OMG! Some People Think Texas Republicans Are Islamophobes

There are 5 counties in Texas with over a million people: Harris County (Houston), Dallas County, Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), Bexar County (San Antonio) and Travis County (Austin). Four are basically blue counties that elect Democrats. Tarrant, with nearly 2 million people, is the outlier. This was Trump's share of the vote in each:

• Harris- 41.8%
• Dallas- 34.9%
• Tarrant- 52.2%
• Bexar- 41.0%
• Travis- 27.4%

Gerrymandered savagely, Tarrant County, is part of 6 congressional districts-- and five are held by Republicans, just one by a Democrat (Marc Veasey). These are the congressional districts and the percentage the congressman got this past November:

• TX-06 (Ron Wright)- 53.1%
• TX-12 (Kay Granger)- 64.3%
• TX-24 (Kenny Marchant)- 50.6%
• TX-25 (Roger Williams)- 53.5%
• TX-26 (Michael Burgess)- 59.4%
• TX-33 (Marc Veasey)- 76.2%

Why all this Tarrant County information today? There's a reason. The vice-chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party is Shahid Shafi and there is a move among some Republicans to remove him from office-- and tonight's the vote. And it's not because he's a surgeon. "Shahid Shafi identifies as a Republican," wrote Alex Samuels, "because of his firm belief in small government, lower taxes and secure borders. But his commitment to core GOP values hasn’t shielded him from ire within his own party."

“This is, unfortunately, not the first time that people or my political opponents have tried to use my religion against me to distract the voters,” Shafi, who declined to be interviewed by the Texas Tribune before Thursday’s vote, told the Washington Post. “And unfortunately, I don’t think it will be the last either.”

Dorrie O’Brien, one of the precinct chairs leading the charge to recall Shafi, did not respond to The Tribune’s request for comment. She’s previously said, however, that her support for ousting Shafi stems not from his religion, but whether he supports Islam or is connected “to Islamic terror groups,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In a series of lengthy Facebook posts, O’Brien wrote that she “never doubted” her side has “the votes to rescind Shahid Shafi’s ratification as vice chair.”

“We don’t think he’s suitable as a practicing Muslim to be vice chair because he’d be the representative for ALL Republicans in Tarrant County, and not ALL Republicans in Tarrant County think Islam is safe or acceptable in the U.S., in Tarrant County, and in the TCGOP," O'Brien wrote on Facebook, adding that "there are big questions surrounding exactly where Dr. Shafi’s loyalties lie, vis a vis Democrat and Republican policies.”

...It’s unclear whether Thursday’s vote will happen in public, behind closed doors or be delayed indefinitely, Easton said. The Star-Telegram reported that, since the movement to remove Shafi has picked up steam, it has expanded to also target some of his defenders, including Easton and a Republican party official who is married to a Muslim.

Shafi, who came to the U.S. in 1990 and became a naturalized citizen in 2009, has repeatedly defended himself against the attacks on his religion. In an open letter, he wrote that he believes “much of the hate against Muslims is driven by a fear of terrorism.”

“Here are the facts. I have never had any association with the Muslim Brotherhood nor [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] nor any terrorist organization,” he wrote. “I believe that the laws of our nation are our Constitution and the laws passed by our elected legislatures-- I have never promoted any form of Sharia Law. I fully support and believe in American Laws for American Courts.

“I am honored to be an American and a Republican,” he concluded.

Jeremi Suri, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin, said claims that Shafi’s religion impede his ability to work with the Republican party are “completely unfounded.” He compared the attacks against the surgeon to rhetoric the Ku Klux Klan used in the early 20th century against Catholics and Jews running for political office.

“The Klan argued that if you’re a Catholic, you obviously put the pope before the country so how could you be an American leader? That’s the same argument this Tarrant County group is making," said Suri.

Though the movement to reconsider Shafi’s appointment was afoot well ahead of last year’s midterm elections, Thursday’s vote comes just months after Tarrant County-- considered the most conservative urban county in the country-- narrowly flipped in favor of Texas Democrats’ star senatorial candidate, Beto O’Rourke. In Tarrant County and the surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth region, several Texas Senate and House seats went to Democrats, including the district previously held by conservative state Sen. Konni Burton of Colleyville.

Brendan Steinhauser, an Austin-based GOP strategist, worries that Shafi's ousting would harm the Tarrant County GOP and state party in the 2020 elections.

“These are the kinds of headlines the party doesn’t need right now,” Steinhauser said. "Doubling down on shrinking the tent is a very bad idea. It does make me wonder what’s next. Are they going to say no Catholics can be in a leadership positions in the party or no Jews? I mean, what is the religious standard that they want to impose?"

Kenny Marchant may be most hurt by the latest GOP bigotry scandal

Could this bigotry scandal harm the chances of the 5 congressional Republicans up for reelection in 2020? There isn't enough of Tarrant County is Roger Williams' district to make any difference. But Kenny Marchant and freshman Ron Wright could both be in for trouble if Democrats make an issue out of it. TX-24 (Marchant's district) looked like this in Marchant's 2018 race:

In other words, if he loses any significant support in the Tarrant part of the district, he's dead. TX-06 is more than 2/3s Tarrant County and the Tarrant County part of the district is already trending blue. Just a few less votes in a Tarrant County with a Republican Party in turmoil will mean Wright will be a one-termer.

Trump Doesn't Understand The American System Of Government And Bannon Is Encouraging Him Towards Tyranny

I'm hearing anecdotal evidence from all over the country that people are tense and disturbed and attributing their change in mood to Trump. I know it sounds unbelievable-- and maybes' just people I know-- but everyone sounds on edge. People are seeing psychiatrists and self-medicating and getting off the wagon and everyone seems nervous and depressed... Have you seen any of that too? I don't mean the freaks on the right descrating Jewish cemeteries or burning mosques or starting fights (or even Mika Brzezinski); I'm talking about normal regular people-- neighbors, friends, relatives, random folks who aren't even that involved with politics.

I'm proud to say I serve on the board of People For the American Way with Khizer Khan, an American citizen for over 3 decades who takes the Constitution super-seriously. According to multiple reports he was told his "freedom to travel abroad" is "under review" and had to cancel appearances in Toronto this week. Silver lining: maybe Trump will be impeached even sooner than anyone expected. You remember him right? He's the Muslim American Gold Star father who aroused Trump’s ire and the Democratic National Convention when he spoke about his son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan, being killed in combat in Iraq. According to Rosa Hwang, a senior producer at CTV National News, Khan cancelled a speech he was scheduled to give in Toronto after being informed that his travel privileges are "under review."

