Trump vs The LGBTQ Community

Trump has been at odds with huge swathes of the population but has been quiet about gays lately-- until yesterday. Remember, NBC's 2016 exit polls showed that 14% of LGBTQ voters admitted they had cast ballots for Trump. Yesterday Hill reporter Nathaniel Weixel wrote that the Regime plans to "scrap ObamaCare's nondiscrimination protections for sex and gender identity under a final rule released Friday. In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the government's interpretation of sex discrimination will be based on 'the plain meaning of the word 'sex' as male or female and as determined by biology.' ... The move was announced amid Pride Month but has been long-anticipated by religious providers, who argue the administration needs to reinforce their right not to provide treatment that is against their beliefs. The administration has been working on the rule for well over a year."

That will come as delightful news to the bigoted evangelicals who are still the base of Trump's dwindling support base. Hatred is, after all, the essence of their creed.

Advocates and health groups said the policy will make it easier for doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to deny care or coverage to transgender and nonbinary patients, as well as women who have had abortions.

"HHS respects the dignity of every human being, and as we have shown in our response to the pandemic, we vigorously protect and enforce the civil rights of all to the fullest extent permitted by our laws as passed by Congress," said Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights.

The administration has argued that removing the protections, based on Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, is largely moot because a federal judge in Texas vacated much of the rule last year.

The Obama-era rule made it illegal for doctors, hospitals and other health care workers to deny care to someone whose sexual orientation or gender identity they disapproved of.

The Obama administration did this by expanding the health law's definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity for the first time, but those expansions were blocked by a federal judge in 2016. The Trump administration has worked to weaken the rules before they could take effect.

The Trump administration’s rule is wide-ranging and goes beyond the Obama-era protections by rolling back nondiscrimination protections contained in other health provisions as well. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the rule removes protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 10 existing regulations.

Advocates and Democratic lawmakers said the decision to move ahead with the rule while the country is still in the middle of a pandemic is especially cruel. The concern is that LGBTQ patients might not be able to access the care they need.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already impacted access to medical treatment, as almost all "nonessential" procedures were halted, people stopped going to the emergency room and even stopped giving their children needed vaccines.

Yet even as states begin to reopen and loosen restrictions on nonessential medical procedures, advocates worry that LGBTQ patients will be discouraged from seeking treatment, coronavirus-related or otherwise.

  "At a time when protecting communities from the COVID-19 pandemic is paramount, your Department and the Trump Administration are knowingly putting the health and wellbeing of vulnerable individuals and children at risk, while blatantly promoting discrimination against LGBTQIA+ communities and religious minorities by pursuing the finalization of this proposed rule," Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Patty Murray (D-WA) wrote in a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

Katie Keith, a health care consultant and professor at Georgetown Law, said the rule will target vulnerable communities, likely making existing health care disparities worse.

"The circumstances [of the pandemic] make it harmful, but it would be harmful either way. It seems extra callous to push the regulation out at this point in time," Keith said.

The Human Rights Campaign immediately announced that it will file a lawsuit to overturn the rule and slammed the administration for releasing it on the anniversary of the Pulse shooting, where a gunman killed 49 people in an LGBTQ nightclub.

The administration's move was praised by religious conservatives and anti-abortion groups.

Imagine if the gayest Republican in the Senate got angry enough to denounce Trump for doing that. This is what it would sound like. You go #LadyG!





I asked several Blue America candidates to comment on the new rule. Marie Newman (IL), Julie Oliver (TX), Jon Hoadley (MI) and Eva Putzova (AZ) pretty much spoke for all of them. Marie, who already won her Chicagoland primary against an entrenched Blue Dog incumbent, sounded exasperated: "HHS and Trump do not respect anybody’s dignity. Whenever I think he will stop being cruel he drops the bar lower. Please vote and tell everyone you know to vote." Julie, also no fan of Trump and his lockstep enablers: "They’re targeting some of the most vulnerable of our fellow Americans’ access to health care during a global pandemic. This serves no purpose, and is as dangerous as it is hateful and backwards."

Jon is a Michigan legislator running for a congressional seat held by Trump collaborator Fred Upton. Hoadley is open about being gay. "There is no logical or policy motive for this move by the Trump Administration," he told us this morning. "Let's be clear: this is blatant discrimination against trans folks and will result in more death. Removing protections for any individual based on an aspect of their identity is obvious discrimination. Remember, anyone who voted against broad protections for LGBTQ+ folks in the Equality Act, like Fred Upton, share responsibility for this harm.

Eva explained that "Before this ruling, 31 percent of transgender Americans already lacked regular access to health care. Now, Trump is authorizing discrimination and futher jeopardizing the health of so many LGBTQ+ people in this country. It's sick, inhumane, and the fact he decided to roll back LGBTQ+ rights on the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting and Pride Month makes it even more abhorrent. When I'm in Congress, I will fight this with bold action. We need to ensure LGBTQ+ equality in law by passing the Equality Act AND enact Medicare for All so all LGBTQ+ people have access to the affordable, quality care they need to be their full selves."

Are Conservative Evangelicals An Actual Hate Group? What Would Jesus Say?

These days, the Senate doesn't pass anything remotely controversial, let alone pass it unanimously. But last month they did-- a bill by Tim Scott (R-SC), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) to make lynching a federal hate crime. Their bill, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act (S.3178), had 39 co-sponsors, including conservative Republicans Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn. The bill defines lynching as the "willful act of murder by a collection of people assembled with the intention of committing an act of violence upon any person" and mandates life imprisonment for those found guilty.

NPR's report included an interesting tangent:

"This is an historic piece of legislation that would criminalize lynching, attempts to lynch and conspiracy to lynch for the first time in America's history," Harris said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "We finally have a chance to speak the truth about our past and make clear that these hateful acts should never happen again without serious, severe and swift consequence and accountability."

While Harris spoke, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) presided. During Mississippi's runoff election last month, Hyde-Smith was caught on camera complimenting a supporter by saying, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."

Hyde-Smith, who is white, was defending her seat against Democratic challenger Mike Espy, a former congressman who is African-American. She was widely criticized for her comments, but won reelection.

While this is the first time the Senate has passed anti-lynching legislation, Congress has been trying for over a century. According to the measure passed Wednesday, almost 200 bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century in an effort to end lynching.

But it still hasn't been signed into law. Why not? Simple: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) refused to schedule it for debate so the process has to start all over again in the Senate, where the craven Miss McConnell has vowed to not permit any votes unless he's given the OK from Trump. And there's a problem. Reactionary white evangelicals-- Trump's base-- are now opposed to the bill. The corporate media doesn't talk much about it but celebrated author Marianne Williamson is running for president right along the politicians and billionaires. This kind of religious bigotry is something she has confronted before. Today she told me that "This argument goes back to Eleanor Roosevelt trying to convince her husband to support a federal anti-lynching bill, which he refused to do; he said Americans weren’t ready for it. But now we are. The Cindy Hyde-Smiths of the world still win some elections, but they don’t speak for the American heart and the heart is where we are going. We simply must persist."

