Last Call For The Vitter End

AP has called Louisiana Governor's race for Democrat John Bel Edwards.

Looks like Sen. David Vitter will lose by about 8-10 points when all is said and done.

A good night for the blue team.

It Feels Like 2002 Again

Greg Sargent takes a look at a new Washington Post/ABC poll in the wake of last week's Paris attacks and finds America's clock has been set back to early 2002.

— By 54-43, Americans oppose taking in refugees from the conflicts in Syria and other Mideast countries even after screening them for security.

— By 52-47, Americans are not confident that the U.S. can identify and keep out possible terrorists who may be among these refugees. (One bright spot: 78 percent of Americans don’t think religion should be considered in determining whether to accept refugees.)

— By 81-18, Americans think it is likely that there will be a terrorist attack in the U.S. in the near future that will cause large numbers of lives to be lost.

— By 55-45, Americans are not confident in the ability of the U.S. government to prevent further terror attacks against Americans here.

— By 72-25, Americans say that it is more important for the government to investigate terror threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy, rather than refraining from intruding on personal privacy.

In fairness, this is pretty vague — “intruding on personal privacy” could mean a lot of different things in terms of actual policy — but it’s still pretty lopsided, perhaps another reminder that public fear sends concerns about civil liberties right out the window.

— 60 percent of Americans want to see an “increased use of U.S. ground forces” against ISIS, and 73 percent of Americans want to see increased air strikes.

— Americans say by 59-37 that the U.S. is “at war with radical Islam.”

So Democrats are on the minority side of a fair amount of these. Hillary Clinton has aligned herself with Obama in coming out against sending in ground troops (though Republicans have been vague on this point, too, and Clinton has called for stepped up air strikes). Clinton and virtually all Democrats have called for the program for admitting Syrian refugees to continue, while the GOP candidates and many Congressional Republicans have called for it to be “paused” or for an outright ban on their entry. There is little confidence in the current administration’s ability to keep us safe — at least right at this moment — and Marco Rubio and Donald Trump have ramped up the calls for a beefed up surveillance state.

Sargent is being kind, as both Trump and Rubio are calling for effectively suspending the US Constitution and tracking the country's Muslims, treating all of them outright as terror suspects that need to be marked.  Trump in particular wants to close down mosques and "do the unthinkable" because it may be "necessary".

Exit questions:

One, aren't you glad Obama is president right now as opposed to any of the Republicans over the last seven, eight years?

Two, if Obama really was a crypto-neocon warmonger, as I have repeatedly been assured he is by "real liberals", we'd be at war right now with tens of thousands of ground troops on the way to Syria, wouldn't we?

Three, do you believe Hillary would send ground troops like Trump, Carson, Rubio or Cruz would?

Democrats need to ask themselves and answer these questions.

Belgian (Not) Waffles

The Belgian government has put Brussels on high alert as they expect an "imminent" Paris-style assault.

A week after Paris bombings and shootings carried out by Islamic State militants, of whom one suspect from Brussels is at large, Brussels was placed on the top level "four" in the government's threat scale after a meeting of police, justice and intelligence officials.

Soldiers were on guard in parts of Brussels, a city of 1.2 million people and home to institutions of the European Union and the headquarters of NATO.

"The result of relatively precise information pointed to the risk of an attack along the lines of what took take place in Paris," Prime Minister Charles Michel told a news conference on Saturday after a meeting of the national security council. The Paris attacks left 130 people dead.

"We are talking about the threat that several individuals with arms and explosives would launch an attack perhaps in several locations at the same time," Michel said, adding people should be alert but not panic.

He declined to elaborate, but said the government would review the situation on Sunday afternoon.

The metro system is to remain closed until then, in line with recommendation of the government's crisis center. Major shopping centers and stores did open on Saturday morning, with soldiers deployed outside shops.

However, many began closing their doors from around midday.

I'm not terribly surprised by this, given the connection to Brussels by the militants who hit Paris eight days ago, the Belgian capital seemed like the obvious next target in Europe.  I'm hoping that nobody else is hurt and that Belgian police can find these guys before they strike.

