Voter suppression laws, forced through by conservatives, will affect both primaries and the general election in 2016

Just Sayin'

Via Vice News and Our Principles PAC, founded by Mitt Romney's deputy campaign manager, Katie Packer.

It says it all.

It says so much.

It says, NO TRUMP in any public office, much less president.

Blame President Ronnie Ray-gun for this corruption of our public policy. He started this.

Those who do not remember are in danger of repeating tragedy Dissent is not disloyalty

Trump Blames Sanders for violence at Trump rallies (or, the buck passes by here)

Donald Trump is blaming the election campaign for violence at Trump's appearances.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-threatens-to-set-supporters-on-sanders-rallies/

Good thing responsibility isn't, wasn't, and never will be a calling card of Donald J Trump.  Sanders never advocated violence, Trump did.  Sanders never asked his folks to "punch folks in the face", Trump has.  Sanders may or may not have asked his supporters to go to Trump's rallies, but there's NOTHING illegal about such things.  Sanders say he didn't, I believe him but even if I didn't, so what, they're allowed to be there and lawfully protest.  It wasn't a Sanders supporter who punched someone who was being escorted out in the face, it was Trump's.   No, I suspect it was Trump's hateful vitriole, like saying that Islam fundamentally hates the US that prompted people to show up and call Trump what he is, a hate-monger.  I suspect it was his laughable excuse for why he failed to condemn and repudiate the KKK and David Duke that has brought people out to call Trump what he is, a man who uses racists and racism to his advantage.  No no, poor Mr. Trump can't possibly be the cause, can he?  His words of hate can't breed hate, can they?

Now Trump says he's going to ask his folks to go to Sanders' rallies.  I suspect strongly they'll be treated far more graciously than the bigots who go to Trump's rallies.  I further suspect mostly they're cowards and won't go.  But let's assume they will, what is Trump trying to do?  Provoke violence?

Fool.

Donald J Trump, I call you a total loser.  Take accountability for your words and what they've bread.  It's not your fault people were violent, but it is your fault they were ready to be so.

Trump rally violence reflects badly on everyone involved, but most of all on Trump

In the coverage of the event, (or should it be called a non-event, since it was canceled?), there is plenty of blame and criticism to go around.
 I'm all for vigorous political expression, for enthusiastic rallies. I'm entirely against any efforts by one side to suppress the political expression of those who disagree.
Of all the coverage of the activity, I found the Guardian coverage from the UK to be the most balanced and accurate.
 NO ONE had their freedom of speech trampled; the right to free speech is exclusively a right to freedom from GOVERNMENT restriction or obstruction of speech. It does not extend to any other entity behaving so as to impede expression, but that doesn't make it acceptable for individuals or groups of people to shut down or prevent political expression. We are a nation that prizes persuasion not thuggery, or at least, we should be.
It is worth noting that Donald Trump (and VP candidate Sarah Palin before him, the right seems chronically unclear on this point) is unclear on the important distinction of what is a right, and what is a value. From the Guardian:

Scuffles broke out between Trump supporters, protesters and police, and a number of arrests were made, including of at least one reporter. As the mayhem took hold, Trump was reduced to complaining about the situation on the air, telling MSNBC: “It’s sad when you can’t have a rally. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”

NOTHING happened to freedom of speech. The police did everything they should have done; government promoted free speech by attempting to allow both sides to express themselves. Those who behaved violently, on both sides, were wrong, were bad, but were not interfering with freedom of speech either. But they contributed NOTHING to political expression other than an example of how not to behave.

Police walked up and down the arena stairs holding sheaves of plastic handcuffs amid fraught but as yet non-violent scenes. Attendees grabbed signs from each other’s hands and several dozen people were ejected from the event long before formalities were scheduled to begin. At least one section of young people was cleared out by police long before the event began, including many of Middle Eastern appearance. “Just because I look like them doesn’t mean I’m with them,” said one.

I condemn Bernie Sanders supporters if they were involved. We don't know, given conservative dirty tricks, how many Sandser supporters were genuinely involved, and who might have been paid provocateurs from Trump rivals. It should be sufficient to condemn both. It is also important to condemn the conservative admiration of such violence that makes it a desideratum, in a way which is not found on the left.

There is a growing catalogue of violence at Trump events. In the past week alone an attack on a non-violent protester led to criminal charges against a Trump supporter, and Michelle Fields, a reporter for conservative website Breitbart, was allegedly assaulted by Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager. Trump’s rhetoric has done little to keep it in check. When the Republican frontrunner appeared in St Louis earlier on Friday, for an event that entailed more than 30 arrests, he complained: “Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick protesters out] is nobody wants to hurt each other any more.” Trump added: “There used to be consequences. There are none any more. These people are so bad for our country. You have no idea folks, you have no idea.”

Trump has also asked his supporters from his podium to hurt people, and expressed his own desire to punch a protester in the face. That was not the only incident where Trump endorsed and encouraged violence against those who disagreed with him, including falsely representing the NON-violent protester as deserving violence.

