Welcome to Kentucky, Mahmoud.

Because of Centre College, Boyle County is relatively liberal.  I expect people there will put down any attempt to treat you with anything less than legendary Kentucky friendliness.

From the Danville Advocate-Messenger:

Her husband, Mahmoud Al Saloum, arrived safely at the Lexington airport after close to two years of attempting to get his visa. 

“Gosh, what didn’t happen since we last spoke,” Morris said the day before she was to pick up “Ma.” Her voice was light and lively; so much different from when we first spoke in January in order to get their story out. 

Her husband, whom she married in Ghana in 2014, had been attempting to get an immigrant visa since June 3, 2015, in order to move to Junction City to be with Morris and their son, Aiden. Just when they thought his time would come, an executive order was signed banning travel from certain Muslim countries. Although Saloum wasn’t living in any of those countries, because he’s Syrian, there was an even greater chance he may have never been approved. 

Morris says she’s been told to get an immigrant visa, the average wait-time is roughly 60 days.

“We’ve been back and forth, back and forth — so many times. They kept telling him to come back in a week, come back in another week, then another week …” Morris says. “We buckled down and just did all we could. Then, last week, they called him on Wednesday afternoon and said to be there Friday.”

 Click here for a photo of Mahmoud meeting his son.

From the Danville Advocate-Messenger:
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article143330564.html#storylink=cpy

How to Fight ISIS

Via Juanita Jean:

War on Christmas

Via Wonkette:

How Appalachia Needs Syrian Refugees

The refugee "debate" is backwards.  The question isn't which state will take the risk and spend the money to help refugees; the question is which state gets to enjoy the economic, social and moral power that refugees and other immigrants have brought to this nation from the beginning.

Appalachia needs all the immigrants it can get.

Dee Davis of the Daily Yonder:

Rural America is falling further behind. Farms don’t need farmers. Manufacturing moved offshore. And the rate of rural kids living in poverty is worse than it is in the inner cities.

Here’s a solution. Let’s take in the Syrian refugees. Make them rural Americans. As many as we can feed.

I live in a small town. The billboard says welcome to Whitesburg, Kentucky, population 1,534 friendly people plus two grouches. We are losing industry, businesses and people with alacrity. We are losing alacrity too. Small towns often struggle to hang on to critical mass to keep a tax base or to have enough tuba players for the school band. In small towns everyone is necessary. Not even the grouches are expendable.

We’ve got room here for more folks. Rural downtowns have empty buildings where dime stores and haberdasheries once catered to customer needs.

SNIP

 In the Appalachian Mountains, Syrians, Lebanese, Persians and Palestinians came in throughout the 20th-century booms and stayed through the busts. They were coal miners and merchants and soldiers in the great wars. This nation welcomed strangers then, and strangers pitched in. Steve Jobs’ people were Syrian. eBay’s Pierre Omidyar is Iranian. There is an upside to an open-door policy.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article46837720.html#storylink=cpy

SNIP

But why should rural people be scared of new neighbors now? This is no time to buckle. Sharing the future with people who want to be here cannot be as daunting as preserving a present that’s straining under the load. The Statue of Liberty’s plaque plainly states: “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”

That sounds like a plan. And it’s a more thoughtful rural policy than any we have now.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article46837720.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article46837720.html#storylink=cpy

Mayors Fischer and Gray: Are You Going to Let Matt Bevin Push You Around?

Kentucky's governor-elect is a racist, motherfucking moron.  Mayors of Louisville and Lexington are not.  They should follow the excellent example of their counterparts in Michigan and Texas.

Crooks and Liars:

The mayors of Detroit and Austin said Monday they are welcoming Syrian refugees despite pushback by their states’ Republican governors following the deadly attacks in Paris.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said his city can support 50 Syrian families annually for the next three years and is “moving down that road.” Mayor Steve Adler said Austin has accepted three Syrian refugees in the past two years and another is coming.

The Democrats spoke during a White House-arranged conference call, a week after numerous Republican governors spoke out against federal refugee policies.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has instructed refugee-resettling organizations to stop helping Syrians. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who has lobbied federal officials for refugees and immigrants, urged a pause in the resettlement program until security concerns are addressed.

