Tag: trump

Donald Trump: The Islamic State’s secret weapon?

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Source:Washington Post

Author:Kathleen Parker

Emphasis Mine

Americans looking for a Snuggy Bear and a blankey to ease their anxieties about the Islamic State will have to become more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

From President Obama’s recent terrorism speech in the Oval Office to Donald Trump’s terrifying, race-baiting, religion-testing rebuke in South Carolina, there is little to console those seeking either instant gratification from Obama or sanity from the leading Republican presidential candidate.

While Trump speaks to fear with anti-Muslim rhetoric that builds a wall around our national essence, the president attempts to soothe with reason and inspirational rhetoric more befitting a nation that hasn’t just suffered a horrific terrorist slaughter.

Obama’s speech was never going to satisfy critics and those convinced they know the better route. But the fact of the speech alone — appropriately solemn in recognition of the fact that the killings in San Bernardino, Calif. , and Chattanooga, Tenn., and at Fort Hood, Tex., were terrorist attacks — spoke volumes. And though he identified the California terrorists as Islamic State-inspired, he surely disappointed those insistent in their own cultish fashion that Obama refuses to name the enemy and, therefore, can’t defeat him. An absurdity. A dead terrorist is a dead terrorist by any name.

Obama’s further reiteration of his current course left wanting those longing for the more comforting certitude of the cheerleader with a megaphone. And those hoping for a declaration of the usual sort of war — thousands of ground troops in Syria and Iraq — were doubtless disappointed, as well as affirmed in their belief that Obama doesn’t get it. Or that he’s only trying to preserve his legacy as the non-war president, a trope favored by the right.

But realistically, what president chooses to ignore a necessary war? Who wants to be remembered as the cowardly commander in chief who allowed the world to slip into darkness and despair? No one, and certainly not Obama.

The problem for the president is that the war he is waging feels like a long-term strategy without benefit of the short term. If not ground troops, then what? There is no good answer. This is a new kind of war requiring fresh approaches. The old templates don’t apply because they actually work against us. As soon as we put boots on the ground, the Islamic State is rewarded with the war it wants, with the propaganda machine it can’t otherwise replicate and with the martyrdom its members welcome. Are Americans really ready to watch their military men and women beheaded and burned alive?

Thus, Obama and his advisers have focused on alternative means of defeating a monster that feeds on atrocity and hate. Strategic hits, special operations, counterterrorism propaganda and so on. At home, Obama seems to say, fight hate with love, fear with resilience, monsters with the superior force of good.  By comparison, admittedly, Trump sounds both decisive and definitive.

But — this is no joke — Trump is also the most dangerous person to emerge on the U.S. political scene in decades. As president, he would be the most dangerous man on the planet.

I’ve often objected in my column to invoking Hitler as popular analogue because it trivializes the suffering and slaughter of the Jews. Now I’m not so sure. Remember that before there could be a Holocaust, there was the identification of the Jewish race as the enemy. Trump’s apparent identification of Muslims as “ a problem,” with his threat of a Muslim registry and a religious test at the border, sounds terribly familiar.

Two facts to consider: First, we need the help of the world’s 1.6 billion — and this nation’s 3 million — Muslims if we hope to defeat terrorists who justify their barbarism with their interpretation of Islam. Second, our best defense against radicalization of Muslim Americans is inclusiveness. By marginalizing our own Muslim community through rhetoric, we vastly increase the risk of we vastly increase the risk of radicalization and recruitment.

Obama understands this. He also understands that another ground war in the Middle East risks our becoming entrenched in endless battle against an enemy that can inspire insurgencies indefinitely.

Few doubt that we could easily take over Iraq and Syria in a replay of shock-and-awe, but then what? Invading another Muslim country feeds right into the Islamic State’s playbook and installs a Crusader vs. Caliphate narrative for millennia — or whatever foreshortened era we invent.

Again, ambiguity and uncertainty are our companions for now and probably for a while. In the meantime, our internecine squabbles about our own nation’s principles couldn’t be a better holiday gift to the butchers-in-waiting. And Trump, by dividing us from within, is the enemy’s hero.

Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-islamic-states-secret-weapon/2015/12/08/f6d5dd60-9de3-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinions

Sanders’ Address on Democratic Socialism: Amazing and Blacked-Out

Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.

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Source: RSN

Author: Scot Galindez

Emphasis Mine

At Georgetown University on Thursday afternoon, Bernie Sanders outlined his vision of what democratic socialism is. Earlier that morning, Hillary Clinton gave an address on fighting ISIS. MSNBC showed all of Hillary’s speech but ignored Bernie. There has been some media coverage of the speech, but nobody cut live to Sanders like they did for Clinton.

I did see more coverage of the lead carnival barker, Donald Trump, saying he would implement a registry for Muslims, while one of the most important, substantive speeches of the election cycle was almost ignored.

The media blackout of Sanders is not going away anytime soon. Bernie supporters must go around the media and use the social media to help the campaign get their message out. Share stories widely, support independent media, help Bernie 2016 TV get off the ground. If we don’t do these things, we will surely be watching Hillary Clinton win the nomination.

Luckily for those of us feeling the bern, Georgetown University streamed the speech on Ustream. I watched the stream on Bernie 2016 TV with nearly 3,000 others using Twitter and other platforms to discuss the speech as it took place. People were very excited as Bernie laid out his vision.

Bernie opened by invoking the vision of FDR:

In his inaugural remarks in January 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked out at the nation and this is what he saw.

He saw tens of millions of its citizens denied the basic necessities of life.

He saw millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hung over them day by day.

He saw millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

He saw millions lacking the means to buy the products they needed and by their poverty and lack of disposable income denying employment to many other millions.

He saw one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

And he acted. Against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists, Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty and restored their faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our country. He combated cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country.

And that is what we have to do today.

A tall order for sure, but the time has come for another transformation. FDR’s “economic royalists” are today’s Wall Street ruling class that needs to be challenged before they consolidate more power. The Billionaire class owns the media and increasingly owns the government. Establishment politics will do nothing to curb their greed. It’s time to fight back.

Bernie went on to say:

And, by the way, almost everything he proposed was called “socialist.”

Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country was “socialist.” The concept of the “minimum wage” was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as “socialist.” Unemployment insurance, abolishing child labor, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, strong banking regulations, deposit insurance, and job programs that put millions of people to work were all described, in one way or another, as “socialist.” Yet, these programs have become the fabric of our nation and the foundation of the middle class.

Thirty years later, in the 1960s, President Johnson passed Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care to millions of senior citizens and families with children, persons with disabilities and some of the most vulnerable people in this county. Once again these vitally important programs were derided by the right wing as socialist programs that were a threat to our American way of life.

That was then. Now is now.

Prior to World War II and McCarthyism, socialism was not a dirty word. Many American icons were self-described socialists. Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and of course Martin Luther King, whom Sanders quotes further down in the speech.

In 1952, a young King wrote in a letter to Coretta Scott: “I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.” In a 1966 speech to his staff, King declared: “Something is wrong … with capitalism. Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”

Next time your conservative friends slam socialism as unpatriotic, remind them that the author of the pledge of allegiance, Francis Bellamy, was a socialist, a Christian socialist known for his fiery sermons on economic justice.

Back to Bernie:

Today, in 2015, despite the Wall Street crash of 2008, which drove this country into the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the American people are clearly better off economically than we were in 1937.

