Trump's Ploy to Destabilize American Democracy

As a student of history, I believe that often people fail to see the larger events taking place around them and the dangerous directions in which their nation is headed.  This certainly applies to Germans in the late 1920's and early 1930's when Hitler used anti-Semiticism and Germans' xenophobia and  sense of victim hood in the wake of WWI to rise to power. I'm currently reading a new book, "The End of Tsarist Russia" that looks at the lead up to WWI and ultimately the Russian revolution and one see's many who failed to see the impending catastrophe.  Fast forward to 2016 and here in America we see forces lead by Donald Trump seeking to destabilize American democracy for their own selfish and hated motivated means.  As the last post noted, some Trump supporters want a putsch if Trump loses to Hillary Clinton - an actual revolt to overthrow the government.  Americans need to wake up to the dangerous forces that are being unleashed.  An editorial in the Washington Post looks at the danger.  Here are highlights:

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES teach their officers how to respond in case of exposure: Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations. While perhaps good advice in the amoral context of espionage, these are not, or should not be, words to live by for those who take part in democratic politics. Yet when Republican Donald Trump was outed as a serial abuser of women, first by his own words and then by testimony from a lengthening list of alleged victims, he responded with tactics worthy of the Russian ex-KGB man Vladi­mir Putin, whose leadership he so admires. Mr. Trump branded the women liars and blamed “the establishment and their media enablers” for the purported smear.

One reason to believe the charges is Mr. Trump’s own repugnant boast,captured on videotape in 2005 and first reported a week ago by The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, about how he likes to “grab” women by their private parts and force himself on them, as an exercise of his “star” power. Lacking the decency to take responsibility for this, beyond a thin layer of apology in a thick sandwich of excuse-making, Mr. Trump went on to compound verbally the insult he already inflicted on his victims, through his conduct, with predictable attacks on their veracity, motives and, of course, appearance. Thus did the GOP nominee further confirm his unfitness for the White House, as well as the cravenness of those elected leaders in his party who continue to endorse him.

And then Mr. Trump, speaking Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla., escalated: Beyond merely denying the truth of the allegations about his treatment of women, he recast them as evidence that U.S. democracy itself is no longer legitimate. Follow the logic here, if you can: The country is under the control of a conspiracy, involving not just his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the media, but also the entire political “establishment,” Republicans included, in league with unnamed international banks, whose goal is to enrich themselves by controlling “the central base of world political power . . . right here in America” and imposing “radical globalization and the disenfranchisement of working people.” Mr. Trump, and the “movement” he heads, are all that stand in the way of this evil cabal. This election, therefore, is no ordinary political contest but “a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over our government.” Ergo, the cabal will destroy Mr. Trump by “slander” — unless the people stand up and resist “a small handful of global special interests rigging the system.”

This language — which he read from a prepared text fed into a teleprompter — is inflammatory beyond any demagoguery Mr. Trump had offered previously. Coupled with his repeated warnings, echoed by his followers, that the Democrats may be cooking up Election Day fraud, the speech seems to prepare the ground for resistance in the increasingly likely event that things don’t go his way Nov. 8. Indeed, anyone who agrees that the alternative to a Trump victory is civilizational disaster, the fruit of a “sinister deal,” as Mr. Trump put it in another Florida speech, would feel obligated to deny the legitimacy of a Clinton victory, should it occur. Trump-for-President is not a campaign to redeem American democracy or even to “take it back,” as Mr. Trump puts it; it has morphed into a campaign of destabilization.

Mr. Trump’s words seek to make accomplices of his listeners. Anyone who challenges the cabal “is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe and morally deformed,” he told the West Palm Beach audience. “They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and your family, they will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation.” As if the assembled Trumpkins were just as guilty as he of all those alleged sins.

