Coronaviral Rage & Fringe Propaganda

A protester holds a doll with a noose around it's neck
at the statehouse in East Lansing, Michigan on 5/14/20

Last Thursday May 14, 2020 was Judgement Day.

At least in the eyes of the small slice of Michigan's populace who turned out in the rain for a protest held in front of the state capital building in East Lansing last Thursday.

The protest, against the scientifically-based social distancing restrictions put in place by Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, was supposedly organized by a group called Michigan United For Liberty.


That's the same group recently credited with organizing the "American Patriot Rally" back on Thursday 4/30/20 that garnered global attention and criticism when some of the protesters, heavily-armed and masked, entered the statehouse in East Lansing with loaded weapons to pressure Governor Whitmer and state lawmakers to lift health restrictions and cede to their demands to allow businesses across the state to re-open by Friday 5/1/20.

It's hard to believe that in 2020, some state legislators present during that rally wore bullet proof vests out of caution with angry protesters armed with rifles looking down on them from the visitor galleries above the floor of the chamber.

Take a minute to listen to Michigan State Senator Dayna Polehanki speaking out on the floor in support of a senate resolution to immediately ban the open carry of firearms in the state capital.

Organizers self-branded last Thursday's rally, "Judgement Day" - as if the the assembled crowd was now biblically empowered to act as some kind of kangaroo court authorized to sit in judgement of a democratically-elected governor and her policies.

There's something deeply disturbing about the sight a man (pictured above) striding up to the front of the rally holding a fishing pole with an American flag and a plastic doll representing Governor Whitmer with a noose around it's neck suspended from it.

Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer 

Personally I find the overheated, partisan opposition to Governor Whitmer's policies to be more evidence that pro-Trump dark money is likely fueling these protests.

I watched Judy Woodruff interview Whitmer on the Covid-19 challenges Michigan is facing on the 3/27/20 broadcast of The PBS Newshour.

She struck me as having what I consider to be the kind of instinctual political authority, bearing and demeanor that Trump so sorely lacks.

Governor Whitmer comes off as a down to earth, intelligent, informed, level-headed realist who clearly understands how the machinations of politics and governance work to create policy.

A virtual polar opposite of Trump in every way.

She also seems to be able to generate that difficult to define pragmatic optimism that effective presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all had and were able to leverage to help lift public spirits during difficult periods where the U.S. faced serious economic, social and wartime challenges that altered society in indelible ways.

So it makes the sight of an angry protester openly hanging Governor Whitmer in effigy in front of the state house so much more disturbing, suggestive of mysogynist violence, and flat out crazy.

The sight of the noose in this country is also a disturbing reminder of the kind of lawless mob mentality that's led thousands of innocent people to be dragged from their homes (or from remarkably unguarded jail cells) by unruly crowds determined to see them hang without a fair trial.

Protesters with loaded semi-automatic rifles linger in 
front of the Michigan state capital on 5/14/20   [Getty Images]

American history is littered with terrifying examples of what can happen when the mob is allowed to run loose and unchecked by the power of the law.

Like the race-fueled massacre that took place in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma when as many as 300 African-Americans were murdered over the course of two days in 1921.

Or the eleven Italian-Americans who were lynched by a mob stirred up by irrational, anti-immigrant fervor in New Orleans in March, 1891.

The recent protests in Michigan seem more intended to generate headlines, disrupt the news cycle, agitate the public, spark unfounded fears, and attract free media coverage for fringe conservative views that might otherwise struggle for recognition outside the spotlight of mainstream media.

Outside of these conservative-engineered media stunts, the kinds of fringe political and ideological views this movement attracts might otherwise only exist in online chatrooms, social media platforms - or deep inside the murky recesses of the Dark Web where exremist views fester and spread largely unchecked.

With an estimated total population of somewhere around ten million people, Michigan has the tenth largest population of any state in the U.S., a large manufacturing base, multiple professional sports franchises, a number of top colleges and universites, a large tourism industry and GDP that ranked 14th amongst the 50 states in 2019.

Do an assortment of members of fringe conservative groups showing up in front of the state capital holding signs and trying to turn a global pandemic into a pro-Trump political rally represent an accurate snapshot of how Michigan's population feels about the restrictions put in place to save lives?

