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ICYMI: Recapping the News (mid-February edition) February 16, 2014

Posted by nicholasjweaver in Politics & News, Sports.
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Welcome (back) to my almost weekly segment highlighting events, news, and commentary that I find to be significant and largely overlooked. Reminder: it is by no means comprehensive. Here’s a quick rundown of some major news stories and commentary from that probably flew under your radar:

Politics

  • It was a big week for Democrats, who got a clean debt ceiling bill passed through the House.
  • Rand Paul believes hard times will not be leaving the Republican party. “I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party.”
    1. On that note, House Republicans in Kansas approved a sweepingly anti-gay measure this week. From Slate: ” A catch-all clause allows businesses and bureaucrats to discriminate against gay people so long as this discrimination is somehow “related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.” From diners, to police officers, to state hospitals, gay people could be denied service in the name of “religious liberty.”
      • Republican sponsor Charles Macheers: “Discrimination is horrible. It’s hurtful … It has no place in civilized society, and that’s precisely why we’re moving this bill.”
    2. A Pew survey of LGBT Americans shows that many view the Obama administration and Democratic Party as generally friendly towards them. The least friendly? The Republican Party.
  • A piece on White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

  • A Florida trial related to the “stand your ground” law ended in mistrial. A 47 year-old white man had a few drinks and shot a black teenager at a gas stations because his “thug music” was too loud. The jury needed more than 30 hours to deliberate. Would they have struggled so much if race was reversed in this case?
    1. Related: a study finds that “homicides with a white perpetrator and a black victim are ten times more likely to be ruled justified than cases with a black perpetrator and a white victim, and the gap is larger in states with Stand Your Ground laws.” Shocking.
  • U.S. Trust on “The Global Rise of Women Entrepreneurs.”
  • In recent years, support for multiculturalism has declined in many European countries. Such trends are usually associated with economic struggles, which have been pervasive over the past few years. However, Switzerland recently approved a far-right initiative to approve immigration quotas. The Swiss, who have an unemployment rate of less than 4%, are now at odds with the broader European community because the EU touts the “principle of free movement of people.”

International

  • Meet Matteo Renzi, 39 year-old mayor of Florence. Renzi, a member of Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party, has no experience in the national government but succeeded in sacking Enrico Letta, Prime Minister and party rival. Now, Renzi looks to become the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history.
  • French, Rwandan, and African Union troops continue their efforts to limit violence in Central African Republic. Troop levels have been insufficient and there is growing concern that the Christian majority will force out or kill the entire Muslim population in the country. Added to the fear of genocide is a potential famine. Food wholesalers and producers are fleeing C.A.R., a country where 9/10 of the country only eats one meal a day. A month before planting season, 96% of farmers find themselves without access to seeds. Fear of violent raids is keeping some food aid at the Cameroon border.
  • The far reach of Al Qaeda: “Clashes between armed villagers and members of an Al Qaeda linked group left 30 people dead near the Mali-Niger border.”
  • Speaking of Al Qaeda, J.M. Berger has an excellent long read on the changing nature of the organization and the problems they present.

Foreign Policy

  • Syria: The UN led a relief effort to Homs last week during a loosely enacted ceasefire. Residents in parts of the city were starving as both pro-Assad forces and the rebels embraced siege tactics.
    1. Some are now arguing for U.S. force, is at least the threat of such, to lift the sieges and feed Syrians.
  • Michael O’Hanlon from Brookings is arguing for a smart increase in U.S. military intervention, specifically in Africa. He believes the forces and resources required would be low, especially compared to their impact.
  • Not news, but always interesting: The U.S. spent more on defense in 2012 than did the countries with the next 10 highest defense budgets combined.
  • Mike Doran from Brookings on Obama and Iran: “The president doesn’t trust those who have traditionally managed the conflict with Iran, doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the struggle to be his. He wants out.”
  • Civilian deaths in Afghanistan neared 3,000 in 2013.

Economics

  • China’s rise and America’s decline are inevitable, right? Of course not.
  • Tyler Cowen on why emerging markets should look at their national governments more than global macroeconomic factors.

Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania

  • New Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto has some new ideas for connecting the city’s transportation with the future.
  • Reporting on fundraising for the governor’s race.

Sports

  • Former MLB broadcaster and Pittsburgh Pirate Ralph Kiner died at 91.
  • Update on A.J. Burnett: $16 million, 1 year contract with the Phillies.
  • Oshie! TJ Oshie’s game-winning shootout goal against the Russians. Awesome game and awesome reactions throughout the country.
    1. Today, it’s Miller Time in Sochi. Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller led the US team over Slovenia 5-1. Miller improves to 6-1 in seven Olympic games with a .945 SV% and a 1.30 GAA. The Americans exit group play with a 3-0 record.

