Britain Begins Stockpiling for Its Self-Inflicted Brexit Apocalypse

If you want a glimpse of where Donald Trump and his base are taking America, look no farther than the United Kingdom where the Russian manipulated Brexit vote is inching closer and closer to bringing economic ruin to that nation.  The forces that brought this disaster parallel those that placed the utterly unfit Trump in the White House: (i) anti-immigrant animus, and (ii) angry rural whites with delusions of restoring an empire and white privilege lost forever. The parallels between the pro-Brexit voters and Trump's base are truly remarkable.  The irony in both cases is that the economic harms will in many cases harm those who voted based on bigotry and a hatred of modernity itself.  The other parallel is that in both instances, Vladimir Putin is smiling broadly - if not laughing out loud - the self-inflicted harm occurring in the UK and Trump's America,  A piece in at Vanity Fair looks at the impending harm about to befall the UK if the Brexit vote is not quickly reversed.  Here are excerpts:

While Brexit negotiations have stalled, British businesses are heaving with activity—though not of the freewheeling, entrepreneurial variety that Brexiteers once promised. Instead of rejoicing in the cutting of European red tape, top executives now find themselves making preparations for the United Kingdom to crash out of the E.U. with no plan, no customs union, and no way to conduct trade with its single biggest market. “This is a disaster for business,” according to Business Minister Richard Harrington, who is presumably in a position to know. 

The crisis isn’t just playing out in Parliament, but in boardrooms across London and Leicester, Luton and Loughborough. Every time Theresa May fields a vote of no confidence, top supermarket brass are strategizing about stockpiling tins of tuna. As Jeremy Corbyn continues to deny voters clarity as to Labour’s stance on the impending divorce, somewhere outside Westminster, a top pharmaceutical honcho is drawing up plans to accumulate medicine. Pets at Home is collecting cat food. Associated British Foods, which produces the beloved Twinings tea, is pre-buying ingredients. One savvy businessman has begun selling emergency “Brexit Boxes,” which contain freeze-dried favorites like chicken tikka, plus a water filter and a fire starter, in the event of a no-deal economic apocalypse.

All these hasty preparations have sparked another problem: Britain, morphing into an oversize warehouse, is running out of storage capacity. According to Harrington, “nearly every square meter” of warehouse space in the country is now full. The drab image of Britain’s warehouses overflowing with life-saving supplies and tin pots of peas is a far cry from the smooth, sparkling vision outlined by Vote Leave leaders. “Britain is a great country. We will be even greater if we take back control of our own democracy,” cheered Brexiteers Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, and Gisela Stuart in an online post just before the 2016 referendum vote. . . . . there won’t be a sudden change that disrupts the economy.” With Brexit scheduled to arrive in nine weeks, and Parliament still divided over May’s withdrawal deal, the British food sector is trying desperately to take back control. Tesco, the largest supermarket chain, has rented an emergency supply of refrigerated units. Marks & Spencer, already in significant financial trouble, is stockpiling nonperishable items. . . . . The government has slapped non-disclosure agreements on multiple companies to keep them from revealing the severity of the crisis. The automobile industry is suffering from a similar problem. . . . . BMW’s supply chain relies on small parts being imported from the E.U. and used at a specific time in the assemblage process. “We are looking for additional [warehouse] space, but in the end, it’s not possible. A key frustration for businesses is that, while they are funneling their resources down a black, Brexit-shaped hole, politicians might suddenly stop fighting, strike up a compromise, and avert a no-deal. . . . Still, it’s understandable why businesses are intent on taking precautions. The government’s contingency planning hasn’t exactly been reassuring . . . .
 [O]thers have decided that Brexit Britain isn’t an economically viable option, and have announced plans to set up shop elsewhere. Among those fleeing are Sony (moving its European HQ to Amsterdam); P&O (registering its English Channel ferries in Cyprus); and, perhaps most controversially, Dyson. Rebranding as a “global technology company” rather than a British hoover brand, it is “future-proofing” by heading to Singapore, which, as The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland points out, recently signed a trade agreement with the E.U. James Dyson, of course, is not only Britain’s wealthiest man, but also an unrepentant Brexiteer who, in 2017, said of a no-deal with Europe, “They’ll come to us.” He must be hoping that the public will accept the official line that Dyson’s move has “nothing to do with Brexit.” Then again, by the time Brexit happens, he’ll be cushioned from accusations of hypocrisy by more than 6,000 miles—and, presumably, a steady income in euros.