There's no proof that all of the protesters at the statehouse were even from the state of Michigan at all.

Pro-Trump signage, hats and paraphernalia were everywhere and many protesters didn't even bother to wear protective masks, or observe the basic social distancing protocols recommended by the CDC, scientists and other leading healthcare groups.

Some of the estimated 900 tractors that encamped
on the National Mall for weeks in Feb. 1977  [Jo Freeman]

If these protestors want to excercise their right to freedom of expression, even if I personally disagree with them, I'll still respect their right to express their views - as long as that expression remains peaceful, and respectful of others.

Back in the winter of 1977 I was still in grade school in Bethesda, MD when thousands of farmers from across the U.S. descended upon the Washington, D.C. area with hundreds of tractors to demand increased federal support for family farms.

I was still too young to fully grasp the policy goals and politics behind their protest, but I remember thinking all the tractors intentionally blocking traffic on the crowded streets of DC were pretty cool.

The farmers camped out on the National Mall for weeks in cold February weather, and aside from a few minor traffic violations the protests remained peaceful and respectful for the most part - something that bolstered their position in the eyes of the public in addition to seizing media attention. 

That kind of grassroots protest is such a far cry from the intentionally divisive optics of offensive noose imagery and masked gunmen that's become associated whith these conservative crowd-bombing protests organized with the assistance of shadowy conservative dark money funneled from Republican Party rainmakers like the Mercers, Kochs and Adelsons.

And quite possibly agents of foreign intelligence agencies tasked with sewing internal division inside  America, manipulating media coverage and messing around with the 2020 elections.

That kind of expression-with-guns protest in the public square - that's a step towards the mob.

Protesters in downtown Huntingdon Beach,
California back on Friday 4/17/20

Are the members of this growing alignment of pro-Trump conservatives interested in policy, or disruption?

Can an assortment of Trump supporters bolstered by Libertarians, anti-government extremists, gun rights advocates, members of the anti-vaccine movement and Covid-19 deniers really organize around concrete policy issues - outside of publicly rallying to protect vague notions of "personal liberty" and "freedom"?

Are they really protesting Covid-19 restrictions like lockdowns and social distancing?

Or are they just using the pandemic as a platform to to vent ideological indignation, promote fringe, extremist theories and serve as a defacto radical arm of the 2020 Trump campaign?

It's not just here in the U.S. either, on Saturday protests were held across various German cities, inlcuding Munich, Berlin and Stuttgart. Like anti-Covid-19 protests in East Lansing and other U.S. cities, yesterday's protests attracted individuals from German far-right neo-Nazi and white supremacist elements.

A spokeswoman for the BKA, the German federal police, warned that extremist groups see the Covid-19 protests as an opportunity to promote thier own ideologies - noting that these groups are attempting to, "instrumentalize the situation for propaganda purposes."

It's interesting how quick some people are to vilify the Covid-19 virus and the necessary social restrictions that come with it as some kind of enemy - projecting their inner fears, insecurities and prejudices onto necessary social distancing rules that are in place to help stem the spread and level off the infection rate of one of the most highly transmissible viruses in modern human history.

Venting Coronaviral rage onto the very measures intended to help keep people alive - and calling it Judgement Day - is only a small part of what somes of these protests in states like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin are really about.

For $30 Million Trump Exports Chaos To Gaza

One of over 2,700 Palestinian demonstrators injured
by Israeli Defense Forces on Monday

Divisive presidential campaign rhetoric, incessant childish name-calling of various world leaders and the abandonment of basic principles of diplomacy and traditional foreign policy objectives are all defining features of what has passed as Donald Trump's chaotic foreign policy approach.

A chaotic, patchwork philosophy that's alienated America's traditional allies around the globe and destabilized the Trans-Atlantic alliance with Western Europe.

On the rocky road of the presidential campaign trail two years ago, what Trump ironically flouted as his "America First" approach to international relations has steadily eroded the image of the U.S. as the unofficial leader of the Free World in the eyes of many.

So it's difficult to stomach the embattled POTUS' current attempts to portray himself as the clever worldly diplomat ready to pull America from hard-fought international agreements like the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Paris Climate Accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) simply so Trump can flaunt his inexperience and naivete by doing "deals" off the cuff.