“Here’s a guy, throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everything else, when we’re talking,” Trump told the crowd, although CNN reported the man did not appear to be fighting with security officers. “The guards are very gentle with him. He’s walking out, like, big high-fives, smiling, laughing,” Trump continued, before saying to loud cheers: “I’d like to punch him in the face, I tell ya.” The incident was the latest in a string of controversial comments by Trump regarding protesters at his rallies. In November, after a Black Lives Matter protester was beaten and choked after disrupting a rally, Trump appeared to condone the rough treatment. “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” he said on Fox News at the time.

From another Guardian account, this one detailing the personal experience of one of their reporters:

The Trump campaign has tried write off rally violence as something he didn’t sanction, but now his campaign manager has manhandled a reporter
...The incidents are piling up. A Black Lives Matters protester was sucker-punched by a white bystander at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A young black woman was surrounded and shoved aggressively by a number of individuals at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. A black protester was tackled, then punched and kicked by a group of men as he curled up on the ground in Birmingham, Alabama. Immigration activists were shoved and stripped of their signs by a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. A Latino protester was knocked down and kicked by a Trump supporter in Miami.
...
The Lewandowski incident and the one at Radford feature the assault of the press, not the assault of protesters, but both types of violence are of a piece: they are about silencing voices of dissent, silencing critics, silencing truth in a campaign built around racist fear-mongering and bombast.
And that – it shouldn’t need to be said, but it does – is undemocratic. Activism and the media play a vital role in any healthy democracy, and to allow this kind of brutality and silencing of free speech to go unaddressed is worse than undemocratic: it’s fascist.

Again, like the Chicago example, where the Trump campaign lied about conferring with law enforcement, the Trump campaign also lied about the involvement of Radford University, which had little hands-on involvement with that Trump rally. This underlines a pattern of behavior, of refusing appropriate accountability, that does not bode well for someone who thinks they can be a leader.
While I do not condone the Sanders protesters for attempting to shut down the Trump rally, as distinct from protesting against it, the Sanders protester criticism was apt. Again, from the Guardian article:

After the postponement was announced a Trump campaign statement said: “Mr Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date. “Thank you very much for your attendance and please go in peace.” Despite Trump’s statement that he had consulted law enforcement, the Chicago police department emphasised it had no involvement in the decision."

and

As one, Violet Ornelas, 28, gleefully told the Guardian: “If he can’t even handle Chicago, what makes him think he could handle Isis?”

Shame on Trump for creating the violence on his side, for hiding behind the police for his decision - the coward, and for failing to understand that political protesters in the USA, or in formulating foreign policy, the decision to de-escalate rather than escalate violence is always important. That is a lesson Trump supporters need to learn as well.

Black Panthers, Gunloons, and the Second Amendment

I found this clip while looking for videos relating to the Black Panthers open carrying and the origin of the Mulford Act.  This was in the day when "conservatives" believed in law and order as opposed to encouraging the reality challenged right in their delusions.  Note comment about the Second Amendment toward the end of this.

KRON-TV News footage from the late 1960s in which an official argues there should be greater gun controls, referencing the Black Panthers showing up at an airport armed with guns to meet Betty Shabazz (Malcolm X's widow). The official says he does not believe that in the "urban environment we have in California" that we should allow people to carry guns "in an excited and hostile atmosphere," and laments that there was no way to prosecute the Panthers under the current law. "We have to protect society from nuts with guns." Ends with a brief overhead glimpse of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale walking down stairs. This footage was probably used in 'Eyes on the Prize II' and may or may not be a compilation of clips rather than one report. [Originally shot on 16mm film, a BetaSP videotape master was made by KRON-TV and was used to produce this low-res online screener.] Remastered, edited and catalogued for the web by Shira Peltzman.

Rick Mercer quote: "Here's to democracy. May we get the government we deserve."

From Think Progress :  



May we aspire to deserve better than a any of these terrible people.  For those not familiar with Rick Mercer, he is a CBD comedian and political satirist.  Another tip of the hat to our neighbors north of the border.

That would be the border 1/3 the length of our southern border where Trump wants to put up his wall, the border about which Trump is geographically too ignorant to be president.

From Factcheck.org
FactChecking the 10th GOP Debate In a Texas showdown, Republican presidential candidates stretched the truth in the last debate before Super Tuesday.

By FactCheck.org Posted on February 26, 2016 There were several false and misleading claims in the Feb. 25 debate:

• Businessman Donald Trump flip-flopped on making his tax returns public, one year after saying he would “certainly” release returns if he ran for president. 
• Trump also made the dubious claim that he “can’t” release them while being audited. 
• Trump said Sen. Marco Rubio was “totally wrong” to claim that Trump had to pay a million dollars as a fine for hiring workers who were in the country illegally. Rubio wasn’t totally wrong. Trump lost a $1 million lawsuit and then settled on appeal for an undisclosed sum. 
• Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that a Wall Street Journal article said the state of Arizona has saved “hundreds of millions of dollars” on “welfare, on prisons, and education,” due to tough illegal immigration legislation. But the article said nothing about “welfare.” 
• Cruz said that Trump favored the U.S. intervention in Libya that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi from power. Trump denied having said that, but Cruz was right. 
• Cruz claimed that Sen. Harry Reid favors Trump because “he can cut a deal with him.” But Reid has denounced Trump as a “hateful demagogue.” 
• Trump wrongly claimed that Americans “pay more personal tax” than residents anywhere in the world. In 2014, the U.S. wasn’t even in the top 10 of industrialized nations in terms of tax revenues as a percentage of GDP or per capita. 
• Trump claimed he was beating Hillary Clinton “badly” in two polls. He’s barely ahead in one and narrowly trails in the other. Cruz claimed Trump has donated more than $50,000 to members of the Senate who cosponsored the so-called Gang of Eight immigration bill in 2013. We tallied $26,000 total, most of it contributed years before the bill was being considered. 
•  Trump said he wasn’t proposing to build a wall along the U.S.-Canadian border because it’s “about four times longer” than the border with Mexico. Actually, it’s less than three times longer.

