Why Trump is here to stay

There has been a lot of media chatter today about Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about Carly Fiorina’s looks and her response to the insult, prompting once again the age-old question of whether it is possible for American politics to get even more trivial and the sad fact is that the answer always seem to be ‘yes’. Another flap the media is drooling over is Trump and the sanctimonious Ben Carson fighting it over who has more religious faith, as if it matters at all to governing. The media loves it when candidates trash talk each other and these will dominate the news cycle for a few days.
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The Republicans can’t even lose according to plan

We are witnessing yet another example of how Republican infighting is creating a chaotic legislative situation. The party has long since morphed into something in which the labels moderate and conservative no longer fit the factions within it. Instead we now have two groups better described as extremists and nutcases, the former being those who hold the extreme positions on economic issues that their oligarchic bosses demand and the extreme positions on social issues that their Tea Party base expects. This group controls the leadership of the party.
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John Kasich is also an extremist

Ohio governor John Kasich has been getting some good press following his performance in the first Republican debate because he seemed to come across as somewhat moderate in his views. But Kasich appears moderate only when compared with some of the more extreme anti-gay, anti-Obamacare stances taken by his rivals. It is such a sad reflection on Republican positions that all Kasich had to say is that he attended a same-sex wedding and supported Medicare expansion to be seen as some kind of enlightened person.
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Past mass deportations

I had ridiculed Donald Trump’s call to deport all undocumented immigrants as well as their children born in the US who are, of course, US citizens. I felt that not only was it unfeasible in practice to round up and deport 11 million people, it was unthinkable and illegal in the case of the children. So I was shocked to learn on NPR today that such a mass deportation had in fact occurred in the past during the time of the Great Depression when the pressure for jobs resulted in Mexican-Americans and their US-born children being sent away.
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Did Kim Davis make a strategic error?

[UPDATE: Federal judge David Bunning has ordered that Davis can be released from jail since five of the six deputy clerks have been issuing licenses to all qualified people and “provided that she shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.” You can read the judge’s order here. It is not clear as yet if Davis agrees to those conditions. She is probably checking with Jesus who is wondering why the hell this woman keeps bugging him with her petty concerns.]

Rowan County clerk Kim Davis continues to be in jail for contempt for defying a federal judge’s order to issue marriage licenses. She has asked the governor of Kentucky to release her from jail so that, according to her lawyers, “she can do her job”, but he has refused to do so, which seems appropriate since not doing her job is what landed her in jail in the first place.
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As idea whose time has come?

Remember when Mitt Romney proposed the idea of self-deportations for undocumented immigrants during the 2012 election and the idea sank like a rock? Given the current climate, that now looks like one of the more humane solutions proposed by Republicans and Funny or Die has a report on how Arizona governor Jan Brewer has come up with a practical way of implementing it.
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A party of hyper-ventilators

Just when you thought that politics could not get more trivial in the US, we reach new lows. The decision by president Obama to officially have the traditional name Denali become the official name of the mountain in Alaska that had been called Mt. McKinley should have been a minor news item, relegated to one paragraph in most newspapers except perhaps in Alaska.
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