We Don't Need No Education, Con't

And as expected, VP Mike Pence broke the tie today on the confirmation of GOP megadonor Betsy DeVos's bid to buy a cabinet seat, and she will be Education Secretary.

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Betsy DeVos to lead the Department of Education by the slimmest of margins, capping off a rocky, high-stakes fight for President Trump's pick. 

Vice President Pence cast the rare deciding vote on DeVos, breaking a 50-50 tie after Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski(Alaska) became the first senators to oppose a Trump Cabinet pick, joining all Democrats. 

Pence is the first vice president ever to cast a decisive vote on a Cabinet nominee. The last time a VP broke a tie in the Senate was 2008, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney voted on a tax adjustment plan. 

Pence arrived at the Capitol around approximately 11:30 a.m., but waited in the wings until the vote was tied at 50-50 to take over the presiding chair and cast the deciding vote. 

The vice president — and former lawmaker — chatted with GOP senators on the floor after the vote, and shook hands with Sen. Ted Cruz. 

Pence is expected to meet with Senate Republicans during their closed-door weekly policy lunch on Tuesday afternoon. 

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a failed 11th-hour plea Tuesday morning for a third Republican to buck the party and sink DeVos's nomination. 

“It’s the Republican side demanding a vote for an unqualified candidate,” the Senate’s top Democrat said. “I hope against hope that another Republican will have the courage … [to] join us.” 

Schumer suggested Republicans are privately saying they wish Trump picked someone else, calling DeVos a “negative trifecta.”

But good news everyone, my own Congressman Thomas Massie has a solution to DeVos!

I just introduced a bill to abolish the federal Dept of Education: https://t.co/hcYr2QzIfI #EndFedEd

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 7, 2017

Won't that be fun?

Zee Germans Are Here

Der Spiegel's Klaus Brinkbaumer declares the Trump regime to be such an existential threat that he believes Germany and the EU must band together to take on America.

Donald Trump and his fire-starter Stephen Bannon discriminate against certain people by decree, but not against those from countries in which Trump does business. The contempt the president of the United States and his most important adviser have for science and education is so blatant that it's almost difficult to write. But their disdain for climate and environmental policies has to be stated, because four or eight years of it could become a serious threat.

Among the things that counted as true progress during the 20th century were multilateralism and free trade. The world has become so complex that no single country can solve the major problems on its own -- that was our recognition. Organizations like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NATO and the EU were all created for this reason. None of these organizations is perfect, but they are what we launched -- and we do need them. Bannon now wants to wipe them away, and either Trump is executing Bannon's intentions or he shares them.

That's why under President Trump, both the justified and the contemptible will be melded. Injustice is a major issue of our times, as are fears of digitalization and globalization -- and rightfully so given that the division of society and the speed of modern life is, in fact, extreme. Trump fuses these worries of his voters with nationalism and xenophobia. That's how demagogues work and it is how they become effective. The fact that the United States, a nuclear superpower that has dominated the world economically, militarily and culturally for decades, is now presenting itself as the victim, calling in all seriousness for "America first" and trying to force the rest of the world into humiliating concessions is absurd. But precisely because this nonsense is coming from the world's most powerful man, it is getting trapped by him.

This is not a threat that will somehow resolve itself. The German economy has become the target of American trade policy and German democracy is ideologically antithetical to Trump's vision. But even here, in the middle of Germany, right-wing extremists are trying to give him a helping hand. It is high time that we stand up for what is important: democracy, freedom, the West and its alliances.

This does not mean escalation or that we must abandon our contacts with America and all the working groups between our governments. What is does mean, though, is that Europe must grow stronger and start planning its political and economic defenses. Against America's dangerous president.

As I keep saying, when the Germans recognize that your country is falling into fascism, it's time for some serious introspection.

And remember, it's been just two weeks at this point.

