Last Call For The Runoff Rundown

Now that the battle for Trump HHS Secretary Tom Price's seat is going to a runoff election between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel, it's time for Georgia's GOP state officials to do everything they can in order to make sure the seat doesn't fall to Team Blue.

That means refusing to extend voting registration for the runoff, of course.  Because the answer every time for Republicans to deal with demographic changes is always "stop those people from voting."

Five civil rights and civic engagement groups have filed suit against Georgia and its secretary of state for attempting to block registered voters from participating in a closely watched runoff election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.

On Thursday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a complaint in the federal district court in Atlanta, arguing that the state is violating the National Voter Registration Act. That law sets 30 days before a federal election as the earliest permissible deadline for voter registration.

Georgia complied with the provision for the special congressional election held this past Tuesday. But because no candidate won 50 percent of the vote, there will be a second election on June 20 ― a runoff between the top two finishers, Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel.

Georgia election officials contend that the June runoff is simply a continuation of the special election this week, so they don’t have to allow newly registered voters to participate. The registration deadline for Tuesday’s election was March 20, and officials say anybody who registers after that day is not eligible to vote in the June runoff.

Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee, argues that under the federal law, Georgia can’t set the registration deadline for the June 20 runoff any earlier than 30 days before that election ― that is, May 22.

“The case is actually a very, very simple case,” Rosenberg told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “Federal law specifically defines elections as including runoff elections.”

The National Voter Registration Act, passed in 1993, defines the word “election” based on the Federal Election Campaign Act. That 1971 statute defines an election as “a general, special, primary, or runoff election.”

Even though this is a "very, very simple case", by dragging their feet on this issue, Georgia Republicans can simply wait out the clock and continue to stop new voters in the district from registering.  Don't expect any help from the Department of Justice run by Jeff Sessions, or from a Supreme Court that just added Justice Gorsuch, either.  If the executive refuses to enforce the law, and the judiciary doesn't step in, does the law even matter?

Georgia Republicans seems to think not, and right now I'm not seeing anything that makes me think that they won't get away with this.

I would very much like to be pleasantly surprised, but as of right now, Georgia is getting away with this.

Running Government Like A Business, Con't

Meanwhile, while people are complaining about who Barack Obama takes a post-presidential vacation with these days as proof that the Dems are all about Wall Street, corporate America and the one percent are making it very clear who they want to remain in power.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Friday announced it raised $41.5 million in the first three months of 2017, its strongest-ever total for the first quarter following a presidential race. 

“Our record-setting fundraising pace has been fueled by grassroots enthusiasm for President Trump and the Republican Party,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said in a statement. 

“The RNC is in a strong position to make an impact in key races in 2017 and 2018 as we plan to take a leading role in preserving our congressional majorities and prepare to reelect President Trump in 2020.”

The RNC said it brought in $12.2 million in March, breaking its record for biggest haul in the March after a presidential race. The committee has $41.4 million total cash on hand. 

RNC Finance Chairman Steve Wynn said the robust totals are proof voters approve of Trump leading GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. 

“Americans across the country are expressing their belief that their best chance for a better life in our country is with continued Republican control of the House, Senate and the White House under President Trump,” he said.

Spending millions to make billions is always a good investment as the Trump regime continues to leave hundreds of key executive branch positions vacant ranging from dozens of US attorneys to hundreds of State Department employees to scores of regulatory agency positions.

And with nobody minding the store, corporate America can happily keep on breaking all the laws it wants to knowing they'll never be enforced.  They're willing to pay millions to keep it that way, too.

So far it's working great.  Just ask the RNC.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Looks like Vlad and Donnie are tying up some loose ends rather quickly.

Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to bring criminal charges against members of the WikiLeaks organization, taking a second look at a 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents and investigating whether the group bears criminal responsibility for the more recent revelation of sensitive CIA cyber-tools, according to people familiar with the case.

The Justice Department under President Barack Obama had decided not to charge WikiLeaks for revealing some of the government’s most sensitive secrets — concluding that doing so would be akin to prosecuting a news organization for publishing classified information. Justice Department leadership under President Trump, though, has indicated to prosecutors that it is open to taking another look at the case, which the Obama administration did not formally close.