The brilliant Steve Sack does it SO well - summarizing a candidate's character in cartoons

and beautifully encapsulating the plight of the saner factions of the GOP......





The above reminds me of the lyric from an old Smother's Brother's routine, a parody of the cowboy / western song "the streets of Laredo" commenting, in a sense, on style over substance. In much the same way, Trump appears to believe that one only has to masquerade as a Christian to be accepted as one, regardless of the evidence to the contrary in his words and behavior.

One more GOP candidate drops out after Super Tuesday

Per news via WSAZ:

Ben Carson says 'no path forward' in 2016 race after Super Tuesday results

Really Ben, what took you so long?  The writing has been on the big wall for a long time now.  You peaked too early.

Meanwhile, Kasich is in some conservative alternate reality / state of denial, still asserting he is doing even better than expected -- which his pretty bad.  Presumably he is hoping to have enough delegates to barter into a VP position, since it is clear that no way in heck is he going to be anywhere near being the presidential nominee.  Not even if he uses the most extreme version of 'Republican math' where numbers have no standard value like the numeric values in real mathematics.

The presidency is not happening, and I predict never will happen, for either Ben Carson or John Kasich.  Rather like the Queen lyrics for the video above, they are always about to make their political mark in national politics, but no matter how much banner waving, it won't - likely - happen.

Buddy you're a boy make a big noise
Playin' in the street gonna be a big man some day
You got mud on yo' face
You big disgrace
Kickin' your can all over the place
Singin'

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you

Buddy you're a young man hard man
Shouting in the street gonna take on the world some day
You got blood on yo' face
You big disgrace
Wavin' your banner all over the place

We will we will rock you
Sing it
We will we will rock you

Buddy you're an old man poor man
Pleadin' with your eyes gonna make
You some peace some day
You got mud on your face
Big disgrace
Somebody betta put you back into your place

We will we will rock you
Sing it
We will we will rock you
Everybody
We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you
Alright

As we approach the Super Tuesday Caucuses....

It is Hillary's election to lose; if she doesn't muck it up, it looks as if -- 8 months and a few days from the general election -- and if things do not change radically from the present, that it is going to be a new President Clinton in the White House come January 2017.

Of the two, I would posit Trump finally making a mistake big enough to stick to him even more so than Hillary, although it would not surprise me to see her make gaffes in the coming months, as well as to see her facing vicious oppo attacks.

Via aol.news and the poll crunching from Realpolitik, combining the most pertinent and recent polls - Hillary to win the general election in November by 14%, followed by Bernie Sanders to win over Trump by 5.9%.

Not only does Trump do poorly matched up against either Bernie or Hillary, but Ted Cruz does even worse, and Marco Rubio even worse than Cruz.

THIS is what winning looks like, when one of the two major parties insists on being the stupid party.  That Trump is even a potential right wing candidate has made the US of A a laughingstock on the world stage -- and rightly as well as right-wingedly so.
:

The Ultimate Slam Dunk Argument Against the Individual Right Interpretation of the Second Amendment.

One thing that Heller and McDonald demonstrated was that it didn't really care about the Second Amendment within the Constitutional Context. That means that those two cases are an absurdity in "Second Amendment Jurisprudence". The absurdity starts with its minimalisation of what Heller described as the "preferatory clause". The reason for the nonsensical nature of the "individual right" interpretation is that it takes the Second Amendment out of legislative and historic context.

But one need not go beyond the four corners of the document to show this is an absurd interpretation of the Second Amendment since it is presumed that a legal document will be interpreted so as to be internally consistent. A particular section of the document shall not be divorced from the rest of the act. Thus, if the Constitution mentions certain goals or subjects in the preamble, it must be considered within the terms of those goals and subjects.

There are two versions of the Amendment and I will use this one for the purposes of the argument I will be making for the purpose of clarity:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

That means the phrase "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" was pretty much ignored or discounted in Scalia's analysis. This is despite the rule of constitutional interpretation that "It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect." The individual right interpretation means that not only is the "preferatory clause" mere surplusage, entirely without meaning, but so is the rest of the text

Of course, the "Individual right" theory also neglects the preamble, which most people seem to stop reading after the first three words:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

I would assert that both the preamble of the Constitution and the "preferatory clause" are important to the analysis of the Second Amendment within the proper constitutional context. That is because the document needs to be read as a whole. Doing that it becomes clear that one of the purposes of the US Constitution is to address matters of "the common defence".

