Extremist, Ted Cruz Predicts a Revolt if the GOP Uses Brokered Convention

While I find all of the Republican presidential candidate to be frightening (Kasich is just as extreme as Cruz and Trump, but knows when to shut his mouth), perhaps the scariest is Ted Cruz, a true extremist who seemingly is every bit as insane as his lunatic father, Rafael Cruz, an anti-gay extremist extraordinaire.   With the GOP establishment literally many years too late in recognizing the whirlwind it created by welcoming Christofascists, white supremacists and know nothings into the party, Cruz is threatening a revolt of the swamp fever afflicted party base if either he or Donald Trump are not crowned as the party nominee.  A piece in Mother Jones looks at Cruz's threat. Meanwhile, a piece in The Advocate looks at the insanity and extremism that has enveloped Cruz under the tutelage of his nutcase father.   First, these highlights on Cruz's threats to the party establishment:

Ted Cruz, campaigning in Wisconsin ahead of Tuesday's primary, says that if the Republican Party establishment were to anoint a candidate other than the two leaders in primary and caucus voting—Cruz and Donald Trump—at the party convention this summer, the GOP base would "quite rightly revolt."

Talking with reporters in the basement of a Masonic Center in Madison, Wisconsin, shortly before recording a town hall with Fox News in the auditorium upstairs, Cruz dismissed the concept of a new candidate like Ryan entering the fray. Currently, the Republican National Convention's Rule 40 mandates that a candidate must win a majority of the vote in at least eight states in order to get his or her name nominated at the convention, effectively preventing anyone other than Trump or Cruz from being placed in contention. Cruz rejected any suggestion that the convention would scrap Rule 40, as has been widely speculated.

"Both Donald and I have been very clear," Cruz said. "We shouldn't be changing the rules because Washington is unhappy with how the people are voting."

He added, "The rules are the rules."

Still, should party leaders attempt to nominate a third candidate, Cruz painted a dark vision for how that would go down. "This fevered pipe dream of Washington, that at the convention they would parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment, it is nothing less than a pipe dream," Cruz said. "It ain't gonna happen. If it did happen, the people would quite rightly revolt."

Cruz's concept of a revolt sounds far more peaceable than the rioting Trump has envisioned if he wins the voting but loses at the convention. Cruz said that if a convention selects a third candidate, "the voters would naturally say, 'To heck with you, we're staying home.'"

Personally, I can't summon a shred of sympathy for the so-called GOP establishment.  They made this entire catastrophe happen.  They are now reaping what they sowed.   As for Ted Cruz's sinister extremism and dangerous mindset, here are excerpts from The Advocate:

If you follow politics at all, you probably know Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz’s major issue stances — he’s anti-LGBT equality, anti-abortion rights, a proponent of free-market economics and an aggressive foreign policy.

But to really kow Cruz’s worldview, it’s important to know his father, mentor, and top campaign surrogate, 76-year-old Rev. Rafael Cruz.

“Rafael Cruz is an extremist,” Chuck Smith, CEO of Equality Texas, tells The Advocate. “He is the senator’s role model. Rafael Cruz spoke at the World Congress of Families event in Utah with a gay-bashing lineup of hateful speakers, and he is Ted’s surrogate traveling across the country on the campaign trail bashing gay people. Like father, like son.”

Ted Cruz, for instance, calls the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling “lawless” and “fundamentally illegitimate,” but his father says it’s the work of the devil. “The devil overplayed his hand with that decision on June 26,” Rafael Cruz said in a speech last August, predicting that godly Americans will rise up against it. 

Among Rafael Cruz’s other antigay greatest hits: At the World Congress of Families event last November, he said gay people want to legalize pedophilia, starting with an effort to strike down age-of-consent laws. Indeed, he has frequently described LGBT people as sexual predators. He has also said marriage equality is part of a government plot to “destroy the concept of God” and establish socialism in the United States.

Rafael Cruz seems to have long believed his son was destined for great things. “Essentially his father groomed him for this moment,” conservative Iowa radio talk show host and Ted Cruz backer Steve Deace told The Boston Globe in January, as father and son were campaigning in the state.

