82% of Evangelicals Continue to Embrace Immorality

The results of a new Pew Research Center survey has been released and they again confirm that white evangelicals are the worse hypocrites and modern day Pharisees of any religious group as they continue to support the most immoral individual to ever occupy the White House.  Eighty two percent say they will vote for Trump in November.  The survey take away is that decent, moral people should not be fooled by the false piety and claims of religiosity from evangelicals given that Trump is the antithesis of Christian conduct and Christ's social gospel message. White evangelicals are not the only ones whose claims of being "Christian" should be questioned.  Majorities of white "Christians' also support Trump although not at the levels of evangelicals who, in my view, lead the nation in moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy.   One cannot be a moral person if they support a man who is the embodiment of immorality.   Here are highlights from the survey:

Amid rising coronavirus cases and widespread protests over racial injustice, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped among a wide range of religious groups, including white evangelical Protestants – though they remain strongly supportive.

The same survey finds that if the 2020 presidential election were held today, 82% of white evangelical Protestant registered voters would vote for Trump or lean toward voting for him, while 17% say they would back the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Joe Biden. By comparison, a Pew Research Center survey that was conducted just after the 2016 presidential election among those who were identified as having voted found that 77% of white evangelical Protestant voters backed Trump, while 16% voted for Hillary Clinton.

The June survey was conducted after Trump’s controversial visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church on June 1, and in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark LGBTQ ruling on June 15.

Trump’s continued support among white evangelical Protestants – a group that is highly religious and overwhelmingly Republican – is matched by their dislike of Biden.

While no other religious group is as supportive of Trump as white evangelical Protestants – and his rating has slipped among most Christian groups in this analysis in recent months – [Trump] the president continues to garner support from half or more of other white Christians. More than half of white Protestants who do not identify as evangelical (56%) say they approve of the job Trump is doing, as do 54% of white Catholics – and roughly six-in-ten voters in these groups say they would vote for him if the election were held today.

On the other hand, large majorities of Black Protestants (83%), Hispanic Catholics (74%) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (74%) say they disapprove of Trump. Among Black Protestants, levels of disapproval have increased to 83% from 74% in April, but are roughly similar to where they stood in January, when 10% approved of Trump and 87% disapproved. And among Black Protestant voters, just 8% say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, while 88% would vote for Biden.

Black Protestants, who overwhelmingly identify as Democrats or as Democratic-leaning independents, are the religious group with by far the most positive views toward Biden.

Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, another strongly Democratic constituency, opinions on a possible Biden presidency are more tepid. (The religiously unaffiliated, also known as “nones,” are those who describe their religion as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”) Fewer than a third of “nones” (27%) say Biden would be a good or great president, while 39% say he would be average and 33% say he would do a poor or terrible job. Nevertheless, this group’s views toward Biden are much more positive than toward Trump: Seven-in-ten “nones” say Trump has been a poor (13%) or terrible (56%) president, and a similar share of unaffiliated voters (72%) say they would vote for Biden if the election was today.

It's telling that the so-called "Nones" are more moral than evangelicals as evidenced by their stron rejection of Trump.

U.S. Supreme Court: How to Preserve White Power in Four Easy Steps

With Donald Trump's two appointments to the U,S. Supreme Court - Neil Gorsuch, who believes right wing Christian beliefs trump the civil rights of others, and Brett Kavanaugh -having shifted the balance of the Court to the far right, the Court now stands poised to implement the pro-white, pro-right wing Christian, bigotry of the Trump/GOP base.  Somewhat incredibly, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts is now the swing vote.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, a series of cases have the potential to preserve disproportionate white power thanks in no small part to the peevish Bernie Sanders who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Whatever legal horrors may be forth coming, responsible citizens never forget to remember that these Sanders voters and Jill Stein voters ushered in this potential nightmare (something 20% of Sanders supporters have said they will do again in 2020 if their cult leader is not the Democrat nominee);  Here are column highlights from the Washington Post on today's oral arguments and what may be forthcoming:

The Trump administration and Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices Tuesday held a legal seminar on how to preserve white hegemony in four easy steps.

Step 1: Devise a discriminatory policy.
In this case, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, after consulting with Stephen Bannon, who was then President Trump’s nationalist “alt-right” adviser, resolved to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census for the first time in 70 years. This would have the well-documented effect of reducing responses to the census by Latinos (from citizens and noncitizens alike), resulting in the undercounting of that population for purposes of congressional apportionment and $900 billion in federal funding.

Step 2: Create a pretext.
In this case, Ross lied to Congress, saying the Justice Department wanted  the citizenship question added to help enforce the Voting Rights Act — a claim three lower courts dismissed as pretextual. In fact, emails showed that Ross (with White House encouragement) was the one who pushed for the citizenship question and quietly dragooned the Justice Department into asking for the question to be added.

Step 3: Muddy the waters.
In this case, Solicitor General Noel Francisco and conservative justices raised doubts about the statistical capabilities of the Census Bureau, claiming it couldn’t accurately “quantify” the damage that would be done by adding a citizenship question because the alternative way to get such information was an “untested statistical model.” Why “untested”? Because the administration denied its experts’ requests to run tests before leaping to a decision.

Step 4: Blame the victim.
Francisco, the top Trump administration lawyer, saved this nastiness for the final minute of the 80-minute argument. If the court disallows the citizenship question, he said, “you are effectively empowering any group in the country to knock off any question on the census if they simply get together and boycott it,” he said, raising the possibility of a boycott by gender-nonbinary people.

For decades, the decennial census sent to each household hasn’t included a citizenship question (it’s instead asked on surveys), and for good reason. Latino residents — legal or illegal — tend to resist such questions out of an (unfounded) fear the government might use the information against them or their relatives. Census Bureau research has projected a drop of at least 5.1 percent from noncitizen households if the question is added, part of an estimated undercount of 6.5 million people. This contradicts the Constitution’s requirement for an “actual enumeration of the people” — not just citizens.

