Month: August 2015

But Mr. President, you must be-leeve
by Tom Sullivan

While we’re believing that Donald Trump is going to deport millions of undocumented immigrants without a plan to pay for it, and while we’re believing he’ll build a 2,000 mile-long southern border fence and get Mexico to pay for it (because Donald knows how to negotiate), why not engage in a military buildup without a plan to pay for it? (And without raising taxes. That’s a given.)

According to Politico, “a growing roster of Republican hopefuls” believe the U.S. needs dozens of new warships if it expects to keep throwing around its global weight. Not that the news outlet could find any to quote for the article. Honestly, this almost reads as if it should be labeled “sponsored content” from the Navy League of the United States for the group’s lobbying campaign, “America’s Strength: Investing in the Navy-Marine Corps Team”:

It’s a love affair steeped in the ideology that more warships bristling with aircraft and missiles translates into more security — and that control of the high seas will not only guarantee international trade but also check the worst ambitions of other powers like Russia and China. And it’s also fueled by a powerful shipbuilding lobby in Washington that is also calling anew for billions more in federal spending to beef up the sea service.

Christie was the first to raise the issue earlier this election season, saying the Navy “should be an armada without equal,” and pledging, if elected president, to reach the goal of 350 ships. Walker also noted earlier this year that “we’re at, what, 275, 280 vessels right now? We’re headed down toward 250. That’s less than half of where we were under Reagan.”

And on Monday, Kasich weighed in, saying that “reinvigorating the Navy’s ability to project power globally is critical to defending and advancing American interests, including ensuring the free flow of global commerce.” Rubio has been more nuanced, calling for increasing the number of aircraft carrier strike groups from 10 to 12 (the newest carrier, about to enter the fleet, is estimated to cost $13 billion).

Richard Danzig, former Navy secretary in the Clinton administration, believes this is “more sloganeering than strategic thought.” Candidates are substituting a nice, round number for sound planning. But then, it’s what they do, and it’s what the Navy League of the United States very much wants.

This rebuild-the-fleet tough talk is familiar to anyone paying attention when The Great Communicator ran for president in 1980. Reagan promised a military buildup, that trickle down economics would, and that his tax cuts would help America grow its way out of the budget hole they created. Really. Instead, the national debt nearly tripled. Can you hear Donald Trump promising the same?

Sometime during the Reagan presidency when economic reality was sinking in, at least for the country, Doonesbury ran a strip (I wish I could find) simply showing the White House exterior and Reagan talking to the fairy Tinkerbell. Reagan had worries. Tinkerbell had promised he could cut taxes, build a 600-ship navy, and balance the budget all at the same time.

“Oh, Mr. President, but you must believe,” said Tinkerbell. Our current crop of Republican carnival barkers want Americans with swelling hearts and short memories to believe again, with Donald Trump in the role of P.T. Barnum.

Update: A clever reader supplied a link to the Doonesbury strip mentioned above. Thanks!

QOTD: One of Trump’s brownshirts

by digby

Awesome followers he has:

“Hopefully, he’s going to sit there and say, ‘When I become elected president, what we’re going to do is we’re going to make the border a vacation spot, it’s going to cost you $25 for a permit, and then you get $50 for every confirmed kill,’ ” said Jim Sherota, 53, who works for a landscaping company. “That’d be one nice thing.”

Kind of like killing Cecil the Lion only a lot closer and cheaper.

They used to only play at this:

A conservative student group announced Monday they will play a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game” this week on the University of Texas at Austin, drawing condemnation from Democrats and a threat of expulsion from campus officials.

The Young Conservatives of Texas have planned the game for Wednesday. Club members will wander the campus wearing signs that say “illegal immigrant,” and students who capture them and take them to the Young Conservatives’ recruiting table will get $25 gift certificates.

“The purpose of this event is to spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue of illegal immigration, and how it affects our everyday lives,” a statement posted by the group’s spokesman, Lorenzo Garcia. The group did not immediately reply to several emails sent by The Associated Press.

