madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time

[boutons_deux]

How Scott Walker Dismantled Wisconsin's Environmental Legacy

Walker is widely expected to announce a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. And his environmental legacy—which so far has gone largely unexamined in the national press—has reached much farther than anything the board of a tiny public lands agency could accomplish.

Since taking office in 2011 Walker has moved to reduce the role of science in environmental policymaking and to silence discussion of controversial subjects, including climate change, by state employees. And he has presided over a series of controversial rollbacks in environmental protection, including relaxing laws governing iron mining and building on wetlands, in both cases to help specific companies avoid regulatory roadblocks. Among other policy changes, he has also loosened restrictions on phosphorus pollution in state waterways, tried to restrict wind energy development and proposed ending funding for a major renewable energy research program housed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Most recently Walker has targeted the science and educational corps at the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which has responsibility for protecting and managing forests and wildlife, along with air and water quality. In his 2015–17 budget, released in February, he proposed eliminating a third of the DNR’s 58 scientist positions and 60 percent of its 18 environmental educator positions. (The cuts were approved by the state legislature’s budget committee in May, and the budget is currently making its way through the legislature.) Walker also attempted to convert the citizen board that sets policy for the DNR to a purely advisory body and proposed a 13-year freeze on the state’s popular land conservation fund—both changes that lawmakers rejected in the face of intense public objections.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...mental-legacy/

[boutons_deux]

A Judicial Election Threatened North Carolina Republicans' Agenda. So They Canceled the Election

If you can't win the game, change the rules.

Until recently, North Carolina Republicans had a problem. Some of their biggest legislative achievements of the past few years, including a restrictive voter ID law and weakened environmental regulations, were heading for review before the state Supreme Court. Right now, conservative justices hold a tenuous 4-3 majority on that court.

But one of the conservative justices was up for re-election in 2016—before several of these matters would reach the court—and he was not guaranteed to win. This meant the Republicans' policy agenda was at risk.

So the Republican-controlled state legislature decided to change the rules of the game. On a party-line vote, the state Senate and House this month passed a bill that does away with that justice's upcoming election and effectively ensures that conservative justices will retain their majority on the state's highest court for years to come. Last week, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the measure into law.

Justices in North Carolina face re-election every eight years.

Under the new law, after winning his or her first election, a state Supreme Court justice can now opt for an up-or-down retention vote without facing a challenger.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...icial-election


Democracy! Freedom! Justice! The Confederacy!

Elected judges! ignoring the law, pandering to money and politics

[boutons_deux]

Cruz Aide Briefs Fringe Doctors Group on Response to Obamacare Case

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is the latest Republican presidential candidate to tie himself to a fringe doctors group that embraces outlandish medical theories like links between abortions and breast cancer and between vaccines and autism. On Wednesday evening, a legislative assistant from Cruz's Senate office was the guest of honor on a conference call hosted by the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), an Arizona-based group that opposes not only Obamacare but all government health-care programs.

(The group's statement of principles holds that Medicare and Medicaid are "evil" and a doctor's participation in these programs is "immoral".)

In February, presidential contender Rand Paul came under fire for being a longtime member of AAPS. The group's website continues to feature a Fox News appearance from 2010 in which Paul lauded the group's anti-Obamacare efforts. According to the New York Times, Paul's membership lapsed around the time he was elected to the Senate in 2010.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...king-v-burwell

[boutons_deux]

News from Kockenstan and the Kockenstein monster.

Scott Walker Expands All-Out War Against Teachers' Unions To University of Wisconsin

Gov. Scott Walker and his allies are advancing one of the most radical assaults on public education in recent history, by bombarding Wisconsin’s highly-regarded schools—from kindergarten through the state university system—with draconian spending cuts, anti-union and corporate-style governance and ending faculty tenure.

As was the case several years ago when Walker and a Republican-majority Legislature took away collective bargaining rights for most state workers—public safety unions were exempted—the 2016 presidential candidate and his Republican crew are ignoring overwhelming public protest to impose their right-wing, anti-union, anti-academic freedom agenda.