But the conservative justices seemed willing to overlook Ross’s lie and the administration’s dubious justifications.

Francisco began with a deception, saying the citizenship question “has been asked as part of the census in one form or another for nearly 200 years.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Francisco the same question three times before he acknowledged that the citizenship question had been abandoned in 1960, in part, because it would depress the count of noncitizens. . . . So the administration is free to disregard millions of Latinos in the census — and the courts have no say.

This seemed to be fine with Republican-appointed justices. Justice Samuel Alito said he was satisfied that the accuracy would be 98 percent if the citizenship question were asked (never mind those 6 million or so left out).

Trump’s two appointees developed a newfound fondness for foreign law: Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the United Nations recommends a citizenship question, and Justice Neil Gorsuch said “virtually every English-speaking country” asks one.

More disturbing were their counterfactual theories claiming some other, unknown variable might cause Latinos not to answer the census. (No such notions appeared in the case record, and census experts had already controlled for other variables.)

The justifications all sounded a bit “contrived,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it, like so much “post-hoc rationalization” of a decision made for another reason.

When you consider that the indisputable effect of adding the citizenship question will be to suppress Latinos’ census participation — and by extension to suppress their political clout — it is difficult not to be cynical about what that reason is.

That's right, a 6.5 million person under count.  To put that in easily understood terms, that is more than 10 times the population of Wyoming or larger than the populations of the Washington, Houston, Miami or Philadelphia metropolitan areas. 

My big complaint with the column - and the mainstream media in general - is that it persists in using the word "conservative" to describe justices and others who are in fact outright racists and bigots.  In the context of the upcoming LGBT employment non-discrimination cases before the Court this term and next term, no doubt "conservative" will be used instead of homophobic and anti-LGBT bigots.  It is far past time that the media begins to call out judges, justices, elected officials and candidates for office for what they truly are and throw away the false and deceptive term "conservative" once and for all. 

Trump's Catholic Vote Problem

As a former Roman Catholic, I hold no love for the Church hierarchy composed largely of bitter old men who desperately cling to a 12th century understanding of science and human sexuality, often denying their own sexual orientation due to religious brainwashing or a hunger for power and position.  That said, many rank and file American Catholics differ greatly with the hierarchy's position on LGBT rights, contraception and a many other issues.  Likewise, other than extreme right wing Catholics, a majority of American Catholics reject the hate and fear based religious beliefs so loved by Christofascists and evangelical Christians.  With Donald Trump's self-prostitution of himself to the Christofascists and far right Protestants and his embrace of Catholic Church positions that are favored by a majority of Catholics, Trump has perhaps unintentionally alienated much of the Catholic vote.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Religion Dispatches that looks at the phenomenon:

Catholics now represent the latest demographic challenge for Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions. As the Washington Post recently reported, a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that Catholic voters preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by a crushing 23 percent margin, 55-32. With less than a third of Catholics intending to vote for him, Trump has fallen well below the support GOP candidates typically enjoy from Catholic voters. George W. Bush won the Catholic vote in his 2004 reelection, 52-47. Although John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost among Catholic voters, they still managed to win 45 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

Why have Catholic voters rejected Trump? All year Catholic commentators and media outlets have provided their thoughts, but they have largely been overlooked by a mainstream media more fascinated by the story of evangelicals and Trump. As early as August 2015, the independent Catholic news site Crux noted that Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration stance put him at odds with Catholic bishops who were lobbying Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Writing in National Review earlier this summer, the political scientist Michael J. New commented that Trump’s “Catholic problem” likely stemmed from Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Latino immigrants who many American Catholics see positively as the future of their church, but also because of Trump’s attacks on Pope Francis.

After Trump selected Mike Pence as his running mate, Christopher Hale, the executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, called the Trump-Pence ticket the “most anti-Catholic GOP presidential ticket in modern history” because of not only Trump’s many shortcomings but also Pence’s record of blocking the Catholic Church’s efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in Indiana.

Trump’s poor standing with Catholic voters resembles his “Mormon problem,” as I have written about. Taken together, the Catholic and Mormon rejection of Trump also further spotlights the embarrassment of evangelical support for the Donald.

Mark Rozell argued we were seeing a “splitting apart” of the coalition of evangelicals and conservative Catholics who have voted together for Republican candidates for nearly four decades. If polling patterns hold up in November, 2016 may yield the greatest difference between Catholic and evangelical voting since the 1960 election where at least 75 percent of evangelicals voted for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy compared to only 18 percent of Catholics.

[A]s I’ve argued in my recent book We Gather Together, the evangelical-Catholic political alliance remained a fragile one, even when results from the ballot box made it appear more solid. Even as conservative Catholics drew to evangelicals on social issues, like abortion, their church often took political stances on matters like welfare and nuclear armament that put them in opposition to the Republican Party. 

Now Trump threatens to disrupt that parity, sending the bulk of Catholic voters to the side of his opponent. What this means for the future of the Republican Party remains uncertain. But for now, Catholic rejection of Trump at least surely offers another withering rebuke of evangelicals’ support of a candidate who is nothing short of unacceptable.

Growing up Catholic one looked down on fundamentalist evangelicals who rightly or wrongly were viewed as ignorant and not true Christians.  Now, with evangelicals flocking to Trump, perhaps that view of evangelicals as ignorant bigots was perhaps accurate after all.  

Latinos Seek Citizenship to Vote Against Trump

After the 2012 presidential election loss, the GOP conducted a post mortem to determine the party's future path so as to avoid becoming a permanent minority party at the presidential level.   Among other things, the study findings were that the party needed to be more open to minorities and less reliant on aging white voters.  That insight has been flushed down the toilet with the rising racism in the GOP best embodied by Donald Trump, but also echoed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Hispanics themselves.  The anti-minority bigotry and hatred displayed by the GOP base is not going unnoticed.  Now, as the New York Times reports, Latinos legally in the country are rushing to obtain citizenship so that they can vote Democratic in November.  Here are story highlights:

Donald J. Trump’s harsh campaign language against Mexican immigrants has helped him win a substantial delegate lead in the Republican primaries, but it is also mobilizing a different set of likely voters — six in the family of Hortensia Villegas alone.

