Amid Loss, Glimpses Of Hope On the American Horizon

PBS Newshour anchor Gwen Ifill dead at 61

With so many new stories of incidents of targeted bias based on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation cropping up all over the country in the wake of Donald Trump's election last week, it's been difficult to regain perspective and a sense of optimism for America's future.

The loss of a gifted and intelligent journalist of the substance, caliber and moral and ethical character of Gwen Ifill to cancer earlier today was yet another blow to the ranks of the Fourth Estate in this country.  

If there was any one member of the mainstream media I was depending on to ask the hard questions in the coming days of the conservative onslaught it was her - after watching countless reports and interviews with her on the PBS Newshour over the years it feels a little like loosing a friend whose presence you just take for granted.

But I'm not sure there's been a time since the 1960's or early 70's post-Vietnam / Watergate era when the need for quality journalism has been so critical for the American people.

As Julie Alderman observed in an article for MediaMatters.org earlier this morning, some of the nation's major news media outlets seem to be downplaying or totally ignoring the long-term impact of Trump's selection of Brietbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon as a senior White House policy advisor - in effect legitimizing a known white supremacist and anti-Semite and assuring that he will have the ear of the president.

But while things do seem bleak, there are glimmers of light breaking through the trees.

Kellyanne Conway on 'Meet The Press'

The hundreds of thousands of people who've taken to the streets of many American cities continue to make clear that Trump did not win the popular vote of the American people.

And he faces a huge grassroots firewall of opposition from across the nation from those who will not tolerate his policies of anti-immigrant hysteria, racial divisiveness, ethnic bullying, climate denial and rehashed failed Trickle Down economic / tax policy.

Trump campaign manager / advisor Kellyanne Conway had the gall to appear on NBC's 'Meet The Press' on Sunday and cast blame for the ongoing protests on Democratic leaders. 

After enduring two years of Trump's delusional stream-of-conscience blathering, bullying, juvenile insults, constant lying and threats, I don't know anyone who for one second takes seriously Conway's claim to NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday that Trump is "there for them. And he is going to be a president that listens and takes the counsel of many different people, including those from the other side of the aisle."

If Conway is going to become the White Press Secretary and we have to endure quasi-delusional spin like that, it's going to be an even longer four years than we already know it will be.

But as I said there are still signs of hope, particularly on the local and grassroots level.

While Trump, Conway and his other advisors and spokespersons seem content to pretend right-wing nut-bag racists defacing property with swastikas and the N-word all over the country is no big deal, organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are taking the initiative to begin tracking these incidents of hate to record the data to be able to analyze and make sense of it.

They've undertaken an online survey of American teachers to update the findings of last spring's Teaching Tolerance project; merging information gathered from responses and input from some 2,000 teachers with survey data from teachers on how the hatred and divisiveness of Trump's election are impacting American students in the classroom.

If you or someone you know has heard of, or experienced an incident of hate or bias since the election you can report it to the SPLC. 

Grassroots movements are beginning to organize as well, as you've likely heard tens of thousands of people from across the nation are signing up for the Million Woman March planned for January 21, 2017 the day after the inauguration. 

A massive effort to not only steal Trump's thunder, but to also demonstrate that woman and men across the nation are not going to sit still while right-wing ideologues like Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence begin to dismantle court-mandated protections for women's rights, access to health care and control over their own reproductive choices.

While the presidential and congressional elections grabbed the headlines, there were some glimpses of hope on the local state level too. 

Particularly in the state of Kansas where citizens voted NOT to misuse a state retention vote designed to prevent judicial corruption to oust four of the state's Supreme Court judges.

Republican Kansas Gov Sam Brownback

As I blogged about back on September 9th, Republican Governor Sam Brownback and his vengeance-minded conservative allies in the Kansas state legislature were behind a massive effort to use a retention vote to try and remove four State Supreme Court Justices who ruled that massive cuts to Kansas public schools violated the state constitution.  

