Pence Dodges Question on Anti-LGBT "Religious Freedom" Order

Der Fuhrer is not the only one in his regime who is challenged when it comes to truth and veracity (indeed, the question would seem to be whether there is anyone who isn't a pathological lair).  Which brings me to homophobe and gay hater extraordinaire, Mike Pence.  It is commonly assumed that Trump tapped Pence as his VP choice in order to pander to Christofascists with whom Trump met in June, 2016.  During that meeting, Trump made promises to the leaders of a veritable who's who of anti-gay zealots and religious extremists, none of which bode well for LGBT Americans. High on that list was the passage of legislation and/or executive orders that would grant Christofascists of all walks, in and outside of governmental positions, the right to openly discriminate against LGBT citizens - and others who do not subscribe to their claimed religious beliefs.  On Sunday, Pence, a man with a decades long history of animus towards LGBT citizens (including support for conversion therapy) dissembled on This Week as to the regimes plans to legalize anti-LGBT discrimination.  The Advocate has highlights: 

In an interview aired Super Bowl Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence handed the ball off when asked if he expects President Donald Trump to issue an anti-LGBT so-called religious freedom executive order.

“I think that’ll be the purview of the president,” Pence said when George Stephanopoulos asked him about the possibility of such an order on ABC’s This Week.

Last week a draft of an order with anti-LGBT language circulated in the media; it was first obtained by The Nation. It would allow businesses, nonprofits, and even government employees to discriminate, without repercussions, against anyone who offends certain religious beliefs. The beliefs include opposition to same-sex marriage, any sex outside marriage, transgender identity, and abortion.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said there are no plans for such an order right now but has said a variety of orders are always under consideration, therefore leaving the door open. LGBT and civil liberties groups have been quick to decry it, and constitutional scholars have said it likely is beyond the scope of what a president is allowed to do via executive order. But religious right activists are pushing it. It is similar to a pending piece of federal legislation, the First Amendment Defense Act, which Trump has said he would sign if it is passed by Congress.

Pence’s words may ring rather hollow, considering his long record of opposing LGBT rights, both as Indiana governor and earlier as a congressman. And given Trump’s opposition to marriage equality and support for the First Amendment Defense Act, he is not exactly an LGBT ally either.

Eliel Cruz, an LGBT rights and faith activist, told the Washington Blade, “The Trump administration will always choose the beliefs of anti-LGBT evangelicals over the dignity and rights of LGBT people.”

The Battlegrounds for LGBT Rights Under Trump

As I have indicated in a number of posts, the inauguration of Donald Trump will set in play numerous assaults on the rights and dignity of LGBT Americans.  Without sufficient mobilization of LGBT individuals and our allies, we are likely to the enactment of license to discriminate laws at the state level and a broad reaching denigration of LGBT rights and protections at the federal level under the deliberately disingenuously named "First Amendment Defense Act" which would allow individuals, businesses and even government employees to discriminate at will against LGBT citizens merely by claiming that to do otherwise offends their religious beliefs.  Thankfully, the assault against LGBT citizens will dovetail with the larger Republican assault on women's reproductive rights and the social safety net, particularly in the realm of healthcare as the GOP moves to fulfill a long held dream of voucherizing Medicare and making draconian cuts to Medicaid.  These efforts will make LGBT citizens, women, the elderly and even health care providers and hospital systems allies in resisting the GOP onslaught.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the coming battle grounds and what must be done in the Age of Trump.  Here are some article excerpts:

As Inauguration Day nears, and as our new, orange-tinted reality sets in, it behooves all Americans who believe in fairness and equality to take stock of what we’re up against — because that’s how we’ll be able to resist it.

On the campaign trail, Trump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.”

That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration.

But even though the President-elect was relatively quiet on LGBT issues during the campaign trail (aside from a couple mangled acronyms he managed to spit out and a lukewarm response to marriage equality), his cabinet appointments make clear that we cannot afford to “wait and see” just how Trump’s team dismantles LGBT rights. Instead, we must use the resources at hand to anticipate the onslaught we are about to step into — giving us the best chance of emerging with dignity, sanity, and faith in this American experiment.

Prepare to Oppose the First Amendment (Defense Act)First and foremost, the so-called First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) is all but certain to become law. Although the precise language has yet to be seen in this year’s Congress, the text of the bill introduced in the 114th Congress sought to prohibit the federal government from taking “any discriminatory action” against a person (defined to include for-profit and nonprofit corporations) who “acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.” The bill offered no similar protections for other views about marriage or sexual relations.

FADA is arguably the clearest and most present danger for LGBT Americans, particularly because it exemplifies the ways in which the bedrock principle of “religious freedom” has been weaponized to block the advance of LGBT equality.

[B]arring some truly unexpected outbreak of empathy in the newly empowered Republican Party, it’s safe to assume the sweeping legislation will become law early on in Trump’s presidency. The president-elect has signaled his support for the bill, promising Catholics in a September statement that he will sign the bill into law. Once FADA becomes law (and perhaps before), it’s reasonable to assume similar “turn away the gays” bills will be introduced in state legislatures, likely under the guise of “religious freedom.”

