StupidiNews!

• Pentagon sources say a North Korean missile test launch failed "within seconds of launch" as the missile crashed, US and South Korean officials are still trying to determine more details.
• Senate Republicans are urging GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan to delay a planned House vote tomorrow on the GOP bill to replace Obamacare, cautioning that the vote could fail.
• Chinese stores will pull Brazilian meat imports from shelves over a growing bribery scandal involving tainted beef and chicken by the country's largest meat exporter. 
• Bankers fleeing London the wake of Brexit may be settling on Dublin as their destination of choice, according to one relocation study.
• Donald Trump has signed a NASA bill designed to keep the space agency on its current exploration course as Republicans in space job states looked on.

Last Call For Ukraine, You Saw, You Laundered

Hey guys, remember our old friend Paul Manafort?  Trump's former campaign manager who resigned in disgrace after the world found out he was in Putin's circle so deeply that he previously worked for Putin's front man in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich?

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials. 

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residencewith a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Well after yesterday's Trump/Russia bombshell from the FBI and NSA, the Ukrainians are playing hardball again as Andrew Roth at the Washington Post picks up this story from Kiev.

A Ukrainian lawmaker on Tuesday released new financial documents allegedly showing that a former campaign chairman to President Trump laundered payments from the party of a disgraced ex-leader of Ukraine using offshore accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan. 

The new documents may revive questions about the ties between the Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and the party of the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who has been in hiding in Russia since being overthrown by pro-Western protestors in 2014. He is wanted in Ukraine on corruption charges. 

Manafort, who worked for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions for nearly a decade, resigned from Trump’s campaign in August after his name in connection with secret payments totaling $12.7 million by Yanukovych’s party. Manafort has denied receiving those payments, listed in the party’s so-called “black ledger.” 

The latest documents were released just hours after the House Intelligence Committee questioned FBI Director James Comey about possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow, which also touched on Manafort’s work for Yanukovych’s party in Ukraine. 

Comey declined to say whether or not the FBI was coordinating with Ukraine on an investigation into the alleged payments to Manafort.

Oops.  And yes, given the events of the last 36 hours, the Manafort story is very much relevant again even after Trump booted him in August, because we now know that the FBI investigation into Trump's connections to Russia began earlier in late July and is even now continuing.

Serhiy Leshchenko, a lawmaker and journalist, released a copy of an invoice on letterhead from Manafort’s Alexandria, Va.-based consulting company from Oct. 14, 2009 to a Belize-based company for $750,000 for the sale of 501 computers. 

On the same day, Manafort’s name is listed next to a $750,000 entry in the “black ledger,” which was viewed as a party slush fund. The list was found at the party headquarters in the turmoil after Ukraine’s 2014 revolution. The ledger entries about Manafort were released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, a government law enforcement agency, last August.

Leshchenko alleges that Manafort falsified an invoice to the Belize company in order to legitimize the $750,000 payment to himself. 

“I have found during this investigation that [Manafort] used offshore jurisdictions and falsified invoices to get money from the corrupt Ukrainian leader,” Leshchenko said during a press-conference in downtown Kiev, where he provided a copy of the invoice to journalists.

This is a huge story guys, it's not going away, and it's going to turn up evidence that buries Trump and the GOP for a long time.  Manafort was in Putin's pocket and crooked as hell and had been for years, and then he ends up Trump's campaign director, when Trump himself has major ties to Putin's circle of oligarchs?  C'mon.

Oh, and Manafort?  Still lives in Trump Tower.

Follow the money.

Testing Your Patience (And Everything Else)

Don't look now, but Republicans have once again used the Congressional Review Act to kill an Obama executive action.  This time the plan is to overturn an Obama-era Labor Department rule that limited what occupations states could demand drug testing for unemployment benefits for.  Those limits are expected to be abolished this week when Trump signs the bill, meaning states can now require drug testing for anyone to receive federal jobless benefits as long as the occupation is "regularly drug tested" (which in 2017 is everyone.  You know, except Congress.)

Senators voted along party lines 51-48 under the Congressional Review Act to cut the rule. The legislation already passed the House and now heads to President Trump's desk, where he is expected to sign it.

Under a 2012 law, states can only drug test individuals applying for unemployment benefits if they were previously fired for drug use or work in jobs for which workers are regularly drug tested. The Obama rule specified a list of jobs the could be included under the law.

Republicans have argued the Obama regulation amounted to a federal overreach that limited a state's ability to determine its own drug testing policy.

"As we saw too often, the Obama administration went beyond its legal authority in creating legislation that limits the role of state governments," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said from the Senate floor.

He added that the Labor Department "should go back to the drawing board."

The Trump administration has also voiced support for getting rid of the rule, arguing its definition of occupations is too narrow and limits a states ability to drug test.

But Democrats warn that by nixing the rule lawmakers will be allowing states the ability to randomly drug test workers who through no fault of their own are unemployed, poor or in need of public assistance.

"This idea that there is a presumption of irresponsible conduct and guilt is just baseless," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said from the Senate floor.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court, I'm sure new state laws for drug testing everyone will run into roadblocks in the judicial, just as states testing everyone on cash assistance programs.

Still, don't tell me about how the parties are the same, especially you folks in states where pot is now legal.

Trump's Budget Gets The Coal-ed Shoulder In Kentucky

Trump came to Louisville last night to sell Trumpcare and coal jobs to the Bluegrass State.  The people at the rally were certainly buying, but it doesn't mean everyone was.

