The Real Sins of Sodom and Gomorrah - An Indictment of the Far Right

This blog often looks at what I deem to be hypocrites and hypocrisy.  It's something that makes it impossible to not talk about the Republican Party, the Christofascists and those who strut about with religion on their sleeves.  Especially those who incessantly condemn gays by grasping a few selective Bible passages and then twisting them to condemn others.  A piece in Formerly Fundie looks at the hypocrisy of too many Americans and points out that the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah really applies to them, not necessarily gays.  The author is kinder than I am because he fails to specifically target the far right Republicans and the Christofascists/Tea Party.   But what he describes is them, plain and simple.  Here are highlights from the post that is dead on target:

On election day in 2012, I received an e-mail from someone who had been my friend for 16 years. He had been growing dismayed with the changes I went through during my 4 years at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, especially my new-found passion for biblical social justice, my advocacy for the poor, and my defense of immigrants. Having spent years wrestling with scripture at seminary and working that out within the context of a community of believers, I broke with conservative politics for the first time in my life, and voted to re-elect Barack Obama. This, clearly, was the last straw in what I thought was a life-long friendship.

His reference of “sins so grave”, was the sin of “sodomy”, which he claims Obama is guilty of (via his support of Gay Marriage). This caused me to realize that in American Christianity, we have completely lost sight of the biblical sin of sodomy– which in the Bible, had a completely different meaning than what it does now.

[T]he most direct reference regarding the sin of Sodom in the Bible,  is what helps us no longer view this story as being about someone else:

Ezekiel 16

⁴⁹ “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. ⁵⁰ They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”

Here we have it…

Sodom was arrogant.

Sodom was overfed.

Sodom was unconcerned for the poor and needy.

Sodom was disdainfully proud (haughty).

Am I saying that the sins of Sodom are absent sexual immorality? Certainly not. Please don’t misread this post. The point of this article is that too often, we find a story of sin and judgment and find a way to make it about themwhen really it includes us.

The story of Sodom, includes us. Their sins are our sins.

We are arrogant and haughty.

We don’t like the word arrogant, so instead we use a term called “American Exceptionalism” to express how different and special we are. ² During the Presidential Elections, I was disgusted by the nationalistic arrogance expressed by both candidates. I cringed as I heard President Obama say that “America is the greatest country on earth”, and wanted to yell “heretic” when I heard Romney say that America was “the hope of the earth.” ³

As a world traveler, I learned early on that Americans are perceived as “rich, loud, and proud” by the rest of the world, and this is not an unwarranted stereotype.

We are overfed.

While 870 millionpeople go hungry in the world and early 5 million children die every year due to malnutrition, America throws nearly half our food in the trash.

We have more food than we know what to do with, so we toss it away at a rate of 400lbs per person, per year.

We live in the country of “bigger and better” while 1 of 4 children in the world is stunted due to lack of healthy food.

We are unconcerned for the poor and needy.

This isn’t to say that we’re not concerned at all; I know a lot of Americans who do great things for the poor and needy among us and around the world.

However, as a culture, we are not nearly as concerned as we should be and far too many of us are concerned only for ourselves. Just look at the cultural shift which has occurred in our nation in the past few years with the birth of the Tea Party– a party who’s basic platform is: “leave me alone and get your damn hands off my money”. As Americans, we want what is ours. We are intoxicated with protecting our money and our “rights.” While the rest of the world is living on dollars a day, eating two bowls of rice and having to drink water tainted with human feces, we’re concerned with making sure that our pizza arrives hot enough, that we get a great parking spot at the mall, and advocating to ensure we don’t have to wait for a background check before we buy our assault weapons.

We fight against ensuring the poorest among us have access to healthcare, so that we can keep more of what’s “ours”.

As I write this, the US House of Representatives is pending a vote to cut $20 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which would put nearly 2 million people off a program designed to help them out of poverty. Meanwhile, we have no problem with runaway military budgets, over-the-top executive salaries, unscrupulous lending practices, and tax reductions which tend to benefit the wealthy.

We might not all be unconcerned, but a good portion of American culture is unconcerned– just like Sodom.

It's no coincidence that the cult of American exceptionalism, obesity and poverty combined with a lack of social programs/safety nets tend to be the worse in the Bible Belt.

