StupidiNews!

• North Korea is claiming that its successful missile test launch over the weekend is proof it can attack the US mainland, US experts say the missile's range is much shorter.
• Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer says he will slow the confirmation of any FBI Director until a special prosecutor is named, but the GOP can confirm them anyway.
• Lawmakers from both parties say the White House needs to turn over recordings of conversations between Trump and James Comey if they exist, based on a FridayTrump tweet.
• The White House's Muslim ban goes back before the 9th Circuit in Seattle today as the regime looks for a lifting of the block on the executive order.
• Microsoft is condemning governments using Windows system bugs as weapons to "stockpile" two days after the massive WannaCry ransomware attack was unleashed globally.

Meanwhile In North Korea...

So it looks like Pyongyang got its act together long enough to finally test fire a missile into the North Japan Sea, much to the consternation of pretty much everybody in the neighborhood.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Sunday in defiance of calls to rein in its weapons program, days after a new leader in its old rival South Korea came to power pledging to engage it in dialogue.

The U.S. Pacific Command said it was assessing the type of missile but it was "not consistent with an intercontinental ballistic missile". Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said the missile could be of a new type.

The missile flew 700 km (430 miles) and reached an altitude of more than 2,000 km (1,245 miles), according to officials in South Korea and Japan, further and higher than an intermediate-range missile North Korea successfully tested in February from the same region of Kusong, northwest of its capital, Pyongyang.

North Korea is widely believed to be developing an intercontinental missile tipped with a nuclear weapon that is capable of reaching the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed not to let that happen.

An intercontinental ballistic missile is considered to have a range of more than 6,000 km (3,700 miles).

Experts said the altitude the missile tested on Sunday reached meant it was launched at a high trajectory, which would limit the lateral distance it traveled.

But if it was fired at a standard trajectory, it would have a range of at least 4,000 km (2,500 miles), experts said.

Kim Dong-yub, of Kyungnam University's Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said he estimated a standard trajectory would give it a range of 6,000 km.

Japan said the missile flew for 30 minutes before dropping into the sea between North Korea's east coast and Japan. The North has consistently test-fired missiles in that direction.

"The launch may indeed represent a new missile with a long range," said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, referring to the estimated altitude of more than 2,000 km. "It is definitely concerning."

In Washington, the White House said Trump "cannot imagine Russia is pleased" with the test as the missile landed closer to Russia than to Japan.

Anything to get America off that whole Comey firing/admitting to impeachable crimes thing, huh guys?

Sunday Long Read: Home Alone

In the New York Times Magazine, Matthew Desmond points out that the one of the largest drivers of inequality over the last four decades has been owning a home, specifically the mortgage deduction in America's income tax system, a massive yearly entitlement that favors the rich at the expense of the middle-class and poor.

When we think of entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare immediately come to mind. But by any fair standard, the holy trinity of United States social policy should also include the mortgage-interest deduction — an enormous benefit that has also become politically untouchable.

The MID came into being in 1913, not to spur homeownership but simply as part of a general policy allowing businesses to deduct interest payments from loans. At that time, most Americans didn’t own their homes and only the rich paid income tax, so the effects of the mortgage deduction on the nation’s tax proceeds were fairly trivial. That began to change in the second half of the 20th century, though, because of two huge transformations in American life. First, income tax was converted from an elite tax to a mass tax: In 1932, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (precursor to the I.R.S.) processed fewer than two million individual tax returns, but 11 years later, it processed over 40 million. At the same time, the federal government began subsidizing homeownership through large-scale initiatives like the G.I. Bill and mortgage insurance. Homeownership grew rapidly in the postwar period, and so did the MID.

By the time policy makers realized how extravagant the MID had become, it was too late to do much about it without facing significant backlash. Millions of voters had begun to count on getting that money back. Even President Ronald Reagan, who oversaw drastic cuts to housing programs benefiting low-income Americans, let the MID be. Subsequent politicians followed suit, often eager to discuss reforms to Social Security and Medicare but reluctant to touch the MID, even as the program continued to grow more costly: By 2019, MID expenditures are expected to exceed $96 billion.