In the wake of Israeli Defense Forces killing of at least 60 Palestinian demonstrators who attempted to cross sections of the volatile 32-mile border that separates the Gaza Strip and Israel during mass protests on Monday and Tuesday, Trump's foreign policy has proven to be an unqualified disaster.

It was Trump's widely-criticized decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the city of Jerusalem that aggravated the widespread Palestinian protests that have been taking place along various parts of the Gaza border for over a month.

Back on Friday April 6th, Israeli troops opened fire with live ammunition and rubber bullets on a mass demonstration by Palestinians in the city of Khuza'a in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, killing nine protesters and wounding hundreds.

Among those killed that day were 30-year-old Palestinian journalist Yaser Murtaja (pictured below), who was shot in the stomach despite wearing a blue flak jacket clearly marked "Press" - he later died in the hospital from his wounds.

Mourners carrying the body of Palestinian journalist
Yaser Murtaja, killed in Gaza by Israeli troops in April 

Those demonstrations were known as "The Greart March of Return", a series of planned demonstrations against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in 1948 and the U.S.-backed Israeli economic and political blockade of the Gaza Strip.

A land and naval blockade that has prevented Palestinians from entering or leaving since 2006 when the Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas won legislative elections and the right to govern the region.

Gaza is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet.

To put it into perspective, more than 1.85 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, an area that's only about 21 miles long and between about 3.7 to 7.5 miles wide at various points.

The Gaza Strip is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on its western border, Egypt sits on it's southern border, and Israel surrounds the eastern and northern borders where most of the violence that has dominated media coverage for the past two days, has taken place.

Israeli ships, planes, tanks and soldiers enforce a blockade that's been in place since Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza in 2005 - the blockade ostensibly prevents Iran from sending military weaponry to Hamas.

But the blockade has also choked off shipments of critical supplies, foreign aid and investment, as well as the freedom to travel in and out of Gaza by the almost two million Palestinians who live in a region where there are almost no jobs or economic or educational opportunities to speak of.

Palestinians behind the Gaza Strip blockade wall 

For example, earlier this morning I listened to a BBC Radio interview with a young Palestinian grad student who said that he's been unable to leave Gaza to complete his graduate studies abroad in a foreign college that offered him a scholarship, because the Israeli blockade prevents him from leaving.

The frustration with Israel and the U.S. inside Gaza that has festered over the past decade was already a focal point for anti-American resentment.


To say nothing of a recruiting tool for radicalized Islamic groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

But Trump's decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem was like pouring gasoline on a fire that's been simmering for almost 70 years - it was a decision that previous U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, refused to make because of it's impact on the destabilization of the region.

Regional powers in the Mid-East including Saudi Arabia and Turkey also warned the Trump administration against making such a provocative and totally unnecessary move - even though he has no diplomatic experience and doesn't understand the complex history of the region he did it anyway.

Such ill-advised foreign policy decisions have become the hallmark of Trump's presidency, and the deadly results seen on the Gaza Strip border on Monday are hardly surprising given the current White House's attempts to remove scores of experienced, career foreign service officials from their positions.

Bizarre actions typified by Trump's attempts to gut the State Department's budget by a staggering 25% ($13.1 billion) for the fiscal year 2018 after appointing former-Exxon-Mobil executive Rex Tillerson, a man with no political or diplomatic experience, to head up the agency at a critical time for America' standing in an increasingly complex global landscape.

Tillerson (who privately called Trump "a fucking moron") has since become one the 37 former Trump administration officials and employees who've been fired or resigned since their erratic ex-boss took office in January of 2017.

Exporting Nepotism: Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump
at the U.S. embassy opening in Jerusalem on Monday

The "brain trust" that Trump sent to Jerusalem for the ceremony opening the U.S. embassy is a sad reflection of his erratic clown-car approach to foreign relations.

Front and center were Trump's daughter-wife Ivanka and her embattled husband Jared Kushner.

The son-in-law Trump touted as some kind of boy-wonder who's actually accomplished little during his tenure as a "senior White House adviser" aside from accepting almost $500 million in loans from AGM and Citigroup for his family's real estate company.


Loans which were secured only AFTER Kushner met inside the White House with reps from both companies - sparking a federal ethics investigation that is ongoing.

