South Florida Evacuates; Scamvangelists Blame the Gays

The Miami Herald reports that Miami-Dade is considering the first evacuations in over a decade (evacuations of the Florida Keys began this morning - we have a friend who is visiting and now trying to evacuate).  Here are excerpts:

Miami-Dade County plans to order evacuations for Miami Beach and much of the mainland coast in advance of Hurricane Irma’s menacing track toward South Florida.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez said to expect evacuation orders late Wednesday or early Thursday, but emergency officials who report to him are already assuming hundreds of thousands of residents will be asked to leave their homes in the coming days out of fears of historic coastal flooding from Irma.

“This is a powerful storm which poses a serious threat to our area. We will be taking some extraordinary actions to ensure that the residents of Miami-Dade County are safe,” Gimenez said at an afternoon press briefing Tuesday. “I would rather inconvenience our residents on this occasion than suffer any unnecessary loss of life if we are hit by Hurricane Irma.”

The planned instructions to flee the county’s A and B evacuation zones — A covers coastal areas in southern Dade, Key Biscayne and a pocket north of Miami, while B encompasses Brickell Avenue, more inland areas and Miami Beach and other cities along the ocean — represent the most dramatic example of Miami-Dade’s efforts to clear out in advance of a hurricane that reached Category 5 status on Tuesday. Miami-Dade’s schools chief canceled classes Thursday and Friday, and most governments and colleges announced similar shutdown plans for an already shortened holiday week. 

Meanwhile, up until the Trump/Pence regime it was considered socially and politically improper if not reprehensible to openly and loudly announce white supremacist and/or Neo-Nazi views or suggest genocide of certain minority groups. Now, per Der  Trumpenführer, such racists and hate mongers are deemed to include many "fine people."  One group has unfortunately found itself a permissible target for open hatred and condemnation even before the rise of Trump. With much of the Texas coast devastated from Hurricane Harvey and South Florida beginning evacuations in advance of the approach of Hurricane Irma, the scamvangelists are back focusing on their favorite targets of condemnation and hatred: the LGBT community.  As Right Wing Watch reports some of the usual suspects were hard at it:

Right-wing pastor Rick Joyner joined televangelist and End Times prepper pastor Jim Bakker on his television program yesterday, where they declared that Hurricane Harvey was God’s judgment on the city of Houston and used the devastation wrought by the storm to promote Bakker’s line of survival products.

Joyner said that Key West, Florida, had been hit by a hurricane “on the day they’re supposed to have the Day of Decadence parade” and another hurricane hit New Orleans right before it hosted another Day of Decadence festival. “Coincidence? I don’t think so,” he said. “We have to stand up against the perversion of our times and call it what it is.”

Of course, Joyner and Bakker - who did jail time for fraud - are just the tip of the scamvangelist iceberg (anorexic drag queen look a like Ann Coulter has made similar statements).   But, there is irony in their whining: to my way of thinking, if one wants to use their version of a wrathful god who punishes the wicked, perhaps Texas and seemingly now Florida are being punished for having voted for Donald Trump, perhaps the most foul and immoral individual to ever occupy the White House.  Your thoughts on this?  Is it the evangelical Christians who elected Trump rather than the gays who are really responsible for god's purported wrath?

Conservative Pundits Launch Smear Campaign on Special Counsel Mueller

Perhaps expecting the worse results possible from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russiagate and most likely attempts by Der Trumpenführer, conservative pundits and perennial windbag Newt Gingrich have launched a smear campaign against Mueller.  The obvious goal is to discredit Mueller in advance in the eyes of the ignorance embracing core of Trump's supporters who whine about "wake news" and the news media even as they themselves fall for utterly fabricated and untrue stories.  Of course, Trump isn't the only one with much to lose if Mueller confirms collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign and/or that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice.  Every Republican who has been an apologist for Trump or who has turned a blind eye to his illegal and unethical actions is likewise at risk of being held accountable.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the preemptive assault on Mueller.  Here are highlights:

As the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election assembled key staff, several prominent Trump supporters questioned his impartiality, and whether the appointment was necessary at all. Bloomberg first reported on June 1, citing two unnamed people, that Department of Justice fraud chief and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissman would join special counsel Robert Mueller’s so-called “murderer’s row” of prosecutors. And the National Law Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed people familiar with the arrangement, that Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben — who in 2016 argued his 100th case in front of the Supreme Court — would assist Mueller on a part-time basis.