A legal immigrant from Mexico, Ms. Villegas is a mother of two who has been living in the United States for nearly a decade but never felt compelled to become a citizen. But as Mr. Trump has surged toward the Republican nomination, Ms. Villegas — along with her sister, her parents and her husband’s parents — has joined a rush by many Latino immigrants to naturalize in time to vote in November.

“I want to vote so Donald Trump won’t win,” said Ms. Villegas, 32, one of several hundred legal residents, mostly Mexicans, who crowded one recent Saturday into a Denver union hall. Volunteers helped them fill out applications for citizenship, which this year are taking about five months for federal officials to approve. “He doesn’t like us,” she said.

Over all, naturalization applications increased by 11 percent in the 2015 fiscal year over the year before, and jumped 14 percent during the six months ending in January, according to federal figures. The pace is picking up by the week, advocates say, and they estimate applications could approach one million in 2016, about 200,000 more than the average in recent years.

While naturalizations generally rise during presidential election years, Mr. Trump provided an extra boost this year. 

“A lot of people are opening their eyes because of all the negative stuff Donald Trump has brought,” said Ms. Villegas’s husband, Miguel Garfío, 30, who was born and raised in Colorado and came to the workshop here to help his wife and other family members become citizens. His parents came from Mexico in the 1980s and worked hard all their lives, he said, helping him create a construction company in Denver that now employs 18 people. Contrary to Mr. Trump’s depiction, he said, none of his relatives have criminal records.

A majority of Latinos are Democrats, and some Republicans accuse the White House of leading a thinly veiled effort to expand the ranks of the president’s party. But administration officials argue the campaign is nonpartisan, noting that immigrants who become citizens improve their incomes and chances for homeownership.

Aside from Colorado, naturalization drives are taking place in Nevada and Florida, states likely to be fiercely contested in November where Latino voters could provide a crucial margin. One nonprofit group, the New Americans Campaign, plans to complete 1,500 applications at a session in the Marlins Park baseball stadium in Miami on March 19.

Among the groups the White House is supporting are immigrant rights organizations and labor unions, which say their goal in holding dozens of citizenship workshops this spring is to build immigrant voting power.

[I]n a poll of Latino voters on Feb. 25 by The Washington Post and Univision, the Spanish language television network, 80 percent had an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump, including 72 percent with a very unfavorable view, far more than for other Republican candidates.

Mary Victorio, 22, a Mexican-born student at the University of Colorado Denver, said she would vote Democratic but was grateful in one way to Mr. Trump. “He gave us that extra push we needed to get ready to vote, to prove to people who see us negatively they are wrong,” she said.

What the Surging Hispanic Population Portends

click image to enlarge

One of the ironies that strikes me when I hear white - usually Christofascist - rant about Hispanics not being "real Americans" is the idiocy of those attacking Hispanics.  If anyone is not a "true American" it is the white conservative bigots many of whom come from families that have been in the Americas for a fraction of the time period that Hispanics have been in the Americas - especially Hispanics with significant Native American ancestry be it Mayan, Aztec, or other groups that were in the Americas for thousands of years before the coming of European explorers and adventurers.  A piece in The Economist looks at (i) the reality of who are "real Americans," (ii) how the surging Hispanic population in the United States will change America, and (iii) how wrongheaded GOP policies are harming America's future prospects.  Here are highlights:

IN THREE TERMS representing Colorado in Congress, John Salazar got used to angry voters calling him a Mexican and not a proper American. During fights over the Obamacare health-insurance law, a constituent told him to “go back where you came from”. The attacks were misplaced. Mr Salazar is proud of his Hispanic heritage, but he comes from a place with deeper American roots than the United States. One of his ancestors, Juan de Oñate y Salazar, co-founded the city of Santa Fe in New Mexico. That was in 1598, some 250 years before it became American territory (and the best part of a decade before English merchant-adventurers splashed ashore at Jamestown, Virginia). A laconic man in denims and cowboy hat, Mr Salazar is a fifth-generation Colorado rancher, farming the same corner of the San Luis valley that his great-grandfather settled 150 years ago, just when Mexico ceded the territory to America. As families like the Salazars put it, they never crossed the border, the border crossed them.

But their high desert valley is home to many Spanish-speaking newcomers too. A demographic revolution is under way. In 1953, when Mr Salazar was born, America’s Hispanic population numbered perhaps 3m. It surged after changes in immigration law under President Lyndon Johnson, nearing 9m by 1970. Today it stands at 57m, out of around 321m Americans, and is on course to double by mid-century, when it is projected to be 106m out of 398m. In the past two decades Hispanic migrants have spread from a few states and cities to places that had not seen big foreign inflows since the days of steam trains and telegraphs. The biggest group, with 34m, is Mexican-Americans.

Hispanics are transforming the definition of what it means to be a mainstream American. During the roughly 200 years from the presidency of George Washington to that of Ronald Reagan, whites of European descent consistently made up 80-90% of America’s population. By the time of the 2010 census, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites (for simplicity’s sake called whites hereafter) was down to 64%. Some time around 2044 it is projected to fall to less than half.

[I]t is white decline that makes today’s demographic revolution so remarkable. America has twice before witnessed European migration waves that were proportionately even larger when measured against the population at the time: once in the 19th century and again at the start of the 20th century. Those new Americans came to be seen as respectable, over time, as they assimilated towards a majority culture rooted in what were explicitly called Anglo-Protestant ideals: self-reliance, rugged individualism, thrift and hard work. Yet now that white majority is on course to become a minority.