Trump pledged to rework trade deals, bolster the military, build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico and put coal miners back to work. Trump also pledged that the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act would pass the House of Representatives on Thursday, only hours after U.S. Sen. Rand Paul told a group of Louisville businessmen that it would fail. 

“It’s a financial disaster waiting to happen right here in your own state,” Trump said, bashing the signature health care legislation of his predecessor. “Thursday is our chance to eliminate Obamacare and the Obamacare disaster in our country.” 

Trump, who was introduced by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, pointed out Republican U.S. Reps. Andy Barr and Jamie Comer in the audience, all of whom have said they support the GOP’s health plan. 

Trump offered few details about the bill or changes he’d like to see, instead taking the stance that it will look different after it gets through both the House and the Senate. 

“The end result is going to be wonderful, and it’s going to work great,” Trump said. 

The audience enthusiastically applauded Trump’s message on health care, but some of the biggest applause of the night came when Trump talked about returning coal jobs to Kentucky. 

“We are going to put our coal miners back to work,” Trump said, repeating a campaign pledge popular in Appalachia.

Only one problem: Kentucky Republicans are pissed at the Trump's proposed budget cuts, and here the Trump budget cuts fall apart as we run into the reality of sacred cows.  It's Republicans who are going to have to own these nearly $60 billion in cuts for 2018 and they're not going to do it.  Case in point, Kentucky Republicans are definitely not going to go along with Trump's plans to kill jobs programs for out-of-work coal miners.

During the campaign, Donald Trump billed himself as the “last shot” for coal country. He alone could save regions like Appalachia that had long suffered from poverty and dwindling coal jobs. And voters in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky believed him — choosing Trump over Hillary Clinton by wide, wide margins.

So it’s striking that President Trump’s first budget proposal would slash and burn several key programs aimed at promoting economic development in coal regions — most notably, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Economic Development Administration. In recent years, these programs have focused on aiding communities that have been left behind as mining jobs vanished.

Even some of Trump’s staunchest allies were livid at the proposed cuts. “I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the President’s skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, a senior House Republican from a key coal-mining district in southeastern Kentucky.

Remember, Rogers is the old warhorse for the KY GOP, on the House Appropriations Committee.  He's been in the House since the Reagan Revolution, and nobody's come close to beating him, period.  In those 36 years the closest contest he had was merely a double-digit thrashing of his opponent, as compared to the 50-point margins he's won by since. The man's literally had a parkway named after him here. If there's anyone who should be safe voting for the Trump budget, it's Hal Rogers.

And if this has got him scared enough to speak out against Trump, it's serious.

First, Trump’s proposing to eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), an independent agency set up in 1965 “to address the persistent poverty and growing economic despair of the Appalachian Region.” Since October 2015, the ARC has invested $175.7 million in 662 projects around the region, with a disproportionate focus on “distressed” counties and coal towns. In some places, that means new highways or broadband infrastructure. In others, it means grants to help former coal communities develop, say, outdoor recreation industries instead.

A government review estimated that, last year, the ARC created or saved at least 23,000 jobs and provided 25,500 households with infrastructure services such as water or broadband. There have been criticisms of the program over the years — it’s odd to have a standalone agency for this one region, and the ARC often focuses on bigger towns and neglects rural areas — but it’s also broadly popular with Democrats and Republicans alike in Appalachia.

Second, Trump is proposing to zero out the Economic Development Administration (EDA), which sits within the Commerce Department and provides about $250 million per year in grants to support economic growth in certain regions. During the Obama years, the EDA began devoting a sizable portion of that money to coal communities around the country that were suffering economically as cheap natural gas and new air pollution rules shriveled the coal industry. (The EDA also supports non-coal communities, providing trade adjustment assistance and other services.)

Needless to say, Rogers is furious.

It’s unclear if the White House conferred with coal-state politicians before proposing these cuts. Rogers, who helped double the ARC’s budget as chair of the House Appropriations Committee from 2011 to 2016, was absolutely scathing in response:

"While we have a responsibility to reduce our federal deficit, I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the President’s skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive.

In particular, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has a long-standing history of bipartisan support in Congress because of its proven ability to help reduce poverty rates and extend basic necessities to communities across the Appalachian region. Today, nearly everyone in the region has access to clean water and sewer, the workforce is diversifying, educational opportunities are improving and rural technology is finally advancing to 21st Century standards. But there is more work to be done in these communities, and I will continue to advocate for sufficient funding for ARC and similar programs, like the Economic Development Administration."

I'd say if Hal is typical, then the Trump/Ryan austerity plan is DOA. Even Mitch the Turtle is assuring everyone that the cuts to ARC and EDA will never happen.

