StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime has selected 10th Circuit conservative Neil Gorsuch to be nominated to the Supreme Court, he is the son of Reagan's EPA chief Ann Gorsuch.
• The US Army Corps of Engineers is expected to grant final approval for the Dakota Access pipeline along Standing Rock Sioux lands today, opponents vow to go to court to block it.
• While just short of half of Americans approve of Trump's Muslim immigration ban so far, less than one-third believe it will make America "more safe" in a new Reuters poll.
• Thousands protested in Romania's capital of Bucharest on Tuesday as the government ended corruption investigations into several cabinet members and sought to pardon those convicted. 
• A Carnegie Mellon University AI named Libratus took on some of the world's best Texas Hold 'Em poker players and won $1.7 million in the "Brains vs Artificial Intelligence" tournament.

Last Call For Flag, Burning

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, nobody seems to know who a military convoy that rolled through Lexington on Sunday flying a "Trump" flag actually belonged to, and nobody's taking responsibility for it.  Yet.

Flying a large "Trump" flag, a mysterious convoy of military vehicles rolled down Interstate 65 through Louisville on Sunday morning. But nobody is claiming it. 

A spokesman for Ft. Knox, Patrick Hodges, said it wasn't theirs. 

Same for the Kentucky National Guard, said Maj. Stephen Martin, director of public affairs. 

A Defense Department spokesman, Maj. Jamie Davis, who examined images of the four-truck procession for the Courier-Journal, said he doesn't think it belonged to any service branch — and that the vehicles may have been military surplus. 

Davis said it would violate regulations to fly such a flag on a military vehicle. “That is not standard procedure,” he said. He also said it would have been against the rules to run a military convoy without unit markings on the trucks. 

Chris Rowzee, a spokeswoman for indivisibleky, a new activist organization in Louisville, said that as a retired veteran who served 28 years in the Air Force, “I can't even begin to describe how disturbed I am by this.” 

While Donald Trump is president, she said, the military is supposed to be a nonpolitical organization in which servicemen and women swear an oath to the Constitution, not to any particular president. 

“To show a partisan political leaning on a military vehicle is very reminiscent of Nazi Germany,” she said.

 

Invisibleky posted photos and a video of the convoy on its website. Rowzee said the group thinks the trucks may have belonged to a military contractor, if they weren't being operated by the military.

So yes, this actually happened.  Somebody decided it would be really cool to drive around several military trucks with at least one of them openly flying a Trump regime flag.  Every alarm bell in the universe ought to be ringing in your head at this one, guys.  We know Trump has his own security team separate from the US Secret Service and that our military and police have a real problem with white nationalists in the ranks.

This is the kind of thing that will become more prevalent.

By the way, can you imagine the national freakout if a military truck was ever spotted flying an Obama flag?

The Fight For SCOTUS

I'll believe this when I see them actually do it, but apparently Dems are going to try to call Mitch McConnell's bluff and will filibuster Trump's expected Supreme Court nominee this week.

Senate Democrats are going to try to bring down President Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick no matter who the president chooses to fill the current vacancy.

With Trump prepared to announce his nominee on Tuesday evening, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in an interview on Monday morning that he will filibuster any pick that is not Merrick Garland and that the vast majority of his caucus will oppose Trump’s nomination. That means Trump's nominee will need 60 votes to be confirmed by the Senate.

“This is a stolen seat. This is the first time a Senate majority has stolen a seat,” Merkley said in an interview. “We will use every lever in our power to stop this.”

It’s a move that will prompt a massive partisan battle over Trump’s nominee and could lead to an unraveling of the Senate rules if Merkley is able to get 41 Democrats to join him in a filibuster. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also reminded her Twitter followers on Sunday night that Supreme Court nominees can still be blocked by the Senate minority, unlike all other executive and judicial nominees.

Any senator can object to swift approval of a nominee and require a supermajority. Asked directly whether he would do that, Merkley replied: “I will definitely object to a simple majority” vote.