“By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was providing heavy doses of conservative Christian politics at the dinner table,” wrote Globe reporter Tracy Jan. “By 13, the younger Cruz had memorized the Constitution and through high school toured the state of Texas, delivering speeches on free market economics and the Constitution.”

[H[e [Refael] now touts himself as an ordained minister. His theology goes beyond traditional evangelical and fundamentalist views. He “is an advocate of Christian dominionism, which essentially holds that fundamentalist Christians should take over, well, just about everything,” David Corn wrote in a February Mother Jones article.

Corn described Rafael Cruz as a “freelancing evangelical,” and that pretty much sums it up. He has claimed to be a pastor at a church in Dallas, but there is no record of such an affiliation, according to a Washington Spectator investigation. That investigation also found that the Bible college he claims to have attended doesn’t exist.

However, the conservative Christian crowds he draws apparently haven’t questioned his credentials, and religious right leaders see him as an asset to his son’s campaign. “He’s a clarifying check that Ted’s the real deal,” antigay Iowa activist Bob Vander Plaats told the Globe.

The lack of distance between father and son shows how dangerous a Ted Cruz presidency would be, Smith tells The Advocate. He “lets his father say all the fiery gay-bashing rhetoric, but Ted Cruz will implement that rhetoric in his policies and appointments,” Smith says. “He is the worst candidate in the race, and I have no doubt he will discriminate against gay and transgender people all over the United States if he is elected president.”

“While Donald Trump is disturbing, Ted Cruz is dangerous, . . . 

One thing I have noted over the years as I have watched and kept an eye on the batshitery of the far right Christians: nowhere else other than in Christofascist circles can one get away with peddling outright lies about one's credentials and claim to have attended non-existent  "bible colleges" and it simply doesn't matter.  It speaks volumes about oth Cruz's and those who support them. 

Vladimir Putin and the Rape of the Russian People

It's no secret that I despise Vladimir Putin and view him as the latest incarnation of Russia's cavalcade of unfit rulers who have driven the country into the ground and robbed the country blind. Unlike Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna who I believe had good intentions - I have read their diaries - and were simply way out of their league in ruling as autocrats, Putin knows exactly what he is doing and cares nothing for the Russian people.  With Putin, it's all about satisfying his narcissism and inflated ego and hiding money overseas for the day when the Russian people wake up and realize that Putin should meet a fate like that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Now, a breach of banking record security has provided a picture of just how badly Putin has betrayed the Russian people.  Here are highlights from The Guardian:

A network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2bn has laid a trail to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

An unprecedented leak of documents shows how this money has made members of Putin’s close circle fabulously wealthy.

Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage.

The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.

The files are part of an unprecedented leak of millions of papers from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm. They show how the rich and powerful are able to exploit secret offshore tax regimes in myriad ways.

The offshore trail starts in Panama, darts through Russia, Switzerland and Cyprus – and includes a private ski resort where Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina, got married in 2013.

The Panama Papers shine a particular spotlight on Sergei Roldugin, who is Putin’s best friend. Roldugin introduced Putin to the woman he subsequently married, Lyudmila, and is godfather to Putin’s older daughter, Maria.

Roldugin appears to have been picked for this role because of his lesser profile. He has denied in documents to bank officials in Switzerland and Luxembourg that he is close to any Russian public figures. He has also said he is not a businessman.

Yet the files reveal Putin’s longstanding intimate has a 12.5% stake in Russia’s biggest TV advertising agency, Video International, which has annual revenues of more than £800m. Previously, its ownership was a closely guarded secret.

Roldugin was also secretly given an option to buy a minority stake in the Russian truck manufacturer Kamaz, which makes army vehicles, and has 15% of a Cyprus-registered company called Raytar.

He also owns 3.2% of Bank Rossiya. The St Petersburg private bank has been described as Putin’s “crony bank”. The US imposed sanctions on it after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

These assets are only part of a series of linked financial schemes revealed in the documents that revolve round Bank Rossiya.

The bank is headed by Yuri Kovalchuk. The US alleges he is the “personal banker” for many senior Russian government officials including Putin. The Panama Papers disclose that Kovalchuk and Bank Rossiya achieved the transfer of at least $1bn to a specially created offshore entity called Sandalwood Continental.