We'll see who wins this battle, but I assure you that Kentucky workers will lose either way now that the GOP is in total control.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article139644553.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders have offered more conservative cuts to the ACHA in order to earn votes, but the bill may still fail this week's scheduled vote.
• The Trump regime will put into effect new Homeland Security rules that bar passengers on some flights from the Mideast from using large electronic devices in flight. 
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will skip a planned NATO meeting in April to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida, and will visit Russia later next month.
• Democrats took aim at Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch yesterday as confirmation hearings continue later this morning.
• New Zealand lawmakers have questions for Apple after a report shows that Apple sold billions in products there but got around paying a single dollar in local taxes.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Today's House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers did not disappoint.  The five big takeaways:

1. Comey and Rogers both ended any credibility of Trump's claims he was wiretapped by Obama.  Both men straight up said that Trump Tower was not wiretapped, and Rogers confirmed that the Brits were definitely not brought on board to spy on Trump.  It also means Trump is an inveterate liar, and the whiff of outright panic is beginning to emanate from the White House at this point.
2. Comey confirmed that the Russians influenced the 2016 elections towards Trump in order to hurt Clinton. Again, this wasn't vote-flipping and hacking, but rather disinformation and leaks.  This investigation is still ongoing, but at this point Comey feels comfortable enough to say outright that Russia was not only anti-Clinton, but pro-Trump.  And that leads us to the big one:
3. Comey admitted that there is an investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  That's the big one folks, treason is a nasty crime and the FBI is indeed looking into whether or not people in the Trump camp were playing footsie with Vlad Putin and the Russians.  There are certainly a lot of suspects: Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, but don't forget Trump himself, who has a decades-long relationship with Russia and its oligarchs.
4. Republicans at the hearing ignored the Trump/Russia story in favor of grilling Comey and Rogers over leaks.  Rep. Devin Nunes, the GOP chair of the House Intel Committee, made a point of saying that while the FBI is investigating possible crimes, actual crimes of leaks have been committed, and all the Republicans wanted answers on that rather than the, you know, possible treason.
5. Trey Gowdy went as far as accusing several Obama aides of being the leakers. Previous committee chair Rep. Trey Gowdy (of Benghazi! fame) directly asked Comey and Rogers if either thought a number of Obama aides had access to intelligence community reports on FISA suspects, i.e. any Russians that the NSA might have been looking into.  Mostly it was "I don't know" but the tactics were clearly trying to attack both the leaks themselves and the reporting of the leaks as an Obama conspiracy to undermine Trump.  (Why? Trump's doing an amazing job of undermining himself.)

So that's where things stand.  Frankly, Trump is in a lot of trouble right now, and he knows it. Republicans are running interference, but it's clear that trying to pull the fire alarm when the republic is in fact on fire isn't a crime. 

More on this from Reuters, CNN, Politico, NY Times, and WaPo.

Rand Betting On A Disaster

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul tells the Lexington Herald-Leader that he'll not only skip tonight's Trump rally in Lexington to sell the AHCA, but that he expects the Trumpcare bill won't even pass the House, let alone the Senate, and that then the "real negotiations" will get underway.

Paul, R-Bowling Green, spoke to the St. Matthews Chamber of Commerce several hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to tout the GOP plan to replace Obamacare Monday night in nearby Freedom Hall. 

Paul said he would not attend Trump’s rally, which is his first visit to Kentucky as president. 

“I have work to do in Washington,” Paul told reporters. In contrast, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is scheduled to welcome the president to Louisville. 

Paul has been at the forefront of opposition to the House GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, calling the proposal “Obamacare lite.” 

The major problem with the House plan, Paul said, is its continued reliance on an individual insurance market. 

He said President Barack Obama tried to fix the individual insurance market by mandating insurance coverage, but not enough young people bought insurance.
“I want it gone,” Paul said of the individual market. 

In its place, Paul envisions a network of associations that individuals could join to get insurance coverage. 

“I would legalize the ability for you to join an association,” Paul said, noting that the St. Matthews Chamber of Commerce has an association health plan. 

“I would like to legalize that you could join with other chambers, national chambers and have an insurance association,” he said, predicting more people would have insurance at lower costs. 

Paul also advocated more use of health savings accounts, arguing they would also help lower costs. 

An audience member asked Paul if he would want to keep the popular provision in the Affordable Care Act that says people with pre-existing health conditions could not be denied health insurance. The GOP health plan contains the same protection. 

Paul responded by saying that joining an insurance group would take care of the problem. If a person does not do that, he said, Medicaid could be a back-up. 

“It’s capitalism that will bring down health care costs,” he said.

Of course Rand Paul is predicting that the bill won't get past the House, he really doesn't want to take a vote on this bill. It's why he's doing everything he can to rile up the House GOP Freedom Caucus to reject the bill before he's forced to vote on taking Medicaid away from 10% of Kentucky, or defying Trump in a state that he won by 16 points.

I'm not sure why Rand is in panic mode, he literally just won re-election in November and won't be up again until 2022 (and by then Trump will hopefully be long gone.)   But hey, the bill is pretty awful, and he knows it.

The stuff he's talking about replacing Obamacare with?  It has no chance, but clearly he thinks it will after the bill dies screaming in the House.

We'll see how true that is.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article139626248.html#storylink=cpy

Not Just Kentucky, But Ohio Too

I know we've read a lot of stories about Obamacare here in Kentucky, where 440,000 stand to lose health coverage under the GOP bill.  But the story in Ohio is even worse, where a million people could end up with no coverage  John Kasich went with Medicaid expansion through an overwhelmingly GOP state legislature (and Lord knows they did everything they could to try to stop it) but now the reality of Obamacare repeal in this newly-minted Midwest Trump state is hitting home.

James Waltimire, a police officer on unpaid medical leave, has been going to the hospital in this small city twice a week for physical therapy after leg surgery, all of it paid for by Medicaid.

