I’ll leave it to the more knowledgeable among us to dissect (looking at you, Adam…). But the greatest hits are about what I’d expected. Iraq’s off the list as we owe too much to too many there. The other six countries from the original order remain, though the specific restrictions are a little different than in Fear The Furriner version one. Here’s The Washington Post‘s take:
President Trump signed a new travel ban Monday that administration officials said they hope will end legal challenges over the matter by imposing a 90-day ban on the issuance of new visas for citizens of six majority-Muslim nations, authorities said.
In addition, the nation’s refugee program will be suspended for 120 days, and it will not accept more than 50,000 refugees in a year, down from the 110,000 cap set by the Obama administration.
The goal is obviously to deliver some red meat to the Trump base while sliding past inconvenient judicial reality tests. Trumpistas are already suggesting that the administration should not have to justify the order in court, despite evidence that there is no net national security gain from a Muslim ban:
A Department of Homeland Security report assessing the terrorist threat posed by people from the seven countries covered by President Trump’s original travel ban had cast doubt on the necessity of the executive order, concluding that citizenship was an “unreliable” threat indicator and that people from the affected countries have rarely been implicated in U.S.-based terrorism.
The Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, criticized the report as being incomplete and not vetted with other agencies, and he also asserted the administration should not be pressed by the judiciary to unveil sensitive national security details to justify the ban.
“This is not something that the Department of Justice should have to represent to a federal-district court judge,” the official said.
We shall see.
Over to y’all.
Image: Benjamin West, The Ambassador from Tunis with His Attendants as He Appeared in England in 1781, 1781
Omnes Omnibus
Assholes.
Yarrow
He’s been an American citizen for 30 years. WTF?
amk
yeah, I am sure the state AG’s and the fed judges will ‘follow that order’ stat.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow: Symptom, not a fluke.
The Wingnuts really are going all in to Civil War.
TenguPhule
Its like a sick twisted joke of who’s on first.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Yarrow:
I think it’s like getting into high society or moving to certain small towns: until you’re fifth generation, you ain’t squat.
MattF
@amk: The justification is ‘Because I say so’. And don’t ask questions, because Ignorance Is Strength.
Humboldtblue
Ahh yes, the old Trump fallback of — bbbbbbut I was elected president and that means what I say goes! THAT’S WHAT OBAMA DID!!!!111!1!!1111111111
dm
The Huffington Post on the stunningly racist novel Steve Bannon uses as a touchstone when he talks about immigrants and refugees.
It’s so appalling even Linda Chavez thinks it’s racist.
lollipopguild
“Kneel before Zod!”
Starfish
They really need to quit letting people anonymous people spout nonsense especially when the President wants to be quoted as “a senior administrative official.”
JPL
@Yarrow: I just added this tweet down below.. I’m waiting for more info.
https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/838825223562616833
Adam L Silverman
@amk: @TenguPhule: This will be back in court in short order. Between the now leaked DHS analytical report, which confirms decades of criminological and sociological research (some of which I contributed to – though mine focused on Europe), and statements made in interviews by Stephen Miller, as well as the statements that the rollout was delayed because the White House didn’t want to step on the President’s good press from last Tuesday’s speech, and, finally, that there is a week’s delay in implementation, the premises don’t hold up. If there is such a great threat, and it is both imminent and existential, then why the delays – first because of the news cycle and then in implementation? This too will be litigated.
Villago Delenda Est
And yet, the countries that gave us the 9/11 hijackers are still inexplicably not on the list.
LAO
@Yarrow: Let’s be skeptical until Khan confirms.
ETA: I see JPL has beaten me to it.
John
@dm: Holy fuck. This seems like the sort of thing that should be more widely known. It should be obvious to everyone that Bannon is unqualified anyway, but this kind of thing should absolutely disqualify him from participation in the mainstream public sphere. If a major politician regularly referred to Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries as a cultural reference, he’d be hounded from office. The Camp of Saints is every bit as bad as those. This needs to brought into the public consciousness. Bannon has to be driven from the White House. Racist piece of shit.
JPL
Tom, Did you see this?
Trump orders government to release info on “gender-based violence” by “foreign nationals.” No word on domestic violence by Americans.
This is in addition to the weekly list of crimes committed by illegal immigrants.
John
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, to be fair, Trump doesn’t have any hotels in Aleppo.
Villago Delenda Est
@dm: Wonkette has an entire thread about that.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
Nice. I suppose they’ll demand a second son before allowing that he may, in fact be a citizen.
Trump sure can hold a grudge. “You have sacrificed nothing.” still stings.
JPL
@LAO: Is it legal to have lists compiled by the government, such as the ones I mentioned in comment 17, that are discriminatory in nature?
jl
Took them weeks to come up with this sad gimmick rehash? From what I heard on the news, they took out religious preferences that discriminated against Muslims (can’t remove the taint of Rudy’s and Trump’s statements on rationales for the ban). They removed Iraq. But countries with Trump businesses still exempted (so, still no rational basis).
Heard a sad and dispiriting radio news report that said that Bannon and Miller actually do have an economic rationale for the ban that is as strong as their bigotry and xenophobia: one more immigrant always and must, in every situation, mean one less job for a current US citizen, no matter what. Full stop, period, end of story. They are economic illiterates, They know nothing. With economic thinking like that, there will be no Trump economic boom, or bounce, or anything.
This mess should be thrown out by the sinister ‘deep state’, er.. I mean any judge who can think straight, just as quickly as the last one.
sigaba
@JPL: Gotta keep the immigrant blood libels separate from the Salt of the Earth just trying to MAGA.
Brachiator
@Yarrow: JUST IN: Gold Star father Khizr Khan cancels scheduled speech in Toronto after being told his “travel privileges are being reviewed.”
Also, “travel privileges?”
Patricia Kayden
@Yarrow: Hold up. So a U.S. citizen can have his “travel privileges” reviewed? Are we living in a communist dictatorship where the government decides who can travel and what people can say abroad? What is happening to this country? This is appalling to say the least.
John
Also, I have to ask, which one is the Ambassador from Tunis in the picture above? Is it the old guy or the guy in the dark hat? Or one of the others?
Mike J
WA AG
LAO
@JPL: Sessions has been using “honor killings” as an excuse to limit refugees from Muslim countries for awhile now. I can’t find the link, but he raised this in a hearing last year.
ETA: horrible site but https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/24168-us-not-screening-refugees-for-extremist
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus:
And, it’s my understanding that we’ve already taken about 35,000 of them.
schrodingers_cat
What is the potted plant with brass that T acquired, up to? Lets not forget that Kelly is in charge of Homeland Security.
George
Is this the “pivot” that people like Cillizza and Van Jones were blushing about like young lovers after the speech to Congress last Tuesday???
Omnes Omnibus
@LAO: From The Atlantic:
amygdala
Forgive me if someone posted this elsewhere, but it’s still going on. An Afghan family, of a man who worked with US forces, were detained at LAX late last week. They were heavily vetted before ever leaving for the US, and it looks like the good guys have won an important battle, but still, WTF?
schrodingers_cat
@LAO: Immigration agenda is written by the likes of Numbers USA and FAIR.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@John:
Based on body language and such, I suspect the heavier man with an ermine scarf/wrap thing is the most exulted of the crew.
Bupalos
So the ostensible rationale for the ban was to put a pause in place “until we can figure out what’s going on.” Like, it will take 90 days to figure out what’s going on. But the first one got shot down, and what, they stopped trying to figure out what’s going on there in the meantime, and now we’re back to the original 90 days?
How does this not just obviously indicate that the reason for not having these awful Muslims coming in for 90 days is simply to be able to not have these awful Muslims coming in for 90 days?
That would be my first question as a judge reviewing this.
LAO
@JPL: In general, the government keeps crime statistics categorized by race and ethnicity. On it’s face, it’s neutral. Should those statistics be used to vilify and stigmatize groups of people — no. But that is a moral not a legal conclusion.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: The DOJ and National Institutes of Justice, collect data on a wide variety of crime, deviance, and delinquency in the US. This is done two ways: the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The first relies on municipal law enforcement (city and county), as well as state law enforcement to report. The second is a self report for those within the US victimized by crime. Both are incomplete data sets. The former because no two law enforcement departments characterize and record crime the same way – for instance, hate crimes are all over the map as are sexual assaults and rapes – and some departments refuse to report because they believe this is a Federal interference/state’s rights issue. The latter because it requires self reporting and not everyone victimized reports. Both data sets, despite these limitations, track each other when incidents are plotted. You can go to DOJ and generate any number of histograms and scatterplots with the reported data and the tools available.