Seventy-eight percent of Wisconsin residents oppose Walker’s $127 million in proposed cuts for K-12 schools—the first part of Walker’s plan, which jibes with a wave of parent-led protests across the state. The reduced public school spending comes in the wake of Walker and Wisconsin’s GOP cutting corporate taxes by an estimated $1.6 billion between 2011 and 2020, which eliminates funds for education and a range of social services.

But the biggest attack is aimed at the University of Wisconsin. To start, Walker is proposing to slash $250 million from its annual budget, which is opposed by70% of the public (he originally proposed $300 million in cuts). Its budget has been cut in five of the past six years. One result has been a lowering of student financial aid, which has increased UW student debt.

However, Walker doesn’t stop there. Assisted by his appointees to the UW’s Board of Regents, he is seeking authority to fire tenured faculty under the guise of meeting state budget goals. This is widely seen as a thinly veiled attack on union-negotiated job security and academic freedom, both of which have been long target of right-wingers, such those leading Milwaukee’s influential and well-funded Bradley Foundation, who believe that UW is too liberal.

http://www.alternet.org/labor/scott-...ter1038032&t=9

Will Walker be re-elected?

red-states are nasty ing places

[boutons_deux]

Rep. Jody Hice: Christians Were Tricked Into ‘False Belief’ That Church And State Are Separate

Congressman Jody Hice railed against the separation of church and state in a video statement screened at a San Diego Christian conference, Right Wing Watch reported.

“Somehow we have bought into that false belief that our Cons ution forbids us from being involved because of the so-called separation of church and state,” the Georgia Republican said in a video prepared for the Future Conference in San Diego. “I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that that’s not in our cons ution. But it’s been said so many times that many Christians believe that we ought not be involved.

While the exact phrase “separation of church and state” is not used in the Cons ution, Hice did not mention that Thomas Jefferson used it to explain the First Amendment’s stance guaranteeing freedom of religion.

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their ‘legislature’ should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State,” Jefferson wrote in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists in Connecticut. “Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

Instead, Hice argued that secular government discouraged Christians from becoming involved because it was corrupt. The congressman also delivered what he called a “historically accurate” rant concerning the dangers of secularism, arguing that a “secular town” required a bigger government because it would produce societal ills.

“You’re going to have things like a higher divorce rate, you’re gonna have higher crime, you’re gonna have gang violence, you will have teen pregnancies, you will have drug and alcohol abuse — all these types of things increase in secular society,” he said. “That’s historically accurate.”

However, Right Wing Watch also noted that rates of both violent crime and divorce are higher in Southern states where Christian conservatives are the majority.

http://www.alternet.org/rep-jody-hic...er1038032&t=15

[boutons_deux]

Kansas Democrat in big trouble with Republicans for calling racist bill racist

Kansas Republicans are all butthurt over an African-American Democratic legislator describing one of their racist bills as racist. Republicans are so upset that state Rep. Valdenia Winn described a bill repealing in-state tuition for undo ented immigrants as racist and supported by "racist bigots" that they are bringing Winn before a special investigative committee next week:

Irigonegaray, Winn’s lawyer, said that the committee chair, Rep. Erin Davis (R), told him Wednesday that he would not be able to offer her counsel during the hearing. Democrats have also taken issue with the fact that two of the three Republicans on the committee are lawyers while no lawyers are represented among the Democrats, as selected by the House Speaker Ray Merrick (R). [...][Minority Leader Tom] Burrough's spokeswoman, Abbie Hodgson, said this was only the fourth time in state history a committee of this nature had been called.

