The Drums Of War, Con't

While the Trump regime is in now full panic mode over the coming Mueller indictments, the counter-operation that will make all this go away is in full swing, half a world away. Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis is priming the pump for war, and right now it's a race to see which will happen first, an indictment that leads to Trump's downfall, or the bombs dropping on Pyongyang.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Saturday the threat of nuclear missile attack by North Korea is accelerating. 

In remarks in Seoul with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo at his side, Mattis accused the North of illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear programs — and vowed to defeat any attack. 

Mattis said North Korea engages in “outlaw” behavior and that the U.S. will never accept a nuclear North. 

He added that regardless of what the North might try, it is overmatched by the firepower and cohesiveness of the decades-old U.S.-South Korean alliance. 

“North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programs,” he said, adding that U.S.-South Korean military and diplomatic collaboration thus has taken on “a new urgency.” 

“I cannot imagine a condition under which the United States would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he said. 

As he emphasized throughout his weeklong Asia trip, which included stops in Thailand and the Philippines, Mattis said diplomacy remains the preferred way to deal with the North. 

“With that said,” he added, “make no mistake — any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.”

And it won't be long before the case will be made that America must attack to stop North Korea, and the closer Mueller comes to Trump, the closer we come to a war that will kill millions.

Trump Cards, Con't

Red state faithful in Ohio are only realizing now how truly screwed they are by handing the country over to Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell, and will have to warm themselves at night with thought that at least it'll be worse for those people or something.

Doug Corcoran is in the trenches every day in the fight against the opioid crisis in the rural Ohio county he helps oversee.

So President Donald Trump’s failure this week to formally declare the overdose epidemic a “national emergency” - words that would have freed up more federal funds to tackle the crisis - was disappointing for him. 

“I have been hopeful for the last several years that the federal government would step up and help us with this crisis, and they haven’t. They’ve really dropped the ball on this and it’s sad,” said Corcoran, a county commissioner in Ross County, home to 77,000 people an hour south of Columbus, Ohio.

The county’s child services budget nearly doubled in the past five years to almost $2.4 million from $1.3 million, because of the number of children needing care due to addicted parents. For a county with a general fund of $23 million, that is a stress on the finances. 

Corcoran struggles constantly to make funds available from the county budget for the likes of drug treatment centers, the county jail and anti-drug education programs.
The disappointment about Trump’s announcement is more bitter in Ross County given that more than 60 percent of the county voted for the Republican at last year’s presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

Oh well.  Hillary had a plan to help you, and I'm 99.99999% sure Doug Corcoran told his buddies at the church cookout that he would never vote for "that stupid Clinton bitch" and that Trump was going to MAGA the hell out of Ohio.

Now you get the Republican plan.  We all do, but it's going to cause the most suffering in Ohio's farm counties too, but as long as FOX News is filled with stories about those people suffering too, I'm pretty sure Doug will vote GOP straight ticket again and again.

They're Richie Rich Rich

The global wealth inequality phenomenon over the last ten years is hardly limited to the US, as the world's thousand-plus billionaires are now worth $6 trillion and counting.

The world’s super-rich hold the greatest concentration of wealth since the US Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century, when families like the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts controlled vast fortunes.

Billionaires increased their combined global wealth by almost a fifth last year to a record $6tn (£4.5tn) – more than twice the GDP of the UK. There are now 1,542 dollar billionaires across the world, after 145 multi-millionaires saw their wealth tick over into nine-zero fortunes last year, according to the UBS / PwC Billionaires report. 

Josef Stadler, the lead author of the report and UBS’s head of global ultra high net worth, said his billionaire clients were concerned that growing inequality between rich and poor could lead to a “strike back”.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Stadler said. “Wealth concentration is as high as in 1905, this is something billionaires are concerned about. The problem is the power of interest on interest – that makes big money bigger and, the question is to what extent is that sustainable and at what point will society intervene and strike back?” 

Stadler added: “We are now two years into the peak of the second Gilded Age.” 

He said the “$1bn question” was how society would react to the concentration of so much money in the hands of so few.

Anger at so-called robber barron families who built up vast fortunes from monopolies in US rail, oil, steel and banking in the late 19th century, an era of rapid industrialisation and growing inequality in America that became known as the Gilded Age, led to President Roosevelt breaking up companies and trusts and increasing taxes on the wealthy in the early 1900s. 

“Will there be similarities in the way society reacts to this gilded age?,” Stadler asked. “Will the second age end or will it proceed?”