NC Goes Down The Crapper, Con't

The NCAA is warming up the big guns to hurt North Carolina where it hurts if HB2 isn't repealed: right in the March Madness.

The NCAA could soon pull championship events from North Carolina through 2022 if House Bill 2 is not repealed, according to a letter sent to state legislators Monday by the N.C. Sports Association. 

“Our contacts at the NCAA tell us that, due to their stance on HB2, all North Carolina bids will be pulled from the review process and removed from consideration,” Scott Dupree of the N.C. Sports Association and Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance wrote. “That process will begin in the various sports committees starting in 7 to 10 days and continuing through February. At that point, we will be faced with a six-year drought of NCAA championships in North Carolina.” 

The NCAA has already moved championship events for the current academic year to other states due to concerns that the law is discriminatory. HB2 struck down local nondiscrimination ordinances and requires transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate while visiting government facilities. 

Dupree wrote that his “letter is not intended to be political in any way, but rather objective and fact-based, so that all interested parties will have a clear understanding of what’s at stake.” 

“In a matter of days, our state’s sports tourism industry will suffer crushing, long-term losses and will essentially close its doors to NCAA business,” the letter continues. “Our window to act is closing rapidly.” 

Dupree says other sports leagues could join the NCAA in bypassing North Carolina. 

“When the NCAA decides it will no longer conduct events in North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast Conference and many other sports organizations will surely follow,” he wrote. “When compounding the effect of losing these additional sporting events, including hundreds of youth and amateur events, plus the NBA All-Star Game, we believe North Carolina could lose upwards of a half-billion dollars in economic impact.”

Again, NC already lost all NCAA tournament events for this year.  Losing them for another five on top of that would be devastating to the state's economy, but maybe by then my home state will have kicked out the Republican bigots that ran the place into the ground under Gov. Pat McCrory.

Ball's in your court, NC GOP.  That's a lot of money you're going to be losing.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article130994139.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• Amnesty International is alleging that as many as 13,000 political prisoners held at Syria's Saydnaya prison were hanged in secret by the Assad regime and buried in mass graves.
• Australia's top government scientist is attacking the Trump regime's stance on climate change, comparing the censorship of climate data to the propaganda of the old Soviet Union.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are calling for an immediate restoration of a cease fire in Ukraine after the two talked by phone on Tuesday.
• Vice President Mike Pence will most likely cast the deciding Senate vote in the controversial confirmation of GOP donor Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary later today.
• The former NSA contractor who allegedly stole dozens of terabytes worth of classified data over several years could be facing espionage charges in connection with a leak last October.

Last Call For Last Bus To Beattyville

Another month, another story of poor white folks in eastern Kentucky who are desperately waiting for Trump to save them.  This time it's Beattyville in Lee County, where residents are hoping Trump will bring back oil and coal jobs from 40 years ago...and barring that, at least if they'll cut off those people who didn't vote for him so the people of this tiny town can continue getting SNAP, welfare, and Obamacare.

"If you got a job here in Beattyville, you're lucky," says Amber Hayes, a bubbly 25-year-old mom of two, who also voted for Trump. She works at the county courthouse, but is paid by the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP), a form of welfare. 

Coal, oil and tobacco made Beattyville a boom town in the 1800s and much of the 1900s. Locals like to bring up the fact that Lee County -- where Beattyville is located -- was the No. 1 oil-producing county east of the Mississippi at one time. 

"Growing up in the '70s? Yeah, this was the place to be," says Chuck Caudhill, the general manager of the local paper, The Beattyville Enterprise. He calls the town the "gem of eastern Kentucky." 

Today, the town is a ghost of its former self. The vast majority of Beattyville residents get some form of government aid -- 57% of households receive food stamps and 58% get disability payments from Social Security. 

"I hope [Trump] don't take the benefits away, but at the same time, I think that once more jobs come in a lot of people won't need the benefits," says Hayes, who currently receives about $500 a month from government assistance. She's also on Obamacare.

