Tag Archives: mexico

Immigration Reform Is Dead Because of Bizarro Obama

by ErmaHarrvnkxahy Posted on March 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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John Boehner says he really, truly wants to pass an immigration reform bill, but he can only do it if President Obama gives him more help. Steve Benen isn’t buying it:

To a very real extent, Obama has already done what he’s supposed to do: he’s helped create an environment conducive to success. The president and his team have cultivated public demand for immigration reform and helped assemble a broad coalition – business leaders, labor, immigrant advocates, the faith community — to work towards a common goal.

But that’s apparently not what Boehner is talking about. Rather, according to the Speaker, immigration reform can’t pass because House Republicans don’t trust the president to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

What’s Obama supposed to do about this? “I told the president I’ll leave that to him,” Boehner told the Enquirer.

I think that translates as “nothing is going to happen.” Boehner’s excuse, however, isn’t that tea party Republicans are obsessed about amnesty and fences and reconquista and all that. His excuse is that Obama has been so brazenly lawless that Republicans simply can’t trust him to enforce whatever law they pass. This is all part of the surreal “Obama the tyrant” schtick that’s swamped the Republican Party lately. Every executive order, every new agency interpretation of a rule, every Justice Department or IRS memo—they’re all evidence that Obama is turning America into a New World gulag. Never mind that these are all routine things that every president engages in. Never mind that they just as routinely get resolved in court and Obama will win some and lose some. Never mind any of that. Obama is an Alinskyite despot who is slowly but steadily sweeping away the last vestiges of democracy in this once great nation.

Barack Obama! A president whose biggest problem is probably just the opposite: he’s never managed to get comfortable throwing his weight around to get what he wants. He’s too dedicated to rational discourse and the grand bargain. He hires guys who want to nudge, not mandate. He wants to persuade, not coerce. That’s our modern-day Robespierre.

Strange times, no?

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Immigration Reform Is Dead Because of Bizarro Obama

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Chart of the Day: Why US Economic Sanctions on Russia Won’t Have Much Impact

by czwcqtpj Posted on March 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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My view of economic sanctions has been strongly influenced by Dan Drezner, who tells us (if I can oversimplify for the sake of a blog post) that they basically don’t work. That’s not an ironclad rule, and there are certain situations where they tend to have some effect. However, one of the primary conditions for success is that the sanctions be broadly applied. If it’s just one country, they almost never work. The target of the sanctions will simply bear the loss and increase its trade with other partners.

This is especially apropos to our current situation with Russia. Our ability to impose sanctions is limited to begin with thanks to our obligations under the WTO. But that hardly even matters. What really matters is that our trade with Russia is minuscule. Cutting off a piece of our trade would hardly impact them at all. Most of Russia’s trade is with Europe and Asia, so no sanctions regime has even a chance of working unless they agree to join in. So far they haven’t, and for the obvious reason: they have a lot of trade with Russia. Sanctions would hurt them as much as it would hurt Putin.

The chart below, via Danny Vinik, tells the tale. We simply don’t have much trade leverage with Russia. (The export chart looks pretty much the same.) Until Drezner weighs in on this to tell me different, I’d say this is the definitive answer to the question of whether economic sanctions are likely to have any effect on Russia’s conduct.

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Chart of the Day: Why US Economic Sanctions on Russia Won’t Have Much Impact

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Please Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

by SamanthaTerry Posted on March 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago I watched Othello for the first time.1 By chance, I had never seen or read it before. But that Shakespeare. He sure had us humans figured out, didn’t he? Here is Emilia, responding to Desdemona’s plea that she had never given Othello cause to doubt her fidelity:

But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

Why do I mention this? Because of Aaron Carroll’s tidy little summary of some Brendan Nyhan research on how to persuade people that the MMR vaccine is safe:

When they gave evidence that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, that actually made parents who were already skittish about vaccines less likely to get their child one in the future. When they showed images of sick children to parents it increased their belief that vaccines caused autism. When they told a dramatic story about an infant in danger because he wasn’t immunized, it increased parents’ beliefs that vaccines had serious side effects.

