BAD CALL: Trump Congratulates Erdoğan on Sweeping New Presidential Powers.

HMM: 2020s To Be A Decade of Disorder For Oil.

OH, SNAP: UK Prime Minister Theresa May to seek early election.

May, who commands only a slim majority in parliament’s lower House of Commons, said that a new mandate would strengthen her hand in negotiations in Brexit talks.

Her decision is a reversal of policy — since taking over as Prime Minister, May had repeatedly ruled out an early election.

A general election would end the attempts of opposition parties and members of the House of Lords to thwart her Brexit plans, she said. “If we do not hold a general election now, their political game playing will continue,” she said.

Probably not just a coincidence that yesterday’s YouGov poll showed the Conservatives with a 21-point lead over Labour. And the pro-Brexit U.K. Independence Party is showing renewed strength at 10 percent.

THEY SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN A HAREBRAINED LETTER ASKING FOR THEIR MONEY BACK: Claremont Snowflakes Write Hairbrained Open Letter Characterizing Truth as a ‘Myth’

JUSTICE? Silicon Valley CEO Pleads ‘No Contest’ to Abusing His Wife—and Is Offered a Deal for Less Than 30 Days in Jail.

She would later be asked by a Sunnyvale police officer whether she considered getting away from her husband when he was assaulting her.

“The victim told me she did not think she could leave,” the officer would write in a report. “In the past if she did anything other than take the assault it made her husband angrier, and the assault was worse. She added that he had already assaulted her that evening, and this was the second assault. She clarified the suspect used both hands to hit her on both sides. Initially his left hand held her right ear, but then he switched to striking her with his left hand.”

By the time of that report, Rastogi had taken the video and other evidence she had gathered with her iPhone to the police. Her 38-year-old husband was arrested and ended up pleading no contest. The device she helped refine seemed to have become an instrument of justice.

But to 36-year-old Rastogi’s dismay, the top charge against Abhishek was reduced from felony assault to felony accessory after the fact, with an accompanying misdemeanor of “offensive touching.”

When did the San Francisco Bay area become such a cesspit of violent misogyny?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Spy Agency Hackers Pose As – Anybody.

The recently released WikiLeaks archives of alleged CIA hacking tools have led some cybersecurity specialists to believe that a unit called Umbrage is facilitating CIA false flag operations by acquiring and repurposing techniques – either those found online, stolen from other governments, or purchased from private security firms and illicit groups acting as brokers. Whether the CIA conducts such false flag operations remains unconfirmed. Some commentators – including WikiLeaks – have alleged that that the intention of repurposing tools is to imitate other actors, rather than that the CIA is simply improving its own arsenal. This charge rests on shaky ground at best. After all, once attacks are deployed, others can copy their techniques. A thriving market for hacking techniques has appeared in recent years. It would be surprising if government spy agencies were not taking advantage of it.

To add to the confusion, multiple actors sometimes use the same tools. For example, the 2012 attack against Saudi Aramco and the 2014 attack against Sony Pictures had in common a disk-wiping tool called RawDisk. Yet the Saudi Aramco attack has largely been attributed to Iran, while the Sony attack was blamed on North Korea – even resulting in U.S. imposed sanctions.

If a false flag operation is to be successful, it cannot rely on a single bogus lead. Some experts question whether any false flag operation can completely deceive everyone. Some false flag gambits may be meant as warning shots. “A state might try to send a signal to another state,” says Maurer, “knowing the victim state will be capable of attributing the true source, while all or most other states will not notice.”

Who can see past the false flags to fix blame for cyber attacks? The Kaspersky Lab paper argues that major signals intelligence agencies, particularly the NSA and the UK’s GCHQ, are capable of attributing attacks with certainty and confidence. The problem is, the secret agencies cannot make their cases in public. “As intelligence agencies,” the paper says, “they are blessed with the ability to see but not to publically substantiate, the gift to attribute without being believed.”

This is the kind of report which used to fill you with confidence about our spy agencies, but now makes you wonder exactly whom those tools are being used against.

GOOD MORNING: Make it even better with Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: No, Russia isn’t sending a Terminator robot to the space station.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: Student Punished by Title IX After Being Exonerated Attempted Suicide.

JAZZ SHAW: What’s the end game in Venezuela?

That leaves us with three equally horrible options to my way of thinking. The first would be to simply leave the status quo in place and see if Maduro can right the ship on his own and at least begin regularly feeding his people again. This sounds dubious at best and those who have been leading any protests or pushing for more legislative power from the opposition side will likely soon wind up in dungeons. The second, even more far fetched possibility is foreign military intervention to overthrow the government and set up some sort of transitional administration. Anybody want to sign up for that duty? I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting.