I understand that Beattyville is poor as hell, and that Lee County has fallen into dark times.  I understand that the efforts made to help the people there haven't been enough.  I understand that oil and tobacco have left them high and dry. I understand being from a town where the companies left and folks are praying for jobs.  Lee County is maybe fifty miles southeast of Lexington, I could get there in about 2 hours and change from here.  It's the same kind of small town I left behind more than a decade ago.

But when 80% of the county votes for Trump, knowing his message full well of bigotry and racism and that his message is acceptable as long as he maybe spares them the rod by yanking a few assistance programs in Louisville or Lexington where they didn't vote for him, well that's not okay.

The people who voted for Clinton in Lee County?  Yeah, I feel for them.  But the Trump voters? You're getting exactly what you wanted.

The Darkness At The Summit

As Jamelle Bouie reminds us, none of us should be surprised that eight years after the election of the nation's first black president that America has brutally reverted back to the historical norm of white nationalism.

We can’t know for certain how many Americans voted for these ideas and this approach. What we can say is that tens of millions experienced Donald Trump’s campaign, heard his racist appeals, and set them aside to take a chance on an “outsider.” Now we’re faced with the extraordinary: A White House whose chief thinkers and architects are white nationalists, keepers of a dangerous tradition in our history, with an unprecedented opportunity to pull the United States back a century to an era of unvarnished nativism and prejudice. The past three weeks are likely just the beginning; we are sure to see even more action against immigrants and Muslims, even more tolerance for the worst forces in American life.

In this usage, white nationalist isn’t a pejorative; it’s the best term we have for the ideology of the Trump administration, one that gives coherence to its actions and approach. White nationalist helps us see how the expansive refugee ban is tied to the efforts to deny government benefits to legal residents and is tied to the promise by Trump to protect entitlements for those who receive them. It helps us see how his “populism” excludes tens of millions of Americans, and why he seems more interested in narrow enthusiasm versus broad popularity. And it gives a sense of what might follow in a Trump administration: not just demonization of disfavored minorities but possible attempts to expand the welfare state for the “deserving,” defined by race—a kind of welfare chauvinism. As he did during the campaign, Trump may adopt slogans and ideas from the left and right, not because he’s really a conservative or really a liberal, but because white nationalism exists outside the familiar divide. It confounds the left-right spectrum as we understand it in the United States. Trumpish policy won’t fall neatly into our old categories of liberal and conservative. Instead, it will turn on the question of what strengthens this basic notion that ours is a white nation.

Democrats, liberals, leftists, and dissident conservatives can dissent and resist, but the only party with the power to challenge Trump and win is the Republican Party, which controls Congress and may soon (again) have a majority on the Supreme Court. But the GOP is too complacent and complicit in the rise of Trump, too willing in its past and present to tolerate or even encourage appeals to white racial tribalism and ethno-nationalism. Indeed, in some regards, Trump is the logical conclusion of a process that began when Barry Goldwater opened his arms to Southern segregationists in his crusade for “liberty.” Besides, Republican leaders like Paul Ryan have embraced Trump as a vehicle for their conservative ideological agenda, content to back the president’s agenda for racial exclusion as long as he cuts health care, cuts taxes, and delivers the federal judiciary.

Defenders of pluralism have a tremendous struggle ahead of them. But as they mobilize and defend, they must understand the stakes. This is a fight to protect our multiracial democracy. It’s the latest in an old fight, one that goes back to our Reconstruction, when freedmen, freemen, and their white allies tried to build true democracy in the former Confederacy. They lost that battle, beat back by reaction, by “redeemers.” A century later, with the civil rights movement, we thought we had won the war. Not quite.