Every year around 900,000 Hispanics born in America reach voting age. Neither party should imagine it will own their votes in perpetuity, but Republicans have the most work to do. In the 2012 presidential election Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, got nine in ten of his votes from whites, whereas Mr Obama won eight in ten of the votes cast by minorities. If the Republicans want to catch up, party hardliners will have to stop taking extreme positions on immigration. Hispanics are unlikely to listen to messages about jobs or health care from candidates who are also proposing to deport their mothers.

Business is waking up to the rise of Hispanics.  . . . . if Hispanic-Americans were a country they would rank 16th in the world. A giant reason to be optimistic about the rise of Hispanics is that they are making America much younger. The median age of whites is 42; of blacks 32; and of Hispanics 28. Among American-born Hispanics, the median age is a stunning 18. As other parts of the rich world face a future of aging, shrinking populations, Hispanics are keeping American schoolyards full of children and replenishing the supply of future workers. 

Take away Hispanics and other fast-growing minorities, and America’s numbers look like those for Italy, a country full of pensioners with a shrinking labour force. As things stand, however, America’s working-age population is expected to grow at a healthy clip.

Many more Hispanics are enrolling in college—and still more would seek degrees if conservative politicians looked to the long term and changed state laws that make the children of unlawful migrants pay much more than their American classmates for a public college education. When one in four children in public schools is Hispanic, economic self-interest alone should prod states to get them ready for the 21st century.

This report will show how some Republicans in Tennessee, a conservative state, are debating pragmatic changes. Alas, in other states, Tea Party zealots are leading a charge in the wrong direction. Texas used to stand out among conservative states for a businesslike approach to immigration. But in 2014 a dismaying number of Texas Republicans ran for election vowing to repeal a far-sighted 2001 law granting subsidised college tuition fees to students resident in the state, regardless of their legal status.

Nativist panic-mongering about a Hispanic “invasion” has helped to skew public perceptions. Many Americans vastly overestimate the incidence of illegal immigration. A survey in 2012 by Latino Decisions, a pollster, asked non-Hispanics to guess the percentage of undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants. The average guess was one in three. The real figure is one in six. And fresh immigration as a cause of Hispanic population growth was overtaken in 2000 by Hispanic births in America. Of the 17m Hispanic children in the country, some 93% are native-born citizens.

Calm logic should prod older Americans to welcome well-educated young taxpayers of any colour. But in politics culture matters just as much as logic. Even different generations of Hispanics can clash, as John Salazar has witnessed in Colorado. During an attempt to pass a comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, he was berated by Mexican-American constituents whose families had been in his valley “for ever”. They asked him why he was trying to help the mojados (wetbacks)—a pejorative for Mexicans supposed to have swum across the Rio Grande.

Millions Of Latinos Have Abandoned Catholic Church Over the Last 3 Years

The declining number of American Catholics has been masked to a large extent to date by the influx of Hispanic immigrants.  But that may be changing. based on the findings of a Pew Research Center survey that ought to have the Vatican worried.  No single cause for the exodus was found, but many fallen away Hispanics noted the sex abuse scandal among other reasons.  Moreover, the survey found a disconnect between an aging celibate clergy and younger generations.  Lastly, the survey found the Church to be losing Hispanics in South America.  Here are highlights via Fox News Latino:

More than 4 million Latinos in the United States have left the Catholic Church since 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that spotlighted the church’s ongoing exodus of Latinos, a group seen as pivotal to the future of Catholicism.

In 2010, two-thirds of Hispanics (67 percent) in the U.S. were Catholic. Today, that number has dwindled to 55 percent of the nation's 35 million Latino adults. While close to 20 million Latinos still identify as Catholic, the church has lost 12 percent, or 4 million Latinos in the U.S. over the past four years alone, according to the Pew study released Wednesday.

At the same time, the share of Hispanic evangelicals rose from 12 percent to 16 percent, while Latinos with no religious affiliation increased from 10 percent to 18 percent.

The new survey confirms a concerning worldwide trend for the Catholic Church, which has been losing followers for years, and is the latest indication the church is particularly losing followers among its strongest base, Latinos in the U.S. and in Latin America.

he changes partly reflect religious trends in Latin America, which has also seen a steady decline in Catholics as the ranks of evangelicals and nonbelievers have grown.

Pew found no single reason for the changing Latino religious landscape.

Respondents most commonly said they gradually drifted away from the faith of their childhood or stopped believing the teachings. About 30 percent said they found another congregation that helps its members more. Others said they had a personal spiritual crisis or left for family reasons. While a large percentage of Latinos overall said the church should do more to address the clergy sex abuse scandal, only a tiny percentage cited the crisis as a reason they left.

Pew found about half of U.S. Latinos who left Catholicism did so before they arrived in this country.

However, U.S. religious life has also been an influence. The share of Americans overall who say they have no religion, or "nones," has increased to about 20 percent in recent years. The trend is more pronounced among young people. Pew researchers found similar patterns among U.S. Latinos. Most of those ages 18 to 29 who left Catholicism now say they belong to no particular religious group. Hispanics ages 30 to 49 moved toward both evangelical Protestantism and no religion.

Just as the hate and hypocrisy of the Protestant Christofascists is killing the Christian brand, so too is the Catholic Church's rigidity and is forcing younger individuals away from institutional religion completely. 

Will Hispanics Be Tomorrow's Whites?

In right wing circles and throughout much of the GOP base, the thought that Hispanics - except those perhaps from Spain - are whites is tantamount to heresy.  One need only listen to the spittle flecked rants against immigrants to get a feel for the animus held toward those less than 100% Caucasian.  But with America's rapidly changing demographics, the issue of who is white may again come to the fore.  A piece in Slate looks at the issue and some of the ramifications that may be seen in the short and the long term.  Here are highlights:

Who is white? This debate is useful to keep in mind as we sift through the information in the Pew Research Center’s new—and massive—look at America’s shifting demographics.