Take Care of Our Health CareLike most of Trump’s cabinet nominees and advisers, the potential Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, has a long history of opposing LGBT-inclusive policies. Price, specifically, is a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and is expected to be a key figure in the yet-to-be-announced plan to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. And Price is no friend to the gays. According to LGBT media watchdog GLAAD’s “Trump Accountability Project,” the Georgia Republican scored a zero (out of 100) on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Equality Scorecard, voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in favor of amending the Constitution to ban marriage equality. More relevant to this discussion and Price’s potential tenure as the nation’s chief healthcare official, though, is the fact that he has defended false equivalencies between pedophilia and homosexuality as nothing more than harmless “Christian beliefs regarding proper sexual ethics.”

But what about the millions of Americans who aren’t transgender? Well, any of those citizens who have a uterus or plan to make their own decisions about when or if they want children need to pay attention, as the National LGBTQ Task Force’s executive director Rea Carey explained when Price’s nomination was announced. “Let’s be quite clear: if confirmed, Price’s decisions will impact the health and social services of millions of people — especially the most vulnerable populations who rely upon access to quality, affordable, culturally competent care. If confirmed, Tom Price would steer HHS in a dangerous direction that’s motivated by profit and the desire to control our bodies.”

Get Ready to Fight the Department of JusticeIn his excellent piece for the Winter 2017 issue of The American Prospect, former Justice Department attorney and current University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Bagenstos raised a terrifying possibility: President Trump’s Department of Justice may use the muscle that agency developed under Obama to suppress voting rights, privatize education, and strip away existing civil rights protections.

If Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is confirmed, the fate of American civil rights law is effectively sealed, given that Sessions was considered too racist to be a federal judge in the ‘80s. Naturally, Sessions has also consistently opposed LGBT rights, and could even use his sway as Attorney General to try to convince the Supreme Court to reconsider marriage equality.

[A] generous, inclusive interpretation of civil rights law is unlikely to continue in a Trump administration. In fact, Bagenstos warns, where LGBT people have found an ally in the DOJ for the past eight years, we may now find a powerful foe. Bagenstos aptly points to G.G. v. Glouchester County School Board, the case out of Virginia where a transgender boy sued his school for the right to use the boy’s bathroom, after the school barred him from using the appropriate facilities on campus. . . . That case is currently pending before the Supreme Court, and could be heard by a full panel of justices — including a Trump appointee.

But the battle is just beginning, Bagenstos writes: . . . there is a substantial prospect that the Civil Rights Division will take an affirmatively anti-LGBT-rights position and intervene to make religious-freedom or free-speech arguments on behalf of the defendants in LGBT discrimination cases brought under state laws.

Which brings us to the final and overarching point of how to agitate for equality in Trump’s America:

Get to Your StatehousesWhile it may seem counter-intuitive to focus a national resistance on regional or state offices, the truth is that local elections matter, and local politicians are often easier to access than high-ranking administration officials. So yes, participate in the Women’s March on Washington if you feel called to, and phone-bank the hell out of every preposterous nominee Trump and the Republicans riding his coattails offer. But also participate in Lobby Days organized by your favorite local advocacy group, and make it a priority to meet your elected officials. If you feel comfortable doing so, introduce them to your family, and force them to look into the faces of the real people their decisions will impact. And when lawmakers try to pull a fast one, take a page from the good people of North Carolina and shout and yell and disrupt and sit-in until uniformed officers drag you away. And then go back again the next day.

It takes dedication, persistence, and a stubborn refusal to ever back down. It seems only fair that those of us feeling targeted by Trump and the GOP in general return the favor they offered to President Obama, and aim to make Trump a one-term president.

Congressional Republicans essentially wrote the playbook on how to be the most obstructionist, least productive legislative body in American history, so I say we borrow that book and use the tactics right-wingers perfected to defend the messy, complicated, frustrating glory of this country.

Cry Babies Trump and Pence Can Dish It Out But Can't Take It

Donald Trump has a well documented history of saying whatever he wants, often in the most vulgar of ways.  For eight years Trump felt free to say any and all kinds of lies about Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Mike Pence has waged a decades long war against those who do not accept his hate and fear and fairy tale based religious beliefs. Now, they want everyone to give them respect and deference.  They can dish it out and mistreat others, but as demonstrated last night and today, they sure can't take it when other Americans exercise their right of freedom of speech and call out Pence for the nasty bigot that he is.  Neither Trump nor Pence has even been sworn into office yet and already the cry baby temper tantrums and conniption fits are on display.   What prompted Trump and Pence's rage is that the cast of the hit Broadway show, Hamilton, addressed Pence's documented bigotry and homophobia.  Many in the audience booed Pence and made their contempt for the man known.  Here's what the cast said:

“We, sir, we are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” . . . “But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us,” Dixon [who plays Aaron Burr] added, while gesturing to the musical’s diverse cast and to the audience. 

Trump - and Pence - needs to get his head out of his narcissistic and ego mad ass and understand that for as long as he is in office many of us will never respect him and will speak out loudly voicing our displeasure with him as a man and condemning his policies when they are deemed misguided.  If he can't take the heat and criticism of the presidency, he needs to resign now and do all of us and the world a favor.  Ditto for Mr. Pence.