"This turn of events is not just concerning to me, but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad. I have not been given any reason as to why." None of us have but this comes just as so-called-president Trumpf signed his second attempt at a Muslim Ban Monday morning behind closed doors.

Farhana Khera president of a civil rights legal organization, Muslim Advocates, and Jonathan Swift, the organization's legal director, penned an OpEd for the NY Times that ran a few hours ago, pointing out the new ban's fatal flaw: "it constitutes unlawful religious discrimination."

Let’s be clear: This revised order is a Muslim ban. All the countries he has excluded are more than 90 percent Muslim. Three of them-- Iran, Somalia and Yemen-- are more than 99 percent Muslim. Even though Mr. Trump tailored his order to survive legal challenges, as his former adviser Rudolph Giuliani conceded on national television, his objective is clearly to exclude Muslims.

The Trump administration argues that the ban protects the country. Yet by excluding Iraq from the order, Mr. Trump has cleared travel from one of the two countries from which Islamic State terrorists operates. Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security concluded last month that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.” Former national security officials from Democratic and Republican administrations have made clear that the January order does not make our country safer. Instead, the bigotry that Mr. Trump spews at news conferences and on Twitter have been a boon for terrorists’ recruitment efforts.

The twisted worldview does not match reality. Muslims have been part of America for centuries, since the first slave ships arrived in the 17th century. Today, Muslims represent 1 percent of the United States population: They are our teachers, doctors, neighbors and co-workers.

American Muslims will suffer a particular harm from this executive order: Those who have ties to the banned countries won’t be able to see their family members and close friends. American Muslims will also be deprived of the instruction from the leading Islamic scholars who are from those countries.

Thousands of Muslim men and women serve in the armed forces; many have given their lives defending our nation and our ideals. They contribute to the diversity that has always been our nation’s pride and strength. President George W. Bush paid tribute to this in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks when he said, “There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know-- that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion.”

President Trump and his top advisers would be wise to listen to President Bush. The Muslim ban and President Trump’s relentless attacks on Islam are not just an assault on thousands of patriotic, innocent Americans-- they violate our Constitution and our most fundamental American values and beliefs.

Joan Walsh, writing for The Nation asserts, correctly, that the real goal of the travel ban is to make America white again. Bannon, she wrote, insists Muslims don't have the right DNA for democracy.

Lindsey Graham must have enjoyed being booed in Clemson Saturday, because it sounds like he wants more of the same, announcing that he backs Trump's unconstitutional travel ban and congratulating him for exempting people with visas, green card holders and people from Iraq. I'm sure there are other Republicans in the same unconstitutional camp as ole Lindsey. But that's very different from what I'm hearing from Members of Congress who actually take the Constitution seriously. Ted Lieu (D-CA) was the first Member I saw putting out a statement after word leaked out that Trump had signed the ban this morning.

25 days after his first unconstitutional immigration ban was rejected by the courts, Donald Trump has signed a new executive order that is-- once again-- as harmful as it is incompetent. This monumental waste of federal resources is wrong on all levels-- strategically, morally, and from a national security perspective.

Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0 is nothing short of a strategic failure. A leaked DHS report from his own cabinet called citizenship from the banned countries an unreliable indicator of threat. If the banned countries in question are such a threat, then why does this second ban arbitrarily drop the nation of Iraq? And why does the ban go into effect on March 16th?  Where’s the urgency in that?  This second executive order just makes zero sense.

As studied by the CATO Institute, the chances of being killed by a refugee committing a terrorist act is 1 in 3.6 billion. For perspective, the chances of being struck by lightning twice is 1 in 9 million. That’s why members of Trump’s own administration recognize that banning women and children fleeing from terrorist groups isn’t just morally bankrupt-- it’s bad for national security. It hands our real enemies like ISIL and al-Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool and undermines our relationships with partners abroad.

Trump is quick to tweet about who is American and who is un-American. As an immigrant, veteran, and member of Congress, I can tell you there is nothing more un-American than undermining our fundamental value of accepting those who are fleeing tyranny, those who want to start a better life in the United States. This order is based on bigotry and must-- once again-- be opposed.

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) rfeel the same way. "Barring people based on their nation of origin or the religion they practice isn’t just a policy change-- it’s a tacit admission by our new president that he is incompetent to lead in ways his predecessors were not," he said in a statement for his constituents. "And to be clear, the only difference between this Muslim ban and the last one-- which was found unconstitutional by four federal judges-- is the time Trump and his cronies spent scheming up a plan to get it past our legal system. Regardless of how successful they are at side-stepping the judicial branch’s rightful check on executive power, they cannot implement this ban without Congressional Republicans providing funding. It remains to be seen if the GOP will stand by our Constitution, our separation of church and state, and the international order that hinges on American leadership, or if they will vote to rubberstamp this president’s hateful agenda and wrecking ball diplomacy. I will fight this Muslim ban and every other corrosive policy Trump pursues that betrays who we are as a people and leaves our nation fundamentally less safe."

Mark Pocan (D-WI), who represents the Madison area, tried to clam the people in his district impacted by this. "Although Steve Bannon didn’t write this new Muslim ban in the dead of night," he said, "it does not mean the ban is any less harmful to America and our image around the world. Rehashing this hateful and divisive travel ban not only sends the wrong message to immigrants and refugees, it also makes our country less safe. The President should be focused on helping working families struggling to make ends meet, not waging an unconstitutional war on our core American value of freedom from persecution and discrimination. I will stand alongside the people of my district and fight with my colleagues in Congress against this prejudice and division. My office will continue to work to support residents and visitors experiencing difficulties as a result of the travel ban while the courts ultimately decide the fate of this unconstitutional ban."

Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), the congressman who came up with the idea to boycott the Trumpanzee inauguration, issued a statement an hour after Trump made his move:

This is just the same stuff on a different day. If you called xenophobia a rose, would it not smell just as foul? Our President, who clearly has a hard time distinguishing facts from fiction, is continuing to take us down the wrong road, the road away from security, morality, and prosperity.

 As I said in January, the President should have faith in the strength of our own country and the vitality of her citizens and culture. A nation of 300 million people that has blazed a trail for the world for more than 240 years can withstand 50,000 or 100,000 moms, dads and children fleeing for their lives. We always have and we always should.   The poem on the Statue of Liberty says “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” not “We are scared of you, come back later when we feel better.”