“Once we’re in a world with a MID,” says Todd Sinai, a professor of real estate and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, “it is very hard to get to a world without the MID.” That’s in part because the benefit helps to prop up home values. It’s impossible to say how much, but a widely cited 1996 study estimated that eliminating the MID and property-tax deductions would result in a 13 to 17 percent reduction in housing prices nationwide, though that estimate varies widely by region and more recent analyses have found smaller effects. The MID allows home buyers to collect more after-tax savings if they take on more mortgage debt, which incentivizes them to pay more for properties than they could have otherwise. By inflating home values, the MID benefits Americans who already own homes — and makes joining their ranks harder.

The owner-renter divide is as salient as any other in this nation, and this divide is a historical result of statecraft designed to protect and promote inequality. Ours was not always a nation of homeowners; the New Deal fashioned it so, particularly through the G.I. Bill of Rights. The G.I. Bill was enormous, consuming 15 percent of the federal budget in 1948, and remains unmatched by any other single social policy in the scope and depth of its provisions, which included things like college tuition benefits and small-business loans. The G.I. Bill brought a rollout of veterans’ mortgages, padded with modest interest rates and down payments waived for loans up to 30 years. Returning soldiers lined up and bought new homes by the millions. In the years immediately following World War II, veterans’ mortgages accounted for over 40 percent of all home loans.

But both in its design and its application, the G.I. Bill excluded a large number of citizens. To get the New Deal through Congress, Franklin Roosevelt needed to appease the Southern arm of the Democratic Party. So he acquiesced when Congress blocked many nonwhites, particularly African-Americans, from accessing his newly created ladders of opportunity. Farm work, housekeeping and other jobs disproportionately staffed by African-Americans were omitted from programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance. Local Veterans Affairs centers and other entities loyal to Jim Crow did their parts as well, systematically denying nonwhite veterans access to the G.I. Bill. If those veterans got past the V.A., they still had to contend with the banks, which denied loan applications in nonwhite neighborhoods because the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages there. From 1934 to 1968, the official F.H.A. policy of redlining made homeownership virtually impossible in black communities. “The consequences proved profound,” writes the historian Ira Katznelson in his perfectly titled book, “When Affirmative Action Was White.” “By 1984, when G.I. Bill mortgages had mainly matured, the median white household had a net worth of $39,135; the comparable figure for black households was only $3,397, or just 9 percent of white holdings. Most of this difference was accounted for by the absence of homeownership.”

This legacy has been passed down to subsequent generations. Today a majority of first-time home buyers get down-payment help from their parents; many of those parents pitch in by refinancing their own homes. As black homeowners, Asare and Jean-Charles are exceptions to the national trend: While most white families own a home, a majority of black and Latino families do not. Differences in homeownership rates remain the prime driver of the nation’s racial wealth gap. In 2011, the median white household had a net worth of $111,146, compared with $7,113 for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Hispanic household. If black and Hispanic families owned homes at rates similar to whites, the racial wealth gap would be reduced by almost a third.

Racial exclusion was Roosevelt’s first concession to pass the New Deal; his second, to avoid a tax revolt, was to rely on regressive and largely hidden payroll taxes to fund generous social-welfare programs. A result, the historian Michelmore observes, is that we “never asked ordinary taxpayers to pay for the economic security many soon came to expect as a matter of right.” In providing millions of middle-class families stealth benefits, the American government rendered itself invisible to those families, who soon came to see their success as wholly self-made. We forgot because we were not meant to remember.

The reality is that the mortgage interest deduction in America is now a $70 billion yearly handout, and those who need help the most with housing get precisely none of that. Actual tax reform, and working to solve America's affordable housing crisis, starts with fixing the MID.

Of course, that will never happen.  Even more than Social Security or Medicare, touching that would mean immediate political annihilation from both voters and business groups. But until it's fixed, we'll continue to shove tens of billions at people who don't need it, and continue to force rental prices higher and higher.

