GOP Immigration Reform Plan: Kill it, Plant the Knife on the President

It's definitely not the outcome anyone expected -- although maybe we should've. House Republican leadership had put forward two principles for immigration reform, one of which was that "specific enforcement triggers" had to be met in order for House Republicans to advance a bill. "Specific" was exactly the wrong word here, since this was a fill-in-the-blank provision to be decided on later. This was the flag that everyone was watching. The common wisdom was that if they were able to wrangle the base on board, the triggers would be half-way reasonable -- or at least do-able. Undocumented people would have to learn English -- assuming they didn't already know it -- or complete high school or an equivalent. If they didn't, then the trigger would be completely unreasonable, like an impenetrable fence at the southern border or something crazy, like mandatory prison sentences. If the push to pass the bill failed, the signal was expected to be a poison pill -- a requirement that was either so noxious that Democrats would reject it out of hand or so technically impossible that it could never be met.

That's what everyone expected to happen. If the House killed immigration reform, that was the way it was supposed to die. No one foresaw this ignoble end:

Associated Press: Republicans are starting to lay the blame on President Barack Obama if an overhaul of the nation's broken immigration system fails to become law.

The GOP's emerging plan on immigration is to criticize Obama as an untrustworthy leader and his administration as an unreliable enforcer of any laws that might be passed. Perhaps realizing the odds of finding a consensus on immigration are long, the Republicans have started telling voters that if the GOP-led House doesn't take action this election year, it is Obama's fault.

"If the president had been serious about this the last five years, we'd be further along in this discussion," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, said Sunday.

And in case you don't get the message, Rep. Paul Ryan -- who'd taken the lead on the bill -- said pretty much the same thing; "Here's the issue that all Republicans agree on: We don't trust the president to enforce the law."

No one expected this turn of events -- mostly because it's stupid.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

On Immigration, Will the GOP Cave to Racists?

In a piece for The Daily Beast, Patricia Murphy writes that a new front is about to open up in the GOP Civil War. At this very moment, House Republicans are locked away at a "retreat," where they're trying to knock together some sort of immigration reform bill. So far, John Boehner has put forth two principles -- one vague and one specific -- that would be required to get House leadership's support. The first is the vague one: that any law would go into effect only after so far undefined "specific enforcement triggers have been implemented." The second is that there be no pathway to citizenship.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say that there would be no automatic pathway to citizenship -- people covered by the reforms would have nothing standing in the way of citizenship, other than the fact that they'd have to officially declare that desire. This is pretty much a fig leaf for the GOP, whose messaging had until recently argued that a pathway to citizenship was "amnesty" and the worst thing ever! By saying there's "no pathway to citizenship," House leaders hope to avoid charges of "caving" to Democrats on the issue. But it would be much more accurate to say there would no longer be any glide path to citizenship, since the path is cleared of any obstacles, should you wish to follow it. You've just got to land the thing yourself.

Whether that fig leaf is enough to get enough Republicans on board is still an open question. Greg Sargent has argued that we'll know when they define the "specific enforcement triggers." If the triggers are unreasonable and unattainable, like a giant wall closing off a ridiculous percentage of the southern border or 100% use of and compliance with e-Verify, then that means Republicans have failed to agree among themselves and they're trying to blame the failure of reform on Democrats.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

GOP Thinks Embracing Their Racism Counts as a Strategy

If you read my headline posts (and I've missed a few this week, sorry. I'll most likely miss tonight's too), you'll know that "David Brooks wrote something stupid again" is a running gag with me. He often goes to great lengths to promote the idea both parties are to blame for Washington being broken, taking Evel Knievel-like leaps of logic to arrive at his predetermined conclusions. But like pretty much all pundits, it proves impossible to always be wrong and the frustrating thing about Brooks is that he can be insightful when he drop his trademark false equivalency -- which he very seldom does. So I wasn't extremely surprised when I saw Taegan Goddard pick up two paragraphs from Brooks about immigration reform that were dead on the money. It's not that Brooks tends to be wrong so much as he's committed to not being right -- I guess because it gets him on TV so much (TV news show producers also love the innoffensive "both sides are just as bad" lie).

Here's his take on the GOP and immigration reform:

It's beginning to look as though we're not going to get an immigration reform law this year. House Republicans are moving in a direction that will probably be unacceptable to the Senate majority and the White House. Conservative commentators like my friends Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry are arguing that the status quo is better than the comprehensive approach passed by the Senate. The whole effort is in peril.