A piece in the Washington Post reminds of Pence's horrible treatment of LGBT Americans.  Here are article highlights:

Although the Broadway cast’s message was directed broadly at what would be an administration under Trump’s presidency, Pence himself has a political track record that has been excoriated by the LGBT community. Last year, as governor of Indiana, Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act after the federal courts ruled that same-sex marriage bans in states were unconstitutional. Under the new state law, Indiana business owners could cite their religious beliefs if they didn’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. Opponents said it amounted to allowing discrimination based on sexual orientation. A week later, after facing boycotts and widespread condemnation from rights groups, Pence signed an amendment clarifying that the law could not be used to discriminate against the LGBT community.

He has a “0%” rating from the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit group that calls Pence “notoriously anti-LGBTQ” when he was chosen to be Trump’s running mate. Republican Chrys Kefalas outlined Pence’s anti-LGBT record in a guest column for The Washington Post:

During his public career, Pence has been an outspoken opponent of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens. In Congress, he opposed efforts to encourage foreign governments to decriminalize homosexuality and sought to block the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. As a governor, he stood against not only marriage equality, but civil unions as well. He also opposed a law prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace and signed one opening the door to wide-ranging discrimination against these residents of his own state under the guise of religious liberty.

None of this was lost on the audience, who greeted Pence’s arrival to his prime orchestra seat with a mix of cheers and boos, according to the AP.

Pat McCory's Defeat Could Be a Watershed Moment for Gay Rights

Admittedly, today's Republican Party offers a cavalcade of douche bags and assholes, starting with Donald Trump.  But Trump is merely a symptom of the larger cancer infecting the GOP.   Here in Virginia, a glance southward to North Carolina offers a look at another GOP Governor Pat McCrory, a foul Republican who has staked his political career on the denigration of LGBT Americans, and the transgender individuals in particular.  If current polls prove accurate, McCory may be headed to defeat largely because of his anti-gay bigotry and willingness to prostitute himself to Christofascists.   Should he creash and burn and go down to defeat, McCrory's demise may be a much needed wake up call to the GOP that anti-gay bigotry is now a guaranteed loser at the polls.  Here are excerpts from the Washington Post that looks at McCrory's much hoped for defeat:

Not since Larry Craig widened his stance has a bathroom caused so much trouble for a politician.

North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, was a good bet for reelection earlier this year. But then he signed HB2 into law in March, eliminating municipal nondiscrimination ordinances and requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificates.

Since then, McCrory’s fortunes have been, well, in the toilet.

Last fall, the conservative group North Carolina Civitas had a poll showing the governor with a favorable rating of 54 percent. But in late April, a month after McCrory signed the bathroom bill, the same group found his favorable rating had dropped to 39 percent. Polling shows McCrory trailing his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, by four percentage points. And there’s little doubt HB2 is a major cause. A plurality of North Carolinians disapprove of McCrory’s handling of the issue and say it makes them less likely to support him.

 

Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights organization, puts the law’s cost for North Carolina at nearly half a billion dollars. Whatever the figure, the reaction has been severe: The NBA moved its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, while the NCAA and the Atlantic Coast Conference took their championships from the state. PayPal — one of about 200 corporations calling for repeal — canceledplans to bring 400 jobs to Charlotte. Bruce Springsteen, Maroon 5 and others have canceled performances in the state. , the James Beard Foundation canceled its meeting in the state because of HB2.

[A] defeat of McCrory because of the bathroom bill would be a watershed (or, if you will, a water closet) moment for gay rights. Stigmatizing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has already lost its potency as a political weapon. But this would be the first case of a prominent official being voted out of office because his anti-gay actions backfired.

Maggie Gallagher, founder of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage,wrote in National Review in August that “the future of religious liberty for traditional religious believers hangs on” McCrory’s reelection. If he loses, she wrote, “the GOP will concede whatever the Left demands on gay rights.”

There’s no realistic prospect of reversing the legalization of same-sex marriage, so opponents are instead pursuing scores of state initiatives restricting gay rights in the name of “religious freedom,” bathroom bills and more.

But while 202 such bills were introduced in 2016, only five were enacted, according to the Human Rights Campaign. GOP governors in South Dakotaand Georgia vetoed such bills to avoid backlash — and both are considerably more popular than McCrory, who finds himself increasingly lonely. Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, in a tight reelection race, distanced himself from HB2. Half a dozen Republican state legislators who voted for the bill have said they want a do-over.

Confident that public opinion continues to shift in their favor, gay-rights advocates, with Hillary Clinton’s backing, are aiming for a federal “Equality Act,” which would bar anti-LGBT discrimination in employment.

The legislation faces long odds in Congress. But that could change — if North Carolinians flush Pat McCrory next month.

 Personally, I hope that McCrory - and others in the North Carolina GOP - go down to defeat.  Until the laws change and the GOP becomes a permanent minority in North Carolina, the husband and I will not visit the state if we can find a way to avoid it. 

