You want to know Melania’s Maiden (hah) Name? Knavs. Her Father, Viktor, is a former member of the Yugoslav Communist Party (for which I don’t blame him, tough to get ahead in Yugoslavia without it and I don’t hate on Communists in general). He was a car salesman (selling Yugos, what else?). Her Mom’s name is Amilija and she used to be a pattern maker at a textile factory. You want creep factor? Her Dad is only 2 years older than Trump.
Ick.
Anyway Viktor and Amilija currently live in the East Wing of the White House and are the primary caregivers for The Donald’s last (I hope, there’s just not enough brain bleach) son Barron.
They could be here on an IR-5 visa, meaning they are legal permanent residents because they are the parents of a U.S. citizen. Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis Law School, believes this is the most likely option, even though the administration’s immigration proposal would limit family visas to spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, ending “extended-family chain migration.”
“If I were advising Trump, Melania’s parents would be admitted as immigrants as the immediate relative of a United States citizen if they were planning on moving here permanently, especially given the fact that there is talk to eliminate this basis for immigration,” said Matthew L. Kolken, a Buffalo immigration attorney.
Of course, using an immigration path that the president wants to eliminate would be politically explosive. So the easiest explanation could be that they are here on tourism visas and have asked for extensions. Generally, a tourist visa is given for about six months, and can be extended for up to a year.
“That’s pretty common,” said Sarah Pierce, an immigration policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “It is way more feasible or likely that they would use tourism visas.” She noted that data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services shows that the approval rate for the I-539 form (which extends status for all types of nonimmigrant visas, not just tourists) is 86 percent.
This would be a relatively simple explanation, which makes it curious why the White House would not confirm it if this is indeed the case.
Individuals who are outside the United States may be able to request parole into the United States based on humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons. There is no statutory or regulatory definition of significant public benefit. “Parole based on significant public benefit includes, but is not limited to, law enforcement and national security reasons or foreign or domestic policy considerations,” USCIS says. “We exercise our discretion on a case-by-case basis.”
Their parole may be extended at the discretion of the Homeland Security Department and would also permit them to adjust their status inside the country if Melania Trump intends to petition for them.
“I would guess that the first lady’s parents were paroled into the United States and did not have to apply for a visa,” Kolken said. “Parole can be extended by the [Homeland Security] Department, or the period of parole could be for a lengthy period of time. If my parents are looking to move to the U.S., and if I were president, I would have them paroled and then file an I-130/485 and get them green cards.”
So those are your choices, Chain Immigration (called by those who are not heartless bigots and racists family unification), Illegal Visa Jumpers, or “Parolees” who’s “valuable” service to the United States is taking care of a child as opposed to cutting grass on the putting green or picking fruit or translating in a combat environment to aid the Armed Services. Sorry Muhammad and Pedro- no Visa for you. Likewise you Dreamers. You screwed up. You trusted U.S.
But first I want to… nah, that won’t work because you’ll think I am and the problem is that writing (at least in the context of a formal essay) is a one way method of communication (you can comment you know, if you’re having a problem you can email- no spamming, we block those).
I have a complication with my social intercourse (oh, get your minds out of the gutter) in that because I’ve been “The Expert- Listen To Him” for so long I tend to assume I’m the smartest person in the room.
It’s often true.
I’ve had a ton of formal leadership training by people whose names you’d recognize if you were part of that scene (I’m certified myself, just like I have a Water Safety and Lifesaving Instructor ticket) and one exercise we called “Labels”.
The idea was that you would strap on these head bands that identified your role in the group that you couldn’t see and everyone else could. Like “Leader” or “Clown”. They were assigned by the moderator in non random ways, either to reinforce or contradict the common perception. The other members of the group were supposed to react to you as dictated by your label, I ignored them because I think leadership games are stupid and manipulative.
Still it was instructive in retrospect to see how I could instantly validate even a “Clown’s” opinion and yet everyone would turn to the “Leader” for final disposition. Keep in mind I had no idea of my own label. People value conformity and obedience.
At the end the moderator explained the game and everyone had a good laugh. He insisted the assignments were by chance. My future boss, capo di tutti, took me aside and explained that wasn’t true at all. “I’m expecting great things from you.”
So, no pressure.
