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Why Won’t Orrin Hatch Blame Republicans For the Failure of Immigration Reform?

by ClarencXQA Posted on November 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch cracks me up:

Hatch expressed concern that President Barack Obama may soon take executive action on immigration and protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. “It would be catastrophic for him to do that,” said Hatch. “Part of it is our fault. We haven’t really seized this problem. Of course, we haven’t been in a position to do it either, with Democrats controlling the Senate. I’m not blaming Republicans. But we really haven’t seized that problem and found solutions for it.”

….”Frankly, I’d like to see immigration done the right way,” Hatch added. “This president is prone to doing through executive order that which he cannot do by working with the Congress, because he won’t work with us. If he worked with us, I think we could get an immigration bill through … He has a Republican Congress that’s willing to work with him. That’s the thing that’s pretty interesting to me.”

You know, it was only 17 months ago that the Senate passed a vigorously negotiated and tough-minded bipartisan immigration bill that was actively supported by President Obama. You know who voted for it? Orrin Hatch. The only reason it’s not the law of the land today is….Republicans in the House. That’s it.

So what’s the problem here? Why shouldn’t we blame Republicans?

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Why Won’t Orrin Hatch Blame Republicans For the Failure of Immigration Reform?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 14 November 2014

by Judith8el Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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As you may recall, last week I regaled you with the news that cats (allegedly) love circles. Put a circular object on the floor, and they’ll flock to it. But is this true? On Saturday, my sister visited and we performed our experiment: she laid down a scarf on the floor in a circular shape and we waited. I insisted that we do nothing to influence the cats, since that would ruin all the lovely Science™, but we didn’t have to wait long. Hilbert came over first, and then Hopper followed. For the next 15 minutes they went nuts for the circle. By the time I took the picture on the right, the scarf was no longer all that circular, but it didn’t matter. They loved it.

So there you have it. Cats do love circles. The reason, however, remains a mystery, so let’s move on to this week’s official catblogging. I’ve already mentioned that I have a hard time keeping up with our little furballs unless they’re snoozing, so this week you get a picture of them snoozing (Hopper on the left, Hilbert on the right). I sent this to the shelter where we got them, and they thought it was hilarious. Our guys are not the kind of cats who curl up when they sleep. They stretch out as far as they can to air out their tummies, even if that means they’re often hanging over the edge of a chair. But the couch is better. Even they can only fill up half a couch.

Link: 

Friday Cat Blogging – 14 November 2014

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Elizabeth Warren Gets a Promotion — Or Does She?

by HopeBungaree Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Elizabeth Warren is getting a promotion:

Seeking ideological and regional balance, a chastened Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) expanded his leadership team Thursday, including the addition of liberal icon Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), to beat back internal critics…..Expanding the leadership table — Warren’s position was created specifically for her — is a way to answer the critics who think that Reid’s team became insulated in recent years, according to senior Democratic aides.

I’m curious: Am I the only person who thinks this is probably not a great move for Warren? She’s now officially part of the Democratic leadership, which makes her implicitly responsible for party policy and implicitly loyal to the existing leadership. And what is she getting in return? Unless I’m missing something, a made-up leadership position with no actual authority.

Is this a good trade? I’m not so sure.

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Elizabeth Warren Gets a Promotion — Or Does She?

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Democrats Take Careful Aim at Feet, Prepare Both Barrels For Firing

by Trinida9037 Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Sen. Mary Landrieu has a tough runoff election next month, and energy policy is a big deal in Louisiana. So Senate Democrats are planning to help her out a bit by holding a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline. Paul Waldman calls this one right:

The current Democratic effort to help Mary Landrieu win her runoff election by scheduling a quick vote on the Keystone XL pipeline has to be one of the most politically idiotic moves in recent history. As I argued yesterday, not only is it guaranteed to fail in its goal of helping Landrieu, it gives Republicans a huge policy victory while getting nothing in return. Runoff elections have extremely low turnout, and the only way Landrieu stands a chance is if she can convince lots of Louisiana Democrats to go to the polls to save her. This kind of me-too policymaking—I’m just as pro-oil as Republicans are!—is about the last thing that’ll pump up Democratic enthusiasm.

