Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 998

Pope Francis’ message is completely lost on Catholic universities

Pope Francis has made serving the poor a Pope Francis has made serving the poor a

We are at war with an imaginary Islam: Lies, propaganda and the real story of America and the Muslim world

The United States is at war with a very different, mythic Islam of its own making that has nothing at all to do with this Islam of the Qur’an. To make sense of that conjured threat, scholarly studies of Islam or Islamic movements are of no help at all. Even the examination of the real-world history and practice of empire has limited value, unless the perceived Islamic dimension is considered. The American imperial project cannot be brought into clear view without assessment of the distinctive rationale that the Islamist Imaginary provides. The task is not an easy one. The Islamist Imaginary has no simple and unitary existence. Rather, it is a complex amalgam that shapes both the delusions of empire and a conjured threat to imperial power into a co-evolving composite. It is a “difficult whole,” in the helpful language of complexity theory. The Islamist Imaginary, unlike Islam itself and political movements of Islamic inspiration, does not exist outside of the imperial interests that shape it. It has no independent cultural or historical reality, outside its role as predatory threat to Western global interests. The American empire, in turn, requires a hostile and threatening enemy, which today takes the form of Islam of its imagination, to realize and rationalize its expansionist project that must remain unacknowledged and unspoken. The two elements of the imaginary and empire co-evolve. The needs of a threatened empire as vulnerable victim change over time. The Islamist Imaginary transforms itself to meet those needs. Imaginary and empire circle one another in a dance of predator and prey. Their roles are interchangeable, a clear sign that they are not entirely real. The predator is prey; the prey is predator. They develop in tandem in a complex process of mutual adaptation. Boundaries give way between the real and the imagined. In the end it is the imagined that haunts our imaginations and drives our policies. The idea of the co-evolution of Islam and empire in the Islamist Imaginary is not as strange as it might at first seem. Scholars know that the entanglement of Islam and empire has an intricate chain of precedents. Edward Said provided a useful starting point for analyzing these complex linkages with his frequently quoted assertion that ours is an age of “many Islams.” It is also the time of the singular American empire. He pointed out that Islam and empire have an intricate history of connections. The dominant notion of civilizational conflict between the Islamic world and the West rightly highlights the Islamic ideological roots of the most persistent resistances to American global dominance, provided that we recognize that the conflict has political and economic causes. However, this same notion obscures an important history of instrumental cooperation between Islam and the United States. American assertions of imperial power have had a consistent and often compliant Islamic dimension. It is now rarely acknowledged, though, that the cooperative dimension is at least as important for understanding the relationship today of the Islamic world and the West as the contrary record of oppositions to American hegemony of Islamic inspiration. Of the “many Islams,” America has for decades actively fostered and manipulated its own useful preferences. These “preferred Islams” of earlier periods are part of the story of the Islamist Imaginary of our own. The consequences of the manipulations of these preferred Islams have not always been those intended, at least not in the long run. They have often entailed violence that in the end was turned back first on U.S. clients and then on the United States itself. Yet, for all these qualifications, it remains true that the preferred Islams, cultivated and shaped by the United States, have been critical to the post–World War II projections of American power. At the end of World War II, President Roosevelt made an historic agreement with the house of Saud in Saudi Arabia. In exchange for privileged access to oil, the United States guaranteed the royal family’s hold on power, declaring the defense of Saudi Arabia a vital U.S. interest. The eighteenth-century origins of the current Saudi regime in the alliance between Muhammad Ibn Sa’ud, a local chieftain, and Ibn Abdul Wahhab, a puritanical and ultraconservative Islamic reformer, proved no obstacle. U.S. material support for all the usual instruments of repression enabled the Saudi royals to impose themselves on “their” people, despite Islam’s deeply rooted antipathy to monarchy. It also allowed the interpretation of Islam to take firm hold in Saudi Arabia and, through Saudi oil revenue funding, make itself felt worldwide as a powerful reactionary tradition. The royal family’s self-appointed role as guardian of Islam’s most holy sites, Mecca and Medina, provided the requisite religious cover for the U.S.-backed repression that secured their hold on power. This critical Saudi connection ensured American triumph over its European rivals for control of Middle Eastern oil. It also ensured a linkage between American empire and one of the most reactionary forces in the Islamic world, if not the world at large. Complicit Saudi Islam played a critical role in the subsequent geopolitical competition with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States knowingly used the retrograde Wahhabi Islam of the Saudis as a counterweight to progressive Arab nationalisms. These nationalisms had shown themselves willing to open doors to the Soviets in exchange for support for their projects of independent national development. By doing so, they threatened to challenge American hegemony over the Middle East and its precious oil resources. Personified most effectively by Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, Arab nationalists threatened to chart the kind of independent path of development that is intrinsically anathema to any imperial power. A combination of external blows and internal manipulations brought these nationalist assertions to an end by the late 1960s. In the wake of the collapse of the nationalist project, the United States saw no problems when a state-controlled Islam provided ideological cover for the compliant Egyptian successor military regimes. Egypt after Nasser was effectively brought within the American orbit and voided of all genuine nationalist content. For such regimes, the threat to their hold on power came from the left and the memories among the masses of the material and social advances registered under progressive Arab nationalist banners. Such successor regimes were no less repressive in pursuing their regressive aims than their predecessors had been in advancing more progressive objectives of autonomous development and improvement of mass welfare. Once again, Egypt provided the prototype, with Anwar al Sadat as the “believing President” who expelled the “Godless” Soviets, opened Egypt to American penetration, and welcomed disciplined Islamists back into public life as a counter to the “atheist left.” The Americans embraced both Sadat and the domesticated Islam in which he draped himself. In the end, however, Sadat’s cynical manipulation of Islamic symbols as a cover for policies of alignment with America and capitulation to Israel on the issue of Palestine incited the anger of Islamic extremists. Khalid al Islambouli assassinated Sadat on October 6, 1981, shouting “Death to Pharaoh!” When an already weakened Soviet Union blundered into Afghanistan in 1979, the United States turned to yet another variety of politicized Islam to hasten Soviet defeat. U.S. intelligence services, with assistance from their regional counterparts, actively and effectively mobilized the resources of Islamic militants, drawn from all over the Islamic world and including the Saudi Osama bin Laden. Enormous levels of funding were provided from American and Saudi sources, variously estimated but certainly in the billions. They aimed to take advantage of Soviet vulnerability in occupied Afghanistan. The strategy worked: Defeat in Afghanistan helped precipitate the demise of the Soviet Union. That direct contribution to unchallenged American hegemony was neither the last nor the most significant by the violent transnational Islamic networks the United States helped finance and train for work in Afghanistan. As a result of the successful American-sponsored guerrilla war against the Soviet Union, violent extremist groups proliferated. They created havoc, everywhere not least in New York City on September 11, 2001. These terrible events were reprisals for American Middle East policies and the work of assassins, whom the United States initially encouraged and even in some cases trained. The crime against humanity committed on September 11, 2001, had the unintended consequence of serving the breathtaking expansionist plans of the neoconservatives who dominated the Bush administration. Only a plausible enemy was lacking to make their execution possible. From the storehouse of the Western historical imagination, age-old images of a hostile Islam were retrieved. Islamic terrorists conjured up in a believable form for a frightened America the “threat to civilization” that every empire requires to justify its own violent acts of domination. The Islamist Imaginary in the service of the neoconservative version of empire was born. The administration used all the resources of media control at its disposal to make sure that no links were made between the 9/11 crime and unjust U.S. Middle Eastern policies and the bloody instrumentalities the United States forged to enforce them. Plans for the United States to topple the Taliban and occupy Iraq, and for the Israelis to “resolve” the Palestinian issue by force, were all in place before 9/11. The most expansive version of the neoconservative agenda to advance U.S. and Israeli interests found forthright expression in a position paper written for the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud party in 1996. It is entitled “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” and was published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. The document calls for a “clean break from the peace process,” the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the elimination of Saddam’s regime in Iraq, as prelude to regime changes in Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The authors all became influential players in the second Bush administration. President Bush’s elaboration of a more comprehensive strategy of global hegemony came in the fall of 2002 in a document called “National Security Strategy of the United States.” The United States would never again allow a hostile power to approach parity with U.S. military capabilities. The United States would take the offensive to ensure its continued “full spectrum” dominance. Endlessly repeated images of 9/11 provided the backdrop for a doctrine of “preventive” wars that would give a defensive coloration to what were, in reality, projections of American imperial power. The president rallied a cowed Congress to a strategy of endless wars to ensure global hegemony under the cover of a worldwide War on Terrorism whose features, while murky, were still recognizably Islamic. An innocent and wounded America recast its public role in the Middle East as the champion of democracy and the bulwark against the Islamic wellsprings of irrationalism that ostensibly fed global terrorism. The stage was set for the full-blown evocation of the Islamist Imaginary. There was already an established American practice of manipulating Islam, including the most backward-looking and violent versions, for imperial ends. This time, however, strategic planners for the Bush administration departed from the established pattern with a breathtaking innovation. At each prior critical strategic moment, America had made use of an existing form of Islam that could be reshaped to serve its needs. The Saudi connection yielded a royal, reactionary, and repressive Islam with which America cooperated without complaints for decades. The American-backed jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, in contrast, called forth an assertively violent rather than simply repressive Islam. America enthusiastically assembled, funded, and trained its transnational advocates. At the same time, the subservient successor regime in Egypt needed a domesticated “house Islam” that would support the right-leaning, authoritarian government. The Sadat regime would preside over the deindustrialization of Egypt and facilitate the ruthless pacification of the Palestinians. The United States had little good to say about Nasser and his Arab socialist policies. It did, however, welcome his efforts to “modernize” the venerable mosque-university of al Azhar. Nasser pursued a strategy of enhancing the role of Islam in Egyptian life while at the same time bringing al Azhar under firm state control. The number of mosques doubled and Islamic broadcasts from Cairo, supported by the government, reached to countries across Dar al Islam. Sadat, for his part, sought to manipulate official Islamic figures and institutions to support his right-wing domestic policies and global realignment into the American orbit. The Americans welcomed Sadat’s self-interested efforts to wrap his pro-American policies with whatever legitimacy a domesticated Islam could provide. In each of these instances, the Islamic dimension derives from a “found Islam” that originated to meet the needs of local actors. It had its own independent roots in the soil of the Islamic world and served, in the first instance, identifiable aims of already existing regimes or movements. The Bush administration sought to pioneer a distinctive variant on this general pattern, in ways that would clarify the new cultural and intellectual dimensions of its exercise of global power. Iraq was made the case in point. The Islamist Imaginary: America’s Preferred Islam The preferred Islam of the Bush administration comes into view most clearly and authoritatively in a Rand Corporation study. For that reason, rather than any scholarly value, Cheryl Benard’s work merits very close attention. I know of no other source as revealing about the way Islam was understood by the circle of neoconservative intellectuals to which Benard belonged in these critical years of assertions of American imperial power. The book carries the engaging title Civil, Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies. It was prepared with the imprimatur of Rand’s National Security Research Division in 2003. Benard’s assessment of the Islamic world quiets the apprehensions that resistance in the name of Islam raised for America’s neoconservative strategic planners. The worries of the Bush team were not entirely misplaced. There was an Islamic threat, not to America per se but rather to American empire. There still is. To be sure, American propaganda exaggerates both the power and moral depravity of the Islamic enemy. The idea that hostility toward America in the Islamic world springs from frustration with the obvious and inherent failings of the Islamic world and envy at the equally obvious success and innate superiority of the West is sheer nonsense, no matter how frequently and portentously repeated. It parrots the message of every expansionist imperial power that history has known. It does so for all the obvious reasons. The colonized are at fault and their failings invite, even demand, colonization. There is no better way to exculpate the West for the consequences of its historical record of violent occupation and exploitation of Islamic lands. Attention is shifted from any serious evaluation of American dominance of the Middle East and its destructive policies in Palestine, Afghanistan, and most dramatically Iraq. Benard takes the reality of an Islamic threat as a premise of her argument. Her analysis begins with a presentation of the self-imposed predicaments of the Arab Islamic world that threaten to spill over and endanger others. In Benard’s formulation the entire world, and not just the United States, is the innocent and vulnerable witness to the tumultuous internal disorders in the Islamic world. “What role,” she asks, “can the rest of the world, threatened and affected as it is by this struggle, play in bringing about a more peaceful and positive outcome?” Benard states clearly that these dangerous predicaments of the Islamic world are entirely self-imposed. She writes that “Islam’s current crisis has two main components: a failure to thrive and a loss of connection to the global mainstream. The Islamic world has been marked by a long period of backwardness and comparative powerlessness; many different solutions, such as nationalism, pan-Arabism, Arab socialism, and Islamic revolution, have been attempted without success, and this has led to frustration and anger.” To conclude, Benard gravely notes that “at the same time, the Islamic world has fallen out of step with contemporary global culture, an uncomfortable situation for both sides.” Benard’s assessment eliminates any reference to the West’s colonization of the Islamic world, and of the physical and psychological damage those violent assaults caused. There are no hints at all of an American imperial presence in the Islamic world through an impressive and constantly expanding network of bases. There is no consideration of the ways that presence constrains autonomous development. There are no references to the awkward facts of consistent American political and economic interventions, often violent and consistently aimed at undermining economic and political autonomy. Israel, heavily armed with all forms of weapons of mass destruction, a cruel occupying force, and the regional superpower, mysteriously disappears from view. These awkward realities are overshadowed by the Islamist Imaginary. Only with these erasures can Benard take for granted the irrational grounding of the Islamic threat. Her analysis highlights the ways that the usual state-based threats to the national security exemplified by the Soviet Union in the era of the Cold War have been replaced by the challenge of nonstate actors, operating below the nation-state horizon. To face this threat, she argues that American strategic planners must make Islam itself a resource. In short, like her predecessors Benard is in the business of strategic manipulations of Islam to serve American economic and political ends. She evokes a malleable Islam that can be turned into an instrument to confront the Islams of resistance, while obediently serving America’s ends. However, Benard does so with a difference. Excerpted from "One Islam, Many Muslim Worlds: Spirituality, Identity and Resistance Across Islamic Lands" by Raymond William Baker. Published by Oxford University Press. Copyright 2015 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