Still, it is not too late even for these GOP politicians to repudiate Mr. Trump’s conspiratorial view of the American political process. They should at least find the decency, and the patriotism, to declare that everyone must respect the results on Nov. 8 — and pursue any protests or disputes through legal channels, not in the streets. Even if Republicans can’t bring themselves to part ways politically with Mr. Trump, they can refuse to cooperate in the trashing of our public discourse and essential civic traditions. Surely that is not too much to ask.

Do We Face a Threat of Armed Sedition?

As noted in prior posts, Donald trump and his surrogates have been planting seeds for a claim that the election was stolen or "rigged" if Trump goes down to defeat.  Combine this with the manner in which Trumps supporters seem to buy into every possible conspiracy theory - e.g., Benghazi - and it could make for a dangerous and toxic mix.  Adding to the toxic brew is Matt Bevin, the Republican Governor of Kentucky (pictured above),  who has suggested that "Patriots" might have to shed blood if Hillary Clinton is elected in November.  Bevin made his remarks - which were vague on whose blood would be shed but certainly suggested that "tyrants" would die - at a closed session at the hate fest known as the Value Voters Summit, a gathering sponsored by a group of certified hate groups.  Right Wing Watch captured Bevin's inflammatory batshirty.  Here are excerpts:

Numerous speakers at last weekend’s Values Voter Summit suggested that the American republic might not survive a Hillary Clinton presidency. During the Obama administration it has become almost routine to hear far-right leaders talk about the possibility of armed revolution against the federal government. But it was still jarring to hear a sitting governor suggest that America might only survive the election of Hillary Clinton through bloodshed.  Speaking on Saturday, he told VVS attendees that the country is facing a fork in the road: “We don’t have multiple options; we’re going one way or we’re going the other way, politically, spiritually, morally, economically, from a liberty standpoint. We’re going one way or we’re going the other way.” American freedom, Bevin said, was “purchased at an extraordinary price,” saying that one and a half million Americans have given their lives in uniform. “America is worth fighting for. America is worth fighting for, ideologically.”

“I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” said Bevin. “But that may in fact be the case.” He explained that it might take the shedding of the blood of tyrants and patriots for America to survive a Hillary Clinton presidency:
 “Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, ‘Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation?’ And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away.” – Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, addressing the closing session of the Values Voter Summit yesterday.

A sitting governor urging violence against elected officials and others.  It is both frightening and disgusting, but that is what the Christofascist and white supremacist dominated Republican Party has fallen to.  These people are downright dangerous. 

Republicans Seeking to Thwart the Constitution

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has wandered off the GOP reservation again - or escaped what is now the GOP insane asylum depending on one's views.  In her latest column in the Washington Post, she takes Republicans to task for their efforts to obstruct any Supreme Court nominee that Barack Obama may submit.  Not only is such action against the U.S. Constitution, but it underscores the divisiveness and hypocrisy that are now among the main hallmarks of the Republican Party and its angry white base.  Here are column highlights:

As Republican presidential candidates invoke Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy, all insisting that his suddenly vacant seat shouldn’t be filled until a new president is in place, it is helpful to ask: What would Scalia do? 

First, Scalia would read the law and, without much chin-stroking, recommend the obvious intent of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which reads: “[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court.”

See? That wasn’t complicated. And the Senate can always reject a nominee. Yet Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made it clear that no Supreme Court nominations would get to the floor.  . . . .

All Republican candidates have expressed agreement with McConnell, with Donald Trump being the most vocal and least nuanced: “Delay, delay, delay,” he said inimitably at Saturday’s debate in South Carolina, just hours after the nation learned of Scalia’s death. 

As unseemly as such political proclamations are so soon after the justice’s death, Scalia likely would have found the shenanigans childishly amusing. Unerringly faithful to the rule of law — and deferential to the executive and legislative branches — he would have understood the politics but not the point.

