Well, This Is a Fine F%$# You to Erdoğan

The US has decidedly to supply arms directly to Kurdish fighters in Syria:

President Trump has approved a plan to directly arm Kurdish forces fighting in Syria, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, inflaming already strained ties with Turkey and putting the U.S. military a step closer to seizing a remaining Islamic State stronghold.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White said the president made the decision Monday, describing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a diverse group dominated by Kurdish fighters, as “the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future.” For more than a year, the U.S. military has been advancing plans to capture Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the Islamic State’s de facto capital, as the final major step in its nearly three-year effort to defeat the militant group.

“We are keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partner Turkey,” White said in a statement. “We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the U.S. is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally.”

………

Ankara sees the YPG as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the United States.

Since Turkey is perhaps the 2nd worst external actor in Syria, after the House of Saud, so the fact that their agenda is going pear shaped is a good thing.

It’s fairly clear that Erdoğan is using the conflict with ISIS to reinforce his authoritarian rule, and it appears highly likely that he is intent on creating some sort of Turkish zone of influence akin to the Ottoman empire.

That reality is disabusing Erdoğan of his delusions is a good thing.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Trump just fired James Comey as FBI director.

First let’s be clear, this isn’t the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973.

Comey is not Archibald Cox, he is was a rather clueless narcissist who ignored standard law enforcement procedures because he wanted to ingratiate himself to Republicans.

I have mixed emotions about this: It’s like seeing your mother in law drive off a cliff in your brand new car.

I anticipate that whoever replaces Comey will be a complete political hack, but that’s about as inevitable as gravity.

There won’t be any meaningful political repercussions though, Republicans control both the House and the Senate.:

President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey on Tuesday, at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who said he had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and in doing so damaged the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department.

The startling development comes as Comey was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasn’t immediately clear how Comey’s ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, would be the acting director of the FBI. As a presidential candidate, Trump explicitly criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in the Clinton probe while at other points praising Comey for his “guts.”

“The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in the White House briefing room. The firing is effective “immediately,” he said.

Finally

A federal court has ruled that the air quality rules for raising livestock are too lenient:

……… Most livestock farming in industrialized countries takes place on large enclosed farms, known in the United States as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), that house hundreds or thousands of animals. Many environmental and public health groups say CAFOs are major air and water polluters and should be regulated more stringently. Farmers and trade organizations typically respond that CAFOS already are adequately regulated and do not threaten nearby communities or the environment.

On April 11, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down a rule, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008, that exempted livestock farms from reporting hazardous air emissions from animal waste. Unless EPA appeals to the Supreme Court, these farms will have to report releases of substances such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide starting later this year.

Agriculture, particularly Big Ag, has been skating for way too long on environmental regulations.

Linkage

The SNL cold open re: Joe and Mika’s recently announced engagement:

The Republicans May Not Have toRepeal Obamacare

Obamacare is good only in comparison to the status quo.

The best part of it, of course, is Medicaid expansion, which is basically single payer.

One of the claims made by Republicans is that Obamacare has reduced the quality of healthcare.

This is not true.

Another claim is that it is in the process of collapsing under its own weight.

This is (IMNSHO) untrue as well, but it appears that the ACA is at risk of collapsing its own insubstantiality:

Karen Slessor’s health insurance is hanging by a thread.

Slessor, a Reinbeck widow who has diabetes and arthritis, is one of nearly 72,000 Iowans who are on the brink of losing coverage as Congress tries to overhaul the country’s health care system. The at-risk Iowans buy their own health insurance policies, usually because they don’t work for employers that offer coverage and they don’t qualify for government insurance programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare.

Iowa is the first state where consumers face the likelihood of losing all access to individual health insurance policies, but experts say other states could soon follow.

The two largest health insurers offering individual coverage in Iowa, Aetna and Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield, announced last month that they would stop selling such policies for next year because of heavy financial losses and uncertainty in the market. In most of the state, that left just one relatively small carrier, Medica. The situation became critical on Wednesday, when Medica leaders said they probably also will pull out of Iowa.

If you know your Streetcar, you know that Blanche DuBois depended on the, “Kindness of strangers,” and Obamacare depends upon the, “Kindness of insurance companies.”