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Trevor Noah’s learning curve: How “The Daily Show” host plans to turn his “clean slate” into success

On Friday morning, journalists were granted a sneak peek at the “Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” during which the host answered questions about the regime change and showed off the spiffy new set, which is buried in a warehouse out on the nether-reaches of Hell’s Kitchen. Accented in gray, brown, deep reds and blues, the set evokes his predecessor’s, albeit with some subtle tweaks — which seems to be Noah’s approach to the show itself. “I look at ‘The Daily Show’ as a beautiful house that I’ve inherited,” Noah explained, looking handsome and at ease as he perched on a director’s chair in front of the anchor desk. “I’m not going to break the house down and start trying to build a house from there; I go ‘this is a beautiful house that’s been there for many years, it’s a landmark.’ So what I’ll try and do is create it into the home of my dreams, using my new family." "So as time goes on, I’ll be breaking down a wall here, changing a color there, moving a counter over there," he added. "But you will know there’s a new person living in the house, because you’ll be complaining about the noise.” In terms of guests, Noah seems to be aiming for a familiar mix of entertainers, politicians and cultural figures, although he says his show will include more musical performances. For the first week’s lineup, Noah outlined how each guest was chosen to make a statement about the show's revamped identity: Comedian Kevin Hart (“that’s what the show is, it is a comedy show first and foremost”), Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe (“like myself, a new voice in a space, but from a female side”), musician and Taylor Swift disrupter Ryan Adams (“he’s done in essence what we’ve done here: he’s taken something loved and cherished by many and created a new version”). Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie was picked to confirm that “the show is still going to be political; it’s still going to be American politics." But it remains to be seen how Noah will deal with the intricacies of the American political system that were his former boss’s bread and butter. Jon Stewart was mired in the system, and the South African-born Noah is much more of an outsider — a viewpoint he intends to use to his advantage in the writers' room. “I also bring in a certain level of ‘did you see this other thing that comes from another place,’ and then we get to talk about that,” he explained. “They get an outsider’s perspective.” As he reiterated a few times, Noah doesn’t see his learning curve as a disadvantage. Rather, he expects that balancing his fresh eyes with the experienced perspectives of his writers (most of Stewart’s writing staff have stayed on) will provide a new way in to some of the show’s well-trodden topics. “The fun part is the learning, and I think sometimes transferring that learning into a TV show and giving that to the audience is fantastic, like when you have a child, they learn new things and then you get to relearn it with them,” he added. Take covering the recent Republican debates: Noah said he and his team worked together to figure out how to stay true to the show’s brand and to his sensibilities simultaneously. “For the writers, they’ve got a history with all of these people," he explained. "I’m watching the debate and someone says something about something one of the politicians did 10, 15 years ago, and they’re like ‘that’s like the time that happened.’ And I’m the person going ‘why is that funny? Who is that person? What is important about that?’" "What’s great about this is I think we have an opportunity to re-learn these instances," he added. "I come in on a clean slate with a lot of the politicians, a lot of the news media outlets.” Certainly, Noah lacks the jadedness that was seeping from Stewart's pores by the end of his tenure. He also might not necessarily target the same Fox News and GOP punching bags that Stewart liked to target. Noah rarely watched Fox News while living abroad, and he seems excited now to dig into the conservative slop bucket. “I get to forge my own relationships, I get to discover the person that I will grow to loathe and hate,” he joked. “I’m not coming in with any preconceived notions of where I think my battles should be waged.” Noah’s childlike naiveté about the U.S. political quagmire may have its charms (and, I suspect, may be more winning for a correspondent than a host); it could also lead to a disconnect between Noah and “The Daily Show’s” politically savvy liberal audience, who might not have the patience to wait for Noah to outgrow his burgeoning “college libertarian phase,” as my colleague Sonia Saraiya dubbed it. “The joke that happened with myself and Steve [producer Steve Bodow] is we were watching the debate together, and I was complimenting every single thing that Rand Paul said,” Noah said. “Rand Paul said something and I said ‘that sounds great!’ and Steve said, just you wait, he’s going to break your heart. And I was like, ‘I don’t know, seems like a pretty amazing guy to me.’” While Rand may be the first candidate in Noah’s heart, he seems open to whichever GOP candidates want to step into the ring with him. After saying that he’d love to have Ben Carson on because “it would be a very energetic interview,” he spoke a little bit about Donald Trump, a notoriously slippery interview subject — even Colbert seemed to have a tough time with the blustering candidate when he appeared on "The Late Show" earlier this week. “Donald Trump is an interesting one, because the truth of the matter is he doesn’t say much,” Noah acknowledged. “Really what we’re doing is enjoying the spectacle of it all. That’s really what we’re doing it, we’re indulging it, and at some point that indulgence may come back to bite us. But we’ll see. Obviously Donald Trump is welcome on the show and I would love to have him on, but the question I would ask myself and the team is, what do we aim to achieve from this? Are we doing this just for entertainment or are we really trying to get answers, are we really trying to go into a political space with these people?” Noah’s on-the-fly political humor chops got a little test this morning, when Saraiya broke the news mid Q&A that John Boehner was stepping down from his congressional seat, and asked Noah to share some of his failed Boehner jokes with the audience. After demurring that it was probably time for him to step offstage, he lamented the speakers's departure (“That’s sad, I liked him! He cried all the time") and expressed disappointment that he wouldn’t get to show off some of his Boehner material: “They weren’t failed, they were great jokes! That’s the sad thing.” Still -- perhaps wisely -- Noah chose not to rise to the bait. “I’m a big fan of thinking before I say or react to anything," he added. “So that’s what we would be doing right now is talking about it and reminiscing on our favorite John Boehner moments, and [the writers] would be taking me back to some I didn’t know of. And we’d figure out a way to go from there.” https://twitter.com/annaesilman/statu... https://twitter.com/annaesilman/statu... Friday morning, journalists were granted a sneak peek at the “Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” during which the host answered questions about the regime change and showed off the spiffy new set, which is buried in a warehouse out on the nether-reaches of Hell’s Kitchen. Accented in gray, brown, deep reds and blues, the set evokes his predecessor’s, albeit with some subtle tweaks — which seems to be Noah’s approach to the show itself. “I look at ‘The Daily Show’ as a beautiful house that I’ve inherited,” Noah explained, looking handsome and at ease as he perched on a director’s chair in front of the anchor desk. “I’m not going to break the house down and start trying to build a house from there; I go ‘this is a beautiful house that’s been there for many years, it’s a landmark.’ So what I’ll try and do is create it into the home of my dreams, using my new family." "So as time goes on, I’ll be breaking down a wall here, changing a color there, moving a counter over there," he added. "But you will know there’s a new person living in the house, because you’ll be complaining about the noise.” In terms of guests, Noah seems to be aiming for a familiar mix of entertainers, politicians and cultural figures, although he says his show will include more musical performances. For the first week’s lineup, Noah outlined how each guest was chosen to make a statement about the show's revamped identity: Comedian Kevin Hart (“that’s what the show is, it is a comedy show first and foremost”), Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe (“like myself, a new voice in a space, but from a female side”), musician and Taylor Swift disrupter Ryan Adams (“he’s done in essence what we’ve done here: he’s taken something loved and cherished by many and created a new version”). Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie was picked to confirm that “the show is still going to be political; it’s still going to be American politics." But it remains to be seen how Noah will deal with the intricacies of the American political system that were his former boss’s bread and butter. Jon Stewart was mired in the system, and the South African-born Noah is much more of an outsider — a viewpoint he intends to use to his advantage in the writers' room. “I also bring in a certain level of ‘did you see this other thing that comes from another place,’ and then we get to talk about that,” he explained. “They get an outsider’s perspective.” As he reiterated a few times, Noah doesn’t see his learning curve as a disadvantage. Rather, he expects that balancing his fresh eyes with the experienced perspectives of his writers (most of Stewart’s writing staff have stayed on) will provide a new way in to some of the show’s well-trodden topics. “The fun part is the learning, and I think sometimes transferring that learning into a TV show and giving that to the audience is fantastic, like when you have a child, they learn new things and then you get to relearn it with them,” he added. Take covering the recent Republican debates: Noah said he and his team worked together to figure out how to stay true to the show’s brand and to his sensibilities simultaneously. “For the writers, they’ve got a history with all of these people," he explained. "I’m watching the debate and someone says something about something one of the politicians did 10, 15 years ago, and they’re like ‘that’s like the time that happened.’ And I’m the person going ‘why is that funny? Who is that person? What is important about that?’" "What’s great about this is I think we have an opportunity to re-learn these instances," he added. "I come in on a clean slate with a lot of the politicians, a lot of the news media outlets.” Certainly, Noah lacks the jadedness that was seeping from Stewart's pores by the end of his tenure. He also might not necessarily target the same Fox News and GOP punching bags that Stewart liked to target. Noah rarely watched Fox News while living abroad, and he seems excited now to dig into the conservative slop bucket. “I get to forge my own relationships, I get to discover the person that I will grow to loathe and hate,” he joked. “I’m not coming in with any preconceived notions of where I think my battles should be waged.” Noah’s childlike naiveté about the U.S. political quagmire may have its charms (and, I suspect, may be more winning for a correspondent than a host); it could also lead to a disconnect between Noah and “The Daily Show’s” politically savvy liberal audience, who might not have the patience to wait for Noah to outgrow his burgeoning “college libertarian phase,” as my colleague Sonia Saraiya dubbed it. “The joke that happened with myself and Steve [producer Steve Bodow] is we were watching the debate together, and I was complimenting every single thing that Rand Paul said,” Noah said. “Rand Paul said something and I said ‘that sounds great!’ and Steve said, just you wait, he’s going to break your heart. And I was like, ‘I don’t know, seems like a pretty amazing guy to me.’” While Rand may be the first candidate in Noah’s heart, he seems open to whichever GOP candidates want to step into the ring with him. After saying that he’d love to have Ben Carson on because “it would be a very energetic interview,” he spoke a little bit about Donald Trump, a notoriously slippery interview subject — even Colbert seemed to have a tough time with the blustering candidate when he appeared on "The Late Show" earlier this week. “Donald Trump is an interesting one, because the truth of the matter is he doesn’t say much,” Noah acknowledged. “Really what we’re doing is enjoying the spectacle of it all. That’s really what we’re doing it, we’re indulging it, and at some point that indulgence may come back to bite us. But we’ll see. Obviously Donald Trump is welcome on the show and I would love to have him on, but the question I would ask myself and the team is, what do we aim to achieve from this? Are we doing this just for entertainment or are we really trying to get answers, are we really trying to go into a political space with these people?” Noah’s on-the-fly political humor chops got a little test this morning, when Saraiya broke the news mid Q&A that John Boehner was stepping down from his congressional seat, and asked Noah to share some of his failed Boehner jokes with the audience. After demurring that it was probably time for him to step offstage, he lamented the speakers's departure (“That’s sad, I liked him! He cried all the time") and expressed disappointment that he wouldn’t get to show off some of his Boehner material: “They weren’t failed, they were great jokes! That’s the sad thing.” Still -- perhaps wisely -- Noah chose not to rise to the bait. “I’m a big fan of thinking before I say or react to anything," he added. “So that’s what we would be doing right now is talking about it and reminiscing on our favorite John Boehner moments, and [the writers] would be taking me back to some I didn’t know of. And we’d figure out a way to go from there.” https://twitter.com/annaesilman/statu... https://twitter.com/annaesilman/statu... Friday morning, journalists were granted a sneak peek at the “Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” during which the host answered questions about the regime change and showed off the spiffy new set, which is buried in a warehouse out on the nether-reaches of Hell’s Kitchen. Accented in gray, brown, deep reds and blues, the set evokes his predecessor’s, albeit with some subtle tweaks — which seems to be Noah’s approach to the show itself. “I look at ‘The Daily Show’ as a beautiful house that I’ve inherited,” Noah explained, looking handsome and at ease as he perched on a director’s chair in front of the anchor desk. “I’m not going to break the house down and start trying to build a house from there; I go ‘this is a beautiful house that’s been there for many years, it’s a landmark.’ So what I’ll try and do is create it into the home of my dreams, using my new family." "So as time goes on, I’ll be breaking down a wall here, changing a color there, moving a counter over there," he added. "But you will know there’s a new person living in the house, because you’ll be complaining about the noise.” In terms of guests, Noah seems to be aiming for a familiar mix of entertainers, politicians and cultural figures, although he says his show will include more musical performances. For the first week’s lineup, Noah outlined how each guest was chosen to make a statement about the show's revamped identity: Comedian Kevin Hart (“that’s what the show is, it is a comedy show first and foremost”), Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe (“like myself, a new voice in a space, but from a female side”), musician and Taylor Swift disrupter Ryan Adams (“he’s done in essence what we’ve done here: he’s taken something loved and cherished by many and created a new version”). Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie was picked to confirm that “the show is still going to be political; it’s still going to be American politics." But it remains to be seen how Noah will deal with the intricacies of the American political system that were his former boss’s bread and butter. Jon Stewart was mired in the system, and the South African-born Noah is much more of an outsider — a viewpoint he intends to use to his advantage in the writers' room. “I also bring in a certain level of ‘did you see this other thing that comes from another place,’ and then we get to talk about that,” he explained. “They get an outsider’s perspective.” As he reiterated a few times, Noah doesn’t see his learning curve as a disadvantage. Rather, he expects that balancing his fresh eyes with the experienced perspectives of his writers (most of Stewart’s writing staff have stayed on) will provide a new way in to some of the show’s well-trodden topics. “The fun part is the learning, and I think sometimes transferring that learning into a TV show and giving that to the audience is fantastic, like when you have a child, they learn new things and then you get to relearn it with them,” he added. Take covering the recent Republican debates: Noah said he and his team worked together to figure out how to stay true to the show’s brand and to his sensibilities simultaneously. “For the writers, they’ve got a history with all of these people," he explained. "I’m watching the debate and someone says something about something one of the politicians did 10, 15 years ago, and they’re like ‘that’s like the time that happened.’ And I’m the person going ‘why is that funny? Who is that person? What is important about that?’" "What’s great about this is I think we have an opportunity to re-learn these instances," he added. "I come in on a clean slate with a lot of the politicians, a lot of the news media outlets.” Certainly, Noah lacks the jadedness that was seeping from Stewart's pores by the end of his tenure. He also might not necessarily target the same Fox News and GOP punching bags that Stewart liked to target. Noah rarely watched Fox News while living abroad, and he seems excited now to dig into the conservative slop bucket. “I get to forge my own relationships, I get to discover the person that I will grow to loathe and hate,” he joked. “I’m not coming in with any preconceived notions of where I think my battles should be waged.” Noah’s childlike naiveté about the U.S. political quagmire may have its charms (and, I suspect, may be more winning for a correspondent than a host); it could also lead to a disconnect between Noah and “The Daily Show’s” politically savvy liberal audience, who might not have the patience to wait for Noah to outgrow his burgeoning “college libertarian phase,” as my colleague Sonia Saraiya dubbed it. “The joke that happened with myself and Steve [producer Steve Bodow] is we were watching the debate together, and I was complimenting every single thing that Rand Paul said,” Noah said. “Rand Paul said something and I said ‘that sounds great!’ and Steve said, just you wait, he’s going to break your heart. And I was like, ‘I don’t know, seems like a pretty amazing guy to me.’” While Rand may be the first candidate in Noah’s heart, he seems open to whichever GOP candidates want to step into the ring with him. After saying that he’d love to have Ben Carson on because “it would be a very energetic interview,” he spoke a little bit about Donald Trump, a notoriously slippery interview subject — even Colbert seemed to have a tough time with the blustering candidate when he appeared on "The Late Show" earlier this week. “Donald Trump is an interesting one, because the truth of the matter is he doesn’t say much,” Noah acknowledged. “Really what we’re doing is enjoying the spectacle of it all. That’s really what we’re doing it, we’re indulging it, and at some point that indulgence may come back to bite us. But we’ll see. Obviously Donald Trump is welcome on the show and I would love to have him on, but the question I would ask myself and the team is, what do we aim to achieve from this? Are we doing this just for entertainment or are we really trying to get answers, are we really trying to go into a political space with these people?” Noah’s on-the-fly political humor chops got a little test this morning, when Saraiya broke the news mid Q&A that John Boehner was stepping down from his congressional seat, and asked Noah to share some of his failed Boehner jokes with the audience. After demurring that it was probably time for him to step offstage, he lamented the speakers's departure (“That’s sad, I liked him! He cried all the time") and expressed disappointment that he wouldn’t get to show off some of his Boehner material: “They weren’t failed, they were great jokes! That’s the sad thing.” Still -- perhaps wisely -- Noah chose not to rise to the bait. “I’m a big fan of thinking before I say or react to anything," he added. “So that’s what we would be doing right now is talking about it and reminiscing on our favorite John Boehner moments, and [the writers] would be taking me back to some I didn’t know of. And we’d figure out a way to go from there.” https://twitter.com/annaesilman/statu... https://twitter.com/annaesilman/statu...