The Worst State GOP In The Country

Nobody does "cruelly vindictive" like the NC GOP folks, a state party that 

• freely admitted to a voter ID law designed to take votes away from black voters because they voted Democratic, 
• moved to strip power from the Governor's office just because the former failed and the state elected a Democrat as governor anyway, 
• happily shredded unemployment insurance so badly that the state still doesn't qualify for federal unemployment reimbursement anymore because it doesn't meet minimum standards, 
• that legalized discrimination against LGBTQ folks over which bathroom they used,
• and now, the state that stripped a million bucks from education funding for districts that dared to elect Democrats.

N.C. Senate Republicans were visibly upset with Democrats for prolonging the budget debate with amendments during an after-midnight session Friday morning.

As the clock approached 1 a.m., Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue was summoned to the front of the chamber to talk privately with Senate leader Phil Berger. The Senate had rejected five amendments from Democrats to fund their spending priorities, but each time one proposal was shot down, another one was filed.

Senate Rules Chairman Bill Rabon abruptly called for a recess, stopping the proceedings for nearly two hours. GOP leaders headed to a conference room with legislative budget staff, while Democrats – some surprised by the lengthy delay – passed the time with an impromptu dance party in the hall.

The session finally resumed around 3 a.m., and Republican Sen. Brent Jackson introduced a new budget amendment that he explained would fund more pilot programs combating the opioid epidemic. He cited “a great deal of discussion” about the need for more opioid treatment funding.

Jackson didn’t mention where the additional $1 million would come from: directly from education programs in Senate Democrats’ districts and other initiatives the minority party sought.

Yeah, that's right.  Because Republicans in North Carolina hate Democratic voters so much, they will punish them for the sin of voting Democratic.  Even their goddamn kids have to be punished.

Sen. Erica Smith-Ingram’s rural district in northeastern North Carolina took the biggest hit from the amendment. It strips $316,646 from two early college high schools in Northampton and Washington counties, and it specifically bans state funding from supporting a summer science, math and technology program called Eastern North Carolina STEM.

The Northampton County program has received about $180,000 in recent years to serve 90 high school students, many of whom are African-American and from low-income families.

“I don’t know what motivated the amendment, but it will have a devastating effect on an area that is already suffering,” Smith-Ingram said Saturday, adding that the STEM summer program would shut down if the provision is in the final budget.

Because we're to the point that a program for STEM education in rural areas doesn't get money anymore because those rural areas are black.  Period.

The amendment also changes the counties included in a program that offers stipends to teacher assistants who are working on a college degree to get their teaching licenses.

The funding level for the program didn’t change, but seven counties represented by Smith-Ingram and fellow Democratic Sen. Angela Bryant were removed. Instead, the program will only apply to several counties represented by Republican senators.

Like I said, the worst Republican state party in the nation, hands down.

The Next Domino To Fall

We know that former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is under federal investigation for his connections to Russia, but now we know that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is also being investigated for his Russia ties, and again the old adage proves true: follow the money.

The Justice Department requested bank records of President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as part of the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department requested Manafort’s bank records from Citizen Financial Group Inc. in April. It’s unclear whether that was the only bank that was asked to turn over records, according to the report.

Manafort has come under intense scrutiny for his financial transactions. In March, the Treasury Department obtained financial records from Cyprus as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into Manafort’s past work in eastern Europe.

Those Cyprus accounts were investigated for money laundering, NBC News later reported.

Manafort also came under scrutiny for financial dealings immediately after he stepped down as Trump’s campaign chairman last year.

On the same day he stepped down, he formed a shell corporation and took out loans worth $13 million from Trump-connected businesses, according to The New York Times.

Manafort left Trump’s campaign as questions swirled around his finances and past lobbying work for Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Russia Ukrainian president and other pro-Russia figures.

So it's not just Flynn anymore.  And again, Manafort's been under investigation for Russia ties since last month.  We're finding out about this now because Trump moved up the game due to Comey's firing.  The leaks are going to start coming fast and hard now and my advice is to get ready, because things are going to move quickly now.  The message is clear: there are multiple investigations, multiple targets, and multiple connections between them, and none of them are going away.

If you thought this week was a whirlwind, the true hurricane is still on the horizon.

