Last Call For Absolutely Tory Bull

UK Prime Minister called out the Labour party and forced new elections in order to complete Brexit, and that's exactly what the UK will get as the Tories ran rampant in Thursday's elections.

The Conservatives are set to win an overall majority of 86 in the general election, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

The survey taken at UK polling stations suggests the Tories will get 368 MPs - 50 more than at the 2017 election - when all the results have been counted.

Labour would get 191, the Lib Dems 13, the Brexit Party none and the SNP 55.

The Green Party will still have one MP and Plaid Cymru will lose one seat for a total of three, the survey suggests.

The first general election results are due before midnight, with the final total expected to be known by Friday lunchtime.

In the exit poll, voters are asked to fill in a mock ballot paper as they leave the polling station indicating how they have just voted.

The exit poll was conducted by Ipsos Mori at 144 polling stations, with 22,790 interviews.

Exit polls have proved to be very accurate in recent years. In 2017 it correctly predicted a hung Parliament, with no overall winner, and in 2015 it predicted the Conservatives would be the largest party.

It's shaping up to be a bloodbath, even worse than when Theresa May won.

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said if the exit poll figures are broadly correct then Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson will get the backing he needs in Parliament to take the UK out of the EU next month.

It would be the biggest Conservative victory since 1987 and Labour's worst result since 1935, the poll suggests, with the party forecast to lose 71 seats.

But it will not become clear whether the exit poll is accurate until the results start rolling in during the early hours of Friday.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said the government will move quickly to "get Brexit done" before Christmas by introducing legislation in Parliament, if it is returned to power.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC the exit poll was "extremely disappointing" for Labour if it was correct.

"I thought it would be closer. I think most people thought the polls were narrowing," he added.

If these results are anywhere close to accurate, the EU will be gutted.  Brexit will almost certainly happen before the end of the year, and you can kiss the National Health Service goodbye as well.

A brutal new era of British austerity is on tap, and when it becomes painfully clear that Johnson and his party have no idea how to manage the split from Brussels, it will be shockingly ugly.

And what of Labour and Jeremy Corbyn?

He's done.  He's resigning this week.  This is the equivalent of Tulsi Gabbard winning the Democratic nomination and getting utterly smashed in 2020, with Pelosi losing the House.  The United Kingdom will not stay united much longer, I fear.  Scotland all but voted to leave the UK today as well.

Stay tuned.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Dems are getting smart, getting tough, and getting real about taking back state legislatures in 2020, finally getting their act together with a multi-state, multi-million dollar projects to flip battleground states like Michigan and NC back to blue at the local level.

Two groups, Arena and Future Now Fund, are planning to spend $7 million to try to flip GOP-controlled state legislatures in Florida, Arizona, Michigan and North Carolina.

“If you look at where the important states are, the places most people are watching are the Electoral College to secure the White House,” said Daniel Squadron, co-founder of the Future Now Fund. “But the truth is that when you talk about the impact of 2020, electoral control of the state legislatures is critical.”

The organizations said their funding represents “the largest coordinated-side commitments to date in North Carolina, Michigan and Florida for the 2020 cycle.”

Under former President Barack Obama, Democrats lost more than 1,000 state and congressional seats. The devastating losses left many Democratic activists and insiders believing that they needed to do more to focus beyond the White House.

“That’s the lesson the radical right has taught us over the last 45 years,” said Ravi Gupta, co-founder of Arena. “So much of what is going on depends on the states.”

Arena and Future Now Fund are expecting to place more than 100 staffers in the four targeted states, hold five-day training academies for 150 aides in each of them, and provide funding to candidates and related groups. Most of their funds will be raised at the grassroots level, the liberal groups said.

Leaders for the groups said they chose those four states in particular for the joint project for several reasons: They think Democrats are poised to win them back, and that each state has faced voter rights or redistricting issues, such as gerrymandering in North Carolina.

They also want to address specific issues in those places, including low teacher pay in Arizona and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. And they are looking to take power in the states ahead of redistricting following the 2020 Census. The GOP prioritized its redistricting efforts to great success after the last Census, and the two groups are looking to emulate those results.

Frankly this is a project that should have started in 2008.  And I see Michale Bloomberg and Tom Steyer having both collectively spending close to $200 million on their ego runs for President when they could have instead pitched in just half of that total and made an enormous impact for Democrats.