It is not clear whether prosecutors are also looking at WikiLeaks’ role last year in publishing emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, which U.S. officials have said were hacked by the Russian government. Officials have said individuals “one step” removed from the Kremlin passed the stolen messages to WikiLeaks as part of a broader Russian plot to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Prosecutors in recent weeks have been drafting a memo that contemplates charges against members of the WikiLeaks organization, possibly including conspiracy, theft of government property or violating the Espionage Act, officials said. The memo, though, is not complete, and any charges against members of WikiLeaks, including founder Julian Assange, would need approval from the highest levels of the Justice Department.

The plan was always clear that in case of a Trump win, WikiLeaks would be formally outed as a Russian intel laundering operation, its usefulness over.  That happened a week after the election.

Despite all the news being generated by the change of power under way in Washington, there is one story this week that deserves top priority: Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, was asked about the WikiLeaks release of hacked information during the campaign, and he said, "This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect." He added, "This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily." 

Everything since then has been theater.  The news that this turn of events was coming soon was foreshadowed last week when Trump's CIA Director openly called WikiLeaks a "hostile intelligence service."

Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo on Thursday denounced WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service," and he singled out Russia as one of the anti-secrecy organization's top collaborators. Pompeo is the latest top official in the Trump administration to note that Russia hacked into the emails of Democratic staffers with the intention of influencing the 2016 presidential election. Thousands of those emails were subsequently released by WikiLeaks. The intelligence community has concluded this operation was mounted with Vladimir Putin's approval and was done to benefit Donald Trump.

Pompeo's remarks were particularly striking because Trump praised WikiLeaks during the campaign and repeatedly referenced the emails it made public. In other words, Pompeo was saying that his boss encouraged an entity he now considers "hostile" to the United States. Trump has repeatedly referred to the Russia scandal as a hoax, yet Pompeo's comments are predicated on the assumption there is nothing hoax-y about the Russian attack on the 2016 campaign.

The very public plan now for Trump to go after Assange and company is all part of the game as well.  After all, he can't be helping Trump if Trump wants him arrested, right?

The obvious play by WikiLeaks and Assange is to now drop everything they have on Trump and Russia and burn Trump to the ground.  Maybe that actually happens, maybe Assange has a final card to play.  But my guess is that when that magically doesn't happen, and Assange ends up in Moscow sharing a flat with Ed Snowden, don't be surprised.

StupidiNews!

• As North Korea continues to threaten the US, Pentagon officials say that China may be preparing to take action to deal with Pyongyang as the Chinese military is on high alert.
• Arkansas has executed its first inmate in 12 years as Ledell Lee was put to death by lethal injection for a 1993 murder, the state still plans to execute seven more before month's end.
• French police has stepped up security in the wake of yesterday's shooting of a Paris policeman by an Islamic militant, French presidential elections begin on Sunday.
• Donald Trump will sign executive orders today aimed at dismantling Obama-era corporate tax regulations in 2016 designed to punish mergers that shifted tax burdens away from the US.
• After being in production limbo for years, Sony has finally picked up the TV rights to bring epic fantasy series Wheel of Time to the small screen.

Last Call For Gang-Related

The most dangerous thing about the Jeff Sessions DoJ is the fact that he thinks designating criminals as terrorists is a good idea.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the MS-13 gang could be designated as a terrorist organization. 

Asked by Fox News's Tucker Carlson on Tuesday whether he thinks the designation would be helpful, Sessions replied, “I think so, perhaps. I believe it could qualify for that." 

"There are rules that I guess the State Department does to establish that," he added. El Salvador has already designated MS-13 a terrorist group. 

Sessions called the gang "one of the most violent gangs in the history of our country." 

“We can devastate this gang. We’re going after them," he said. "We’re not going to allow them to take over a block, a corner of our communities and terrorize people with this violence.”

Now MS-13 is definitely a dangerous and violent criminal gang, but legally designating them as terrorists opens up a Pandora's Box of unconstitutional actions that could potentially be taken against US citizens in US territory.  Once you define down "terrorist" as "a group of criminals" then all criminal groups become terrorists.  Being designated as one means you get the other for free.

Again, taking law enforcement action against MS-13 gangsters in the US is entirely different from deeming them terrorists and using possible military force against them.  And what about places where MS-13 exists outside of the US?  Do we invade El Salvador in order to stop MS-13?  Mexico? Guatemala?  Belize, too?

