Islamic Extremist Use Trump as Recruiting Tool

Many have accused Donald Trump of aiding the enemy - i.e, ISIS and other extremist groups - through his vitriolic denunciations of Muslims and advocacy for barring Muslims from America.  Trump's demagoguery plays well with the racist, knuckle draggers of the GOP base, but plays right into ISIS and other groups' desire to depict America and the West at war against Islam and by extension, all Muslims. Not that Trump, the carnival barker playing to America's own extremists seems to give a damn.  A piece in the New York Times looks at how Trump's rhetoric is being used against America.  Here are highlights:

Al Qaeda’s branch in Somalia released a recruitment video on Friday that criticized racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States and contained footage of the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump announcing his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country.

The video, released by the militant group Shabab, appeared to be the first time that Mr. Trump was featured in jihadist recruitment material. During a Democratic presidential debate last month, Hillary Clinton said that Mr. Trump had been used in a recruitment video for the Islamic State, a claim that was later debunked.

Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are rival jihadist groups that compete for recruits and money among radicalized Muslims.  Representatives for the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

The video was authenticated by the SITE Intelligence Group, which studies jihadist propaganda, and it appeared to be aimed at the African-American community.

In addition to footage of Mr. Trump, the video, which is 51 minutes long, included excerpts from speeches by Malcolm X and unnamed white supremacists, as well as footage of white police officers, African-Americans protesting police brutality and African-American men in prison. Some appeared to be performing Islamic prayers.

Using footage of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American member of a Qaeda affiliate who was killed in an American drone attack in 2011, the video also said the United States was gripped by a “malignant hatred” of Islam. It warned American Muslims that “there are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon.”

“The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the camera. Only two choices remained for Muslims in the United States, he said.

“You either leave or you fight,” he said. “You leave and live among Muslims, or you stay behind and follow the example of Nidal Hasan and others who fulfilled their duty of fighting for Allah’s cause.”

What is frightening is that far too many Americans seem only too happy to play right into ISIS's hands, especially GOP presidential candidates who are only too eager to prostitute themselves to the ugliest elements of the GOP base.

Donald Trump Hands a Victory to ISIS

There is probably nothing that ISIS wants more than to be able to depict its actions as defending Islam (certainly its virulent version of Islam) against a war brought by the United States and other "Christian" nations.  Even Republicans - such as even the usually cretinous George W. Bush - have taken pains to separate Al Qaeda and now, ISIS from all of Islam.  Yet today, Donald Trump more or less declared war n all Muslims and  called for the "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."  Not surprisingly, Trump cited "research" from a certified hate group as backing his statements. Trump's declaration no doubt is playing well with the ugliest, knuckle dragging elements of the GOP base.  But it is probably being welcomed with even more excitement in ISIS leadership circles.  The question now becomes whether or not the mainline GOP (to the extent it still exists) will at last grow the spine to loudly and repeatedly condemn Trump and his followers.  A piece in Politico looks at Trump's poorly thought through declaration.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump on Monday said there should be a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," a surprising escalation of rhetoric—even for him.

The brash GOP front-runner, increasingly desperate to hold on to his position atop the field, emailed out the statement just hours after a new poll showed Ted Cruz overtaking him for the first time in Iowa, where the first-in-the-nation caucuses are less than two months away (a second poll of likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers released Monday afternoon showed Trump maintaining his lead in Iowa).

Doubling down on the signature demagoguery that has enraged liberals and many moderate Republicans but endeared him to the conservative base, Trump said that the U.S. should stop all Muslims from entering the country in response to the ISIL-coordinated attacks in Paris and last week’s ISIL-inspired shooting in San Bernardino carried out by a Muslim husband and wife who became radicalized.

Trump’s statement, without citing a study, said that Pew Research had found that “there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.” Trump’s aides promoted the statement on Twitter. 

Even though Trump aide Daniel Scavino had tweeted the statement, Trump’s campaign fielded a number of calls from reporters wanting to confirm that the statement was real—a sign of the outlandish nature of this latest proposal, even from a candidate who has been uniquely audacious in stretching the boundaries of political decorum and the standard Republican orthodoxies on policy.

But the statement, Trump’s campaign confirmed, was true. A spokeswoman, when asked what inspired the comments, said Trump commented, “death.”

To clear up any doubts, Trump himself tweeted moments later: “Just put out a very important policy statement regarding the influx of hatred and danger coming into out country. We must be vigilant.”

Once again, Trump’s extreme positioning on an issue forced his GOP rivals to weigh in, further fanning attention Trump’s way.

Jeb Bush quickly spoke out on Twitter, saying, “Donald Trump is unhinged. His ‘policy’ proposals are not serious.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called Trump’s statement “a ridiculous view” and chalked it up to his lack of political experience.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who unlike Cruz and Rubio isn’t making a serious play for Trump voters, slammed the rhetoric as “just more of the outrageous divisiveness that characterizes his every breath and another reason why he is entirely unsuited to lead the United States.”