According to Pew—and echoing the results in the last census—the United States is just a few decades away from its demographic inflection point. Come 2050, only 47 percent of Americans will call themselves white, while the majority will belong to a minority group. Blacks will remain steady at 13 percent of the population, while Asians will grow to 8 percent. Hispanics, on the other hand, will explode to 28 percent of all U.S. population, up from 19 percent in 2010. Immigration is driving this “demographic makeover,” specifically the “40 million immigrants who have arrived since 1965, about half of them Hispanics and nearly three-in-ten Asians.”

But the thing to remember about the Hispanic category, for instance, is that it contains a wide range of colors and ethnicities. In the United States, Hispanics (or more broadly Latinos) include Afro-Brazilians, dark-skinned Puerto Ricans, indigenous Mexicans, Venezuelan mestizos, and European Argentinians, among others.

To say that America will become a majority-minority country is to erase these distinctions and assume that, for now and forever, Latinos will remain a third race, situated next to “non-Hispanic blacks” and “non-Hispanic whites.”  . . . .  it’s not that simple.

American racial categories are far from fixed, and who counts as white is extremely fluid. “A hundred years ago,” writes Ian Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics, “firm racial lines elevated Anglo-Saxons over the supposedly degenerate races from southern and eastern Europe.” For a large chunk of the 19^th century—and a good deal of the 20^th—America’s intellectual energy was devoted to policing the boundaries of “whiteness.”

Over time, however, as new immigrants entered the country and old ones gained access to levers of power and influence, the boundaries grew to include them.

It’s hard to say history is repeating itself—the circumstances of the early 21^st century are vastly different from those of the late 19^th—but the current period does seem to rhyme with the past. Over the last 50 years of large-scale Latino and Asian immigration, we’ve seen waves of anti-immigrant hysteria (Proposition 187 in California and the minutemen along the Mexican border), attempts to keep high-achieving immigrants and their children out of elite institutions, and intermarriage leading to assimilation—one of the most famous comedians in the world, Louis C.K., is half-Mexican, but to most Americans, he’s just a white guy.

Going forward, will white Hispanics see themselves as part of a different race—light-skinned but distinct from whites—or will they see themselves as another kind of white? Will the government treat them as white in its forms and surveys, and will so-called traditional white Americans understand them as such? What about the children of mixed marriages? As Pew points out, we live in an age of intermarriage. More than 15 percent of new marriages are between partners of different races, and the large majority of them are Hispanic and Asian “out marriage” to whites. Will these children retain a racial identity, or will they join the vast tapestry of American whiteness?

These are critical questions, since—in a country where white Hispanics are just white, and Asians intermarry at high rates—the white population of the United States could stay steady or actually grow.

The future could make a collection of minorities the majority in America, or it could broaden our definition of white, leaving us with a remix of the black-and-white binary. A country where some white people are Asian, some are Hispanic, and the dark-skinned citizens of America—and blacks especially—is still a world apart.

For now at least, "white" to the GOP means white of European descent, conservative Protestant (preferably evangelical), and heterosexual.  As the demographics continue to change that GOP base and definition of white will shrink in numbers and yet again causes me to ask why the GOP is busy committing long term political suicide?   When will the GOP come to the point of just seeing people as people regardless of skin tone?  Meanwhile, Tony Perkins, Victoria Cobb and others of their ilk will continue to preach hate while wrapping themselves in false piety and religiosity.

Texas GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Calls South Texas "Third-World Country"

GOP's Greg Abbott

If one wants to see what passes as outreach to minorities look no farther than Texas Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott who has called the Rio Grande Valley a "third world country."  Why?  Because of its high Hispanic population, of course.  That someone like Abbott can even be running for governor makes one long for the future when Texas's urban areas can completely out vote the rural regions as is happening slowly but steadily in Virginia.  The Raw Story looks at Abbott's batshitery. Here are highlights:

When Texas Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott compared the Rio Grande Valley to a “third-world country” earlier this week, progressives and the Latino community in south Texas hit the roof.

Democratic opponent State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) called on Abbott “to apologize for his offensive and erroneous comment that problems facing South Texas resemble ‘third-world country practices that erode the social fabric of our communities and destroys Texans’ trust in government’” in a letter published in the south Texas publication The Monitor.

“While I agree we should ensure that law enforcement has the necessary resources throughout our state, it’s unfortunate that oftentimes the conversation around our border communities focuses solely on enforcement,” she wrote, taking issue with Abbott’s “divisive rhetoric” and calling for “leadership that is grounded in facts and is ready to open up new opportunities with trade and commerce which currently support hundreds of thousands of jobs in Texas.”

The Existential Question Facing the Republican Party

With the Republican Party base - i.e., angry white conservatives - aging and dying off only to be replaced by more liberal and more racially diverse citizens, the GOP needs to face the reality that either it changes or else in the not too distant future it will become a permanent minority party.  Here in Virginia (outside of gerrymandered House of Delegate districts in particular) the demographics are approaching a permanent tipping point.  Texas is following  a similar arch toward a GOP hostile future.  As a column by Michael Gerson, a conservative, in the Washington Post, immigration reform is forcing an existential question on the GOP whether it wants to face the coming reality before it.  Here are column highlights:

The Republican Party faces an existential question: Can it make the transition to a more welcoming position on immigration without tearing itself apart or further alienating Latinos by the tenor of its internal debate? The journey is necessary, perilous and always easier to delay than begin.

Most Republicans — or at least the subset that cares about the national fortunes of the party — recognize that Mitt Romney’s 27 percent showing among Latino voters was a frightening portent. While not even the worst of Romney’s electoral problems — a lack of enthusiasm among white, working-class voters probably takes that honor — this outcome represents collapsing support in a rising group.

There are a variety of ways to do the electoral math, but here is one: Republicans won about a quarter of the Latino vote in a nation when about a quarter of all children entering kindergarten are Latino. Republicans have a rendezvous with irrelevance, arriving faster in places such as Colorado, Nevada and Florida. While it remains possible for Republicans to win national elections with low Latino support, it will become harder and harder over time. Eventually, a party at war with demography becomes accustomed to defeat.

