The Great Republican Memory Lapse

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz & Sarah Palin join angry Tea Party
protesters to rally against deficit spending in 2013 

Smug Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan are preening with gooey self-satisfaction after the House passed what may well be the single most absurd piece of legislation in American history.

One that's more like a con job.

It's remarkable to watch Republicans literally tripping over themselves to pass what they're laughingly calling a "tax reform bill" that's going to blow a $1.5 trillion hole in the federal deficit.

Remember back in fall of 2013 when Republicans and their perpetually-riled-up Tea Party base were literally raging against the federal deficit as if it was the manifestation of evil and a harbinger of the Apocalypse that would end life as we know it?

Who can forget the epic theatrical hypocrisy of Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee joining the bubble-headed right-wing political has-been Sarah Palin at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on a chilly October Sunday four years ago (pictured above).

Just days after taking to the Senate floor to deliver one of the longest filibuster's in American history to rail against the Affordable Care Act (during which he famously read Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs & Ham"), Cruz joined a group of angry Tea Partiers and anti-Obama veterans at the World War II Memorial to rail against the fact the U.S. Park Service closed it because of the government shutdown.

Never mind that it was Cruz himself who'd intentionally helped to engineer the 17-day partial shutdown of the federal government by working with an obstructionist do-nothing Republican-majority House of Representatives (led by former Speaker John Boehner), and conservative political groups like the Heritage Foundation.

The Republican House famously included "poison-pill" provisions in their appropriations resolution bill to fund the government for fiscal 2014 that would have defunded or delayed implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Ex-Speaker John Boehner takes heat from the media
during the 2013 government shutdown

That essentially (and purposefully) made it impossible to pass an appropriations bill since the Senate at the time was controlled by Democrats.

As we've all been reminded of in the past few days, the House and Senate must reconcile their differences on a piece of legislation in order to get a bill passed by both chambers and sent to the desk of the president to be signed into law.

Remember, Republicans could have simply passed a clean appropriations bill to keep the government running in back in the fall of 2013.

But Boehner chose ideology over the best interests of the American people and famously caved in to pressure from the extremist right-wing "Freedom Caucus" and Tea Party zealots of his own party.

He even sank to taking to the floor of the House to peddle the ludicrous fiction that the Affordable Care Act was "killing American jobs"; it actually wasn't, that was a lie.

So instead of doing their jobs and passing a spending resolution, Republicans basically held the government hostage by refusing to remove the ACA repeal so it could pass in the Senate.

As the editorial board of the New York Times observed back on October 1, 2013 as the shutdown began, locking thousands of federal workers out of their jobs and closing essential government services for millions of Americans, it was a moment that defined John Boehner's failure as the Speaker of the most unproductive House of Representatives in American history.

Mostly because conservatives, unsettled by the presence of an intelligent, two-term African-American in the White House, simply despised President Obama.

Remember the $1.7 trillion added to the U.S. deficit
because of the 2nd Iraq War? Republicans don't

Amidst the turmoil of their 2013 deficit hysteria, Republicans conveniently seemed to forget that their own president, George W. Bush, was responsible for at least $1.7 trillion of that debt because his failed war in Iraq was never paid for in the federal budget.

So not only did hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens and thousands of U.S. and coalition service men and women loose their lives, "Dubya" put the whole thing on the American credit card.

Conservative's self-serving situational outrage over the federal deficit should serve as a warning sign to the American people - a reminder of the Republican Party's willingness to use deficit spending like some kind of prop to suit their ideological needs and financial desires.

As we've seen this week, the Republican Party has a giant memory lapse, and they've shown a willingness to bounce back and forth on the deficit like a ping-pong ball.

Four years ago they were railing against President Obama for his call for over a $1 trillion in infrastructure spending because of their concerns about what it would do to the federal deficit.

And they refused to do anything about it.

(Incidents like the Flint Water Crisis and the horrific Amtrak train derailment in Pierre County, Washington on an overpass on Monday that killed three and injured at least 100, serve as chilling reminders that Republican refusal to act on much-needed infrastructure repair has had deadly consequences.)

A collapsed section of I-10 between California and
Arizona in 2015

So when when President Obama was in office, they opposed authorizing $ 1trillion of the taxpayer's money to conduct long-overdue repairs on the nation's infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels, airports etc.) that affect the lives of all Americans.

Just a few years before that they allowed Bush to spend almost $2 trillion on an ill-advised war in one of the most destabilized countries in the world.

