Last Call For Diplomacy Is Hard You Guys

It seems after 8 months on the job that Trump regime UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has given up on her job or something, and really when it comes to dealing with North Korea, shooting things is just probably easier am I right?

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday the U.N. Security Council has run out of options on containing North Korea’s nuclear program and the United States may have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon.

“We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we can do at the Security Council at this point,” Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that she was perfectly happy to hand the North Korea problem over to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

As world leaders head to the United Nations headquarters in New York for the annual General Assembly meeting this week, Haley’s comments indicated the United States was not backing down from its threat of military action against North Korea.

North Korea launched a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday in defiance of new U.N. Security Council sanctions banning its textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.

China has urged the United States to refrain from making threats to North Korea. Asked about President Donald Trump’s warning last month that the North Korean threat to the United States will be met with “fire and fury,” Haley said, “It was not an empty threat.”

“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that. None of us want war,” she said on CNN.

“We’re trying every other possibility that we have, but there’s a whole lot of military options on the table,” she said. 

Please remember that all of those military options lead to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of casualties on the Korean Peninsula, along with possibly Japan and China and Guam, and if nuclear weapons come into play, possibly everywhere.

There is no "military solution" to North Korea right now that avoids a truly staggering number of dead and injured civilians.

Now the UN Ambassador is saying that there is no diplomatic solution either.  Keep in mind Trump will address the UN General Assembly Tuesday morning, and it's going to be a disaster.

There's a very good chance that by this time next year we'll be in a shooting war (or worse a nuclear one) with North Korea. If Haley can't handle the job, she needs to resign and make way for someone who can.

Of course, same goes quadruple for Trump.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Of course Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff is correct when he said today that Trump only cares about Trump.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday said President Donald Trump is neither conservative nor liberal, but simply “pro-Trump.”

On ABC’s “This Week,” Schiff called Trump’s discussions with Democrats “purely transactional.”

“This is a president, look, who has no ideology. He’s not conservative, he’s not liberal; the only consistent theme seems to be, he’s pro-Trump,” he said. “He’s for his own personal interests.”

Schiff also questioned Trump’s reluctance to enforce policies implemented by former President Barack Obama’s administration.

“I don’t know why it is so hard for this administration, whether it’s on climate or on Iran or on our strategy of defeating ISIS, to acknowledge that the prior administration did some things right,” he said.

And so far his term has been 100% about enriching Donald Trump's bank account while treating everyone else like suckers who are beneath him, because he's the guy in the Oval Office and you're not, period.

That's it.  That's the pathology of Trump.

Sunday Long Read: O Canada, How Could You?

It's not just the US that has a terrible record with temp employees, immigrants and deadly laxity in safety records, but North America's second largest city, Toronto, proves the problem is pervasive and brutal in Canada as well. The Toronto Star goes undercover to bust one of these companies, Canadian bakery giant Fiera Foods.

There are two dozen of us crowded around a conveyor belt, bodies twisting to snatch dough off the line. The floor is strewn with raw pastries that seem to accumulate faster than anyone can sweep them up. They collect in bloated masses at our feet.

It is my first day as a temp at Fiera Foods, an industrial bakery that reeks of yeast and is alive with the constant drone of machinery.

We are forming and packing raw, circular pastry dough into wet plastic trays — a shoulder-crunching task called pinching. These may well be the croissants you eat for breakfast.

Supervisors shout at us to wake up. They shout at us to move faster, pinch nicer, work harder. No one talks through the noise and exhaustion.

The factory relies heavily on temporary help agency workers. Its health and safety record is checkered; three temps have died here or at Fiera’s affiliated companies since 1999.

Across the province, more and more people are relying on temp agencies to find work. When they do, statistics show they are more likely to get hurt on the job.

I am undercover to investigate why.

Fiera’s current clients include some of the continent’s biggest brands including Dunkin’ Donuts and Sobeys; over the years it has made pastries for Costco, Tim Hortons, Metro, Walmart, and Loblaw. Its factories churn out baked goods by the truckload, destined for markets across North America and around the world. They can produce 2 million bagels alone per day.

Fiera said health and safety is a “core principle,” in response to questions from the Star. It said it contributes to Ontario’s “economic well-being” with more than 1,200 people working at its facilities in the GTA, and that it believes strongly in helping immigrants “find work and build their futures in Canada.” It also said it uses strict criteria when choosing temp agencies to work with. The company says it has given almost $1.5 million to health-care initiatives and minority communities over the past decade.

It has also received some $4.7 million in government loans and grants to expand capacity and create good jobs. The company says all employees are given “in-depth training” and that Fiera has invested half a million dollars in health and safety initiatives over the past two years.