Keystone XL isn’t really one of my hot buttons. I figure that all that oil is getting to market one way or another, and blocking the pipeline won’t really make much difference. I know that’s probably a little too fatalistic, but we all have issues that strike us that way. Keystone XL is one of mine.

That said, Waldman is right. There’s simply zero chance that this is going to help Landrieu. There’s not a person in Louisiana who doesn’t know that she supports the oil industry and hates hates hates President Obama’s energy policy. She’s made that crystal clear, and everyone who’s persuadable has already been persuaded. A Keystone XL vote just won’t move the needle.

So Democrats would be giving something away and getting literally nothing in return. In fact, since this would outrage all the people who do care about Keystone XL, Democrats would probably be giving something away and losing support from key supporters at the same time. It’s crazy.

These are the same guys who whine endlessly about President Obama’s lousy negotiating skills. Someone just shoot me.

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Democrats Take Careful Aim at Feet, Prepare Both Barrels For Firing

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Ebola Panic Mysteriously Disappeared Last Tuesday

by JeffChevalier Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

This is from the LA Times yesterday, but I forgot to mention it. It’s worth a quick read:

A few short weeks ago, Ebola was public enemy No. 1.

About 1,000 people were being monitored by health officials. Several schools in Texas and Ohio shut down because of a single patient who boarded a plane. A cruise ship was refused permission to dock in Cozumel, off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. President Obama appointed an Ebola “czar.” Polls showed a majority of Americans were concerned that Ebola would spread out of control in the U.S.

On Tuesday, a fully recovered Dr. Craig Spencer was released from Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan. The U.S. was now Ebola-free for the first time since Sept. 5 — a milestone that barely seemed to register with a once-frenzied public.

How did we get here from there?

How indeed?

“October was a rough month for stigma and fear,” said Doug Henry, a medical anthropologist at the University of North Texas in Denton. “The cruise ship that was denied entry into a port, kids who weren’t welcome at school, parents who kept their own kids home — things got really bad here in Dallas.” To further complicate matters, the crisis occurred in the home stretch of the midterm election campaign. Some Democrats accused Republicans of stoking Ebola fears for political advantage.

Yep, it’s quite the mystery.

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Ebola Panic Mysteriously Disappeared Last Tuesday

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Obama Takes a Good Half Step Toward an Unequivocal Ban on Torture

by GloryGibbbrq Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s worth mentioning that the Obama administration has finally decided to take a more expansive view of where torture and “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” is banned:

The Obama administration, after an internal debate that has drawn global scrutiny, is taking the view that the cruelty ban applies wherever the United States exercises governmental authority, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. That definition, they said, includes the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and American-flagged ships and aircraft in international waters and airspace.

But the administration’s definition still appears to exclude places like the former “black site” prisons where the C.I.A. tortured terrorism suspects during the Bush years, as well as American military detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there. Those prisons were on the sovereign territory of other governments; the government of Cuba exercises no control over Guantánamo.

Why exclude black sites? Administration officials apparently say this is just a “technical matter of interpretation, underlined by concerns that changing the jurisdictional scope could have unintended consequences, like increasing the risk of lawsuits by overseas detainees or making it harder to say that unrelated treaties with similar jurisdictional language did not apply in the same places.”

I can….almost buy that. Lawyers and diplomats get pretty hung up on stuff like this. Nonetheless, I’d be a lot happier if Obama could be a little more Bush-like here, and simply overrule the legal eagles and insist on a clear and unequivocal policy. It’s hard to believe there isn’t a way to do that which wouldn’t somehow wreck a bunch of other treaties at the same time.

So two cheers for doing the right thing. But not three.

Continued:

Obama Takes a Good Half Step Toward an Unequivocal Ban on Torture

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Chart of the Day #2: Wage Growth Is Still Lousy

by DamienVxmvkqoot Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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In my post earlier this morning about jobs growth, I mentioned that wage growth continues to be stuck at about zero after accounting for inflation. This probably deserves a chart of its own to make it clear what things look like, so here it is: wage growth after inflation since the recovery began in 2010. As you can see, real wages have been bouncing along slightly above and slightly below zero for four years now. If you use alternate measures of inflation, the trend is even worse.