Duggan, who discussed refugee issues with Obama administration officials last month during a two-day Washington trip, said he remains comfortable with the refugee-vetting process. He said the city has vacant housing that could accommodate refugees, as well as support agencies and a large Syrian and Middle Eastern community in the surrounding area.

He said all mayors are “conscious of this terrorist threat,” which is “very real.” But he called accepting refugees a “very human issue.” Providing “refuge” to victims of terror, he said, “is what this country is all about.”

“We stand in Detroit prepared to do our share,” he added.

Bevin to Bankrupt Kentucky on Refugee Lawsuits

Our repug guv-elect said Kentucky won't accept them. That stupidity is going to cost Kentucky taxpayers millions.

TPM:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on Monday against Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) on behalf of the refugee agency that redirected a Syrian refugee family from Indiana to Connecticut at the request of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to keep the governor from withholding any state or federal refugee resettlement funds from Exodus Refugee Immigration, Inc., and states that Pence's rejection of refugees from Syria is unconstitutional.

"This lawsuit is calling out Governor Pence on his unconstitutional bluff," Judy Rabinovitz, deputy legal director of the ACLU's immigrants' rights project, said in a statement. "He does not have the power to pick and choose between which lawfully-admitted refugees he is willing to accept. Singling out Syrian refugees for exclusion from Indiana is not only ethically wrong, it is unconstitutional. Period."

Governors do not have the authority to block refugees from living in their states, since the federal government sets immigration policy. And experts say that targeting refugees from certain regions is unconstitutional and could invite lawsuits.

But the lawsuit filed by the ACLU notes that when Exodus had to redirect a Syrian refugee family to Connecticut at the last minute, the agency had to spend its own funds to find the family a new home.

"Exodus Refugee Immigration had expended both staff time and resources in preparing for the Syrian refugee family who did not come to Indiana. These resources were necessarily diverted from other projects and from assisting other refugees," the complaint reads.

SNIP

In a statement issued in response to the ACLU lawsuit on Tuesday, Pence's office said that the state will continue to suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana.

Moron.  Stand up, Hoosiers and impeach this idiot before you lose everything.

It's come to this. And it's just the beginning

White racists shooting unarmed and peaceful African-Americans?  Check

Police pepper-spraying the victims while the shooters get away?  Check

Authorities blaming the unarmed, peaceful protesters for bringing white violence down on themselves?  Check

Presidential candidates inciting the racist hatred and celebrating the violence?  Check and check and check.

Think Progress:

A group of white supremacists opened fire on an encampment of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis on Monday night, according to witnesses. Five protesters were shot and sustained injuries.

The police are seeking three white male suspects. They were reportedly “wearing masks and bulletproof vests.

“I am obviously appalled that white supremacists would open fire on nonviolent, peaceful protesters,” Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, said from the site of the shootings.

The encampment was in response to the shooting of of 24-year-old Jamar Clark, who was fatally shot by the police on November 15.

The New York Times reports that some witnesses claimed “they had been sprayed with Mace by the police following the shooting.”

What's this?  A white mayor in Texas says that white supremacists are a greater danger than scary browns?

The mayor of Dallas is pushing back against politicians who say Americans should be skeptical of Syrian refugees, saying he is “more fearful” of armed white men than people fleeing civil war in the Middle East.

Speaking to MSNBC on Saturday morning, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was asked to discuss the growing anxiety over Syrian refugees entering the United States, purportedly over concerns they could be potential agents for militant groups such as ISIS. Rawlings staunchly rejected the assertion that Syrians are somehow uniquely prone to violence, saying he is more concerned with the rise of white supremacy and the recent flurry of mass shootings committed by white men.

“I am more fearful of large gatherings of white men that come into schools, theaters and shoot people up, but we don’t isolate young white men on this issue,” Rawlings said.

George Does It Again

Just. Nails. The. Motherfuckers. To. The. Wall.

Vox:

On Wednesday, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, wrote a controversial letter explaining why his administration won't be welcoming Syrian refugees. The letter from Mayor David Bowers invoked America's history of interning Japanese Americans during World War II as a precedent for his own actions. He wrote, "President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then."