This is what Trump - and Putin - want to bring to America.  They must be stopped. 

Trump Immigration Changes Are Killing Maryland's Crab Industry

Small manufacturers are not the only ones suffering under Der Trumpenführer's failed economic policies.  In Maryland, that state's signature crab industry is reeling - I suspect Virginia is experiencing the same phenomenon - thanks to Trump's anti-immigrant policies that are keeping seasonal workers from Mexico from coming and doing work key to the crab industry that Americans simply will not do.  Some businesses are considering closing down and moving to Mexico. It's yet another example of Trump's "winning" that makes American businesses losers and leaves Americans losing their jobs.  The Washington Post looks at the damage being done to a long standing industry.  Here are excerpts: 

Normally, the crabs would be steamed and hauled through double doors to a long, fluorescent-lit room, where dozens of employees at Russell Hall Seafood would extract the meat. But on this day, the steel tables inside that room sat empty.

“There’s nothing going on at all,” said owner Harry Phillips, “ ’cause we haven’t got our pickers.”

Changes to a foreign-worker visa program have left businesses like Russell Hall without the seasonal laborers — mostly from Mexico — who help drive Maryland’s signature industry.

About a third of picking jobs remain unfilled across the Eastern Shore this summer, as few Americans have responded to openings and Mexican laborers are stranded at home without permission to come here to work.

The situation illustrates a general unwillingness among U.S. workers to perform certain kinds of labor, some of the business owners here in Dorchester County say. It also demonstrates how President Trump’s “America First” policies have not necessarily helped those workers or small-business owners but instead have dealt them a new economic reality.

Crab-picking houses are boosting wages and expanding overtime but are losing customers — and profits — because they can’t provide a reliable supply of crabmeat. One local supplier buys meat elsewhere to serve at its restaurant because the in-house picking plant has none. And at Russell Hall, Phillips is weighing whether to pack up and move his operation to Mexico. . . . . “Our girls are right in Mexico, and they have crabs just like we have.”

Since he took charge of the family business in 1992, Phillips has hired 50 Mexican workers a year through the H-2B visa program to work summer through fall. Most were women. Some had been coming for 18 years. But changes to the program shut him out this year.

The Trump administration announced this past winter that it would distribute the temporary visas through a lottery — not the first-come, first-served system previously in place. In addition, Congress dropped a rule in 2017 that said workers who had gotten visas in the past could get them again without counting toward the annual cap.

“It’s just ridiculous,” said Phillips, who failed to secure any visas when the first 33,000 were allocated in February or when an additional 15,000 were issued in June. “I’m not a gambler. I want to know I got my crew.”

Just under half of Russell Hall’s business comes from picked crabmeat used by restaurants to make crab cakes and other delicacies. For now, the company is trying to stay afloat through its sale of whole crabs and menhaden, which are used for bait.

Phillips said he has lost about 20 customers — hotels in Ocean City, restaurants in Baltimore and seafood shops from as far as Massachusetts — who are turning to vendors with a more reliable supply. “We used to sell 800 to a thousand pounds of crabmeat a day,” Phillips said, “but now, we’re producing nothing.”

A 10-minute drive away, Aubrey Vincent faces similar woes. While she was able to secure about 40 of the 104 visas she requested at her family’s picking house, Lindy’s Seafood, the shortage means she can’t run the business as she did last summer.

Generations ago, picking was the job of women born and raised on Hoopers Island. They spent their days extracting the crabmeat as their watermen husbands went out on the Chesapeake to catch the crustaceans.

But as these couples have aged, their children have not followed in their footsteps. Many families have left the area entirely, their homes converted to vacation rentals. Young people who are still around tend to look for office jobs farther inland.

Hampton, Virginia, has a large crab industry and I recall seeing Mexican workers in the past picking crabs.  I suspect they are not faring well either. 

Gorsuch Joins Liberal Justices to Strike Down Deportation Law

Gorsuch with Justice Kagan who wrote the majority opinion.