The law is clear.  But politics are something else, and Republicans have decided that, at least on this matter, the people should have a voice. Inarguably, with three justices likely to retire during the next presidency and Scalia’s seat now empty, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But, if you’ll pardon this intrusion of logic, haven’t the people already had a voice? Didn’t a majority of the people reelect President Obama, and doesn’t he have nearly a year left to serve out his term? Lame duck doesn’t mean dead duck — and this president’s still quacking.

[O]riginalists would have to concede that it’s the president’s job to nominate a replacement for an empty Supreme Court seat and the Senate’s job to advise and consent — or dissent, as the case may be. Yet to Republicans, the idea of Obama fulfilling his constitutional responsibilities falls somewhere between apocalyptic and absurd.

So why would the GOP, professed stewards of original intent, seek to thwart the Constitution’s clear purpose? Again, not complicated.

First, because several cases that Republicans hoped would result in their favor hang in the balance. With a 4-to-4 vote, the lower courts’ rulings stand.

Republicans are playing with fire. Is this really a precedent they wish to set? Which of these candidates in the fourth or eighth year of his presidency would surrender his own nominating powers to a successor? And, finally, what if the next president is Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

The GOP’s calculation, apparently, is that the greater risk lies in Obama’s nominating a reasonably moderate liberal who passes all the usual tests that Republicans can’t rationally block. If Obama were feeling frisky, he might select a Hispanic or Asian judge, thus helping ensure that the Republican “Big Tent” collapsed from the weight of emptiness.

[I]t may seem wiser to avoid the advise-and-consent process, but hypocrisy takes no prisoners. You can’t attach yourself to Scalia’s originalist virtues and also ignore the rule of law he so passionately defended. 

Oregon: Eight "Militia" Members Arrested, One Dead

One did not need to be clairvoyant to know that sooner or later the illegal seizure and occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon would lead to violence and bloodshed. Yesterday, it happened as eight of the lunatic, sedition loving "militia" members were arrested and one other member was killed and yet another wounded.  Others remain at the refuge facilities.  Like so many right wing groups that want to subvert the government and make themselves above the law, this group had ridiculously called itself the "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom."  In fact, the group stood for lawlessness.  Sadly, few Republicans had the spines to condemn the group and its illegal actions, self-prostitution to extremists now being a hallmark of the GOP.  The New York Times has details on yesterday's long over due arrests.  Here are highlights:

Ammon Bundy, the leader of an armed seizure of a federal wildlife refuge in rural eastern Oregon, was arrested and one person was killed Tuesday afternoon in a traffic stop in rural Oregon, the F.B.I.

Seven other people, including Mr. Bundy’s brother Ryan Bundy, were arrested, the authorities said. Another person was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.

The authorities did not identify the man who was killed, but a member of the Nevada State Assembly, Michele Fiore, who has been a supporter of the Bundy family, said on Twitter that it was LaVoy Finicum. Mr. Finicum had become a de facto spokesman for the occupiers.

Community leaders demanded that the group leave, but several members were still occupying the refuge Tuesday night.

The F.B.I. and the Oregon State Police said that Mr. Bundy, his brother and three other people, including Shawna Cox, 59, of Kanab, Utah, and Ryan Waylen Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont., were arrested on a state highway, but they provided no further details. Ms. Cox and Mr. Payne were prominent in speaking for the refuge. Also arrested on the highway was Brian Cavalier, 44, of Bunkerville, Nev.

The authorities said only that shots were fired during the course of the arrest. Two other people: Peter Santilli, 50, of Cincinnati, and Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy, 45, of Cottonwood, Ariz., were arrested later in Burns, and John Eric Ritzheimer, 32, turned himself in to the police in Peoria, Ariz., the authorities said. All of the defendants face a federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats.

Those arrested need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and the law breakers still at the refuge need to either leave immediately or be removed by force.  Watch to see if any of the GOP presidential candidates condemn the lawless behavior of the extremists who occupied the wildlife refuge.