The statement also drew fire from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who tweeted, “@realDonaldTrump has gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric.”

Trump's proposal, which would seemingly violate the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom, also comes on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, an attack that ultimately led to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.

Incredulous as so many were upon hearing Trump's proposal, a longtime political operative who knows Trump well saw a cunning political ploy aimed at solidifying the billionaire's standing with the GOP base.

"He knows that by driving a wedge like this, he'll win the Republican primary," the operative said. "This is a base that is almost completely opposed to resettling any Syrian refugees in the U.S. He's locking down that real estate, forcing his rivals to scramble to figure out their own positioning and he's setting the agenda once again.  "He knows the xenophobia thing works with the Republican base. It just does."

Trump’s statement also quoted a study by the Center for Security Policy that claimed, "'25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as part of the global Jihad.'" The CSP is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Donald Trump’s Police State

Sadly, many Americas know very little accurate history of their own nation much less that of other nations.  This deficit of knowledge and the vulnerability it creates for demagogues to simply lie at will is becoming increasingly obvious as one watches the Republican Party swing towards fascism, especially in the person of Donald Trump who seems to believe that Americas are willing to accept a police state in exchange for "security."  It's the type of pact with the devil that many Germans accepted in the early days of the 1930's and lived to regret - assuming they and their families survived World War II intact.  If one really listens to Trump, it is frightening, especially since 75% of his "facts" are untrue.  A column in the New York Times looks at what a Trump regime could bring to America.  It's not a country in which I would want to live.  Here are excerpts:

[O]ver the last three months, in listening to plans of the Republican presidential front-runner and the views of his increasingly thuggish followers, I’m starting to have some dark fears should Donald Trump become president.

Take him at his word — albeit, a worthless thing given his propensity for telling outright lies and not backing down when called on them — Donald Trump’s reign would be a police state. He has now outlined a series of measures that would make the United States an authoritarian nightmare. Trump is no longer entertaining, or diversionary. He’s a billionaire brute, his bluster getting more ominous by the day.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before,” he said in the demagogic spiral following the Paris attacks. “And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.”

What’s he talking about? In his words, he wants to implement “the unthinkable.”

Let’s start with his most far-reaching crush of cruelty, the Trump promise to create a huge “deportation force” to storm into homes, churches, schools and businesses and round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants. In doing so, he would need an army of agents to go door-to-door, breaking up families, and snagging many citizens caught up the in the mass sweeps.

As his jackbooted minions grab legal Americans (the children born in this country, citizens per the 14th amendment) and separate them from their illegal parents, he will place them — where? In foster homes? In detention centers? In concentration camps?

He says it will take only two years for him to disrupt nearly every community in the United States, destroying thousands of businesses in the process. “I’m going to remove them so fast your head would spin.”

To go with his Deportation Force, Trump would send another wave of federal authorities out to identify, track and monitor Muslims in America. All of them? He hasn’t said. He’s building his police state on the fly. But in just a few days he went from saying he would “strongly consider” closing houses of worship (mosques), to saying he would have “absolutely no choice” but to shut them down. As for tracking Muslims through some kind a database, he’s been squishy, but also unequivocal, saying, “I would certainly implement that.”

To further clamp down in this land of the formerly free, Trump could borrow a few police state ideas from his fellow Republican presidential candidates. Mike Huckabee has suggested using federal agents to invade doctors’ offices and homes, physically preventing women from ending a pregnancy.

[A]ttend a Trump public event.   These rallies are scary spectacles of rabid brown shirts in Dockers. His followers cheer while others pummel protesters, or spit on them. A few days ago in Alabama, a black protester was punched and kicked by his supporters. Trump suggested the man had it coming.

Like any good authoritarian — Soviet or banana republic — Trump concocts plots and dark doings to scare the quivering masses. And no one on the public stage is better at the Big Lie this year than Trump. PolitiFact found that 75 percent of his so-called factual statements are “mostly or entirely false.” The other 25 percent were “half true” or “mostly true.” His score in the flat-out “true” column was zero.

The more lies he tells, the more popular he is with a large part of the Republican base that lives in a world of made-up horror and blunt force solutions.

So, hordes of Mexicans continue to rush into the United States, he says, when in fact more people are now returning to Mexico than are coming in. Syrian refugees are “pouring into the country” when barely 2,000 have been admitted. And Trump continues to say “I saw” thousands and thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, when no such thing has ever been documented. The goal is to get you to hate them — Mexicans, Muslims, the object of all your fears.

As we enter the holidays, there is one more Trump vow to consider. “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you.” With Trump, the seasonal salutation may be mandatory, and creepy.

