Skyfall: Just a day after Daylight Savings Time kicked in bringing the promise of spring, a late-winter blizzard is expected to hit the East Coast tonight and tomorrow, bringing a foot or more of snow in some areas. The storm is on track to hit Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Parts of the New York metropolitan area could get 14 inches and as much as 16 inches is predicted for Boston. They always get hit hard.

Eat Cake: Republican politicians were out over the weekend selling the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, not always to friendly audiences. California Rep. Darrell Issa was jeered at two separate town hall meetings and Rep. Ron DeSantis was booed at a meeting in Florida when he brought up healthcare savings accounts.

 Appearing yesterday morning on CBS, House Speaker Paul Ryan declined to say how many people might drop off the rolls of the insured under the new Republican healthcare law.

Despite President Trump’s promise that he would bring great health insurance to everyone, Ryan said, it’s “up to people” to buy coverage “if they want it.”

A prime target of the Republicans is repealing the requirement that people must have insurance. He said, “The one thing I’m certain will happen is CBO (Congressional Budget Office) will say, well, gosh, not as many people will get coverage. You know why? Because this isn’t a government mandate,” Ryan told CBS’s John Dickerson. “You get it if you want it. That’s freedom.”

Deep State: Rigged elections. Fake news. Illegal voting. Phone tapping. The latest term to slip into the Trump and Republican list of complaints is the existence of what is called the “Deep State.”

Deep State is the concept, sometimes a favorite of conspiracy theorists, that there is a permanent government of bureaucrats that control the government no matter which president or party has been elected. Some Deep State theorists say it also includes the military and private business interests.

A Deep State may actually exist in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey which are ruled through the military, murder, manipulation of the courts, and dictatorial control.

The current complaint here is that there’s a Deep State of Obama operatives trying to undermine President Trump. Fox News host Sean Hannity has called for cleaning out the Deep State saying, “For weeks we’ve been warning you about the Deep State Obama holdover government bureaucrats who are hell bent on destroying this president, President Trump.”

David Remnick writes in The New Yorker that there is no such thing as the Deep State in the US. He says, “The reason that Trump is so eager to take a conspiratorial view of everything from the CIA to CNN is that an astonishing array of individuals have spoken out or acted against him.” Remnick writes, “The problem in Washington is not a Deep State; the problem is a shallow man—an untruthful, vain, vindictive, alarmingly erratic President.”

Dutch Treat: The Netherlands and Turkey are in a diplomatic spat after the Dutch blocked two Turkish government ministers from coming into the country.

The ministers were sent to campaign among Turks living in Holland to vote for the referendum that would give additional powers to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But the visit would have been too close for comfort to the Dutch elections Wednesday in which the anti-Muslim right wing is looking to gain seats in Parliament.

Erdogan threw gas on the fire saying, “Nazism is alive in the west.”

Madness: Returning champion Villanova (31-3), has been named the top overall seed in this year’s March Madness NCAA basketball championship. Villanova won the Big East championship just yesterday.

The other regional No. 1 seeds are Kansas, North Carolina, and Gonzaga. Northwestern University got into the bracket for the first time in the 80 years of the tournament.

Newspaper War: The Washington Post has adopted the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness.” The NY Times’ new tagline is “Truth is more important now than ever.”
Yesterday the Times Editor Dean Baquet said, “I love our competition with the Washington Post, I think it’s great. But I think their slogan … please forgive me for saying this — sounds like the next Batman movie.”

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