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“Trump is kind of scary. I get the feeling he might actually pull it off”: Michael Shannon on “99 Homes,” the economic collapse and the eroding American Dream

Michael Shannon gives an indelible performance as Rick Carver in Ramin Bahrani’s intense, rewarding drama, “99 Homes.” A shrewd, affectless real estate broker in Orlando, Florida, Rick puffs on e-cigarettes and carries a gun as he goes about his work forcing people out of their foreclosed homes. After he evicts Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) and his family, Rick finds an opportunity to hire Dennis as his protégé. The balance of power between these men shifts over the course of this intense, engaging drama. What makes “99 Homes” electrifying is how Shannon taps into what makes Rick tick; it’s more than just greed and hubris, it’s a mindset that justifies his behavior which escalates to criminal activity. He gets Dennis to do his dirty work with the promise that Dennis can recover his family home. Shannon has a glint in his eye that makes Rick as seductive as he is slimy. Yet the actor, who is best known for his work in “Taking Shelter,” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Revolutionary Road,” takes a completely different—and nice guy—role in “Freeheld,” opening October 2. In this issue-driven drama, Shannon is Dane Wells, a New Jersey cop who becomes a straight ally in his lesbian partner Laurel Hester’s (Julianne Moore) battle for pension benefits after she is stricken with cancer. Shannon spoke with Salon about his characters and his career, as well as his thoughts on realty, the American Dream and the worst jobs he ever had. How do you find—or do you find—something redeeming about Rick Carver in “99 Homes?” Well, I don’t think he’s a piece of human garbage. He’s a person trying to survive like anyone else. He’s a very intelligent person. I admire the fact that he seems to have found a way to take a system that is rotten and corrupt, and turn it to his advantage. Most people don’t do that; they give up, or play the victim. He didn’t. He said I’m going to try and conquer this system and not be bullied by it. I feel like it’s an epidemic in this culture that in order for people to get ahead they have to step on somebody’s head, you know? It’s not the only option, but there are a lot of people who make money by screwing other people over. He’s not the sole shining example of that. How do you identify with Rick, who is seductive, but not exactly lovable? Do you have sympathy for him? I don’t know that I have sympathy for him, or that he asks for sympathy. Mostly, I could say I identify with him to the extent that he’s a creative individual. He’s a colorful character and the way he operates and gets by is through his wits. He’s an iconic kind of con-man wheeler-dealer-type person, which is exciting to play. I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass whether you have sympathy for him or not. He’s lonely and unhappy, and something is eating away at him. He thinks Dennis can help him resolve that by passing along the tricks of his trade; maybe he can exonerate himself somehow. If Dennis accepts things, it helps validate his behavior. I think he has a lot of doubts about himself underneath his exterior confidence. The characters you tend to play are brainy and dangerous. You make viewers root for them even when most folks would run from them in real life. But then you turn around and play a nice guy in “Freeheld.” What are your thoughts about the men you play on screen? I don’t know that there’s a unifying element with all of the characters I play. I am always excited by the opportunity to explore how someone else’s mind works. It’s why I started acting in the first place. I like exploring other people’s identities. Every job is different, and comes about for different reasons. With “99 Homes,” I wanted to work with Ramin, because I thought he was a great filmmaker. When I read the script, I saw he took the subject I didn’t know much about and illuminated it in a robust, heartfelt way. I also have a soft side, so something like “Freeheld”—they showed me the doc about Laurel [Hester] and it melted my heart. I met the real Dane Wells and he was a fascinating person. He has a lot of dignity, and the fact that he cared so much about Laurel, I found that very moving. The notion that they had been partners on the force for so long and real close friends, but that Laurel was keeping secrets to keep her job, was a situation I wanted to explore. He had no idea that she was gay.  Rick smokes e-cigarettes and chews on a cigar—the latter being a symbol of power and money. Are you a cigar enthusiast? No. Ramin gave me the e-cigarette. I got into it while we were shooting, but as soon as we wrapped I turned it back in. Rick pays Dennis to clean out a house literally full of shit. What is the worst job you ever had? [Laughs] Telemarketing was pretty bad. So was canvassing door to door for an environmental organization when I was a teenager. I worked at Taco Bell once for a summer. That wasn’t great. I was in the back and made the meat and beans. I was a meat-and-bean man.  Rick has to tell folks they are losing their homes, which is pretty devastating. What’s the worst or most devastating news you received? Once I was in London and was doing press for “The Iceman,” and while I was there I got a phone call that my daughter Sylvia’s appendix had ruptured and she was going into surgery. So I got on the first plane I could. But while I was on the plane, she was in surgery. I got off the plane and she was out of surgery and OK, but that was the longest flight I’d ever taken. Rick says “Don’t get emotional over real estate.” What can you say about your experiences buying and selling property? I don’t picture you living in a McMansion, but more monastically? Our main residence is in Brooklyn, in Red Hook. I rent there. I’m naturally suspicious of banks and mortgages. I always have been. Mortgages seem like a raw deal, but I finally broke my pact to never have a mortgage, so now I have a condo in Chicago. I try not to throw my money around too much, because you never know when you’ll run out. They say Nicolas Cage overextended his finances, and he works constantly because he bought too many houses.  Rick also has a hell of a speech about the American Dream. How do you think that dream is doing these days? [Sighs] I feel like there’s been a lot of gridlock, and I feel bad for Obama, who didn’t really get to spread his wings and fly. It’s sad to see it all gearing up for the next whoever it might be. Trump is kind of scary. I get the feeling he might actually pull it off. I’m very lucky, I get to work, and it would be hard for me to complain about anything. I have what I need. I know a lot of people are still suffering. This collapse is not a thing of the past for most people. I don’t know how you get ahead. You used to go to college and get a nice job, but nowadays people have a great education and still can’t get a job. It’s scary. And the technology end of it, they seem to be trying to replace people with machines. That’s going to create more unemployment. I try to stay optimistic. I have two kids. I hope the world is still worth a shit when they grow up. Michael Shannon gives an indelible performance as Rick Carver in Ramin Bahrani’s intense, rewarding drama, “99 Homes.” A shrewd, affectless real estate broker in Orlando, Florida, Rick puffs on e-cigarettes and carries a gun as he goes about his work forcing people out of their foreclosed homes. After he evicts Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) and his family, Rick finds an opportunity to hire Dennis as his protégé. The balance of power between these men shifts over the course of this intense, engaging drama. What makes “99 Homes” electrifying is how Shannon taps into what makes Rick tick; it’s more than just greed and hubris, it’s a mindset that justifies his behavior which escalates to criminal activity. He gets Dennis to do his dirty work with the promise that Dennis can recover his family home. Shannon has a glint in his eye that makes Rick as seductive as he is slimy. Yet the actor, who is best known for his work in “Taking Shelter,” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Revolutionary Road,” takes a completely different—and nice guy—role in “Freeheld,” opening October 2. In this issue-driven drama, Shannon is Dane Wells, a New Jersey cop who becomes a straight ally in his lesbian partner Laurel Hester’s (Julianne Moore) battle for pension benefits after she is stricken with cancer. Shannon spoke with Salon about his characters and his career, as well as his thoughts on realty, the American Dream and the worst jobs he ever had. How do you find—or do you find—something redeeming about Rick Carver in “99 Homes?” Well, I don’t think he’s a piece of human garbage. He’s a person trying to survive like anyone else. He’s a very intelligent person. I admire the fact that he seems to have found a way to take a system that is rotten and corrupt, and turn it to his advantage. Most people don’t do that; they give up, or play the victim. He didn’t. He said I’m going to try and conquer this system and not be bullied by it. I feel like it’s an epidemic in this culture that in order for people to get ahead they have to step on somebody’s head, you know? It’s not the only option, but there are a lot of people who make money by screwing other people over. He’s not the sole shining example of that. How do you identify with Rick, who is seductive, but not exactly lovable? Do you have sympathy for him? I don’t know that I have sympathy for him, or that he asks for sympathy. Mostly, I could say I identify with him to the extent that he’s a creative individual. He’s a colorful character and the way he operates and gets by is through his wits. He’s an iconic kind of con-man wheeler-dealer-type person, which is exciting to play. I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass whether you have sympathy for him or not. He’s lonely and unhappy, and something is eating away at him. He thinks Dennis can help him resolve that by passing along the tricks of his trade; maybe he can exonerate himself somehow. If Dennis accepts things, it helps validate his behavior. I think he has a lot of doubts about himself underneath his exterior confidence. The characters you tend to play are brainy and dangerous. You make viewers root for them even when most folks would run from them in real life. But then you turn around and play a nice guy in “Freeheld.” What are your thoughts about the men you play on screen? I don’t know that there’s a unifying element with all of the characters I play. I am always excited by the opportunity to explore how someone else’s mind works. It’s why I started acting in the first place. I like exploring other people’s identities. Every job is different, and comes about for different reasons. With “99 Homes,” I wanted to work with Ramin, because I thought he was a great filmmaker. When I read the script, I saw he took the subject I didn’t know much about and illuminated it in a robust, heartfelt way. I also have a soft side, so something like “Freeheld”—they showed me the doc about Laurel [Hester] and it melted my heart. I met the real Dane Wells and he was a fascinating person. He has a lot of dignity, and the fact that he cared so much about Laurel, I found that very moving. The notion that they had been partners on the force for so long and real close friends, but that Laurel was keeping secrets to keep her job, was a situation I wanted to explore. He had no idea that she was gay.  