So why is Trump so popular with the many in the Republican Party base? Very simple.  The party base is now mostly made up of straight, white, far right Christian, white supremacists who embrace ignorance and feel threatened by anyone who is different and/or threatens their white privilege and/or their fantasy based world view (if one can even call their restricted version of reality a world view).  Trump is playing to everyone of their prejudices and making them promises just as Hitler did as he began his rise to power. The rest of us should be very, very afraid.  

Donald Trump's Racist Revival

Donald Trump is rapidly rebranding the GOP, or at least solidifying what has been a GOP staple in motivating voters to vote against their own and often America's best interest.  Trump has taken outright blatant racism main stream as he has encouraged crowds to rough up non-white protesters and played the race card against Hispanics and now those of Middle Eastern origin.  The man is a loud mouthed demagogue, yet he seems to be exactly what a large core of the GOP base wants because he is playing to their ugliest prejudices.  Sadly, Trump is providing fodder for ISIS' propaganda efforts but seemingly doesn't care.  With Trump, self-aggrandizement is all that matters. a Piece in Salon looks at Trump's naked racism.  Here are highlights:

Over the weekend, a group of Donald Trump supporters punched and kicked a Black man who attended a Trump rally, and disrupted the event with cries of “Black Lives Matter.” When asked later about his fans’ deplorable and violent behavior, Trump remarked that “maybe [the man] should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” There have been no cries of outrage about how this man’s right to free speech was violated through use of intimidation and violence.

Instead, Trump condones white violence against a non-violent protestor. And in doing so, he demonstrates not only the complete hypocrisy of the right wing on questions of race but also the extent to which a deep desire and will to do violence toward Black people exists just beneath the surface of most right-wing political discourse. Many White Americans carry seething racial resentment toward Americans of color, with special enmity reserved for Black folks and those of ostensible Middle Eastern descent whom they would hastily deem “terrorists.”

Trump continues to be a formidable candidate for the Republican nomination because he grants legitimacy to most basely racist notions of the GOP base.  Many of us in the African American striver class had been convinced that while our society was still rife with covert racism and dogwhistle politics, that white Americans had evolved past the moment where they would dare express such explicit racial animus with no expectation of serious repercussion.

White rage freely expressed in a system of white dominance is a wholly dangerous thing, largely because it proceeds unchecked by riding the coattails of calls for honest, pull-no-punches political discourse.  The White Americans who love Donald Trump finally feel like they can breathe free oxygen again, like there might be a return to some semblance of an America they know. 

That Donald Trump continues to hold his ground in the presidential race suggests that we are in an era in which too many white folks can’t even be shamed into anti-racist pretension. In our endless discussions about post-racial discourse over the last 7 years, those of us who study race had been frustrated that this era seemed to be marked by an inability to nail down racism because the language of racism had become nebulous and indeterminate even though the policies continued to be as concrete and immovable as ever.

This moment, however (hopefully) fleeting, is both new and old. We see explicit racist discourse re-emerging boldly and shamelessly in public life. The rub is that the American public on the whole has been no more responsive to Trumpian racism than it has been to post-racial, covert, racism. And that is downright shameful.

 

The GOP's Race Away from Inclusiveness

If one thinks back to the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, one will recall all the promises that the Republican Party would make a concerted effort to be more inclusive and strive to fill the fictional GOP big tent.  Booby Jindal - who just saw his would be presidential campaign crash and burn after prostituting himself to white Christofascist extremists - said the GOP needed to stop being the "party of stupid" and many said there simply were not enough aging whites to allow the GOP to win national elections.  Fast forward to today, and the GOP has gone in exactly the opposite direction from that promised in early 2013 and the racism and religious fanaticism seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.  GOP presidential candidates are attending "kill the gays" gatherings and the party base wants to treat Syrian refugees much like Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.  All of this nastiness is, of course, wrapped in the American flag and professions of Christian values.  A piece in Politico looks at the demise of the GOP's call to inclusiveness.  Here are excerpts:

Poor Reince Priebus. After Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in 2012, Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, touted his shiny new 100-page report on reinventing the GOP at the National Press Club in March 2013. It was called the “Growth and Opportunity Project.” Priebus’ message was earnest and direct: The GOP needed to practice inclusion, not exclusion, if it was to have any chance of winning the presidency. “We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too,” the report said.

That was then. In the meantime, the GOP’s leading presidential contenders have serially and successfully thumbed their collective noses at the party establishment. Already Donald Trump and Ben Carson have upended the race with stands like castigating illegal immigrants. But amid widespread fear of terrorism triggered by the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, the GOP is now mired in its ugliest intra-party debate yet—about whether Muslims living in the United States constitute a potential Fifth Column.

