Kris Kobach's Ministry of Voter Suppression

Voter suppression czar, Republican Kris Kobach

In the cruel pantheon of the modern American Republican Party ideology, aside from a fetish-like obsession with lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest 1%, no idol is more worshiped than the suppression of the right to vote.

Content to abandon their supposed allegiance to Constitutional principles, many Republicans have now gone full tilt and embarked upon a crusade to aggressively block access to the ballot box on a nationwide scale.

No that long ago these reprehensible voter suppression tactics were generally engineered from the state level in those states with majority-Republican state legislatures and Republican governors mostly working off of scripts, media talking points and model legislation courtesy of our old friends at the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC).

Check out the Center for Media and Democracy's 'ALEC Exposed' Website to learn more about how ALEC helped Republican politicians lay the groundwork for massive voter suppression by enacting ludicrous, overly-burdensome voter ID laws in at least 37 different states following the 2010 mid-term elections.

To most Americans it's an affront to the basic principles of democracy, but as you've likely heard over the past week couple weeks, Republican efforts to target the voter rolls of the entire nation are now being orchestrated from the federal level - directly from the Trump administration.

As Madeline Conway reported yesterday in an article for Politico.com, written requests from the Presidential Advisory Commission On Election Integrity for individual states to provide detailed information including voter's full names, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, party affiliation, voting history since 2006, and information on felonies and military status, were met with widespread outrage - and not just from traditionally blue states either.

Mississippi Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann

After reviewing a copy of the letter sent from Trump' widely-panned commission, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said his response would be:

"They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." 

And he's a Republican from Mississippi.

As Chris Cillizza reported for CNN yesterday, at least 45 states have already refused to provide at least some of the information to the commission.


Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe got to the heart of the matter when he said in a statement:

"This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November. At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump's alternative election facts, and at worse is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression."
 
The blowback for the Trump administration's "voter integrity commission" and it's chief architect Kris Kobach has been swift, but what's really bizarre are their attempts to justify and defend it.

Despite serious pushback from dozens of secretaries of state and governors, Kobach simplistically dismissed the media's efforts to question the commission's motives "fake news."

And predictably, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that anyone who doesn't comply has something to hide.

What else can you expect from Republicans who know they can no longer win the mainstream American vote based on the issues?

Whether it's gerrymandering of political districts or voter suppression, they must cheat to win.

What real voter fraud looks like courtesy of Crosscheck

What's particularly troubling is that if you take some time and go back and read Greg Palast's meticulously-researched article "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters" published in Rolling Stone back in August of 2016 in the lead-up to the November elections, Trump's outrageous information request is really nothing more than a souped-up version of Kris Kobach's widely-condemned voter data collection system known as Crosscheck.

As Palast noted, based on the algorithms and search parameters within the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program as it's formally known, the program "disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters" by incorrectly listing certain ethnic-sounding last names as inherently suspicious.

Click the link above and read some of the flagrant ways in which thousands of mostly-minority Americans were improperly and unfairly "flagged" by Crosscheck and denied the right to vote.

It's truly Third-World authoritarian stuff, and this big data request by Trump's "commission" (ostensibly headed up by Kobach) is nothing more than an attempt to create a "Crosscheck 2.0" in time for the 2018 mid-term elections.

If you missed it, check out Ari Berman's profile of Kobach that was published in the New York Times Magazine back on June 13th.

Kobach is a genuinely dangerous individual, heading up a hyper-partisan "voter integrity commission made up of a cast right-wing zealots summoned up from the putrid depths of authoritarian bigotry.

Voter suppression zealot Hans Von Spakovsky

No member of Trump's "commission" embodies that more than the widely-reviled Hans Von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission who oversaw the division of the Justice Department that monitored voting rights during the Bush administration.

If there is a Creature From the Black Lagoon of Republican voter suppression, it's this guy.

His mission in life is clear:

Use arcane misinterpretation of data, racist and xenophobic fear-mongering and the flagrant manipulation of existing federal and state laws to prevent as many people of color, the elderly, students, legal immigrants and people with foreign-sounding names from participating in the voting process as possible.

If you're not familiar with this guy, take some time to read Leon Neyfakh's recent feature on Von Spakovsky published on Slate.com titled, "The Dark Prince Of Voter Fraud Alarmism Is Joining the Trump Administration".

Kris Kobach may be the evangelist of Republican voter suppression in America but Hans Von Spakovsky is arguably the high priest - a man who has literally spent years trying to make it harder for non-white people to vote in the name of mass voter fraud that simply does not exist.

Trump is far too self-obsessed, uninformed and shallow to realize the degree to which Kobach and Von Spakovsky are true believers in the Ministry of Voter Suppression.

He embraces them and their so-called commission only because he thinks it will help legitimize his continuing delusional fiction that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton because 3 to 5 million illegal aliens cast votes in the 2016 presidential election.

Make no mistake, men like Kobach and Von Spakovsky need Trump too in order to lend an air of credibility to the dark and arcane arts they practice - Trump's concocted unproven lies about fictional "busloads" of illegal aliens costing him the popular vote in 2016 are right up their alley.

And their "presence" in the White House under the guise of a presidential advisory board is indeed a boon to the likes of Trump policy advisors like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller - and proof positive that a cabal of white nationalists eager to create a 21st century version of Apartheid in America now runs the presidency.