But, here is a very hard truth that we must acknowledge and address. Despite a huge increase in technology and productivity, despite major growth in the U.S. and global economy, tens of millions of American families continue to lack the basic necessities of life, while millions more struggle every day to provide a minimal standard of living for their families. The reality is that for the last 40 years the great middle class of this country has been in decline and faith in our political system is now extremely low.

The rich get much richer. Almost everyone else gets poorer. Super PACs funded by billionaires buy elections. Ordinary people don’t vote. We have an economic and political crisis in this country and the same old, same old establishment politics and economics will not effectively address it.

If we are serious about transforming our country, if we are serious about rebuilding the middle class, if we are serious about reinvigorating our democracy, we need to develop a political movement which, once again, is prepared to take on and defeat a ruling class whose greed is destroying our nation. The billionaire class cannot have it all. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the one percent.

Now that sums it all up. Are we ready to follow Bernie’s lead and take our country back? It’s time to get off the sidelines. Bernie needs all of us to have his back. He is fighting the bankers, today’s robber barons. They are not going to just roll over, they are fighting back and they will get dirty. We need to be prepared to take them on and defeat them.

I’m not one to say that this is our last chance; progress can help us move forward in the future. But we have not had a better chance to take on the ruling class, and it may be a long time before we have a vehicle like we have now. Let’s not blow it.

We need to create a culture which, as Pope Francis reminds us, cannot just be based on the worship of money. We must not accept a nation in which billionaires compete as to the size of their super-yachts, while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep out on the streets.

Today, in America, we are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but few Americans know that because so much of the new income and wealth goes to the people on top. In fact, over the last 30 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth – trillions of wealth – going from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent – a handful of people who have seen a doubling of the percentage of the wealth they own over that period.

Unbelievably, and grotesquely, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Today, in America, millions of our people are working two or three jobs just to survive. In fact, Americans work longer hours than do the people of any industrialized country. Despite the incredibly hard work and long hours of the American middle class, 58 percent of all new income generated today is going to the top one percent.

Today, in America, as the middle class continues to disappear, median family income, is $4,100 less than it was in 1999. The median male worker made over $700 less than he did 42 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. Last year, the median female worker earned more than $1,000 less than she did in 2007.

Today, in America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, more than half of older workers have no retirement savings – zero – while millions of elderly and people with disabilities are trying to survive on $12,000 or $13,000 a year. From Vermont to California, older workers are scared to death. “How will I retire with dignity?” they ask.

Today, in America, nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty and over 20 percent of our children, including 36 percent of African American children, are living in poverty — the highest rate of childhood poverty of nearly any major country on earth.

Today, in America, 29 million Americans have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with outrageously high co-payments and deductibles. Further, with the United States paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, 1 out of 5 patients cannot afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors write.

Today, in America, youth unemployment and underemployment is over 35 percent. Meanwhile, we have more people in jail than any other country and countless lives are being destroyed as we spend $80 billion a year locking up fellow Americans.

The bottom line is that today in America we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality. A handful of super-wealthy campaign contributors have enormous influence over the political process, while their lobbyists determine much of what goes on in Congress.

Amen. Now this is leadership. No empty soaring rhetoric. Bernie Sanders is speaking truth to power. The comparisons to FDR are coming into focus for me. This guy is ready to transform our country in the same way Roosevelt did with the New Deal. Leaders like this come about once in a generation.

We can’t afford to wait for another leader emerge who is ready to take on the ruling class. We need to rise up now! As Bernie regularly says, “Think big, it’s not time to play it safe.” Incremental change won’t work; we need to take bold action.

In 1944, in his State of the Union speech, President Roosevelt outlined what he called a second Bill of Rights. This is one of the most important speeches ever made by a president but, unfortunately, it has not gotten the attention that it deserves.

In that remarkable speech this is what Roosevelt stated, and I quote: “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men.” End of quote. In other words, real freedom must include economic security. That was Roosevelt’s vision 70 years ago. It is my vision today. It is a vision that we have not yet achieved. It is time that we did.

In that speech, Roosevelt described the economic rights that he believed every American was entitled to: The right to a decent job at decent pay, the right to adequate food, clothing, and time off from work, the right for every business, large and small, to function in an atmosphere free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. The right of all Americans to have a decent home and decent health care.

What Roosevelt was stating in 1944, what Martin Luther King Jr. stated in similar terms 20 years later, and what I believe today is that true freedom does not occur without economic security.

People are not truly free when they are unable to feed their family. People are not truly free when they are unable to retire with dignity. People are not truly free when they are unemployed or underpaid or when they are exhausted by working long hours. People are not truly free when they have no health care.

Free the people!!! I have been poor so I understand where FDR, Dr. King, and Bernie are coming from. I know what it’s like to suffer because I couldn’t afford health care. I know what it’s like to not be sure if I could find a warm place to sleep or a warm shower. I was in America, but I was not free. I was prisoner to just finding what I needed to survive. I was not happy. Life was a chore. All around me I saw great wealth. I often wondered, what did I do wrong to deserve to be punished?

I fought back. I became an activist. I worked with Mitch Snyder, Phil Berrigan, William Thomas and others who helped me get back on my feet. Then I met Marc Ash after the stolen election and decided the most effective thing I could do was help build an independent media organization.

While I am doing better, I have not forgotten what it is like to struggle, not from paycheck to paycheck but from day to day, hour to hour. We must stand up for those still struggling hour to hour. They need us to transform America into a country that puts human need above corporate greed.

So let me define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me. It builds on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans. And it builds on what Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1968 when he stated that; “This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.” It builds on the success of many other countries around the world that have done a far better job than we have in protecting the needs of their working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.

Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.

Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt.

It is a system, for example, which during the 1990s allowed Wall Street to spend $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to get deregulated. Then, ten years later, after the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of Wall Street led to their collapse, it is a system which provided trillions in government aid to bail them out. Wall Street used their wealth and power to get Congress to do their bidding for deregulation and then, when their greed caused their collapse, they used their wealth and power to get Congress to bail them out. Quite a system!

And, then, to add insult to injury, we were told that not only were the banks too big to fail, the bankers were too big to jail. Kids who get caught possessing marijuana get police records. Wall Street CEOs who help destroy the economy get raises in their salaries. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. meant by socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.

In my view, it’s time we had democratic socialism for working families, not just Wall Street, billionaires and large corporations. It means that we should not be providing welfare for corporations, huge tax breaks for the very rich, or trade policies which boost corporate profits as workers lose their jobs. It means that we create a government that works for works for all of us, not just powerful special interests. It means that economic rights must be an essential part of what America stands for.

It means that health care should be a right of all people, not a privilege. This is not a radical idea. It exists in every other major country on earth. Not just Denmark, Sweden or Finland. It exists in Canada, France, Germany and Taiwan. That is why I believe in a Medicare-for-all single payer health care system. Yes. The Affordable Care Act, which I helped write and voted for, is a step forward for this country. But we must build on it and go further.

Medicare for all would not only guarantee health care for all people, not only save middle class families and our entire nation significant sums of money, it would radically improve the lives of all Americans and bring about significant improvements in our economy.