[T]he party establishment is once more being outflanked by its militant wing, which has long depicted Muslims as first and foremost loyal not to America but to Islamic Sharia law. . . . . whether Trump and Carson really believe in their gibberish about Muslims-Americans is almost beside the point: If they score electoral successes, they will reshape the GOP in their own image. And to some extent they already are. 

To be sure, Carson’s likening some Muslim refugees to “rabid” dogs and Trump’s musings, which he has attempted to rescind, about creating a federal registry for Muslim-Americans—how would he even decide who was or was not truly a Muslim; by drawing on the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws?—are triggering something of a backlash on the mainstream right.

For all their pious disavowals of Trump’s fiery rhetoric, establishment candidates like Bush and Rubio are backing House Speaker Paul Ryan’s push for suspending a Syrian refugee program, with Bush exempting “Christians.” Meanwhile, neoconservative outlets like Commentary magazine are warning that “any plan to admit tens of thousands of Syrians is a huge gamble with American security.

So what’s going on? How has the party departed so far from the vision Priebus laid out just two years ago?

There are two factors at work. The first is that as the GOP embraces the theme of America’s precipitous decline under President Barack Obama, it’s jettisoning the crusading and optimistic foreign policy credo of George W. Bush. After over a decade of warfare in the Middle East, the notion that Washington can single-handedly transform Muslim societies in America’s image attracts derisory snorts on the right as well as the left. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, by contrast, is harkening back to the Bush legacy by endorsing a federal agency to disseminate “Judeo-Christian values” to Iran Russia, China and the Middle East . . . But many conservatives—both candidates and their constituents—are adopting a darker view of the Middle East, which is that it is irredeemable and thus poses a dire threat to the very existence of western civilization. 

The second reason goes back to the end of the Cold War. During the past century, the GOP focused on the internal subversive threat of communism and often depicted liberals as traitors. Now many on the right have seamlessly moved on to hunt for Muslim traitors as part of a third World War against a foreign enemy. They’ve been identifying domestic traitors and declaring a broader war against Islam for years, but have been, for the most part, speaking to deaf ears. . . . Now after Paris, the radical right is grabbing the opportunity to push their case to a wider audience.

Up until now, the most conspicuous example of the GOP’s persistent anti-Islam strain, of course, has been the campaign to depict Obama as a closet Muslim. . . . . The search for traitors has also been going inside the ranks of the GOP itself. Take the stalwart anti-tax activist Grover Norquist whose wife Samah Alrayyes is of Palestinian origin. Along with former George W. Bush administration official Suhail Khan, he has regularly been accused by former Reagan administration Defense Department official Frank Gaffney of being a secret Muslim Brotherhood agent.  . . . . egged on by the attacks in Paris, all this that was once on the fringes is now beginning to get wider circulation in the GOP. Today, mainstream conservative magazines and politicians are raising similar doubts about Islam and Muslims.

Yet a new nationwide Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that while public fears of a terrorist attack in America have increased, over three-quarters of the respondents rejected the idea of discriminating among refugees on the basis of religious faith.

Adding the demonization of Muslim-Americans to the GOP brand might well sabotage the party’s chances before it has even entered the national competition. . . . Specifically, it would do well to recall the postmortem that took place after the party suffered devastating losses in the 1953 midterm elections. Then as now the party was bitterly divided between its establishment wing and radical populists such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy that helped doom it at the polls.

Today, the party is flirting with national registries and a secret police to track down illegal immigrants. Will it really bang its drum about this in 2016?

GOP Fear Mongerers and America's Poor Track Record on Immigrants

One other thing that John Kasich said in the context of whether or not Syrian refugees should be allowed into America was to the effect that "the American public usually gets it right."  Kasich made the statement to justify turning away Syrian refugees.  In point of fact, America has gotten it seriously wrong on immigration many times over the course of the nation's history - especially if the immigrants were of different faiths and darker skin color.  The image above shows how wrong public opinion was in the 1930's in the context of taking in Jewish refugees.  This piece looks at America's less than stellar track record.  Here are some excerpts:

It’s a comforting thought to look at the refugees fleeing ISIS — the same ones to whom Republicans want to deny entry into the United States — and say that we’re better than this, that Americans as a whole will rise up and refuse to be so cold, so heartless. But those of us who are eager to help people in need are truly in the minority, historically speaking.

As World War II approached, Fortune Magazine published the results of a 1938 poll that should serve as a grim reminder that Americans can and will latch on to bigotry in any sense. Today, we pretend that America has always accepted Jewish people. Unfortunately, the poll reveals that the majority — 67 percent — openly rejected taking in Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, and other countries oppressed by the Nazis “with conditions as they are.” Only 23 percent of Americans, most of whom opposed raising immigration quotas, said that accepting Jewish refugees was a good idea.

2016 Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie’s opinion that we should not even accept Muslim “5-year-old orphans” is one that should stay buried in our shameful past — but a January 1939 poll heartbreakingly reveals that Americans even opposed taking care of Jewish children.