From Plato's Laws through common law and until modern legal systems, preambles to constitutions have played an important role in law and policy making. The preamble to the United States Constitution has become a legend. The phrase “We the people of the United States” and the remaining forty-five words of the preamble are the most well-known part of the Constitution, and the section that has had the greatest effect on the constitutions of other countries. And yet, the preamble remains a neglected subject in the study of American constitutional theory and receives scant attention in the literature. This is a shame since a preamble is the part of the constitution that best reflects the constitutional intentions of its drafters.

The interpretive role of preambles is rooted in the common law tradition. Edward Coke asserted that preambles to an act of parliament are a “good mean to find out the meaning of the statute” and “the key to open understanding thereof”, they are “the key to the statute and the key to the makers.” William Blackstone referred to preambles as intended “to help the construction of an act of parliament.” Blackstone noted that whenever the statute is dubious, “the proem, or preamble, is often called in to help the construction of an act of parliament.” However, in a case of conflict between the preamble and the body of the act, the body of the act prevails. This is still considered good law in common law states. Some have a specific clause indicating the significant role of preambles in statutory interpretation.

The preamble may not be legally binding, but it is key to understanding the rest of the document and should be given weight in any constitutional analysis. Any interpretation that runs contrary to these principles is questionable. Anything which assumes something which is not covered by the main text must be suspect, which the individual rights interpretation does in spades.

This takes us to two concepts of statutory interpretation: (1) only items which are specifically mentioned are addressed within a law. (2) items which are not specifically mentioned are not covered by the statute.

Which takes us to Article I, Section 8, Clause 16, which gives Congress the power:

"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;"

Note that Congress is given the power to ARM the militia. Only Congress has this power under the Constitution. This is where the individual rights theory provides the usual misquotations removed from their context, which in the case of the Patrick Henry "Let everyman be armed quote" is tragic since it is clear that Henry was concerned with the above section of the Constitution, not a personal right to arms, when one reads it in context.

I really don't want to get too much into how this one sentence has been mangled and removed from constitutional context in the attempt to create a right which does not exist. The grammar is handled in this article: Dennis Baron, Guns and Grammar: The Linguistics of the Second Amendment. I will say that Prof. Baron would give the "preferatory" clause far more weight than it was given in the Heller decision:

Reading the Second Amendment as a statement in which every word counts follows from the opinion articulated by Chief Justice John Marshall: “It cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect” (Marbury v. Madison, 1803). But even without that landmark ruling, it would have been clear to 18th-century readers that the first part of the Second Amendment was bound to the second part in a cause-and-effect relationship, that the right to bear arms was tied by the framers directly to the need for a well-regulated militia.

If you wish to go outside the Constitution, there are many more problems with the Individual right interpretation. In fact, both the Heller and McDonald decisions were exercises in sophistry which removed the interpretation from an "originalist" and "constitutionalist" context and placed them into pure fantasy. If anything, the Heller and McDonald decisions are unconstitutional exercises of power by judicial amendment of the constitution. McDonald even more so since it somehow neglected Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 and created a right which was present in state laws in contrast to its non-existence in the US Constitution.

I am truly disappointed by the praise of the emperor's new clothes in McDonald v Chicago by the justices willingness to separate the Second Amendment from Constitutional context by even countenancing that it had nothing to do with Article I, Section 8, Clause 16. How does Congress' power "incorporate" to the States without an amendment to the Constitution? McDonald can only be described as silly buggers and not really precedent.

State v. Buzzard, 4 Ark. (2 Pike) 18 (1842), puts the absurdity of the individual right assertion:

However captivating such arguments may appear upon a merely casual or superficial view of the subject, they are believed to be specious, and to rest upon premises at variance with all the fundamental principles upon which the government is based; and that, upon a more mature and careful investigation, as to the object for which the right was retained their fallacy becomes evident. The dangers to be apprehended from the existence and exercise of such right, not only to social order, domestic tranquillity and the upright and independent administration of the government, but also to the established institutions of the country, appears so obvious as to induce the belief that they are present to every intelligent mind, and to render their statement here unnecessary.

The revisionist theory that the Second Amendment somehow applies to a context outside the common defence is beautifully destroyed since it does not withstand scrutiny within the four corners of the US Constitution.

It is even more devastated if we are going to go outside the document since we need to have the "scholars" explain how:

1. The concept of self-defence did not allow for the use of deadly force as a first option when the Constitution was written.  Deadly force at that time was a LAST option. There was a duty to retreat. Deadly force could only be used if there was no lesser alternative and all other options had been exhausted.  You had to have your back to the wall to be able to kill someone. 
   --carrying a weapon would create a presumption that you intended to do harm.
2.  Where are the other versions of "gun rights" in Common Law nations?
3. The issue of civilian control of the military, which fear of standing armies is a common thread in English political thought.   It was mentioned in the debates in relation to this Amendment, whereas personal defence was next to nonexistent.
4. regulation of private arms has always been a part of the common law.
5. When primary source material is read in its complete form, it highlights the above issues and the lack of concern with a right to own a weapon outside the context of the common defence.
6. Why the US Constitution would concern itself with matters of "personal defence", especially in light of point (1) above?
7. Why state constitutional provisions explicitly mention this right, but it is not mentioned in the US Constitution.