Sheriff Clarke, Terrill Thomas & Authoritarian Creep

Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke

Oxford defines authoritarian as: (adjective) 1. Favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority. 2. Tyrannical or domineering.

So let's hope that the troubling rumor reported by Politico last Friday, that the controversial Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke will soon be tapped for a position at the Department of Homeland Security, turns out not to be true.


If it does turn out to be true, then this nation will have stepped dangerously closer to the precipice of a dark authoritarian vision for this nation.

The really scary hyper-conservative version of America envisioned by Donald Trump, his attorney general Jeff Sessions and the cabal of right-wing extremist bigots like Stephen Bannon, Stephen Miller and Michael Anton that now infect the White House like a dangerous ideological virus.  

Like a lot of Americans who are somewhat familiar with David Clarke's words and actions, I don't have anything against him personally, but my sense is that members of law enforcement must keep their personal politics and ideology separate from their duty to enforce the laws they are sworn to protect and uphold.

In the same vein as the recently fired Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona, Clarke views his position as sheriff as a platform to spread his own personal right-wing ideology; he's a regular guest on Fox News, at National Rifle Association conventions and on various right-wing radio programs.

And frankly speaking, this guy is totally off his rocker - and I'm not even talking about his penchant for dressing up like a cowboy.

Terrill Thomas at his son's HS graduation

Clarke, his department and employees of the Milwaukee County Jail are currently under fire for the April 24, 2016 death of 38-year-old Terrill Thomas.

As the New York Times reported, last week the Milwaukee County DA's office was conducting an inquest into Thomas' death after he died of dehydration after corrections officers turned off the water to his cell.

Testimony by investigators, inmates and corrections personnel will determine if criminal charges will be filed.

Inmates claim that Thomas, who suffered from bipolar disorder, could be heard begging for water and records show that he went without water for at least seven days before he died of dehydration.

That's torture folks, plain and simple.

He was brought there after being arrested for a shooting inside a casino, and initially ripped up a mattress to try and flood his own cell by clogging the toilet.

Because he was having a bipolar episode when corrections officers later placed him in a solitary confinement cell with no mattress, blanket or pillow, according to the New York Times, Erik Heipt, a lawyer retained by Thomas' family, Thomas "was not operating in a world of reality."

Once in solitary confinement, he had no access to medication to help him think and speak clearly, so he had no ability to ask for help, as Heipt told the Times, "They treated his mental illness as a behavioral problem and disciplined him."

According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article published last Thursday by Jacob Carpenter and Dave Umhoefer, a corrections lieutenant named Kashka Meadors testified under oath that she ordered the water to Thomas' cell shut off after he'd flooded a previous cell.

She claimed it was only supposed to be a temporary measure, but the water remained off for seven days and remarkably, no corrections personnel entered the cell to provide him with water to drink.

As the Times reported, Thomas was given a disgusting "food product" mashup that comes in the form of an unappetizing block called "Nutraloaf" which is given to some prisoners in America and Canada as punishment, watch people try to eat it.

But Thomas refused to eat it, and was given no water with the Nutraloaf and he subsequently lost at least 30 pounds - last week the medical examiner who ruled his death a homicide testified that Thomas lost 10% of his body weight while in custody.

But still the water in his cell was not turned on.

Corrections Lt. Kashka Meadors

Meadors testified that:

"I was under the impression that it was taken care of, and as well, I briefed my supervisor."

As the Journal Sentinel article reports, last week's testimony by corrections officers reveals what looks increasingly like a coverup.

For example, while footage of the incident was captured on videotape, and a captain and at least one other officer viewed it, corrections personnel apparently failed to properly download the tape.

So the section showing the incident is now gone.


Terrill Thomas was responsible for shooting a weapon in a public place, and by all rights should have faced charges for that in a court of law, but his reprehensible treatment at the hands of corrections officers is reflective of the kind of open contempt that David Clarke has for inmates in general.

As the Huffington Post reported last November, "At least four people, including a newborn baby, have died at the Milwaukee County Jail since April. (2016)"

The idea of Clarke going to Washington, D.C. to serve DHS's Office of Partnership and Engagement as an assistant secretary acting as the liaison between Trump administration and local law enforcement around the U.S. at a time when relations between many local communities and police is so fragile, is preposterous and scary.

He's been a frequent critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, calling them "sub-human creeps" and spreading bogus rumors that the group is aligned with ISIS.

Clarke called President Obama a "Marxist" on Twitter, even though he himself travelled to Russia on a trip partially paid for by a Russia-linked group called 'The Right to Bear Arms' with a delegation from the NRA to meet with Dimitry Rogozin, a deputy foreign minister under sanction by the U.S. government.

He publicly called former attorney general Eric holder an "asshole", and during an appearance on nut-bag conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' radio show he warned of a "second American Revolution" while fanning the flames of loony right-wing theories about the Obama administration wanting to take away people's guns.

Cowboy fetish? Clarke riding in a parade in 2103

Clarke has been in a longstanding feud with county executives over budget issues, and his overly confrontational approach to dealing with his enemies probably appeals to Trump.