The committee could recommend the censure, reprimand or expulsion of Winn -- which would then be advanced to a House vote where a two-thirds majority is required to act -- or do nothing. If the committee is deadlocked on party lines, the speaker could still bring the matter to the House floor, according to those involved in the process.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...28Daily+Kos%29

[boutons_deux]

Louie Gohmert tells the Supreme Court: Jesus’ law more important than cons utional law



http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/loui...e+Raw+Story%29

[djohn2oo8]

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conten...obama-ban-guns

[boutons_deux]

Religious House Republicans Plan To Deny Contraception Access to 4.6 Million Women

Over the past five years, the evangelical Republican war to abolish the now 45 year old family planning program was successfully thwarted by a Democratic-controlled Senate. However, now with a Koch Senate repaying evangelicals for getting out to vote in 2014, it looks like Republican theocrats will finally do right by the Vatican, eradicate le X, and deprive at least 4.6 million women from having access to reproductive care including safe, dependable contraceptives, cancer and STD screenings, and assistance in planning when to start their families.

It would be the ultimate wet dream for evangelical Republicans and Vatican loyalists to see several million, mostly poor women, denied family planning services and access to contraception; it is just what good evangelical and Catholic Republicans have panted to accomplish for the past five years.Before 2010, support for le X had broad bipartisan support and most legislators agreed with then-president Richard Nixon who said on le X’s inception that, “It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.” Of course that was long before Republicans became Vatican puppets and women, although still thought of as second class citizens in 1970, were not yet relegated to the role of being perpetual birth machines by evangelical Republicans.

The proposal from the House Appropriations Committee also reveals the Republican intent to eliminate most of the Affordable Care Act, eliminate as much federal funding from comprehensive sex education and teen pregnancy prevention programs that will increase the number of abortions, and give religious employers much greater power and authority to refuse health insurance coverage that includes reproductive services, including contraception, on evangelical Christian and Vatican loyalty grounds; likely in anticipation of the new and friendlier Pope’s upcoming visit with Congress. The Republican-led committee held a religious hearing on the proposal to end family planning services to 4.6 women on Wednesday; sans Papal attendance.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06/...iticus+USA+%29

So the misogynist Christian supremacists' War on (poor) Women wants to deny women ways to avoid pregnancy, to deny peri-natal care, and ways to terminate pregnancy, and once the kids are born, "ladies, you're on your own, we're cutting the safety net, school lunch funding, etc, etc, etc"

It all adds up to the misogynist Christian supremacists' War on (poor) Women giving USA the highest infant mortality rate in industrial nations, and even higher than many non-industrial nations. iow, the misogynist Christian supremacists' War on (poor) Women is actually killing babies.

[Alex's foreskin]

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/huck...dian-governor/

[boutons_deux]

Rick Perry: Texans without health insurance don’t matter because ‘that’s not how we keep score’

“If how you keep score is how many people you force to buy insurance, well, then I would say that’s how you keep score,” Perry opined. “We make access to health care the real issue, we passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation.”

“That’s not how we keep score,” Perry insisted. “I think it’s a fallacy to say access to health care is all about insurance. What we happen to say in the state of Texas is we’re going to try to make accessible as we can good quality health care.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/rick...e+Raw+Story%29

gobblely-gook double-talk from the JimmyRicky's tiny brain.

[boutons_deux]

Tucker Carlson: Obama’s Secret Service detail should lose guns first if he wants gun control


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/tuck...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

Texas volunteer firefighter fired after posting Dylann Roof ‘needs to be praised for the good deed he has done’


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/texa...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

The roaches Scatter: Ted Cruz Can’t Give Back Conservative Group’s Money Fast Enough

“I honestly pray to God that some n*gger f*cks, kills and eats you and everyone you claim to love!”

– Earl Holt III, President of the Council of Conservative Citizens, in a 2004 email

In the wake of The Guardian’s report yesterday that a conservative group, Council of Conservative Citizens – labeled a white nationalist organization by the SPLC – was linked not only to alleged killer Dylann Roof but to numerous Republican politicians, presidential candidate Ted Cruz told the paper that he would ‘be making a full refund.’