Random

  • From Ian Bremmer: all 22 countries that Britain has never invaded.
  • Taunting a sniper with a sock puppet, because warzones just aren’t lively enough for some people.
  • Eritrea arrested two locally-hired U.S. embassy employees back in 2001. They are still being held.
  • Sad to see cultural destruction in Africa and the Middle East over the past month. In Baghdad, the Shorjah market was set ablaze in a bomb attack. The market was 700 years old and dated back to the Abbasid Caliphate. In Mali, militants destroyed 14 of 16 World Heritage Sites and burned 4,200 manuscripts on astronomy, medicine, theology, and history (dating from the 12th to 19th century). (Mali information from UN Ambassador Sam Power)
  • What would Middle Earth look like from space?
  • Ellen Page came out on Friday. You can watch her inspiring speech here.
  • Happy belated Valentine’s Day to all of you. And, if it wasn’t happy, maybe these NFL valentines will amuse you.
  • Good luck to Max Fisher, my favorite international affairs writer at the Washington Post. Fisher is joining Ezra Klein’s new team at Vox Media.
  • Best wishes to Tom Brokaw, who is battling cancer.

State of the Party: A Democratic Reflection, In 700 Words January 29, 2014

Posted by nicholasjweaver in Politics & News.
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A conversation with a friend triggered some thoughts about a topic with which I’ve been grappling, namely why do liberals screw themselves over? (For the purposes of this post, liberals and democrats can be considered inter-changeable, as can conservatives and Republicans. Disclosure: I am an active and fairly liberal Democrat from New York and living in Pennsylvania.) My thoughts on some major problems that liberals have because of themselves…

See, the GOP is a visibly divided party but Democrats, to me, are fairly homogeneous in their beliefs. I think that Democrats are very consistent believers in lessening economic inequality, closing the racial and gender gaps, protecting the environment, enacting better gun control, maintaining social government programs (by which I mean Medicare, Social Security), and avoiding large-scale foreign conflicts. But Democrats differ greatly on the priority that they place on each issue, and they emphasize their top priorities so heavily that it ends up hurting the party’s capacity to enact change.

We often look whiny because some or most of those issues are always left unaddressed at any given time. President Obama covered many things last night but you know that liberals are going to be on him for leaving out race or the environment or the space program or not closing Guantanamo yet or continuing drone usage or…you get the picture. If the President fights hard for health care, we hit him for not working on taxes or Wall Street reform. If he kills Bin Laden, we complain about drones or Guantanamo. And if the President were to simultaneously balance all of those issues at once? Then we’d complain that he hadn’t actually fixed all of them ALREADY. We are NEVER satisfied because gosh darn it the world hasn’t been saved from EVERYTHING yet! Augh! Sometimes we seem like Type-A parents pushing their kids to simultaneously get straight A’s and play sports and join clubs and take up an instrument and….yikes. We get a bit out of control.

Liberals often do a poor job on sales pitches because we tend to have those “pet issues,” focusing on one big issue from the aforementioned group. We view our preferred pet issue as the biggest priority or most important issue, so much so that we often eschew the other issues and their supporters as we tout our concerns. But in a sense, all of those “pet issues” are connected because they are (surprisingly to us) partisan: a conservative economist recently wrote about the “unrelenting beauty” of inequality, Sarah Palin jeered President Obama last week for tending to “pull the race card,” and Rand Paul dismissed the “war on women” just this weekend. Republicans are, at best, torn on believing in climate change and they like to deride social programs as “entitlements” (side rant: we pay into all of those programs…look up the definition of “entitlement”). We view all of our positions on these issues as “common sense,” but that clouds our attempts to pitch solutions or even the importance or existence of the problems in the first place. We expect everyone to know, understand, and agree with us on these issues and their solutions and so we never seem to know what to do with the disconnect.

Additionally, as the group that wants to change the status quo, Democrats always face the tougher fight because 1) the defenders of the status quo are usually staunch, 2) the “change” group typically lacks a unified idea of what change should look like and 3) the members of the pro-change group becomes disillusioned, apathetic, and cynical if things don’t change or don’t change in the way they envisioned. I think this is a big part of why Republican strategists out-communicate and out-maneuver the Dems. When all of this comes together, Democrats look uncoordinated, whiny, and “partisan.”

I think you should fight the battles you have to fight, not just the ones you can win. You shouldn’t stop trying to change the world but sometimes you have to step back to regroup and fight better tomorrow. Liberals can’t sell the rest of the country on all of the big issues at once. We need to develop more awareness of how we approach issues and pitch solutions.