Of course, Steyer and Bloomberg don't really care about local Democrats, so they wont lift a finger.

I'm just sad that it took so long for Dems to get their crap together on this.

The Last Days of Bevinstan

Outgoing GOP Gov. Matt Bevin left office at midnight on Tuesday, and Gov. Andy Beshear is now chief executive of the Bluegrass state, but Bevin didn't leave without a boatload of controversial pardons.

The family of a man pardoned by Gov. Matt Bevin for a homicide and other crimes in a fatal 2014 Knox County home invasion raised $21,500 at a political fundraiser last year to retire debt from Bevin’s 2015 gubernatorial campaign.
The brother and sister-in-law of offender Patrick Brian Baker also gave $4,000 to Bevin’s campaign on the day of the fundraiser, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance database.

A photo of Bevin attending the July 26, 2018, fundraiser at the home of Eric and Kathryn Baker in Corbin was published six days later in a local paper, the News Journal.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Jackie Steele, who prosecuted Patrick Baker and other defendants for the 2014 death of Donald Mills, told The Courier Journal on Wednesday it would be an “understatement to say I am aggrieved” by Bevin’s pardon.
Steele identified Patrick Baker as the brother of Eric Baker, who hosted the Bevin fundraiser at his Corbin home.

The Friday order was one of 428 pardons and commutations Bevin issued since his narrow loss in November to Democrat Andy Beshear, who was sworn into office Tuesday.
The beneficiaries include one offender convicted of raping a child, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner and a third who killed his parents.

Steele noted Baker served two years of a 19-year sentence on his conviction for reckless homicide, robbery, impersonating a peace officer and tampering with evidence.

Steele, who, like Bevin, is a Republican, also cited the fact that two of Baker’s co-defendants are still in prison. "What makes Mr. Baker any different than the other two?" he asked.

Answering that question, he said he believes Baker was pardoned while the others remain locked up because Baker’s family has given generously to Bevin. State records show that Victoria Baker, who lives at the same Corbin address where the fundraiser was held, donated $1,000 in 2015 and that Kathryn Baker gave another $500 to Bevin’s reelection in March.

In a pardon order Friday, Bevin said Baker had made “a series of unwise decisions in his adult life” and that his drug addiction “resulted in his association with people that in turn led to his arrest, prosecution and conviction for murder.”

Bevin wrote that the evidence supporting Baker’s conviction is “sketchy at best. I am not convinced that justice has been served on the death of Donald Mills, nor am I convinced that the evidence has proven the involvement of Patrick Baker as a murderer.”

Good to know that twenty-five grand or so will get a loved one off the hook for murder in Kentucky.

Well, if you're the right kind of person, that is.

Not going to miss Matt Bevin at all.

StupidiNews!

• GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to hold a vote to acquit Donald Trump after he is impeached when a majority of senators believe the trial has "run its course".
• Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is expected to settle out of court in his sexual assault trial for $25 million.
• The House has passed a Defense Authorization Act bill that gives Donald Trump his Space Force in exchange for paid family leave for all federal workers.
• The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee has advanced a bill to put additional economic sanctions on Turkey over Ankara's military action in Yemen, the bill faces a certain Trump veto.
• Senate Judiciary lawmakers in both parties blasted Big Tech in blaming crypto tech for the rise in child pornography and demanding that companies provide access to any data with a warrant.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Perry Bacon over at Five Thirty Eight sees a 56-44 vote in Trump's favor of acquittal as far as the Senate trial on articles of impeachment, and I think he's almost 100% dead right on the final vote.

Trump’s removal is supported by a plurality of Americans (48 percent) and more than 80 percent of Democrats. So if you’re the typical Democratic senator, who represents a blue-leaning state, the safe and obvious vote is for Trump’s removal. And that’s without even considering the strong evidence that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens in exchange for a White House meeting and military aid.

It’s hard for me to see even Democrats who like to emphasize their bipartisanship — Chris Coons of Delaware, for example — or those up for reelection in 2020 in blue-tinged swing states — Gary Peters of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota — voting against impeachment. Impeachment is popular enough among Democratic voters that any Democratic senator in a state that’s not solidly red would have serious electoral problems voting against it.

There are two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who are not up for re-election in 2020 but who might still vote against removal.