“There is beauty in art, in literature, in science, and in every triumph of intelligence, all of which I covet for my country,” said Charles Sumner in his appeal for a national civil rights bill in the fall of 1871. “But there is a higher beauty still—in relieving the poor, in elevating the downtrodden, and being a succor to the oppressed. There is true grandeur in an example of justice, making the rights of all the same as our own, and beating down prejudice, like Satan, under our feet.” He continued: “Humbly do I pray that the republic may not lose this great prize, or postpone its enjoyment.”

We seem to have entered a time where, by choice, we have postponed the enjoyment of that higher beauty. Let us pray, like Sumner, that we do not lose the prize altogether.

Trump, Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, and Jeff Sessions: these are the folks running the show here.  The end result of this is an America divided into a "deserving" white middle class and excluded everyone else, with the wealthiest corporate titans ruling over all.  It's a massive transfer of wealth and political power to the top, the the expense of tens of millions of people of color.

When people like Trump and Bannon talk about "chaos" and "breaking the system" and "making America great again" what they mean is the restoration of native-born white Christians to first-class citizen status.  Everyone else is denied the benefits of citizenship.  A compliant populace and self-interested Republican party will go along.  They're only marginally good at this stuff right now, but they are learning quickly.

We're heading there at frightening speed.  We may not be able to turn back.  The good news is as I've said, they're making mistakes and there's still time to act.

But that time grows shorter by the hour.

The Voter ID Fraud Patrol

Many people have challenged DOnald Trump's false claims of widespread national voter fraud with a simple premise: if it really exists, why is nobody looking into it?  Well, it looks like the Trump regime's point man on investigating national voter fraud disenfranchising millions of voters of color nationwide will be VP Mike Pence.

In a pre-Super Bowl interview that aired on Sunday, President Donald Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that he would establish a commission led by Vice President Mike Pence to investigate allegations of widespread voter fraud.

“We’re going to look at it very, very carefully,” said Trump.

There is, of course, no widespread voter fraud, and multiple independent observers have debunked Trump’s claims to the contrary. But the president has spent weeks repeating the false claim that undocumented immigrants cast three to five million votes against him — a lie that seems intended to explain away his loss of the popular vote by more than two million ballots cast.

In response to questioning about the “voter fraud” lie, White House press secretary Sean Spicer indicated in late January that the Trump administration would pursue an investigation into it. Not long after, Pence privately told Republican members of Congress that there would be “a full evaluation of voting rolls in this country.” Trump seemed poised to sign an executive order mandating some kind of inquiry.

But then the administration seemed to let it slide. By the end of Trump’s second week in office, the administration had quietly backed down, with one anonymous staffer telling CNN that voter fraud was no longer a “priority.”

But judging by Trump’s interview with Bill O’Reilly, “voter fraud” — likely a thin pretext to implement voter suppression tactics on the federal level — is once again a priority.

Shortly before announcing the Pence-led commission, Trump dug in on his false allegations of voter fraud and insisted he had been vindicated by, well, “many people.”

“Many people have come out and said I am right,” the president told O’Reilly. He offered no additional support to his claims.

Of course, getting the GOP in Congress to pay for such an investigation when they could have done it at any point in the past two years seems to be something of an issue.

Earlier Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that he didn’t think federal funds should be spent on a voter fraud investigation.

“This sort of thing is handled at the state level, and the Democrats always claim there’s no election fraud at all. That is, of course, not true — election fraud does occur,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “There’s no evidence that it occurred in such a significant number that would have changed the presidential election, and I don’t think we ought to spend any federal money investigating that,” the Kentucky Republican said.

Of course, it will be difficult for a commission headed by the vice president to conduct any business without dipping into the federal coffers.

So we'll see what's going on.  My guess is still that we're going to see national strict voter ID measures before 2018, and definitely before 2020.

StupidiNews!

