Last Call For Dump Trump

Just another reminder, gentle reader, that Donald Trump''s success in the GOP right now stems from his honesty over the GOP's brutal positions.

Donald Trump would reverse President Obama's executive orders on immigration and deport all undocumented immigrants from the U.S. as president, he said in an exclusive interview with NBC's Chuck Todd.

"We're going to keep the families together, but they have to go," he said in the interview, which will air in full on NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday.

Pressed on what he'd do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: "They have to go."

"We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don't have a country," he said.

Speaking on Trump's gilded private plane as it idled on a runway in Des Moines, Iowa, the real-estate mogul and Republican presidential frontrunner offered the first outlines of the immigration policy proposals he'd implement from the Oval Office.

Trump said, to begin, "we have to" rescind Obama's executive order offering those brought to the U.S. illegally as children — known as DREAMers — protection from deportation, as well as Obama's unilateral move to delay deportation for their families as well.

"We have to make a whole new set of standards" for those immigrating to the US.

He doesn't sugarcoat anything.  Trump's position is "round them up and ship them out."  This is what the Perpetual Outrage Machine demands.  And right now the only two things standing between the Trump GOP and total domination of the country are Barack Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's workout routine.

But the people telling you there's no difference between the parties and that your vote is meaningless?  They're why Trump is loose in the china shop wrecking everything. Nationalism and protectionism certainly isn't new in American politics (especially during periods of economic downturns) but the people that say to themselves "Hey you know he has a couple of points" are the problem here.

Job Misplacement

The Lexington Herald-Leader editorial board is making it pretty clear where they stand on the issue of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis's refusal to issue marriage certificates and the right-wing firm Liberty Counsel representing her, and that position is "do your job or quit".

No doubt county clerks and their staffs over the decades have often looked at people applying for marriage licenses and questioned both the wisdom and the likely sanctity of the proposed union. Certainly they've often known things about the couple that many religions would frown upon. But we've never heard of a clerk denying a license to a divorced person, a philanderer, someone who's abused a partner or neglected children. It's easy to imagine the outrage and chaos that would ensue if clerks began morality-testing prospective opposite-gender spouses. But that's exactly the right that Davis is demanding. She wants to pick and choose, based on her beliefs, which legally qualified couples will get marriage licenses.

The Liberty attorneys have asked Bunning to delay his order while they appeal it.

Bunning should deny that request.

Davis can resign if she's morally unable to issue the marriage licenses while the appeal is pending. Law-abiding, taxpaying Rowan County citizens have been denied their constitutional rights for almost two months while Davis has kept her job and Liberty has ginned up its marketing machine.

 And this case may still be heading for the Supreme Court, it only takes four Justices to grant cert. In the meantime the Justices have already decided on the question of same-sex marriage itself, and Davis should either follow that law or resign and be replaced by someone who can.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/13/3987637_time-for-davis-to-do-her-job-or.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Sunday Long Read: School Dazed

This week, Tampa Bay Times gives us this truly depressing example of what Republican misrule in Florida has wrought: the systemic abandonment of elementary schools in black neighborhoods with the goal of siphoning off education resources to the affluent white neighborhoods that vote Republican.

In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida. 

First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.
Then they broke promises of more money and resources. 

Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing. 

Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Timesinvestigation has found. 

They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories. 

Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don’t know the basics.
Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math. 

Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15. 

All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties. 

All of them were much better off a decade ago.

This is just one county, in one red state, but it's an example of the Republican mindset: education resources are finite, we can never raise taxes for better schools, so we're going to improve schools for the kids that matter -- affluent white kids -- at the expense of everyone else.  What are those people going to do about it anyway?  We've made sure they have no political power. These are our neighborhoods and our kids.

Let those black and Latino kids burn, right?

You have to look no further than Pinellas County for evidence of that.

Public education is no longer a right for American kids.  It's a weapon to be used to keep them in poverty, to keep them weak, to keep them down.

Welcome to local government in Red State America.