Merkley's party leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, has said he will fight "tooth and nail" any nominee who isn't "mainstream." 

So the question is who cracks first here, the Dems or the Trump regime?  History tells us the Dems will probably be smashed into oblivion and will have folded by March 1, with Trump's nominee getting an easy confirmation vote before Tax Day.  The Dems folded on Samuel Alito and that was with the Christmas holiday, in a matter of three months.

I dearly hope I'm wrong, but Senate Dems continue to disappoint me at nearly every turn.

The Sinking Ship Of State, Con't

The Trump regime is discovering the problem with career State Department diplomats: they're pretty good writers with excellent skills of persuasion.

Numerous diplomats have drafted a memo of dissent denouncing President Donald Trump's executive order banning the resettlement of refugees and barring travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The current draft of the memo, which was obtained by the Lawfare blog, describes Trump's actions as "counterproductive" to its stated goal of protecting Americans from potential terrorist attacks. According to the memo, the order will instead exacerbate relations with the targeted countries.

The State Department confirmed the existence of the memo to Mother Jones on Monday.

"We are aware of a dissent channel message regarding the Executive Order titled 'Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,'" State Department spokesman Mark Toner said when reached for comment. "The Dissent Channel is a long-standing official vehicle for State Department employees to convey alternative views and perspectives on policy issues. This is an important process that the acting secretary, and the department as a whole, value and respect. It allows State employees to express divergent policy views candidly and privately to senior leadership."

The "dissent channel" was established in the 1970s for career diplomats to confidentially express opposition to the administration's foreign policy.

"We are better than this ban," the draft memo adds. "Looking beyond its effectiveness, this ban stands in opposition to the core American and constitutional values that we as federal employees took an oath to uphold."

From the memo:

The United States is a nation of immigrants, starting from its very origins. The concept that immigrants and foreigners are welcome is an essential element of our society, our government, and our foreign policy. So, too, is the concept that we are all equal under the law and that we as a nation abhor discrimination, whether it is based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. Combined together, that means we have a special obligation to maintain an immigration system that is as free as possible from discrimination, that does not have implied or actual religious tests, and that views individuals as individuals, not as part of stereotyped groups. 

The Executive Order frames the ban as a 90-day suspension of entry for these nationals until their countries can set up arrangements to provide adequate information to determine that an individual seeking a benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat. This is a high, vague, and nebulous bar. In some cases, the governments of these countries may be wholly incapable of providing this information; in others, the government may be unwilling. In either case, individual citizens will pay the price, a situation which runs counter to US. values of fair play and offering equal opportunities to all.

How long the State Department gets to keep its dissent channel, well that's really the question now, is it?

In all seriousness, this should be extraordinarily disturbing to folks.  State Department dissent channel stuff should be taken pretty seriously, it's there for a reason.  The Trump regime's official response?  If you don't like it, quit.

Asked about a memo signed by dozens of State Department diplomats opposing the temporary ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the US, spokesman Sean Spicer encouraged the federal employees to "either get with the program or they can go." 

"The president has a very clear vision. He's been clear on it since the campaign. He's been clear on it since taking office, that he's going to put this safety of this country first. He is going to implement things that are in the best interest of the safety of this country prospectively, not re-actively," Spicer said at the White House. "And if somebody has a problem with that agenda then that does call into question whether or not they should continue in that post or not."

Once again, dissent will not be tolerated in the Trump regime.

StupidiNews!

• In a statement former President Obama "fundamentally disagrees" with the Trump regime's refugee ban executive order and says airport protests are "exactly what we expect to see".
• Trump is expected to sign an executive order today commissioning a complete review of the nation's cybersecurity, calling it a top priority of American defense.
• Turkish authorities have fired more then 90,000 civil servants over the last six months as President Regep Tayyip Erdogan's government purge since last July's coup still continues.
• Trump's expected Supreme Court pick will come tonight at 8 PM, Democrats are still considering whether or not to block the nominee.
• A new reports finds that the majority of Washington DC surveillance camera recorders were knocked out a week before the Trump inauguration by malware.