• The New England Patriots completed the biggest comeback in the history of the Super Bowl, overcoming a 28-3 halftime deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in overtime.
• Vice President Mike Pence issued a warning to Iran Sunday, advising Tehran not to "test the resolve of this new president".
• Trump is expected to sign into law a GOP measure passed Friday that will eliminate a SEC rule requiring energy companies to disclose fees and taxes paid to foreign governments.
• Romanian PM Sorin Grindeanu is refusing to step down despite widespread protests demanding his resignation over his cabinet's decision to abruptly end anti-corruption probes.
• Amazon's latest commercials indicate the company's drone-based "Prime Air" delivery service could be a reality sooner rather than later.

Superb Owl Open Thread

I understand there's some sort of sporting contest going on, so I'll leave the door open for folks to talk about whatever for the evening.



Have at it, but keep it civil.

Banning The Ban

Late last night the Trump regime appealed the federal court order halting its Muslim immigration ban to the 9th Circuit, demanding an immediate reinstatement based on the grounds of national security.  Early this morning the 9th Circuit replied with "nope."

The decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit means the bans will remain on hold through the weekend, with a decision on a further request to reinstate the ban put off until at least Monday afternoon.

Justice Department lawyers had gone to the appeals court earlier Saturday, asking for an immediate stay of a lower court’s order that stopped enforcement of major portion’s of Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order nationwide.

The request came a little more than 24 hours after the Friday night order from US District Judge James Robart halting enforcement of much of President Trump’s executive order temporarily stopping visa-holders from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US and shutting down the US refugee program temporarily and entrance of Syrian refugees indefinitely.

“Appellants’ request for an immediate administrative stay pending full consideration of the emergency motion for a stay pending appeal is denied,” the late-night order from the appeals court stated.

In addition to the immediate stay request, the Justice Department’s lawyers also asked for a stay pending the department’s appeal of Robart’s order. That request is still under consideration.

Lawyers from Washington and Minnesota, who had brought the challenge in Robart’s court in Seattle, have until 11:59 p.m Sunday Pacific Time to file a response to the Justice Department’s request. The Justice Department then has until 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time Monday to file a reply brief.

So far the judiciary is passing the test on whether or not we have three branches of government, or just one.  How long that will last is anyone's guess. We'll see how Week Three of the Trump regime proceeds.

Sunday Long Read: The Data Detectives

In a world where science moves quickly and science news moves even faster, a Dutch team of researchers is looking for a way to reform science itself by busting junk data that the world has taken for granted as fact.  Meet the Statcheck Project.

One morning last summer, a German psychologist named Mathias Kauff woke up to find that he had been reprimanded by a robot. In an email, a computer program named Statcheck informed him that a 2013 paper he had published on multiculturalism and prejudice appeared to contain a number of incorrect calculations – which the program had catalogued and then posted on the internet for anyone to see. The problems turned out to be minor – just a few rounding errors – but the experience left Kauff feeling rattled. “At first I was a bit frightened,” he said. “I felt a bit exposed.”

Kauff wasn’t alone. Statcheck had read some 50,000 published psychology papers and checked the maths behind every statistical result it encountered. In the space of 24 hours, virtually every academic active in the field in the past two decades had received an email from the program, informing them that their work had been reviewed. Nothing like this had ever been seen before: a massive, open, retroactive evaluation of scientific literature, conducted entirely by computer.

Statcheck’s method was relatively simple, more like the mathematical equivalent of a spellchecker than a thoughtful review, but some scientists saw it as a new form of scrutiny and suspicion, portending a future in which the objective authority of peer review would be undermined by unaccountable and uncredentialed critics.

Susan Fiske, the former head of the Association for Psychological Science, wrote an op-ed accusing “self-appointed data police” of pioneering a new “form of harassment”. The German Psychological Society issued a statement condemning the unauthorised use of Statcheck. The intensity of the reaction suggested that many were afraid that the program was not just attributing mere statistical errors, but some impropriety, to the scientists.