Perhaps the biggest flip-flop among high-profile Trump supporters came from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who changed justifications multiple times for his new opposition to Mueller.

Gingrich said Mueller’s position had been compromised by fired FBI Director James Comey’s admission that he had authorized a friend to pass details of his meetings with Trump to the press in order to justify a special counsel. The next day, he said evidence that Mueller wouldn’t be fair could be found in his new hires’ political donations. Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter jumped on board Sunday, writing that Comey’s acknowledgement that he told Trump he wasn’t personally under investigation was grounds for dismissing Mueller altogether. Radio host and LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham posted a column from the Washington Examiner’s Byron York to her 1.5 million Twitter followers early Monday. York asked five unnamed Washington lawyers if they thought Comey’s reported friendship with Mueller presented a conflict. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting in his capacity as the then-lead of the Russia investigation at the Justice Department, chose Mueller to lead the investigation. The Hill noted Monday that four members of Mueller’s investigative team, each seasoned criminal prosecutors with extensive experience at the Justice Deparment or Washington, D.C. law firms, had donated to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Expect the efforts to discredit Mueller and his team to intensify.  I suspect that the Trump apologists know or strongly suspect that Mueller will find offense committed by Trump and or his campaign. It's amazing how these supposed super patriots are now only too happy to close their eyes to possible treason and/or obstruction of justice.  The GOP has fallen  so far that it is almost unrecognizable. 

Ann Coulter Goes to War with Trump

Not only is Donald Trump facing attacks from Hillary Clinton, but now anorexic drag queen look alike, Ann Coulter has declared war on Trump for his seeming flip-flop on immigration just in time for the launch of Coulter's new book, "In Trump We Trust."  It truly doesn't get anymore delicious in terms of irony!   I have always found Coulter to be a foul hate merchant who happily makes a living sowing hate and discord.  That Trump seemingly pulled the rug out from under her at her book launch is sweet beyond measure.  Talking Points Memo looks at the war fare  (read the entire piece to savor Coulter's twitter rants):  

Liberals may die tonight because there are limited supplies of those injections they give you for acute schadenfreude toxicity. Ann Coulter has been Donald Trump's biggest New York City white nationalist supporter. She's transformed toadying into a militant act. Just today her new book In Trump We Trust was released, a genuflecting, tour de force of leader principle obsequiousness. As many have noted, in the book itself she writes that Trump can do anything, change his position on anything - none of it matters. She and they are that devoted. Everything except shift on immigration.

So today, the very day her book comes out he shambles his way to embracing the Rubio/Bush 'Amnesty' agenda he spent the last year railing against and using as a cudgel to destroy the Republican establishment's favored ones. She even had an opening book party hosted by Breitbart.

Already at the book party, photos snapped by Twitters journos showed a sad visage and perhaps a growing thunder ...

I've been waiting all evening to see whether she's muscle through at least the first day of the book tour without acknowledging Trump had dumped her whole agenda. It seems not.

It seems Coulter will be the Dylan Thomas of Trump Dignity Wraiths. She won't go gently in that good night.

The Real "Conservative" Agenda: "Make America White Again"

While in the past conservative politicians - at least until the rise of Donald Trump - tended to try to hide their blatant racism and use dog whistle messaging instead of putting it in full view.  Now, apparently emboldened by the response that Trump has received to his open message of racial based hatred, Rick Tyler, an independent candidate for Congress, is using billboards that display what the real "conservative" agenda is all about: restoring white privilege and putting those of differing racial groups "in their place."  Hand in glove with this agenda is an effort to push LGBT Americans back into the closet and make us simply invisible.  The images in this post are from Tyler's campaign web site and illustrate future billboards he wants to utilize in his campaign.  Here are excerpts from a Washington Post piece that look at Tyler's openly racist campaign ploys:

An independent candidate for Congress from Tennessee has been swept up in a wave of criticism for his campaign billboard vowing to "Make American White Again."