Sinema, who was elected last November, is known to be fairly centrist and comfortable bucking her party. She was one of only three Democrats who backed the confirmation of William Barr to be attorney general, for example. Manchin is friendly with Trump and voted for Barr and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The West Virginian has taken the same position as the Trump White House on key votes about 31 percent of the time in the current Congress, making him the chamber’s most Trump-aligned Democrat. Sinema is No. 2, backing the president’s position 21 percent of the time.

In terms of partisan lean,1 Arizona leans red, and West Virginia is super conservative. But I doubt electoral considerations matter that much to either Manchin nor Sinema — they aren’t up for reelection until 2024, when Trump’s impeachment will likely be a distant memory.

So I would bet that both Manchin and Sinema vote against Trump’s removal, preserving their brands as separate from the broader Democratic Party.

Like Manchin and Sinema, Doug Jones of Alabama also voted for Barr. Unlike Manchin and Sinema, Jones is up for re-election in 2020. My read on Jones is that he’s not that personally centrist; instead, he seems to be trying to figure out how to stay in his seat in pro-Trump Alabama. Jones has taken Trump’s position on 18 percent of Senate votes in the current Congress, making him the third-most Trump-aligned Democrat, after Manchin and Sinema. But relative to Alabama’s politics, Jones ranks behind only Jon Tester of Montana in bucking his state’s pro-Trump preferences.

My starting assumption is that Jones will vote against Trump’s removal, hoping that the vote helps his re-election bid. But he could also decide that Trump’s behavior is too extreme to condone and back removal — electoral consequences be damned. Or perhaps Jones votes for Trump’s removal both because he opposes the president’s conduct but also because the Alabama Democrat sees little chance of winning reelection anyway and is basically auditioning for a spot in the next Democratic president’s cabinet. (In 2016, presidential and U.S. Senate voting were highly correlated — no U.S. Senate candidate won in a state where his or her party’s presidential nominee lost. It’s hard to imagine the Democratic presidential nominee winning in Alabama in 2020, so Jones seems like an underdog.)

So that’s at least 44 votes for removal just among Democrats, and as many as 47. The removal of Trump would need another 20-23 votes. Those would have to come from among the chamber’s 53 Republicans, which means removal is 20 to 23 votes short.

At least right now, I don’t think any Republican is likely to vote for Trump’s removal. My guess is that lots of Republicans privately disapprove of Trump’s Ukraine moves. But GOP senators face significant pressure not to publically break with Trump if they want to maintain their standing within the party and not annoy GOP voters who they need to win primaries and general elections.

I've been saying this all along, and Pelosi seems to think impeachment will be a necessary moral victory that has to happen.  Whether or not that remains the case is to be seen, I don't know how the next 11 months will play out.

But I do know that there's no way the Senate convicts Trump.

Another Day In Gunmerica

At least six people were killed in a massive shooting rampage in Jersey City on Tuesday as two gunmen attacked a kosher supermarket and then police arrived on the scene.

Six people, including a police officer and three bystanders, were killed in a furious gun battle Tuesday that filled the streets of Jersey City with the sound of heavy fire for hours, authorities said.

The dead included the two gunmen, Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly said.

The slain officer, Detective Joseph Seals, 40, was credited by his superiors with having led the department in the number of illegal guns removed from the streets in recent years, and might have been trying to stop an incident involving such weapons when he was cut down by gunfire that erupted near a cemetery, authorities said.

The shooting then continued at a kosher supermarket about a mile away, where five more bodies were found, Kelly said.

Authorities believe the Jewish market was targeted by the gunmen, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop tweeted Tuesday night. Fulop, whose public safety director said earlier in the day that terrorism wasn’t suspected, did not elaborate on why authorities now believe the market was targeted.

Messages were left Tuesday night seeking comment on Fulop’s tweet.

“It’s a really tough day for the city of Jersey City,” Fulop said. Seals “was one of the best officers for getting the most guns off the streets. He was a good cop.”

Two other officers were wounded but were later released from the hospital, authorities said.

This appears to be another anti-Semitic attack.

An assailant involved in a prolonged firefight in Jersey City, N.J., that left six people dead, including one police officer, had published anti-Semitic and anti-police posts online and investigators believe the attack was motivated by those sentiments, a law enforcement official familiar with the case said on Wednesday.

The official said the names of the two suspects were David Anderson and Francine Graham. Mr. Anderson appeared to have a connection to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, which is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks such movements.
The extent of Mr. Anderson’s involvement in that group remains unclear, the official said. The Black Hebrew Israelites have no connection with mainstream Judaism.