Spies Dislike Us, Con't

So remember last month when we found out that hacker group Shadow Brokers (who are totally not Russians) released the NSA's hacking toolkit worldwide to see just what chaos they could cause and of course people started asking some questions:

The real mystery here is why the Shadow Brokers released this data. Ordinarily, a hostile intelligence service wouldn’t tip their hand by showing that they had obtained this information but there are some clear strategic benefits to that kind of signalling. Releasing the vulnerabilities themselves goes a step further. It ensures not only that the NSA is unable to use the Windows 0-days against targets, but that you aren’t either. It is a matter of short time before these tools are patched, and thus unavailable to anyone. These are tremendously valuable tools to just burn that way, so it does make one wonder (and worry): what exactly is the intended payoff here?

Today we have our answer.

Employees and patients across multiple UK National Health Service facilities were displaced on Friday thanks to a large-scale cyberattack on network computers across Eurasia, including Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan. 

Doctors and hospital staff were locked out of patient files and forced to relocate emergency patients, the Guardian reported. The attack made use of ransomware, a type of malware that restricts file and system access by encrypting data. The hackers then demand payment in exchange for decrypting the data and restoring access. Patient records, emails, schedules, and phone lines were all ensnared in the attack. 

British health officials said its systems were not the target of the attack. But security experts believe the vulnerability exploited during the attack was discovered by the NSA, and was included among the many cyber tools previously stolen from the American intelligence community earlier this year, the New York Times reported. The ransomware was distributed via email. 

Hospitals and telecom companies in western Europe, Russia, and Asia were also affected, the MalwareHunterTeam told the New York Times. 

The hackers demanded each user pay $300 in bitcoin to a specific bitcoin account in the next three days, potentially totaling thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin. The ransom doubles if payments aren’t made in that time, according to the hacker’s message obtained by the Guardian, and files will be kept restricted “forever” if payment isn’t received in seven days.

Meanwhile, you'd be crazy not to suspect that somebody just gained access to thousands of medical files in the UK and that's just a drop in the bucket.  Maybe this was the work of the Shadow Brokers, maybe it was somebody else, but my money continues to be on Vladimir and his friends, who sure could use a massive global distraction from the Comey firing and Trump/Russia investigations making worldwide headlines right now, particularly a destructive move that affects our closest ally in Britain.

Suddenly the Brits are all tied up dealing with this cyberattack rather than looking into any Trump connections and backing up US investigators.  Nice plan if you can execute it, and like clockwork:

In light of today's attack, Congress needs to be asking @NSAgov if it knows of any other vulnerabilities in software used in our hospitals.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 12, 2017

Funny, the timing on this.  Just when the US intel community gears up to go to war with Trump over Comey's firing, this happens.

You do the math.

The Whole Goal Of The Troll Patrol

Former right-wing talk radio host Charlie Sykes takes to the NY Times to write an op-ed on recent events and finally finds what I've been saying for years: it doesn't matter what Republicans do to their own voters as long as they are making liberals second-class citizens.

If there was one principle that used to unite conservatives, it was respect for the rule of law. Not long ago, conservatives would have been horrified at wholesale violations of the norms and traditions of our political system, and would have been appalled by a president who showed overt contempt for the separation of powers. 

But this week, as if on cue, most of the conservative media fell into line, celebrating President Trump’s abrupt dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James Comey, and dismissing the fact that Mr. Comey was leading an investigation into the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. “Dems in Meltdown Over Comey Firing,” declared a headline on Fox News, as Tucker Carlson gleefully replayed clips of Democrats denouncing the move. “It’s just insane actually,” he said, referring to their reactions. On Fox and talk radio, the message was the same, with only a few conservatives willing to sound a discordant or even cautious note. 

The talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was positively giddy, opening his monologue on Wednesday by praising Mr. Trump for what he called his “epic trolling” of liberals. “This is great,” Mr. Limbaugh declared. “Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows? So he fires Comey yesterday. Who’s he meet with today? He’s meeting with the Soviet, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov! I mean, what an epic troll this is.” 

Given the enthusiasm of the president’s apologists, it is likely that much of Mr. Trump’s base will similarly rally to him as it has in the past.

But perhaps most important, we saw once again how conservatism, with its belief in ordered liberty, is being eclipsed by something different: Loathing those who loathe the president. Rabid anti-anti-Trumpism. 