And then there was this fun video game:

Oh, and this:

The migration of extreme notions into the mainstream was recently laid bare in a Newsweek cover story that described ranchers who are “hunting humans” as simply “dealing first-hand with the problems caused by the influx of undocumented immigrants.” The piece, “Hunting Humans: The Americans Taking Immigration Into Their Own Hands” was reported from Brooks County some 70 miles north of the border in South Texas, and quotes three ranchers—Michael and Linda Vickers and another who went only by “B.J.” Not apparently comfortable enough to use her full name, B.J. refers to migrants as if they were prey.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” says B.J. with a grin, driving through ranch trails. Her Heckler & Koch P2000 pistol rests in the cup holder next to her right knee. She starts by looking for footprints—they are most noticeable on the sand tracks she has set up next to the trails that she smooths by dragging tires. When she sees a fresh set, she speeds through the trails, finds the migrants, chases after them until they tire out, corners them and then yells, “Pa’bajo!”—Spanish for down.

That humanitarian provision, later described in the Newsweek article, is nonetheless part of an attitude that equates people with animals: “In any case, says Vickers, the windmills provide a water source which is safe for cattle, and therefore for migrants.”

Last year, U.S. News and World Report described Vickers’ group as “simply back-up for U.S. Border Patrol. The goal of the volunteers is not to engage with the ‘criminal trespassers,’ as they call them, but alert border patrol of their findings.” One year later, the ranchers are described as hunting migrants while laying out traps and chasing them down. Maybe these ranchers viewed the migrants not simply as trespassers but as prey all along and now they feel free to express such opinions. It’s difficult to know. But reporters who had interviewed the Vickers before told me they were alarmed at what they described as a sharp shift in rhetoric.

Nearly 90 percent of the population in Brooks County is Latino, with five percent foreign born. Many ranches predate the U.S.-Mexico War. And when I read those quotes I’m reminded of the image of a group of Texas Rangers mounted on horseback, the ends of their rope tied around the ankles of three ‘Mexican bandits’ laying face down on the ground. Prized game. The image, captured near Brooks County a little over a century ago, was sold as a postcard and distributed widely.

Back then, the justification for hunting Mexicans was banditry and rebellion but, as history has shown, then as now, the concept of border security was woven from the dark thread of race. The Vickers were once associated with the Minutemen, the militia group described by former President George W. Bush as “vigilantes.” The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Minutemen and the Vickers’ ‘border volunteer’ outfit as a nativist extremist group.

From the media to the political arena the racially tinged side of “security” and normalized violence has found its way into the center. On July 5, just over two weeks before the Newsweek story was published, Bud Kennedy at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a Facebook page created for GOP convention delegates included statements such as:“Americans are not breeding while ‘the bronze master races is’… We will die out and they will win.”

Kennedy told me some readers complained that he had overstated the importance of Facebook comments. But the page belonged to a faction of the Texas Republican Party that had been instrumental in shaping the state GOP platform. “What I’m concerned about is a Republican Party that has become infiltrated by John Birchers and white nationalists,” he said.

Ya think??? They seem to be welcoming them with open arms as far as I can tell. Indeed, I’m not sure who’s who.

Gov. Rick Perry cruises the Rio Grande with Sean Hannity, posing together on gunboats. The Dallas Morning News reported U.S. Rep Sam Johnson (R-TX) provoked laughter at a groundbreaking event for defense contractor Raytheon Co. when he said: “I don’t know how people cross that river. Maybe Raytheon can figure out a new silent gun.” He then cocked his finger like a pistol. Johnson later apologized.

Lost in the headline-grabbing displays of “border security” is a discussion of whether the border enforcers are in fact breaking the law. I reached Brooks County Deputy Chief Urbino “Benny” Martinez by telephone and read him a Newsweek tweet about the story: For a few ranchers, setting traps for migrants, chasing after them and being intimidating is a hobby.

“That shouldn’t happen, I’ll make that very clear to you right now. That’s the first time I’ve heard that,” he said, distressed. Martinez added that he intended to investigate what is happening on the ranches. “This is not a show, this is not a reality show, this is for real.”

So, is that guy quoted in the New York Times at the top of the page a real outlier? I wouldn’t be too sure. Trumps getting a third of the GOP. That’s millions of people who are lustily cheering his nativist, nationalist rhetoric.