People who get sick will not have to worry about paying a deductible or making a co-payment. They could go to the doctor when they should, and not end up in the emergency room. Business owners will not have to spend enormous amounts of time worrying about how they are going to provide health care for their employees. Workers will not have to be trapped in jobs they do not like simply because their employers are offering them decent health insurance plans. Instead, they will be able to pursue the jobs and work they love, which could be an enormous boon for the economy. And by the way, moving to a Medicare for all program will end the disgrace of Americans paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

Democratic socialism means that, in the year 2015, a college degree is equivalent to what a high school degree was 50 years ago – and that public education must allow every person in this country, who has the ability, the qualifications and the desire, the right to go to a public colleges or university tuition free. This is also not a radical idea. It exists today in many countries around the world. In fact, it used to exist in the United States.

Democratic socialism means that our government does everything it can to create a full employment economy. It makes far more sense to put millions of people back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, than to have a real unemployment rate of almost 10%. It is far smarter to invest in jobs and educational opportunities for unemployed young people, than to lock them up and spend $80 billion a year through mass incarceration.

Democratic socialism means that if someone works forty hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty: that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage – $15 an hour over the next few years. It means that we join the rest of the world and pass the very strong Paid Family and Medical Leave legislation now in Congress. How can it possibly be that the United States, today, is virtually the only nation on earth, large or small, which does not guarantee that a working class woman can stay home for a reasonable period of time with her new-born baby? How absurd is that?

Democratic socialism means that we have government policy which does not allow the greed and profiteering of the fossil fuel industry to destroy our environment and our planet, and that we have a moral responsibility to combat climate change and leave this planet healthy and inhabitable for our kids and grandchildren.

Democratic socialism means, that in a democratic, civilized society the wealthiest people and the largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes. Yes. Innovation, entrepreneurship and business success should be rewarded. But greed for the sake of greed is not something that public policy should support. It is not acceptable that in a rigged economy in the last two years the wealthiest 15 Americans saw their wealth increase by $170 billion, more wealth than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans. Let us not forget what Pope Francis has so elegantly stated; “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

It is not acceptable that major corporations stash their profits in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens to avoid paying $100 billion in taxes each and every year. It is not acceptable that hedge fund managers pay a lower effective tax rate than nurses or truck drivers. It is not acceptable that billionaire families are able to leave virtually all of their wealth to their families without paying a reasonable estate tax. It is not acceptable that Wall Street speculators are able to gamble trillions of dollars in the derivatives market without paying a nickel in taxes on those transactions.

I couldn’t interrupt Bernie on that roll. Democratic socialism in other words is economic and social justice. It’s my belief system. It is what William Thomas dedicated his life to when he vigiled in front of the White House for years for nuclear disarmament. Thomas, as we called him, saw that greed was destroying our country. Mitch Snyder fasted many times to draw attention to the plight of the homeless and build the largest homeless shelter in the United States within a few blocks of the Capital. He understood that he had to fight the greed of the ruling class that was neglecting those in need. Phil Berrigan was a Christian who understood that the war machine was taking resources that could be used to help the poor. They were my mentors. I know that they would be backing Bernie if they were alive today. Well, maybe not Thomas, it would have been hard to get him to trust a politician.

But Bernie is not a traditional politician, he is a public servant who wants to build a just society. If you feel burned by Obama, Bernie is no Obama. Obama ran and governed as an establishment centrist. Those terms are far from any words I would use to describe Bernie Sanders. Have faith, we can trust Bernie.

Democratic socialism, to me, does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice. It also means that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote. It is extremely sad that the United States, one of the oldest democracies on earth, has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country, and that millions of young and working class people have given up on our political system entirely. Every American should be embarrassed that in our last national election 63% of the American people, and 80% of young people, did not vote. Clearly, despite the efforts of many Republican governors to suppress the vote, we must make it easier for people to participate in the political process, not harder. It is not too much to demand that everyone 18 years of age is registered to vote – end of discussion.

Further, it is unacceptable that we have a corrupt campaign finance system which allows millionaires, billionaires and large corporations to contribute as much as they want to Super Pacs to elect candidates who will represent their special interests. We must overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections.

If we don’t get the money out of politics, and don’t bring people back into the process, we might as well elect a king or queen and stop having elections. They are a waste of our time and money.

If we continue to sit on the sidelines, we might as well just let the oligarchy take full control. Heck, we might even get lucky and royalty will throw us some big crumbs. I’m just kidding, trying to motivate those who think the system is beyond hope. I believe, as Bernie says, that if we stand together there is nothing we can’t accomplish.

So the next time you hear me attacked as a socialist, remember this:I don’t believe government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.

I believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America instead of shipping jobs and profits overseas.

I believe that most Americans can pay lower taxes – if hedge fund managers who make billions manipulating the marketplace finally pay the taxes they should.

I don’t believe in special treatment for the top 1%, but I do believe in equal treatment for African-Americans who are right to proclaim the moral principle that Black Lives Matter.

I despise appeals to nativism and prejudice, and I do believe in immigration reform that gives Hispanics and others a pathway to citizenship and a better life.

I don’t believe in some foreign “ism,” but I believe deeply in American idealism.

I’m not running for president because it’s my turn, but because it’s the turn of all of us to live in a nation of hope and opportunity not for some, not for the few, but for all.

Now that is change we can believe in. One reason we can believe it is he tells us that he can’t do it alone. Democratic socialism is not something we should fear. What we should fear is unchecked crony capitalism. If we let the billionaire class consolidate their power, America will become an oligarchy and Democracy will no longer exist. We need socialism to save America.

Author’s note: Next week I will look at the rest of the speech, which focused on ISIS and foreign policy. The transcript I used for this article was from his remarks as prepared for delivery. –SMG

Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador’s slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush’s first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.

See: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33596-focus-sanders-address-on-democratic-socialism-amazing-and-blacked-out.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence Rips Trump, Kim Davis & Republican Bigots In Epic Interview

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final_newsletter_imageSource: occupy democrats.com

Author:Colin Taylor

Emphasis Mine

World-famous actress Jennifer Lawrence was raised a Republican – but is horrified by the monster the Grand Old Party has become today. In a recent interview with Vogue, Lawrence slammed the conservative party for their downright backward attitudes towards women’s rights and the rising power of religious zealots within the movement.

“I was raised a Republican but I just can’t imagine supporting a party that doesn’t support women’s basic rights. It’s 2015 and gay people can get married and we think that we’ve come so far, so, yay! But have we? I don’t want to stay quiet about that stuff.

My view on the election is pretty cut-and-dried. If Donald Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”

It truly is appalling how a party attempting to make a case for the presidency of the United States treats a full half of the electorate with such condascending disdain. From Sen. Marco Rubio‘s (R-FL) horrendous assertions that women are “getting pregnant to sell the fetus to Planned Parenthood” to Ben Carson’s comparison of rape victims who have abortions to slave owners, the GOP simply refuses to rid itself of the rampant misogyny that one expects to hear from a religious extremist group like the Taliban but not a political party seeking election in a global superpower. 

Lawrence also took aim at embattled bigot Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who made headlines when she was jailed for refusing to do her job and sign marriage licenses for LGBT couples. The Hunger Games actress did not mince her words: “Kim Davis? Don’t even say her name in this house. [She is a] lady who makes me embarrassed to be from Kentucky. All those people holding their crucifixes, which may as well be pitchforks, thinking they’re fighting the good fight. I grew up in Kentucky. I know how they are.”

