Pangloss

Well what he needs to be doing is living in New Orleans. For at least the last two weeks, and ongoing until the spill is resolved. Not listening to Paul McCartney sing "Michelle" to his wife. The moment it became clear that this was serious (at least two weeks ago), every single event should have been canceled. Every trip. Everything. You take it, as the newsies say, "wall to wall". You move the President and many major West Wing players right to the gulf coast area and operate a mini-White House right there. You have him on the beach pushing booms into place every single day, and when he's not moving booms he's listening to locals, working a boat, helping the Coast Guard, whatever. Every single day. That would have been quite a momentous statement -- a real "change" in practice, and a very hard one for Republicans to criticize in light of Katrina. But I wouldn't have stopped there, I would have deployed every single stateside National Guard unit to the region (it's not as if they'd be standing around, since it appears there's more equipment than people to deploy it at the moment). I would have also accepted every single proposal for cleanup. All of them. "Get started; bill us later, and we'll bill BP" would have been the line for the reporters. The Saudi scooper-tankers would have been out there, Kevin Costner would have been out there, everything. Consequences later. Of course other events intrude, and you handle those. Instead of taking time out from dealing with everything else to fly to the Gulf, he should be taking time out from the Gulf to deal with everything else. You have him take time out from the Gulf to deal with Israel. You have him take time out from the Gulf to deal with immigration. You have him take time out from the Gulf to appoint a new spy chief. To take a look at the jobs report. And so on. That may sound extreme, but it's how I would have handled it. I think an overwhelming White House response is how you get on top of this. The current response is underwhelming at best, and election-losing at worst, and it's clearly not working.

Considering the bolded, it sounds like your ideological preferences are coloring your judgment. Plenty of observers at that time questioned the authenticity of Hamas' promises in 2008, without resorting to Fox News, Republicans, or conservative partisans. It's unfortunate to see the Israeli/Palestinian conflict dragged into the Western liberal-conservative political conflict like that (surely they have enough problems without us piling our ideologies onto the fire), but I suppose this is not entirely unexpected. Too many people seem to have forgotten that the 2008 "cease fire" was entirely one-sided. Hamas never stopped firing rockets into Israel, and Israel stopped shooting many times. You're not wrong to hold Israel responsible for its own errors and bad judgment. You're just wrong to view them as entirely responsible. Even Jimmy Carter doesn't do that. That wasn't the case with Northern Ireland either, btw. In no way was the resolution of that conflict as one-sided as you make it out to be. BOTH parties had to work hard to bring it to an end. Such will almost surely be the case with Israel and Palestine as well.

From a tactical point of view he hasn't really done anything wrong, but from a political perspective it's a bit of a disaster, I'm afraid. He's been behind it, rather than in front of it. There's a lot he could have done to get in front of it, but he (or rather "they") didn't realize it was going to be such a big deal. I think that's actually a mistake -- from the beginning it seemed clear to me that this is something you "go big" on regardless of how big it actually turns out to be.

I don't believe that to be the case, and frankly there is no justification for shooting rockets into civilian areas, regardless of what the Israelis have or have not done. Also Hamas as not at all comfortable with President Carter's 2008 "peace plan", which actually wasn't even a peace plan so much as a few suggestions during an overblown fact-finding mission. As far as I'm aware there have been no circumstances under which Hamas was actually willing to recognize Israel, just political maneuverings that looked as such.

He does have a way with words. I appreciate your input and perspective, Rickdog, even if I disagree with it. Emotional issues are always the most difficult to discuss.

You already have a thread running on this, Rigney. Check the topic listing. Thanks.

I think it's about time we added another state north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Resistance is futile, Scotlander! Oh sorry, Obama... I think he's doing a pretty good job under extremely adverse circumstances. It's quite a juggling act. I think he could be doing a lot better in his response to the oil spill, which is looking more like Katrina 2.0 every day, but as with Katrina there's no real "win" there, and if he works out other problems then it won't really matter in the end. I am somewhat disappointed with his lack of bipartisanship and catering to the Reid/Pelosi Congress, and I think that's what got him into the most trouble in 2009 (seriously, how do you screw up a 60-seat majority??). But he's learning and he does keep reaching out to the right. He just needs to get better at telling the extremes to shove it where the sun don't shine.