When the Justices put a stop to the Kansas legislature's efforts to turn the state into some kind of crazy Republican lab experiment, what did those right-wing lawmakers do?

Republican State Senator Mitch Holmes authored Senate Bill 439; a bill that would have radically expanded the legislature's ability to impeach State Supreme Court Justices.

Not for judicial corruption mind you - but to prevent those Justices from being able to rule that any laws passed by the legislature violate the state constitution; no lie folks, that is some seriously Banana Republic-type shit.

But in a positive sign for reason and hope, the people of Kansas showed that they have had just about enough of Sam Brownback's kooky hyper-conservative agenda - remember folks, this was the guy who used an executive order back in 2015 to rescind protections for LGBTQ state workers so that it would be legal to fire them for being gay.

On November 8th Kansas voters voted to keep the Justices in place; thwarting radical Republican overreach and preserving the balance of power that is so basic to American government.

It's not an answer to all the swastikas, harassment and fear-mongering, but it's a positive sign that in two years, Democrats along with more moderate Republicans could begin to chip away at the Republican majorities in state legislatures all over the country.

Like the ongoing anti-Trump protests and the thousands of people joining up for the Million Woman March in Washington, it's a sign that folks aren't going to just sit idly by while Republicans rip the fabric of this nation apart in order to sew it back together into something dark and unrecognizable.

Something many in this nation have no desire to wear. 

Brownback & Kansas Republicans Target Judges

Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback

Over the past couple of years the troubling ongoing political saga of two-term Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has offered remarkable insight into the radical transformation of the Republican party on the state level.

Aided by a conservative majority state legislature, he has tried to transform Kansas into a radical conservative utopia by slashing taxes on businesses and the state's wealthiest citizens.

The results have been disastrous.


The tax cuts that further enriched well-off Kansas citizens led to plunging revenues that defunded essential state government services including public schools, social services and road maintenance.

As you may recall, back in March Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes authored Senate Bill 439 which would actually authorize state legislators to impeach State Supreme Court judges for striking down legislation that violates the state Constitution.

Previously the only grounds for impeaching a Kansas State Supreme Court judge were for offenses like "treason, bribery, or other high crimes misdemeanors", but state legislators trying to remove judges for essentially disagreeing with legislation that violates law reflects just how radical Republican Kansas politicians have become.

This unprecedented attack on the judiciary came in response to the State Supreme Court ruling that the drastic cuts in funding to the Kansas public school system (once considered among the nation's finest) passed by the Republican-majority state legislators with Brownback's blessing violated provisions of the state constitution that mandate adequate public education - and in true Republican fashion, also disproportionately targeted the state's poorest school districts for budget cuts.

Now, remarkably, Brownback and state legislators are going after the court again.

Today the editorial board of the New York Times published a scathing op-ed piece that calls out the Kansas legislature for attempting use the state's retention vote process in a blatantly opportunistic manner to try and oust the majority of the State Supreme Court.

As the Times op-ed observes; "Right-wing politicians who adhere to the fantasy that government is the problem, not the solution, are eager to politicize the courts."

Kansas State Supreme Court Justices

How are Kansas Republicans trying to do that?

In Kansas, the governor appoints state supreme court judges, but they then come up for a retention vote on the state ballot every six years.

As the Website  Ballotpedia notes, "Retention votes of state supreme court justices are usually among the least noted elections on the ballot. Each sitting justice is usually retained without fanfare."  

"Usually", but not this year.

The radically conservative Kansas state legislature is going all out to oust Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Marla Luckert, Carol Beier, Daniel Biles and Caleb Stegall.  

The legislature is doing it by, in part, drawing on untraceable money from out-of-state conservative groups (we see you Koch brothers) to partner with, and secretly fund, interest groups like Kansans For Justice to develop grass roots campaigns to persuade Kansas citizens to vote to remove the justices facing a retention vote this November 8th.

