Last Call For The Big Turnoff

By the time the Trump regime's reign is over, the resulting damage to our media integrity will be overwhelming, and will take decades to fix at best.  Even though we're only 100 days and change in, the mass consolidation of news outlets that slowed under Obama's FCC has now been fast-tracked under Trump FCC chief Ajit Pai and the industry is now heading steadily for virtual monopoly.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc (SBGI.O) is nearing a deal to acquire Tribune Media Co (TRCO.N) for close to $4 billion after prevailing in an auction for one of the largest U.S. television station operators, according to people familiar with the matter.

A potential deal for Tribune comes just weeks after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to reverse a 2016 decision that limits the number of television stations some broadcasters can buy.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, named by President Donald Trump in January, is planning to take a new look at the current overall limit on companies owning stations serving no more than 39 percent of U.S. television households.

Sinclair's deal for Tribune Media also represents a blow to Rupert Murdoch's ambitions to expand Twenty-First Century Fox Inc's (FOXA.O) broadcast assets.

Fox Networks Group chairman Peter Rice confirmed at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week that Fox was looking to buy Tribune Media because "having more scale and more control of distribution is important."

We're already down to a handful of media giants, Comcast, Viacom, Disney, News Corp, and Time Warner in who produces and distributes news in the US.  With the FCC reversing both limits on broadcast station ownership and net neutrality, deals where the companies that are left must band together in consolidation is now happening quickly.

None of this will be good for the American consumer or for what's left of our democracy.

The French Connection Election

Chalk up one time where our Gallic friends have shown wisdom far beyond their American counterparts as not only did the French media not fall for Putin's obvious last-minute WikiLeaks screw job to help Marine Le Pen, the French voters didn't fall for it either, and while turnout was low for French standards at about two-thirds of those eligible, the French overwhelmingly elected Emmanuel Macron to be France's next leader.

Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has decisively won the French presidential election, projected results say.

Mr Macron defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen by about 65.5% to 34.5% to become, at 39, the country's youngest president, the results show.

Mr Macron will also become the first president from outside the two traditional main parties since the modern republic's foundation in 1958.

He said that a "new chapter of hope and confidence is opening".

Mr Macron's supporters gathered to celebrate in central Paris after the bitterly fought election concluded on Sunday amid massive security.

The Macron team said that the new president had had a "cordial" telephone conversation with Ms Le Pen.

In a speech she thanked the 11 million people who had voted for her. She said the election had shown a division between "patriots and globalists" and called for the emergence of a new political force.

Macron looks like he'll end up winning by 30 points, far exceeding even the rosiest poll projections.  If I didn't know any better, I'd say Putin's win in America backfired miserably in France.  The good guys (and the EU) needed a win badly here, and got it.  Le Pen's win, combined with May in the UK, would have left Germany in an untenable position and the future of the EU in extreme doubt, without two of its three strongest economic and political members.

By the way, WikiLeaks is now pushing the story that Obama ordered the CIA to help Macron (they still work for Obama you see, because chapeau de papier peint) in the best case of projection since the Cannes Film Festival.

Viva la Revolution, indeed.

Sunday Long Read: The Scarlet Letter

Nate Silver has our Sunday Long Read this week as he takes an exhaustive look at the data on the effect of FBI Director James Comey's October Surprise letter on the polls, and concludes that Comey's interference and the media explosion surrounding it probably cost Clinton the election ten days later.

Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College. 

The letter isn’t the only reason that Clinton lost. It does not excuse every decision the Clinton campaign made. Other factors may have played a larger role in her defeat, and it’s up to Democrats to examine those as they choose their strategy for 2018 and 2020. 

But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to measure. The impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College. 

And yet, from almost the moment that Trump won the White House, many mainstream journalists have been in denial about the impact of Comey’s letter. The article that led The New York Times’s website the morning after the election did not mention Comey or “FBI” even once — a bizarre development considering the dramatic headlines that the Times had given to the letter while the campaign was underway. Books on the campaign have treated Comey’s letter as an incidental factor, meanwhile. And even though Clinton herself has repeatedly brought up the letter — including in comments she made at an event in New York on Tuesday — many pundits have preferred to change the conversation when the letter comes up, waving it away instead of debating the merits of the case. 