The one NOT responsible for the 911 attacks by the way.

But as we've seen recently under Trump, Republicans rushed to pass a bloated, confusing 500-page legislative behemoth that will enrich already-cash-loaded American corporations and the small fraction of the nation who count themselves among the 1% (and of course the Trump and Kushner families) with no public hearings and no meaningful studies of how it will impact the U.S. economy.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) didn't even get to score the much-talked-about tax bill properly, and most Republicans gleefully passed it without even bothering to read what's in it - even though it raises taxes on the middle class and poorest taxpayers.

Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker, the 4th wealthiest U.S. Senator who owns vast holdings in real estate, admitted not having read it as he tried to deflect criticism over the fact that he magically reversed his opposition to the bill after a provision was inserted at the last-minute last Friday.

A provision that will allow folks like him and Trump to save millions in taxes on "pass-through" income they receive from the s-corporations where they keep their real estate holdings.

What, me worry? "Corker Kickback" namesake
Tennessee Senator Bob Corker

Corker's lame assertion that he had no idea the provision was added to the tax bill is laughable considering that just a couple months ago Corker was one of Trump's biggest critics, famously telling CNN reporter Manu Raju:

"The president has great difficulty with the truth. On many issues."

Evidently the president isn't the only one...

Remarkably, the Republican tax bill doesn't do anything Trump promised it would do when he was running for office in 2015 and 2016.

You can't fill out your taxes on a form the size of a post card, it didn't cut the tax brackets down to three, it doesn't eliminate sketchy loopholes for corporations and the 1% - and it raises taxes on the same working class white voters who filled Trump rallies and bought "Make America Great Again" hats.

As columnist and author Charles Blow observed in the opening sentence of his latest op-ed published in this morning's New York Times:

"With their tax bill, Donald Trump and the Republicans are raiding the treasury in plain sight, throwing crumbs to the masses as the millionaires and billionaires make off with the cake." 

Amazingly, many mainstream media news outlets (including NPR) keep referring to this as a "win" for Trump.

Just wait, once he signs this mockery of American principles into law and Republicans, their 1%-er billionaire donor base and corporations have all had a chance to cash in on their flagrant looting of the U.S. Treasury, there'll be another collective Republican memory lapse.

And when the automatic spending cuts their legislation mandates begin to kick in, phony deficit hysteria will return just in time for Republicans to set their sights on cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - gutting bedrock social safety net programs to further enrich a small privileged few.

Throwing crumbs to the masses - just in time for Christmas.

From Romans to Republicans - Has the GOP Downfall Begun?

English politician Sir John Dalberg-Acton

In a now-famous letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, the English historian, writer and moralist Lord Acton famously observed:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

He was essentially paraphrasing an idea previously expressed by other thinkers and writers for centuries, reflecting on the Roman Empire, the Papacy and countless monarchies.


But his oft-quoted observation, written 130 years ago, could well have been a prescient warning about the state of the Republican Party in 21st century America.

In the wake of the November 8th elections, a number of elated Republicans, from spine-challenged House Speaker Paul Ryan to average conservative Joe's calling into NPR to share their thoughts on the shocking presidential election results, publicly expressed concerns that the GOP, with both houses of Congress, the presidency and a majority of state legislatures in their hands, would end up going too far.

But as we've seen time and again, the collective memory of the Republican establishment is shockingly short when it comes to learning from their past political mistakes.

Ever since 45's shaky first day in office a little over two weeks ago, the new leaders of the executive branch and their reluctant Republican allies in Congress seem almost obsessed with dismantling America's imperfect Democracy and reshaping it to reflect some kind of twisted conservative-Utopian worldview.

By doing so, they are ironically sewing the seeds of an unprecedented nationwide backlash movement that poses a direct threat to their Congressional majority with all 435 seats in the House and 33 seats in the Senate up for reelection in 2018.  

Protestors outside Rep. Chaffetz's town hall in Utah

If this past week is any indicator, the Republican establishment seems almost catastrophically tone deaf to the values and priorities of the vast majority of the American people.

Take Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz's town hall on Thursday evening for example.

Like other Republican members of the House, Chaffetz was home taking the post-election political temperature directly from his constituents.

It was not a warm reception, and Chaffetz is probably itching to scurry back to the safety of the isolated political bubble in Washington where he and other Republicans are content to dwell in a distorted ideological reality.