Sure, but why would we want to let bad people in when we're overwhelmed with good people who want in? Sure they may be good people who just have had some bad luck and need a break, but as a simple practical matter our prisons are already overburdened -- why make it worse if we don't have to? And we don't have to. And then you have two billion Americans and you've just shoveled the poverty from one place to another. I understand what you're saying, but it really just sounds like intellectual hypothesizing to me. I'm a realpolitik kind of guy. Maybe you're just talking to the wrong person.

I wasn't talking about cultural preservation. You talk about the flyover states like they need to be adjusted, corrected, changed, etc. I believe you're flat-out wrong in that perspective. They're hardly perfect, but your premise is not only incorrect, but also counter-productive. People don't like being told all the time that they're wrong. That is the single biggest reason for Fox News Channel's success, in my opinion. Getting back to the point, you said that "hispanic protest marches wouldn't seem so disturbing if they didn't feel like their existence and rights as citizens (or non-citizens) were being threatened". It hasn't been demonstrated that they ARE threatened, and my point is that this is precisely comparable with the religious right feeling that their rights as citizens were being directly threatened as well. Perhaps not so much their right to existence, but very much their rights as citizens. The comparison is doubly apt because in both cases these are groups of people who are being mislead by political ideologies that have zero interest in their situation. They're pawns. A means to an end.

I'm sure you're right. And that's exactly how many on the right feel when they listen to people from your "culturally diverse" city talk about how their way of life needs to change.

You know, even if you could show something like that in a meaningful way (which I've seen no evidence of as yet), I don't think it would ultimately matter. There's what works in theory, and there's what works in politics. The two are frequently very different. I don't see where that would affect security. Terrorists come here for revenge, drug smugglers come here for the customers, etc. We already have the most open immigration policy in the entire world, and yet we have serious security concerns. And in terms of illegals who commit more conventional/routine crimes, like drunk driving, pedophilia, robbery, etc, wouldn't those likely increase under an open border? If we're not even going to TRY to stop such people from coming in?

Of primary concern to Arizonans is security. Whether it's illegals committing heinous crimes (which certainly happens, if not to the extent that the right likes to say that it does), or even just getting caught mowing people down while drunk driving, or to the other extreme, skirmishing drug smugglers from various cartels, these people have a right to expect their federal government to guard the border. Of secondary concern is labor. Sure, the illegals take jobs that Americans don't want, but not because Americans don't want them, it's because the pay is too low. Is it really that important that I be able to get my lawn cut four times a month for fifteen dollars? Those jobs aren't low-paying because they're menial, they're low-paying because there's a ready labor pool willing to work for those wages. Remove the labor pool and suddenly you're creating higher-paying jobs for Americans. Isn't that what the left says it wants? Isn't it going to start demanding higher pay for those jobs eventually anyway, once it gets those people the amnesty that their ideology demands that they get first? But I think the important thing is that we not play ideological games with serious, daily, boots-on-the-ground concerns. These hispanic protest marches, for example, are every bit as disturbing to me as the mobilization of the religious right during the Bush years, and should be every bit as disturbing to this community for the exact same reason -- they represent ignorance being lead by demagoguery. The notion that one cannot secure the border without being racist should be ANATHEMA to every American, not because it's true but because it ISN'T. But instead of being up in arms about the illogic of that position, we ignore it and pretend it isn't common, while at the exact same time hundreds of thousands of hispanics are lead around by the nose right in front of our faces, told that that IS the case. These people are lead by politicians who are in office right now. And yet people just sit there, ignore that this is happening, and post jokes about Sarah Palin, as if that is somehow completely different. Anyway, I digress, but I think I've answered your question.