 

The GOP’s Sympathy for Sedition

When Republican politicians constantly attack the government - and other citizens - to pander to ugly elements in their party base, they are setting the stage for and building a mindset that accepts armed revolt against the government and the larger society.  This is especially true when portions of that base are pathological in their hatred towards others and view themselves literally above the law.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how today's Republican Party encourages sedition, a/k/a treason.  Note how GOP House members try to conflate armed bands with "peaceful civil disobedience."  It is laughable or insane, take your pick. Here are excerpts:

Republican lawmakers began the new year in Washington with new ideas about how to undermine the government in which they serve. 

On Wednesday, the first legislative day of the year, House conservatives gathered with reporters for their monthly “Conversations with Conservatives.” When the questioning turned to the armed rebellion in Oregon against the authority of the federal government, these representatives of the United States stood with the rebels. 

No, Congressman. Civil disobedience is when people break laws they think unjust and then peacefully face the legal consequences. The takeover of a federal wildlife facility in Oregon by armed men is sedition.

Yet not one of the 10 or so Republican House members on the panel criticized the takeover, and one, Rep. Steve Pearce (N.M.), announced his refusal to pass judgment.

It was an inauspicious start to this election year and to the second session of the 114th Congress. The Republican majority began the year not by governing but with an ostentatious show of its hostility toward government.

The House’s first substantive piece of business for the new year: another attempt to repeal Obamacare (the 62nd, by the Democrats’ tally) coupled with another stab at cutting off Planned Parenthood, one of a dozen such efforts recently to scale back abortion rights and women’s health care.

[T]here was, purely as a matter of doggedness, something impressive about the New Year’s Obamacare vote. North Korea is testing nukes, Saudi Arabia and Iran are plunging the Middle East deeper into conflict — but congressional Republicans will not be distracted from their agenda.  

[I]t’s hard to govern when your caucus is so hostile to government that it has sympathy for seditionists. Asked about the Oregon situation, Ryan deferred to Rep. Greg Walden, a member of GOP leadership who represents the area — and, as The Post’s Mike DeBonis noted, Ryan nodded agreement as Walden spoke. Walden made clear that “an armed takeover is not the way to go about it,” but he had sympathy for the rebels.  . . . . lawmakers sworn to uphold the Constitution applaud those who take up arms against the government.

The GOP’s Love Affair with Lawbreakers

The Republican Party likes to bill itself as the party that supports the rule of law and law and order, yet its base it increasingly made up of those that believe that they are above the law and that they can simply disregard and break laws that they do not like.  Such laws range from non-discrimination laws that the Christofascists break over disingenuous claims of "religious liberty" to the gun carrying lunatics and domestic terrorists that seized federal facilities in Oregon.  A column in the Washington Post rightly looks at the GOP's love affair with those who seek to break the law.  Here are highlights:

Ammon Bundy and the other armed militants occupying a federal facility at a wildlife refuge in Oregon have a beef with the administration — the Teddy Roosevelt administration.

[T] “taking of the people’s land,” the “overreach” that moved these rebels to take up arms, occurred 108 years ago, when Roosevelt — a Republican president and a great conservationist — established the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, one of 51 such refuges he set aside, “as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.”

So why have the militants chosen this moment, more than a century after the fact, to “unwind all these unconstitutional land transactions,” as Bundy put it? Perhaps it’s because they think the political atmosphere now condones such anti-government activity. 

You can see why they might think so. Several of the Republican presidential candidates have been encouraging lawbreaking, winking at it or simply looking the other way.

A few months ago, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and others rushed to defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to obey federal law.  . . . . Cruz identified her jailing as “judicial tyranny” and said Davis was operating “under God’s authority.”

Donald Trump has put at the center of his campaign an extra-constitutional ban on admitting Muslims into the country. Marco Rubio said that if the law conflicts with the Gospel, “God’s rules always win,” and that “we are called to ignore” the government’s authority.

