Politics Plus

I have been able to accomplish quite a bit today so I am a happy camper. Tomorrow will be a day to visit with my mother.  I bought her some adaptive clothing so we may have a "fashion show" to try them on for fit and hopefully to see my mother smile.

Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:15 (average 5:20). To do it, click here. How did you do? 

Short Takes

Vancouver Sun — But he believes that building cities is about more than just constructing houses and towers and roads to connect them. It’s also about creating social infrastructure and inclusive societies.

So, Gillespie’s Westbank Properties is handing over 12 fully furnished and fully stocked apartments downtown to the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. for a minimum of four months. Those multi-bedroom units will be used as transitional accommodation until more permanent housing can be found for some of the 3,000 Syrian refugees expected to arrive in Vancouver within the next several months. 

Click through for the rest.  This attitude is certainly in contrast to that of US state governors, many of whom have said flat out "no refugees", and to the US House which voted "no" to refugees.  But many US Christians are seriously stepping forward in support of the Syrian refugees.  Vancouver developer Daljit Thind, himself an immigrant, has housing available. Vancouver's Temple Sholom has raised money to sponsor a family and is working with Mosaic immigrant services.

Washington Post — h/t JLA — Completing a long-shot bid that ran counter to the conservative tide sweeping the Southern states, Democratic state Rep. John Bel Edwards was elected governor of Louisiana on Saturday, defeating his Republican rival, U.S. Sen. David Vitter.

Edwards was the top vote-getter in the state’s open primary last month and then built a lead over Vitter that he never surrendered.

With 1,800 out of 3,945 precincts reporting, Edwards led Vitter 55 percent to 45 percent, prompting the Edwards campaign to declare victory late Saturday evening.

Click through for the rest of the story.  Although this article states "1,800 out of 3,945 precincts reporting", the Huffington Post's story says "Edwards won 56 percent of the vote, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.".  And from Mother Jones, 

Edwards has pledged to sign an executive order authorizing the expansion of the program on his first day in office. That's a really big deal. Such a move would provide coverage to about 225,000 residents in one of the poorest states in the nation.

It certainly looks like things are looking up for Louisiana.  About time!

Think Progress — When a parking lot attendant dared to recycle trash he picked up outside an upstate New York Walmart, the store fired him. Now generous strangers are trying to help cushion his sudden fall.

Thomas Smith, 52, had been earning $9 an hour at an upstate New York Walmart for less than three months when his manager terminated him over the cans. Smith was in charge of rounding up shopping carts from the lot outside the store, and started collecting trash from the lot while making his rounds. After storing up cans for a couple months, he recycled them in the store’s machines in early November. He got $5.10 for them.

Click through for the rest of the story.  I think the following line from the story sums up the situation: "That thief was white. Smith collected trash while black."

My Universe — 

It was -4 C (25 F) this morning when I awoke, and is only just freezing as I write.  There was definitely frost on the rooves but no birds tobogganing on my slippery garage roof.  Being this cold at my level, there certainly will have been more snow on the mountains above me.  I am teaching this afternoon so will be out until at least 5 pm.  Have a great day everyone!

Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:52 (average 6:42). To do it, click here. How did you do? 

Short Takes

Alternet — Paradoxically, at a time when the stakes are especially high for who becomes the next president, we have a free-for-all politics in which anyone can become a candidate, put together as much funding as they need, claim anything about themselves no matter how truthful, advance any proposal no matter how absurd, and get away bigotry without being held accountable.

Why? Americans have stopped trusting the mediating institutions that used to filter and scrutinize potential leaders on behalf of the rest of us.

As usual, the Reich on the left is correct.  But I don't think Americans have necessarily "stopped trusting mediating institutions" but rather many have lost the ability to think clearly and critically, especially when it comes to the governance of the states and country.  It seems to me that the clown car isn't just filled with the Republican candidates, but also their donors and the whole Republican structure.  Click through for the rest.

CBC — Superficially, the fearful reaction of Canadian, U.S, and European politicians to a new wave of Syrian immigrants may seem rational.

In the wake of horrific attacks in Paris, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has asked that Canada's Syrian immigration plan be suspended. In Poland and some U.S. states, leaders have said they no longer want Syrian immigrants at all.

A more careful examination of what happened in Paris will tell us our worries should lie elsewhere.

The best antidote to the kind of domestic Islamic radicalism that we have seen in Europe is not fear of immigration, but successful economic and social integration of new immigrants into the Canadian mainstream.

Click through for the rest of the article.  I agree with Pittis.  As Abraham Maslow showed, people need to provide for their physical and safety needs first.  These include: (from http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html) 

Biological and Physiological needs – air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.

Safety needs – protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.

In order to continue to progress in a different culture, the refugees must be able to work and contribute to their family's well being and their own.  That feeling of success will lead to greater success.

Alternet — What follows are a dozen excerpts from Sanders' speech of what democratic socialism means to him and could mean for the country. It is a vision of a better world that starts with improving the economics and the dignity of Americans at home, which in turn Sanders said would better position America to face challenges from abroad, such as the terrorist threat posed by ISIS, which he addressed in the final quarter of his 100-minute speech.

1. Major political and economic reforms. “Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system which is corrupt, that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy. Democratic socialism, to my mind, speaks to a system, which for example during the 1990s—and I want you to hear this—allowed Wall Street to spend $5 billion, over a 10-year period, in lobbying and campaign contributions in order to get deregulated. They wanted the government off of their backs. They wanted to do whatever they wanted to do….