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Coupla charts to ponder awhile

link

The toughest attack ad of the 2016 cycle

by digby

Whoa:

The thing is that it’s actually more mature than most of them …

“They’re hiding in caves!”


by digby

I know it’s hard for people to keep up with wingnuttia.  It’s pervasive and loonier than usual.  But nobody is more full of wingnut nonsense than Ben Carson and somebody needs to take him in hand.

Here’s a fact check from a couple of weeks ago:

ABC’s Martha Raddatz debunked GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s claim that Planned Parenthood engages in racist population control by targeting black communities.

On the August 16 edition of ABC’s This Week, Carson spoke with Raddatz on the campaign trail in Iowa. Raddatz asked Carson about his controversial comments he made on August 12, when he said Planned Parenthood is targeting African-American communities to control their population by placing “most of their clinics in black neighborhoods.” Raddatz debunked this claim, saying, “Planned Parenthood estimates that fewer than five percent of its health centers are located in areas where more than one-third of the population is African-American”.

That’s an unusual example of somebody fact-checking him in real time. But he apparently believes everything he hears from right wing cranks and it leads him astray. Lately he’s been talking about using military drones to blow up caves on the border where some looney sheriff told him all the illegals are hiding before they come over the border. he thinks we should blow them up, taliban style. (He insists that we shouldn’t blow up the people inside but is unclear on just how we will know they are empty.)

But all this begs the question: what’s the hell is the deal with these caves? I just did a cursory search on google and can’t find any stories about caves hiding illegal immigrants. What I did find was this one story about Carson going on a helicopter tour with Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeau, (the married former GOP candidate who was exposed by his undocumented gay lover when he ran for congress in 2012.) Breitbart was there and reported on the tour and even they don’t say that illegal immigrants are hiding in caves. Here’s what this was about:

“Nobody does,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Breitbart News when asked who has operational control of this region of the United States of America.

Babeu was on a helicopter tour of Mexican drug cartel scout locations in caves in the side of mountains throughout the desert about 70 miles inside the U.S. border. Essentially, that means U.S. sovereignty is gone for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of square miles throughout the American southwest.

Babeu was leading the helicopter tour with Dr. Ben Carson, a GOP presidential candidate, after briefing Carson on everything happening at the border.

Among other things that Babeu showed Carson and Breitbart News on this helicopter tour were how this far inside the border on high ground there are scores of scout sites where cartel operatives serve as lookouts for smugglers bringing drugs, people and other contraband into the country.

“If they can operate up to this degree, 70 miles north of the border, in law enforcement we call that a clue,” Babeu said in a brief exclusive interview outside the helicopter after landing back at the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. The lack of United States sovereignty this deep into the country is highly concerning to Carson, who told Breitbart News that this shouldn’t be happening.

“We should stop them at the border,” Carson said. “They shouldn’t be 70 miles inside the border. We should stop them at the border. As the sheriff indicated, if we were to take like 6,000 troops and put them at the border, you wouldn’t have those people coming inside the border.”

They were talking about drug cartels, not immigrants. And even the crazed Babeau doesn’t suggest that we blow up these caves, which is ridiculous. Carson wants to put troops on the border, like East Germany used to do, in order to keep out people from coming into the country to pick strawberries and clean your house. He rivals Trump for sheer weird wingnuttiness. He believes everything he hears and that’s when he’s not misunderstands it in the first place. I think it’s probably a good idea to add him to Trump’s totals if you want to have a good guess just how many Republicans are out of their ever-lovin’ minds.

The southwest is full of interesting caves with cave writings and all kind of geological wonders. I don’t think we’re at a point where we need to destroy our own natural beauty to salve the feelings of a bunch of white supremacists who are worried that Mexicans are going to take away their All American right to eat Taco Bell and drink Corona.

Here’s Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico:

Let’s blow it up!

Sunday funnies

by digby

Tom Tomorrow:

McFadden NY Times:

The Great Whitebread Hope waffles again

by digby

Think Progress:

When George Stephanopoulos asked [Scott Walker] on ABC’s This Week, “You’re not seeking to repeal or alter the 14th Amendment?” Walker answered, “No, my point is any discussion that goes beyond securing the border and enforcing laws are things that should be a red flag to voters out there who for years have heard lip service from politicians and are understandably angry because they haven’t been committed to following through on promises.”