One last congressional reaction-- Pramila Jayapal from Seattle, who's been fighting this kind of ugly, divisive bigotry all her life:

The president has been forced to recognize-- through the clear signal sent from several courts and in our streets-- that his original travel ban was both unconstitutional and ineptly executed. The new order recognizes that we must honor the visas of those who already have been given clearance to come to the United States, as well as expressly excludes legal permanent residents and dual citizens from the ban. It also excludes Iraq from the list of countries, another clear sign that such a ban would hurt our coalition efforts for peace in the Middle East. It should not have taken the courts and nationwide protests to stop such an order from taking effect in the first place. The president was irresponsible in throwing the country into chaos and putting fear in the hearts of millions of families across our country and world.

  Unfortunately, however, the president’s Muslim Ban 2.0 is driven by the same xenophobic priorities that wreaked havoc at airports around the nation and led to the shameful detentions of innocent men, women and children. It continues to single out Muslim majority countries only, drastically limits and suspends refugee resettlement, and deeply affects our relationships with countries around the world. It continues to do nothing to make our country safer, alienates our allies and gives extremists propaganda for recruitment.

President Trump is once again attempting to shut America’s door to immigrants and vulnerable refugees who are fleeing war-ravaged countries. This ‘do-over’ order still has consequences that stretch far and wide and hurt our national security. It is still extremely ill-conceived and paints wide swathes of people and countries with negative stereotypes that have little to do with a logical plan for peace and security in our country. We will continue to work in the courts and in the streets to stop this administration-- as we have done before.

The thermometer just above and to the right... that leads to the ActBlue page we've put up for the most outspoken and effective leaders of The Resistance inside Congress. These are the most crucial voices in Congress... because this Know Nothing fanatic isn't on the side of America:

What If You Could Get A Time Machine And Go Back To 1946 when Baby Trump Was In His Crib?

You remember Anne Frank, the Dutch girl with the diary during the German occupation of Amsterdam, right? She could be a 77-year-old woman living in Boston or Atlanta or Laguna Niguel today but she was denied a U.S. visa because she was Jewish and seen as a danger. Nice diary, though, right? Utah Republican, Jason Chaffetz, one of the most partisan hacks in Congress, announced yesterday that he's considering a bill to require presidents to undergo independent mental health exams. It has finally begun to dawn on Republicans that electing a mentally unbalanced narcissist and psychopath to the White House and then enabling him, is, to say the very least, not patriotic... and not safe. Yesterday Trump suddenly announced that he had dropped the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the National Security Principles Committee and replaced them with neo-Nazi crackpot Steve Bannon.



I'm not an observant Jew but this past June I was in St. Petersburg, Russia-- a city with incredibly beautiful public buildings-- and I visited the Grand Choral Synagogue. It's the second biggest synagogue in Europe and was the first synagogue built in Russia's then-capital. It opened in 1893. My teenaged grandfather and his brothers and sisters left Russia in 1905 after a series of pograms had killed thousands of Jews across the country including in small, rural villages like the one his family lived in. When he got to St Petersburg to board a ship for America, the Grand Choral Synagogue was 12 years old. He wasn't any more religious than I am but he had never been in a grand building of any kind before. He prayed at the synagogue the night before leaving for America. When his ship got to New York only he and one brother were allowed, arbitrarily, to enter the U.S. 10 brothers and sisters wound up in Bahia and Recife in Brazil. Almost my whole family lives in Brazil and speaks Portuguese. The U.S. turned them away because Jews were looked down on and feared, the way Germans and the Irish and Italians and Chinese had once been looked down on and feared. Hours after Trump announced his ban on Muslims, a Texas mosque was burned down. It reminded people of when Hitler's and Goebbels' anti-Jewish rhetoric resulted in the burning of synagogues across Germany and Austria in 1938.



Trump has brought this back-- but for Muslims. And it started yesterday. Right after he was declared the winner of the presidential election, several state universities across the country-- including here in California-- wrote to their students studying abroad to warn them that once Trump took over the possibility of some of them not being allowed to re-enter the U.S. would be a real possibility. That started yesterday. Reuters reported that Trump included green card holders in his Muslim ban, in other words, barring legal permanent residents from returning to the U.S. The first report in yesterday's NY Times indicated that Friday night "refugees who were in the air on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports" and that the Trump Regime will be entangled in law suits immediately as a result.

The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.

...It was unclear how many refugees and immigrants were being held nationwide in the aftermath of the executive order. The complaints were filed by a prominent group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center, the National Immigration Law Center, Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization and the firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

The lawyers said that one of the Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq for 10 years. The other, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for a U.S. contractor, and young son, the lawyers said. They said both men were detained at the airport Friday night after arriving on separate flights.

The attorneys said they were not allowed to meet with their clients, and there were tense moments as they tried to reach them.

“Who is the person we need to talk to?” asked one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Mr. President,” said a Customs and Border Protection agent, who declined to identify himself. “Call Mr. Trump[anzee].”

Trumpanzee has shut down the White House call-in lines but you can leave him a message at his hotels and other shady businesses. Most mainstream Jewish groups are horrified but, predictably, the very right-wing Zionist Organization of America is on Trump's side. ZOA's extremist president, Morton Klein (no relation) says his organization "is appalled that leftwing Jewish groups are wrongly analogizing this humane, reasonable, security-based draft Executive Order to U.S. restrictions in the 1930s on Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany. A ZOA official who had several relatives on the SS St. Louis is particularly offended that leftwing Jewish groups are attempting to analogize President Trump’s humane draft Executive Order to Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refusal to allow the SS St. Louis, which was carrying over 900 Jews, land in the United States.  Europe’s Jews in the 1930s – 1940s had no safe zones to flee to: Britain had slammed shut the door to the area that is now the State of Israel. Most importantly, Jewish refugees posed no threat to the United States. No Jewish immigrants flew airplanes into buildings, or massacred scores of innocent people at a holiday party or nightclub or marathon or drive trucks into innocent citizens.