 

On election day in 2012, I received an e-mail from someone who had been my friend for 16 years. He had been growing dismayed with the changes I went through during my 4 years at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, especially my new-found passion for biblical social justice, my advocacy for the poor, and my defense of immigrants. Having spent years wrestling with scripture at seminary and working that out within the context of a community of believers, I broke with conservative politics for the first time in my life, and voted to re-elect Barack Obama. This, clearly, was the last straw in what I thought was a life-long friendship. - See more at: http://www.formerlyfundie.com/sodom-gomorrah-a-story-about-us-and-not-for-the-reasons-you-think/#sthash.llhDOYlL.G6xSp2iq.dpuf

On election day in 2012, I received an e-mail from someone who had been my friend for 16 years. He had been growing dismayed with the changes I went through during my 4 years at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, especially my new-found passion for biblical social justice, my advocacy for the poor, and my defense of immigrants. Having spent years wrestling with scripture at seminary and working that out within the context of a community of believers, I broke with conservative politics for the first time in my life, and voted to re-elect Barack Obama. This, clearly, was the last straw in what I thought was a life-long friendship. - See more at: http://www.formerlyfundie.com/sodom-gomorrah-a-story-about-us-and-not-for-the-reasons-you-think/#sthash.llhDOYlL.G6xSp2iq.dpuf

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Eric Cantor and House GOP Seek More Cuts in Food Stamps

One of the things that always strikes me about the House Republicans is that they constantly prostitute themselves to the Christofascists and proclaim their worship of Judeo-Christian morality, yet then push policies and positions that are 180 degrees opposite of what the Gospel message would have one do.  Instead of feeding the hungry, aiding the sick, etc., the GOP seeks to demolish the social safety net and throw millions of Americans on the trash heap.  The hypocrisy is amazing.  Equally stunning is the fact that the mainstream media never calls them on this hypocrisy.  Now, in keeping with its war on the poor and needy, the GOP House is seeking further slashing of the food stamp program.  Politico has high lights:

House Republicans are proposing to double their food stamp savings to nearly $40 billion by rolling back waivers for able-bodied adults and targeting funds to states that are willing to impose greater work requirements on the parents of young children.

The prime mover is Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) who helped jettison the nutrition title from the House farm bill last month and is now trying to write his own version before the House goes to conference with the Senate.

The prime target appears to be able-bodied beneficiaries under 50 years old and without dependents — a population that has grown significantly since 2008 because of the bad economy and increased state waivers of a 20-hour-a-week work requirement.

By rolling back these waivers, large savings are possible, essentially by forcing millions off the rolls if they don’t find work after three months. Unless approached with some care, the impact could be severe in areas of chronically high-unemployment, such as the Rio Grande Valley, poor urban areas and Indian reservations, for example. And the final details of the bill have not been made public.

A second area of more modest but still controversial savings would come from using federal funds to pressure states to take a more aggressive welfare reform-like approach imposing work requirements on able-bodied parents with young children.

Currently Washington provides a 50 percent match for states that spend their own funds for employment and training programs for food stamp recipients. As proposed now, the bill would only provide this aid if the state is willing to operate welfare reform-like work activities for mothers with children over 1- years-old.

This is a significant expansion of the current food stamps work rules, which exempt mothers with children under 6.

Peterson said his great fear is that the Cantor effort will only raise the stakes on the food stamp cuts to the point where any compromise with be unacceptable to conservatives and make it harder for Democrats to step back in and help pass the final report from the House-Senate conference.

Cantor is a vile individual and an embarrassment to Virginia. 

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Cuccinelli Continues to Try to Hide Ties to Star Scientific

With Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell's popularity plummeting and roughly a third of Virginians believing that he should resign as Governor of Virginia, his would be successor, extremist Ken Cuccinelli is dancing as fast as he can to put distance between himself and McDonnell and Jonnie R. Williams, Sr. (pictured below), who was giving handouts of gifts - and perhaps insider stock trading information - to Cuccinelli as well.  One can only hope the media and Cuccinelli's opponent, Terry McAuliffe continue the drum beat to force Cuccinelli to come clean.  A piece in the New York Times reviews the Cuccinelli-Williams relationship which mirrors that of Williams and McDonnell except for the magnitude of the gifts (at least so far).  Here are highlights:

He first bought the tiny company’s stock after bunking down in its chief executive’s six-bedroom home.