In a move that will prompt shrieking among the racist  and misogynist GOP base and possible rants in the West Wing, Justice Neil Gorsuch - hardly my favorite justice - joined with the Supreme Court liberals and voted to strike down an arbitrary and vague anti-immigrant law.   The ruling was the second time that an overly vague anti-immigrant law has been struck down by the Supreme Court. As worded, the law that was in theory aimed at immigrants who commit violent crimes was being abused by Homeland Security and used to target immigrants committing non-violent crimes.  The New York Times looks at the welcomed ruling:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a law that allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. The decision will limit the Trump administration’s efforts to deport people convicted of some kinds of crimes.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joining the court’s four more liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. Justice Gorsuch wrote that the law crossed a constitutional line.

“Vague laws,” he wrote in a concurring opinion, “invite arbitrary power.”

His vote in Tuesday’s case was not entirely surprising, though, as he has a skepticism of vague laws that do not give people affected by them adequate notice of what they prohibit.

Immigration advocates said the ruling could spare thousands of people from deportation.
“This decision is of enormous consequence, striking down a flawed law that applies in a vast range of criminal and immigration cases and which has resulted in many thousands of immigrants being deported for decades in violation of their due process rights,” said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, a lawyer for the immigrant at the center of the case.

The case, Sessions v. Dimaya, No. 15-1498, was first argued in January 2017 before an eight-member court left short-handed by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The justices deadlocked 4 to 4, and the case was re-argued in October after Justice Gorsuch joined the court.

The case concerned James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who became a lawful permanent resident in 1992, when he was 13. In 2007 and 2009, he was convicted of residential burglary.

The government sought to deport him on the theory that he had committed an “aggravated felony,” which the immigration law defined to include any offense “that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”

In 2015, in Johnson v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar criminal law was unconstitutionally vague. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority in Tuesday’s case, said the reasoning in the Johnson case also doomed the challenged provision of the immigration law.

She quoted at length from Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Johnson, which said courts could not tell which crimes Congress had meant to punish.

She added that lower courts had been unable to apply the immigration law consistently.
“Does car burglary qualify as a violent felony?” she asked. “Some courts say yes, another says no. What of statutory rape? Once again, the circuits part ways. How about evading arrest? The decisions point in different directions. Residential trespass? The same is true.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined all of Justice Kagan’s opinion, and Justice Gorsuch most of it.

Near the end of her opinion, Justice Kagan again quoted Justice Scalia. “Insanity,” he wrote in a 2011 dissent, “is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Justice Kagan said it was time to heed that advice. “We abandoned that lunatic practice in Johnson,” she wrote, “and see no reason to start it again.”

Trump Has Mainstreamed the Alt-Right, Racism and Bigotry

Threats against Jewish community centers across the country have sky rocketed, anti-LGBT violence is on the rise, and the dehumanization of Muslims and Mexican immigrants has the imprimatur of the White House.  Yet, many Republicans continue to close their eyes to what is happening and most certainly disavow any responsibility for the hate and ugliness that is now being mainstreamed and made acceptable (at least in some quarters) by Der Trumpenführer and his inner circle, many of whom are reminiscent of the thugs and losers who comprised Hitler's inner circle.  I believe that Republicans and other Trump voters need to be held personally accountable for what they have set in motion be it due to their own hatred towards others who are different, their laziness in not bothering to educate themselves on what they were voting for, or general indifference.  Republicans like to talk about "personal responsibility" and "holding people accountable,"so it's time to apply their words against them.  A column in the Washington Post underscores the responsibility of Trump and his Republican enablers in mainstreaming white supremacists and other hate merchants.  Here are column excerpts:

Leading conservatives have taken to pretending that the alt-right is a fringe movement that they and President Trump have disavowed. In recent interviews and at a high-profile conservative conference last month, conservatives have taken great pains to distance conservatism — and the Trump administration — from any alt-right influence.

But here’s the reality: The alt-right’s deep influence over this White House is on display daily — in Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s policies. The alt-right influence on Trump matters: it means the most powerful man in the world is under the influence of a racist and white nationalist movement. And conservatives should reckon with this more forthrightly.

For instance, note this podcast that the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart conducted with American Conservative Union president Matt Schlapp. Capehart pointed out that Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller are Trump’s top White House advisers, and asked: “Doesn’t that mean, that despite the concerns, the alt-right is now mainstreamed, if not the power within the White House?” Schlapp flatly denied that the alt-right had been mainstreamed in this manner.