"As Homeland Security Committee Chair Congressman Peter King put it: 'in [previous] refugee situations [Bosnian refugees in the 1990s, Jew in the 1930s], the refugees coming were not a threat to the United States. . .  the Jews [in the 1930s] . . . should have been let in, because they were no threat to the United States, plus they needed, of course, the relief from the horror they were going through. In this case [Syrian refugees], we have no idea who we’re getting. And a lot of these refugees . . . were [already in Turkey and] going to Europe for economic gain. And, you can understand that, but do you open up all your borders, not knowing who’s a real refugee, who’s coming for economic reasons, and who is affiliated with ISIS?'... ZOA strongly praises President Trump for his wise and humane order that protects Americans."

Over the weekend, David Brooks compared Señor Trumpanzee to one of his own heroes, Ronald Reagan.

Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, he’s spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes.

If Reagan’s dominant emotional note was optimism, Trump’s is fear. If Reagan’s optimism was expansive, Trump’s fear propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian entanglements through rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull in from European entanglements by disparaging NATO. It’s not a cowering, timid fear; it’s more a dark, resentful porcupine fear.

We have a word for people who are dominated by fear. We call them cowards. Trump was not a coward in the business or campaign worlds. He could take on enormous debt and had the audacity to appear at televised national debates with no clue what he was talking about. But as president his is a policy of cowardice. On every front, he wants to shrink the country into a shell.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”

Desperate to be liked, Trump adopts a combative attitude that makes him unlikable. Terrified of Mexican criminals, he wants to build a wall that will actually lock in more undocumented aliens than it will keep out. Terrified of Muslim terrorists, he embraces the torture policies guaranteed to mobilize terrorists. Terrified that American business can’t compete with Asian business, he closes off a trade deal that would have boosted annual real incomes in the United States by $131 billion, or 0.5 percent of G.D.P. Terrified of Mexican competition, he considers slapping a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, even though U.S. exports to Mexico have increased 97 percent since 2005.

Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition.

Brooks frets that his party has fundamentally changed and he pinpoints that change to when "Trump became the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness became the party’s dark fearfulness. In this case fear is not a reaction to the world. It is a way of seeing the world. It propels your reactions to the world. As Reagan came to office he faced refugee crises, with suffering families coming in from Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia. Filled with optimism and confidence, Reagan vowed, 'We shall seek new ways to integrate refugees into our society,' and he delivered on that promise. Trump faces a refugee crisis from Syria. And though no Syrian-American has ever committed an act of terrorism on American soil, Trump’s response is fear. Shut them out... A mean wind is blowing."

A few minutes ago a liberalish friend of mine called to complain about how Trump is destroying our relationship with Mexico, causing unnecessary tension and anxiety and creating negative feelings for no reasons. When I brought up the horror at the airports he said he doesn't care about "fucking Muslim terrorists from Somalia." We're doomed. I read him Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous little homily after he was freed from a Nazi concentration camp.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Don't let Trump divide us. Please speak out. Loudly. Clearly. wo of the first congressional resisters to jump into action yesterday were Jerrold Nadler and Nydia Velazquez who traveled to JFK airport to demand the release of the dozen refugees being held under Trump's unconstitutional executive order. They got one of them-- an Iraqi who fought for the U.S.-- released quickly and were still working to free the other 11 as I wrote this. Nadler's and Velazquez's statement:

Today, we saw in real human terms the damage and the absurdity of Trump’s policies. The president’s executive order is mean-spirited, ill-conceived, and ill-advised. The order almost banned a man from entering the country who has worked for the United States government for 10 years, who risked his life to help us and to help our troops, and who loves our country. Thankfully, we did not sit idly by. We took action. We demanded his release, and the release of the others who are being unlawfully detained. We are pleased to announce that Hameed Khalid Darweesh has been released and can now be reunited with his family.

This should not happen in America. We shouldn’t have to demand the release of refugees one by one. We must fight this executive order in the streets, in the courts, anywhere, anytime. We must resist. We must fight.  We must keep working to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Constitutional Crisis Already

Three federal judges, one in New York, one in Alexandria, VA and one in Seattle all handed down rulings blocking Trump's unconstitutional orders to detain Muslim visa and green card holders at airports. Bannon had the Department of Homeland Security issue a statement that they would continue implementing Trump's illegal order. (A 4th federal judge, in Boston, has since weighed in that Trump's orders to ban legal immigrants is unwarranted and he blocked it pending further hearings.) Bannon's defiance: "The president's Executive Orders remain in place-- prohibited travel will remain prohibitted, and the U.S. government retains the right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety."

Trump -- The Art And Acts Of The Emboldened: The Rise In Hate Crimes Under The Influence Of Comrade T

2016 In Review: America Off The Rails, Part 8

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by Noah

There have always been hate crimes, but now, since Comrade Trump's incessant hateful spew has become a daily segment of news coverage, according to the FBI there has been a 67% uptick in hate crimes just against Muslims. The uptick corresponds particularly well with Trump statements such as a call for a "complete ban on all Muslims." But, of course, Muslims are not the only target of the President-elect.

He directs his words (doesn't he have "the best words"?) at minorities in general. The tacit, and often overt, acceptance of the endorsements and glowing approvals of every white-nationalist and Aryan-supremacy group in the world has led to an increase in pro-KKK, anti-Semitic graffiti and similar anti-"other" utterances around the country. These groups have been listening to Trump and now feel they have a license. It seems that under Trump all is now permissible.

The campaign and election of Comrade Trump, designed to fear-monger and set Americans against Americans, has emboldened the haters. The embrace of Comrade Trump by the Republican Party has brought bigotry of all kinds, a key component of republicanism for decades, to the forefront. It's all about divide and conquer.

[Click to enlarge.]

We haven't heard the likes of Trump and people like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or House Speaker Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan doing much speaking out against such behavior now, have we? No, instead we have seen them embrace the appointments and nominations of virulent homophobes such as Mike Pence and Rick Perry and white-supremacy advocates like Steve Bannon. In the few instances that repug politicians do speak out about such things, it is gratuitous, insincere, and obviously runs counter to their previous statements, policies, and actions.

Below are just a few representative examples of Trump's Brown Shirts at work, spreading the word and acting out. Republicans can call them all hoaxes. That's been a traditional tactic throughout history. But when you have witnesses and film, the claim of "hoax" doesn't stick. It's getting ugly out there. Now there has been retaliation against Trump supporters, which is just as bad. It will get worse on both sides. This is what Trump and his party have unleashed.

THE GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE.
WELCOME TO TRUMP'S AMERICA.