Now the above said, this is an attempt to tap into the someone darker than me looked funny at my white wife paranoia that is still all to rampant in the US. And that has also been exploited in the US where Breitbart and other far right and right wing media outlets have played up reports of this type of victimization coming out of Europe. The most recent example just blew up in everyone’s face as the news report that all the outrage was based on turned out to be completely bogus – the events never happened. This isn’t to provide Americans with information, this is intended to make Americans angry, to make them hate, and then to utilize that anger and hate for political, social, economic, and religious purposes.
Major Major Major Major
@George: After that speech, one of my lefty friends posted on FB “Trump just won 2020”.
I didn’t watch the speech, but it must have killed a hell of a lot of brain cells.
TenguPhule
It was never about illegals, it was all about stopping the browning of America by any means necessary.
It hasn’t even been 2 months FFS.
I have to start over on my worse case scenario. Again.
hovercraft
@Yarrow:
Really WTF, I know GC holders can be harassed and have their cards be revoked, but as a citizen other than giving him a hard time, how can they restrict his travel?
Bnad
Khan story is either completely fake news, or maybe Khan decided not to travel because he’s read about things like this, but if so, it’s misleading to say words like “travel privileges” and “revoked.”
TenguPhule
@Patricia Kayden:
We are now. SATSQ.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
That news made me burst into tears. What a fucking outrage.
Brachiator
@dm:
Also, foolishly believes that she can pick the parts of Trump’s agenda that she likes, while ignoring the unacceptable pieces.
As far as I can tell, the novel that Bannon admires would not see Chavez as worthy of sharing the bounty of a white only America.
Steeplejack
Do the specifics of the travel ban really matter (in the larger sense)? The biggest effect seems to be to give the CPB and ICE personnel permission to loose their inner thugs. And they are running amok with little regard for the specifics of the “travel ban.”
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: @LAO:
Thanks. We are on such a slippery slope, and I for one, don’t think it ends well.
PaulW
Alongside this order, more and more travelers to the United States are undergoing harsher reviews, intimidating confrontations with the Customs people, and overall horrifying mistreatment. It’s as though trump’s existence has unleashed the bully within each TSA official and made things worse.
This is a general call to every other nation on the planet. STOP TRAVELING TO THE UNITED STATES. We can no longer guarantee your safety or your civil rights.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: This.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
Michelle Malkin writes in defense of the WW2 Japanese internment camps. Many minority people labor under the delusion that they’re white.
hovercraft
“also asserted the administration should not be pressed by the judiciary to unveil sensitive national security details to justify the ban.”
Twitler still doesn’t understand that being president is not the same as running his company. You have to justify every goddamn thing that you do to every goddamn person who wants to question you if they are willing to make a big enough stink. Welcome to the presidency mofo, you asked for this. You had your fun forcing president blackety black to show his papers was fun, now it’s time to show us not only your papers, (yeah right), but that you are capable of doing the job. And we get to call you an evil, ignorant, incompetent, orange shitstain every day and make you miserable. You’re welcome.
randy khan
There are some cases over the years of even citizens being refused admittance to the U.S., but as a general rule they involve people who, for whatever reason, are thought to have renounced their U.S. citizenship. (Also, apparently, drunk people, but that generally merely involves a delay while you sober up.)
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: And we have how many equivalents that we don’t call honor killings among white American Christians because someone beat their wife or son or daughter to death because they lost control when confronted with something they did?
27 incidents out of 324 million Americans. Yep, we’ve got a real problem. I’m more likely to be killed by my the remote control for my TV.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Major Major Major Major:
So your friend is a “we’re so fucked”-er then. Man, way to give up without a fight. Just roll over and pee on yourself. (Your friend, 4M, not you.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman:
Great, something else to worry about.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Adam L Silverman:
Only if it’s the new Samsung model.
Mnemosyne
I have to admit, all of this bullshit is making me nervous about my trip to Disneyworld next week even though I’m a native-born white woman flying domestically. Why? Because I protested the refugee ban at LAX and my face was on TV.
jl
@hovercraft: The Trump gang is attempting to smear the judiciary system as some sort of sinister ‘deep state’ that is illlegimately thwarting their executive will. Expect to hear more about ‘so called’ justices.
These people are evil and stupid. Hope their stupidity thwarts their bad intentions.
Ian G.
@Villago Delenda Est:
And the country that gave us the Boston Marathon bombers. You know, Russia.
JPL
@Yarrow: During the last travel ban, there was some questions about those with dual citizenship. The new one doesn’t include those with dual citizenship, so hopefully, if that was the problem, it is fixed quickly.
Lapassionara
I think this is going to be harder to attack, legally. It exempts current visa holders and Legal Permanent Residents (green card holders). So it means that people who have applied for a visa will have a longer wait, but I would think that the US State Department could require longer waits for visas if it wanted to do so, without even telling the public it was doing so.
It will negatively impact business travel, which had been completely disrupted (most likely) by the earlier ban, and also tourist travel, but I would not consider traveling to the U S as a tourist in these dark times. Students are also screwed, as are the US institutions where they were planning to study. But the earlier ban likely had a negative impact there for future students anyway.
I will be interested to see what arguments the lawyers make, and maybe they can find a way to get a TRO, but if not, any litigation over this will be still ongoing when the 90 days are done ( assuming the EO will not be renewed).
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
But the WH lawyers have said that what the WH and the president say in public on TV on the record, should not be taken as having anything to do with anything they are doing or proposing via executive order, it’s just words.
randy khan
@amk:
The Ninth Circuit, in particular, will have fun with that claim.
Origuy
Commentary on the radio this morning pointed out that in order to justify refusing to issue new visas, they have to show how the existing visa process is inadequate. It was already pretty extensive for many countries. I was organizing an event in San Francisco in December; I was contacted by a Ukrainian man who wanted to come with four other people, including his wife. I had to write an invitation letter describing the event and listing all five people with their passport numbers. They had an interview at the US Embassy in Kiev. This was an orienteering competition and my contact had been a coach of a Ukrainian team. They were still turned down for a visa.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands die due to 2nd Amendment absolutism, and no one so much as blinks.
hovercraft
@George:
He took out the word Muslim, see presidential pivot! Win!
Villago Delenda Est
@Origuy: Orienteering is the work of the devil. I learned this early in my Army stint.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Enumerated Right…
And I wish I could put sarc tags on that.
Ian G.
@dm:
I read that the other day. What strikes me is that the racial hysteria in the novel is over Indians, presumably Hindus. These days, they seem the brown foreigners that least panic the Drumpfenkorps. Certainly, Muslims, Hispanics, and Chinese freak them out more, and I’d guess the Indian-Americans attacked by Nazis in recent days/weeks were mistaken for Muslims.
I mean, I’m sure they DO hate Hindus, just not enough these days to write some hysterical racist trash novel about it. Hell, some of these yahoos may have even had their blood pressure medication prescribed by a Hindu doctor…
amygdala
@Mnemosyne: I hear you. I had a short domestic trip last week and wanted to kick myself for being a little twitchy in the security line. I have a bunch of travel coming up, domestic and international, and you know what?. Screw it; I’m going. Same way that after 9/11 I dug out my passport and made sure I got outside the US when I could, because otherwise the terrorists win. It’s just that then it was alQ and now the bad guys are inside the walls.
danielx
@Bnad:
True or not, if I was in his shoes I wouldn’t be traveling outside the country without a really compelling reason right now. ICE agents have, as far as they are concerned, been given free reign to abuse pretty much whomever they please. If it happens to be someone Donald Trump doesn’t like, so much the better.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Posted my comment before reading the speculation that the story is not well-sourced and may be fake. Although I hope that’s the case, I still find it appalling (and tear-worthy) that the Khan story is all too believable these days.
Villago Delenda Est
@Major Major Major Major: This is the great irony; in the society that white supremacists want, Michelle Malkin would be relegated to the role of comfort woman for the junior enlisted.
Yarrow
@JPL: Thanks for the update. It seems really confusing. The speaker company has updated their Facebook page with a quote from him saying, “This turn of events is of great concern not only to me but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad. I have not been given any reason as to why.” But reporters who have contacted him have been told he has no comment.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: There is nothing so dangerous as a 2nd Lieutenant with a compass. Except, perhaps, a 2nd Lieutenant with a compass and a carbine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman:
You’ve obviously never met a Captain with a plan.