These funds came from a series of enormous unsecured loans from the state-controlled Russian Commercial Bank (RCB) located in Cyprus and other state banks. There is no explanation in the files of why the banks agreed to extend such unorthodox credit lines.
Some of the cash obtained from RCB was also lent back onshore in Russia at extremely high interest rates, with the resulting profits siphoned off to secret Swiss accounts.

A $6m yacht was purchased by Sandalwood and shipped to a port near St Petersburg.
Cash was also handed over directly to the Putin circle, this time in the form of very cheap loans, made with no security and with interest rates as low as 1%. It is not clear whether any loans have been repaid.

In 2010 and 2011, Sandalwood made three loans worth $11.3m to an offshore company called Ozon, which owns the upmarket Igora ski resort in the Leningrad region. Ozon belongs to Kovalchuk and a Cypriot company. Putin is the resort’s star patron and a reputed resident.

Speculation over the size of Putin’s personal fortune has gone on for almost a decade, following reports in 2007 that he was worth at least $40bn, based on leaks from inside his own presidential administration.

In 2010, US diplomatic cables suggested Putin held his wealth via proxies. The president formally owned nothing, they added, but was able to draw on the wealth of his friends, who now control practically all of Russia’s oil and gas production and industrial resources.

One of the companies linked to Ove Financial Corp belonged to Mikhail Lesin, Putin’s media tsar and former press minister. Lesin founded the Kremlin’s propaganda TV channel Russia Today but later fell out of favour. He was mysteriously found dead last November in a Washington hotel room with blunt force injuries to the head.

Asked about the offshore companies linked to him last week, Rodulgin said: “Guys, to be honest I am not ready to give comments now … These are delicate issues. I was connected to this business a long time ago. Before ‘perestroika’. It happened … And then it started growing and such things happened. The House of Music [in St Petersburg] is subsidised from this money.”

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s official spokesman, declined to comment on specific allegations against the president. Speaking last week, Peskov said western spy agencies were behind an all-out “information attack” against him to destabilise Russia before elections. Peskov dismissed the investigation by the Guardian and others as an “undisguised, paid-for hack job”. He said Russia had “legal means” to defend Putin’s dignity and honour.

US political scientist Karen Dawisha said it was inconceivable that Putin’s friends had become rich without his patronage. “He takes what he wants. When you are president of Russia, you don’t need a written contract. You are the law.”

Republican Religious Extremism and Self-Prostitution Intensifies

Tennessee state legislature

Just when you think Republicans cannot get any more insane and/or that efforts to self-prostitute themselves to the Christian Taliban cannot get any more outlandish, they rise to the challenge and make it clear that they hold religious freedom of anyone other than Christofascists in contempt and behave in a manner one would expect from Islamic zealots in the Middle East.  Years ago when I resigned from the Republican Party, my resignation letter cited the GOP's inability to grasp and accept the concept of separation of church an state.  In the intervening years, if anything, the Party has become even more extreme than I could ever have imagined.  Now, in Tennessee the Republicans in the state legislature want to make the Bible the state's official book.  Nashville's largest newspaper, the Tennessean is not amused.  Here are highlights from an editorial:

This is Tennessee, not Tehran. We are governed by the people, not the religious authorities.

If legislators truly care about religious liberty, they would vote against an ill-advised effort to endorse the Holy Bible as the official state book.

However, the theocrats in the Tennessee General Assembly have a good shot at getting their way.

The House passed the Bible bill last year, but the Senate wisely passed on it.This year, however, there might be enough votes in the Senate to approve it.

This, despite Attorney General Herbert Slatery's warning last year that such a bill could be ruled to be unconstitutional.

Turn only to Article I Section 3 of the Tennessee Constitution and pay particular attention to the last clause:

"That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience; that no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any minister against his consent; that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience; and that no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship."

Aside from the potential constitutional issues this presents, the bill, if passed by the Senate, should invalidate the false narrative that there is an attack on Christians' religious liberty.