I get about five minutes of training in a factory packed with industrial equipment.

I am paid in cash with no deductions or pay stubs. I pick up my wages from a payday lender, a 35-minute bus ride from the factory.

Fiera has been slapped with 191 orders for health and safety violations over the past two decades, for everything from lack of proper guarding on machines to unsafely stored gas cylinders.

At least a dozen of the women I meet on my assembly line at Fiera, a multimillion-dollar company, are hired through temp agencies.

Temp agency workers are changing the face of labour in Ontario.

In workplaces around the province, the use of temp agencies limits companies’ liability for accidents on the job, reduces their responsibility for employees’ rights, and cuts costs.

When I walk into the factory, I see mostly people of colour. Many are new Canadians. Many told me they have taken this job for one reason: to survive.

In August, charges were laid against Fiera Foods under the Occupational Health and Safety Act for the 2016 death of a temp agency worker named Amina Diaby. Her hijab was caught in a machine, strangling her.

She was 23 years old. She was a refugee trying to save for nursing school. She had been on the job two weeks.

If anything, the worst labor practices of the US are finding a thriving home in Canada these days, and that's definitely not a good thing.  It's just another reminder that our neighbors to the north have their problems with labor laws, racism, corporate greed and worker deaths too.  The difference is that the Trudeau government will probably do something about it.  The Trump regime here could not give less of a damn.

Russian To Judgment, Con 't

So it's the time of the week where we review Friday's Trump/Russia news dump stories, and this week is no different. I asked a few days ago what Michael Flynn was doing in the Middle East when that story broke earlier this week, and now we have our answer and it's a doozy.

In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, when his soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly pushing a multibillion-dollar deal to build nuclear reactors in Jordan and other Middle East nations, Flynn and two other top Trump advisers held a secret meeting with the king of Jordan.

The meeting — details of which have never been reported — is the latest in a series of secret, high-stakes contacts between Trump advisers and foreign governments that have raised concerns about how, in particular, Flynn and senior adviser Jared Kushner handled their personal business interests as they entered key positions of power. And the nuclear project raised additional security concerns about expanding nuclear technology in a tinderbox region of the world. One expert compared it to providing “a nuclear weapons starter kit.”

On the morning of Jan. 5, Flynn, Kushner, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon greeted King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons hotel in lower Manhattan, then took off in a fleet of SUVs and a sedan to a different location.

People close to the three Trump advisers say that the nuclear deal was not discussed. But a federal official with access to a document created by a law enforcement agency about the meeting said that the nuclear proposal, known as the Marshall Plan, was one of the topics the group talked about.

So yes, it's Flynn, Kushner and Bannon again, doing this before Donald Trump was president, meeting with a foreign leader to make a deal with him over nuclear technology, and failing to disclose the meeting.

But it gets worse, and we all know the reason why.

The Wall Street Journal reported that while Flynn’s White House disclosure forms state that he stopped working on the deal in December 2016, he in fact continued to push it even after he entered the White House. Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment on the claims in the Journal story.

The plan, for which Flynn was reportedly paid as a consultant, initially envisioned that the reactors would be built by US companies and security would be provided by the Russian state-owned firm Rosoboron, an arms exporter currently facing US sanctions. As the plan evolved, Russian involvement reportedly lessened, and it is not known whether Russia or its companies featured in the meeting with the Jordanian king. This week, Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee said they would turn over documents about the nuclear plan to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, contending that Flynn may have violated federal law by not disclosing foreign trips and meetings.

While it is not unusual for an incoming administration to meet with foreign dignitaries during the transition, Trump surrogates have repeatedly failed to acknowledge these contacts. Attorney General Jeff Sessions at first said he did not discuss campaign matters with Russian officials, only to later acknowledge at least two conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The United Arab Emirates set up a meeting between a military contractor close to the Trump administration and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin. And this week, CNN reported that Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, visited with Flynn, Kushner, and Bannon without alerting the American government beforehand.

The meeting with the king of Jordan had extremely high stakes: a discussion with the head of a key American ally that might have included plans about spreading nuclear power to one of the world's least stable regions, possibly with the help of one of America's main geopolitical enemies, Russia. The revelation of the meeting comes as Abdullah plans to visit the United States next week and speak with Trump.

So here we have all this done on behalf of a US businessman deep in bed with the Russians, and his presumptive National Security Adviser breaking basically every national security rule in the book pitching Russian nuclear reactors to Jordan.

And speaking of side deals with the Russians, that brings us to Moscow's favorite GOP Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher,who is now is deep trouble of his own.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), an eccentric lawmaker known for his pro-Russia stances, proposed to the White House a pardon deal for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a Wednesday phone call Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Rohrabacher suggested to President Trump’s chief-of-staff, John Kelly, that the administration end Assange’s various legal problems in the U.S. In exchange, Assange would turn over a digital storage device that Rohrabacher said would clear Russia of allegations of interference in the 2016 election, according to the report.

