The Blue State

Immigrants aren't criminals

Everyone thinks the borders should be secure.  Everyone wants immigrants to go through the full legalization process.  Yet, not everyone thinks that immigrants increase crime.  A new report shows that the perceived connection between immigrants and crime is overblown:

Another study released Monday by the Washington-based ImmigrationPolicy Center showed that immigrant men ages 18 to 39 had anincarceration rate five times lower than native-born citizens in everyethnic group examined. Among men of Mexican descent, for instance, 0.7%of those foreign-born were incarcerated compared to 5.9% ofnative-born, according to the study, co-written by UC Irvinesociologist Ruben G. Rumbaut.

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This study was based on U.S. census data.

President Bush and a bipartisan coalition in Congress are about to unveil a bill that would give lawful, tax-paying undocumented immigrant families a path to citizenship.

Terror war to be proclaimed victorious one month before '08 election

In an effort to help the next Republican presidential nominee, the Bush Administration will proclaim in October of 2008 that the war on terrorism has been won -- confirming suspicions by many Americans that Bush's foreign policy is partly motivated by his domestic political agenda.

Washington Post:

The Pentagon, in a series of recent memos, is making the fight againstterrorism synonymous with Iraq (although it has been pretty muchconfirmed that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in the Sept. 11 attacks)and has issued a clear call for getting the job done by the end of nextyear.

In a Dec. 6 memo to top civilian and military folks, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England outlined the Pentagon's eight priorities for this fiscal year, and No. 1 was "Win the Global War on Terror," or GWOT.

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Fun stuff.  Right now, Bush is mainly concerned with his legacy, particularly his image within the Republican base.  If he can help his party elect another Republican president, then he can say that his presidency was politically successful.

All Cheney can do is talk

Dick Cheney's hawkish circle that once had enormous influence on Bush's foreign policy has been diminished.  Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, and Donald Rumsfeld are all gone.  We are watching the lessening of Cheney's influence before our very eyes.  Just days after Dick Cheney took a hard-line approach on Iran, American officials have agreed to high-level negotiations with Iran and Syria, which will take place at a regional conference on Iraq:

The discussions, scheduled for the next two months, are expected to include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian and Syrian counterparts.

Theannouncement, first made in Baghdad and confirmed by Ms. Rice, that theUnited States would take part in two sets of meetings among Iraq andits neighbors, including Syria  and Iran , is a shift in President Bush’s avoidance of high-level contacts with the governments in Damascus and, especially, Tehran.

We will probably never seen Bush and Ahmadinejad in a room together -- so don't get your hopes up.  Though, this definitely is a start.  It shows that the State Department and the post-Rumsfeld Pentagon are moving in a more realistic direction, even though it is taking them a long time to do so.

Bottom line: the most damage Cheney can do is with his mouth.  In terms of his influence, he is definitely a lame duck without anything to do other than voice threats.  New Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has obviously helped shift power away from Cheney.  Even Joshua Bolton, Bush's Chief of Staff, is more influential than Cheney at this very moment.  Compared to the situation when Andrew Card was in there, a lot has changed.

Clinton unveils energy policy

In the latest edition of Hillary Clinton's "HillCast" -- otherwise known as those "chat" sessions on her web site -- the former First Lady unveiled her energy policy for if she wins the presidency.  You can watch the video here.

Because I get a creepy Manchurian/Stepford vibe from these chat sessions, instead of posting the video, here is a summary of her plan (WSJ):

Clinton proposes an “Apollo-like effort to make clean and alternativeenergy the energy of America.” The centerpiece: a Strategic Energy Fundto advance new technologies. The money — $50 billion over 10 years —would be extracted from the oil industry by ending tax breaks, imposinga two-year windfall profits “fee” and collecting all the royalties owedfor drilling on federal lands. Oil companies could make up for the feeby investing in ethanol, wind and other alternative energy sources.

That's definitely a good start.  Instead of the U.S. Treasury paying oil companies to drill on government land, as it is today, it should be the other way around.

Also, as the campaign moves along, it will be interesting to see how many of the candidates in both parties acknowledge the differences between "alternative energy" and "renewable energy."  All in all, there is a huge difference.  The government can list literally anything they want as an alternative energy -- even dirty coal.  It comes as no surprise that Bush's new energy plan focuses almost entirely on alternative energy, and not the other.