Essentially, these groups are trying to use their disagreement with between six and ten of the thousands of decisions the Kansas State Supreme Court has ruled on to vote them out.

But it's really a carefully calculated Republican effort to circumvent the basic checks and balances embedded in the American political system to stack the Kansas State Supreme Court with conservative appointees of Governor Sam Brownback who would be less likely to overrule the kind of radically conservative legislation he and the Republican legislators have tried to unleash in Kansas.      

That is straight out of the Banana Republic playbook and an overwhelming majority of Kansans don't like it.

As Yael T. Abouhalkah observed in a Kansas City Star article four months ago, a May poll of 66,000 Americans across all 50 states revealed that Sam Brownback remains the nations most unpopular governor with a 26% approval rating; that was even lower than Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder whose handling of the Flint Water crisis made him universally loathed.

But clearly that isn't stopping him from trying to be the architect of his twisted conservative fantasy, which for most people in Kansas, including public school students, is more of a nightmare.

As Kansas State Supreme Court Justice Marla Luckert observed of the court's decisions:

"I'm not saying that everyone should agree with the decisions I make or that my court makes. There is room for disagreement; we have dissent. We don't even agree ourselves sometime. But we all need, I believe, to step back and not be swept [by] the rhetoric, and instead think about what is the role of the courts in our democracy."

We're So Not In Kansas Anymore

Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback

It's one thing to listen to the leading Republican candidates talk about abstract campaign promises to deploy tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS to see "if sand can glow in the dark" , make the U.S. military torture people, or construct a big wall along the southern border with Mexico.

But if you really want to get an idea of the kind of America that extremist Republicans have in mind should they win the White House and retain control of both houses of Congress, look no further than the great state of Kansas.

Hyper-conservative 2nd-term Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and his Republican-majority state legislature have come under fire in recent years for trying to create a bizarre "conservative utopia-slash Tea Party lab experiment" which has plunged the state economy to the brink of turmoil and adversely affected the lives of tens of thousands of Kansas citizens.

Brownback and his cronies have used their power to slash state spending on education, social programs (like their bizarre restrictions on how welfare recipients can spend their money) and basic government services to finance outrageous tax cuts for guess who?

The tiny fraction of the population made up by the wealthiest folks in the state.

Most recently the mad scientists running the state legislature were up in arms after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that severe cuts to the education budget they'd inserted into the budget had disproportionately and unfairly affected schools in the state's poorest districts - leaving at-risk school districts underfunded in violation of state mandates on educational funding.

After lawyers filed suit on behalf of local school boards, the state Supreme Court told the legislature it has until June 30th to revise budget expenditures to restore millions in public school funding back to the poorest schools.

Republican Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes

In response to that ruling, and other court rulings on hot-button conservative issues like abortion, Kansas Republican lawmakers are trying to pass Senate Bill 439, a law that would radically expand the ability of state legislators to impeach judges

As the editorial board of the Kansas City Star noted in an op-ed, on Tuesday, even though Kansas legislators already have the authority to impeach judges for improper behavior or conduct, Senate Bill 439 would authorize lawmakers to impeach judges for striking down legislation passed by the legislature.


Why undermine the basic system of checks and balances between the legislative and judicial branches in Kansas?

As the author of the bill, Kansas state senator Mitch Holmes (pictured above) told the Associated Press, "I believe the court has a tremendous problem with overreach."

Now let me just repeat that because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it myself after reading about this on DailyKos - Republican legislators in Kansas want to be able to impeach state Supreme Court justices who rule against legislation they pass; even if it violates the state constitution.

It's the kind of reprehensible abuse of political power concocted by the right-wing brain trust at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that Tea Partiers like Senator Ted Cruz salivate over - remember his efforts to single-handedly shut down the federal government?

