The Wedding That Started a Republican Civil War

Virginia's gerrymandered 5th Congressional District.

Virginia is rapidly becoming a blue state despite the efforts of the majority of Republicans, particularly those from rural, economically moribund areas of the state.  A minority of Republicans recognize that the either the Virginia GOP changes or the state will have a Democrat majority for the foreseeable future (Republicans last won statewide office in 2009). In a nod to change, 5th Congressional District congressman Denver Riggleman officiated at the wedding of a same sex, mixed race couple, Alex Pisciarino and Anthony “Rek” LeCounte.  Little did Riggleman realize that this simple action would ignite a civil war within the Virginia GOP with the forces of reaction seeking Riggleman's expulsion from the party and primary defeat to replace Riggleman with a knuckle-dragging candidate with past ties to the religiously extreme Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  As a piece in Politico reports, the forces of reaction won and Riggleman ousted - likely to the delight of Democrats.  Here are highlights:

Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who became a target of conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding last year, was ousted Saturday by GOP voters in a drive-thru district convention. 

Good’s victory came after a day-long convention held in the parking lot of a central Virginia church. He ran as a staunch social conservative, campaigning on a traditional view of marriage, his support to make English the official language of the U.S. and to end birthright citizenship.

A piece in The Atlantic looks at the effort behind Riggleman's ouster and the push to drag the Virginia GOP even further rightward and homophobic and racist.  Here are excerpts:

Virginia Republicans have spent the past decade getting routed in elections. They lost three U.S. congressional seats and control of both chambers of the state legislature in 2018 [and 2019] alone. Yet today, with another tough election less than five months away, Republicans in Virginia’s Fifth District will gather in a church parking lot to decide whether to boot their incumbent congressman, Denver Riggleman, largely because he officiated a same-sex wedding last summer. The unconventional convention will earn the grooms, Alex Pisciarino and Anthony “Rek” LeCounte, a distinction in their first year of marriage that most people never achieve in a lifetime: They started a Republican civil war.

Virginia’s Fifth is a district where Bible Belt activists, suburban moderates, and college-town free-market types mix together in one massively gerrymandered area larger than New Jersey, stretching from the state’s southern border almost all the way to D.C. Riggleman, who owns a distillery outside Charlottesville, was one of the few rookie Virginia Republicans to win a competitive district amid the Democrats’ 2018 wave. But Riggleman’s success, and even an endorsement from President Donald Trump, may not save his job: The idiosyncrasies of Virginia election law mean there is a real risk he will be ousted by his own party. As Virginia turns blue, the question is whether the GOP can stay close enough to the center to hold competitive seats—or whether it will become more extreme as it shrinks.

“We don’t want a party so small that it just fits in the bedroom,” says Riggleman, an Air Force veteran with libertarian leanings on marijuana legalization, social issues, and small-business regulations. His opponent, Bob Good, who declined to speak with me, is a former athletics director at the evangelical Liberty University who has described himself in interviews as a “strong, bright-red,” “biblical,” and “constitutional conservative.” After Good was elected to the Campbell County Board of Supervisors in 2015, one of his first acts was signing onto a resolution declaring the U.S. Supreme Court “lawless” for legalizing same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, comparing the decision to the Dred Scott case.

“We’ve played the ‘Who’s the bigger Christian?’ game in the Republican Party for a long time,” says Matt Hall, a conservative commentator who writes for Bearing Drift, a website focused on Virginia politics. “Bob comes from that minority—that small group of people that says you have to be this way or that way to be a Republican.” Riggleman’s liability, at least in this district, is that he is unwilling to conform to a culture-wars strategy. “Bob Good doesn’t get to define what’s Christian and what’s not Christian,” he told me. “You can say you’re a Christian conservative all day long. What I’m going to say is that I’m going to protect your right to be a Christian conservative. But I’m also going to protect your right to follow any religion that you want to.”

When Pisciarino and LeCounte moved to Charlottesville for graduate school in the summer of 2018, they wanted to get involved in local politics. Pisciarino, who is white, and LeCounte, who is black, were impressed by Riggleman’s record on LGBTQ issues. After Riggleman won, they figured it would be fun to ask him to officiate their wedding, a way of “celebrating the fact that we had a congressman we liked and wanted to elect,” LeCounte told me. . . . . Although they expected that local papers might write a story or two about the congressman’s involvement in their ceremony, LeCounte said, “We were not remotely expecting it to become the kind of story where we’re giving interviews about it almost a year later.”

The backlash was immediate. Melvin Adams, the district committee chair, wrote a post on the district’s website about “inclusiveness,” emphasizing that the Republican Party is committed to recognizing marriage “as the union of one man and one woman.” One Republican group after another in the Fifth District voted to censure or condemn Riggleman: in Cumberland County, then in Rappahannock. “The sanctity of marriage does not need to be redefined because it has been defined for thousands of years as one man and one woman. That’s a standard that I don’t think you can change, because that’s the standard that I believe the God of Creation established in the very first chapters of the Book of Genesis,” Travis Witt, a Bob Good supporter and pastor who serves on the Fifth District committee and the Republican Party of Virginia’s state central committee, told me.

Riggleman may have had an easier time securing his seat in a primary election; he has pitched his campaign as one of broad, conservative-coalition appeal. But the GOP’s Fifth District congressional candidate is about to be chosen by the party’s most ardent activists. Virginia election law allows districts to hold nominating conventions rather than primaries. Out of the roughly 3,500 people preregistered as delegates, some will have to drive several hours to cast their ballot on Saturday morning in the parking lot of Tree of Life Ministries in Lynchburg—Good’s home turf—remaining in their cars to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The whole process is set up to encourage participation from the people with the strongest views.