LAO
@randy khan: Historically, courts have been very differential to claims related to national security. The FISA court is a perfect example of that. What do we (or the Courts) do now? This President is liar and phony — what weight to give to claims made by the executive branch? Especially when prior precedent favors the Executive branch. I think it may be upheld.
Yarrow
@PaulW:
Yes. This. Who in their right mind would choose to visit the US now? Maybe if you have to come for some reason, but business travel has to be down because companies can’t guarantee their employees can even get into the country, let along guarantee their safety. And tourists? Why would you come here? So many other places you can visit without the hassle or risk that you get sent back at the airport and your whole trip is ruined.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: In my first platoon leader job, one of my NCOs actually looked at me with skepticism on his face and said “you can read maps, right?” Can’t blame him for wanting to be sure.
My stature with him rose significantly when I demonstrated that indeed I could!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Do prospective ICE agents face a psychological exam to weed out the obvious thugs? They sure seem to conduct themselves like high school bully-jocks running in pack formation.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: And Stephen Miller would be doing slave labor picking vegetables.
JPL
@Yarrow: hmm Very Interesting…
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I have. People in Arkansas and California decided it was a good idea to send them to Congress.
jhtrotter
Did he take Iraq off the list to throw them a bone before he comes for the oil?
Mary G
IANAL, but I spent a lot of time in settlement conferences years ago, and statements like this:
would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Judges are the gods of their little universes, and challenging them like that never ended well.
Yarrow
@JPL: Even if the dual citizenship is the problem, he’s from Pakistan, which wasn’t one of the countries on the list. So….
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
“Michelle Malkin writes in defense of the WW2 Japanese internment camps. Many minority people labor under the delusion that they’re white.”
I think it’s self hatred, they are willing to grovel and adopt the views of their oppressors in exchange for acceptance. Clarence Thomas would be exhibit A of this species. Morons don’t realize that they are not being saved and accepted, they are being used to hide the racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and they are merely going to be the last of their group to be purged, they will never make it to the promised land.
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Rockies (been a while): ICE is one of the few federal agencies that is not only exempt from the hiring freeze, but is actively seeking more agents.
I have a suspicion that the need for warm bodies to chase down 3 year old “illegals” and their 50 year old grandmothers have made all that “psychological testing” stuff moot.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Probably was a good idea to have said yes instead of: “Right here the legend says: To the East lie the Iron Hills where is Dain”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mary G: Amateur hour at every damn level of the Executive branch.
Mnemosyne
@amygdala:
The only reason I’m worried is that I’m meeting my two nieces on the other end (11 and 16 years old) and I do NOT want them stranded in a strange city because TSA decided to be dicks to me for protesting.
If they want to screw with me on the way home, I don’t care.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Now you’ve got me wondering how one could possibly be killed by the remote to one’s TV…not sure this is a good place…
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Here you go:
https://www.ice.gov/careers
https://www.cbp.gov/careers/join-cbp/which-cbp-career/border-patrol-agent/application-process/basic-bp-requirements
Right now the Administration is figuring out how to ask Congress to relax the requirements for CBP officers.
Villago Delenda Est
@jhtrotter: To stop pissing off the military and votevets, who pointed out including Iraq on the list was fucking over people who risked and ARE RISKING their lives for the United States.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Have a backup plan in place in case something happens. Make sure your nieces know what it is. Even non-TSA things can happen–flights get delayed and canceled, weather and so forth. It’ll probably all go fine, but it’s smart to have a backup plan.
@Adam L Silverman: Didn’t the ICE union (or something like that?) endorse Trump for president. I remember it had something to do with ICE and it was a bit controversial because they’re federal employees. Can’t remember the details offhand.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: “Gondor is around here somewhere! To the west, east, north or south…”
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Here you go:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8420817.stm
Villago Delenda Est
@Yarrow: My understanding is that some of the union leaders endorsed Trump, but that there was some dissent in the ranks about the leaders assuming they could just do that without getting a mandate from the membership.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Of course they are, the thugs he has around him would never make it through the screening process, and they are just the type of people who they want dealing with illegals. Sheriff Joe also has a lot of time on his hands these days, I’m sure they can find a way to make use of his expertise.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Both ICE’s union and the CBP’s union endorsed his candidacy.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Stand by the stone when the thrush knocks.
John Revolta
That guy on the left is flashing gang signs. Get him, boys!!!
Another Scott
@Lapassionara: But surely, in a sensible world, the changes would have to have some rational basis, wouldn’t they?
The Executive has a lot of power, but we don’t let him mess with people and systems in nonsensical arbitrary ways just because they’re systems nominally under his control…
It’ll be interesting to see what the ACLU, the AGs, and the courts end up doing. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Don’t know, but I DO know that my local police department (San Diego) fails out candidates who score too high on their IQ tests.
Not joking, wish I was.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
There’s only one flight per day between their city and Orlando, so the backup plan would have to be “go home and get on the plane tomorrow.”
I’m supposed to arrive at 7 am while they arrive at 3:30 pm, so that should be plenty of time to account for any ordinary delays. That’s why the only one I’m really worried about is the possible TSA Being Dicks delay.
Elmo
I travel for work a horrifying amount. I’m typing this on my phone on the way to National Airport. On this trip, for the first time, I am bringing my passport.
amygdala
@Mnemosyne: Do you have backup on the other side? I can’t #$%* believe I’m actually asking this, but there you you go.
*sigh*
ETA: What @yarrow said.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. Terrifying.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Both the United States and Canada imprisoned without trial (interned) white people during WWI.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: Almost all of them do. The argument is that they won’t be happy and will leave for more challenging jobs.
Mnemosyne
@amygdala:
There’s enough of a time difference that if I ran into an ordinary delay, I could re-arrange things on the fly. But a TSA Being Dicks delay would mean that I wouldn’t be allowed to call or email or text anyone and might miss the window to make a change.
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus:
even if that were true what would be the logic of banning women and children who, presumably, would like to get away from honor killings?
rikyrah
@John:
When folks called Bannon a White Supremacist, what did folks believe that meant?
Adam L Silverman
@aimai: The moose shall not be with the lamb. Or something equally stupid.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: I am extremely nervous about leaving the country, which I would like to be able to do to see my daughter who is abroad right now and possibly through the summer. My great uncle fought the passport cases in the fifties. I know just how easy it is for the government to decide to pull your passport and how hard it will be to get it back.
Patricia Kayden
@Villago Delenda Est: Inexplicably to us but not to Trump. Those are countries with which he does business and money talks. Trump’s hustling is quite transparent.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
They thought he was just a good ol’ boy racist like their dad or uncle who listens to Fox News too much.
Gee, if only one of the candidates had warned us all that there was a whole “basket of deplorables” behind Trump who believed some truly horrifying things that would wreck people’s lives. ?
Weaselone
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, but they were generally individuals with ties to the Nazi party, they weren’t locked up just because they were Germans.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: They also did in WWII, but in not nearly the numbers as EO 9066 did with Japanese-Americans.
Patricia Kayden
@John: Bannon is pretty much running the show so I don’t expect Trump to ever kick him out of the White House. I wish Democrats would be more aggressive about pointing out how dangerously bigoted Trump’s people are. Feels like White Supremacists and alt righters got exactly what they wanted in November and the rest of us got screwed. Secretary Clinton was perfectly right to point out that they are Deplorables.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: I think it’s unlikely that will happen. Remember not to look them in the eye. And no, I’m not kidding. Look down, look at your drivers license/other ID and boarding pass, at most look at their nose or mouth. Don’t look submissive; just kind of neutral. Oh, and bring a paper copy of your boarding pass or get one at the kiosk because you never know if internet might be down or something might happen to your phone.
Also, be sure you don’t do anything to call attention to yourself. All your liquids in the ziploc bag and out before security, no forgotten water bottle that gets you extra security, nothing in your pockets and wear no hair clips with metal (they require extra checking). Take off any jacket so you’re down to just a shirt. Wear slip on shoes for ease of inspection. Avoid any jewelry that isn’t easily seen–like a necklace that slips under your shirt is not a good idea.
Also, if you take any prescription medications, make sure you have a copy of the original prescription you can show them–the bottle with the info is okay if it’s current. Have your doctor’s phone number if confirmation is necessary.
The best way to get through it all is to just be kind of neutral and not call attention to yourself. It’s not that likely that the people at the TSA security checkpoints will know to look for you and will give you extra hassle unless you give them a reason to. Don’t give them a reason.
