Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

After their decisive loss in 2012, the GOP claimed that the time had come to make their party more open, accepting and wonderful. Let’s check in and see how the rebranding effort is going.

Six cities in Idaho have ordinances in place that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Now, leaders in the Idaho Republican Party want them voided, the Spokesman-Review reported Monday.

The Idaho GOP passed a resolution asking the state legislature to make the local ordinances “unenforceable” if they seek to expand on state anti-bias law.

Cornel Rasor, chairman of the Idaho GOP’s resolutions committee and self-described “liberty person,” said he would like to retain the legal option to dismiss or not employ gay people.

“I’d hire a gay guy if I thought he was a good worker. But if he comes into work in a tutu … he’s not producing what I want in my office,” Rasor told the Spokesman-Review.

“If a guy has a particular predilection and keeps it to himself, that’s fine,” Rasor continued. “But if he wants to use my business as a platform for his lifestyle, why should I have to subsidize that?”

Right, ’cause there’s a real problem with gays coming into work in tutus and shoving their sexual orientation in your face.

Republicans might want to keep their rebranding effort in the oven a bit longer. It doesn’t appear ready for public consumption. It would also seem to me that as long as Republicans keep taking in every low-life, bigoted asshole they can find into their ranks, the entire rebranding idea is a colossal waste of time.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

It might still be possible to get a bipartisan bill on immigration through the Senate regardless of what the bill looks like and how well it addresses true reform. But it’s getting likelier that there won’t be any immigration legislation coming out of the House any time soon.

John Boehner:

“I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have a majority support of Republicans,” Boehner said during a press briefing with reporters Tuesday.

“I frankly think the Senate bill is weak on border security, I think the internal enforcement mechanisms are weak and the triggers are almost laughable,” he said of the bill drafted by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Republican Sens. Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Jeff Flake. “So if they’re serious about getting an immigration bill finished, they should reach out to their GOP colleagues to broaden support.”

There you go. That just about kills any chance of an immigration bill getting through Congress. Boehner is essentially saying that unless he gets the support of teapublican house members, he will not bring an immigration bill to the floor. We know, of course, that there is no bill that addresses immigration reform in any serious manner that would ever satisfy the xenophobic madness running rampant in the radical right.

It’s all going to come down to how much pressure the GOP establishment can exert on the orange man between now and the elections to get an immigration bill through the House. Tea Party idiots might not get it but most Republicans do: there will not be another Republican president in the White House if Hispanics believe that the Republican party blocked immigration reform. End of story.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

Leena at her first birthday bash this last Saturday. The weather was glorious and the little one was radiant decked out in her ladybug-colored outfit. Those are little red and black wings strapped to her shoulders.

Thank you for tagging along for the pictorial ride through leena’s first year of life.

Happy Monday.

UPDATE

And then there were wings…

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

I dislike Lindsey Graham about as much as I can dislike any politician but he’s got this one right.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — one of the Republican co-sponsors of an immigration reform bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11.1 million undocumented immigrations — told fellow Republicans that the GOP will fail to exist if reform does not become law.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform , if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016,” Graham warned during on appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who will run, in my view.”

I applaud Graham’s honesty on this issue in as much as I can applaud the honesty of any self-serving dick. He makes no pretense that he or his party give a damn about the lives or fate of 11 million undocumented immigrants. Clearly, there is no compassion at play here. Graham’s only concern has to do with Republicans winning in 2016. Nothing else matters and if there was a way to secure the Hispanic vote while herding 11 million men, women and children on to cattle cars and shipping them out of the country, I suspect that Graham wouldn’t be putting up much of a fight.

As for that death spiral thing – the sooner, the better.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

Bob Englehart

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

The best of late night political humor via Daniel Kurtzman’s Political Humor.

Happy Friday.