In a lamentably overlooked monologue this month, Mr. Limbaugh embraced the new reality in which conservative ideas and principles had been displaced by anti-liberalism. For years, Mr. Limbaugh ran what he called the “Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.” But in the Trump era, he told his audience, he has changed that to the “Institute for Advanced Anti-Leftist Studies.” 

With Mr. Trump in the White House, conservative principles were no longer the point. “How many times during the campaign did I warn everybody Trump is not a conservative? Multiple times a day,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “How many times have I told you: ‘Do not expect Trump to be a conservative? He isn’t one.’ ”He went on to emphasize that the campaign was not about conservatism, because that’s not what Mr. Trump is about.

That was a remarkable admission, but it is also a key to understanding what is happening on the right. While there are those like Sean Hannity who are reliable cheerleaders for all things President Trump, much of the conservative news media is now less pro-Trump than it is anti-anti-Trump. The distinction is important, because anti-anti-Trumpism has become the new safe space for the right. 

Here is how it works: Rather than defend President Trump’s specific actions, his conservative champions change the subject to (1) the biased “fake news” media, (2) over-the-top liberals, (3) hypocrites on the left, (4) anyone else victimizing Mr. Trump or his supporters and (5) whataboutism, as in “What about Obama?” “What about Clinton?”
For the anti-anti-Trump pundit, whatever the allegation against Mr. Trump, whatever his blunders or foibles, the other side is always worse. 

But the real heart of anti-anti-Trumpism is the delight in the frustration and anger of his opponents. Mr. Trump’s base is unlikely to hold him either to promises or tangible achievements, because conservative politics is now less about ideas or accomplishments than it is about making the right enemies cry out in anguish.

I'm glad that Sykes arrives at this conclusion, it's important that we admit one party is now dedicated to the destruction of half of America in order to try to benefit themselves in the chaos and carnage. But again, this has been the obvious point of the Republican party since Reagan if not Nixon: crush the other guys and rule unopposed over them.

This is why we see the victimization complex on the right these days, that Christianity is always "under assault" (but not by the admitted serial adulterer, abuser of women and the literal walking poster boy for graven images).  They have to be the victims, because it gives them the excuse to take whatever measures are necessary to destroy us, crush us, kill us.

It was always about putting us in our place, and increasingly that place is a shallow, unmarked grave. That's why they will hold on to Trump as his regime crumbles around him, because if they don't, they will know what it's like to be us.  They can't handle it.  They will burn this country down rather than see another non-white president, and Trump will let them.

Cry out in anguish indeed.

Last Call For Depression Of Suppression

As I keep saying, the best ally Republicans have right now is the suppression of the black and Latino vote in purple and red states to make sure they stay that way, and the evidence is now in on why 2016 was so badly missed by the pollsters: voter suppression worked better than even the GOP imagined.

A record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall voter turnout – defined as the share of adult U.S. citizens who cast ballots – was 61.4% in 2016, a share similar to 2012 but below the 63.6% who say they voted in 2008. 

A number of long-standing trends in presidential elections either reversed or stalled in 2016, as black voter turnout decreased, white turnout increased and the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate remained flat since the 2012 election. Here are some key takeaways from the Census Bureau’s report, the data source with the most comprehensive demographic and statistical portrait of U.S. voters. 

The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.

The Latino voter turnout rate held steady at 47.6% in 2016, compared with 48.0% in 2012. Overall turnout remained flat despite expectations heading into Election Day of a long-awaited, historic surge in Latino voters. Due largely to demographic growth, the number of Latino voters grew to a record 12.7 million in 2016, up from 11.2 million in 2012. Even so, the number of Latino nonvoters – those eligible to vote who do not cast a ballot, or 14 million in 2016 – was larger than the number of Latino voters, a trend that extends back to each presidential election since 1996. Meanwhile, the Asian voter turnout rate increased to 49.3% in 2016, up from 46.9% in 2012 and surpassing Hispanics for the first time since 1996. Asians continue to represent a smaller share of voters than Hispanics: Overall, about 5 million Asians voted in 2016, up from 3.8 million in 2012.