Back in 2013, after  Clarke got upset over proposed budget cuts to the sheriff's department, as NPR reported, he aired PSA radio spots calling for local residents to arm themselves and warned that calling 911 was no longer a safe option.

Among other things he told members of the Milwaukee community:

"Once the wolf is at the door, once the intruder is inside your home, once you're on the street and someone sticks a gun in your face to take your car or your wallet, you don't have the option of calling 911."

A member of law enforcement who urges citizens not to call 911 to report emergencies has absolutely no business working in the federal government in a capacity where he would be advising local law enforcement on policy, training or tactics.

This is America, and Clarke has the right to say and think whatever he wants, but it's wrong for him to use his position as a civil servant to do it.

From my perspective, I find his willingness to be used as a complacent lackey by conservative right-wing media to legitimize quasi-racist beliefs in order to placate his massive ego to be somewhat pathetic.

As Gwen Moore, the Congresswoman who represents Sheriff Clarke's district observed back in 2015 in an op-ed on Urban Milwaukee, right-wing media outlets like Fox News use Clarke in part because they need "a black sheriff to give voice to the dog-whistle narratives its anchors dare not vocalize themselves."

If the Trump administration is looking to put this man into the Department of Homeland Security as an assistant secretary in the Office of Partnership and Engagement, you can be sure the bigots who advise Trump on domestic policy are eager to use him in the same capacity.

After all, the only black folks an American racist likes are those willing to lend a cloak of legitimacy to divisive theories based on ignorance that demean and dehumanize people of color.

With his overly-authoritarian approach to law enforcement, Sheriff David A. Clarke has demonstrated an ability and willingness to do just that.

Is Right-Wing Media Turning on Trump?

Jared Kushner & Stephen Bannon [Getty Images] 

From a political standpoint, my sense of humor is admittedly a bit tilted, so it's been amusing to watch the Republican Party's own chickens come home to roost this week.

But the reasons behind said roosting are no laughing matter.

The New York Times' Jeremy W. Peters and Maggie Haberman were two of the many political observers who reported on the internal rift between Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner.

With his erratic tweets, lies, hypocrisy and ethical quagmires, it's no secret that Donald Trump is the maker of his own bed.

No one forces him make outlandish statements unsupported by fact, send out snippets of incomprehensible nonsense to his Twitter followers in the middle of the night without consulting his own advisers and policy makers, or conduct himself like an amateurish diplomatic lout with no tact or understanding of the delicate subtleties of international relations.

But as his approval ratings plummet to historic lows and he struggles to right the chaotic ship that is his presidency, the focus of his ire has increasingly turned upon his top advisers.

To be fair to Trump, internal divisions among senior White House advisers are not unique to his administration, but ultimately he's the one who bears responsibility for the controversy that's dogged the two advisers who arguably hold the most influence over him - Bannon and Kushner.

Bannon, an unapologetic white nationalist and xenophobe with direct links to Neo-Nazi's who is the architect of the alt-right, is perhaps one of the most divisive White House advisers in modern history.

He's the brainchild of much of the virulent anti-immigrant hysteria and toxic racial divisiveness that has characterized the Trump campaign, and carried over into the Trump White House.

Religious wingnut Dave Daubenmire

By all accounts it was Bannon who was responsible for pushing the ill-advised and poorly planned executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from coming to the United States.

Even Republicans are growing concerned that Bannon's extremist worldview poses a danger to American foreign policy because of the influence he holds over Trump.

This morning Jeremy W. Peters wrote a front-page story for the New York Times about Bannon being influenced by the 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning", which theorizes America heading towards a catastrophic socioeconomic breakdown.

But recently the toxic intolerance that Bannon peddles in has come back to haunt the White House in the form of anti-Semitic attacks on Jared Kushner in response to the public feud between the two advisers.

For example, as Right Wing Watch reported, last Friday the "Religious Right" zealot Dave Daubenmire used a Webcast from a McDonald's in a remote Kentucky town to take the anti-Semitic attacks on Kushner to a whole new level.

The noted evangelical Christian extremist fanned the flame of right-wing conspiracy theorists that Israel drives American foreign policy by blaming the decision to fire 59 cruise missiles on Syria on the fact that Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump are both Jewish, telling his audience:

"Why is it in America today, the only group that you cannot criticize are the Jews? Everything we do is about Israel. The Jews are lost. Donald Trump's number one adviser, from what I understand, is his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Think Jared Kushner has got the Holy Spirit? No. Why? Jared Kushner is a Jew. He's a Jew. Donald Trump's daughter - what's her name? Ilanka? Ivanka? Ivanka - she converted to Judaism, alright? So Donald Trump has around him...those who love Israel."      

Are Daubenmire's views mainstream? Probably not.

But they do reflect the tone of some of the increasing criticism leveled at Kushner from within conservative circles worried that the wealthy scion of a prominent New York City real estate family whose vast holdings around the globe create an unprecedented ethical conflict of interest given his influence on domestic and foreign policy in the White House.

Will Bannon (next to lamp) continue to have a
seat at the table?

As Alyson Chadwick reported in an article posted on DirectExpose.com on Saturday, Bannon is still hugely popular with the alt-right and right-wing media.

While the much younger Kushner is more of a centrist moderate eager to reign his erratic father-in-law back from some the extremist views and polarizing positions he's taken.