Basically, it was all depressing. Nothing was effective.

So that’s that. They believe not for cause, but believe just to believe. ‘Tis a monster begot on itself, born on itself. Of course, it’s possible that Nyhan simply didn’t find the right intervention. Or that an intervention from a researcher has no effect, but the same intervention from a family doctor might. Still, Carroll is right: it’s all kind of discouraging. It’s nothing new, but still discouraging.

1It was the 1965 movie version with Laurence Olivier in blackface. Kind of disconcerting. But Frank Finlay was great as Iago.

UPDATE: More here from Dan Kahan, including a reminder that (a) vaccination rates in the US actually haven’t declined over the past decade and (b) freaking out about a nonexistent problem is genuinely unhelpful. Also this:

The NR et al. study is superbly well done and very important. But the lesson it teaches is not that it is “futile” to try to communicate with concerned parents. It’s that it is a bad idea to flood public discourse in a blunderbuss fashion with communications that state or imply that there is a “growing crisis of confidence” in vaccines that is “eroding” immunization rates.

It’s a good idea instead to use valid empirical means to formulate targeted and effective vaccine-safety communication strategies.

Much more at the link.

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Please Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

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Is Putin Making a First Move to De-Escalate?

by EllaBlocker Posted on March 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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From the LA Times:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to a German proposal for international observers to review the tense standoff in Ukraine’s Crimea area, a Kremlin news service dispatch indicated Monday.

The proposal for a “contact group” of mediating foreign diplomats and an observer delegation to assess Moscow’s claims that ethnic Russians are threatened with violence under Ukraine’s new leadership was made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a late Sunday phone call to Putin, her spokesman told journalists in Berlin on Monday.

Is this for real, or is it just a stalling tactic? There’s no telling, of course. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s at least semi-real, since it could provide a convenient excuse to call a halt to things. And that’s something Putin probably wants. I don’t know what his long-term plans in Crimea are, but I doubt that he has any appetite for a military incursion into the rest of Ukraine. That’s not because he’s voluntarily showing a sense of restraint. It’s because Russia just doesn’t have the military to pull it off. A few thousand troops in South Ossetia or Crimea is one thing, but even a minimal military presence in eastern Ukraine would be orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive. Unless Putin has truly gone around the bend and is willing to risk another Afghanistan or another Chechnya, that’s just not in the cards.

A lot of American pundits are pretty cavalier about Russia’s military capabilities, assuming they can do anything they want simply because Putin is such a tough guy. But it’s just not so. The Russian military might be up to an intervention in eastern Ukraine, but it would take pretty much everything they have. This is not the Red Army of old.

It’s also the case that although Putin may put on a brave show, he’s well aware that intervention in Ukraine would unite the West against him in no uncertain terms. Those same pundits who are so cavalier about Russian military strength are also far too willing to take Putin’s bravado at face value. That’s a mistake. He doesn’t want Russia cut off from the West, and neither do his oligarch buddies. He may be willing to pay a price for his incursion into Crimea, but he’s not willing to keep paying forever. As long as Western pressure continues to ratchet up, at some point he’ll start looking for a way out.

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Is Putin Making a First Move to De-Escalate?

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No, Vladimir Putin Is Not a Cunning Geopolitical Chess Player

by ZeldaMoritz Posted on March 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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From House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers:

Putin is playing chess and I think we are playing marbles, and I don’t think it’s even close. They’ve been running circles around us.

This kind of knee-jerk reaction is unsurprising, but it’s also nuts. Has Rogers even been following events in Ukraine lately? The reason Putin has sent troops into Crimea is because everything he’s done over the past year has blown up in his face. This was a last-ditch effort to avoid a fool’s mate, not some deeply-calculated bit of geopolitical strategery.