And that leaves perhaps the ugliest option. A revolution coming from the streets where the citizens somehow manage to overcome the well armed government forces and essentially hang Maduro from a meat hook on the streets of Caracas like a modern day il Duce. The death toll to the rebels would be horrendous and even if they succeeded… what then? There are multiple opposition groups representing very different factions and ideologies out there. Would internal warfare immediately follow until some sort of 21st century Robespierre arose from the blood soaked ashes and instituted a new Reign of Terror? If history teaches us anything, that possibility can’t be discounted and is likely more of a probability at this point.

This would normally be the portion of the essay where I raise my hand, point out how all of these proposals have shortcomings and offer a better solution of my own. No such luck here, sports fans.

Venezuela, post Maduro? Maybe at best a test case for the feasibility of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

HAVE FLIGHT DECK, WILL PROJECT POWER: U.S. Marines Want to Pack 20 Stealth Fighters on One Assault Ship.

The plan, which the Corps laid out in the 2017 edition of its annual aviation strategy document, has been under consideration for at least five years, according to the document.

Increasing demands on the U.S. Navy’s 10 supercarriers, the entry into service of the aviation-optimized America-class assault ships and the fast-growing numbers of vertical-landing F-35Bs in the Marines’ inventory finally makes the light-carrier scheme feasible … and necessary.

“While the amphibious assault ship will never replace the aircraft carrier, it can be complementary, if employed in imaginative ways,” the strategy document notes.

Indeed. A light carrier doesn’t pack the punch — or enjoy the staying power — of a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. But providing the Marines with that much mobile air cover would free up the Navy to concentrate on its own missions.

PENCE IN SOUTH KOREA: North ‘Would Do Well Not to Test’ Trump.

This is how you get wily dictators to the negotiating table — not by sending them midnight pallets of cash and hoping for the best.

JAY COST: As goes Kansas, so goes …?

It is a dicey proposition to read too much into special elections to the House of Representatives. Turnout tends to be quite low, and local factors can skew results one way or another. That could be especially true in this case. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is immensely unpopular in the state, and Mr. Estes, as state treasurer, is naturally linked to his administration.

Still, the results were notable — especially in Topeka, the state capital and the biggest population center in the district. Mr. Trump won Topeka comfortably against Hillary Clinton in 2016, but in the special election, the vote was split more or less down the middle. In many respects, Topeka is your typical Midwestern city. So, to see the Democratic nominee claim half the vote could be a sign of rising voter discontent nationwide.

Or it could just be a fluke. That’s the trouble with special elections.

Still, congressional Republicans would do well to confront the plain fact that, though they have had complete charge of the government, they have no substantive accomplishments to show for their time in power. Worse, they do not even have any big achievements working their way through the pipeline.

Read the whole thing.

My preference would have been for a GOP loss in Kansas last week. The sacrifice of one easy-to-win-back seat would have been worth it, if it had given the House GOP a wakeup call in time to avoid a 2006-style shellacking next year.

MORNING JOE: Democrats Have Forgotten How To Win.

• Joe Scarborough said that he’s been asking Dem leaders appearing on the show if they’d be okay with a pro-life person from areas like Alabama or Kentucky, so long as they were progressive on economic issues. Said Scarborough, “and I keep hearing, No. No it’s not, no it’s not.”

• Liberal New York Times columnist Frank Bruni said “if you look at certain swing districts, [Dems] do not nominate the person who’s most likely to win in the general. They nominate someone who’s a purist from the primary, and then they wind up losing the district.” Without citing the specific district, Bruni gave the example of an upstate New York House election. He might well have had in mind the 19th district race. With an open seat in a competitive district at stake, Dems nominated the far-left, Occupy Wall Street/Bernie backer Zephyr Teachout. She lost handily to Republican John Faso.

• Dems got a double-dose of bad news from representatives of the Gray Lady. NYT reporter Jeremy Peters said “there is no leadership right now. There is such a vacuum. The sclerosis in the Democratic party is so overwhelming and crippling that they do not have a bench. They do not have leaders.

Obama took the national party Full Left-Progressive, making it as ideologically pure as it’s ever been. The 2010 & 2014 off-year elections all but wiped out moderates at the state and local level.

Expecting moderation and compromise from what’s left is a fool’s game, at least until the next savvy DLC-type candidate comes along.