Did Pence "Win" His Debate by Lying

Perhaps I am prejudiced since I have met and spoken with Tim Kaine, or perhaps I know too much about Mike Pence's virulently anti-LGBT track record and his desire to make right wing Christianity the de facto established religion in both Indiana and America as a whole.  Whatever, the thought process, I find it bot frightening and ironic that many have dubbed Pence the winner of vice presidential debate based on his composed demeanor while giving little weight to the fact that the man lied almost incessantly and denied Trump statements and actions that all have been documented on video.  Perhaps Pence's lying comes from having little option given the vulgarity and unfitness of his running mate.  Or perhaps it stems from his conservative religious beliefs that seeming motivate Christofascists to lie more than nearly anyone else.  Kaine's style may have been lacking, but what he said was 95% or more true.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Pence's supposed "win" that was won by lies and a denial of objective facts.  Here are highlights:

The Indiana governor’s background as a talk radio host helped. Bigly, one might say. He was a smooth and amiable happy warrior. Tim Kaine, embracing the attack-dog role that a running mate traditionally plays, came across poorly as he repeatedly interrupted and trained his fire on Donald Trump.

He acted incredulous when Kaine correctly pointed out that Trump has called Mexicans “rapists,” NATO “obsolete” and said women who get abortions should be punished somehow. Pence pointedly declined to defend Trump’s offensive statements about women or his racial attacks on a U.S.-born federal judge of Mexican descent, opting to change the subject.

Amber Phillips writes that “Pence spent most of the debate defending a Trump that doesn’t exist.”

National Review Executive Editor Rich Lowry argues that he won but with this caveat: “Pence evidently decided to pretend that he is on a ticket with an utterly conventional Republican … [and his] sidestepping of Trump is the big asterisk on his night.”
 And in a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Pence repeatedly attacked Kaine and Clinton for running “an insult-driven campaign.” But he did it with a smile.

On foreign policy especially, Pence’s talking points underscored just how far outside the GOP mainstream Trump remains. Pence said the United States should be willing to attack the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and he called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a small and bullying leader.”

As David Gergen put it on CNN, “Pence will not fare well with fact checkers, but his poise and polish played well with voters,” For better or worse, style counts a lot in these debates.”

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni might capture the zeitgeist best: “It wasn’t exactly a vivid performance, but it was an eerily consistent one, and it answered the question of how a man who supposedly prides himself on his virtue defends a running mate who is often bereft of it. He sets his jaw. He slows his pulse. He practices a bemused chuckle, perfects deafness to anything he prefers not to hear and purges from his memory anything he doesn’t want to own. That included the whole grotesque cornucopia of Trump’s slurs and bad behavior, which [Kaine] had studied up on exhaustively, knew by heart and kept throwing at Pence, pressing for the barest glimmer of shame or the slightest hint of apology. It was pointless — a point that Kaine himself made about an hour into this exercise in futility. Substantively, it was galling. Strategically, it may well have worked.”

In his own way, Pence is as morally bankrupt as Trump himself.

Vancouver Christians Oppose Franklin Graham's "Crusade"

Franklin Graham, hate merchant

I often complain about the silence of "good Christians" in the face of the hatred that a pillar of the Christofascists' religious dogma.  Hence, when the foul agenda of the Christofascists and professional Christian class is in fact challenged by other Christians, the challengers deserve recognition.  Winning kudos today are both Catholic and Protestant church leaders in Vancouver, Canada, who are condemning a "crusade" to be held by Franklin Graham - a many who has made a lush living peddling hate and religious extremism - in that diverse and tolerant city.  The Vancouver Sun looks at the opposition Graham is deservedly facing.  Here are highlights:

Metro Vancouver Christians are colliding over the coming crusade of televangelist Franklin Graham, who is known for criticizing homosexuals, Muslims and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Saying that Graham is often “incendiary and intolerant,” some evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics are opposing his participation in the three-day Festival of Hope event at Rogers Arena in early March 2017, which many of the city’s mega-churches are supporting.

“Rev. Graham is a polarizing figure … His ungracious and bigoted remarks have the potential to generate serious negative impact on the Christian witness in Vancouver,” says a statement from five prominent evangelical and Catholic leaders.

“We … denounce the frequent incendiary and intolerant statements made by Rev. Graham, which he unapologetically reiterates,” said the letter, signed by Marjeta Bobnar of the Catholic archdiocese, City in Focus president Tom Cooper, Tenth Church pastor Ken Shigematsu, Calvary Baptist pastor Tim Dickau and First Baptist pastor Tim Kuepfer.

Franklin Graham, son of 97-year-old retired televangelist Billy Graham, has said homosexuals are “the enemy” and will “spend eternity in hell” if they don’t repent.

Earning more than $1 million a year as an evangelist and head of the charity Samaritan’s Purse, Graham led a crusade in Toronto in 2014 that was attended by 40,000 people of diverse ethnic origins.

After the Toronto event, Samaritan’s Purse terminated a Canadian volunteer because she refused to sign a standard statement opposing abortion and homosexual marriage.

In North Vancouver, another endorser of the Festival of Hope, Valley Church Pastor Owen Scott, declined to comment on the controversy other than to say, “I know Franklin is not the same as his dad. His dad is a pretty gracious person.”