That narrative has fueled bills, for example, that would allow counselors to reject potential clients as well as a short-lived attempt to amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to allow discrimination

The Bible bill is clearly an attack on religious minorities, and secular, agnostic or atheistic people, who are also protected by the state and federal constitutions.

Lawmakers who support it are acting like the ayatollahs of the Legislature, dictating what beliefs are acceptable and  making Tennessee a laughingstock.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

What Donald Trump's Popularity Reveals About the South

At this point I have lived the majority of my life in the South, including four years in Alabama.   While the Hampton Roads area of Virginia is less and less part of the South due to the influx of people from Northern states, there remain pockets that are very Southern when it comes to claimed religiosity, racism and hypocrisy.  The South can display charm and supposed hospitality, but depending where you are, beneath the veneer of graciousness lucks a would be KKK supporter.  As a column in Politico notes, the rise of Donald Trump's popularity in the South has done much to display the reality that while much has changed, the stain of racism and a fear of modernity and those who are different is still alive and well.  Folks may sit in the pews on Sunday morning, but they make a mockery of the Gospel message the rest of the week.  Here are excerpts:

The Republican South so far has rallied behind Donald Trump, a northerner without any of the grassroots evangelical credibility that is supposed to bind conservatives here—a candidate whose main appeal, in fact, has been coded appeals to the same hatred that drove [Dylnn] Roof to pick up a gun.

Make no mistake, Trump’s embrace by millions of people in my region isn’t solely about economic angst. It is also about the kind of pent-up fear—made up of barely submerged racism and profound ignorance—that a reader in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, expressed to me shortly after Barack Obama’s election: “I think he’s gonna enslave us,” he said. “Look what we done to ya’ll.”

Trump was, in many ways, the optimal antidote for that fear, and the racism behind it. It was Trump who more than anyone kept “birtherism” in the mainstream through the first term of Obama’s presidency, feeding belief in the deep South that this oddly-named president was not even American. And now it is Trump who has brilliantly exploited and drawn out the racism that the civil rights movement drove underground 50 years ago, but which is now resurfacing.

All this has thoroughly removed the scales from my eyes. I grew up watching the South become more tolerant. My son will have far more opportunities here than my father did. But I now know just how deeply the region is stuck in our ugly past. I now realize that little boy I saw 26 years ago more likely than not grew up to harbor the same racial hatred his parents did. I’m not forced to sit on the back of the bus; I’m not restricted from swimming in some parts of the Atlantic. But too often, that overt progress has been used as an excuse by residents to pretend that further civil rights gains would be “giving” minorities something they don’t deserve.

Trump’s rise in both South Carolina and throughout the South proves why celebrating that change—the removal of a flag that should not have been flying—was in many ways premature, if not misleading.

There’s little reason to pretend, as some are, that the anger Trump has tapped into in the South, which has propelled him to a near sweep of Southern states and to the top of Republican polls, is primarily about white Southerners’ anger about their changing economic fortunes. If that were the case, Southerners would also be embracing Bernie Sanders, another candidate seen as a political outsider running on a populist economic message.

Instead, while Sanders eagerly touts his civil rights past, Southerners—including those who long claimed the principles espoused by their conservative Christian faith influence their every decision—have picked the one presidential candidate who claimed (at first) he didn’t know enough about the Ku Klux Klan to have an opinion about it—the one candidate the Klan has said it is using as a recruiting tool.

They picked the one candidate who initially excused two white men who beat up a homeless Hispanic man, saying they were following Trump’s lead.

They picked the one candidate sued by the Justice Department in the 1970s for telling employees to avoid renting property to black people.

They picked the one candidate who stoked the fires that helped lead to five young black men in New York being falsely accused and convicted in the Central Park jogger case in 1989.

They picked the one candidate who proudly said out loud what they’ve been saying throughout the entire Obama era in email chains and private discussions after Sunday morning church services: That the nation’s first black president isn’t a real American and needed to prove he belonged in a way no other president, or presidential candidate, ever had to do.

According to widely-cited exit polls and other surveys, 70 percent of Trump supporters in South Carolina wanted the Confederate flag to keep flying, compared with 31 percent of South Carolinians overall. Twenty-one percent of his voters in the state either believe whites are superior or aren’t sure; 20 percent don’t like the Emancipation Proclamation.