Last Call For The Orange Coup-Coup Birds

This analysis of the Trump regime's first 10 days is making the rounds, and given the evidence at hand it's fairly compelling stuff.

I see a few key patterns here. First, the decision to first block, and then allow, green card holders was meant to create chaos and pull out opposition; they never intended to hold it for too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if the goal is to create “resistance fatigue,” to get Americans to the point where they’re more likely to say “Oh, another protest? Don’t you guys ever stop?” relatively quickly. 

However, the conspicuous absence of provisions preventing them from executing any of the “next steps” I outlined yesterday, such as bulk revocation of visas (including green cards) from nationals of various countries, and then pursuing them using mechanisms being set up for Latinos, highlights that this does not mean any sort of backing down on the part of the regime. 

Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision. 

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored. 

Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.

That;s a very serious accusation, but I myself have said several times that if you wanted to lead a de facto coup in the US, the Trump regime has been following that playbook for more than a year.

A second major theme is watching the set of people involved. There appears to be a very tight “inner circle,” containing at least Trump, Bannon, Miller, Priebus, Kushner, and possibly Flynn, which is making all of the decisions. Other departments and appointees have been deliberately hobbled, with key orders announced to them only after the fact, staff gutted, and so on. Yesterday’s reorganization of the National Security Council mirrors this: Bannon and Priebus now have permanent seats on the Principals’ Committee; the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both been demoted to only attending meetings where they are told that their expertise is relevant; the Secretary of Energy and the US representative to the UN were kicked off the committee altogether (in defiance of the authorizing statute, incidentally). 

I am reminded of Trump’s continued operation of a private personal security force, and his deep rift with the intelligence community. Last Sunday, Kellyanne Conway (likely another member of the inner circle) said that “It’s really time for [Trump] to put in his own security and intelligence community,” and this seems likely to be the case. 

As per my analysis yesterday, Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do) Keith Schiller would continue to run the personal security force, which would take over an increasing fraction of the Secret Service’s job. 

Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President.

It's an ugly subject, frankly.  Again, we're already in the early stages of a constitutional crisis as of this weekend anyway.  Do I think a coup is coming?  I couldn't tell you, but the path we're going down really does have only two conclusions.

The notes may be in a different key, the instruments different, but the Trump regime band is playing one of the oldest songs in the book right now, and for now the country is playing along.

When the music suddenly stops, that's when history tells us the darkest refrain begins.

Russian To Judgement, Con't.

Americans continue to want answers about Russian interference in our elections and Putin's relationship with the Trump regime.  As much as Trump would like to make it so, this story isn't going away.

American voters believe 53 - 39 percent that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election and support 56 - 30 percent the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama Administration, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. In fact, 76 percent of those who support existing sanctions want tougher sanctions.

Russia is an adversary of the U.S., 46 percent of American voters say, while 9 percent say Russia is an ally and 41 percent say it is neither an ally nor an adversary, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds.

A total of 67 percent of American voters say alleged Russian interference is a "very important" or "somewhat important" issue, and 68 percent want the matter investigated.

In a separate question, voters support 62 - 32 percent investigations into potential links between President Donald Trump's campaign advisors and the Russian government.

President Trump is "too friendly" towards Russia, 49 percent of voters say, while 3 percent say he is "too unfriendly" and 43 percent say he has the right attitude towards Russia.

Voters trust Congress more than Trump 60 - 29 percent to handle America's policy towards Russia.

"Beware the Russian Bear, say American voters, most of whom believe the Kremlin meddled in the U.S. presidential election," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "President Donald Trump is too friendly with Russia and voters say 2-1 they would rather have Congress, not the president, handle future relations with Russia.

"Should we let bygones be bygones? Absolutely not, say Americans, who want an investigation - and tougher sanctions."