Bannon — who is now Trump’s most influential adviser — told me last summer, when he was chairman of Breitbart, that his site was “the platform for the alt-right.” Capehart questioned Schlapp about this, but Schlapp argued, implausibly, that this is not as significant as it appears.

Yet Breitbart was and remains one-stop shopping for readers looking for anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-refugee rhetoric and disinformation, as well as stories about “black crime.”

This echoed similar head-in-the sand denials that were on full display last month at the ACU’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The reality is that it is under Bannon’s influence that the administration has taken its actions that most thrill the alt-right, most notably his moves to step up deportation of undocumented immigrants, and ban refugees and migrants from Muslim-majority countries.

When Bannon and I spoke this summer, he tried to deny to me that the alt-right is a white nationalist movement, although he did concede that white nationalists and anti-Semites could be attracted to “some of the philosophies of the alt-right.” But, as I have written after Trump tapped him to head up his campaign, Bannon nonetheless praised the deeply Islamophobic ethno-nationalism on the rise in Europe, like the National Front in France, led by far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

And then there’s Trump’s choice of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. During the transition, alt-right leaders were delighted with the Sessions pick, pointing to his opposition to immigration as well as their hope that he would stop enforcing civil rights laws and might even prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters.

As Emily Bazelon writes, Sessions has long been a devoted Breitbart reader, and met regularly with the site’s writers. Trump’s dark vision of America as besieged by inner city crime, immigrants, and refugees, Bazelon notes, “provides clear justification for policies that will advance Sessions, Bannon and Miller’s divisive nationalism.”

Trump’s false claims about voter fraud are straight out of the ugly maw of alt-right meme-making, portraying supposed voter fraud as a scourge perpetrated by African-Americans and undocumented immigrants — a possible signal that a crackdown on voting rights is coming, one that Sessions would likely help carry out from the Justice Department.

[T]he reality is that Trumpism would not exist without the alt-right. Conservatives can pretend it’s fringe and has little to no influence on the Trump administration — but the proof is in the policy.

Hispanics Are Poised For Historic Voter Turnout

If Donald Trump goes down to defeat tomorrow - which I fervently hope will be the case - his undoing may track to Hispanics whom he has demonized and attacked from day one of his campaign. True, Hispanics have not been Trump's only target for slander and denigration - add blacks, women, gays, non-Christians and others to the list - but Hispanics have been the target of choice.  As a piece in the Washington Post reports, indications are that Hispanics will be turning out in record numbers to send Trump to defeat.  Hopefully others who believe in morality and decency will turn out as well in force.  Here are article highlights:

MIAMI — Five undocumented domestic workers, all named Maria, fanned out across Little Havana delivering a desperate, last-minute plea to Hispanic voters: We can’t vote, but you can. Vote early to ensure a President Trump does not deport us.

In Hialeah, a traditional stronghold for Cuban American Republicans, backers of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton drove a colorful, Colombian-style chiva party bus with bongo drums and rumba dancers handing out Cuban pastries and “Hispanics for Hillary” signs.

And in ritzy Coral Gables, Maria Ballaster, a 60-year-old Cuban American who has always voted Republican reflected on why she had just split her ballot — sticking with her party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate, Marco Rubio, while casting a vote for Clinton.
“I trust Rubio, but I don’t trust Mr. Crazy,” Ballaster said.

[T]here are early indications that Hispanics have mobilized for this election like no other in U.S. history. Activist groups and Clinton allies, motivated largely by a deepening fear of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, are deploying new voter outreach strategies and hoping to take advantage of growth in the Latino electorate.

In Nevada, thousands of voters lined up outside an early-voting site at a Latino market Friday night, prompting voting hours to be extended at the end of what has been a record-breaking early-voting surge in the state. Turnout was so high in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, that Democrats enter Tuesday with an advantage similar to the one they held there four years ago when President Obama won Nevada by seven points. 

Early voting is not necessarily an indication of final results, given that those who have turned out so far are highly motivated and that the election will be decided by the millions more who cast ballots Tuesday.

Nonetheless, the increase has taken place even in states such as Texas, where Democrats have not focused on galvanizing voters. The spike appears to be the result of the rising number of Hispanic voters and the increasingly aggressive efforts to organize what has long been considered a potent voting bloc whose numbers have never lived up to their potential. Adding to the fervor is widespread anger at Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about Hispanics and Mexico, suggesting that Clinton could outperform Obama’s 71 percent share of the Hispanic vote from 2012.