But none of that can detract from the fact that Trump’s supporters also include white nationalist groups like the American Freedom Party and American Renaissance whether he wants them to or not. To them, Trump has come as close to sounding like former Klan wizard and Louisiana Rep. David Duke that a politician can—and still potentially win high national office. That should give pause to the millions of other Trump supporters, or would-be supporters, who are ignoring his bigotry because they are so desperate to see a political sea change.

Too many of us have been convinced that quiet equals peace. That’s the one good thing about the loudmouth that is Donald Trump. It’s hard to remain silent in the face of the ugliness he has highlighted like no other politician has in quite some time.

He isn’t Dylann Roof, deliberately targeting a single African-American church. No, he’s potentially more dangerous because he targets the vulnerable wherever they are. There aren’t enough Americans, in the South or the Republican Party, primarily motivated by hate to have fueled his rise. His presence on the national stage is scary because too many otherwise good people—the kind who would give comfort to a black orphan or pray for a sick Hispanic friend—are turning a blind eye to his peculiar brand of bigotry and angrily following his lead.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Will the DC Madam's Client List Doom a Presidential Candidate?

Back in 2009, I had a number of e-mail exchanges with Montgomery Sibley, the author of a then new book entitled "Why Just Her, the Judicial Lynching of the D.C. Madam" that looked at the legal/judicial system as it was brought to bear on Deborah Jeanne Palfrey (Sibley sent me a complimentary copy of the book that prompted me to write this post).  Indeed, Sibley subsequently did a guest post on this blog found here.  Now, Sibley plans on releasing Palfrey's client list as reported by Rachel Maddow who says that it will have a cataclysmic impact on the 2016 presidential race.   Here are excerpts of a reprise of what Maddow covered:

We recently brought you a story by Rachel Maddow regarding the infamous D.C. Madam and her list of clientele — hundreds of Washington D.C. insiders who partook of her “services” by hiring prostitutes from her. Rachel had broken the story that the Madam’s lawyer, who still has the original list, is now threatening to release the entire thing despite a gag order requiring him to keep it secret.

The lawyer has GUARANTEED that the list will come out, it will have information in it that will upset the 2016 election in a severe way by potentially swaying the entire nation away from one candidate — and he intends to make the information public even if he is arrested or otherwise detained. Even if he is dead or incapacitated the list WILL be released via a “dead man switch.”

The way it was explained is that if the lawyer is somehow incapacitated for more than 72 hours, the list will automatically start being distributed to journalists around the world from one of 4 different secret locations in which it’s currently stored. Every day he does a process to reset the 72-hour timer, as of now, to prevent it from mailing out before he is ready.

This is seriously starting to read, like some kind of spy novel. We have a list of names, one of which will completely rewrite the 2016 election if made known, and it’s now on a timer that the owner is using to safeguard himself from potential harm.

I don't know who is on the list, although I can make conjectures that may or may not prove true.  Here is a clip of Rachel Maddow's coverage:

Is It Time to Divest From HRC?

I and many others have had enough of the Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") and its bloated executive salaries, lack of support for local LGBT rights organizations, and most recently endorsement of a Republican that might help the anti-gay GOP retain control of the U.S. Senate.  A piece in Daily Kos looks at the question of whether it is time for liberals and progressives to cease their support of HRC.  I have made my decision and have ceased all contributions to HRC and removed the HRC bumper sticker from my car.  I'd be interested in what readers think.  Here are highlights from the Daily Kos article:

When the gay rights behemoth known as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) endorsed Illinois GOP Sen. Mark Kirk over his Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, it took a lot of heat for obvious reasons. Control of the Senate has become a critical flashpoint in 2016 now that liberals have a chance to completely reshape the center of gravity of the Supreme Court with a single justice—a justice that GOP Senate leadership has committed to obstructing indefinitely.

In other words, Republican control of the U.S. Senate is single-handedly blocking a once-in-a-generation opportunity for progressives. In the meantime, it’s also a major hurdle (though not the only one) to congressional passage of the Equality Act, which would provide federal nondiscrimination protections to Americans on the basis of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”

For many progressives, the notion that an LGBT equality organization would endorse a Republican is anathema. I am not one of them.