Gin & Tonic
@Weaselone: Bullshit.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: I was quoting Sessions’s question. I have no insight into what goes on in the racist’s mind.
Mike J
WA AG presser on now
http://www.king5.com/news/live_breaking/king-breaking-news/94483762
schrodingers_cat
@Ian G.: Tell that to Srinavas K’s wife and I take it that you haven’t read the blogs railing against H1-B’s.
Weaselone
@Weaselone: Well, I feel like an idiot. I totally misread the war in the post above.
Adam L Silverman
@Weaselone: You had a 50-50 shot…
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@The Moar You Know:
Oh, wow. Don’t even know what to say about that. Any idea what the cutoff was?
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus: No, I know. My remark was aimed at Sessions and his ilk.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: I was just making sure.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Adam L Silverman:
Do you know the typical cutoff, Adam? Is it north of, say, 130?
Immanentize
@hovercraft:
I recall Judge Leon Higginbotham once said something about Clarence Thomas like: “He imagines himself sitting with the framers discussing aspects of the constitution when in fact he would be lucky to be serving them tea as the House slave.”
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I have no idea.
randy khan
@LAO:
I think the specific claim that the order can’t be reviewed is pretty much a dead letter now, and certainly that’s going to be true in the 9th Circuit (starting with the Seattle district court).
A lot of times courts will cut the feds some slack when an original decision was overturned and the government tries to fix the problems. But courts aren’t really fond of fingers-crossed-behind-the-back fixes when they see that’s what’s going on. I’d guess this will be a closer case than the first order, but I also don’t think the Administration can expect a smooth ride on the general approach. I do suspect that the refugee pause will have an easier time, because it’s just a pause on admitting people who are in a long, long pipeline.
One question I’d love to hear a judge ask, though, is why the new order requires 120 days to do what the Administration said would take 90 days a month and a half ago. The answer, of course, is that they’ve made no progress at all on the “extreme vetting” because they have no idea what they’re doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Lower.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: and also they didn’t do it just because they were of German stock or whatever, I assume.
JPL
This seems like an odd headline
I haven’t read the article, but it is at the Washington Post. They know who is President, right?
LAO
@Adam L Silverman:
When I was an undergrad at Penn, I went to a lecture by Judge Higginbotham — I have no recollection what he said that afternoon; but I remember leaving the lecture hall knowing: (1) that I was going to go to law school and (2) practice criminal law. He was an amazing man and an inspiring jurist.
ETA: Not sure how this got directed to Adam, was supposed to be Immanentize. Sorry!
Adam L Silverman
I’m thinking of getting one of these, but in the hockey jersey:
http://www.mylocker.net/my/shop/deep-state/product-2010-226600_Navy_White_NEW_7504_758.html
randy khan
@Yarrow:
Not to dispute your advice on dealing with TSA, but I’ve generally taken the approach of assuming that I’m going to have a pleasant interaction – looking at the agents and smiling, asking them how they’re doing, etc. I do this partly because it’s a miserable job that doesn’t pay well, and I see no reason to make it more miserable, and partly because I figure that people who are nice to them will get slightly better treatment. Of course, I’m a very white, somewhat overweight guy with grey hair, so they probably wouldn’t see me as a threat unless I greeted them by saying “Allahu Akbar! Vive jihad!”
Immanentize
@LAO: Did you mean that as a reply to me?
ETA Adam gets all the quality responses!!
Basilisc
After 90 days (assuming it stands up in court), if there are no terrorist attacks by brownish/Muslimish people, they’ll say it was a success and it will be renewed, maybe made permanent.
If there is (God forbid) a terrorist attack by a brownish/Muslimish person (even, as most of them have been, a US citizen), they’ll say that proves how important the ban is and it will be renewed, maybe made permanent.
LAO
@Immanentize: I did. Apparently, I’m experience technical difficulties — ie, pressed the wrong reply button.
Felonius Monk
@Omnes Omnibus:
Better a remote control than a Klown.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I think you meant to reply to @Immanentize:
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Parents have the Enemy Alien Registration card of one of my great great grandmothers from WWI. She came over from Germany as a child in the late 1840s.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: What’s interesting is that SOF goes in the other direction. Consistent scoring at the top of the scale.
japa21
Was the original EO officially rescinded? Or does this EO automatically rescind the old?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Makes sense.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@JPL: Yah, I’ve passed it around, but clearly labeled as RUMINT. All we seem to have at this point is the press release, and that website has been farked.
Yarrow
@randy khan: I’ve had worse treatment when looking them in the eye. I’m pleasant, but my experience is they don’t like want to interact with me in any pleasant way and perhaps view it as a distraction technique or something if I make any small talk. I am not sure. I just know speaking-when-spoken-to works best for me.
I’ll say, “Good morning” or “hello” sometimes, and always if they say it to me. I look at them but not at them, if that makes sense. The person inspecting the ID always looks me over, so I manage a neutral half smile.
My goal is always to be sort of furniture. Forgettable, boring, no one of interest. I don’t really care if their job is pleasant or not and it’s not my goal to make their day better. Because by a poor attempt at doing that I could easily make my own day worse.
Felonius Monk
In case it hasn’t been mentioned yet: R.I.P., Robert Osborne.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: interesting, I guess I didn’t know they did that with Germans and Italians. Nothing compared to the number and percentage of Japanese folks though.
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: Two of my great – grandparents came over from Germany in the 1890s — we have copies of the documents wherein my Great Grandfather was required to disavow his allegiance to Kaiser Willheim prior to his naturalization as an American citizen. (My Grandmother had his entire immigration file). It was pretty cool.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: 18 and 37F MOS are the highest, along with CA on the Army side. Don’t really know how the other services stack up, but I know they’re all very high.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: And my ancestor wasn’t interned. Being an 80ish grandmother in rural Wisconsin and all that. Germans were demonized and sauerkraut was renamed Liberty Cabbage. But nothing like what happened to the Japanese during WWII.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Good God! I’ve heard of “entertaining ourselves to death”, but it never occurred to me that there might be literal hazard in TV watching!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, crap… an IQ of 125 is regarded as too high. That explains a lot. At the risk of sounding Trumpian, sad!
Cain
@Ian G.:
It’s because Hindus by all counts do not contribute to a lot of crime in the U.S. You’d be hard pressed to see any crimes committed by them. That could be most Hindus tend to be middle class and the people who come over here tend to be fairly law abiding. I don’t know about Canada and the U.K. but I know that the immigration types there tend to be more rural and village types and thus cling to a lot of their indian roots more so than the ones who immigrated to America.
In any case, that’s probably one data point. Secondly, Indians are perfect educated work force that are willing to work for peanuts to stay in the U.S. via H1B. Although given how things are going in the India, and what is happening here, I think there is less willingness to go to abroad when there could be other places to go.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca:
http://theweek.com/articles/469421/shocking-number-deaths-caused-by-falling-tvs
gwangung
Just FYI, I’ve had friends in the Asian American community detained at the US/Canadian border, trying to get back in the country, even though they’re 2nd generation born in this country (one case, it took protracted time using connections within the agency to get the person back in).
I just think ICE and CPB attract asshats, and this administration has given them the official OK to unleash their innate assholish-ness.
D58826
@Omnes Omnibus: They also dropped German from the HS language classes. Then had to scramble in 1941 to find people who could translate from German.
So my Mom took Spanish rather than German. Made it a bit of a problem years later when my Great Grandmother came to visit. She read English and understood English but refused to speak it. Hevean forbid if you answered ‘yes’ when you should have answered ‘no’ when talking to her.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Forgive my glee! I just found out that my Android phone recognizes Trumptastrophe as a word already.
Cain
@amygdala: I did a FOIA on myself and I have my entire immigration history in a PDF including a copy of my citizenship papers in it. They are welcome to review any of that while coming in. If you are a naturalized citizen, might be worth doing.
Of course, the reason I had to do that was because of some fucked up process to get an Indian visa.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: speaking of, I can still barely believe we did the Freedom Fries thing. Republicans are so fucking petty and idiotic. And evil. And childish. A winning combination, just what you want holding half the world’s nuclear arsenal.
SiubhanDuinne
@Felonius Monk:
Hadn’t thought of him in several years, but my mind flashed on him yesterday afternoon when I was watching the big-screen TCM presentation of All About Eve at my nearby theatre that shows Fathom events. May he RIP.
Patricia Kayden
Another Brown person stopped at the US/Canadian border. This is beyond a Muslim ban. It’s a “keep them dark skinned people out of my damn country” ban.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: He did aa film festival here for a number of years.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: What’s Deep State’s team mascot? And how do we root for them? “Go, Deep State! Smash…err…State”?