Another presidential aspirant, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, is very sensitive to religious bigotry intruding into politics. And in the distant past, coming from a very conservative family, she wasn't always on the same page as Hawaii's LGBT community. After her military service in Iraq her views have been much more gay-friendly and she wasn't happy about extremists' attempts to target the LGBT community with this legislation. Yesterday, in the midst of her presidential campaign rollout, she told me that "We must learn from the dark stains of our country’s history, from slavery, to the Jim Crow era of lynching, to the failed War on Drugs, and more. The passage of this landmark legislation in the Senate to establish lynching as a hate crime is a critical step forward, which is why it is unconscionable to attempt to block these protections from applying to the LGBT community. All Americans-- no matter their sexual orientation, race, gender, religion, disability, zip code, national origin, or anything else-- must receive equal protection and treatment under the law."

Suppose Miss McConnell were out in Pickle Park or Louisville's Fruit Loop, cruising late one night and instead of a young man, he ran into a dozen red necks with Louisviille slugger baseball bats and suppose they clobbered him into hamburger. Under the legislation he and McCarthy (who is not gay) are blocking, the perpetrators would be guilty under the federal lynching bill.

The hate-filled evangelical fanatics are demanding that victims who are targeted for their sexual orientation or gender identity be excluded from the bill's protections. The Trump-supporting Liberty Counsel-- an off-shoot of Falwell's Liberty "University"-- and led by deranged and obsessive homophobes, Mathew and Anita Staver-- is at the forefront of the demands. Mathew Staver: "The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in. And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation, as part of this anti-lynching bill... So far they've been unsuccessful over the many years in the past, but this is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler at some time in the future."

Staver tolds OneNewsNow that his fanatical organization, Liberty Counsel, is talking to lawmakers in the House in an effort to convince them to strip the bill of the amendment before taking a vote. Instead he seems to have persuaded McCarthy just to not take a vote at all.

Matt Cartwright (D-PA) is a member of two very powerful committees, House Appropriations and the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee. Before being elected to Congress, he was one of Pennsylvania's top attorneys. And, like Tulsi Gabbard, he's not happy about this kind of thing. "People," he told me, "who think it’s okay to commit murder because of the victim’s sexual orientation have no business commenting on American law, let alone holding themselves out as followers of Jesus Christ."

Yesterday, Doug Pagitt, a progressive evangelical pastor in Minnesota and executive director of VoteCommonGood, suggested I use the term "conservative Evangelicals" instead of "white evangelicals" because it's more accurate and helps make the distinction and because it "calls people to the progressive ideas and actions Jesus teaches... The people who support these measures are by far more committed to their conservatism, and even white nationalism, than they are to any sense of evangelicalism. This is born out in the fact that the primary question that should be put to any Jesus following Evangelical group is not the well deserved question, 'are they a hate group?' but, 'how do they find no end to the love they show all people?'"

Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of the most distinguished members of the House Judiciary Committee, told me that "It’s hard to believe that, while the Congress is already up in arms over the dangerous white nationalism voiced by Rep. Steve King, the GOP is indulging the bigotry of right-wing religious forces. Conservative Evangelicals apparently cannot abide the inclusion of gay and lesbian Americans in our federal anti-lynching legislation. What do they think the social message is of removing the LGBT community from the protection of a law against lynching? Here’s another simple moral test for the GOP."

Expanding on a theme he's been developing for a decade, evangelical expert and best-selling author Frank Schaeffer asked "Where did Trump’s evangelicals come from?: Children born into households that isolate them in homeschooling and church schools then send them to institutions like Bob Jones or Liberty U or Wheaton so identity is cemented and they carry forward the fundamentalist religious supremacy crusade. The Bible Trump’s evangelicals quote sanctifies humanity’s moral infancy idolizing the worldview of the Iron Age, leaving believers susceptible to justifying all manner of Trump’s evil in the name of God.

Face it: American Evangelicals are the Number 1 threat to democracy. Of course lynching gay people would be fine with them. As Trump joked about Mike Pence "He'd like to hang gay people."

When one treats the Bible as the literally perfect word of God it isn’t hard to find support for the ugly list racist, Christian-Zionist, xenophobic magical thinking that now darkens the Trumped evangelical brand. It’s time to say it: Evangelicals are a threat to the USA.

Evangelical religion has made evangelical leaders and ordinary Bible-believers susceptible to courtship by Trump’s authoritarian, bigoted, sexist, tribal, anti-intellectual greed-mongers who dangle the carrot of theocracy. It is time to define evangelical voters as a hate group.

Mark Foley, a personal friend of Trump's and a gay former Republican congressman who represented Mar-A-Lago, told me this morning that "the fact that  they are working to exclude any group from this legislation is appalling and shows a total lack of true Christian beliefs." He then warned his former colleagues that "If the Republican Party wants to continue to placate a vocal, yet distinct minority of individuals who cloak their bias by using the church as their shield, they will be justly rewarded on Judgment Day and those legislators that aid and abet this calculated hateful political stunt will pay dearly at the ballot box if their conscience doesn’t get them first..."

One More GOP Crackpot Who Probably Won't Get Into Congress-- Mark Harris (NC-09)

Keep digging' Mark

Dan McCready isn't my kind of candidate. He has already joined the Blue Dogs and New Dems, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and is likely to take a very conservative posture when it comes to crucial congressional votes-- more or less your father's kind of Republican but with a "D" next to his name, not a Trumpian fascist or 2018 right-wing extremist. With the connivance of the DCCC, he won the NC-09 May 8th primary.

The Republican incumbent, Robert Pittenger, a solid conservative, was defeated by a neo-fascist extremist, Mark Harris in that primary, probably making it easier for McCready, a Marine vet, to win the general election. McCready didn't just win his primary overwhelmingly-- 36,098 (82.8%) to 7,922 (17.2%)-- he won more votes than the 3 Republican combined!

• Mark Harris- 17,302 (48.54%)
• Robert Pittender- 16,474 (46.22%)
• Clarence Goins- 1,867 (5.24%)

As of the April 18 FEC reporting deadline, Pittenger had spent $1,000,061 to Harris' $465,043. McCready, who has raided the most money, spent $695,478 on the primary. Ryan's House Majority PAC spent around $75,000 attacking Harris. As of that last filing deadline, McCready had $1,220,648 cash on hand to Harris' $70,804.

The district takes up most of the state's southern tier that borders on South Carolina but much of the population lives in metro Charlotte-- Cherry, Colonial Heights, Eastover, Meyers Park, south into the cities suburbs and exurbs-- and most of Fayetteville and its suburbs. Although the district's PVI is R+8 and although Trump beat Hillary there 54.4% to 42.8%, demographics are trending blue. In a wave election, NC-09 would be a good pick to flip Democratic, especially this year when Harris had been unable to soothe the bitterness and rancor of the Pittenger backers. That's confirmed by a Civitas poll of likely voters released yesterday, showing McCready ahead by 7 points.