All of this may end up putting a relatively safe Republican seat in jeopardy. . . . . Choosing the more socially conservative candidate may end being an expensive form of purity: “It will cost the party a lot of money to defend a seat, and possibly lose a seat, that otherwise they’d walk into,” Davis said.

When Bob Good came to Charlottesville, Pisciarino and LeCounte attended one of his campaign events. They wanted to hear for themselves how their wedding had become part of his stump speech. Good moved through that section quickly, presumably because they were there, LeCounte said, but the experience was surreal: “It’s extremely bizarre to watch people argue about what they consider an abstract issue, which is our lives.” Pisciarino and LeCounte haven’t particularly enjoyed receiving calls from reporters to talk about the wedding that might unseat their friend and congressman. But they wanted “to take control of a narrative that was going to include us, one way or another,” LeCounte said. When the couple load up their blue sedan, with its Riggleman and UVA bumper stickers, and drive to Lynchburg today, they won’t just be voting for Riggleman. They’re voting for a different kind of Republican Party.

Sadly, there will not be a different kind of Republican Party in Virginia.  Only more and more electoral defeats will finally force change or see the much deserved death of today Virginia GOP..

The Trade War’s Risks for Trump

For years now the Republican Party has used appeals to racism, homophobia and evangelical Christian extremism to convince voters in their base to vote against their own economic interest.  Donald Trump has embraced this playbook with gusto and ramped it up to new levels, with outright appeals to white supremacists and Christian dominionists. Now, the question is whether his ill-conceived trade wars and the damage being wrought on agriculture and manufacturing in swing states be enough to finally convince some in the GOP base to rethink their blind support for Trump.  Given that Trump's Electoral College win - a demonstration why that antiquated system needs to be repealed - was roughly 70,000 votes spread across three states, even a slight erosion in farming and manufacturing worker support could prove fatal.  A piece in Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the situation and the evidence that at least so far, policies embracing racism, homophobia and religious extremism are still working for Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Trump has taken a hard line on trade. He’s imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, and on a wide variety of Chinese products. In response, China has slapped tariffs on American products.

If Trump’s trade strategy poses risks for the economy, it also poses risks for his reelection strategy. That’s because farmers and manufacturers in battleground states are facing retaliatory tariffs on their products.

To measure Trump’s degree of risk, we analyzed 14 battleground states — 10 of them won by Trump in 2016 and four won by Hillary Clinton.

Eight of the battleground states we studied are reliant on manufacturing and agriculture to a greater degree than the nation as a whole. In descending order, these eight states are Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

Notice anything about these states? Trump won seven of them in 2016, making the core of his Electoral College majority at special risk from fallout from tariffs. Especially notable is the inclusion on this list of the three narrowly divided states that made his victory possible: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

[O]nly one state saw agricultural production grow between 2017 and 2018 — Georgia. The other 13 states saw declines in the agricultural sector during that period.

And the worst-performing agricultural states? Six of the seven worst-faring farm states were won by Trump in 2016 — those same three cornerstone states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) plus Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina . . . Two other Trump states, Iowa and Ohio, also fared worse than the national average.

[T]he most recent data available — the annualized change between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 — shows a broad manufacturing slowdown.

Ten battleground states saw lower annualized manufacturing growth in the first quarter of the year than they saw during the previous full year. These included seven Trump-won states, three of which were the pivotal ones — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.A key question, though, is whether any of this will matter electorally. When we checked with political observers in these states, they said that losses among farm and factory families pose a risk to Trump’s electoral prospects, but they added that there’s little hard evidence of that happening yet.

University of Northern Iowa political scientist Christopher Larimer — who calls this “the fundamental question heading into the 2020 election” — said he has “yet to see anything” that would suggest these voters are going to abandon the GOP in significant numbers. That could change as more polls are fielded as the election approaches.

One unknown is whether Democrats make a play for these demographic groups, said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College poll in Pennsylvania.

“The Democrats still have not been regularly courting the working class, except for an occasional foray into places they predominate,” he said. In Pennsylvania, he said, Democratic gains seem more likely to come from Republicans in suburban areas turning against the president.

Depressed turnout among disaffected farm and factory voters might be more likely than actually switching rural and blue-collar Republicans to support whoever the Democratic nominee is.

Especially in the three pivotal states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, it wouldn’t take much to shift the balance.

Craig Gilbert, a political journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has reported extensively from the swing rural areas of western and southwestern Wisconsin. He said he hasn’t encountered any sign of mass defections from the historically strong levels of Trump support in 2016, but he added that it remains an open question whether more modest shifts could occur.

Bottom line: Trump’s trade policy could weaken his support in key states, but for now at least, there’s little evidence of widespread damage to Trump’s standing among the farm and factory demographics. Until further notice, cultural issues appear to be taking prominence over economic ones.