Yeah, this is all kinds of bad here folks, and we should definitely be concerned here.  Who gets designated as a terrorist organization next?

Considering we already have a domestic terror problem with white supremacists and sovereign citizens?  Why are we suddenly concentrating on creating fear of Scary Brown People as a terrorist threat?

Oh wait, I answered my own question.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Meanwhile, Reuters gives us another piece of the Putin puzzle pertaining to Russia's efforts to elect Trump and undermine Clinton.  The Russians knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew exactly how to accomplish what they wanted.

A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters. 

They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election. 

The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office. 

The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals. 

It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said. 

A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said. 

The current and former U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the Russian documents’ classified status. They declined to discuss how the United States obtained them. U.S. intelligence agencies also declined to comment on them.
Putin has denied interfering in the U.S. election. Putin’s spokesman and the Russian institute did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents were central to the Obama administration's conclusion that Russia mounted a “fake news” campaign and launched cyber attacks against Democratic Party groups and Clinton's campaign, the current and former officials said.

So Team Vlad had a roadmap to push Trump to victory and to crush Clinton by damaging the legitimacy of the US election process, and they executed the plan well enough to get both goals done. The country got played like a fiddle and we're stuck with a semi-senile orange toddler with nuclear weapons, and a Republican party so corrupt that it's going right along with the Russian plan to continue to wreck the country.

And yet we still pretend that Donald Trump's election is a normal act.

It's not.

The Beaver Goes Home

GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz is going to be spending time with his family in 2019, so don't you dare tell me that the narrow Dems losses from special elections so far this year in districts that Republicans won last year by 20 points aren't scaring the hell out of Republicans who would be facing much tougher contests.

Representative Jason Chaffetz, the powerful chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told supporters on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election to Congress — or for any office — in 2018. 

Mr. Chaffetz, 50, a Utah Republican who plainly relished his oversight role more under a Democratic administration, said he was ready to return to the private sector after more than 13 years in public service, calling his decision a “personal” one. 

“I have long advocated public service should be for a limited time and not a lifetime or full career,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook. “After more than 1,500 nights away from my home, it is time.” 

He said his decision was not based on either health or political concerns, adding that he was “confident” of his re-election should he have pursued it and retained support from Speaker Paul D. Ryan for his committee chairmanship

More than 18 months out from the election in the heavily Republican district, there were already possible signs of a challenging race in Mr. Chaffetz’s future. Kathryn Allen, a physician and political newcomer running as a Democrat, has already raised nearly $400,000 more than Mr. Chaffetz this year, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday — most of it from donors outside of Utah. And Mr. Chaffetz had also acquired a primary challenger: Damian W. Kidd, a lawyer and another newcomer who accused the congressman of caring more about himself than his district. 

Even with his announcement, Mr. Chaffetz left open the possibility of his return.“I may run again for public office,” he added, “but not in 2018.”

I'm sure Chaffetz will be back in some capacity in GOP politics in Utah sometime next decade, (maybe a primary run against GOP Gov. Gary Herbert, who would be facing his fourth term in 2020?)  but the notion that he's not running for the hills after Tuesday's near-upset by Jon Ossoff in Georgia's 6th special election primary is completely laughable.

Expect to see a lot of House Republican retirements ahead of 2018.  Chaffetz here won't be the last by any stretch.

Last Call For BillO's Big Breakdown, Con't

Bill O'Reilly is done and will not return from his "vacation" as allegations of multiple sexual harassment claims are actually affecting FOX News advertisers. It's finally gotten to the point where the Murdoch family that owns FOX are kicking him to the curb.

A well-placed source said Tuesday afternoon that representatives for Fox and O'Reilly have begun talking about an exit. But this prompted a denial from sources in O'Reilly's camp. 

Even one person close to O'Reilly, however, said he will probably not be back on "The O'Reilly Factor." 

The original well-placed source said an announcement about O'Reilly's fate was likely by the end of the week. 

The fact that none of these sources were willing to go on the record speaks to the delicate maneuvering underway. 

The network's parent company, 21st Century Fox (FOX), will hold a board meeting on Thursday, a spokeswoman told CNNMoney. One of the sources said O'Reilly will be a primary topic. 

The Murdochs, the men who control 21st Century Fox, are pointedly not commenting on any of this. 

But conversations inside Fox have already turned to possible O'Reilly successors.