The House Oversight Committee Chairman, whose continuing obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails borders on partisan political lunacy, was greeted with a chorus of boos and jeers in Brighton High School in a Salt Lake City suburb as he faced an onslaught of questions from angry members of his Congressional district.  

It was pretty brutal.

A young girl asked him if he believed in science.

In response to expressions of outrage over Republican efforts to allow the extraction of fossil fuels from the nation's National Parks, Chaffetz actually told the crowd that solar energy can harm animals and wildlife.

Between the boos and chants of "Do your job!", others demanded to know why the House Oversight Committee he chairs isn't investigating 45's ties to Russia and the role Putin played in manipulating the November 8th election results - or why the American people haven't yet seen the beleaguered POTUS's tax returns.

A woman questions Tennesse Rep Diane Black at a
packed town hall on Thursday

And this wasn't an isolated incident either, other Republican House members in traditionally conservative-leaning "red" states faced similar questions from their constituents.

Take a couple minutes to watch a woman from Tennessee ask Republican Congresswoman Diane Black about Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.




Things didn't fare much better for the Republican-majority Senate this week either.

Republican Senators had the gall to dredge up the obscure Senate 'Rule 19' to block Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren from reading a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

As Politifact.com reported, Rule 19 was added by the Senate on February 28, 1902 after the junior senator from South Carolina John McLaurin rushed into the Senate chamber, denounced the senior South Carolina senator Ben Tillman as being guilty of a "willful, malicious, and deliberate lie" before getting punched in the jaw by Tillman.

If Republican senators thought that invoking a rule historians suggest has only been invoked twice since 1902 would somehow shield the American public from hearing the truth about newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' legacy of opposing voting rights for African-Americans in the south and civil rights, they were way off base.

The recording of Warren reading King's nine-page letter (originally sent to former Republican North Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, a notorious opponent of civil rights) went viral and was listened to millions of times by people around the globe.

Senator Ted Cruz reads 'Green Eggs & Ham'
on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2013

As TheHill.com reported, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders took the floor on Wednesday and angrily announced, "The idea that a letter and a statement by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr...could not be presented and spoken about here on the floor of the Senate, is to me, incomprehensible." 

He then defiantly read the letter in it's entirety as Democratic Senators Tom Udall and Sherrod Brown had done earlier that day.

The episode didn't just reinforce the perception of the Republican Party as contemptuous of women.

This is the same party that cheered as a self-righteous hypocrite like Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz spent 21 straight hours on the floor of the Senate in opposition of enacting healthcare reform (during which he also read from Dr. Seuss' 'Green Eggs and Ham' and talked about poker) but silenced Senator Warren while she was reading a letter that was sent to the Senate in 1986 by the deceased wife of a civil rights icon.

During Black History Month no less.

With each day, it seems as if the Republican party puts itself further and further out of touch with mainstream American citizens and the values they uphold.

Just days into this new Republican-dominated government, Congress has already moved quickly to eradicate legislation that protects consumers from banks being allowed to charge predatory overdraft fees, permit mining companies to dump toxic coal sludge into rivers and streams, and further curb the right to vote for people of color, the poor, students and legal immigrants.

Protesters block Betsy DeVoss from entering a
Washington, D.C. school on Friday morning

To say nothing of approving a known bigot and opponent of civil rights like Jeff Sessions as the attorney general.

Or  billionaire Betsy DeVos, (who donated money to every Senator who approved her) with no experience working in education, as Secretary of Education.

These kinds of actions have sparked a nationwide grassroots protest movement.

One that began with millions of people around the globe coming out to protest 45 the day after his inauguration, and has since grown exponentially.

Both online and in person.

As CommonDreams.com reported earlier today, protestors chanting "Shame! Shame!" briefly blocked Betsy DeVos from entering Jefferson Academy in Washington, D.C, this morning as protestors hounded her for buying her way into 45's cabinet and chided her for having no experience as an educator.

The other night protesters stood outside the home of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell protesting his invoking the aforementioned rarely used Senate 'Rule 19' to block Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King's letter on the floor of the Senate.

For example, the March for Science scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. on April 22nd (Earth Day) is already sparking regional marches in cities and communities all over the world in what looks to be a truly global backlash to Republicans who dismiss scientific research on issues like climate change, fuel efficiency standards and the effects of pollution, toxic waste and pesticides on the environment.

These aren't flash-in-the-pan protests as some conservatives have dismissively suggested.

They are parts of a much larger and sustained organized campaign built on a broad coalition that opposes 45 and the current manifestation of the Republican party.

