Morally bankrupt GOP opts for another racist ‘Willie Horton’ style campaign in 2018

While most of America on Tuesday was following news of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager being convicted by a jury on eight counts (and it would have been all 18 counts but for one rogue juror, Lone holdout on Manafort jury blocked conviction on all counts, juror says), and Trump’s former personal lawyer and consigliere (fixer) Michael Cohen pleading guilty to eight counts and implicating Donald Trump in two counts of campaign finance violations involving hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, the alternate universe of FAUX News aka Trump TV was reporting that authorities in Iowa filed charges against an undocumented immigrant in connection with a recovered body believed to be that of 20-year-old University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared from her home a month ago. Republicans want to make Mollie Tibbetts a household name:

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich emailed Axios‘ Mike Allen to make sure that we’d be covering this story, which Fox News led with on air and online Tuesday evening, ahead of the Cohen-Manafort news. His take: “If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble. If we can be blocked by Manafort-Cohen, etc., then GOP could lose [the House] badly.”

Newt Gingrich, the spawn of Satan, is channeling GOP ratfucker Lee Atwater and the infamous Willie Horton campaign ad by George H.W. Bush in 1988.

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Gov. Doug Ducey to participate in Trump middle-finger to Americans on Monday

The Trump White House is planning a “Salute to the Heroes of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs [and] Border Protection” on Monday, August 20 in the East Room. The ceremony is a politically motivated stunt to provoke ire from opponents of Trump’s zero tolerance family separation policy.

Naturally,  Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey intends to participate in this middle-finger to Americans opposed to the political party of kidnapping and child abuse and making orphans out of innocent children. Way to make us proud, Trump troll.

Daily Kos reports, As hundreds of separated migrant kids remain locked up, White House to honor ICE and CBP ‘heroes’:

As hundreds of separated migrant children continue to remain under U.S. custody and at ongoing risk of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, Donald Trump plans to honor the border agents who kidnapped them from their parents’ arms and locked them up in cages in the first place.

Politico reports the White House has planned a “Salute to the Heroes of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs [and] Border Protection” event for next Monday, coming a few days after Trump claimed that immigration agents “have been absolutely abused.”

All right, if he wants to talk abuse, let’s talk about abuse.

Despite a federal judge’s court order, the Trump administration continues to hold more than 560 kids under U.S. custody, including two dozen kids aged five years old and under. [Contempt of court.] Not only is the administration blatantly violating a court order, it’s continuing to keep kids locked up in facilities where migrant children have already been molested, and are only there because of  Trump’s family separation policy.

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Republicans complete their epic fail on immigration bills

In other news … Republicans completed their epic fail to pretend to pass an immigration bill on Wednesday when the GOP compromise bill on immigration failed in a worse-than-expected 121-300 vote, effectively ending a months-long GOP drama that had put the caucus’s internal politics on display.

Arizona delegation: Yeah: McSally; Nay: Biggs, Gallego, Gosar, Grijalva, Lesko, O’Halleran, Schweikert, Sinema.

The Hill reports, House rejects second GOP immigration bill:

The measure won far fewer GOP votes than a more hard-line measure rejected last week in a 193-231 vote.

Only 121 Republicans backed it, compared to 193 for the earlier measure. Two Republicans did not cast votes on Wednesday, while 112 Republicans voted against it.

Votes on the bill were twice postponed to give Republicans more time to win support for the measure, which was opposed by Democrats.

But conservatives never really warmed to it, and President Trump put down the effort on Twitter, at one point saying that Republicans should stop wasting their time since the bill was seen as dead on arrival in the Senate.

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The Trump administration’s defense of the indefensible goes off the rails (updated)

President Donald Trump on Monday, with his sycophant Vice President looking on adoringly with puppy dog eyes, announced that the plaque bearing the text of the poem by Emma Lazarus,”The New Colossus,” mounted inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, with its famous inscription of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” is no longer operative in America.

Someone please check to see whether Stephen Miller has had this plaque removed from the Statute of Liberty.

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Also on Monday, a recording of immigrant children calling out desperately for their parents after being separated from them by United States immigration authorities was released by the investigative news site Pro Publica. The audio went viral in the media.

Also on Monday, These photos were the Trump administration’s attempt to quiet criticism. They’re only increasing critics’ horror.

As attention to the issue of child separation reaches a new high on Monday, the Trump administration [sought] to defend what critics call a “cruel” and “immoral” policy. It’s even releasing photos and video of the facilities where children separated from their parents are being held — but far from tamping down criticism, it’s only increasing critics’ horror.

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Children in cages, like dogs in a kennel. Yeah, this is not making your case.

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