In Whitefish, Montana, a white supremacy group headed by Richard Spencer, aka "The Heil Trump Guy," has decided to take to the streets and has scheduled a "March Against Jews." Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, editor of The Daily Stormer, says:

We are continuing our barrage against the criminal Jews of Whitefish. We are planning an armed protest in Whitefish. . . . We can easily march through the center of town carrying high-power rifles.

Well, that kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it? It's almost poetic, if one was to interpret it as Andrew Anglin saying, "We can easily march through the center of town naked, carrying our high-power penis-compensation devices." Anglin rails against what he calls "The Jew Agenda" and has issued reminders of his beloved Nazi Germany by superimposing yellow Jewish stars on photos.

Here where I live, in New York City, a Muslim transit worker was recently shoved down some stairs at Grand Central Terminal as she was reporting for work. The assailant shouted "terrorist" at her and told her to go back to "her own country," adding, "You shouldn't work here."

It seems there's no pleasing the righties. They accuse people of not wanting to work. Yet when people are just going about their own business and going to their job, they have an issue with that, too.

Hate crimes in New York are up 115% since Election Day, with 43 hate crimes reported compared with 20 in the same period of 2015. 24 of those crimes were anti-Semitic. 4 were anti-Muslim. Arrests have increased by 45%.

Interestingly, the far-right Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post included the fact, right in their headline, that the transit worker who was assaulted was wearing a hijab, as if that was some sort of a crime, or maybe she was asking for trouble. She was also wearing her transit worker's uniform.

In another New York assault, a man threatened to slit an off-duty officer's throat, calling her "ISIS." Apparently, part of her crime was that she too was wearing a hijab. The attacker, sounding like he was at a Trump rally, yelled "We can't allow this."

In Loveland, Ohio, a message of intolerance and racial hate was painted on a park bike trail. The "art" included a 15-foot-wide depiction of Pepe the Frog. Pepe, a once-innocent cartoon amphibian character, has been coopted by anti-Muslim and white-supremacy groups but is mostly used by anti-Semitic types for neo-Nazi propaganda purposes.

[Click to enlarge.]

Depictions of Pepe were known to show up at Trump campaign events. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently added Pepe the Frog to its database of hate symbols. The ADL also denounced Trump's campaign for its apparent promotion of the use of Pepe. Wouldn't you love to know what Trump's alleged white-supremacist, anti-semitic chief strategist Steve Bannon thinks of all this?

This sort of graphic art has been found lately all across the country. In Hartsdale, NY (just north of the city) a wall on a path to the local train station was painted with swastikas, the N-word, Trump, and KKK, among other things the day after the election. It was clearly done as a celebration and "in your face" kind of statement. Similar graffiti "art" was found on a park path on Long Island -- just one of many post-election incidents on Long Island. At least one, on a sidewalk in Mineola, combined red swastikas with the words "Make America White Again."


New York Daily News caption: "Police found a red swastika and the words 'Make American White Again' spray-painted onto the sidewalk along Washington Ave. in Mineola on Long Island on Nov. 30." [Click to enlarge.]

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported in late November that just a week before the election, a historically black church in Greenville, Mississippi, was burned in what even Mississippi authorities believe was an act of voter intimidation. The words "Vote Trump" were sprayed on the walls of the church.

These are the kind of incidents that Trump supporters often claim are fake and done by Trump-haters, but really, is this something a Trump-hater would want to be caught doing? Would a Trump-hater risk fines and imprisonment over this? Would a Trump-hater enjoy explaining to his or her community that he or she is not really an anti-semite or whatever? No, the people who does this are proud of what they are doing. They are true believers.

Speaking of true believers, here's one Trump supporter who got so enthusiastic about the election result that he went and got himself banned from Delta Airlines for life.



Such outbursts on planes are never cool, especially since 9/11.

The SPLC has also reported that in the ten days following the election there were an incredible 900 reports of harassment and intimidation around the country. Many of the assaulters used Trump's name while committing their assaults. If you go to that link, you can see that the SPLC has charted the post-election incidents in great detail, including breakdowns as to specific type of incident.

In an effort to be thorough, the SPLC has also charted anti-Trump-supporter incidents, but, just like police reports from around the nation, the number of such incidents is minuscule compared with the numbers of attacks on Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and LGBTQ people.

One horrific attack on a young white homeless man did occur recently in Chicago and made national headlines. In this incident, young African-Americans did the attacking and they invoked Trump's name clearly as some sort of retribution. The idiots even filmed their crime and put it on Facebook.

Let's never forget that Trump began his rise to political prominence by leading the racist birtherism idiocy. This is the atmosphere that the Trump campaign has created. Its flames have been fanned by the usual media suspects who incessantly whine about "political correctness." I have said for years that the republican war against "political correctness" is waged because republicans long to scream the N-word and similar things from the rooftops. Republicans are ridiculously pointing to the Chicago incident and saying that whites are victims just as often as anyone else. Unfortunately for them, FBI data, not just the data of the SPLC, says otherwise and says it loudly and clearly.

[Click to enlarge.]

Meanwhile, President-elect Trump disingenuously says that he has no idea why white supremacists had been "energized" by his campaign -- a campaign filled with incendiary bigoted statements that make the late Alabama Gov. George Wallace sound like a choirboy.

IN TRUMP WORLD,
HATE GETS A PUSH

In a related matter, book publisher Simon and Schuster (CBS Inc.) has given ultra-right extremist Milo Yiannopoulos, a British writer and public speaker (including American college tours) and technology editor for the far, far right Breitbart "News," a $250,000 advance for a book ostensibly about free speech. The author is known for his own brand of bigoted ravings spun from his virulent homophobic, white supremacist, and misogynistic mind. In other words, Simon and Schuster is peddling hate speech for profit by giving Yiannopoulos a mainstream platform.



I'm all for free speech. After all, it can give people quite an opportunity to reveal how evil they are. However, this is more akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater. Right-wingers have already launched a successful campaign to make this yet-to-be-published book #1 on Amazon's "political commentary and opinion" best-seller list. The book comes out in March on Simon and Schuster's "conservative" imprint, Threshold Editions, also known for their books by Rush Limbaugh and President-elect Trump.

I know we can expect TV appearances with sympathizers and fellow hate-spinners such as Sean Hannity, Bill-O, and Tucker Carlson, who has now been announced as the replacement for the departed Megyn Kelly in FOX's 9pm Bigot Hour. In fact, it would not be surprising if FOX "News" or CNN gives Yiannopoulos his own show before the end of the year. Appearances on CBS would also not be surprising, given its relationship to Simon and Schuster. That's how it is with Trump World. Hate gets a push.