The motivation for this seems fairly clear: If Comey’s letter altered the outcome of the election, the media may have some responsibility for the result. The story dominated news coverage for the better part of a week, drowning out other headlines, whether they were negative for Clinton (such as the news about impending Obamacare premium hikes) or problematic for Trump (such as his alleged ties to Russia). And yet, the story didn’t have a punchline: Two days before the election, Comey disclosed that the emails hadn’t turned up anything new. 

One can believe that the Comey letter cost Clinton the election without thinking that the media cost her the election — it was an urgent story that any newsroom had to cover. But if the Comey letter had a decisive effect and the story was mishandled by the press — given a disproportionate amount of attention relative to its substantive importance, often with coverage that jumped to conclusions before the facts of the case were clear — the media needs to grapple with how it approached the story. More sober coverage of the story might have yielded a milder voter reaction.

And this is really the crux of the issue here:  if the Comey letter doesn't get released here, Clinton most likely wins the Rust Belt states (WI, MI, PA) and the electoral college, even if Trump had still won Florida and NC.  She would be President.

Comey will have a lot to answer for (his testimony this week was a gigantic load of self-serving twaddle) but the media has a lot to answer for as well,and Silver lays out a very convincing case for both Comey and the media taking the responsibility for Clinton's narrow loss.

Clinton would have won with 278 electoral votes with these 3 states, and if she had taken NC and Florida as well she would have won with 322, more than Trump's actual 2016 total of 306.  It wouldn't have been close really, she would have won by more than 100 EVs in that case.

Bottom line: yes, Clinton made mistakes, but the Comey letter made the difference.

A Hard Lesson In College

Trump's now infamous question to the black community -- "What have you got to lose?" if we voted for him -- was always apparent when he chose to staff his team with white supremacists and card-carrying Nazis.  Never forget hoever that the reason these odious beliefs are tolerated by Trump is that he believes the same himself, and always has.

President Donald Trump signaled Friday that he may not implement a 25-year-old federal program that helps historically black colleges finance construction projects on their campuses, suggesting that it may run afoul of the Constitution.

In a signing statement on the $1.1 trillion omnibus government spending bill, Trump singled out the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program as an example of provisions in the funding bill “that allocate benefits on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender.”

Trump said his administration would treat those programs “in a manner consistent with the requirement to afford equal protection of the law under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.”’

Previous presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, often issued such statements when they signed legislation to signal they may ignore or disregard parts of laws passed by Congress.

In his first signing statement, Trump outlines a range of provisions in the spending bill that he says would “unconstitutionally” limit his authority as commander in chief — and indicates that where the bill conflicts with the White House’s interpretation of the president’s powers under the Constitution, he will go with the Constitution.

If you need to ask yourself why Trump would choose to single out HBCUs as deserving of having their federal funding revoked because of "reverse racism", ask yourself who voted for him and why.  It's one thing for a chief executive to harbor personal biases and understand that they still have to faithfully execute the law, but it's another thing entirely to make this clear to everyone that you believe this in public signing statement.

This is an open threat, mind you.  It's one we should expect Trump to carry out.

Last Call For The Greyball Special, Con't

Two months ago the NY Times revealed how ride-sharing giant Uber was using software called "Greyball" to evade police in cities where the service was limited or prohibited entirely by law, and had been using it for years.  It seems the Sessions Justice Department wants to have a few words with Uber about Greyball and its use as the company is now facing a criminal probe.

The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a criminal investigation into Uber Technologies Inc's use of a software tool that helped its drivers evade local transportation regulators, two sources familiar with the situation said.

Uber has acknowledged the software, known as "Greyball," helped it identify and circumvent government officials who were trying to clamp down on Uber in areas where its service had not yet been approved, such as Portland, Oregon.