Meanwhile new harassment claims are becoming public this week as advertisers are beginning to flee the network.

Attorney Lisa Bloom said Tuesday that she is representing a new woman making a complaint of sexual and racial harassment against O’Reilly, claiming that he made offensive gestures toward her and called her “hot chocolate.” O’Reilly’s lawyer called the claim “outrageous” and blasted the fact that it was made by an anonymous woman. 

“It is outrageous that an allegation from an anonymous person about something that purportedly happened almost a decade ago is being treated as fact, especially where there is obviously an orchestrated campaign by activists and lawyers to destroy Mr. O’Reilly and enrich themselves through publicity-driven donations,” said attorney Marc Kasowitz.

The last thing FOX wants is a lengthy trial getting headline news, so FOX News pulled the plug on him this afternoon.

BREAKING: Bill O'Reilly OUT pic.twitter.com/oJ9QPeRo27

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) April 19, 2017

That's not exactly fair, this asshole deserves to get roasted and lose it all, plus some nice lengthy prison time for sexual assault (and I hope that's still coming) but being sued into oblivion works for me.  He's long been a cancer on news and I'll be glad when he's excised like the tumor he is.

Bye bye, BillO.

Berning Down Kentucky Democrats

Bernie Sanders, with DNC chair Tom Perez in tow, kicked off the Democratic party's national "We Apologize To White People Tour '17" as Sanders came to Louisville last night to make the case that Democrats have to be nicer to Trump voters or something.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders urged Democrats to reach out to President Donald Trump's supporters to promote a progressive agenda that includes guaranteed health care for all Americans as part of a strategy to rebuild the party. 

Sanders told a boisterous crowd Tuesday night in Louisville that Trump has reneged on his promises to working-class voters. He said Democrats should reach out to disillusioned Trump supporters as the out-of-power party tries to recover from last year's election losses. 

"You don't stand with the working people of this country by supporting health care legislation that throws 24 million people off of health insurance," former presidential candidate Sanders said of the languishing health care overhaul backed by Trump. 

Sanders and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez took their nationwide tour to Kentucky, where downtrodden Democrats saw their series of election losses mount last November when Republicans claimed the state House. Trump won 118 of Kentucky's 120 counties. 

Democrats who once dominated Kentucky politics have since lost the governor's mansion and majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Republicans hold both U.S. Senate seats and all but one of the state's U.S. House seats.

Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, called for a grass-roots resurgence in which progressives run for offices ranging from local school board to Congress. He said the party's strategy should include building a strong base in all 50 states, not just on both coasts. 

"Real change ... never, ever takes place from the top on down," he said. "It is always from the bottom on up." 

Sanders and Perez are seeking to jump-start grass-roots opposition to Trump by focusing on such issues as raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing health insurance coverage for all and making public colleges and universities tuition-free. 

U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, the state's only Democratic congressman, spoke in favor of a "single-payer" health care system, drawing sustained applause from the crowd. 

Yarmuth, who represents a Louisville-area district, said the "single-player" plan would loom as the biggest advantage that Democrats would have in next year's election if the national party embraces it.

The one thing Sanders has right is the fact that Democrats do need to pursue the 50-state strategy again and get involved in more local and state races, from school board and city council on up.   That part of his message is something I 100% agree with.

The rest is, as they say, problematic.

I don't buy for a second that "disillusioned" Trump voters are going to turn back to the Democrats, especially in a state like Kentucky.  The complete turnaround in GOP voter opinions on Obamacare once Obama left office is all the proof you need of that.  They may not be happy with Trump, but let's remember that his approval ratings among Republicans are still in the low 80's range and aren't really budging that much from that point no matter how awful things will get.

I'd love to see Medicare for all, a public option, or single payer.  It's good to run on those issues, but remember Trump's still at the break even point on approval among white voters.  If you're in Kentucky and you've been bombarded with messages about scary brown people since 9/11, saying "Won't single payer be great?" isn't going to get through the fear when the GOP can counter with "Yeah, but they're going to give your job to a Mexican."

It's a good message, but we're pretending that Republicans haven't paid attention and haven't been counter-programming messages for the last decade plus on "They're gonna double your taxes, they're going to take your jobs, they're going to move next door and bring that culture with them."  They've perfected this tactic, and punching through it to get voters to vote for their self-interest?  Good luck, Dems have been trying to solve THAT problem for 50 years.