Considering Republicans in Congress are working to cut $6.5 trillion in taxes, 90% of which will go to the wealthiest, I'm betting the world's billionaires will see their total net worth grow by trillions more in the Trump era., at the direct expense of the rest of us poor slobs.

And yeah, as they say, something's gotta give. 

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Ahh, it's Friday News Dump time for more Trump/Russia fun, and this week doesn't disappoint.  First up, more news on Donny Junior's meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016:

Natalia V. Veselnitskaya arrived at a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 hoping to interest top Trump campaign officials in the contents of a memo she believed contained information damaging to the Democratic Party and, by extension, Hillary Clinton. The material was the fruit of her research as a private lawyer, she has repeatedly said, and any suggestion that she was acting at the Kremlin’s behest that day is anti-Russia “hysteria.” 

But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim. 

The coordination between the Trump Tower visitor and the Russian prosecutor general undercuts Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that she was a purely independent actor when she sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul J. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chairman. It also suggests that emails from an intermediary to the younger Mr. Trump promising that Ms. Veselnitskaya would arrive with information from Russian prosecutors were rooted at least partly in fact — not mere “puffery,” as the president’s son later said. 

In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated her charges at length last week at an annual conference of Western academics. A state-run television network recently made them the subject of two special reports, featuring interviews with Ms. Veselnitskaya and Mr. Chaika.

The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign. Like some other Russian experts, Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said they indicate that Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions “were coordinated from the very top.”

The Trump Tower meeting is of keen interest to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigates Russian efforts to help Mr. Trump’s campaign. At least one participant at the meeting has already testified before a federal grand jury.

We're now seeing what was waiting in store for a Clinton administration if Hillary had won: a coordinated GOP push along with Russia to go after the biggest Democratic donors for tax evasion.  This was planned from the beginning as part of the arsenal Putin had on hand to bring the US to its knees, buried under disinformation and Republican shamelessness.

As I've said before, the GOP/Russia side has moved to a new level as the Mueller investigation draws closer to completion.  The rush to discredit Mueller and Comey as working for the Clintons is laughable, but the goal is to put enough doubt on the side of the balance that the legitimacy of any recommended indictments are thrown into question, enough so that naturally it will be acceptable when Jeff Sessions and the DOJ take no action...and maybe decide instead to take action against Clinton.

Vox's Zach Beauchamp sets up the playing field for story number two on Cambridge Analytica.

The second big piece of news this week concerns Cambridge Analytica, the UK-based company that ran the Trump campaign’s data operation beginning in June 2016. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Cambridge as part of his look into the Trump-Russia mess, with the company’s work with disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn raising a particularly big red flag. 

“We know that congressional and DOJ investigators believe that Trump’s campaign might have helped guide Russia’s voter targeting scheme and that Flynn, who worked for Trump’s campaign and with Cambridge Analytica, is suspected of having extensive ties with Russian operatives,” my colleague Sean Illing explains in a vital profile of the group. 

The scoop this week, first reported by the Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff on Wednesday morning, is that Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix reached out to WikiLeaks head Julian Assange to try to acquire 33,000 emails that had been deleted from Clinton’s private server. 

This matters for two reasons. First, it suggests a willingness on the part of Trump allies to reach out to foreign sources with anti-American agendas (Assange is no fan of the USA). Second, it could in theory point to a pathway through which information traveled from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign: We know that Assange published emails Russia passed to him after stealing them from Clinton allies. 

“If true, HOLY COW!” tweeted Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who tracks Russian involvement in US politics. “US political campaign seeking help of US adversary doing damage to US, to then damage another American.” 

This, like the Post’s Clinton scoop, is legitimately interesting — but is also being overinterpreted by people who believe it confirms their overarching view of the Russia scandal. 

First, there’s no evidence (yet) that the Trump campaign was behind Nix’s outreach. While he informed Trump allies of the idea of working with WikiLeaks afterward, there’s no reason to believe they told him to write the email — which suggests it wasn’t a “political campaign seeking help of US adversary,” as Watts wrote. 

“No one from the Trump campaign was copied on the email,” CNN reported in a follow-up to the Daily Beast’s piece. “It is not clear whether he sent it before or after Cambridge Analytica was brought onto the campaign.” 

Second, and more importantly, there’s no evidence that the Cambridge-WikiLeaks connection actually went anywhere. Assange tweeted that he refused to help Nix; while he’s not especially credible, that’s also what Woodruff’s sources said. 

“Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own,” she writes. 

So while the Cambridge Analytica report is certainly suggestive, it doesn’t on its own confirm very much.

For now, yes.  But I'm betting the other shoe drops soon, and this is where things get very nasty for the Trump regime when they do.  That this is happening at the same time you're seeing things like former Trump regime adviser Sebastian Gorka all but call for Hillary Clinton to be executed for treason is no coincidence.

The serious stuff is just starting.

And that brings us to the big reveal tonight from CNN.

A federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter. 

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.

This explains the sudden move this week  to discredit the Mueller investigation and deflect to "Clinton collusion".  They knew the charges were coming.  They know somebody's doing the perp walk next week.

Somebody with ties to Trump.

On Friday, top lawyers who are helping to lead the Mueller probe, including veteran prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, were seen entering the court room at the DC federal court where the grand jury meets to hear testimony in the Russia investigation. 

Reporters present saw a flurry of activity at the grand jury room, but officials made no announcements.

We're entering the next phase of the game.  The sides are on the field and awaiting the fight. Still don't believe me?

Here we go.

Pence Would Be Worse, Take That On Faith

Meanwhile, for those of us still convinced that Mike Pence would somehow be less awful at this whole presidential thing than Trump, have I got news for you!

Vice President Pence on Wednesday said that President Trump has instructed the State Department to stop funding certain "ineffective" United Nations relief efforts and to instead provide humanitarian assistance directly through USAID and "faith-based groups." 

In a speech at the In Defense of Christians annual Solidarity Dinner for Christians in the Middle East, Pence excoriated the U.N., saying the international body has "often failed to help the most vulnerable communities especially religious minorities."

"We will no longer rely on the United Nations alone to assist persecuted Christians and minorities in the wake of genocide and the atrocities of terrorist groups," Pence said to applause.

"The United States will work hand in hand from this day forward with faith-based groups and private orgs to help those who are persecuted for their faith. This is the moment, now is the time, and America will support these people in their hour of need." 

He did not specify what U.N. programs or initiatives the U.S. will no longer fund. 

Those faith-based groups, Pence said, have repeatedly had funding requests denied by the U.N., despite "proven track records." 

"Those days are over," Pence said. "Our fellow Christians and all who are persecuted in the Middle East should not have to rely on multinational institutions when America can help them directly."

Oh, but those specific programs will be easy to spot: any program that gives relief aid of any sort to the Palestinians, for starters.  Mysteriously, programs that continue to send money to Saudi extremists or the Syrian regime won't be touched, of course.

The real issue is the US now bypassing the UN to work with faith-based groups and private organizations to distribute billions in foreign aid, and you'd better belief the level of graft and corruption resulting from this will make the current waste in the UN look like pocket change.

The other issue is that the US can happily withhold aid from those who aren't devoutly Christian enough.  No contraception for you!  State-sponsored religion, we've got it.

As bad as America is under the Klep-Trump-cracy, we'd be a 100% Handmaid's Tale Christian Taliban theocracy under Pence.

Economic Anxiety, Con't

The economists over at Indeed Hiring Lab make the argument that the areas of the country that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 are the areas facing the smallest job growth in the decade ahead, meaning that if my predictions about Trump wrecking the economy come true, then the people who voted for Trump are going to be even worse off.

The BLS occupational projections favor some places over others. We combined these projections with 2016 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data on where specific occupations are located to see which places are blessed with faster-growing occupations.

The occupational projections suggest faster growth in urban areas than in suburbs, and slowest in rural areas. The two sectors projected to have no or negative growth — production and agriculture — are more concentrated in small towns and rural areas. Many technical, scientific, legal, financial, and healthcare jobs are clustered in big, dense cities.

Even among large metros, the occupational mix varies. Metro San Jose — that is, Silicon Valley — has the most favorable occupational mix for future growth, as do other big, coastal metros. Whether this translates into actual job growth depends on other factors, too, like the local cost of living and whether housing construction will accommodate future growth pressures.

Midsize metros in the South and Midwest tend to have a less favorable occupational mix, skewed more toward slower-growing production or administrative jobs. Again, other factors will influence whether these places end up having slower actual job growth — including their ability to attract jobs in faster-growing occupations.

The differences in projected growth among metros are small. Large metros aren’t as different in their occupational mix as you might think: many retail, sales, and service occupations are “everywhere jobs.” Plus, this calculation might understate the impact of job mix on local growth because it ignores any multiplier effect of, say, a local tech boom on local retail demand.