The company prohibited the use of Greyball for this purpose shortly after the New York Times revealed its existence in March, saying the program was created to check ride requests to prevent fraud and safeguard drivers. The Times report triggered a barrage of negative publicity for the company.

The criminal probe could become a significant problem facing the company that is already struggling with an array of recent business and legal issues.

An Uber spokesman and the Justice Department declined to comment. Uber lawyers said in letters to Portland authorities, which Portland made public in a report last week, that the Greyball technology was used ”exceedingly sparingly” in that city, before the service was approved there in 2015.

The nature of any potential federal criminal violation, and the likelihood of anyone being charged, is unclear. The investigation is still in its early stages, the sources said.

Bloomberg news service reported the existence of a federal probe last week, but did not identify it as criminal.

Not sure who to root for here as it's the Trump regime versus arguably the worst, most entitled techbro asshole company in Silly Valley, but I'm hoping both sides will find a way to be permanently damaged by the probe and any resulting trials.

We'll see what happens, but for now I'm rooting for a meteor impact.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

And we finally have one Arizona Republican go there on public education: One GOP state lawmaker says it's time for the Grand Canyon State to toss compulsory public education laws and redefine K-12 schooling as a privilege, not a right.

He is Paul Mosley, an extremely conservative freshman Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives from Lake Havasu City, which is in Mohave County. When it comes to education, his campaign website says this: 

A good quality education is essential in preparing the next generation. I believe that parents understand the needs of their children better than bureaucrats and I am a proponent of education choice. Competition in education is good and I support district schools, charter schools, private schools, home schooling and tuition tax credits.  

But he has another idea about education, too, and, he says, it is a top priority. In an interview with the Arizona Capitol Times, he said wants the state to pass a law that eliminates compulsory education. He was quoted as saying:

“Education used to be a privilege. People used to believe getting an education was something you had to be privileged to get, that you had to work hard to get. Now we basically force it down everybody’s throats.” 

And he said this:

“The number one thing I would like to repeal is the law on compulsory education … I believe education is still a privilege, and the kids who don’t want to be there are a larger distraction to the kids who do want to be there. 

“We’re telling kids they have to go to school, and we put fences around the schools to protect them now, and we give them a meal or two and sometimes send a backpack of food home with them. So now schools are not only tasked with educating our children, but also feeding our children. What happened to the personal responsibility of a parent to feed and educate their kids?”

You catch that?  Mosley wants to define who does and who does not get to have the "privilege" of public education.  In a border state like Arizona, you can guess exactly who Mosley would like to deny education to.

That's the endpoint of the GOP attack on education in this country, to reserve it for those who are "privileged" enough to deserve it.  The rest of America's kids, well, maybe a little child labor will fix them right up.  Or you know, prison for the bad ones.  (Same difference if the GOP has their way.)

But don't be fooled for a second by the "charter school" crusaders and the "accountability reformers". The goal is to turn public education into something only the right people are allowed to have.  It's much easier to control the uneducated, you see.

Fascism In Fashion

In America, dissent against the Trump regime is now literally punishable by a year in prison.

A jury on Wednesday convicted three Code Pink protesters on charges that they disrupted the confirmation hearing of Jeff Sessions for attorney general — including a Virginia woman who said all she did was break out in laughter. Each could face up to 12 months in prison. 

The Virginia woman, Desiree A. Fairooz, was found guilty of the two charges she faced: disorderly conduct and parading or demonstrating on Capitol grounds. 

The jury also convicted two other activists in the group she was with, Tighe Barry and Lenny Bianchi, who were dressed as Ku Klux Klan members with white hoods and robes and stood up before the Jan. 10 hearing started. 

They were acquitted on a count of disorderly conduct but were convicted on two separate charges of parading or demonstrating, Mr. Barry said.Continue reading the main story

The verdicts were returned shortly after noon Wednesday. A two-day trial in United States Superior Court in Washington ended on Tuesday. 