___

“Hispanic Senator Ted Cruz, who is fighting the immigration bill, described himself as Obama-phobic. You know you have Obama phobia if you’ll deport immigrants even though your last name is Cruz.” –Conan O’Brien

“Marco Rubio announced a new bill that would require immigrants to learn English to become citizens. Many Americans already say it’s the goodest news they have heard all year.” –Conan O’Brien

“According to a poll, the majority of Americans are OK with the Obama administration listening in on our phone calls. Guys approve because they feel it increases security. And women approve of Obama’s policy because finally a man is listening to them.” –Conan O’Brien

“Mr. President, no one is saying you broke any laws, we’re just saying it’s a little bit weird you didn’t have to.” –The Daily Show’s John Oliver on the NSA spying scandal

“Last week it was revealed that the National Security Agency has spied on Americans’ phone records and Internet history for years. Yesterday, the source of the leak said he’s hiding out in Hong Kong, marking the first time anyone has ever said, ‘I don’t want to be punished by the government – so I guess I’ll go to China.’” –Jimmy Fallon

Pat Bagley

“He went to China to avoid government persecution. That’s like going to Ireland to avoid getting drunk.” –Jimmy Fallon

“The NSA has been listening in on phone calls. It’s people with cellphones — you hear these people walking down the street screaming into their cellphones. They’re the ones who are upset about people listening to their phone calls.” –David Letterman

“Big breaking news about something we’ve known for like seven years, which is that your phone calls are being tracked and your emails are being accessed by the government. And married men all over are saying, ‘The government? Thank God. I thought you were going to say my wife.’” –Bill Maher

“The same conservatives who were all for the Patriot Act are now freaked out about this. They’re like, ‘When we said the president could do whatever the f*ck he wanted, we didn’t mean a black guy.’” –Bill Maher

Chris Weyant

“President Obama was visiting a middle school yesterday, and while he was there he said that every school in the U.S. should have high-speed Internet. Then it got awkward when one kid said, ‘Why, so you can read our emails faster?’” –Jimmy Fallon

“Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife announced that they are getting a divorce after almost 30 years of marriage. When asked why, Putin said, ‘We tried to make it work, but you know what they say: Men are from Malgobek, women are from Kadnikov.’” –Jimmy Fallon

“The National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of Verizon customers since April. That explains Verizon’s new ad campaign: ‘They can hear you now.’” Jimmy Fallon

“A new report shows that the Obama administration has been collecting the telephone records of millions of customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order. Here’s the sad part. It turns out that 90 percent of the phone calls Americans make are to order a pizza.” –Jay Leno

John Darkow

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Not a good time to be the party of xenophobes and delusional frauds.

For the first time, America’s racial and ethnic minorities now make up about half of the under-5 age group, the government said Thursday. It’s a historic shift that shows how young people are at the forefront of sweeping changes by race and class.

The new census estimates, a snapshot of the U.S. population as of July 2012, comes a year after the Census Bureau reported that whites had fallen to a minority among babies. Fueled by immigration and high rates of birth, particularly among Hispanics, racial and ethnic minorities are now growing more rapidly in numbers than whites.

Based on current rates of growth, whites in the under-5 group are expected to tip to a minority this year or next, Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director, said.

The government also projects that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of children under 18. Not long after, the total U.S. white population will begin an inexorable decline in absolute numbers, due to aging baby boomers.

Will numbers of this sort bring conservatives and Republicans to their senses and finally have them embrace comprehensive immigration reform? No, of course not. Teahadists will only dig their heels in and increase the decibel level of their screeching and opposition to any commonsense reform.

As we’ve come to learn, these sad little people don’t react well to numbers that don’t match up to their preconceived notion of reality.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

.

Kos:

Let’s be clear about this: If Latinos voted at the same rates as whites, Texas would already be Purple. And all other things remaining equal, it would’ve provided Mitt Romney with his second closest victory margin last year. Except that all things wouldn’t have been equal—a five-point race would’ve meant lots of money. Democrats would’ve poured resources into the state, while Republicans would’ve been forced to divert their cash to playing defense.

How important is Texas? If Republicans lost it, they could win Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin and still lose the election. In other words, lose Texas, or even be forced to defend that expensive-ass state, and Republicans are screwed.

So the math is clear—Texas would be purple of Latinos voted. But they don’t, so who cares, right? Well, Republicans should, because even with the same existing shitty turnout rate the growth in the Latino and Asian communities will erode the GOP’s base by about 5 1/2 points every four years, or about 1.4 points per year.

In other words, demographics alone will make Texas purple by 2024. And if Latinos decide to start voting, years sooner.

Of the 15 senators who voted against debating immigration reform, 13 were from red states, including Texas’ Ted Cruz. As Kos points out, there is no better reason for Republicans to vote for immigration reform than that of holding on to Texas. And yet, it’s going to be an uphill battle getting a bill out of the Senate and near impossible to get it through the House where Tea Party Republicans have vowed to block any and all legislation.

Who is Republican’s worst enemy? Republicans.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.