“Trump has built a wall, indeed,” said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster who specializes in Latino voters. “And it is a new firewall for Democrats.”

In Florida, early-voting data suggests that Hispanics are emerging as a larger force in the state’s electorate — and that many Latinos are participating for the first time.

The Hispanic share of overall early voters is sharply higher this year, reaching about 15 percent from about 10 percent at this stage four years ago, according to an analysis by University of Florida political scientist Daniel A. Smith. Another examination of the numbers, by Democratic strategist Steve Schale, found that more than half of the Hispanics who have voted so far have either never voted before or voted only once previously.

Across Miami-Dade County, Hispanics seemed to be heavily favoring Clinton.

Marilyn Ralat-Albernas considered the stakes in the election so high for her Hispanic community that she took a month off work to volunteer for Clinton.

One of the most persuasive strategies for Clinton allies has been to send undocumented workers to knock on the doors of potential Hispanic voters to explain the stakes of the election.

Pence Likely to Worsen Trump's Problems with Gays, Women and Minorities

As noted in prior posts, Mike Pence is an anti-gay ideologue who happily signed Indiana's license to discriminate law surrounded by a group of anti-gay extremists and religious fanatics.  But LGBT voters are not the only ones who ought to be terrified by Pence as Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate. Women and minorities ought to be similarly disturbed if not out right terrified.  Pence is a determined opponent of women's rights and would close down Planned Parenthood and thereby live countless poor women with no source of need healthcare treatment and cancer screening options. It goes without saying that Pence is a darling of the anti-democracy theocrats who want to exempt Christofascists from the laws governing the rest of us.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at how Pence will likely aggravate Trump's problem with women voters.  A similar piece in The Nation describes Pense as a smooth talking "legitimate rape" Todd Akin.  Here are highlights from the Post article:

Donald Trump has already had problems making inroads with female, gay and minority voters. His vice-presidential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, could make things even worse.

Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, has endorsed conservative legislation on abortion, gay rights and immigration both in his home state and while in Congress, where he was consistently ranked as one of the most right-leaning members of the House. He attempted to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood funding, supported a measure that made English the nation’s official language and signed one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws earlier this year.

Pence is almost certain to appeal to socially conservative and evangelical voters . . . . By picking Pence, Trump added his inverse to the ticket: a social-issues warrior with a long, very conservative track record.

Democrats (including presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton), women’s health advocates and gay rights groups wasted no time pouncing on Pence, whom they described as extreme, anti-woman and anti-gay. . . . . “Donald Trump just sent a message to the women of America: Your health and your lives are not important.” 

A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that 77 percent of women had an unfavorable impression of Trump, including 65 percent who saw him in a “strongly unfavorable” light. Trump’s negative ratings among women are more than 20 percentage points higher than the ratings 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney received at any point in that campaign.
 Earlier this year, Pence signed one of the nation’s furthest-reaching abortion laws, which bans abortions of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome or any other disability or because of their race, sex or ancestry. The measure subjects abortion providers to disciplinary sanctions and civil liability for wrongful death for performing an abortion for any of the reasons stated in the law. . . . “This law attempted to do exactly what Supreme Court precedent said could not be done: invade a woman’s privacy rights by preventing her from deciding whether to obtain a pre-viability abortion,” Ken Falk, the legal director of the Indiana ACLU, said.

Representatives for Trump did not respond to requests for comment. . . . The choice of Pence was praised by antiabortion advocates.   

Trump: Make America Great by Keeping the Dark Hordes Out

While the GOP seemingly celebrates lawbreakers and armed rebellion, Donald Trump is continuing to crystallize the reality that the GOP is not a political party of religious extremists but also open racists.  Trump, of course, is slightly more discrete than to call out that all non-whites be barred from entering the country, but that's the net sum of his message.  Needless to say, the ugliest elements of the white GOP base love Trump's message.  Another column in the Washington Post looks at this open racism.  Here are excerpts:

As the final, frenzied push towards the first presidential voting begins, Donald Trump has unveiled a riveting new television ad that perfectly sums up Trumpism in all its xenophobic glory — and also perfectly captures the problem Trumpism has created for the Republican Party.

