GOP – Page 51 – immigrationcourtside.com

THE LIARS ON THE HILL: Spurred By Trump’s Example, GOP Legislators and Politicos In Washington Have Taken Outright Lying And Knowingly Spreading False Narratives To A New Level

Dave Leonhardt writes in “Opinion Today” at the NYT:

“First, health care: Here’s a giveway about how bad the new Senate health care bill is: Bill Cassidy, one of its authors, keeps trying to sell it by telling untruths.
“The relatively new phenomenon of just ‘up is down’ lying about your bill’s impacts is jarring,” says Loren Adler of the USC-Brookings-Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy.
Most egregiously, Cassidy is claiming that the bill would not ultimately deprive sick people of health insurance. That’s false, as NPR calmly explained when Cassidy said otherwise.
In fact, the bill — known as Graham-Cassidy — would free states to remove insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Without those protections, insurers could price such people out of the market.
If you get cancer (or even have a family history of it) or your child is born with a birth defect — among many, many other health issues — you could find yourself unable to buy insurance. Without insurance, you could be denied crucial treatments. In a tangible way, Graham-Cassidy would harm millions of Americans.
Aviva Aron-Dine and Sarah Kliff have both written good explainers on this issue. As Kliff notes, “There is literally no analysis” to support Cassidy’s claim that the bill would expand the number of insured.
Jimmy Kimmel, the country’s most unexpected health wonk, has urged Cassidy to stop “jamming this horrible bill down our throats.”
Insurers came out against the bill yesterday, joining doctors, hospitals, AARP, patient advocates, multiple governors and others.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders are trying to win the vote of Lisa Murkowski — one of three Republican senators who voted against a previous Obamacare repeal bill, in July — by funneling money to Alaska.
In the least surprising development of all, President Trump is now repeating Cassidy’s falsehoods.
The last word on health care this morning goes to Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan. “Graham-Cassidy is a brazen effort to block any level of government, state or federal, from achieving near-universal coverage,” he writes. “That’s what the debate is about. Everything else is just noise.”

Read Leonhardt’s entire piece with working links to his sources and citations at this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/2017/09/21/opinion-today?nlid=79213886

And Leonhardt is by no means the only one blowing the whistle on the GOP’s latest War on America. Among many others, the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” awarded Senator Cassidy “Three Pinocchios” for his false claims about coverage:

“Regular readers of The Fact Checker know that the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. Cassidy has provided little evidence to support his claim of more coverage, except that innovation would flourish and help bring down costs and expand coverage. That’s certainly possible, but it would be more plausible if his proposal did not slash funding to such an extent.

Kimmel’s claim that 30 million fewer Americans will have insurance may be a high-end estimate. But already, in 2019, CBO calculations suggest at least 15 million fewer Americans would have insurance once the individual and employer mandates are repealed. Much of that decline might be by choice, but Cassidy insists the gap will be filled and then exceeded in 10 years. Unlike Cassidy, no prominent health-care analyst is willing to venture a guess on coverage levels — but the consensus is that his funding formula makes his claim all but impossible to achieve.

Given the lack of coverage estimates by the CBO or other health-care experts, Cassidy’s claim does not quite rise to Four Pinocchios. But it certainly merits a Three.

Three Pinocchios”

Here’s a link to the complete analysis by the Post’s Glenn Kessler:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/09/21/sen-cassidys-rebuttal-to-jimmy-kimmel-more-people-will-have-coverage/

Wow! Three Pinocchios is getting into Trump, Sessions, Miller territory!

PWS

09-21-17

🤥 🤥🤥

NYT OP-ED: “MAINSTREAMING” HATE: How Trump & His Supporters Help Legitimize A Global White Hate Movement!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/opinion/alt-right-white-supremacy-undercover.html

Jessie Singal writes:

Last September, Patrik Hermansson, a 25-year-old graduate student from Sweden, went undercover in the world of the extreme right. Posing as a student writing a thesis about the suppression of right-wing speech, he traveled from London to New York to Charlottesville, Va. — and into the heart of a dangerous movement that is experiencing a profound rejuvenation.

Mr. Hermansson, who was sent undercover by the British anti-racist watchdog group Hope Not Hate, spent months insinuating himself into the alt-right, using his Swedish nationality (many neo-Nazis are obsessed with Sweden because of its “Nordic” heritage) as a way in. It wasn’t always easy. “You want to punch them in the face,” he told me of the people he met undercover. “You want to scream and do whatever — leave. But you can’t do any of those things. You have to sit and smile.”

What he learned while undercover is one part of a shocking, comprehensive new report from Hope Not Hate that sheds light on the strange landscape of the alt-right, the much discussed, little understood and largely anonymous far-right movement that exists mostly online and that has come to national attention in part because of its support for Donald Trump.

As a result of the growing influence of the far-right social-media ecosystem, once-moribund hate groups in both the United States and Europe — groups that mostly existed long before “alt-right” entered the vernacular — are enjoying a striking uptick in recruitment.

This latest wave of potential members is young — teenage and 20-something men (they’re mostly men) appear to be exhibiting interest in far-right ideas in numbers that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. These young men are being radicalized largely through the work of a popular group of new far-right internet personalities whose videos, blog posts and tweets have been consistently nudging the boundaries of acceptable conversation to the right — one of the explicit goals of racist extremists everywhere.

And while “globalist” may be one of the alt-right’s favorite slurs, Hope Not Hate conclusively shows that the alt-right is itself now a global movement with regular interaction among far-right figures from Scotland to Sweden to Seattle.

Mr. Hermansson’s story offers vital insights into these groups’ tactics and their sometimes bizarre practices. During his time undercover, he hung out with heavily armed Holocaust deniers and attended gatherings where extremists drank mead from a traditional Viking horn and prayed to the Norse god Odin. In Charlottesville, he marched alongside hundreds of young neo-Nazis and white supremacists before he was sprayed with Mace by a counterprotester and witnessed the car attack that killed Heather Heyer.

In Britain, Mr. Hermansson attended a private dinner of extremists where Greg Johnson, a reclusive leading American far-right figure who is editor in chief of Counter-Currents Publishing, explained the need to “mainstream this stuff — or, more precisely, we need to bring the mainstream towards us.”

. . . .

“If Mr. Jorjani wasn’t exaggerating to Mr. Hermansson, and he did have a relationship with White House officials, that would certainly be alarming. But even if he was exaggerating, it’s still important to understand how messages like his could travel from the far reaches of the right-wing internet and all the way into — or close to, at least — the White House.

The extreme alt-right are benefiting immensely from the energy being produced by a more moderate — but still far-right — faction known as the “alt-light.”

The alt-light promotes a slightly softer set of messages. Its figures — such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Mike Cernovich — generally frame their work as part of an effort to defend “the West” or “Western culture” against supposed left-liberal dominance, rather than making explicitly racist appeals. Many of them, in fact, have renounced explicit racism and anti-Semitism, though they will creep up to the line of explicitly racist speech, especially when Islam and immigration are concerned.