These geographic differences might also lead to further political polarization. Blue America has a more favorable job mix for future growth than Red America, where slower-growing manufacturing and agriculture jobs are clustered. In places that voted for President Trump by a 20-point margin, 16% of workers are in occupations projected to shrink, versus 13.2% of workers in places that voted for Hillary Clinton by a similar margin.

The risk of job loss goes in the opposite direction of other job-market indicators. Likely Trump supporters have, on average, lower unemployment and higher wages than likely Clinton supporters. But should these BLS projections come true, then the labor market could shift further toward healthcare and other high-education jobs, and away from production, middle-wage, and traditionally small-town jobs. In turn this may end up reinforcing or even increasing the economic, geographic, and political polarization of America.

Which makes you wonder, why did Red America vote for the party of policies that would specifically make this situation worse for them, only making them angrier in 2018, 2020 and beyond?

Gosh, I just don't know.

StupidiNews!

• Defense Secretary James Mattis made an unannounced visit Friday to the Korean DMZ, where he told South Korea that America's goal is not war, but peace on the Korean peninsula.
• While 2,800 documents related to the JFK assassination have been released, Donald Trump held back on some documents claiming national security concerns from both the CIA and FBI.
• Spain is now set to impose direct governmental control over Catalonia in order to block the regions independence movement, a move which could escalate an already growing crisis.
• Australia's government is facing crisis after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and four other lawmakers were removed from parliament over dual-citizenship status Friday.
• A Silicon Valley startup has revealed a new AI algorithm that can beat CAPTCHA prompts with "minimal training", the algorithm is based off of how mammals process visual info.

Last Call For Immigration Nation, Con't

Trump's immigration detention goons never miss an opportunity to go after the undocumented when they are at their most vulnerable.

A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas after she passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint on her way to a hospital to undergo emergency gall bladder surgery. 

The girl, Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought over the border illegally to live in Laredo, Tex., when she was three months old, was being transferred from a medical center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance she was riding in, her family said. The agents allowed her to continue to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, the family said, but followed the ambulance the rest of the way there, then waited outside her room until she was released from the hospital. 

By Wednesday evening, according to family members and advocates involved in her case, immigration agents had taken her to a facility in San Antonio where migrant children who arrive alone in the United States from Central America are usually held, even though her parents, who both lack legal status, live 150 miles away in Laredo. 

Her placement there highlighted the unusual circumstances of her case: The federal government maintains detention centers for adult immigrants it plans to deport, facilities for families who arrive at the border together and shelters for children who come by themselves, known as unaccompanied minors. But it is rare, if not unheard-of, for a child already living in the United States to be arrested — particularly one with a serious medical condition.

This is who Trump chooses to "protect" America from: 10-year-old sick kids who came to the country as newborns but have to be deported because screw those lazy Mexicans, right?

Rosamaria’s cousin, Aurora Cantu, a United States citizen who was riding with her in the ambulance and accompanied her to the hospital, told Rosamaria’s mother and others working on the case that the agents had at first tried to persuade the family to agree to have the girl transferred to a Mexican hospital, pressing the family to sign a voluntary departure form for her. They declined to do so. The entire time Rosamaria was in surgery and then in recovery, several armed Border Patrol agents stood outside her hospital room, the family said. 

Her mother, Felipa de la Cruz, 39, said in an interview that her family had moved to Texas from Nuevo Laredo, the city in Mexico just across the border from Laredo, when her daughter was still an infant, hoping to get better treatment for her cerebral palsy.
They had not been able to afford her therapies in Mexico, she said, but in Texas, Medicaid paid for her daughter’s treatment, which included home visits from therapists. 

“I’m a mother. All I wanted was for her to get the surgery that she needed,” Ms. de la Cruz said. “It never crossed my mind that any of what is happening right now could happen. When you’re a mother, all you care about is your child.”

That's the issue.  We have to protect the American taxpayer from saving the life of a child.

Can Afford A Gun, Can't Afford To Be Shot

It feels like a lifetime ago, but the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history happened on the first of the month.  The families of the victims are picking up the pieces of their lives, and for the survivors, that means medical bills, disability insurance, and unemployment.

Kurt Fowler and his wife, Trina, were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary at a country music festival when the shooting started. Fowler, 41, knew he'd been hit in the ankle and couldn't run. He hid under the stage until the gunfire ended.