Democrats Behaving Badly, Con't

Of all the political excuses to use when embroiled in scandal of your own making in 2015, "I didn't know this would go viral" borders on gross incompetence.

The mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, apologized Friday for his recent remarks comparing the current threat of terrorism in the U.S. to the national mood after Pearl Harbor, invoking the internment of Japanese-Americans in his call to block Syrian refugees.

Mayor David Bowers said in a statement released Wednesday he's "reminded" of the internment of Japanese-Americans with "the threat of harm to America from Isis [sic]" now "just as real and serious."

The remarks were met with nearly universal condemnation, with members of the community calling on the mayor to resign, and prompted TV actor George Takei to invite the mayor to a musical about internment camps.

One, assume everything can go viral.

Two, read a history book once in your life.

Three, the really bad parts of America's history?  Try to remember that they should not be repeated.

Last Call For The Kids Are Not Alright

C'mon Millennials, read the goddamn Constitution once in a while.

American Millennials are far more likely than older generations to say the government should be able to prevent people from saying offensive statements about minority groups, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data on free speech and media across the globe.

We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK.

Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech.

Compared with people we surveyed in dozens of nations, Americans as a whole are less likely to favor the government being able to prevent speech of any kind. The debate over what kind of speech should be tolerated in public has become a major story around the globe in recent weeks – from racial issues on many U.S. college campuses to questions about speech laws in Europe in the wake of concerns about refugees from the Middle East and the terrorist attacks in Paris.

We've gone over "vile speech" before.  You may not like it, it's hateful, it's awful, but the Constitution is pretty clear about the government banning it.  It's not going to happen.

Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

Lexington Herald-Leader cartoonist Joel Pett goes right for the jugular on Matt Bevin's response on Syrian refugees:



Now...you can definitely make the argument that this cartoon is out of bounds and that Pett went way over the line here, involving Bevin's four adopted children from Ethiopia.

But there's no such debate on the propriety of Bevin's response, via BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner:



Like Pett's cartoon or not (I do not, and I think Pett should apologize) he still has free speech rights, and the direct threat of a governor saying that a political cartoonist or any member of the press's opinion "will not be tolerated by our administration" is flat-out unconstitutional.

There's no argument there to be had.

But welcome to Bevinstan.

Post-Racial America Update

There are people who are unconscionably awful human beings out there doing unspeakable things to their fellow humans, but I'm pretty sure the folks behind this are absolutely bound for the lower planes.

Two brothers in Horry County, South Carolina are facing charges that they treated a mentally handicapped black employee like a slave for years, beating and overworking the man, who lived in squalor on property owned by their restaurant. 

According to the Charleston Post and Courier, two Charleston attorneys filed a civil suit on behalf of Christopher Smith, who worked at the J&J Cafeteria in Conway for 23 years, but was hideously abused and exploited from 2010 to 2014. 

The suit lists 14 counts against J&J owner Ernest J. Edwards and manager Bobby Paul Edwards, including false imprisonment, discrimination and exploitive labor practices. Bobby Edwards, 50, was arrested a year ago in connection with the case. Those charges are still pending. 

Last October, Smith was rescued when social workers received a tip from an anonymous source who expressed concern for the man’s safety. Attorneys Mullins McLeod and David Aylor said that while the civil suit cannot change the past or rectify the harm done to Smith, hopefully it will “bring about positive change in the future.” 

The Post and Courier explained that Smith worked at the Edwards brothers’ business for more than two decades, but it was when Bobby took over as manager in 2010 that Smith’s situation turned ugly. 

Smith was routinely called the N-word, according to the suit. He was savagely beaten with a frying pan, hot tongs, butcher knives, belt buckles and fists. He worked 18-hour shifts Monday through Saturday and 11-hour shifts on Sundays with no breaks, receiving little pay. His total wages for each year added up to less than $3,000. 

The complaint against the Edwards said that Smith was often abused on the job, dragged into the walk-in freezer where he could be heard screaming in terror and pain by other employees and begging his abusers not to kill him.

And they kept him as an effective slave for years.  Please, please tell me these assholes are going to prison for a very long time.

Please.

StupidiNews!