Ms. Fairooz, 61, of Bluemont, Va., said she was “really disappointed.” She said her lawyer, Samuel A. Bogash, would file post-trial motions seeking to set the verdict aside. She said it was too early to discuss an appeal. 

“We’ll face that music when we get to that,” Ms. Fairooz said. She added that she was undeterred and would continue to protest.

She was in the Senate gallery at Sessions's confirmation hearing.  She laughed.  She's now facing a year in federal prison for this crime.  The jurors felt that the statue, as written, demanded her conviction.

Several of the jurors indicated they disagreed with the decision of Capitol Police Officer Katherine Coronado to take her into custody because of the laugh.

“We did not agree that she should have been removed for laughing,” the jury foreperson stated. Some jurors indicated they believed Coronado made a mistake.

“The officer, she was a rookie officer, and I think it was her first time involved in an arrest,” another juror stated. “Make of that what you will.”

The jurors indicated they felt they had to convict Fairooz because of the way the laws are written, with yet another juror describing them as “so broad.”

At least three jurors said it was fair to say they felt forced into convicting her. “There’s almost no way that you can find them not guilty,” one said.

“There’s not a lot of wiggle room,” said the jury foreperson.

Justice Department attorneys claimed during the trial that laughter was enough to merit a criminal charge against Fairooz, asserting that “heads turned around” when Fairooz let out what they characterized as a “scoff,” “outburst” or “burst” of laughter. But they mostly focused on how Fairooz acted after she was confronted by the police officers.

“Why am I being taken out of here?” Fairooz asked. “I was going to be quiet, and now you’re going to have me arrested? For what?” Fairooz also referred to Sessions’ record as “evil,” Shelby’s comment as “ridiculous,” and appeared to hold up her sign, which could violate the ban on picketing.

This is the textbook definition of fascism, by the way, arresting and jailing political dissidents for the crime of being political dissidents.  Just so you know, that's the real legacy of Trump's first 100 days.

StupidiNews!

• Hillary Clinton will be returning to political action this month, launching a PAC to help fund "resistance" to Donald Trump.
• Medical researchers at Temple University may have taken a major step towards curing HIV after using gene-editing technology to remove the virus's DNA from cells in animals.
• In a 419-1 vote, House Republicans and Democrats have overwhelmingly approved new sanctions on North Korea over Pyongyang's continued weapons testing.
• Crude oil prices have dropped to under $45 per barrel as expanding US shale oil production is countering OPEC's November output reductions.
• California is looking to become the first state to tax commercial rocket launches in addition to existing federal taxes.

Third Time's A Horror Show, Con't

Trumpcare 3.0 has passed the House entirely by Republican votes, as the House GOP feels the legislation is now sufficiently cruel enough to the poor.

Republicans are excited about repealing Obamacare. They are not as excited about their legislation that will do it. 

The House passed the American Health Care Act on Thursday afternoon by a razor-thin margin of 217-213 after Speaker Paul Ryan and his deputies engaged in an aggressive whipping operation, with President Donald Trump working the phones to move fellow Republicans into the “yes” category.

But Republicans have been saying this particular bill was set to pass because it’s a now-or-never situation — especially after the embarrassing collapse of the first effort in March — and they’re been finding solace in the idea that the legislation won't be the final product anyway. 

Rep. Luke Messer, an Indiana Republican, called it a "green flag" and a "start." 

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) also pushed the idea that Republicans just need to pull the trigger on this bill because it will change. “This thing is going to go to the United States Senate. It’s going to change in my view,” he said on NPR. “At some point you just have to move, and we think this is it. This will create some momentum.” 

"We like the fact that it needs to be repealed," said Scott Reed, chief strategist at the Chamber of Commerce, when asked whether they support the legislation. "... We need to move the process forward."

As I mentioned before, the bill is, as written, a complete disaster for Americans, and above all a massive, trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich.