Star Trek actor turned internet celebrity George Takei takes this subject very personally, because he was one of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were targeted by Roosevelt's policies. And in a powerful Facebook post, he pointed out that the lesson Bowers has drawn from this history is totally wrong:

1) The internment (not a "sequester") was not of Japanese "foreign nationals," but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America.

2) There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected "enemies" then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the U.S. already has accepted. We were judged based on who we looked like, and that is about as un-American as it gets.

3) If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.

Cowards Who Think America is Weak

The Rude Pundit:

This is simple: If you say that the United States or your state or your city or your little shithole by the ditch should ban refugees from Syria because ISIS fighters or Islamic terrorists or Sharia-packin' mules might get into the nation. you are a pussy. Because what you are saying is that you are so afraid of a couple of goatfuckers getting through and blowing themselves up that you would rather cringe in the dark and hide. And you think the nation is so pathetic and weak that those goatfuckers could actually have a shot at destroying Our Way of Life (spoiler: they don't).

Repug Pants-Wetters Determined to Create Radical Muslims in America

Their hysteria over muslinterrists under the bed is pure projection: America's real domestic terrorists are the very right-wing, freakazoid gun nuts repugs have been growing and cherishing for 60 years.

And now their screaming hate-mongering is going to create in reality the myth they lie about.

 

Digby:

Michael Cohen makes a good point in this column about the various myths surrounding the Paris attacks and US policy toward ISIS:

Myth No. 1: America Is Next

From the pages of Politico to the CBS news program “60 Minutes,” this argument has been made repeatedly since Friday night, and it demonstrates a glaring ignorance about the differences between the U.S. and Europe when it comes to vulnerability to terrorism.

The biggest difference is that the United States simply doesn’t have a radicalized Muslim population, as is the case in France and elsewhere in Europe. That matters a lot because foreign terrorists operating in the United States, especially in a post-9/11 environment, would need local assistance, safe houses, access to weapons and explosives, logistical support and more. In short, they would need Americans, or people who know American culture and who can operate in the country freely. Yet, in the 14 years since 9/11, there’s been no serious emergence of radicalization among American Muslims. The Fort Hood shooter and the Boston Marathon bombers are obvious exceptions, but exceptions nonetheless.

Europe is a very different kettle of fish than the US. They have large Muslim populations with long-standing social unrest and cultural alienation. It's quite possible that the radicalization, at least among some of them, has as much to do with their own issues as Europeans as it has with their religion or solidarity with the aims of ISIS.

We have not had this in the US. But from the way the Republicans are acting, it appears we're jealous and would like to get some. At the very least they seem petulant that we aren't in the center of the  fight. Treating Muslims like aliens and talking about closing mosques and rounding up and interning or deporting them is one way to get there.

Keep it up boys. This demagoguery may very well keep out Syrian refugees but if you want to create some American homegrown Islamic radicals you're doing a heckuva job.

Choosing Brave and Smart Over Scared and Stupid

Ever notice how real heroes are never the ones screaming "OMG we're all gonna die!"

Digby:

I've been aghast at the panic stricken bellowing coming from mainstream US media in the wake of Paris and needless to say, Fox News has been worse than most.  But once in awhile someone surprises you. Here's Fox's Shep Smith:

In the face of terror, will we panic or be calm and deliberative in approach?” Smith asked in a 90-second monologue. “Confronted with those who want to change our way of life, will we abandon our freedoms and the rights granted to us by the creator, or will we welcome huddled masses, yearning to breathe free? Will we take extreme measures to fundamentally alter who and what we are?” 

“Our shining city on a hill is vulnerable,” he continued. “We’ve always known that. If we change it to accommodate the savages, have they won? And what then would be left to protect? We profess to stand as an example for all the world. Our unique experiment in freedom, tolerance, openness, and equality, is our gift to societies and peoples everywhere. Come, join us. Enjoy a chance at the American dream.” 