While the opposition statement was signed by Catholic ecumenical relations official Bobnar, Paul Schratz confirmed the archdiocese also formally declined an invitation to take part in the Festival of Hope.

“Initially we were supportive of next year’s event, since it was intended to draw a large number of people to hear the gospel and grow closer to Jesus,” said Schratz, spokesman for the archdiocese, which includes more than 400,000 Catholics.

“While we obviously acknowledge Mr. Graham’s zeal in preaching the Gospel we had second thoughts about participating when we noted that American evangelicals, whom we were trying to work with on this event, were criticizing Mr. Franklin for various comments and stances that didn’t promote religious tolerance.”

The formal letter of opposition to the Festival of Hope’s leadership committee was signed by Christian leaders in Metro Vancouver whom the Billy Graham Association had asked for endorsements, including Cooper, Shigematsu, Dickau and Kuepfer.

Cooper — the president of City in Focus, which specializes in ministering to businesspeople —said those who signed the letter “were willing to provide suggestions for an alternative speaker. But the Festival of Hope leadership committee was content with having Reverend Graham give the major talks.  “We therefore, reluctantly, decided we could not endorse this event.

Franklin Graham is little better than a parasite who is living well living off his father's fame while peddling hatred and intolerance. 

The Implosion of Ted Cruz

I find the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency to be frightening.  That said, Ted Cruz in the White House is just as frightening given his loathsomeness and bigotry - and willingness to utterly prostitute himself to the Christofascists in the GOP base as underscored by his ongoing anti-transgender lies.  In deed, Lindsey Graham described the choice between Trump and Cruz as akin to deciding whether to be killed by a gunshot or poisoning.  Now, with Indiana voters going to the polls today, it appears that Cruz has begun to implode.  A column in the Washington Post looks at "Lucifer's" decline.  Here are excerpts:

In a case of exceptionally bad timing, Fiorina hitched herself to Cruz at precisely the moment his candidacy began to implode, as polls showed him fading in must-win Indiana before Tuesday’s vote. Fiorina’s previous criticism of Cruz and her checkered record at HP were again in the news.

It’s not Fiorina’s fault that news broke just after her “nomination” was announced that former House speaker John Boehner, still a popular figure in nearby Ohio, had called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” and a “miserable son of a bitch.” Nor was it Fiorina’s fault that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Friday gave Cruz such a tepid endorsement — he said that he “will be voting for Ted Cruz” but that “I particularly want to commend Donald Trump” — that Pence attempted a do-over in the form of an op-ed in the Indianapolis Star.

But if Fiorina picked investments the way she picked her candidate, you can see why HP stopped requiring her services. She bought Cruz at the peak, when polls showed him close in Indiana. But an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll Sunday found Trump up 15 points.

And now Cruz and Fiorina have to explain all those things she used to say about him: that “Cruz is just like any other politician”; that “there’s no honor in charging a hill that you know you can’t take, only casualties, although Ted Cruz maybe got name recognition and money”; and that it was “odd that Senator Ted Cruz did not renounce his dual Canadian citizenship until 2014.”

Cruz now also has to defend Fiorina’s record at HP, where she let go thousands and sent jobs to India and China. “Will the Cruz-Fiorina team do the same thing to Indiana that she did to Hewlett-Packard?” Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked Cruz on Sunday.

Fiorina was not standing at his shoulder later Monday, when he waded bravely into a group of Trump supporters outside his event. Cruz bravely tried to engage them in calm discussion. “Donald Trump is deceiving you. He is playing you for a chump,” Cruz said.

The Trump supporters taunted Cruz: “Do the math. . . . Time to drop out. . . . You are the problem, politician. . . . Where’s your Goldman Sachs jacket? . . . Lyin’ like you always do. . . . Are you Canadian?” America, one said, would be a better country “without you.”

If Cruz hadn’t established himself as a singularly unlikable candidate, one could almost have felt sorry for him in that moment. He needed urgently for Fiorina to sing more Ethel Merman . . . 

Putin Took Credit for the Boom. Now There’s a Bust.

As noted many times, Russia has been plagued throughout the centuries with a curse: failed leaders who have put personal ambition and/or ideology ahead of the best interests of the Russian people.  This curse continues to persist under Vladimir Putin who sees himself as a new tsar and who, with his cronies, has raped the Russian economy of assets.   Now, with oil prices falling and economic sanctions for his illegal invasions of Crimea and parts of Ukraine also taking a toll, the question is whether or not the Russian people will rightly blame Putin's years of mismanagement for their plight.  The answer to this question is still out, but some Russians seem to be finally opening their eyes and not being duped by Putin's foreign adventures and anti-gay efforts that were always meant to be a distraction from his failed leadership on the economic front.  Here are highlights from a piece in the New York Times:

Today, the economic troubles that Mr. Putin came here to make a big show of solving are back, only worse and involving far more intractable problems than just the “trivial greed” of tycoons that Mr. Putin blamed for Pikalevo’s tumult in 2009.

Pikalevo, about three hours east of St. Petersburg, and the rest of Russia are now mired in the country’s longest recession since Mr. Putin came to power at the end of 1999, with the World Bank warning last month that the nation’s poverty rate would increase this year to 14.2 percent of the population, “undoing nearly a decade’s worth of gains.”