Like voter repression and illegal redistricting, Kansas Senate Bill 439 is part of the Republican party's vast efforts to allow a numerical (and shrinking) political minority to maintain control of state and national government - even if it means tramping on ethics, decency and the basic foundations of Democracy.

Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was right a few weeks ago when he said that the GOP has gone "bat shit crazy".

Nowhere more so than Kansas.

American Idiot (s)

His Holiness gets medieval on the Donald

My decision to use the term "American Idiot" as the title for tonight's blog has absolutely nothing to do with the title of the Grammy-winning musical of the same name by the band Green Day.

After witnessing so many examples of outright buffoonery by members of the Republican party this week, I can't think of a more appropriate term to describe the shenanigans being perpetrated by members of the "Party of No".

Where to begin?


It's been while since I've given out a George Lincoln Rockwell Award, but this week's hands-down winner has to be Donald Trump.

The astronomically-conceited leading Republican presidential bigot candidate showed his presidential chops earlier in the week when he visited right-wing talk radio host Michael Savage's show on Monday to lend credence to the baseless loony insinuation being bandied about by extremist conservatives that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.

Despite reports from federal marshals (who actually saw the body) that the 79-year-old Scalia died of natural causes related to a serious heart condition he'd had for years, right-wing conspiracy nuts have evidently confused reality with the plot of The Pelican Brief.

Trump's proof? As reported by Caitlin Yilek on TheHill.com on Monday, Trump told Savage:

"...I'm hearing it's a big topic. But they say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow." 

Case solved Columbo!

Pope Francis offers his take on Trump's spirituality

But as you've likely heard, Trump once again distinguished himself as a petulant clown-child today by getting into a war of words with Pope Francis after His Holiness told reporters during a conversation on the plane ride home that: 

"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not a Christian. This is not the Gospel."


Having served the Catholic Church for 47 years, it's fair to say Pope Francis knows a little bit about what it means to be Christian.

Versus Trump, who famously reduced the sacred act of communion on the campaign trail last year by insisting, "I drink my little wine, and eat my little crackers." - like some kind of buffoonish simpleton 12-year-old; no doubt that sat well with the Vatican.

After the Holy Father's words went viral around the globe, Trump responded with a series of typically nonsensical responses, but a statement like that from the Pope isn't going to be erased from the minds of the millions of American evangelicals Trump hopes to woo.

And the message, that the Pope thinks Trump is far from presidential material, couldn't be any clearer.

The message to thousands of voters in the state of Wisconsin was pretty clear too after the state's local primary elections held on Tuesday offered the first glimpse of how the new voter ID laws implemented by Governor Scott Walker and the majority-Republican state legislature.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker 

As Alice Ollstein reported in an article for ThinkProgess.org yesterday, across the state some veterans were unable to cast votes because Wisconsin's laws do not consider a valid Military ID card, or a federal Veterans Administration card with a photo to be acceptable forms of ID to vote.

Some college students in different cities were turned away from the polls after presenting valid out of state driver's licenses.

Back in March of 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to expand the types of voter ID's the state can accept to permit residents to cast votes (including military ID's), but Judge Lynn Adelman (a Bill Clinton appointee) denied the ACLU request.

Leave it to Wisconsin Republicans to create a law that will prevent a veteran of the U.S. military from voting because his VA card isn't valid ID - all to protect against almost non-existent voter fraud.

Voter rights advocates are rightfully concerned about how those laws will affect turnout in the upcoming April 5th presidential primary. Outrageous.

Disastrous Republican Governor Sam Brownback 

But across the country in Kansas, where Republican Governor Sam Brownback and his Republican-majority state legislature have plunged the state into socioeconomic turmoil by passing a series of draconian cuts to government spending to finance tax cuts so lavish the state has virtually eliminated some taxes on business completely.