"I knew my foot was completely useless," said Fowler, a firefighter from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and a father of three. He underwent surgery, spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and still may need another operation. He also will need rehabilitation and follow-up visits with a specialist.

Fowler has a Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO through his job, but he said he doesn't know how much he will have to pay out of his own pocket for the care he is receiving. In an era of higher deductibles and limited choice of in-network doctors, however, he knows he could face significant medical bills.

His insurance card says his individual deductible is $5,000 and his coinsurance 20%. He said he didn't know how much his health plan would cover for out-of-state care.

"Medical expenses are astronomical these days," Fowler said from his bed at Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in Las Vegas. "It's a mountain that just doesn't seem like it's gonna be climbable, but we are gonna do our best."

As hundreds of survivors struggle to recover emotionally and physically from the Oct. 1 attack, they are beginning to come to terms with the financial toll of the violence perpetrated against them. Even those who are insured could face untold costs in a city they were only visiting.

The total costs of medical care alone could reach into the tens of millions of dollars, said Garen Wintemute, who researches gun violence at the University of California-Davis.

And that is just the beginning. Many survivors will be out of work for months, if they are able to return at all.

"We really don't have a good handle on the intangible costs of something like this ... the ripple effects on family and friends and neighborhoods when a large number of people have been shot," Wintemute said.

More than 100,000 people are shot every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That generates about $2.8 billion per year in emergency room and inpatient charges alone, according to a recent study in Health Affairs. The average emergency room bill for an individual gunshot victim is $5,254 and the average inpatient charge is $95,887, according to the study.

It costs a couple hundred bucks to buy a pistol in the US.  It costs $100,000 on average to get shot by one, and that happens to 100,000 people a year.

The cost of the Second Amendment is in the billions, folks.  It's an increasingly high price to pay and Republicans refuse to stem that tide of blood money.

Race To The Bottom, Con't

This is Trump's America, where now the majority of white people believe they are actively discriminated against.

A majority of whites say discrimination against them exists in America today, according to a poll released Tuesday from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"If you apply for a job, they seem to give the blacks the first crack at it," said 68-year-old Tim Hershman of Akron, Ohio, "and, basically, you know, if you want any help from the government, if you're white, you don't get it. If you're black, you get it."

More than half of whites — 55 percent — surveyed say that, generally speaking, they believe there is discrimination against white people in America today. Hershman's view is similar to what was heard on the campaign trail at Trump rally after Trump rally. Donald Trump catered to white grievance during the 2016 presidential campaign and has done so as president as well.

Notable, however, is that while a majority of whites in the poll say discrimination against them exists, a much smaller percentage say that they have actually experienced it. Also important to note is that 84 percent of whites believe discrimination exists against racial and ethnic minorities in America today.

To be fair, majorities of all ethnic groups believe they are discriminated against for their race.  The difference is what people believe to be discrimination.

Ask Hershman whether there is discrimination against whites, and he answered even before this reporter could finish the question — with an emphatic "Absolutely."

"It's been going on for decades, and it's been getting worse for whites," Hershman contended, despite data showing whites continue to be better off financially and educationally than minority groups.

Even though Hershman believes he has been a victim of anti-white discrimination, he wasn't able to provide a specific example. He describes losing out on a promotion — and a younger African-American being selected as one of the finalists for the job. But the position eventually went to a white applicant, who was also younger than Hershman.

Representing Category 2 is 50-year-old heavy equipment operator Tim Musick, who lives in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. He says anti-white discrimination is real, but he doesn't think he has ever really felt it personally.

"I think that you pretty much, because you're white, you're automatically thrown into that group as being a bigot and a racist and that somehow you perceive yourself as being more superior to everybody else, which is ridiculous," Musick said, speaking during his lunch break at a construction site.

"I'm just a man that happens to have been born white," Musick continued.

He also makes it clear, however, that he is not comparing what happens to whites to the African-American experience.

"I don't know what it feels like to be a black man walking around in the streets, but I do know what it feels like to be pegged, because of how you look, and what people perceive just on sight," said Musick, who has the stocky build of a retired NFL lineman and a shaved head under his hard hat.

Age discrimination is real.  That's Hershman's issue.  Prejudice is real, that's Musick's issue.  But racial discrimination, as in people taking negative actions against you based solely on race, well, neither one of these guys know what it's like.

But neither one of these gentlemen would ever wish to be black in America.  Not even for a day.

StupidiNews!