There are far too many flaws in the Individual Right interpretation of the Second Amendment when one looks at it critically. There are even more flaws in the "precedent" set by Heller-McDonald despite its "friendliness" to firearms regulation. These are dangerous decisions to be left in the common law cannon.

It is a shame that Heller and McDonald have been allowed to create mischief in the US legal system.
I will not even bother readdressing the absurdity of the associated insurrection theory of the Second Amendment since it is so far from the Constitutional contexts as to be laughable. The fact that so many people are willing to accept it in their ignorance is astounding.

Trump-eting one of the many GOP lies

So, Trump, and the other Republican candidates for that matter, all claim we have done nothing against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, Trump most notably so in his recent comments re Pope Francis. 

And this, after chastising Ted Cruz for lying; more of the pot calling the kettle black!




This lie is in sharp contrast to the reality that we have been hitting ISIS hard for a long time, along with our allies, doing considerable damage to them. From this week's STrib indicating that ISIS is going broke, because of those airstrikes led by the good ol' US of A under the leadership of President Obama.

photo from the AP, circa 2014

IS faces budget crunch, cutting perks and trimming salaries:

FILE - In this summer of 2014 photo released on a militant social media account, a convoy of Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria. The extremist group that once bragged about minting its own currency is now accepting only U.S. dollars in Raqqa, slashing salaries across the board and imposing �exit fees� for those trying to leave its domain. BEIRUT — Faced with a cash shortage in its so-called caliphate, the Islamic State group has slashed salaries across the region, asked Raqqa residents to pay utility bills in black market American dollars, and is now releasing detainees for a price of $500 a person. The extremists who once bragged about minting their own currency are having a hard time meeting expenses, thanks to coalition airstrikes and other measures that have eroded millions from their finances since last fall. Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses, the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars. Necessities are dwindling in its urban centers, leading to shortages and widespread inflation, according to exiles and those still suffering under its rule. Interviews gathered over several weeks included three exiles with networks of family and acquaintances still in the group's stronghold in Raqqa, residents in Mosul, and analysts who say IS is turning to alternative funding streams, including in Libya. In Raqqa, the group's stronghold in Syria, salaries have been halved since December, electricity is rationed, and prices for basics are spiraling out of reach, according to people exiled from the city. "Not just the militants. Any civil servant, from the courts to the schools, they cut their salary by 50 percent," said a Raqqa activist now living in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, who remains in close contact with his native city. But that apparently wasn't enough close the gap for a group that needs money to replace weapons lost in airstrikes and battles, and pays its fighters first and foremost. Those two expenses account for two-thirds of its budget, according to an estimate by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a researcher with the Middle East Forum who sources Islamic State documents, Within the last two weeks, the extremist group started accepting only dollars for "tax" payments, water and electric bills, according to the Raqqa activist, who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre Abu Ahmad for his safety. "Everything is paid in dollars," he said. His account was bolstered by another ex-Raqqa resident, who, like Ahmad, also relies on communications with a network of family and acquaintances still in the city. Al-Tamimi came across a directive announcing the fighters' salary cuts in Raqqa: "On account of the exceptional circumstances the Islamic State is facing, it has been decided to reduce the salaries that are paid to all mujahedeen by half, and it is not allowed for anyone to be exempted from this decision, whatever his position." Those circumstances include the dramatic drop in global prices for oil — once a key source of income — airstrikes that have targeted cash stores and oil infrastructure, supply line cuts, and crucially, the Iraqi government's decision to stop paying civil servants in territory controlled by the extremists.

And it's not like this is only recent damage to ISIS; from the International Business Times back in September 2014. This pretty much brings us to the choices that the GOP candidates are liars, so bone ignorant on the realities of the regional conflict as to disqualify them from serving in any office more demanding than dog catcher; or both. :

US Airstrikes In Syria Cripple ISIS Funding By Hitting Oil Refineries

ISTANBUL -- U.S. airstrikes in Syria targeting oil refineries controlled by the Islamic State group are cutting heavily into the group’s profits, which at one point were, on average, between $2 million and $3 million a day, analysts say.
“It is crippling for ISIS,” Luay al-Khatteeb, director of the Iraq Energy Institute, said of the destruction of oil refineries. After more than a week of U.S. and coalition bombings targeting the Sunni militant group in Syria, “profits [for ISIS] are out of the equation." The group’s profits are now in the thousands rather than millions of dollars per day, Khatteeb said in a discussion on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Istanbul. Khatteeb said before the airstrikes, ISIS was making anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 barrels a day in just Iraq, and in Syria, they produced 50,000 barrels. Now, they are making on average 20,000 barrels a day.
Over the past three months the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has gained control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, including oil fields on the edges of Iraqi Kurdistan. The extremist group began selling oil, turning itself into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. The group has sold both crude and refined oil to locals in Iraq and Syria, and purportedly on the black market in Turkey. According to Khatteeb, ISIS sold the oil for prices ranging between $20 and $40 a barrel. Each truck transporting oil through the border via what Khatteeb said was an already well established "smuggling network" was worth about 7,000 barrels.
The money has been used to finance, at least in part, the group’s weapons, ammunition, soldier salaries and procure other resources needed to fight.
Describing ISIS as a “network of death” at his speech at the United Nations last week, President Barack Obama said the U.S.-led coalition would starve the group financially.  

