The year's first case of U.S. bird flu has been found at a chicken farm in Tennessee which is under contract to Tyson Foods. Tyson says it will euthanize 73,500 affected chickens. The farm, along with 20 poultry farms within a 6 mile radius, are now under quarantine.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this represented the first confirmed case of highly pathogenic H7 avian influenza (HPAI) in commercial poultry in the United States this year. It is the first time HPAI has been found in Tennessee, the state government said.

[More...]

I didn't have to read a word of the Republican proposed health care bill to know it would be an as*-backwards approach to medical care. I've now read one article, and need go no further than this to prove the point: It swaps penalties for not buying insurance for penalties for letting it lapse:

People who let their insurance coverage lapse, however, would face a significant penalty. Insurers could increase their premiums by 30 percent, and in that sense, Republicans would replace a penalty for not having insurance with a new penalty for allowing insurance to lapse.

No major health care bill passes without months or years of discussion and amendments. The final version is always a compromise, and looks little like the original proposal. So other than demonstrating once again, what bad ideas Republicans have, I'm not going to be reading too much about it as of now, but for those of you who are worried about it, here's a place to discuss it.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has set 8 executions for a ten day period in April, now that the state's supreme court rejected lawsuits over the controversial drugs used.

The upcoming execution schedule is unprecedented, notes Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "No state has ever conducted eight executions over a 10 day period," he told CNN.

The Associated Press speculates that they were scheduled for such a short window because the state's supply of one of the lethal injection drugs, Midazolam, expires at the end of April. Arkansas has already run out of potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest upon injection, and has yet to acquire a new supply. Hutchinson has expressed confidence that a new supplier for the substance will be found in time.

While Hutchinson has no moral qualms about killing his fellow human beings, he did have qualms about a pig named Roxy P. Hamilton, and in January, he granted the pig a pardon.

More on the executions here.

Donald Trump has signed a new executive order banning people from six countries from getting visas for 90 days. (Iraq was omitted.) You can read the order here. Trump also issued a Memorandum for the Secretary of State on how it is to be implemented, which you can read here.

Also, according to the Washington Post article linked above:

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.

A few other exceptions were included: [More...]

David Letterman weighs in on Donald Trump in a new interview with Vulture Magazine:

Say the head of the family, let’s say his name was Larry Wasserstein. If Larry behaved the way Donald behaves, for even a six-week period, the family would get together and say, “Jesus, somebody better call the doctor.” Then they’d ask him to step down.

But Trump’s the president and he can lie about anything from the time he wakes up to what he has for lunch and he’s still the president. I don’t get that. I’m tired of people being bewildered about everything he says: “I can’t believe he said that.” We gotta stop that and instead figure out ways to protect ourselves from him. We know he’s crazy. We gotta take care of ourselves here now.

[More...]

This may be the best SNL cold open of the Trump season yet -- Kate McKinnon as Jeff Sessions -Forrest Gump. Mediaite has the video.

"This is my best good friend Kelly Ann, she ain't got no legs....They don't let her talk any more.

On Russia: "My lawyer said, Run Jeff-ey Run. So I ran and ran...."[More...]

Ecuador has launched a campaign against U.S. Immigration policies. It is providing consular assistance and wants Ecuadorians to know that they are not alone, no matter where they are.

Here are some of the graphics, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Translation isn't really needed but I added some to the less obvious graphics:)

Breaking with yet another tradition, Donald Trump's Secretary of State couldn't be bothered to personally appear for the release of the State Department's annual report on human rights.

“It’s just signaling a lack of basic interest and understanding in how support for human rights reflects what’s best about America,” said Rob Berschinski, senior vice-president for policy at Human Rights First.

Ecuador is blasting the report, saying the accusations against it are unfounded. In an official release, essentially telling the U.S. to examine abuses within its own borders before casting aspersions on others, it makes a few good points:

Donald Trump today (apparently parroting his favorite right wing website) accused President Obama of wiretapping his phones.

A spokesman for Obama said the accusation was “simply false”.

The unprecedented attack by a president on his predecessor, made in a series of early morning tweets, stoked speculation that Trump’s remarks were prompted by stories circulating in rightwing media, including one that claimed Obama is attempting a “silent coup” against Trump.

Trump's baseless claim shows his ignorance of electronic surveillance laws and procedures, both as to criminal investigations (under Title III) and foreign intelligence/ national security investigations (under FISA.) [More...]

Arnold Schwarzenegger has had enough. He has told NBC he will not returng for another season of New Celebrity Apprentice, should the network renew the show. Ratings were low, for which he blames Donald Trump:

“With Trump being involved in the show, people have a bad taste and don’t want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show,” Schwarzenegger said in that interview. “It’s a very divisive period now, and I think this show got caught up in all that division.”

He made it clear the show was not to blame:

“Everyone — from the celebrities to the crew to the marketing department — was a straight 10, and I would absolutely work with all of them again on a show that doesn’t have this baggage.”

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The Washington Post has an interesting article about state laws that force parents to pay the cost of jail when their kids get incarcerated. In PA, parents have to pay even if the kid is acquitted.

The lawyer, Steven Kaplan — who according to his city contract is paid up to $316,000 a year in salary and bonuses, more than any city employee, including the mayor — is one agent of a deeply entrenched social policy that took root across the country in the 1970s and ’80s. The guiding principle was simple: States, counties and cities believed that parents were shedding responsibility for their delinquent children and expecting the government to pick up the tab.

If parents shared the financial cost of incarceration, this thinking went, they would be more involved in keeping their children out of trouble.

19 states bill parents, and 28 more have the means to do so by state statute. California is bucking the trend: [More...]

When GW Bush left office, it was "Good Riddance." We might as well have kicked him to the curb and tossed him his clothes through his White House bedroom window.

Who would have believed he's now making the rounds, with humor, and being embraced by Democrats and late night talk show hosts alike? The answer? Anyone with the prescience to know that 2016 would usher in Donald Trump, a man deemed so horrible in all his orange unsplendor by so many, Bush now evokes, if not quite nostalgia, something close. (To be clear, no one's embracing Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, just GW.)

GW Bush does seem more upbeat and less of a threat these days, but that may be because he seemed more like a puppet doing the bidding of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Libby and on and on. He was considered incompetent, but not to the extent of Trump. (The only thing I can envision that would be worse than a Trump Presidency would be a Trump-Cheney or Trump-Giuliani Presidency.)

As for Bush, I'm glad to see him happy and painting. I would have been happier if he had picked painting for a career in 2000, when his term as Governor of Texas was up, but at least I can watch him now without reaching for the remote to change the channel, which I doubt I'll ever be able to say about Cheetolini.