• Former Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott Brown, now US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, is under fire for inappropriate comments made to women in Samoa's capital of Apia.
• Donald Trump is expected to make public his plan to fight the nation's opioid abuse crisis today, federal health officials admit they're not sure what's actually in the proposal.
• New tougher security measures take effect for all international flights bound for the US today, airlines are bracing for long lines and significant delays for US-bound flights going forward. 
• House GOP leaders will take a vote today on passing a Senate GOP budget resolution that would allow massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich to pass with just 50 Senate votes.
• The FCC has eliminate decades-old rules on TV station control and local studio requirements, paving the way for corporate rule and signaling the end of local news being produced locally.

The Wrong Lesson From 2016

If the Virginia gubernatorial race and the state's other races turn into a disaster for Dems in two weeks, it's because Team Blue went all in on the "white voters matter" message from 2016, and it's coming directly at the expense of black Democrats in the state.  Steve Phillips at The Nation:

For all the analyses offered about the behavior of these voters in 2016, you hear almost nothing about the tactical and strategic decisions that led to the cataclysmic collapse of black-voter turnout. Of the first $200 million allocated by progressive outside groups for spending in 2016, zero dollars were directed to African-American voter mobilization. Zero. Despite the availability of multiple inspiring leaders of color in the mold of Barack Obama, the Clinton campaign opted to return to the days of fielding an all-white presidential ticket. In facing a Republican nominee whose candidacy was propelled by white racial fears and anxieties, the Democratic strategy was to largely ignore the racism and focus instead on Trump’s temperament. In the face of such neglect and disinterest, many black voters showed less interest in the election, and turnout plummeted to the lowest level in almost 20 years. A higher percentage of black voters turned out to vote for John Kerry than did for Hillary Clinton, and that precipitous decline cost her the pivotal states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—and, as a result, the White House. 

Rather than heeding last year’s wake-up call, Democrats continue to perpetuate this pattern of structural racism and implicit bias. Take the upcoming election in Virginia—a quadrennial political bellwether because it takes place the year after each presidential election. Smart electoral strategy should be predicated on empirical evidence and hard data, and the data in Virginia clearly illuminates the path to victory for Democrats. In off-year elections, turnout usually drops dramatically, lowering the threshold needed to secure a majority of the vote. Current Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe won the governor’s mansion in 2013 with about 1.1 million votes. It is the presidential elections that show the true size of the pool of progressive voters, and Clinton won nearly 2 million votes in Virginia last year. According to the exit polls, 53 percent of the Virginians who supported Clinton—1,047,518 voters—were people of color. That’s more than all of the people who backed the 2013 Republican gubernatorial nominee, Ken Cuccinelli, whose campaign garnered 1,013,354 votes. 

The racial myopia in the Democratic ecosystem is revealed by analyzing how money is spent by campaigns and how money is given tocampaigns. On the spending side, campaign allocations reflect a candidate’s true priorities. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Democratic nominee Ralph Northam has spent over $17 million as of October 1, 2017. Logically, if a majority of the target-voter universe consists of people of color, a campaign that wanted to win would spend a majority of its money trying to get those voters to the polls. But the Northam campaign’s biggest line item—nearly $9 million—consists of funds given to an advertising firm led by an all-white board to run television ads. These campaign ads attack the Republican nominee for his ties to the oil company Enron. What is the strategic rationale of such an advertising campaign? Clearly, those ads are not supposed to motivate African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and other people of color to take time from their busy lives to come out and support the Democratic ticket. 

Meanwhile, organizations specifically focused on mobilizing black voters—who comprised 37 percent of all Virginia Democratic voters in 2016—have to practically beg, borrow, and steal for resources to engage the voters who form the cornerstone of Democratic politics. BlackPAC, New Virginia Majority, and other community-based organizations have managed to gather enough resources to conduct a $1 million black-turnout program, but that’s just a fraction of the $8–10 million that should be allocated to reaching black voters, based on their numbers and centrality to Democratic victory.
Another indication of limited cultural competence in campaigns is the failure to take advantage of the fact that the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor is an African American, Justin Fairfax. From Harold Washington’s Chicago mayoral campaign in 1983 to Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, it has been shown that having a candidate from one’s community, particularly when that community bears the brunt of inequality, can be a motivating factor in increasing voter turnout. Given this, progressive donors and groups across the country should be showering resources on Fairfax’s campaign and featuring his face in campaign ads. Instead, Fairfax must be repeating to himself the words of the protagonist in Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

If anything, Justin Fairfax is seen as a hindrance to Ralph Northam.  He has appeared in zero joint commercials with Northam and the DNC has basically ignored Fairfax for months.