The man behind all this controversy was a 25-year-old Dutch scientist named Chris Hartgerink, based at Tilburg University’s Meta-Research Center, which studies bias and error in science. Statcheck was the brainchild of Hartgerink’s colleague Michèle Nuijten, who had used the program to conduct a 2015 study that demonstrated that about half of all papers in psychology journals contained a statistical error. Nuijten’s study was written up in Nature as a valuable contribution to the growing literature acknowledging bias and error in science – but she had not published an inventory of the specific errors it had detected, or the authors who had committed them. The real flashpoint came months later,when Hartgerink modified Statcheck with some code of his own devising, which catalogued the individual errors and posted them online – sparking uproar across the scientific community.

Hartgerink is one of only a handful of researchers in the world who work full-time on the problem of scientific fraud – and he is perfectly happy to upset his peers. “The scientific system as we know it is pretty screwed up,” he told me last autumn. Sitting in the offices of the Meta-Research Center, which look out on to Tilburg’s grey, mid-century campus, he added: “I’ve known for years that I want to help improve it.” Hartgerink approaches his work with a professorial seriousness – his office is bare, except for a pile of statistics textbooks and an equation-filled whiteboard – and he is appealingly earnest about his aims. His conversations tend to rapidly ascend to great heights, as if they were balloons released from his hands – the simplest things soon become grand questions of ethics, or privacy, or the future of science.

“Statcheck is a good example of what is now possible,” he said. The top priority,for Hartgerink, is something much more grave than correcting simple statistical miscalculations. He is now proposing to deploy a similar program that will uncover fake or manipulated results – which he believes are far more prevalent than most scientists would like to admit.

Considering the kind of people who are making policy decisions based on bad science and misleading data, getting at the heart of data checking with powerful computers seems like a necessary step in order to establish rigorous fidelity in science.

But it's only a small part of the issue.  The rest is political and financial, and until that changes, I fear Statcheck and its successors will also be manipulated by politicians and corporations.

Still, you have to start somewhere.  More power to Hartgerink.

Last Call For Anti-Immigration Nation, Con't

Meanwhile the LA Times runs the numbers on Trump's mass deportation scheme and finds out we're going to have to stuff more than 8 million people in those deportation facilities they want to build.

Far from targeting only “bad hombres,” as Trump has said repeatedly, his new order allows immigration agents to detain nearly anyone they come in contact with who has crossed the border illegally. People could be booked into custody for using food stamps or if their child receives free school lunches.

The deportation targets are a much larger group than those swept up in the travel bans that sowed chaos at airports and seized public attention over the past week. Fewer than 1 million people came to the U.S. over the past decade from the seven countries from which most visitors are temporarily blocked.

Deportations of this scale, which has not been publicly totaled before, could have widely felt consequences: Families would be separated. Businesses catering to immigrant customers may be shuttered. Crops could be left to rot, unpicked, as agricultural and other industries that rely on immigrant workforces face labor shortages. U.S. relations could be strained with countries that stand to receive an influx of deported people, particularly in Latin America. Even the Social Security system, which many immigrants working illegally pay into under fake identification numbers, would take a hit.

The new instructions represent a wide expansion of President Obama’s focus on deporting only recent arrivals, repeat immigration violators and people with multiple criminal violations. Under the Obama administration, only about 1.4 million people were considered priorities for removal.

“We are going back to enforcement chaos — they are going to give lip service to going after criminals, but they really are going to round up everybody they can get their hands on,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. and an immigration lawyer for more than two decades.

And the 8 million number is a floor, not a ceiling.  As I pointed out yesterday, these orders are ridiculously broad.

Trump's orders instruct officers to deport not only those convicted of crimes, but also those who aren’t charged but are believed to have committed "acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense."

That category applies to the 6 million people believed to have entered the U.S. without passing through an official border crossing. The rest of the 11.1 million people in the country illegally, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, are believed to have entered on a valid visa and stayed past its expiration date.

Also among those 11.1 million are about 8 million jobholders, Pew found. The vast majority have worked in violation of the law by stating on federal employment forms that they were legally allowed to work. Trump’s order calls for targeting anyone who lied on the forms.