I have been so stupid so often that I am consumed with self doubt and it comes up in every session with my Therapist. The burden of expectation is deeply internalized and leads her to question why I choose to live in a system of self imposed deadlines I constantly fail to achieve.
Me too. Yet I can’t suppress my habit of donning the label which leads to awkward interactions when someone doesn’t accept it. I have many other faults and this is probably not my chief grief but what I want you to understand is that if I seem condescending and arrogant…
I am.
Anyway, in conjunction with Ellen DeGeneres, Kristen Bell has started a series of YouTube videos titled Momsplaining that I find both horrifying and amusing.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that drive these trends. For example, Americans across many ages and marital statuses are having less sex than they used to.
Data from the General Social Survey shows that the share of people 18 to 30 who have not had sex in the past year has risen to nearly 20 percent today, from about 10 percent between 1990 and 2010, while the share having sex at least two times a month has fallen to about 65 percent, from about 75 percent from 1990 to 2010.
Diminished face-to-face interaction, and possibly increased use of pornography, may explain the fall in sex, and both of those trends may be explained by the rise in cellphone usage and other screen time.
Smartphone ownership rates have more than doubled for every age group in America since 2010, meaning that almost all of us now carry a get-out-of-human-interaction-free card in our pockets 24/7.
But these are all long-term trends. What’s driving the decline right now?
Answering that question may be more about where than what. Using census population estimates by sex and age for states and making some simple extrapolations to monthly data, we can make a reasonable guess of where birthrates per-childbearing-age-woman are falling or rising most.
…
(T)he steepest declines have been in Western states, especially previously high fertility states like Utah. Only Alabama and Connecticut have posted any likely increase in their general fertility rate over the last three years. Connecticut’s fertility rate has been roughly tied for lowest in the nation for several years, however, so a small gain isn’t saying much. Alabama’s increase is more interesting, but peaked in late 2015 and has been declining since.
Blah, blah, blah, Social Security. Remove the damn cap on taxation. That will fund it for a thousand years. You thought this had no political purpose. All fun up front, all business in the back.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Bruno Richard Hauptmann convicted in the Lindbergh baby kidnap-murder; The World War II bombing of Dresden begins; Konstantin Chernenko becomes Soviet leader; Peter Gabriel born; Waylon Jennings dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Happy 95th, Chuck.
If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.
I don’t think it’s a secret that since I started following The Good Place I’ve really become impressed with Kristen Bell.
No, I’m not going to deliver my monograph on Moral Philosphy and the different types of Cigar, Cigarette, and Pipe ash. Olympics, duh.
But she does a lot of other stuff that shows up on YouTube that I find screamingly funny, some of which has a clear political edge. If Sam Bee were ever to retire and TBS would pony up the money (which they wouldn’t because Anna==$$$) Kirsten Bell has the right sensibility.
Minimum Wage
What About Bob?
Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss have kind of a Hollywood feud thing happening though both of them deny it. This started on the set of What About Bob? (well, some say it was preceded by a guest appearance on SNL) because Richard Dreyfuss is a Method Actor and Bill Murray is also… a Method Actor, just in a different way.
Real Therapy is not like this. Oh sure, you’re basically paying someone to sit around and listen to you being an asshole for 45 minutes, why would they do it otherwise? No, the difference is that it’s a strictly professional relationship. I like my Therapist because she’s very supportive and upbeat (“Look, it doesn’t matter whether the things we talk about are important. It’s that they’re important to you.”).
I have no idea what her personal life is about. Where does she live? Does she have a dog? Nor do I care to know, I don’t even fantasize- I’m paying $200 a 45 minute hour to talk about me dammit, least you can do is not strand me in the waiting room staring at the clock (she’s actually pretty prompt).
The other thing is that parts of my life seem pretty delusional and I’d hate to have to train a new one that they’re all mostly true.
Last week Donald Trump released the un-redacted Nunes Memo over the objections of the FBI and Department of Justice. On Friday he refused to allow the release of 10 page Democratic response which had been vetted by the DOJ and FBi, probably because it would make Trump and Nunes look like the fools they are. Trump and the his Republican enablers thought that would be the end of it. The Democratic memo may see the light of day. According the Mark Lederman at Just Security, it is up to the House Intelligence Committee whether or not to make a classified memo public.