The congressman told Kelly that if what Assange turned over was not the proof promised, “he would get nothing, obviously,” according to the report. Over the course of summer 2016, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails from Democratic officials believed to have been the target of a hacking campaign backed by the Russians.

Rohrabacher traveled to London last month to meet with Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder is avoiding extradition to the U.S. Once the meeting was reported, Rohrabacher indicated his plans to tell Trump what he heard from Assange. On Thursday, he told the Los Angeles Times he had “spoken to senior people at the White House about arranging a meeting” with the President.

A Trump administration official told the Wall Street Journal that Kelly did not deliver Rohrabacher’s message to Trump, and that the chief-of-staff instead told Rohrabacher his idea “was best directed to the intelligence community.”

Really? Julian Assange gets a full pardon for leaking damaging information on Trump's enemies, while every indication points to Assange working for Putin as his intel laundry shop? Is Rohrabacher stupid or what? Of course Kelly didn't want to touch this, nobody in their right mind believes Assange these days.

And speaking of Russian intel laundering, that brings us to story number three: We know Russian shell companies who wanted to influence the 2016 election bought hundreds of thousands in ads on Facebook and other social media sites, but now Team Mueller is asking if those companies had a little inside help from Trump's people.

Mapping the full Russian propaganda effort is important. Yet investigators in the House, Senate, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office are equally focused on a more explosive question: did any Americans help target the memes and fake news to crucial swing districts and wavering voter demographics? “By Americans, you mean, like, the Trump campaign?” a source close to one of the investigations said with a dark laugh. Indeed: probers are intrigued by the role of Jared Kushner, the now-president’s son-in-law, who eagerly took credit for crafting the Trump campaign’s online efforts in a rare interview right after the 2016 election. “I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting,” Kushner told Steven Bertoni of Forbes. “We brought in Cambridge Analytica. I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff . . . We basically had to build a $400 million operation with 1,500 people operating in 50 states, in five months to then be taken apart. We started really from scratch.”

Kushner’s chat with Forbes has provided a veritable bakery’s worth of investigatory bread crumbs to follow. Brad Parscale, who Kushner hired to run the campaign’s San Antonio-based Internet operation, has agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee.

And now House Intelligence Committee Democrats have questions too, particularly about Kushner, Bannon, and Kushner's "friends in Silicon Valley", the now infamous Cambridge Analytica.

Bigger questions, however, revolve around Cambridge Analytica. It is unclear how Kushner first became aware of the data-mining firm, but one of its major investors is billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer. Mercer was also a principal patron of Breitbart News and Steve Bannon, who was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica until he joined the Trump campaign. “I think the Russians had help,” said Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “I’ve always wondered if Cambridge Analytica was part of that.” (Cambridge Analytica did not respond to a request for comment.)

Senator Martin Heinrich is leading the charge to update American election laws so that the origins of political ads on social media are at least as transparent as those on TV and in print. Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, is also part of the Senate Intelligence Committee that is tracing Russia’s 2016 tactics. “Paul Manafort made an awful lot of money coming up with a game plan for how Russian interests could be pushed in Western countries and Western elections,” Heinrich said, referring to a mid-2000s proposal Manafort pitched to a Russian oligarch. “Suddenly he finds himself in the middle of this campaign. If there is a person who I think is very sophisticated in this stuff, and runs in pretty dicey circles, that is the place where I would dig.”

No evidence has emerged to link Kushner, Cambridge Analytica, or Manafort to the Russian election-meddling enterprise; all have denied colluding with foreign agents. (Kushner’s representatives declined to comment for this article. Manafort’s spokesman could not be reached.) Yet analysts scoff at the notion that the Russians figured out how to target African-Americans and women in decisive precincts in Wisconsin and Michigan all by themselves. “Could they have hired a warehouse full of people in Moscow and had them read Nate Silver’s blog every morning and determine what messages to post to what demographics? Sure, theoretically that’s possible,” said Mike Carpenter, an Obama administration assistant defense secretary who specialized in Russia and Eastern Europe. “But that’s not how they do this. And it’s not surprising that it took Facebook this long to figure out the ad buys. The Russians are excellent at covering their tracks. They’ll subcontract people in Macedonia or Albania or Cyprus and pay them via the dark Web. They always use locals to craft the campaign appropriately. My only question about 2016 is who exactly was helping them here.”