This is actually the third position Walker has taken on the issue of birthright citizenship, with him telling NBC’s Kasie Hunt on Monday we should “absolutely” rethink the 14th Amendment.
Then Friday he told CNBC’s John Harwood that he wasn’t going to take “a position on it one way or the other” and that he was tired after a three-and-a-half hour press gaggle.

On Sunday, Walker said that position was finally a “no,” but not before trying to evade the question.

This is the guy all the smart money says will be the GOP nominee. Gosh I hope so.

Click over to read the whole exchange. It’s pretty much gibberish.

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A suspiciously “European” solution
by Tom Sullivan

American presidential candidates debate deporting millions of immigrant families to Mexico as Europe faces the worst refugee crisis since WWII. On the Macedonian border with Greece, CNN reported last night:

Refugees who are soaking wet and hungry in makeshift camps, with only a few nongovernmental organizations present to help, told the CNN team of sheer misery.

A Syrian man said he never imagined Europe would be like this.

“Look at her,” he said, motioning to his 3-year-old daughter in his arms. “In Syria she was a princess, now she is like a rag. They are treating us like animals.”

He said that if someone could get him back to Syria, he would go. “Better to die from bombs in my homeland than die out here,” he said.

The Independent reports this morning:

For a second day, they came. And, for a second day, they faced a wall of riot shields, razor wire and batons. But on Saturday something was different. As the Macedonian police waved a handful of exhausted refugees through from Greece, something snapped and hundreds rushed the lines, causing chaos and police retaliation in the form of volleys of stun grenades and beatings. Many were injured.

And yet they still came and, eventually, with the tide of humanity too much to hold, the Macedonians opened the border with Greece. The police, who only hours before had swiped and batted at the crowds, simply stepped aside as thousands – men, women and children, many from Syria – streamed through, crying tears of joy as they began their next step to sanctuary and escape from the horrors of war in their own countries.

The Guardian, also this morning:

Hundreds of migrants have crossed unhindered from Greece into Macedonia after overwhelmed security forces appeared to abandon a bid to stem their flow through the Balkans to western Europe following days of chaos and confrontation.

Riot police remained, but did little to slow the passage of a steady flow of migrants on Sunday, many of them refugees from the Syrian war and other conflicts in the Middle East, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

Macedonia had declared a state of emergency on Thursday and sealed its southern frontier to migrants arriving at a rate of 2,000 per day en route to Serbia then Hungary and the EU’s borderless Schengen zone. This led to desperate scenes at the border, as adults and children slept under open skies with little access to food or water.

Elsewhere on the Mediterranean, Italian and other naval vessels rescued another 2,000 refugees yesterday, responding to distress calls from more than 20 vessels in danger of sinking.

Donald Trump and others on the right are too busy insisting we have walls to build across our southern border to take notice. But maybe someone should point out that this is a suspiciously “European” solution coming out of the mouths of American politicians:

Throughout Europe, leaders are succumbing to the keep-them-out syndrome. Hungary is building a fence (along its border with Serbia). Spain has done the same (in Ceuta and Melilla). Bulgaria followed suit (on the border with Turkey). More fencing is springing up in Calais.

In Macedonia, which is not in the EU, they are deploying armoured vehicles against migrants. Will this work? Unlikely. When you flee atrocities and war, the desperation to reach a haven will always be stronger than security fences and dogs.

The causes of migration in Europe and the Middle East are more instability than economics, argues Patrick Kingsley in the Guardian. Human smugglers often portrayed as the source of the problem are simply reacting to the opportunities presented by demand for their services, as any conservative economist could tell you. But as I recall, one of the last mass migrations in my lifetime occurred after the U.S. military debacle in Vietnam. Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the current crisis presents itself in close proximity to American adventures in Iraq and Syria. Strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett has suggested that one of America’s greatest exports is security. Isn’t instability more like it?

There are a lot of actors who have tried to be Marlon Brando over the years. God knows, they’ve tried (not that James Dean, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Richard Gere, Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Tom Berenger, Johnny Depp, Nicholas Cage, Mark Ruffalo, Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro or Russell Crowe were/are slouches). In fact, since 1947, which is when a 23 year-old Brando exploded onto the American stage (and into eternal iconography) with his primal performance as Stanley Kolwalski in the original 2-year Broadway run of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, it’s likely the only young actor who hasn’t been influenced by Brando was…Marlon Brando.