Rick smokes e-cigarettes and chews on a cigar—the latter being a symbol of power and money. Are you a cigar enthusiast? No. Ramin gave me the e-cigarette. I got into it while we were shooting, but as soon as we wrapped I turned it back in. Rick pays Dennis to clean out a house literally full of shit. What is the worst job you ever had? [Laughs] Telemarketing was pretty bad. So was canvassing door to door for an environmental organization when I was a teenager. I worked at Taco Bell once for a summer. That wasn’t great. I was in the back and made the meat and beans. I was a meat-and-bean man.  Rick has to tell folks they are losing their homes, which is pretty devastating. What’s the worst or most devastating news you received? Once I was in London and was doing press for “The Iceman,” and while I was there I got a phone call that my daughter Sylvia’s appendix had ruptured and she was going into surgery. So I got on the first plane I could. But while I was on the plane, she was in surgery. I got off the plane and she was out of surgery and OK, but that was the longest flight I’d ever taken. Rick says “Don’t get emotional over real estate.” What can you say about your experiences buying and selling property? I don’t picture you living in a McMansion, but more monastically? Our main residence is in Brooklyn, in Red Hook. I rent there. I’m naturally suspicious of banks and mortgages. I always have been. Mortgages seem like a raw deal, but I finally broke my pact to never have a mortgage, so now I have a condo in Chicago. I try not to throw my money around too much, because you never know when you’ll run out. They say Nicolas Cage overextended his finances, and he works constantly because he bought too many houses.  Rick also has a hell of a speech about the American Dream. How do you think that dream is doing these days? [Sighs] I feel like there’s been a lot of gridlock, and I feel bad for Obama, who didn’t really get to spread his wings and fly. It’s sad to see it all gearing up for the next whoever it might be. Trump is kind of scary. I get the feeling he might actually pull it off. I’m very lucky, I get to work, and it would be hard for me to complain about anything. I have what I need. I know a lot of people are still suffering. This collapse is not a thing of the past for most people. I don’t know how you get ahead. You used to go to college and get a nice job, but nowadays people have a great education and still can’t get a job. It’s scary. And the technology end of it, they seem to be trying to replace people with machines. That’s going to create more unemployment. I try to stay optimistic. I have two kids. I hope the world is still worth a shit when they grow up. Michael Shannon gives an indelible performance as Rick Carver in Ramin Bahrani’s intense, rewarding drama, “99 Homes.” A shrewd, affectless real estate broker in Orlando, Florida, Rick puffs on e-cigarettes and carries a gun as he goes about his work forcing people out of their foreclosed homes. After he evicts Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) and his family, Rick finds an opportunity to hire Dennis as his protégé. The balance of power between these men shifts over the course of this intense, engaging drama. What makes “99 Homes” electrifying is how Shannon taps into what makes Rick tick; it’s more than just greed and hubris, it’s a mindset that justifies his behavior which escalates to criminal activity. He gets Dennis to do his dirty work with the promise that Dennis can recover his family home. Shannon has a glint in his eye that makes Rick as seductive as he is slimy. Yet the actor, who is best known for his work in “Taking Shelter,” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Revolutionary Road,” takes a completely different—and nice guy—role in “Freeheld,” opening October 2. In this issue-driven drama, Shannon is Dane Wells, a New Jersey cop who becomes a straight ally in his lesbian partner Laurel Hester’s (Julianne Moore) battle for pension benefits after she is stricken with cancer. Shannon spoke with Salon about his characters and his career, as well as his thoughts on realty, the American Dream and the worst jobs he ever had. How do you find—or do you find—something redeeming about Rick Carver in “99 Homes?” Well, I don’t think he’s a piece of human garbage. He’s a person trying to survive like anyone else. He’s a very intelligent person. I admire the fact that he seems to have found a way to take a system that is rotten and corrupt, and turn it to his advantage. Most people don’t do that; they give up, or play the victim. He didn’t. He said I’m going to try and conquer this system and not be bullied by it. I feel like it’s an epidemic in this culture that in order for people to get ahead they have to step on somebody’s head, you know? It’s not the only option, but there are a lot of people who make money by screwing other people over. He’s not the sole shining example of that. How do you identify with Rick, who is seductive, but not exactly lovable? Do you have sympathy for him? I don’t know that I have sympathy for him, or that he asks for sympathy. Mostly, I could say I identify with him to the extent that he’s a creative individual. He’s a colorful character and the way he operates and gets by is through his wits. He’s an iconic kind of con-man wheeler-dealer-type person, which is exciting to play. I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass whether you have sympathy for him or not. He’s lonely and unhappy, and something is eating away at him. He thinks Dennis can help him resolve that by passing along the tricks of his trade; maybe he can exonerate himself somehow. If Dennis accepts things, it helps validate his behavior. I think he has a lot of doubts about himself underneath his exterior confidence. The characters you tend to play are brainy and dangerous. You make viewers root for them even when most folks would run from them in real life. But then you turn around and play a nice guy in “Freeheld.” What are your thoughts about the men you play on screen? I don’t know that there’s a unifying element with all of the characters I play. I am always excited by the opportunity to explore how someone else’s mind works. It’s why I started acting in the first place. I like exploring other people’s identities. Every job is different, and comes about for different reasons. With “99 Homes,” I wanted to work with Ramin, because I thought he was a great filmmaker. When I read the script, I saw he took the subject I didn’t know much about and illuminated it in a robust, heartfelt way. I also have a soft side, so something like “Freeheld”—they showed me the doc about Laurel [Hester] and it melted my heart. I met the real Dane Wells and he was a fascinating person. He has a lot of dignity, and the fact that he cared so much about Laurel, I found that very moving. The notion that they had been partners on the force for so long and real close friends, but that Laurel was keeping secrets to keep her job, was a situation I wanted to explore. He had no idea that she was gay.  Rick smokes e-cigarettes and chews on a cigar—the latter being a symbol of power and money. Are you a cigar enthusiast? No. Ramin gave me the e-cigarette. I got into it while we were shooting, but as soon as we wrapped I turned it back in. Rick pays Dennis to clean out a house literally full of shit. What is the worst job you ever had? [Laughs] Telemarketing was pretty bad. So was canvassing door to door for an environmental organization when I was a teenager. I worked at Taco Bell once for a summer. That wasn’t great. I was in the back and made the meat and beans. I was a meat-and-bean man.  Rick has to tell folks they are losing their homes, which is pretty devastating. What’s the worst or most devastating news you received? Once I was in London and was doing press for “The Iceman,” and while I was there I got a phone call that my daughter Sylvia’s appendix had ruptured and she was going into surgery. So I got on the first plane I could. But while I was on the plane, she was in surgery. I got off the plane and she was out of surgery and OK, but that was the longest flight I’d ever taken. Rick says “Don’t get emotional over real estate.” What can you say about your experiences buying and selling property? I don’t picture you living in a McMansion, but more monastically? Our main residence is in Brooklyn, in Red Hook. I rent there. I’m naturally suspicious of banks and mortgages. I always have been. Mortgages seem like a raw deal, but I finally broke my pact to never have a mortgage, so now I have a condo in Chicago. I try not to throw my money around too much, because you never know when you’ll run out. They say Nicolas Cage overextended his finances, and he works constantly because he bought too many houses.  Rick also has a hell of a speech about the American Dream. How do you think that dream is doing these days? [Sighs] I feel like there’s been a lot of gridlock, and I feel bad for Obama, who didn’t really get to spread his wings and fly. It’s sad to see it all gearing up for the next whoever it might be. Trump is kind of scary. I get the feeling he might actually pull it off. I’m very lucky, I get to work, and it would be hard for me to complain about anything. I have what I need. I know a lot of people are still suffering. This collapse is not a thing of the past for most people. I don’t know how you get ahead. You used to go to college and get a nice job, but nowadays people have a great education and still can’t get a job. It’s scary. And the technology end of it, they seem to be trying to replace people with machines. That’s going to create more unemployment. I try to stay optimistic. I have two kids. I hope the world is still worth a shit when they grow up. 