As Mark Josef Stern wrote at Slate:

We shouldn’t criticize HRC for attempting to play the long game with Kirk. Rather, we should criticize them for attempting to play the long game stupidly.

Given the current political climate and the particulars of this coming election, there’s just no good explanation for this mind-boggling endorsement. If Tammy Duckworth was a conserva-Dem, maybe. But not only did she have a 100 percent rating from HRC in the 2013-2014 Congress to Kirk’s 78 percent, the Illinois senate race promises to be extremely competitive, and literally every seat counts on the path to Democrats flipping the handful of seats necessary to regain control of the Senate. (If Democrats hold the White House, they actually only need four since the VP is the tie-breaking vote.)

In the interest of full disclosure, Daily Kos has endorsed Duckworth, but that’s not the impetus for my piece. The controversy made my radar again this week when Kirk said he would support Donald Trump if he were the GOP nominee.

In the words of blogger Andy Towle, “HRC’s Appalling Mark Kirk Endorsement Now Comes with Donald Trump.” That’s when I noticed an organic phenomenon on Twitter that struck me a nascent #DivestFromHRC movement. The twitter search “Kirk HRC” yielded a growing number of sentiments like this simple message: Done with support for HRC. So disappointed: Kirk.

I’m not an HRC fan but I’m also not necessarily an HRC hater—they’ve always had their faults as does any large group. My biggest quibble is this: since they’re working on all things LGBT, they aren’t necessarily accountable for anything. In 2009-2010, for instance, they were initially committed to passing hate crimes protections (which did happen) and then the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA). But when repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” jumped ahead of ENDA—mainly because DADT-specific groups applied more outside pressure and actually protested Congress and the White House—HRC jumped on that bandwagon even though ENDA had been their priority. So the group manages to get partial credit for most LGBTQ wins, but it has little accountability for losses. When something fails, they can always say, well, we were working on (fill in the blank) as a way to dodge responsibility.

[S]omething Michelangelo Signorile noted about the Kirk endorsement has stuck with me.

If HRC is not answerable to LGBT people, however — and its president, Griffin, rarely even gives interviews to LGBT media, while speaking often in the larger media — exactly to whom and what is it answerable, and what are its true priorities? One thing is clear: HRC doesn’t speak for the LGBT community, and the sooner that politicians and those in the media grasp that, the smarter they will be.

HRC, by virtue of its size and visibility, has been given carte blanche to say and do whatever it wants while representing LGBTQ Americans. Mainstream media almost always looks to them first when they’re seeking someone to weigh in on LGBTQ rights. And ever more so recently, the group has made a series of decisions that have actually dealt serious blows to the equality push.

HRC isn’t solely responsible for the lack of LGBT debate this election cycle. As I have noted before, lack of grassroots energy has also contributed. But that is perhaps precisely a reason now to find alternatives to funding HRC. We need to be lifting up a multitude of voices. 

Divest? Don’t divest? Perhaps, there are groups you would like to raise up here as possibilities for giving. There’s always the legal groups—Lambda Legal, GLAD, ACLU, Transgender Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (which launched a “WeAreAllNC” campaign this week.) If you’re inherently drawn to electoral giving, there’s the relatively new Lesbian Political Action Committee, or LPAC, (which endorsed Tammy Duckworth this week). Perhaps some state or regional groups in the South, like SONG (Southerners On New Ground, @ignitekindred).

The Republicans’ Gay Freakout

With the North Carolina border roughly 25-30 miles from where I sit writing this post and northeastern North Carolina comprising a portion of the local television view and newspaper circulation area, what happens in North Carolina does impact my home town region.  Thankfully, because of Democrat Terry McAuliffe, Governor of Virginia, we were spared the type of hate and bigotry that has been enshrined (at least for now) into the laws of North Carolina.   Ultimately, what is driving the hate and bigotry is the Republican Party's slavish self-prostitution to far right Christians - the Christofascists, if you will - who are enraged by anything that challenges their ignorance, fear and hate based religious beliefs.  Beliefs ultimately based on myths and legends that are daily crumbling in the face of modern science and knowledge.  As a last gasp to stop progress that is passing them by these (in my view) truly foul, nasty and horrible people have yet again made gays the target of their anger and frustration over the fact that they are increasingly irrelevant.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon and the damage and destruction being done to the Republican Party.  Here are highlights:

OUR infrastructure is inexcusable, much of our public education is miserable and one of our leading presidential candidates is a know-nothing, say-anything egomaniac who yanks harder every day at the tattered fabric of civil discourse and fundamental decency in this country. 