Why Bernie doesn't acknowledge that, I don't know.  But blaming the Dems constantly for it isn't going to make Republicans come to their senses.

Working His Ossoff But Coming Up Short

In Georgia's 6th Congressional district, last night's special election found Democrat Jon Ossoff coming up just short in his quest to win the race outright.  After getting 48% of the vote he'll be facing second-place finisher Republican Karen Handel in a June 20th runoff.

That means Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel, the race’s top two vote-getters, will have nine more weeks of expensive and heating campaigning before voters will decide who will replace Tom Price, now Trump’s health secretary, as the representative for Atlanta’s affluent, leafy northern suburbs in the House.

Ossoff, a 30-year-old documentary film maker and political novice, told his supporters late Tuesday that a runoff “shattered expectations.” “We will be ready to fight on and win in June if it is necessary,” he said.

Earlier Tuesday evening, former Secretary of State Karen Handel vowed “start the campaign anew” on Wednesday, as her onetime Republican opponents began to coalesce around her. “Beating Ossoff and holding this seat is something that rises above any one person,” she told supporters.

Outside groups poured millions into the nationally-watched contest, which was widely viewed as an early indicator of Trump’s popularity as he closed out his first 100 days in office. Even the president himself weighed in, via a series of attacks against Ossoff on Twitter, and he tweeted again moments after CNN called the race.

Of course Trump tweeted that he was "glad to be of help" in stopping Ossoff and the "FAKE media".

However if the name Karen Handel sounds familiar, it should.  She's the wingnut former Georgia Secretary of State behind the state's 2005 Voter ID law who was dismissed from a breast cancer non-profit in 2012 over her efforts to stop the charity Komen Foundation from supporting Planned Parenthood mammograms over abortion.  At one point she even made a junk science claim that abortions increased the rate of breast cancer among women, so that it was immoral for the Komen Foundation to support PP.  The outrage back in 2012 and 2013 drove her from the charity and back into state politics.

And yeah, note that Georgia's Voter ID bill became law before Obama even took office.  She was well ahead of the curve on Republican efforts suppressing the black vote.

Handel is dangerous.  But Ossoff is going to have nine weeks of Republican attack ads and Trump tweets aimed straight at him.  Here's hoping he can get the win two months from now.

StupidiNews!

• Police in Fresno, California say Kori Ali Muhammad's shooting of three white men in two minutes on Tuesday amounts to a hate crime under state law.
• The Trump regime will review the existing Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, saying that so far Iran is holding to the agreement but still remains a state sponsor of anti-US terrorism.
• Venezuelan opposition leaders plan a massive national protest against the government of President Nicolas Maduro today in order to force delayed elections and government reform.
• Mike Pence continues to warn North Korea of possible US military consequences to continuing its nuclear program as he visited a US naval base in Japan Wednesday. 
• Two Maryland men arrested Friday for allegedly trying to record Fate of the Furious in a theater both face up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine under state movie piracy laws.

Last Call For On And On To Pyongyang, Con't

So remember the reports of the USS Carl Vinson carrier task force heading for North Korea?  The NY Times followed up and realized that said carrier task force didn't actually head towards North Korea at all, and Trump was just lying again.

As worries deepened last week about whether North Korea would conduct a missile test, the White House declared that ordering an American aircraft carrier into the Sea of Japan would send a powerful deterrent signal and give President Trump more options in responding to the North’s provocative behavior. 

The problem was, the carrier, the Carl Vinson, and the four other warships in its strike force were at that very moment sailing in the opposite direction, to take part in joint exercises with the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula.

Oops.

White House officials said on Tuesday they were relying on guidance from the Defense Department. Officials there described a glitch-ridden sequence of events, from a premature announcement of the deployment by the military’s Pacific Command to an erroneous explanation by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — all of which perpetuated the false narrative that an American armada was racing toward the waters off North Korea. 

By the time the White House was asked about the Carl Vinson on April 11, its imminent arrival had been emblazoned on front pages across East Asia, fanning fears that Mr. Trump was considering a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea. It was portrayed as further evidence of the president’s muscular style two days after he ordered a missile strike on Syria while he and President Xi Jinping of China were finishing dessert during a meeting in Florida.