The bill would end the Medicaid expansion in 2020, a program that millions of Americans who earn less than 138 percent of the poverty line (about $15,000 for an individual) currently rely on. The end result would be that people eventually get moved into the individual market, where they would have to pay for private insurance coverage. They would get some help from AHCA’s tax credits, but likely not enough to afford to purchase a plan — keep in mind, these are people who are only earning $15,000 or less per year. 

People already in the marketplace would see significant change, too. Right now, Obamacare’s tax credits are based on income, with those who earn less getting more help. Under Obamacare, people who earn less than 200 percent of the poverty line (about $24,120 for an individual or $49,200 for a family of four) get the most generous help, enough money so that a midlevel plan would cost no more than 6.4 percent of their income. 

Under AHCA, which doesn’t base tax credits on income alone, those people would get substantially less help. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the average 40-year-old who earns $26,500 would see her tax credit fall from $4,800 to $3,650 under AHCA. 

For an older Obamacare enrollee, the problem would be even more acute, because insurers would be allowed to charge the oldest enrollees five times as much as the youngest enrollees. This would have the result of raising premiums for Obamacare enrollees in their 60s. 

CBO estimates that a 64-year-old earning $26,500 would see their annual tax credit decline from $13,600 to $4,900. The amount they pay out of pocket for their premiums, meanwhile, would go up from $1,700 in annual premiums under current law to $14,600 under AHCA. Right now, with the tax credit, that person spends very little of her own money on a premium. Under the new bill, she’d spend nearly half her annual income on health insurance.

So what now?  That's up to what Mitch McConnell can get through the Senate with budget reconciliation.  That will most likely be the "real" bill, which will include most of the House provisions, and then the negotiations will begin.  The problem is that the Senate has to pass something awful enough that the House will still vote for it.

This process still has a long way to go.  But Republicans now own the first step for tens of millions to lose their health insurance.  Whether or not voters decide to actually do anything about it in a midterm year, well the odds are extremely low of that coming to pass.

Going Into Overtime (And Ripping It Out)

Don't look now America, but Paul Ryan and the House GOP just voted to give employers the option to end time-and-a-half pay for hourly overtime and replace it with comp time, which employers would be under no rules to actually allow workers to take.  That's right, the cleverly-titled Working Families Flexibility Act just passed the House and is on its way to the Senate.

The measure, backed by Republicans, would let employers give workers paid time off instead of time-and-a-half pay the next time they put in extra hours. The vote tally was largely along party lines, with no Democrats voting in favor of the bill. Six Republicans also voted against it. 

G.O.P. leadership has touted the legislation, called the Working Families Flexibility Act, as an attempt to codify flexibility for employees. 

"I don't think there's anything more powerful than giving them more control over their time so that they can make the best decisions for themselves and their families," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said Tuesday morning in a press conference held by Republican leaders in the House. 

The Trump administration also came out in support of the measure on Tuesday. The White House said in a news release that the president's advisers would recommend Trump sign the bill into law if it was presented to him in its current form. 

But Democrats stand in strong opposition. Their chief concern is that employers have the final say on when comp time can be used, which means bosses can defer compensating employees for overtime work.

The GOP House passed similar legislation in 2013, and Mitch McConnell's been trying to pass legislation to end overtime pay for quite some time now, most recently in 2014.   Now that Trump is in the White House and is indicating that he'll sign the measure, only a Senate Democratic filibuster stands between you and "white working-class hero" Trump taking your overtime pay.

But hey, her emails.

StupidiNews!

• House Republicans will make a third attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare today in a rushed vote on legislation that doesn't yet have a score from the Congressional Budget Office.
• Ohio state Republicans have added a budget provision that would put the legislature in charge of appointing oil and gas commissioners instead of GOP Gov. John Kasich.
• Britain's Prince Philip will retire from public royal engagements in August, the 95-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth will continue to attend events over the next few months.
• Post-debate polls in France continue to see centrist Emmanuel Macron with a commanding lead over far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen ahead of Sunday's presidential election.
• Google is warning users to beware of a sophisticated and widespread email phishing attack disguised as a request to open Google Docs files.