As I said a few weeks ago, we had reached the end of the beginning of the Trump/Russia tale.  Now we're seeing where the pieces fit and how they go together, and at every turn we see Russian involvement in assisting Trump in manipulating the election in exchange for helping to get Russian businesses (and Putin and his cadre of oligarchs that own them) involved in every aspect of MAGA, Inc.

The evidence is piling up.  Mueller, House Democrats, and Senate Democrats (and even some Republicans, shockingly enough) are asking questions and conducting investigations.  When Mueller's final report comes (and that may be a while as he continues to hire prosecutors that are experts in forensic accounting and money laundering cases suggesting there's a LOT of evidence to chew through still) it's going to be thorough and devastating to the Trump regime.

What happens after is going to be the real story, and the real future of America as a democracy or as something else.

The American Taliban, Coming Soon

We're going to have to deal with the very real fact that Roy Moore is going to be a United States Senator in 2018, and that he is the personification of the American Taliban.

Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore suggested earlier this year that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks might have happened because the US had distanced itself from God. 

Moore, a hardline conservative running against fellow Republican and incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in a runoff primary race, made the comments in February during a speech at the Open Door Baptist Church, a video reviewed by CNN's KFile shows. Moore, the former chief justice of Alabama, quotes verses from the Old Testament's Book of Isaiah, which have been used by some fringe elements of Christianity to suggest that the Bible prophesied the attacks. 

"Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon ... therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance,'" Moore said, quoting Isaiah 30:12-13. Then he added: "Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn't it?" 

Moore, continued, "If you think that's coincidence, if you go to verse 25, 'there should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall.' You know, we've suffered a lot in this country, maybe, just maybe, because we've distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land." 

Later in the same speech, Moore suggested God was upset at the United States because "we legitimize sodomy" and "legitimize abortion." 

The Moore campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Understand Roy Moore is going to win the primary, the polling averages show him with a 12 point lead or so right now with the primary run-off next week.  He'll win the general easily after, and this guy will be a US Senator before the end of the year.

By the way, my idiot Congressman Thomas Massie endorsed Moore last week.  That's all you need to know.

Last Call For Wrecked In Reykjavik

In countries that still have archaic concepts like "rule of law" and "honor", things like "family members of government leaders doing personal favors for convicted felons" is still enough to end that government.  Not so here in the States (where we call that "Tuesday") but in Iceland the ruling coalition has just come undone over allegations against the father of PM Bjarni Benediktsson.

A furore over a paedophile's links to Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson has triggered the collapse of Iceland's ruling coalition. 

The Bright Future party announced it was withdrawing from the three-party coalition after nine months in office. 

It blamed a "serious breach of trust within the government". 

Earlier it emerged that the prime minister's father had written a letter recommending a convicted paedophile have his "honour restored". 

This old Icelandic system permits convicts to have certain civil rights restored - enabling them to run for public office, qualify for certain government jobs or serve as an attorney or solicitor, for example - if three letters of recommendation from persons of good character are provided. 

But Icelanders have been horrified by the secret backing for Hjalti Sigurjón Hauksson - convicted in 2004 of raping his stepdaughter almost every day for 12 years from when she was five. He served a five-and-a-half-year jail term. 

The Reykjavik Grapevine news site quotes the survivor of Hauksson's abuse as saying it was "surreal" that he should receive restored honour. 

The government has also been accused of an attempted cover-up after it refused to disclose who had written the letter of recommendation. 

It only emerged on Thursday that it was Benedikt Sveinsson, Prime Minister Benediktsson's father, but the prime minister is said to have been informed about his involvement in July. 

In a statement, Mr Sveinsson apologised for providing the recommendation for Hauksson, an old friend of his. 

Iceland's justice minister has said she is preparing a bill to reform the restored honour system in response to the furore.

It's never the crime, it's the cover-up.  C'mon, America figured that one out 45 years ago, Iceland.

The Return Of The Revenge Of The Son Of Trumpcare

Still two weeks before the September 30th deadline for Senate Republicans to get away with only needing 51 votes for repealing the Affordable Care Act and kicking tens of millions of Americans off their health coverage, and that means one last plan to try to kill them some poors.  Sponsored by "GOP moderates" like Huckleberry Graham, the bill would wreck America's health care system, end Medicaid expansion for millions, and throw millions more off Medicaid by turning it into block grants for states...who won't be compelled to spend a single dime on the program as a result.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, Dean Heller and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released an Obamacare repeal bill, framing it as the last, best hope to fulfill the GOP's promise to undo the health law. 

"There's a lot of fight left in the Republican Party" on repeal, Graham said.

The bill faces long odds: Even some of its GOP backers say it would be almost impossible to get a massive rewrite of the health care system through the Senate within 17 days, or before the expiration of fast-track procedural powers Republicans hope to use to bypass the threat of a Democratic filibuster. 