He added to his holdings soon after the rollout of a new product that the company hinted could be a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.  As the stock reached a 52-week high last year, he sold part of his portfolio for a $4,000 profit. 

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Virginia’s attorney general, said that the timing of his ownership of Star Scientific shares reflected nothing more than his own investment analysis. 

Star Scientific and its chief executive have been at the center of an exploding political drama in Virginia as state and federal investigators look into lavish gifts that the executive, Jonnie R. Williams Sr., gave Gov. Bob McDonnell. 

And now, despite his efforts to distance himself, scrutiny is growing of Mr. Cuccinelli’s ties to the executive. 

Mr. Williams, 57, also gave the attorney general $18,000 worth of gifts, including frequent stays at Mr. Williams’s homes outside Richmond and in the Blue Ridge Mountains, according to Mr. Cuccinelli’s financial disclosure statements. Mr. Cuccinelli at first failed to report some gifts, as well as his Star Scientific stock, as required by law, which he has said was an oversight. 

At no time, the attorney general said, did he receive stock tips from the executive. But Mr. Cuccinelli’s buying and selling of Star Scientific shares raises questions about whether he and Mr. Williams were as distant as campaign aides insist. 

Star Scientific was Mr. Cuccinelli’s only stock holding worth more than $10,000 since he became attorney general, according to his disclosure forms. In at least two cases, his buying and selling was closely timed to vacations he and his family enjoyed as guests of Mr. Williams. 

For a relative novice at stock picking, Mr. Cuccinelli’s investment in Star Scientific was highly unusual. It is a thinly traded stock in a company that has lost money for a decade. It stayed afloat by selling stock at a discount in “private placements” to large investors, whose hopes were repeatedly raised by company promotions about big payoffs. 

It is unclear how Mr. Cuccinelli first met Mr. Williams. When the attorney general took office in 2010, he sometimes stayed in Mr. Williams’s $2.2 million home outside Richmond while his family remained in the northern suburbs. 

In late October 2010, Mr. Cuccinelli made his first purchase of 5,060 shares of Star Scientific, at $1.98. A month later he, his wife and their seven children spent Thanksgiving at a vacation home that Mr. Williams owned on Smith Mountain Lake, near Roanoke, dining on a $1,500 catered dinner that Mr. Williams paid for, according to the attorney general’s financial disclosure.

Mr. Cuccinelli made his second purchase of stock, adding 3,600 shares of Star Scientific at $2.80. It continued its climb for a year, hitting a peak in early July 2012. In June, Mr. Cuccinelli used Mr. Williams’s lake house again, and after his vacation, he sold 1,500 shares of Star Scientific for a profit of $4,041.

There's more to the article but the supposed "coincidences" seem rather astounding.  Martha Stewat did prison time for insider trading.  Here, Cuccinelli is supposed to be Virginia's top law enforcement officer.  Jonnie R. Willimas may be many things, but the man isn't stupid.  The question thus becomes, what did he expect in return from Cuccinelli.  He did not give away gifts and use of his homes purely out of affection and the goodness of his heart.  Something is rotten in Cuccinelli land.

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Quote of the Day: The Heartless and Mean Spirited GOP

In addition to needing a lobotomy and/or the IQ of a cretin, in order to be a Republican nowadays one needs to be at best morally bankrupt and/or one who holds the Gospel message of Christ - a figure the GOP base claims to revere - in utter contempt.  How else to explain the GOP House's passage of massive corporate handouts to corporate farming while eliminating any funding for food stamps.  Isn't feeding hungry children core to the Gospel message?  Michael Kinsley describes today's GOP well in a piece in The New Republic.  Here is the money quote:

[T]he Republican-controlled House has chopped off and discarded food stamps. (The program is now called “SNAP”—an acronym for something or other.) It’s like amputating a gangrenous limb, then keeping the limb and discarding the rest of the body.

Forget about kids going to bed hungry. (Melodramatic, but accurate.) Can this possibly be good politics? Are there actually people out there waiting for a candidate who will kill the food stamp program? It takes your breath away. The Republicans have now cornered the heartless vote. But are there enough heartless people in this country to counterbalance the sane people fleeing the other way?