2016 IN REVIEW: AMERICA OFF THE RAILS

Here it is, Noah's completed Year in Review for 2016:

Part 1, "Profiles in Cowardice: The Electoral College" (12/23/2016)
Part 2, "Republican Of The Year Nominee #1: Newt Gingrich" (12/27/2016)
Part 3, "The Trumpf Inauguration Committee Finds The Perfect Inauguration Entertainment At Last!" (12/29/2016)
Part 4, "Republican Of The Year Nominee #2: R-R-Reince Priebus" (1/2/2017)
Part 5, "Comrade Trump: The World’s Worst Cabinet Maker, Believe Me -- Meet The New Russian Oligarchs! (1)" (1/4/2017)
Part 6, "Comrade Trump: The World’s Worst Cabinet Maker, Believe Me -- Meet The New Russian Oligarchs! (2)" (1/5/2017)
Part 7, "Republican Of The Year Nominee #3: Governors' Edition" (1/9/2017)
Part 8, "Trump -- The Art And Acts Of The Emboldened: The Rise In Hate Crimes Under The Influence Of Comrade T" (1/10/2017)
Part 9, "Republican Of The Year Nominee #4: It's A Sad Thing When Cousins Marry Edition" (1/11/2017)
Part 10, "Republican Person Of The Year Nominee #5 -- And Winner!" (1/12/2017)
Part 11, "Comrade Trump: Inauguration Entertainment Update!" (1/15/2017)
Part 12, "A DWT Exclusive: We Have The First Draft Of Comrade Trump's Inauguration Speech!" (1/16/2017)

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Confidential to Antonio Sabato Jr.: God thinks you're an asshole and Jesus says you suck

One more time --
We first looked at this clip in the July 27 post "If the campaign is going to be a 'feelings' fight, is the handwriting on the wall?"


"What is truly revealing is [Antonio Sabato Jr.'s] implication that believing something to be true is the same as its being true. Because if anything, that was the theme of the Republican Convention this week. It was a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts."

-- John Oliver, on that Sunday's Last Week Tonight

by Ken

Leastwise that's my opinion, Antonio, up there atop this post -- you know, about God thinking you're an asshole and Jesus saying you suck. And you know what? As you explained so eloquently on national TV, I'm entitled to my opinion, and you can go against it, but I believe it. Why . . . why . . . denying me my right to have and express my opinion is just like Communism, as you have further explained.

And it seems only fair to allow you to make your case, seeing as how I so enthusiastically endorsed John Oliver's making a federal case of your nationally televised assault on sense, sanity, truth, and decency, your coast-to-coast declaration of war on, well, reality. I'm sure you remember what you blithered, but perhaps some readers could use a refresher. As John put it, you, an "IMDB-page-awarded actor," after "deliver[ing] a relatively restrained speech" at the convention, "open[ed] [your] heart regarding President Obama to ABC News":



Since you still don't get it, Antonio, not any of it, it's hard to know where to begin. And not, I think, with the most obvious point: that what you believe is demonstrable and well-demonstrated bullshit, delivered with the intent, or at least the result, of destroying civility and decency, and that it can only be the product of some combination of imbecility and insanity. No, I think we have to back up to the underlying belief: that being a Muslim is inherently evil, or for that matter in any way subject to reproach, especially from a demonstrated lunatic-cretin. Because with this stated belief, you declared yourself, again to a national TV audience, as a snarling, savage bigot and hate-monger, again with no imaginable goal except the destruction of sense, civility, and decency.

So while yes, you have a right to your beliefs and of course the right of free speech to express them. But included with those rights are the rights of others to respond to their ignorance, delusionality, and dangerous hatefulness. This is, after all, the way free speech is supposed to work. And yet . . . and yet . . .

As Walter Einenkel explains in a DailyKos post, "Washed-up soap actor says his claim that Obama was a Muslim has led to a Hollywood blacklist":

Well, two weeks later, the former Dance Night Obsession star is saying that his support of Donald Trump has led to a Joseph McCarthy-like blacklist of Sabáto Jr! As an aside, here’s a tweet from Sabáto Jr. from a little over a month ago.



Sadly for Antonio Sabáto Jr, not unlike people’s reaction to 2003’s Wasabi Tuna, the backlash against him is making him frowny-face-unicorn-poo-brokenheart emoticony. He tells Variety:

I think this country allows you freedom of speech. Anybody should be allowed to say whatever they want. When you’re in my business, you can’t talk about [conservative] politics. You just can’t. You’re attacked viciously in a way that I’ve never been attacked before.

On Twitter, there’s been name calling, and celebrities attacking me. That’s fine. I see it, but I don’t read it. I block them and delete them and move on. There’s so much negativity you can be taken into that. But I’ve also heard from celebrities: “If he can do it, I want to speak my mind too.” They are fed up with the way this country has been running and by all these lies.

As our Antonio prattles on, he seems to lose some of his optimism.

I was never a politician. I care about my country. I put God first. For the last seven-and-a-half years, I’ve seen this country led by a leader that’s made mistakes. I spoke my mind about it. But because I’m in the industry, you can’t talk about that. The media and the liberals act the way they act: The will back up the president until the end. It’s been interesting. I’ve had fantastic directors who have said officially to my agents and managers they will never hire me again. They will never even see me for projects. That’s unfair. It’s just like Communism.

Um, yikes! "Just like Communism"? Do you actually known anything about Communism, Antonio? Or, more to the point, about blacklisting? This is actually the sort of thing beloved by power-mongering right-wing hatebags.

But to return to the, er, substance, of your complaint -- so much crackpot bullshit, so little attachment to reality. Well, sorry, Antonio, none of this washes, for the reasons I sketched earlier on, but also, as Walter points out with regard to your newfound diminished employability:

This would be true, if it was true. Here’s a quick list of the liberal power brokers of Hollywood:

• Robert Downey Jr. -- Conservative and top grossing actor in Hollywood
• Clint Eastwood -- seriously
• ylvester Stallone -- the guy that has three top grossing films over the last five years
• Jerry Brickheimer -- If you’ve watched a movie that goes “boom” in the last 40 years, he probably produced it.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger -- Was a governor once, I think
• James Woods, Jon Voigt, Gary Senise, John Malkovich, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Adam Sandler, Robert Duvall, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson ... and the list goes on.