Russia’s current crisis, though largely caused by market forces beyond the Kremlin’s control, notably a slump in the prices of oil and gas, has pushed Mr. Putin into a corner. After years of taking credit for a booming economy, which also had little to do with his actions, and casting himself as a can-do leader capable of untying the toughest economic and political knots, he faces a crisis that has exposed the stark limits of his power and prowess.

A recent rebound in oil prices has lifted hopes in the Kremlin that the worst of Russia’s economic storm has passed, but it has also highlighted just how much Mr. Putin’s fortunes depend on unpredictable and uncontrollable outside forces like the energy market or the economic sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States.

[T]hroughout his 16 years in power, whether as president or prime minister, Mr. Putin has presented an image of an omniscient and omnipresent leader interested in and capable of addressing his country’s most microscopic concerns.

[C]ost-cutting maneuvers, which keep workers off the unemployment register but in some cases reduce their income to almost nothing, are increasingly popular with Russian businesses hit hard by the downturn. But they are deeply unpopular with a population that had grown accustomed to rising salaries under Mr. Putin.

The downturn seems to be taking a toll on Mr. Putin’s standing, or at least on faith in his policies, as Russians’ fascination and delight with his foreign ventures wanes and pocketbook issues increasingly dominate public worries. Around half of those polled this year by the independent Levada Center said they thought Russia was moving in the “right direction,” compared with 64 percent last summer.

[T]he Kremlin’s current nightmare: With low global energy prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict crimping Russia’s prospects of recovery, the economy has hit a wall. It simply cannot compete with China, the United States or even the European nations that Russian state media constantly portray as fading has-beens. The easy and popular fixes the Kremlin used in the past to resuscitate the economy — or at least to placate the public — have all been exhausted.

There are few signs, however, that Russians will take to the streets in protest or flock to the banner of a divided and feeble opposition. 

The Growing Backlash Against North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law

Apparent mental midget NC Gov. Pat McCory

Driving back from Richmond, I listened to among other things an interview with the director of Equality North Carolina who expressed the view that North Carolina Republicans seemingly thought that, if they rammed the state's new anti-LGBT law through in a single day, then they could avoid the backlash that Georgia is experiencing as that state's Governor tries to decide whether to veto the Georgia bill.  Whatever the North Carolina GOP cretins may have thought, they are quickly finding that escaping a severe backlash was a fantasy on their part.  Major corporations, pro-sports leagues and many others are raising an outcry and their may be very real economic consequences - especially if the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals finds that anti-transgender action violates Title IX and North Carolina loses $4.5 billion in federal education funding.   A piece in Think Progress looks at the growing backlash.  Here are highlights:

North Carolina’s legislation, which was passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor in just one day, is targeted at undoing an LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance recently passed in Charlotte by banning any local nondiscrimination laws. But it also goes much further, banning transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender unless they change their birth certificates, preventing civil suits even when discrimination is documented, and prohibiting cities and counties from passing employment requirements — a higher minimum wage or paid sick days, for instance — that go beyond state law.

While San Francisco is the first governmental entity to take a stand against the law, a huge number of businesses have already spoken out. A number of technology companies — including IBM, which has a big presence in the state; PayPal, which just announced the opening of a new office there; Apple; Facebook; Google; and Salesforce — have all spoken out against the law. 

In the sports world, the NBA, which is set to host the All-Star Game in Charlotte next year, has spoken out against the law and put the location of that event into question. The NCAA, which is planing to hold the men’s basketball tournament in the state in 2017 and 2018, says it’s monitoring the situation, as is the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the oldest African-American sports conference, which holds its annual basketball tournament in the state every year. Meanwhile, ESPN had been considering Charlotte for a possible site for the X Games in the summer but has now said it embraces “diversity and inclusion and will evaluate all of our options.” 

Others have joined in as well. American Airlines, whose second-largest hub is in Charlotte, said, “Laws that allow such discrimination go against our fundamental belief of equality and are bad for the economies of the states in which they are enacted.” Lowe’s, based in Mooresville, said it “opposes any measure in any state that would encourage or allow discrimination.” Dow Chemical, which has several factories in the state, tweeted that it is “disappointed” in the signing of the law, and Biogen, a biotech company that employs more than 1,000 people in the state, also tweeted its opposition.

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA DIES AT 79

Having been out at a dinner party and having partaken of a number of cocktails, my thoughts of the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will have to wait until morning.  As regular readers know, I have argued for quite some time that Scalia needed to be removed from the Court because of his refusal to remain non-partisan and to adhere to the rules of judicial conduct that govern other federal judges. That said, a few comments from friends and fellow activists may sum up the feelings of many.  One said "He might not be in a better place. But we certainly are."  Another said "I know it's wrong but, it's hard not to feel happy about this news. It's wrong wrong. But, I cannot find another emotion that fits." 