As the nation reacts to the news that 45's national security adviser Michael Flynn had private conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at least a month before the compulsive authoritarian liar 45 took office - violations of ethics and the law which both Flynn and VP Mike Pence have lied about in front of the press - the protest movement grows.

A movement that could culminate with the 2018 Congressional elections when 468 members of Congress and the Senate will be forced to face the reality of exactly what American voters think about them and the job they've done.

Remarkably, and perhaps predictably, Republican politician's stubborn inability to reach across the aisle, listen to the overwhelming majority of voters who did not vote for 45, or govern outside of a narrow-minded extremist ideology could very well mark the beginning of the downfall of the GOP.

After all, we're not even a month into 45's administration, and as Lord Acton observed, absolute power has already corrupted absolutely.  

Ted Cruz 's Climate Change Chicanery

Texas Senator Ted Cruz: Nothing to see here folks!

Well I'm sitting here making a late Sunday brunch while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on NPR with all the windows in my apartment wide open enjoying some amazing weekend weather.

Which wouldn't be all that unusual except for the fact that it's December 12th and it's partly sunny and 70 degrees outside here in central New Jersey.

The weather has been like this the past few days and local meteorologists are saying temperatures are somewhere between 20 to 23 degrees above normal for this time of year, so Republican Senator Ted Cruz picked a rather peculiar time to hold a Senate hearing to call into question the fact that human activity has influenced climate change.

The Tea Party poster boy and presidential candidate, who serves as the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, made headlines last Monday when he cherry-picked substantive climate change data to try and cast doubt on what the overwhelming majority of scientists agree on - that humans are changing the planets climate and contributing to global warming.

As Emily Atkin reported in an article on ThinkProgress.org, Cruz confused the Arctic with the Antarctic, quoted NASA climate research out of context and tried to poke holes in established scientific fact in an effort to prove that global warming is a myth.

The timing of Cruz's attack on science is part of a carefully planned Republican strategy to try and undermine the historic agreement on limiting climate change reached at the COP21 summit in Paris by almost 200 different countries including the world's biggest polluters, including the U.S., China and India.   

The deal calls for taking steps to keep global temperature rise to under 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, capping greenhouse gas emissions and providing $100 billion a year to small developing nations to help finance their efforts to transition their emerging economies to more climate-friendly energy sources like wind, solar and hydroelectric instead of relying on coal and oil.

Cruz's Senate hearings aren't surprising given that his largest campaign contributions by industry come from oil and gas companies and, or industries that represent them.

According to data compiled by OpenSecrets.org posted on the VoteSmart.org Website, the oil and gas industry has donated at least $952,380 to Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign.

It's rare to get almost 200 nations to agree on anything, and taking concrete steps to address climate change is in the long-term interests of humans, plants, animals, the oceans, rivers, lakes and the atmosphere - but the majority of Republican politicians in Congress view it exclusively from the one dimensional perspective of the financial interests of the oil, gas and coal industries.

While Republicans view entitlement programs like Social Security, unemployment insurance and Medicare that benefit average Americans with contempt, they're like zealots when it comes to protecting billions of dollars in lavish taxpayer-funded subsidies for America's oil and gas producers in the form of sketchy tax loopholes and other financial chicanery.

As an article on PoliticusUSA.com last June reported, a report by the International Monetary Fund showed that collectively, the world's countries provide a mind-boggling $5.3 trillion a year in taxpayer funds to subsidize fossil fuel companies that make huge profits even as they contribute to the pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which are altering the climate.

So Cruz using a Senate hearing as a platform to try and debunk climate change science is more about money than it is ideology, even though his sketchy arguments against human influence on climate change are largely ideologically driven.

Smog blankets the city of Beijing, China

In the meantime the evidence of global warming is all around us.

My friend Jeff just got back from a 12-day business trip to China where he spent time in the city of Shanghai.

He told me the pollution levels were bad enough to create near-constant overcast skies which at times could make it difficult to see store fronts across the street from his hotel.

It wasn't uncommon for him to see people walking around the streets wearing filter masks or even gas masks. 

He said Shanghai isn't nearly as bad as Beijing though.

On the very same day that Ted Cruz was holding his Senate Subcommittee hearing last Monday to deny that humans are contributing to climate change, hazardous levels of smog blanketing the city of Beijing prompted the first-ever "red alert" for toxic levels of smog that are some 20 times the level considered safe for the city's 20 million residents.