Confronting the problem seems even less attractive because it won’t be solved in a single, symbolic vote on immigration reform. That would only allow a more extensive courtship to begin. And  
Republican leaders in the House have taken their first, hesitant steps by issuing a set of immigration reform principles. . . . . Improved enforcement first, then legal status for undocumented workers meeting stringent conditions — pay a fine, know English, no welfare benefits. Children brought to America by undocumented parents would gain citizenship. Others — and here the document is a bit fuzzy — would have to go to the end of the current citizenship line.

An element of the conservative movement has delivered its usual, considered response. “We ought not be granting citizenship to people that don’t love the country,” says Rush Limbaugh. “It’s the end of the Republican Party. It’s the end of the country as we know it.” It is so easy for ideology to drain politics of humanity — to turn human beings into categories and categories into threats. 

There are, however, more serious criticisms about House Speaker John Boehner’s timing, even among those open to reform. Immigration reform is an issue that generally unites Democrats and deeply divides Republicans. Why emphasize those divisions . . . .

There are valid questions about the timing of the inevitable Republican transition on immigration reform. But it is a good and healthy thing that the argument among House Republicans is increasingly about timing rather than destination. Boehner’s initiative is simply an honest recognition of the difficult, inevitable Republican journey that lies ahead. 

Expect serious push back from the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the GOP to any meaningful reform.  To this element of the GOP, if one isn't white, conservative Protestant and straight, one isn't really even fully human.

 

Hispanic Evangelicals Support Obamacare

In the category of more bad news for the GOP which already has a horrendous problem with Hispanic voters who rightly see the GOP as their enemy, now Hispanic evangelicals are supporting  the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a, Obamacare.  Pastors rightly see that Obamacare can mean health care coverage as opposed to nothing and, unlike the white supremacists in the Tea Party/Christofascist base of the GOP, are not hoping their parishioners will simply vanish or die off. Politico has details:

Under the big evangelical tent where tens of millions of Americans worship, Hispanic churches are embracing Obamacare despite the concerns about religious freedom that have tarnished the law for many of their fellow believers.

Pastors have encouraged support since enrollment for health coverage began in October. Their take is that the law’s positives outweigh its negatives, especially for the one in three Hispanics without insurance, the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group. Many of the uninsured are eligible for major new health benefits plus subsidies to help them afford coverage.

On the eve of the first sign-up deadline Monday, church leaders are still working hard to get out the word about how much the Hispanic community will gain. Some draw parallels between the suffering the law is intended to ameliorate and the church’s core mission.

Jesus was a healer,” noted Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. “The health care law can be improved, but I think in its present form it does more good than harm to Latinos around the country.”

[The]embrace of the health law puts Hispanic evangelicals at odds with other evangelicals as well as religious conservatives across denominations. They have opposed Obamacare primarily because of its provision requiring businesses to cover contraceptives in employee health plans, including the morning-after pill.

Although the contraceptive requirement may cause many evangelical Hispanics discomfort, they seem to have made their peace. “Our commitment has always been to strike a balance between religious liberty and individual liberty,” Salguero said.  In doing so, they’ve aligned with the mainline congregations that have been at the center of most of the Obama administration’s faith outreach.

The law is “a start,” said Abraham Hernandez, northeast vice president for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. He believes Obamacare’s expanded benefits will advance a key conference principle. “If Hispanics in the nation can have access to health care, it indeed preserves life. We believe that access to health care is very critical,” he said.

The divergence from other evangelicals is stark.  But then again, it is important to remember that many far right evangelicals are self-centered, seek to inflict their religious beliefs on all Americans and frankly do not give a damn about blacks, Hispanics or other minorities who they see as interlopers who do not belong in America,  

Is Chris Christie Sending a Message to the GOP?

The only other state with statewide elections this year is New Jersey and the contrasts between the gubernatorial candidates, Chris Christie and Ken Cuccinelli, could not be more stark.  Christie, a Republican in a blue state is seemingly headed to a major victory while Cuccinelli hopefully is about to suffer a humiliating defeat.  The main difference?  Cuccinelli has sworn absolute fealty to the ugliset elements of the GOP and embraced an agenda that is increasingly rejected by younger and urban voters.  Christie on the other hand has taken positions that are deemed heresy by the Christofascists/Tea Party inn recognition that one has to win votes from outside of the dwindling aging white racist./religious extremist base of the GOP.  The Washington Post looks at Christie's apparent message to the GOP:

LIVINGSTON, N.J. — When Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign bus made its first stop last week, in front of the Ritz diner, the event had the trappings of both a victory lap and a road test.

The official victory lap can’t come until Tuesday night, . . . . The road test was for a possible campaign for president in 2016. Christie’s gubernatorial reelection campaign is about much more than winning a second term to enhance his power in New Jersey. He and his advisers hope that the outcome will send a message to a divided Republican Party about how it can win in places where its presidential candidates have been losing.

Christie is trying to win by the biggest possible margin and show that, despite his conservative positions, he can attract support from constituencies long tied to the Democrats.

But the Republican Party that will pick its next presidential nominee in three years is far different from the one that nominated Bush. Christie should emerge from Tuesday’s election as a top-tier candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, but also as one fully stamped as a favorite of the establishment wing who has not been afraid to criticize hard-liners on the right.

“I’m in this to win, because if you don’t win, you can’t govern. If you can’t govern, you can’t move the country, the state, the city — whatever you’re running for — in the direction it needs to be moved in. I think we’ve had too many people [in the Republican Party] who’ve become less interested in winning an election and more interested in winning an argument.”

Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia will highlight both strains of Republican conservatism, with Christie representing one approach and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II — a tea party favorite and underdog in his race against Democratic businessman and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe — representing the other.

A loss by a tea party favorite in a swing state and a victory by Christie in a Democratic stronghold would probably set the terms for the next phase of the debate within the Republican Party about the way forward. If Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) has become the symbol of the GOP’s tea party wing, Christie is poised to become the anti-Cruz.