• Mark Harris- 36%
• Dan McCready- 43%
• Jeff Scott (Libertarian)- 3%

By 49-43% NC-09 voters disapprove of the way Trump is doing his job. But Harris' biggest problem is because women dislike him-- by 16 points. While the poll was in the field a Democratic SuperPAC, American Bridge, discovered a sermon Harris did as a Baptist minister, implying, strongly, that women belong in the home, not in the workplace. It was picked up widely by the local media. He questioned whether a career was the "healthiest pursuit" for women.

In the sermon, Harris, then pastor of Charlotte's First Baptist Church, spoke about "God's plan for biblical womanhood" and barriers to it.

"The first one... is that we’ve had in our own culture a new supreme pursuit," he said. "There is a new supreme pursuit from the traditional pursuit of being a wife or a mother... 
"In our culture today, girls are taught from grade school... that what is most honorable in life is a career, and their ultimate goal in life is simply to be able to grow up and be independent of anyone or anything," he said.

"But nobody has seemed to ask the question that I think is critically important to ask: Is that a healthy pursuit for society? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our homes? ...Is that the healthiest pursuit for the sexes in our generation?"

...In a statement, McCready said the sermon reflects someone "out of step."

"As a Christian, I believe that we are all created in God's image," he said. "That means men and women are equally valuable and equally capable and should be treated as such in their homes, careers, and in society. Mr. Harris' comments suggest otherwise. This is just another example of how out of step Mr. Harris is-- not just with this district but with this century."


...Harris' sermon came a year after he helped lead the successful 2012 push for what was known as Amendment One, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. It was later nullified when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

Arrest Those Two And Grab The Kid

Early yesterday on his way to Fox and Friends, the fake president was delighted to be surrounded by reporters throwing questions at him. He revels in lying to the media. "That’s a Democrat bill," he lied. "That’s the law, and that’s what the Democrats gave us," he spouted, perpetuating his own baseless bullshit that the law is forcing his regime to incarcerate children at the border to be separated from their parents.

Not knowing anything about the Bible, Trump left it for Sessions and Huckabee's daughter to make up the biblical justification for the Trumpist policy. I can't wait to see how Kate McKinnon handles this on Saturday Night Live: "Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order... Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful."

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who says she went to an Evangelical University, has been making the same case, saying it is "very biblical to endorse the law... That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible."

James Hohmann went on and on about this in yesterday's Washington Post: Trump is losing the debate over splitting up immigrant families. Thursday was "a tipping point" for the Trumpist regime's war against refugee children, as even Republican congressmember and loyal Trumpist religionists "distanced themselves" from the vile and illegitimate boob of a so-called "president."

Republicans might be able to win political fights over “sanctuary cities,” the border wall and the president referring to Hispanic gang members as “animals.” But party strategists privately acknowledge they will not be able to prevail in a messaging war over whether it’s a good idea to take kids away from their folks, especially against the backdrop of dramatic visuals and a stream of relatable stories about traumatized young people being housed in shelters. This policy is widely believed by operatives to play especially poorly with suburban women who are key to Democratic hopes of retaking the House.

This explains why more and more elected Republicans-- especially those facing tough reelection fights-- are going on the record to say they oppose splitting up families. Even Paul Ryan declared that he is uncomfortable with the policy. “We don’t want kids to be separated from their parents,” the speaker told reporters during his weekly news conference, though he blamed the courts and not Trump.

...Historically, whenever a politician has cited Romans 13 to justify public policy, they have lost the debate. It’s never been a winning argument, but that’s what Jeff Sessions did Thursday. Defending the “zero tolerance” policy he unveiled last month, the attorney general said during a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Ind.: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.”

This passage was previously used to justify the divine right of kings, oppose the American Revolution and defend slavery. Consider these two quotes from a new story by Julie Zauzmer and Keith McMillan:

“There are two dominant places in American history when Romans 13 is invoked,” said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. “One is during the American Revolution [when] it was invoked by loyalists [to the crown]… The second spike you see is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong… This is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made… Whenever Romans 13 was used in the 18th and the 19th century-- and Sessions seems to be doing the same thing, so in this sense there is some continuity-- it’s a way of manipulating the scriptures to justify your own political agenda.”

“Romans 13 says that the purpose of government is to pursue what is good, and it says that the government should not be a terror for those who are doing good,” said Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization for World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. “The fact that the Apostle Paul, who wrote Romans, wrote several epistles from jail suggests that he was occasionally on the wrong side of an unjust law… You cannot read Romans 13 without reading Romans 12.”

In Romans 12, Paul wrote: “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. ... Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.”

Sessions’s defense led to one of the testiest briefings of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s tenure as White House press secretary. When CNN’s Jim Acosta asked her about the attorney general’s biblical reference, she eventually told him: “I know it's hard for you to understand even short sentences.”

“Where in the Bible does it say that it's moral to take children away from their mothers?” Acosta asked.

“I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law,” Sanders replied.

“There is no law that requires families to be separated at the border,” said Paula Reid of CBS. “This was the administration's choice!”

“Come on, Sarah, you're a parent,” added Brian Karem, executive editor of the Sentinel newspapers in Maryland. “Don't you have any empathy for what these people are going through?”

“Brian, guys, settle down,” said Sanders. “I'm trying to be serious, but I'm not going to have you yell out of turn.”

“These people have nothing,” replied Karem.

“Hey, Brian, I know you want to get some more TV time, but that's not what this is about,” said Sanders.

“Answer the question,” he replied. “It's a serious question. These people have nothing. They come to the border with nothing, and you throw children in cages. You're a parent. You're a parent of young children. Don't you have any empathy for what they go through?!”

Sanders ignored him and called on another reporter.

“The Trump administration seems to be caught inside a Twilight Zone episode, insisting without evidence that its own policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents is somehow a long-standing law and that any blame should go to Democrats,” writes Salvador Rizzo of The Post’s Fact Checker unit. “These claims are violently divorced from reality, as we’ve explained previously. Alas, [Sanders] seems to have missed or disregarded our fact-check.”

...Religious leaders, including on the right, are not buying the Romans 13 argument that Sessions is making.

“I think it’s disgraceful, it’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit,” the evangelist Franklin Graham, Billy’s son and a staunch Trump supporter, told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “And I blame the politicians for the last 20, 30 years that have allowed this to escalate to the point where it is today.”

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, which Vice President Pence addressed Wednesday in Dallas, passed a resolution nearly unanimously afterwards that said immigration policy should make “family unity” a “priority.” “We declare that any form of nativism, mistreatment, or exploitation is inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” said the resolution, from the country’s biggest Protestant church.

The official Twitter account of the Migrants and Refugees Section at the Vatican tweeted out a verse from Deuteronomy yesterday:

One prominent bishop said during a Wednesday meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Florida that Catholics who carry out Trump’s separation policy are violating the tenets of their faith and perhaps should be denied communion.

The head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston released his own statement blasting the policy. “This strategy is morally unacceptable and denies the clear danger weighing upon those seeking our assistance,” wrote Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley. “In the year 2018, the moral challenge of immigration is mounting for the United States. On too many occasions our government has taken a posture and established policy which is in principle and in practice hostile to children and families who are fleeing violence, gangs, and poverty.”