As Edward Wong reported in The New York Times last week, the smog prompted the government to shut down schools, businesses, factories and even some highways because of the lack of visibility caused in large part by fumes from coal burning factories and the millions of drivers who clog Beijing's roads.

Maybe Ted Cruz needs to take a fact-finding trip to Beijing; he could hold his hearings from there if the smog isn't too thick.

Anyway look for Republicans in Congress to continue doing what they can to undermine the U.S. honoring the commitments they agreed to in Paris while questioning whether man is influencing global warming.

In the meantime it's going to be 70 degrees in central New Jersey tomorrow - but I'm certain the 40 billion tons of CO2 that humans pumped into the atmosphere in 2014 have nothing to do with that.









 

Sweet Home Alabama - Republicans Drive Over Voter Rights

A state drivers license center in Alabama

The restrictive voter ID law passed in 2011 by the the conservative Republican politicians who now dominate the Alabama state legislature didn't take affect until 2014.

But it only took a year for them to take another swipe at the voting rights of Alabama citizens; those who vote Democratic anyway.

In another low point for the basic principle of American democracy, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency ( the result of a consolidation of 12 different law enforcement agencies under a single authority now known under the acronym ALEA) announced that budget shortfalls would require the closing of an astounding 31 different driver's license centers around the state.

Republicans, including Governor Robert Bentley (we'll get to him in a moment) were quick to deny accusations leveled by politicians, members of the press, voter rights groups and citizens that the closing of these centers were part of an underhanded effort to put up barriers that make it more difficult for citizens of Alabama to comply with the voter ID law that Republicans themselves drafted and passed in 2011.

But statistics suggest otherwise.

As Rachel Witkin wrote in an article posted on TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com on Monday,
8 of the 10 counties where the drivers license facilities are being closed just happen to have the largest percentages of non-white voters in the state.

Driver's license centers in every county in the state of Alabama where more than 75% of registered voters are African-American will be closed.

Coincidence? Hardly.

First off, Alabama is one of many American states with a solid "super majority" of Republican state legislators dominating the state house; as well as a Republican Governor.

Since it's the Republican party who are essentially responsible for establishing the budget for the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (which runs the driver's license centers across the state); Republicans are the ones responsible for the apparent lack of available funds to keep the centers open.

Oct 2013, Ted Cruz & Sarah Palin protest WWII memorial closing THEY caused 

That kind of  manipulative legislative nonsense is taken right from the playbook of the senseless Republican "starve the beast" strategy of governing.

And the illogical political spin, where they childishly blame Democrats for their own Republican handiwork, is hardly new for them either.

It's the same kind of demented GOP thinking that led Republicans Senator Ted Cruz and former VP candidate Sarah Palin to fan the flames of conservative hysteria which lead to an intentional shut down of the federal government in 2013.

Once they'd accomplished their demented goal, they had the gall to actually go and stand theatrically in front of the WWII Veteran's memorial in Washington, DC and piously criticize Democrats for not keeping the national parks open (pictured left).

Is it a total PR nightmare that contributes to the Republican's dismal approval rate? Sure, but they still do it.

And then they have the temerity to act offended by people who call their actions out for what they are by dismissing them as nosy outsiders trying to politicize an issue for personal gain.
 
Since the news about the closing of the driver's license centers has been so dominated by national media news outlets lately, I was genuinely curious to see what people who actually live in Alabama had to say on the issue.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley

To gain some perspective, I decided to troll through some of the over 522 reader comments that were posted in response to a story posted on the AL.com Website by Charles Dean about Republican Governor Robert Bentley (pictured left) strongly denying accusations that the decision to close 31 different state-run facilities where (mostly) people of modest income who reside in more remote rural areas can obtain driver's licenses, was not a race-based decision intentionally designed to make it more difficult for people of color to get ID's to vote.

Interestingly, the reader comments seemed to break down along just about the same political lines as national reactions to the story; but there seemed to be blacks and whites on both sides of the issue.

There were white Alabamans who thought the closing of the centers were clearly race-based, and there were also black Alabamans who pointed out the relatively low state voter turnout (under 50%) in the last election to point out that if you really want to vote in the state, you just have to register to do it.

Someone who claimed to be black pointed out the fact that there are large numbers of black folks in the state who have valid state ID's to cross state lines to gamble in Mississippi or Louisiana or buy alcohol legally.  

Some white Alabamans felt it was only being made into a national issue because Alabama's legacy of racism and political correctness make it easy to accuse the state of such racial shenanigans.