Mr. Waltimire, 54, was able to sign up for the government health insurance program last year because Ohio expanded it to cover more than 700,000 low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act. He voted for President Trump — in part because of Mr. Trump’s support for law enforcement — but is now worried about the Republican plan to effectively end the Medicaid expansion through legislation to repeal the health care law.

“Originally the president said he wasn’t going to do nothing to Medicaid,” Mr. Waltimire said the other day after a rehab session. “Now they say he wants to take $880 billion out of Medicaid. That’s going to affect a lot of people who can’t afford to get insurance.”

As Republicans in Washington grapple with how to meet their promise of undoing the greatest expansion of health care coverage since the Great Society, they are struggling with what may be an irreconcilable problem: bridging the vast gulf between the expectations of blue-collar voters like Mr. Waltimire who propelled Mr. Trump to the presidency, and longstanding party orthodoxy that it is not the federal government’s role to provide benefits to a wide swath of society.

If they push forward the House-drafted health bill, which could come to a vote as early as this coming week, Republicans may honor their vow to repeal what they derided as Obamacare, but also risk doing disproportionate harm to the older, working-class white voters who are increasingly vital to their electoral coalition.

Many of those voters live in small Midwestern cities like Defiance and neighboring Bryan, home of a candy company that makes Dum Dum lollipops but has moved many of its jobs to Mexico. Though unemployment is low in the region, where farmland stretches for miles between towns, the slow erosion of manufacturing has taken a toll, and “what’s left in our communities are lower-paying jobs,” said Dr. Neeraj Kanwal, the president of Defiance Regional Hospital.

The region has voted Republican in presidential contests for decades, but its support for Mr. Trump — he took 64 percent of the vote in Defiance County and an even larger share in most of the surrounding counties — was more resounding than for any candidate since Ronald Reagan. Yet many people here tend to have conflicting values that make repeal of the health law appealing on its face but ultimately hard to swallow.

“People in this community are very conservative. They struggle with the federal budget deficit, and they like the idea of personal responsibility,” said Phil Ennen, the president and chief executive of Community Hospitals and Wellness Centers, which has a 75-bed hospital in Bryan. “But at the same time, we have a lot of friends and family and neighbors who just don’t have a lot going for them. There is a population out there that needs Medicaid. That’s the dilemma.”

And yet most of the people who voted for Trump, if not every single one of them, bought the promise that Trump would never take Medicaid away from them, personally. 

But here we are.

Oh I don't feel sorry for them.  They gladly voted to take health care coverage away from those people who "didn't deserve it", anyone black or brown.  They knew what Trump was selling.  They just figured he wouldn't screw them over this early.

But again, here we are.  

Only now are people like Jim Waltmire asking questions. Only now are they showing up at town halls.  Only now are they worried about losing what Obama gave them.  Only now.  And the rest? They think Trump will fix it all for them.

When that doesn't happen, then what?

StupiidNews!

• FBI Director James Comey will publicly testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee today, Democrats have questions on Russia and wiretapping, the GOP wants answers on leaks.
• In the Senate on Monday, Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will face the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing.
• Another round-up by Turkish authorities has resulted in nearly 2,000 arrests of people with "links" to Kurdish militants or Islamic militants involved in last July's coup attempt.
• Director Roman Polanski wants to return to the US to visit his wife's grave after being a fugitive on multiple felony sexual abuse against a minor charges for nearly 40 years.
• Launch sales of the Nintendo Switch have been promising enough for Nintendo to double hardware production over the next 12 months.

Last Call For Flint, Stones

Republicans in Congress refused to help Flint's water crisis for years until after the 2016 election, when the GOP suddenly decided that passing an emergency grant in December for $120 million that President Obama signed into law was a good idea.  Now we know why they took so long: more than three months later, the Trump regime is taking 100% of the credit for saving Flint when "Obama did nothing" to help.

The fix is part of the Trump administration’s goal of updating the country’s water infrastructure, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said Friday in a press statement.

“The people of Flint and all Americans deserve a more responsive federal government,” he said. “EPA will especially focus on helping Michigan improve Flint’s water infrastructure as part of our larger goal of improving America’s water infrastructure.”

Michigan Democrats and Republicans praised the EPA’s decision to infuse money into the dilapidated city’s broken water supply.

“We are excited and very grateful to receive these much-needed funds,” said Flint Mayor Karen Weaver. “The City of Flint being awarded a grant of this magnitude in such a critical time of need will be a huge benefit.”

Michigan officials and Flint residents have been struggling to get the small, mostly black town’s water system up and running after lead contaminated its water supply.

Officials switched the small Eastern Michigan city’s water supply from Lake Huron in 2015 to the Flint River in a bid to save money. But the state applied the wrong regulations and standards for drinking water, which ultimately resulted in corroded pipes.

Various reports conducted in the past two years indicate the EPA has been slow to respond to the growing scandal.

One report published in March, 2016, claimed the EPA only acts to enforce clean drinking water regulations when public outrage reaches a fever pitch, implying negligence on the part of agency officials.

Another report conducted in February, 2016, by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), details how the EPA fails to force state regulators to comply with federal drinking water laws.

Nearly 2,000 citizens became fed up with the dawdling, so they sued the federal agency for failing to address the long-running water crisis.

The lawsuit claims the EPA failed to take the proper steps to ensure that state and local authorities were addressing the crisis. The defendants are seeking a civil action lawsuit for $722 million in damages.