Lying is for losers -- like Trump; THIS damage to ISIS is what winning looks like, regardless of polls or primaries, and this is what it looks like to be the president instead of a reality tv celebrity. If Republicans want to win the general election and get the White House back, they need to stop being such eager consumers of lies and the liars who peddle them.

CANADA for President 2016; or the US of "Eh?"

Not a serous possibility, sadly, given our constitutional limitation to natural born citizens (even if we can reasonably assume we know what that means, absent a SCOTUS decision on it).  

On the other hand.....Rubio is shooting his ads for president in Canada. While far too many Americans are weak on geography, as we see here, and especially conservatives as we see here, I think we can safely argue that we don't want a president who is weak on which side of the border is Canada and which side is the old US of eh?, er A. But it is conservatives who are the weakest on geography :  

Worryingly, but hardly surprisingly, the poll also found that the further a poll respondent thought Ukraine was from its real location, the more likely he was to support US military intervention in Ukraine. Few Americans could find Iraq (Eye-raq to most), Afghanistan, or Iran (Eye-ran) on the map. “Let’s get those dirty Commies,” goes the latest wave of war fever to sweep the US, “if we can only find them!” Some respondents put Ukraine in Australia, or South America. Interestingly, the poll found that the group least able to locate Ukraine was +65 year olds – core Republican voters.

From the STrib:

OOPS — RUBIO AD IS SET IN CANADA The scenes and narration mimic Ronald Reagan’s legendary ad “Morning Again in America.” But Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio’s new ad of the same name opens with a shot of Vancouver, Canada. “It’s morning again in America,” the ad begins with shots of a harbor, city street and suburban neighborhood. “Today, more men and women are out of work than ever before in our nation’s history.”

Well, if they can't run in our elections, then at least those enterprising Canuks have an alternative to our more toxic politics (from facebook):

Cape Breton Island: Website Invites Americans to Move to Canadian Island if Donald Trump Is Elected

The website, cbiftrumpwins.com, was created by radio host Rob Calabrese of Sydney, Nova Scotia. He says he has gotten serious inquiries since launching the site, news outlets reported.

GOP , SOP, SOB(s)

Cruz and Rubio,
respectively
if not respectably

The latest headlines have nominee wanabee Rubio and Congressman Trey Gowdy joining Trump in attacking nominee wanabee Ted Cruz for engaging in dirty tricks.   From the Wall Street Journal:  

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. — The rivalry between Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio has escalated rapidly in advance of Saturday’s GOP primary here, and on Tuesday Mr. Rubio’s campaign accused Mr. Cruz’s team of an “underhanded tactic” in a state whose primary contests have had a lengthy history of them. Mr. Rubio’s campaign indicated that it believes Mr. Cruz’s operatives have been circulating a Facebook post claiming to be from South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, one of Mr. Rubio’s fiercest supporters who has appeared with him in close to a dozen events over the past several days.

Boo bloody hoo Rubio, and too-bad Carson before him.

These are nothing new, these are business as usual tactics for the GOP.

To protest them is to ignore or to attempt to deny that this is anything other than Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on the right -- and nowhere more so than in South Carolina, election cycle after election cycle.  

The GOP is always the party of the dirty tricks, not the values party and not the party to which anyone who values religious standards for conduct should ever adhere. The GOP is the party of the gullible, the party of the-end-justifies-the-means. It's hard to know which is worse - the crooked political operatives who cheat and lie, or the stupid people who fall for their dirty tricks and bigot-pandering, in their voting and in their donations.  

 I fully expect to see these and more of the dirty tricks used routinely on the right pulled out of their 'rat-f*cking' Nixon-style bag of dirty campaigning methods.   One of the examples that comes to mind, the George Dubya Bush campaign in South Carolina promoting the false rumor that John McCain had a black child out of wedlock; the reality was that the McCains had adopted a child from Bangladesh. Let me review what those 'family values' Jesus-loving Republicans did to John McCain back in 2000 in South Carolina.

The Data Lounge highlighted a few - the race-baiting phone calls that McCain had a black child with a prostitute, that his wife was a drug addict, that he came back from being a prisoner of war too 'damaged' to be entrusted as commander in chief, and that McCain committed treason while a prisoner of war.  

This is the same party that not only cannibalized it's own rival campaigner for the nomination, but later ran the Swiftboat ads against John Kerry.   Are there ever dirty tricks on the left? Of course there are, but not on the scale or with the approval and participation of the mainstream political establishment to the same degree as the GOP.

Because you can't make up this stuff!

Donald Trump and the rest of the 2016 cast of clown candidates are all promoting some degree of Islamophobia, to gin up fear among their base in the hopes that will translate into votes.  I have routinely - and accurately - described conservative voters as poorly educated, and as being low information voters, and as being bigots.