President Donald Trump praised the lawmakers for continuing to work on Obamacare repeal, citing the "complete nightmare" the law is for Americans. But he didn't indicate whether he would press lawmakers to support the measure. "I sincerely hope that Senators Graham and Cassidy have found a way to address the Obamacare crisis," he said in a statement. 

Graham called on Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Senate GOP leaders to help them gather 50 votes. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who brought up several repeal measures in July only to see all of them fail, has said he'd bring up any Obamacare repeal bill that has enough Republican support. McConnell on Tuesday refused to choose between the repeal bill or a bipartisan measure being drafted by GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.

Oh, but it gets worse.

The $1.2 trillion bill, H.R. 1628 (115), which has been at the CBO for about one week, according to the senators, would provide states with block grants instead of Obamacare's tax credits, Medicaid expansion and cost-sharing payments. It would also repeal Obamacare's individual and employer mandates and the medical device tax. 

In general, Republicans favor giving the states a “block grant” of funding to create their own health care systems. The repeal bill attempts to equalize health care spending by the federal government to states. 

Some states, particularly high-cost places such as Massachusetts, are bound to be worse off under the measure than less expensive parts of the country. 

It’s unclear if the CBO would even have time to score the bill before the end of the month. It would also have to go before the Senate parliamentarian to ensure that it complies with the rules of the expedited procedure, called reconciliation.

Blue states would get billions less for sure, but imagine giving Wyoming (pop 600,000 or so) and California (pop 39 million and change) an equal amount to implement Medicaid.

That's what we're looking at.  And again, states would not be compelled to spend all the money on Medicaid.

But here's the best part: after 2026, funding for the block grants is zeroed out.

No more Medicaid.  Period.  Done.  Gone.  Over.

This is arguably the worst version yet of Trumpcare, and it's coming unless we help stop it.

Make those calls, folks.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Before Ferguson, before Charleston, before Baton Rouge, before Baltimore and New York, there was Anthony Lamar Smith, killed by St. Louis police in 2011.  After six years, the officer in that killing, Jason Stockley, faces a verdict in the charge of first degree murder as prosecutors contend he planted a gun in Smith's car to justify killing him in "self-defense".

The problem isn't the jury here.  It's a bench trial.  The judge in the proceedings is expected to hand down a verdict any time now.  GOP Gov. Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, author, and Rhodes scholar, is still calling up the National Guard, just in case.

The entire city is on edge because we know what's going to happen.

With courthouse barricades up, police presence expanded and National Guard troops on standby, St. Louis is braced for Friday’s anticipated verdict in the murder trial of a white police officer accused of executing a black motorist. 

Former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley maintains the 2011 shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith was in self-defense. If he is acquitted of a first-degree murder charge, officials fear the inevitable protests could turn violent. Some activists have hinted as much. 

Christina Wilson, Smith’s fiancée, appeared at a news conference with Gov. Eric Greitens Thursday evening to ask protesters to avoid violence if they demonstrate.

“However it goes, I ask for peace,” Wilson said. 

Greitens echoed Wilson’s sentiments, saying he understood that many people feel pain over the shooting. “Do not turn that pain into violence,” he said. “One life has been lost in this case, and we do not need more bloodshed.” 

Earlier Thursday, Greitens — who won office last year in part on a promise not to repeat mistakes he says officials made in responding to the racial unrest in Ferguson in 2014 — announced he is readying the Missouri National Guard to protect both protesters and property. 

“As Governor, I am committed to protecting everyone’s constitutional right to protest peacefully while also protecting people’s lives, homes, and communities,” Greitens said in a statement. “Taking the steps to put the Missouri National Guard on standby is a necessary precaution.” 

On Thursday, barricades went up around the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse downtown, and St. Louis and St. Louis County police prepared to move officers to 12-hour shifts Friday. The federal courthouse will be closed on Friday. 

“We want to ensure the community that our police department is prepared for any scenario,” the city police department said in a statement. “In the wake of an announcement, the department is committed to keeping our citizens updated and informed.” 

Stockley fatally shot Smith after a police chase on Dec. 20, 2011. Prosecutors have alleged Stockley planted a .38-caliber revolver in Smith’s crashed Buick after shooting him five times at close range. The defense has said Stockley shot Smith in self-defense because Stockley believed Smith was reaching for a gun. 

The bench trial before St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson ended Aug. 9. Some St. Louis black clergy and activists have pledged “mass disruption” if Stockley is acquitted. 

There has been no official word on the timing of the announcement of a verdict, but multiple sources have told the Post-Dispatch it will come down Friday.

We know what happens next.

