Priebus: Immigration Order ‘Doesn’t Include’ Green Card Holders (But It Do)

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus muddied the waters on President Donald Trump's new executive order barring immigration from select countries, saying Sunday it "doesn't include green card holders going forward" but adding that anyone traveling back and forth from the countries in question will be subject to further screening, including U.S. citizens.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Priebus was asked about reports that the executive order affected green card holders, contrary to recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security.

"We didn't overrule the Department of Homeland Security, as far as green card holders moving forward, it doesn't affect them," Priebus first said. But when pressed by host Chuck Todd on whether it impacts green card holders, Priebus reversed himself, saying, "Well, of course it does. If you're traveling back and forth, you're going to be subjected to further screening."

More here.

This adminny is nothing but a bunch of amateur neonazis.

The way Trump/Bannon are treating the media matches the anti-press behavior of Putin in Russia and Erdoğan in Turkey. Autocrats marginalize critical, free media in order to consolidate power.

We also see a Trump/Fox News feedback loop, where Trump tweets stuff within minutes of it appearing on the network. Fox has become a mouthpiece of the Trump Administration, promoting positive stories to its audience.

There's no surprise when I see Fox viewers supporting the Trump madness. This near-dictatorial strategery has been highly successful in the past, and we're seeing it again.

Fox is fulfilling the role of trumpeting the party line while the rest of the media are providing traditional fact checking and truly fair and balanced reporting.

We are on the brink of becoming the most recent example of a fearful nation falling into the depths of fascism. A free press is our only hope of preserving our freedom.

Steve Bannon personally overruled DHS decision not to include green card holders in travel ban: CNN

Steve Bannon, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, personally overruled a decision by the Department of Homeland Security not to include green card holders in the president’s temporary ban on travel from Muslim countries.

Protests erupted at airports across the country over the weekend after DHS agents began enforcing an executive order signed by Trump by detaining legal permanent residents who were returning from abroad. On Saturday, a federal judge stayed the detentions and ordered the green card holders to be released, but CNN reported that the mayhem could have been avoided if the White House had listened to the guidance of DHS lawyers in the first place.

Documents obtained by CNN showed that DHS initially determined that “lawful permanent residents are not included and may continue to travel to the USA.”

But Bannon personally intervened to counter the guidance from DHS lawyers.

“The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout,” the CNN report said. “That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.”

The decision led Mother Jones columnist Kevin Drum to conclude that the chaos caused by Trump’s executive order had been part of the White House plan.

“Whatever else he is, Steve Bannon is a smart guy, and he had to know that this would produce turmoil at airports around the country and widespread condemnation from the press,” Drum wrote. “In cases like this, the smart money is usually on incompetence, not malice. But this looks more like deliberate malice to me. Bannon wanted turmoil and condemnation. He wanted this executive order to get as much publicity as possible. He wanted the ACLU involved. He thinks this will be a PR win.”

More here.

Trump is unable to tell the truth.

Donald Trump is still bitter about losing the popular vote, so he’s doubling down on his claims that millions of illegal immigrants went to the polls and cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, thereby costing Trump the popular vote. This claim has no basis in reality, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeating it over and over again.

~The Ring of Fire

According to Trump’s statistics, undocumented immigrants committed 25,000 homicides and cost the country $113 billion. The problem is that those statistics are false and misleading. Here are the facts:

1. "Undocumented immigrants were arrested for 25,000 homicides."

As ThinkProgress previously reported, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that 25,000 foreign nationals — or immigrants — were arrested for homicides, but for over a 55-year period between August 1955 and April 2010. In comparison, there were 11,200 arrests for homicides in 2010 alone among the general American population, according to the U.S. Department of Justice statistics.

A 2007 study found that immigrants have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans, according to the immigration organization American Immigration Council. Another similar 2013 study found that first-generation immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than second-generation immigrants and native-born, non-Hispanic whites.

2. "Immigrants cost the economy $113 billion."