This could be a tragedy for the country and political suicide for Republicans, especially because the conservative arguments against the comprehensive approach are not compelling.

The thing about Brooks is, as the current Pope of the Church of High Broderism, that people take him seriously when he singles out one party as being the problem. Republicans won't of course -- mostly because they've become some weird hybrid fantasists/nihilists who don't take anything that happens to be real seriously -- but other pundits in the pundit echo chamber will. Not so much the political suicide part, which is pretty much what most of them are already saying, but the part about GOP arguments against reform being made out of suck. Republican excuses for killing immigration reform are mostly unpopular and all stupid.

And the stupidest of all is the mythical "missing white voter."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

The GOP's Nosedive Among Latino Voters

A new poll by Latino Decisions [pdf] includes an interesting factiod -- in 2004, George W. Bush carried 40% of the Latino vote. The idea that Latinos are all automatically Democratic voters -- an idea pushed by anti-immigrant white nationalists -- is obviously untrue. The thing is, even as Latinos grow as a segment of the population, you don't need to win a majority of that particular demographic to win an election. You can come up short of half and make up for it in other populations. The Latino vote didn't used to be hopelessly out of reach for Republicans. That is, until the Tea Party came along and began worshipping racists like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Once that happened, Republicans were circling the drain with Latino voters.

Today, one of the very best performing potential Republican presidential candidates is Marco Rubio. And "best performing" isn't a whole lot to brag about.

The Hill: A new poll of likely Hispanic voters in the 2016 presidential election shows strong support for the two candidates seen as potential Democratic nominees: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden.

The survey, by Latino Decisions, also revealed Republican candidates continue to significantly trail among Hispanic voters, with even champions of immigration reform like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush significantly behind top Democrats.

[...]

According to the survey, Clinton remains the most popular candidate among the Hispanic electorate, mirroring other recent national surveys. The former first lady is seen positively by 73 percent of likely Hispanic voters, while 17 percent have a negative view.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

How Gerrymandering is Forcing the GOP to Self-Destruct

It's not well-remembered -- mostly because the media didn't do much with the story -- but earlier this year the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) released a report praising their own gerrymandering efforts and giving those efforts credit for the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. In other words, they admitted to stealing elections. The organization poured money into state races, with the strategy of redrawing district boundaries around solidly conservative populations -- i.e., choosing voters, instead of voters choosing them. "The rationale was straightforward," RSLC's report bragged. "Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn."

These lines were so unfairly drawn that Republicans kept their House majority despite the fact that the Democrats got 1.1 million more votes nationwide. Want to know why congressional approval ratings are so rock-bottom low? There ya go: we wound up with a House that's the opposite of what we voted for. The fact that democracy was thwarted doesn't have to be well-known for the effects to be felt. All that we have to know is that the House of Representatives is going in the opposite direction than that for which most of us voted. Not surprisingly, there are consequences to this -- and they aren't good for the Republican Party.

Politico: Some top GOP strategists and candidates warn that the ruby red districts the party drew itself into are pushing House Republicans further to the right — narrowing the party’s appeal at a time when some GOP leaders say its future rests on the opposite happening. If you’re looking for a root cause of the recurring drama within the House Republican Conference — from the surprise meltdown on the farm bill to the looming showdown over immigration reform — the increasingly conservative makeup of those districts is a good place to start.

The shellacking Republicans took in 2012 has triggered months of consternation that the party is too white, too conservative and too male. But tell that to the increasing number of House Republicans who are safely ensconced with nary a worry that a Democrat might unseat them in the next election.

But what they do have to worry about is a primary challenge from the right. By choosing only the most reliably rightwing voters to elect them, Republicans haven't given themselves a lot of wiggle room. These are the talk radio-brainwashed types for whom compromise is more than a dirty word, it's a crime. Republicans must toe Rush Limbaugh's completely unworkable line or be thrown out as RiNOs or "Republicans in Name Only" -- which is somewhere in the conservative spectrum between communists and people who deny that Obama's a secret illegal alien Muslim terr'ist.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Immigration Reform from the White Guy Party? Increasingly Unlikely.

Don't look now, but the GOP is on the verge of committing electoral suicide.

ABC NEWS: Bipartisan meetings in the House of Representatives on a comprehensive immigration reform bill have failed, and the congressmen will meet for the last time today without reaching an agreement on a House bill, ABC News has learned.

The stumbling block is GOP insistence that newly legalized workers now working in the shadows have no access to government-sponsored health care during their 15-year pathway to citizenship, according to two sources with access to the secret house “Gang of 8? meetings.