Sessions today will travel to Scranton, Pa., to speak on immigration at Lackawanna College. Ahead of his visit, the Catholic bishop for that area sent a separate statement to the local newspaper, the Times-Tribune, that described the administration policy as an “affront to the right to life.”

“These individuals are fleeing violence and chaos in their homelands, only to face policies that are destroying their families and unduly burdening their children,” said Bishop Joseph C. Bambera.

The leaders of 26 separate Jewish groups-- from the conservative, reform and reconstructionist movements -- have signed a new open letter to Sessions and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that calls the policy of separating children from their parents “unconscionable.” It was organized by the Anti-Defamation League.

Furthermore, the policy is breaking through into popular culture.

Stephen Colbert, a devout Catholic, lambasted the separation of families on his show last night:

“What's going on at our southern border is outrageous," singer Willie Nelson said in a statement picked up yesterday by Rolling Stone. “Christians everywhere should be up in arms. What happened to 'Bring us your tired and weak and we will make them strong?' This is still the promise land.” (That’s a reference to lyrics from his song "Living in the Promiseland.”) ...Activists protested around the country yesterday. Hundreds showed up in places like Cincinnati and Akron, Ohio. Thirty people gathered outside Mar-a-Lago, per the Palm Beach Post.

...The press clips continue to be brutal, even in ruby red states like Mississippi. Here’s a taste:

• The Clarion Ledger: “Crisis on the border: Immigration attorney describes families being separated, torn apart.”
• The Detroit Free Press: “‘Where's my mom?' cries girl as immigrant kids separated from parents arrive in Michigan.”
• WHYY (Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate): “Philly mental health experts call for end to separating kids, parents at Mexican border.”
• The American Medical Association Wire: “Doctors oppose policy that splits kids from caregivers at border.”
• The History News Network: “Would the Trump Administration Separate Jesus from Mary and Joseph?”

MEANWHILE, DOWN AT THE BORDER:

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it now has 11,432 migrant children in its custody, up from 9,000 at the beginning of May.

To cope with the surge, HHS announced it will open a temporary tent city in the Texas desert. “The shelter site, at the Tornillo-Marcelino Serna port of entry, is about 20 miles east of El Paso along the Mexico border,” Nick Miroff reports. "It was last used in 2016 to house migrant children and families in large, dormitory-style canvas tents. Children will begin arriving in the next few days... The site will have 360 beds, according to HHS officials, with the potential to add more. The Tornillo site will be the only location, to date, where HHS plans to put children in tents, or what the agency calls ‘semi-permanent structures."

“This is not a place that was built to house children, nor is it a location that has adequate numbers of counselors or therapists to assist these children,” said Texas state Rep. Mary González (D), whose district includes the site.

Intelligence and defense contractors are benefitting financially from the family separations, posting jobs focused on building up the infrastructure to house migrant children. The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman report: “One of them, from Virginia-based MVM Inc., seeks a compliance coordinator to help in San Antonio with the ‘rapid deployment of an Emergency Influx Shelter for unaccompanied children.’... MVM appears to believe its business is growing. A job posting on Indeed.com from 20 days ago advertises for youth care workers ‘in anticipation of a contract award.’ Matthew Kolken, an immigration attorney who frequently represents undocumented children, [said] he’s deeply concerned about these contractors’ child care work. ‘I’m guessing that in their mission statement, one of the central components isn’t the care of refugee children,’ he said.”

“The moral outrages from the Trump administration come so fast that they blur together, but this one stands out,” columnist Eugene Robinson writes on today’s opinion page. “[A] Honduran woman at a Texas detention center was breast-feeding her daughter recently when the child was snatched away. Other migrant families have said their children were purportedly led away for showers and clean clothes — but never returned. This is the kind of behavior we expect from monstrous totalitarian regimes such as the one led by President Trump’s ‘talented’ new friend, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. It is certainly not the policy of any nation that strives to be a ‘shining city on a hill.’”

And CNN has just unearthed a bevy of anti-Trump tweets from 2016 by Mercedes Schlapp, who is now the White House's director of strategic communications. Oliver Darcy reports: “Some of the most pointed criticism Schlapp, who is of Cuban descent, directed at Trump was about the uncompromising anti-immigration platform on which he campaigned during the 2016 election. In August 2015 … Schlapp tweeted that she was ‘not sure’ how Trump ‘will lead with Latinos’ in the 2016 election. Days later, Schlapp wrote, ‘One way to lose the Latino support is by saying that U.S. needs to deport all undocumented immigrants #DonaldTrump.’”

I just heard someone say that Trump's concentration camps aren't really concentration camps because there are no gas chambers. Why does the media keep calling them "shelters?" What's become of us?

Where Trumpism And Pretend Christianity Meet-- A Danger To America

The Last Supper by Nancy Ohanian

This morning, the NY Times reported that "While Republicans have been bracing for months for a punishing election in November, they are increasingly alarmed that their losses may be even worse than feared because the midterm campaign appears destined to turn more on the behavior of the man in the White House than any other in decades... As much as gun control, immigration, the sweeping tax overhaul and other issues are mobilizing voters on the left and the right, the seamy sex allegations and Mr. Trump’s erratic style could end up alienating crucial blocs of suburban voters and politically moderate women who might be drawn to some Republican policies but find the president’s purported sex antics to be reprehensible."

Right after Stormy's 60 Minutes show-- with its 22 million eye-popping ratings-- Washington Post reporters Andrew Whitehead, Joseph Baker and Samuel Perry asked "Why are white Christians sticking so closely to Trump, despite these claims of sexual indiscretions? And why are religious individuals and groups that previously decried sexual impropriety among political leaders suddenly willing to give Trump a ‘mulligan’ on his infidelity?" They pointed to a Pew Research Poll from earlier this month about values. The poll shows that "Sizable shares of Americans say that those with views different from their own about how Donald Trump is handling his job as president also probably don’t share many of their other values and goals. Just over half (54%) of the public disapproves of the job Trump is doing, while fewer (39%) say they approve of his job performance... Among those who disapprove of Trump, 65% of self-identified Democrats say they don’t think those with a different view of Trump share their other values and goals... By 60%-34%, self-identified Republicans who approve of Trump say those with a different view of him probably do not share their other values and goals."

Among those who approve of the job Trump is doing as president, 51% say that those who feel differently about him probably do not share many of their other values and goals, while 44% say they probably do share their other values and goals.

Among those who disapprove of Trump-- the larger share of the overall public-- 56% say that those who approve of him probably do not share their other values and goals; fewer (39%) say that they probably do.

...Wide differences in views of Trump by educational attainment also persist. By 71% to 26%, those with a postgraduate degree disapprove more than approve of Trump’s performance. Similarly, nearly two-thirds of those with a bachelor’s degree (64%) disapprove.

By contrast, adults with a high school degree or less education are divided in their views: While 49% approve, about as many (46%) disapprove of Trump.

Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants continue to be solidly supportive of the president’s job performance: 78% approve today, while just 18% disapprove. By comparison, white mainline Protestants are divided in their views on Trump, while black Protestants express overwhelming disapproval. A majority of Catholics disapprove of Trump’s job as president (57%), as do 68% of those who are religiously unaffiliated.

Back to Whitehead, Baker and Perry, but not to The Post, but to a sociology of religion podcast they did, Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. "Why," they asked, "did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic defense of the United States’ perceived Christian heritage. Data from a national probability sample of Americans surveyed soon after the 2016 election shows that greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for Trump, even after controlling for economic dissatisfaction, sexism, anti-black prejudice, anti-Muslim refugee attitudes, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as measures of religion, sociodemographics, and political identity more generally. These findings indicate that Christian nationalist ideology-- although correlated with a variety of class-based, sexist, racist, and ethnocentric views-- is not synonymous with, reducible to, or strictly epiphenomenal of such views. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a unique and independent ideology that can influence political actions by calling forth a defense of mythological narratives about America’s distinctively Christian heritage and future." And of course, none this has anything whatsoever to do with Jesus Christ or his teachings.

While American “civil religion” and “Christian nationalism” are closely connected in that both present a narrative and origin myth that expresses purpose and unites those who adhere to it, there are important differences between the two. Civil religion, on the one hand, often refers to America’s covenantal relationship with a divine Creator who promises blessings for the nation for fulfilling its responsibility to defend liberty and justice. While vaguely connected to Christianity, appeals to civil religion rarely refer to Jesus Christ or other explicitly Christian symbols. Christian nationalism, however, draws its roots from “Old Testament” parallels between America and Israel, who was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest, and separatism. Unlike civil religion, historical and contemporary appeals to Christian nationalism are often quite explicitly evangelical, and consequently, imply the exclusion of other religious faiths or cultures. Also paralleling Old Testament Israel, Christian nationalism is often linked with racialist sentiments, equating cultural purity with racial or ethnic exclusion.

Unlike civil religion, contemporary manifestations of Christian nationalism can be unmoored from traditional moral import, emphasizing only its notions of exclusion and apocalyptic war and conquest. Trump represents a prime example of this trend in that he is not traditionally religious or recognized (even by his supporters) to be of high moral character, facts which ultimately did little to dissuade his many religious supporters. In this way, the Christian nation myth can function as a symbolic boundary uniting both personally religious and irreligious members of conservative groups. In this respect Christian nationalism, while more common among white conservative Protestants, also provides a resilient and malleable set of symbols that is not beholden to any particular institution, affiliation, or moral tradition. This allows its influence to reach beyond the Christian traditions of its origins.

During his candidacy, Trump at times explicitly played to Christian nationalist sentiments by repeating the refrain that the United States is abdicating its Christian heritage; however, Trump’s appeals to Christian nationalism were typically overlooked in media coverage of the campaign, which focused more on whether a relatively nonpious candidate could win the vote of the Religious Right. For example, in a speech to a crowd at Liberty University on January 18, 2016, Trump infamously quoted a Bible verse as being from “two Corinthians” rather than the customary “second Corinthians.” News coverage of the event focused on whether this gaffe displaying lack of knowledge about the Bible would hurt Trump with religious voters. Overlooked was the fact that immediately following his faux pas, Trump successfully made a direct appeal to Christian nationalism:

But we are going to protect Christianity. And if you look what’s going on throughout the world, you look at Syria where they’re, if you’re Christian, they’re chopping off heads. You look at the different places, and Christianity, it’s under siege. I’m a Protestant. I’m very proud of it. Presbyterian to be exact. But I’m very proud of it, very, very proud of it. And we’ve gotta protect, because bad things are happening, very bad things are happening, and we don’t-- I don’t know what it is-- we don’t band together, maybe. Other religions, frankly, they’re banding together and they’re using it. And here we have, if you look at this country, it’s gotta be 70 percent, 75 percent, some people say even more, the power we have, somehow we have to unify. We have to band together... Our country has to do that around Christianity (applause).

Similarly, at a campaign stop at Oral Roberts University, Trump announced that “There is an assault on Christianity... There is an assault on everything we stand for, and we’re going to stop the assault.” Later that year, on August 11 in a meeting with evangelical pastors in Florida, Trump claimed:

You know that Christianity and everything we’re talking about today has had a very, very tough time. Very tough time…. We’re going to bring [Christianity] back because it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. They treated you like it was a bad thing, but it’s a great thing.

Similarly, to those gathered at Great Faith Ministries International on September 3, 2016, Trump said, “Now, in these hard times for our country, let us turn again to our Christian heritage to lift up the soul of our nation.” Finally, there were a number of instances where Trump used the Johnson Amendment restricting political speech by nonprofit organizations as a foil, claiming that the Amendment singled out Christians and trampled on their right to freedom of speech.

While Trump directly referenced the Christian nation myth periodically, his various supporters and endorsers also made the connection between voting for Trump and the United States as a Christian nation. This was especially prevalent among various conservative Christian leaders. Many times the connection was made by arguing that Hillary Clinton would make the United States godless and potentially lead to an apocalyptic future. Christian author and media personality Eric Metaxas claimed that “God will not hold us guiltless” if Clinton were elected instead of Trump. James Dobson, founder of the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, wrote that “If Christians stay home because he [Trump] isn’t a better candidate, Hillary will run the world for perhaps eight years. The very thought of that haunts my nights and days.” In another interview Dobson highlighted the importance of the Supreme Court vacancy and how “unelected, unaccountable, and imperialistic judges have a history of imposing horrendous decisions on the nation. One decision that still plagues us is Roe v. Wade.” He went on to share how religious liberty, religious freedom, and all religious institutions in America would be under siege if Clinton were elected.

Trump’s Christian nationalist rhetoric also expressed a particular eschatology of America’s future, emphasizing how America was once a great nation, but had rapidly disintegrated under the influences of Barack Obama, terrorism, and illegal immigration. Trump’s promise was to restore America to its past glory, a point he made most clearly with his ubiquitous slogan emblazoned upon red hats. The catchphrase has even been refashioned into a Christian hymn.2 Those supporting Trump, like Sarah Palin in her endorsement speech at Oral Roberts University, also implicitly aligned with a Christian nationalist eschatology: “In this great awakening, you all who realize that, man, our country is going to hell in a handbasket under this tragic fundamental transformation of America that Obama had promised us, know what we need now is a fundamental restoration of America.” The 2016 election was repeatedly labeled as conservative Christians’ “last chance” for citizens to protect America’s religious heritage and win back a chance at securing a Christian future. As Trump told conservative Christian television host Pat Robertson, “If we don’t win this election, you’ll never see another Republican and you’ll have a whole different church structure … a whole different Supreme Court structure.” Pining for America’s distinctively Christian past and insecure about her Christian future, all fomented by Trump’s apocalyptic campaign rhetoric, we hypothesize that Americans adhering to Christian nationalist ideology were more likely to vote for Trump.