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America’s “religious liberty” fiasco: What Kim Davis, the GOP & Ahmed Mohamed reveal about our stunted priorities

Yesterday, Pope Francis made an historic speech before Congress, the first Pope ever to do so. The themes of his papal visit have been notably social-justice oriented, including a focus on poverty and immigration and the responsibility we all have to work to help the poor and destitute among us. During his remarks, he spoke passionately about just immigration, and of his own family’s history of moving from Italy to Argentina, where he was born. Pope Francis made further history when he declined to stay and talk with Congress members in favor of spending time at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. He spoke before roughly 250 staff and volunteers before joining another 300 people for lunch with St. Maria’s Meals, a project of the local branch of Catholic Charities. Many in the audience were homeless. In his remarks Pope Francis touched briefly on the issue of religious freedom, saying,

“It is important that today, as in the past, the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love, which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society.”

We remain in this country inthe throes of a debate about religious freedom, with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who defied a federal court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses, asserting her right to discriminate against same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs. We've also seen, more recently, 14-year-old high school student Ahmed Mohammed arrested by his teachers for bringing a homemade clock to school; a Louisville mosque vandalized with hate speech; and the Indian-American president of the University of Southern California student body verbally attacked for her race and religion. For whom, then, is the American right to religious freedom? For Ahmed, racial and religious profiling resulted in an unjust arrest. Violence and discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs continues, as does the profiling of Arab and South Asian American communities across the country. And, lest we think that this is an issue only faced by non-Christians, let’s remember the horrific and ongoing violence targeting Black churches that has surged in recent months. In fact, in the wake of the shooting of nine worshippers at Charleston’s historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church, many Christian conservatives spoke at length about religious freedom. Instead of naming the attack as race-based violence, many right-wing commentators spoke of it as evidence that Christians are under attack in the United States. Fox News went so far as to declare it an “attack on faith.” GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the shooting part of a broader assault on “religious liberty” in this country. The recent anniversary of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, which killed four young girls and injured 22 others should remind us of the fact that Black worshippers aren’t attacked for being Christians, they are attacked for being Black. A year after the bombing in 1963, KKK members beat churchgoers leaving the Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Mississippi. White supremacists have continued targeting black churches and are not motivated by anti-Christian beliefs, instead, they are an age-old response to the deepening political power and civil rights organizing of these churches. For whom, then, is the American right to religious freedom? If we speak about religious liberty and the freedom to worship without acknowledging the racial biases that permeate this country and result in unspeakable violence against those who are not White Christians, our religious liberty is hollow at best, and false, at worst. Yesterday, Pope Francis said the following words:

“We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms.But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”

The violence perpetrated in the name of racism is surely in this category as well. Eesha Pandit is a writer and activist based in Houston, TX. You can follow her on twitter at  @EeshaP , and find out more about her work at  eeshapandit.com .   -- Eesha Pandit www.eeshapandit.com @EeshaP  Yesterday, Pope Francis made an historic speech before Congress, the first Pope ever to do so. The themes of his papal visit have been notably social-justice oriented, including a focus on poverty and immigration and the responsibility we all have to work to help the poor and destitute among us. During his remarks, he spoke passionately about just immigration, and of his own family’s history of moving from Italy to Argentina, where he was born. Pope Francis made further history when he declined to stay and talk with Congress members in favor of spending time at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. He spoke before roughly 250 staff and volunteers before joining another 300 people for lunch with St. Maria’s Meals, a project of the local branch of Catholic Charities. Many in the audience were homeless. In his remarks Pope Francis touched briefly on the issue of religious freedom, saying,

“It is important that today, as in the past, the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love, which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society.”