Lawrence is one of many Republican across the nation who are very distraught with the Republican Party’s slide into the depths of delusional extremism. We welcome her to the side of empathy, rationality, and reason.

See: http://wp.me/p3h8WX-5Hn

Republicans are Nothing More Than Cheerleaders for Hate, Ignorance and Intolerance

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Source: ForwardProgressives

Author: Allen Clifton

Emphasis Mine

Sometimes I’ve joked that my life would have much simpler had I just been a Republican. Doesn’t it just seem easier? Just grab a Bible; go to church 52 days a year; hang a flag at your home; go buy a gun; only worry about yourself; and repeat whatever talking points you’re fed by the conservative media and you’re good to go.
No complex or critical thinking is required. In fact, both of those are highly discouraged. Look at some of the more well-known members of the conservative media; people like Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly. These are people who’ve become stars among conservatives for simply spouting utter nonsense as often as possible. I firmly believe that right now I could go give a speech at a conservative event, have no idea what the event was about, and just using what I know about Republicans I could have people in attendance giving me standing ovations throughout most of my speech. It’s not hard to do. These are the people who claim to be “fighters for good, Christian family values,” yet support people like Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump (who was actually a speaker at the Iowa Freedom Summit) simply because they often make derogatory statements about President Obama and liberals in general. I’m not sure how you can claim that you’re defenders of “family values” when: Trump has been married three times (so much for that sanctity of marriage). Nugent dodged the draft (so much for supporting the troops), has threatened the president’s life and is an admitted sexual predator. Limbaugh has been married four times (again, so much for sanctity of marriage), is an admitted drug addict and constantly demeans women. Oh, but it’s okay because they all love guns and hate President Obama. And apparently that’s all you really need to do in order to be “loved” by these good, wholesome “Christians” standing for family values and the “moral majority.” And let’s not forget the “family values” that were on full display a few months ago by tea party queen herself Sarah Palin during a late-night drunken brawl her family was involved in. Apparently, even her 5-year-old grandson was a witness to it. Nothing says “good Christian values” quite like riding around in a limo late at night with several members of your family intoxicated, crashing parties – with a 5-year-old in the car.
But, again, she loves guns and hates President Obama, so she’s just fine by conservatives. The truth is, these people are nothing but cheerleaders for hate, ignorance and intolerance. Anyone can get on a stage and bash homosexuals, attack President Obama, praise guns and say “God Bless America” and these people would stand in awe, cheering like mindless drones programmed to respond to certain words or phrases. That’s really all it takes for conservatives to support anyone. If you can spout enough anti-liberal nonsense on a large enough stage, you’re only a few steps away being the next conservative hero. Because at the end of the day, these people don’t stand for anything. They claim they’re all about Christian values, but that’s negated when they throw their support behind adulterers and sexual predators. It’s just millions of people who are distracted by talking points, an American flag, a gun and the Bible. And when it’s all said and done, they’re really nothing more than cheerleaders for anyone who can get on a stage and preach hate, ignorance and intolerance.

See:  http://www.forwardprogressives.com/republicans-nothing-cheerleaders-hate-ignorance-intolerance/

Chilling New Poll Finds GOP Fascism Is Very Real

A shocking number of Republicans say they can conceive of a situation in which they’d sympathize with a military coup.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Heather Digby Parton

Emphasis Mine

Last week, as the nation observed the anniversary of 9/11, one could not help but look back at that time and contemplate the reaction by our fellow citizens and foreign nations. Rick Perlstein wrote a very poignant piece a couple of years back about the solidarity that horrible day inspired among all Americans and people around the world — and how it was lost.

Perlstein describes how bills such as the vote to authorize war and the Patriot Act passed nearly unanimously and without debate, which he says happened because in that moment of oneness,”it seemed unimaginable that this extraordinary grant of executive power could possibly be abused.” The man who should have been president, Al Gore, famously said, “George W. Bush is my commander in chief.”

Lefties from Ellen Willis to Barbra Streisand immediately fell into line and supported the president unequivocally. Bush memorably put this new sense of trust and good will into words when he addressed Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001, and asked the American people to pull together for the sake of the nation as a whole. He also admonished them to be decent to the people of Middle Eastern descent who lived among us.

“I ask you to uphold the values of America and remember why so many have come here. We’re in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them.”

Here is the notoriously fractious Congress all gathered together on 9/11 to sing God Bless America on the Capitol steps.

Sadly, as Perlstein pointed out, it didn’t take long for all of that solidarity to fall apart. One year later, conservative pundit Peggy Noonan was writing:

“So the Southerners are eyeballing the young Muslim males. Maybe these guys are bad guys. They allow themselves to think this in part because one of the things Americans regret most since Sept. 11 2001 is their lack of suspicion. We’re all very live-and-let-live. Before Sept. 11, young Muslim males could tell someone in passing that soon those towers in New York will go boom. And fearing to offend, fearing to hurt the feelings of another person, we’d let it pass. We’d mind our business, give them the benefit of the doubt. And now we wish we’d been less friendly, less trusting, less lazy or frightened. We wish we’d been skeptical. Hell, we’re the only nation on earth that is now nostalgic for paranoia.”

Noonan went on to condemn the “young Muslim males” — medical students — who inspired the column as bigots for failing to properly soothe a hysterical woman who panicked to see them eating dinner in a Georgia restaurant. (Jeb Bush, by the way, called the woman to congratulate her for her sharp observation.)

Anyone who was in America during that period also remembers the intense patriotic fervor exemplified by the anthem of the era, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (the Angry American)”:

Hey Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty Started shakin’ her fist
And the eagle will fly
Man, it’s gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom Start ringin’ her bell
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Brought to you Courtesy of the Red White and Blue
Justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you’ll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A.
‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way

As the Dixie Chicks found out, anyone who didn’t agree could expect to be met with a furious reaction from conservatives who enforced the new patriotism with near religious fervor. And their love of country was not confined to the military. When president George W. Bush donned a Navy flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier in a fighter jet to (prematurely) declare victory in Iraq, the right wing went into a major collective swoon. You could even buy a bronze bust of George W. Bush wearing the jumpsuit that was advertised with this stirring sales pitch:

“President Bush is a Leader who has the courage to lead. It is political courage. It is not poll driven it is conviction driven. It is consistent and does not change because of pressure or threats of political survival. It is reconfirmed every day. It differs from combat courage in that it is thought oriented not reaction oriented. Combat courage does not necessarily translate into political courage. Combat courage is admirable and you only know if you have it when you are in combat. President Bush has demonstrated that he has political courage and this is why he was re-elected. By owning a bust of President Bush, Commander in Chief you will be making a statement and in a politically charged environment, it takes courage.”

In those days, Republicans believed that government and military leaders were heroic protectors of all we hold dear. But even as kitschy as Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” performance was, and as overweening as the GOP’s patriotic love of men in uniform, that statement above is a remarkable validation of the American dedication to the concept of civilian control of the military. He might have been wearing a fake uniform (he liked to do that) but they acknowledged and respected him for his political leadership.

Something seems to have changed their minds. According to this new YouGov poll, these same patriotic Republicans still love the military passionately but are no longer attached to that moldy old concept of civilian control:

“Republicans (43%) are more than twice as likely as Democrats (20%) to say that they could conceive of a situation in which they would support a military coup in the United States.”