It is critical to clarify that we are hypothesizing that the influence of Christian nationalism on the 2016 Presidential election is distinct from, even as it is closely related to, other cultural factors influencing voting for Trump. Christian nationalism has been linked to attitudes opposing economic regulations, welfare, and affirmative action, as well as gender equality and gay rights. And even more research has demonstrated that Christian nationalism is a strong predictor of antipathy toward racial boundary crossing, non-white immigrants, and non-Christians, especially Muslims. Consistent with its earlier racialist connotations, Christian nationalism can serve as an ethno-nationalist symbolic boundary portraying nonwhites and Muslims as threatening cultural outsiders. Indeed, in light of the strong role that Islamophobia was shown to play in shoring up support for Trump, and because Islam is often framed as the antithesis of both Christian and American identities, we would expect Trump support, Christian nationalism, and Islamophobia to be closely related.

Despite these close connections with economic views, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, however, Christian nationalism is not synonymous with or reducible to any or all of these. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a set of beliefs and ideals that seek the national preservation of a supposedly unique Christian identity. Voting for Donald Trump was for many Americans a Christian nationalist response to perceived threats to that identity. Stated more formally, we hypothesize that Christian nationalism will predict voting for Donald Trump even after these other important and interrelated factors have been held constant, as well as under empirical contexts that allow for the potential interplay between Christian nationalism and various forms of ethnic resentment.

If these fake Christians overlook Trump's violation of Biblical proscriptions and injunctions, does anyone think they care at all about his Regime's blatant violations of ethical rules? Yesterday Public Citizen filed 30 ethics complaints against the regime. Lisa Gilbert an officer of Public Citizen explained that “The bottom line is that neither Trump nor his administration take conflicts of interest and ethics seriously. 'Drain the swamp’ was far more campaign rhetoric than a commitment to ethics, and the widespread lack of compliance and enforcement of Trump’s ethics executive order shows that ethics do not matter in the Trump administration.”

A key provision of the ethics order prohibits former lobbyists from being appointed without a waiver to governmental positions that oversee the same specific issue area they lobbied within the past two years. In a report titled The Company We Keep, Public Citizen identified dozens of appointments throughout the Trump administration that appear to violate this rule and has sent letters to the respective designated agency ethics officers requesting that they investigate and explain 30 such lobbyist appointments.

“These 30 apparent violations of Trump’s own ethics rules are only the tip of the iceberg,” said Craig Holman, co-author of the report and lobbyist for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “We looked at only a quarter of all presidential appointees because records were not readily available at the time. I suspect the real number of potential violations is fourfold.”

About a week into his term, on a Saturday afternoon, Trump issued an ethics executive order designed to implement his campaign pledge to “drain the swamp.” The ethics order came as a surprise to many and borrowed some key provisions from President Barack Obama’s earlier ethics executive order. One such clause reads in part:

• “If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 6, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment or participate in the specific issue area in which that matter falls.”

Public Citizen identified 36 lobbyists who have been appointed to positions that oversee the same specific issue areas they recently lobbied, with only six of those appointees having received publicly disclosed waivers from the ethics rule. Violations of Trump’s ethics rules by the remaining 30 former lobbyists would occur if they are in any way involved in influencing official actions on the matters that they had recently lobbied in the private sector and have not received a waiver.

2017, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 7): Is Franklin Graham Brain-Damaged, Or Is It Just Because He’s A Typical Fake Christian Republican?

-by Noah

With every year-end review I do, I like to include one or more Republicans that, while they get some attention, largely fly under the radar. Sure, I do that all year long, but, you see, I just feel so bad that some miscreants just don’t get the exposure they so righteously deserve. Oh, how I long to rectify the situation!

So, this year, I thought I’d do an additional good work that will, I’m sure, gain me entrance into Christian Heaven, aka The Ultimate Gated Community. The Ultimate Gated Community? Yeah. You bet. Why else do you think that Christianity, especially pompous, sanctimonious, fake Christianity, has sooo much appeal to Republicans?

As for the question posed by the headline of this post, the correct answer is both. After all, one can’t be a Republican without a) hiding behind a fake and perverted version of what was once one of the world’s great religions, before it got so corrupted by greed and toxified by hate, and b) from what I’ve seen, you do have to be brain-damaged to be a Republican. How else does one explain things like promoting pedophilia for the sake of power?

Franklin Graham is, or at least likes to be known as Donald Trump’s pastor. He’s also the son of the late Billy Graham who, although he hung around politicians of both parties, liked to think of himself, especially, as Richard Nixon’s pastor. The Grahams like to really hang with the uber-douchebags.

Billy Graham, however, was a man of great accomplishment in his field. He managed to successfully apply the principles of old time western patent medicine salesmen to the selling of a brand of Christianity that is as phony as those old cure-all “medicines.” Sure, that’s what it’s all about anyway. Whether you’re Pat Robertson, Graham, or Joel Osteen, the godly man so famous for shutting his doors during the Houston flood this past summer, it’s all about marketing yourself and preaching for money, lots of money, more money than God, in fact. Saving souls? What’s that about? Just send your checks.

Whatever else you say about Billy Graham, at least he had the respect of the public, deservedly or not, even from people who didn’t like a lot of things he stood for. Maybe one reason is because Billy Graham didn’t engage in overt bigotry when it came to Islam or our LGBTQ citizens like his son does. Franklin, in fact, is in danger of being banned from Great Britain for those very reasons. Graham is so batshit crazy about anything to do with LGBTQ issues that he has warned music legend Grace Slick that her sins carry “a death sentence.” What set him off into full-blown crazyland? Well, when the anti-gay rubber chicken chain, Chick-fil-A used one of her songs in a commercial, she decided to donate her royalties to Lamda Legal, a legal rights organization that fights on behalf of LGBTQ people. Franklin also says that same-sex marriage is the work of Satan. No, sorry Franklin. You are the work of Satan. Period.

Graham has also made it clear that he thinks former President Obama is a “Secret Muslim” and that God chose Trump to be president. Franklin Graham is such a perfect match for birther Trump that I’d be surprised if Trump didn’t someday put tits on him and marry him.

To date, Franklin Graham is but a shadow of his father, a faded xerox copy printed on cheap paper. I know I’ve used this analogy before, but, it’s true 99% of the time so why not beat it to death? Over the years, I’ve noticed what seems to be an as yet unnamed disorder. For lack of a better name, I call it Rotten Apple From The Tree Syndrome. I observed it numerous times during my career in the corporate world: First there is a father who rose to the top of his profession, was actually good at it, and stacked up a lot of achievements and respect.

After that, came the son, the opposite side of the coin. The son who was both supremely obnoxious, insecure, and utterly incompetent. Such sons never learned how to grow up and only got a job because of daddy. Often, they lose their jobs but daddy is always there with the diaper-made parachute of another job. Unlike the father, the sons often temporarily just hang on by claiming achievements that will never stand up to investigation or analysis. People laugh at them behind their back, constantly. Some people call it the lucky sperm bank but I see it as a disorder. That’s Franklin Graham.