We remain in this country inthe throes of a debate about religious freedom, with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who defied a federal court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses, asserting her right to discriminate against same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs. We've also seen, more recently, 14-year-old high school student Ahmed Mohammed arrested by his teachers for bringing a homemade clock to school; a Louisville mosque vandalized with hate speech; and the Indian-American president of the University of Southern California student body verbally attacked for her race and religion. For whom, then, is the American right to religious freedom? For Ahmed, racial and religious profiling resulted in an unjust arrest. Violence and discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs continues, as does the profiling of Arab and South Asian American communities across the country. And, lest we think that this is an issue only faced by non-Christians, let’s remember the horrific and ongoing violence targeting Black churches that has surged in recent months. In fact, in the wake of the shooting of nine worshippers at Charleston’s historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church, many Christian conservatives spoke at length about religious freedom. Instead of naming the attack as race-based violence, many right-wing commentators spoke of it as evidence that Christians are under attack in the United States. Fox News went so far as to declare it an “attack on faith.” GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the shooting part of a broader assault on “religious liberty” in this country. The recent anniversary of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, which killed four young girls and injured 22 others should remind us of the fact that Black worshippers aren’t attacked for being Christians, they are attacked for being Black. A year after the bombing in 1963, KKK members beat churchgoers leaving the Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Mississippi. White supremacists have continued targeting black churches and are not motivated by anti-Christian beliefs, instead, they are an age-old response to the deepening political power and civil rights organizing of these churches. For whom, then, is the American right to religious freedom? If we speak about religious liberty and the freedom to worship without acknowledging the racial biases that permeate this country and result in unspeakable violence against those who are not White Christians, our religious liberty is hollow at best, and false, at worst. Yesterday, Pope Francis said the following words:

“We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms.But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”

The violence perpetrated in the name of racism is surely in this category as well. Eesha Pandit is a writer and activist based in Houston, TX. You can follow her on twitter at  @EeshaP , and find out more about her work at  eeshapandit.com .   -- Eesha Pandit www.eeshapandit.com @EeshaP  Yesterday, Pope Francis made an historic speech before Congress, the first Pope ever to do so. The themes of his papal visit have been notably social-justice oriented, including a focus on poverty and immigration and the responsibility we all have to work to help the poor and destitute among us. During his remarks, he spoke passionately about just immigration, and of his own family’s history of moving from Italy to Argentina, where he was born. Pope Francis made further history when he declined to stay and talk with Congress members in favor of spending time at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. He spoke before roughly 250 staff and volunteers before joining another 300 people for lunch with St. Maria’s Meals, a project of the local branch of Catholic Charities. Many in the audience were homeless. In his remarks Pope Francis touched briefly on the issue of religious freedom, saying,

“It is important that today, as in the past, the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love, which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society.”

We remain in this country inthe throes of a debate about religious freedom, with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who defied a federal court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses, asserting her right to discriminate against same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs. We've also seen, more recently, 14-year-old high school student Ahmed Mohammed arrested by his teachers for bringing a homemade clock to school; a Louisville mosque vandalized with hate speech; and the Indian-American president of the University of Southern California student body verbally attacked for her race and religion. For whom, then, is the American right to religious freedom? For Ahmed, racial and religious profiling resulted in an unjust arrest. Violence and discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs continues, as does the profiling of Arab and South Asian American communities across the country. And, lest we think that this is an issue only faced by non-Christians, let’s remember the horrific and ongoing violence targeting Black churches that has surged in recent months. In fact, in the wake of the shooting of nine worshippers at Charleston’s historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church, many Christian conservatives spoke at length about religious freedom. Instead of naming the attack as race-based violence, many right-wing commentators spoke of it as evidence that Christians are under attack in the United States. Fox News went so far as to declare it an “attack on faith.” GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the shooting part of a broader assault on “religious liberty” in this country. The recent anniversary of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, which killed four young girls and injured 22 others should remind us of the fact that Black worshippers aren’t attacked for being Christians, they are attacked for being Black. A year after the bombing in 1963, KKK members beat churchgoers leaving the Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Mississippi. White supremacists have continued targeting black churches and are not motivated by anti-Christian beliefs, instead, they are an age-old response to the deepening political power and civil rights organizing of these churches. For whom, then, is the American right to religious freedom? If we speak about religious liberty and the freedom to worship without acknowledging the racial biases that permeate this country and result in unspeakable violence against those who are not White Christians, our religious liberty is hollow at best, and false, at worst. Yesterday, Pope Francis said the following words:

“We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms.But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”

The violence perpetrated in the name of racism is surely in this category as well. Eesha Pandit is a writer and activist based in Houston, TX. You can follow her on twitter at  @EeshaP , and find out more about her work at  eeshapandit.com .   -- Eesha Pandit www.eeshapandit.com @EeshaP  

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John Boehner was really bad at his job. Now things are about to get epically worse

Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner was his usual weepy self as Pope Francis spoke to a joint meeting of Congress. Boehner, a Catholic, had invited three popes to address Congress, and Francis finally took him up on the offer—a first in U.S. history. So it wasn't that surprising to see Boehner, in the background, leaking like a water faucet in disrepair. Only now, we can see those tears in a different light, as Boehner announced his stunning resignation from Congress, effective at the end of October.

There's little doubt that the proximal cause of  Boehner leaving is the GOP's internal fight over whether to do another government shutdown—this time, aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood, an organization that (at 45 percent) is currently viewed about three more favorably than Congress.

But it's equally clear the push to oust Boehner has bubbling for some time, though characteristically not with much method or discipline. In late July, North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows surprised everyone with a motion to vacate the chair, which Politico described as “an extraordinarily rare procedural move that represents the most serious expression of opposition to Boehner’s speakership,” going on to note:

GOP leaders were taken completely by surprise. Meadows, a second-term Republican, hadn’t even asked for a meeting with Boehner or other top Republicans to air his gripes.

Boehner had faced a challenge to his leadership before, but not in his most recent election. So the ebbs and flows of opposition have remained relatively opaque, aided by a generally incurious press. Rachel Maddow represents a distinctly discordant view, having repeatedly run segments arguing that “John Boehner is bad at his job.” But it can be argued that Maddow is wrong to blame Boehner for problems that are much bigger then the office he holds, or even the GOP House caucus.

Indeed, viewed through an institutional lens, Boehner's troubles go back much further, encompassing the all three of his GOP predecessors. In 1998, Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker, and from Congress, after the GOP lost seats in mid-term elections after intensely pursuing a Clinton impeachment agenda. Just days after the election, CNN reported, “Faced with a brewing rebellion within the Republican Party over the disappointing midterm election, House Speaker Newt Gingrich made the stunning decision Friday to step down not just from the speakership but also from Congress.”

Gingrich's replacement, Louisiana's Bob Livingston, resigned just over a month later [video], before even taking office, after his own extra-marital affairs were revealed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. Amazingly, Livingston, who had been part of Gingrich's leadership team devoted to hounding Clinton from office, said in his remarks, “I want so very much to pacify and cool our raging tempers and return to an era when differences were confined to the debate, and not a personal attack or assassination of character.”

Livingston's deliberately low-key successor, Dennis Hastert, had some troubles in office, but managed to survive with dignity and reputation reasonably intact through eight years of leadership—the longest tenure ever for a Republican—until Democrats retook the House in the 2006 mid-terms. It was only this year that he was criminally charged for lying to federal agents and evading financial reporting requirements, reportedly as part of an attempt to conceal sexual misconduct with a minor, which in turn raised new doubts about his handling of similar problems in the Mark Foley affair, just prior to the 2006 election.

At one level, this record speaks to a lack of personal morality—a key GOP hobby horse for at least the past half century, if not virtually forever. But more deeply, it highlights the inherent dangers stirred up by running political campaigns as moral crusades, which simply cannot be sustained as a means of government in a secular, pluralistic system. The attempt to demonize Planned Parenthood as evil incarnate involves spectacular levels of fraud and deception. Such deception may be sustainable within the bubble of the GOP base, driving the latest mania which appears to have exhausted Boehner's endurance, but it cannot prevail in the polity at large, unless the elite media are fully on board—as they were in attacking ACORN, or selling the Iraq War—but not for this fight.

Thus, Boehner bows out as an institutional sacrificial lamb. But the only question is: for what? His office offered the following:

Speaker Boehner believes that the first job of any Speaker is to protect this institution and, as we saw yesterday with the Holy Father, it is the one thing that unites and inspires us all.

The Speaker's plan was to serve only through the end of last year. Leader Cantor's loss in his primary changed that calculation.

The Speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution.

He is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his Speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the Speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30.

So Boehner is protecting the institution of the House, which he somehow confuses with the Pope? Even though the Pope did not unite and inspire all of Boehner's caucus (typically, only the Democrats were united). The Catholic back-bencher who boycotted the Pope to show his displease with the Pope's concern over global warming is decidedly out of step with American Catholics, but he's much more in tune with Boehner's caucus than Boehner himself is—and that is the root of Boehner's problem.

Boehner is presiding over a House divided—and sub-divided—against itself, and his real failure is simply to recognize that fact and face up to it, however much it might have required a “profile in courage.” It would have actually done his own party a world of good. He could have passed the Senate's bipartisan immigration reform bill, if only he'd been willing to do so with votes from both parties, rather than from Republicans alone.  On the one hand, he gives lip-service to bipartisanship and responsible leadership, but on the other hand, he has repeatedly failed to act in that way. So now, because of his failure, immigration is not an issue Republicans have helped deal with, it's become the launching pad of Donald Trump's campaign, which in turn has unleashed a whole new army of demons for the GOP to wrestle with in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.

There may be little doubt that if Boehner had passed immigration reform, it would have cost him his speakership. But he's lost his speakership anyway, and what does he have to show for it?  Only the record of having secured a visit from the Pope—which surely heart warming, and tear-jerking, and all. But if one thinks just for a moment about actually doing anything based on what Pope Francis had to say, then there's a whole different reason for Boehner's tears to start flowing again.