Democrats say that since these newly legalized immigrants would be paying taxes they should be eligible for benefits.

Was it just months ago that the Republican Party realized they needed to give on comprehensive immigration reform or continue to lose elections? Yes it was. And nothing has changed. "The Republican Party is on bad terms with a long list of voters," Greg Sargent wrote a few days ago. "It has no credibility with African Americans, almost none with young voters, little with Hispanics, and is on the rocks with women."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Poll Shows Guns, Immigration 'Top Priorities' for Voters -- Queue the Rightwing Spin

 

It's a poll that sure to get a lot off attention -- and spin -- from the right. A new Gallup poll shows that most voters rate "reducing gun violence" and "reforming immigration" as top priorities. The problem is that this percentage is on the lower end of the scale from economic issues.

Part of the problem is that Gallup gives their analysis of the poll the completely inaccurate title of "Americans Give Guns, Immigration Reform Low Priority." The poll shows that 55% of Americans rate gun violence and 50% rate immigration reform as "top priorities" and 20% and 32% think that the respective issues are of medium priority. It's hard to see how those numbers are bad news for people advocating for either issue. It's just that fewer are rating those issues as priorities over economic issues. People don't think immigration and gun violence are "low priority," as Gallup's headline would make it seem. Majorities think they're high priority. In fact, Gallup specifically asked in they were low priority and the response was overwhelming. Only 13% believe that immigration reform is a low priority, while 17% believe the same about gun violence.

Gallup even admits to comparing specific apples to very broad oranges:

"Creating jobs" and "helping the economy grow" are of course broad and diffuse goals that do not easily translate into specific legislation. And even though there is significant consensus across party lines that these two issues should be given high priority, there are fundamental party disagreements on the broad approach that can be taken to achieve these goals. These disagreements no doubt have kept the Congress and the president from moving forward on these issues -- but to the degree that these elected representatives feel it is their duty to follow the wishes of those they represent, they would renew their focus on efforts to come to consensus on reaching these goals."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

One Hispanic News Source Defends "Don't Vote" Ad -- Meet Fox News Latino

Yesterday, I wrote about the Republicans' never-ending search for people to hate. About a month and a half back, it was all about hating the Muslims. This started to get a little out of hand, so undocumented immigrants became the new group to hate -- a frequent target earlier this year. But this is starting to cost them voters, so now they seem to be in search of a new scapegoat. Without an internal US enemy, Republicans find it difficult to operate.

For now, the target is still illegal aliens. And, since this is costing them voters in the Latino community, they've come up with what might be the most painfully obvious voter suppression scheme ever devised -- beg Hispanic voters not to vote.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Republicans in Search of New Scapegoat to Hate

"We hate Muslims! Grrrr!"

Republicans had hoped to ride a wave of fear and hatred into office, because that's what they do. So they glommed onto the cause of a lunatic backwater blogger, helping to whip up a frenzy of terror over a community center project in Manhattan. It all went pretty well for a while; gullible people really did start freaking out, terrified that the "Mosque at Ground Zero" (which isn't a mosque and isn't at ground zero) meant that terrorists were building a "victory mosque." This went on for a while, but the wave crested too soon and things started to get a little out of hand. "Hot issue" became "hot potato" and suddenly the Park51 project wasn't so important anymore. The Summer of Hate was over and the prospect of a long Autumn Without Hate loomed. It mustn't be allowed to happen.

Since the Cold War, Republicans have been nothing without enemies. They aren't a peacetime party. We're still at war, sure. Two of them, in fact. But the problem with long wars is that they become wallpaper -- if it's always there, you stop noticing it. Muslims were perfect enemies, because it reinforced the far right belief that Bush's War on Terror was really a war against Islam. The wars, although widely ignored now, could be reflected at home. And, like the Cold War communists, terrorists could be everywhere Republicans wanted them to be. So don't think they've dropped the "Muslim automatically equals terrorist" propaganda. It just got a little too hot there for a while, so they had to put it down for a bit. It'll be back.

But Republicans found themselves without enemies within. The "we hate gays!" wedge they'd previously used to divide the electorate had become dull; the GOP may hate them, but most people don't. Polling shows the public is split on the subject of same sex marriage, for example, with opinion moving rapidly against the "we hate gays" position. That territory is being lost, so it was time to retreat from it as well. Who would be the interim boogeyman, scaring the electorate until it was safe to demonize Muslims again?