This apparent moderation partly explains why they tend to have much bigger online audiences than even the most important alt-right figures — and why Hope Not Hate describes them as “less extreme, more dangerous.” Alt-light sites like Breitbart, formerly home to Mr. Yiannopoulos, as well as Prison Planet, where Mr. Watson is editor at large, draw millions of readers and are key nodes in a hyperkinetic network that is endlessly broadcasting viral-friendly far-right news, rumors and incitement.

Fluent in the language of online irony and absurdism, and adept at producing successful memes, alt-lighters have pulled off something remarkable: They’ve made far-right ideas hip to a subset of young people, and framed themselves as society’s forgotten underdogs. The alt-light provides its audience easy scapegoats for their social, economic and sexual frustrations: liberals and feminists and migrants and, of course, globalists.

The alt-light’s dedicated fan base runs into the millions. Mr. Watson has more than a million YouTube followers, for example, while Mr. Yiannopoulos has more than 2.3 million on Facebook. If even a tiny fraction of this base is drafted toward more extreme far-right politics, that would represent a significant influx into hate groups.

According to researchers, the key to hooking new recruits into any movement, and to getting them increasingly involved over time, is to simply give them activities to participate in. This often precedes any deep ideological commitment on the recruits’ part and, especially early on, is more about offering them a sense of meaning and community than anything else.

Intentionally or not, the far right has deftly applied these insights to the online world. Viewed through the filters of alt-light outlets like Breitbart and Prison Planet, or through Twitter feeds like Mr. Watson’s, the world is a horror show of crimes by migrants, leftist censorship and attacks on common sense. And the best, easiest way to fight back is through social media.

The newly initiated are offered many opportunities to participate directly. A teenager in a suburban basement can join a coordinated global effort to spread misinformation about Emmanuel Macron, France’s centrist president, in the hopes of helping far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Anyone who wants to do so can help spread the word about supposed mainstream media censorship of the Muslim “crime wave” the far right says is ravaging Europe.

These efforts — a click, a retweet, a YouTube comment — come to feel like important parts of an epochal struggle. The far right, once hemmed in by its own parochialism, has manufactured a worldwide online battlefield anyone with internet access can step into.

And if you’re one of those newcomers happily playing the part of infantryman in the “meme wars” that rage daily, maybe, along the way, one of your new online Twitter buddies will say to you, “Milo’s O.K., but have you checked out this guy Greg Johnson?” Or maybe they’ll invite you to a closed online forum where ideas about how to protect Europe from Muslim migrants are discussed a bit more, well, frankly. Maybe, if you’re really lucky, you’ll eventually discover a whole new political movement to join.

All of which can explain why members of the hard-core alt-right are watching the explosive success of their more moderate counterparts with open glee, unable to believe their good luck. “I’m just fighting less and less opposition to our sorts of ideas when they’re spoken,” Mr. Johnson, the Counter-Currents editor, told Mr. Hermansson. His optimism, unfortunately, appears to be well founded.”

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Read the entire shocking article at the link!

Think that a return of Naziism is impossible in our lifetimes? Not if these evil dudes have anything to say about it, And, they well might. That’s due in large part to the GOP’s acceptance of Trump, his inappropriate hate speech, and his pandering to the worst undercurrents in American politics and society which has assisted the mainstreaming of hate and racism as a legitimate political and philosophical stance! Shrugging it off as “it’s just Donald being Donald” or even applauding his willingness to be “politically incorrect” is only making things worse.

And, if some of this sounds familiar, it should. It’s pretty much the same false narratives that guys like Trump, Sessions, Miller, and Bannon have been spreading: migrants and Latinos are drug peddlers, rapists, and criminals who endanger American communities; migrants steal jobs from Americans; Muslims and refugees are terrorists and even those who aren’t are a drag on our society; multiculturalism weakens the “homeland,” laws protect Muslims and gays but not (white, straight) Christians, etc.

PWS

09-20-17

WASHPOST: Voter Fraud Is Not a Threat, But Kris Kobach is Both A Fraud & A Threat To Our Democracy!

The Editorial Board writes:

“Aha, says Mr. Kobach, writing at Breitbart, the right-wing website, “now there’s proof” of fraud: “It seems that they never were bona fide residents of the State.”

In fact, when New Hampshire Public Radio examined the data earlier this year, it found that more than two-thirds of 5,900 day-of-election registrants who had out-of-state driver’s licenses lived in college towns, indicating most were students voting perfectly legally. Again, on most of the state’s biggest residential campuses, a majority of students — usually a sizable majority — are from out of state. That’s true at the University of New Hampshire, Dartmouth College, Keene State College, Franklin Pierce University and others.

It’s also true at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., where on Tuesday Mr. Kobach attempted to defend his baseless claim at a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Under fire for his tendentious claims, which he used to cast doubt on the narrow victories in New Hampshire of Hillary Clinton and now-Sen. Maggie Hassan, both Democrats, he said: “Until further research is done, we will never know the answer regarding the legitimacy of this particular election.”

That’s Mr. Kobach at his most insidious, using innuendo, but never actual evidence, to impugn and subvert American democracy.”

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Kobach is a long-standing racist, White Nationalist, and xenophobe whose mission is to promote a primarily anti-Hispanic agenda that includes suppressing the votes not only of Hispanics but of other minorities and the poor because he and his cronies deem them to be “unsuitable” for the franchise. What greater proof of unsuitability can there be than that many of the foregoing are thought to vote for Democrats.

Kobach is out to insure that a minority of White Nationalists and their GOP “fellow travelers” (which would be virtually every other GOP pol and voter who consistently refuse to stand up and expose Kobach’s charade) maintain control over the rest of us in the majority. And no lie, fabrication, or misrepresentation is too low for him to go.

But, in the end, it’s the GOP electorate (particularly in Kansas), President Trump, and the “establishment” GOP pols (like Mitt Romney and Mike Pence) who have enabled this toxic anti-American dude. The rest of us need to come up with a strategy to “retire” Kobach to the fringes of alt-right “fake radio” where he belongs. He certainly is totally undeserving of a voice on the national political scene.

PWS

09-18-17

MIGRANTS ARE THE HOPE FOR REVIVING MANY SMALLER MIDWESTERN CITIES — TRUMP/SESSIONS “GONZO” ENFORCEMENT IS THE THREAT! — “In light of Trump’s policies, anything that hurts cities is bad for the Midwest, because we have a lot of cities back on their heels (after) population loss!”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/immigration/ct-midwest-immigrant-populations-met-20170918-story.html#nws=true

Marwa Eltagouri Reoorts for the Chicago Tribune:

“Like most Midwestern cities, this one is losing its native population. It’s becoming less appealing to the people born and raised there, who have their sights set on warmer states in the South and West.

But as locals move out, immigrants are moving in.