He concluded, “Today we mourn but we cannot allow ourselves to become like those who want to destroy us. We cannot resort to tactics of the barbarians. We must fight for what we believe in and who we are. Guard our freedoms faithfully for the generations to follow. And we must not let the rhetoric of potential and political extremists among us lead us to self-destruction. When there’s panic, we show resolve. When there’s calm for extremism, we resist. We are America. We must lead.”

QOTD: Refugees

If America is not the beacon of freedom to every oppressed person on earth, then it is nothing at all.

 

Paul Campos at LGM:

... the proper response to calls for an end to accepting Syrian refugees is to point out that such a policy is grotesquely inhumane, as it buys Americans an infinitesimal decrease in the already infinitesimal risk that we as individuals will be victimized by jihadist terrorism, at the cost of failing to do anything to ameliorate the vast suffering of the actual victims of ISIS, 99.99% of whom are in Syria and Iraq.

Not Gonna Be Nice: The Mother Fuckers Are Wrong

Via Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Doctor Zoom at Wonkette crystallized the absurdity:

Of course U.S. America should take in refugees. It’s our fucking job. The alternative is to leave them stuck in hell, where they will either die or become radicalized against the United States. Or else we might as well replace the plaque on that nice welcoming statue in New York Harbor with one that reads, “Sucks to be you.” The lesson of World War II was supposed to be “Never Again,” not “leave ’em to die because they’re scary foreigners with the wrong religion.”

John Nichols ‏@NicholsUprising

If only they weren't so very wrong, so very often, perhaps we could take the fear-mongering politicians seriously. 

 

Saladin Ahmed ‏@saladinahmed

Jewish refugee ship turned back by USA. 254 passengers died in the Holocaust. ht @mlvwrites http://www.floridahistorynetwork.com/june-4-1939---jewish-refugee-ship-turned-away-from-florida-coast.html …

Will Jordan ‏@williamjordann

A cartoon from the New York Daily Mirror at the time (June 6, 1939). https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/666440453487779840 …

Pat Bagley ‏@Patbagley

Republican America is mean, narrow, ill-informed, bigoted, angry, self-destructive ... and incredibly well-armed.

Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part 1

First, you moron, refugee policy is set by the President, not by faux-libertarian bros who think a governor's race makes them king. If President Obama wants to send five million Syrian refugees to Kentucky, there's not a fucking thing Bevin can do about it.

And as has been pointed out by others, ISIS is what the Syrian refugees are running away from.  You want to hurt ISIS and help America?  Welcome the refugees with open arms and make sure they become grateful American citizens.

 

You know, like the immigrant ancestors of every single fucking person in this country.

From the Courier:

As Kentucky refugee advocates worked to calm fears and stave off a backlash against Syrian refugees, Gov.-elect Matt Bevin on Monday joined with a chorus of governors, including Indiana's Mike Pence, calling for suspending the refugees' resettlements to their states.

"The recent terrorist attacks in Paris serve as a warning to the entire civilized world that we must remain vigilant," Bevin said in a statement. "It is imperative that we do everything in our power to prevent any similar attack by evildoers from taking place here in America."

Bevin, who is to be inaugurated Dec. 8, said his primary responsibility as governor would be to protect Kentuckians.

About the same time, Kentucky's outgoing governor, Steve Beshear, issued a statement saying the commonwealth would be following federal immigration laws under him. "In terms of the impact of this violence on refugees, obviously, these are women and children and people who are in desperate need, and if America needs to help out, we will help out," he said. "But we have to be very careful and make sure that we screen people so we only bring folks into the United States who are truly looking for a safe haven.”

How Marxist, Feminist, Environmentalist Muslims Defeated IS

It's liberal democracy the way it was supposed to be, the one that plutocrats, corporations and freakazoids fear the most.

I expect U.S. drones to "accidentally" obliterate it any day now.

TPM:

Months after it was supposed to fall, Kobane still stands, and IS has been forced back. The story of the town’s resistance is an epic tale of determination and self-defense, and it’s one U.S. officials would rather not discuss. When the Pentagon claimed there were no ground troops in Kobane, they weren’t exactly telling the truth. In 2012, Syrian forces withdrew from three northern areas, leaving their administration and defense to the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Now the three territories hold more than four million people, half of them refugees from the Syrian civil war or the Islamic State’s advance, and many of them armed and organized. Kobane is one of the three territories that together constitute the autonomous region of Rojava, and it endures today because of the fiercely egalitarian society the people have built, the kind idealized by many leftists around the world.