And remember, Kushner is the guy who lied so many times on his federal disclosure forms about meetings he held with foreigners while he was acting as a member of the Trump campaign that his security clearance was revoked - essentially neutering him in terms of the White House power structure.

Look at the picture above.

The fact that Kushner is sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the embassy ceremony would almost be laughable, save for the fact that as the photo was being taken, hundreds of Palestinian protesters were being wounded and over 58 killed less than a hundred miles away.

Given the media reports back in February that a 12-month investigation by Israeli police revealed that Netanyahu had accepted hundreds of thousands in bribes and recommended that he be charged with breach of trust and fraud, in the world of "Trump logic" it's actually not surprising that a right-wing war-hawk with questionable personal finances is sitting next to Jared and Ivanka.

Ivanka takes a selfie as Palestinians
are shot at the Gaza border

Trump himself knew the decision to open the embassy would result in violence that would be widely condemned by the international community (which it was) so he was too chickenshit to bother to show up for the ceremony himself.

Instead he dispatched his disgraced son-in-law and ethically-challenged daughter for a photo op with a corrupt Israeli prime minister who praised IDF forces for gunning down unarmed Palestinian protesters.

And what was Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin doing there anyway? Did Trump just throw him in there to lend the whole affair some credibility?

Check out this People.com article about how Jared and Ivanka are getting ripped on social media for attending the ceremony and celebrating in front of cameras while Palestinians were being slaughtered.

Like Trump's foreign policy, it makes very little sense, but that's of little consequence to a man who continues to foist his unqualified relatives upon the American public in an effort to use the presidency to enrich the finances and influence of his own family.

With the Syrian conflict getting trickier and more violent, about the last thing Palestinians stuck in limbo in the Gaza Strip needed was Trump's chaotic leadership style or the destabilization of the already-fragile Palestinian - Israeli regional conflict by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

But for the $30 million donated by casino magnate and Republican rainmaker Sheldon Adelson to the GOP for the upcoming midterm elections, Trump was willing to do just about anything.

Even if dozens of Palestinians were killed and more than 2,700 wounded.

So much for draining that swamp.

The Zombie Meets Political Reality

'Zombies, Vampires and Republicans' is not the name of a low-budget summer horror movie.

Though I freely confess that I would pay to go see that based on the title alone.

Actually that was the title of the esteemed Princeton University economist Paul Krugman's op-ed in the New York Times last Monday.

One that was both timely and insightful given the current political climate.

It offered his usual mix of progressive-tinged wit, wonky economic insight for the common man, and sharp political insight; it was published on June 19th, the eve of one of the most anticipated special Congressional election in modern history (we'll come back to that in a minute).

Krugman's op-ed also offers insight into today's decision by Senate Majority Leader McConnell to delay a vote on the Republican healthcare bill after at least six Republicans came out against it in the wake of yesterday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of this draconian piece of legislation showed that it would strip well over 22 million Americans of their healthcare by 2020, drastically increase healthcare premiums and gut Medicaid like a fish.

When Krugman uses the term 'Zombie', he's not talking about the fictional flesh-eating humanoids popularized in films like Night of the Living Dead or TV shows like AMC's The Walking Dead.

Krugman uses the word zombie to describe the derisive inside-the-Beltway term for "policy ideas that should have been abandoned long ago in the face of evidence and experience, but just keep shambling along."

The Senate's version of the healthcare bill, which was famously negotiated in total secrecy away from the sunlight of public scrutiny (by actual vampires apparently), is a prime example of a zombie.

Home for the holidays: Sen. Mitch McConnell

It's not a healthcare bill at all.

It's a massive tax cut for the wealthiest 1% that redistributes hundreds of billions of dollars from bedrock social safety net programs like Medicaid in order to lavish people who are already loaded with more cash.

Republicans figured they could slip it past the white working class base that elected Trump.


They figured that the Obama-fear-hatred the GOP base cling to like well-worn blankies would serve as sort of a political smokescreen and distract decent working class folk while they slapped a 'Repeal Obamacare!' sign on a tax break for the wealthy.

But unfortunately for Republican politicians and Trump, Obama isn't the president anymore.