You catch all that?  How the Obama EPA "failed" Flint when Republicans refused to lift a finger in Congress to help until Trump won and they could take credit?   That's the Trump regime for you: a problem the GOP created over years of neglect, suddenly fixed when they have the window to blame it on Obama.

Only then do the people of Flint get help with their lead-poisoned water, because they can score political points.

Nice, huh?

Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime's reign of fear continues as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly wants extra immigration judges assigned to key cities to process all the cases he plans to send them, something I doubt AG Jeff Sessions will have a problem with.

The U.S. Justice Department is developing plans to temporarily reassign immigration judges from around the country to 12 cities to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes, according to two administration officials.

How many judges will be reassigned and when they will be sent is still under review, according to the officials, but the Justice Department has begun soliciting volunteers for deployment.

The targeted cities are New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Baltimore, Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska and Phoenix, Arizona. They were chosen because they are cities which have high populations of illegal immigrants with criminal charges, the officials said.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts, confirmed that the cities have been identified as likely recipients of reassigned immigration judges, but did not elaborate on the planning.

The plan to intensify deportations is in line with a vow made frequently by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year to deport more illegal immigrants involved in crime.

The Department of Homeland Security asked for the judges' reshuffle, an unusual move given that immigration courts are administered by the Department of Justice. A Homeland Security spokeswoman declined to comment on any plan that has not yet been finalized.

No wonder then that Cinco de Mayo celebrations in six weeks are starting to be looked at as "target rich environments".

El Carnaval de Puebla, a major Cinco De Mayo celebration in Philadelphia, has been canceled following recent federal immigration crackdowns, organizers said.

Edgar Ramirez told a local NBC affiliate that as many as 15,000 people gather for the annual parade through South Philadelphia, marking the city's largest Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Ramirez told NBC the decision was "sad but responsible" amid reports of more immigration enforcement arrests on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Hundreds of undocumented immigrants have been detained or arrested since President Trump took office. Trump campaigned on a pledge to strengthen enforcement of immigration laws.

ICE announced this week alone that 248 people in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia were in federal custody awaiting deportation following two weeks of immigration raids.

Ramirez said that the Mexican-American community, including both legal and illegal residents, was disheartened by reports of large-scale arrests.

"The group of six organizers decided to cancel unanimously,” Ramirez said. “Everyone is offended by the actions of ICE. They did not feel comfortable holding the event."

Philly's Carnaval won't be the last event cancelled, either.   This is Trump's America now.  Everyone else is most certainly not welcome here anymore.

Roll Over Beethoven And Everyone Else

Legendary Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer, Blues Hall of Famer, and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Chuck Berry has passed at the age of 90.

He performed in 1979 for President Jimmy Carter at the White House, landed at No. 6 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and trademarked his stage showmanship with his famous “duck walk.”

John Lennon once said, “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’” He paved the way for such music legends as the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Band, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, AC/DC, Sex Pistols and Jerry Lee Lewis, among many others.

Muddy Waters, Berry’s idol and musical influence, gave him some constructive backstage advice: contact Leonard Chess. Chicago-based Chess Records, primarily a blues label run by Polish brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, had a series of transplanted blues artists on its roster, including Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker.

The Chess brothers signed Berry in 1955 and produced and released his first single, “Maybellene,” an adaption of the Bob Wills song “Ida Red.” It sold more than a million copies, reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts and hit No. 5 on the Pop charts, allowing Berry to build crossover appeal beyond the R&B audience.

Chuck Berry defined rock for decades, and the biggest names in the industry know exactly who they owe their success to.

Keith Richards of the Stones, a big fan, said, “Chuck Berry always was the epitome of rhythm and blues playing, rock ’n’ roll playing. It was beautiful and effortless, and his timing was perfection. He is rhythm supreme. He plays that lovely double-string stuff, which I got down a long time ago but I’m still getting the hang of. Later I realized why he played that way — because of the sheer physical size of the guy. I mean, he makes one of those big Gibsons look like a ukulele!”

His 1972 album The London Chuck Berry Sessions, featuring a who’s who of British rock royalty went gold within a month, selling more than 500,000 copies. It featured both studio and live recordings with such songs as “Let’s Boogie,” “I Love You,” “Johnny B. Goode” and “My Ding a Ling,” a late-period hit written and first recorded by Dave Bartholomew. The novelty song about his private part became his only No. 1 pop hit on both the Billboard and U.K. pop charts.

Berry fought a number of legal situations that arose in his life. He was arrested in high school for stealing a car and robbing convenience stores. He received his GED in prison and was released at age 21. He was imprisoned under the Mann Act in the early 1960s for having sexual intercourse with a minor and in 1979 for tax evasion. He continued to make music behind bars, writing “Thirty Days,” “Nadine” and “No Particular Place to Go.”

Expressing his disagreement with the charges, “Thirty Days” included the lyrics, “If I don’t get no satisfaction from the judge/I’m gonna take it to the FBI and voice my grudge/If they don’t give me no consolation/I’m gonna take it to the United Nations/I’m gonna see that you be back home in 30 days.”

Bands like the Stones, Beach Boys (basing “Surfing U.S.A.” on his “Sweet Little Sixteen”) and Beatles covered his songs, allowing him to remain relevant to the music world, and he signed with Mercury Records in the mid-1960s. He released five albums on the label and toured on the success of his earlier hits. He quickly built a bad reputation during his live shows by hiring spur-of-the-moment backup bands, somehow thinking they’d know each lick of his music.

Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller occasionally performed live with Berry. Springsteen and the E Street Band backed Berry during his performance of “Johnny B. Goode” and “Rock and Roll Music” at his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Director Taylor Hackford captured Berry’s 60th birthday in the 1986 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, where he famously clashed with his protégé Richards. Those who appeared in the film included Diddley, Lennon, Lewis and Little Richard, all of whom revealed personal stories and relationships with him. Berry performed concerts that same year with a number of artists including Linda Ronstadt, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray and Johnson, his original mentor.

I think it's time to track down Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll and give it another viewing.  He was legendary 30 years ago, and the legend only grew since.

Sunday Long Read: True (Base) Detective

Oxford American's Nick Tabor gives us this week's Sunday Long Read, a detective tale about a grisly double murder in Oak Grove, Tennessee, just outside Army base Fort Campbell.  It's about the town madam who made a lot of money and paid to keep it that way, a bad cop whom everyone knew was guilty, and the military-industrial complex and a base with 30,000 soldiers that crushed a town and its 3,000 people for decades.

In the early 1990s, New Life Fitness & Massage kept its lights on twenty hours a day, closing at five every morning and reopening at nine. Everyone in Oak Grove knew it was a brothel. Fort Campbell, one of the nation’s largest Army posts, sits on top of the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and New Life stood right outside its northern gates next to Interstate 24. Many of its clients were Screaming Eagles: paratroopers from the famous 101st Airborne Division. Most of the others were truckers off the highway and locals of all stripes; some say judges and other dignitaries would come up from Nashville, an hour down the highway, to be ushered in and out covertly.

At twenty-six, the owner, Tammy Papler, was shrewd beyond her years. She had picked the location for the ready-made customer base in Fort Campbell, and for the pool of potential workers: soldiers’ wives, ex-wives, and girlfriends, as well as women who had recently been discharged, most of them far from their families and without safety nets. She wore her hair in a fluffy blond permanent and took the pseudonym Mercedes. Some of her employees feared her temper.

Oak Grove, Kentucky, wasn’t a city in any meaningful sense, but rather just a commercial strip hedged by trailer parks and clapboard housing. Its population was around three thousand, though this number fluctuated depending on deployments. While Fort Campbell’s officers could afford the more elegant digs on the other side of the post in Clarksville, Tennessee, Oak Grove was a haven for young enlistees, and it drew seedy businesses like mosquitos to a bog. The main stretch of highway was lined with liquor stores, pawnshops, and adult businesses: Fantasee Lingerie, Donna’s Den, Mona’s Go-Go, Classic Touch, and Cherry Video, the last of which Papler also owned. The brothel operated in the back of a small brick building that it shared with a Chinese restaurant.

The business cycle at New Life, as with Oak Grove’s small economy, rose and fell with military paydays. During the slow periods, the women would order takeout and watch the O.J. trial. There were moments of levity, and escapades. Once, two strangers came in off the interstate and plied a couple of workers with mounds of cocaine and hundred-dollar bills for an all-night party, but the men made such a mess in the Jacuzzi room that the workers had to spend their tips to have the carpet cleaned before Papler arrived in the morning.

For Ed Carter, a burly twenty-four-year-old police officer, the city was something of a playground. Carter grew up near Hopkinsville, the county seat, on a farm, where his father worked for an influential white family (the Carters were black) and his mother cleaned houses and churches for extra money. After dropping out of community college, Carter was recruited into the Police Explorers, an apprenticeship program for youths who want to work in law enforcement. He graduated into the midnight shift, responding to domestic fights of young military couples and scuffles at Oak Grove’s strip club.

With minimal training, he spent his first months on the job scrambling to learn the local geography and police procedures. But he didn’t need any instruction to push people around. (Once, Carter responded on a call about a fighting couple and he flung the husband out of their trailer.) He began to walk with a swagger. One of the badge’s perks, he found, was that wearing a uniform made it easy to pick up women—especially with so many men away on deployments. In 1992, he married a woman he’d met on the job, but this didn’t get in the way of his tomcatting.

As a bad cop, Carter was largely a product of his environment. The Oak Grove Police Department had only six officers and was known throughout Christian County for its corruption. Buddy Elliott, the police chief, was the older brother of the mayor, Jack, and together the Elliott brothers owned a major share of the local real estate. They used the police force as an arm of their business enterprises and sometimes as a revenue generator. For instance, in 1993, after some of the New Life massage parlor’s workers were charged with prostitution, Buddy Elliott came to Papler and asked whether she’d “get with the program.” She gave him $600 cash, and when the case reached a grand jury, the charges were dropped.

Over the year that followed, the cops got increasingly cozy at New Life, and some even hung out in the lobby when they were off duty. “They felt like they owned the place, they really did,” one of the workers remembers. “You never knew if they were just stopping by to say hi, or if they were wanting something.” Papler says she came up with a special procedure when an officer wanted sex: he didn’t pay, but his name was recorded at the bottom of the client register, so she could compensate the worker later herself. The Oak Grove government didn’t have much tax revenue, so when the patrol cars needed new lights, the cops imposed on Papler to foot the bill.

Carter spent more time at the brothel than any of his colleagues. He began a steady affair with the manager, and since his police salary was so meager, he compelled Papler to put him on the payroll as a “janitor.” She later said in court proceedings that the payments were really for “protection” or “hush money”—not for mopping the floors. And she was afraid that if she stopped, he’d get the place shut down. For all her friendliness with cops, Papler faced regular threats of closure. For backup, she had an emergency dispatcher keeping guard; whenever there was talk of another prostitution raid, the brothel would get a call—“a storm is coming” or “time to get the umbrellas out”—so her workers could get dressed.