According to Fox News this morning, Cruz has made good on his promise, “in a statement obtained by Fox News that it was returning money donated by Earl Holt III, the head of the Council of Conservative Citizens – some $8,500 since 2012 – “according to The Guardian and The New York Times.”Cruz’s statement assures us that “Senator Cruz believes that there is no place for racism in society. Upon learning about Mr. Holt’s background and his contributions to the campaign, he immediately instructed that all of those donations be returned.”Cruz had good reason to act quickly. According to the SPLC,

Founded in 1985 by Gordon Baum, a worker’s compensation attorney and longtime racist activist, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) rose from the ashes of the Citizens Councils of America (CCA), commonly called “White Citizens Councils,” a coalition of white-supremacist groups and individuals formed throughout the South to defend school segregation after the Supreme Court outlawed the policy in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education.

According to The Guardian,

Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were “the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world” – were posted online in his name

It almost doesn’t require saying, but Ann Coulter is a past defender of and apologist for the CofCC, arguing in her 2009 book “Guilty” that,

There is no evidence on its Web page that the modern incarnation of the CCC supports segregation. Apart from some aggressive reporting on black-on-white crimes — the very crimes that are aggressively hidden by the establishment media — there is little on the CCC website suggesting” [that the group is racist. Indeed, its main failing is] containing members who had belonged to a segregationist group thirty years earlier.

Holt, characterized as a “St. Louis hate group leader” by the SPLC, and a frequent racist commenter on The Blaze, said in astatement that “The C of CC unequivocally condemns Roof’s murderous actions,” and that while he acknowledged the “legitimacy of some of the positions he has expressed,” it is “hardly responsible for the actions of this deranged individual merely because he gleaned accurate information from our website.”Republicans think they can embrace their racist base with utter impunity. And usually they can. It takes a monstrous act of violence like the Charleston church shooting, to shed light enough to cause the roaches to scramble. The mainstream media studiously ignores the GOP’s racist ties, and will continue to do so.

As the TV show X-Files put it, “The truth is somewhere out there.” It’s just that the mainstream media does not want to find it. And when it is pointed out to them, studiously avoids looking at it.Speaking of which, Rand Paul ($1,750) and former Sen. Rick Santorum ($1,500) were also recipients of Holt’s money, as was Mitt Romney in 2012 ($2,000).Paul, of course, has well-known neo-Confederate sympathies.CofCC is proud of its activities, bragging in their “Why you should join” section that,

The Council of Conservative Citizens, the no longer silent majority, — is a genuinely active national organization — effectively organizing and winning!

The C of CC was organized by conservative leaders from throughout the nation, who met in Atlanta, Georgia to build an updated organization in which the “silent majority” could participate at the local, state, and national levels.

We’re organizing conservative activists, developing unity, and successfully building a network of chapters and supporters at the grass-roots level nationwide to serve as a responsible, effective voice and active advocate for the no-longer silent conservative majority. This is a unification movement that is desperately needed and long overdue.

They might brag that conservatives leaders love them, but for now, at least, conservative leaders are distancing themselves from such outward displays of racism, if only because they are watching the last few percentage points of the black demographic slip away from them just in time for Election Day 2016.

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06/...iticus+USA+%29

St Louis AGAIN!

Missouri's Rape Caucus!

Missouri sounds like a really ty state, but it's deep red, so that's normal

[boutons_deux]

Republicans keep making up quotes from Founding Fathers


"Take my guns and I'll totally throw a wicked fit, dude."
—George Washington or someone else, who knows? Pretty sure it was WashingtonSteve Benen over at MSNBC has a little breakdown of some of the Republican/Tea Party'sconvenient Founding Fathers misquotes.

The first hint of trouble came about a month ago, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) told supporters that “Thomas Jefferson said it best” when the Founding Father said, “That government is best which governs least.”Thomas Jefferson never said this. Walker fell for a fake quote.

Soon after, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told an audience, “Patrick Henry said this, Patrick Henry said the Cons ution is about ‘restraining the government not the people.’” In reality, Patrick Henry said no such thing.