Rockford has manufacturing and aerospace jobs, and help-wanted fliers are taped inside the windows of storefronts. It’s a short drive from Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago. Housing is affordable. There are Buddhist temples and a mosque, and tight-knit immigrant communities that praise Rockford to friends and families overseas who are looking to settle in America.

For these reasons, among others, the city’s immigrant population grew by 64 percent from 2000 to 2015, according to U.S. Census data, helping to mitigate a net population loss of about 10,000 people between 2010 and 2016.

Rockford is emblematic of a larger trend that’s happening at a time when the country is torn over the issue of immigration. In more than 40 Midwestern cities, immigrants are a lifeline, bucking the pattern of population loss and revitalizing an aging workforce. In the last 15 years, immigrants accounted for 37 percent of the growth of Midwestern metropolitan areas — defined as a city and its surrounding suburbs. That’s a significant contribution for a region that has experienced the slowest growth in the nation.

In larger cities like Chicago, population loss is greater and the influx of immigrants isn’t having the same impact as in smaller Midwestern cities. Chicago and its suburbs lost 19,570 residents in 2016 — the most of any major city in the country.

Immigrants tend to settle in ethnic neighborhoods in larger cities, and have a more difficult time assimilating. Demographers predict that immigrants will likely keep fueling the populations of quieter, midsize cities like Rockford, where some say it’s easier to adjust to American life.

“I think in Rockford, you can be part of America,” said Sunil Puri, a Rockford businessman who moved there from India in the 1970s. “The middle class, in the middle part of the country, in Midwestern America.”

For many Midwestern cities with shrinking populations, immigration is a lifeline

Immigrants talk about resettling in Rockford, where the immigrant population grew by 64 percent from 2000 to 2015, according to U.S. Census data. “Rockford – it’s a great place for a refugee to start,” said Ahmed Muhammed, who moved to Rockford from Iraq in 2010. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
Marwa EltagouriContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune

Like most Midwestern cities, this one is losing its native population. It’s becoming less appealing to the people born and raised there, who have their sights set on warmer states in the South and West.

But as locals move out, immigrants are moving in.

Immigrants can’t fully make up for population losses across the Midwest communities, but without them, cities and towns would be far worse off, demographers say.

The number of people born in the U.S. has declined since 2000 in about one-third of Midwestern metropolitan areas, according to a report compiled by Chicago demographer Rob Paral in May for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Another third of the cities have grown slowly — by less than 7 percent while the nation as a whole grew by 14 percent during that same time.

While immigrants made up 7.8 percent of Midwestern metropolitan areas in 2000, that number rose to 9.7 percent by 2015. The areas with the most foreign born people continue to be traditional gateway cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit. But in areas less-known for their immigrant communities, like Rockford, Iowa City, Bloomington, Ind., Wichita, Kan., Lincoln, Neb., and Grand Rapids, Mich., immigrants are starting to make up nearly 10 percent of the population.

In towns large and small across Indiana and Wisconsin, the trend is noticeable, according to people surveyed by the Tribune. They say their neighborhoods are diversifying, and they can count a number of newer, immigrant-owned restaurants or businesses they’ve visited. In Rockford, most residents believe the city to be welcoming to immigrants, and say instances of discrimination are generally rare. They also say they’ve noticed an effect on the economy.

“From an economic standpoint, we’re seeing the impact the immigrant population has on our city,” said Mayor Tom McNamara. “It’s pretty dramatic. Foreign-born residents are starting businesses at a more frequent rate.”

Rockford immigrants
Immigrants from several countries who’ve recently made Rockford their home gather at Catholic Charities of Rockford on Aug. 24, 2017. From left are: Girom Gebreslessie, a former refugee from Eritrea; Lusi Ntamuheza, a former refugee from Burundi; Thang Khen Mung, a former refugee from Burma; and Tshela Annie Mwambuyi, a former refugee from Congo. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Still, Rockford’s home county, Winnebago, voted for President Donald Trump, who promised to reduce illegal immigration and has proposed policies since taking office to do so. Last month, Trump embraced legislation that would dramatically reduce legal immigration and shift toward a system that prioritizes merit and skills over family ties.

Because foreign-born people are a key component of Midwestern cities, Paral said, policies that curtail immigration put their population growth at risk.

“In light of Trump’s policies, anything that hurts cities is bad for the Midwest, because we have a lot of cities back on their heels (after) population loss,” Paral said.”

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Read the rest of the story at the link.

Wow! Just think how great America could become if we had an Administration that ditched the White Nationalist, racist, xenophobic agenda and instead worked to develop a sane immigration policy that actually advanced our national interests? That would include legalization, significantly expanded opportunities for legal immigration (and not just for English-speaking PHDs — forget the xenophobic, White Nationalist “RAISE Act” built on the premise that immigraton is bad and has to be reduced or “offset” – hogwash!), more enforcement of wage and hour laws, and concentrating immigraton enforcement resources on “bad guys” rather than folks who are here to hep us prosper and move forward.

Also, what would it be like to have an electorate where more folks voted their own and their country’s best interests, instead of voting their biases, fears, and erroneous beliefs (like, perhaps undocumented migrants should get in a nonexistent “line,” or that immigration is bad for American workers, or that migrants don’t want to assimilate and be part of the community).

Our daughter Anna and her family live just over the state line from Rockford in Beloit, WI. Migrants of all types are helping to revive what had been a “down and out” former manufacturing center. In other words, they are an important part of the “Beloit Proud” movement that is making Beloit a better place to live.

The Trump Administration and in particular “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions are getting in the way of progress. Pretty ironic for an Administration that claims to want to reduce government regulation and intrusions on American businesses and communities, while actually building an expensive and counterproductive internal police force in the guise of immigration enforcement.

PWS

09-18-17

CHILD PREZ REVERTS TO FORM — Underscores Unfitness For Office By Throwing Spitballs At Hillary!

After a short spell during which Trump unexpectedly demonstrated something resembling Presidential qualities by cutting a budget deal with the Dems and showing an openness to working with Dems and responsible Repubs on a legislative solution for DACA, our “6-Year-Old-In-Chief” let his lack of Presidential qualities hang out again by “re-tweeting” a fake video of him hitting Hillary in the back with a golf ball. Trump is an embarrassment to America.

Here’s the CNN report from Jeremy Diamond:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/17/politics/trump-tweet-clinton/index.html

“(CNN)President Donald Trump retweeted an edited video Sunday morning that showed him swinging a golf club and appearing to hit his former presidential campaign rival Hillary Clinton with a golf ball.

The animated GIF image Trump retweeted spliced together footage of Trump taking a swing on a golf course with footage of Clinton tripping and falling as she boarded a plane in 2011 as secretary of state. The footage is edited to make it appear as though Clinton is hit in the back with a golf ball before her fall.

The tweet revealed a President still reverting to his old social media habits, namely, those likely to earn him quick criticism, less than two months after retired Gen. John Kelly took over as White House chief of staff.