Tonight’s letter to HPSCI from White House Counsel Donald McGahn states that the memo in question includes certain information that the President declines to declassify, due to the determination of the Department of Justice that disclosure of that information would raise “especially significant concerns for the national security and law enforcement interests.” That’s the President’s prerogative. As I explained here back in 2014, however, the classification system merely regulates what Executive Branch personnel can do with information entrusted to them. It does not regulate what members, or committees, of Congress may lawfully do with such information.
There are restrictions on the HPSCI’s dissemination of classified information, but those restrictions (and conditions) are self-imposed by the House itself. Rule X, Clause 11 of the House’s Standing Rules prescribes the process by which HPSCI may publicly disclose information in its possession. Clause 11(g)(1) provides that “[t]he select committee may disclose publicly any information in its possession after a determination by the select committee that the public interest would be served by such disclosure.” And the Committee unanimously voted on Monday–21 to zero–that the memo should be released because public disclosure wouldbe served by such disclosure.
To be sure, Clause 11(g)(2)(A) further provides that if any of that information “has been submitted to [HPSCI] by the executive branch,” if it “has been classified under established security procedures,” and if “the executive branch requests [that it] be kept secret,” HPSCI must notify the President of its decision to disclose the information, and may not disclose it for at least five days after such notification. If, during that five-day period–which expires Saturday, February 10–the President, “personally in writing,” notifies HPSCI that he objects to the disclosure, provides his reasons therefor, “and certifies that the threat to the national interest of the United States posed by the disclosure is of such gravity that it outweighs any public interest in the disclosure,” then HPSCI may not disclose the classified information without first submitting the question to the full House.
Trump has not responded in writing with his specific objections. The letter sent by White House Counsel Doug McGahn stated that Trump objected to the memo release and that the memo should be vetted by the FBI and DOJ to make redactions or edits that will “mitigate” any possible harm. which is what Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated was being done.
Constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe told MSNBC host Joy Reid that, since the committee has already voted unanimously to release the memo, the ball is now entirely in their park.
Question is wll the House rise to its responsibilities or continue to abdicate its powers to this wanna be despot in the Oval Office.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
President Abraham Lincoln and naturalist Charles Darwin born; The U.S. Senate acquits President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial; Founding of the NAACP; Cartoonist Charles Schulz dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
Let me explain what I mean by chromosome damaged. You see, us guys have an X and a Y, gals have two Xs. Now that Y, that’s just an X with the bottom leg broken off. Gals are tougher and smarter than we are. I don’t say this to impress the ladies, at 120+ I’d hardly know what to do with one except to chat with her and maybe have her light my cigars ala George Burns (saw him before Gracie, he was awful, she did it backwards in high heels and could sing too).
They represent 51% of the population and we treat them like slaves in that we work them to death, abuse them physically, and buy and sell them as if they were property- not equals.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s taken centuriesmillenia of subjugation to make them think their only value is how attractive we think they are. High heels and makeup. Bravo Gentlemen, we’ve domesticated them like dogs.
(T)he fight for equality at the Olympics is far from over. Because while the female ski jumpers who didn’t make it to the top of the podium — including silver medalist Katharina Althaus from Germany, bronze medalist Sara Takanashi from Japan, and U.S. ski jumpers Sarah Hendrickson, Abby Ringquist, and Nita Englund — will have to wait another four years for their next shot at Olympic gold, their male counterparts will have two more chances to compete in Pyeongchang — in the large hill individual event and the large hill team event. (The men already competed on the normal hill, which is the same hill the women competed on.)
…
Sure, we’ve come a long way since the first Winter Olympics in 1924, when only 11 of the 258 athletes were women, and all of those were figure skaters. Four years ago in Sochi, women made up 40 percent of the competitors. This year, 43 percent of 2,920 athletes in Pyeongchang are women. But throughout the Winter Olympics schedule, there are frequent reminders that in the eyes of the International Olympic Committee, women are still less than. ln biathlon, women compete in shorter distances than men in every event — individual, sprint, pursuit, mass start, and relay. The same goes for the women in cross-country skiing and long-track speedskating. In bobsleigh, the men have two events — two-man and four-man — compared to only one (of course, still called two-man) for the women. The men’s hockey tournament has 12 teams, compared to only eight for the women.
But no sport exemplifies the opportunity gap like ski jumping. Not only do male ski jumpers have three events compared to one for the women, but Nordic combined — a sport that involves both cross-country skiing and ski jumping — has three events for men, and zero events for women.