More than one reader expressed skepticism over the fact that Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson have both inserted themselves into the controversy - for what some readers felt were for self-serving reasons rather than the issue of voter rights.

But as you may have guessed, I'm just not buying that.

Nov 5, 2012 - Voters in Akron, Ohio wait hours for early voting

Especially given the Republican party's openly passing dozens of sketchy voter ID laws in states like Ohio (pictured left), North Carolina and Florida - and other ALEC-crafted legislation that intentionally restricts the rights of the poor, racial minorities, working class, students, legal immigrants and the elderly to cast their votes in elections.

As the AL.com article reported, the state's embattled Governor, Robert Bentley offered up some fairly sketchy reasoning for the closures of the 31 driver's license centers during a press conference on Tuesday when he said:

"The last time I looked, 16-year-olds that get their license at a driver's licenses place, don't vote," said Bentley. "That's all we're doing. We're repositioning people in the state because we don't have enough funds in this state to keep these offices open." 

"Repositioning people"? He and his Republican cohorts in the state legislature are the ones who control the funds that keep the drivers license centers open in the first place!

Now just bear in mind folks, this statement is from the same Governor who self-righteously opposed gay marriage on the grounds that  heterosexual marriages like his represent 'Stability' before his wife of 50 years, Dianne Bentley, filed for divorce back in August. 

Bentley has also had his toes in hot water over race recently, after what many perceived as insensitive comments insinuating common simplistic stereotypes about the black family structure were to blame for the horrific kidnapping and murder of 8-year old Hiawayi Robinson.

Governor Bentley took particular issue with Hillary Clinton weighing in on the issue of his party actively suppressing the rights of minority voters in Alabama, saying:

"The one that I'm really angry about is Hilliary Clinton. You know Hillary Clinton never lets the facts get in the way of a good political sound bite and that's exactly what she has done criticizing the state of Alabama,"  

Hillary Clinton wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade; she called the decision to close the centers in Alabama  "a blast from the Jim Crow past."

And her criticism of Alabama's closing 31 drivers license centers isn't her first time calling out Republicans for suppressing votes.

Bentley's insinuation that she just started chiming in on the issue after Alabama's latest voter suppression efforts earned national attention for a "soundbite" is plain wrong.
 

Guess who vetoed state legislation to add early voting hours?

Say what you want about her, Hillary has been attacking Republican presidential candidates for suppressing voter rights for months.

The "Truth-o-Meter" of the Pulitzer Prize-wining PolitiFact.com Website fact-checked Clinton's claims of Republican voter suppression by Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Scott Walker.

They found them to be "largely accurate" and rated her claims, "Mostly True."

Why? Because the reality is that actively using legislation, illegal redistricting, gerrymandering and even voter intimidation are now part of the accepted (by Republicans anyway) strategy for winning the White House in 2016 and holding on to a majority in the House and Senate.

It's disgraceful and a mockery of everything this nation stands for, but that's today's Republican party for you.

But the closings of the 31 centers is far from a done deal. Politicians and activists groups including the NAACP are calling for legal challenges to the closings as well as a Department of Justice investigation.

If you were curious about what would happen after the Supreme Court gutted key provisions of the Civil Rights Act, look no further than the state of Alabama.

"Sweet Home" indeed.

'Witchcraft and Sodomy' & Other Texas Chicanery

"And I'll flood your little state too!'

The great state of Texas has been featured in the headlines of mainstream American media lately, unfortunately for reasons that are not really all that positive.

While the victims of the massive flooding in Houston, Austin and other parts of Texas have the sympathy of people around the globe, it also offers insight into just how totally detached from reality the extremist conservative mind-set in Texas really is these days.
 
For example, according to RightWingWatch.org, back on Thursday May 28th, eerily conservative talk radio host Bryan Fischer fielded a call from a concerned listener from College Station, Texas named 'Rebecca' who had some interesting theories on the cause of the unprecedented flooding that's taken lives and damaged property.

According to an article by Kyle Mantyla of RightWingWatch.org, "As Rebecca explained, the only parts of Texas that are underwater are the parts "that are overrun with witchcraft and sodomy" like Austin and Houston, which has a "sodomite mayor". On the other hand, the area where Rebecca lives is not underwater, even though she lives in a valley, and that is because "we kicked out abortion" and the people who live there hold conservative views."