D58826
@Adam L Silverman: and make sure it doesn’t come from any of the countries on Der Fuhrer’s list. Those terrorists are a sneaky bunch
Felonius Monk
@SiubhanDuinne: Here is the WaPo article about him.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major:
In WWI that is precisely what Canada did.
Mike J
@Miss Bianca: Moles may be a little too on the nose.
Another Scott
In other news Alexandria, VA schools to close for “Day Without a Woman” protests on Wednesday.
Interesting!
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Moderation? Really? For this?
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Alexandria-Schools-to-Be-Closed-Wednesday-Due-to-Day-Without-a-Woman-415495513.html
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I got no words for this.
@Mike J: lol – THE MIGHTY MOLES!!
Cain
@Yarrow:
Interesting.. I’ve always had good luck with the TSA and have a pretty good rapport with them. But then I don’t fly to places like LA or New York. Portland has one of the friendliest TSA people around. Love joking round with them and they are always seem happy.
JPL
Headline from the New Yorker
iokiyr
Another Scott
I’ve got two posts in the dungeon. Help? The 2nd one can be trashed (as redundant).
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Villago Delenda Est:
All too true. But she will not admit that is true, even if she was been rounded up and started in “training”.
And as far as Mr Khan goes, he is more American and better American that The Donald Trump ever will be. Yet he is the person the ICE bullies will select to harass and bully. And anyone with a diplomatic passport should just be automatically passed on, but nope.
Do you suppose an ICE agent would even get reprimanded today for bullying a traveler with a diplomatic passport?
scav
Le Roy le veult! Apparently this is one of the new special constitutional powers taught in Civics at Trump University. Does not apply retroactively to phone tapping, even rumored.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Very nerdy! The family recently blessed me with a “bad hombre” t-shirt that I can’t wait to sport at the next capital rally, whatever the topic.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
@Yarrow:
I try not to play the gender card, but I usually do better at TSA when I’m a little friendly because I’m short and cute and have a largish bust. When necessary, I can even put my voice up a little higher and end my sentences with a question mark? You know?
But, yes, I will be putting a lot of extra thought into how I pack my carry-on, just in case. I also splurged on a business class ticket since it’s a redeye and I have trouble sleeping on planes, so I may get a separate TSA line where they’re more polite.
LAO
Long live street artists. Especially Plastic Jesus.
Bard the Grim
Full story. What can we do about this kind of abuse of authority? I’m under the impression it’s bupkis until Dems control the Presidency and both houses. It’s a systemic culture problem that will take a lot of effort and political capital to address, mostly for the benefit of furriners. Hard not to get really depressed and angry.
trollhattan
Let’s play Who said it?
If y0ou guessed the new HUD secretary, move to the
head of the lineback of the bus.Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: 36% of the climbing-on-TV victims are children. So why were the other 64%, the adults, climbing on a TV?
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip:
Because it’s there.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Use those tools while you got ’em! One of these days (we hope) you’ll be 70. Then you have to switch to the sweet-little-old-lady tools.
The Moar You Know
@LAO: I’m not normally a fan of street art but that is nothing but nonstop win right there.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Your business class ticket will get you a separate line for check in and boarding, but unless you’re randomly given TSA Pre or you have it via another means, you’ll be in the regular TSA line. Edit: I can’t remember now if they offer special TSA lines for business class. I think it’s only elite frequent fliers, but that may have gone too.
I think everyone has different things that work for them for getting through security. The cute girl strategy might work if your TSA agents are straight men, but if they’re straight women it might backfire.
@Cain: I’ve had better luck with TSA in smaller airports where I think there just aren’t that many of them and they aren’t as busy. At larger, busier airports I think they can get overwhelmed with people. That’s why my goal is not to be a problem. Be forgettable. Nothing to draw attention to me. That kind of thing.
lapassionara
@Another Scott: Yea, well in a sensible world. But I was focused on the Temporary Restraining Order stage, in which the Plaintiff would have to show immediate and irreparable harm, among other things. I would like to think that the ACLU can find a way to make this showing, but I am having a hard time figuring out how. People from these countries have get some kind of visa to travel here. That was what was so maddening about the first Trump EO. It treated people who had gone through the Visa application process (which is pretty rigorous) as if they had no papers at all. Maddening! Vile! Despicable!
Trump has completely ruined the image of the US. If I were a dark-skinned person from somewhere else, the US is the last place I would go for any reason.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
Holy fuck.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I have to say that I have been warming to Ben Mankiewicz as the main TCM presenter. I feel like he was trying too hard when he was on just to introduce the kitschy/edgy stuff, and now he has dialed it back and/or gotten more comfortable in the role.
EriktheRed
@TenguPhule: Yup.
Around me, we just had a fundrasier for a nice woman and her son from the Dominican Republic who came here in 2010 (her son actually arrived in 2011). She had a clean record, not even a parking ticket. She’s married to a white US citizen. Her visa is still valid until 2019. Nevertheless she received a letter from the INS saying she had to make arrangements to leave the country by Feb. 24. The main reason given was that they doubted to authenticity of her marriage, since they didn’t have any kids together. Thing is, she’s a cancer survivor who can’t have kids anymore and she had to go thru the indignity of getting a doctor’s note to vouch for that.
So she’s staying anyway and trying to raise the thousands of $$$ it takes to go through the whole process of applying for permanent residency again.
And that letter she received? It was dated January 25 of this year, same day as the first “travel ban”.
So yes, Teng is right: this is about attempting to debrown America by any means they think they can get away with.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@trollhattan:
I’m not even sure what the hell this is supposed to mean…
If someone came here as a slave, I don’t think that counts as immigration… and I doubt anyone who id come voluntarily would have booked passage in the bottom of a slave ship…
And I have no idea how anyone could work longer, harder and for less than a slave…
Geez… I’m getting a headache even thinking about this little bit of idiocy…
But then, isn’t Carson the one who thought the pyramids were really used for storing grain?
Steeplejack
@Miss Bianca:
The Deep State Moles. The Fightin’ Moles! Bur-row! Bur-row!
ETA: Damn it, late again!
Gelfling 545
@Bupalos: it could well be argued that waiting for Trump to figure out what the hell is going on constitutes sn indefinite ban. Eternal, even.
Cain
@Yarrow:
I never book flights where internationally I come into New York or some other busy place because it is such a pain in the ass. Especially if I have a connection flight.
The Moar You Know
@Bard the Grim: Nothing until we can get the presidency and some of Congress under control. A very tall order.
The only cure I see for this is to fire most CBP and ICE agents. As in over 90% of them. Declare them ineligible for rehire and start from scratch with new hires. And that’s not a trivial or cheap proposition and the American public will probably not like it very much. But I see no other way to both stop the abuses and regain some international stature. The problem is obviously baked into the system and the only way to get it out is to clean house.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
also, if any single one of those Skittles could kill us, why shrink the number of incoming Skittles to 50,000? What if we let. just. one. Skittle in the door, and crap out, and that’s the Skittle that wipes out Western civilization?!?
/channeling Alex Jones
chris
@Gin & Tonic: Kitchener, Ontario was Berlin, Ontario until WWI. My great grandfather changed his name so it would sound a little less German even though he was born in Canada.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
He introduces the big-screen monthly classics. He was cute yesterday talking about his “Uncle Joe,” who won two Oscars (Best Director, Best Screenplay) for All About Eve.
Another Scott
@EriktheRed: That’s horrible. :-( And all too common, I fear.
Can she contact the ACLU and similar groups?
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: I have noticed that despite being told not to, TPT are still stopping people that have visas and green cards and not letting them in, and they aren’t even from the 7 nations in the original ban. It seems to be getting worse every day. I think I read last week that a naturalized citizen was given a lot of grief at the Canadian border and I can’t remember if they got in.
In about a year from now I would like to visit my niece who is working in Entebbe. My husband and I are whiter than white, natural born citizens with ancestry dating back to the 1600s in this country, and England before that, and we are late 60s-early 70s. Do we need to be concerned about our passports showing that we’ve been to Uganda and possibly Kenya? We would likely be out of the US for a month, and there would be at least one other stamp from Iceland, maybe from France.
I’m a little spooked about even driving up to Canada from Seattle for a weekend and maybe I’m overreacting to all of this but I have no way of telling.
SiubhanDuinne
@Felonius Monk:
Thanks. Nice obit about an interesting guy.