To his credit, Franklin Graham falls short of the hideousness of the more well-known Pat Robertson when it comes to being counted on for lunatic pronouncements from fake Christians, but, let’s be fair, Franklin just hasn’t been around as long and he doesn’t have his own TV channel. Graham could be just as crazy as ol’ Pat, but we just don’t know it yet. That’s as good of a reason as anything to write this post. His fans can thank me later for doing God’s work.

So here we have Franklin Graham, a man who is also a pastor. These days, he hangs out with a supremely obnoxious, insecure, and incompetent president who has even deeper problems; problems that affect all of us, regardless of religious (or not) background. Graham and Trump are kindred spirits in hate.

Graham also shares in Trump’s cries of fake news, even saying that the concept of fake news is illustrated in the Bible.

Isn’t everything? Some people will even tell you that the Bible has a code you can decipher to give you winning lottery ticket numbers and World Series winners. Next thing you know, Trump and Graham will be telling us that the fabled Bowling Green Massacre appears in the Bible too, so it has to be true.

In the past, Graham has also taken one of George W. Bush’s daughters to task for her support of Planned Parenthood saying:

Planned Parenthood is the #1 abortion provider in the United States. Raising funds for this organization is like raising money to fund a Nazi death camp, like Auschwitz, except for innocent babies in their mother’s wombs!

An obvious proponent of fake news himself, Graham also prides himself on spreading the big lie that Planned Parenthood was caught on video “trying to sell baby parts.” But, promoting fake news comes naturally if you are a fake Christian, especially one who kisses up to a fake president.

That Good Ole Fashioned Republican "Religion"

Rubio and Cruz have competed for the title of "most homophobic" in the Republican primary season. Rubio has a problem-- not just because of the high heeled booties, but because he was arrested when he was 19 in a closed Coconut Grove park that was frequently (exclusively) by elderly gay johns looking for gay-for-pay teenage men-- and Cruiz is winning this one. (Rubio isn't ceding the bigotry field though and his crackpot faith advisor says Rubio is as anti-gay as Cruz is.) There's a lot at stake. And it's not just the primitive hate-filled homophobes who make up a significant part of the Republican Party base. There are more than a few deranged pastors with significant influence.

The Wilks family of tiny Cisco in central Texas (population- 3,777, 90% white) have given Ted Cruz's campaign around $60,000 and the family gave one of his SuperPACs, Keep the Promise III a cool $15 million. People chalk it up to fracking. That's who the WIlks brothers are-- a family of pig ranchers who turned bricklayers and then struck it rich in hydraulic fracking. But, that isn't thew hole story. Family patriarch Farris Wilks is the pastor of the church founded by their parent Voy and Myrtle, the Assembly of Yahweh Seventh Day Church on the outskirts of Cisco. The church is unrelated to the message of Jesus-- refuse to celebrate Christmas or Easter-- and almost exclusively teaches Farris' bizarre, life-long obsession: homophobia. His church is Anti-Gay Central for rural backward central Texas. The Jesus-denying church's object of worship is Kim Davis (the Kentucky clerk) and fighting marriage equality is their mission. The Wilks were assured by Cruz that he is the man to turn back LGBT progressive most effectively. That's why they've been funding his campaign. And the robo-call (recording above) that he used last week in South Carolina was attributable to the dictates of the satanic Wilks church, which is really not a Christian church in any way, but a sick form of a perversion of Old Testament Judaism that never existed. (The robo call itself was funded by 2 far right sociopaths, Missouri builder Stan Herzog and Dallas investor Chris Ekstrom, through Cruz's Courageous Conservatives SuperPAC.) Interestingly the Wilks are as anti-pigmeat now as they are anti-gay. They also eschew lobster, shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, crayfish, octopus, winkles, squid, oysters, whelk and alcohol.

Farris: "If we all took on this lifestyle, all humanity would perish in one generation... [T]his lifestyle is a predatorial lifestyle, in that they need your children and straight people having kids to fulfill their sexual habits. They can’t do it by their self. They want your children… But we’re in a war for our children. They want your children. So what will you teach your children? A strong family is the last defense." They begin their hate-spewing religious services by blowing on a shofar (a bugle-like Jewish ram's horn).

Most of the other anti-gay activists who seek to cloak their bigotry and psychosis in religion have flocked to Cruz's camp-- Jason and David Benham, Mike Bickle, David Lane, Kevin Swanson, Bob Vander Plaats, Philip "Flip" Benham, to name a few. Many of these people have been inciting their simple-minded and naive followers to murder, preaching that they should kill gay people and register to vote so they can support Ted Cruz.

In Ted Cruz-world marriage equality isn't about two people forming a loving bond. According to his SuperPAC's robo-call, "It’s not about tolerance anymore; it's about mandatory celebration. It’s about forcing people to bake cakes and photograph gay weddings. Forcing clergy to officiate. It’s about transgender bathrooms in your child’s school. It’s about tearing down our Judeo-Christian values. It’s about tearing down our America." Oh, and Jeb was relieved to be able to drop out last night. "The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina," he announced, "have spoken and I really respect their decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign." Whew! And... it looks like Herr Trumpf won all 50 South Carolina delegates. But who would Herr name UN Ambassador? Huh? At least we know who Cruz's UN Ambassador would be!

The Republican Sharia Law Fantasies: It’s Republican World! 2015 In Review-- Chapter Eleven

by Noah

Most Republicans I know about like to whine about Muslim Sharia Law taking over our country. In the Republican mind, it goes hand in hand with their imagined Obama-led "War On Christianity" that I posted about yesterday. The Sharia Law threat is one of their favorite and most paranoid theme songs. They’ve been singing this one (very off key) since the man they like to call Barack Hussein Obama won election and moved into the White House. They see Muslims coming to this country as some sort of conspiracy to install a theocracy. Since the majority of them think that President Obama is a Muslim, they, of course, see him as supporting this fanciful takeover.

Sharia Law is Muslim religious law. It’s prescriptions are very often harsh and medieval. The dominance of Sharia, or lack there of, varies from country to country in the Muslim world, depending on a given country’s constitution and/or legal systems.

Our system of law, outlined by The Constitution, is not in any way religious law; quite the contrary. We have the concept of separation of church and state, so, as long as we keep that concept, there will be no Sharia Law, of any kind, taking over the United States. In fact, and this would come as a shock to most republicans, there is no mention of God in The Constitution. That is by design, intelligent design as a matter of fact. Article VI of the Constitution says:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby.

“Supreme Law of the Land.” That seems pretty clear. So why do Republicans keep yapping about Sharia Law taking over America, a country whose Muslim inhabitants amount to 2% of the population, if, by the design of our founding fathers, many or whom were agnostics, it is proscribed that The Constitution is supreme? At worst, the best Sharia supporters could hope for would be that it would be used by the members of closed societies within the larger population, much like mobsters and gangs live, outside the law, by their own codes.