Hollywood’s about narcissism and money -- yes, there are “liberals” in Hollywood, but mostly “social liberals,” which means virtually nothing except that you are aware that gay people aren’t going to some fictitious hell. However, the Shark Hunter actor, who will be coming out with a mini-series next year titled Antonio Sabato Jr Down Under, feels like he’s being punished for being as dumb as a brick.

Ah, if only our IMDB-page-awarded boy was aware that "he's being punished for being as dumb as a brick." Now I don't want to let this go without restressing John Oliver's original point, which emphatically wasn't about our Antonio being an idiot. As he made abundantly clear, it was about the belief that "believing something to be true is the same as its being true."


HOWEVER, ANTONIO, AS REGARDS YOUR CAREER . . .

. . . being dumb as a brick may well be a problem. Even more of a problem is your demonstrated willingness, even eagerness, to make headlines by spewing imbecilic, hate-infested lies and delusions. You've turned yourself into what's often known as a "loose cannon," and this often doesn't sit well with people one would like to do business with. Just consider, if you were the producer of such hot-ticket spectacles as Shark Hunter and Antonio Sabato Jr Down Under, how eager would you be to sign up a potential cancer for your extravaganza?

Now one doesn't want to get so personal as to cast aspersion on your talents, Antonio. Just because those talents don't happen to include much in the way of acting doesn't mean you shouldn't be employable as an actor. If Hollywood were to outlaw the hiring of low-talent actors, well, it would be a very different place, wouldn't it? But did you really expect  Antonio, that your talents -- being pretty and having a killer body -- would be a lifetime meal ticket? Does that sound like Hollywood?

Did readers notice, by the way, buried in Antonio's blithering, the apparent source of his seemingly implacable Obama hatred? "For the last seven-and-a-half years, I’ve seen this country led by a leader that’s made mistakes." Well, DWT has had a fair amount to say about mistakes made by President Obama, but the list doesn't include being a Muslim, and wouldn't even if it were true.


RECALLING THE TALENTS OF ANTONIO SABATO JR.

#

Naturally, the Christian slime who screech about imaginary abuses of their religious freedoms can't wait to abuse OTHER people's

Sorry, Dr. Ben, you're un-American, and it's time for you to STFU.

by Ken

I'm sure you remember the kid who made the clock that nearly got him shipped to Guantanamo. A swell post the other day from BSSanders at Daily Kos:

"They didn't think he had a bomb."

by BSSanders
Thursday, Sept. 17 at 03:17PM EDT

Great Post Sent to Me Today

I said: it's sad they thought that kid had a bomb.
She said: they didn't think he had a bomb.
I said: yes, they thought he made a bomb and even called the police.
She said: They just wanted to humiliate a little Muslim boy. They didn't think he had a bomb.
I said: Don't be a conspiracy theorist. They might be a little prejudiced, but I'm sure they thought he had a bomb.
She said: OK. 
But they didn't evacuate the school, like you do when there's a bomb. 
They didn't call a bomb squad - like you do when there's a bomb. They didn't get as far away from him as possible, like you do when there's a bomb. Then they put him and the clock in an office: not like you do when there's a bomb 
Then they waited with him for the police to arrive, and then they put the clock in the same car as the police. 
Then they took pictures of it.
I said: Damn.....They never thought he had a bomb.

EQUAL RIGHTS are HUMAN RIGHTS

The Irving PD, the School Admin will be rightfully sued.
They can now pay Ahmed's way to MIT.
Thanks.

"They never thought he had a bomb."

THEN THERE'S THIS FROM BEN CARSON

The surging GOP presidential candidate is working hard to prove that he hates everything America stands for as violently as does "The Donald" Trump, who said on Meet the Press that because Islam is somehow inconsistent with the Constitution, "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that." The man is a proud, flaming bigot, and should -- along with all the other America-hating sociopaths -- wither shut the hell up or be rounded up as a threat to national security and stashed in a tent somewhere (in the desert?) while we await the completion of the Walls of Trump.


THEN THERE'S THIS BOROWITZ REPORT:

ROCHESTER, N.H. (The Borowitz Report)—Two days after asserting that President Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, a guy who asked Donald Trump a provocative question at a New Hampshire rally is now the front-runner in the Republican race for President, according to a new poll.

The poll, which was conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, shows Muslim Question Guy leading the G.O.P. field with thirty-four per cent as opposed to nineteen per cent for Trump.

In interviews with poll respondents, Republicans gave Muslim Question Guy high marks for stating that President Obama was neither Christian nor American and criticized Trump for not being more vocal in his agreement on those points.

Minutes after the poll was released, however, Trump was on the offensive, attacking Muslim Question Guy during an appearance on CNN.

“People who are supporting this guy haven’t done their homework,” the businessman said. “If you look back over the past seven years, no one has called Obama a foreign-born Muslim more often than I have.”

Trump’s comments did little to slow the momentum of Muslim Question Guy, who drew four thousand people at his first official campaign rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where he vowed to take back the country from Muslim clockmakers.

THIS IS A POINT I MEANT TO MAKE --

the other day in my post "Do the people protesting Kim Davis's 'religious persecution' have any idea what actual religious persecution?"

These Christian-slime sociopaths who bray so loudly about nonexistent infringement of their religious freedoms are hair-trigger quick to try to actually abuse other people's religious freedoms. Muslims, for example. If you really believe in the most basic American principles, then you have no choice but to believe in the religious freedom of all believers. You know, kind of the way the IRS does. (The exception being when, on extremely rare occasions, they actually dare to investiate flagrant abusers of the tax code by pastors who are knowingly pushing their abuses as far as they can to see just how much they can get away with. Then the lying-slimebag Christian scum screech about -- you guessed it!-- abuses of their religious freedoms, despite the reality that they're the ones who deliberately, systematically seek to abuser their own freedoms in the direction of limitless expansion.

Because the real goal of the lying Christian slimebags is precisely that: to impose their sociopathic prejudices and hates on everyone else, including the legitimately God-fearing. And in the process, they're doing what they can to destroy what America stands for.

#

Chris Christie draws a line in the sand of right-wing craziness

"This Sharia law business [i.e., that it has anything to do with lawyer Sohail Mohammed's suitability to be a judge] is crap. It's just crazy. And I'm tired of dealing with the crazies. . . . It's just unnecessary to be accusing the guy of things just because of his religious background."

by Ken

I don't take back anything I've said about the evil Chris Christie, but as I used to point out fairly frequently, before half of the American political spectrum declared itself officially decoupled from reality, the world is hierarchical, and Governor Christie deserves appropriate credit for drawing a line in the craziness. Today, in anticipation of the swearing in as a judge of lawyer Sohail Mohammed, a Christie appointee who has faced an appalling amount of flak simply for who he is, the governor spoke out.