While Kelly has not sought to stop Trump from tweeting, he has encouraged the President to allow him to vet the tweets before posting them — a request Trump has sometimes acquiesced to.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday about the President’s tweet and whether Kelly was aware of it.

A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton declined to comment on the tweet.

Former Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub, who repeatedly criticized the administration about potential conflicts of interest before resigning in July, slammed Trump for the retweet and said he reported it to Twitter for violating the social media platform’s rules of conduct.

“The President of the United States just retweeted a video vignette that imagines him assaulting his political rival. The man is unfit,” tweeted Shaub, who joined the ethics office as a staff attorney early during the George W. Bush administration and was appointed as the office’s director by President Barack Obama.

The tweet, which came as Trump prepares to head to New York for a critical round of powerhouse diplomacy with world leaders at the United Nations, followed a week during which Clinton reemerged in the spotlight as she promoted her new book, “What Happened,” about the 2016 campaign, reviving her fiercest criticisms of Trump and his supporters and reigniting the debate about her stunning, unanticipated loss.

Trump slammed Clinton over her new book earlier this week too, tweeting that she “blames everybody (and every thing) but herself for her election loss.”

Trump’s Sunday morning Twitter post was one of more than a half-dozen supporters’ tweets the President retweeted Sunday before 8:30 a.m.

Those other tweets included an image predicting Trump would win every state for reelection in 2020, another showing Trump hauling US companies that have outsourced manufacturing abroad and a tweet claiming that “only true Americans can see that president Trump is making America great.”

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Read the complete report at the link.

The Emperor never had any clothes (common sense, intelligence, or decency) to begin with! A sad commentary on those who voted for this clown!🤡

We’re all “living under the Big Top!”🎪🤹‍♂️

PWS

09-16-17

CAL LAWMAKERS APPROVE BILL TO PROTECT MIGRANT RESIDENTS! Gov. Brown Expected To Sign Into Law!

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-sanctuary-state-bill-20170916-story.html

Jazmine Ulloa reports for the LA Times:

“California lawmakers on Saturday passed a “sanctuary state” bill to protect immigrants without legal residency in the U.S., part of a broader push by Democrats to counter expanded deportation orders under the Trump administration.

The legislation by Sen. Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), the most far-reaching of its kind in the country, would limit state and local law enforcement communication with federal immigration authorities, and prevent officers from questioning and holding people on immigration violations.

After passionate debate in both houses of the Legislature, staunch opposition from Republican sheriffs and threats from Trump administration officials against sanctuary cities, Senate Bill 54 was approved Saturday with a 27-11 vote along party lines. But the bill sent to Gov. Jerry Brown drastically scaled back the version first introduced, the result of tough negotiations between Brown and De León in the final weeks of the legislative session.

On the Senate floor minutes before 2 a.m. on Saturday, De León said the changes were reasonable, and reflected a powerful compromise between law enforcement officials and advocates.

“These amendments do not mean to erode the core mission of this measure, which is to protect hardworking families that have contributed greatly to our culture and the economy,” he said. “This is a measure that reflects the values of who we are as a great state.”

It’s a wrap for the California Legislature for 2017. Here’s what lawmakers accomplished
Officially dubbed the “California Values Act,” the legislation initially would have prohibited state and local law enforcement agencies from using any resources to hold, question or share information about people with federal immigration agents, unless they had violent or serious criminal convictions.

After talks with Brown, amendments to the bill made this week would allow federal immigration authorities to keep working with state corrections officials and to continue entering county jails to question immigrants. The legislation would also permit police and sheriffs to share information and transfer people to immigration authorities if they have been convicted of one or more crimes from a list of 800 outlined in a previous law, the California Trust Act.

Some immigrant rights advocates who were previously disappointed with the list of offenses under the Trust Act, were dismayed to see the same exceptions applied in the so-called sanctuary state bill. The list includes many violent and serious crimes, as well as some nonviolent charges and “wobblers,” offenses that can be charged as a felony or misdemeanor, which advocates said has the potential to ensnare people who do not pose a danger to the public.

But immigrant rights groups did not withdraw their support for Senate Bill 54 and also won some concessions. Under the additions to the bill, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would have to develop new standards to protect people held on immigration violations, and to allow immigrant inmates to receive credits toward their sentences serviced if they undergo rehabilitation and educational programs while incarcerated.”

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Read the full article at the link.

While termed a “Sanctuary State” law, I think that is a misnomer. I’d call it more of a “Smart Immigration Enforcement” law.

The bill provides for a wide scope of cooperation, access, and information sharing aimed at getting dangerous migrants off the streets. At the same time, the bill does limit ICE’s notorious “bait and switch” tactic.

That’s when ICE puts out lots of hyperbole about “removing criminals” and “making communities safer,” while actually using state authorities to assist them in “sacking up” lots of so-called “collaterals” — generally law abiding productive members of the community who are among the millions residing in the United States without status. It’s the latter rather random use of Federal Immigration Enforcement authority that actually hurts communities, sows unnecessary fear, wastes resources, and makes communities less safe for everyone, regardless of status.

It appears that Gov. Brown took a proactive role in achieving this balance, since Republicans evidently were more anxious to pontificate than negotiate. Also, if, Trump and Sessions were truly interested in making America safer, it seems like negotiating deals with the locals that addressed the common need to remove criminals without creating unnecessary barriers between the police and otherwise law abiding members of the community without status would have made more sense than threats and public shaming. It’s also significant that although they had reservations about the compromise version, leaders of the immigrant community strongly supported the revised bill.

I’m sure that this new law will quickly end up in court.

PWS

09-16-17

TRUMP SPREADS “FALSE GOSPEL” WHILE IGNORING REAL THREAT “RIGHT” IN FRONT OF HIM!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/opinions/trump-call-white-supremacists-losers-opinion-obeidallah/index.h

Dean Obeidallah writes on CNN:

“As part of the Trump administration’s extreme vetting, they are now examining the social media accounts of people applying for visas to see if they have ties to ISIS-related groups. Well, they must do the same to determine if a person seeking to enter our country has any ties to white-supremacist or neo-Nazi organizations in their home countries.

No one wants anyone with ties to ISIS allowed in the United States. We must also guard against allowing those with ties to dangerous white supremacist groups from setting foot on our soil. They, too, are a potential threat to the people of our nation.
This sick ideology is not just limited to America, as we saw in January in Canada when a young white man described as an “ultra-nationalist white supremacist” walked into a Quebec mosque and shot and killed six Canadian Muslims as they prayed.

And after Charlottesville, white nationalist groups in various European nations cheered the attack by the man who killed Heather Heyer. Do you really want people with those views granted visas to visit our country?

Although, to be blunt, the greatest threat likely comes from white supremacists already within our own borders.

If you think Charlottesville is the only deadly white supremacist terrorist attack in recent times, you haven’t been paying attention.

In May, we saw a self-professed white supremacist in Portland, Oregon, stab two people to death on a train after they stood up to his anti-Muslim tirade directed at a young Muslim-American woman. In March, a 28-year-old white man who was a reader of white supremacist websites traveled to New York for the sole purpose of killing African-Americans. He killed one black man before being arrested and charged with terrorism by the Manhattan district attorney.

