Thursday Open Thread [7.23.15]

This is awesome. And out of all of them, Hillary’s got the best logo.

Texas health officials “asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by immigrant parents who were denied birth certificates for their U.S.-born children because local authorities refused to recognize as valid certain forms of identification,” the AP reports.

“Although the parents are not U.S. citizens, their children are, because the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees the right of citizenship to anyone born on American soil. Without a birth certificate, it can be difficult for parents to access medical care, travel, school enrollment and other benefits available to U.S. citizens.”

This is unconstitutional, and those children’s legal guardians should sue the Texas health officials personally for a couple trillion.

Jeff Greenfield on the Nativist, i.e. Racist intentions of Donald Trump and his followers:

“Are there sound reasons for questioning comprehensive immigration reform? Of course… But those are not the arguments that Trump and his supporters are offering. They’re embracing the same arguments that were once aired at the Irish and German Catholics; at the Chinese; at the Italians and Poles and Jews: They’re going to undermine our culture; they’re disproportionately criminal or they’re carrying diseases; they threaten our way of life.”

“In this sense, Trump’s screeds on immigration fit perfectly with his birther arguments four years ago. There’s simply no way of knowing whether his GOP rivals will succeed in pushing Trump and his arguments to the margins, or whether the broader Republican primary electorate will reject the messenger, if not the message. What’s clear is that the rise to the presidency of Barack Obama—seen by many Republicans and conservatives as a source of patriotic pride—is still seen by others as proof that an ‘un-American’ occupies the highest office in the land.”

This is where beltway pundits annoy me, because they lie. I know of not one single Republican that is filled with Patriotic Pride that Barack Obama is their President. They all hate him, it is just a question of degrees. So stop lying Jeff Greenfield. You media types need to stop making the Republican Party appear warm and fluffy.

Attention Republicans everywhere. You are hereby ordered to cease what you are doing and make your way to your nearest public elementary school forthwith. Once there, you will be forced to retake Basic U.S. Civics so that you might learn how the U.S. Federal Government is structured, and what the roles of each branch of government are.

Last night, for reasons passing any understanding, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow had Rick Santorum on her show, and of course, they got into it over gay marriage.

Santorum told Maddow that the Supreme Court “is not a superior branch of government” and argued that Congress can still pass a law regarding same-sex marriage. Maddow insisted that Congress could only pass a constitutional amendment that directly contradicts a Supreme Court ruling. Santorum disagreed and said that all three branches of government can determine what is constitutional.

First, Ricky, you are a little right. The Supreme Court is not a superior branch of government. As you probably don’t know, there are three branches of government: The Legislative, The Executive, and The Judicial. Each are equal branches of government with their own roles, responsibilities and obligations. In the very simplest terms (so you and your fellow Republicans can understand), the Legislative Branch passes the laws. The Executive enforces the laws. And the Judicial interprets and evaluates the laws to see if they are constitutional.

Here is a little chart:

So, where the Judicial Branch is superior is in its exclusive role as the judge of what and what is not constitutional. That is their only job. So when they decide that the gays can marry and it is perfectly constitutional (and in fact the 14th Amendment to the Constitution demands it), that is pretty much the fucking final word on the subject. Case closed. End of story.

Well, no, Rachel is right, if Congress is full of idiot theocratic Nazis like Rick Santorum, then they can pass a Constitutional Amendment (by a two thirds vote in both Houses). And then the Amendment must be ratified by three fourths of the states. And then, and only then, a law passed by Congress that is contrary to a court ruling stand. Understand Little Ricky and you Republicans?

Rick Wilson: “Donald Trump is not running a real campaign. He is working the phones, stirring the pot and using the media ecosystem to its fullest. Soon, the bolder members of the field will follow Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush in making harder and more decisive strokes against him. Unlike Trump, they’ll use real oppo, tested and targeted messages—ads built not just to cut, but to kill. They’ll break his operational tempo, get inside his OODA loop and turn his circus into a crispy ruin. It’s what real campaigns do.”

“Trump will lose, and Trump supporters will wake up with a combination I call ‘herpes and a hangover.’ They may have had fun the night before, but they’ll regret the hangover for a day. However, if Trump’s games in this campaign lead to the election of Hillary Clinton, they’ll regret the herpes a lot longer.”

This was a very smart political response by Lindsey Graham to the whole Donald Trump Assholishness. Very good.

Greg Sargent:

One subplot of that storyline centers on a corollary question. Can Democrats perform better among non-college whites in 2016 than they did in 2012, by fielding a candidate (say, Hillary Clinton) who enjoys a greater cultural affinity with those voters than Barack Obama did, and by speaking directly to their sense that the economy has been rigged for many years against them?

The new Washington Post/ABC News poll starkly illustrates the challenge Democrats face in this regard. It turns out that an overwhelming majority of non-college whites believes the U.S. economic system is stacked in favor of the rich — but far more of those voters also think Republicans, not Democrats, have better ideas to address that problem.

And that is the Fox News affect. It is the only thing explaining why you think your rapist has the solution to stopping your rape.

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Public Policy Polling: Trump 19, Walker 17, Bush 12, Carson 10, Rubio 10, Huckabee 8, Cruz 4, Fiorina 4, Paul 4, Christie 3, Kasich 3, Jindal 1, Perry 1, Santorum 1, Gilmore 0, Graham 0, Pataki 0.

“Trump’s lead comes despite the fact that only 22% of Republicans agree with the comments he made about John McCain over the weekend compared to 50% who disagree. Despite his overall lead there are some signs that Trump’s comments may have hurt him. For one thing his favorability rating is back down in the 40s, at 48/39.”

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Public Policy Polling: Clinton 57, Sanders 22, Webb 5, Chafee 3, O’Malley 2

[Clinton] is polling over 60% with liberals and seniors, and over 5o% with moderates, men, women, whites, and younger voters. Her area of greatest strength though is with African Americans, where she gets 82% to 6% for Sanders and 3% for Webb.

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–CLINTON V. GOP–Public Policy Polling:

Clinton 45, Paul 42
Clinton 46, Bush 41
Clinton 46, Rubio 41
Clinton 46, Walker 41
Clinton 46, Huckabee 40
Clinton 47, Carson 39
Clinton 46, Christie 38
Clinton 48, Cruz 40
Clinton 47, Fiorina 37
Clinton 50, Trump 37

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–SANDERS V. GOP–Public Policy Polling:

Bush 44, Sanders 37
Rubio 41, Sanders 36
Walker 40, Sanders 39
Sanders 47, Trump 37

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–THREE-WAY–Public Policy Polling:

Clinton 43
Bush 25
Trump 23

Frank Rich: “The GOP can blame the media all it wants, but the party has no one to blame but itself for weaponizing Trump. It subsidized and encouraged the market for what Trump is now selling. Now the Republicans’ only really hope is that Trump will blow himself up, Herman Cain style. Maybe he will, and he certainly has no chance of getting the nomination no matter what he does. But in the meantime he can keep wreaking havoc. Nine other GOP candidates were onstage at the Ames, Iowa, forum last weekend where he trashed McCain, and no one remembers anything anyone else there said unless it was in response to Trump. The same may well happen at the first national debate on Fox News on August 6, which is likely (because of Trump, and much to his delight) to be the highest rated primary debate in history.”

“Even over the short term, the Republicans are clueless about how to deal with him; they keep playing into his hands.”