And, of course, there was the 2014 standoff in which Cliven Bundy, who refused to pay grazing fees for his use of federal land, got support or sympathy from Cruz, Trump, Huckabee, Rand Paul and Ben Carson. Cruz denounced the federal government for “using the jackboot of authoritarianism.”

The rancher lost much of his support when he delivered a racist rant. But not all of it:

Flirting with extremists helps conservative candidates harness the prodigious anger in the electorate. A poll released this weekend by NBC, Esquire and Survey Monkey found anger is particularly intense among Republicans: Seventy-seven percent said the news makes them angry at least once a day . . . .

So when some very angry people led by Ammon Bundy took over the (unoccupied) compound at the wildlife preserve over the weekend, the Republican presidential candidates reacted mostly with silence. A scan of tweets from Republican lawmakers also found nary a peep about the armed takeover of the federal facility.

Cruz also released a TV ad Monday protesting inadequate enforcement of the border. “The rule of law,” he says in the ad, “wasn’t meant to be broken.” That’s a fine sentiment. But to live under the rule of law we must follow all laws — not just those we like. 

GOP Business As Usual: Sedition in the Name of Patriotism

UPDATED:  The front page of the New York Daily News (see image above) gets it right for a change.

Republicans and their Christofascists and Tea Party base talk ad nausea  about patriotism and the rule of law yet are always ready at the drop of a hat to undermine the constitution, seek to nullify judicial decisions and ignore the separation of powers in government if they don't like the result.  All too often such unhappiness stems from their minority positions on issues - e.g., same sex marriage - that are accepted by the majority.  A piece in Washington Monthly looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

On many occasions during the last few years, as I heard talk of secession and nullification, and of defiance of the courts, and of duly enacted statutes representing slavery and tyranny, and of Higher Laws and a Right to Revolution, and most recently, of allegiance to a foreign government—all more or less countenanced by one of our two major political parties—I’ve thought of a historical parallel, as described in one of my favorite books, George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England.
 
The period in question was just prior to World War I when a Liberal majority government committed by mandate and party alliance to Home Rule for Ireland was obstructed by a Tory minority in alliance with Ulster Unionists which explicitly and implicitly threatened civil war.

Sedition in the name of patriotism should sound familiar today. Just over a century ago in England, the seditionists—aptly described by Dangerfield as cynical opportunists in league with sectarian fanatics—won. The country recovered, but was never quite the same. Are we headed in that same direction? 

You have to wonder, as does Paul Waldman today at the Plum Line:

The American political system runs according to a whole series of norms, many of which we don’t notice until they’re violated. For instance, the Speaker of the House can invite a foreign leader to address Congress for the sole purpose of criticizing the administration, and he can even do it without letting the White House know in advance. There’s no law against it. But doing so violates a norm not only of simple respect and courtesy, but one that says that the exercise of foreign policy belongs to the administration. Congress can advise, criticize, and legislate to shape it, but if they simply take it upon themselves to make their own foreign policy, they’ve gone too far.

Republicans seem to have concluded that there is one set of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set that applies when Barack Obama is the president. You no longer need to show the president even a modicum of respect. You can tell states to ignore the law. You can sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating directly with that power.

I wonder what they’d say if you asked them whether it would be acceptable for Democrats to treat the next Republican president that way. My guess is that the question wouldn’t even make sense to them. After all, that person would be a Republican. So how could anyone even think of such a thing?