• At least three are dead after gunmen stormed a Raddison hotel in the Malian capital of Bamako Friday, taking 170 hostages including UN staff members and an Air France jet crew.
• Convicted Israeli-American spy Jonathan Pollard has been released from a US prison almost 30 years after his arrest for leaking classified military intelligence to Israel.
• The House has overwhelmingly passed legislation suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the US, the White House may not be able to prevent a veto override.
• UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurer, is considering dropping Obamacare plans in 2017, which would be a major blow to the program.
• A federal judge in Illinois has ruled against the DHS and DoJ when it comes to warrant requirements for deploying cell phone surveillance.

Last Call For Marked By The Beast

Are we surprised that the same Donald Trump calling for an Eisenhower-era "Operation Wetback" style roundup of eleven million Latinos is now calling for a national database to identify and track the country's Muslim citizens?

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump believes that the war on terror will require unprecedented surveillance of America’s Muslims.

“We’re going to have to do thing that we never did before,” he said during a Yahoo interview. 

“Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. 

“Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy,” he added. “We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.” 

Trump would not rule out warrantless searches in his plans for increased surveillance of the nation’s Muslims, Yahoo reported Thursday. 

He also remained open toward registering U.S. Muslims in a database or giving them special identification identifying their faith, the news outlet added. 

“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

Closing mosques, tracking Muslims, perhaps giving them armbands to identify them?  Hey Republicans? This is your current front-runner for President saying this.

And I don't blame Trump for his racist idiocy, I blame the "moderate Republicans" for accepting this and supporting this and the voters for electing Republicans who don't have a problem doing this to fellow American citizens.

Time to reclaim your party and clean house, guys.  Or live with your racist, awful party's consequences.

Riding The Redline in Richmond

Meanwhile, in Post-Racial America(tm)…

Black borrowers in Richmond are less likely to be approved for home loans and refinancing than white applicants regardless of their income levels, according to a study by fair-housing advocates. 

The effect is a continuation of the “redlining” that explicitly denied loans to minorities in the 20th century, according to Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia.
“Certainly lenders and banks tell you money is all the same color and they’re an equal opportunity lender, but when you get down to it, you have individuals who are underwriting loans who have biases,” said Brian Koziol, the nonprofit organization’s director of research and the report’s author. 

The group’s study found that between 2010 and 2013, the most recent year for which mortgage data is available, 13.7 percent of white borrowers had loan applications denied while black applicants experienced a 34.6 percent denial rate.

The report found that Hispanic residents also faced higher denial rates than white residents, but overall were granted loans more frequently than black borrowers.

Koziol said that a lenders’ willingness to finance home purchases directly corresponded to a neighborhood’s racial makeup.

The study found that for each percentage point increase in the minority population of a census tract, 12.5 fewer mortgages would be made.

The neighborhoods impacted are the same ones historically excluded for lending through redlining, and more recently, targeted for subprime loans, Koziol said.

While those neighborhoods have disproportionately high poverty rates, a borrower’s income doesn’t account for the difference: The report found a 9.9 point disparity in loan approval rates among black and white low-income applicants and a 27.5 point disparity among black and white upper-income borrowers.

That’s the best part, really. The higher your income as a black potential mortgage borrower, the larger the disparity in actually being approved for a mortgage. Because a black family making good money is automatically more suspect, you see. They could afford the house in the nicer white neighborhood, but why would the bank want to lower the property value of the houses of their other mortgage clients? Mortgage loan decisions aren’t made by banks, they’re made by people.

Redlining has been going on for decades, folks. It’s been going on not just in the South but all over the country, in red states and blue states and liberal enclaves and conservative strongholds.

And if you don’t think this isn’t happening in just about every decently sized US city in America right now, with the rush to segregate schools and neighborhoods through gentrification and exurban gated communities where “we don’t think it’s a good idea that you move in to this neighborhood, you see”, well I have some property for sale for you that you mysteriously can’t get a mortgage on.

Very little has changed in the last few decades, social media and instant news just makes it more visible.

Post-Racial America Update

This kind of thing happens in America more than we like to admit, and it's racism, pure and simple. Fay Wells is a black entrepreneur in California, and she made the criminal mistake of locking herself out of her apartment in a white neighborhood.