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Westboro Hate Cult Wins Big, Rightwingers Too Busy With Their Own Hate to Notice

Hate won big yesterday as a court in Missouri declared a state ban on protests at military unconstitutional. The decision clears the way for a small Kansas cult to march around at funerals with signs that read "GOD HATES AMERICA!" and "THANK GOD FOR DEAD SOLDIERS!" Why does God hate America, you might ask? Because we don't hate gay people nearly enough. Cult leader Fred Phelps says that our war dead are God's punishment for allowing gays to exist in America, which explains the additional "GOD HATES FAGS!" and "AIDS CURES FAGS!" signs. Of course, the thought of people dishonoring the memory of dead heroes (and they will do it, the ban was in reaction to previous protests) has the nation up in arms, with politicians of all stripes elbowing each other out of the way to to denounce the cult in question, Westboro Baptist Church.

Or so you'd hope. Our reality, however, is an entirely matter. Westboro's big win for hate was widely ignored, because another battle for hate was still being waged. That battle was much, much more important: some Muslims want to build a community center in the neighborhood of Ground Zero. This is apparently more outrageous than hate-cult zombies marching around the graves of veterans with signs that read "GOD BLEW UP THE TROOPS." Never mind that once Cordoba House is built (if it is built), you'll never hear about it again; we're all supposed to think that a mosque within walking distance of the former address of the World Trade Center is a bigger insult to the memories of heroes than people with signs actively trying to insult to the memories of heroes. If you need proof that political outrage is one of the few things still manufactured in America, I'd say the silence on Phelps and his hate-squad qualifies. No one on the right seems to care, despite the fact that the court's decision clears the way for a much greater insult to America and her defenders than anything that will ever come from a community center in a neighborhood most people will never even see.

But, of course, Phelps' hate is based in homophobia and there are more than a few on the right who are no less hateful toward gays, just more cautious in their approach. So Phelps presents a bit of a problem for the homophobic right; how to attack him without running to the defense of the dreaded Homosexual Menace? Better just to pretend he doesn't exist and attack the groups you hate in your own way and in your own time.





And the right has been wasting no time on that front. This has been called The Summer of Hate. As the Republican Party gets closer to election day, they become more and more insane. And the GOP has never -- not in my experience anyway -- been more of the nearly exclusively white Christian party that they are today. The Republican party holds an advantage in the generic ballot only in the south. And the people they've been attacking have either been insufficiently white or insufficiently Christian. Gays, Hispanics, blacks, and Muslims are all facing rightwing hatred these days, as the politics of hatred becomes the new wedge issue the Republican Party uses to divide the electorate. When Newt Gingrich compares an entire American demographic group to Nazis, you know you've left rationality far behind.

"If we had any sense, the fall elections would be about just one thing: the economy," writes Howard Fineman. "But we do not have any sense." What we have is just fear and hate.

...We are facing what Wall Street would call the "triple witching hour." Republicans have their finger on three social-demographic hot buttons. The first is illegal immigration (in proposing a review of the 14th Amendment), and the second is Islam in America (in objecting to the mosque at ground zero). They won't be able to avoid pushing the third, race, even if they wanted to, given that the two leading congressional Democrats facing ethics charges are African-American. The Democrats, in response, label the GOP xenophobic and intolerant -- and those are the nice words. If Barack Obama's inauguration -- could it have been only 19 months ago? -- was a moment of proud, blessed calm, we are now looking at a nasty, community-shredding season of fear.

I've mentioned before how cowardly the Republican base has become, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the GOP have become fearmongers -- and that fearmongering leads to hatemongering. And our current crop of Democrats are such pansies that they won't stand up against it. Many Democrats say they were "blindsided" by President Obama's defense of the First Amendment. And they're complaining about it.

New York Daily News:

Several Democratic campaign operatives complained that without a heads-up, they did not have the time to war-game how to handle questions from the news media or GOP attacks.

"They did the right thing -- they just didn't do it the right way," lamented another Democratic source.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has spent three days on the phone doing damage control with angry Democrats and urging them not to go public against the President, Democratic sources said.

Yes, shame on the president for not assuming you were a bunch of wusses who couldn't be counted on to stand up for American principles. For his part, Senate majority leader Harry Reid completely fell apart on the news. I wish I could say I was surprised. The man has a spine of Silly Putty.

But the spinelessness of many Democrats is no excuse for Republicans. It isn't the other party's job to be their conscience. They are responsible for their own actions and their own words and they are responsible for the almost inevitable results of those actions and words.