Ignorance is behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed, [who] played an integral role in the post-September 11 period in building bridges between the Muslim American community in this state and law enforcement. [The governor went on to describe the role Mohammed played post-9/11 as a liaison to the state's Muslim community, scheduling dozens of meetings and encouraging them to trust the federal government.]

The folks who criticize my appointment of Sohail Mohammed are ignorant, absolutely ignorant of that, and they're criticizing him because he's a Muslim American, and because he represented people who were inappropriately detained by the FBI post-9/11. Now the fact of the matter is, there were lots of people inappropriately detained by the FBI post-9/11. It was a very difficult time for law enforcement. . . . None of [the people] that Sohail Mohammed represented ever were charged with any crimes of terrorism, and they were released, because of his diligence and zealous representation of them.

The governor was if anything more emphatic when a questioner raised the issue (I'm sorry I can't make out the actual question) of "Sharia law."

Sharia law has nothing to do with this at all. It's crazy! It's crazy -- the guy's an American citizen, who has been an admitted lawyer to practice in the state of New Jersey, swearing an oath to uphold the laws of New Jersey, the Constitution of the State of New Jersey, and the Constitution of the United States of America, and has never been accused of doing anything but, honorably and zealously, according to the oath he took when he became a lawyer.

I assume, from the simple fact that he was appointed by this governor, that Sohail Mohammed isn't my kind of guy, but the governor wasn't elected to appoint my kinds of guys. And the notion that he's unsuitable to serve simply because he's a Muslim is shocking and appalling and an abomination on the part of anyone who says it -- or, alas, simply thinks it. None of this should require stating in the year 2011.

Possibly it does require stating because so many of the "good Christians" who have been denouncing Mr. Mohammed actually believe that Christian law not only can but should supersede American law. Since, shamefully, it does require stating that Muslims are as fit for judicial service as any other Americans, full credit to Governor Christie for saying it and saying it so forcefully and unequivocally.

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Who Has The Courage To Stand Up For A Scapegoated Community Of Americans-- Not Dan Lipinski, That's For Sure

If you're not from Chicagoland you probably haven't heard of John Atkinson (yet). If you do live around the Windy City there's a chance you remember the full page ad (above) from last year, which ran in the Tribune, the Sun-Times and the Southtown Economist. The ads were put together and paid for by John and his wife Bonnie; I'm figuring they cost between $25 and $30,000. But they didn't work, Lipinski still bragging to this day-- and using Republican talking points in the process-- that he not only voted for the anti-Choice Stupak Amendment but that he was one of only 33 Democrats to cross the aisle and vote with Boehner against healthcare reform a year ago this month. Lipinski's ignoring the ads was part of the impetus that has made John throw his hat into the ring in seeking the Democratic nomination for the seat currently held by Lipinski, one of the most corrupt and reactionary Democrats in Congress.

This weekend, John officially registered with ActBlue and he's looking like a progressive and principled candidate for sending a Democratic Establishment that countenances corporate shills and bigots like Lipinksi a good strong message. You can contribute to his campaign at the Blue America Democratic message page.

President Obama won Illinois' 3rd CD with 64% of the vote, about 5 points better than either Gore or Kerry did. It's a solid Democratic district and there is no reason the party needs to keep nominating a Republican-lite shill like Lipinski, whose politics are more in tune with his home in Tennessee than with Cook County. The 3rd has one of the highest concentrations of Muslim-Americans of any district in the country and yet Lipinski, who never shuts up about super-serving Polish-Americans and other ethnic groups represented in the district, has been silent about the plight of Muslim-Americans unfairly targeted by Republican bigot Peter King in his McCarthy-like Homeland Security hearings. The day after King began his anti-Muslim hysteria, I asked John Atkinson if he would be handling this situation differently than Lipinski. He graciously agreed to write a guest post for us:

Representative Peter King (R-NY)-- in the latest example of his Party's relentless pursuit of a narrow ideological agenda-- has found yet another way to distract this new Congress from focusing on the issues that really matter to American families and businesses. Instead of working together to create jobs, pass a responsible budget, address growing concerns about our dependence on nonrenewable resources and foreign oil, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is spending their time investigating what they're calling "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." 

Unfortunately, these hearings aren't just a waste of taxpayer dollars, the King hearings are an affront to our hard-working, patriotic Muslim American neighbors; and an embarrassment to anyone who believes in the American principles of fairness and religious freedom. We have Muslim Americans dying in defense of our country, teaching our children, healing our sick, serving in Congress, and living next door. They are our friends and our fellow citizens. And, according to law enforcement officials, they are on the front lines of homeland security, working hard to identify and stop those who are or may be engaged in terrorist activities.

It is outrageous enough that Peter King and his Republican colleagues are leading the charge against our Muslim American neighbors. Something is deeply wrong in this country when we begin drawing lines to separate us from each other. We deserve leaders who will bring us together-- black and white, gay and straight, people of all religions and no religion at all, people of every language and every ethnicity-- to help us work together to meet the challenges that confront us all. 

There is no question that extremism is a threat to our security-– but extremism is not limited to any single group. On the day before Peter King opened these hearings, law enforcement officials arrested a neo-Nazi in a plot to murder 1500 Martin Luther King Jr. Day marchers in Spokane, Washington. And on the day the hearings opened, police arrested five people, including the head of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, an anti-government "Patriots" group, in a plot to murder judges and state troopers. (Source: Southern Poverty Law Center, http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/03/11/the-screaming-hypocrisy-of-peter-king/#more-6017)

Mr. King, why aren't we investigating "The Extent of Radicalization in the "you name the group" Community and that Community's Response"? Because, Mr. King, in America it is not OK to indict a whole community of people because of the illegal actions of a few. 

There have been times in our history when we look back and we know that our leaders, who claimed at the time to be acting in the interest of national security, got it horribly wrong. This is one of those times.

Blue America is getting to know John but my guess is that he's a very good prospect for an early endorsement. Like I said, right now you can help launch his primary campaign at our Sending the Democrats A Message page.

Congress' 2 worst anti-Choice fanatics, one from each party