Trump's storm of executive orders may be flooding the zone, but it's not enough to get America to forget about his real boss, Vlad.  Even 43% of Republicans want Trump regime ties to Russia to be investigated.

This is the real issue, guys.  The rest is designed to distract from the fact we have foreign agents running the executive branch.

Authoritarianism For Dummies

While the battle over the Trump regime's awful immigration ban continues, regime spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway wants to know when media critics of Trump will be disposed of.

Kellyanne Conway in an interview Sunday slammed the media, asking when network reporters will be fired over their coverage of the Trump administration.

"Who is cleaning house? Which one is going to be the first network to get rid of these people, the people who think things were just not true?" Conway asked on "Fox News Sunday."

Conway, a key adviser to President Trump, criticized networks for their coverage of her "alternative facts" statement one week ago, noting that there were other things she said in Sunday show interviews that could have been the reporters' focus.

"I went on three network shows and spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows. You know what got picked? The fact that I said 'alternative facts,' not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts that they never cover the facts that matter," Conway said.

"Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go," she added. "I'm too polite to mention their names, but they know who they are, and they are all wondering who will be the first to go. The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go."

Dissent will not be tolerated by the Trump regime, you know.  Eventually the answer to "Who will rid me of these troublesome media priests?" will be answered by heavy White House pressure from the regime and heads will roll pretty quickly.

Actual President Steve Bannon has long wanted the destruction of the America free press.  Conway is laying down yet another warning that this is one of the Trump regime's major goals.  When it happens, it will happen blindingly fast.  Once the first goes, well, many many more will follow. The regime will need total control of the media before too long, and it will most likely get it, at least for a while.

You didn't think this had a happy ending, did you?

StupidiNews!

• Six are dead and eight injured as at least two gunmen opened fire on a Canadian mosque near Quebec City, police have two suspects in custody as Quebec premier's calls this a terrorist act.
• Winners at the 23rd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards last night included the casts of Stranger Things and Hidden Figures, as several winners spoke out against the Trump regime.
• Deadly clashes between Ukraine's military and pro-Russian separatists killed five ahead of President Petro Poroshenko's visit to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
• Brazil's former wealthiest man, fugitive Eike Batista, will return to Rio to face corruption and bribery charges in the "Carwash" investigation that snared former President Dilma Rouseff.
• School districts in California, Illinois and New York are introducing electric school bus vehicles as the nation's school bus fleet uses 800 million gallons of fuel in a school year.

Little Donny's First Constitutional Crisis

Late last night a federal judge in Brooklyn has issued a federal court order to stop the Trump regime's deportation scheme.  As of this hour, that order is being willfully ignored.

The ACLU is getting “multiple reports” that federal customs agents are siding with President Trump — and willfully ignoring a Brooklyn federal judge’s demand that travelers from seven Muslim countries not be deported from the nation’s airports.

“The court’s order could not be clearer… they need to comply with the order,” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants Rights project, told The Post late Saturday.

“It’s enough to be a serious concern,” Jadwat said of the reports.

Jadwat and other ACLU lawyers had earlier Saturday night won an emergency stay of Trump’s deportation order from Brooklyn Federal Judge Ann Donnelly.

So here we are, barely into week two and we're already in constitutional crisis mode.  Protests continue at major US international airports across the country.  Right now Trump looks like a tyrant and an ass.  But as Steve M. points out, this is far from over.

Nope. Not good enough. The order has to be overturned and the president has to be prevented from either modifying it slightly or ignoring the courts altogether. And the damage to America's reputation as a place where Muslims are welcome has suffered irreparable damage in any case.

The administration has suffered a setback. It's not nearly enough.

It won't be enough until the Trump base stops supporting him. And the base has made it clear that there's nothing he can do that will qualify short of surrendering to the hated liberals.