In December, another white supremacist was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting a domestic terrorist attack involving a radioactive device that he planned to kill Muslims with in New York state.

All of these domestic terrorist attacks prove that it’s time that Trump take the deadly threat of white supremacists as seriously as the threat that ISIS poses. And one big step he can take — in addition to enacting policies and allocating resources to fight their hateful ideology — is making it clear on Twitter that he views white supremacists as “losers.” The lives of Americans depend on it.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

Trump never speaks to or deals with the “real” America: the diverse, multicultural, multitalented, multiracial, ecumenical America where the majority of us live. Not surprising, perhaps, considering that this is the America that by and large didn’t vote for him. Yet, it’s also the “majority America” that a much less diverse minority of Americans elected him to govern.

No, instead Trump chooses carefully orchestrated “campaign-style rallies” where he speaks to crowds of “True Believers:” nearly all white folks wearing red baseball caps, waving American flags, and chanting inane nationalist slogans like “build the wall” and cheering wildly as Trump does things like heap praise upon the racist, scofflaw, hate-monger “Racist Joe.” Whipping up destructive and divisive passions while spreading a false narrative praising the myth of the “Great White America” is a “clear and present danger” to our national security and our national values.

Meanwhile, the Administration doubles down on the contrived message that we should fear visa holders and exhaustively vetted refugees from a few Muslim countries. When will those charged with protecting us turn their attention to the real security threats among the far right and how their own ill-conceived actions and inflammatory words actually increase the danger to all of us?

PWS

09-16-17

BRET STEPHENS IN NYT: Right Finally Getting The Trump They Deserve!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/opinion/trump-conservatives-democrats-daca.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region%C2%AEion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

Stephens writes:

“Who are the “cuckservatives” now?

I use the epithet — “cuck” is short for cuckold — since it’s the one Trump’s most vociferous supporters hurled at mainstream Republicans they accused of caving in to the moral bullying of liberals, especially on the subjects of race and immigration.

But now it’s the president who is doing exactly that, making the case for DACA beneficiaries in terms his base most condemns: as “good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military” and who don’t deserve to be thrown out of the country simply because their parents brought them to the United States as children. It’s the kind of thing Nancy Pelosi — or, worse, John McCain — might say.

It’s also the kind of thing that could make for a successful presidency, if only Trump could follow his pragmatic instinct, banish his inner Steve Bannon and shelve the worst promises of his candidacy, as he already has with his threats to exit NATO.

Next steps could include pairing an infrastructure bill with tax reform, eliminating budget sequestration and the debt ceiling, restoring funding to the State Department and cutting it to the United Nations, and saving the nuclear power industry through deregulation and federal subsidies — in the name of combating climate change.

But Trump’s move toward the Democrats on DACA — just as his earlier move toward them on the debt ceiling — isn’t about pragmatism. It’s not even about the plasticity of his convictions.

It’s about his addiction to betrayal, his contempt for those who bend their knee to him, his disdain for “losers” (especially when they’re on his side) and his desperate need to be admired by those who despise him most simply because they have the wit to see through him. This is a presidency whose defining feature isn’t ideology, much less policy. It’s neurosis.

In other words, there is no “pivot” at work in the presidency, in the mold of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s leftward turn during his governorship of California. There’s a mood swing.

That might comfort the Trump true believers who fear their president is abandoning them. It shouldn’t: He feels about as much loyalty toward them and their convictions as he’s felt toward his several wives. Remember that, as recently as 2012, he denounced Mitt Romney for an excessively harsh attitude toward immigrants, calling the Massachusetts governor’s policy of self-deportation “crazy” and a turnoff to “everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”

All of this is fun, since it’s always delightful to see blowhards and bigots get their comeuppance at the hands of their idol. The ideologues of the right are left to make do with their jester and his antics. I hope they have a sense of humor about it.

But there’s also a lesson for conservatives who mistook Trump’s bluster for seriousness. Not least among the conservative “Never Trump” objections to the candidate is that he would be a disaster to the Republican Party — not just because his beliefs, such as they were, were anathema to the party’s best traditions, but because at heart he was a destructive opportunist with no core convictions beyond his own immediate advantage.

The president’s newfound good sense on DACA is good news for the country, provided it lasts. Nobody should count on it whipping any sense into those conservatives who fell for him, also known as cucks.”

***********************************

Read Stephens’s full column at the link.

Stephens chooses to be a bozo on climate change (controversy ups readership, I suppose), but he sure does understand the evil dynamics of Donald Trump. Believe in nothing, be loyal to nobody, but require absolute belief and loyalty from others. That’s why Trump is such a danger to our country and to our national security. He doesn’t believe in the Constitution, humane values, democracy, or the free world for that matter. He is his own “Cult of Personality” and his erratic self-centered behavior certainly is reminiscent of guys like Mao (although to be fair, The Donald hasn’t ordered the liquidation of his “enemies” — just public humiliation, dissing, twitter shaming, threats of political retaliation, and occasionally calling for baseless criminal prosecutions).

Any time overhyped Neo-Fascists like Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Steve King, and Sean Hannity as well as ideologue White Nationalists like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon are up in arms, you know that the country is moving in the correct (can’t use the term “right” here) direction.

PWS

09-16-17

THE REAL HUMAN COSTS — AND THE COSTS TO OUR HUMAN VALUES & NATIONAL CONSCIENCE — OF TRUMP’S BOGUS REFUGEE BAN!

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/somali-refugees-american-dream-hold-trump-ban-debated-49866974

Tom Odula reports for the AP from Nairobi, Kenya, where the unnecessary human suffering caused by the Trump Administration is a daily reminder of how our national soul was diminished by Trump’s election:

“Somali refugee Asho Manangara Ibrahim has a dream. She wants to educate herself and her children in the United States. For 10 years she went through a rigorous process of interviews and screening and finally she was cleared to travel to the United States.

But Ibrahim’s hopes have been dashed. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to maintain its restrictive policy on refugees. The court agreed to an administration request to block a lower court ruling that would have eased the ban on refugees and allowed up to 24,000 refugees to enter the country before the end of October.

Ibrahim, a 30-year-old mother of four children, escaped war-torn Somalia in 2007 after three men forced their way into her house and assaulted her.

She trekked for three days with her 2-year-old daughter to reach the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp in neighboring Kenya where she stayed for three years. She was relocated to Kakuma refugee camp where she learned that she could apply to be resettled in a third country. By the time she was cleared to travel to the U.S. on July 19, she had three other children from a second marriage.

After years of patiently waiting to be resettled, the news that she may not be allowed into the U.S. because of the Trump administration restrictions has devastated her.

“I feel shocked. I forget things now,” she told The Associated Press last month through an interpreter.