Investigators also found a manifesto-style note inside the assailants’ van, the law enforcement official and another official familiar with the case said.

The document, which was described as brief and “rambling,” suggested no clear motive for the shooting. Investigators also found a live pipe bomb inside the vehicle, the law enforcement official said.
The law enforcement official could not provide more details about the suspect’s online posts or where they had been published. He said investigators were still reviewing that information.

So far, the authorities have not identified the attackers, who were killed in the firefight. None of the three victims inside the store have been publicly named by officials, but multiple people connected to the Jewish community in Jersey City have identified two of them as Mindel Ferencz, 33, the wife of the market owner, and Moshe Deutch, a 24-year-old rabbinical student who lives in Brooklyn.

The Jersey City police officer who was killed was identified on Tuesday as Detective Joe Seals, a 15-year law enforcement veteran and a father of five.

Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, said that surveillance footage indicated the two attackers had targeted a kosher supermarket where most of the carnage unfolded.

Mr. Fulop said on Wednesday that the footage revealed that after the assailants shot Detective Seals in an earlier encounter, they drove slowly and deliberately to the market, roughly a mile away.

“The perpetrators stopped in front of there and calmly opened the door with two long rifles,” he said.

Just another day in Trump's America.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

US Attorney General Bill Barr went bonkers on Tuesday, completely rejecting the findings of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his report on the Mueller probe into Donald Trump, going so far as to say that he believed the probe not only never should have been opened, but that it was done so in "bad faith", stopping just short of calling the investigation illegal and illegitimate.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Barr essentially dismissed the findings of the Justice Department's inspector general that there was no evidence of political bias in the launching of the Russia probe, saying that his hand-picked prosecutor, John Durham, will have the last word on the matter.

"I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press," Barr said. "I think there were gross abuses …and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI."

"I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith."
Barr's blistering criticism of the FBI's conduct in the Russia investigation, which went well beyond the errors outlined in the inspector general report, is bound to stoke further debate about whether the attorney general is acting in good faith, or as a political hatchet man for Trump.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz, after reviewing a million documents and interviewing 100 people, concluded that he "did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open" the investigations into Trump campaign aides.

But Barr argued that Horowitz didn't look very hard, and that the inspector general accepted the FBI's explanations at face value.

"All he said was, people gave me an explanation and I didn't find anything to contradict it … he hasn't decided the issue of improper motive," Barr said. "I think we have to wait until the full investigation is done."

Barr said he stood by his assertion that the Trump campaign was spied on, noting that the FBI used confidential informants who recorded conversations with Trump campaign officials.

"It was clearly spied upon," he said. "That's what electronic surveillance is … going through people's emails, wiring people up."

Barr portrayed the Russia investigation as a bogus endeavor that was foisted on Trump, rather than something undertaken by career civil servants who were concerned about whether a foreign power had compromised a political campaign.

"From a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state … both to spy on political opponents but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of an election," Barr said. He added that this was the first time in history that "counterintelligence techniques" were used against a presidential campaign.

Barr is not only setting the groundwork for sweeping the Mueller probe and years of evidence of Russian efforts to throw the election for Trump, he's setting up massive retribution against everyone involved in the probe, and all but promising boatloads of hyped-up criminal charges against FBI investigators, DoJ lawyers, and very likely, against Obama administration officials to boot.

It's very clear that before the election, Barr is going to be rounding up "enemies of the state" at the behest of Donald Trump.

If there still will be an election.

Here there be dragons.

StupidiNews!

• Terrorist group Al-Shabaab is claiming responsibility for a deadly hotel attack in Mogadishu, Somalia on Tuesday, five people were killed and 11 injured when militants stormed the building.
• The US, Mexico, and Canada are expected to finalize Donald Trump's NAFTA replacement this week, but the US Senate isn't expected to take up the legislation until next year.
• The Pentagon has halted all military training exercises involving Saudi nationals in wake of last week's shooting at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida.
• UN investigators reported Tuesday that they were unable to trace October's attack on Saudi Aramco's oilfields to Iran, the US has deployed thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia to protect the oilfields.
• Researchers aboard the International Space Station have uncovered new data on lightning strikes and how they are triggered, lightning is made up of gamma rays, UV bursts, and ionized oxygen.

Last Call For Trump Trades Blows, Con't

Donald Trump has effectively killed the Paris Climate Accords, neutered the UN, all but cratered NATO, and now he has murdered the World Trade Organization.