The ad, which is set to run extensively in Iowa and New Hampshire, has it all. It reiterates his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, and links this directly to the need to combat “radical Islamic terrorism.” It also again vows to “stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.” All of this leads up to the grand conclusion, in which Trump himself vows to “make America great again.”

Note this footage from the new Trump ad showing dark hordes breaching the border. . . . . this depiction of “illegal immigrants as invaders” offers a striking parallel to today’s Trumpian rhetoric. That parallel should make it hard to avoid reckoning with the possibility that Trump’s appeal to GOP voters just might be partly rooted in the raw appeal of his xenophobia and demagoguery about immigrants, and not just in anxieties that are legitimately traceable to the impact of immigration policy on GOP voters’ economic prospects, as some right-leaning commentators have suggested.

[A]s one California Democrat puts it to Dionne: “The one thing no one can stop is that every month, the rest of America looks more like California.”

 Other Republicans, such as pollster Whit Ayres, broadly agree with this analysis and its ominous portents for the GOP’s hopes in future national elections. Now, it remains unlikely that Trump will actually win the nomination. But even if he doesn’t, the question then becomes: Whither the forces Trump has unleashed inside the GOP? Trump’s candidacy — and to a somewhat lesser extent, that of Ted Cruz — is framed around the idea that the way to win the White House is by unleashing the power of white backlash.

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.

GOP Threatens Government Shutdown Over Refugee

Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)

While utterly ignoring the hate mongering elements of their own base - including those advocating for the execution of some 10-30 million LGBT Americans - the political whores in the Republican Party are now making rumblings about shutting down the federal government if the Obama administration does not limit access to Syrian refugees to those who are Christian.  Of course, how they would winnow out those who are not Christian is not specified nor is any cognizance given to the reality that any terrorist worth his or her salt who wanted to infiltrate America along with the legitimate refugees could easily provide falsified documentation as to their alleged - and false  - Christian faith.  Among those leading this charge is Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) who seems more delusional bu the day.  Politico looks at this latest wave of GOP batshitery.  Here are highlights:

A cascade of Republicans on Monday implored the Obama administration to scrap plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States next year, saying they pose an unacceptable security risk in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

And, in a dramatic twist, the sudden standoff is raising the possibility of a government shutdown next month.

Throughout the day a host of Republican governors around the country, wary that refugees could end up in their home states, blasted President Barack Obama’s plans. But those governors lack real sway over the process, and some are asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to insert a provision in the Dec. 11 spending bill that would bar more Syrian settlers.

In an interview, John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said “it’s a good time to hit the pause button [on the Syrian resettlement program] and to reevaluate where we are and what the risks are.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the leading immigration hard-liners in the Capitol, sent a letter to colleagues calling for provisions in the omnibus spending bill that would give Congress more oversight over Syrian refugees.

And House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul of Texas wrote a letter to Obama asking him to “temporarily suspend the admission of all additional Syrian refugees into the United States pending a full review of the Syrian refugee resettlement program.” In an appearance on CNN, McCaul said Congress should declare war on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS.

Ryan and McConnell will have to decide quickly on a course of action as they confront the first potential legislative crisis since Ryan became speaker. The government funding process offers powerful leverage over the Obama administration but would threaten a shutdown if Democrats balk at their demands.

Time is short. Just 25 days remain until government spending authority runs out, and Congress will recess next week for Thanksgiving.

Republicans’ chief concerns stem from reports that at least one of the suspects in Friday’s attacks may have crossed through Greece along with refugees. A Syrian passport discovered near the body of one of the attackers in Paris showed that the holder of the passport passed through Leros, Greece, in early October, according to Reuters. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday afternoon that the Syrian passport was fake, according to French officials.

Jeb Bush: Only Christians Should be Allowed Refugee Status

Seeking to quickly pander to the Christofascists that largely control the Republican Party base, an increasingly desperate Jeb Bush stated that the USA must only allow Syrian Christians be allowed refugee status.  Bush, of course, is not the only GOP presidential contestants seeking to shamelessly prostitute himself to the portion of the party base who want to establish nothing less than a Christian theocracy in America or, if that goal fails, then establish special rights and privileges for hate and fear motivated evangelical Christians under the guise of "religious freedom" laws.  Jeb Bush not surprisingly totally ignores the role of his cretin brother in creating the instability in the Middle East that has allowed ISIS to come into being and expand.  The Raw Story looks at Jeb's desperate effort to pander to bigots:

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said over the weekend that the U.S. should respond to the terrorist attacks in Paris by carefully screening out Syrian refugees who are not Christians. 