Yet black and especially Latino voters were the most engaged voters in the polls, time after time.  If you factor in GOP voter suppression, these numbers make a lot more sense, particularly in states that passed voter suppression laws after 2013.  Those resulted in rock-bottom turnout for midterms and halted or completely reversed presidential election turnout model growth for both groups.

It worked so well, Donald Trump won.

I'll Have The Prosecutor Special, Please

It's clear now that Republicans will never allow a special prosecutor in the FBI Trump/Russia investigation.  Greg Sargent says that Senate Dems in particular could try to force one,

Trump also claims Democrats have no business attacking him for firing Comey, since they protested Comey’s conduct. But Democrats can still be furious with Comey’s handling of the newly discovered Clinton emails, while also pointing out that Trump’s firing of Comey is highly suspect and demands a special prosecutor. 

Regardless, multiple GOP senators — such as John McCain, Bob Corker, Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake and Richard Burr — are also troubled by that firing. But they can do something more about this if they wish to. The FBI’s investigation will now be led by Rosenstein. But Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey persuasively argue that the firing of Comey, amid an active investigation of his own campaign, “violates profoundly important norms of an independent, non-political FBI” and that Rosenstein, having already participated in this “tawdry episode,” can’t “credibly lead this investigation any longer,” necessitating an independent prosecutor. 

Wittes and Hennessey add, however, that senators and members of Congress “have tools at their disposal” that could help compel the appointment of an independent prosecutor. I contacted Wittes, a legal observer at the Brookings Institution who runs the Lawfare blog, to ask what these might be. 

Wittes suggested several ideas to me. He noted that, with all Democrats and a handful of Republicans upset about the Comey firing, there are enough senators “to create a blocking majority for the next FBI director,” who must be confirmed. This blocking majority, Wittes said, could theoretically condition its support for nominees to that post, insisting that the Justice Department produce a fuller accounting of the recommendation into the Comey firing or that the department appoint a special prosecutor on the Russia probe. 

Alternatively, Wittes noted, individual senators — in either party, but especially in the majority — can employ other tactics to force the issue. They could try to oppose funding for various other Justice Department priorities or block other nominations to the department. “I would not give that cooperation until the Justice Department names a special prosecutor,” Wittes said.

Finally, Democrats — with or without a handful of Republican allies, but preferably with them — can basically try to grind the Senate to a halt, by refusing cooperation on any legislation or nominations or anything, until GOP leaders and/or the White House agree to some form of independent investigation. “Every time they’re asked to cooperate on something, this needs to be front and center,” Wittes says. “They needs to be focused like a laser beam on that every time they’re asked to give unanimous consent.”

The Dems are opting to go for doors two and three so far.  They're starting to place holds on the many deputy/assistant level cabinet positions that the Trump regime is trying to fill, and they are slow-walking all other Senate business with procedural moves to piss off Mitch.

How effective this will be, I can't tell you.  We'll see, but I'm thinking the Dems will eventually have to do something about Comey's replacement, and they will need at least some Republican help for that.

Speaking of Ben Wittes ar Lawfare Blog, he does have another option for a special prosecutor that would involve Deputy AG Ron Rosenstein choosing to go out like a hero after Trump hung him out to dry yesterday:

The trouble is that while Rosenstein got what he wanted, Trump’s idea of correcting the record was to say publicly exactly the thing about a law enforcement officer that makes his continued service in office impossible: That Trump had used his deputy attorney general as window dressing on a pre-cooked political decision to shut down an investigation involving himself, a decision for which he needed the patina of a high-minded rationale. 

Once the President has said this about you—a law enforcement officer who works for him and who promised the Senate in confirmation hearings you would show independence—you have nothing left. These are the costs of working for Trump, and it took Rosenstein only two weeks to pay them. 

The only decent course now is to name a special prosecutor and then resign.

I wouldn't count on that happening unless we get some bombshell news on the investigation (which is entirely possible).  But it could happen.

The much larger question is if any of it actually matters anymore.