Meet Our National Insecurity Team

Name me any other time a President has put a chief strategist on the National Security Council, especially when that strategist is white nationalist asshole Steve Bannon.

President Donald Trump has tapped his controversial senior adviser and chief strategist Stephen Bannon for a permanent seat at National Security Council meetings in what some experts are calling an "unprecedented" political appointment to the panel.

In an executive memorandum signed by Trump on Saturday, the president also downgraded the status of the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on the security council's principals committee. Both will now only attend meetings "where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed."

The invitation-only status of the joint chiefs chairman and director of national intelligence is similar to a policy instituted under President George W. Bush.

Another Bush-era policy re-instituted in Trump's memorandum is separating the Homeland Security Council from the NSC, which President Obama had previously merged.

While it's not abnormal for presidents to restructure the makeup of their National Security Council, the addition of Bannon, the former publisher of Breitbart News, has brought scrutiny over the adviser's influence in Trump's inner circle.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who worked with Trump's National Security Adviser Michael Flynn during the transition, called Trump's reorganization "stone cold crazy."

If you're wondering where Trump's awful immigration policies are coming from, it's Steve Bannon and policy aide Steve Miller, and these two clowns in hoods are the reason we've seen the Trump regime completely botch this plan this weekend.

When President Donald Trump declared at the Pentagon Friday he was enacting strict new measures to prevent domestic terror attacks, there were few within his government who knew exactly what he meant. 

Administration officials weren't immediately sure which countries' citizens would be barred from entering the United States. The Department of Homeland Security was left making a legal analysis on the order after Trump signed it. A Border Patrol agent, confronted with arriving refugees, referred questions only to the President himself, according to court filings. 

Saturday night, a federal judge granted an emergency stay for citizens of the affected countries who had already arrived in the US and those who are in transit and hold valid visas, ruling they can legally enter the US. 

Trump's unilateral moves, which have drawn the ire of human rights groups and prompted protests at US airports, reflect the President's desire to quickly make good on his campaign promises. But they also encapsulate the pitfalls of an administration largely operated by officials with scant federal experience. 

It wasn't until Friday -- the day Trump signed the order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and suspending all refugee admission for 120 days -- that career homeland security staff were allowed to see the final details of the order, a person familiar with the matter said. 

The result was widespread confusion across the country on Saturday as airports struggled to adjust to the new directives. In New York, two Iraqi nationals sued the federal government after they were detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and 10 others were detained as well. 

Steve Bannon is at the center of all this mess, guaranteed.  He's the devil in the shadows here.

 

Sunday Long Read: The Dark Side Of Data

Two reporters for Zurich's Das Magazin take a look at British data analysis company Cambridge Analytica in this week's Sunday Long Read at Vice and find there's a method to the madness of "fake news" and social manipulation in the 2016 elections.

On November 9 at around 8.30 AM., Michal Kosinski woke up in the Hotel Sunnehus in Zurich. The 34-year-old researcher had come to give a lecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) about the dangers of Big Data and the digital revolution. Kosinski gives regular lectures on this topic all over the world. He is a leading expert in psychometrics, a data-driven sub-branch of psychology. When he turned on the TV that morning, he saw that the bombshell had exploded: contrary to forecasts by all leading statisticians, Donald J. Trump had been elected president of the United States.

For a long time, Kosinski watched the Trump victory celebrations and the results coming in from each state. He had a hunch that the outcome of the election might have something to do with his research. Finally, he took a deep breath and turned off the TV.

On the same day, a then little-known British company based in London sent out a press release: “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to data-driven communication has played such an integral part in President-elect Trump’s extraordinary win,” Alexander James Ashburner Nix was quoted as saying. Nix is British, 41 years old, and CEO of Cambridge Analytica. He is always immaculately turned out in tailor-made suits and designer glasses, with his wavy blonde hair combed back from his forehead. His company wasn't just integral to Trump’s online campaign, but to the UK's Brexit campaign as well.