Kushner is smart enough to know how reprehensible Bannon's views are.


As Dave Daubenmire's disturbing quote above demonstrates, many right-wing media figures have begun to worry that Kushner's being related to Trump, in addition to his having met with Russian political and business leaders in December (which Congress will soon grill him about) poses a risk for the Trump presidency.

After all, as Chadwick reported in her article, Bannon was supposedly against the decision to greenlight the attack on Syria while Kushner supported it; a position that likely played some part in Trump's decision to remove Bannon from the National Security Council last week.

The political danger for Trump is that Bannon was instrumental to his winning the support of hard right and fringe conservatives who helped propel 45 into the White House - and as the recent failure of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act demonstrated, hard-line members of the far right Congressional Freedom Caucus have shown that they will oppose the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

But it also exposes the danger of Trump having tapped both his son-in-law and daughter as senior advisers, if it comes down to making staff changes as is rumored, will he be able to do what's best for his presidency?

Or will his notorious loyalty to his family blind him to the tough decisions that presidents must inevitably make?



With Congress home on spring break, Republicans are preparing to defend their House and Senate majorities in the upcoming 2018 elections with a public that's shown little tolerance for their domestic agenda, and a historically-unpopular president in office.

A president who could find himself, and his agenda, shackled by the extremist views that he himself cultivated and encouraged in order to get himself elected.

An unpleasant chicken that's come home to roost at a White House that wants nothing to do with it.

Publicly at least.

Chad Robertson, The DOJ's "Pull Back" & Trump's Blind Eye

Shot in the back: Chad Robertson with his family

With each day, it seems as if the Republican politicians frantically tugging at the strings of power in Washington are turning the clock backwards to a darker place.

Attorney general Jeff Sessions has already indicated that the Justice Department under the Trump administration will "pull back" on using the power of the federal government to hold members of law enforcement responsible for the unjustified killing of innocent unarmed U.S. citizens.

While that is reflective of Session's history as an opponent of civil rights activists and voting rights (for people of color and immigrants), it certainly doesn't bode well for Chad Roberston's family to obtain justice from the legal system.

Amidst all the confusing clutter of mainstream media attention focused upon America's resident Deporter-in-Chief over the past few weeks, the deadly shooting of Chad Robertson by Amtrak police in Chicago did not garner the level of media attention it probably merited.

You certainly haven't heard Sean Spicer whining about "under reporting" over THAT particular case in any of his contentious, invitation-only White House briefings lately.

(But it's a safe bet that Spicey won't be complaining about the media "under reporting" tonight's bombshell Washington Post story about records showing Sessions lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings about his having been in contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential race...)

Any number of local Chicago and midwestern media outlets ran the AP text of the story about Robertson's death, but it felt like the questionable circumstances warranted more extensive mainstream media attention given the ongoing epidemic of members of law enforcement making the decision to shoot at unarmed African-American and Hispanic men for no justifiable reason.

Sadly, Robertson's death was yet another case of a member of law enforcement making a deadly decision to fire a handgun at a person based on a false allegation of the victim having a weapon that never actually existed.

Amtrak transit officer LaRoyce Tankson

According to an article posted two weeks ago on the Chicago Sun-Times Website, Robertson, 25, and two travelling companions were on a one-hour layover stop at Chicago's Union Station during a February 8th Megabus trip from Memphis to Robertson's home town of Minneapolis.

As the three of them were walking around inside Union Station, they were approached in what the Robertson family attorney Douglas Hopson called an "aggressive" manner by two Amtrak transit officers.

Robertson and his friends then exited Union Station to walk to a nearby restaurant to get something to eat.

When the two Amtrak transit officers followed the three men to the restaurant, they continued to harass the three passengers and demanded to search them - when Robertson, who feared for his life, began to run away at about 8:45pm, officer LaRoyce Tankson dropped to one knee and fired a shot and missed.

He fired a second shot that struck Robertson in the back, the bullet lodged in his spine and left the father of two a quadriplegic.

He died in the hospital seven days later.

Tankson was subsequently charged with first-degree murder by Cook County prosecutors and was held on $250,000 bail - but he was released pending a March 9th court appearance.

Now Tankson's attorney claims Robertson and his two friends were confronted by Tankson and his partner for smoking some marijuana in public - and a small amount was found on him after he was shot.

But does that really justify shooting the guy in the back while he was running away?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

But remarkably, yesterday, as the New York Times reported, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice would begin to pull back from efforts to monitor police departments and officers accused of the excessive use of deadly force.  

Despite the Justice Department's own report that identified racially biased policing as widespread and systematic in Chicago.


And despite unarmed 25-year-old Chad Robertson having been shot in the back by a federal transit officer while running away less than a month ago, Sessions, now the nation's top law enforcement official, reasons that:

"We need (to), so far as we can, in my view, help police departments get better, not diminish their effectiveness."

So in Sessions' mind, decreasing Justice Department scrutiny of overt cases of unarmed people being shot by police is the way to help them "get better"?

Does that make sense to you?

In the hermetically-sealed ideological bubble of Trump-world, that kind of asinine thinking, codified by the unapologetically white supremacist worldview held by the White House's top domestic policy advisers including Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller, it does makes sense.