EriktheRed
@Another Scott: I don’t know the full lengths she’s gone to, but at least there are a lot of people around to give her moral (and a little financial) support. She was also able to get a lawyer who would work not for free, but at a major discount.
Ruviana
@Yarrow: And for some of us, think about your underwire bra if you wear one. They can set off the security alarm as well.
ETA typo
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Cool. Did you ever meet him?
EriktheRed
@opiejeanne: Something tells me people like us (“whiter than white”) are safe, but that’s only because they know they couldn’t get away with doing that to people who disagree with them…
…yet.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack: “UN-DER-MINE ‘EM! UN-DER-MINE ‘EM!”
gvg
@Mnemosyne: what city are they potentially stranded in? I live in Gainesville Fl. Others are in Florida. If anything happens, yell for help.
Are you staying in a Disney hotel or at least a pretty big one on International Drive or at Lake Buena Vista? there are shuttle services and the hotels will send vans. You probably had to prepay the rooms with their name. If you get all the info ahead of time, they could get to the hotel even if you weren’t there. I am not sure about the tickets without you there but they can call all relatives especially your husband who could call you a lawyer.
Nothing is likely to happen but 2 months ago I couldn’t picture being worried about this scenario. I have had travel plans go blooey due to weather including relatives being rerouted because or weather in between or airports shutting down for lightning or snow and not being allowed to take off for hours because the other air traffic was stacked up waiting to be allowed to land. no cell phone in flight too.
I want to see some lawsuits against the CBP and INS agents who interpeted regs in the ways most pleasing to their bigotries. As bad as Trumps orders are, some individual actions have been way beyond that and they need to lose jobs or be held in contempt of court, etc.
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
@Yarrow:
@Cain:
Well, whatever works (although of course it shouldn’t if they’re properly trained, but never mind). Business class should get you TSA Precheck, which also should help get through.
Further to my original post, my goal is to be unmemorably pleasant – nice enough that they don’t think they should bother me, but not so obvious about it as to make them wonder why I’m being so nice. And, for what it’s worth, I live in the D.C. area, so obviously it’s one that gets a lot of attention.
And apropos of Cain’s comment about the friendly Portland TSA people, my funniest TSA experience of all time was in Bismarck, North Dakota. I had to change both my departure time and my final destination because my meeting ran long (and I couldn’t leave), so I effectively bought a one-way ticket within a few hours of departure. As anyone would expect, this raised a big fat flag with TSA, and I got the full pat-down and luggage inspection deal when I went through security.
The agent kept apologizing to me the entire time, and then insisted on repacking my bag when she was done. I kept reassuring her that it was fine and I didn’t mind, while the people who’d been behind me in line were wondering what I could possibly have done to justify the search. (This, remember, is North Dakota, where everybody at least wants to be nice.) It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.
By the way, for those who might care, the Bismarck airport actually is kind of nice. They built a relatively fancy terminal maybe 15 years ago, and it was one of the first airports with free wi-fi. The terminal was way too big for a while, but then the oil boom hit and it was about the right size. Also, you don’t need to take a shuttle to the rental cars – you just walk out the door into the rental lot, which is kind of nice.
Hal
So what happens at the end of 90 and 120 days? What, specifically, is the Trump Admin doing during this period? What is the benefit?
david
Eric Garland is reaching his wit’s end. Begin rant/
The reality is that there is no Executive Branch right now. They haven’t hired
hundreds of critical positions, and POTUS watches TV all day.
We have a president who’s ignoring North Korean nukes in favor of watching
headlines about the last president that he made up on Twitter.
The President’s top advisors are trying to reenact the plot of some neo-Nazi
French novel. The AG is a suspect in a counterintelligence Op.
Citizens are afraid to go to Canada. Latin America is buying everything from
China. Australia, of all allies, is pissed off at us.
I don’t know about you, but after much patience I’m not sure I can sit through
much more of this. WE HAVE NO PRESIDENT.
The US Government requires a president, and we don’t have one. We have a
demented used car salesman, the guy’s creepy sons, and some Nazis.
We need an actual president. Sooner rather than later. *HEADDESK TIMES 10,000*
/end rant…
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
I thought it was Uday or Qusay who was responsible for the “Skittles” thing. Although it certainly sounds Jonesian.
randy khan
@Lapassionara:
It’s worth noting that the government claimed that the original order did not affect green card holders (eventually, even though it obviously did), so now they’re left saying that there’s an imminent danger from visa holders that is sufficient stop granting visas for 120 days, but not sufficient to deny entry to people with existing visas. That seems like a pretty hard line to draw.
gwangung
@EriktheRed:
Though those of us who are East Asian are understandably worried, and those of us who are South Asian are straight up alarmed.
opiejeanne
@Bupalos: They’ll just ignore it after the 90 days are up, let it continue for another 90 days, and then again in infinity.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
I’m close to 50 now, but I dye my hair and wore lots of sunscreen, so I can pass for younger.
I don’t want to bring the head-tilt out of the arsenal, but I’ll do it if I have to.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
G and I were just talking yesterday about how it seemed that Robert Osborne’s health was fading. We’re sad to see we were right.
Yarrow
@randy khan:
All Pre does is get you to the front of the line faster. Once you’re past the person checking the IDs you’re often in with everyone else. Unless they’re somehow keeping an eye on which person is from Pre and which person is from the regular line, it’s kind of all mixed up. I’ve been in some airports where Pre had a special line all the way through, but most often it’s just for the first part. Basically it’s just supposed to save you some time.
rikyrah
A warning, a gun sale and tragic consequences
Published on March 6, 2017
Despite a mother’s plea, her mentally ill daughter was sold a firearm. Here’s why she sued.
She called the police. Then ATF. After that, the FBI.
Janet Delana was desperate to stop her mentally ill adult daughter from buying another handgun.
Finally, Delana called the gun shop a few miles from her home, the one that had sold her daughter a black Hi-Point pistol a month earlier when her last disability check had arrived.
The next check was coming.
Delana pleaded.
Her daughter had been in and out of mental hospitals, she told the store manager, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She had tried to kill herself. Her father had taken away the other gun, but Delana worried that her daughter would go back.
“I’m begging you,” Delana said through tears. “I’m begging you as a mother, if she comes in, please don’t sell her a gun.”
Inside the store:
“Something like what I bought last time,” Colby Sue Weathers said to the manager, Derrick Dady.
She seemed nervous, he would recall to police.
Weathers had a diagnosis of mental illness, but she had never been identified as a threat to herself or others by a judge or ordered to an extended mental hospital stay — which meant she could pass the background check for her gun.
The Hi-Point pistol and one box of ammunition cost Weathers $257.85 at the Odessa Gun & Pawn shop on the main drag of the small Missouri town about 40 miles east of Kansas City.
Weathers headed back to the house the 38-year-old shared with her parents, stopping for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes along the way at a gas station. A firefighter who was an old acquaintance saw her acting skittishly and muttering.
An hour after leaving the gun store, Weathers was back home where her father sat at a computer with his back to her.
She shot.
Weathers planned to kill herself next but told a 911 operator: “I can’t shoot myself. I was going to after I did it, but I couldn’t bring myself to it.”
Delana lost Tex, her husband of nearly 40 years, and her daughter, who was charged with murder. And beneath her anguish, Delana seethed.
The store had made about $60 profit on the sale, court records would show.
“After everything I did, they still sold her a gun,” Delana said recently. “The more I thought about it, the madder I got. I wanted someone to pay.”
Boatboy_srq
@JPL: “weekly list of crimes”? How soon until we see calls for the arrest and trial of Emmanuel Goldstein?
Mnemosyne
@gvg:
It would be Orlando. We are scheduled to get on the Disney Express, so they could get to the hotel and be let into the room IF I was able to call ahead. That’s why the prospect of TSA Being Dicks is the only thing that worries me since that would involve being held incommunicado and not allowed to make any calls.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I suspect Jones was riffing off the original Trumpling’s analogy.
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: They were…I was pretending to be Jones riffing off of their bad metaphor.
Honestly, it felt ucky just pretending to think of other human beings as Skittles, much less try to channel a raving paranoid loon like Jones. Won’t be trying THAT again, that’s for sure…
Ohio Mom
@Ruviana: On a similar note to the underwire bra comment: this doesn’t apply to too many here, but if you have a foob (silcon breast prothesis), you will be pulled over, wanded and pretty close to felt up.
I swear, it is usually all I can do to not reach into my bra and pull it out for the agent’s edification.