She and her three daughters and small son pass their days in a makeshift home of mud walls, sticks and battered sheets. The children sit on woven plastic rugs covering a cracked-earth floor amid the barest of possessions: plastic water jugs, metal basins, a simple stove.

Ibrahim is one of about 500 people among the hundreds of thousands in Kenyan refugee camps who are ready for resettlement in the U.S. but are now stranded, said Jennifer Sime, senior vice president with the International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps resettlements.

The fear and rhetoric that refugees are a security threat or terrorists looking to infiltrate the U.S. are unfounded, Sime said.

“The probability of dying from an act of terrorism committed by a refugee is unbelievably low. Refugees have not perpetrated terrorist acts,” she said. The chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee is one in 3.64 billion a year, she added, citing 2016 figures from the Cato Institute.

Globally about 45,000 refugees have been approved for resettlement in the U.S. and 2,000 are ready to board planes but this has been put on hold, Sime said. Many gave away their hard-earned belongings to start a new life, she said.

Tuesday’s court order was not the last word on the travel policy that President Donald Trump rolled out in January. The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to hear arguments on Oct. 10 on the legality of the bans on refugees anywhere in the world and on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries.

It’s unclear, though, what will be left for the court to decide. The 90-day travel ban lapses in late September and the 120-day refugee ban will expire a month later.

The Trump administration has yet to say whether it will seek to renew the bans, make them permanent or expand the travel ban to other countries.

For now Ibrahim, like many in limbo, must wait to see if her American dream of education for her family will become a reality.”

***************************************

Maybe, moral leadership doesn’t end wars or prevent famine. But, we have graphically demonstrated over the past four decades the inability to solve problems by use of military force. Moral leadership is still a useful thing to have. And, by electing Trump and his intellectually shallow, unqualified, amoral minions we have diminished ourselves in the world’s eyes!

PWS

09-15-17

WHAT DO YOU CALL SOMEONE WHO ENJOYS INFLICTING GRATUITOUS PAIN AND SUFFERING ON VULNERABLE PEOPLE? — Jeff Sessions

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/category/the-daily-202/?utm_term=.c4e82aca4268&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

James Hohmann writes in then”Daily 202″ in the Washington Post:

“THE BIG IDEA: Photographers caught a giddy Jeff Sessions cracking a satisfied smile last week as he prepared to announce that 690,000 undocumented immigrants who had been brought into the United States as minors would no longer be shielded from deportation. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “is being rescinded,” the attorney general declared in the first line of his statement. “There is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws. … Failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and even terrorism. … The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.” Fact checkers called these and other claims Sessions made about the immigrants known as “dreamers” dubious or outright false. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t take questions afterward. Regardless, the speech was widely covered as a triumph for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and a sign that he was out of President Trump’s doghouse. Not only did Sessions get the outcome he wanted; he also got to deliver the news from the Justice Department briefing room. Trump’s DACA decision last week seemed to validate Sessions’s decision to slog on through the summer even after being frozen out of the inner circle. From interviews to tweets, Trump repeatedly attacked his attorney general throughout July as “weak” and “beleaguered.” The main reason Sessions chose to put up with indignities that might cause most people to quit was because he believed he could make a difference on immigration policy. That has always been his signature issue and animated his two decades in the Senate.

— But it took less than 10 days for Trump to once again undercut Sessions. The president on Thursday signaled his embrace of granting permanent legal status to these “dreamers” as part of a deal with Democrats that he said is close to being finalized. He also acknowledged that he’s not going to make a deal to save DACA contingent on getting funding for the wall he wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Discussing the exact same group of people that Sessions painted with such a sinister brush one week earlier, Trump tweeted yesterday: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!” Trump tweeted yesterday. “They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own — brought in by parents at young age.”

**************************************

Read the rest of Hohmann’s always-entertaining column at the above link.

Quite simply, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions is a poor excuse for a human being and a disgrace to the U.S. Department of Justice. What kind of person is motivated by a desire to destroy our society by hurting fine American young people and smearing them with lies and innuendo?

But, let’s not forget who empowered his message of hate and fear by appointing him, and who “blew by” his long record of racial problems while silencing the opposition that told truth. And, a special “shout out” should go to those who voted to put this intentionally divisive Administration in office and to the unapologetically racially challenged white GOP voters of Alabama who elected this leftover of the Jim Crow era time and time again.

Jeff Sessions does not represent the values of the majority of Americans. We must get it together at the ballot box to insure that he (and those like him) never again happen to us and to our country!

PWS

09-15-17

“DREAM DEAL” DESCENDS INTO TYPICAL TRUMP CHAOS WITHIN 24 HOURS! — Who REALLY Knows What’s On His Mind?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-border-wall-daca_us_59ba570ee4b0edff971983ee?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Elise Foley and Willa Frej report for HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump gave a series of conflicting statements on Thursday about how he hopes to deal with young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, muddying the waters over whether he will support their bid to gain eventual citizenship and whether he will demand a border wall in exchange.

Trump’s comments, made both to reporters and on Twitter, came after leading Democrats in Congress said they had reached an informal deal with the president on legislation to help so-called Dreamers, or undocumented young people who entered the country as children.

Last week, Trump put the fates of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers up in the air by rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted two-year work permits and deportation relief.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Wednesday that they had reached an agreement with Trump to tie measures to grant Dreamers legal status to border security measures, but not to a wall. They said Trump had made clear he would continue to demand a wall, and that they had told him they would oppose it.

Trump denied that a deal had been made, although he initially did not dispute key details of what the Democrats had said. But later, he said Dreamers’ fates would be tied to the construction of a border wall, even if it’s not part of legislation that addresses Dreamers.

“We have to be sure the wall isn’t obstructed, because without the wall, I wouldn’t do anything. … It doesn’t have to be here but they can’t obstruct the wall if it’s in a budget or anything else,” Trump told reporters in Florida, according to a pool report.

He added that he would “only do it if we get extreme security, not only surveillance but everything that goes with surveillance,” Trump said. “If there’s not a wall, we’re doing nothing.”

The president also created more confusion by suggesting that he might not support allowing Dreamers to eventually gain citizenship. That would destroy any hope of a deal with Democrats, who want Trump to support the Dream Act, which would allow undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children to eventually become citizens.

“We’re not looking at citizenship,” he said. “We’re not looking at amnesty. We’re looking at allowing people to stay here.”

That doesn’t necessarily preclude eventually supporting Dream Act-style measures, however. The bill would not grant citizenship immediately; it would allow Dreamers to gain legal status that would make them eligible for eventual citizenship ― so there’s potential that Trump could eventually back such measures and still claim they were not the “amnesty” he opposes.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump said in a series of tweets that any deal on Dreamers would be contingent on “massive border security,” although he didn’t specify that it had to include a wall. He added that the wall is “already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls” and would proceed.”

*************************************************

And, the beat goes on! I knew that sanity couldn’t last long in the “Age of Trump.”

PWS

09-14-17

BREAKING: CAN WE BELIEVE THIS? — NBC Reports That Trump & Dems Cut Deal To Save Dreamers Over Dinner!!!