On Sept. 6, I locked myself out of my apartment in Santa Monica, Calif. I was in a rush to get to my weekly soccer game, so I decided to go enjoy the game and deal with the lock afterward. 

A few hours and a visit from a locksmith later, I was inside my apartment and slipping off my shoes when I heard a man’s voice and what sounded like a small dog whimpering outside, near my front window. I imagined a loiterer and opened the door to move him along. I was surprised to see a large dog halfway up the staircase to my door. I stepped back inside, closed the door and locked it. 

I heard barking. I approached my front window and loudly asked what was going on. Peering through my blinds, I saw a gun. A man stood at the bottom of the stairs, pointing it at me. I stepped back and heard: “Come outside with your hands up.” I thought: This man has a gun and will kill me if I don’t come outside. At the same time, I thought: I’ve heard this line from policemen in movies. Although he didn’t identify himself, perhaps he’s an officer. 

I left my apartment in my socks, shorts and a light jacket, my hands in the air. “What’s going on?” I asked again. Two police officers had guns trained on me. They shouted: “Who’s in there with you? How many of you are there?” 

I said it was only me and, hands still raised, slowly descended the stairs, focused on one officer’s eyes and on his pistol. I had never looked down the barrel of a gun or at the face of a man with a loaded weapon pointed at me. In his eyes, I saw fear and anger. I had no idea what was happening, but I saw how it would end: I would be dead in the stairwell outside my apartment, because something about me — a 5-foot-7, 125-pound black woman — frightened this man with a gun. I sat down, trying to look even less threatening, trying to de-escalate. I again asked what was going on. I confirmed there were no pets or people inside. 

I told the officers I didn’t want them in my apartment. I said they had no right to be there. They entered anyway. One pulled me, hands behind my back, out to the street. The neighbors were watching. Only then did I notice the ocean of officers. I counted 16. They still hadn’t told me why they’d come. 

Later, I learned that the Santa Monica Police Department had dispatched 19 officers after one of my neighbors reported a burglary at my apartment. It didn’t matter that I told the cops I’d lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID. It didn’t matter that I went to Duke, that I have an MBA from Dartmouth, that I’m a vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation. It didn’t matter that I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. It didn’t matter that I calmly, continually asked them what was happening. It also didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for — my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911. What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment — in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city — and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before.

Nineteen cops.

Nineteen.

I'm desperately tired of this, and there but for the grace of God this hasn't happened to me yet in my apartment building where I live in a 92% white state.

It doesn't matter if you're "one of the good ones", educated, a pillar of society, not wearing baggy pants or tattoos or not flashing gang signs.  If you're a person of color, you are an assumed criminal in your own home if a white person decides so.

So bone-weary of stories like this, because it's only a matter of time.  And if one of those officers had decided Fay Wells was a threat, she'd be dead, and these officers would have told us she was a threat that had to be dealt with, and they would not have been charged with her murder, much less convicted.

I am tired of only being alive because a white person hasn't decided I am a threat yet.

StupidiNews!

• As French police are trying to determine whether the ringleader behind last week's Paris attacks was killed in raids Wednesday, Belgian police are conducting related raids around Brussels.
• Minneapolis police clashed with Black Lives Matter activists protesting the shooting death of 24-year-old Jamar Clark, who was shot by officers while handcuffed and unarmed.
• House Speaker Paul Ryan insists that at GOP bill to tighten vetting practices for Syrian refugees is not a "religious test" but the legislation faces a veto threat from President Obama.
• China says it wants any climate deal arising from Paris talks next week to be legally binding on all signatory countries, a nearly impossible sell to GOP lawmakers in the US.
• Ride-sharing service Uber has lost an appeal to stop a California class-action suit that could classify drivers as employees entitled to benefits and not independent contractors.

Last Call For A Member Of Club Wrong

Yet another reason why more liberals need to be involved in local politics and especially school boards: otherwise, they get infested with horrible theocratic bigots.

A North Carolina K-12 charter school has caved to parents and shut down all student clubs over concerns about the inclusion of a student LGBT group.