Rick Tyler, who is running for the 3rd Congressional District in the northeastern part of the state, said he put up the billboard alongside Highway 411 in Polk County to make a point that "the 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Mayberry' America of old was vastly superior to what we are experiencing today."

In a Facebook post Wednesday night, Tyler wrote: "It was an America where doors were left unlocked, violent crime was a mere fraction of today's rate of occurrence, there were no car jackings, home invasions, Islamic Mosques or radical Jihadist sleeper cells."

But the billboard's message, a spin on Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan, has been widely derided as a display of bigotry and racism.

It was taken down Tuesday night, according to ABC affiliate WTVC.

Tyler, a 58-year-old self-described "entrepreneur, pastor and political candidate," ran as an independent in the 2014 Senate race, getting less than half a percentage point of the vote against Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

"There's no room for this type of hateful display in our political discourse," Ryan Haynes, the Tennessee Republican Party chairman, told WRCB in a statement. "Racism should be rejected in all its heinous forms in the Third Congressional District and around the country."

Note two things: (i) that Tyler identifies as a pastor, and (ii) the disingenuous condemnation by GOP party chair.  Tyler is merely saying openly what the GOP has been messaging for years.  Here's more from Tyler's campaign website:

The Make America White Again billboard advertisement will cut to the very core and marrow of what plagues us as a nation. As Anne Coulter so effectively elucidates in her book, Adios America, the overhaul of America’s immigration law in the 1960’s has placed us on an inevitable course of demise and destruction. Yes…the cunning globalist/Marxist social engineers have succeeded in destroying that great bulwark against statist tyranny…the white American super majority. Without its expedited restoration little hope remains for the nation as a whole.

Ann Coulter: Deal With Border the Way Israel Deals with Hamas

If one wants a good glimpse at the ugly racism that is now a pillar of Republican Party policy look no farther than the remarks of drag queen look-a-like Ann Coulter who would have America deal with the supposed "border crisis" by treating the undocumented children the way that "Netanyahu deals with Hamas."  With hundreds of Palestinian children being murdered by Israeli forces, the demand is horrifying.  But then again, to Coulter and much of the GOP base, if one isn't a white, heterosexual conservative Christian, one isn't really human and, therefore, murder or misery are one's due.  Perhaps the only good news is that people like Coulter are driving the younger generations not only from the GOP but from Christianity as well.  The Raw Story looks at Coulter's heinous statements:

Ann Coulter told host Sean Hannity that she wished Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “our president,” so he could deal with our border problems the way he deals with border issues in his own country.

Comparing tunnels found at the U.S./Mexican border with tunnels used by Hamas, Coulter asserted the U.S. is being invaded.

“We need a Netanyahu here. Can you imagine all these — yes, sometimes Palestinian kids get killed, ” she said as she began to laugh. “That’s because they are, they’re associated with a terrorist organization that is harming Israel, and Netanyahu doesn’t care what the religious leaders say, weeping about Palestinian children. He doesn’t care what the UN says. He doesn’t care what the media says.”

She concludes, “We are a country, we have borders, and Netanyahu enforces them. Why can’t we do that in America?”

 Laughing about the death of children - yep, that's today's GOP.  It is down right evil.  Just like the "godly Christians" in the GOP base.

The Usual Far Right Suspects Stir Up Anti-Immigrant Hysteria

If there is any doubt that today's GOP base is anti-immigrant and basically racist, on needs to only look to the efforts of the always vile Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter to cause the angry white base of the GOP grow even more hysterical.  The claim is that the Congressional GOP is about to sell out the party base and the nation as a whole if it approves any form of immigration reform.  Indeed, these two evil women want current immigration levels sharply cut back so as to stop what they perceive to be the "brown skin menace."  Here are excepts from Coulter's screed which will not doubt be picked up and parroted by many other hate merchants of the right:

As House Republicans prepare to sell out the country on immigration this week, Phyllis Schlafly has produced a stunning report on how immigration is changing the country. The report is still embargoed, but someone slipped me a copy, and it's too important to wait.

Leave aside the harm cheap labor being dumped on the country does to the millions of unemployed Americans. What does it mean for the Republican Party?