In September, the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor reminded us that the bigotry espoused by the Right and the hatred they level at Muslim refugees is exactly like the anti-Semitism of the 1930’s:

No matter the alarming rhetoric of [Adolf] Hitler’s fascist state — and the growing acts of violence against Jews and others — popular sentiment in Western Europe and the United States was largely indifferent to the plight of German Jews.

“Of all the groups in the 20th century,” write the authors of the 1999 book, “Refugees in the Age of Genocide,” “refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as ‘genuine’, but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy.”

“Part of that hostility was fueled, as some of the European grievances are now, by stereotypes of the refugees as harbingers of a dangerous ideology, in this instance communism and anarchist violence,” Tharoor notes.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Every day, Republicans remind us  — incorrectly — that Muslims are of the devil, that their ways and beliefs are somehow dangerous to the good, pristine America they know and love…and that has not existed since Jim Crow ended.

Jeb Bush Drops in the Polls as Carson Pulls even with Trump

I cannot stand Jeb Bush, but it is nonetheless noteworthy that "Jebbie" is plummeting in the polls even as whackadoodle Ben Carson pulls even with blowhard, narcissist billionaire Donald trump. One can only imagine the growls coming from mamma bear Barbara Bush as the delusional GOP base rejects her son simply because he isn't utterly batshit crazy.  Jebbie's a pawn of the wealthy and certainly no friend of working Americans, but he is the height of sanity when compared to Ben Carson or Donald trump who continues his nationwide reality show within the GOP nomination contest.  The Raw Story looks at Jebbie's plummeting poll numbers.  Here are highlights:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush apparently is out of the top tier of Republican presidential contenders, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll indicated Sunday. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina surged into the vacuum while real estate mogul and celebrity candidate Donald Trump retained his front-runner status, the poll of 1,000 people Sept. 20-24 indicated.

Bush has gone from a frontrunner to a sideshow. "Some 7 percent of Republican primary voters named Mr. Bush as their top pick for the GOP nomination, down from 14 percent in July and 22 percent in June," the Journal reported.

Fiorina, riding the wave of attention and praise following a strong performance on CNN's second Republican presidential debate Sept. 16, scored 11 percent as did Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Carson is almost matched with Trump, taking 20 percent of GOP primary voters' support compared to Trump's 21 percent. It's a major jump for Carson after the last Journal/NBC News poll in July in which Carson only polled at 10 percent. The Journal noted when voters’ first choices are combined with their second, Carson actually overtakes Trump.

Significantly, the poll was conducted after Carson's inflammatory remark that a practicing Muslim should not be allowed to become president. After much criticism, Carson doubled down on that statement Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

The fact that Carson has risen in the polls should be no surprise given the Islamophobia son prevalent in the GOP base .  The surprise is that anyone in the GOP base supports a black candidate even if that candidate is a religious extremist loon like Carson.  

The Republican War on Muslims

Increasingly, the Republican Party is defined by who it wages war against.  The GOP has continued a war on gays, a war on women, a war on the poor, a war on labor union members, a war on Hispanics, and now it has made official its war on Muslims.  Virtually anyone who is not a white, knuckle dragging far right Christian is now the enemy.  As one reader noted, it used to be that such bigotry was at least signaled in coded dog whistle messages.  Not any more, the bigotry and demands for special rights to discriminate are displayed openly and worn as a badge of distinction.   The irony is that this now open war on Muslims was made official by Ben Carson, a black who candidly doesn't have a chance in hell of winning the GOP nomination because to most of the GOP base a black president is anathema to their demands for perpetual white privilege. The New York Times lays into the Republican Party in a main editorial today.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is drawing criticism over the bigoted comments he has been making recently about Muslims. It is well deserved, and is not a matter of “P.C. culture,” as Mr. Carson has claimed. Nor does Mr. Carson represent some minor fringe element in the Republican Party.

This latest sordid mess to arise from the G.O.P. nomination contest touches on bedrock American values, constitutional principles and American history. It reflects a pernicious habit among the leaders of the Republican Party to play with fire by pandering to an angry, disaffected and heavily white base by demonizing selected minorities. Muslims are just the current target.

Mr. Carson declared Sunday on ”Meet the Press” that Muslims are unfit to run for president because a president’s faith should be “consistent with the Constitution.” Later, he told the newspaper The Hill that Islamic Shariah law isn’t consistent with the Constitution because “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

Leave aside for a moment the unintentionally funny spectacle of a member of the current Republican Party declaring that religion should be kept out of public life, and that Mr. Carson, as an African-American, is a member of a much belittled minority. The freedom of religion embedded in the First Amendment rules out the very idea of a religious test for public office, as John F. Kennedy so eloquently argued and then proved by becoming the first Catholic president.