The Daily Courier reported that parents and other members of the community “blindsided” the Lake Lure Classical Academy board of directors at a meeting on Friday after a students formed the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Club.

On grandmother reportedly complained to the board that she would have to explain the meaning of “gay” and “lesbian” to her grandchild because of the club.

“Another citizen told the board since it is a public school it has the ability to do away with the club,” The Daily Courier noted. “He said he did not have a child at Lake Lure, but if he did he would take them out immediately. He said the only diversity the school needs is the Bible.”

As long as "Christians" like this continue to run out politics because the rest of us are too busy to give a damn, then they'll continue to be in charge. These are wingnuts who would rather see all clubs shut down rather than be exposed to those people.

Lake Lure Baptist Church Pastor Anton Roos warned that attendance at the school would dwindle if the LGBT club was allowed to continue.

Roos said that it was unfair that the “Raptors for Christ Club” was not allowed to hang posters in the school but he said that the LGBT club was allowed to kick off with an “advertising campaign.” And the pastor asserted that, Layne Long, the teacher who sponsored the LGBT students, should be disciplined.

“This [LGBT] club was put together by a teacher and I would like to know what action was taken against her,” Roos said. “We are in a time in which you as a board need to take a stand. We have entrusted [School Director Jessica Boland] with our children and you have failed them.”

To recap, the point of a school board in 2015 is to punish those educators who disagree with the board.

Got it.

Think maybe you should look into the school board where you live, yet?

Operation La Kocha Nostra

Guess which major right-wing political donors are so wealthy and powerful that they have their own 25-person strong in-house intelligence gathering agency to spy on liberals?

The competitive intelligence effort, reported here for the first time, also hints at the audaciousness of the Koch network’s mission. While the Republican Party focuses on winning elections, the Kochs want to realign American politics, government and society around free enterprise philosophies that they hope to spread more broadly. 

A key to accomplishing the mission, from the Kochs' perspective, is countering super PACs and other big-money groups funded by rich liberals, as well as allied public sector unions and academic and media elites. The Kochs’ allies feel that those forces have worked together for decades with Democratic politicians and government bureaucrats to institutionalize the philosophy that heavy regulation and taxation of business is the only way to ensure an equitable society. 

The Kochs concluded that defeating this well-funded left-wing infrastructure requires tracking the professional left in real time ― a capability they realized they lacked after the 2012 election. In the run-up to that election, the Koch network spent $400-million-plus attacking Democratic politicians and policies, only to see President Barack Obama win re-election and his party maintain control of the Senate. A forensic audit of the network’s efforts concluded the Kochs had been out-maneuvered by the left on the airwaves, in the data war and on the ground. Vowing not to let that happen again, the network began investing in the competitive intelligence team and other efforts to keep tabs on the left. 

To be sure, the Kochs’ operation isn’t the only one focused on pulling back the curtain on its opponents. In fact, liberal activists and groups have frequently worked to expose the activities of the Koch brothers and their network. But the competitive intelligence team, like so many other Koch-backed programs, appears to be unique in its scale and its thoroughly methodological approach.

The outfit is run by a former CIA operative named Jim Roman, and from all indications it's a very professional deal. Keep in mind that if it was a left-wing business group that had its own intelligence group tracking conservatives in real-time, there would be congressional hearings, subpoenas , endless breaking news stories, and conservatives screaming that American take up armed resistance to overthrow "tyrant" Obama's network of spies.  Hell, those attacks on the "Dems'' private Stasi" would be coming from the right and the civil libertarian left.

But it's the Koch Brothers, so it's okay. And of course, the paranoid style runs deep.

In addition to delving into the left, the competitive intelligence team also monitors potential Koch network threats, according to sources familiar with it. It tracks people deemed suspicious outside the offices of Koch network groups, circulating be-on-the-lookout photos to internal network email lists, while keeping an eye on the network's own ranks for possible leakers or disloyal employees. 

One former network executive remembers an email containing a photo of a man identified as an operative with the environmental group Greenpeace who allegedly had been spotted taking his own photos outside the network’s cluster of offices in the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington. 