For example, back in April, 2015, I blogged about Brownback enacting almost Orwellian restrictions on how Kansas welfare recipients could spend the modest sums they receive; including limiting cash withdrawals from the state-issued debit card to $25 at a time, subjecting already economically disadvantaged residents to excessive per-transaction fees given that many lower class and poor Kansas residents have limited access to normal banking services and most ATM's don't allow withdrawals in $5 denominations.

Well the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed an appeals court decision that the Republican state legislature had violated Constitutionally-mandated equitable funding for public schools after they switched from a per-pupil formula used to determine public school funding, to a block grant system.

Last Thursday the state Supreme Court ruled that Republican's actions had undercut funding for poorer public school districts by an astounding $54 million, and ordered the legislature to come up with a revised funding formula by June 30th.

As Edward Eveld reported for The Kansas City Star last week, the court ruled that "without a constitutionally equitable school finance system, the schools in Kansas will be unable to operate beyond June 30th," 

Between Trump giving legitimacy to bizarre conspiracy theories about some kind of liberal plot to kill Antonin Scalia, Wisconsin's voter suppression and the massive unequivocal failure of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's use of the state as some kind of "laboratory" for fringe right-wing ideas that bankrupt  government services to enrich the wealthiest few at the expense of public school education - it's like a parade of American idiocy.

As the presidential primaries move into larger states with more diverse populations that accurately reflect the American populace and mainstream thinking, let's hope that like Pope Francis, voters begin to see today's Republican party for what it is.

A party that wants to burn bridges instead of building them.

Inside Professor Brownback's Laboratory & The Vilification of the Working Poor In America

Ready? Cut! Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

There are arguably some pretty crazy Republican governors in these United States, but you really have to admire Governor Sam Brownback's stubborn determination to turn the state of Kansas into an idealistic conservative Utopia; at any cost.

Earlier today he signed into law some of the most restrictive laws in the nation that severely limit how Kansas welfare recipients can spend their money.

That's right, the same governor who's ranted about "big government" and the intrusion of government authority has used the legislative power of the state government to mandate draconian restrictions on how Kansas families on welfare can spend their money.

According to an article on Aljazeera.com, the list of no-no's includes things like concerts, tattoo artists, psychics (yes psychics), cruise ships or movies.
 
But interestingly, as NPR reported today, the new Republican restrictions do NOT apply to firearms.

So Kansas welfare recipients can't use their money to take their kid to see a movie, but they can buy ammo; how Republican is THAT?

But wait, there's more. Remarkably, the restrictions also limit each ATM transaction of the debit card Kansas welfare recipients are issued to a mere $25. As the Aljazeera.com article notes, that essentially imposes a tax on welfare recipients given that most ATM's charge withdrawal fees, don't issue bills in $5 denominations and the majority of poor or lower middle-class Kansas welfare recipients often don't have access to normal banking services.

As an article posted on ThinkProgress.org reported, "Meanwhile, during debate over the bill state Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau (D) pointed out that many recipients need to withdraw hundreds of dollars some days in order to be able to pay rent." 

No one is going to argue that transitioning Americans off welfare in ways that will allow them to be self-sufficient is a bad thing, but the extreme nature of the Kansas welfare restrictions come off as  vindictive, petty and chiefly motivated by a desire to appease the fringe element that now holds the strings of the Republican party; thanks to ALEC, similar restrictions have been passed in 20 other states.

Kansas Action for Children CEO Shannon Cotsoradis

The Associated Press quoted Shannon Cotsoradis, president and CEO of the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children as saying of the new Kansas laws severely restricting how welfare recipients spend their money: "

It really seems to make a statement about how we feel about the poor."

These kinds of restrictions on how welfare recipients spend their money are disturbing on multiple levels.


They reinforce distorted perceptions of the working poor (most American adults on welfare work) as 2nd class citizens who need to be told how to spend their money.