The net effect of the farm bill, as it stands now in the House, is to take money away from a successful program for making sure that no one starves, and giving it to a variety of programs whose goal is to raise the price of food, for the poor and everyone else. Even if you only care about how things look, this does not look good, it seems to me.

As I have said many times, the GOP has become something truly ugly.  And the transformation began when the Christofascists hijacked the party grass roots.  The sickness continues to fester.

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GOP Excludes Food Stamps from Farm Bill

For a political party that falls all over itself pretending to honor - indeed worship - Christian values, the passage of a GOP Farm Bill yesterday that excluded any funding for Food Stamps (which were described as one of "some extraneous pieces") demonstrates that the hypocrisy of today's Republicans is now complete.  How is one honoring the Gospel message of feeding the hungry and caring for the poor when one votes for passage of legislation that kicks their poor and hungry to the curb?  These modern day Pharisee truly would like to see the poor just die off and disappear.  Especially if they are non-white.  Mitt Romney's "the 47%" comment did indeed show today's real GOP.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this disgusting display of GOP hypocrisy and selfishness:

There was a rare moment of candor on the House floor this week.  Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), a committee chairman and the man who led House Republicans to their majority in 2010, was explaining why he and his colleagues decided to drop the food stamp program from the farm bill. 

“What we have carefully done is exclude some extraneous pieces,” he said.  Extraneous? For almost 50 years, food stamps have been part of the annual farm bill, and the $80 billion spent on the program keeps tens of millions of Americans, about half of them children, from going hungry.

Without a single Democratic vote, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill that, if allowed to stand, would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in agriculture subsidies but not a dime for the hungry. Happily, Americans are unlikely to starve as a result of Thursday’s vote because the Senate won’t allow the House’s farm bill to become law if the food stamp program isn’t restored.

But as a political matter, the food stamp folly shows just what a difficult situation Republican leaders find themselves in. For the second time in two days, they had been forced to placate conservatives in their own ranks by taking a position that alienates crucial segments of the electorate.

On Wednesday, the House GOP caucus huddled and determined that, because of conservatives’ objections, they would not take up the bipartisan Senate immigration bill, or any major immigration legislation, anytime soon.

. . . . inviting new charges that Republicans are hostile to racial minorities — 36 percent of food stamp beneficiaries are identified as white — and the poor. 

Today's "conservatives" - most of whom describe themselves as "godly Christians" - are horrible people who care nothing about others and add daily fuel to why one would never be described as a Christian.  

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The GOP Is Terrified of Obamacare Because It Could Work

With all the huge problems facing America at the moment the Congressional Republicans have lots of things that they could be doing.  But their number one obsession is thwarting the Affordable Health Care Act - a/k/a Obamacare - as evidenced by the ridiculous number of votes for its repeal in the GOP controlled House of Representatives.   Why?  First, because these cretins cannot grasp that we are already paying the cost of treating the uninsured through exorbitantly high medical cost which are inflated to recapture all the monies written off by hospitals and other providers.  We have the least efficient and cost effective system of any advanced nation.  Second, and most importantly, they are terrified that Obamacare might actually work and destroy all of their claims and doom saying.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the phenomenon.  Here are story excerpts:

I know, we’re all supposed to think the End Is Nigh because the government has decided to give the 10 percent of large employers who don’t insure their workers another 365 days to do so before levying a small penalty. This could not possibly be a reasonable accommodation to protect jobs and businesses, because as everybody knows, this president hates jobs and businesses.

No, this brief delay must be a sign that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is destined to result in abject failure. After all, that’s what every Congressional Republican with the ability to hit send on a press release has told us, over and over again, hoping that repeating their prediction enough times will somehow make it true.

But here’s my question: if Republicans are so confident Obamacare will end badly, why not just shut up about it? It’s not like they have the votes to repeal the law—a math problem they still haven’t solved after 37 different tries. Their appeal to the Supreme Court ended in defeat at the hands of a conservative chief justice. And now the bulk of the plan will begin to take effect in just a few months.

At this point, why not sit back and wait for this crazy experiment to self-destruct? Why not let President Obama and the Democrats reckon with the millions of angry Americans who will undoubtedly hate their new insurance or their new insurance protections?