Mr. Carson is hardly alone in his demagogy. Donald Trump has accused President Obama of being foreign born, and is continuing to stoke suspicions that Mr. Obama is a Muslim — a myth that a disturbing number of Republicans believe.

The phenomenon isn’t new. Running for president in 2008, Senator John McCain was praised when a voter called Mr. Obama an Arab and Mr. McCain replied by calling him a “decent family man, citizen,” but he didn’t rebut the lie. Former President Bush sometimes said the right things, but instituted a system of detention, torture and trial that applies only to Muslims.

Anti-Muslim sentiment is playing out in the refugee crisis caused by hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, fleeing wars in the Middle East. The United States recently agreed to take an additional 30,000 refugees per year by 2017, but some conservatives are objecting, claiming they will provide a recruiting pool for radicals.

Closing the country’s doors to Muslims would buy into Mr. Carson and Mr. Trump’s vilification and dishonor the thousands of Muslims who have joined Irish, Italians, Germans, French, Jews, Russians, Latinos, Africans and many others in becoming honorable citizens and perhaps, one day, president.

Ben Carson: Ban Muslims from Public Office

Over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate and, in my view, certifiable lunatic Ben Carson, stated that he did not believe that a Muslim could be president of the United States because Islam was "incompatible with the principles of America."  In short, Carson advocated for a religious test for holding the office of the presidency - something contrary to the U.S. Constitution.  Such an extremist statement from Carson should come as no surprise since he has also stated that slavery was the best thing to happen to blacks since it brought them to Christianity.  Carson embodies the threat that Christofascists pose to constitutional government.  They are every bit as opposed to the principles of America as Islamic extremist but for the level of violence most are willing to use.  Both groups want a theocracy.  Carson belongs in an asylum.  Senator Harry Reid rightly ripped Carson a new one in a Facebook post.  Here are highlights:

In Arlington National Cemetery, there is a white headstone, which, like so many others, marks the final resting place of a courageous service-member who gave his life in combat. This grave belongs to Kareem Khan of New Jersey, who was just 20 years old. Kareem was Muslim.

Kareem’s rank was that of Specialist in the Stryker Brigade of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry division. He received a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a medal for good conduct. Like thousands of other soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kareem Khan sacrificed everything for his country. Kareem gave, as President Abraham Lincoln said, “the last full measure of devotion” for the United States.

But yesterday, I watched on “Meet the Press” as a Republican candidate for President denigrated Kareem Khan and all Muslim-Americans. Ben Carson questioned Muslim-Americans devotion to the United States. He questioned their integrity. And then Ben Carson unilaterally disqualified every Muslim-America from becoming President of the United States.

Shame on him. Shame on any person who spews such vile, hateful rhetoric. The nearly three million Muslim in this country are part of the fabric of America. They teach in our schools, fight in our military, and serve in Congress. Congressmen Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana – both Muslim – have represented their districts and states with distinction.

Sadly, this is just another example of Republican candidates refusing to speak for three million Muslim Americans. We saw it last week with Donald Trump, as he refused to denounce bigotry at his own campaign rally. If these Republican candidates are incapable of going to bat for America’s Muslim community, then they shouldn’t run for President of the United States.

I call upon every Republican to denounce Ben Carson’s disgusting remarks. That shameful intolerance and bigotry should have no place in America today. Sadly, it seems to have a lasting place in the Republican Party. Republicans should open their eyes and take note of the contributions of our country’s Muslim community. Until they do, none of them will be worthy of leading this nation.

As with gays, Muslims simple do not count as fully human or as full citizens in the minds of the religious zealots who have taken over the GOP base and to whom GOP candidates willingly prostitute themselves.   If anyone should be barred from public office, perhaps it should be Christofascists since they increasingly refuse to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

The GOP's Growing Anti-Islam Fanaticism

Conservative columnist Michael Gerson has gone off the GOP reservation again in a column in the Washington Post that condemns the GOP's growing anti-Islam fanaticism which ultimately plays into the hands of Islamic terrorists.  GOP candidates engaged in anti-Muslim demagoguery may win points with the increasing racist and religiously extreme party base - many of who seem to want to bring back the Crusades - but they are providing great video clips for terrorist to use in propaganda campaigns.  Sadly, the days of the GOP being a responsible political party are gone and  Gerson needs to understand that rational thought and arguments and the Republican Party are now generally mutually exclusive.  Hate, bigotry, homophobia, racism - these are now the GOP norm and the party's candidates only inflame the insanity and extremism of the party base.  In the long run, it harms America's long term interests.  Here are column highlights:

During the speech [to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001], Bush explained, “The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics — a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.” 

This claim — that radical Islam is a violation rather than an expression of Islam — is controversial among many conservatives today. Bush’s formulation of this argument might well be disqualifying in the current GOP presidential nomination process. This change in language and attitude toward Islam represents the largest shift in Republican views of the war on terrorism since 2001. 