But let’s by all means worry about the gays! Let’s make sure they know their place. Keep them in check and all else falls into line, or at least America notches one victory amid so many defeats. 

That must be the thinking behind Republican efforts to push through so-called religious liberty laws and other legislation — most egregiously in North Carolina — that excuse and legitimize anti-gay discrimination. They’re cynical distractions. Politically opportunistic sideshows. 

And the Republicans who are promoting them are playing a short game, not a long one, by refusing to acknowledge a clear movement in our society toward L.G.B.T. equality, a trajectory with only one shape and only one destination. 

They’re also playing a provincial game, not a national one, and scoring points in their corners of the universe at the expense of the Republican Party’s image from north to south and coast to coast, a brand that needed a makeover — remember the broadly ballyhooed “autopsy” following Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat? — and somehow didn’t get so much as a tweezed eyebrow or dab of blush. 

Nor did it want Republican leaders to spotlight divisive social issues and hurtle anew into the culture wars, which is precisely what Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, who is up for re-election in the fall, just did. He hastily signed a sweeping anti-gay and anti-transgender law that was rushed through the State Legislature as if the state’s security and economy were in immediate peril. 

It takes forever in this country to build a new bridge, tunnel or train line, but it took no time flat for politicians in the Tar Heel State to convene a special session, formally ostracize North Carolina’s L.G.B.T. voters and wrap conservative Christians in a tight embrace. 

What happened in North Carolina is a problem for Republicans atop the major trouble (Cruz, Donald Trump) that they already had. It exposes divides within the party that are ever more difficult to paper over and contradictions that aren’t easy to explain away. 

While the marriage of the party’s evangelical and business wings has never been a cuddly one, it’s especially frosty now, their incompatible desires evident in the significant number of prominent corporations that have denounced the North Carolina law and that successfully pressed the Republican governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, to veto recent legislation that would have permitted the denial of services to L.G.B.T. people by Georgians citing religious convictions. 

Corporations want to attract and retain the most talented workers, and that’s more difficult in states with discriminatory laws. They want to reach the widest base of customers and sow loyalty among young consumers in particular, and the best strategy for that is an L.G.B.T.-friendly one, . . . they’re increasingly at loggerheads with the G.O.P., whose gay-rights advocates are still in the minority and whose socially conservative members still profit from and promote a derisive view of gays. 

[S]everal major companies are so concerned about the brew of misogyny, racism and xenophobia stirred up by Trump that they are debating whether to follow through with their usual sponsorship of the Republican National Convention, as The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman reported last week. 

 THE party’s anti-gay efforts not only undermine its pro-business stance but also contradict conservatives’ exaltation of local decision making. The North Carolina law was drafted and passed expressly to undo and override an ordinance in the state’s most populous city, Charlotte, . . . 

They will lose in the end — whether that’s 10, 20 or 30 years from now. Meanwhile they’ll do undeniable harm to the Republican Party nationally and force tough, coalition-straining choices upon it. They’ll also steal oxygen from matters more central to this country’s continued vitality and prosperity.

Catholic Clergy Sex-Abuse Remains Pervasive and Needs to be Spotlighted

The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy continues to wage a war against the LGBT community and women and clerics continue to wrap themselves in feigned piety and religiosity.  Meanwhile, as a grand jury report from Central Pennsylvania which I have mentioned before shows that the church hierarchy despite the more open attitude of Pope Francis remains a moral cesspool.   Sex abuse and the cover up of past abuse remains rampant and will never be stamped out without (i) vigorous efforts of police and civil authorities, the Church being unable/unwilling to police itself, and (ii) a drastic change in the Church's sick, psychotic approach to sexuality in general.  I remain convinced that much of the cause of priestly sexual abuse traces to the emotional and psychological damage done by being raised in Catholic schools and seminaries.  A column in the Washington Post looks at just how pervasive the abuse of children and youths has been in a central Pennsylvania diocese, much of it shielded by undeserved deference to the Church.  Here are highlights:   

Like many longtime reporters, I celebrated the Oscar victory for “Spotlight” and the fearless journalism that exposed the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal.