The bigger issue is that as bad as voter suppression is right now, Democrats are focused on unreliable Trump voters and not getting out the reliable black vote. I don't understand why, but there it is.  In fact, if Virginia is any indication, Democrats are now giving the appearance of being openly dismissive to black voters.

I still think Northam can win, and he'll pull it off by 5 points or so.  But it's going to be an ugly 2018 if Dems continue to think ignoring black voters and the suppression we face in favor of white Trump voters is going to win them races.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Over at Washington Monthly, Nancy LeTourneau correctly concludes that the GOP believes the Mueller investigation is about to blow wide open, and that the Republican party is getting out in front with a proper smokescreen story, in this case, the "bombshell revelations" from The Hill reporter John Solomon.

If you avoid right wing media, you might not be aware of the story that has them all galvanized right now, a remake of the old one about how the Russians bribed the Clintons to sell off 20 percent of America’s uranium. It’s the lie Peter Schweitzer tried to sell in his book, Clinton Cash, which has been repeatedly fact-checked since he and Bannon conned the New York Times into buying it in 2015. 

The reason this whole nonsense has been resurrected is because a reporter named John Solomon has been writing about it at The Hill almost daily for the last week. To understand what’s up, it is helpful to know a little bit about his background. From 1987 until 2006 Solomon worked as a reporter for the Associated Press. Here is how Josh Marshall summarized his reputation among fellow journalists.

He had a well-earned reputation as the easiest mark in the business for GOP oppo research hits. It was actually a kind of running gag among Republican campaign operatives. No one will run with a story you’re trying to float? Bring it to John Solomon.

Since then, Solomon worked mostly for the conservative Washington Times before going to Circa News.

You may remember that Circa was a startup with an ingenious but ultimately flawed or perhaps premature concept that debuted to much fanfare but ultimately shuttered. The URL and social media feeds of Circa were purchased by Sinclair Broadcasting, a hyper-right-wing media conglomerate, which is now buying up properties to bring its style of post-Fox News propaganda television nationwide. Sinclair put Solomon in charge of Circa and relaunched it as a Buzzfeed for right wing propaganda focused on millennials.

His position at The Hill started this past summer.

Solomon has dredged up the widely debunked "Clinton Foundation uranium scandal" again, featured in the hit job book Clinton Cash, backed by Steve Bannon and Breitbart News.  Why?  It's all they have to deflect the coming charges from Mueller.

Anyone wondering why major media outlets are ignoring this latest attempt to dig up old lies about Hillary Clinton need only look at the facts. But as much as Trump and right wing media outlets complain about the lack of coverage, I don’t think they are even attempting to reach a mainstream audience with this story. Instead, it is designed to prep Trump’s supporters for coming news from the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. In some cases, they’re not even being subtle about that. Take a look at how RedState introduces the story:

As the left and its media buddies continue to search for the elusive Russia/Trump collusion monster roaming forested hillsides, the FBI has actual evidence of a Russian plot that occurred in 2009 under Barack Obama’s watch. 

Beyond thinking that they can point fingers and say, “Clinton and Obama did it too, only worse,” this story is designed to discredit the people who are involved in the current Trump/Russia investigation. Here is what they’re all saying about Solomon’s first report that focused on the FBI’s investigation of “racketeering scheme” by Russian nuclear industry officials: 

Who was the prosecutor leading the investigation? Rod Rosenstein. That would be the same Rod Rosenstein who is now Deputy Attorney General and supervising the Russia probe. 

Who was the FBI Director? Robert Mueller. That would be the same Robert Mueller who is leading the Russia probe. 

Who was leading the FBI investigation? Andrew McCabe…This would be the same Andrew McCabe who approved his own refusal to recuse himself from the Russia investigation both because of his Clinton ties and because of his personal vendetta against Mike Flynn. 

Only in Washington could this mess be carried out and the perpetrators still not only walk free but be thought of as men of integrity. 

Whoa! So the guys who uncovered a plot by Russians working in the U.S. to provide kickbacks to their country’s oligarchs are now perpetrators who don’t deserve to be walking free? Do you see how far down the rabbit hole all of this has gone? 