But I think there are valid reasons for not having an open border, and security is top amongst them. We have not only a right but also an obligation to determine who can become a citizen (and who cannot), and every other nation recognizes that right/obligation and practices it themselves. The point of being aware of just how open we are is to recognize that we're doing a job that, while not above criticism, is clearly above many of the criticisms typically leveled against it.

Well I believe that is the accusation, right? I don't think anybody suspects that all of those on board these ships intended to cause violence. The supposition is that a few very bad people (Al Qaeda, if you believe the IDF) infiltrated the activist groups for that specific purpose. That's life in the 21st century, I guess.

The United States accepts more immigrants each year than all other countries in the world combined. Every year we break the previous year's record for naturalization (citizenship for immigrants). Both Democrats and Republicans recognize the value of immigration to the growth and culture of the nation, and even though there are individuals who do not, they appear to be very much in the minority. What exactly could we be doing better? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

The Annenburg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org Web site, which is known for its objective analysis, posted a new analysis of the law yesterday, which can be found here: http://factcheck.org/2010/06/arizonas-papers-please-law/ In a nutshell, they do feel that it allows some (undetermined) amount of racial profiling, but that it's within the bounds already permitted by federal law. My biggest beef with opponents of the Arizona law is that they're standing back from the fray, where it's nice and comfy and safe, and playing mental exercises while Arizonans face real, daily problems. Society regularly and repeatedly refuses to resolve this issue for reasons that are mainly ideological in nature, and that can't continue indefinitely.

Wow, a mailing list is serious old-school, but I like it. It has a nice advantage in terms of immediacy -- they don't have to stop by the web site in order to know something has changed, and they might even get email on their telephone. And it'd be easy to store everything for future reference (I want to rinse and repeat this exercise for future batches of student-interns). The only real down side is I can't "sticky" important info, but they can just save those emails. I think I'll check into that, thanks Genecks. I thought about the blog idea but I don't think the format really works for us. I appreciate the suggestion, though, DK.

Does anybody know a good place to host a free forum? I've got 7 students to support in a little internship group, plus maybe up to half a dozen more added later. I set up a forum for them at freeforums.org, but it's abysmally slow, and I was hoping for something a little speedier. I know that's a bit much to ask when there's no money involved, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask around. I saw a bunch of free services listed in a google search but I was hoping to hear from someone who's used one that's really good. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The Justice Department filed another petition to the Supreme Court today on yet another Arizona law, clearly indicating a ramp-up to a challenge against the new Arizona immigration law. This time the law in question enforces penalties on Arizona businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants, initially with a suspension, then with business license revocation on subsequent offenses. An interesting twist in this case is that this particular Arizona law was signed in 2007 by the governor of Arizona -- Janet Napolitano. Napolitano is now President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security. Another interesting aspect here is that this particular law has already been upheld in federal court, in this case the famously left-leaning 9th Circuit court in San Francisco. None of this seems to have anything to do with the Obama administration's oft-stated basis for objecting to the Arizona law, which is that it would be unfairly applied to hispanics. Perhaps that's because there's no real indication (other than speculation) that it would be. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/03/justice-dept-challenges-arizona-immigration-law-targeting-employers/

Does anyone have any experience with netlogo who might be able to help out Mayank here?

I'm not sure I understand the political impact of a joint analysis of the economic affect of both legal and illegal immigration combined.

Yeah, probably so. Agreed. That was a really tragic example, btw.

Yup, I agree with all that. Here's another very human angle: "That man killed my daughter and you had his confession, but you let him go?" I'm not disagreeing with you, but it is a complex equation.

Seems like a good point to me.

Sure, and how many of the other 2,211,950 would you set free just to make sure that those 92,165 were protected? Would 100,000 be okay? 200,000? How many people DID get off scott free solely because of the system's inability to convict them due to a legal constraint designed to protect the innocent? Oddly enough, nobody seems to want to collect that data. I'm not defending wrongful convictions, I'm just saying it's important to look at these things in context, not absolutes.