Then, in the summer of 1994, Papler says, she cut Carter off. His payments cost her too much and they had a falling-out. She remembers telling him not to come back, but short of changing the locks, she couldn’t keep him out; he had a key. A few weeks later, in the early hours of September 20, two of her workers were alone at New Life. At 3:35 A.M., two colleagues found them in a back room of the brothel, naked, lying in puddles of blood, both shot through the head and stabbed in the neck. The investigators suspected Carter right away, but they didn’t have enough evidence to convict him. To many, it appeared that the Oak Grove Police Department had a hand in covering up the double murder. Within months, the New Life massage parlor shut down. Carter fled town and many of the locals close to the event eventually left, too, including Papler. The sheriff’s office handed over the investigation to the state, but for more than fifteen years no one was arrested. By the time I moved to the area, the case had almost evaporated into a grisly local legend.

This is Nick Tabor's story, chasing a legendary cold case in a town that definitely didn't want it re-opened.  Pull up a chair, this is a good one.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

In the Trump era, overt racism is again not only totally acceptable, but actually expected in red state American cities like Indianapolis.

The day should have been one of glory and celebration for five fourth-graders.

The Pleasant Run Elementary students had just won a robotics challenge at Plainfield High School, and the students — new to bot competition this year — were one step closer to the Vex IQ State Championship.

The team is made up of 9- and 10-year-olds. Two are African American and three are Latino.

As the group, called the Pleasant Run PantherBots, and their parents left the challenge last month in Plainfield, Ind., competing students from other Indianapolis-area schools and their parents were waiting for them in the parking lot.

“Go back to Mexico!” two or three kids screamed at their brown-skin peers and their parents, according to some who were there.

This verbal attack had spilled over from the gymnasium. While the children were competing, one or two parents disparaged the Pleasant Run kids with racist comments — and loud enough for the Pleasant Run families to hear.

And yes, I mean in 2017 in red states, racism is expected.

“They were pointing at us and saying that ‘Oh my God, they are champions of the city all because they are Mexican. They are Mexican, and they are ruining our country,’ ” said Diocelina Herrera, the mother of PantherBot Angel Herrera-Sanchez.

These are minority students from the east side of the city, poor kids from a Title I school.

“For the most part, the robotics world is kind of a white world,” said Lisa Hopper, the team’s coach and a Pleasant Run second-grade teacher. “They’re just not used to seeing a team like our kids.

"And they see us and they think we’re not going to be competition. Then we’re in first place the whole day, and they can’t take it,” she said.

The racism was always there, just under the surface.  People told themselves "Well, we have a black president though, haven't we gotten past this?"

The answer of course is now it is no longer hidden.  The poor kids from the school where we wall off black and brown kids, they're not supposed to win, let alone be there. They're not supposed to compete, hell they're not supposed to be allowed to compete.  They couldn't have won fair and square.  It has to be that they're cheating, or getting special treatment somehow.

But now the government is there to strike fear into these kids.  They see people who look like them get shot, get rounded up by ICE, go to prison, get deported, go to the morgue, get put in the ground.

There's nobody on their side, and they know it.  On top of everything else that you have to go through as a kid in America these days, now they have all this on top of it. 

Even when they win, they lose.  I know what it feels like.  Believe me.

Not in Trump's America.

Intense International Incidents

This week the Trumpies managed to piss off the Brits and embarrass the Germans, and that was just the list of our major allies that we offended.  First, Mouth of Sauron Sean Spicer made London's spies so angry that they actually spoke up about it.

Out of the gate, Spicer stated that the president still stands by his allegation of wiretapping, even after both the House and Senate have pronounced it false, then proceeded to initiate verbal fights with journalists, which media outlets have fairly termed wild and angry. Next, Spicer rehashed the increasingly threadbare accusations of the right-wing media, backing up the White House’s claim against President Obama, making no impression on the gathered journalists.

Things went from bad to worse when Spicer cited one especially ridiculous far-right claim verbatim:

On Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement: “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ—what is that? It’s the initials for the British Intelligence Spying Agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, ‘the President needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trump’s conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ he was able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”

As I explained a couple days ago, Napolitano has zero background in intelligence and has no idea what he’s talking about. His accusation against Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, London’s NSA equivalent, was patently absurd, as well as malicious, demonstrating that neither Napolitano nor Fox News have the slightest notion how intelligence works in the real world.

Yet here the White House was publicly endorsing this crackpot theory—and blaming perhaps our closest ally for breaking American laws at the behest of Barack Obama. Our domestic crisis thereby became an international one, for no reason other than the administration has gone global in its efforts to deflect blame from its own stupidity and dishonesty.

This is no small matter. NSA and GCHQ enjoy the most special of special relationships, serving since the Second World War as the cornerstone of the Anglosphere Five Eyes signals intelligence alliance (the others are Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) which defeated Hitler and won the Cold War. This constitutes the most successful espionage alliance in history, and just how close NSA and GCHQ are would be difficult to overstate.