That’s the news bubbling all over right wing web sites and Fox News and spread via social media. It is nothing more than a pre-emptive use of Trump’s ubiquitous pattern of lie, distract and blame designed to provide him and his base with a response when/if charges of collusion with Russia are brought against his campaign.

Bingo.  Remember, the GOP is counting on Trump's support among Trump voters to be unwavering.  If it is, he can survive pretty much anything thrown at him, the cowards in the GOP will see to that.  They can scream "partisan witch hunt" all day and get away with it.

But if Trump does something bad enough, he's done for.  The GOP knows this, they'll be joining him in obscurity and infamy as a result.  Therefore, the Trump faithful are being inoculated now, they'll point to the uranium deal and blame a "massive Obama/Clinton conspiracy" for Trump's problems.

House Republicans on Tuesday launched new probes into several Obama-era controversies, covering both the Justice Department’s 2016 handling of the Clinton email case and the administration’s 2010 approval for the sale of a mining company that gave the Russians partial control over American uranium reserves. 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., announced his committee and the House Oversight Committee will investigate the so-called Uranium One deal. 

“We’re not going to jump to any conclusions, but we’re going to try and get the facts,” Nunes said. 

Separately, the House oversight and judiciary committees announced a joint investigation into the Justice Department and FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe.

"Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said in a statement.

Endless Clinton investigations as a smokescreen for Trump's malfeasance was always the plan.  For the GOP to move on this story now means Mueller's recommended charges and indictments are coming sooner rather than later.  This will be "both sides do it" to the max as a result, all through the 2018 midterms.

And why now?  Why are these old Clinton wounds being ripped open again so that the GOP must investigate?

Maybe it's because they are covering for truly bad news for Trump.

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is pursuing an investigation into possible money laundering by Paul Manafort, said three people familiar with the matter, adding to the federal and state probes concerning the former Trump campaign chairman. 

The investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is being conducted in collaboration with a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into Mr. Manafort and possible money laundering, according to two of these people.

Stay tuned.  Things are moving quickly now into a dangerous new stage.

StupidiNews!

• In a 50-50 vote with the tie broken by Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Republicans voted to strip Americans of the ability to collectively sue banks and credit card companies for fraud.
• The House overwhelmingly voted to place new sanctions on North Korea that would end all foreign aid and block US banking transactions with countries that do business with Pyongyang.
• Thailand is beginning a five-day state funeral for the country's late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died last year at 88 and served as the country's ruler for 70 years.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping has presented a new five-year government without a clear political heir, leaving the door open to Xi remaining in power past 2022.
• A California judge has tossed a $417 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson over baby powder, saying there was no evidence that the product caused ovarian cancer.

Last Call For A Power Play In Puerto Rico

As millions in Puerto Rico remain without power, the Trump regime is turning to private industry to restore the power grid on the island.  The Senate is expected to finish up a $36.5 billion disaster relief package for Florida, Texas, California and Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands this week, and the biggest recipient of Puerto Rico's power grid contract, some $300 million to start with, is going to...a two-person company in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown.

For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico’s crippled electrical grid, the territory’s state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island’s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the “mutual aid” arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities — including those in Florida and Texas recently — to recover quickly after natural disasters.

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico’s spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

“The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish,” said Susan F. Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. “I’m scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.”

It adds up because Zinke wanted to bring home the bacon for his home state.  Guy still thinks he's a Congressman and of course this is a crapload of money awarded in a no-bid process because "emergency".

Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another — but only, Zinke’s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where “everybody knows everybody.” One of Zinke’s sons “joined a friend who worked a summer job” at one of Techmanski’s construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a “flagger.”

Zinke’s office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.

Techmanski said in an interview that the contract emerged from discussions between his company and the utility rather than from a formal bidding process. He said he had been in contact with the utility two weeks before Maria “discussing the ‘what if’ scenarios” of hurricane recovery. In the days after the hurricane, he said, “it started to make sense that there was a need here for our services and others.”

Just a total coincidence, I'm sure.

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company — which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million — was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.

Yeah, these guys are the best experts in restoring power in the entire country, two guys whose biggest ever project took 11 months to fix five miles of power lines in Arizona when Puerto Rico has tens of thousands of downed transmission and distribution lines.

But sure.  These guys will help Puerto Rico get the lights on, as the island heads into its second miserable month without power, water, sewage, and hope.  Did I mention Zinke's son worked for these guys?

Totally not relevant, I'm sure.

They're not even pretending anymore that it isn't all about the graft and the grift.