Of these three players—reflective Kosinski, carefully groomed Nix and grinning Trump—one of them enabled the digital revolution, one of them executed it and one of them benefited from it.

Anyone who has not spent the last five years living on another planet will be familiar with the term Big Data. Big Data means, in essence, that everything we do, both on and offline, leaves digital traces. Every purchase we make with our cards, every search we type into Google, every movement we make when our mobile phone is in our pocket, every “like” is stored. Especially every “like.” For a long time, it was not entirely clear what use this data could have—except, perhaps, that we might find ads for high blood pressure remedies just after we’ve Googled “reduce blood pressure.”

On November 9, it became clear that maybe much more is possible. The company behind Trump’s online campaign—the same company that had worked for Leave.EU in the very early stages of its "Brexit" campaign—was a Big Data company: Cambridge Analytica.

To understand the outcome of the election—and how political communication might work in the future—we need to begin with a strange incident at Cambridge University in 2014, at Kosinski’s Psychometrics Center.

The reality is Facebook is an open book, and that building a database of profiles based on likes and activity online was far easier than anyone has ever imagined.  One company discovered that you could use Facebook to target people you wanted to target with messages tailored to them from a political standpoint.  It can be used to get Trump voters to go vote, and could be used to get Clinton voters to throw their votes away.

For the Trump campaign, it worked far better than anyone could have guessed.  The money you didn't see Trump spending on traditional political advertising was being spent on Cambridge Analytica, as much as $15 million in order to individually target people through the internet and directing canvassers with specific messages to specific houses.

The Clinton camp had no clue what was going on, either.  They had no way of knowing.  The Trump campaign unleashed this weapon in 17 states, and it was this data model that put Trump in the Rust Belt in the last month of the campaign.

It won him the White House.

Anti-Immigration Nation

By the way, the Trump regime has ordered Homeland Security to go after anyone who is helping undocumented immigrants.

Easily overlooked in the small print of President Donald Trump's Sanctuary Cities Executive Order signed Wednesday is a clause making it a crime to help an undocumented immigrant.

The sweeping wording is contained in Section 6 of the executive action titled 'Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,' and would appear to include even the actions of legal immigrants seeking to protect undocumented family members.

The Secretary of Homeland Security "shall issue guidance and promulgate regulations ... to ensure the assessment and collection of all fines and penalties ... from aliens unlawfully present in the United States and from those who facilitate their presence in the United States," it reads.

The rule is similar to one that was included in an early draft of Arizona's controversial 2010 anti-immigrant bill SB1070, which proposed making it a Class One misdemeanor to "conceal, harbor or shield" an undocumented immigrant. Class 1 misdemeanors carry a maximum fine of $2,500 and up to six months in jail.

But boy we dodged a bullet on that Hillary bitch, she might have put Wall Street people on her Cabinet or something.  It's a good thing we're not a bunch of bigoted, hateful, retaliatory bastards either.

A Texas mosque was set on fire just hours after Trump signed an executive order restricting migration from Muslim-majority countries.

The Islamic Center of Victoria was set on fire around 2 a.m. on Saturday, according to local reports.

Victoria Fire Marshal Tom Legler told the Victoria Advocate he had no theories about the cause of the fire, but he is seeking assistance from state and federal fire investigators.

“It’s a house of worship,” Shahid Hashmi, the president of the center, told the Victoria Advocate, as he watched the center burning. Hashmi also said he will not speculate about the cause of the fire, but mentioned the center was burglarized last week.

This is America now.  This is who we are.  This is who we elected to represent and lead us.  This is what the rest of the world knows we are.

They will not tolerate us for long.

Binging On Purging

The Trump regime begins the Great De-Musliming of America as we will now find out if there's anything to the concept of the Bill of Rights left.

President Trump’s executive order on immigration quickly reverberated through the United States and across the globe on Saturday, slamming the border shut for an Iranian scientist headed to a lab in Boston, an Iraqi who had worked as an interpreter for the United States Army, and a Syrian refugee family headed to a new life in Ohio, among countless others.