In the real world it doesn't.

Jewish tombstones overturned in Philadelphia [Getty]

In the real world that kind of thinking essentially condones criminal conduct by some members of law enforcement.

And worse, it also reassures them that if they "make a mistake" and shoot and kill an unarmed person for no real reason at all, the Department of Justice under Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions won't hold them accountable for their actions.

Sound absurd?

It is, but it's part of the Republican vision for the American landscape.

And remember folks, that's the approach to police reform of a president who yesterday actually had the gall to publicly insinuate that the horrifying wave of recent bomb threats to Jewish schools and community centers, and the heinous and offensive desecration of Jewish cemeteries were the fault of Trump's "opponents".

Not the cowardly devotees of Breitbart News who openly play footsies with anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs like some kind of sick religion.

Nope. The delusional ass-clown who currently occupies the Oval Office would have you believe that his "opponents" were the ones who entered a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia the other night and spent hours toppling over hundreds of tombstones.

 The same president who last night asked the members of Congress and the American people to "embrace this renewal of the American spirit." willfully turns a blind eye to the anti-Semitism his own campaign brought out of the shadows.

Repulsive acts of hate that are taking place around the country in front of our own eyes.

Sadly, we can also expect the current attorney general to turn a blind eye towards the epidemic of racially biased policing in America which violently and unfairly condemned Chad Robertson to the unfortunate ranks of The Counted.

Poisonous Illusions In the White House

Creepy fascist thinker Julius Evola

My stomach is still hurting from laughing at Melissa McCarthy's second outing last night on the opening segment of Saturday Night Live as she once again skewered White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

But Jason Horowitz's enlightening must-read article in this morning's New York Times about senior White House advisor Stephen Bannon being influenced by the fascist Italian thinker Julius Evola was no laughing matter.

As Horowitz's article notes, Evola has influenced 20th century Italian facists, far-right thinkers and modern day European Neo-Nazis with his bizarre mix of pre-Christian theology, white supremacy and 'Traditionalism':

"...a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes that progress and equality are poisonous illusions."


Unfortunately for this nation, Bannon is not the only White House advisor shaping foreign and domestic policy with established ties to Neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

As Michael F. Brown reported in an article posted on ElectronicIntifada.com, a 2007 email from Peter Laufer, a senior professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, shows that current White House advisor Stephen Miller worked closely with alt-right Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer while the two worked together to organize a debate on anti-immigrant policy when they both attended Duke University.

Spencer has become familiar to many as the speaker leading a crowd of white supremacists in a disturbing "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!" chant as audience members gave Nazi salutes during an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C. back in November celebrating 45's election victory.

This morning the White House trotted out Spencer's conservative college homey Stephen Miller on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos where the anti-immigrant ideologue criticized the federal judges who struck down the legality of 45's disastrous ban on Muslims entering the United States.

White House policy advisor Stephen Miller

If you really want to get a sense of the depth and scope of the nationalist anti-immigrant hysteria at the core of 45's domestic agenda, take a few minutes to listen to Miller being interviewed with Stephanopoulos this morning on ABC.

He also tried to justify the current wave of ICE agents forcefully removing illegal immigrants, some of them working parents who've been in the U.S. for years, in an unprecedented wave of deportation.

Those targets include the heartbreaking case of 35-year-old Mexican immigrant Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, which made global headlines last week.

As CNN.com reported, the working mother of two, who snuck into the U.S. illegally 20 years ago and was arrested and convicted by immigration officials in 2008 for using a fake Social Security number, had gone to an immigration center in Phoenix, Arizona (as she'd done regularly for the past eight years) to check in with government officials.

But despite that fact that she complied with the law, this time she was detained and deported back to Mexico within 24 hours.

During his interview on ABC this morning Stephen Miller defended such actions as necessary to national security and called these efforts "magnificent"even though the rollout of 45's immigration plan is almost universally viewed as a disaster.

(Did you hear about the American-born NASA scientist Sidd Bikkannavar being detained by U.S. Customs agents at a Houston airport and being forced to unlock his phone?)

Now I can't speak for everyone, but Ms. Garcia de Rayos' presence here in the U.S. doesn't strike me as threatening anything other than the Republican Party's narrow-minded vision for the cultural fabric of this nation.

Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos being deported 

Some critics immigrants rights advocates point out that this boost in the rapid deportation of illegal immigrants taking place across the U.S. is part of broader strategy by some Republican leaders to channel taxpayer dollars to the private prison contractors who will profit off of the sudden spike in arrests and detentions.

Miller also repeated 45's wildly-ridiculed claims that his proposed Mexican border wall "will pay for itself over and over".

Despite statistics from organizations like the Pew Research Center showing that net illegal immigration from Mexico into the U.S. has declined steadily since the Great Recession in 2009, and estimates that construction costs could cost American taxpayers over $21 billion since the Mexican government is on record as saying there's no way they'll pay for it.

To top all that off, remarkably Miller also had the gall to repeat 45's outrageous unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud in the New Hampshire primaries; and like 45 himself, offered no actual proof.

Predictably, 45 Tweeted his congratulations to Miller for eloquently spreading even more fake news, unproven claims and shaky promises.