Last Call For Our Prosperity Gospel Theocracy

So for those still holding out hope that Jared and Ivanka's brutal pragmatism can be some sort of moderating influence on Donald Trump when it comes to Mike Pence and the GOP's theocracy wing, you should probably consider those hopes shredded starting tomorrow.

President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

Two senior administration officials confirmed the plan, though one cautioned that it hasn’t yet been finalized, and noted that lawyers are currently reviewing and fine-tuning the draft language. Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders.

The signing would represent a major triumph for Vice President Mike Pence—whose push for religious-freedom legislation backfired mightily when he served as governor of Indiana—and his allies in the conservative movement.

The original draft order, which would have established broad exemptions for people and groups to claim religious objections under virtually any circumstance, was leaked to The Nation on Feb. 1—the handiwork, many conservatives believed, of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who have sought to project themselves as friendly to the LGBT community. Liberals blasted the draft order as government-licensed discrimination, and the White House distanced itself from the leaked document in a public statement.

Pence and a small team of conservative allies quickly began working behind the scenes to revise the language, and in recent weeks have ratcheted up the pressure on Trump to sign it. The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said.

If that's true, this one's going to be certainly challenged in court, but between the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling two years ago and the nearly 25-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act (thanks Bill!) there may not be very much opponents can do to keep Trump from exempting nearly everyone from anti-discrimination laws or just about anything else for that matter if they are opposed to them on the grounds of religious belief.  From The Nation:

The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but when asked Monday about whether a religious freedom executive order was in the works, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, “I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There is a lot of executive orders, a lot of things that the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”

Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”

The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.

Almost certainly this would head to the US Supreme Court, with Trump's freshly installed Justice Neil Gorsuch ready to rule in Trump's favor.  Certainly this would be another instance where Kenndy could decide the fate of the country again in a 5-4 decision.

The battle to legalize discrimination begins in earnest tomorrow, it seems.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

So, let's talk about the death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in Texas, his life snuffed out by a cop because Edwards was a black boy in the passenger seat of a car.  This was his crime, and for this he was summarily executed by police in the town of Balch Springs near Dallas.

The police chief in Balch Springs admitted Monday that a car full of teens was driving away from police when an officer armed with a rifle fatally shot a 15-year-old boy in the head.

After reviewing body-cam footage, Police Chief Jonathan Haber reversed his initial account about Saturday's deadly confrontation, saying the teen behind the wheel Saturday night at first backed down the street but was fleeing the scene when the officer opened fire.

"It did not meet our core values," Haber said of his officer's actions.

Haber had initially said the car was driving backward when Jordan Edwards was shot. The officers had been inside a house where they found a large party. They ran outside after hearing gunshots around 11 p.m. Saturday in the 12300 block of Baron Drive.

Jordan, a freshman at Mesquite High School, was leaving the party over the weekend when the officer shot him through the passenger's side window.

The medical examiner's office said Jordan was killed with a rifle and also ruled his death a homicide, though that doesn't necessarily mean charges will be filed.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's public-integrity unit are investigating the shooting.

The medical examiner's office said Jordan was killed with a rifle and also ruled his death a homicide, though that doesn't necessarily mean charges will be filed.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's public-integrity unit are investigating the shooting.

Attorney Lee Merritt, who represents Jordan's family, said Jordan and four other teens heard gunshots and decided to get in a car and leave the party. He said the teens heard someone cursing and then three shots were fired into the car.

The officer, who has not been named, has been placed on administrative leave. No officers were injured.

Tuesday the family of Jordan Edwards responded.

In their first statement following Jordan Edwards' death, the 15-year-old's family called him a "loving child with a humble and sharing spirit."

The statement also said he had an indescribably strong bond with his family, especially his siblings. The family said his brothers witnessed Jordan's death.

"Not only have Jordan's brothers lost their best friend; they witnessed firsthand his violent, senseless, murder," the statement reads. "Their young lives will forever be altered. No one, let alone young children, should witness such horrific, unexplainable, violence."