Because Republicans are terrified that Obamacare could actually work. Already, the law has provided 54 million Americans free access to preventive services like check-ups and mammograms. More than six million seniors have saved more than six billion dollars on their prescriptions. Nearly thirteen million consumers have received more than one billion dollars in rebates from insurance companies that had overcharged them. There are more than three million happy young adults who have been allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26. And in California, a state that represents one-fifth of the U.S. economy, we’ve learned that premiums for the law’s new insurance options have come in lower­ than expected.

As these successes build, Republicans are naturally coping with their fear the only way they know how: by scaring the hell out of everyone else.
[T]oday, the anti-government zealots who have taken over the once-proud Republican Party feel they must burn our village to save it. They are actively trying to prevent Americans who have been too poor or sick to get health insurance from knowing that all three branches of their democratically elected government have passed and upheld a law that will finally allow them to see a doctor without going broke.

[T]here is now plenty of evidence that if we as a nation want Obamacare to work, it will work; that if we can extract ourselves from the trench warfare that preceded the passage of the law, we can all start focusing on fixing and improving it over the next year. 

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The GOP Fueled Driven Decline of North Carolina

The southern boundary of the Hampton Roads area is the North Carolina/Virginia border.  Indeed, my office is less than 25 miles from North Carolina and I've spent a great deal of time in the Outer Banks surfing.  Hence, I thought I knew the state.  Yet, since the Republican Party took control of the North Carolina legislature and governor's mansion, North Carolina has veered off into insanity.  One has to wonder how long it will be before its reputation as a moderate and pro-business state is destroyed by the GOP/Christofascist extremism.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the rapid decline of that state.  Here are excerpts:

Every Monday since April, thousands of North Carolina residents have gathered at the State Capitol to protest the grotesque damage that a new Republican majority has been doing to a tradition of caring for the least fortunate. Nearly 700 people have been arrested in the “Moral Monday” demonstrations, as they are known. But the bad news keeps on coming from the Legislature, and pretty soon a single day of the week may not be enough to contain the outrage.

In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot. 

The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 residents. Another 100,000 will lose their checks in a few months. Those still receiving benefits will find that they have been cut by a third, to a maximum of $350 weekly from $535, and the length of time they can receive benefits has been slashed from 26 weeks to as few as 12 weeks.

At the same time, the state is also making it harder for future generations of workers to get jobs, cutting back sharply on spending for public schools. Though North Carolina has been growing rapidly, it is spending less on schools now than it did in 2007, ranking 46th in the nation in per-capita education dollars. Teacher pay is falling, 10,000 prekindergarten slots are scheduled to be removed, and even services to disabled children are being chopped. 

Republicans repealed the Racial Justice Act, a 2009 law that was the first in the country to give death-row inmates a chance to prove they were victims of discrimination. They have refused to expand Medicaid and want to cut income taxes for the rich while raising sales taxes on everyone else. The Senate passed a bill that would close most of the state’s abortion clinics. 

And, naturally, the Legislature is rushing to impose voter ID requirements and cut back on early voting and Sunday voting, which have been popular among Democratic voters.

North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build. 

Two things strike me: (1) what the GOP is doing in North Carolina is a blue print of what the Virginia GOP wants to do in Virginia, and (2) while the GOP claims to be the party of Christian values, its actions are the antithesis to the Gospel message of Christ.

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Let's Be Truthful: Republicans Aren’t Christians

One of the ironies - examples of rank hypocrisy? - that strikes me constantly is the fact that despite wearing feigned religiosity on their sleeves, today's Republicans are the antithesis of Christians if one applies the standard of the Gospel message.   Rather than feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and give shelter to the homeless, today's GOP wants to kick the poor and unfortunate to the curb, cut the meager health care benefits they mat have, and literally grab the food out of the mouths of hungry poor children.  The Pharisees of the Bible come across as compassionate in comparison.  A piece in Forward Progressives hits on this theme of GOP hypocrisy and failure to even remotely act in a true Christian manner.  Here are some excerpts:

Republicans don’t get a lot of things, but they really don’t get Christianity—because it’s not what they follow.