One of the disturbing aspects about people like Bannon and Miller advising the the man with no political experience who now occupies the Oval Office is that here in the 21st century, the influence of far right extremist thinkers and those who openly advocate white supremacist ideology have utilized fear, ignorance, lies and misinformation to allow hate and bigotry to infect the highest political office in the land like a virus.

After all the suffering, persecution, horror and death that devastated Europe as a result of the rise and eventual fall of the Third Reich in in Nazi Germany, that dark flame still burns inside the hearts of some here in the US.

Including those who whisper in the ears of the erratic man who was Tweeting his anger over retailer Nordstrom's decision to stop selling his daughter Ivanka's accessories as North Korea was test firing a ballistic missile.

Men who, as Jason Horowitz noted, believe "that progress and equality are poisonous illusions."

Fake Massacres, Smokescreens & MAGA

Kellyanne Conway peddles fabricated facts

Well it's the first Friday of February and we've reached inauguration-plus two weeks.

So how's that whole "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan-thing shaping up?

If repeating fake information and blatantly lying to the press is any measure of the success of this administration then they're doing a bang-up job.

As illustrated by White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway citing a totally fabricated "Bowling Green Massacre" that never actually took place during an MSNBC interview yesterday while trying to justify Trump's much-criticized restriction on Muslims entering the U.S.

Sure it's a total disaster that makes Conway look like an uninformed amateur, but who knows?

The way this clown car is rolling, it may well have been done on purpose just to elicit the kind of media and public reaction that it's garnered - why?

As a carefully-crafted smokescreen to distract public attention from the radical extremist agenda the administration, in cooperation with the Republican House and Senate, are trying to ram down the throats of the American people.

Have you noticed how these sorts of quasi-delusional kinds of outbursts pop up like clockwork?

Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull

I mean Trump's silly phone-feud with the conservative prime minister of Australia?

A Democratic nation that's been a close ally of the United States since the first world war?

I mean come on, really? Australia??

What the hell was that about?

My sense is that this administration's tactic of "lie then retract or deny" is being used to deflect attention from what they're really up to

Which ain't good.

Like the high-chair president's move to begin eliminating the financial regulations President Obama put in place after the catostrophic financial crisis of 2008 - which of course was caused in no small part by the loosening of financial regulations on the banking and financial industries.

(Props to Maureen Dowd for the high-chair president line, I love that.)

So while everyone's getting their panties in a wad about Kellyanne Conway lying about a massacre that never happened, the Republicans are trying to unleash some seriously next-level sneaky shit.

As Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren noted on her Twitter feed yesterday, just as the Republican majority Senate confirmed former Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, the Republican majority House of Representatives quietly passed a bill that would allow the aforementioned Exxon-Mobil to secretly funnel money to foreign dictators in the interests of extracting more fossil fuels from the earth.

Reunited and it feels so good - Tillerson & Putin

And most decidedly NOT coincidentally, Russia recently sold a 19.5% share of the "state owned" oil behemoth Rosneft for $10.2 billion Euros.

To who?

A shell company based in the Cayman Islands just as the Trump administration was announcing efforts to begin to ease sanctions on Russia.

The myriad conflicts of interest between Rex Tillerson being named Secretary of State and his Exxon-Mobil-fueled relationship with Vladimir Putin is staggering in the ethical sense.

It's fair to ask at what point will the millions of working class Americans who voted for the raving toddler-in-chief who now occupies the Oval Office realize what his real agenda is?

It seems as if all the little buttons that ignite prejudice and bigotry and engender discrimination based on religion, ethnicity and nationality have been pushed and prodded so often that the minions who swallowed the whole MAGA-thing are almost anesthetized to disturbing truths that Trump and his advisors want to normalize.

Like the banning of people based on their faith in the name of national security.

Which is like straight out of Hitler 101; a class Neo Nazi white nationalist White House policy advisor Stephen Bannon has certainly mastered.

By now it's pretty clear that the thin-skinned man-child intentionally uses his Twitter account as a free platform to toss out toxic chunks of political red meat to his followers and the media in order to distract them from the specifics of his real quasi-Republican agenda, which is of course to enrich himself financially.

So while many mainstream media outlets are reacting to his ceaseless petty feuds with his enemies, critics and increasingly (and disturbingly) America's traditional allies around the globe, they're not reporting about some of the really troubling things taking place on the ground (and behind Republican doors) as he begins to use the levers of executive authority to make himself and other greedy gazillionaires even richer.

And we're just two weeks from the inauguration? It's gonna a be a long four years.

An Erratic Little Man & His Muslim Travel Ban

The Wizard's trickery is revelaed in The Wizard of Oz

To borrow a phrase from Maureen Dowd's blistering New York Times column on Saturday, "the 70-year-old 7-year-old" child who now occupies the Oval Office is off to a rocky start to say the least.

His chaotic first week in office was defined by lies, Orwellian denunciations of the press, efforts to censor government agencies and klutzy foreign policy steps that were amateurish as best.



It's been anything but a smooth transition of power - and that was just the first week.

Trump's first days inside the Oval Office were epitomized by that scene at the end of the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy's faithful dog Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal an erratic little man twisting dials and pushing buttons in a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of authoritarian control.

The newest resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seems less the dignified presidential figure than some bedazzled kid frantically pulling at the levers of power in a determined effort to try out the machine before understanding how it actually works.