Compared to our system of laws, Sharia Law is literally what some would call “a higher law” or God’s law; in this case Allah’s law since the basic tenet of Sharia is that God’s law is the source of all legal rulings for all acts. Again, our Constitution is a total impediment when it comes to the establishment of Sharia Law in our country. To refresh your memory; especially any lurking republican trolls out there, here is the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

That works in two ways: no special support, and no belligerence. So, as long as we don’t become a theocracy, there will be no religious law or Sharia Law that will have dominance over The Constitution.

Republicans profess to be all gung ho about The Constitution. Perhaps they should actually read it, or, perhaps there is a different Constitution in Republican World. Those who put our Constitution together for us were very wary of the very idea of a theocracy running America. Many immigrants back then and right now came here to escape a theocracy. The separation of church and state, a concept that Republicans seem to have a very big problem with, protects us from the formation of a theocracy of any kind here. That includes Christianity and all other religions.

The list of those Republicans who seem like they would vastly prefer a theocracy here is perhaps best exemplified by the Rev. Mike Huckabee and Sen. “Ted” Cruz who both came to the aid of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis when she cited her religious convictions as baring her from giving same sex couples a marriage license. Huckabee is one of those who believe that we can selectively choose which laws we want to obey and that we should be allowed to do so without consequence. These people seem to be in favor of Sharia Law of the Christian kind.

Huckabee and his followers can scream "judicial tyranny" all they want. That comes under "free speech." However, he and his kind have decided they are above the laws of the land. They are not. If we don’t think a law is right in our country, we have another concept that the founding fathers gave us. It’s called Judicial Review. Under judicial review, actions by legislative bodies and executive actions can both be reviewed by the courts. The courts have the power, not Mike Huckabee and his ilk, not "Ted" Cruz, and not some FOX "News" wacko, to invalidate laws and decisions that are incompatible with a higher authority. In this country, that higher authority is The Constitution, not a bunch of voices you hear in your head and mistake for some sort of god or oracle.

If you don’t like a law, you take it to court. You may win. You may lose, but that is how it’s supposed to work here. You don’t just get to say "that law doesn’t apply to me because of my religion." If Republicans don’t like that, perhaps they’d be happier and more comfortable in another country. Wouldn’t they love a nice, warm Muslim country? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they would all just self-deport, tomorrow!

To Davis, Huckabee, Cruz, the Davis supporters, and other like-minded Republicans (Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, for instance), there is a higher law than the laws of the United States of America. Such people believe this higher law supersedes the laws of their country, just like extreme Muslims believe similar things in their countries. In other words, people in America who believe as Davis, Huckabee, Cruz, and their like do, believe in some kind of Christian Sharia Law. There is no difference, if you believe your religious beliefs take precedence over the legal system of your country. Now, that’s what I call unconstitutional!

Imagine a world where each of us could just say, “Hey, I don’t like that law” and just did whatever we want.

Since we all have fantasies, here’s one of mine that is inspired by this subject. In my fantasy, I actually get to run for President of the United States and I actually get elected. Yeah, I know it’s quite a whopper of a fantasy. But, wait, there’s more. I’m President and I get to nominate a Supreme Court justice. So, what do I do? I scour the entire country for the brightest most accomplished lawyer in the land, someone with indisputable qualifications… who happens to be a Muslim. I would do this just to see Mike Huckabee’s head and entire body explode. I would do this to see Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, that Duck Dynasty clown, "Ted" Cruz, Trumpf, and Chris Christie (My what an explosion that would be!) all violently burst at the seams with apoplexy.

Someday, a President will nominate a brilliant Muslim to the highest court in the land but, for now, we will have to settle for baby steps. Recently, in New York City, Carolyn Walker-Diallo was sworn in as a judge for Brooklyn’s 7th Municipal District. She swore he oath with her right hand on, not the Bible, but a book that has many of the same stories and characters. It’s called The Quran. Why a Quran? Well, Carolyn Walker-Diallo is a Muslim.

As soon as she was sworn in, a sickening amount of local Republican malcontents erupted with their usual hate. Online comments included:

• "Sickening. Is this America of the Middle East."
• "Another piece of s--- Muslim trying to take over this country."
• "This is so wrong on so many levels!!!! Our leadership has gone to Hell!!!"
• "We are witnessing our nation falling to her knees."

You get the picture. The four comments I just listed above are probably the most articulate ones. Some are nothing but gibberish. It’s safe to say that Walker-Diallo can speak English and write a lot better English than many of her critics. She’s more American than her critics will ever be. There’s been a lot talk from the critics about Sharia Law taking over and a lot of that FOX "News" leadership meme. I haven’t bothered with all of the obscene ones, and, speaking of getting the picture, there have been a lot of pictures of burning Qurans and pictures of republicans apparently using pages of the Quran as toilet paper. This country clearly has a mental illness problem. At least one of its political parties does.

You have to wonder if those who live in Republican World know that we have Muslim U.S. soldiers fighting against terrorists. We have Muslim intelligence agents, too, but, a Muslim judge? Hey, that’s just wrong to these nutters. Just imagine if their favorite sports team got rid of its Muslim players. Confusion in Republican World would abound.

Judge Walker-Diallo did pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America before being sworn in but that would never satisfy the republican mob. Celebrity nutjob Republican Allen West immediately published on his website an article titled "Obama’s America: Muslim Woman Sworn In As Judge, Look At The FIRST Thing She Does!" His site even cropped the photo so none of his sensitive readers would see the Quran.

Local Republicans have since been bellowing and tearing at their hair wondering how such a thing as a Muslim judge could come to pass. Well, dummies, it’s simple, almost as simple as you. We had an election in November. The people voted for her. Majority rules. Don’t you have any faith in the American democratic process? Do you not believe in America? You are the same ridiculous fools that whined when Irish, Italian, and Jewish New Yorkers became judges or entered politics. What the Hell is wrong with you?

On Judge Walker-Diallo’s campaign website, her message reads:

"I am humbled that my community has entrusted me with the immense responsibility of ensuring that EVERYONE has notice and fair opportunity to be heard in the halls of justice."

Maybe it’s that use of the word 'everyone' that bothers Republicans. Hah! Yeah, it’s that word and that other word, 'Muslim.' Walker-Diallo isn’t even the first Muslim judge here in New York. We’ve had others. Two years ago we even got a Muslim judge on the Court of Appeals. Her name is Sheila Abdus-Salaam. She’s a woman. She’s of African heritage, and, she’s a Muslim! That’s a perfect trifecta of hate for Republicans. But, this election cycle, Republicans have revved up the bigotry engine.

Carolyn Walker-Diallo is very qualified for her new job. She received her Juris Doctor from New York Law School. She serves as First Vice-Chair of Brooklyn Community Board 5. She is the Board Chair of The George Walker Jr. Community Coalition, Inc., and she is a member of several other community organizations. In other words, Brooklyn’s 7th Municipal District has a judge that is about as familiar with the issues of her community as you can be. She is no outsider.

Judge Walker-Diallo has been a judge now for 12 days. The Brooklyn Bridge has not been turned over to a local Taliban. The Brooklyn Nets still play professional basketball, although not particularly well. You can still get some of the very best pizza in the world in Brooklyn, for now, that is.