But perhaps more disturbing is that these restrictions are essentially a retreaded version of the vilification of the poor used by the Reagan administration when he and his economic advisers ranted against "Welfare Queens" back in the 1980's, regurgitating simplistic stereotypes of poor African-American, Hispanic and whites and mocking populations of poorly-educated urban and rural residents geographically locked into impoverished neighborhoods through economic and racial discrimination and stuck in cycles of poverty.

When it comes down to it, is there a difference between an impoverished family that lives in North Philadelphia, rural Kentucky or on a reservation? These restrictions are economically discriminatory as much as they are racial or political; or based on other ethnic attributes.

Brownback has never hidden how he feels about the wealthiest and the poorest in the state of Kansas.

He made national headlines over the past couple years after his bold initiative to take advantage of his gubernatorial powers and an eager GOP-majority state legislature to use the state of Kansas as a working "laboratory" for executing fringe conservative ideas.

Aided by a former key Reagan administration economic adviser and representatives from groups including Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and yes, the Koch brothers, Brownback enacted a series of sweeping tax cuts affecting top earners and businesses.

How sweeping? Like a mad swordsman he slashed regulations and all but eliminated taxes on businesses in the state of Kansas while gifting wealthy Kansas citizens with unprecedented cuts in income taxes.

Conservatives drooled and fawned.

Here at last was a chance to validate the long-disproved "Trickle Down" economic theory long espoused by wishful Republicans as if it were some kind of magical elixir that could jump start the American economy and set the nation on a path to prosperity instead of the discredited political-economic philosophy credible economists have shown it to be. 

We've all heard the party line: slash taxes for the wealthy and business and they will pump that money back into the economy creating jobs and prosperity for all. But Brownback's "experiment" was a colossal failure that drained state revenue, stalled economic growth in Kansas to anemic levels, killed job growth and sent the state economy straight into the red.

Read op-ed writer Yael Abouhalkah's piece published in The Kansas City Star back on February 2nd of this year if you want to get a true picture of how Brownback's tax cuts have destroyed the Kansas economy.

Abouhalkkah quotes figures right from the Kansas Department of Revenue showing that in the first two years of Brownback's tax cuts starting in 2013, revenues from state income tax dropped by a staggering $713 million.

The remarkable thing is even after the state began slashing spending on essentials like public education, roads and public pensions in order to try and make up the difference - the people of Kansas re-elected Brownback to another term during the fall 2014 elections. 

If I were a political cartoonist, I'd sketch Brownback as a modern day Don Quixote sitting astride an elephant.

His checklist of destructive conservative policy initiatives is so bizarre and brazen, I'd bet a five-spot that he's eager to jump into that growing pool of "potential GOP presidential candidates" which seems to get stranger by the minute.

Take for example, the Republican party's "answer" to Hillary Clinton, "potential" presidential candidate Carly Fiorina - who's been dipping her toes into the presidential pool as well.

GOP presidential hopeful (?) Carly Fiorina

And yes, that's the same Carly Fiorina (pictured left) who spent over $22 million in a failed bid to unseat Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer back in 2010.

Earlier this evening Sarah Farris posted an interesting piece on TheHill.com.

According to the article, Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO, was quoted as saying that "Conservatives are 'winning' on abortion" at an event hosted by the conservative pro-life group known as the Susan B. Anthony List.

By any measure, that's a pretty astounding statement.

If stripping access to healthcare and cutting off access to breast cancer and other types of screening for millions of low-income women and making it harder for abortion clinics to operate through arcane laws enacted by Republican state legislators is what Fiorina meant by Republicans "winning" on abortion, then yeah, I guess she's "right."

But it's says a lot about today's GOP that Fiorina, who once led an enormous high tech company with thousands of employees, is now proudly trumpeting the trampling of women's rights as a credential for being president of a nation of over 300 million - more than half of whom are women.  

Maybe it's not surprising though. Fiorina earned a reputation at HP for being a "big picture" ideas-oriented executive who was adverse to compromise and reluctant to delegate authority; the latter two arguably being fairly important qualities of anyone who expects to be the chief executive in Washington, DC.   