Now that the levers of power in Washington in the House, Senate and White House are all controlled by Republicans, all the irrational disinformation about the Affordable Care Act and election campaign hysteria generated around conservative rallying cries to repeal Obamacare just don't have as much political oomph as they used to.

Now that millions of veterans, working and middle class people over 50 and people who work jobs that don't offer healthcare, people who used to fall through the cracks of the healthcare net in America, realize that the Affordable Care Act guarantees them access to healthcare - a majority of people don't want it repealed.  

The Republican healthcare zombie ran smack into the harsh political reality that the GOP just doesn't persuade the mainstream on issues anymore, because their policies don't actually do anything for them (the working class white base) which is why voter suppression and gerrymandering is how the GOP stays in power these days.

With a little help from the Russians of course.

All roads lead to Rome for Republicans, and Rome means tax cuts for the rich, the Senate bill was exposed for that even though they tried to craft it in secret.

Capitol Police escort a disabled protester from
Sen. McConnell's office last week

What's interesting to me is that McConnell could only lose two votes from his own party to get his zombie passed and six Republican Senators came out against it - rumors are that even more opposed it but stayed silent.

One would have thought McConnell would have gotten the message last week when cringe-worthy
video of Capitol Police hauling away disabled people in wheelchairs who showed up at McConnell's Senate office to protest the bill went viral.

But no, he was unmoved by such emotional displays by people who will be decimated by draconian cuts to Medicaid.

McConnell thought he could get the votes to ram it past in time for Senators to go home for their hardly-deserved July 4th break.

But the CBO score revealed the truth, and all the Obama-bashing in the world isn't enough to hide the fact that 22 million people are going to lose their access to healthcare.

The zombie met political reality today and McConnell was forced to delay the vote while Senators go back to meet to see what kind of compromises they can make to get the votes needed to pass it.

But Republican Senators from states like Kansas, Maine, Ohio and West Virginia realize that the 2018 midterm elections are on the horizon - they know what slashing Medicaid will do to their older constituents and to their chances for re-election.

To the casual political observer glancing at the calendar, the 2018 midterm elections might seem a long ways off - but they're really not.

The special election last Tuesday for Georgia's hotly contested 6th Congressional District between Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel made that quite clear.

House candidate Jon Ossoff (D-GA) waves during
his concession speech last week

The tens of millions of dollars, intense national focus and social media reach that both the Democratic and Republican parties poured into this race made it the most expensive in American history.

While there have been four different special Congressional elections already (all won by Republicans), the race in the Georgia 6th is widely seen as the first real opening salvo in the upcoming national political war for Congress.

An astounding $59 million was collectively spent on this race by both political parties.


And the campaign contributions speak to the candidates themselves.

The bulk of Karen Handel's donations came from large Republican Political Action Committees (PAC's) largely funded by the big conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers, the reclusive Trump-backing hedge fund gazillionaire Robert Mercer, or the shadowy casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, these 1%'ers can now legally pour virtually limitless amounts of anonymous cash into elections, like a gushing fire hose shoved through the broken window of a house.

That unprecedented flood of cash, combined with the despicable kinds of Republican voter suppression tactics that Karen Handel herself specialized in when she served as Georgia's secretary of state from 2007 - 2010 (read Ari Berman's June 19th article on Handel in The Nation), helped Republicans keep this seat Red.

But the Georgia 6th has been Republican since before Ossoff, a former Congressional staffer and documentary film maker, was even born, the district of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a place where Democrats used to lose by a margin of 20 points.

Karen Handel is sworn into office: a reward for her
years of Republican voter-suppression tactics in GA

With the help of over $24 million raised from 200,000 different small campaign contributions from individual donors all over the country (like me) and an additional $8 million from the Democratic Party, Ossoff did something very few in the DNC expected him to do - he made the race competitive.

He forced Republicans who thought this would be an easy victory, to funnel tens of millions from their Big Donor war chest into this one race.



Ossoff didn't just compete, he almost won.

And it wasn't some 20-point political blowout, when the votes of all 259,488 people who cast ballots were finally tallied up in the early morning hours of last Wednesday, Ossoff garnered 48.1% of the vote to Handel's 51.9%.

He lost by just 9,702 votes by rallying the local Democratic base and doing what the Democratic Party used to be known for - Standing up for the little guy.