I would soon see the story, and the scandal, from a very different perspective.

Two days after the Oscar ceremony, news broke about another widespread church coverup. I found myself poring over a grand jury report outlining in sickening detail the abuse of hundreds of children by at least 50 priests and religious leaders in western Pennsylvania’s Altoona-Johnstown Diocese — in my hometown.

I moved away long ago, but I still have family there. I visit regularly, and my mom was a devoted parish volunteer during her lifetime. I figured I might recognize a few of the accused or some of the churches. I quickly realized things stretched far beyond that.

The names of priests and parishes from my childhood appeared, one after another, all familiar. My grade school priest. Not one but two pastors from my neighborhood parish, a half block from my childhood home. The principal, vice principal and music director from my high school. A priest I once met with to consider officiating my wedding. The priest at the church my four nieces and nephews attended. The chaplain of the nearby Catholic hospital, where my mom volunteered.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Two of the priests, leaders at Bishop McCort High School, where my parents sent me and my three brothers in the 1970s to receive a quality religious education, were “sexual partner[s]” who worked together to molest a 13-year-old boy, the report said. They coordinated visits to his house. Once one priest had “satisfied himself,” the report said, the other “took advantage of a victim he believed to be compliant.”

One had been my religion teacher.

First, I called my brothers, to vent. Then I tried comprehending the scale of the abuses. The Spotlight team identified about 80 predatory priests in an archdiocese of 1.8 million Catholics. The grand jury report found at least 50 priests and religious leaders in a diocese of fewer than 100,000. That was stunning enough. But there was more.

“Spotlight” depicted the Catholic clubbiness of Boston that allowed for abuse. In small-town Pennsylvania, corruption extended into all corners of the community. The church exercised “overwhelming access and influence,” even handpicking community leaders, including the police and fire chiefs. “The mayor would have them come to me, and I would interview them and I would tell him which I would pick,” a top bishop’s aide testified.

George Foster, manager of an outdoor billboard advertising company and a former high school classmate of mine, emerges as the hero — not an investigative reporting team.

Foster’s brother was a priest; the two heard rumors of abuses and began looking into them. In 2002, Foster wrote an op-ed for the local paper, calling on the church to clean up its house.

Immediately, he was inundated with tips and evidence from victims, attorneys and even the police. He also did something no journalist had: He went through the files at the Blair County Courthouse from the 1994 civil trial of the Rev. Francis Luddy, a priest accused of molesting boys. The lawsuit against Luddy was filed in 1987, but records were sealed at the church’s request. They became public during the trial.

Foster found in the files documents showing church officials knew of credible allegations against many additional priests but kept them secret. He confronted then-Bishop Joseph Adamec. If this were a movie, outraged authorities would have taken action. But that didn’t happen. Adamec rebuffed him.

Finally, in 2014, state investigators in a different child abuse case contacted Foster, and he provided his files. The report cited them extensively and called Foster’s actions “nothing short of heroic.”

I wondered where the journalists had been.  I called Richard Serbin, the attorney in the Luddy case, who regularly represents clergy sex-abuse victims. There wasn’t a paper with the prestige of the Boston Globe to make an impact, Serbin said. It happened in a small community in decline, and few noticed or cared. “The facts were all there, back in 1994,” Serbin said. “And no one bothered to look at them.”

Again, I ask myself how a decent moral person can remain part of a church that is so utterly bankrupt morally?  Similarly, why do politicians continue to fawn and give deference to high clerics who have been part of a world wide criminal conspiracy?  Is it really that frightening to let go of brainwashing that one received as a child?  And as with the author of the column, why are journalist so afraid to take on such and evil empire?