Scalia was stridently anti-gay, anti-woman, and anti-minority.  If there is a God and a Hell, Scalia may be learning how wrong he was on so many things.  I would be lying if I said that I would mourn the man's passing. In many ways he embodied what is wrong with the nation's judiciary.  It is very telling that Republicans in the U.S. Senate are vowing to block any Obama appointee even though their office requires that the consider and vote up or down on presidential nominees. All they are showing is that they are as unfit for office as Scalia had become.

Rubio Further Prostitutes Himself to Christian Extremists

President Obama spoke this evening with an aim of calming a nervous American public after an apparent Muslim religious extremist terrorist attack last week in California.  Meanwhile, a desperate Marco Rubio, faced with Donald Trump soaring in the GOP polls and purported "momentum" in favor of Ted Cruz, decided he needed to further prostitute himself to the Christofascist GOP base by pledging to undo all of Barack Obama's pro-gay executive orders.  Once again. Christian extremists are given deference and praise by Republican political whores even as they seek to demonize all Muslims.  The hypocrisy is stunning.   The New Civil Rights Movement looks at Rubio's desperate self-prostitution.  Here are excerpts:

Staunch right wing conservative Catholic Marco Rubio says protecting LGBT people from discrimination forces Christians to "sin," so as President he would reverse President Barack Obama's policies. President Obama has signed several executive orders mandating that government contractors not discriminate against LGBT people, thus preventing corporations or organizations that choose to do business with the federal government from refusing to hire LGBT people, or firing them because they are LGBT.

"There’s no doubt that we need to be extra vigilant now about protecting the religious liberties of Americans and that includes having a justice department that’s vigilant about ensuring that those who hold traditional values are not being discriminated against," Rubio told Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody last week in the video above that was just published Saturday. The Florida GOP Senator seemed to be concerned only with the religious liberties and traditional values of Christians, not people of other faiths, or of no faith. 

[A] President Rubio would give anti-LGBT religious businesses special rights.

Rubio singled out LGBT people, and transgender people in particular, stating he would "reverse the executive orders the President has made on things like gender equality in restrooms."

In addition to ensuring that religious organizations and even major corporations, like Hobby Lobby, for example, be allowed to discriminate against LGBT people specifically, Rubio would go even farther by ensuring the Supreme Court would be comprised of people who hold Justice Antonin Scalia's obscure vision that the Constitution is not a living document, but a text that is to be applied as written and under the same mindsets as when it was written.

Rubio stopped short of applying a litmus test, but slammed the five majority Supreme Court justices who, he said, "wanted to reach a certain policy outcome and so creatively manipulated the Constitution to discover a right that for over two centuries, some of the most brilliant minds and legal history didn’t find.

If Rubio is willing to say and do anything to win the support of Christian extremists who want to ultimately overthrow the U.S. Constitution in order to get elected, what would he do in office?  The prospect is frightening.

PS - One outlet is claiming that Rubio has a mistress who is about to come forward.  I can't vouch for the claim, but it would certainly be in keeping with the sex scandals that endless involve "family values" Republicans.  Some think Jebbie Bush is behind the rumor. :)

Prostitute Loving Vitter Loses Louisiana Governor's Race

With so many Republicans falling into the thoroughly despicable category nowadays, it is sometimes difficult to estimate which ones are the most despicable.  By any measure, prostitute loving, gay hating Senator David Vitter (R-La) has to rank near the top in terms of both utter hypocrisy and sleaze factor.  Vitter for years ridiculously used the excuse that he had repented from his erroneous ways to get himself reelected by simpletons and godly folk in Louisiana.  Last night Louisiana voters seemingly finally got their heads out of their asses and Vitter went down to Democrat John Bel Edwards who garnered 56% of the vote.  While the results suggest that Republicans in Louisiana may be belatedly coming to their senses, the same unfortunately doesn't hold true elsewhere.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at Vitter's delicious loss.  Here are highlights:

[I]t is nice to see the political career of David Vitter - someone we've been following closely at TPM for almost a decade - go down in flames tonight. But there's an additional part of the story, an additional piece of good news. As Catherine Thompson explained here, Vitter devoted the last week of his campaign to demagoguing the Syrian refugee issue in a desperate effort to save himself. He even went beyond the standard scare talk and hyperbole to trying to whip hysteria against a specific Syrian refugee who Vitter falsely claimed had mysteriously disappeared and was now at large in the state. (The man in question had, all through official channels and with appropriate notifications, been relocated to the Washington, DC region where he had relatives.)

[T]he race had become a potential bellwether for Syrian refugee hysteria and politics. Perhaps even the fear of terrorism or hatred for the desperate and forlorn was not enough to overcome the state's building revulsion for the man-child senator.  

Not only did Vitter not make a comeback. The final election results (almost a 10 point win) suggest the last minute immigrant-terror bashing had no effect at all. 

We're still seeing how this all plays out. I don't mean to tell you that Syrian refugee hysteria politics is nothing. But in this case it wasn't enough. Indeed, it does not appear to have helped Vitter at all - not even to partially close the gap. And that is worth noting.