According to Trump, undocumented immigrants are a billion-dollar burden on the economy, costing $113 billion in local, state, and federal taxes. The same statistic can be found at the Federation for American Immigration Reform website, an anti-immigrant organization founded by white nationalist John Tanton.

In reality, undocumented immigrants are a net positive to the economy, contributing $11.64 billion into local and state taxes, according to a 2016 Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report. What’s more, undocumented immigrants also contributed $35.1 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund between 2000 and 2011, according to a 2015 Journal of General Internal Medicine study. Even Alex Nowrasteh, the immigration policy expert at the Libertarian think tank CATO Institute, called Trump’s claim “nonsense.”

~ThinkProgress

“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
― Adolf Hitler

Immigration Ban Is Unlikely to Reduce Terrorist Threat, Experts Say

Rarely does an executive order announce a more straightforward and laudable purpose than the one President Trump signed on Friday: “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.” But the president’s directive is unlikely to significantly reduce the terrorist threat in the United States, which has been a minuscule part of the overall toll of violence since 2001.

Many experts believe the order’s unintended consequences will make the threat worse.

While the order requires the Department of Homeland Security to issue a report within 180 days providing detailed statistics on foreign nationals who commit acts of violence, terrorism researchers have already produced rich and revealing data. For instance, since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, no one has been killed in the United States in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from or whose parents emigrated from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, the seven countries targeted in the order’s 120-day visa ban, according to Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina.

There was a random quality to the list of countries: It excluded Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where the founders of Al Qaeda and many other jihadist groups have originated. Also excluded are Pakistan and Afghanistan, where persistent extremism and decades of war have produced militants who have occasionally reached the United States. Notably, perhaps, the list avoided Muslim countries where Mr. Trump has major business ventures.

More here.

9 Terrible Things Trump Has Done in Just a Week

There are four more years of this to come.

It’s been just seven days since Donald Trump took office. While the media spent most of that time spilling digital ink over inauguration numbers, the new administration was diminishing women’s health and safety around the world, chipping away at health care for millions of Americans and pouring money that could feed and insure children into a useless garbage heap along the border. It was a bad week for politics and decency, which have always been on frigid terms, but are now dead to each other.

There were other things, too. Trump threatened Chicago with martial law on what he thought was a double-dog dare from fellow racist Bill O’Reilly. He promised to install monitors—glorified tattletales, really—to oversee federal agencies and report back to brass at the White House. After again trotting out the lie about immigrants and dead people voting, Trump promised an investigation into the widely debunked issue of election fraud (though not into Russian election meddling), which should start with his own family and staff. Speaking of Steve Bannon, the grand wizard of the so-called alt-right and White House senior adviser continued the Trump team’s cynical campaign to keep their base paranoid, uninformed and stupid by pretending their boss is a victim of the press. Newsweek discovered Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Jared Kushner all have email accounts on a private system. And as the final, delusional cherry on the poisonous cake, Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln.

He also signed a bunch of executive orders. Far more important than all the background noise is the authoritarian craziness that Trump is codifying into law. These plans and policies will wreak irreparable havoc and damage, causing suffering and pain to millions in the U.S. and beyond. Remember—this is just seven days' worth of destruction. We've got four more years of this.

To read the 9 Terrible Things, go here.

LAWMAKERS IN TEN STATES HAVE PROPOSED LEGISLATION CRIMINALIZING PEACEFUL PROTEST

OVER THE WEEKEND, millions of demonstrators took to streets across the country to mobilize against the new president and his agenda, assembling in a national turnout that organizers call the beginning of a reinvigorated protest movement. But in states home to dozens of Saturday’s demonstrations, Republican lawmakers are moving to criminalize and increase penalties on peaceful protesting.

Last week, I reported that such efforts were afoot in five states: In Minnesota, Washington state, Michigan, and Iowa, Republican lawmakers have proposed an array of anti-protesting laws that center on stiffening penalties for demonstrators who block traffic; in North Dakota, conservatives are even pushing a bill that would allow motorists to run over and kill protesters so long as the collision was accidental. Similarly, Republicans in Indiana last week prompted uproar over a proposed law that would instruct police to use “any means necessary” to clear protesters off a roadway.