GOP Ohio Rep. Blames Mass Shootings on Gay Marriage, Drag Queens and Obama

GOP Rep. Keller

The absolute lunacy and bigotry of the Republican Party was on open display in the wake of the weekend's mass shootings as GOP Ohio Rep. Candice Keller took to Facebook and blamed the tragedies on "drag queen advocates," "homosexual marriage," "open borders" and even former President Barack Obama.  Sadly, this type of insanity and bigotry - not to mention homophobia - is the norm with far too many Republican candidates and office holders.  Here in Virginia, despite her sanitized campaign web page, GOP candidate Colleen Holcomb running for the 91st House of Delegates seat is just as nuts as Keller as I pointed out in a post here.  Holcomb subscribes to the same mindset as Keller and has many disturbing affiliations, not the least of which are her ties to Eagle Forum, an ultra-far right organization.  

But back to Keller.  USA Today looks at Keller's batshitery Cincinnati which even alramed a few Republicans in Ohio.  Here are story highlights:

A Southwest Ohio [Republican] politician has stirred anger for a Sunday post on social media in which she blamed mass shootings on "drag queen advocates," "homosexual marriage," open borders and even former President Barack Obama. 

In the Facebook post, Ohio Rep. Candice Keller complained about liberals playing the "blame game" after every shooting and asked why not place the blame where it belongs. The Republican lives in Middletown, about 30 miles south of Dayton, where a gunman killed nine people early Sunday. 

Keller, in the post, placed the blame for mass shootings on "the breakdown of the traditional American family(thank you, transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates); fatherlessness, a subject no one discusses or believes is relevant; the ignoring of violent video games; the relaxing of laws against criminals(open borders); the acceptance of recreational marijuana; failed school policies(hello, parents who defend misbehaving students): disrespect to law enforcement(thank you, Obama)."

The post went on to blame others, including the Democrats in Congress, and other lawmakers who don't value the Second Amendment.  Keller is running for the Ohio Senate in Butler County in 2020 against fellow Republicans: Rep. George Lang, R-West Chester Township, and West Chester Township Trustee Lee Wong. Democrats have yet to announce a candidate for the heavily Republican district.  

Again, Keller is not unique in her bizarre beliefs. In Virginia, we need to make sure Colleen Holcomb is defeated in November, 2019.

Republicans Need a Suburban Agenda

Echoing the conclusions of the prior post, Eric Cantor - a Republican I always found loathsome - admits in an op-ed in the New York Times that the Republican Party has abandoned the suburbs and women in particular.  He suggests that the GOP change its messaging and come up with a winning agenda for suburban voters.  Doing so, however, will likely prove impossible now that the party base is controlled by right wing Christian extremists and thinly disguised white supremacists.  And that doesn't even factor in the toxic individual in the White House who, if he runs in 2020, will continue to fuel the exodus of decent, moral people from the GOP.  Killing the Frankenstein monster the GOP has become will not be easy.  It may, in fact prove impossible given the demands of the GOP's toxic base.  Here are highlights from Cantor's piece:

An election provides a certain definitiveness for political candidates, win or lose. I know from experience, having lived through both the ups and the downs. For political parties, elections also provide a chance to reflect, learn and move forward with the business of attracting more voters next time. Or at least they should.

For Republicans, losing the House majority in last week’s midterm elections is a clear demonstration that the party must do more to appeal to suburban voters, especially college-educated women. Once a Republican mainstay, this group has been slowly moving away from us for the past few cycles.

The data is indisputable, and Republicans must address it. We need a Republican suburban agenda.

There is no doubt that some of the loss in support this year from college-educated women, for example, is a result of the negative opinion these voters have of President Trump. But it is also true that Republicans have not had much to offer suburban voters on what they consistently say are their top issues, including health care, child care, education, the environment and transportation.

A suburban agenda would not just address pre-existing conditions in insurance coverage but also commit to medical research that offers treatments for a child with a chronic disease or a cure for a parent’s Alzheimer’s. Republicans also need to unify around a plan to ensure that every woman who needs it has access to paid maternity leave from her job and addresses the cost of child care for working families.

No one likes spending time in traffic, but that is exactly where suburban voters are stuck a lot of the time. Republicans need to think about investments in infrastructure not just as an economic issue but also to improve the quality of life of their voters — and the people we need to bring back to our party. Finally, we should continue our commitment to reducing energy costs using an all-of-the-above approach, but emphasize energy efficiency and sustainable, renewable power.

Republicans, however, are not alone in not being able to reach people for whom their message used to resonate. The Senate results demonstrated that the Democratic Party continues to suffer from its loss of non-college-educated white men.

Unfortunately, in the past week, both parties have so far sought to explain where they fell short in the midterms by placing the blame on factors outside of their direct control. House Republicans have linked the loss to a record number of retirements and open seats. Senate Democrats have attributed their poor night on the “map” and having to defend so many seats in states President Trump carried in 2016.

There are some truths in both excuses, but those small truths mask the bigger picture: Both parties have given up on competing for large portions of the electorate. Instead, it’s all about maximizing turnout for each side’s most partisan supporters.

In my home state of Virginia, the suburbs throughout the state have been trending blue for some time. Last year in the race for governor, Democrats faced a choice: Double down on the gains they had made in the suburbs of Washington, Richmond and Norfolk or try to hold those voters while simultaneously appealing to rural areas. . . . . Both sides turned out their core voters, but the Democrats won in part by reducing the Republican margin of victory in some of the reddest areas of the state. Put another way, they broadened their appeal.

The 2020 election season has now begun. After last week’s niceties of calls and congratulations, what comes next will foreshadow whether these lessons were internalized or ignored. Will Republicans have something to offer suburban, college-educated women? Will Democrats have anything to say to white, non-college-educated men in the rural areas?