More to the point, only 32 percent of Republicans state unequivocally that they would not conceive of a situation in which they would support a military coup. One would be tempted to think this is simply a matter of partisanship, but there is no evidence that Democrats have ever entertained the notion of a military coup, no matter who was president, even one as widely loathed as George W. Bush. It’s as “un-American” as it gets.

For years the right has accused the opposition of being unpatriotic and failing to properly love America. And here they are, endorsing something that’s only seen in Banana Republics and totalitarian police states.

But there is some good news in all this. It’s likely that as soon as they get a president they like, they will once again discover that the Constitution is sacrosanct and the president is worthy once again to be the Commander in Chief. For instance, the latest Washington Post poll shows that they are not so cynical that they cannot imagine anyone having the qualities that are required for such a job:

1) Republicans say by 64-35 that Trump is “qualified to serve as president.”

2) Republicans say by 60-35 that Trump is “honest and trustworthy.”

3) Republicans say by 53-45 that Trump understands the problems of people like them.

4) Republicans say by 54-42 that Trump “has the kind of personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively as president.”

So we can all rest easy. As long as a qualified leader like Donald Trump is in charge they are unlikely to support something as radical as a military coup. But Barack Obama has clearly worn on their last nerve. And you don’t even want to think about what will happen if Hillary Clinton becomes Commander in Chief. One can easily imagine them calling for this coup and telling themselves “it’s the American way.”

For these folks the American way is whatever they want it to be including, apparently, a military dictatorship.

 

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

See: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/chilling-new-poll-finds-gop-fascism-very-real?akid=13479.123424.9YvtrN&rd=1&src=newsletter1042471&t=6

Nate Silver: ‘Stop Comparing Donald Trump And Bernie Sanders’

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Source: Daily Kos

Author:Lawrence Lewis

Emphasis Mine

Nate Silver took a look at the media’s comparisons of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and found them lacking. He makes ten points, each of which are blockquoted below and followed by my own reactions, but you’ll have to click through to read the entirety of Silver’s analysis.

1. Trump is “winning” (for now), and Sanders isn’t.

Silver thinks there is reason to believe Trump’s lead won’t hold. I’ve tended to agree, assuming that as the ridiculously large GOP field gets narrowed, supporters of mainstream Republicans will coalesce around another mainstream Republican. But I’m no longer sure that will matter. Ben Carson is now second in many polls, and when you add his numbers to those of Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz, it appears that there may be enough unhinged GOP voters to carry Trump, after all. This shouldn’t frighten Democrats now eyeing the head-to-head general election polls. Most Americans know the personality, but not his politics. Most Americans don’t like bigotry and misogyny. My guess is that if Trump is the GOP nominee, Democrats could bring back Michael Dukakis and still win.

2. Sanders is campaigning on substantive policy positions, and Trump is largely campaigning on the force of his personality.

This is the big one, and if we ended up with a Sanders/Trump general election, it would become even more apparent. Trump is an ignorant blow-hole, and Sanders has a long, deep, and wide history of substantively analyzing and taking stands on issues. The guy is a wonk. Trump is an affectation.

3. Sanders is a career politician; Trump isn’t.

To the GOP base, that’s a big plus for Trump. For voters who want a president that knows what he or she is doing, that’s a big plus for Sanders. It’s also another fundamental difference between the two men. Sanders is the real deal, while Trump is a fake tan and a bad toupee.There’s more below.

4. Trump is getting considerably more media attention.

This says everything about the media. Silver looked at Yahoo News and found that over the past month, Trump has received more media “hits” than Sanders and Hillary Clinton combined. Of course, the media find it much easier to cover personalities than policies. It’s their basic mode of operation.

5. Sanders has a much better “ground game.”

Sanders has a professional campaign apparatus in place, while Trump is more of a TV phenomenon. That can make a huge difference when it comes time for people to vote.

6. Sanders holds policy positions of a typical liberal Democrat; Trump’s are all over the place.

Sanders is not some whacky outsider trying to elbow into the Democratic base: He actually supports Democratic Party positions overwhelmingly often. This means base Democrats will like him. He even voted the same as Hillary Clinton 93 percent of the time when they served in the Senate together. Trump’s positions align well with the GOP base on some issues, but are anathema on others. That will make it easier for Democrats to want to vote for Sanders, and harder for Republicans to want to vote for Trump.

7. Sanders’s support divides fairly clearly along ideological and demographic lines; Trump’s doesn’t.

This one may better serve Trump, whose support is ideologically widespread among Republicans. Sanders appeals primarily to white, liberal Democrats. That’s not a secret, and it’s where Sanders will have to expand his support if he’s going to make a serious run at Clinton for the nomination. However, polls do show that Democratic voters who don’t prefer Sanders as their first choice are fine with him as their second choice. As is the case in reverse—it’s not that Clinton’s supporters don’t like Sanders, it’s just that they like Clinton more.

8. Sanders’s candidacy has clear historical precedents; they’re less obvious for Trump.

Silver compares Sanders to previous insurgent Democratic candidates, such as Bill Bradley, Howard Dean and Eugene McCarthy. They all gave the mainstream candidate a scare, but ultimately fell short. But Trump is more openly hostile to the GOP than were previous insurgent Republican candidates. Given how much the GOP base hates all things government, that may actually help Trump in the primaries.

9. Trump is running against a field of 16 candidates; Sanders is running against one overwhelming front-runner.

The diluted Republican field has prevented the GOP establishment from rallying behind just one of their own, and has helped Trump jump to his current lead. I will add that it also means Trump’s lead is a relatively small plurality, which may or may not grow as other candidates drop out. See my comment on Silver’s point No. 1. But were the Democratic field as diluted, Sanders might also enjoy a plurality lead.

10. Trump is a much greater threat to his party establishment.

Sanders is an outsider. But because he has aligned with Democrats so often, if he were to win the nomination the Democratic establishment base wouldn’t have a lot of trouble aligning behind him. The Republican establishment would have a much tougher time rallying behind Trump. His open hostility to the party, his animosity toward right wing media, and his apostasy on some key Republican issues means that if he did win the nomination, the GOP establishment might not even mind if he lost. The GOP establishment does not like not being in command. As Silver says:

A Trump nomination would be more of an existential threat to the Republican establishment.

Could Trump win without it? Not likely. It’s even less likely given his inattention to the ground game, which would make him particularly dependent on the party’s. Sanders would have the entire Democratic establishment behind him and he’d have his own ground apparatus. He’d have his long experience both with the politics of politics, with understanding and articulating his understanding of the issues, and he’d have stands on the issues that are much more aligned with those of the electorate than are Trump’s.The media love a simplistic narrative, and for them equating the outsider candidacies of Trump and Sanders is too easy. But as is so often the case with narratives promoted by the major media, this one is also absurdly wrong.

See:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/10/1419991/-Nate-Silver-Stop-Comparing-Donald-Trump-And-Bernie-Sanders?detail=email#

Is Donald Trump Showing Republicans Can Win in the Bible Belt Without Being Overtly Religious?

For Trump, a lapsed Presbyterian, religion really isn’t important to his politics.