Mike Huckabee: States Should Ignore Federal Court Rulings

Proving yet again that his is utterly unfit for any elected office much less the office of the President of the United States, uber-Christofascists Mike Huckabee, a would be GOP 2016 presidential candidate, is urging states to ignore the rulings of the federal courts not to Christofascists' liking on the issues of same sex marriage, abortion and the separation of church and state.  Such action would, of course, be in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution which Huckabee would be sworn to uphold if he were ever elected to the presidency (and most other state and federal offices).   Huckabee's latest batshitery should surprise no one since he's previously stated on national television that he advocates replacing the Constitution with the Bible.  Huckabee epitomizes the problem the Republican Party has created for itself by ever allowing lunatics like Huckabee and his followers to have a place within the GOP.  Right Wing Watch looks at this latest insanity which arguably is tantamount to sedition.  Here are highlights:

In an interview with Iowa-based conservative talk show host Steve Deace on Monday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee repeated his recommendation that governors simply ignore the Supreme Court’s decision to let stand lower court rulings legalizing marriage equality in several new states, adding that state governments should have also ignored Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court rulings banning school-sponsored prayer.

When Deace pressed him on the “maelstrom” that would be set off if state governments simply ignored court rulings on marriage, Huckabee responded that it was in fact the courts that have set off a “constitutional crisis” by ruling in favor of marriage equality.

Huckabee said, elected officials should have said, “Well, the courts have spoken and it’s an important voice, but it’s not the voice of God and the Supreme Court isn’t God” and simply ignored the courts’ rulings.

Huckabee belongs in a mental institution and one can only hope that the so-called GO establishment will do all in its power to silence him and throw both him and his followers out of the GOP.  These people are a clear and presnt danger that needs to be addressed.

Hate Group Voters Value Summit Provides Cavalcade of Lunacy

Click image to enlarge

Having followed right wing organizations since the late 1990's - a number of which have now garnered much deserved hate group designations - several things have become quickly apparent: (i) these groups and their followers want to establish a Christian theocracy, (ii) they spend millions on disseminating lies and engendering hatred towards others but participate on no real charitable works, and (iii) many of the leaders as well as their followers are nothing short of insane/mentally disturbed.  Few gathers provide a better glimpse at the frightening agenda and unhinged insanity of these organizations that the so-called "Value Voters Summit" orchestrated by the hate group Family Research Council.  This years coven gathering provided a bumper crop of lunacy and ought to terrify the GOP establishment in turns of who these folks selected via straw poll as their preferred presidential candidate Jeb Bush and Chris Christie received 2% and 1% of the votes, respectively, in the straw poll).  A piece in Slate looks at the presidential straw poll results.  Here are highlights:

Radical religious conservatives at this weekend's annual Values Voter Summit chose Ted Cruz as their standard bearer. The son of an anti-gay anti-science anti-women Christian pastor, Cruz's embrace of religious rhetoric and his habitual grenade-throwing has endeared him to the Christian conservative crowd.  So what's shocking?

Ben Carson, the man who equates gay people with pedophiles from NAMBLA, came in second, with nearly 20 percent of the vote. That says a lot more than Cruz coming in first.  Carson, by the way, last month formed a presidential run exploratory committee. He believes white liberals are "the most racist" people in America, and abortion is "human sacrifice."

Straw poll voters also said their top priority was “protecting religious liberty." Second-most important was fighting abortion, followed by “protecting natural marriage.”

Coming in third was Christian Dominionist Mike Huckabee who has admitted on national television that he would replace the U.S. Constitution with the Bible as the nation's governing document and apply "biblical law."   If you check your dictionaries, Huckabee is potentially guilty of treason and sedition. 

Alaskan white trash

But the straw poll was only the tip of the iceberg of unhinged insanity as demonstrated by numerous speakers, including Alaska mental midget Sarah Palin who said she wanted to "bring truth to 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue."  This cretin is so stupid that she doesn't even know that the White House is a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  John McCain should face some sort of criminal negligence prosecution for every nominating this ignoramus as his vice presidential teammate.  About the only thing one can ask about Palin is whether she's dumber than Michele Bachmann.

It goes without saying that the gay haters were out in force at the summit and spreading their usual messages of hate even as some like the reality untethered Mat Staver - who with Liberty University is a blight on Virginia - whined about being labeled as "anti-gay."  Here's what Right Wing Watch reports about Staver:

Mat Staver spent a good portion of his speech at the Values Voter Summit today fuming over a letter sent by People For the American Way, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and five other civil rights and LGBT organizations to Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus, asking members of the GOP not to participate in the conference, citing the anti-gay extremism of its sponsors.