With the suburbs growing and population falling in rural areas, the GOP will have the harder task in my view.  What much of the GOP base wants - special rights for Christofascists, endless attacks on LGBT citizens, and a re-enforcement of white privilege - simply doesn't play well in the suburbs any longer.  As for the Democrats, bringing renewed economic opportunities to racist and religiously extreme rural areas - think Southwest Virginia - will prove very difficult.  Progressive businesses simply have no interest in such regions. 

Trumpism: Cruelty and White Identity Politics

Hopefully, the pundits who claimed that Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election due to his "strong economic message" - one which had few if any details - have belatedly pulled their heads out of their asses and faced the reality that Trump's entire campaign and agenda since moving into the White House has been about white identity politics laced with a large dose of homophobia to thrill the Christofascists in the GOP base. Now, in the wake of the pipe bomb threat against CNN and numerous Democrats constantly attacked by Trump, one hears calls - disingenuous on the GOP side of the aisle - that people should not be labeled as bad or immoral because they hold differing "political beliefs."  The problem is, in my view, that when one supports racist policies, the brutal separation of immigrant families and efforts to strip LGBT citizens of legal protections - all things that cause very real harm - you are supporting immoral policies.  One cannot support immoral policies and then in the next breath whine that it is unfair to call you immoral or question your decency.  Trump supporters have a choice: they must either accept or reject the Trump/Pence regime's immoral policies.  If they accept them, then all the negative reflections on their lack of decency and morality are fully deserved. A piece in The Atlantic looks at Trumpism in all its ugliness.  Here are excerpts:

After Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, a certain conventional wisdom congealed within the pundit class: . . . By failing to emphasize a strong economic message, the thinking went, the [Democrat] party had ceded the election to Trump.

That explanation ignored the uncomfortable fact that Trump’s economic vision was centered on a politics of white identity, charging that immigrants and unqualified minorities were obtaining advantages the average white American could not claim. That left his opponents with a choice: Contest that vision, or let him attack those groups uncontested. In the meantime, Trump’s administration has seen that economic message almost entirely subsumed by the focus of congressional Republicans on tax cuts for the wealthy and plans to shrink the social safety net. . . . The economics were never the point. The cruelty was the point.

Nevertheless, among those who claim to oppose identity politics, the term is applied exclusively to efforts by historically marginalized constituencies to claim rights others already possess. Trump’s campaign, with its emphasis on state violence against religious and ethnic minorities . . . . does not count under this definition, but left-wing opposition to discriminatory state violence does.

[T]he entire closing argument of the Republican Party in the 2018 midterm elections is a naked appeal to identity politics—a politics based in appeals to the loathing of, or membership in, a particular group. The GOP’s plan to slash the welfare state in order to make room for more high-income tax cuts is unpopular among the public at large. In order to preserve their congressional majority, Republicans have taken to misleading voters by insisting that they oppose cuts or changes to popular social insurance programs, while stoking fears about Latino immigrants, Muslim terrorists, and black criminality. In truth, without that deception, identity politics is all the Trump-era Republican Party has.

Trump considers the media “the enemy of the people” only when it successfully undermines his falsehoods; at all other times, it is a force multiplier, obeying his attempts to shift topics of conversation from substantive policy matters to racial scaremongering. The tenets of objectivity by which American journalists largely abide hold that reporters may not pass judgment on the morality of certain political tactics, only on their effectiveness. It’s a principle that unintentionally rewards immorality by turning questions of right and wrong into debates over whether a particular tactic will help win an election.

In the closing weeks of the campaign,[Trump] the president has promised a nonexistent tax cut to the middle class after two years in which unified Republican control of government produced only a windfall for the rich; he has spread falsehoods about a caravan of refugees traveling through Central America; he has invented wholesale a fiction about anti-immigrant riots in California to justify his policies; and his administration is considering revoking federal recognition of the existence of trans people. This is of a piece with the Trump administration’s general policy agenda, which has involved austerity for the working class and the poor and generosity to the wealthy or connected.

2016 campaign pledged both generous social-insurance benefits for working-class white Republicans and cruelty for undeserving nonwhites. The Trump White House delivered on the latter, but not on the former, and so Republicans are scrambling to insist that they will cut taxes on the middle class, offer robust health-care protections, and protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, even as GOP leaders in Congress plot to slash all three to cut the deficit created by their upper-income tax cuts.

In upstate New York, an embattled Republican incumbent attacks his black, Harvard-educated Democratic challenger as a “big-city rapper”; in California, an anti-immigrant Republican under federal indictment smears his Arab American rival as a terrorist; in Georgia, a state far from the Southern border, the Republican candidate for governor brags that he’ll drive around in his pickup truck and “round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.”

America is not, strictly speaking, a center-right or center-left nation. Rather, it remains the nation of the Dixiecrats, in which the majority’s desire for equal opportunity and a robust welfare state is mediated by the addiction of a large chunk of the polity to racial hierarchy. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Party’s dominant period in American history coincided with its representation of both warring impulses and ended when it chose one over the other. The midterms offer a similar choice for the American voter, in rather stark terms.

If you are one of my "friends" yet support the Trump/GOP agenda of lies, cruelty and inflicting harm on others, don't be surprised it I question your morality and decency.  Some things are more than "political differences" - they come down to basic morality.  If you support immoral policies, then it likely that you are not the moral, decent person you pretend to be.  You do not get to have it both ways. 