And those tears, sadly, would only be the beginning. Because the history of failed GOP speakerships touched on above is only an aspect of the deeper problem, which goes to the very nature of the party itself. The GOP was born from the ashes of the old Whig Party, but it was the only, or even the first party to so emerge. Before the GOP rose to prominence, the virulently anti-immigrant American Party, commonly known as the “Know-nothings,” were the most promising party to replace the Whigs. They won 51 House seat in 1854, while the Whigs were still on their last legs, before being eclipsed by the Republicans in 1856. When the Whigs collapsed, their remnants could have gone either way. One direction was anti-immigrant, the other was anti-slavery—although fretfully at first.

But the modern GOP has spent the last five decades courting those sentimentally opposed to its anti-slavery origins as “the Party of Lincoln,” and the last 10 years, at least, reviving the anti-immigrant sentiments on which the Know-nothings were founded. As confused as Boehner may be about his role, his responsibilities, his place in the order of things, it is only a small part of the much larger confusion that the GOP as a whole has been wallowing in for years—and, sadly, dragging the rest of America along with it.

The more things change, as Boehner steps down, the more we should expect them to stay the same—only worse. Perhaps even much, much worse. There will be plenty more tears to come.

Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner was his usual weepy self as Pope Francis spoke to a joint meeting of Congress. Boehner, a Catholic, had invited three popes to address Congress, and Francis finally took him up on the offer—a first in U.S. history. So it wasn't that surprising to see Boehner, in the background, leaking like a water faucet in disrepair. Only now, we can see those tears in a different light, as Boehner announced his stunning resignation from Congress, effective at the end of October.

There's little doubt that the proximal cause of  Boehner leaving is the GOP's internal fight over whether to do another government shutdown—this time, aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood, an organization that (at 45 percent) is currently viewed about three more favorably than Congress.

But it's equally clear the push to oust Boehner has bubbling for some time, though characteristically not with much method or discipline. In late July, North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows surprised everyone with a motion to vacate the chair, which Politico described as “an extraordinarily rare procedural move that represents the most serious expression of opposition to Boehner’s speakership,” going on to note:

GOP leaders were taken completely by surprise. Meadows, a second-term Republican, hadn’t even asked for a meeting with Boehner or other top Republicans to air his gripes.

Boehner had faced a challenge to his leadership before, but not in his most recent election. So the ebbs and flows of opposition have remained relatively opaque, aided by a generally incurious press. Rachel Maddow represents a distinctly discordant view, having repeatedly run segments arguing that “John Boehner is bad at his job.” But it can be argued that Maddow is wrong to blame Boehner for problems that are much bigger then the office he holds, or even the GOP House caucus.

Indeed, viewed through an institutional lens, Boehner's troubles go back much further, encompassing the all three of his GOP predecessors. In 1998, Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker, and from Congress, after the GOP lost seats in mid-term elections after intensely pursuing a Clinton impeachment agenda. Just days after the election, CNN reported, “Faced with a brewing rebellion within the Republican Party over the disappointing midterm election, House Speaker Newt Gingrich made the stunning decision Friday to step down not just from the speakership but also from Congress.”

Gingrich's replacement, Louisiana's Bob Livingston, resigned just over a month later [video], before even taking office, after his own extra-marital affairs were revealed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. Amazingly, Livingston, who had been part of Gingrich's leadership team devoted to hounding Clinton from office, said in his remarks, “I want so very much to pacify and cool our raging tempers and return to an era when differences were confined to the debate, and not a personal attack or assassination of character.”

Livingston's deliberately low-key successor, Dennis Hastert, had some troubles in office, but managed to survive with dignity and reputation reasonably intact through eight years of leadership—the longest tenure ever for a Republican—until Democrats retook the House in the 2006 mid-terms. It was only this year that he was criminally charged for lying to federal agents and evading financial reporting requirements, reportedly as part of an attempt to conceal sexual misconduct with a minor, which in turn raised new doubts about his handling of similar problems in the Mark Foley affair, just prior to the 2006 election.

At one level, this record speaks to a lack of personal morality—a key GOP hobby horse for at least the past half century, if not virtually forever. But more deeply, it highlights the inherent dangers stirred up by running political campaigns as moral crusades, which simply cannot be sustained as a means of government in a secular, pluralistic system. The attempt to demonize Planned Parenthood as evil incarnate involves spectacular levels of fraud and deception. Such deception may be sustainable within the bubble of the GOP base, driving the latest mania which appears to have exhausted Boehner's endurance, but it cannot prevail in the polity at large, unless the elite media are fully on board—as they were in attacking ACORN, or selling the Iraq War—but not for this fight.

Thus, Boehner bows out as an institutional sacrificial lamb. But the only question is: for what? His office offered the following:

Speaker Boehner believes that the first job of any Speaker is to protect this institution and, as we saw yesterday with the Holy Father, it is the one thing that unites and inspires us all.

The Speaker's plan was to serve only through the end of last year. Leader Cantor's loss in his primary changed that calculation.

The Speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution.

He is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his Speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the Speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30.

So Boehner is protecting the institution of the House, which he somehow confuses with the Pope? Even though the Pope did not unite and inspire all of Boehner's caucus (typically, only the Democrats were united). The Catholic back-bencher who boycotted the Pope to show his displease with the Pope's concern over global warming is decidedly out of step with American Catholics, but he's much more in tune with Boehner's caucus than Boehner himself is—and that is the root of Boehner's problem.

Boehner is presiding over a House divided—and sub-divided—against itself, and his real failure is simply to recognize that fact and face up to it, however much it might have required a “profile in courage.” It would have actually done his own party a world of good. He could have passed the Senate's bipartisan immigration reform bill, if only he'd been willing to do so with votes from both parties, rather than from Republicans alone.  On the one hand, he gives lip-service to bipartisanship and responsible leadership, but on the other hand, he has repeatedly failed to act in that way. So now, because of his failure, immigration is not an issue Republicans have helped deal with, it's become the launching pad of Donald Trump's campaign, which in turn has unleashed a whole new army of demons for the GOP to wrestle with in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.

There may be little doubt that if Boehner had passed immigration reform, it would have cost him his speakership. But he's lost his speakership anyway, and what does he have to show for it?  Only the record of having secured a visit from the Pope—which surely heart warming, and tear-jerking, and all. But if one thinks just for a moment about actually doing anything based on what Pope Francis had to say, then there's a whole different reason for Boehner's tears to start flowing again.

And those tears, sadly, would only be the beginning. Because the history of failed GOP speakerships touched on above is only an aspect of the deeper problem, which goes to the very nature of the party itself. The GOP was born from the ashes of the old Whig Party, but it was the only, or even the first party to so emerge. Before the GOP rose to prominence, the virulently anti-immigrant American Party, commonly known as the “Know-nothings,” were the most promising party to replace the Whigs. They won 51 House seat in 1854, while the Whigs were still on their last legs, before being eclipsed by the Republicans in 1856. When the Whigs collapsed, their remnants could have gone either way. One direction was anti-immigrant, the other was anti-slavery—although fretfully at first.

But the modern GOP has spent the last five decades courting those sentimentally opposed to its anti-slavery origins as “the Party of Lincoln,” and the last 10 years, at least, reviving the anti-immigrant sentiments on which the Know-nothings were founded. As confused as Boehner may be about his role, his responsibilities, his place in the order of things, it is only a small part of the much larger confusion that the GOP as a whole has been wallowing in for years—and, sadly, dragging the rest of America along with it.

The more things change, as Boehner steps down, the more we should expect them to stay the same—only worse. Perhaps even much, much worse. There will be plenty more tears to come.

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The most bizarre GOP primary ad so far: Conservative challenger suggests she’ll shoot moderate Republicans, or something

RINO: Republican In Name Only. With Republican intra-party bickering reaching inane levels and the cuckservative slur gaining popularity as the insult du jour, I guess being tarred as a RINO isn't the worst thing that could happen to an incumbent House Republican -- unless of course your Tea Party challenger cuts an ad declaring she's "hunting RINOs" before she takes aim and fires off a shotgun. Mother Jones' Tim Murphy first uncovered this gem of a campaign ad by North Carolina conservative activist, Kay Daly, that aired in the Raleigh market during last week's GOP debate. The 30-second jampacked ad is a doozy, complete with gratuitous swipes at feminists, same-sex couples, and undocumented immigrants but it's target is embattled North Carolina Rep. Renee Ellmers.  Elected to Congress during the 2010 Tea Party wave, Ellmers has been dogged by conservative furor since leading a group of mostly Republican women in blocking a 20-week abortion ban earlier this year. She also irked conservatives with her refusal to support a bill undoing President Obama's executive actions on immigration. Ellmers has faced tough primaries in the past, most recently in 2014, before going on to beat her conservative challenger and defeat "American Idol" winner Clay Aiken in the general election -- but this time her challenger is swinging for the fences. The ad, narrated by a man who charges that "this feminist" (referring to Ellmers) is a RINO, is Daly's first ad of the 2016 campaign but makes quite the impression. The ad features a number of unflattering photos and screengrabs of Ellmers, while running down a litany of her alleged heresies. Ellmers, the ad goes on to charge has “voted to let homosexuals pretend they are married” and “voted to fund Obamacare and to raise the debt ceiling twice to pay for abortions in D.C. and fund Planned Butcherhood." The ad also charges Ellmers “voted to let convicted child molesters stay in America.” At the end, Daly appears with a shotgun and turns to the camera to declare, “I’m hunting for RINOS” before asking, "care to join me?": Daly, a former North Carolina GOP spokeswoman, seemingly has devoted her entire campaign website to bashing Ellmers' record as a conservative. But her website does mention that she counts Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito as “friends," along with noting endorsements from the likes of Alan Keyes and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.  Daly is not Ellmers' only primary challenger. As Mother Jones notes, "Her top primary challenger, a former county GOP chair named Jim Duncan, is neck and neck with her in fundraising."