Over the weekend, readers alerted me to two additional anti-protesting bills, both introduced by Republicans, that are pending in Virginia and Colorado. This brings the number of states that have in recent weeks floated such proposals to at least eight.

In Colorado, Republican state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg has introduced a bill that would greatly increase penalties for environmental protesters. Under the proposed law, obstructing or tampering with oil and gas equipment would be reclassified from a misdemeanor to a “class 6” felony, a category of crime that reportedly can be punished by up to 18 months behind bars and a fine of up to $100,000.

The Intercept

Johns Hopkins’ Top Psychotherapist Releases Terrifying Diagnosis Of President Trump

If there’s one thing we can say about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s unlike any other world leader we’ve seen to date. The problem, however, is that his differences fail to set him apart in a positive manner.

Almost daily, Trump tweets about the “biased media,” “fake news,” or a world leader who has suddenly done something so terrible that he must take to Twitter to publicly berate them. Notice, however, that it’s always someone else with the problem. It’s never him.

However, John D. Gartner, a registered psychotherapist from the renowned Johns Hopkins University Medical School seems to think Trump may, in fact, be the one with the problem. Gartner, who teaches psychiatric residents at Hopkins, decided to break the ethical code known as the “Goldwater Rule” in order to warn the American public about the dangerousness of our new commander-in-chief’s mental state.

According to USNews, Gartner unofficially diagnosed Trump with “malignant narcissism.” Although he himself has not personally examined Trump, Gartner claims it’s obvious from watching even a little of his behavior that he meets the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. Some of the characteristics include:

Anti-social behavior
Sadism
Aggressiveness
Paranoia
Grandiosity
Entitled
Regressed
Manipulative
Destructive
Egocentric
Use of projection
Lack of conscience
Narcissistic

Gartner says that individuals with malignant narcissism often lack impulse control and empathy. He also says many who suffer from this disorder believe that others around them don’t recognize their greatness.

HERE.

Right Wingers' Fear

Apparently, right wingers are so afraid of The Terrors that all thoughts of compassion get throwed out the winder.

The Keepers of the Doomsday Clock Are Really, Really Worried About Donald Trump

The Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical measure of how close humanity is to imminent disaster, jumped to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight today, the closest it's ever been since the height of the Cold War. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the anti-nuclear weapons group that first set the clock in 1947, said that the reason for the time change is simple: Donald Trump.

Explaining its members' reasoning, the Bulletin cited the continued threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change as well as a new one that could make them worse: "a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a US presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change."

Prior to today's change, the Doomsday Clock was set at three minutes to midnight.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-doomsday-clock-atomic-scientists

OMG!

Killing The Walmart Economy

Trump Tariffs on Chinese and Mexican goods will hurt consumers, especially poor consumers who shop at Walmart. 

Here. And Here.

The New Fascism

Only a few days into the new Presidency*, and it appears we have a fascist leader. I fear for our Nation.

Here.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Stephen Bannon said in the interview with the Times published on Thursday.

Bannon said the media still fails to understand how Trump rose to victory.

“I want you to quote this,” Bannon told the newspaper, “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Bannon defended White House press secretary Sean Spicer and his controversial, fiery performance over the weekend in which he accused the media of dishonest inauguration coverage.

TomDispatch

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- a writer I admire -- on the possible return of torture and black sites in the Trump era. Here's the first half of her latest piece. Tom

"In an interview with his biographer Michael D’Antonio, Donald Trump explained that although he received a medical deferment rather than serving in the war in Vietnam, “I always felt that I was in the military.” This was, as D’Antonio reported in “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success,” because he spent his high-school years at a military-themed boarding school, not far from West Point.

"Last Saturday, President Trump trumpeted his military expertise during a visit to the C.I.A.’s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, where he praised his nominee to direct the C.I.A., Michael Pompeo, for being first in his class at West Point. Then he digressed, noting, “I know a lot about West Point. . . . Trust me, I’m, like, a smart person.”