Make no mistake. All the sanctions and NATO meetings and condemnations from foreign offices in the West won’t have much material effect on Putin’s immediate conduct. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about this stuff: he does, and he’s been bullying and blustering for a long time in a frantic effort to avoid it. Now, however, having failed utterly thanks to ham-handed tactics on his part, he’s finally decided on one last desperation move. Not because the West is helpless to retaliate, but because he’s simply decided he’s willing to bear the cost.1 It’s a sign of weakness, not a show of strength. It’s the price he’s paying for his inability to control events.

1This is why a strong response from the West is a good idea even though it won’t have much immediate effect. Having decided that he’s willing to pay the price for his action, Putin now has to be sent the bill. It will pay dividends down the road.

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No, Vladimir Putin Is Not a Cunning Geopolitical Chess Player

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A Wee Prediction About Ukraine

by ChasityPrater Posted on March 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Following up on the previous post, if you do want to fret about Ukraine, I have just the thing for you. I’m going to tell you how this will all unfold:

  1. Vladimir Putin will do something belligerent. (Already done.)
  2. Republicans will demand that we show strength in the face of Putin’s provocation. Whatever it is that we’re doing, we should do more.
  3. President Obama will denounce whatever it is that Putin does. But regardless of how unequivocal his condemnation is, Bill Kristol will insist that he’s failing to support the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people.
  4. Journalists will write a variety of thumbsuckers pointing out that our options are extremely limited, what with Ukraine being 5,000 miles away and all.
  5. John McCain will appear on a bunch of Sunday chat shows to bemoan the fact that Obama is weak and no one fears America anymore.
  6. Having written all the “options are limited” thumbsuckers, journalists and columnists will follow McCain’s lead and start declaring that the crisis in Ukraine is the greatest foreign policy test of Obama’s presidency. It will thus supplant Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, and North Korea for this honor.
  7. In spite of all the trees felled and words spoken about this, nobody will have any good ideas about what kind of action might actually make a difference. There will be scattered calls to impose a few sanctions here and there, introduce a ban on Russian vodka imports, convene NATO, demand a UN Security Council vote, etc. None of this will have any material effect.
  8. Obama will continue to denounce Putin. Perhaps he will convene NATO. For their part, Republicans will continue to insist that he’s showing weakness and needs to get serious.
  9. This will all continue for a while.
  10. In the end, it will all settle down into a stalemate, with Russia having thrown its weight around in its near abroad—just like it always has—and the West not having the leverage to do much about it.
  11. Ukraine will….

Actually, there’s no telling about #11. Maybe Ukraine will choose (or have foisted on them) a pro-Russian leader that Putin is happy with. Maybe east and west will split apart. Maybe a nominally pro-Western leader will emerge. Who knows? What we do know is that (a) the United States will play only a modest role in all this, and (b) conservative hawks will continue to think that if only we’d done just a little bit more, Putin would have blinked and Ukraine would be free.

You may now go about your regular weekend business.

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A Wee Prediction About Ukraine

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Friday Cat Blogging – 28 February 2014

by DeborahESSM Posted on February 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Quelle horreur! After two weeks of lovely weather, suddenly Southern California is in the middle of a monsoon. Domino is not happy about this state of affairs and blames me personally. In this, she takes after Petronius the Arbiter: “Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for the weather.”

And please do not bore Domino with your petty human concerns over “drought” and “reservoir levels.” Here she is looking disdainfully through a rain-soaked window into a rain-soaked backyard that just yesterday was all sunny and beautiful. It is simply a nightmare.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 28 February 2014

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Can the World Feed China?

by Hilario8040 Posted on February 25, 2014

green4us

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Not all battles in the 41st Millennium are massed engagements between lumbering armies and towering war machines. In the shadows of these epic conflicts, squads of elite soldiers clash – their missions no less vital, their foes no less deadly. Designated as Kill Teams by the Imperium, or by a myriad of different names for their alien and daemonic counterpart […]

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White Dwarf Issue 4: 22 Feb 2014 – White Dwarf

Issue 4 of White Dwarf is dominated by the arrival of the Imperial Knight; we support it with painting guides, full rules and more. About this series: White Dwarf is Games Workshop’s weekly magazine, and boasts a wealth of great content, from the latest new releases to modelling and painting guides, gaming features, interviews with designers and writers […]