The United States has spent two years chipping away at the World Trade Organization, criticizing it as unfair, starving it of personnel and disregarding its authority, as President Trump seeks to upend the global trade system.

This week, the Trump administration is expected to go one step further and effectively cripple the organization’s system for enforcing its rules — even as Mr. Trump’s widening trade war has thrown global commerce into disarray and another tariff increase on Chinese goods set for next weekend could send markets reeling.

Over the past two years, Washington has blocked the W.T.O. from appointing new members to a crucial panel that hears appeals in trade disputes. Only three members are left on the seven-member body, the minimum needed to hear a case, and two members’ terms expire on Tuesday. With the administration blocking any new replacements, there will be no official resolution for many international trade disputes.

The loss of the world’s primary trade referee could turn the typically deliberate process of resolving international disputes into a free-for-all, paving the way for an outbreak of tit-for-tat tariff wars.

It could also signal the demise of the 24-year-old World Trade Organization itself, since the system for settling disputes has long been its most effective part.

“The W.T.O. is facing its deepest crisis since its creation,” Phil Hogan, the European trade commissioner, told members of the European Parliament this year. If the rules governing international trade can no longer be enforced, “we’d have the law of the jungle.”

Mr. Trump has already embraced that scenario, wielding America’s economic power to press for better trade terms. He has sidestepped W.T.O. rules by imposing metal tariffs on allies like Canada, Europe and Japan, and by adding punishing levies to Chinese goods, prompting appeals to the global body for relief.

The president and his top advisers have long viewed the W.T.O. as an impediment to Mr. Trump’s promise to put “America First.” They say the organization, which insists that all of its members receive equal treatment, has prevented the United States from protecting its workers and exerting its influence as the world’s most powerful economy. They have also criticized the W.T.O. for emboldening China — whose economy boomed after it became a member in 2001 — while doing little to curb Beijing’s unfair trade practices.

The WTO is done.  It has no enforcement power and no dispute-resolution ability, because Donald Trump killed it all.  It's toast.

If we don't get rid of Trump in 2020, if he's re-elected, then the rest of the world will give up on us and they will start taking punitive action against us as befitting the rogue state we are.  As bad as this decade was at the end, the 20's are going to be far, far worse.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The impeachment of Donald Trump is moving forward rapidly now, with House Democrats moving to bring two articles of impeachment against him by the end of the week.

House Democrats announced on Tuesday that they would move ahead this week with two articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, as they accused him of violating the Constitution by pressure Ukraine for help in the 2020 election.

Speaking from a wood-paneled reception room just off the floor of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and leaders of six key committees said that Mr. Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, and his efforts to block Congress’s attempt to investigate, had left them no choice but to pursue one of the Constitution’s gravest remedies. The move will bring a sitting president to the brink of impeachment for only the fourth time in American history.

“Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution, and to our country, the House Committee on Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment charging the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the panel’s chairman. He stood before four American flags and a portrait of George Washington.

“Our president holds the ultimate public trust,” Mr. Nadler said. “When he betrays that trust and puts himself before country, he endangers the Constitution, he endangers our democracy, and he endangers our national security.” 

The announcement comes a day after Democrats summed up the central allegations in their impeachment case against Mr. Trump: that he pressured Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals while withholding as leverage a coveted White House meeting for its president and $391 million in critical security assistance. His actions, they argued in a lengthy hearing at the Judiciary Committee, had placed the president’s personal political interests above those of the country, threatening the integrity of the election and national security in the process.

After more than two months of investigating the Ukraine matter, and a year of confrontation between the Democratic House and Mr. Trump, the impeachment process is now likely to unfold quickly. The Judiciary Committee plans to promptly begin debating the articles as soon as Wednesday, and could vote by Thursday to recommend them to the full House of Representatives for final approval. If the House follows through as expected next week, Mr. Trump could stand trial in the Senate early in the new year.
The Judiciary Committee planned to publicly release text of the articles later on Tuesday. While individual lawmakers will be able to propose amendments to the articles during this week’s debate and potentially force a committee vote on additional charges, they are not expected to substantively change.

By this time next week, Donald Trump could be impeached.

History is being made.  What the results of that history will be, even I'm not sure.