"Then, 10 years later, after the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior led to their collapse, what our system enabled them to get bailed out by the United States government, which through Congress and the Fed, provided trillions of dollars in aid to Wall Street. In other words, Wall Street used their wealth and power to get Congress to do their bidding for deregulation, and then when Wall Street collapsed, they used their wealth and power to get bailed out. Quite a system!

“And then, to add insult to injury, we were told that not only were the banks too big to fail, we were told that the bankers were too big to jail. And this is the system. Young people who get caught possessing marijuana, they get police records—and many many hundreds of thousands have police records that have impacted their lives in serious ways. On the other hand, Wall Street CEOs who help destroy the economy, they don’t get police records, they get raises in their salaries. And this is what Martin Luther King, Jr. meant when he talked about socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.”

Click through for the other 11 exerpts plus Bernie's thoughts on foreign policy.  Politico a 93 seconds video of Bernie's speech, a transcript which follows.

“Against the ferocious opposition of the ruling class of his day, people he called economic royalists, Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty, and restored our faith in government. He redefined the relationship of the federal government to the people of our nation. He combatted cynicism, fear and despair. He reinvigorated democracy. He transformed the country, and that is what we have to do today,” said the Vermont senator, an independent who caucuses with Democrats while identifying as a democratic socialist.

“And, by the way, almost everything he proposed, almost every program, every idea, was called ’socialist.'"

I make no bones about it, Bernie would fit in nicely in Canada, a social democracy.  Feel the Bern!
 

My Universe — Who doesn't love panda bears?  These are at the end of a Huffington Post article about zoo penguins in Denmark trying to escape.

I want the little one in the last picture sleeping on his belly and using neighbour as a pillow.  Reminds me of how my cats often sleep.

Well the wind finally stopped yesterday afternoon and the rain along with it . . . well at least for now.  More rain is on the way and Friday promises to be wet.  With colder temperatures and rain wherre I am, the mountains behind my house are guaranteed to be getting snow.  Some of the local ski hills are scheduling to open this weekend,  Some did not open at all or only for short periods last year because of the lack of snow.  May this year be better for them.  Today is a "lazy" day with 2 chores . . . the litterbox and some laundry, mostly linens.  Of course, I have tomorrow's articles and cat snuggling too!

Puzzle — Today’s took me 2:48 (average 4:24). To do it, click here. How did you do? 

Short Takes

Alternet — Twitter user @HistOpinion (Historical Opinion) tweeted out polls from 1939 and 1938 showing what Americans thought of political refugees, most of whom were Jewish, on the eve of World War II. On the question, "What’s your attitude towards allowing German, Austrian & other political refugees to come into the US?" the numbers are, in retrospect, devastating:

Indeed, a fear of "Jewish-Bolshevism" was very real as Juan Cole noted in Truth Dig:

Jews were also seen by some US Neanderthals as having socialist tendencies and so were kept out as radicals. There was talk of the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. (Hatred of Jews was irrational, so that they were blamed for being bankers [they were less than 1 percent of bankers] at the same time they were excoriated for being Marxists.) There was also the Society for the Defense of Christianity, so fundamentalists did their part.

An article in the Huffington Post takes a more personal look at the issue of admitting refugees, postulating that we should be proclaiming "never again" when it comes to ethnic refugees desperately fleeing their foe. Anti-refugee attitudes of the late 1930s have returned with a new Islamic target.

Déjà-vu?  I am inclined to think that the hysteria exhibited by many politicians, particularly Republicans, is reminiscent of the 1930s.  There are parallels that we should examine if the "never again" is to survive.  It is true that there have been genocides in the world since WWII, but none on the magnitude of the Holocaust.  We must ensure "never again" is very literally NEVER AGAIN and be compassionate.

Daily Kos — How ISIS is funded:

As ISIS fighters expand their control, it is in the border region, in villages like Besaslan, where the Islamic State group can make some of the money it needs to finance its wars. Oil-smuggling operations involving millions of barrels have recently been uncovered […]

Besides revenue from oil smuggling, the group receives money through donations from wealthy sympathizers in countries including Qatar and Kuwait.

There’s a reason the US is bombing ISIS/Daesh’s oil infrastructure. 

"We know the oil funds more than 50 percent of ISIL's operations," Warren said, using an acronym for Islamic State. "This is something we want to take away from them."

Iraqi soldiers guarding Baiji oil refinery after taking back from Daesh

Click through for the rest of the article.  In an article from the Wall Street Journal: U.S. Airstrikes Target Islamic State Oil Assets 

The U.S. has stepped up its attacks on Islamic State’s industrial base, striking more than 100 tanker trucks used to transport oil that helps the militant group earn tens of millions of dollars each month, an American military spokesman said Monday.

I remember hearing a saying about defeating something: you must cut off the head of the snake so the body will die.  This seems appropriate for Daesh.  Remove the source of much of its funding and Daesh will be weakened, perhaps easier to defeat.

Think Progress — Responding to the Paris attacks in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, presidential candidate and former governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) said that he could not think of any group targeting innocent civilians except for radical Muslims. Huckabee used this argument to justify the intensifying call for discriminatory policies toward Muslims seeking refugee status.

Click through for some statistics on terrorist attacks.  To quote Assistant Attorney General John Carlin,

“[O]ver the past few years, more people have died in this country in attacks by domestic extremists than in attacks associated with international terrorist groups,”  “[I]t doesn’t get discussed as much as it should.”

My Universe — One of these is different.  Can you tell which one it is?