Citing surveys from the Pew Research Center, the Pew Hispanic Center, Gallup, NBC News, Harris polling, the Annenberg Policy Center, Latino Decisions, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Hudson Institute, Schlafly's report overwhelmingly demonstrates that merely continuing our current immigration policies spells doom for the Republican Party.


Immigrants -- all immigrants -- have always been the bulwark of the Democratic Party. 

At the current accelerated rate of immigration -- 1.1 million new immigrants every year -- Republicans will be a fringe party in about a decade.

Thanks to endless polling, we have a pretty good idea of what most immigrants believe.

According to a Harris poll, 81 percent of native-born citizens think the schools should teach students to be proud of being American. Only 50 percent of naturalized U.S. citizens do.

While 67 percent of native-born Americans believe our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, only 37 percent of naturalized citizens agree. 

The two largest immigrant groups, Hispanics and Asians, have little in common economically, culturally or historically. But they both overwhelmingly support big government, Obamacare, affirmative action and gun control. 

Also surprising, a Pew Research Center poll of all Hispanics, immigrant and citizen alike, found that Hispanics take a dimmer view of capitalism than even people who describe themselves as "liberal Democrats." While 47 percent of self-described "liberal Democrats" hold a negative view of capitalism, 55 percent of Hispanics do.


It would be one thing if the people with these views already lived here. Republicans would have no right to say, "You can't vote." But why on Earth are they bringing in people sworn to their political destruction?

Republicans have no obligation to assist the Democrats as they change the country in a way that favors them electorally, particularly when it does great harm to the people already here.

Sorry, Americans. You lose. 

The G.O.P.’s Bachmann Problem

I for one and many readers of this blog had hoped that Michele Bachmann would go down to defeat last November.  Rational Republicans should have held similar hopes.  Sadly, she was re-elected and has continued to display the kind of batshitery that is harming the GOP brand no matter how well she plays with the delusional and ignorance loving party base.  But Bachmann is only one of a larger number of Tea Party and Christofascist darlings all of whom are toxic in terms of attracting the new and broader demographics that the GOP needs.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

Senator John McCain called the far-right darlings Senator Rand Paul, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Justin Amash “wacko birds” earlier this month. (McCain later apologized for that burst of honesty and candor.) 

Ann Coulter used her Conservative Political Action Conference speech to take a shot at New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, who was not invited to speak this year. Coulter quipped: “Even CPAC had to cut back on its speakers this year, by about 300 pounds.” What a lovely woman. 

Donald Trump took to Twitter recently to call the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin a “dummy” who was “born stupid.” It’s hard to know whom to side with when two bullies battle. 

But all this name-calling, as fun as it is to watch, is just a sideshow. The main show is the underlying agitation.

The Republican Party is experiencing an existential crisis, born of its own misguided incongruity with modern American culture and its insistence on choosing intransigence in a dynamic age of fundamental change. Instead of turning away from obsolescence, it is charging headlong into it, becoming more strident and pushing away more voters whom it could otherwise win.

Andrew Kohut, the founding director of the Pew Research Center, pointed out in The Washington Post on Friday that the party’s ratings “now stand at a 20-year low,” and that is in part because “the outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the G.O.P.   .  .  .  .  radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.”  

And too many of those hard-liners have a near-allergic reaction to the truth.  A prime example is Michele Bachmann, the person who convened the Tea Party Caucus in Congress and a Republican candidate for president last year. She burst back on the scene with a string of lies and half-truths that could have drawn a tsk tsk from Tom Sawyer. 

PolitiFact rated two of her claims during her CPAC speech last Saturday as “pants on fire” false. The first was that 70 cents of every dollar that’s supposed to go to the poor actually goes to salaries and pensions of bureaucrats. The second was that scientists could have a cure for Alzheimer’s in 10 years if it were not for “a cadre of overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators.”

People like Bachmann represent everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. She and her colleagues are hyperbolic, reactionary, ill-informed and ill-intentioned, and they have become synonymous with the Republican brand. We don’t need all politicians to be Mensa-worthy, but we do expect them to be cogent and competent.  .  .  .  .  And as long as the party has Bachmanns, it has a problem.