14 Year Old Killed by Father for Being Gay

As a parent, I cannot comprehend disowning one of my children much less killing them, yet reports coming out of Las Vegas indicate that 14 year old Giovanni Melton  was murdered by his father because his father, Wendell Melton would not tolerate the fact that his son was gay.  Reportedly, the father said he would rather have a dead son that one who was gay.  Where does such ugliness come from?  In my view, three elements are involved.  The first, of course, is fundamentalist/evangelical religion that continues to denigrate and malign LGBT individuals while spreading the lie that sexual orientation is a "choice." Some of the most homophobic pastors are in black churches who allow themselves to be cynically manipulated by those who in my opinion are anti-gay white supremacists such as those at The Family Foundation here in Virginia.  

A second factor is the anti-gay agenda of the Republican Party.  Indeed, at this moment the U.S. Justice Department is arguing before the Supreme Court that anti-gay discrimination is perfectly fine and legal as long as it is wrapped in the smoke screen of "religious belief."  This bigotry provides yet another layer of legitimacy to anti-gay hatred.   The third factor, in my view, is self-centered parents who care more about "what will people think" about them rather than the happiness and well-being of their children. Some accuse me of being anti-religion and, frankly, when I see this kind of ugliness, yes, I am. A young life ended for no reason other than bigotry and apparent self-absorption.  Here are highlights from Channel 3 News in Las Vegas:

Friends and family are remembering a 14-year-old son who Henderson police say was shot and killed by his own father. People close to the murder victim say part of the argument leading to the shooting was about the teen's sexual orientation.

Friends of Giovanni Melton remember an energetic teenager bringing smiles to everyone he met.

On Thursday afternoon, Henderson police say 53-year-old Wendell Melton shot his teenage son in the apartment where family members say Giovanni stayed by himself.

"Giovanni was abused physically and mentally and spiritually for many, many years," said Sonja Jones, Giovanni's former foster mom.

Over the phone, Jones spoke of the teen she loved as one of her own.  Jones says she was told by another family member that part of the argument that led to the deadly shooting was over Giovanni's sexual orientation. Jones says Wendell Melton had problems with it.

"He hated the fact that his son was gay," said Jones. "I'm sure that inside of his mind, he would rather have a dead son than a gay son."  Jones says Wendell threatened his son before.

"I'm hearing his dad had caught him with his boyfriend before and pulled out a gun on him," said Jones.  Giovanni was a student at Coronado High School. Jones says a beautiful life was taken away because of ignorance. "I hope they throw the book at him.

White Supremacists Got What they Wanted with DACA Rescission

Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions - a man who refused to prosecute KKK members for lynching a black man when he and I both lived in Mobile - made the announcement today for a cowardly Donald Trump indicating that the Obama administration executive order protecting undocumented individuals brought to America as children would be rescinded.  Given Sessions' unbridled racism, it a wonder he didn't have an organism while making the announcement. Placing 800,000 mostly non-white individuals at risk of deportation is a dream come true for Sessions, Trump's white supremacist supporters and a host of racist Republican officials. Yes, Sessions sought to dress the decision up with legal arguments, but the real hope is that Congress will fail to act and then these individuals can be deported.  Driving home I heard Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, a vociferous immigrant hater in my view, and a Trump supporter, claim that families would not be broken up as a result.  His solution was to have entire families  return to the parents countries of origin, including U.S. born children.  That's right, he's perfectly fine with the defacto deportation of U.S. citizens who would have to wait until age 18 to return to America.  Why? Because - although he won't say it directly and engages in legal mambo jumbo - most would be Hispanics and other non-whites.  That's the Reality of what today's Republican Party stands for.   I hope I'm proven wrong and Congress reverses this ruthless policy, but I will not be holding my breath.  As for the evangelical Christians who support this administration, this merely further confirms that they are truly horrid people who need to be shunned by decent and moral people.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the Democrats who see through Trump's charade as I do. Here are excerpts:

Democrats, dismayed but not surprised by President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, were quick to issue statements of condemnation and offer up legislative fixes. They were also bolder than they’d been in the past to make a heavy accusation: The president, in the wake of deadly neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, was giving white supremacists what they wanted.

“It is clear that the president eliminated DACA to advance his xenophobic agenda,” Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said in a statement. “This repeal aligns with the interests not of the 78 percent of Americans opposed to deporting these young people, but of un-American anti-DACA white supremacist leaders like Richard Spencer. Spencer has called himself a former ‘mentor’ to close Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, who urged the president to end the program.”

Conyers, who is in line to run the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the House, was one of several Democrats who invoked racists, Charlottesville, or both, to describe the president’s decision as a sop to bigots.

 

“The president is breaking apart families and bruising our economy,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in his statement. “And on the heels of Charlottesville, he is signaling to champions of hate and bigotry that their voices matter most.”

Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), the House’s main advocate for DACA, singled out White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, saying in a statement that he’d been lied to about the fate of the program. Then he went further, accusing Kelly of siding with white supremacists.

“General Kelly is a hypocrite who is a disgrace to the uniform he used to wear,” Gutiérrez said. “He has no honor and should be drummed out of the White House along with the white supremacists and those enabling the president’s actions by ‘just following orders.’ ”

The final hypocrisy is Sessions and  Kobach whining about "protecting the Constitution and the rule of law" when Trump utterly ignores the Emoluments Clause and other legal norms and Kobach and his Republican cohorts seek to disenfranchise minorities and are waging a homophobic war on the LGBT community, particularly those who are transgender. 

Will Gays Again Becoming Targets of Choice for the GOP?