It's pointed out that the Tea Party fancies itself the intellectual heirs to our country's "Founding Fathers" and so quoting them is top of the list of things to do. However, whereas Steve Benen is diplomatic:

My su ion is that these are honest mistakes. I rather doubt that any of these GOP presidential candidates are knowingly pushing bogus quotes and/or had anything to do with the original fabrication. It’s far more likely the candidates and their aides stumbled upon false information online and didn’t realize their mistake.

I am not. I do not believe the word "honest" should be used in this context. There is nothing "honest" about saying you have any intellectual leanings and then not doing even the tiniest bit of research into the big thought quotes you are using—especially in your incredibly original books.The fact that these candidates want to believe the Founding Fathers said these things doesn't make them honest mistakes at all.

This makes them intellectually dishonest mistakes.

Attributing quotes to people incorrectly happens. It happens quite a bit. But, when you're sorta writing books, and then pointing to those books as the moral and intellectual foundation of your potential leadership credentials, you need to show a little more diligence.

Video of more "honest mistakes" by right-wingers below the fold.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...s?detail=email

[boutons_deux]

this Repug greasebag asshole, again

Maine GOP Guv. Accused Of Using Blackmail To Get Dem House Speaker Fired

The Democratic speaker of the state House of Representatives accused Republican Gov. Paul LePage on Wednesday of blackmailing a charter school by threatening to withhold state funding from it to get him fired from a job there.

Rep. Mark Eves said LePage told school operator Good Will-Hinckley it had to remove Eves as president or lose $500,000 in state funds, resulting in a loss of an additional $2 million in private funds.

A lawyer for Eves said he's considering taking legal action against the governor.

"The governor's actions represent the worst kind of vendetta politics Maine has ever seen," Eves said in a statement. "If it goes unchecked, no legislator will feel safe in voting his conscience for fear that the governor will go after the legislator's family and livelihood."

Eves was expected on July 1 to assume the post of president of Good Will-Hinckley, which operates the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences, the state's first charter school.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pa...+%28TPMNews%29

[boutons_deux]

Texas Board of Education to be headed by a homeschooler


The Texas Board of Education creates "policies and standards for Texas public schools." Gov. Greg Abbott's choice to head this body setting policies and standards for Texas public schools is a woman whose own children never attended those public schools—they were homeschooled and then sent to a private high school.

But hey, she's a former aide to the state's Republican lieutenant governor.The problem here seems obvious.

Even Republican State Board member Thomas Ratliff called the move a mistake.“Public school isn’t for everybody, but when 94 percent of our students in Texas attend public schools I think it ought to be a baseline requirement that the chair of the State Board of Education have at least some experience in that realm, as a parent, teacher, something,” Ratliff argued.

Bahorich's relevant experience, as listed on her LinkedIn profile, includes "founder/director/board member" of Home Ed Plus, which "provides the opportunity for homeschool families and Christian teachers to come together in support of a high quality academic education for homeschooled students." Naturally she's also a huge supporter of charter schools. Basically any way of getting students out of public schools ... the public schools for which she'll play a major role in setting policy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...28Daily+Kos%29

So some lady who has never trusted TX public schools with her own kids is heading the SBOE? Kafkaesque!

ing TX Repugs and Bible humpers!

[boutons_deux]

Koch-Backed Group Calls For No More National Parks?

Just in time for the Fourth of July — when millions of people across the country will visit America’s national parks and other public lands — the Koch brothers are rolling out their latest campaign against these treasured places: pushing for no more national parks.

In an op-ed published in Tuesday’s New York Times, Reed Watson, the executive director at theKoch-backed Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), along with a research associate at the Center, call for no more national parks, citing the backlog in maintenance for existing parks.

“True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have, not insatiably acquiring more and hoping it manages itself,” the op-ed reads. “Let’s maintain what we’ve already got, so we can protect it properly,” it concludes.