Lindsey Van, a retired American ski jumper who was one of the leaders of the campaign to get women’s ski jumping in the Olympics, has heard every excuse in the book for why women’s ski jumping shouldn’t be encouraged or supported. The most infuriating — and frequent — reason that she and her fellow trailblazers were given?
“That our uteruses would fall off,” she told ThinkProgress.
In case you think she’s kidding — an understandable reaction — in 2005, Gian Franco Kasper, the president of the International Ski Federation (FIS), the governing body of the sport, told NPR that ski jumping “seems to not be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” As recently as 2014, a Russian ski jumping coach said that ski jumping wasn’t appropriate for women because “women have another purpose—to have children, to do housework, to create hearth and home.”
…
“Ours are on the inside, and they’re very well protected. And theirs is literally hanging outside their body.” Van said. “You tell me which is safer. So, when they’re like, ‘Yeah, your uteruses will fall out,’ I’m like, ‘Well, you better check their boots for their balls.’”
Van has a different theory about why the sport has been so slow to embrace gender equality: the fact that men and women jump very comparable distances. Some of the sport’s elite women athletes can even jump farther than the elite men. Going into the 2010 Vancouver Games, Van actually held the K95 hill record at the site of the Olympic ski jumping events; the only man at the normal hill event who surpassed her record was Simon Ammann from Switzerland, who won the gold medal. Because there was no women’s event at that Olympics, Van had to watch from afar.
“In every other sport you can see that gender gap. Then in ski jumping, there is hardly any gender gap, it’s smaller than any other sport,” Van said, adding that the gap actually gets smaller when the hills get larger, because it becomes less about power and more about technique. “I don’t think that does our sport favors. I think people see that and they want to bury it,” she says.
“It’s one of those original extreme sports, so if women are doing it, is it as extreme? Is it perceived as as extreme?”
Outdated notions of what the female body is capable of were used to limit opportunities for women in sports; now that so many of those notions have been proven false, both by science and by show, it seems like the opportunities for women in sports are still being limited arbitrarily just because they can be, as a way to send the message that women are inferior.
That’s hard to prove on paper, of course, but it would explain both why women have been excluded from competitive opportunities in some sports, and why their distances have been capped shorter than the men’s distances in other sports.
…
Before the 2018 Games, the IOC had a press conference and announced a vague outline of a 25-step plan that is designed to advance gender equality. The IOC already ruled in 1991 that every sport added to the Olympics must have a men’s and women’s event, but that rule didn’t apply to events that already existed. One of these initiatives is to increase women’s participation in the Olympics to 50 percent.
“Having visible female role models is one of the most important things that we as an organization do,” four-time ice hockey world champion Angela Ruggerio, a senior American IOC board member, told Reuters in Pyeongchang. “(It) sends a very strong message to the world in terms of what’s possible.”
Van was disappointed that there wasn’t a bigger push to get more women’s ski jumping events added in Pyeongchang after the success of the event in Sochi, but she insists that there are some positive signs. This World Cup season kicked off in December with the top 30 women in the World Cup rankings having an opportunity to compete off of the large hill in Lillehammer, Norway, and the addition of a women’s team event in Zao, Japan and Hinterzarten, Germany. Last year, there was a women’s Nordic combined event at the U.S. championships for the first time, and the FIS has stated its intention to hold a women’s Nordic combined event this World Cup season, and to hopefully get the event added to the schedule at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
But Van has learned not to trust the IOC of FIS too much when it comes to gender equality promises. She knows that it’s ultimately going to be up to the athletes to keep up the fight for equality. And she hopes that this generation of jumpers is up for it.
“It’s going to take a lot of people bugging and bugging them,” she said. “Nobody wants to do it, but somebody has to do it. They have to get to the point where enough’s enough.”
In other news the wind has been blowing skiers off the hill so the Alpine and Snowboarding schedule is all screwed up. Russia got the Bronze in Mixed Doubles. Norway is kicking ass overall, Germany leads in Golds, Team USA looks kind of sucky at this point and Russia surprisingly strong since they had to leave half the team behind because of steroid sanctions.