So when the Westboro jerks start marching around at vets' funerals with their insulting signs, ask a rightwinger what they were doing the day that became possible. The odds are good they won't have any idea, since they completely ignored it. So go ahead and tell them -- they were busy hating everyone else. Then hand them a sign and tell them to join in.

Veterans will be the only people they have left to hate anyway, so why not just go all the way? Tell them to ahead and join Fred Phelps, the only person who's actually honest about his hatred.

-Wisco


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Arizona's 'Papers Please' Law is Worse Than You Think

I've been on kind of a tear against the media lately, so I think it's worth pointing out when a media outlet does it right. KPHO in Phoenix covers SB-1070 -- otherwise known as Arizona's "papers please" law -- and finds out two very important points: Republican election-year fearmongering is wrecking the state's economy by driving away tourism and top people in Governor Brewer's office stand to benefit from from the law, which goes into effect tomorrow.

Yeah, it turns out that if top politicians tell you you're going to get your head chopped off if you go to Arizona, people don't want to go to Arizona. I imagine you're as surprised by that fact as I was. And it reminded me of how conservatives echoed Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's complaint that Obama's talk about the Gulf oil gusher was driving away tourists. It's typical rightwing upside-down reality twisting; an existing oil slick doesn't drive away tourists, people talking about it drive away tourists -- but politicians talking about a crime wave that doesn't exist is fine, even though it drives off tourists. If this makes no damned sense to you, remember this handy rule of thumb; anything, no matter what it is, is fine when a Republican does it.





But more disturbing is the very real possibility that a law has been passed to benefit a private corporation. And worse, it may result in terrible injustices. We've seen a state go down that road before and the result was corruption. And not just your normal, everyday, money-under-the-table corruption, but a miscarriage of justice that should shock anyone with anything approximating a conscience.

CNN, February, 2009:

...As scandals from Wall Street to Washington roil the public trust, the justice system in Luzerne County, in the heart of Pennsylvania's struggling coal country, has also fallen prey to corruption. The county has been rocked by a kickback scandal involving two elected judges who essentially jailed kids for cash. Many of the children had appeared before judges without a lawyer.

The nonprofit Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia said [14-year-old Phillip Swartley] is one of at least 5,000 children over the past five years who appeared before former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella.

Ciavarella pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal criminal charges of fraud and other tax charges, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Former Luzerne County Senior Judge Michael Conahan also pleaded guilty to the same charges. The two secretly received more than $2.6 million, prosecutors said.

Among the bloated sentences Ciavarella and Conahan handed down were sending "15-year-old Hillary Transue to a wilderness camp for mocking an assistant principal on a MySpace page," "13-year-old Shane Bly, who was accused of trespassing in a vacant building [to] a boot camp for two weekends," and "Kurt Kruger, 17, [sentenced] to detention and five months of boot camp for helping a friend steal DVDs from Wal-Mart." Swartley was sentenced to nine months in a detention facility for stealing change.

Now, take that mindset and apply it to undocumented people. As we've already established, Arizona politicians are whipping up hysteria over illegal aliens and, as a result, they are widely hated. If you can make a lot of money selling kids to a private corrections company, imagine what you could make selling pariahs. It could be a gold mine.

Of course the company, Corrections Corporation of America, says it never lobbied Brewer. But why would they have to? She has two lobbyists on staff. You don't have to convert the already pious. And, just as predictably, Brewer's office denies any connection -- but we've already established what her word is worth.

Back to my media-bashing; why was it that it was up to a local TV station to uncover this in the week the law is set to kick in? SB-1070 has been a big story for how long? And no one nationally dug this up, no one wondered why Brewer was so dead-set on this bad idea. I suppose they figured that it was just political grandstanding, but shouldn't someone have dug a little deeper? It seems a little late in the game to have this come out now.

Better late than never, I guess. But "better" is not the same as "best."

-Wisco


UPDATE: Not so fast there, Sparky.

Houston Chronicle:

A federal judge today issued an injunction barring Arizona from enforcing key provisions of its controversial immigration law, prompting promises to appeal from supporters and tears of joy from opponents outside the state capitol.

The parts of the law that Judge Susan Bolton included sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold the law's requirement that immigrants must carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

Bolton ruled that those sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues.

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For a Lot of People, Facts Don't Matter

In his Sunday column, Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote about Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's recent claim that illegal immigrants were responsible for a crime wave that included beheadings. So Milbank did what journalists do -- he checked the story with the facts. And it was at this point that Brewer's story fell apart.