Sex, Lies, And Videotape In NKY

The big local story this week in Northern Kentucky is the precipitous fall of former Campbell County district Judge Tim Nolan, a major player in the state's GOP and Trump's county campaign chair.  Nolan has been involved in the Kentucky Republican party since before I was born, so it was a huge shock around here to see a grand jury charge him last week with multiple counts of rape, human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking of five adults, witness tampering and prostitution.  Nolan was in court yesterday on arraignment, and things got weird.

Tim Nolan pleaded not guilty to an 11-count indictment that included rape, witness tampering, human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking of five adults, unlawful transaction of a minor and prostitution.

But then his attorney Margo Grubbs made impassioned arguments and accusations that prompted Kenton County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Lape to remark that this was a bond hearing and “not a comment on the justice system.”

Among the things revealed:

• Grubbs said they believe one of the grandmothers of the victim is a tenant on Nolan’s sprawling farm in southern Campbell County and pays rent to him.
• There are nine alleged victims covered in the indictment, according to prosecutor and Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley.

Grubbs argued the bail was too high, accused police of not interviewing all the witnesses and said someone, they believe mother of one of the victims, has tried to contact Nolan to see if he’s all right. She also revealed she believes that the accusations against Nolan are connected to a lawsuit.

She confirmed to the press after the hearing the lawsuit she referred to was the defamation suit Nolan filed against some Republicans behind GOPFacts.org.

It's another bizarre wrinkle in what has become a convoluted case that has shocked Northern Kentucky.

Nolan, dressed in a gray suit, sat calmly in court as his attorney unfurled arguments why she thinks authorities violated his rights. The Campbell County police went into his rural farmland “with guns ablazing” when they searched his property in February, Grubbs said in court.

Nolan could face more than 100 years in prison if convicted on all counts. He’s maintained his innocence. After the hearing, he tried to talk to the press as his attorney desperately tried to pull him toward the courtroom elevators.

“This is my attorney and my attorney tells me I cannot make any statements,” Nolan said. “I’d love to other than I can tell you we have a great Constitution and I have a great attorney and we will vigorously defend this.”

This is about as close to "Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard ending up in court on sexual assault crimes" as it gets, folks, and I guarantee you that this case is going to get far uglier as it goes on.  I'll keep an eye on it as things go but this is going to be huge around here.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions is telling federal prosecutors to reverse an Obama-era criminal justice reform policy by seeking to charge suspects with the most serious crime possible.
• The Justice Department will open an investigation into the shooting death of Texas teenager Jordan Edwards by a former police officer, Roy Oliver already faces state murder charges.
• South Korea's government is getting tough on the country's two biggest automakers as officials have ordered a mandatory recall of 240,000 Kia and Hyundai vehicles over safety concerns.
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has announced a bilateral trade deal with China this week, more natural gas and beef will go to China and the US will import more poultry from Beijing.
• Music services Spotify and Apple iTunes will be coming to the Windows Store later this year as Microsoft expands its selections for Windows apps.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

Here's a thing, maybe the Trump regime should stop admitting to obstruction of justice on national television.

Earlier Thursday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Comey firing may hasten the agency's investigation into Russian meddling. 

"We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," she said, referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's election. "And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen." 

The statement had come as a surprising admission from the White House that Comey's sudden dismissal on Tuesday may have an effect on the Russia probe. Officials have insisted the removal came because of Comey's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server, and was unrelated to his oversight of the look into Russia's election hacking and possible ties between Trump advisers and Russian operatives. 

Earlier in her briefing Thursday, Sanders claimed that Comey's firing had not altered the Russia investigation at all. 

"Any investigation that was taking place Monday was taking place today," Sanders said, suggesting that was an indication that Comey's firing would not impact the ongoing probe. 

Now, you can make the argument that the "make that happen" Sanders was referring when it came to removing Comey from his job was modifying the word "integrity" rather than "conclusion" and that she wanted the "integrity" part to happen as a result of Comey's firing.

Well, you could argue that if Sanders or anybody in the regime had any credibility on this, which they do not (and Sanders certainly did not help anyone with her bad choice of wording.)

Still, nobody believes that Comey's firing was the reason Trump gave on Tuesday.  That ship has sailed.  We're deep in the weeds on this one for now, and we'll just have to see what the FBI investigation finds.