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Source:

Author: Zaid Jilani

Emphasis Mine

Historically, the American South has been the nation’s most religious corridor, and politicians courting Republican voters in particular are quick to point to their religiosity. In 2008, deep south states such as Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee went to the pastor Mike Huckabee. In 2012, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee went to the avowed Catholic evangelical Rick Santorum.

But the country has seen a number of shifts in its religiosity. The number of Americans who identify as unaffiliated with any religion grew from 16.1 percent in 2007 to 22.8 percent in 2014, while the share of Americans who identify as Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical Protestant declined. This shift is particularly evident among young people; 25 percent of Americans born after 1980 say they are atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular.

This may explain why a candidate who is not religious at all — real estate mogul Donald Trump — is leading the polls in virtually every southern state.

Take Florida, where a recent poll showed Trump in the lead at 29 percent. Digging into the results of the poll, you’ll find that Jeb Bush — who comes from a family that has long courted the Christian right as a political arm — had a remarkable zero percent of support from young voters, while Trump was capturing over half of them. In Alabama, Trump is nearing 40 percent of the vote, eclipsing the second candidate, Ben Carson, who is closer to 17 percent.In Georgia, Trump is at 34 percent and Bush is at 12 percent.

For Trump, who is a lapsed Presbyterian, religion really isn’t important to his politics. When GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked him if he has ever “asked God for forgiveness” over the summer, he responded, “I’m not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.” This caused right-wing blogger and activist Erick Erickson to say that Trump made a “potentially fatal error” in admitting he was not very religious — a prediction that has fallen pretty flat.

When Ben Carson, who has managed an impressive second place in the polls over the past few months, was asked about the differences between himself and Trump, he pointed to religion. “I’ve realized where my success has come from, and I don’t in any way deny my faith in God,” he said. “And I think that is the big difference. By humility and the fear of the lord are riches and honor and life and that’s a very big part of who I am. I don’t get that impression with [Trump]. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t get that.”

This led Trump to fire back, tweeting, “Wow, I am ahead of the field with Evangelicals (am so proud of this) and virtually every other group, and Ben Carson just took a swipe at me.”

From the looks of things, Trump’s point is correct. His candidacy is proving that religiosity is not very important to the GOP voter base. But bluster, candor and cultural affirmation, all of which Trump provides with his broadsides against various liberal boogeymen, from immigrants to Hillary Clinton, are key.

(N.B.: perhaps this is a different segment of the base…)

Zaid Jilani is an AlterNet staff writer. Follow @zaidjilani on Twitter.

See: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-showing-republicans-can-win-bible-belt-without-being-overtly?akid=13470.123424.EdIs2E&rd=1&src=newsletter1042267&t=4

I Finally Understand Trump’s Appeal After Going To His Iran Rally

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Source: TPM

Author: Jason Stanford

Emphasis Mine

Speaking at the Stop the Iran Deal Rally with the U.S. Capitol as his backdrop, Donald Trump at first made the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran seem like a simple negotiation gone awry, nothing more.

“We’re gonna do, and we’re gonna get, nothing. Nothing. We are led by very, very stupid people. Very, very stupid people. We cannot let it continue.”

There were far more homemade signs at the rally than there were “Make America Great Again” caps, the unofficial uniform of Trump’s supporters, but his Art-of-the-Deal take on the Iran deal played well enough with the crowd. They seemed to regard him with amusement and sincere interest, though their general opinion was best expressed later by Sarah Palin who said, “You don’t reward terrorism. You kill it!” This crowd didn’t want a better deal. They wanted no deal.

But it didn’t take long for Trump to suck them in with a rant that gave a clue as to why the flamboyant billionaire is playing so well with white, working class Republicans.

“We lose everywhere. We lose militarily. We can’t beat ISIS. Give me a break. We can’t beat anybody. Our vets are being treated horribly,” he said, and the people around me started murmuring in agreement. Suddenly the crowd, or at least the part I was standing in, shifted from taking in a spectacle to feeling a chord struck inside them. Forget the facts—there are plenty of dead terrorists and Somali pirates who are unavailable to comment—but Trump’s vision of America on a losing streak felt true to the Tea Party crowd.

“It will change,” he said. “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored of winning. Believe me.”

There was no hollering back where I stood, but that isn’t to say he wasn’t getting a response. The murmuring had taken on a happier tone. “Winning, yeah,” said one. “That’d be nice, huh? Winning?” said another.

“We are going to turn this country around,” Trump said, the crowd now completely with him. “We are going to start winning bigly, on trade, militarily.” And yes, Trump said “bigly,” but no one cared. He’d conjured both a word and a world in which the United States didn’t have the most powerful and lethal military force in the history of the planet. Every word he said felt true to them, even the one he made up.

“We’re going to build up our military. We’re going to have such a strong military, that nobody—nobody!—is going to mess with us. We’re not going to have to use it,” said Trump.

(N.B.: Might makes right)

This is American Exceptionalism re-imagined by Charles Atlas. Trump wants to prove that he can make America so huge and so strong—the strongest!—that no terrorist would dare kick sand in our faces again. Thinking this way is more than a little silly, but it is exactly how the people who went to the Stop Iran Deal Rally felt.

The pity of this all is that the Iran deal shows how America can lead (and win!) in an increasingly disorganized world. We negotiated with Iran from a position of strength. We had support from our European allies. We had Iran’s billions in our banks. Behind door number one was Iran giving up their nuclear weapons program. Behind door number two was Iran becoming the next destination for Drone Airlines. The United States gave up nothing in this deal. In exchange for their own money, Iran gave us what we wanted: an Iran without The Bomb.

This is what winning looks like. This is our enemy surrendering their weapons without a fight not because they love us but because they know they would not survive the fight. After our embassies getting bombed, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia invading Georgia, the red line in Syria, Benghazi, Russia invading Ukraine, Boko Haram, and ISIS, stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons was change we need to believe in.

There are reasonable criticisms of the Iran deal, but you didn’t hear any at the rally. Instead, they got Sen. Ted Cruz, who seems to get his intelligence briefings from Call of Duty. “If this deal goes through, we know to an absolute certainty, people will die,” Cruz said. “Americans will die.” They also heard from Palin, who took the occasion to tell not one but two thinly veiled penis jokes at the President’s expense.

Cruz and Palin are minor players who are as yet unable to tap directly into what animated the crowd at the Stop Iran Deal Rally. “What part of ‘Death to America and Israel’ do you not understand?” read one popular sign. To them, negotiating with Iran exposes our weakness. Maybe they’re being misled. Maybe they’ve thought that everything Obama has done is wrong so long that they can’t see anything he does as right. But if they—and Trump—want America to be great again, they could hardly do better than Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Jason Stanford is a partner with the Truman National Security Project. He is also a national Democratic consultant and writes regular columns for The Austin American-Statesman and The Quorum Report.

See: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/trump-appeal-winning-iran-rally

The GOP’s Problem Is Not Donald Trump

at least half of the GOP is unhinged and living in its own fact-free and perhaps Fox-fed reality

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Source:motherjones.com

Author:David Corn

Emphasis Mine

Only a few weeks ago, pundits and political observers roundly proclaimed that Donald Trump, the reality-show tycoon who’s mounted a takeover of the GOP, would flame out, fade, implode, or whatever. Jeb Bush’s campaign aides were telling journalists that they had no concerns about Trump threatening a third Bush regime. “Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem,” said Michael Murphy, the chief strategist for Bush’s super-PAC. It’s becoming clearer, though, that Trump, still dominating the polls and the headlines as the Republican front-runner, could well pose an existential threat to the Grand Old Party (or at least its establishment, including the Bush campaign). But the fundamental problem for the Rs is not Trump; it’s Republican voters.