Of course, insurance companies have no kindness, and this problem with a lack of providers is not limited to Iowa, Tennessee has s similar (though less dire) situation, and huge swaths of the country have only one provider on the exchanges, meaning that Obama’s neoliberal* vision for healthcare reform would have been in trouble if Hillary hadn’t lost the election.

Barack Obama’s merry band of free market mousketeers may have created a system that is fundamentally unsustainable.

*At Naked Capitalism, in the aptly named post, “Neo-liberalism Expressed as Simple Rules,” gives two basic rules:

1. Because markets.
2. Go die!

How Can You Govern a Country Which Has Two Hundred and Forty-Six Varieties of Cheese?*

Emnanuel Macron defeated Marine le Pen in the French Presidential elections, and it wasn’t even close:

The pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidency in a decisive victory over the far-right Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, and vowed to unite a divided and fractured France.

Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ran as a “neither left nor right” independent promising to shake up the French political system, took 65.1% to Le Pen’s 34.9%, according to initial projections from early counts.
………

 Despite the wide margin of the final result, Le Pen’s score nonetheless marked a historic high for the French far right. Even after a lacklustre campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken almost 11m votes, double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002. The anti-immigration, anti-EU Front National’s supporters asserted that the party had a central place as an opposition force in France.

 Turnout was the lowest in more than 40 years. Almost one-third of voters chose neither Macron nor Le Pen, with 12 million abstaining and 4.2 million spoiling ballot papers.

In 2002, le Pen pere got 17.8% of the vote, so this is an improvement, but still a blow-out.

It’s a loss, but it is a major improvement, and she picked up 15% from what she got in the first round, as versus a roughly 1% that Jean le Pen gained in the 2002 2nd round.

I do not think that this trend has reached its high water mark, this will continue until the EU fixes some very serious problem:

  • The EU remains an anti-democratic institution, and creating meaningful representative democratic functions.
  • It remains in the thrall of neoliberal economics.
  • German hegemony,  with the associated faulty German economics, and German punitive morality, is a petri dish for xenophobic nationalism among the rest of the EU.

If these flaws are not addressed, I expect to see the end of the Euro, and possibly the end of the EU.

As I’ve noted before,  many of the deep problems in the EU come from Germany’s preeminent position in it.

*It’s a quote from Charles de Gaulle. He was talking about France.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Sunday)

We have the 5th commercial bank failure of the year, Guaranty Bank, (d/b/a BestBank in Georgia & Michigan), in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This means that bank failures have caught up with credit union failures, and the current pace is about 14 a year, which is a faster pace than both 2015 and 2016.

Here is the Full FDIC list.

So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Ireland is a 3rd World Nation in Europe

Any country which has working blasphemy statutes on the books cannot be considered a modern nation state:

Police in the Republic of Ireland have launched an investigation after a viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on a TV show were blasphemous.

Officers are understood to be examining whether the British comedian committed a criminal offence under the Defamation Act when he appeared on RTE [Ireland’s National Television and Radio Broadcaster] in 2015.

Fry had asked why he should “respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world…. full of injustice”.

………

Appearing on The Meaning of Life, hosted by Gay Byrne, in February 2015, Fry had been asked what he might say to God at the gates of heaven.

Fry said: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery? It’s not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”

He went on to say that Greek gods “didn’t present themselves as being all seeing, all wise, all beneficent”, adding “the god who created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish”.

The Irish Independent reported a member of the public made a complaint to police in Ennis in the same month the programme was broadcast. He was recently contacted by a detective to say they were looking into his complaint.

The viewer was not said to be offended himself but believed Fry’s comments qualified as blasphemy under the law, which carries a maximum penalty of a fine of 25,000 euros (£22,000).

The law prohibits people from publishing or uttering “matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”.

If you think that your  God has such a thin skin, I kind of think that either you do not understand your God, or you are worshiping a very small and petty being.

This Would Never Happen Without the Video

Roy Oliver, former of the Balch Springs Police Department, who gunned down Jordan Edwards has been charged with murder:

Roy Oliver, the fired Balch Springs police officer who shot and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards as he was driving away from a party, was arrested on a murder charge Friday night.

Oliver, 37, turned himself in at the Parker County Jail. Bond was set at $300,000. If convicted of murder, he faces up to life in prison. His attorney could not be reached for comment.