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/politics/Ryan-Deporting-Young-Immigrants-Not-in-Nations-Interest-444252723.html

Jill Colvin reports:

“President Donald Trump told lawmakers Wednesday that he’s open to signing legislation protecting thousands of young immigrants from deportation even if the bill does not include funding for his promised border wall. But Trump remains committed to building a barrier along the U.S.-Mexican border, even if Democrats say it’s a non-starter.
Trump had dinner with Sen. Chuck Schumer and top Democrat Nancy Pelosi Wednesday night, and they reached a deal on DACA, according to a joint statement by the democrats.
“We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” the statement read.
Trump, who was deeply disappointed by Republicans’ failure to pass a health care overhaul, infuriated many in his party when he reached a three-month deal with Sen. Schumer and House Democratic Leader Pelosi to raise the debt ceiling, keep the government running and speed relief to states affected by recent hurricanes.

Trump ended the program earlier this month and has given Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix before the so-called “Dreamers'” statuses begin to expire.
“We don’t want to forget DACA,” Trump told the members at the meeting. “We want to see if we can do something in a bipartisan fashion so that we can solve the DACA problem and other immigration problems.”
As part of that effort, Trump said he would not insist on tying extending DACA protections to wall funding, as long as a final bill included “some sort of border security,” said Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who attended the meeting.

“He said, ‘We don’t have to have the wall on this bill,'” recalled Cuellar. “He said: ‘We can put that somewhere else, like appropriations or somewhere.’ But that was very significant because a lot of us don’t want to tie DACA and the wall. We’re not going to split the baby on that one. So he himself said, ‘We’re not going to put the wall tied into this.'”
Trump has made a sudden pivot to bipartisanship after months of railing against Democrats as “obstructionist.” He has urged them to join him in overhauling the nation’s tax code, among other priorities.
“More and more we’re trying to work things out together,” Trump explained Wednesday, calling the development a “positive thing” for both parties.

“If you look at some of the greatest legislation ever passed, it was done on a bipartisan manner. And so that’s what we’re going to give a shot,” he said.
The “Kumbaya” moment appeared to extend to the thorny issue of immigration, which has been vexing lawmakers for years. Funding for Trump’s promised wall had been thought to be a major point of contention between Republicans and Democrats as they attempted to forge a deal.
Democrats have been adamant in their opposition to the wall, but both Pelosi and a top White House staffer indicated Tuesday that they were open to a compromise on border security to expedite DACA legislation.

White House legislative director Marc Short said during a breakfast that, while the president remained committed to the wall, funding for it did not necessarily need to be linked directly to the “Dreamers” issue. “I don’t want us to bind ourselves into a construct that makes reaching a conclusion on DACA impossible,” he said.”

*********************************

I have to admit that I’m stunned by this swing of the pendulum. But, I’m pleased and relieved for the great Dreamers if it works. The Devil is often in the details, particularly with immigration.

On this occasion, I’ll have to agree with the President that bipartisan legislation putting the best interests of the country first is a good thing, and a smart way for the President to get credit for some legislative achievements.

We’ll have to see what happens, But, it’s nice to end the day on a more optimistic note.

PWS

09-13-17

UPDATE:

The Devil is indeed in the details! According to this more recent article from Sophie Tatum at CNN (forwarded by my friend and fellow insomniac Nolan Rappaport) the “deal” is far from done and the White House version of the meeting is not the same as the Schumer-Pelosi statement:

“White House press secretary Sarah Sanders immediately pushed back on the idea the wall would be dropped.
“While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to,” Sanders said.
White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short confirmed that the President and Democrats agreed to work to find a legislative fix for DACA, but he called Democrats’ claim of a deal that would exclude wall funding “intentionally misleading.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/chuck-schumer-nancy-pelosi-donald-trump/index.html

Stay tuned!

PWS

09-14-17

DEMS ARE “PIPE DREAMING” IF THEY BELIEVE THAT TRUMP’S SUPPOSEDLY HISTORICALLY LOW POLL NUMBERS WILL ADD UP TO DEM VICTORY AT POLLS — Without Any Charismatic Leader Or Hugely Popular Program, Dems Appear Slated To Wander In The Wilderness Until Trump Destroys The Entire Country!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/13/teflon-trump-democrats-messaging-242607

Edward-Isaac Devore writes in Politico:

“Democrats tried attacking Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. They’ve made the case that he’s ineffective, pointing to his failure to sign a single major piece of legislation into law after eight months in the job. They’ve argued that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that his campaign was in cahoots with Russia.

None of it is working.

Data from a range of focus groups and internal polls in swing states paint a difficult picture for the Democratic Party heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. It suggests that Democrats are naive if they believe Trump’s historically low approval numbers mean a landslide is coming. The party is defending 10 Senate seats in states that Trump won and needs to flip 24 House seats to take control of that chamber.

The research, conducted by private firms and for Democratic campaign arms, is rarely made public but was described to POLITICO in interviews with a dozen top operatives who’ve been analyzing the results coming in.

“If that’s the attitude that’s driving the Democratic Party, we’re going to drive right into the ocean,” said Anson Kaye, a strategist at media firm GMMB who worked on the Obama and Clinton campaigns and is in conversations with potential clients for next year.

Worse news, they worry: Many of the ideas party leaders have latched onto in an attempt to appeal to their lost voters — free college tuition, raising the minimum wage to $15, even Medicare for all — test poorly among voters outside the base. The people in these polls and focus groups tend to see those proposals as empty promises, at best.

Pollsters are shocked by how many voters describe themselves as “exhausted” by the constant chaos surrounding Trump, and they find that there’s strong support for a Congress that provides a check on him rather than voting for his agenda most of the time. But he is still viewed as an outsider shaking up the system, which people in the various surveys say they like, and which Democrats don’t stack up well against.”

*********************************

Read the complete article at the link.

Don’t forget that Trump has seldom “polled well” except among his base. He never really crossed the 50% mark in any credible polls (assuming that any polls were in fact credible, something cast into doubt by the 2016 Election) even on Election Day. But, that hasn’t stopped him from becoming President and won’t necessarily stop him from being a 2-term President.

If nothing else, Trump has proved that a fanatic base, properly distributed across the U.S., can allow him to exploit the peculiarities of the US system to win elections without ever being “the people’s choice.” According to this article, there is little reason to believe that voters will hold either Trump or the GOP accountable for their lackluster performance at governing. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the GOP will wake up the morning after the November 2018 Elections with even bigger majorities in the House and Senate.

PWS

09-13-17

GONZO’S LATEST TARGET: LGBTQ Americans — DO”J” Gratuitously Files “Embarrassing” Brief With Supremes SUPPORTING Homophobia: “politicized bigotry dressed up in inane legalese!”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/09/doj_s_cynical_embarrassing_brief_in_the_supreme_court_s_anti_gay_baker_case.html

Mark Joseph Stern reports in Slate:

“On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Civil Rights Commission, a constitutional challenge to LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws. The DOJ urged the Supreme Court to rule that laws barring businesses from refusing to serve gay couples may violate the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. Its brief is an exercise in cynical dishonesty, one that’s difficult to read as anything less than politicized bigotry dressed up in inane legalese.