Trump is a brash and arrogant celebrity who is well skilled in pushing buttons, belittling foes, uttering outrageous remarks, causing a ruckus, and drawing attention to one thing: himself. He’s a smart marketer and a brilliant self-promoter. His name recognition is over 100 percent. He cooked up a wonderful ready-for-swag tagline: “Make America Great Again.” He’s incredible. He’s yooge. But none of this would matter if there was no demand for his bombastic, anger-fueled, anti-immigrant populism—that is, if Republican voters did not crave a leader who equates undocumented immigrants with rapists and who claims that everyone else in political life is a nincompoop selling out the US of A to the Chinese, the Mexicans, and just about every other government.

The polite way to say this is that Trump’s message is resonating with Republicans. And polls show that his support is not ideological. He’s winning over GOPers across the spectrum, from conservatives to evangelicals to supposedly moderate Rs. His assault on the GOP powers that be (or powers that were) is not the rebellion of one wing against another. (Political commentators are so programmed to view party conflicts as battles between conflicting factions.) Instead, Trump is tapping into a current that runs throughout the various strains of the GOP. It’s a current of frustration, despair, anger, and yearning—a yearning for a time when the United States will not be confronted by difficult economic and national security challenges, and when you will not have to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish.

Republicans are pissed off. (In polls, they express far more dissatisfaction with the nation’s present course than Democrats.) And they believe the nation has been hijacked by President Barack Obama, whose legitimacy most Rs still reject. A recent Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucus participants found that 35 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States. A quarter said they were not sure. (Nine out of ten Democrats said the president was born in the United States.) So nearly 60 percent of Rs believe there is cause to suspect Obama has hornswoggled the nation. Meanwhile, according to another poll, 54 percent of Republican voters say Obama is a Muslim. A third were not sure. Only 14 percent identified the president as a Christian.

These findings—which echo a long string of surveys conducted during the Obama years—would seem to indicate that at least half of the GOP is unhinged and living in its own fact-free and perhaps Fox-fed reality. To top it off, many Republican voters have expected the GOPers in control of Congress to kill Obamacare, shut down the government and slash the budget, prevent Obama from issuing executive orders, and impeach the pretender who inhabits the White House. Oh, and there’s this: Benghazi! So they are mighty ticked off and seriously disappointed. The Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll found that half of GOP caucus-goers said they were unsatisfied with the US government and 38 percent were “mad as hell” at it. Slightly more than half were unsatisfied with Republicans in Congress; a fifth were mad as hell at them.

Given the psychological state of the GOP base, it’s not surprising that the fellow expressing the most outrage on the campaign trail—the guy who sounds like he, too, is mad as hell—has taken the express elevator to the penthouse floor of the polls. After all, he’s the only one in the pack who has confronted Obama on his birthplace. Trump has not renounced his birther ways. He has already made that point for this audience and can move on. (In the past few days, Trump also came close to endorsing another far-right conspiracy theory. He essentially accused Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, of being a security problem because she is married to disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner and presumably shared classified State Department information with this “perv.” For years, conservative conspiracy theorists have claimed Abedin was a Muslim Brotherhood mole within the US government.)

The anti-immigrant, anti-Obama, anti-establishment sentiment that Trump is tapping runs deep within the Republican electorate. Many Republicans clearly see the president as a foreign-born secret Muslim with a clandestine plan to weaken, if not ruin, the United States—remember the death panels—and they have a dark, nearly apocalyptic view of Obama’s America. (My email box of late is full of fundraising notes from right-wing groups claiming Obama is about to confiscate all guns, suspend the Constitution so he can run for a third term, relinquish American sovereignty to the United Nations, and mount a military operation within the United States to subdue any opposition to him.)

If this is your perspective when seeking a presidential candidate who will represent your desires and demands, you are unlikely to be drawn to a politician who wants to gain your vote by presenting a 27-point economic plan or by advocating charter schools. Voters this dissatisfied and this detached from reality will be looking for someone who can vent for them. Trump does that. He also promises quick and simple action to address their concerns: a wall (not  a fence), great trade deals at a snap of the finger, the end of ISIS, you name it. And you just won’t believe how great this country will be after four years of President Trump. A focus group of Trump backers recently conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz found that Trumpites fancied Trump as much for his cut-the-crap manner as for the substance of his remarks.

As a way to counter Obama, the Republicans eagerly courted the tea partiers and other dissatisfied voters. They rode that tiger into the congressional majority in the low-turnout elections of 2010 and 2014. They whipped up the frenzy. (During the Obamacare fight, House Speaker John Boehner hosted a tea party rally on Capitol Hill, during which the crowd shouted, “Nazis, Nazis” when referring to Democrats.) Washington Republicans vowed they would take the country back from Obama for the tea party. They exploited the Obama hatred, but their often effective obstructionism was still not enough to feed the beast that had carried them into power.

Though Trump may beg to differ, Trumpmania is not about Trump. He’s merely supplying the rhetoric and emotion craved by a large chunk of the GOP electorate. That yearning won’t go away. Ben Carson, who in the latest Iowa poll tied for first place with Trump, is pushing a similar message—America is going to hell and the nation needs an outraged outsider to clean up the mess. His tone is kinder and gentler (and musical!). But like Trump, he is mining profound dissatisfaction and promising a national revival. Combine the Trump and Carson electorates at this point, and it’s close to a majority of Republicans.

A Trump-Carson ticket? Maybe not. (But if so, you heard it here first.) The point is, the GOP is overflowing with voters who long for a candidate who echoes their rage and resentment. Whatever happens with Trump in the months ahead, this bloc of voters won’t go away. Neither will their fury. This is the true dilemma for the Republican Party and its pooh-bahs. Trump, the deal-making businessman, is merely responding to market forces. He’s just the supplier. Trump is the drug, and the voters need to score. The demand is what counts.

See:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/gop-doesnt-have-donald-trump-problem

7 ‘Inconvenient Truths’ for Trump About Immigration

For starters, the number of undocumented immigrants, especially Mexicans, has fallen. Trump and his followers don’t want their rage disrupted or redirected to the real causes of economic insecurity: how America’s capitalist system, exemplified by selfish strivers like Trump, has made a growing schism of have-nots and haves.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Stephen Rosenfeld

Emphasis Mine

 Trump and his followers don’t want their rage disrupted or redirected to the real causes of economic insecurity: how America’s capitalist system, exemplified by selfish strivers like Trump, has made a growing schism of have-nots and haves.

What will it take to get a majority of Republicans and an even bigger slice of Donald Trump supporters to reconsider their mistaken beliefs about Mexican immigrants and border enforcement? Though it’s unlikely, one might begin with the facts.

This week, a nationwide survey by Public Policy Polling reported that 51 percent of Republicans—and 63 percent of Trump supporters—would support a constitutional amendment to take U.S. citizenship away from children born in this country to the parents of undocumented immigrants. Their support for this exceptionally punitive measure, which, practically speaking is going nowhere, follows Trump’s ongoing and unapologetic comments that illegal Mexicans are a source of American woes.