During the last two presidential nomination cycles, Republican candidates, at various points, have proposed requiring a loyalty oath for Muslims to serve in government; ruled out Muslims serving in their Cabinet; called sharia law “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States”; raised alarms about the “creeping attempt” to “ease [sharia] law and the Muslim faith into our government”; warned of “no go” zones where sharia law rules; described Muslim immigration as “colonization” and warned that immigrants “want to come and conquer us”; said there were only a “handful” of “reasonable, moderate followers of Islam”; described Islam as “a religion that promotes the most murderous mayhem on the planet.”  

All this is combined with a durable conviction among some Republicans that President Obama offers Muslims special favor and may be a Muslim himself. As well as an almost magical belief that saying the words “radical Islamic terrorism” — like reciting an incantation — is a victory in the war against terrorism. 

These beliefs have become pronounced during the Republican Party’s current populist turn, in which the blaming of outsiders is a sure applause line (and, in some campaigns, a substitute for ideas and policy). The current rejection of “political correctness” . . . . has become a type of broad permission for the expression of properly repressed ethnic and religious resentments.

Bush did not make this point only because he was a decent human being . . . . Terrorists from the 9/11 hijackers to the Islamic State believe they will win if the world’s Muslims regard their conflict as Islam versus the West. Cultivating this belief is the main objective of their sophisticated propaganda.

Bush believed that we will win if the world regards this conflict as civilized humanity versus murderers who use religion as an excuse for hatred, tyranny and the will to power. 

Perhaps seven years without presidential authority has left Republicans unfamiliar with presidential responsibilities. But this contest of narratives remains the most important ideological struggle of our time. And Republicans should engage that debate, not complicate it.

New 'Crusader' Assault Rifle Engraved With A Cross And Bible Verse

If one needs any more proof of how insane and dangerous some on the far right are to the rest of society, look no further than a new "Crusader" assault rifle being marketed to the evangelical crowd that comes engraved with a cross and Bible verse.  With he professional Christian crowd whipping up the hysteria of the ignorant and pushing the Christian persecution meme, one can only wonder how long it will be until guns like this are used against "the enemy."  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at this latest frightening batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Florida gunmaker, Spike’s Tactical in Apopka, Florida, introduced a new assault rifle this week that is every evangelical NRA member's wet dream. The $1,395 AR-15 is engraved with with a Bible verse:

"Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle."

On the other side of the weapon is a Christian cross and the word "Crusader," the name of the rifle.

Ben Thomas, a former Navy SEAL and spokesman for Spike's, said the bible verse is meant to insure no Muslim will ever use that weapon.

“When you make a rifle, you have to understand that it could be used for ill deeds if it got in the wrong hands,” Thomas warned.

Mr. Thomas said the Crusader, which went on sale this week, was not meant to be racist. He fended off the question with the demur:

"We didn't say no Muslims."

 These people constitute a clear and present danger!

The High Economic Price of Rejecting the Iran Deal

In its quest to pander to the ignorance embracing party base, Republicans continually reject objective reality and ignore the fact that the United States cannot unilaterally force other nations to dance to its tune.   Should such an attempt be made if the U.S. Senate rejects the agreement negotiated with Iran to control that nation's nuclear program, the economic consequences for America could be severe, not to mention the cost involved of alienating needed allies.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this reality that ought to outweigh GOP desires to pander to it base that revels in killing Muslims as it clings to a delusional myth of American exceptionalism.  Here are column highlights:

Those calling on Congress to scrap the [Iran] deal argue that the United States could have gotten a better deal, and still could, if we unilaterally ramped up existing sanctions, enough to force Iran to dismantle its entire nuclear program or even alter the character of its regime wholesale. This assumption is a dangerous fantasy, flying in the face of economic and diplomatic reality.

To be sure, the United States does have tremendous economic influence. But it was not this influence alone that persuaded countries across Europe and Asia to join the current sanction policy, one that required them to make costly sacrifices, curtail their purchases of Iran’s oil, and put Iran’s foreign reserves in escrow. They joined us because we made the case that Iran’s nuclear program was an uncontained threat to global stability and, most important, because we offered a concrete path to address it diplomatically — which we did.

If Congress now rejects this deal, the elements that were fundamental in establishing that international consensus will be gone.

The simple fact is that, after two years of testing Iran in negotiations, the international community does not believe that ramping up sanctions will persuade Iran to eradicate all traces of its hard-won civil nuclear program or sever its ties to its armed proxies in the region. Foreign governments will not continue to make costly sacrifices at our demand.

Indeed, they would more likely blame us for walking away from a credible solution to one of the world’s greatest security threats, and would continue to re-engage with Iran. Instead of toughening the sanctions, a decision by Congress to unilaterally reject the deal would end a decade of isolation of Iran and put the United States at odds with the rest of the world.