I’m sorta glad my husband and I declared a moritorium on flying vacations, though our purpose in doing so was for budgetary reasons.
?eric
@LAO:he is the reason i went to law school, and i later had the chance to tell him that when i saw him give a speech. A moral force of nature.
rikyrah
great twitter thread:
Charles ClymerVerified account @cmclymer
1/ It’s difficult for me to buy the “listen to Trump voters” reasoning as if by hearing them out, profound insight will emerge. (thread)
Charles ClymerVerified account @cmclymer
2/ I swear I lose a little respect for fellow liberals who say this. I really do. It smacks of the worst naiveté. There is no mystery here.
Charles ClymerVerified account @cmclymer
Charles ClymerVerified account @cmclymer
3/ Trump was SO very clear about what he said he would do, and he was SO very clear about his lack of knowledge on anything.
Barbara
@Hal: Here is a link to the order (PDF). There is supposed to be a review of current policies and a report with recommendations. Reading through the whole thing, the most immediate effect will be on people from Iran seeking student visas to study in the U.S. I have represented two such people in asylum proceedings, and all I can say is that Iranians who study in the U.S. are the likeliest path we have for building a bridge to a better relationship with Iran. I suspect that because this document is temporary, there will be a pause in proceedings pending the outcome of the review and drafting of final recommendations. Also, the priority for religious minorities has been removed from the document. This was the clearest evidence of intentional discrimination against Muslims in the original order.
JerryRich
@Major Major Major Major:
For decades, simply not being African-American was roughly equivalent to being white. No longer true in the Age of Trump
Barbara
@Hal: Oops. Here is the link. I hope it works.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3482801/Read-the-full-text-of-the-revised-executive-order.pdf
zhena gogolia
@Felonius Monk:
Oh, no! I loved him so much. TCM has definitely not been the same since he has not been on.
opiejeanne
@gwangung: I can’t imagine your levels of alarm. Right now I’m pretty freaked out just watching the way they treat people they’ve decided are too browned that’s not even my demographic, but I do have family, friends, and neighbors who fit their laundry list of people to kick out, and I know that some of them did not come here legally. I am so worried about these people and I feel powerless to help them.
randy khan
@Yarrow:
Maybe you and I go to different airports, but at DCA and pretty much all of the other airports I frequent, the Pre line is separate all the way through security, including both different agents and separate scanners because they just use metal detectors instead of the fancy naked x-ray machines.
Barbara
@rikyrah: The GOS himself said approximately the same thing and got flamed at his own website for being insufficiently compassionate and writing off whole classes of people. But in reality, I think in stating his disgust he was being more respectful of these people, who are not children and are not stupid. Reading interviews with many Trump voters, most acknowledged that Trump was a high risk but given their current outlook or situation, worth the risk. So they took a knowing and calculated risk. I do think that they — along with many others — read into Trump what they wanted to, and assumed he would do those things they wanted without doing the things they don’t like.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Horrible. Preventable. Shame on everybody who ignored the mother.
Hasn’t that goddamn liberty tree downed in blood by now?
Mike J
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Mnemosyne:
Plant some personal “toys” both in carryon and checked luggage. They’re disarming to a questioner.
Yarrow
@randy khan: I’ve been to both kinds. Last couple of airports I’ve been through have been separate lines up to ID checker and then everyone went through the hand luggage x-ray and scanner/metal detector all together. The last airport where the Pre people had a totally separate line, that line was waaaaay longer than the regular line. And they wouldn’t let Pre people go into the regular line to get to go faster.
JPL
@Yarrow: Both the Hill and Politico have tweeted about Khan. They don’t seem to have additional info though. Maddow has spoken to Mr. Khan several times, so maybe she’ll have an update.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@amygdala:
I have major concerns about upcoming international travel – solo to Straya in May to catch up to wife (meeting Sydney, then to Daintree for treetops on rainforest, then on to Cairns for a liveaboard scuba trip). I don’t think the Australians are going to be reciprocating pricks, but I’m a sitting duck if they are. Coming back, she’s got a shitton of Muslim country entries, with some on a sexy list.
Probably no trouble in Mexico or Italy, but I anticipate that Africa next year will be touchy – we’re returning via Dar es Salaam.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Yarrow:
Never have experienced that with precheck.
randy khan
@Yarrow:
DCA has a surprisingly small number of Pre travelers, so the line always is relatively short and moves quickly. I’ve never understood that, especially because you automatically get Pre with Global Entry, and DC has a ton of international travelers.
Yarrow
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Don’t have any tight connections when you come back through the US. If she has a lot of Muslim country stamps she could be taken aside for extra questioning.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Experienced what?
@randy khan: That is weird. You’d think DC would have a lot of precheck travelers.
aimai
@Ohio Mom: My teenage daughter has a really big bust and has had to wear an underwire bra since she was 12. They ALWAYS pull her over when the fucking bra beeps and then wand her or pat her down.
japa21
At first I thought this one might pass legal muster, but I got to thinking. Unless the visa vetting process is going to be different for people from those 6 countries then for every other country in the world, the government would need to show why those countries need to be singled out (which would be hard to do). And if the vetting process will be different, I think the government would need to show why it needed to be different.
Peale
@amygdala: Yep. And this is going to be the crux going forward – does CPB and ICE get to disqualify the work of State in issuing visas and will they be allowed to just use any old arbitrary hunch to revoke visas.
hovercraft
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/white-house-statement-exxon-mobil-investment
“President Donald J. Trump today congratulated Exxon Mobil Corporation on its ambitious $20 billion investment program that is creating more than 45,000 construction and manufacturing jobs in the United States Gulf Coast region,” a laudatory statement from the White House read Wednesday afternoon.
Shortly before the White House’s release, according to the company’s website, ExxonMobil put out its own statement on the expansion.
Neither the White House nor ExxonMobil immediately responded to TPM’s request for comment, but White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the White House had been in touch with the oil giant.
“Exxon made it clear to the White House and to the President that because of his policies that they continue to expand their investment,” he told reporters Monday afternoon. “It is information that has been provided to us by Exxon about the number of jobs and investments in America that we go off.”
bluefoot
@Yarrow: I don’t think it’s odd that Khan won’t comment. I assume he can’t comment because he’s speaking with a lawyer about what he can do. If the US gov’t tells me they’re reviewing whether or not I will be able to freely leave or re-enter the country, first thing I’m doing is calling a lawyer. The first thing the lawyer will tell me is not to talk about it to anyone for any reason, and cancel any commitments that require travel.
TS
@Yarrow:
These were the rules for going in/out of East Germany way back when. What is happening in the USA???
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne:
I had the same reaction to Miguel Ferrer on NCIS a few months ago. He looked really gaunt. He was gone for a while, I thought he was getting treatment for something, he was back for an episode or two (looking a little better), and then came the news of his death. They just finished a couple of episodes where they wrapped up his character arc.
Mnemosyne
@Ohio Mom:
I would totally do that, but I can be kind of a jerk if I get sufficiently riled up.
Perhaps MomSense could make you a comfy knitted one before your next trip? It’s been a big project for her lately.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack (phone):
The LA Times obit is a little strange. First it says he died of natural causes in his sleep, then they quote his partner as saying something like, he chose to go out this way, or something like that.
Yarrow
@bluefoot: I don’t think it’s odd that he’s not commenting now. I think it’s odd that he supposedly released a statement to the speakers organization that they posted on their Facebook page. And when reporters have reached out to him he has no comment. Those two things together seem odd. He’s a pretty savvy guy and I’d think he’d have a statement ready to give the speakers bureau that they could release instead of letting them write their own. So I don’t know if they speakers bureau made up a statement or what.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Yarrow:
Fairly long layovers, so timing’s not a problem. She has multiple Turkey entries, multiple Thai, India, Myanmar, Tanzania, Kenya, India and a bunch of Doha transits. Plus, that sexy damn multiple China 10 year, come and go as you please visa we both have.
Sab
@West of the Rockies (been a while): That disqualifies Trump and all of his kids except Tiffany.
Mnemosyne
@Ohio Mom:
And, of course, since we have so many movie fans here, I’m assuming that everyone has heard the famous story of (usually) Judy Holliday being chased around a desk by an amorous producer until she stopped, pulled the falsies out of her bra, and handed them to him, saying, “Here, I think this is what you’re after.”