Most Americans, even the ones who pay close attention to national involvement in the Middle East, have little to no idea about what has been happening in Kobane. The Pentagon has been less than forthcoming with support for these enemies of our enemies; their fighters are still on the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations. The American media has more or less ignored the political project in Rojava; they’ve been more comfortable painting Kurds as desperate fighters fending off the Islamic State. Besides, there are a lot of acronyms and complicated political affiliations to sort through. But while America isn’t watching, something incredible is happening. At the geographical nexus of so many of the world’s conflicts, a new post-national project is emerging.

SNIP

In 2005, his death sentence reduced to life in prison, Öcalan made a surprising announcement: He renounced nationalism. The PKK and its affiliates followed suit, dropping the fight for a seat at the UN and adopting a unique political ideology called democratic confederalism. When the Syrian government withdrew from what would be Rojava in 2012, they did not declare independence despite controlling the territory. Just when the world’s largest stateless group finally seems poised to join the modern nation state system, when the dream of a Kurdistan (if not a united one) in northern Iraq is nearly at hand, the PKK has abandoned its foundational agenda. What happened? The simplest answer is they thought of a better idea.

Despite being Turkey’s most notorious prisoner, Öcalan has kept in communication with his comrades (that’s what they call each other) through his writing, some of which has been translated for a western audience that has so far yet to appear. In a pamphlet on democratic confederalism, Öcalan laid out the premise for his unexpected turn:

So far, with a view to issues of ethnicity and nationhood like the Kurdish question, which have their roots deep in history and at the foundations of society, there seemed to be only one viable solution: the creation of a nation-state, which was the paradigm of the capitalist modernity at that time. We did not believe, however, that any ready-made political blueprints would be able to sustainably improve the situation of the people in the Middle East. Had it not been nationalism and nation-states which had created so many problems in the Middle East?

The Kurdish freedom struggle, he explains, had always been about “liberating the society and democratizing it” and resisting “the global domination of the modern capitalist system.” Inspired by decolonization struggles throughout the global south, the PKK’s founders followed their model, attempting a Maoist guerrilla war strategy to establish their own nation. They were always a little behind the times; by the PKK’s founding in 1978, the Cold War period of national liberation had drawn to a close. Even if, against all odds, they were to win, the most likely outcome would be a Cuba-style trade embargo enforced by Turkey. The organization needed a new vision, and democratic confederalism was Öcalan’s answer.

At the geographical nexus of so many of the world’s conflicts, a new post-national project is emerging.

 

So what is democratic confederalism? Öcalan calls it “a non-state political administration” or a “democracy without a state.” Instead of centralizing political power in a government, confederalism views society holistically, as an association of associations of intrinsically social people. It aspires to flatten the divisions the state places between public, productive and domestic life, linking together sewing cooperatives, neighborhood communes, refugee assistance groups, schools and self-defense forces in a common framework. The higher levels of organization exist to facilitate the grassroots, and decisions flow from the bottom to the top. It’s designed to work without, beneath, between and against nation-states, depending on the situation. Like the Islamic State, democratic confederalism does not recognize borders except as obstacles to overcome. “It is flexible, multi-cultural, anti-monopolistic, and consensus-oriented,” Öcalan writes. “Ecology and feminism are central pillars.”

Nuke Saudi Arabia. Do It Now.

Steve M. says President Obama will probably send ground troops to the Syria/Iraq Permanent Hellhole of Futility after the election.

I think he's right, and I think the only way to stop it is to turn the real trouble-maker in the region into a giant sheet of glass.

I mean it. There is no reason not to and and infinite number of reasons to do it.

Revenge for 9-11, three-quarters of the terrorists of which came from Saudia Arabia?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Shut off the money flow to Islamic terrorists worldwide?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Punch the fossil fuel industry in the nuts, maybe long enough to get renewable energy really off and running?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Eliminate the economic, social and religious source of the 9th-century backward bullshit that enslaves a billion women and children around the world?  Nuke Saudi Arabia.