Nothing makes that point more clearly than this sad commentary on the lack of geography and history knowledge among United States citizens:

...41% of his [Donald Trump] supporters would favor bombing Agrabah to only 9% who are opposed to doing that. Agrabah is the country from Aladdin. Overall 30% of Republican primary voters say they support bombing it to 13% who are opposed.

Sadly, the Dems are better, but not by nearly enough of a margin to avoid shame.

We asked the same question of Democrats, and 36% of them opposed bombing Agrabah to 19% in support.

I can only hope that in the context of polling questions, which often come at inconvenient times while respondents are multi-tasking, that there was some unfortunate confusion with a familiar sounding place name not registering correctly as fiction rather than fact.

To elaborate further on the poll which produced that sad bit of Islamophobia, from Public Policy Polling year-end:

-54% support Trump's proposed Muslim ban, to only 25% who oppose it. Among Trump's own supporters there's 82/5 support for it. Cruz voters favor it as well, 57/25. Rubio voters are pretty evenly divided on it with 39% in favor and 40% opposed, while Bush voters oppose it 21/37.
-46% support a national database of Muslims, to only 37% opposed. Trump voters support this 66/15 but voters for the other top candidates are more closely divided- Cruz's (40/41) and Rubio's (44/45) narrowly oppose it while Bush's (36/49) do by a wider spread.
-36% think thousands of Arabs in New Jersey cheered when the World Trade Center collapsed to 35% who don't think that happened. Supporters of Trump (49/24) and Cruz (47/22) both pretty firmly think that occurred while Bush (37/51) and Rubio (22/46) voters don't think it did.
-Only 28% of GOP primary voters go so far as to think mosques in the United States should be shut down to 47% opposed to that. Trump voters are on an island on that issue- they support it 45/28 but backers of Cruz (23/40) and especially Rubio (18/66) and Bush (14/68) are strongly against it.
-Supporters of most of the major GOP candidates agree with the basic premise that Islam should be legal in the United States- it's 59/21 with Cruz voters, 67/11 with Bush voters, and 77/10 with Rubio voters. Trump supporters are off on their own on that one too though- just 33% think Islam should be legal to 42% who think it should be illegal. Overall 53% of primary voters think Islam should be allowed to just 26% who don't think it should be.

To put some of these findings about real modern day issues and Trump voters in context, 41% of his voters think Japanese internment was a good thing, to 37% who don't.

While I expect Trump's popularity to continue to decline overall, I sadly do not expect the insidious and deep rooted Islamophobia on the right to do so.

Kim Davis, another pointless legal decision has been issued

Earlier this week a court issued a decision that Kim Davis, Rowan County, Kentucky clerk, acted legitimately and legally in removing her name from marriage licenses, including those issued to same sex couples.

Kim Davis had attempted to thwart the legal decision of the Supreme Court by not issuing any same-sex marriage licenses.

Pending the progress of a law suit through the courts about her religious rights to deny same sex couples marriage licenses, she was ordered not to interfere with the issuance of such licenses by her office -- and her office has moved forward, issuing marriage licenses, including to same sex couples.

What remains to be seen, to be decided by a federal court, is whether or not Kim Davis as the top elected official responsible for issuing marriage licenses may continue to refuse to do so while allowing subordinates in the office to issue such licenses. The issue has never been important to anyone else as to whether or not her name was included on a form, and in point of fact, the state of Kentucky is in the process of removing individual county clerk names from such forms.

However, for the moment, it does appear that Kentucky state law DOES require that format of clerk identification. The recent decision is based on an unproven assumption that those licenses without the name of a county clerk would be recognized as legal.

Davis' term of office runs until 2019, if she chooses to complete her term, in the likely event that the federal courts rule against her having any right to force her religion on others in her official capacity.

One of the proposals for same sex marriage licenses in Kentucky would have two different forms of marriage license - a separate but equal kind of development that would likely be illegal due to disparate treatment of same sex couples. This strikes me as one of the dumber so-called compromises for those who have difficulty adjusting to the 21st century extension of rights and freedom to those previously excluded from them. In any case such a measure would not address the core issue, that Davis and those other bureaucratic officials seek to use their office to thwart or interfere with same sex marriage, and to impose their religious beliefs on others who do not share it, using their positions - elected or otherwise - to make their offices theocratic in nature, as in effectively creating an official state or local government level religion.

Update: final occupier has surrendered in Oregon The Malheur Occupation in Oregon, it's over with a whimper not a bang - and a bonus!

Update:

From CNN by way of wlky.com:

(CNN) —David Fry -- the final holdout in the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge's headquarters in Harney County, Oregon -- surrendered to authorities Thursday,...

From earlier Thurs, 2/11/2016: All of the remaining four occupiers of the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon have either surrendered or agreed to surrender. The only apparent condition has been the escort of the lunatic occupiers by fellow extremist and right wing nut preacher Franklin Graham, (son of popular televangelist Billy Graham).