SANITY RETURNS TO THE ACADEMY: Fresno State Reports Own Professor for ‘Trump Must Hang’ Tweet.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Take Over Syria, Roman Edition.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Army Lasers Will Soon Destroy Enemy Mortars, Artillery and Drones From Strykers.

YOU CAN’T ENFORCE THE LAW HERE, GENTLEMEN — THIS IS A COURTROOM! Arresting Illegal Immigrants in Courthouses Violates Their Rights, Say Activists.

RETENTION: The Air Force Nosedive Will Continue Until it Deals with Toxic Commanders.

When Col. Debbie Liddick relieved Lt. Col. Craig Perry from command without proper cause, it was abuse of power. When she had him investigated to give credibility to her lie, it was abuse of power. When Brig. Gen. Mark Camerer failed to relieve Liddick of command for her actions and failed to punish her, he abused his power.

When Col. Pat Rhatigan relieved Lt. Col. Blair Kaiser from command without cause, it was abuse. When Gen. Darren McDew failed to remove or reprimand Rhatigan, McDew himself became culpable for abuse.

When Col. Brian Hastings reprimanded and grounded three of his officers without proper evidence, he abused his power. When Gen. Robin Rand failed to relieve Hastings or investigate his actions, Rand abused his power. When Gen. Mark Welsh allowed Hastings to be placed on the promotion list for Brigadier General in spite of his conduct, Welsh participated in and deepened the abuse.

When Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta ignored the fact that Maj. Michael Turpiano had been railroaded by a sham prosecution containing zero evidence of sexual misconduct, he abused his power.

These are just a few prominent examples of a phenomenon that has been baked into the Air Force’s institutional climate and is now pervasive, no where more obvious than in reprimand and Article 15 proceedings that often curtail liberty and remove property from airmen without sufficient evidence to meet even a modest preponderance standard. The phenomenon is that the Air Force has given commanders the power of professional assassination and turned them loose to wield it without training, education, or accountability.

“Toxic commanders” act a lot like SJWs in uniform.

METHOD ACTOR: Will the real Alex Jones please stand up?

CHANGE? Trump’s message to Democrats: Negotiate Obamacare, or payments to insurers will be cut.

President Trump is threatening to cut off critical Obamacare payments to insurers unless Democrats come to the table to negotiate a new health care bill, taking a tough negotiating stance that could force Democratic leaders into a government shutdown by month’s end.

At stake are “cost sharing” payments that Obamacare backers say are supposed to be made to insurance companies to cover their losses from low-income customers.

A federal court has invalidated the payments, saying the Obama administration spent the money even though Congress specifically stripped the funds from its annual spending bills.

The government is still making the payments pending an appeal of the case, but Mr. Trump hinted last week that he would halt the payments himself, forcing Obamacare into a quick death unless Democrats agree to negotiate over major changes to the Affordable Care Act.

“If Congress doesn’t approve it, or if I don’t approve it, that would mean that Obamacare doesn’t have enough money, so it dies immediately as opposed to over a period of time,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

Alternately, Trump could hit them where it really hurts:

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law, said that if Mr. Trump truly wants leverage, then he should cancel an Obama-era rule that lets members of Congress and their staff keep their federal health care subsidies, even though they are mandated by law to use Obamacare’s exchanges.

Don’t let Congress get away with breaking the law, Mr. President!

CHARLIE MARTIN ASKS: What Is Trump’s Deal?

CHANGE: Haitians get word of Trump crackdown, slow flow to border by 97%.

BUT I DON’T WANT TO: Forget About Terraforming Mars. Here’s Why.

“The rate of loss of gas today is very low — slow enough that it would take billions of years to remove the equivalent amount of gas that is in the atmosphere,” principal investigator Bruce Jakosky said in an email. There is some CO2 left in the polar ice and in carbon-bearing materials, he added, but not nearly enough to warm the temperature significantly if it somehow was put back in the atmosphere.

“There isn’t a source of CO2 that could replenish the atmosphere — even outgassing of CO2 from volcanoes has got to be incredibly slow today,” Jakosky added. “If we wanted to put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to raise temperatures significantly, it would take something like 10 million kilometer-sized comets (if they were all made entirely of CO2). This is just not feasible.”

That is… inconvenient.

QUESTION ASKED: What are the True Costs of New York’s ‘Free’ College Education?

I’m not sure it matters. Whenever costs are socialized and benefits are privatized, there is usually a constituency loud and engaged enough to keep a program going in perpetuity, regardless of the expense.