Month: June 2012

TNR recently profiled Sister Gramick and we’re honored to have her voice on the Dish all this week. Previous videos here and here. “Ask Anything” archive here.

Ezra Klein throws a tub of cold water on Bloomberg's new poll, which shows Obama with a 13 point lead.

These kids don't deserve to be deported:

 

Adam Serwer defends Obama's new policy: 

There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US. The federal government claims it only has the resources to deport about 400,000 a year. Deciding not to devote those limited resources to kicking out a group of unauthorized immigrants who didn't make the decision to end up here and could eventually gain legal status is a defensible use of executive authority. 

Related thoughts here and here. 

Chris Geidner reports on a shift in immigration enforcement for same-sex married couples:

Lavi Soloway, an attorney arguing several of the cases, tells Metro Weekly the move, which sends the cases back for further fact-based investigations to determine whether the couples would be eligible for relief were it not for DOMA, is "historic" and reflects DOJ's apparent view that "there may very well be, a year from now, a post-DOMA world."

He sure is running for re-election, isn't he? But this is an immensely good and humane thing.

J. Dana Schuster heralds a "second Arab Spring":

Despite the constitutional reforms, a new protest movement has taken to the streets in Morocco, motivated increasingly by “quality-of-life questions,” according to Issandr El Amrani. This is not mutually exclusive with the motivations that spurred the political protests of early 2011, but the economic component of recent protests seems more and more evident. It is also happening in Algeria, where “high unemployment, inadequate housing, and a dearth of social services” have brought protesters (and state security forces) back into the streets. Jordan, which has mostly stayed aloof from the Arab Spring, has noted a marked increase in labor protests. The new revolutionary states are not immune to the second spring.

What's encouraging about this is the focus on the government's provision of goods and services. Democracies should mostly be boring – demanding effective government, criticizing poor administration, forcing accountabilty for specific goods. In the past, Arab politics were, in so far as they existed under dictatorships, largely rhetorical and symbolic and abstract. From the West Bank to Algeria, the rise of this kind of accountability may be in retrospect the Arab Spring's most durable legacy, amid its no doubt chaotic future.

(Photo: Casablanca taxi drivers stage a protest outside the police headquarters in Casablanca on June 11, 2012, against a hike in fuel prices implemented by the government of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane. By Abdelhak Senna/AFP/Getty Images.)

The reader who submitted the moving MHB for Monday follows up:

Just wanted to thank you for posting the vid of my momma singing Puccini. She's tickled pink that she's gotten almost 8,000 views! I also wanted to pass on a bitter irony about the wedding party: I'm from North Carolina, where obviously the gays just got bitchslapped with Amendment One – so this party couldn't have taken place there. Well, it could have (gays can have a party wherever they want, obviously), but it wouldn't have had the legitimacy it does in New York State. Thankfully, we live in Brooklyn, so mom, whose non-procreative marriage she was also celebrating (she was officially on her honeymoon), flew up and sang at her son's gay wedding party in NYC. Really poetic.

Also, mom is extremely religious, a lifelong Republican, and is deeply deeply suspicious of Obama. I went through hell trying to get her to listen to reason during the '08 election, debunking every Obama myth that emerged from the right-wing fever swamp listservs on a daily basis (God bless Snopes). And she still voted for McCain-Palin. (She proudly voted against Amendment One, though!)

So your clarifying comments at the end of the post about Romney and same-sex marriage were an extra-special wedding gift to me. Muchos arigatos for that!

Update from another reader:

Thank you for posting that video. It made this married Mom of two cry over breakfast. The song choice made me both smile and respect this awesome Republican Mom even more. The aria is from the 1 act Opera Gianni Schicchi by Puccini. The aria is a plea by the daughter of the outsider Schicchi to marry the local Rinuccio. She begs her father to let her marry Rinuccio, otherwise she will kill herself – in essence, I beg you to let me marry whom I want. I believe the choice of this aria to sing at her gay son's wedding was not a coincidence.

(Photo: Our reader and his momma with their husbands)

Nyhan notices that "Romney’s manner on the campaign trail, which has previously been derided as wooden and inauthentic, is now being described as more 'confident'":

Ask yourself this: How often is a losing candidate portrayed as confident? The reality is that politicians tend to seem confident and persuasive when the political wind is at their back (see, e.g., George W. Bush 9/11/01-11/2/04). By contrast, candidates facing poor fundamentals seem hapless and unable to connect with voters. Journalists love to tell a story of how a politician’s personal style is the reason that her campaign has surged or declined—it creates an easy-to-understand narrative centered on the events that reporters cover every day.

(Photo: Republican Presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney speaks at his last campaign rally as he completes a five day bus trip in Holland State Park June 19, 2012 in Holland, Michigan. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Romney recently suggested that a good guide to his policy on Israel would be to "just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite." Adam Chandler makes a list of what this would entail. A few highlights:

• Take the military option against Iran off the table.
• Proclaim boldly and often that an Iranian nuclear weapon is acceptable and sponsor a policy of containment.
• Dismantle the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Israel.
• Vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Frank Rich implores Obama to destroy Romney with negative ads:

Doing it right doesn’t necessarily mean doing right by the facts. An effective attack ad doesn’t require strict accuracy as long as its broad caricature rings true. It has to land a punch as propaganda, not journalism. For all his trigger-happy rhetoric, Goldwater was not in favor of starting World War III, whereas the theoretically peace-loving Johnson would prove, after reelection, to be an enthusiastic escalator of the disastrous war in Vietnam. But if the "Daisy" ad was not determinative in Johnson’s reelection victory and not a balanced depiction of Goldwater, it remains the gold standard of attack ads for good reason. Now that Obama is trying to fend off a GOP as radically right wing as Goldwater was, it’s a standard he will have to meet.

Galupo finds "something rank about this business":

I don’t mean the dodgy attack ads, which like the poor will always be with us; I mean Frank Rich’s embrace of them. Partisan tribalism, with its tolerance of behavior that would elicit howls of outrage if the other side were doing it, is one of the most dispiriting aspects of modern politics. I have a hunch liberals will hate the executive orders of a President Romney, and I’m pretty sure Frank Rich would not have even considered writing this piece in 2004 on behalf of the Swift Boaters.

But if your enemy brings an AK-47 to the fight, what's a man gonna do? Become Dukakis?