Can Immigration Reform Save Democrats in November?

The Internets today have two excellent articles that, put together, point to why Democrats must prioritize comprehensive immigration reform if they want to save themselves in November. Over at Political Wire, Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling points out the crucial difference between 2006 and 2010. In 2006, Republican voters defected and voted Democratic. In 2010, Democrats are staying home - but you don't see them liking the GOP.

The reason Democrats won [in 2006] even though the electorate disproportionately consisted of Bush voters was that 15% of those Bush voters cast their ballots for a Democrat, a pretty large amount of crossover. There aren't nearly that many Obama voters leaning toward the Republicans this year.

Meanwhile, at Alternet, NYU Professor Greg Grandin nicely lays out nine reasons why Democrats should prioritize immigration reform this year:

1. Immigration reform ends the Southern strategy ... 2. It wins back the Catholic Church to social justice ... 3. It slows the inclusion of Latino evangelicals into the religious right ... 4. It is lose-lose for Republicans ... 5. It splits the conservative coalition in other ways ... 6. It revitalizes the union movement ... 7. It dilutes the power of Florida Cubans. ... 8. It helps America's cities ... 9. It is the morally right thing to do.

Memo to Democrats: Want to avoid a bloodbath in November? Mobilize your base. Wanna mobilize your base? Pass immigration reform. I honestly don't see another way at this point to keep our Democratic majority. Read More......

74% of BP oil spill cleaned up; remaining 26% is still 4x larger than Exxon Valdez

As always, good news if true.

The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.

A government report finds that about 26 percent of the oil released from BP’s runaway well is still in the water or onshore in a form that could, in principle, cause new problems. But most is light sheen at the ocean surface or in a dispersed form below the surface, and federal scientists believe that it is breaking down rapidly in both places.

The Guardian makes a good point about that remaining 24%:

The volume of the remaining oil, however, is still more than four times larger than the amount lost from the Exxon Valdez tanker in 1989.

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Huffington Post investigative report on HAMP: 'It's not working'

Last week, Gaius did a post on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), based on coverage from Chris Hayes. He described it as "painful."

Housing foreclosures have been one of the biggest problems facing many Americans in the wake of the economic crisis. The Obama administration's HAMP was supposed to be a solution. But, there's more painful coverage today. According to an extensive report by Huffington Post's Shahien Nasiripour and Arthur Delaney, it's not working:

President Barack Obama's signature plan to combat the housing crisis has fallen short of its goals -- rather than significantly and permanently reducing home foreclosures, it is only delaying them.

The administration unveiled its Making Home Affordable plan in February 2009. Obama vowed in front of an audience gathered at Dobson High School in Mesa, Ariz., that MHA's signature effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program, would "enable as many as three to four million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure."

The $75 billion initiative -- $50 billion from the bank bailout, $25 billion from government-owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- was designed to induce lenders, servicers and investors to modify distressed mortgages through a series of cash incentives.

It's not working.

This was supposed to be a signature program for Team Obama. Read the full report. It's worth it. And, this quote isn't what anyone would have expected from HAMP:

"They told us we were a great candidate, so we went for it," [Bea Garwood] says. "And as a result we're losing our home."

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VIDEO: Bristol and Sarah have a heart-to-heart

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Steele confuses Republicans by courting foreign ambassadors

They can't vote and they donate money, so there's really no reason for the head of the Republican party to be wasting his time courting foreign embassies only three months before a key election. Perhaps he's seeking political asylum. Read More......

UPDATED: Snowe and Collins will decide whether to fire Maine teachers, police and fire fighters today

UPDATE @ 11:05 A.M.: The Senate just voted by a margin of 61 - 38 to end the filibuster of the underlying bill. Snowe and Collins voted with all 59 Democrats to end the filibuster.
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At around 11:00 a.m this morning, the U.S. Senate will vote to end the GOP filibuster of the bill to provide funding Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) aid to states and teacher funding. The Democrats are voting as a bloc so need one vote to get to 60.

This one falls squarely on the shoulders of Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Maine will be severely impacted if this legislation doesn't pass. And, from what I'm told, all of Snowe's demands have been met. Americans United is on the air in Maine:

This is as good as it gets for Snowe and Collins. Unless the Democrats come back in 2011 with 59 Senators, these two are never going to be the center of the political universe again. They could have wielded enormous power over the past year and a half. They could have done so much for Maine. Instead, the duo has been mostly under the thumb of Mitch McConnell. They've chosen fealty to the obstructionist GOP over their constituents.

Today, we'll see whose side their on. It's a choice between Maine teachers and Mitch McConnell. And, it's a choice between Maine students and Mitch McConnell.