BREAKING: Judge acquits white ex-St. Louis police officer of first-degree murder in 2011 shooting death of black man.

— AP Central U.S. (@APCentralRegion) September 15, 2017

Black Lives Still Matter. .

StupidiNews!

• North Korea fired another intermediate range missile over Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Friday as Pyongyang continues to defy UN Security Council sanctions.
• Multiple injuries have been reported in London as an explosion on a subway carriage during Friday morning rush hour has been declared a terrorist incident by Metropolitan Police.
• Harvard University has withdrawn an invitation to convicted national security leaker Chelsea Manning after Trump CIA Director Mike Pompeo canceled a speech at Harvard in protest.
• Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren will introduce legislation on Friday cracking down on the nation's credit bureaus after last week's announcement of a major data breach at Equifax.
• Hyperloop One, the transportation startup founded by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, will study possible routes in 10 global locations including the Denver area in Colorado.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan

It's important to remember that under the Trump regime, America is edging ever closer to an authoritarian government on a daily basis, but that goes for states as well.  Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin is no different, all but calling for the resignation of his toughest critic, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, and suggesting that the office become another appointment by an all-powerful chief executive rather than being an elected position.

Gov. Matt Bevin said Thursday he is open to changing the Kentucky Constitution so that the state’s attorney general and judges are appointed by the governor rather than being elected. 

The Republican governor, who has had several legal run-ins with Attorney General Andy Beshear, called his Democratic nemesis “highly incompetent.” He also voice support for putting term limits on legislators. 

Bevin’s wide-ranging comments came in response to questions from attendees at a conference of The Federalist Society’s chapters in Kentucky. Bevin spoke to the group in the Capitol’s House chamber before taking questions. 

When asked whether he would support seeking the public’s approval for a constitutional amendment to appoint the attorney general, Bevin first said with a smile, “Oh, yeah.” 

He then asked “How about our judges in general? Seriously.”

He added: “We have a remarkable number of people who have no business being judges. I mean none. They don’t have the competence even to be a private practice attorney who can bill at a rate that people would not pay. I’m not kidding.” 

Bevin said potential judges first should pass “some kind of competency test.”

Of course if you've been keeping score, AG Beshear's biggest beef with Bevin is that he believes Bevin is abusing the power of his office to make wholesale changes to state boards without consulting the Kentucky General Assembly.

Bevin's solution to this is to change the state constitution to give him the power to appoint the Attorney General and state judges.  And right now, if Republicans in the state legislature want to do that, they'd probably have the votes.

Matt Bevin's quickly growing used to power, isn't he?  So much so that of course he wants more of it.

Especially if it means ridding the state of his critics.

Shutdown Workaround

Looks like now that President Obama isn't in office any more, suddenly Republicans are a whole lot more open to passing clean continuing budget resolutions these days.

The House on Thursday completed its work on the annual appropriations bills for 2018, ahead of expected negotiations at the end of this year to keep the government funded.

By a vote of 211-198, the House passed a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills to fund wide swaths of the federal government, ranging from the Department of Homeland Security to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“This is a big day,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said, touting the House's use of regular order to pass the 12 bills.

“This is the first time the House has done that since 2009,” he said.

The package included eight new bills, plus four previously passed appropriations bills that advanced through the House in July. Regular order for appropriations typically involved passing each of the bills individually, not in groups of 4 or 8. 

Congress sent a three-month government funding extension to President Trump’s desk last week to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1. That means Congress will have to finalize government spending for 2018 in December. 

“This is the next step in the process, but it is not the end. Funding these important federal responsibilities and keeping the government open is our constitutional duty to the people we serve, and I look forward to the final completion of all these critical bills,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.). 

The passage of all 12 of the annual appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year is a first for Republicans who have not been able to move them all in the same time frame in recent years.

Of course, getting the House bills through the Senate won't happen, but hey, at least Paul Ryan finally figured out how legislation works, right?

A DACA Deal Done?

News of a Trump deal with Dems to restore DACA has Trump's base furious.

Democratic leaders announced late Wednesday that they agreed with President Trump to pursue a legislative deal that would protect hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation and enact border security measures that don’t include building a physical wall. 

The president discussed options during a dinner at the White House with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that also included talks on tax reform, infrastructure and trade. Trump has showed signs of shifting strategy to cross the aisle and work with Democrats in the wake of the high-profile failures by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

We’re working on a plan for DACA,” Trump said as he left the White House on Thursday for a trip to survey hurricane damage in Florida. 

Trump said that he and Congress are “fairly close” to a deal and that Republican leaders Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) are “very much on board” with a deal that would address DACA. The agreement must include “massive border security,” Trump said in response to shouted questions about whether he had reached a deal on the terms Schumer and Pelosi had described. 