See, a few decades ago the leaders of the GOP did something very intelligent.  History shows one of the easiest ways to manipulate, and control, people is through their religion.  You can get people to do horrific things in the name of “their god” by convincing them that their actions are acceptable because they are the true believers, and those they oppose are the “heathens.”   You see this with radicals of every faith.  

Republicans knew two key issues could easily control millions — abortion and homosexuality.  Once they identified their two key manipulation points, all they needed to do was tie in whatever political ideology they wanted with these two religious-based beliefs and they could create a political party that was worshiped more like a faith than a political idea.

And that’s exactly what they did.  I always encourage people to stop saying Republicans represent Christianity, and call them out on what they really worship.
It’s a perversion of Christianity mixed with a political set of man-made beliefs.  These people view their devotion to the GOP on the same level they do their belief in God.  To them, the Republican Party is the party of “real Christians.”  They don’t need facts or reality to support their political beliefs, they have “faith.”

What they follow is some mix of Ayn Rand economic ideologies and a couple of select passages from the Bible.  Which I always find hilarious considering Ayn Rand thought religious people were stupid and insane.  So people like Paul Ryan, who built his economic ideology on her teachings while claiming to be a devout “Christian,” just show their ignorance by claiming to believe in both.  How exactly can someone build an economic platform based on a woman who completely contradicted Christianity, while claiming to be a follower of Christianity?

[Christ] spent his life helping the poor, sick and needy.  He never once spoke about homosexuality or abortion.  He embraced those from the lowest rungs of society by saying that those for whom much had been given, much is expected.  He taught love, hope, compassion and forgiveness.  He warned against those who would manipulate the word of God for their own selfish ambitions.  He opposed greed and encouraged giving.  You know, the exact oppose of what Republicans stand for.

Very well said and 100% accurate.  If one wants to find a true Christian, the last place to look for one is in today's GOP or any of the Christofascist "family values" organizations which have come to run the GOP's "social issues" agenda. 

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Marco Rubio's "47%" Moment?

At times it is breath taking how out of touch members of the GOP can be when it comes to a total lack of empathy - or even concern for - many American citizens.   During the 2013 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney showed his true colors and contempt for "the 47%" who Romney depicted as lazy slackers.   Now, Marco Rubio through an aide has denigrated many average Americans who are facing bleak employment prospects.  The inflammatory statement was first released by The New Yorker:

“There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it,” a Rubio aide told me. “There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly.”

The solution apparently in Rubio's mind?  Kick them to the curb and treat these Americans like disposable garbage as the GOP seeks to treat so many others, especially the poor and less fortunate.  It goes without saying that Rubio and company are frantically claiming that the statements were "taken out of context" which seemingly means they were not stated in a closed, controlled setting with limited access for reports.  Here's a sampling of the supposedly misquoted comments:

New York Magazine looks at this blunder by Rubio and the possible consequences for passage of meaningful immigration reform.  Here are excerpts:

Part of the fascination of the immigration-reform saga is that it provides a test of the Republican Party elite’s ability to tame its own base. For most of the Obama era, the bulging-eyed mania of the conservative activist base helpfully served the party’s interests.

Immigration reform is the clarifying event, directly pitting the passions of the base against the party elite’s long-term survival.

As a political matter, passing immigration reform is a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for winning national elections. The Latino vote is not going to stop growing, and while Latino voters hold left-of-center views pretty much across the board, Republican hostility to illegal immigrants is the insuperable obstacle. Political scientist Dan Hopkins compared the GOP’s voting coalition in 2012 versus 2008 and found Latino Republicans defected at a higher rate than any other piece of the party’s voting bloc.

What makes immigration reform such a no-brainer for the elite is that Republican elites not only grasp its political necessity, but, for the most part, also support it on the merits. Immigration reform is helpful to business in any number of ways, one of them being as a legalized channel for low-wage labor.
[A]n aide to Marco Rubio strips bare the dynamic with a brutal frankness that I have never seen before in American politics   . . .   The idea that American workers don’t want to do certain jobs is a long cliché peddled by people who sit in soft chairs all day. American workers will do any job if it pays well enough — American workers toil in coal mines and collect garbage if they’re paid a living wage to do so. You certainly don’t have to take a cruel and ignorant view of the labor market to support immigration reform . . .