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Codex: Legion of the Damned (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Appearing from the shifting tides of the Warp, the Legion of the Damned are mysterious bone-adorned Space Marines who arrive unlooked for to aid the servants of the Imperium. No one knows for sure where they come from, but none can doubt the fury with which they fight, or the trail of dead foes they leave in their wake. Tormented by a ghostly past and afflic […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag . . . and Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha – Jolie Kerr

“Jolie Kerr really cuts through the grease and grime with her new book. I do what she tells me to do.” —Amy Sedaris The author of the hit column “Ask a Clean Person” offers a hilarious and practical guide to cleaning up life’s little emergencies Life is filled with spills, odors, and those oh-so embarrassing stains you just can’t tell your parents […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Dataslate: Tyranid Invasion – Rising Leviathan II (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

The invasion of Satys enters a new and deadly phase as the Hive Mind drowns the planet in a deluge of biohorrors. Though tens of thousands lie dead already, the Catachans, led by Colonel Krelm, desperately try to hold key fortifications within the irradiated jungles, hoping to keep the swarm at bay. The surviving members of the Aurora Space Marine Chapter fi […]

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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 – J.D. Lenzen

Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 (PFT-V2) is the second installment in the paracord fusion ties book series and another stunning achievement by author J.D. Lenzen. Like Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1, PFT-V2 reveals innovative and stylish ways of storing paracord for later use. So once again you’ll find crisp, clear, full-color photographs (over 1,000 i […]

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Codex: Legion of the Damned (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

Appearing from the shifting tides of the Warp, the Legion of the Damned are mysterious bone-adorned Space Marines who arrive unlooked for to aid the servants of the Imperium. No one knows for sure where they come from, but none can doubt the fury with which they fight, or the trail of dead foes they leave in their wake. Tormented by a ghostly past and afflic […]

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Dataslate: Tyranid Invasion – Rising Leviathan II (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The invasion of Satys enters a new and deadly phase as the Hive Mind drowns the planet in a deluge of biohorrors. Though tens of thousands lie dead already, the Catachans, led by Colonel Krelm, desperately try to hold key fortifications within the irradiated jungles, hoping to keep the swarm at bay. The surviving members of the Aurora Space Marine Chapter fi […]

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Can the World Feed China?

Posted in alo, aquaponics, ATTRA, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, Mop, ONA, organic, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Can the World Feed China?

Friday Cat Blogging – 21 February 2014

by Oliab719z Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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The weather is still great around here, and that means we get another outdoor pic of Domino this week. Today, she’s posing as Queen of the Garden. If you look closely, you’ll see that she’s plonked herself on top of a sprinkler head, and since these are on a timer I always figure she’s going to regret that someday. But not yet. So far, a sprinkler has never gone off while she’s sleeping on it. Nine lives indeed.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 21 February 2014

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Rand Paul is the P.T. Barnum of the Modern Senate

by AlfonzoIRKZ Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman is impressed by Rand Paul:

Rand Paul continues to win my admiration, I have to say. There are people who come into the Senate with a kind of celebrity status and get lots of good press—one Barack Obama comes to mind—but I can’t think of anyone who has gotten so much good press through their own initiative, coming up with one clever way after another to get people to pay attention to them in ways that are almost always positive. His latest move required a subtle ideological tightrope-walk, one that Paul played perfectly. And all it took was a tweet.

It’s true. Rand Paul has a sort of Palinesque native genius for self-promotion. This isn’t going to get him any closer to the Oval Office than St. Sarah, mind you, but it’s still damn impressive. Like Waldman, I was nodding my head in admiration when I saw his tweet about Ted Nugent last night, because I knew instantly that it was perfectly suited to get him a whole gob of attention for a day or two. If he’s lucky, maybe even longer. For a tweet about Ted Nugent!

It’s genius, I tell you. He knows how to play both his own base and the media like a Stradivarius.

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Rand Paul is the P.T. Barnum of the Modern Senate

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