http://prospect.org/article/how-asian-americans-became-democrats-0

The last two decades have seen a major shift in the party preferences of Asian Americans, but they're still not deeply engaged in civic life.

As a force at the ballot box, Asian Americans caught the media’s attention in 2012, when exit polls showed that they supported Barack Obama with 73 percent of their votes, a level exceeded only by African Americans. That year, Obama also won a big majority of Latinos, but his strong showing among Asian Americans was a much bigger surprise. In 1992, the majority of Asian Americans had voted for George H.W. Bush, creating the impression that as an upwardly mobile and affluent group, they would continue to vote Republican. But 20 years later, in an astounding shift, Asian Americans moved 40 points toward the Democrats in presidential elections. Since they’re also the fastest growing racial group in the United States, the change has major implications for the future of American politics.

While the attention to Asian Americans in 2012 was long overdue, much of the commentary was short-sighted and misleading. By that year, the high level of Asian American support for Democrats should not have come as a surprise; a leftward shift had been building from one election cycle to the next. Some pundits also misread the sources of the change. In 1992, writing in The Washington Post, Stanley Karnow had claimed that Asian immigrants were more likely to identify as Republican because they valued individual responsibility and free enterprise and many of them had fled communist countries. In 2012, New York Times columnist David Brooks claimed that Asian Americans voted Democratic because they came from cultures that do not put a high value on individualism and instead approve government intervention. If cultural values can be used to explain both voting Republican and voting Democratic, they may not explain either one very well. The actions of parties and political leaders over the past two decades provide a far better explanation for the politics of Asian Americans today than do the disparate cultural traditions that immigrants have brought with them.

To understand the shifting political allegiances of Asian Americans, we need to look closely at the evidence of their political attitudes and behavior. Recent years have seen a significant increase in survey data on Asian Americans from such sources as the collaborative National Asian American Survey (NAAS) and AAPI Data, a project that I direct. These and other surveys help to correct some mistaken explanations for the shift of Asian Americans to the Democrats, but they also show another pattern that blunts the impact of that shift. Despite their high average levels of education and income, Asian Americans have among the lowest levels of civic and political participation in the United States.

This low level of participation should worry not just Democrats but anyone concerned about the future of race relations in America. The juxtaposition of large-scale Asian immigration, high levels of economic achievement, and low levels of civic integration runs the risk of reverting Asian Americans to a place they have occupied through much of U.S. history: a “middleman minority” in America’s racial order, ignored by the powerful and resented by the powerless. Any effort to make sense of Asian Americans’ politics today has to begin with that historical background.

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http://samuel-warde.com/2016/07/hypocrisy-amok-at-anti-gay-gop-convention/

Hypocrisy runs loose as male escorts in Cleveland are making crazy money thanks to the anti-gay GOP who have turned out to be their best clients.



The 2016 Republican platform has been called “the most anti-LGBT platform in history” by the Log Cabin Republicans, the best known gay conservative group in the country.

The platform condemns “redefining sex discrimination to include sexual orientation or other categories,” referencing trans Americans. The platform also suggests supporting gay conversion therapy in a section drafted by Tony Perkins, an RNC delegate and president of the Family Research Council, a group which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled “extremist” and describes “its real specialty” as “defaming gays and lesbians.”

“We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children,” reads the section, which Time reported was initially more extreme and explicit in its original draft.

At the RNC convention in Cleveland however, the Republicans seem to have set out to prove that people like to do the things they aren’t supposed to be doing.

According to an article in New York Post, business for gay prostitutes couldn’t be better. “Business has been way better. I’ve seen 10 clients so far,” said one hustler. One gigolo who charges $250 an hour said that since Monday, when the convention kicked off, he’s been making about $800 per day. Another said he’s made $1600 in the first two days.

The clientele, along with being evidently first-timers, are described as being mostly married white guys in their 40s. “One of them was from Texas and visiting for the convention. He said he was a politician.”

Oddly, according to the article, female prostitutes aren’t doing nearly as well – with one telling the Post that business is actually slower than usual.

The spike in numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise, and it certainly isn’t to many of the male prostitutes in Cleveland. As the post writes:

One of the hookers said he wasn’t surprised that the convention—filled with politicians who openly oppose gay marriage—brought such a boom in business.

‘When it comes to anything people aren’t supposed to be doing, they like to do it,’ the escort said;
‘The Republicans have a lot of delegates in the closet, let’s put it that way.’

Once again the GOP has not only made their own hypocrisy clear but, as usual that there are deep dark secrets looming below their supposed veneer of purity.

Islamophobe On Tumblr Gets Completely Owned

https://www.good.is/articles/islamophobe-schooled-on-tumblr

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Recent terrorist attacks in France, Turkey, and the U.S. have stoked the flames of Islamophobia throughout the West. And nowhere was it been more apparent than last night at the Republican National Convention when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich went on an anti-Muslim rant where he claimed there were 16 million ISIS supporters in Pakistan. With fiery racist rhetoric coming out of a major political party, it’s not shocking that Islamophobes are becoming more comfortable spreading their hate in public.

Recently, a Tumblr user asked other users to “Imagine a world without Muslims” by posting the photo above. But what the user didn’t realize was that by blaming the actions of a few extremists on a population over 1.5 billion people he was setting himself up to get completely owned. Tumblr user whatpath responded to the racist meme with the most amazing list of Muslim achievements throughout history.

Yes, lets imagine a world WITHOUT MUSLIMS, shall we?