While the authors seem to push for “true conservation” from the federal government, in reality, PERC has a long history of advocating for the privatization of America’s national parks and other public lands, and has significant ties to the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industries.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...ational-parks/

VRWC strategy: underfund/misgovern, cause a "disaster", self-fulfilling that "govt can't do anything", then scream for privatization into "capitalist" control of the VRWC-screwed-up property.

aka, "disaster capitalism".

[boutons_deux]

As World Champion Human Rights Violator and county buster, USA receives a recommendation from Christian supremacist supporting rapture-site Israel's genocide.

Ted Cruz calls for US to withdraw from UN Human Rights Council

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/ted-...e+Raw+Story%29

[boutons_deux]

Anti-democratic from Kockenstan WI

Wisconsin Republicans propose limiting public access to records

Nearly all records created by state and local government officials, including bill drafts and communications with staff, would not be subject to the Wisconsin open records law under a sweeping surprise change Republicans introduced in committee Thursday as an amendment to the state budget.

The changes were part of a 24-page final motion to the budget that makes 67 alterations to the two-year, $70 billion spending plan that the Legislature was expected to vote on next week. The panel was to vote on adding it to the budget Thursday night. The full Legislature, along with Gov. Scott Walker, would have to sign off before they would become law.

Numerous new protections would be extended to the 132 members of the Legislature, their staff, support agencies, and all other state and local government officials, including members of school boards.

"It's astonishing," said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. "It is a full-frontal assault on the open records law as it pertains to the state Legislature and other agencies of government."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...702-story.html

[boutons_deux]

WI Repug rousing the white/Christian supremacist rabble

Wisconsin Lawmaker Claims Civil War Was Fought to Further a Christian Lifestyle

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/...iticus+USA+%29

[boutons_deux]

View from the left—the GOP gets Trumped

The immigration group America's Voice started a countdown clock this week measuring how long it would take the GOP candidates to denounce Donald Trump's abhorrent commentsabout Mexican immigrants being "rapists" and "drug dealers" and "murders." Last I checked, it was still running.Even though the entire Republican field has been desperately trying to ignore him, Trump's riding pretty high in the polls. He's #2 nationally, he's #2 in Iowa, he's #2 in Michigan, and he's #2 in New Hampshire.

Barring some catastrophic event, Trump's a sure thing for the GOP debate stage on August 6. Journalist Howard Fineman summed up the state of affairs nicely on MSNBC.

"We now are in a situation where Donald Trump is setting the tone and the tenor for at least the next month of the campaign heading into that debate in August. Nobody could have predicted that a couple weeks ago."

In the meantime, the Republican candidates are either sucking up to him or running scared from him.

The immigration group America's Voice started a countdown clock this week measuring how long it would take the GOP candidates to denounce Donald Trump's abhorrent commentsabout Mexican immigrants being "rapists" and "drug dealers" and "murders." Last I checked, it was still running.

Even though the entire Republican field has been desperately trying to ignore him, Trump's riding pretty high in the polls.

He's #2 nationally,

he's #2 in Iowa,

he's #2 in Michigan,

he's #2 in New Hampshire.

Barring some catastrophic event, Trump's a sure thing for the GOP debate stage on August 6. Journalist Howard Fineman summed up the state of affairs nicely on MSNBC.

"We now are in a situation where Donald Trump is setting the tone and the tenor for at least the next month of the campaign heading into that debate in August. Nobody could have predicted that a couple weeks ago."

In the meantime, the Republican candidates are either sucking up to him or running scared from him.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/04/1398607/-View-from-the-left-the-GOP-gets-Trumped?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29#

Repug politicians!

Repug voters!

[boutons_deux]

5 Reasons Donald Trump Is The Republican Party

“Based on estimates of the composition of the 2016 electorate, if the next GOP nominee wins the same share of the white vote as Mitt Romney won in 2012 (59 percent), he or she would need to win 30 percent of the nonwhite vote. Set against recent history, that is a daunting obstacle. Romney won only 17 percent of nonwhite voters in 2012. John McCain won 19 percent in 2008. George W. Bush won 26 percent in 2004.”