My money is on McConnell. They're too weak to stand by their constituents. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Today, between 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM Pacific time, Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will issue his ruling in the case challenging the constitutionality of Prop. 8. This could be a historic day -- if Walker finds Prop. 8 unconstitutional. And, let's hope he finds that a higher standard of scrutiny is warranted for laws that are aimed at LGBT Americans. Rex Wockner reports that rallies are already being planned in cities across the country. We'll be monitoring, of course.

Today is the birthday of President Obama. He's 49. And, it's also Robin Carnahan's birthday. Yesterday, she won the Democratic primary for Senate in Missouri. Her opponent will be long-time GOP Congressman Roy Blunt. 30% of Missouri GOPers did not vote for Blunt yesterday. The hard core base doesn't like him. He's a real DC insider. So much so that he considers the swanky Georgetown Safeway his local grocery story. That and his close ties to lobbyists, especially Jack Abramoff, are going to be trouble for Blunt. There is a right wing third-party candidate in the race, too.

Also, today, the Senate will take a vote to end the GOP filibuster of Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) aid to states and teacher funding. It's been paid for, so if Republicans vote to continue the filibuster, they're going to be firing teachers across the country. More on this later.

So, should be a busy day. Let's hope it is historic.... Read More......

Robert Reich: 'You have the right ... to be my b+tch!'

Hilarious, and very nicely done. Robert Reich on Conan O'Brien:



An addendum: Did that NAFTA reference catch your ear? It did mine. Reich has been one of the good guys during this economic crisis, but not so much during his time as Secretary of Labor. He was indeed a big NAFTA guy.

Click here for Gerald McEntee's 2008 take on Reich and NAFTA. McEntee is President of AFSCME, the huge government employee's union.

The best I can find in Reich's NAFTA defense is this exchange from Democracy Now on June 18 of this year (my emphasis):

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to bring back Robert Reich, and we’ve only got a couple of minutes before your feed goes down there, but I’d like to ask you about another issue: NAFTA. Many years ago, back in the early '90s, when you and other members of the Clinton administration were going around trying to convince the editorial boards of newspapers to back NAFTA, we had a spirited debate at the Daily News editorial board meeting over the issue. I'm wondering your assessment. Did Mexico benefit from NAFTA that the Clinton administration pushed? And in retrospect, what do you think was good or bad about the deal?

ROBERT REICH: Juan, in retrospect, I think both sides, those who were very concerned about loss of jobs due to NAFTA in the United States and also those in Mexico and also in the United States, such as the Clinton administration, who thought that NAFTA was the best thing since sliced bread, both of those sides were proven wrong. Those jobs didn’t go to Mexico. They went to China. But the one winner in NAFTA, and a big winner, was Mexico in terms of the peso crisis. I think that peso crisis, you may remember, in 1998, would have been much worse, were it not for NAFTA.

Small comfort; we both got screwed. He's a free trader, so take him with a grain of salt. Great sense of humor though.

GP Read More......

George Carlin: 'They want your Social Security money, and they'll get it'

The late great George Carlin, so NSFW. From the video "Life Is Worth Losing" circa 2005. Let's pretend this is a comedy routine about some imagined mangled world, shall we? (h/t Griffon in the comments to this post.)



Note the reference to Social Security. In that year, it was Bush going after your retirement. Now it's Team Change.

Like Nixon to China . . .

GP Read More......

BP oil from the crab holes of LA's barrier islands

The oil is hiding, but it's everywhere. It could be more than a generation before any fisherman or farmer can sell anything that grows where it's found.

In this video, the oil comes up through crab holes, when you press down next to them with your foot. From Fox8 local news (h/t Digby):

BP's Oil on Louisiana's Barrier Islands - FOX8 Story @ Yahoo! Video

Note, by the way, that's a Fox local news channel. According to this Countdown report, they may not be doing these kinds of reports in the future:

Aug. 2: Rupert Murdoch and Dennis Swanson, president for stations operations for Fox, have been sending memoranda and e-mails to local Fox news directors urging them to make their broadcast stations look and sound like the Fox News Channel.

Owned and operated indeed.

GP Read More......

Solar flare plasma could bring 'dancing 'curtains' of green and red light'

Okay, this sounds really cool. It's a solar tsunami. And, yes, it's a little geeky, but the bottom line is that there should be celestial show tonight over the nothern U.S. and Canada. From NASA:

On August 1st around 0855 UT, Earth orbiting satellites detected a C3-class solar flare. The origin of the blast was Earth-facing sunspot 1092. C-class solar flares are small (when compared to X and M-class flares) and usually have few noticeable consequences here on Earth besides aurorae. This one has spawned a coronal mass ejection heading in Earth's direction.