The saga of the wayward carrier might never have come to light, had the Navy not posted a photograph on Monday of the Carl Vinson sailing through the Sunda Strait, which separates the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. The picture was taken on Saturday, four days after the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, described its mission in the Sea of Japan.

Only now is the Vinson on its way to the Korean Peninsula, something neither the White House nor the Pentagon chose to correct in the last 9 days.  The White House flat out lied about this, plain and simple.  At this point, assume everything coming out of the White House is in fact a complete fabrication unless confirmed otherwise.

A Few Bad Blue Apples

Meanwhile, the Attorney General of the United States of America is publicly arguing that police killing innocent people is an acceptable practice, so just shut up about it already before the real criminals kill everyone you love.

Violent crime is surging in American cities. To combat this wave of violence and protect our communities, we need proactive policing. Yet in some cities, such policing is diminishing — with predictably dire results. 

In Chicago, arrests have fallen 36% since 2014 to the lowest level in at least 16 years. Last year, they fell in every major crime category, and they fell in every single district in the city. To put that in perspective, out of more than 500 non-fatal shootings in early 2016, only seven resulted in any sort of arrest. That’s 1%. Not surprisingly, as arrest rates plummeted in those years, the murder rate nearly doubled. Meanwhile in Baltimore, while arrests have fallen 45% in the past two years, homicides have risen 78%, and shootings have more than doubled. 

Yet amid this plague of violence, too much focus has been placed on a small number of police who are bad actors rather than on criminals. And too many people believe the solution is to impose consent decrees that discourage the proactive policing that keeps our cities safe. 

The Department of Justice agrees with the need to rebuild public confidence in law enforcement through common-sense reforms, such as de-escalation training, and we will punish any police conduct that violates civil rights. But such reforms must promote public safety and avoid harmful federal intrusion in the daily work of local police.
When proactive policing declines and violent crime rises, minority communities get hit the hardest. We will not sign consent decrees for political expediency that will cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals. Every neighborhood needs to be safe and peaceful. 

Our first priority must be to save lives, restore public safety, and bring back the community policing that we know works. To help achieve those goals, the department, with the help of our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, will focus our efforts on thwarting violent crime, drug trafficking, and gun crime and gang violence. If combating violent crime and restoring public safety are seen as dramatic reversals, then I fully support such a sea change.

Again, this is the AG of the United States is telling us that the priority of the Trump regime is not just "we're not concerned about stopping police from killing innocents" but "we're actively reversing measures that stop police from killing innocents in order to give police more power, and if this results in them killing more innocents, it will be made up for by hopefully reducing the number of innocents that are killed by criminals."

If that sounds awful to you, it's because you would have to accept the basis of Sessions's argument, which is "police who are supposed to follow the law and kill innocent people is not something we can actively control, but criminals killing innocents is something we can do something about." Furthermore, you'd have to again accept that the measures used to stop police from gunning people down are actively allowing criminals to kill additional people if they are kept in place.  The problem in Sessions's world isn't bad cops, it's rules and laws and safeguards that are supposed to prevent bad cops.

I think cops should be held to a higher ethical standard than crooks, but apparently Sessions doesn't agree.  How many police shootings per year are acceptable to justify the removal of safeguard measures like federal oversight of departments with long and detailed histories of corruption and wrongdoing?

Look, I know people in the law enforcement community.  They are good people and are dedicated to their jobs, and every one of them would agree that police must be held to a different ethical standard than the people they protect, or the people they pursue.  But I also know that they work with people who don't agree with that, cops who believe that police are righteous swords of justice that cannot and should not be judged by the people who they need to protect them on a daily basis from chaos.

But the moment you buy that line of thinking, you lose the right to be called a "protector" of society. And that line of thinking is possessed by the nation's top cop now. We're all in danger when that happens, period.

And that brings us to the larger point: Sessions and Trump want America scared so that they can justify the use of brutal force, it's a standard authoritarian tactic.  This is why they are both repeatedly lying about "violent crime in America's cities on the rise" and as Sessions does above, the framing is that urban (black) neighborhoods are so crime-ridden that efforts to hold police departments accountable are actually responsible for black deaths at the hands of black criminals.

This serves as both shaming black people and scaring white people. It removes sympathy and agency from black people in black neighborhoods ("If they really thought Black Lives Matter, they would stop killing each other and let the cops come in hard") while absolving the structural racism in both policing and in America itself.  It's long been used as an effective wedge to split resistance to bad cops.