. . . .

Even worse, the brief does not explain why homophobia deserves special respect under the law. The Supreme Court has said that homosexuality is immutable, like race. Why, then, should animus toward same-sex couples be treated differently from animus toward interracial couples? And what about religious bigotry? Can a devout baker refuse to sell a cake to an interfaith couple, and can an atheist one say a Christian can’t buy cupcakes for a christening? Can a sexist baker refuse to serve a female customer? What if his misogyny is derived from religion? And why stop at a cake? Shouldn’t the preparation of other foods qualify as expressive conduct, too? Doesn’t every good or service involve some measure of expressive conduct or association that the First Amendment could theoretically protect?

In its brief, the DOJ implicitly raises all of these questions without answering them because it can’t answer them—not honestly, at least. The reality is that the courts cannot, with any logical coherence or consistency, deny civil rights protections to some groups but not others. Either nondiscrimination law are constitutional or they aren’t. The First Amendment does not grant greater rights to homophobic bakers than racist or sexist ones. Plenty of bigoted business owners wish they could assert a constitutional privilege not to associate with specific groups. If the courts open the door to one, they’ll open the door to all. Shopkeepers do not have a special right to turn away gays from their stores.

The brief strives to avoid this problem because it is, at bottom, a political document. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently gave a speech to ADF thanking the organization for its “important work” defending “religious liberty.” Through Sessions, President Trump is discharging his obligation to appease the bigots in his base. The DOJ’s efforts, however, may prove counterproductive. This brief will delight the court’s reactionaries who favor religious supremacy and disdain gay rights. But it can only estrange Kennedy—who notably, has allowed an LGBTQ nondiscrimination policy to trump a First Amendment claim in the past. Kennedy is always eager to protect the “equal dignity” of same-sex couples; the DOJ now seeks to undermine it. The Trump administration might score political points with this brief, but it won’t win enough votes at the court.

One more thing
The Trump administration poses a unique threat to the rule of law. That’s why Slate has stepped up our legal coverage—watchdogging Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department, the Supreme Court, the crackdown on voting rights, and more.”

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Under Sessions, the Department of Justice has become purveyor of racism, bigotry, hate, voter suppression, xenophobia, White Nationalism, homophobia, and some incredibly bad and intellectually dishonest lawyering. Gonzo is a disgrace to his position and an insult to American justice. Liz was right. And let’s not forget how she was treated by the GOP when she tried to speak truth about Sessions in the Senate!

PWS

09-08-17

PETULA DVORAK IN WASHPOST: DISHONEST LEADERS SOW “FALSE FEARS” WHILE IGNORING REAL THREATS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/what-happens-when-a-presidency-runs-on-fakefears-real-fears-are-ignored/2017/09/07/83ead004-93d1-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html

Dvorak writes:

Fake fear is our new leader.

Washington’s new ruling class is not governing with compassion, common sense, measured research, knowledge of history or the future. Theirs is a doctrine of fake fears. And these same people also have a problem with things we should actually be afraid of.

Let me explain.

Fake Fear: The “bad hombres” President Donald Trump talked about during the campaign last year begot this week’s DACA repeal thing. Trump wants us to be afraid of these immigrants, and he’s ready to trash the lives of more than 800,000 Americans looking for a path to legal residency by killing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The truth is that these immigrants, brought here as children by their parents, “have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans of the same age and education level,” according to a report issued last week by the nonpartisan CATO Institute.

Real Fear: Hurricanes. You know them — from Katrina to Harvey to Irma — millions of people and billions of dollars tell you hurricanes devastate lives, cities and industries.

But Trump refuses to fear them. Earlier this year, he proposed a budget that slashed about $667 million for the disaster preparedness programs run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That budget also proposed $6 billion in cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps rebuild homes and hospitals.

The fake fear administration also killed a post-Katrina rule requiring building projects eligible for federal funding to take such measures as elevating structures in flood zones away from the reach of rising water before they get government cash. And they did this just in time for hurricane season.

But hey, the $108 billion in damage and the 1,800 lives lost in Hurricane Katrina must not mean much when it your moral compass is fake fear.

Fake fear: The apparent crime wave that Attorney General Jeff Sessions keeps warning Americans about.

“We have a crime problem,” Sessions said in February. “I wish the rise that we are seeing in crime in America today were some sort of aberration or a blip. My best judgment, having been involved in criminal law enforcement for many years, is that this is a dangerous, permanent trend that places the health and safety of the American people at risk.”

But the facts say otherwise.

This year is on pace to have the second-lowest violent crime rate of any year since 1990, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice this week that analyzed statistics from the nation’s 30 largest cities.

Real fear: Though we’ve seen more and more horrifying videos of civilians being shot by police officers, we still have little comprehensive data that shows how often this happens and how agencies can prevent these tragedies.

“What we really need to know is how many times police shoot people, not just how many of those people die,” David A. Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis who studies police use of force, told The Washington Post earlier this summer.

The Post began compiling this information in 2015, relying on local news, social media and our own reporting.

This is a real fear for real people. This is true whether you’re a black man, such as beloved cafeteria worker Philando Castile, who was doing nothing wrong when he was killed in Minnesota last year by a nervous police officer. And it’s true if you’re a white woman, like nurse Alex Wubbels, who was seen in a viral video last week being roughed up and arrested by a Utah detective for simply doing her job. The fake fear people seem to have little interest in addressing this problem.

The FBI’s weak, self-reporting system that has been the only way to track this was called “embarrassing and ridiculous” by fired FBI director James B. Comey.

Fake fear: Muslims in America. Trump’s attempts at a travel ban, fulfilling his campaign promise of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” have reinforced a growing and misplaced Islamophobia throughout our country. We’ve seen the fake-fear sentiment in workplaces, in small-town councils trying to mess with mosques that have been peaceful and unnoticed for years, and I even saw it one of my sons’ sports teams this summer.

The truth is, from 2008 to 2016, right-wing extremists carried out twice as many terrorist attacks on U.S. soil than Islamist extremists, according to a recent report from The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal.

Real Fear: White supremacists in America. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin that said white supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement.”

They issued this statement just a couple months before the protests in Charlottesville, where an avowed Nazi sympathizer was arrested after a car drove into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. There is no mistaking that was real.

We deserve real care and real concern from our leaders when it comes to real fears. There’s no shortage of them.

Let’s start by calling out #FakeFears when we see them. Washington is full of those these days, too.

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Dvorak succinctly captures what White Nationalist governance and propaganda is all about: fear, loathing, lies. Too cowardly to address real problems because that might offend the “White Nationalist base” that put and keeps them in power.

PWS

09-08-17

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