He made issues like the economy, defending Medicare and Medicaid, protecting civil liberties, and defending women's health issues and supporting Planned Parenthood and  fighting voter suppression cornerstones of his campaign - so he may not have won the seat.

But he set the stage for the 2018 midterm elections by showing that standing firm on a solid progressive platform can rally the Democratic base - and even persuade some disenchanted Republicans to switch sides as well.

Will that be enough to overcome nationwide Republican voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering of political districts to dilute Democratic and progressive voting blocs?

Organizations like Flippable, a group comprised of former Hillary Clinton staffers determined to use complex political analysis to challenge Republicans at the state level with small targeted donations, think so.

Ossoff winning 48.1% of the Georgia 6th District and a majority of Americans rejecting the Republican healthcare bill is enough to hang the hat of hope on - and maybe enough to stop the zombie in it's tracks in 2018.

The Republican's White Elephant

After last night's Republican presidential debate, which seemed more like televised gladiatorial combat than an open exchange of ideas, my only question to the Republican party is this:

Why did it take so long for someone to stand up and confront front-runner Donald Trump?

Is it too late for Rubio at this point?


For month's, the country and the world have watched in horror as Trump has energized what's been a fairly marginalized and disenfranchised segment of the Republican voter base with inflammatory language laced with a toxic mix of anti-immigrant xenophobia, racism and delusional pie-in-the-sky campaign promises that have nothing to do with a coherent political strategy for governance.

The Republican brand was already bruised and tarnished from ten years of the GOP's having relinquished their party to the narrow self-interests of zealot anti-tax, anti-government libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.

Right-wing oligarchs who bankrolled the Tea Party with the help of  Fox News and saddled us with ideologically unhinged politicians like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz.

Which makes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's announcement today that he's endorsing Trump all the more bizarre.

All ahead full! Chris Christie endorses The Donald?

Christie left the Garden State on his quest for glory as a fairly moderate Republican who appealed to Democratic voters over a year ago and came back, well, like this.

Just weeks ago on the campaign trail Christie was vilifying Trump as the embodiment of evil.

As the old saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows; Christie backing Trump is like learning Vito Corleone is teaming up with Don Barzini.

Christie will soon be back in the media headlines with the approach of the Bridgegate trial, so maybe he needs all the friends he can get - even a candidate whose two main campaign promises seem to be building a really big wall and assuring Americans "there'll be so much winning"- if he's elected president, whatever that means...

On behalf of many reasonable-minded New Jersey-folk, we're as confused as you are about this.

Plus we have two more years of him as governor. (Sigh)

Thanks in part to Trump's unhinged political campaign, the GOP's public perception has sunk so low even conservative South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told an audience gathered at a dinner last night that "My party has gone batshit crazy."

The day before Graham made that comment, former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke took aim at the ethnicity and race of Cuban-American GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and African-American candidate Ben Carson when he told the audience of his radio show:

"Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage." 

These people.

That could be the new motto for the Republican party. There's little doubt that "these people" is a hardly-secret codeword meant to characterize anyone who isn't conservative, Christian and white.

White supremacist David Duke

As David Duke urged the white nationalist listeners of his radio show on Wednesday:

"...call Donald Trump's headquarters, volunteer...Go in there, you're gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have."

And therein lies the dilemma of the great white elephant currently crowding the roomful of increasingly nervous Republicans.



Nudging it with a stick isn't going to make it leave.

It won't leave nicely if asked.

Shooting it would be excessive.

But as the presidential campaign season comes closer to the Republicans having to choose a candidate, they can no longer pretend the stench of that elephant isn't making the room unbearable to be in.

It's Viva Las Vegas For GOP Contenders & Ken Detzner Rides Again

Voter purge-obsessed Florida Sec of State Ken Detzner

March may be coming to a rain-soaked close here by the banks of the Delaware River but if you harbored any doubts about Republican focus on the upcoming fall mid-term elections, kiss 'em goodbye.

Between the Supreme Court challenge by Hobby Lobby to undermine the contraceptive portions of the Affordable Health Care Act, ongoing Republican efforts to prevent eligible US citizens from voting in the November Congressional elections and a massive fund-raising campaign, the GOP is in game mode and all bets are off.