From Think Progress:

But in the end, the occupiers agreed to disarm and surrender themselves in the morning so long as the right-wing Reverend Franklin Graham, who spoke with one occupier by phone during the standoff, was on hand to physically escort them off the refuge. It took more than an hour from the first time that possibility was raised for the group to agree to it, in part because they remained convinced that the FBI would come in shooting overnight and in part because they said they would never agree to go to prison or give up their guns.

[From his twitter feed:]

Franklin Graham ‏@Franklin_Graham 7h7 hours ago

Pray for all involved in the #Oregonstandoff. On my way there now. http://on.fb.me/20XiMGM 

The occupiers will be in jail and will be giving up their guns, in spite of their whining and gnashing of teeth.  It beats getting shot, and appeals to their desire to be crazy over-the-top drama queens.

As a bonus, the Feds arrested Cliven Bundy, father of two of the Oregon occupation leaders, notorious for his own governmental armed stand off back in 2014, in Nevada.

Courts will be busy, demonstrating that while justice moves slowly, it does move.  I am looking forward to a bit of that 'grinding' mentioned in numerous historic quotes:

"Millstones of Justice turn exceedingly slow, but grind exceedingly fine."
~John Bannister Gibson (1780-1853), American jurist, Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
( a paraphrase of the ancient Greek, Euripides)

and

Justice, though moving slowly, seldom fails to overtake the wicked~Horace, Odes, (23 BC)

Now it is time to sit back, and watch the administration of justice occur. Listen for the subtle grinding noises.

A few more are gone.......... but were they ever SERIOUS candidates in the first place?Are ANY of the GOP candidates REALLY serious contenders for the nomination or office?

Trump is not the cause of the GOP’s problems—he’s the symptom.ukprogressive.co.uk

A few more candidates have dropped out, Fiorina and Christie. The shelf of candidates on the right have been singularly shallow, none of them really have great depth, and all of them have serious "oppo" material that would be a detriment to their candidacies the same way the '47% are takers' and his record of exporting jobs hurt Romney (and some, worse than what properly came out about Romney).

For example, it would not surprise me to find that Trump had shafted plenty of veterans and their families, like those former casino employees who lost their health care and retirement funds in the failure of his New Jersey casinos - contrasted with Trump exploiting veterans for political advantage with his fund raising stunt while dodging the Iowa debates.  Trump has no history of supporting veterans or of acting on veterans issues, which makes his recent actions at best specious and suspicious.  While I would regard anything coming from Pete Hegseth, failed Minnesota right wing nut candidate, now on the payroll of the Koch brothers as a political activist, the criticism that Trump has no new ideas for veterans, no past advocacy for veterans, and is not serious when it comes to his policies for veterans is pretty much on target.  And that is just one example of many possible oppo issues that could sink Trump in a general election with voters - including his low information supporters who don't really know who he is, but are swayed by style over substance.

I would argue that neither one has ever been a serious contender to be the presidential nominee for the GOP - and neither have the others who dropped out (left or right).  Candidates like Jindal and Perry never had a prayer of winning the nomination, in spite of all their prayer rallies. (Does anyone even remember Perry was briefly a candidate, ....or Jindal?)

A few who still hang on, like Jim Gilmore, John Kasich, and Ben Carson have never really been serious contenders either, they just haven't left yet. Gilmore, for example, got 0% of the New Hampshire primary vote and received 0% of the Iowa caucus vote as well.

I doubt that even most of the political savvy, the most extensively and encyclopedic informed follower of the 2016 election cycle, could readily identify Jim Gilmore without a caption identifying him, and that few more could readily identify Kasich without a label (myself included) among the candidate line ups.  Even Carson's advisers and coaches find him to be a joke.  I expect that we will see Gilmore and Carson quit soon, with Kasich following their example after South Carolina.  I expect Jeb to hang on until April, maybe May. The Bush brand is so badly tarnished, and Jeb is so lacking in any ideas that were not already espoused and implemented by his brother Dubya, that regardless of how much money, or what aging family member Jeb drags out to be his proxy supporters, it is unlikely anything he could do would change the deep disaffection that the country holds for the Bush legacy.

Even though they won the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, respectively, I would further argue that neither Trump nor Cruz have a serious chance at being the GOP candidate either; the establishment still holds the real power, if less so than in the past.  And the establishment doesn't like either one, and are, I expect, going to be successful, ultimately, in preventing them from running under the Grand Old Party imprimatur, with all that goes with the official party approval.

I can only surmise that the candidacies of the unlikely proceeded from some angle, some strategy, that participating as a candidate would in some way pay off afterwards, that it would add some degree of prestige or profit.  A few, like Kasich and Fiorina, appear to have been /appear to be running more for the second spot on the ticket of VP.




Steve walks warily down the street,
With the brim pulled way down low
Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet,
Machine guns ready to go
Are you ready, Are you ready for this
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat
[Chorus] Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust see the rest of the lyrics here: https://www.bing.com/search?q=queen+youtube+channel%2C+another+one+bites+the+dust&pc=MOZI&form=MOZTSB

And then there's the progress of 'the Donald' Turnip-top Trump.... which can only remind me of another Queen classic:

lyrics here: https://www.bing.com/search?q=lyrics%2C+don%27t+stop+me+now&pc=MOZI&form=MOZTSB