Here in Virginia, the usual suspects in the Virginia GOP have made it clear that LGBT Virginians will again become the targets of animus and efforts to thwart non-discrimination protections under the guise of protecting "religious freedom."  At the national level, some GOP presidential candidates attended a gathering led by a far right lunatic who advocated for the execution of gays, and many of the GOP clown car occupants have pledged to support a license to discriminate law, but over all LGBT citizens have been off the radar screen in terms of daily attacks and denigration.  However, a column in the Washington Post suggests that gays may soon become the bogey man of choice for GOP candidates striving to prostitute themselves to Christofascists in the party base.  Here are column highlights:

Just because there’s been surprisingly little thunder against the gays of late doesn’t mean no one has been busy conjuring up the lightning that precedes it. And just because the Republican presidential candidates have so far been relatively quiet about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans on the campaign trail doesn’t mean they won’t turn up the volume if it suits them. Thanks to a collision of the primary calendar and actions coming to a head out in the states, it just might suit them.

In September, we had to endure a storm over the illegal antics of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Ky., clerk . . . . Then, in November, we witnessed the repudiation of an anti-discrimination law that protected LGBT people in Houston. Thanks to a campaign built on lies about transgender people in public bathrooms, . . .

Since then, however, we have not seen the anti-gay-marriage backlash that many people expected would be fanned by GOP candidates fighting for the votes of evangelicals and hard-line conservatives. Does this signal widespread acceptance, at last, of the full rights of LGBT people? Or something more like the eye of the hurricane passing through?  Brace yourself. It looks like it’s going to be the latter.

With this new year will come renewed attempts to use the law to discriminate against LGBT Americans, largely by deploying Davis’s “God’s authority” defense.   . . . . Case in point: Florida.

In the Sunshine State, the legislature is considering HB 401, or the “Protection of Religious Freedom” bill. This nasty measure would go well beyond what was proposed in Indiana. Yes, as is common with such efforts, it would apply to — and protect from litigation — religious institutions, businesses and private adoption agencies. But it would also cover any “health care facility,” “nursing home,” “ambulatory surgery center,” “assisted living facility” or “health care provider” — which would not be “required to administer, recommend, or deliver a medical treatment or procedure that would be contrary to the religious or moral convictions or policies of the facility or health care provider.”

[I]t is discrimination masquerading as religious conviction. Period. Florida’s legislation could well turn into a fight to rival Indiana’s. Forces are lining up on both sides. Florida state Rep. Holly Raschein (R) has countered by sponsoring a business-backed anti-discrimination bill that’s also making its way through the legislature.

The issue may flare up in other places, as well. Religious refusal and anti-transgender laws have been or are being considered in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming.

“As troubling as this Florida bill is, this is just one way in which we are seeing religion being invoked to resist equal rights across the country,” Louise Melling, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Liberty, told me in an email. “Religious freedom protects our right to our beliefs, but not to discriminate.”

[I]n the next few months, the candidates have a huge incentive to do whatever it takes to earn the votes of evangelicals and social conservatives. In a presidential election cycle where not being “politically correct” has been polling gold, don’t be surprised when the silence on LGBT issues ends.

Religion continues to prove itself to be a great evil - an evil that too many shameless political candidates are willing to pander to in order to promote themselves with no care about the harm they do.  It is beyond disgusting.

Southern Judges Continue to Reject SCOTUS Marriage Equality Ruling

Alabama Capitol

While Muslims are the current favored bogey man and target of hatred for the Republican Party, LGBT Americans remain another favored target, with Christofascists demand special "right to discriminate" laws under the ruse of "religious freedom."    But the anti-gay efforts of the GOP go even further.  Here in Virginia hysterically anti-gay Del. Bob Marshall (who was distressingly reelected in November) has introduced HB77  which provides that for the purposes of the Virginia Human Rights Act, an ‘unlawful discriminatory practice’ shall not include conduct that violates any federal administrative policy, rule, or regulation adopted on or after January 1, 2012.  Blue Virginia has noted:

“Sideshow Bob” wants Virginians to continue being able to discriminate against people based on their gender identity and/or sexual orientation. And yes, this really is what the guy’s focused on, along with his relentless crusade against a woman’s right to choose, his concern that Virginia might need to create its own currency, etc. What a guy, huh?

But the problem goes beyond a lunatic homophobic legislator, especially in the South where elected judges - many, surprise, surprise, Republicans - have decided that they can ignore the United States Supreme Court in Obergefell and refuse to perform or allow same-sex marriages.  Kim Davis is still just the tip of the iceberg.  A piece in The Advocate looks at the religious based batshitery still going on.  Here are highlights:

It’s been nearly five months since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges guaranteed the freedom to marry for same-sex couples throughout America. Most state courts with pending marriage cases promptly implemented the ruling. Today, around 99.9 percent of Americans live in counties issuing marriage licenses to all couples. But in the counties where same-sex couples continue to be denied the right to marry, elected judges are casting aside their duty to follow the law for political reasons.

In Alabama — where justices run in partisan races — probate judges in 13 counties still refuse to issue any marriage licenses. Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered probate judges not to issue licenses to same-sex couples, despite a federal court ruling the state’s marriage equality ban unconstitutional.

Politicized, big-money elections create more pressure on judges to rule in a way that pleases voters. Thirty-eight states conduct some kind of election for their supreme courts — and these races are increasingly indistinguishable from elections for the political branches. Alabama is a prime example: the state has a history of expensive, politicized judicial elections, with supreme court candidates raising more than $58 million since 1993.

