, world peace or ”cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

It’s not meant to recognize those who have done favors for a criminal president.

Last week, Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to another Republican ally, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, in a private ceremony.

Another … Read the rest

Oh he’s so BUTCH.

https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1348789291506425856

First of all Hogan Gidley looks exactly like Alfred E. Newman, but more to the point – Trump, masculine??? The goldy hair dye? The ridiculous fluffy ferfy flippy wavey twirly hair arrangement? The heavy makeup? The whining? The pouting? The inability to walk a tenth of a mile?

The fear of cats? The endless bullying? The tiny fingers on the tiny hands? The stupid little mincey gestures?

There’s a confusion here. Trump is mean, and rude, and piggy, and a bully, but that doesn’t make him masculine…or feminine, either – it makes him an asshole.… Read the rest

Ok now they’ve gotten to him. Impeachment no big deal, but the PGA? Ouch!

He’s angry about impeachment, people who have spoken to him say. But the reaction to the PGA decision was different order of magnitude.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 11, 2021

That is, a much bigger wound, not a much smaller one. You’d think the other way around, but no. Being president is just for giggles, golf is serious.

What did they do?

"The PGA of America Board of Directors voted tonight to exercise the right to terminate the agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster." — Jim Richerson, PGA of America President

— PGA of America (@PGA) January 11, 2021

Fore. https://t.co/xkBARjWlQX

… Read the rest