“The wall will come later” he said, apparently confirming a central element of the Democrats’ account. 

Earlier Thursday, amid backlash from conservative supporters, Trump had sought Thursday to reach out to his GOP base with messages claiming his agenda would remain intact on signature issues such as the border wall.

In a series of tweets, Trump wrote that “no deal” was made on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program that has allowed 690,000 dreamers to work and go to school without fear of deportation. He further wrote that agreements on “massive border security” would have to accompany any new DACA provisions, and insisted that “the WALL will continue to be built.”

Needless to say, the MAGA types are ready to do to Trump what they did to Dubya's immigration deal ten years ago.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter reacted to President Donald Trump's recent stance on immigration policy Thursday by suggesting she wanted Congress to impeach him:

At this point, who DOESN'T want Trump impeached? https://t.co/g1mMhmm8ng

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 14, 2017

Coulter was responding to one of Trump's tweets in which he defended immigrants who came to the United States as undocumented children. 

Among Coulter's many bestselling books, “In Trump We Trust” was a full-throated endorsement of Trump for president, a position she thought he would use to tamp down on illegal immigration and build a border wall. 

Without the wall, Coulter said she preferred Vice President Mike Pence take over the Oval Office: 

If we're not getting a wall, I'd prefer President Pence. https://t.co/g1mMhmm8ng

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 14, 2017

There is one hard and fast rule of the "unpredictable" Donald Trump: Eventually Trump screws over everyone.

Everyone.

StupidiNews!

• Florida police are investigating the deaths of eight nursing home residents in Hollywood Hills after Hurricane Irma knocked out power and air conditioning to the facility.
• President Obama will host a leadership summit for the Obama Foundation's first major event at the end of October in order to teach the next generation of civic leaders. 
• Sweden will conduct the largest war games exercise in 20 years this weekend as the country is concerned with massive Russian military exercises later this month.
• UK Parliament are launching a full review of FOX owner Rupert Murdoch's $15.5 billion offer to buy UK's SkyTV, critics say Murdoch would have too much power over UK media.
• Convicted "pharmabro" Martin Shkreli, on $5 million bail for securities fraud, is headed to prison after his bond was revoked following a Facebook post threatening Hillary Clinton.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Bevinstan

I've already talked about how here in Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin wants to dismantle state employee pensions and post-retirement health care benefits, as well as his across-the-board austerity cuts to the state budget.  Bevin says his cuts won't affect public education, but apparently that doesn't include the UK system, where the governor is warning the state's colleges and universities that the time has come to eliminate majors that don't produce money-making graduates as all of the state's higher education system faces Bevin's chainsaw austerity cuts.

Gov. Matt Bevin bluntly suggested Tuesday that some academic programs on Kentucky’s college campuses have outlived their necessity in times of tight state budgets.
With a pointed jab at the job prospects of interpretive dancers, the Republican governor challenged public university boards and presidents to consider eliminating some courses that don’t produce graduates filling high-wage, high-demand jobs. 

His message comes as the state tries to fix its failing public pension systems, and economists estimate Kentucky faces a $200 million shortfall when the fiscal year ends in mid-2018. 

“Find entire parts of your campus … that don’t need to be there,” Bevin said in a speech to a higher education conference. “Either physically as programs, degrees that you’re offering, buildings that … shouldn’t be there because you’re maintaining something that’s not an asset of any value, that’s not helping to produce that 21st century educated workforce.”

Education, critical thinking, pushing boundaries, scholarship?  Screw that, we're here to make money, you ivory tower nerds.

Bevin acknowledged such comments would be seen as “sacrilege” by some. 

It’s not the first time Bevin has urged the state’s colleges and universities to refine course offerings to create more graduates moving on to jobs “that matter” and are in demand.
“If you’re studying interpretive dance, God bless you, but there’s not a lot of jobs right now in America looking for people with that as a skill set,” he said Tuesday. 

In comments that echoed an earlier snipe at French literature students, Bevin said educators from middle school on up need to do a better job of steering students toward high-demand jobs. They need to stop perpetuating “this idea that simply going to college is enough,” Bevin said. A college degree isn’t sufficient if students “aren’t studying the right things,” he said. 

“There’s a whole lot of kids sitting in their parents’ basements and competing with people for jobs that are minimum wage or a bit better who have four-year degrees, some of them graduate-level degrees,” he said. “Some from the very universities that you all represent.” 

Bevin has made workforce development a priority of his tenure as governor. He said Tuesday he wants Kentucky to become the nation’s engineering and manufacturing epicenter, and urged the state’s engineering programs to embrace the challenge. 