Meanwhile, elected justices in Mississippi and Louisiana have issued divided rulings in marriage-related cases, with dissenters arguing for defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court. A disturbing dissent from Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jefferson Hughes — who was elected with campaign ads claiming that he was “pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage” — not only suggested that he would not comply with Obergefell, but went on to imply that same-sex parents shouldn’t be trusted to adopt children of the same sex.

In a recent 5-4 decision, the Mississippi Supreme Court recently granted a divorce to a lesbian couple.  . . . .  Justice Randy Pierce, who put politics aside and joined the majority, also minced no words regarding the political forces at work: “As an elected member of this court, the politically expedient (and politically popular) thing for me to do is to join my colleagues' separate statements and quote the dissenters in the Obergefell case.” 

Judges must decide cases based on the law, not on politics, popular opinion, campaign contributions, or super-PAC spending. In order to protect individual rights, judges must sometimes issue unpopular rulings. While we expect governors and legislators to reflect the will of the majority of voters, judges must protect the constitutional rights of individuals, regardless of the political cost. Judicial elections make that exceedingly difficult — if not impossible. 

Bernie Sanders: GOP Opposition to Gay Marriage Part of Economic Con Game

I often lament that today's republican Party uses racism, homophobia, nativism, anti-immigrant bias, and other types of division to con voters into voting against their own financial and economic interest.  Stated another way, their bigotry towards others is used to dupe them into voting for GOP politicians who are raping their futures as they work for a new Gilded Age.  Now, in typical form, Bernie Sanders has shouted this truth out.  He has also slammed members of the mainstream media for their failure to look at serious issues and expose the toxicity of GOP policies for the average American.  Here are highlights of Sanders' call out via Towleroad:

Speaking after a campaign appearance in Iowa, Sanders said same-sex marriage is among issues Republicans have used to divide people to get them to vote against their own economic interests:

“I think the Republicans have done a brilliant job over the years — they’re very smart guys — in dividing people on a million different issues. They divide people on gay marriage. They divide people on abortion. They divide people on immigration. And what my job is, and it’s not just in blue states, believe me, we’re going to go to red states, we’re going to conservative states, is to bring working people together around an agenda that works for their kids and works for their parents. Raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour, having a trade policy that creates jobs in America, not in China, making sure all our of kids can get a college education regardless of their income, fighting for pay equity for women workers. We have an agenda that I believe can bring people together, and when we do that, we’re going to win this election very easily I think.”

Sanders’ comments were part of an epic response to reporters who’ve continued to try to get him to attack Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. In response to a question from a Wall Street Journal reporter about his differences with Clinton, Sanders said “the corporate media likes to talk about all kinds of issues except the most important issues”:

“Time after time, I’m being asked to criticize Hillary Clinton, that’s the sport that you guys like. The reason this campaign is doing well is because we’re talking about the issues that impact the American people. … The issue I want to be talking about is the collapse of the American middle class. You guys don’t to write about? Is that an important issue? The need for millions of decent-paying jobs, the obscenity of the kind of income and wealth inequality that we have today. The reason our campaign is doing well is because people are responding to those issues, so I’m not going to get into the game of sitting around attacking Hillary Clinton.”

In other words, the media’s endless game of gotcha — just like the GOP’s opposition to same-sex marriage — is nothing more than a distraction.

The Challenges That Remain After Marriage Equality

Living in a state like Virginia it is easy to be reminded that winning marriage equality was anything but the last battle in the struggle for legal equality for LGBT individuals.  In Virginia and many other states, members of the LGBT community can be fired at will with zero state law protections, we can be discriminated against at will in housing, and we daily see Republican political whores of the Christofascists (in Virginia its usually The Family Foundation that pulls the GOP puppet strings) ranting about the need to protect "religious freedom" which translates into special rights for Christofascists and a license for them to discriminate however they want as long as they dress their bigotry in smoke screen of religious belief.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at all the issues that have yet to be resolved.  Here are highlights:

It’s tempting to regard last month’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage as the coda of the gay rights movement.

Yet the marriage equality victory should not be regarded as the final battle, or even a clear sign that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are on the cusp of enjoying full equality under the law. They are not.

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation remains an everyday challenge in many parts of the country. Currently, 31 states lack comprehensive laws that protect gay and transgender Americans from being fired, evicted or denied lines of credit.

Last week, lawmakers in the House and the Senate introduced the Equality Act, a bill that would broaden legal protections by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to explicitly cover sexual orientation and gender identity. 

While federal courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have found that gay and transgender workers are protected under federal law, the bill would offer an important layer of protection in the workplace and beyond. Many Americans still worry that being out to colleagues and bosses could jeopardize their job security or career advancement.

The law would protect transgender students who are waging humiliating battles against school systems that have allowed hysteria to dictate policies on the use of public restrooms. It would make it harder for landlords to turn down prospective tenants who are gender nonconforming. To those who live in the country’s large, liberal cities, these scenarios might seem like aberrations. In much of the country, though, they are an everyday reality for thousands of Americans.

The Democratic lawmakers sponsoring the Equality Act realize the bill might have little chance of passing while both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans. (It was introduced with no Republican backers.) It is nonetheless a worthy piece of legislation that establishes what more is needed to ensure full equal rights.