Firehose-Up Economics

Greg Sargent zeroes in on income inequality in America and finds that while wages for working-class Americans has gone up 50% in 50 years, in those same 50 years the wealthy have gotten massive gifts from lawmakers and the tax code.

The triumph of the rich, which is one of the defining stories of our time, is generally described as largely the reflection of two factors. The first, of course, is the explosion of income among top earners, in which a tiny minority has vacuumed up a ballooning share of the gains from the past few decades of economic growth.

The second factor — which will be key to the 2020 presidential race — has been the hidden decline in the progressivity of the tax code at the top, in which the wealthiest earners have over those same decades seen their effective tax rates steadily fall.

Put those two factors together, and they tell a story about soaring U.S. inequality that is in some ways even more dramatic than each is on its own.

A new analysis prepared at my request by Gabriel Zucman — the French economist and “wealth detective” who has become famous for tracing the hidden wealth of the super-rich — illustrates that dual story in a freshly compelling way.

The top-line finding: Among the bottom 50 percent of earners, average real annual income even after taxes and transfers has edged up a meager $8,000 since 1970, rising from just over $19,000 to just over $27,000 in 2018.

By contrast, among the top 1 percent of earners, average income even after taxes and transfers has tripled since 1970, rising by more than $800,000, from just over $300,000 to over $1 million in 2018.

Among the top 0.1 percent, average after-tax-and-transfer income has increased fivefold, from just over $1 million in 1970 to over $5 million in 2018. And among the top .01 percent, it has increased nearly sevenfold, from just over $3.5 million to over $24 million.
I’m emphasizing the phrase “after taxes and transfers” because this is at the core of Zucman’s new analysis. The idea is to show the combined impact of both the explosion of pretax income at the top and the decline in the effective tax rate paid by those same earners — in one result.

And the Trump Tax Cut scam made it all exponentially worse.  Since 2000, when Bush came in and crashed the economy and left Obama holding the bag, and then Trump came in, wages for the bottom 90% went up maybe 10%, and 20% for the Top 10-1%.

But the wealthiest Americans saw the same income growth as before. the Top 1% up 40%, the Top 0.1% up 50%, and the Top 0.01% saw their incomes rise by 90%, from $14 million to $24 million.

We're headed for disaster, and imminently.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

The Supreme Court won't touch Kentucky's "Road to Gilead" abortion punishment law, so for now the women who go though the state's last remaining abortion clinic get a nice does of state-mandated mental anguish for being slutty slut sluts.

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a Kentucky law, mandating doctors perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients before they can perform abortions.

The high court declined, without comment, to hear an appeal brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the state's lone abortion clinic.

The Kentucky law, which requires a doctor to describe an ultrasound in detail while a pregnant woman hears the fetal heartbeat, was passed in 2017.

It was signed by Gov. Matt Bevin, an anti-abortion Republican who lost his bid for re-election last month.

The ACLU had argued that the Kentucky statute had no medical basis and was designed only to coerce a woman into opting out of having an abortion. Defenders of the law said it represented a straightforward attempt to help patients make a well-informed decision.

The high court's action let stand the law which had been upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement Monday that the high court had "rubber-stamped" Kentucky's interference in the "doctor-patient relationship.”

Bevin may be out this week, but the damage from his four years will last decades.  I'm not sure how much Andy Beshear will be able to do to even save the state's last abortion clinic, and that's not counting the inevitable "leaving abortion rights to states to decide" decision dismantling Roe in six months.  Beshear's veto of an anti-abortion law would almost certainly be overridden.

After that, it's Gilead.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The long-awaited Justice Department inspector general report on the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump is out, and while the report is pretty scathing on what the DoJ sees as "missteps" by the FBI, the report also concludes that there was sufficient evidence to open the investigation into Trump's Russian collusion.

The 434-page report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found the FBI had an “authorized purpose” when it initiated its investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, into the Trump campaign, and rejected the assertion that the case was opened out of political animus or that informants were used in violation of FBI rules.

It asserted, though, that as the probe went on, FBI officials repeatedly decided to emphasize damaging information they heard about Trump associates, and play down exculpatory evidence they found.

Conservatives and liberals alike claimed victory in the report — with Democrats saying it validated the Russia investigation while Republicans asserted it exposed serious wrongdoing.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said the inspector general had “completely demolished” some of conservatives’ assertions about the origins of the probe, though his investigators did find some problems.