To those Republicans who question whether Christie is conservative enough for their tastes, he said this: “My record speaks for itself. When people take a look at my record, it’s more than sufficiently conservative.”

Christie said there is a lesson in all this that should not be lost on others in his party. “People expect you to do the job,” he said. “They expect you to get the job done. And that’s sort of a universal truth, whether you’re a Republican, independent or Democrat. That’s what people want more than anything else. And they’re willing to put up with disagreeing with you on certain things.”

Christie’s goal Tuesday is more than just a big margin of victory. He wants to show that he can draw support from Hispanics and African Americans and from Democrats generally; he said his party has been inconsistent in its outreach to those groups. Christie said: “If we don’t get instant gratification, we walk away. I’ve worked for the last four years to build relationships with these folks. That’s the way you broaden the party, over a long period of time, to build relationships. And, ultimately, that’s the way you govern.”

I disagree with many of Christie's views.  But, that said, he is clearly not a member of the Christian Taliban and has shown he will not prostitute himself to that element of the GOP on a constant basis.

The GOP's Problems Are Deeper Than Just Hispanics

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post is sounding more and more like me when it comes to deriding the republican party for its circular firing squad mindset which continues to cause the GOP to pander to angry, aging white Christofacists and racist voters and, in the process, drive everyone else away.    One has to wonder how the so-called GOP establishment sees this as a way forward rather than a form of slow suicide.  What makes matters worse is that the GOP is not even trying to reach out to minorities in any meaningful way even compared to what was being done 10 to 15 years ago.  Here are highlights from Rubin's column:

In the debate on immigration reform, nearly all of the discussion concerning the GOP’s appeal to minorities has focused on Hispanics. This, in many ways, underestimates the problem in the post-Bush 43 Republican Party.

Consider that in 2004 President George W. Bush got almost 12 percent of the black vote. Not much, you say, but that’s a figure most Republicans aspiring to national office would be glad to have.

Moreover, the party’s share of the Asian vote has plummeted. In 1992, 55 percent of the Asian vote went for George H.W. Bush in 1992.  .  .  .  .  .  In 2008, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) got only 35 percent of the Asian vote, and in 2012 Mitt Romney got a measly 27 percent of Asians.

If the GOP could simply get back to Bush 43′s numbers among minority groups (not merely with Hispanics), its ability to win presidential elections would improve immensely.

Others see a more fundamental problem with the party’s message and tone since Bush left office. A savvy African American conservative contends that ”the hard right embraces blacks who espouse a fierce, go-it-alone economic libertarianism with a hard-edged social conservatism and a penchant for off-base comparisons between welfare and slavery and Democrats and plantations.” That is a dead-bang loser, he says: “There is literally no evidence that such a message resonates in the black community and it probably isn’t meant to. To the contrary, it is intended less to persuade blacks than to ratify the hard right’s notions that expressing such views is not racist.”

That is tough talk, but he is on to something. Former Republican congressman Allen West and E.W. Jackson, Virginia’s right-wing candidate for lieutenant governor, may thrill white radio talk show hosts and conservative media, but theirs is not a message that offers much to African Americans other than “I’m pro-life and can’t possibly be racist.” 


So let’s recap. The GOP stopped reaching out to minorities. It adopted a harsh tone, opposing immigration reform and threatening to round up anyone here illegally. And its extra-harsh rhetoric on the evils of government (rather than the reform of government) didn’t connect with minority voters, who saw no obvious appeal in a message that castigated all receivers of benefits as moochers.

This should surprise no one, but the bearers of the anti-immigration reform and anti-government (as opposed to pro-reform) message don’t seem to get it. Hopefully GOP primary voters do and will choose candidates wisely.

Obviously, the extremists at the Virginia GOP convention did NOT get the message when they nominated the most extreme statewide ticket in Virginia history.

11-Year-OldHispanic BoySings National Anthem, And GOP Racists Go Berserk

I am frequently attacked by former GOP colleagues from my years as a GOP City Committee member and accused of being a "single issue" voter - i. e., gay issues - so that my former friends who are drinking Kool-Aid by the gallon can ignore the utter racist and religious extremist nastiness that has become the norm for the Republican Party base.   The blatant racism and homophobia that go hand in glove with today's GOP is to me sickening and are displays of neither patriotism nor the Christian values that the GOP claims to worship.  The recent NBA playoff in San Antonio, Texas - a city that was part of Mexico long before American immigrants rebelled against Mexico - where an 11 year old Hispanic boy gave an amazing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner sent the GOP base into convulsions and spittle eruptions.  The video of the boy's performance is above.  The  GOP and "godly Christian" tweets are set out below via Liberals Unite are set out below.

Click image to enlarge

Yes, the comments are ugly.  But that's the reality of today's Republican Party.  The party of our parents  or even of just 20 years ago is gone and its current incarnation is horrific. 

Heritage Foundation Anti-Immigration Reform Paper Author Says "Some Races More Intelligent Than Others"

I catch a great deal of grief at times for maintaining that the GOP - a party for which I was once an activist and city committee member and precinct captain - now has racism as one of its twin pillars (the other pillar of the GOP is religious extremism).   But, from all I see and read, I believe I am on target.  This blog recently noted that the Heritage Foundation now headed by knuckle dragging Neanderthal, former GOP Senator Jim DeMint, had issued a position paper arguing against comprehensive immigration reform.  I should have known that the other shoe would soon drop, and sure enough, one of the authors of the Heritage paper (pictured at left) is on record as believing that "some races are more intelligent than others."  I think we all know which race he champions.  Media Matters looks at the mindset behind the Heritage Foundation report.  Yes, Hispanics - indeed all minorities - need to run screaming from the GOP.   Here are some article highlights:

A co-author of the Heritage Foundation's new immigration report, which right-wing media have hyped despite even conservative criticism about its methodology, has long promoted inflammatory theories about the relationship between race and IQ in Hispanic immigrants, an unsurprising fact given his ties to extremist anti-immigrant organizations.