Operation Trump The Vote

You guys know I've been talking about Kansas GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach for a while now, as he's been the leading Republican on the party's national voter suppression efforts for the last several years now.  Kobach was also in the running for Trump's Attorney General but that ultimately went to Jeff Sessions.

However, it seems that Trump has found something for Kobach to do, and that is to officially lead up the regime's efforts to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters in 2018.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, multiple senior administration officials tell ABC News. 

The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the ‘Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’ in a press release today. It's not clear whether the White House will allow coverage of the order signing. 

The commission, which will include Republicans and Democrats, will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in U.S. voting systems and potential effects on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," according to one official with knowledge of the announcement. 

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation. 

“You can never really find, you know, there are going to be -- no matter what numbers we come up with there are going to be lots of people that did things that we're not going to find out about,” Trump told ABC News' David Muir in January. "But we will find out because we need a better system where that can't happen." 

Administration officials would not provide a draft copy of the order but described its scope to ABC News. The commission's review is expected be broad in scope, and will not just address Trump's allegations about the 2016 election but also "systemic issues that have been raised over many years in terms of the integrity of the elections," one official said. 

There's no doubt in my mind that this commission is the first step on the way to de facto national Voter ID laws ahead of 2018 midterms and especially 2020 presidential elections, and the GOP effort to keep millions, maybe tens of millions of people from being able to ever vote again.

That was always the plan once the GOP got back in power again.  Looks like more than ever that this plan is on.

Drain Your Own Swamp For Once

Back in October, Hurricane Matthew tore up Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba as a Category 5 storm, killing more than 500, and then dumped feet of rain on the Carolinas and killing 50 more before stumbling into the Canadian Maritimes and setting rainfall records.

The flooding damage in North Carolina was particularly bad, especially near the border with SC and last month Gov. Roy Cooper and NC House Republicans requested nearly a billion dollars in FEMA aid for the state from the Trump regime to help families in the Fayetteville and Wilmington area. Lumberton, where interstates 74 and 95 cross, was the hardest hit.

This week the Trump regime got back to them on that request and told them to go pound sand.

The State of North Carolina requested $929 million from the federal government to help with costs associated with Hurricane Matthew, but the state will be receiving far less than that, according to an announcement by Gov. Roy Cooper. 

North Carolina will receive only $6.1 million from the Trump administration. That’s 99 percent less than the requested amount. 

In a letter Cooper sent to the president and other officials today, he expressed “shock and disappointment in the lack of federal funding for Hurricane Matthew recovery efforts.”
The governor had worked with Sen. Thom Tillis and Representatives David Price (D) and Rep. David Rouzer (R) in April to come up with a request to Congress to help cover the costs associated with the destruction left by Matthew. 

The $929 million requested would have been used to “help communities and families fix homes, repair businesses and recover from the historic flooding,” Cooper said. 

“Families across Eastern North Carolina need help to rebuild and recover, and it is an incredible failure by the Trump Administration and Congressional leaders to turn their backs,” said Cooper said in a statement released to the press. “Matthew was a historic storm and we are still working every day to help families return home and rebuild their communities. North Carolinians affected by this storm cannot be ignored by the Trump Administration and Congressional leadership, and I will continue to work with our Congressional delegation to get North Carolina residents affected by the storm the help they deserve.”

Southeastern NC?  Voted big for Trump and the GOP.

Here endeth the lesson.

StupidiNews!

• Under police watch, city parks crews in New Orleans have begun the removal of the city's Jefferson Davis memorial, the second of four Confederate monuments slated for relocation.
• China has issued warning statements to US members of Congress who visited the Dalai Lama in India last week, saying that it sends the wrong message about the status of Tibet.
• Pope Francis is expected to announce canonization of two Portuguese shepherd children who first reported visions of the Madonna a century ago in the town of Fatima.
• European airlines are already working to inform passengers to the US of the Trump regime's expected laptop ban being expanded to all incoming flights from Europe this week.
• Tech company Tesla is launching its solar roof panel nationally this week, pre-orders for the roof system require $1,000 to get on the waiting list.