Staver's organization, Liberty Counsel, is among those very sponsors and he is not very happy about being labeled an anti-gay extremist, despite this long and documented record of being one. Staver fumed that he is being attacked merely for believing "in God's natural created order of male and and female and marriage as the union of one man and one woman."

In an effort to prove that he is not an extremist, Staver then went on to liken himself to Jesus when he turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple before declaring that marriage equality teaches that children do not need mothers or fathers.  "That is an absolute lie from the very pit of Hell," he said

That anyone in the Republican Party listens to a word these organizations has to say, much that numerous GOP officials attend the event, is an indictment of how low the GOP has fallen.  There was once a time when such people would have been addressed with a wink and a nod and then totally ignored.  Now individuals like Ted Cruz go an prostitute themselves to these lunatics and enemies of the U. S. Constitution.

 

TheGathering: A $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy

I've written about the Christofascist organization, The Gathering, which works to deny civil rights to many Americans and which ultimately would gut, if not over throw the United States Constitution if it could have its way.  Sadly, the media too often fails to cover the extremist, if not seditious, actions of Christofascists organizations and most politicians - especially self-prostituting Republicans - fear condemn such actions lest they be charged with being "anti-Christian."  Thankfully, a piece in The Daily Beast lays into The Gathering and its participants and hopefully will help more Americans to realize the threat Christofascist pose to constitutional government and rights and freedoms of other Americans.  As I have said many times, they are a clear and present danger and need to be treated accordingly.  Other than the level of violence utilized, their theocratic goals are not so far removed from those of ISIS and Islamic extremist organizations save the fictional work that the swear allegiance to.   Here are article highlights:

Have you heard of the $1,750-per-person “Gathering,” which starts Thursday in Orlando, Florida?
Probably not. But if you’re female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state, your life has been affected by it.

The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest.

Featured speakers have included many of the usual suspects: Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Alan Sears (2013), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (2011), and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins (2006).

The Gathering is as close to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” as you’re likely to find. So with this year’s conference about to get under way, Wilson gave The Daily Beast an exclusive interview over email—heavily redacted here—about this shadowy, powerful network of hard-right funders.

The Gathering promotes “family values” agenda: opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, for example, and also a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all competing belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity. Last year, for example, The Gathering 2013 brought together key funders, litigants, and plaintiffs of the Hobby Lobby case, including three generations of the Green family.

The evangelical right financial dynasties and foundations that meet each year at The Gathering dispense upwards of $1 billion a year in grants. But even that is overshadowed by the bigger sums that The Family and The Gathering have managed to route from the federal and state government to fund their movement via the Faith-Based Initiative program, USAID, PEPFAR and other multibillion-dollar programs.

The NCF was created, back in 1982 or so, to maximize hard right-wing evangelical Christian philanthropic giving. It was so novel and complex, the architects got a special ruling from the IRS, to make sure it was legal. The NCF has multiple overlapping legal entities and holding companies, but at the core is a huge donor-advised fund. The NCF is now the 12th biggest charitable foundation in America that raises money from private sources.

One reason the NCF, a donor-advised fund, has been so successful is that it ensures anonymity for its philanthropists. Many of these individuals may fear a backlash, given the controversial causes that they support.

But we do know about the NCF’s leadership. Two of the NCF co-founders were tied to Campus Crusade for Christ, and the late Larry Burkett, a NCF co-founder, was also one of the co-founders of the Alliance Defense Fund/Alliance Defending Freedom, now the religious right’s preeminent umbrella legal defense fund. NCF’s other co-founder, Atlanta tax lawyer Terrence Parker, sits on the board of directors of the Family Research Council, and also The Gathering Foundation, which puts on The Gathering.