Yet, according to academics and other demography experts, what’s been happening in the real world of U.S.-Mexico immigration trends and border enforcement is exactly the opposite from what Trump is bellowing and his flock is nodding their heads to.

The facts are that undocumented Mexican immigration has been going down during all of President Obama’s tenure; it peaked in 2007. Moreover, Trump’s remedy—a new wall—has largely been in place (fences, sensors, drones, patrols). But because his white and aging following grew up in a less diverse America following World War II, it will be hard to dislodge their racist perceptions and xenophobic views.

Here are seven facts that Trump and his flock are ignoring:

1. Undocumented Immigrant Numbers Have Fallen. According to a July report by the Pew Research Center, the total U.S. population of undocumented immigrants in has fallen in recent years and was 11.3 million people in 2014. “The population has remained essentially stable for five years, and currently makes up 3.5 percent of the nation’s population. The number of unauthorized immigrants peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million, when this group was 4 percent of the U.S. population.” In other words, this cannot be called a beckoning and burgeoning crisis.

2. Undocumented Mexicans Have Declined As Well. Pew noted that while Mexicans comprise a little more than half of all undocumented U.S. immigrants (52 percent), their numbers have been declining. “There were 5.9 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2012, down from 6.4 million in 2009,” according to Pew estimates.

Again, Trump is portraying a false boogeyman. Other academic experts who have studied the issue for years, such as academics at Princeton University’s Mexican Migration Project, describe the trend even more starkly. “Net unauthorized migration from Mexico to the U.S. has been zero or negative since 2008,” its research team wrote in the winter 2014 edition of International Migration Review.

“We find that undocumented migration from Mexico reflects U.S. labor demand and access to migrant networks and is little affected by border enforcement,” they explained, citing the underlying economics. “Mass undocumented migration from Mexico appears to have ended because of demographic changes there.”

3. As Mexico Ages, Would-Be Immigrants Shrink. Those demographic changes are a shrinking number of 15 to 24-year-olds in Mexico—the age cohort of the largest cohort of immigrants, the Princeton researchers found. This age group was only 18 percent of the population in 2015, The New York Times reported. That’s down from 22 percent in 2009 and is expected to fall to 16 percent in 2015, it reported. So, here too, is another factor that lessening unauthorized immigration from Mexico—not increasing it.

4. Last Summer’s Border Crisis Doesn’t Change These Trends. In 2014, an estimated 60,000 unaccompanied children from Central American massed at the border, seeking to get into the U.S. and prompting the federal government to set up processing centers—as Republicans criticized Obama for not taking a tougher approach. (They ignored that his administration had deported more migrants than any prior White House.) That refugee crisis was reflected in recent Census data, which has lead some republicans to suggest that a new historic tide of immigrants was beginning.

The Center for Migration Studies asked in a mid-August analysis if there was a surge. It concluded, “it is highly improbable based on: (1) the essentially unchanging patterns of apprehension data in the past few years; (2) the fact that the higher numbers in 2014 and 2015 are within the range of previous random fluctuations in the CPS data; and (3) the likelihood that the numbers for recent years partially reflect the return migration of previous legal residents; and (4) the fact that at least one of the conditions that brought about the significant reductions in unauthorized immigration over the past 15 years – enhanced immigration enforcement – is still in place and in fact has been augmented in recent years.”

5. More States Are Seeing The Undocumented Leave Than Stay. Before following up on the Center for Migration Studies’ last point—that until Obama issued his executive orders suspending some enforcement, his administration was deporting migrants—it’s worth noting that more states have seen undocumented populations fall than rise.

As Pew reported, “From 2009 to 2012, several East Coast states were among those with population increases, whereas several Western states were among those with population decreases. There were seven states overall in which the unauthorized immigrant population increased: Florida, Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Meanwhile, there were 14 states in which the population decreased over the same time period: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. Despite a decline, Nevada has the nation’s largest share (8 percent) of unauthorized immigrants in its state population.”

6. Not A Major Slice Of Job Market. Trump has also blamed unauthorized migrants for taking American jobs. But Pew also reported that “unauthorized immigrants make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force,” saying that in 2012 there were 8.1 million people “either working or looking for work.” These are some of the lowest-paying jobs in America, not wanted by many people. Pew also said 7 percent of K-12 students have an undocumented parent, athough 80 percent of those youths were born here—the cohort that Trump and a majority of Republicans would penalize by revoking their U.S. citizenship.

7. Building A Bigger Wall Is A Big Myth. Trump’s solution to the non-existent migrant crisis is its jingoistic counterpart, building a bigger border wall. But as The Times noted, border enforcement under Obama has expanded—and the U.S. undocumented population has fallen and leveled off. Border personnel doubled since 2004, more than 650 miles of fencing and sensors built, and drone monitoring has been instituted. That’s both reduced illegal immigration, the Times said, while boosting smuggler profits and making the crossing far more dangerous. Moreover, “the rising cost of entry… ensured that those who made it stayed,” it said, citing experts at Princeton’s Mexican Migration Project.

In other words, building a bigger and better wall, as Trump bombastically suggests, would fuel the smuggling economy and ensure that most unauthorized migrants would not periodically return to their native countries, but remain here. It is a stark solution for an imagined problem that recent experience has shown would backfire.

“Mr. trump could blame the browning of America at least in part on the wall,” the Times reported. “In a cheeky bit of counterfactal analysis, the three [Princeton] researchers estimated that the tightening of border enforcement since 1986 actually added 4 million people to the population of immigrants living illegally in the United States in 2010.”

Mistaken Beliefs Versus Stubborn Facts

As that Times report concluded, “Analytical quibbles are unlikely to sway Mr. Trump or his followers.” And a separate Times analysis, by Thomas B. Edsall,explained why.

It’s not just that “a half-century of Republican policies on race and immigration have made the party the home of an often angry and resentful white constituency,” he wrote. It’s also because that Republican constituency “is now politically mobilized in the face of demographic upheaval.” What Edsall is referring to, and traces, is the growth of the U.S. Hispanic population—citizens and non-citizens—over the lifetime of Republicans in Trump’s generation. In short, many aging white Republicans feel threatened by an racially diverse America.

“From 1970 to 2010, the Hispanic population of the United States grew fivefold, from 9.6 million to 50.5 million,” Edsall wrote. “From 2000 to 2010, the number of white children under 18 declined by 4.3 million while the number of Hispanic children grew by 4.8 million. In 2013, white children became a minority, 47.6 percent of students ages 3 to 6.”

This past June, 63 percent of Republicans told Pew’s pollsters that immigrants were a burden. And last October, 52 percent told the Public Religion Research Institute that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.”  These findings confirm that in politics and life, fears and beliefs—however misdirected and mistaken—often reverberate at deeper levels than facts and sensible thinking. Trump and his followers don’t want their rage disrupted or redirected to the real causes of economic insecurity: how America’s capitalist system, exemplified by selfish strivers like Trump, has made a growing schism of have-nots and haves. Instead, it’s easier to falsely blame some of the most powerless people in America—undocumented immigrants—by fingering a fake threat, undocumented Mexicans, and a fake remedy, a bigger wall.

See:http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/7-inconvenient-truths-trump-about-immigration?akid=13445.123424.cOAhx8&rd=1&src=newsletter1041906&t=4