Trump’s deportation priorities also include smaller groups whose totals remain elusive: people in the country illegally who are charged with crimes that have not yet been adjudicated and those who receive an improper welfare benefit, used a fake identity card, were found driving without a license or received federal food assistance.

An additional executive order under consideration would block entry to anyone the U.S. believes may use benefit programs such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, according two Trump administration officials who have seen the draft order.

Combined, we're talking about tossing, three, maybe four percent of the country in jail and ejecting them from America.  And if Republicans get rid of birthright citizenship as they seem to want to do, that number could be far, far higher.

How I Started Worrying And Hated The Ban

The Trumpies continue to be bad at this whole "pretending to be a legitimate administration" thing and just two weeks in, they already have dropped the "pretending" part.

Hours after a federal judge ordered customs officers to provide lawyers to travelers detained at Dulles airport last Saturday, senior Trump administration officials instructed the guards to give the travelers phone numbers of legal services organizations, ignoring a mass of lawyers who had gathered at the airport.

Most of the legal services offices were closed for the weekend, effectively preventing travelers with green cards from obtaining legal advice.

The move was part of what lawyers contend was a series of foot-dragging actions by the administration that appeared to violate court orders against the Trump’s controversial travel ban.

The contempt the Trump regime has for rule of law is staggering, but what do you expect when the place is run by people who have sworn to destroy America's political, legal, and social norms in order to reshape the country?

A little over 24 hours after Trump ordered the ban, federal judges in New York, Massachusetts and Virginia issued emergency rulings blocking parts of it. But at Dulles and other airports, customs officers refused to change their procedures until their superiors conveyed instructions from agency lawyers reviewing the court decisions, according to three lawyers familiar with the situation and a congressional staff member investigating the matter.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, at least four hours after the first of the court orders came down, Todd Owen, Customs and Border Protection's executive assistant commissioner, convened a conference call for field operations to deliver new guidance, according to a person briefed on the call.

But rather than allow the detained travelers to contact lawyers waiting to serve them, Owen’s team advised CBP officers at Dulles to give the travelers phone numbers for legal-services organizations.

“This is a runaround they’re trying to do on these orders,” said Sirine Shebaya, a civil rights lawyer who was on the scene. “This is an unchecked executive that thinks it’s above the judiciary.” 

Of course they hate it.

President Donald Trump lashed out on Saturday at "this so-called judge" who put a nationwide hold on the implementation of his travel ban denying entrance to the U.S. to refugees and people from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Meanwhile, federal agencies were already halting the implementation of the controversial order that appears certain to spark another weekend of protests as well as confusion for travelers and government officials.

Confronting the most serious setback of his young administration, Trump took to Twitter to complain about at the Seattle judge who halted his controversial executive order before heading to Trump International Golf Resort in West Palm Beach to hit the links.

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!" Trump tweeted, after writing several other tweets defending his immigration stance. He later added, "What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.?"

Trump already attacking judges.  It's not even Valentine's Day, and we're already deep into the authoritarian playbook.

The End Of Nerd Prom

If these early indicators are true of the media as a whole, then the yearly White House Correspondents' Dinner may not survive the Trump regime at all.

The White House Correspondents Dinner has gone from a hoary ritual to the apex of Washington’s social calendar, replete with Hollywood A-listers, tuxedoed television stars and live coverage on the major news networks. 

But like many Washington traditions, things are changing now that President Trump is in town. 

The New Yorker is canceling the kickoff party that it usually holds at the W Hotel, according to a spokeswoman for the magazine, Natalie Raabe. Vanity Fair is pulling out of co-sponsoring the dinner’s most exclusive after-party, a celebrity-studded affair most recently hosted at the French ambassador’s residence that is considered the capital’s hottest ticket of the year. 