The Green family—who were at The Gathering in 2008 and 2013—have said they intend to leave much of their fortune to it. And in 2009, Hobby Lobby-related contributions were the No. 1 source of NCF funding (about $54 million), which we know because Eli Clifton, funded by The Nation Institute, somehow got hold of an NCF 2009 990 Schedule B form, which shows NCF’s top funders that year (Hobby Lobby was No. 1, Maclellan Foundation No. 2).

Over the last decade, he NCF has pumped over $140 million into groups that oppose action to curb climate change and portray concern over global warming as part of a satanic conspiracy to impose a tyrannical “One World Order” or “New World Order.”

[T]he story of the politicized religious right is one of the biggest untold stories of our time. It’s the story of how a covert political movement, driven by a well-organized, -funded, and committed minority, has perturbed the political arc of the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation on Earth—and how it has subverted the national dialogue.

I'm annoyed at the basic dishonesty of religio/political phenomena such as The Gathering that lay claim to the Christian tradition but ignore its underlying mandate of truth-telling.

The donors to The Gathering and its principals need to be identified and, if they are business owners, their businesses and their products need to be shunned by decent people who believe in constitutional liberties.  As for the NCF, it needs to lose its tax-exempt status in light of all of the political involvement it and its affiliates have.  I'd even argue that ALL religious based charities need to lose their exempt status unless they cease ALL political activity. 

Minnesota GOP Supreme Court Nominee Vows To Put The Bible Above the Law

Examples of the batshitery of the Christofascists who now control the base of the Republican Party and their tawdry political whores in the GOP seem to be multiplying exponentially as sane and rational people flee the GOP.  One truly has to wonder when some of these nutcases are going to be charged with sedition and/or treason given their statements that their goal is to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and place the Bible as the governing document of the nation.  A case in point?  Michelle MacDonald (pictured above), the GOP nominee to become a state Supreme Court judge.  Just to add to the fun, MacDonald id up on DUI charges.  One literally could not make up the lunacy that is now the norm in the Republican Party.  These people are worse than a bad caricature.  Here are details from the Friendly Atheist on the batshitery eruption in Minnesota:

Lawyer Michelle MacDonald, who faces DUI charges, just won the Minnesota GOP’s nomination to become a state Supreme Court judge.

Just before getting the nomination, MacDonald explained how she would make decisions: Forget the law. It’s all about the Bible:

When judges used to enter the courtroom, they would hold the Bible over their head, like this.

In the words of George Washington, it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.

She’s a bad historian, too. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Washington said that. (Even Christian pseudo-historian David Barton, who popularized that lie in the first place, later admitted there was no proof he said it.)

She’s like a female version of Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore, who installed a Ten Commandments monument right in the courthouse. (But with a DUI charge.)

She said later in her speech that she would be “committed to civil liberties, constitutional rights, human dignities, and fair treatment of all citizens children or adults.” Though I wonder if she would’ve applied those principles to gay couples if the state hadn’t legalized marriage equality last year…

There’s one more MacDonald incident worth noting:

The documents also contained information about a bizarre incident in 2013 where MacDonald, who was representing a client in court, was removed from the courtroom by deputies and placed in a cell.

According to the documents, MacDonald was handcuffed, placed in [a] wheel chair and wheeled back into the courtroom by a deputy. The hearing resumed and MacDonald continued to represent her client, but she was in a wheel chair and handcuffed. MacDonald was jailed for multiple days, but was eventually released without being charged.

That’s who the GOP just nominated to the highest court in the state.

My Republican ancestors must be rolling in their graves that such a lunatic not only won any GOP nomination but that she won a nomination to Minnesota's highest court.  And the Tea Party wonders why America is dropping like a stone in international competition?  Its as if the GOP has undergone a collective lobotomy or had a collective nervous breakdown.  These people are insane and downright frightening!!