Host Bryan Fischer was quick to agree with Rebecca's unusual supernatural explanation, adding that, "If you're going to attribute the flooding in Texas to some kind of supernatural cause, you can make a geographical connection between the flooding and the practice of the occult and witchcraft and the embrace of homosexuality,"

Personally I was unaware of the prevalence of Wiccan activity in Texas, or that sex between same sex couples in said state could affect the weather. Go figure!

Now Texas conservatives aren't the only ones freaking out about same sex couples getting married; or having sex and making it rain a lot.

Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily

As Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch reported yesterday, Joseph Farah (pictured left), the founder and editor of WorldNetDaily (which ran a six-part series on how soybeans cause homosexuality), issued an 'emergency plea' to governors and legislatures in all 50 states requesting that they be prepared to secede from the United States if the Supreme Court strikes down state bans on gay marriage.

Farah, who is profiled on the Website of the SPLC, insists that other countries that ban same-sex marriage, like Nigeria, Iran or Russia, should be prepared for "a pilgrimage of millions of Americans" seeking to flee the evils of same sex couples in monogamous long-term relationships.

Yup, I can see millions of right-wing conservatives packing up and heading to foreign countries they already despise. Anyway, let's get back to Texas.

It didn't really make large scale media headlines, but in Huntsville, Texas last Wednesday June 3rd at 6:18pm the state of Texas executed it's oldest death row inmate, Lester Leroy Bower, who'd been on death row for 31 years after being convicted of a quadruple shooting in an airplane hanger at a ranch outside Sherman, Texas in 1983.

Bower and his pro-bono legal team had maintained his innocence for years and claimed the state's case was flawed. Even though a witness has maintained for 26 years that she knew who killed the four men and it was not Bower, the state of Texas went ahead with the execution of the 67 year-old man who used his last words to proclaim his innocence in the death chamber with his wife and two sisters attending.

The strange pride the state of Texas seems to take in executions is ghoulish, but far be it from Texas to let something like facts or eyewitness testimony stand in the way of taking a human life.

Rick Perry rides again!

On a much lighter note our old friend Rick Perry (pictured left) is back in the news too; he hopes the public has forgotten "Niggerhead". We haven't.

The always quotable former Texas governor, who wants to eliminate so many departments from the federal government that he just can't remember them all, announced that he's tossing his own Stetson back into the crowded field of 2016 GOP presidential candidates.

Armed with a stylish new pair of glasses and a bagful of dusted off generic conservative talk-points, Rick is elbowing his way into the already overloaded Republican clown car and joining Senator Ted Cruz as yet another conservative Texan seeking the White House.

Cruz made headlines himself the other week when he weaseled out of answering a question about whether the Texas floods that have dumped trillions of gallons of water on Texas soil, caused the deaths of 28 people and caused billions of dollars in damage had anything to do with global warming.

According to an article by Emily Atkin on ThinkProgress.org, Cruz side-stepped the chance to defend his quasi-delusional beliefs about the 'myth' of global warming by saying, "At a time of tragedy, I think it’s wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster."  

But it's okay for him to use his position as a Senator to try and suppress science while accepting millions in political donations from petrochemical companies that dump millions of tons of toxic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year?

So I guess "politicizing" global warming just depends on when you're doing it and who's paying you to do it, right Ted? 

It's often said Texas is like a different country, if you've ever been there you know why.

The Supreme Court is preparing to rule on whether Texas issuing license plates with the Confederate flag on them is protected by free speech in a case brought by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Between politicians who deny the science of climate change even as record flood levels devastate their state, nut-bag radio hosts who blame witchcraft and homosexual citizens for the weather and a state legislature who just voted to approve a law that would allow Texans to openly carry loaded handguns in hip or shoulder holsters, Texas is living up to it's reputation as a nation apart.

As I've blogged about before, Texas certainly has it's fair share of progressive locales like Austin, so it's not my intention to lump all Texans into one bin.

But if recent headlines are any measure of the state of the state, there are way too many delusional Texans who openly embrace chicanery.

Ted Cruz Gets "Foxed" by Mark Halperin

Writer Mark Halperin

We interrupt the normally liberal fare of this humble blog to rise in defense of Texas Senator and 2016 GOP Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.

And lest you wonder, no that's not a misprint and yes, I am decidedly sober.

Unlike our friends over at Fox News, I firmly believe in treating all political candidates with a basic measure of respect and decency; and I do my best to limit my contempt for a politician to his or her political stances or policy views rather than their race, ethnicity or sex.