This is the basic lay of the land. Yes, the economy is improving and jobs are becoming more plentiful. But most of us have seen our pay stagnate for four years and counting. That’s one of the reasons the public mood remains so sour.

Source:  

Chart of the Day #2: Wage Growth Is Still Lousy

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Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

by AnneSASMfvyq Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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National Review has an editorial today that’s headlined—deep breath, folks:

The Governing Trap

No, that’s not the Onion. That’s for real. NR is earnestly begging Republicans not to try to actually govern the country:

The desire to prove Republicans can govern also makes them hostage to their opponents in the Democratic party and the media. It empowers Senator Harry Reid, whose dethroning was in large measure the point of the election. If Republicans proclaim that they have to govern now that they run Congress, they maximize the incentive for the Democrats to filibuster everything they can — and for President Obama to veto the remainder. Then the Democrats will explain that the Republicans are too extreme to get anything done.

I wonder if NR’s editors have enough of a sense of humor left to be embarrassed by this? After all, this is precisely what Republicans have been doing to Democrats for six years: obstructing everything imaginable and then snickering as Dems helplessly try to explain to voters that Washington gridlock isn’t their fault, it’s the fault of that mean Mitch McConnell. Clearly NR understands how well this worked and wants to protect Republicans from having their own playbook used against them.

Beyond that, NR is afraid that trying to govern will just upset one faction or another in the GOP’s delicately balanced coalition, and that makes no sense. Who needs a bunch of crazy tea partiers stirring up trouble again? There’s no reasoning with those folks! Better to just lie low.

As cynical political strategy, it’s hard to argue with the logic here. Republicans probably are better off doing nothing for the next two years except mocking President Obama and throwing out occasional symbolic bits of red meat to keep the rubes at bay. Usually, though, this is the kind of thing you talk about quietly behind closed doors. It’s a little surprising that we’ve gotten to the point where apparently this level of cynicism is so routine that no one thinks twice about spelling it out in public in explicit detail. Welcome to modern politics.

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Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 October 2014

by KassandBirrell Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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I thought cats were supposed to get gradually calmer and more mature as they aged. Not these two. They’re now 11 months old, and apparently they went nuts during my stay in the hospital. Now that I’m back, they’re still going nuts. Every scrap of paper in the house has to be kept at least six feet off the ground or else it gets shredded. When does the calming down part start?

At the moment, I’d settle for training Hilbert not to leap on my stomach unexpectedly. This is not good for people with bad backs. It. Needs. To. Stop.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 October 2014

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Here’s What Democrats and Republicans Are Afraid Of

by CarissaLindquis Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Wonkblog regales us this morning with the chart on the right, which summarizes a recent Chapman University survey about what we’re afraid of. Basically, it suggests that Democrats are more afraid of things than Republicans. This goes against the conventional wisdom a bit, and it especially goes against the conventional wisdom in the “strangers” category. Supposedly, liberals are more open to strangers and outsiders than conservatives, but this survey suggests the opposite.

So that’s interesting. But what’s probably more interesting is the cause of all this fear. Here’s what the researchers say are the prime causes of fear:

Low education
Talk TV
True Crime TV

These all make sense. People with low levels of education tend to be poor and to live in poor areas. I don’t know why they’re so afraid of clowns, but it makes perfect sense that they’d have relatively high levels of economic anxiety as well as fears for their personal safety. As for talk TV, that makes sense too. “It is a simple, straight-line effect,” the researchers says. “The more one watches talk TV, the more fearful one tends to be.”

So turn off the doofus TV, OK? And tell your friends and family to turn it off too. It’s making our lives worse.

And for the record, the rest of survey suggests that Democrats tend to be afraid of crime, pollution, and man-made disasters. Republicans tend to be afraid of today’s youth, the government, and immigrants.

Link:  

Here’s What Democrats and Republicans Are Afraid Of

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