Connor Gibson, a Greenpeace researcher who focuses on the Koch network, said he visits its component groups’ offices once a year to pick up their tax filings, and he speculated he could have been the operative photographed by the competitive intelligence unit. While he said he’s never sought to conceal his identity during such visits, he added “If the Kochs consider me an opponent, I’m flattered.” 

In another instance, sources say, Roman's team set out to identify an IT contractor who was working for one of the network's groups and was posting anonymous messages to Reddit, proclaiming that he worked for the Koch brothers but despised their stances. Within 48 hours, the team had sleuthed out the offender and his contract was terminated. 

“They were scared to death of moles,” said the former executive. 

A separate source ― an organizer who’s worked with the unit ― described it as “a full opposition research operation, only at about 10-times the level of any political campaign.” The organizer added “my guess is that most people inside the network don’t even know about it.”

Understand that this is the logical endpoint of believing your political opponents as an enemy that needs to be ferreted out and destroyed, to spy on them, track them, identify them, and to conduct counter-espionage against, all in the name of controlling the country's politics.  And they have access to billions in resources in order to do it.

The Kochs see liberals -- fellow Americans, mind you -- as people who must be tracked in real-time.

This is who controls American politics.

Syrian Shutdown, Con't

GOP Old and brokedown: threatening to shut the government down over Planned Parenthood.

GOP new hottness: threatening to shut the government down over Syrian refugees.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Republicans in a closed-door meeting Thursday that he is looking to address this week the concerns many GOP lawmakers have raised about Syrian refugees in light of the Paris attack, an anonymous source in the room told Politico.
It's not clear which steps Ryan will take, though Politico reported there are several legislative options to consider in the coming days.

Some Republicans have suggested attaching a measure blocking or restricting President Obama's refugee resettlement program to the must-pass spending bill due in December. Avoiding a government shutdown over the refugee program -- which Obama has continued to defend -- will likely be Ryan's first major test as speaker.

That's right folks, the government shutdown game isn't over yet, and the Paris attacks just threw the whole thing into doubt.  Ryan and Mitch the Turtle made it the official GOP position last night:

Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, embracing his new role as the highest-ranking Republican in Washington, was the leading voice in his party urging immediate suspension of a State Department program to settle Syrian refugees in the United States. The Republicans cited evidence that at least one of the Paris attackers may have entered Europe by posing as a refugee.

The Republican demands raised the possibility that legislation temporarily barring the admission of Syrian refugees could be attached to a spending measure that Congress must pass before Dec. 11 to avoid a government shutdown. Republicans said they had not yet settled on a legislative strategy.

“Our nation has always been welcoming,” Mr. Ryan said at a news conference. “But we cannot allow terrorists to take advantage of our compassion. This is a moment where it is better to be safe than to be sorry. So we think the prudent, the responsible thing is to take a pause in this particular aspect of this refugee program in order to verify that terrorists are not trying to infiltrate the refugee population.”

Mr. McConnell also endorsed a suspension of the program, which so far has brought only small numbers of Syrians to the United States and, Democrats noted, only after a lengthy screening process. The administration earlier this fall pledged to take in up to 10,000 additional Syrian migrants.

“We’re going to continue to have refugees as long as Syria looks like it does, and so what we need is a strategy obviously to give the refugees an opportunity to stay in their own country,” Mr. McConnell said.

The spoiler here is that the Republicans will never agree to unpause in this particular aspect while a Democrat is president.

The Donald also wasted no time in taking the lead on the demagoguery among the 2016 GOP hopefuls.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is going after President Barack Obama claiming the administration is sending Syrian refugees to Republican states.

“They send them to the Republicans, not to the Democrats, you know because they know the problem… why would we want to bother the Democrats?” Trump told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham Tuesday, as reported by Politico.

The question becomes is this something the GOP can win, or is it their usual overplaying their hand and getting smashed by President Obama?

We'll see.  The answer is how many Democrats are believe they are going to survive political ads showing SCARY BROWN TERRORISTS and "Shame on X for possibly allowing deadly terrorists pretending to be refugees into our backyard!" voiceovers next year.

We'll see, and soon.