The family asked the public to refrain from protests and marches in Jordan's name as they prepare for his funeral. "We do not support nor do we condone any violence or threats made against the Balch Springs Police Department or any other law enforcement agencies."

"What we desire only second to having our beloved Jordan back, is JUSTICE FOR JORDAN," the statement reads.

Jordan Edwards wasn't a thug or a criminal.  He was a straight-A student and a football star as a freshman with his entire life ahead of him.  That life was taken carelessly and stupidly by police.  Meanwhile the Jeff Sessions Department of Justice is refusing to press any charges against the Baton Rouge cops who killed Alton Sterling last July.  Sterling was black.  The cops killed him.  Case closed in Trump's America.  They're always righteous shoots when somebody who looks like me dies to police bullets.

There is one piece of good news on this front: the officer that shot Walter Scott in North Charleston, SC in 2015, the murder caught on video, will plead to a single federal charge after last December's deadlocked trial.  The officer, Michael Slager, faces up to life in prison.

Black lives matter.

Shutdown Countdown: Maybe You Deserve It

Trump regime budget director Mick Nulvaney seems to think that him completely failing at his job and shutting down the government would teach those pesky Democrats and their supporters a lesson, and that lesson is "you can't have government work for you if it doesn't work at all" or something.

The White House budget director on Monday threatened Democrats with a government shutdown if they don’t “behave” when it comes time to write a federal budget in September. He also defined a “good shutdown,” advocated earlier by President Donald Trump on Twitter, as one that proved Trump correct about the dysfunction of the federal government.

An animated Mick Mulvaney responded first to a reporter who asked about Trump’s Twitter dispatches Tuesday morning, in which the President urged, “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”

“I think the President is frustrated with the fact that he negotiated in good faith with the Democrats and they went out to try and spike the football and make him look bad,” Mulvaney said, presumably referring to Democrats’ taunts that Trump got almost nothing his White House budget advocated for.

“I get that frustration because I think it is a terrible posture for the Democrats to take,” he continued. “If we are sitting here trying to prove to people that Washington is going to be different, that we’re going to change things and can figure a way to work with them and they do that to this President, listen, I would have taken offense at that so it doesn’t surprise me at all that his frustrations were manifested in that way. We’ve got a lot to do between now and September. I don’t anticipate a shutdown in September. But if negotiations — if the Democrats aren’t going to behave any better than they have in the last couple days, it may be inevitable.”

“How would a shutdown clean up the mess?” one reporter asked.

“Sooner or later, we’ll have to start doing something different,” Mulvaney said, adding: “If we get to September and it is still business as usual, business as usual, business as usual and nothing changes, and takes a shutdown to change it, I have no problem with that.

Later in the press conference, NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Mulvaney to define what he thought Trump meant by a “good shutdown.”

“I don’t know,” Mulvaney said, pausing. “We haven’t had one.”

But a Trump™ brand Shutdown would be a good shutdown, because America.

Remember that point I keep making about Trump supporters being fine with whatever pain inflicted by Trump just as long as black and brown people suffer the most?  Watch Trump, or at least the Bannon wing of the Trump regime, start talking up the notion that a shutdown would be vital in "getting rid of the dead weight" in government.  Mulvaney's already on board.

It won't be long before somebody talks Trump into it too.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will meet with House Republicans still opposed to the current bill to repeal and replace Obamacare as the GOP bill's support continues to flag.
• The leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee says testimony from former acting AG Sally Yates later this week could be "the ball game" when it comes to Trump and Russia.
• A suicide bombing attack on a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan has killed eight and injured dozens as several civilian vehicles in the area were damaged or destroyed in the blast.
• Auto theft in Mexico is up more than 20% from this time last year as police are struggling to keep up with recovery efforts.
• San Francisco and AirBNB have settled their lawsuit over the city's short-term rental policy, and the city will keep its Office of Short-Term Rentals and require registration for room rentals.