Donald Trump — after years of race baiting his way into the conservative movement — is now exploding like a big racist supernova in the GOP primary. His chances of winning the party’s nomination are slim but the fact that his anti-immigrant rhetoric has catapulted him to the top of the polls is a concern for the Republicans who actually take their party seriously.

And Republicans should be concerned. Trump, as many have said, is the “id” of the Republican Party. He lays bare the subtext of a movement whose ideas and governance have been revealed as disasters again and again (except in places like Texas, where a combination of federal dollars and a global addiction to fossil fuels allowed the economy to steam along despite the financial crisis).

Here are five reasons Donald Trump needs to be destroyed by the Republican Party before he exposes what the party really stands for.

1. Race baiting as the foundation of populism.

How do you deal with an economy where 99 percent of the gains of the recovery go to the richest?

Republicans would like to cut top earners’ taxes and make sure their kids inherit millions of dollars without paying the same taxes that all Americans pay on income or Social Security—which Republicans would also like to cut, rather than asking the richest among us to pay payroll taxes on all their income, the way middle-class workers do.

Conservative economics are “Winner-Take-All“ economics that have kept wages stagnant for decades while wealth at the top has skyrocketed. So how have Republicans thrived during that time? America’s abundance of white voters who felt unsettled by the advances of civil rights and feminism formed the core of the GOP base. Call it the “Southern Strategy” — or just a huge coincidence that Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 general election campaign in a county known for the deaths of civil rights workers ranting about “states’ rights” and “welfare queens.”

The right’s “Dog Whistle” racism activates fears that what little stability is left for workers will be taken away by “them.” It’s an artful con that requires subtlety. Even Mitt Romney’s false attacks on President Obama for gutting welfare reform weresniffed out as race baiting in 2012.

Republicans told themselves that they need to do better this time. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are trying to build campaigns to reach out to minorities and leave the coded language for issues like religion.

But Trump’s anti-immigrant slurs and the way they’re welcomed by a large segment of the GOP base may well reawaken the anger that many minorities feel after decades of ill treatment as the party’s scapegoats. If that happens in Nevada, Colorado and Texas as it has in California — where Latino voters have never forgotten Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant attacks of 1994 — Republicans could be locked out of the White House forever.

2. He doesn’t have any actual beliefs — except making Trump richer.

The amazing thing about Donald Trump’s rise in the GOP is that after so many years of pretending to run for president, a political party is taking him seriously. His vast experience with race-baiting found him perfectly suited to be the nation’s Chief Executive Birther in 2012. Now, as the GOP failed to pass immigration reform in the House after several Republicans voted for it in the Senate, Trump is uniquely positioned to divide the party with lies about immigrant criminality — though border crossings and crime are at generational lows.

Trump seems to have a genuine fear of minorities, but how anti-immigrant could he actually be? Two of his three wives have been immigrants. (No doubt several of his future wives will be immigrants.) His game is publicity, not policy. Like big business,he donates to both parties and in his fake 2000 run, he backed single-payer health care and gun control.

In this way, he’s very Republican: Sheldon Adelson and David Koch both claim to be pro-choice, for example; they just use the GOP for their own personal agendas — like war with Iran and unfettered carbon pollution.

The one thing all Republicans (and fake Republicans like Trump) agree on, though, is that Donald Trump should be richer — no matter how much that hurts our economy.

3. No difference between entertainment and statesmanship.

The natural conclusion of a movement that has turned politics into pro wrestling is that Donald Trump is taken seriously.

Why not? He was taken seriously at Wrestlemania.

4. He’s disrupting the GOP’s plan to make its primary boring.

Republicans thought they learned from 2012. They’d cut back on the debates and speed up the delegate collection so the nominee wouldn’t be fighting a clown like Rick Santorum late into spring.