For a couple of Republicans with little mainstream appeal who have their respective eyes on the GOP presidential nomination, Fiorina and Brownback are making an awful lot of conservative noise.

But to quote Shakespeare, "Sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The Sound & The Fury: GA Sec of State Brian Kemp Warns About "Registering All These Minority Voters"

Georgia Sec. of State Brian Kemp 

In terms of the GOP's rather feeble minority outreach efforts, March of 2013 seems like the distant past - or possibly another dimension.

That's when a far more conciliatory and humbled Republican National Committee made national headlines with the release of a frank and openly self-analytical examination of their 2012 election losses acknowledging the urgent need of the GOP to do more to reach out to women, minorities and the LGBT community.

Here's a quote from that report:
“the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

Recent comments by Georgia Secretary of State of Georgia Brian Kemp would suggest that the "commitment" to a more progressive GOP was little more than superficial self-serving hot air.

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, at a GOP breakfast earlier this summer Kemp told an audience:

“In closing I just wanted to tell you, real quick, after we get through this runoff, you know the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.”

By "all these minority voters" I assume he meant the citizens of Georgia exercising their Constitutional right to participate in the Democratic process? 

In its quest to recapture the Senate, maintain a majority in the House, keep "super majorities" in state legislatures around the nation and take another crack at the White House, the GOP is busy trying to harvest the fruits of the Southern Strategy by dividing voters along racial lines and making it more difficult for students, the poor, the working class, the elderly and minorities to vote - and not just in Georgia.

Just last Thursday federal judge Peter Economus blocked efforts by Republicans in Ohio to eliminate early voting hours and ordered the state to add more voting dates to the calendar in the interest of ensuring equal access to the electoral process in November by minorities, the elderly and the poor. Republican secretary of state Jon Husted and Republican Governor John Kasich were both active supporters of measures intended to suppress votes.

While those kinds of measures may stand in total contrast to the Democratic principles of freedom the Republicans like to claim they stand for, it's par for the course with today's GOP.

A Washington Post article reports that a staggering 95% of Republican House districts are majority white - a direct result of years of Republicans spending their time in Washington gerrymandering House districts into all manner of bizarre shapes to create Republican majority districts where they don't actually exist.

Take a moment to look at the shapes of some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country from this Wonkblog article in the Washington Post by Christopher Ingraham. These are the kinds of bush-league tactics a Republican Party that can't win on the issues employs to win elections. 

Speaking of issues, as the fall elections approach, the default Republican strategy for stimulating the economy, cutting taxes for the wealthiest citizens by stripping revenue from critical state programs (like cutting pay for teachers and firefighters or stripping funding for schools) has proved to be as big a failure as it was when it was called the "trickle down" theory under Ronald Reagan.

Bond rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poors both recently downgraded the state of New Jersey's bond rating because of a flat economy and Governor Chris Christie's failure to shore up the states massive pension obligations in part because if his ill-advised and highly criticized decision to grant generous tax breaks to (drum roll please...) the states wealthiest individuals.

By the way, that's the record eighth time the state of NJ's bond rating has been downgraded under Christie's leadership and the state still lags almost last among the fifty states in new job creation - no wonder Hizzoner has spent much of the summer traipsing around the country trying to sew the seeds for a 2016 run at the White House.

It's the same story in Kansas where Republican Governor Sam Brownback famously trumpeted the explosion in job growth a generous tax cut for the wealthiest Kansas citizens would create. So he slashed state spending and what happened?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics as of August 18th, Kansas created a grand total of 6,900 jobs - a gain of . 5 %. Point 5 percent. Right across the state line in Missouri where tax cuts were NOT used to strip the state of revenue during a fragile economic recovery, job growth has been 1.2% for the same period.

Such is the state of the Republican Party party as we approach critical fall elections.

As Shakespeare said, "Sound and fury signifying nothing."