Coronal mass ejections (or CMEs) are large clouds of charged particles that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours and can carry up to ten billion tons (1016 grams) of plasma. They expand away from the Sun at speeds as high as a million miles an hour. A CME can make the 93-million-mile journey to Earth in just three to four days.

When a coronal mass ejection reaches Earth, it interacts with our planet’s magnetic field, potentially creating a geomagnetic storm. Solar particles stream down the field lines toward Earth’s poles and collide with atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, resulting in spectacular auroral displays. On the evening of August 3rd/4th, skywatchers in the northern U.S. and other countries should look toward the north for the rippling dancing “curtains” of green and red light.

This is what a CME looks like:

More from the Winnipeg Free Press:

Those events happen fairly often on the sun, but it's rarer for them to be directed at the Earth, said astrophysicist Leon Golub. The light show could be visible around 2 a.m. Wednesday and last 24 hours — but the emphasis should be on the word "could," he said.

Golub, speaking from Cambridge, Mass., said viewing chances in the U.S. are probably limited to the northern states. But Welch said in Canada it may be possible to see them "any place where it's dark."

People in big cities likely won't be able to see anything, and still the best locations for viewing the northern lights will be farther north, Golub said. But it's not every day that southern Canadians can see the lights.

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Demand for shark fin soup in Asia has been blamed for the illegal killing of nearly 300,000 sharks off Brazil

Nasty if true. From the BBC:

The Environmental Justice Institute in Brazil has accused a seafood exporter (Siglo do Brasil Comercio) of illegally killing nearly 300,000 sharks.

It is suing for what it says is massive damage to the marine ecosystem.

It alleges that many of the sharks were thrown back into the sea after their fins were taken for clandestine export.

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Gingrich says no mosques near Ground Zero until Saudi Arabia has some churches and synagogues

Um, when did Saudi Arabia come into this? And how does Muslims trying to build a mosque in America have anything to do with the ridiculous lack of any freedom in Saudi Arabia? So Gingrich is now going to interpret the Constitution, and America's overall freedoms, based on the lowest common denominator of "what would Saudi jesus do?" They don't let women drive over there either, so should we yank Muslim-Americans' drivers' licenses, Newt? That'll show em.

He really is a bright man, but sometimes he really panders to the stupid when he's desperate for attention. More from Richard Cohen at the Post. (I swear I wrote that part about yanking driver's licenses before reading Cohen's piece.) Read More......

Countdown: Target moves into Mr Robert's neighborhood

Mr. Robert's neighborhood just got a new resident. The store chain Target (Targét as was) decided to flex its corporate muscle by throwing $150,000 at the 2010 Minnesota race, via the ironically named "MN Forward", a creature of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce (h/t Steve Perry).

MN Forward is a big supporter of Republican Tom Emmer in the governor's race. Keith Olbermann has the story. (I'm not sure why this segment is only available on YouTube, but the Countdown site appears not to have it.)



Target hits all the ... targets ... with this little bon-bon. A rich chocolate coating of Citizens United, testing just how to control elections with corp funding; with a tangy anti-gay crunch hidden in the middle.

Emmer is also anti-tax, anti-union, anti-minimum wage, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, pro-"pharmacy conscience" . . . and pro-"more rights for DUI arrestees" (yep, he's got two convictions for DUI-related offenses). A real forward-looking guy for MN Forward* to support.

What's Target's defense? As quoted in the show, they only "seek to advance policies in line with our business objectives." (They might as well have said: "Don't blame me; I only want money.")

Quoting pro-gay activist Randi Reitan, "My son is gay, and I love him more than anything I could buy at Target." Thank you for saying it out loud, Ms. Reitan — in the world of actual humans, it's people before things, always.

Note what Christina Bellantoni says, that MN Forward is spooked by the negative publicity. Action, folks.

Action opportunity: Both major DFL party candidates are running 40% to Emmer's 35% in the latest Rasmussen poll. Those candidates are former Senator Mark Dayton and state House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher — and the primary is set for August 10. If you're a Minnesotan, pick one and vote; and then get active in the general election. Emmer's a real troglodyte.

GP

*MN Forward — A prime example of the 180 Tell (whatever they say about themselves is always 180-degrees wrong). If the group were correctly named, they'd be "MN Backward". Read More......

Beautiful vintage gay photos

This site has collected a ton of old gay photos (and some that might just be friendly foreigners, hard to say). They're very cool. (H/t to GayTwogether.com, some of the pics come from there as well.)



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