Dylan Matthews of The Washington Post's Wonkblog reported that Jason Richwine, a co-author of the Heritage report, asserts in his 2009 doctoral dissertation titled "IQ and Immigration Policy" that "there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races." Matthews wrote [emphasis added]:

While it's clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics -- "the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ" -- he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against."

Matthews also included Richwine's dissertation abstract, which forwards the idea that the U.S. should not only select its immigrant pool based on IQ, but that immigrants and their future generations are not apt to obtain his desired level of intelligence [emphasis added]:

The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.

His dissertation, however, was not the first time Richwine promoted these offensive claims. In July 2008, while Richwine was a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he said in a panel discussion of the book The New Case Against Immigration, broadcast on C-SPAN, that "races differ in all sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ."

Richwine's anti-immigrant language is reminiscent of that used by the Pioneer Fund, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group that "funds studies of race and intelligence, as well as eugenics, the 'science' of breeding superior human beings that was discredited by various Nazi atrocities."

There is more, but I will let readers check out the rest of the articles for themselves.  The bottom line is that this prevalent mindset in the GOP and far right elements.  And it's ugly, it's racist and it is contrary to everything that supposed Christians ought to be supporting.

Catholic Bishops Seek to Torpedo Immigration Protections for Bi-National Couples

Even as more filth within the Catholic Church hierarchy has been exposed by the ongoing release of documents from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the Roman Catholic bishops have stepped up their anti-gay jihad and are pressuring politicians to strip provisions from immigration reform bills that would give legally married bi-national same sex couples the same immigration rights afforded to heterosexual couples.  It's part and parcel of the bishops' continued speaking out of both sides of their mouths while they disingenuously state that gays should be treated with dignity even as they do all in their power to strip away LGBT rights and dignity.  One has to wonder (i) do the bishops think these tactics will distract the laity from the horrors the bishops, cardinals and Popes allowed and perpetuated, and (ii) why does any politician listen to these bitter old men, many of whom ought to be behind bars for their roles in the sexual abuse of children?  The Associated Press is reporting on the bishop's anti-gay efforts. Here are highlights:

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops are in a difficult position as the debate over immigration reform gets underway: The immigrant-built American church, known for advocating a broad welcome for migrants and refugees, could end up opposing reform because it would recognize same-sex partners.

Proposals by President Barack Obama and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus include the same-sex partners of Americans among those who would be eligible for visas. The Human Rights Campaign and other gay advocates welcomed the recognition, arguing current laws unfairly treat people in gay or lesbian relationships "as strangers." The idea has the backing of the National Council de la Raza and other liberal Latino groups.

But Catholic bishops, with the support of evangelicals and other theological conservatives, have sent a letter to Obama protesting his proposal. In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would not provide a copy of the statement, saying the signatories agreed not to make the letter public. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops, would say only that recognition of gay couples in the president's reform proposals "jeopardizes passage of the bill."

Many other major religious groups lobbying for reform, such as The Episcopal Church, either support gay marriage or don't make homosexuality a focus. In a conference call this week with reporters, White House Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Munoz was asked whether Obama would support a bill that didn't acknowledge same-sex partners. Her only response: "The president's position on that is very clear."

It seems unlikely the bishops would accept any provision for same-sex partners— even for an issue as important to the church as immigration.

Ultimately, the controversy could split Catholics, in much the same way that Catholics divided over health care. Despite enormous pressure from the bishops, the Catholic Health Association, a trade group that represents hospitals, provided critical backing for the president's health care legislation. Surveys have found that large majorities of lay Catholics back same-sex marriage or civil unions.  Given the importance of Latinos to the U.S. church, political observers wonder how bishops could explain their opposition to Hispanic parishioners.

Frankly, what's needed is more criminal investigations of - and criminal prosecutions of bishops and cardinals for their roles in the worldwide criminal conspiracy to protect predators and obstruct justice.  Perhaps then these foul men wouldn't have time to work to deprive others of their civil legal rights - they'd be too busy trying to save their own sorry asses.

It's Republicans Who Don't Know the Real America

Ensconced in their reality denying bubble Republicans claim to represent "real Americans" and seek to uphold a version of America that in many ways never really existed outside of small pockets and, of course in the programing of shows like Leave It to Beaver.  Most people never existed in this false idyllic world, but that doesn't matter to those who want to keep America white and Christian and hold contempt for most Americans.  The real America, however, is changing rapidly and underscores the alternate universe world of today's GOP.  A piece in Politico looks at the phenomenon and the need for Republicans to come outside their bubble.  Here are highlights:

Republicans’ post-election soul-searching has to go beyond a simple self-reflection about who we are – we know our core belief in small government and individual liberty remains unchanged. Rather than look inward, it’s time to look outward and finally get to know the people we seek to represent.

The days and months and years ahead must be about a nationwide effort to introduce ourselves and get to know the millions of people and thousands of communities that make up our 21st-century America.

We all know the GOP has become synonymous with older, white males. This isn’t entirely accurate, but it’s public perception, and perception is reality.

 

As we evolve, it doesn’t just matter what we say but who is saying it.  Howie Long and Charles Barkley are two of America’s most popular and successful sports analysts today. That’s because they have credibility: Football fans know that Howie understands football, and basketball fans know that Barkley gets hoops. We respect their opinion because we believe they know what they’re talking about.  It’s the same in politics.

No citizen will support a candidate they don’t think understands them. After all, the whole point of representative government is putting into office someone who represents your values.  The focus has got to be on inclusion – welcoming minorities, women, youth and all Americans into the party and giving them a voice in shaping who we are, not just a one-way conversation in telling them what we believe.

[I]f all we’re doing is looking inward, we’re going the wrong way.  Look outward and find out who America is instead. We have a lot of people to get to know.

Will Republicans take heed of this message?  I for one will not be holding my breath.  Frankly, I believe that the Christianist base of the GOP cannot and will not change.  No real change will occur until several more generations of angry whites die off.