“I challenge you to say to yourselves, ‘If we’re graduating 250 people out of our engineering school … why is it 250 and not 1,000? And what are we going to do between now and 2030 and a whole lot sooner to make sure it’s 1,000?’ ” Bevin said.
The University of Louisville’s interim president, Greg Postel, said the school’s engineering program has been growing, and continuing on that trajectory would be a “natural fit.” 

“Universities have to be aware of where the jobs are, and that has to advise us as to which programs we choose to grow and put resources in,” he said in an interview after Bevin’s speech. 

Asked about Bevin’s suggestion that universities look for academic programs to eliminate, Postel said: “That requires an awful lot of thought before one would do something that dramatic.”

U of L President Postel ought to know by now that "giving things a whole lot of thought" isn't Bevin's strong point.  If the only point of education is to make money as a member of the work force, then what's Bevin doing being employed?

We ain't gonna have no damn interpretive dancers in Bevinstan, ya hear?

La Brodega De La Condenación

Silicon Valley tech bros are out to kill the corner bodega, because progress and besides who needs immigrant small business owners anyway?

While it sometimes feels like we do all of our shopping on the internet, government data shows that actually less than 10%of all retail transactions happen online. In a world where we get our groceries delivered in just two hours through Instacart or Amazon Fresh, the humble corner store–or bodega, as they are known in New York and Los Angeles–still performs a valuable function. No matter how organized you are, you’re bound to run out of milk or diapers in the middle of the night and need to make a quick visit to your neighborhood retailer.

Paul McDonald, who spent 13 years as a product manager at Google, wants to make this corner store a thing of the past. Today, he is launching a new concept called Bodega with his cofounder Ashwath Rajan, another Google veteran. Bodega sets up five-foot-wide pantry boxes filled with non-perishable items you might pick up at a convenience store. An app will allow you to unlock the box and cameras powered with computer vision will register what you’ve picked up, automatically charging your credit card. The entire process happens without a person actually manning the “store.” 

Bodega’s logo is a cat, a nod to the popular bodega cat memeon social media–although if the duo gets their way, real felines won’t have brick-and-mortar shops to saunter around and take naps in much longer. “The vision here is much bigger than the box itself,” McDonald says. “Eventually, centralized shopping locations won’t be necessary, because there will be 100,000 Bodegas spread out, with one always 100 feet away from you.”

2004 Tokyo called and wants its vending machines back, guys.  And let's talk about calling these things bodegas to begin with, you assholes.

The major downside to this concept–should it take off–is that it would put a lot of mom-and-pop stores out of business. In fact, replacing that beloved institution seems explicit in the very name of McDonald’s venture, a Spanish term synonymous with the tiny stores that dot urban landscapes and are commonly run by people originally from Latin America or Asia. Some might bristle at the idea of a Silicon Valley executive appropriating the term “bodega” for a project that could well put lots of immigrants out of work. (One of my coworkers even referred to it as “Bro-dega” to illustrate the disconnect.) 

I asked McDonald point-blank about whether he’s worried that the name Bodega might come off as culturally insensitive. Not really. “I’m not particularly concerned about it,” he says. “We did surveys in the Latin American community to understand if they felt the name was a misappropriation of that term or had negative connotations, and 97% said ‘no’. It’s a simple name and I think it works.” 

But some members of the Hispanic community don’t feel the same way. Take Frank Garcia, the chairman of the New York State Coalition of Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who represents thousands of bodega owners. Garcia’s grandfather was the head of the Latin Grocery Association in the 1960s and was part of the original community of immigrants who helped settle on the term “bodega” for the corner store. “To me, it is offensive for people who are not Hispanic to use the name ‘bodega,’ to make a quick buck,'”Garcia says. “It’s disrespecting all the mom-and-pop bodega owners that started these businesses in the ’60s and ’70s.” 

In fact, Garcia would consider making it harder for McDonald to set up the pantry boxes within his community. “I would ask my members not to allow these machines in any of their properties in New York State,” Garcia says. “And we would ask our Hispanic community not to use the service because they are not really bodegas. Real bodegas are all about human relationships within a community, having someone you know greet you and make the sandwich you like.” 

According to Garcia, many bodega owners are suffering because of escalating rents and competition from delivery services like Fresh Direct. A service like this could further adversely affect them. “Bodegas can’t compete with this technology, because it is so much more expensive to have a brick-and-mortar store than a small machine,” Garcia says. “To compete with bodegas and also use the ‘bodega’ name is unbelievably disrespectful.”

When your startup's public mission statement is to put thousands of corner stores out of business, you might want to pause and reassess why both the left and the right think it's time to start taking a sledgehammer to Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook the way Ma Bell got broken up when I was a kid.

More and more I'm thinking this is looking like a much better idea all the time.