The images of him gleefully signing executive orders like some self-declared king issuing decrees for his subjects is downright creepy.

Especially with his stone-faced Chief-of-Staff Reince Priebus, the representative of the political party that demonstrated utter contempt for Trump before he dispatched their weak lineup of establishment candidates, and Stephen Bannon, the racist, alt-right Neo-Nazi sympathizer, looking over the shoulder of the man they attempt to control.

A controversial press release issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day by the ethically-conflicted POTUS* on Thursday drew widespread criticism for neglecting to mention the over six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis.




The White House statement (pictured above) didn't mention anti-Semitism either, prompting the Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to call it "Puzzling and troubling."

As the Times of Israel reported today, when asked by Chuck Todd on NBC's Meet the Press this morning whether it was a mistake for the White House not to have mentioned Jews in as press statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Priebus insisted there was "no regret".

He also reminded Todd that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is Jewish; as if that fact is some kind of Jedi Mind Trick that will make the press and everyone else forget that the controversial White House advisor Stephen Bannon is a known anti-Semite who ran the Breitbart News Website when it ran overtly anti-Semitic articles.

The alarming oversight lead many observers to suspect that the text of the statement was actually written by Bannon as a not-so-subtle nod to the extremist alt-right followers of Breitbart News, who devour fake news like Doritos and openly sympathize with loony Holocaust deniers - like the former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz - another Trump foreign policy advisor.

Actions like the White House Holocaust Remembrance Day press release only confirm the suspicions of many around the world that this fledgling administration's ultimate goal is to normalize bigotry, anti-Semitism, racism and ethnic and religious hatred - and to make such reprehensible views U.S. government policy.

Case in point, the executive order Trump signed on Friday that temporarily bans people of Muslim faith from seven mid-east and African nations with majority-Muslim populations from entering the United States.

Protesters outside Terminal 4 of JFK [Photo - Getty Images]

As you've likely seen and heard, those bans have caused chaos in airports around the nation as well as in airports in those seven nations on the banned entry list for foreigners with valid U.S Visas and legitimate reasons to travel to America.

As Rolling Stone reported, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman is up for nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, announced that he will not attend the ceremony to protest Trump's order.

Some individuals in airports across the nation, including JFK in New York, have been held in detention for days while security officials try to sort out their status and eligibility to enter the country based on Trump's vague executive order.

In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Trump's decision to intentionally target Muslims "goes against our Constitutional values" - in part because innocent people are being detained by authorities without being charged with anything, or without the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.

Mayor de Blasio echoed the concerns of local officials in other cities by also noting that the White House had issued no clear policy explanation, specific instructions or guidelines for airport security staff responsible for screening passengers entering the United States.

While it's unclear if the entry ban has kept any actual terrorists from entering the U.S., on Saturday at least 12 people were detained at JFK, including Hameed Khalid Darweesh.

Rep. Jerry Nadler with Hameed Khalid Darweesh

As the Huffington Post reported Darweesh worked as an Iraqi translator for the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in both Baghdad and Mosul during the American invasion in 2003.

Darweesh was eventually released after being detained for 19 hours with the help of Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler - but the episode reflects the random and vague nature of the executive order.


In my view it is reprehensible to specifically target the members of any religion based simply on unjustified fear, paranoia and suspicion - it's bigotry in its purest form.

As the Iranian government noted in a statement, Trump's actions are likely to be used by terrorists as a recruiting tool and may in fact increase the likelihood of some kind of terrorist attack against innocent people here in the United States or abroad.

So the unpredictable POTUS* may well have put innocent human lives at risk by his decision.

It's like he's declaring his own war against Islam; his decisions have already cost the life of an American service member.

The same man who spent months ripping Republicans and Democrats alike for the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost thousands of lives and over $6 trillion of American taxpayer's money, approved a deadly weekend attack on a remote al Qaeda base in Yemen.

The attack in the al Bayda region of southern Yemen resulted in the death of a member of the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team Six, and three other injuries to U.S. service members - including two members of the flight crew of a V-22 Osprey that later crashed when it was sent in to extract the team after a protracted firefight.

Aftermath of a drone strike that killed an al Qaeda
leader in the same area of southern Yemen

Two weeks ago a drone strike killed an al Qaeda leader named Abd al-Ghani a Rasas in the same region where this weekend's attack, which the Pentagon said had been planned for months, took place.

According to an article in the Washington Post, Yemeni government officials claim that 15 women and children were also killed during the operation, which involved U.S. helicopter gunships and aircraft providing cover fire for the operation.



Did that remote al Qaeda base represent a direct threat to innocent lives American or otherwise?

Are the (alleged) deaths of 14 members of al Qaeda and innocent women and children thousands of miles away in Yemen worth the life a U.S. Navy SEAL or any other serviceman?

This decision also raises the legitimate question of whether this mission was a result of a legitimate security threat, or simply to placate the incessant needs of Trump's fragile ego and his almost obsessive childlike need for attention.

As biographer Michael D'Antonio was quoted as saying in Maureen Dowd's New York Times column:

"If he (Trump) could have commanded the attention of the world media every day of his life in the past he would have. The fact that the press corps is captive in the White House and can be dragged into these executive order signings is, for him, like mainlining Heroin."  