"One difference between serving in the military and being a pretend soldier at the New York Military Academy, where Trump proudly led mock drills in snappy faux military uniforms, is that, in the real thing, officers are drilled not just in marching formations but also in the laws of war. These include the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, which impose absolute, unconditional bans on torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment of enemy combatants, categorizing such conduct, under any and all circumstances, as a war crime."

Read it here.

 On Teh Twitters...

Worry 'O Teh Day™

Trump ceding economic power to China and threatening war in the South China Sea isn't too smart in my book. Economic decline and war with China. Hot diggety!

China manoeuvres to fill US free-trade role
Xi Jinping courts regional support as election of Donald Trump clouds future

https://www.ft.com/content/c3840120-aee1-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1

Mr Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, and the now-stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that was supposed to be its economic backbone, have for years given the US a leadership role at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. But the election of Donald Trump, who campaigned on a protectionist platform and against Mr Obama’s TPP, has rewritten that formula. On Mr Obama’s last official trip overseas, the real star at this year’s Lima summit was Chinese president Xi Jinping, who courted other APEC members with a rival to the TPP. Mr Xi offered Beijing as an alternative to what many US allies fear will be a more bellicose America under Mr Trump. “China will not shut the door to the outside world but will open it even wider,” Mr Xi told business leaders on Saturday.

Is Trump ready for war in the South China Sea, or is his team just not being clear?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/24/is-trump-ready-for-war-in-the-south-china-sea-or-is-his-team-just-not-being-clear/?utm_term=.afd01aa90c9a

On Monday, new White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the United States would prevent China from taking over territory in international waters in the South China Sea.

His comments were widely interpreted as doubling down on remarks by Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, on Jan. 11 that the United States would not allow China access to islands it has built in the South China Sea, and upon which it has installed weapons systems and built military-length airstrips.

Experts had initially thought Tillerson might have misspoken, but Spicer's remarks appeared to raise the likelihood that the administration was indeed considering blocking China's access to its new islands in the Spratlys.

Nationalist tabloid the Global Times warned that any move to blockade the islands could provoke a “large-scale war.”

That is an assessment broadly shared by many foreign policy experts.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, a South China Sea expert at the Center for a New American Security, called the threats to bar China's access in the South China Sea “incredible” and told Reuters it had no basis in international law.

“A blockade — which is what would be required to actually bar access — is an act of war,” she added.

How Can We Describe Donald Trump’s Bidness Dealings?

A while back, Donald Trump gave a speech in South Carolina where he mentioned he’d made a big investment in their state. He wouldn’t tell ‘em at the time what that investment was, other than it was “interesting”.

Recently, that investment became known to the public in South Carolina, and to say the least, it is indeed interesting.

A company in South Carolina was in dire financial straits. Donald Trump bought that company and rescued it, or perhaps rather, rescued its owner from financial collapse. Unfortunately, now a large building owned by that company sits empty. Rain seeping in a leaky roof. Full of toxic stuff in drums. Trump wants to sell the building, but the State of South Carolina says it can’t be sold until the toxic mess is cleaned up. That cleanup will cost millions of dollars.

Trump refuses to foot the bill to clean up the toxic mess at his building. He wants the taxpayers of South Carolina to clean it up. He says his company has no relations with the previous owner of the building. South Carolina has a quandary. Dare they go against the powerful soon-to-be President*, fight to make him pay for the cleanup of his toxic waste site and incur lord knows what kind of wrath from him? Or should the taxpayers in South Carolina foot the bill?

Who was the previous owner of the building that Donald Trump says he has no relations with? His son. Yep. He bailed out his son’s failing bidness and now wants to sell an asset of that bidness. Without being responsible for cleaning up the toxic mess first. An asset originally owned by his son. Who he has no relations with.

I just figured out the word to describe Trump’s bidness dealings. Smarmy.

*Trump lost the election in a landslide and is going to hold the Presidency due to interference by Russia, ill-considered public statements by the FBI Chief, and the vote of the outdated Electoral College.