Pope Francis Secretly Met with Kim Davis and Reveals His Duplicity

While Pope Francis seemingly tried to use his visit to America to present a kinder, gentler face on Catholicism and to score a PR triumph, news that Francis met with four times married, serial adulterer Kim Davis shows that nothing has changed in the Church leadership other than a matter of style.  Whatever good I thought of the man is gone and I again say that, in my view, gays who remain Catholics are delusional masochists.  As for Francis, if the Gospels are to be believed, while Christ met with prostitutes, he had little good to say about Pharisees who were selectively  (and falsely) pious - a description that well describes Davis and her professional Christian class supporters.  A column in Huffington Post reflects my views of con man Pope Francis.  Here are excerpts:

After first refusing to confirm nor deny it, the Vatican has confirmed that Pope Francis met with the Kentucky clerk Kim Davis at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, where Davis' attorney -- who made the news public after the pope's trip ended -- said Francis told her to "stay strong." And that simple encounter completely undermines all the goodwill the pope created in downplaying "the gay issue" on his U.S. trip. 

The pope played us for fools, trying to have it both ways. As I noted last week, he's an artful politician, telling different audiences what they want to hear on homosexuality. He did that in Argentina as a cardinal -- railing against gay marriage when the Vatican expected him to do so -- and he's done that since becoming pope, striking a softer tone on the issue after Benedict's harsh denunciations were a p.r. disaster for the Catholic Church in the West. But this news about Kim Davis portrays him as a more sinister kind of politician. That's the kind that secretly supports hate, ushering the bigots in the back door -- knowing they're an embarrassment -- while speaking publicly about about how none of us can judge one another. 

[B]y meeting with Davis secretly, and then at first having the Vatican neither confirm nor deny the encounter -- and now having the Vatican say it "won't deny" the meeting while it still won't offer any other details -- the pope comes off as a coward. 

He shows himself to be antithetical to much of what he preaches and teaches. He talks about dialogue and having the courage of one's convictions and the courage to speak out. But he swept this Davis meeting under the rug, seemingly ashamed and certainly not wanting to broach the subject. Even Davis's supporters should find that insulting to them.

[B]y telling Davis that she should "stay strong" -- if her attorney's account of the encounter is to be believed -- the pope is only encouraging the bigots, even if he's doing so quietly.  

Rather than moving us forward on LGBT rights ever so slightly, as many viewed the pope as doing, he now, with this meeting, emboldens the haters in the church who will be pushing to make sure church doctrine continues to call homosexuality "intrinsically disordered." And it sends a message to all those people who've experienced anti-gay discrimination . . . . that this pope is not going to end that discrimination any time soon. Rather than stopping that discrimination, he welcomed, with open arms in the Vatican's own embassy, the bigots who promote that discrimination but who've turned themselves into the victims.

Grand Jury Indicts Anti-Gay GOP Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton

Anti-gay bigot indicted

I lived in Texas many years ago and, like Alabama where I also once lived, the state seems to have gone insane finds itself under the heel of anti-gay (and anti-minority) extremists in the Republican Party. And not only are these Republicans crazy anti-gay and virulently, they are also corrupt.  Take Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton who has been indicted on multiple counts of securities fraud.  One has to wonder when the modern cities in Texas will have the ability to out vote the lunatics in the rural areas as is now beginning to occur regularly in Virginia.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on Paxton's indictment:

Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and a former state legislator, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud and of failing to register with the state securities board, officials said.

The grand jury in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney handed up a three-count indictment against Mr. Paxton on Tuesday, the officials said. The indictment is to be unsealed on Monday, when Mr. Paxton is expected to turn himself in to the authorities at the Collin County Jail.

The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, before he was elected attorney general in November.

In the most serious charges, first-degree securities fraud, Mr. Paxton is accused of misleading investors in a technology company, Servergy Inc., which is based in McKinney, his hometown. He is accused of encouraging the investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 into Servergy while failing to tell them he was making a commission on their investment, and misrepresenting himself as an investor in the company, said Kent A. Schaffer, one of the two special prosecutors handling the case.

Mr. Schaffer said politics had played no part in the indictment.  “I have nothing personal against Mr. Paxton based on his politics,” he said. “Even if you found fault with Brian Wice or myself, how do you find it with the Texas Rangers? These are the most honest, straightforward, incorruptible police officers you’re ever going to find. They don’t have political motivations, and they certainly wouldn’t have any against the sitting attorney general.”

A conviction for a first-degree felony in Texas can carry a punishment of life in prison or a sentence of five to 99 years. A third-degree felony is punishable with a sentence of two to 10 years. Mr. Paxton helped create the possibility of such severe punishment: As a freshman representative in the Texas House in May 2003, he voted to amend the state securities law to make it a felony to act as an investment adviser representative without being registered, the very crime the grand jury accuses him of committing.

As the state’s top lawyer and law enforcement officer, Mr. Paxton has made headlines for challenging the Obama administration on its immigration and environmental policies and for encouraging county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples on religious grounds after the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding same-sex marriage.

Servergy has also been the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The investigation centered on whether Servergy and its founder, Bill Mapp, who has since resigned as chief executive, made misleading statements about the company to induce investors to buy Servergy stock, according to court documents the S.E.C. filed. Mr. Paxton’s name and email address appeared in documents Servergy filed to comply with S.E.C. subpoenas.