As past blog posts will attest, I may not agree with Ted Cruz's obstinate brand of fiery conservative rhetoric, and at times I have no idea what the Hell he's talking about (remember his 'Green Eggs & Ham' filibuster speech?), but I do respect his right to express his own political beliefs.

So I think it's totally inappropriate for any reporter to use Cruz's heritage or racial identity like some kind of punch line during an interview.

As Ian Millhiser reported in an article on ThinkProgress.org, writer and former television news producer/correspondent Mark Halperin is catching serious heat for doing just that in a recent on-camera interview he conducted for Bloomberg Politics.

As Millhiser observed, "Though Halperin begins the interview by raising a legitimate topic — a speech Cruz gave to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce — his conversation with Cruz quickly goes off the rails. “Your last name is Cruz and you’re from Texas,” Halperin asks Cruz. “Just based on that, should you have appeal to Hispanic voters?”"

It got worse.

Halperin had the temerity to ask Cruz if he identified himself as "Hispanic" on his application to Harvard before grilling the Texas Senator on substantive political issues like his favorite Cuban singer, and his favorite Cuban food.

And that was before he asked Cruz to demonstrate his mastery of Spanish by asking him to, "...welcome your colleague Senator (Bernie) Sanders to the race and I’d like you to do it, if you would, en Español.”

Halperin may as well have asked Cruz to do a Ricky Ricardo imitation for good measure.

Now I don't dislike Mark Halperin, in fact we both attended the same high school in Bethesda, Maryland, Walt Whitman Senior High School (Go Vikes!)

He's been around the ring of the political media circus, cut his teeth in the trench warfare of presidential campaign coverage and been a (mostly Democratic) talking head on television; during his career he's served in various roles as researcher, producer and correspondent for ABC and MSNBC.

But he's not blindly Democratic in the way most Fox News hosts tend to be about Republican candidates or politicians.

For example,  according to a Wikipedia.org article, in 2011 Halperin was suspended from MSNBC for a month after saying that President Obama had come off as "kind of a dick" during a press conference on the program Morning Joe.

Halperin is supposedly earning seven figures for his current political analysis gig with Bloomberg but is perhaps best known as the co-author of the book chronicling the 2008 presidential election, "Game Change" - which was made into a highly-acclaimed HBO movie of the same name starring Ed Harris as Senator John McCain and Juliane Moore as Sarah Palin in 2012.

So while he's a fairly shrewd political observer, Halperin's particular brand of reporting and political commentary can land him in hot water.

Washington Post writer Phillip Lump wrote an interesting piece for The Washington Post yesterday chronicling Halperin's somewhat superficial political coverage/analysis of the 2016 GOP Presidential race with his curious report-card grading system; which according to Lump seems to have very little to do with substance and more to do with Halperin's own perception of their style.

Personally I thought "Game Change" was a brilliant movie (I've never read the book) but in my opinion, the substance of some of Halperin's Bloomberg interview with Cruz came off less the tongue-in-cheek casual interview he claims it was meant to be, than a buffonish, racially insensitive example of a poorly prepared interview.

It's hard to know what Halperin was going for in that interview.

Was it a klutzy not very well-thought-out attempt to juxtapose Cruz's Cuban heritage with the staunchly anti-immigrant position of the Tea Partiers who deify Cruz?

Was it a poorly planned effort to get Cruz to embrace his Cuban-ness to create some kind of usable sound-bite to serve as digital fodder for liberal social media?

Whatever Halperin intended it to be, it offended a lot of people. To be fair he did post a public apology, but that cat is already way out of the bag.

In fact the the interview itself was broadcast more than a month ago and might very well have gone unnoticed if not for a powerful op-ed piece that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on May 9th written by Reuben Navarette.

Navarette, himself of Hispanic heritage, is the real reason the story has blown up and while larger more mainstream media outlets have picked up on the story, Navarette's piece cuts to the chase and it's most definitely worth a read if you have a few minutes to click over and check it out.

As Navaretter observes, "Watching Mark Halperin of Bloomberg Politics interview Cruz recently, I wasn't just uncomfortable. I was actually nauseated." 
 
What's ironic in all this are the various talking heads of conservative media getting all riled up at Halperin touching on Cruz's ethnicity in a way that's inappropriate.

Some of the same people who've spent eight years aping Fox News by calling President Obama everything from a radical Muslim, to a lying "uppity" so-and-so, to a gun-grabbing socialist are suddenly offended at the idea of a member of the media using a Republican candidate's racial heritage in ways that are inappropriate?

Maybe now they know how it feels to be "Foxed."