But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There's not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer's claim.

The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona's border counties, and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer's press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.

Brewer's mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.

Wow, a Republican executive fearmongering to shore up her political position. How unsurprising. Since Bush, scaring the bejeezus out of people to get what you want is often the first resort. Replace "terrorist" with "illegal alien" and you can almost quote from the exact same script.

Well, Milbank's debunking of a favorite urban legend was too much for the Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott. Sure, reporters checked with Arizona coroners and came up empty, but that's because they didn't dig deep enough. Milbank's column was BS, according to Tapscott. See, he had the best expert witnesses in the world -- cowboys.

Tapscott points to letter to Jan Brewer from rancher J. David Lowell. It seems a ranch hand was out riding on the ridge where the west commences, where he found a human head. "Although the head was missing the lower jaw, it was immediately apparent that much of the mass and flesh of the head was still present," the letter relates. "The cowboy searched the area in hopes of finding the remainder of the body to no avail."

The letter says that the head was found along a trail that many believe is used by drug runners and human smugglers. "We suspect that the head may have been placed along side the trail as a warning to other drug and alien traffickers using the trail," Lowell writes.

Here's the thing though, if you find a body part and no body, the most likely explanation is predation of a corpse, not beheading by drug smugglers. It's a sad fact that people crossing the border illegally sometimes die in the desert. Drug runners leaving the head would have absolutely no reason at all to dispose of the rest of the body elsewhere -- it's just extra work in a crime whose purpose is to leave evidence. It's much more likely that wild animals dragged the body off someplace safe to consume it -- because that's the sort of thing predators and scavengers do all the time. On the other hand, beheading people is most definitely not the sort of thing that people do all the time. Just playing the odds, predation is the most likely explanation. And, if we assume that this head was reported and examined by one of the coroners reporting no beheadings (which they all reported), those odds leap to certainty. The disembodied head was the result of natural predation, not murder. Despite the expert testimony of Roy Rogers here, I'm going to go with the coroner on this one.

But you and I both know that logic and facts won't have any effect on the opinions of Tapscott or many of his readers. Experience with political opinion tells us that many people believe what they want to believe, the facts be damned. "Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information," writes Joe Keohane for the Boston Globe. "It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."

This is related to something called "confirmation bias," which, put as simply as possible, is the tendency of people to be skeptical of information that contradicts their beliefs and far too credulous of information that reinforces them. Creationists, global warming deniers, Holocaust deniers, birthers, etc. are all guilty of this -- if the science says one thing and the true believers say another, then the scientists are wrong. If the facts contradict the hypothesis, then the facts are flawed... or even lies.

But this takes it further. We can drop scientific terms like "confirmation bias" and get a lot more earthy here -- this is pigheadedness. If I argue with a creationist, I not only accomplish nothing, I actually get him or her to dig in their heels even more deeply. In his piece, Keohane describes this as a "threat to democracy," but I think that's overstating things immensely. I'm not alone.

"The good news and bad news is that democracy has never involved a well-informed citizenry reflecting on the issues of the day," writes Matthew Yglesias. "I think the misinformation literature needs to be read in tandem with the research indicating that overall levels of political information are extremely low. Two thirds of Americans can't name any Supreme Court justices and only one perent can name all nine. The reason the system functions is that democratic accountability doesn't depend on voters knowing what they're talking about. Most people have strong partisan identities, and just vote for the same team. And swing voters' views are driven overwhelmingly by economic performance."

Put another way, the study offers a psychological truth. And, as a psychological truth, it has always been the case. There have always been pigheaded people and democracy has survived. If this tendency to believe what you want to believe in a completely fact-free bubble were a threat to democracy, we wouldn't talking about voters today. All it would take would be a few elections to destroy the nation. Democracy is resilient and can survive even stupid, willfully ignorant voters.

People may not be losing their heads out there in the Arizona desert, but they're definitely losing them in the realm of politics. The good news is that if cooler heads don't always prevail, history shows they prevail often enough.

-Wisco


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Further: Dana Milbank and Brendan Nyhan, a Robert Wood Johnson scholar in health policy research with the University of Michigan, discuss the issue of political pigheadedness on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Immigration Non-Solutions

Yesterday, I wrote that Barack Obama's on a roll. It was a mostly factual post, with analysis and, rereading it, I don't see a lot of pro or anti-Obama opinion in it. Basically, I wrote that he owned last weekend, that he was likely to own last night (I was right), and that he's likely to take Wisconsin and Hawaii next week.

