bigotry

What is actually going on with Rep. Ilhan Omar

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Update to There is good cause for Americans to be alarmed and highly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Israel’s attorney general made it official, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be indicted on corruption charges: Israel’s attorney general announced Thursday that his office plans to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on … Read more

The Party of Trump is unworthy of winning

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“The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. ” – Adlai E. Stevenson

The white identity, white grievance, white nationalist Party of Trump fka the Republican Party is built upon four pillars: ignorance, fear, hatred of others, and an unrelenting stream of pathological lies. President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days.

The Party of Trump is unworthy of winning.

It is a political party which has forfeited any claim to legitimacy in the American tradition and within acceptable norms. It has become the crypto-fascist authoritarian wet dream of Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller and their useful idiot, Donald Trump.

As conservative commentator Max Boot warns, “[T]he Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.” Vote against all Republicans. Every single one.

I’m sick and tired of a president who pretends that a caravan of impoverished refugees is an “invasion” by “unknown Middle Easterners” and “bad thugs” — and whose [propagandists] on Fox News aka Trump TV pretend the refugees are bringing leprosy and smallpox to the United States. (Smallpox was eliminated about 40 years ago.)

Mike Allen of Axios adds, “In one of the most blatant and misleading attempts ever to scare American voters days before an election, President Trump is warning in speeches, tweets, interviews and ads that scary, deadly migrants are about to storm our southern border. Almost none of what he warns is demonstrably true, at least in terms of scale and scope of threat.” Reality check: Trump is pushing fake news on the migrant caravan. New York Times fact check of the day, Trump’s Falsehood-Laden Speech on Immigration.

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The Arizona GOP has a white nationalist problem

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Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona’s most embarrassing congressman, has endorsed former state legislator Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward for the U.S. Senate over his colleague Rep. Martha McSally. Paul Gosar endorses Kelli Ward for Senate, attacks Martha McSally’s GOP credentials. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The real story here is Paul Gosar’s white nationalism and Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward’s embrace of the same. (Here they are together hobnobbing with Cliven Bundy during his standoff with the government. Republican Legislators Caravan To The Bundy Ranch). Their connection runs through white nationalist Steve Bannon and his wealthy benefactors, Robert and Rebekkah Mercer.

Earlier this year, white nationalist Steve Bannon endorsed Ward as well. Bannon endorses Ward. After doing campaign events together, Ward subsequently publicly distanced herself from Bannon after the former Breitbart chief fell out of favor with the White House and many Republicans after he criticized members of President Donald Trump’s family in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.” Kelli Ward distances herself from Bannon and Arpaio.

Bannon is gone, but Ward’s embrace of his white nationalist politics remains the same.

Just last week, Bannon’s former wealthy benefactor at Breitbart, Robert Mercer cut a $500,000 check to a super PAC backing Arizona Senate hopeful Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward. Megadonor boosts Ward in Arizona Senate race:

Mercer, a reclusive billionaire and a former hedge fund executive, has emerged as a major Ward benefactor. With his latest contribution, he has given KelliPAC a total of $800,000 in support of Ward this election cycle.

Mercer also funded Ward during the 2016 election season, when she waged an unsuccessful primary challenge against Sen. John McCain.

Mercer and his daughter, Bekah, have been major funders of conservative, anti-establishment causes, including Trump’s 2016 campaign and Breitbart News.

Last weekend during Trump’s disastrous trip to Great Britain, Rep. Paul Gosar was also there, at a London rally in support of a jailed anti-Muslim, ant-immigrant activist, Tommy Robinson. GOP lawmaker speaks at rally for jailed anti-Muslim activist in UK:

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) spoke at a London rally in support of a jailed anti-Muslim activist, invoking the First Amendment and arguing for free speech.

Gosar spoke at a “Free Tommy Robinson” rally on Sunday.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a founder of the anti-Muslim English Defense League, which has organized violent protests against Muslim immigrants.

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SCOTUS conservatives uphold Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban

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David Horsey’s dystopian vision of life in America under Donald Trump (right) has become a shocking reality. With Trump’s Deportation Force rounding up immigrant familiess from Latin America and jailing them in internment camps, and Trump asserting dictatorial powers over the courts and constitutional due process, today the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban in a 5-4 decision in Trump v. Hawaii(.pdf).

This is what creeping fascism looks like.

The conservative majority on the Court demonstrates exceeding deference to executive authority, and exceeding indifference for individual liberties. Chief Justice John Roberts, delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch joined. Kennedy and Thomas filed concurring opinions.

Effectively the conservative majority holds that as long as there is a minimally rational neutral (pretextual) reason for the action taken under the Immigration and Naturalization Act, the Court will accept that reason as reasonable and disregard other evidence of the president’s numerous and repeated discriminatory public statements exhibiting a discriminatory animus. So Trump can be a raging racist religious bigot against Muslims to his heart’s content, and it does not affect the validity of this immigration order so long as the government can provide a minimally rational (pretextual) reason for the order.

One has to pose the hypothetical question whether this decision would be the same if this was a travel ban on Christians from predominantly Christian countries, instead of Muslims from predominantly Muslim countries. Sadly, I think we all know that we can presume the answer is no, and that is why this is a suspect opinion.

To their shame, all of the justices ruling in favor of the Muslim Travel Ban are Catholics. Given the past history of the Church, I’m sure Pope Francis is most displeased with the bad optics.

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The Religious Right’s ‘blitz’ on American democracy

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Last week Ireland, long a Roman Catholic country, held a vote to repeal a constitutional provision criminalizing abortion.  Ex-pat Irish citizens from around the world flew home to cast their votes. It wasn’t even close. Ireland votes overwhelmingly to overturn abortion ban:

The Irish have swept aside one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the developed world in a landslide vote that reflects Ireland’s emergence as a socially liberal country no longer obedient to Catholic dictates.

With all ballots counted and turnout at a near-historic high, election officials reported Saturday that 66.4 percent voted to overturn Ireland’s abortion prohibition and 33.6 percent opposed the measure.

The outcome of the referendum Friday was a decisive win for the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. The 1983 amendment enshrined an “equal right to life” for mothers and “the unborn” and outlawed almost all abortions — even in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality or non-life-threatening risk to maternal health.

“What we have seen today is a culmination of a quiet revolution that has been taking place in Ireland for the past 10 or 20 years,” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.

The United States, however, is now moving in the exact opposite direction. Religious Right extremists have taken Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale not as a dystopian vision of a totalitarian Christian theonomy that has overthrown the United States government, but as a handbook on how to actually make it a reality.

In March, GOP-run Mississippi enacted the strictest abortion law in the nation, for the intended purpose of a legal challenge that may get in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to directly challenge Roe v. Wade (which permits abortions in the first 24 weeks). Mississippi gov signs nation’s toughest abortion restrictions:

Mississippi’s governor signed a law Monday banning most abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation, the tightest restrictions in the nation.

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The bill was drafted with the assistance of conservative groups including the Mississippi Center for Public Policy and the Alliance Defending Freedom [based in Scottsdale, Arizona].

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