They're trying to hold onto their majority in the House and six is the magic number for them to re-gain the Senate. According to the slew of e-mails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee clogging my overburdened in-box, a single GOP fundraiser last week raised a staggering $15.1 million.

Not a bad take for one nights work. Evidently the fiery but frequently senseless right-wing rhetoric of the recent CPAC conference motivated Republicans to whip out their checkbooks.

Remember when presidential candidates used to actually court the approval of American voters?

Last week a steady stream of potential GOP presidential candidates made the pilgrimage out to Las Vegas to seek the blessing (and campaign contributions) of global casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

You remember Sheldon right? After pouring $19 million of his almost $37 billion fortune to prop up Newt Gingrich's hopeless snoozer of a 2012 presidential campaign, Adelson then backed Mitt Romney once Newt crapped out. (And Sheldon made his fortune in gambling?)

Even walking-political liability Chris Christie is out there trying to make his case. He's happy to get the hell out of New Jersey for a few days and is apparently undeterred by the fact that pricey attorney/fixer Randy Mastro's NJ tax payer-funded whitewash "investigation" (which exonerated hizzoner despite not interviewing Bridget Kelly or David Samson) is almost universally viewed as a total sham by both the public and press.

Governor Christie seems to be laboring under the delusion that convincing David Samson to "retire" from his post at the head of the monumentally corrupt Port Authority will quench the thirst of the restless hordes calling for the truth about Bridge-Gate.

But wooing the backing of big GOP donors in Vegas may be the least of Christie's host of problems.

He's also got some 'splainin' to do to the members of the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting out there in Vegas regarding those anti-Semitic comments made by the Gov's own staffers about the GW Bridge traffic snarl in front of Rabbi Mendy Carlebach's house. Adelson is RJC's largest financial backer as well as a board member. Oops.

Julie Bykowicz wrote an excellent summary of the GOP players out in the desert seeking Sheldon's blessing on Bloomberg.com; check it out.

Finally, based on the ongoing Republican obsession to prevent US citizens from voting in essential swing states, one might almost be led to believe the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a Sith lord on their payroll who can use the dark side of The Force to manipulate the minds of Republican secretaries of state like Ohio's notorious vote suppressor Jon Husted and Florida's vote suppressing zealot Ken Detzner (pictured above), to believe in a mythical plot of wide-spread voter fraud.

Data from organizations like the Department of Justice demonstrates that actual cases of voter fraud in the United States are so numerically infrequent (.00000013 out of 197 million votes cast in 2006) as to make it make it almost nonexistent.

But that hasn't deterred groups like True the Vote from using fabricated statistics and rhetoric-filled fear-mongering to support arcane voter ID laws, limit polling stations in districts that skew Democratic, and curtailing voting hours that make it easier for people who work to vote.

Republicans simply haven't been able to sell a simple majority of Americans to back GOP their legislative initiatives or presidential candidates in years, so men like Husted and Detzner have taken on the dirty work; doing everything in their power to try and systematically purge Democratic voters from the election rolls.

The state of Florida recently put the halt on yet another voter purge list filled with thousands of names the Republican party wants to remove the voter rolls led by the voter suppression ideologue, Detzner; the same guy who in 2011 ordered local Florida election districts to send out letters to thousands of voters informing them they were "non-citizens" and did not have the right to vote.

It turned out the purge list was filled with errors and most of the people were actually citizens who were eligible to vote. According to ThinkProgress.org a letter was even sent to a 91 year-old WWII veteran. The article by Josh Israel reports Detzner recently tried yet again to purge more voters but was once again shut down by the state because of inaccuracies and mistakes in the list.

It's a sad state of affairs when a political party simply stops trying to sway voters with new ideas and instead pours millions of dollars into widespread efforts to illegally strip people who won't vote for them of their most basic Constitutional right.

Or perhaps, Republicans are just terrified of what conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter recently termed the "browning of America"? Annie get your gun!!

And Republicans like John McCain are up in arms and outraged about Putin annexing Crimea?

Seems to me the GOP has it's own kind of Anschluss going on right here in America, only instead of guns and bogus diplomacy, they're using false voter fraud accusations to manipulate the electorate in a devious effort to assume further control over state legislatures, the House of Representatives and United States Senate.