Oh, the results in Women’s Ski Jumping (70m/Normal Hill), so happy you asked-
I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching Hockey, many, many Rangers games when they were very, very bad. I even know what the Blue Lines are for, no I won’t bore you at this point- maybe later. I’ll tell you instead what the problem with Pro Hockey is- too many players in too small a space and unregulated violence. Maybe it’s different now, I haven’t followed it in years.
After I gave up on that I took up with the International version for a while, it has the virtue of having lots of room and, at the time, it was a little like Women’s Basketball with a premium on stick handling and passing.
Then they let the NHL Players in and it’s never been the same since.
The problem is that the brutal game works. Goalies are so padded there’s not much Net to work with and unless you can fake them out of their skates (rare now, they’re mostly very good) there is no choice except to dump it right in front of the Crease, grind it out, and hope for a lucky bounce.
The USA Ladies didn’t play enough like that today. I’m tempted to sic Geno Auriema on them. While they had overwhelming puck control in the first period Finland scored one of those “lucky” goals right at the end and it took them most of the second period to get the lead back. The empty netter at the end of the game was meaningless.
We’ll see how that works out going forward. The real competition, as always, is going to be Russia and Canada though Russia didn’t look very good today losing to Canada 5 – 0. They play the same games, so, sport has changed.
Norway survived a tiebreaker against China that managed to claw their way back into the hunt in Mixed Doubles. It will likely be Norway and Russia in the consolation game and Canada and Switzerland for the Gold.
As in actually functionally illiterate. Sam Bee explains-
The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency. Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!
— Donald J. Trump
Ten pages! tl;dr. Proper form is lots of cartoons and pictures and charts and favorable mentions of the awesomeness of Donald J. Trump from Faux and Fiends. And then there’s this-
He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.
Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.
Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
And that despite the fact they deliver it in the proper form.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
South Africa frees Nelson Mandela; Allied leaders in the last months of World War II sign the Yalta accords; Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers seize power in Iran; inventor Thomas Edison born.
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — Talk about one heckuva an explosive donation.
Authorities say a grenade launcher, loaded with a live grenade, was left with other donated items at a Florida Goodwill store.
The Bradenton Herald reports that employees at a Goodwill store near Tampa reported the weapon on Sunday.
The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office says the store manager told deputies that the grenade launcher had come in a shipment from another store several days earlier. The employees at the other location said they sent it along because they didn’t know what it was.
Deputies say they disposed of the active grenade in a Hazmat locker, and the launcher was stored in the agency’s property room.
Ok, I decided to skip a day in the numbering because the upcoming events looks a day forward to tomorrow.
Becca and Matt Hamilton were drawing dead today. Last night’s loss to China didn’t quite make a trip to the semi-finals impossible, but the first victory by anyone else today sure did. As I write this they have one more match against the Finns, the only team below them in the standings, to play.
I’d like to talk about their style before it’s all over because to me it’s very instructive if not very successful, this year.
On most teams when the guy is throwing the gal stands at the other end and provides a target with her broom. After the guy lets go of the rock he pops right up and scoots down the ice so he can sweep. The gal stays firmly planted at the other end and claps in encouragement. The guy in fact does all the sweeping for the team. When she throws he provides the target and scoots down the ice to pick up her rock wherever.
Seem slightly sexist to you? Me too. It’s not that women can’t sweep, they do it all the time on the Women’s Teams, just that it’s a critically important job and there’s definitely this vibe of “I’ll do all the important bits myself Honey. Stand in the corner and look cute.”
Becca Hamilton is one of the 5 best sweepers in the world, male or female (she’s also a better shot than Matt). When the Hamiltons throw the one doing it concentrates on that and the other one is right there to sweep, no frantic scooting, no constant exercise, no distraction.
Today they had an excellent game against the Norwegians, 4 – 1 and tied with Russia, Switzerland, and Canada for first (there’s your medal round pool btw). They scored a 4 point steal in the 4th End and a 3 point steal in the 6th for a 10 – 3 lead and a concession. Their two wins were against teams that advanced. First Olympics jitters I guess. I hope they’re back next time because I really want to see their egalitarian style of play become the norm.
And they’re funny too.
In other news the Unified Korea Women’s Hockey Team lost to Switzerland 8 – 0. North Korea has more than 200 Cheerleaders attending the events and everyone wants a selfie with Kim Yo Jong.
Mike Pence is a lonely, ignored, and forgotten man.