Kevin Drum:

I don't think the world has a Muslim problem. It has a Saudi Arabia problem. The closer a country is to the warped influence of Saudi Arabia, the more violent and illiberal it is. Go west to Tunisia and Morocco and Islam becomes more moderate. Go north to Turkey and it becomes more moderate. Go east to India and Indonesia and it becomes more moderate.

Obviously this is hardly a perfect correlation. If you want to find exceptions, you can. But generally speaking, Saudi Arabia is the epicenter of Islam's problems, a country that stands for virtually everything that the liberal West condemns. It is almost feudally anti-democratic. It is corrupt. It is theocratic. It treats women and gays horribly. Its legal system is barbarous. It is intolerant of any religion other than its own fundamentalist strain of Wahabi Islam. It is no coincidence that 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia and the rest came from nearby countries. Saudi Arabia is a country that, by rights, should be shunned by every government on the planet.

But they're not. For historical reasons, we've instead forged a longtime alliance with the princes of Riyadh. The world is paying a high price for this.

QOTD: Useless Air Strikes

Kevin Drum:

But guess what? The Iraqi army is still incompetent. America's allies still have their own agendas and don't care about ours. Air campaigns still aren't enough on their own to stop a concerted ground attack. This is the way things are. There are no magic wands. If you want quick results against ISIS, then speak up and tell us you want to send in 100,000 troops. If you're not willing to do that, then you have to accept that lots of innocent people are going to die without the United States being able to offer much help. Make your choice now.

If There Were Syrian Refugees Aboard Flight 370, Then Would People Care About Them?

There's nothing you can do about Malaysia Air Flight 370.  There's a lot you can do to help Syrian refugess.

Juan Cole:

It is a tragedy that the 239 passengers on Malaysian Air MH 370 never made it to Beijing, and appear to have been the victims of a hijacking that went horribly wrong. But the hours and hours of US cable television speculation about the fate of the flight during the past seven days are a Daily Show parody waiting to happen. There has been some genuine breaking news in the mystery worth covering, but much of that air time was spent in fruitless speculation. One guest told CNN that ‘funny-sounding’ but ‘very deadly’ Uighurs could be at fault. Even over-the-top CNN commentator Richard Quest reacted with horror at the sheer speculation and shut the guest down.

It is a little mystifying why American broadcast networks become collectively obsessed with a story like this and insist on covering it 24/7 even in the absence of genuine news. At Lexis Nexis, “Malaysian Flight 370″ returns 1800 stories during the past week. In contrast, the string “Syria and refugees” for the past 7 days returned 241 stories (not all of those are even about Syria’s refugees– some of the stories center on, e.g., the Central African Republic, presumably where the search algorithm favored ‘refugee’ over ‘Syria).

The Syrian refugee story is vastly more important than the missing airliner:

1. There are some 2.5 million Syrian refugees, so the scale of the human tragedy there, in which 140,000 have died, dwarfs that of one missing airliner.

2. There is most likely nothing anyone can do about the airliner. But the welfare of the Syrian refugees, many of them children, depends on our donating and organizing to help them. In turn that philanthropy depends on the world public knowing about their plight, i.e. depends on the news channels to get out the word. (Mostly, they aren’t).

"We'll keep working with the international community"

You know what would impress everybody and give the U.S. a real upper hand over both Assad and Putin? Spending a billion dollars to feed and shelter Syrian refugees and resettling the 100,000 most endangered here in the U.S. That would be exceptional.



Full transcript here.

QOTD

Charles Pierce:

Ultimately, it is cruelty that is the real New Normal. We accept it every time we accept that cops can stop teenagers for "furtive movements," or when they respond to every unusual situation as though it were taking place atop Mount Suribachi. We accept it every time we accept that "the economy" is some faceless force over which we have no control, and that the plight of its victims are somehow the natural result of immutable natural laws, instead of the natural result of thousands of individual decisions, many of which were made down the marble halls not 10 feet from this keyboard, where the Congress is back to discuss, seriously, how a distant government could do such horrible things to its own citizens.