Since I started blogging, I've noticed that there are a few topics that are practically guaranteed to attract lunatics and comment spam. Among them are the fact that creationists are crazy, the idea that Muslims are actually people, Ron Paul, and torture. For one reason or another, these are topics that people are obsessive about. Now we can add Barack Obama.

On yesterday's post, I got this fun comment:

Prof. Goldblatt Ph.D. said...


Barack Obama's position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. After Sen. Clinton gave a garbled response to her position on this issue in the Philadelphia debate, she was intensely criticized by you, accusing her of intentionally obscuring her position, and by media commentators. (She subsequently admitted she had not given a clear answer.)

Barack Hussein Obama has no ideological compass. All Barack Hussein Obama cares about is the aura of him, because he has no ideological center, which he admitted himself, offering the first self-inflicted warning signal that everyone should pick up for President. - Leland Milton Goldblatt

Shalom and Pray for Israel,

--- Prof. Leland Milton Goldblatt

Oh wow! Professor Goldblatt! Pee-Aitch-Freakin'-Dee, no less! Clearly, I was completely outmatched in the authority department. Shaking in my shoes before what was clearly a towering intellect, I left the following comment:

Oh yay! Dishonest cut & paste comment spam!

How do I know? Because I never "intensely criticized" Clinton's position on licensing.

And "Barack Hussein Obama?" Here's a fun game -- quick, what's Hillary's middle name? Most people don't know it's Fatima, Enemy of Liberty.

No lie.

Prof. Goldblatt apparently has a doctorate in bullshit. You can safely disregard his comment.

The august Prof. Goldblatt has yet to get back to me. Probably because he doesn't actually exist.

For the record, my position on licensing for illegal immigrants is pretty non-existent. I don't think it'd make a difference either way. It's hard to imagine someone saying, "You know? I'd go live in America illegally, but they won't give me a driver's license." It doesn't seem like much of an incentive or disincentive for someone willing to crawl across a desert to get in. I'm pretty sure the only people who really care one way or another are Americans. No one's out there saying, "If it weren't for that one minor inconvenience, I'd so jump the border!"

In fact, if I were at a debate and the subject came up, that'd be my answer -- Americans care about it, but undocumented people could give a crap either way. Which goes a long way toward explaining why I'll never be elected to anything. There are some things no one wants to hear.

The right seems to have come to the conclusion that illegal immigration is their strong point. But their ideas are predictably simplistic. Build a damned fence, that'll stop them. No one but Americans have developed to technology to make a freakin' ladder. And, with nearly half of undocumented immigrants entering the country with a visa, we're going to have to put up really big fences around airports and ports of entry. That'd kind of defeat the purpose of these places.

Another answer is to crack down on people who employ illegals. This from the party that resides in the pocket of the business lobby. I don't see that happening in any real or effective way. We'll bust contractors who hire day laborers, but I doubt we'll do much about people working on Archer Daniels Midland factory farms. Or the guys working on Mitt Romney's yard, for that matter.

The one thing that may make a dent is admitting that trade deals like NAFTA and GATT aren't super-helpful to the average person on either side of the borders. American jobs get shipped abroad, where companies like Wal-Mart drive wages down in an effort to reduce prices. Watching their wages go from crap to jack crap, people come to the crazy conclusion that they've got to move someplace where they can make enough to stay alive.

But, again, the business lobby loves this system. It doesn't help those people abroad, it doesn't help Americans, but it sure helps corporations. Which is why we're arguing about BS that isn't going to make any difference one way or another -- fences and drivers licenses.

Real solutions would reach right into their pocket.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Republican; free trade; NAFTA; GATT; Illegal immigration is great for corporations -- which is why we're talking about BS solutions like border fences and driver's licenses

Real ID as Popular as the Measles

Wisconsin has all kinds of lawmakers representing us in Washington. We've got excellent people like Russ Feingold at one end, mediocre lawmakers like Sen. Herb Kohl in the middle, and total dickheads like Rep. James Sensenbrenner at the other end. For some unknown reason, Sensenbrenner has a lock on his district, despite being the perfect symbol of the previous congress. He's a font of idiotic ideas, a spouter of antidemocratic sentiments, and has all the phony patriotism endemic in his party.

He's the go-to-guy if you have some idiotic right wing candy like a ban on flag burning or a political fad like term limits. A 'flags in evey classroom and screw the books' sort of guy. Unfortunately, Sensenbrenner's not an empty suit -- he actually believes in all this crap. But it's more about winning elections with stuff that sounds good than it is about passing effective legislation.