Peale
@Hal: I think the point is to establish that he can at any time make any visa worthless. Once the courts allow that, he’ll go about making the visas worthless for any ethnic group that’s gotten to large. So even if you’re following the rules, say, on an H1B visa, you can just be deported for national security reasons. What they want is to be able to say “national security” and the top of their lungs to remove about 40 million immigrants, naturalized, legal, permanent, undocumented. They want an exodus. Its that simple.
Mnemosyne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
What part of me sharing a hotel room with a 16 year old and an 11 year old did you miss?
I am not prepared to have that conversation with someone else’s children, thank you very much.
randy khan
I have an email from Tom Perez (well, sent to me and a lot of other people) inviting me to mosey over to the White House for a little public discussion of Travel Ban 2.0. I think I might just do that.
J R in WV
My wife and I have joint replacements, her knees and my shoulders. I overused my arms with heavy tools in my hobbies, and Mrs J had crummy knees from birth, and they wore out pretty fast. The Dr said after the first knee “I don’t know how you adapted to walk on that knee!”
So we get the whole body scan individually. I hope our next trip in May is smooth. Italy should be nice. We’re plump elderly white people flying premium economy, which seems to give you enough room to be comfy, which is all I want, really.
We upgraded to First Class coming back from Hawaii the one time we visited friends out there. It cost a whole $100 each, and was really nice, the seats, the hot wet hand towels, but really I’m OK with just enough space to be comfy.
I can’t imagine that flying point to point inside the country could be too messed up, but if anyone could do it, Trump is your go to guy. Hoping you and your part-time kids have a good time.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Mnemosyne:
Oops – was commenting at traffic lights and failed to scroll up….
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, it’s pretty ambiguous.
I don’t think it means he took his own life or anything like that. Can imagine (and am purely speculating here) that he might have had a DNR order in play, and I guess that could legitimately be described as a “choice.”
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yeah.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Trump is a white supremacy president, who campaigned on white supremacy. It was his only position. Everything else he said was an inconsistent ramble. He’s an obvious moron, he was humiliated almost daily on national television, and his economic policy was ‘colored people are to blame.’ He was not merely racist, he was loudly, you-can’t-possibly-miss-it openly and non-dog-whistle racist. Trump voters voted for white supremacy. Trump addressed none of their other concerns, while his opponent addressed those concerns at length. I understand Trump voters quite well, and they’re racist assholes. They cannot be won over except by advocating racism ourselves, and I do not see racism as a position that deserves respect. In fact, I think trying to pretend Trump was elected by any factor other than racism is both idiotic and legitimizes racism.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
It could also be that he was in hospice but chose not to announce that publicly.
Steeplejack (phone)
@zhena gogolia:
I thought you were talking about Miguel Ferrer.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack (phone):
No, sorry, Osborne.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
I just flew over the weekend, domestic. I violated about 75% of the things you listed and had no issues what so ever. On my return I got put into the TSA pre-check line, in which you don’t have to take off your shoes, jackets, belts, etc or your laptop out of your bag. Passed without any issues. I think it depends on if the terminal you are in may have international flights. At LAX that is rare, the terminal I was in had nothing but domestic arrivals or departures, same at SFO. And as someone above said a family from somewhere was held or sent back from LAX, in the international terminal, I think it was last week. That’s not to say that there aren’t some airports that have TSA agents who are assholes and I don’t think I’ve ever had a CBP agent who wasn’t an asshole. But this weekend I saw a lot of non US passports and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary of the last decade.
Ohio Mom
@Mnemosyne: I once knew, then forgot, the story of the starlete pulling out her falsies — thank you for reminding me of it and the resulting chuckle.
I actually have an order in for a knitted knocker with the local group of volunteer knitters.
And I am thinking of young teenaged Aimai’s daughter being pulled over for the crime of wearing an underwire. It’s bad enough when you are a worldly-enough adult but even a confident teen is still easily embarrassed. I feel for her. And for her rightly irritated mother.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
Mems is probably flying from LAX and there you stay in the pre-check line all the way through. Same in SFO. Maybe in a much smaller airport it just takes you out of the main line to get to the scanners but not in my experience at bigger airports. There are just too many people to get through in a limited amount of time. And while one person or a few people being late wouldn’t raise a big ruckus, entire plane loads of people stuck in a TSA line would. I know, I had a situation once where (this was before the TSA) one of the security people who watched the X-ray machine told her supervisor that she thought she may have seen a knife in a check on bag about 15 minutes prior. They emptied the entire terminal wing and all the planes still at the gate (SFO) and had everyone go through X-ray twice, once through each line and then hand checked each bag. As I worked in professional sports at the time and no one could have a cashiers check made out for more than $10,000 without a massive problem (so no bank would bother) someone had to carry back the competitors cash to the office, where our bank would take it as a deposit. So I had over $30,000 in my carry on and the woman who looked into it had to shout it out to the entire terminal full of people. His bag is full of cash!!!!. Even when her supervisor came over and told her it is OK for someone to carry cash and to shut up she had to yell it out again. Of course now everyone looked at me like I’d just scored a massive drug deal and I had to be extremely aware of each and every person in the terminal and on the plane.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I assumed he was in home hospice care if he retired from TCM hosting duties a year or more ago, as some obits reported.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Yep, LAX. I’m mostly paranoid because Bill told me I was on TV during the protests, but hopefully I’m small enough potatoes that they won’t bother to ban me or seriously mess up my travel. I’m still going to get there the regulation 2 hours in advance, just in case.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
He’s really pretty simple isn’t he? That makes it really pretty simple doesn’t it?
There is still a rather large segment of the population of the US, and I’d bet of the world as well, who are racists/misogynists first and foremost.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
As I said in a couple of posts, I had no trouble different than I’ve had for years. On my way out of LA I got the regular line and went through the revolving scanner. I was then patted down (Levi 501 jeans have rivets, they set off the machine) and my bag gone through. Took less than 5 minutes, not a big deal. On my return flight I got pre-check and waltzed through the line, total process took maybe 20 min from getting in line to walking away. Last time I flew the process was reversed, pre-check on the outbound and scanned on the return, with pat down and bag inspection. Other than standing in line none of the security processes were in any way an issue or pain in the ass. And I look all of the TSA people in the eye and never have had an issue. I also say thanks when they are done. Both times in the last 3 months I’ve been patted down the agents were apologetic, and I used my normal “no worries” reply. When they ask if I mind being patted down in public it’s “I don’t care let’s get on with it,” or something to that effect. Make their job as easy as possible and that’s generally the response. This last weekend I was ready for them to be complete assholes but no one was at all. YMMV.
Gvg
@Mnemosyne: you might call the Disney hotel ahead of getting to your airport. You probably aren’t the only worrier. Maybe an email so they have it in writing and whoever is on duty can look it up.
Disney hotels were nice to me when the credit card company called about fraudulent charges a few hours before I needed to drive down to check in. Had to cancel the card. Disney said hotel already paid for. I was worried because usually they use the card also as a kind of ID but they understood. I think they have heard everything already. If the kids can get there magic bands then, and you set it up, they can also charge food to the room. As long as they stay there and don’t get reckless at the pools, they can be safe. Tell them to call G so he can find you. Weather problems are still more likely for air travel.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
@Gvg:
I’m probably feeling extra paranoid because it’s the one major thing that would be totally out of my control. Even a weather delay could still get me there in time because Delta could rebook me. I booked my flight to get there 8 hours before theirs just to not have to worry about travel delays! ?
John
@rikyrah: Totally agree, but man he just hangs it out there, doesn’t he? I mean, I obviously haven’t been paying close enough attention to the actual shit that comes out of his disgusting mouth, rather than the policies that come out of his fetid head. He’s as bad as David Duke. Would anyone countenance Duke as any kind of White House advisor, let alone the President’s senior advisor? Insane.
John
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yep. I’ve tried to find some way to explain how my uncle could have voted for that sweating orange pile of impotent self-hate, but I guess I have to rack it up to a willingness to accept outright racism in the name of tax cuts for his bracket. Wow. My kids are mixed race.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Knowing you I can understand.
But there is only so much we have any control of most every day of our lives. I was ready to react but had no idea of what to actually say or do, other than just act like every other time I’ve flown since 9/11, which I was flying on from east to west. First (and only) time I was chased out of an airport by NG armed with M16s was landing in Atlanta and being told to get the fuck off the airport property. No one and I mean no one was really in charge or had really any idea what they were doing. That was the absolute final proof to me that republicans should never be in charge of anything ever again. And now I’m of course seeing that I was correct, the republican party should be banished from the planet. Every last fucking one of them. We’d still have stupidity of course but maybe our government might work just a bit better.