Around the nation, security officers at major international gateways had new rules to follow. Humanitarian organizations scrambled to cancel long-planned programs, delivering the bad news to families who were about to travel. Refugees who were airborne on flights when the order was signed were detained at airports.

At least one case quickly prompted a legal challenge as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy International Airport in New York filed a motion early Saturday seeking to have their clients released. They also filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and other immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.

Mr. Trump’s order, enacted with the stroke of a pen on Friday afternoon, suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The White House said the restrictions would protect “the United States from foreign nationals entering from countries compromised by terrorism” and ensure “a more rigorous vetting process.” But critics condemned Mr. Trump over the immediate collateral damage imposed on people who, by all accounts, had no sinister intentions in trying to come to the United States.

An official message to all American diplomatic posts around the world provided instructions about how to treat people from the countries affected: “Effective immediately, halt interviewing and cease issuance and printing” of visas to the United States.

Confusion turned to panic at airports around the world, as travelers found themselves unable to board flights bound for the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates and, in at least one case, ejected a family from a flight they had boarded.

And so on World Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Trump regime closes the door to people in countries we're bombing the crap out of, but not the countries where the 9/11 terrorists actually came from (which happen to be countries Trump has economic ties to with his business organization. Go figure.)

In red states this is being hailed as "about damn time we started kickin them out" and such.  In blue states, employees are finding they may not be allowed back Stateside anymore, and it may not help as we're now revoking entry privileges for green card holders, which could affect as many as 500,000 people and their families.

The legal challenges are already beginning, but at this point I would have to expect retaliation from the rest of the world, especially from multinational businesses.

So here we are the new bad guys on the block.  And this is just his first week.

In The Fetal Position

After two days of testimony by medical experts and state witnesses, a US federal judge has once again blocked Texas's fetal tissue remains disposal regulations.

A federal judge on Friday blocked Texas from requiring that fetal remains to be buried or cremated, saying the rule placed burdens on access to abortion that “substantially outweigh the benefits.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly vowed to appeal, setting up another high-stakes battle over Texas’ attempts to regulate abortion providers — seven months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned two Texas regulations that would have left nine abortion clinics operating in the state.

After hearing two days of testimony early this month, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks issued a preliminary injunction Friday that indefinitely prohibits Texas from enforcing the rule, which would require health facilities to ensure that fetal tissue is buried or cremated — with the ashes buried or appropriately scattered — whether from an abortion or miscarriage.

The rule didn’t apply to miscarriages at home or to early-term, drug-induced abortions that typically take place at home.

Sparks said the new standards were vague, inviting interpretations that would allow state health officials “to exercise arbitrary, and potentially discriminatory, enforcement on an issue connected to abortion and therefore sensitive and hotly contested.”

Worse, Sparks wrote in his order, state officials admitted that the new policy offered no health benefits and replaced tissue-disposal regulations that caused no health problems. While Texas leaders said the change was needed to promote respect for life and to protect the dignity of the unborn, it appeared that the rule “may be pretext for restricting abortion access,” Sparks said.

With only one identified vendor willing and able to dispose of fetal tissue as required by the new rule, the judge said it was reasonable to conclude that a lack of vendors could prohibit compliance — “which would deliver a major, if not fatal, blow to health-care providers performing abortions.”

Well no kidding the point of the bill is "restricting abortion access".  Dumping ridiculous regulatory burdens on women hasn't managed to end legal abortion in states, but dumping regulation after regulation on abortion providers has eliminated access for tens of millions of women in the South, Midwest, and Mountain West.

I'm glad to see that this is so obviously a back door method of restricting abortion that even a judge appointed by Poppy Bush can see it.

But thanks to voters, eventually Trump will get his Supreme Court pick on the bench, and most likely that will mean states like Texas will be able to regulate abortions into oblivion before too long, I fear.