This press release from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz may reawaken a memory from the bad old days of 2005. If not, it'll serve to introduce you to the man. In June of 2005, congress held hearings on abuses of the USA PATRIOT act, hearing the testimony of those who's civil liberties had been curtailed. Sensenbrenner ran the Judiciary Committee like a Stalinist.

The majority acted shamefully today, attempting to silence Democrats at the Judiciary Committee hearing this morning on the impact of the Patriot Act. Throughout the hearing, run by Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, witnesses and members were cut-off in mid sentence, the Chairman refused to yield to Democratic members points of order, or points of personal privilege. Finally, the hearing was adjourned by the Chairman, in violation of the Rules of the House and cutting off the microphones of Democratic members while they attempted to speak.

In Rep. James Sensenbrenner's world, democracy works like freakin' Bill O'Reilly's show -- you cut off the mics of the people you don't want to hear, you interrupt people, and you generally behave like a complete, bombastic ass. Because each witness had five minutes of floor time, he'd interrupt them to burn up their time, then dismiss them after he'd run out the clock. He adjourned the hearing and cut off the mics in midsentence. In a fact-finding hearing, James Sensenbrenner had no patience for the facts. And no desire to get the facts on record. If you don't agree with Rep. James Sensenbrenner, government doesn't have to represent you or even hear you.

So, we've established that Rep. James Sensenbrenner is a horse's ass. This horse's ass, being a Congress critter, is everyone's horse's ass, not just Wisconsin's. The idiotic legislation, completely partisan politicking, and contempt for democracy are suffered by the country as a whole.

Which brings us to a story that's been sort of flying under the radar of the mainstream media. A national ID card, known as 'Real ID,' is Sensenbrenner's baby. And it's coming to your state.

Passed in 2005, the Real ID Act would require states to issue a federal ID card by 2008. Without it, you can't get a driver's license or other state ID. It's supposedly a homeland security measure, but it's really an anti-immigration measure -- one that's not very likely to actually accomplish anything. It's typical of a bumpersticker politician like Sensenbrenner.

Really, isn't a driver's license a 'real ID' and, if not, why not? What Sensenbrenner's legislation actually is is a national, internal passport -- can't get on a plane without it. And it's as pointless as a border fence, which assumes that would-be illegal immigrants don't know about ladders or that a majority of undocumented residents didn't enter legally. People already exist in the US without ID or with a counterfeit ID -- one more card isn't going to make a damned bit of difference. Well, other than giving ID thieves one more way to steal your identity.

Pretty much all it really does is cost states money and creates a new layer of federal bureaucracy. Yay...

So it's no surprise that 36 states -- that is, most of them -- have either passed or are considering legislation opting out of Real ID or, at least, critical of it. And one of those states is now Sensenbrenner's home state of Wisconsin.

The Capital Times:

Wisconsin soon may join the roster of states saying "no" to Real ID.

A bipartisan bill that would set high performance benchmarks for the federal legislation before the state would comply with it is being circulated for co-sponsors.

Its authors, state representatives Louis Molepske Jr., D- Stevens Point, and Jeff Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, make no bones about the fact that they think the federal law is an expensive boondoggle that will expose Wisconsin citizens to increased risk of identity theft and curtail civil liberties.

That last one is a very legitimate concern. We've heard about Sensenbrenner's attitude toward civil liberties from Rep. Wasserman Schultz -- he doesn't want to hear about them.

Getting rid of Real ID before it kicks in shouldn't be all that hard. No one on the left is a fan and civil libertarians on the right aren't either. The right wing nutjobs think it's the 'mark of the beast' -- a biblical prophecy regarding a mark the antichrist requires everyone to bear if they want to buy or sell anything. Of course, they said the same thing about Social Security numbers, but who cares why they're against it when they're against it? I always say that if someone wants to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, you ought to let them do the right thing.

If Real ID goes down in Wisconsin, it'd be a gigantic embarrassment for Sensenbrenner. A reporter for The Capital Times called his office and got 'no comment' on Molepske's and Woods's legislation. No doubt, he wants to march into the statehouse and cut off their mics.

Once again, it's up to the states to fix the BS handed to them by some federal dope more concerned with winning elections than with actually accomplishing anything. 'Tough on ___' makes a nice bumpersticker, but it rarely works in the real world.

Much like Rep. James Sensenbrenner.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; immigration; terrorism; republican; bureaucracy; James Sensenbrenner's Real ID isn't all that popular among the states