The Rubio aide quote is not only a piece of shocking candor, but also the biggest single blunder the pro-reform coalition has committed so far. Party elites may nod along when they read it, but there’s a reason nobody in politics ever says anything like this.

The question, as always, is, What will John Boehner do? The endgame of a successful law almost has to include the House passing a bill with mostly Democratic support. Boehner probably wants to pass a reform, and possibly a majority of House Republicans do, too, but there’s no chance a majority of them wants to vote for it openly.  . . . . No way in hell" is how several described the chances of the speaker acting on such a proposal without a majority of his majority behind him.

What I find most shocking about today's GOP - and the Christofascist puppet masters behind the scenes - is that they are utterly incapable of seeing the common humanity in others.  They whine about "Christian values"yet they display nothing but contempt and hatred towards those who are different, be they different because of the color of their skin, their national origin, their sexual orientation and a host of other criteria to fan division and discord.

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Bob McDonnell Probe Taints Cuccinelli's Virginia Governor Bid

Have you noticed that time and time again it is the supposed "godly Christian" folk - especially those in elected office - who seem to always be the ones ultimately caught up in scandals that involve conduct and actions that are the antithesis to what "Judeo-Christian " values seemingly ought to mean if put into practice?  The displays involve everything from the gay sex scandals of former Congressman Ed Schrock and former Senator Larry Craig to corruption charges surrounding GOP Virginia Governor Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli.  I'm not saying that the Democrats are innocent of missteps, but the level of rank hypocrisy is nowhere near the same.  Especially if one believes the propaganda put out by "family values" groups that Democrats are "godless" and anti-Christian.  Bloomberg looks at the ongoing train wreck surrounding Bob McDonnell which is seemingly spilling over onto Kookinelli, especially given the recent revelations that an attorney in Kookinelli's AG's office has been inappropriately aiding a major Cuccinelli campaign donor in civil litigation.  Here are article excerpts:

A federal investigation into a Virginia businessman’s political ties is threatening to harm the reputations of Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, an often mentioned prospective presidential candidate, and the man running to replace him. 

Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general and Republican gubernatorial nominee, is squaring off against former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe in a race testing the staying power of the diverse voting bloc that backed President Barack Obama 2008 and 2012 and turned Virginia into a swing state.

For Cuccinelli, who like McDonnell has links to the targeted businessman, the timing of the investigation’s progression couldn’t be worse: a related trial, which will focus on felony embezzlement charges against the governor’s former chef, is scheduled to be held in mid-October.

“That’s when the last of the voters start paying attention to the election” held on Nov. 5, said Quentin Kidd, the director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.   “I think a lot of people on both the Democratic and Republican side are looking at that trial, at the schedule, and saying that it could throw a wrench into the last couple weeks” of the campaign, Kidd said.

The outcome of the governor’s race is likely to influence whether Virginia remains in the competitive presidential state column or is nudged toward the Democrats. It also may establish momentum for the 2014 midterms when control of the U.S. Senatewill be in play and Virginia Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, is up for re-election.

The federal probe centers on Jonnie Williams, chief executive officer of Star Scientific Inc. (STSI), a former cigarette maker that has shifted into marketing a nutritional supplement and skin cream. The FBI is examining whether McDonnell and his family took gifts from Williams in exchange for favors that helped promote Star and its dietary products. 

Williams, whose firm donated $108,500 worth of in-kind air travel to help elect McDonnell in 2009 and cover travel expenses during his tenure, paid $15,000 in catering expenses at the June 2011 wedding of the governor’s daughter. Two months later, the company promoted a dietary supplement, Anatabloc, to doctors attending a luncheon at the governor’s mansion, according to court records.


Cuccinelli’s ties to Williams were underscored in April, when he amended his financial disclosure forms to include previously unreported gifts he received from the businessman, including the use of a vacation home. Cuccinelli has said his omission was inadvertent.


“Depending on how big this gets with respect to McDonnell, there’s no doubt about it, some of the controversy will hurt the Cuccinelli campaign as well,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  

Personally, I hope the feds turn up more dirt - especially dirt that clings to Kookinelli.  The man is dangerous and the arrogance he has already displayed in believing that he is above the rules ought to trouble all Virginians.

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