Without Muslims you wouldn’t have:

Coffee

Cameras

Experimental Physics

Chess

Soap

Shampoo

Perfume/spirits

Irrigation

Crank-shaft, internal combustion engine, valves, pistons

Combination locks

Architectural innovation (pointed arch -European Gothic cathedrals adopted this technique as it made the building much stronger, rose windows, dome buildings, round towers, etc.)

Surgical instruments

Anesthesia

Windmill

Treatment of Cowpox

Fountain pen

Numbering system

Algebra/Trigonometry

Modern Cryptology

3 course meal (soup, meat/fish, fruit/nuts)

Crystal glasses

Carpets

Checks

Gardens used for beauty and meditation instead of for herbs and kitchen.

University

Optics

Music

Toothbrush

Hospitals

Bathing

Quilting

Mariner’s Compass

Soft drinks

Pendulum

Braille

Cosmetics

Plastic surgery

Calligraphy

Manufacturing of paper and cloth

It was a Muslim who realized that light ENTERS our eyes, unlike the Greeks who thought we EMITTED rays, and so invented a camera from this discovery.

It was a Muslim who first tried to FLY in 852, even though it is the Wright Brothers who have taken the credit.

It was a Muslim by the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan who was known as the founder of modern Chemistry. He transformed alchemy into chemistry. He invented: distillation, purification, oxidation, evaporation, and filtration. He also discovered sulfuric and nitric acid.

It is a Muslim, by the name of Al-Jazari who is known as the father of robotics.

It was a Muslim who was the architect for Henry V’s castle.

It was a Muslim who invented hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes, a technique still used today.

It was a Muslim who actually discovered inoculation, not Jenner and Pasteur to treat cowpox. The West just brought it over from Turkey

It was Muslims who contributed much to mathematics like Algebra and Trigonometry, which was imported over to Europe 300 years later to Fibonnaci and the rest.

It was Muslims who discovered that the Earth was round 500 years before Galileo did.

The list goes on…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/magazine/ted-cruz-might-be-the-only-republican-who-understands-donald-trump.html



Viewed through the lens of conventional politics, Ted Cruz’s performance last night was the sort of thing you just don’t do at the Republican National Convention. But we’re pretty far removed from conventional politics by now, aren’t we? If that wasn’t clear before the lights went up in the Quicken Loans Arena on Monday, it certainly was by the time Trump made his from-the-shadows entrance that night. Within minutes, you could find photos of the scene paired with shots of “the Undertaker” entering a crazed arena that made overt what we already suspected: that this week’s festivities were going to be as much W.W.E. as R.N.C.

And that’s what I like about what Cruz did last night: He embraced the professional-wrestling ethic that Trump has so fully imposed on this campaign. He leaned full-on into the spectacle. The half-baked conciliatory gestures that erstwhile Trump antagonists like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and Scott Walker have offered so far have been the work of mere politicians; Cruz proved himself to be the only one among the defeated who is truly playing Trump’s game. On some level, I think Trump must have respected it. The nominee’s entrance into the hall just as the hecklers were getting going at the smugly grinning Cruz was a cinematic nod — not quite a wink between the combatants, but something awfully close.

“Party unity” is a lie. Everyone here in Cleveland knows that. Any attempts to disguise the obvious with another hostage-video testimonial like Rubio’s last night just makes your teeth hurt after a while. If voters really crave “authenticity,” why not just be authentic? Is there really anyone that would not see as “authentic” Cruz’s response to a man who had insulted his wife, questioned his citizenship and accused his father of being complicit in killing John F. Kennedy?

In most cases, being booed offstage on national television is not a great look. But we’re well beyond “in most cases” in this campaign. Yes, Cruz’s nonendorsement speech won him the ire of Trump delegates, “party loyalists” (what even are those now?) and the Donald’s political butler, Chris Christie; Christie called Cruz’s speech “awful” and “selfish,” which in turn led Cruz’s former campaign manager, Jeff Roe, to say that Christie had “turned over his political testicles long ago.” But Cruz played the arena, as Triple-H or the Donald would. He understood that Trump doesn’t just want his former opponents to endorse him — he expects them to submit to him. This nominee does not consider it his job to reach out and favor his vanquished opponents with magnanimity and grace. His willingness to humiliate the likes of Christie, mocking his weight (“No more Oreos”), among other things, should make that obvious.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/christian-extremist-shoots-trans-woman-in-the-face-but-in-pences-indiana-its-not-a-hate-crime/


When is a hate crime not a hate crime? If it happens in vice presidential nominee Mike Pence’s state of Indiana, it cannot be a hate crime: Indiana does not have a hate crimes statute. So, for Crystal Cash, a transgender woman who was shot in the face, police will not be pursuing hate crime charges against the man who Cash alleges shouted an anti-gay slur at her before shooting her.

Cash, 55, is currently unable to speak after being shot in the face at her Perfect You Permanent Cosmetics shop in Evansville last week.

The case has been complicated by the police — who have implied that Cash is a prostitute — and by whether her assailant, identified as Gerald Duane Lewis (AKA Gadiell Ben Israel), belongs to an organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a hate group.

The SPLC identifies Lewis/Israel’s church as violently anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT. The Israel United in Christ Church, on its Tumblr page, denounces interracial marriage as a sin and an abomination, and also commands its followers not to vote. In recent posts, it commented upon a recent house fire that killed seven children that it was a lesson to be learned about “defiling the sabbath.” The organization posted a note on its website denying that Lewis was a current member of the group.