Again, this is now being used by America's chief law enforcement official.  It's disgusting and depressing and was totally predictable, and yet it helped Trump win the votes he needed to win and appoint Sessions as AG.  This is who we are in America in 2017.

We had the method to stop this.  We chose not to, or rather, 65 million of us or so chose not to, and even more chose to sit at home and do nothing about it.

Nobody's Business But The Turks, Con't

So yesterday we talked about Turkey's President Erdogan and how he basically obliterated the country's parliament with a mere majority referendum, which is bad enough.  I mean, amid nearly universal condemnation for a clear authoritarian if not outright fascist move, who's going to approve of such a comically anti-democratic act?

Well then, why don't you take a guess and the first three don't count.

President Trump called President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Monday to congratulate him on winning a much-disputed referendum that will cement his autocratic rule over the country and, in the view of many experts, erode Turkey’s democratic institutions. 

Those concerns were not mentioned in a brief readout of the phone call that the White House released Monday night. After noting Mr. Trump’s congratulations, the one-paragraph statement pivoted to a recent American missile strike on a Syrian airfield, which it said he and Mr. Erdogan had also discussed. 

The statement did not say whether Mr. Trump had raised independent reports of voting irregularities during the Turkish referendum or the government’s heavy-handed tactics in the weeks leading up to it, when the country was under a state of emergency. The State Department noted both issues in a more cautious, less laudatory statement issued a few hours earlier. 

The White House was also silent about the long-term implications of the referendum, which some experts have likened to a deathblow to democracy in Turkey. Mr. Erdogan’s narrow victory, in effect, ratifies his authoritarian rule. The change to Turkey’s Constitution will allow the winner of the 2019 presidential election to assume full control of the government, ending the current parliamentary political system. 

OK, I can see why Trump would tweet congrats because he's orange and proto-fascist, but why the full-court press with the congratulatory call and the State Department involvement?  Well, you see, about that whole "Trump being nice to Turkey" thing...

The mall was named for him. His name adorns signposts at the nearby metro station. It also looms from the sides of the twin skyscrapers that the mall sits beneath. 

Yet many of the diners, shoppers and store owners here at Trump Towers Istanbul on a recent evening could not quite believe that the complex — among the tallest buildings in one of the world’s largest predominantly Muslim cities — had anything to do with President Trump. 

Evin Sumeli, a 19-year-old training to be an anesthetist, was sitting down for a meal with her sister, Mizgin, 18, when she learned that Mr. Trump does indeed profit from the buildings. “O.K. — we’re leaving!” she declared. 

One floor below, Cigdem Turan, a cashier at a cosmetics store, was similarly surprised. “I actually asked people if he had anything to do with the building, but they said no,” said Ms. Turan, 25, who began working at Trump Towers early last fall. “My husband said it’s probably just a coincidence.”

A coincidence, however, it is not. Technically, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization owns the property (or most of the other buildings featuring the Trump name outside the United States). But in 2010, Mr. Trump allowed the building’s Turkish owners, Dogan Holding, to brand it with his name, in exchange for a sizable fee. The total has not been disclosed, but campaign records show that by July 2015, Dogan Holding had paid Mr. Trump between $1 million and $5 million for the use of his name.

The Trump regime is awfully nice to dictators who rule over countries where there's Trump-branded properties, it turns out, and there's your answer as to why Erdogan gets a personal phone call, especially since Erdogan isn't too cool with having Trump-branded buildings in Istanbul.

Gee, maybe he's cool with it now that he knows he has some leverage.

But that's nobody's business but the Turks.

StupidiNews!

• British PM Theresa May will call for snap elections on June 8th in order to try to gain Conservative seats as Britain begins Brexit procedures. 
• Voters go to the polls in Georgia for a special House election to fill HHS Secretary Tom Price's old seat, Democrat Jon Ossoff is looking to win outright as polls suggest a runoff in June.
• Arkansas' GOP governor and attorney general are vowing to find a way to pursue a number of  executions after the US Supreme Court refused to lift a state Supreme Court stay.
• Mike Pence's Asian trip continues, where he warned South Korea that a free trade deal with the US will be reviewed after "falling short" of expectations.
• Researchers at MIT are looking into ways to passively collect moisture even in low-humidity desert conditions using the sun.