The GOP establishment is getting antsy

by digby

The Washington Post editorial board clutches its pearls after years of excusing the Republican right wing extremism and insisting that “both sides do it.”

DONALD TRUMP’S rapidly expanding catalogue of bombast is already a weighty tome, and it’s a fool’s errand to take each of his utterances seriously. Still, his loathsome comment on Wednesday, in which he excused violence against a Hispanic man in Boston as “passionate” acts of “people who are following me,” taps into a dark vein in American history and merits special attention.

In the Boston incident, two brothers were charged with using a metal pole to assault a 58-year-old Hispanic man. The man, who was homeless, was left with a broken nose and other injuries to his face, arms and chest. “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” one of the brothers, Scott Leader, told police, the Boston Globe reported.

When Mr. Trump was told of the incident, in which the brothers also are alleged to have urinated on the man before beating him, he said the following: “It would be a shame. . . . I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
[…]
The truth is that Mr. Trump deliberately whips up popular rage for political advantage. By spewing hatred on the stump, Mr. Trump encourages it in the bleachers and on the streets, then sanctions it when it occurs. Remember: He also minimized the death threats Ms. Kelly received after his dustup with her, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “I’m sure they don’t mean that,” then pivoting to stress his “respect for the people that like me.”

Mr. Trump is not the first politician to inspire and then explain away crimes of hatred; he’s just the most recent one. Recall the Southern politicians of the past century who were apologists for lynchings. Rep. Charles E. Bennett of Florida, who said he condemned such violence, nonetheless explained that lynchings occurred because Southerners were aggrieved at the meddling of Congress. Others, more coarsely, cited the rape of white women by black men as having naturally incited a lynch mob.

Mr. Trump’s immigrant-bashing rhetoric is intended to galvanize political anger and win Republican primaries, not incite a lynch mob. The trouble is that his contempt-filled hyperbole appeals not to rational discourse but to passions — passions that can and do get out of hand.

Excuse me, butwhat did they think was going on when people were cheering the deaths of sick people who have no insurance and throwing dollar bills at Parkinson’s victims? What did they think this whole confederate flag flap was all about?

And while I’m sure it’s nice of them not to take his nativist bigotry seriously and give The Donald the benefit of the doubt, I don’t know for sure he isn’t inciting a lynch mob. Do they listen to what he’s actually saying? This was from Derry, New Hampshire on Wednesday:

…we have crime all over the country, we have … the borders, the southern border is a disaster…The other night a 66 year old woman, a veteran, raped sodomized, brutally killed by an illegal immigrant. We gotta stop we gotta take back our country. We’ve gotta take it back!

Last night in Mobile Alabama he said it this way:

“Between what happened in San Francisco….The other day in California, last week, a woman, 66 years old a veteran was raped, sodomized, tortured and killed by an illegal immigrant. We have to do it. We have to do something.”

That’s in his standard stump speech and he gets huge cheers every time. If he doesn’t want people to take the law into their own hands he certainly isn’t explicit about it.

Now it’s not fair to say that all of Trump’s supporters are white supremacists. But the white supremacists do seem to love him.

What did these handwringing elites think has been going on these past few years? They so dizzy with visions of crazy 1960s hippies dancing in their heads that they failed to notice the rise of the extreme right.

Update: The New York Times noted last week that he’s forcing all the other Republicans in the race to join his crusade:

[A]s Mr. Trump swells in the polls, his diminished opponents are following in his wake, like remoras on a shark. Several have shuffled onto the anti-birthright-citizenship bus, including Rick Santorum, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ben Carson and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who once fought for smart bipartisan immigration reform, wants to repeal birthright citizenship. As does Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a birthright citizen himself. As for Mr. Trump’s other restrictionist proposals, several are firmly lodged again in the playbook of a Republican Party that briefly tried to reform itself after the Mitt Romney debacle. Some candidates are even willing to try to trump Mr. Trump in xenophobia: Mr. Carson is talking about using armed military drones at the border. That’s right– bombing Arizona.

Jeb! can’t even think of another word for “anchor baby.” (Apparently, “American children of undocumented workers” is too complicated.)