At some point Trump is going to have to get on with the complex business of governing with the consent of Congress, not just using his pen to sign executive orders like the ones that have left people detained indefinitely in airports and resulted in lives lost in a remote region of Yemen this weekend.

Granted the Special Operations strike had been planned for months, but the order barring people of Muslim faith from seven countries from entering the U.S. doesn't seem like the product of a carefully planned and well thought out strategic objective with a specific purpose.

It seems like the action of an impulsive, reactionary mindset - an erratic little man pulling at the levers of power that he does not yet fully understand.

Creepy American Stuff: Clowns & The Bitter Ghost of Andrew Breitbart

Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's 'It'

Well it's the end of August and Labor Day is a mere five days away but the Halloween decorations, along with absurdly large bags of discounted candy, are already on display in my local ACME so fall is truly upon us.

Artfully displayed orange and black Halloween streamers strewn across the aisles along with the obligatory cutouts of witches and black cats hanging from the ceiling?

It reminded me that there is some seriously creepy stuff going on in America.

Have you read about those weird reports of clown sightings?

Last night before bed I made the mistake of reading a New York Times article about the strange reports the Greenville County, South Carolina sheriff's office has received from terrified locals of groups of clowns seen in different parts of the area; some reportedly offering children candy to follow them into the woods.

According to the Times article, one woman claims to have seen a large clown waving at her from under a streetlight as she was driving by at night.

Whether all this clown business is some kind of elaborate hoax or not is still not clear, but it's possible it could be some kind of weird underground guerrilla marketing campaign designed to build up buzz for the 2017 theatrical film adaptation of Stephen King's truly creepy 1987 novel 'It' .

It's not a short read by any means (the original hardcover copy on my shelf comes in at a whopping 1,138 pages...), but if you enjoy a well-layered novel with plenty of back story 'It' will creep you the %$#! out if you've never read it.

Warner Bros. is preparing to release the 1990 two-episode television miniseries on DVD on October 4th, which featured the brilliant Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown (pictured above) and which was quite well done in my humble opinion.

Funeral for 6 family members killed in Chicago in February

On a more serious note, nothing is creepier than the alarming headlines coming out of the city of Chicago revealing that there have been more than 400 people shot and 78 homicides in the Windy City during the month of August.

And sadly, there are still a few hours to go on this final day of the month so those shocking numbers are sure to rise before the night is through.

As the beleaguered African-American SNL cast member, comedienne and actress Leslie Jones has learned the hard way in recent weeks, there's some serious creep-factor happening on the internet as well.

The trolls who have mercilessly hounded her recently hacked her personal Website and turned it into a toxic platform of racist, denigrating hatred by not only posting her personal information like passwords, they also reached into the Jim Crow playbook and posted a photo of a gorilla meant to represent her and even posted nude photos of her as well.

Online harassment of her has gotten so bad the Department of Homeland Security has launched an investigation into the hack.

Back in July the unmistakable aroma of misogynistic hatred accompanied the tide of negative fanboy feedback leveled at the four female actresses tapped to play the title roles in Sony's remake of the classic 1984 comedy Ghostbusters.

SNL cast member Leslie Jones

To the degree that the highly anticipated release of the film on July 15th was overshadowed by media reports of the vicious Twitter campaign against Jones; a truly vile social media campaign which was engineered by unhinged conservative Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

The disturbing mix of racist and misogynistic Tweets aimed at Jones by many of Yiannopoulos' 338,000 followers led her to close out her Twitter account in a highly publicized statement in which she leveled criticism against the social media site for not doing enough to put a stop to the trolling.



Her departure prompted Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to release a public apology to Jones and on July 20th Yiannopoulos' Twitter account was finally shut down.

After all that drama, reviews of the Ghostbusters remake were unsurprisingly lukewarm; typified by critic David Rooney's July 10th review in The Hollywood Reporter in which he gave some praise to Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon for their performances, but savaged the writers who came up with the mediocre screenplay for what could have been a hysterical comedy.

Former Sony Pictures studio head Amy Pascal was the one who developed the Ghostbusters remake, but I'm not even sure she could have envisioned the level of resentment that would come from the notoriously prickly fanboy community over casting women in the original roles.

Andrew Breitbart

It's a pretty sad comment on the current state of media that the mainstreaming of the type of irrational, divisive, anger-fueled hysteria slung by conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter who influence the broader Republican message, now seems to have seeped into mainstream social media platforms.

(Where it's now Republican gospel.)

Online platforms where the anonymity of the internet inspires people to feel comfortable uncorking the racist and misogynist views that so clearly still simmer below the surface of this nation.

Breitbart.com creator Andrew Breitbart may have died in 2012, but four years later the kind of skewered, attack dog, sleazeball "reporting" he tried to peddle as journalism has metastasized like a cancerous growth to the point that Breitbart News now basically pumps out a slightly more polished version of white supremacist views recast with the more digestible moniker of "Alt-Right."

Little surprise that Donald Trump hired the former Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon to run his rambling train wreck of a presidential campaign.

Regardless, the creepy online hate campaign against Leslie Jones stoked by Milo Yiannopoulos is a reminder that the devisive tone of intolerance and bigotry that characterizes and permeates the current Republican party is not the exclusive domain of Donald Trump.