By shrinking the significance of the primary, they hoped to downplay GOP differences over things like immigration reform and cruise into the general election without a candidate smeared with the fecal matter of his opponents.

Trump piñatas are selling in Mexico. But Republicans are now preparing for debates where Trump makes piñatas out of his opponents over immigration, and a base fostered on decades of race baiting goes wild.

5. Big business is recognizing that it has created a monster.

Being offensive is nothing new to Donald Trump. Suffering any consequences for it is. He’s lost deals with Univision, NBC, and Serta. Macy’s has discontinued its business relationship with him, and the City of New York is considering doing the same. And now Panama doesn’t want to host his Miss Universe pageant anymore.

Why is Trump suddenly being punished for things he’s said for years, things that other Republicans say all the time? Because his rise in the polls makes big business realize that he’s doing real damage to its biggest investment — the Republican Party.

Conservatives had been preparing to run against Hillary Clinton for being too old and too rich. But now they’ve found someone older and richer who is illating the craven instincts their philosophy has nurtured for years.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-reason...ublican-party/

[boutons_deux]

We’re gonna need a bigger mattress: Texas lawmakers want to hide their gold from Obama but don’t know where

Texas lawmakers who voted in June to create a state-run gold depository beyond the reach of the federal government left the state comptroller’s office with a small problem: where do they store the gold and how do they pay to have the facility built and secured.

According to the Associated Press, lawmakers in Texas rushed through a bill to repatriate the state’s $1 billion in gold bullion held by the Federal Reserve in New York but failed to make plans for what to do with it when it returned to the Lone Star state.

As written,

the law doesn’t specify where the depository would be located or how it should be built and secured. Additionally no funding was allocated for building the high security facility or leasing temporary storage space for the precious metal until the new facility becomes operational.

“We are honestly at the phase where the questions we are answering are creating more questions that we have to answer,” said Chris Bryan, a comptroller’s office spokesman

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/were...e+Raw+Story%29

TX Repugs, seditionists, secessionists, and all-around flaming assholes, just like their voters.

[boutons_deux]

elected(corrupt) Repug SCOTX news

Texas Could Become an Even More Dangerous Place

Threading eyebrows can be a dangerous business. Without proper sanitation, threading—a form of hair removal that uses thin strings to shape eyebrows—can spread highly contagious bacterial and viral infections, including flat warts, pink eye, ringworm, and staph. For that reason, Texas required threaders to undergo 750 hours of training in order to practice their craft professionally, the same amount of training that other cosmetology specialists must receive.

But threaders didn’t like all that training—so they asked the Texas Supreme Court to simply strike the regulation down. In late June, the court obliged. It granted itself the power to strike down any health and safety laws it deems “oppressive.”

The startling decision revives a dangerous, widely discredited doctrine that gives judges authority to strike down economic regulations that interfere with the free market. By resuscitating it, the Texas Supreme Court has effectively declared that laissez-faire capitalism is the only true form of American liberty.

The notion that American courts should impose a free market ideology on the laws they interpret has a long, mottled history. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States Supreme Court did just that, invalidating regulations like maximum hour and minimum wage laws. The notorious period is named the Lochner era after one infamous case, Lochner v. New York, in which the court considered a New York law that regulated bakeries.

At the time, many bakers were brutally overworked in unsanitary conditions, and they frequently fell victim to lung inflammation and rheumatism. To prevent bakery owners from straining their workers, New York barred bakers from working more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week.

In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the law as a violation of “liberty of contract.” Bakery workers, the majority wrote, have a cons utional right to work out individualized contracts with their bosses free of undue legislative meddling. If an employee wants to work more than 10 hours a day, he has a cons utional right to do so.

And where, exactly, did this right come from? The Due Process Clause of the Fifth and 14th amendments declare that no person may be deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

This “liberty,” the court wrote, includes the liberty of contract. And if a state wanted to interfere with that liberty, it had to prove its regulation to be “reasonable and appropriate” and not “unnecessary and arbitrary.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...return_to.html