Affectionately calling each other “the cousins,” they interchange personnel and, in the event of disaster—for instance a crippling terrorist attack on agency headquarters—NSA would hand most of its functions over to GCHQ, so that Five Eyes would keep running. It’s long been a source of consternation at Langley that NSA appears to get along better with GCHQ than with CIA. I once witnessed this issue come up in a top-secret meeting with senior officials, in which a CIA boss took an NSA counterpart to task when it became apparent that a piece of highly sensitive intelligence had been shared with “the cousins” before Langley was informed. The NSA senior official’s terse reply silenced the room: “That’s because we trust them.”

Publicly attacking the NSA-GCHQ relationship was therefore a consummately bad idea, particularly by a White House that has already gone so far out of its way to anger and alienate our own spies, and the British reply was one for the record books. Late yesterday, GCHQ issued a remarkable statement:

Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.
American spy services are famously tight-lipped in their public utterances, falling back on “we can neither confirm nor deny” with a regularity that frustrates journalists. And our spooks are positively loquacious compared to British partners, who seldom say anything on the record to the media. Calling out Fox News and the White House in this manner has no precedent, and indicates just how angry British officials are with the Trump administration. For Prime Minister Teresa May, whose efforts to build bridges with the new president have been deeply unpopular at home, this had to be galling.

If angering the entire British spy apparatus didn't win the prize for worst American diplomatic gaffe in decades, then insulting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to her face certainly did, only to have her quickly make Trump look like the uneducated buffoon he really is.

TO APPRECIATE how shocking President Donald Trump is to modern German sensibilities, consider the “America First!” slogan that so cheers his supporters. Then ponder how Germans—and indeed voters across Europe—would react if an avowed law-and-order nationalist were to seek the office of Bundeskanzler with the slogan: “Germany First!” Several issues divided Mr Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel at their first meeting in the White House on March 17th. At an often awkward press conference in the East Room, the two leaders politely disagreed on everything from immigration to free trade and the value of seeking multinational agreements. Their comportment could hardly have been more different. Mrs Merkel was every inch the cool, reserved physicist-by-training, at moments giving her American host the icy stare of a Mother Superior told a dirty joke. Mr Trump was dyspeptic, defensive and visibly irritated by press questions about his latest controversial tweets.

But the real dividing line between the two involved the nature of political leadership. Mr Trump, being Mr Trump, presented himself as a tribune of the people, heeding and acting on public demands to end “unfair” treatment of America. He catalogued some of those resentments. He said it is time for members of the NATO alliance to pay their “dues”—countries “must pay what they owe”, he grumbled—though as members of NATO, governments do not technically “owe” anything but have merely made political commitments to spend the equivalent of 2% of GDP on defence. He cited public demands for tighter controls on immigration in the name of “national security,” adding that: “immigration is a privilege, not a right.” He condemned previous free trade deals and spoke of the need for American workers to come first from now on.

Mrs Merkel’s response was subtle but brutal. She noted that free trade agreements have “not always been that popular” in Germany, and referred to protests in her own country relating to free trade pacts that the European Union has either signed with foreign partners or wants to sign. She recalled the specific fears raised by an EU pact with South Korea, and the predictions that the German car industry would suffer from increased competition and more open markets. Instead, she said, the pact with South Korea “brought more jobs” and both sides won. “I represent German interests,” she said at one point, just as the American president “stands up for American interests.” Listen carefully and Mrs Merkel was telling Mr Trump that she, like every leader in the world, has domestic politics to think about. Left unspoken was the point that it is easy, even dangerously easy, to let such distinct national interests provoke a clash. Her core message to Mr Trump was that real political leadership involves seeking a co-operative solution that leaves everyone ahead, and that international relations do not have to be zero-sum.

Mrs Merkel had no desire to pick an open fight. She has long experience with swaggering male leaders who like to throw their weight around, from President Vladimir Putin of Russia to the former French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. The German press corps that covers the chancellor has long swapped tales of the dry, off-the-record jokes that she cracks at the expense of such men, often under the cover of self-deprecation. After one European summit in Brussels at which the hyper-active Mr Sarkozy had been more manic than usual, Mrs Merkel told her press corps: “I think I am the most boring person that he has ever met.”

The German leader also came prepared. She is an atypical “Playboy” reader. But that magazine’s interview with Donald Trump in 1990 is one clue studied by Team Merkel before their first meeting. In that preview of his “America First” views, nearly 30 years ago, Mr Trump accused allies of subsidising exports while free-riding on American security, growling: "I'd throw a tax on every Mercedes-Benz rolling into this country.” The president remains an unlikely Merkel ally. He scorns detail, has praised Britain’s decision to leave the EU, obsesses over trade balances (Germany ran a $53bn trade surplus with America last year), and has called her decision to admit more than a million refugees into Germany “catastrophic”. He has appalled the German government with his open admiration for the iron-fisted nationalism of Mr Putin, his hints that he might lift sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and his suggestions that NATO is obsolete.

At their press conference Mrs Merkel managed to persuade Mr Trump to state his “strong support” for NATO. She also heard the American leader praise Germany’s schemes for job training and retraining, and apprenticeships in industry. Earlier, she had introduced Mr Trump to bosses from firms like Siemens and BMW, who talked up their American factories and investments. That was smart. Apprenticeships are a big part of Germany’s global brand, and an impressed-sounding Mr Trump noted from the podium that his government is “in the process of rebuilding the American industrial base.”

At this point Trump is bleating on Twitter that this week was fine and that his meeting with Merkel was great.  Nothing could be further from the truth.