“As it relates to the refugees, I think we need to do thorough screen,” Bush told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “And take a limited number. But ultimately, the best way to deal with the refugee crisis is to create safe zones inside of Syria so that people don’t risk their lives, and you don’t have what will be a national security challenge for both our country and for Europe of screening.”

But there was one group which should be allowed to take refuge in the U.S., the former Florida governor argued. 

“There are a lot of Christians in Syria that have no place now,” he explained. “They’ll be either executed or imprisoned, either by Assad or by ISIS. And I think we should have — we should focus our efforts as it relates to the Christians that are being slaughtered.”

Tapper wondered how screeners would know which refugees were Christians.  “We do that all the time,” Bush insisted. “I think we need to be — obviously — very, very cautious. This also calls to mind the need to protect our borders, our southern border particularly.”

“This is a threat against Western civilization, and we need to lead. The United States has pulled back and when we pull back, voids are filled. And they’re filled now by Islamic terrorism that threatens our country.”

According to Bush, apparently only Christians merit humanitarian efforts.  The man is not only disgusting, but seems to be even dumber than his idiot brother.

Race - The Real Reason the Republican Party is Imploding

I have said it before and I will say it again: the descent of the Republican Party began when white, racist, Christofascists were cynically welcomed in to the party by the so-called GOP establishment which put short term electoral victories over the long term future and viability of the party.  These angry white conservative Christians - many of whom, particularly in the South view the Jim Crow era a golden period in America - have become a cancer in the GOP that has proved to be just as hard to eradicate as the AIDS virus.   A piece in Salon looks at the role racism has played in the coming implosion of the GOP.  Here are highlights:

Republicans in the House are reportedly no closer to finding John Boehner’s successor. As a matter of fact, things have gotten so bad that the conservative establishment is begging Rep. Paul Ryan to take the job. He says he’d rather not.

But over the weekend, it started to look like Ryan may not have to resign himself to the miserable fate of being one of the most powerful people on the planet — at least not yet. Because according to reports which first emanated from Breitbart.com and other tribunes of the far right, but which have since been corroborated by the New York Times and others, even Ryan may not be conservative enough to please the 30-40 extremists who felled Boehner, thwarted McCarthy, and call themselves members of the House Freedom Caucus.

 

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Yes, that’s right: The Republican Party is now beholden to a faction so zealously reactionary that Paul “Ayn Rand is the reason I got involved in public service” Ryan is, in its reckoning, much too far to the left.

[R]ecognizing the problem is the easy part. The harder part is acknowledging where it comes from. Brooks chalks the GOP’s militancy up to 30 years of “rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals” and suggests that Republicans are “addicted to a crisis mentality.”  . . . . 

No, as is so often true in American politics, the problem is race.

Some hardliners pay lip service to his supporting the 2008 bailouts when explaining their opposition to Ryan. But if you follow the far-right press, or listen to rank-and-file activists, it’s blindingly obvious that conservatives’ real problem with Paul Ryan is that he not only supports comprehensive immigration reform, but supports higher levels of overall immigration, too. “There’s nobody in the Republican Party who could be worse than Paul Ryan,” said Roy Beck, a leading “immigration control” activist, to Breitbart. “Open Borders is in his ideological DNA. That’s the terrifying thing.”

Where they break from the rest of the political establishment is in their analysis; that apocalyptic stuff about the end of the republic, the New Black Panther Party, and immigration being akin to “invasion.”

But that’s not craziness; that’s racism. They’re different. So if Brooks and others really want to know how this dysfunction got started, they’ll have to look back further. Before the Tea Party, and before Paul Ryan was even born. They’ll have to examine the roots of today’s Republican Party. I’d recommend they start with Richard Nixon and the presidential campaign of 1968.

As noted before, the GOP has become so extreme on race that I often wonder why they do not hand out KKK robes at the beginning of GOP city and county committee meetings.  The GOP was not always like this - certainly not in the more distant years past when I was on the Virginia Beach City Committee for the GOP.