“Clearly, there was a legitimate, factual basis; in fact the FBI had a moral imperative to begin this investigation,” Blumenthal said. In particular, he said the inspector general had rebutted claims that Trump campaign advisers were illegally surveilled or entrapped, or that political motive was “in any way a factor.”
In a statement, Attorney General William P. Barr disagreed with one of the inspector general’s key conclusions, saying the FBI launched an investigation of a presidential campaign “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.” So, too, did Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who Barr handpicked to conduct an investigation similar to that of Horowitz.

“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham said in a statement. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), a strong Trump ally, said “this is not a good day for the FBI.”

“There’s more than enough evidence in this report that would suggest a major overhaul in terms of policies and procedures,” he said.

Meadows has a point, although Republicans surely didn't care about FISA reform until it was legitimately used on Donald Trump's campaign.

Oh, and the report absolutely concludes that the Russians hacked the DNC email server and laundered the emails through WikiLeaks, and it concludes it was done to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

So no, there wasn't any "deep state" anything, just overworked FBI agents who cut corners and who have already for the most part been disciplined if not already fired.

This should put an end to all this, but of course if Barr ends it here, he's fired by Trump, so he won't leave it where things are.

Count on that.

No Room In North Dakota

Just in time for Christmas, Bismarck, North Dakota is set to become the first local government to vote to ban all refugees as Burleigh County takes Dear Leader up on his offer of legitimized institutional, and systemic racism.

The county postponed a vote last week when more than 100 people showed up and overflowed the commission’s normal meeting space. Monday night’s meeting will be held in a middle school cafeteria to accommodate public interest that Chairman Brian Bitner said is the most intense he’s seen in more than a decade on the commission.

Though he declined to predict which way the commission would go, Bitner said he would vote against accepting additional refugees.

“The overwhelming public opinion is so clear to me, that I think if you vote for it, you’re not going to be reelected if you choose to run again,” he said.
Trump’s executive order this fall came as he had already proposed cutting the number of refugees next year to the lowest level since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980. He declared that refugees should be resettled only in places where the state and local governments — counties — gave consent. Since then, many governors and counties around the country have declared that they would continue taking refugees.

Republican Gov. Doug Burgum said last month that North Dakota would continue accepting refugees where local jurisdictions agreed, and his spokesman said the governor saw it as a local decision. Soon after, Cass and Grand Forks counties, which are home to the state’s largest city, Fargo, and third-largest city, Grand Forks, respectively, declared they would continue taking refugees. Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney said refugees were needed to boost the city’s economy, and that 90% were fully employed within three months of resettling in his city.

But the idea was quickly opposed in more conservative Burleigh County. Among the opponents was Republican state Rep. Rick Becker, of Bismarck, an ultraconservative who took to social media to criticize the program as unrestrained and a possible drain on social service programs, schools and law enforcement, though the county said it doesn’t track any costs directly related to refugees.

“This isn’t about skin color,” said Becker, a plastic surgeon and former gubernatorial candidate. “In the past, nobody had any say whatsoever. Now we have something that should have been in place decades ago.

“Now, if they want to accept them, they can, and if they don’t want to they shouldn’t,” he said.

Burleigh County won't be the last county to ban refugees, either.  Far from it.  This is Donald Trump's America, where your huddled masses can go live in the cities, and we can continue being racist assholes, right?

Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken said the city government has no say in the matter, but he sides with those who want to stop taking in more refugees.

“Right now it’s a blank check and that equates into a lot of questions,” Bakken said of the number of refugees that could be placed in the area. “We have burgeoning school enrollment, veterans’ needs, homeless needs, and Native American needs.

“This isn’t about heartstrings, this is about purse strings,” he said.

Shirley Dykshoorn, a vice president for Lutheran Social Services, which handles all of North Dakota’s refugee resettlement cases, said her agency used to handle about 400 cases per year, but that number dropped to 124 in fiscal 2019, which ended in September. The program has been in existence in North Dakota since 1948.

LSS settled 24 refugees in Bismarck in fiscal 2019, after settling 22 in fiscal 2018. Dykshoorn said Burleigh County had been projected to get no more than 25 refugees annually in the coming years.

“We always look at the capacity of a community to handle these,” she said.

“I’m trying to understand the basis for believing how 25 people will dramatically change the fabric of a community,” she said. “What does it say to the rest of the country when a county where your capital city is located would choose not to participate?”

If it was 25 millionaire white supremacists, they'd be welcomed, of course.

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