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David Vitter’s Louisiana nightmare: He’s losing his race for governor — and he has only himself (and Bobby Jindal) to blame

The Bobby Jindal experiment began in 2008. For most left-leaning Louisianans, Jindal’s election as governor wasn’t great news, but neither was it terrible. Awkward and amateurish, Jindal nevertheless appeared smart and competent. Most people (myself included) assumed he’d do a reasonably good job. As the country now knows, Jindal is a deplorable hack with a near-heroic incapacity for shame. His record of failures in Louisiana is spectacular and too long to catalog here (If you’ve got the time, I noted a few back in May). What’s interesting now is the race to succeed Jindal. For months, David Vitter, the unchaste Republican senator, was considered the frontrunner. Which is not terribly surprising. Louisiana is a red state. The demographics, particularly after Hurricane Katrina's displacement of African American voters, heavily favor Republicans. Vitter, despite his penchant for prostitutes, seemed to be coasting to the Governor’s mansion on money and name recognition alone. But that’s no longer the case.There are signs that Jindal’s transcendentally awful tenure (his approval rating at home is hovering around 32%) may result in the election of a Democratic governor in Louisiana. Vitter, for all this ethical issues, was easily re-elected in 2010, but that was a landslide year for the GOP and Vitter wasn’t running away from a Republican governor’s calamitous 8-year record. Not so today. Vitter is in serious trouble, and his desperation is increasingly obvious. According to a poll released this week by Public Policy Polling, Vitter’s brand is badly damaged. He’s now viewed unfavorably by 51% of Louisianans and by 44% of Louisiana Republicans (both numbers have risen considerably in the last year or so). The most shocking numbers, however, are the head-to-head results between Vitter and the lone Democratic candidate, John Bel Edwards. As of now, Edwards lead Vitter 50/38 among likely voters, almost a complete reversal of the numbers a year ago. This is great news for Louisiana Democrats. Vitter, whose clumsy cocksmanship has become a national punchline, would be a disaster for Louisiana as governor. For the unfamiliar, Vitter was the target of the famous “D.C. Madam Scandal.” As the senator himself confessed, he committed “serious sins" as a member of the House of Representatives -- including soliciting prostitutes twice during House votes and finagling FEC regulations to use campaign money to pay off legal fees. The Vitter camp's worry about these problems is showing in its campaign tactics. Vitter can’t run on his record (personal or otherwise) and, thanks to Jindal, the Republican brand is too toxic to lean on in the state. So Vitter (who, incidentally, is from the same district as David Duke, the former Klansman and Louisiana state representative) has decided to dog whistle to his white nativist base instead. The disgraced senator has focused primarily on two non-issues: fomenting outrage over New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s proposal to relocate Confederate monuments and on wildly exaggerated claims about food stamp fraud in Louisiana. In a state with an eroding coastline and crises in health care and higher education, this is what Vitter is talking about, and everyone knows why. As Louisiana blogger Lamar White noted, “David Vitter apparently believes that, in order to win, he must appeal, once again, to white racists.” It’s too soon to say whether Vitter’s racist gambit will work. But most observers agree that his lumbering campaign is a sign of desperation. James Carville, whom I recently spoke to about the race, is surprised at how poorly Vitter is doing. Carville, who returned to Louisiana several years ago, says “Vitter is having a rougher time than I expected.” “His sex scandal is probably the third reason people don’t like him,” Carville concluded. “Although they don’t get along, Vitter has the stench of Jindal on him. He’s also from Washington [at a time when anti-establishment sentiment is high]. And then there’s the atmospherics of the sex scandal, which are always a problem for Vitter.” Vitter, regrettably, may still win this election, if for no other reason than that the demographics benefit him. He also has considerably more money than any of the other candidates. So far, Vitter has spent most of his time attacking his two Republican rivals. His strategy, as Carville pointed out, is “to get in a runoff with Edwards.” (All candidates compete in an October 24 "jungle primary," and if no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the top two finishers advance to a November 21 runoff.) If that happens (and it seems likely), Vitter will be more than competitive, especially if the supporters of the other Republicans flock to him over Edwards. Whatever happens, the strength of the Democratic candidate in this race says something significant about Jindal and Vitter. It shows how uncommonly bad Jindal’s reign as governor has been. So bad, in fact, that disdain for Jindal is the one thing the preponderance of Louisianans share at the moment. No matter how fast he runs away, Vitter still smells of Jindal: They’re from the same party, the same part of the state, and they’ve had similar career trajectories – clearly that’s not lost on voters. Vitter’s foibles also reveal how weak a candidate he really is. It turns out that Louisianans notice (however reluctantly) when a moralizing family values conservative is caught whoremongering on the public’s dime. And that, if nothing else, is encouraging. The Bobby Jindal experiment began in 2008. For most left-leaning Louisianans, Jindal’s election as governor wasn’t great news, but neither was it terrible. Awkward and amateurish, Jindal nevertheless appeared smart and competent. Most people (myself included) assumed he’d do a reasonably good job. As the country now knows, Jindal is a deplorable hack with a near-heroic incapacity for shame. His record of failures in Louisiana is spectacular and too long to catalog here (If you’ve got the time, I noted a few back in May). What’s interesting now is the race to succeed Jindal. For months, David Vitter, the unchaste Republican senator, was considered the frontrunner. Which is not terribly surprising. Louisiana is a red state. The demographics, particularly after Hurricane Katrina's displacement of African American voters, heavily favor Republicans. Vitter, despite his penchant for prostitutes, seemed to be coasting to the Governor’s mansion on money and name recognition alone. But that’s no longer the case.There are signs that Jindal’s transcendentally awful tenure (his approval rating at home is hovering around 32%) may result in the election of a Democratic governor in Louisiana. Vitter, for all this ethical issues, was easily re-elected in 2010, but that was a landslide year for the GOP and Vitter wasn’t running away from a Republican governor’s calamitous 8-year record. Not so today. Vitter is in serious trouble, and his desperation is increasingly obvious. According to a poll released this week by Public Policy Polling, Vitter’s brand is badly damaged. He’s now viewed unfavorably by 51% of Louisianans and by 44% of Louisiana Republicans (both numbers have risen considerably in the last year or so). The most shocking numbers, however, are the head-to-head results between Vitter and the lone Democratic candidate, John Bel Edwards. As of now, Edwards lead Vitter 50/38 among likely voters, almost a complete reversal of the numbers a year ago. This is great news for Louisiana Democrats. Vitter, whose clumsy cocksmanship has become a national punchline, would be a disaster for Louisiana as governor. For the unfamiliar, Vitter was the target of the famous “D.C. Madam Scandal.” As the senator himself confessed, he committed “serious sins" as a member of the House of Representatives -- including soliciting prostitutes twice during House votes and finagling FEC regulations to use campaign money to pay off legal fees. The Vitter camp's worry about these problems is showing in its campaign tactics. Vitter can’t run on his record (personal or otherwise) and, thanks to Jindal, the Republican brand is too toxic to lean on in the state. So Vitter (who, incidentally, is from the same district as David Duke, the former Klansman and Louisiana state representative) has decided to dog whistle to his white nativist base instead. The disgraced senator has focused primarily on two non-issues: fomenting outrage over New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s proposal to relocate Confederate monuments and on wildly exaggerated claims about food stamp fraud in Louisiana. In a state with an eroding coastline and crises in health care and higher education, this is what Vitter is talking about, and everyone knows why. As Louisiana blogger Lamar White noted, “David Vitter apparently believes that, in order to win, he must appeal, once again, to white racists.” It’s too soon to say whether Vitter’s racist gambit will work. But most observers agree that his lumbering campaign is a sign of desperation. James Carville, whom I recently spoke to about the race, is surprised at how poorly Vitter is doing. Carville, who returned to Louisiana several years ago, says “Vitter is having a rougher time than I expected.” “His sex scandal is probably the third reason people don’t like him,” Carville concluded. “Although they don’t get along, Vitter has the stench of Jindal on him. He’s also from Washington [at a time when anti-establishment sentiment is high]. And then there’s the atmospherics of the sex scandal, which are always a problem for Vitter.” Vitter, regrettably, may still win this election, if for no other reason than that the demographics benefit him. He also has considerably more money than any of the other candidates. So far, Vitter has spent most of his time attacking his two Republican rivals. His strategy, as Carville pointed out, is “to get in a runoff with Edwards.” (All candidates compete in an October 24 "jungle primary," and if no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the top two finishers advance to a November 21 runoff.) If that happens (and it seems likely), Vitter will be more than competitive, especially if the supporters of the other Republicans flock to him over Edwards. Whatever happens, the strength of the Democratic candidate in this race says something significant about Jindal and Vitter. It shows how uncommonly bad Jindal’s reign as governor has been. So bad, in fact, that disdain for Jindal is the one thing the preponderance of Louisianans share at the moment. No matter how fast he runs away, Vitter still smells of Jindal: They’re from the same party, the same part of the state, and they’ve had similar career trajectories – clearly that’s not lost on voters. Vitter’s foibles also reveal how weak a candidate he really is. It turns out that Louisianans notice (however reluctantly) when a moralizing family values conservative is caught whoremongering on the public’s dime. And that, if nothing else, is encouraging.

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Fox News’ Shepard Smith thinks Leonardo DiCaprio painted the “Mona Lisa”

Leonardo DiCaprio wears a lot of hats: celebrated actor, influential environmental activist, founding member of the pussy posse, not to mention that weird newsboy cap he tries to rock sometimes. One hat he has not donned, however, is that of 15th century Renaissance painter, something that Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was a little confused about when he credited DiCaprio with painting his namesake Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" on his newscast yesterday. Watch: https://twitter.com/StevensonErin/sta... C’mon, Shep -- you should know that Leo only paints French girls. (And the occasional Sports Illustrated model, probably). Leonardo DiCaprio wears a lot of hats: celebrated actor, influential environmental activist, founding member of the pussy posse, not to mention that weird newsboy cap he tries to rock sometimes. One hat he has not donned, however, is that of 15th century Renaissance painter, something that Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was a little confused about when he credited DiCaprio with painting his namesake Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" on his newscast yesterday. Watch: https://twitter.com/StevensonErin/sta... C’mon, Shep -- you should know that Leo only paints French girls. (And the occasional Sports Illustrated model, probably). Leonardo DiCaprio wears a lot of hats: celebrated actor, influential environmental activist, founding member of the pussy posse, not to mention that weird newsboy cap he tries to rock sometimes. One hat he has not donned, however, is that of 15th century Renaissance painter, something that Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was a little confused about when he credited DiCaprio with painting his namesake Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" on his newscast yesterday. Watch: https://twitter.com/StevensonErin/sta... C’mon, Shep -- you should know that Leo only paints French girls. (And the occasional Sports Illustrated model, probably).

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