Some critics nevertheless argue that we can force the hands of these countries by imposing powerful secondary sanctions against those that refuse to follow our lead.

But that would be a disaster. The countries whose cooperation we need — including those in the European Union, China, Japan, India and South Korea, as well as the companies and banks that handle their oil purchases and hold foreign reserves — are among the largest economies in the world. If we were to cut them off from the American dollar and our financial system, we would set off extensive financial hemorrhaging, not just in our partner countries but in the United States as well.

The major importers of Iranian oil — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey — together account for nearly a fifth of our goods exports and own 47 percent of foreign-held American treasuries. They will not agree to indefinite economic sacrifices in the name of an illusory better deal. We should think very seriously before threatening to cripple the largest banks and companies in these countries. . . . . not to mention the economic aftershocks and the inevitable retaliation.

The deal we reached last month is strong, unprecedented and good for America, with all the key elements the international community demanded to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Congress should approve this deal and ignore critics who offer no alternative.

The GOP's Swamp Fever

At all levels the Republican Party has become a coven of crazy people and those motivated by hatred of others - and the list of who is "other" is very, very long.  By GOP standards, only far right white Christians are not other.  The result is the increasing lunacy that we see in GOP candidates, with Donald Trump being only the most visible tip of the iceberg.   Years ago, these lunatics would not have been welcomed in the party, but once the Christofascists were welcomed in, the flood gates of insanity were cast wide open.  A piece in the Richmond Times Dispatch - one of the most reactionary newspapers in Virginia - decries what is now the GOP norm.  Here are column excerpts:

On Friday, retired Gen. Wesley Clark suggested people who are “disloyal to the United States” should be put in WWII-style internment camps. He meant Islamist radicals, not Confederate flag-wavers. Either way, locking people up because they “have an ideology,” as Clark put it, is disloyal to the Bill of Rights — so the first person to go into any Disloyalty Camp should be Clark himself.

Clark once ran briefly for president as a Democrat, but his comments suggest he might be more comfortable in today’s GOP . . . . [Donald] Trump is doing very well among the Republican rank and file, thanks to his tough-guy bluster. A lot of the base sees him as a teller of hard truths other people do not want to face: Illegal immigrants are drug pushers and rapists, we still need to find out whether President Obama’s birth certificate is real, and so on.

Many of them [Democrats] like to say Trump is not a problem for the GOP, he is the GOP — and that’s the real problem: Republicans have waded so far into the fever swamps that somebody like Trump can spout the most lunatic nonsense and still fit right in.

But this is inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say Republicans have waded so far into the fever swamps that all of the candidates can spout the most lunatic nonsense and fit right in.

For instance: The other day Rand Paul, . . . . said he might like to revive NSEERS, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. . . . . a program created after 9/11 that, among other things, “not only singled out Muslims entering the country for extra interrogation at the airport,” but also required Muslim males over 16 to register in person at federal immigration offices. Registration including being photographed and fingerprinted.

[F]orcing people with certain religious backgrounds to register with the government probably sounds good to a lot of folks [in the GOP] — at least so long as you don’t make anyone wear a gold star. 

Yet as far as fellow GOP presidential hopefuls Lindsey Graham, Chris Christie and Rick Perry are concerned, Rand Paul is a lily-livered sob sister.

And let’s not forget Ted Cruz . . . Cruz says he is one of Trump’s biggest fans: While conceding Trump is “not always artful,” Cruz says “he is focusing on the enormous problem of illegal immigration and the need to secure the border.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker thinks Americans need protection not only from illegal immigrants but from the legal kind as well: “In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying … the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, protecting American workers and American wages.” Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, is manning the barricades against the homosexual agenda that threatens not just the traditional American family but civilization itself. Rick Santorum is right there with him, warning that America is at a “tipping point.”

[I]f Republicans really want to keep America safe, they will have to widen the net. As the massacre at a black church in Charleston shows, white supremacists can pose quite a threat to security. What’s more, in 2002 the FBI’s section chief for domestic terrorism testified before Congress about the threat of ecoterrorism from environmental and animal-rights activists. Seven years later, the Department of Homeland Security warned about the potential terrorist threat posed by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This past February, DHS and the FBI warned about the threat posed by right-wing militias, “sovereign citizens” and other anti-government radicals. 

Add up all the warnings and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there has never been a greater need to keep America safe from current and aspiring Americans. 

The GOP, of course, will not cast a wider net because of the fact that white supremacists, right-wing militia members and Christian extremists are all now an integral part of the party base.  It's disturbing to see how low a once rational political party has fallen - and the descent into insanity really started when the Christofascists were welcomed with open arms by a cynical party leadership.   The cancer has truly metastasized.