Today, a broad majority of Americans support protecting gay and transgender workers from employment discrimination. Nearly two-thirds of likely Republican voters and 90 percent of Democrats recently told pollsters that they support such protection. There is every reason, moral and political, to be on the right side of this issue.

But, of course, GOP elected officials are not on the right side of the issue.  They still support hate and bigotry  as they pander for the votes of the Christofascists who have no place in polite and decent society. 

Donald Trump's Immigration Comments Hurting GOP

With voter affiliation drifting away from the Republican Party one would think there would be some serious effort to re-establish the myth of the GOP "big tent."  That message, however, doesn't seem to have gotten through to Donald Trump who seems to be on a personal mission to totally alienate the Hispanic vote.  Then we have Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz trying to out prostitute themselves to the Christofascists in the GOP base by calling for anti-gay measures that simply are no longer in the mainstream of American opinion.  In combination, the joint efforts is clearly marking the GOP as the party of the past - a past where only certain people had rights and mattered.  On the Hispanic vote front, even Mitt Romney, Mr. 47%, is alarmed at the damage trump is doing to the party brand.  CNN looks at the controversy.  Here are highlights:

Mitt Romney said Saturday that Donald Trump's comments on Mexico and undocumented immigrants have hurt the Republican Party, making the 2012 presidential nominee the latest Republican to slam the billionaire over his controversial remarks.

Romney made his remarks during a Fourth of July parade in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, which was also attended by presidential candidates New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Asked if Trump's comments on Mexicans have hurt the Republican Party, Romney replied, "Yes."

"I think he made a severe error in saying what he did about Mexican-Americans," Romney said.

Romney also said he will meet with Jeb Bush and his wife, Columba, on Monday at Walker's Point, the Bush family home in Maine. Asked if he plans to endorse Christie, whom he hosted at a sleepover at his summer home in the New Hampshire town on Friday night along with Rubio, Romney said he's not going to endorse anybody until later in the nomination process.

"A lot of these folks helped me during my campaign. I'm going to be as loyal to them as they were to me," he said.

Personally, I hope Trump continues to shoot off his big mouth.  I downright relish the though of Trump on the debate stage!  Have plenty of popcorn!

Scandals Only Make the Clintons Stronger

As the occupants of the GOP clown car scheme against Hillary Clinton and compete with each other to see who can most prostitute themselves to the Christofascists and white supremacist elements of the GOP base, one thing that they have not factored in is the reality that scandals only make the Clintons stronger - sort of like the lyrics of Kelly Clarkson's song "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger."  A somewhat tongue in cheek piece in Politico Magazine looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

One has to wonder: When Republicans gathered earlier this year to scheme the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who was the genius who stood up and said, “I know. We’ll challenge the Clintons’ pristine record on ethics. They’ll never see that one coming.”  But of course they did. We all did.

A little newsflash about our past (and probably future) First Family, who pundits, long predicting the Clintons’ coronation, are now suddenly beginning to count out: Scandal surfing is what they always do. They skip the top of the waves, sometimes even giving the impression they might succumb to them. But they never do.

The Clintons have been sent off to their certain doom more times than Tyrion Lannister. During their last sojourn on Pennsylvania Avenue, operators all but installed a new message on the White House switchboard, “If you’re calling with a subpoena for the Clintons, please press 7 now.”

Yet whatever the storm—from blue dresses to funny money from China to an actual impeachment trial—Bill and Hillary are this generation’s Six-Million Dollar Man (and Woman). They always rebuild faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot richer than ever.  

Much is now being made of a CNN poll finding that a majority of Americans—57 percent—do not believe Hillary Clinton is honest or trustworthy.  But is that really news? Roughly half of the country has felt that way for a long time.  Forty-three percent of Americans said that a year ago. And forty-six percent said that back in 2007.

Under the headline, “Hillary Clinton’s honesty problem,” an earnest reporter for The Hill newspaper asks, “Is it possible to win the White House if more than half the electorate thinks you’re dishonest?” Uh, of course, it is, people. The Clintons do this all the time.

Clinton’s margins against her potential Republican contenders is thin, to be sure, but not much different than they have been for months. And, by the way, even in purplish New Hampshire, she’s still beating them all—from Bush to Walker to Rubio. Nationally, CNN has her beating Washington’s favorite Republican, Jeb Bush, by eight points.

Time and again, it’s the Clintons’ accusers who end up humiliated, run out of town, ruined by sex scandals, or left to write soft-porn memoirs about supposed romantic dalliances that read like a letter to a trashy magazine.

The Clintons are often fortunate in their opponents—an assortment of professional prudes and ethical hypocrites who push too hard, who revel in it too much, and who focus not on one charge that might stick but a hundred that go in more directions than a Tolkien novel. Which scandal are we on now? Benghazi? Erased emails? Clinton Cash? The death of Vince Foster? An outrage to be named later?

Bill and Hillary Clinton learned long ago what should be obvious to anyone spending a day in politics: Voters care about their own lives, their own futures, far more than they do about the latest Washington feeding frenzy. Ideas trump innuendo. This is why the Clintons keep winning.

Until the GOP gives us its obsession with the former First Family. Until it positions itself as the party of the future and the Clintons, implicitly, as relics of the past, then the party is going to be in for another shock next year—this one even bigger than 1992.

And the GOP is clearly the party of the past . The time in the past?  Ideally of the 1950's  when gays were totally closeted, blacks were segregated and Hispanics weren't even on the radar screen.  It's a time period that doesn't sell well out side of the GOP bubble.