Vanity Fair’s co-sponsor, Bloomberg L.P., is proceeding with its plans for the party, but no final decision has been made on the event, a spokesman said on Thursday. (Bloomberg has previously sponsored the after-party on its own.) 

“We’ve taken a break from the dinner in the past,” Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, wrote in an email, adding that he planned to spend the weekend fishing in Connecticut instead. 

Mr. Carter, who has feuded with Mr. Trump for decades, was asked whether he had a particular reason for canceling this year’s festivities. “Trump,” Mr. Carter replied, “and the fish.”

Considering the Trump regime sees the Washington media as a enemy that needs to be completely exterminated off the face of the planet, I can't imagine the dinner will happen at all.

Compare that to any of Obama's WHCD proceedings, or even that of his predecessor.  (The Bush ones were tasteless, but they weren't "Off with his head!" affairs either.)  Who would want to perform at that as the host, other than dull, unfunny right wing comics who'll spend the entire night trashing Obama, black people, Latinx folks and anybody darker than a paper bag?

Even if the dinner happens, I sure as hell won't watch.

I don't think many other folks will either.

At least until Trump makes it mandatory next year.

Repeal, Delay, Destroy, Ignore

The GOP plan for repealing and "replacing" Obamacare remains in semi-permanent limbo, and it doesn't look like Republicans are going to move on getting rid of it anytime soon, despite heated rhetoric from the Trump regime.  Why?  Because several red states would be wiped out of the individual insurance market completely.  Greg Sargent explains:

For weeks now, Republicans have employed a range of tortured talking points designed to push one idea: The GOP repeal-and-delay plan will not leave anyone without health coverage, and is merely designed as a transition that will ultimately move us seamlessly to the new, improved health care system Republicans envision, with the details to be worked out later. 

But here’s the problem. If Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act and delay the date that repeal takes effect, to give themselves time to develop their alternative, it could still create massive disruptions in the interim, even if you presume that the GOP replacement may materialize. 

For instance, many insurers might exit the market, even if repeal hasn’t yet taken hold, simply because there is no guarantee that this GOP replacement will ever come to pass. 

A new analysis suggests that some of the impact of these disruptions might end up concentrated in Republican areas. 

The Congressional Budget Office recently examined a version of the GOP repeal-and-delay bill — one passed by Republicans in 2015 and vetoed by President Obama — and concluded that, because of insurers exiting the market, some 10 percent of Americans might be left living in an area that had no insurers participating in the individual market at all. 

It turns out that 10 percent of the population might end up being concentrated in Republican areas. 

Jeanne Lambrew, who was a key Obama administration official involved in implementation of the ACA, conducted a new analysis designed to try to determine where that 10 percent reside. Using data furnished by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Lambrew singled out counties that fill two criteria: First, that they have low populations; and second, that they currently only have one insurer serving customers on the individual market.

And guess where the bulk of those counties that would have NO individual insurance market at all are?

...many of the counties in red are in states like Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia. (Some counties are in swing or blue states like North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Illinois.) The study was conducted by Lambrew for the Century Foundation. 

Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, tells me that this analysis broadly tracks with what Kaiser believes is a reasonable projection of the outcome under repeal-and-delay. He emails that if the GOP repeals the ACA on a delay, it could very well leave large swaths of the country with no insurers in the individual market, and that this could strand a lot of people in those areas with no insurance — even those who continue to get subsidies in the interim before repeal takes hold

A dozen red states would have their insurance markets wiped out, and major swing states like NC, Ohio and Pennsylvania would be affected too.   But it's bad enough that entire states would be nuked, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Arizona, South Carolina and Alabama's individual markets would be eliminated totally.

In other words, it would be a guaranteed bloodbath for Republicans in the House and Senate in 2018.

And they know it.

It's looking more and more like Republicans are going to let Obamacare stay, because if they repeal it, they're done.  And if they don't repeal it, well...

Democrats can use this to take advantage here if they're willing to do it.  That question remains up in the air however.  We'll see.