Oliver, who lives in Combine, fired a rifle into a car of teenagers as they drove away from a party Saturday night, striking Jordan, a passenger, in the head, police said. The six-year veteran of the department was fired Tuesday.

He was the second of two officers who responded to a report of underage drinking. After gunfire was heard in the area, Jordan and four other teenagers got in their car to leave.

Police originally said Oliver fired on the car because it was backing up aggressively toward the officers. But the department revised its account after reviewing body-cam footage, saying the car was driving away when Jordan was shot.

It wasn’t a cell phone video this time, it was a body cam, but it reveals a truth:  Cops lie, a lot, and without video evidence, they almost never get caught.

Every body cam, and every cell phone camera, is a tool to keep law enforcement honest.

Without the video, Oliver would probably have gotten a commendation.

Linkage

Trump Voter Feels Betrayed By President After Reading 800 Pages Of Queer Feminist Theory:

The Balloon Has Gone Up

The House of Representatives just passed the latest version of Trumpcare:

The House on Thursday narrowly approved legislation to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, as Republicans recovered from their earlier failures and moved a step closer to delivering on their promise to reshape American health care without mandated insurance coverage.

The vote, 217 to 213, held on President Trump’s 105th day in office, is a significant step on what could be a long legislative road. Twenty Republicans bolted from their leadership to vote no. But the win keeps alive the party’s dream of unwinding President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

The House measure faces profound uncertainty in the Senate, where a handful of Republican senators immediately rejected it, signaling that they would start work on a new version of the bill virtually from scratch.

This is going to be a complete clusterf%$#.

The only question is whether the Democrats have sufficient solidarity to make political hay from it.

There Are Two People Who Make Donald Trump Look Good, Hillary Clinton, and ………

Mark Zuckerberg:

Facebook is disputing a former employee’s analysis that female engineers have their code rejected 35% more than male engineers, telling employees internally that leaking such information damages its “recruiting brand” and makes it harder for the company to hire women.

The original analysis, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and independently confirmed by the Guardian, was conducted by a longtime Facebook software engineer last year. The engineer studied the company’s code review process, looking at the number of times code was rejected, commented upon, or updated; how long it took for code to be accepted; and demographic data about the coder, such as gender and length of employment.

Female coders received 35% more “rejects” and 8.2% more comments on their code, the engineer found. The engineer also found that the disparity in rejections for male and female coders was “consistent across time at company”.

(emphasis mine)


We don’t care, we don’t have to … we’re Facebook.

“Damages its recruiting brand?” Seriously?

If Facebook thinks that this is the worst part of their being another outpost of “Bro Culture,” is that it damages their brand, then their moral compass is spinning fast enough to power all of Bayonne, New Jersey.

It’s no wonder that another publication described Facebook’s response as, “Incredibly tone-deaf.”

They are Facebook, they don’t care, they don’t have to.

Linkage

I am so going to see the Kingsman Sequel:

Schadenfreude, Sweet Schadenfreude

Jim DeMint was just fired by the Heritage foundation:

The board of the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday ousted president Jim DeMint after days of turmoil and internal debate, blaming him for management and communication problems that have roiled the venerable conservative think tank.

 Thomas A. Saunders III, chairman of the Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement that the 22-member board unanimously requested and received the resignation of DeMint, the firebrand former senator from South Carolina. Heritage founder Ed Feulner will serve in his place until a permanent successor is chosen.

 “After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation,” Saunders said. “While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems.”

 In his own statement, DeMint called the critique “puzzling,” saying the board had praised his work for the past four years and approved annual performance bonuses for the entire management team.

 He said he was proud of his work at Heritage, citing accomplishments such as the think tank’s role in helping lead President Trump’s transition team.

………

But board trustee Bill Walton said the issue was not “Needham versus DeMint.”

“It’s boring old management stuff,” said Walton, saying that excessive bureaucracy prevented papers from getting approved rapidly and scholars from getting permission to attend meetings. “We think we can make it leaner and more effective.”

I wish that there was a way for both of them to lose.

A friend of mine was fired by Heritage because she got cancer, so I am even less disposed to give them the benefit of the doubt than I would be otherwise.

I am sure that personalities were a part of this, but I think that a lot of this is that DeMint and his minions had no interest in managing a facsimile of a serious academic institution, since Conservatism of DeMint’s ilk is generally opposed to ideas, and thinking, in general.