"Is Obama black enough" comments having opposite effect

Besides promoting a fictional story about Barack Obama's childhood school, another way to after this Democratic presidential candidate is to make him look like an uncle Tom.  The hope of some political strategists is it might hurt Obama's support among black voters.  Well, they tried that.  The jury's results are in.  It looks like that attack did not produced the desired effect.

Compare the latest Obama numbers among black voters with the ones last month:

ABC News national survey
(likely black primary voters)

2/25 (1/19)
Barack Obama - 44% (20%)
Hillary Clinton - 33% (60%)

I do not like to use polling data on the 2008 primaries if they are national surveys.  After all, the race will basically come down to four states: Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.  But this change is significant because the numbers turned upside down over the span of just one month.

Who owns your economy, stupid

The Black Tuesday stock market slide really shows how big of a hand China has in the U.S. economy.  For starters, how about stop borrowing money from Chinese banks to finance our debt, which my generation will eventually pay interest on.

The slide could have been worse had it not been for those technical glitches near the end of trading.  The glitches led to booing chants by the traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

2.28.07 Blue Radar

Here are the miscellaneous politicalstories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are still news-worthy.  Be sure to check out The Blue State on Youtube, which is located under "Menu."  It includes all of the political videos that are featured on this site:

• Newsweek reports that some U.S. interrogators were influenced by techniques learned on television.
• Glenn Beck has officially compared Keith Olbermann to Joseph McCarthy.  The video is here.  (hmm...)
• Today, Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA) will unveil a bill that would repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military.
• President Bush is proposing a 25% cut to public broadcasting networks such as PBS and NPR.  (At least don't take away Sesame Street!)
• Tuesday's election results in Chicago show that Mayor Richard M. Daley has been reelected to a sixth term -- yep, that's four years per term.
• A undisclosed CIA official reports that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan, and is establishing new Al Qaeda bases there.
• This is as close to an "in your face" job as possible.  John Edwards traveled to New York, home of Senator Hillary Clinton, and made a point of apologizing yet again for his 2002 Iraq war vote.  "If you asked me what I think the most important personalcharacteristics of the next president are, I would say honesty,openness and decency," Edwards said.
• Bill Richardson is promising a cabinet level Department of Indian Affairs if he is elected president.
• London's mayor Ken Livingstone is unveiling a plan to cut greenhouse emissions in his city: "The fight to tackle climate change will either be won in cities such as London or will not be won at all."
• The City Commission in Largo City, Florida voted 5-2 to fire the City Manager because he planned to get a sex change operation.  (Not an important news story, just amusing.)
  

let me know.  Feel free to add any new stories in the commentbox.

2.28.07 Political Clips for Nightowls

As posted in the middle of each night, here are some of the popular political clips circulating throughout the blogosphere at this time:

1. Young people in Austin went bananas for Obama.  Politically speaking, at this point, no other politician succeeds more in getting my generation to become engaged in politics than this guy.  And it's working.
2. Our good buddy Glenn Beck rants about Gore's Oscar victory.  So Beck thinks Gore will run in 2012?  This was from Monday's episode.
3. Fox News claims terrorists are influencing Nancy Pelosi.  This is OUTRAGEOUS, and LOW!
4. Duncan Hunter and Jane Harman debate Iraq war.  This was from Sunday's Late Edition.
5. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Chris Shays go at it on Afghanistan.  And Shays claims the Democrats are ignoring the Iraq Study Group.  How can he say that with a straight face?  This was from Tuesday's Hardball.

More clips later today and tomorrow.

Burglary at New Hampshire Democratic headquarters

No, the Republican Party would not be dumb enough to have a direct hand in it.  Or would they?  Apparently, this break in at the New Hampshire Democratic headquarters happened over the weekend, and just broke the news wires a few hours ago:

Office workers reported the break-in to police on Monday. ConcordPolice Sgt. Mike McGuire said some items were taken, but he declined tobe more specific. The assessment was the same from Kathy Sullivan, thechairwoman of the state Democratic Party.

"Some things were taken, but I don't really want to get into that right now," Sullivan said on Tuesday.

There was no indication that any personal financial information was taken, said party spokeswoman Kathleen Strand.

"We want to assure our donors that their personal financialinformation, as far as we can tell, has been protected, and we hope tofind out who did this soon," she said.

I will stay on top of this.  The way news works these days, we will know very fast whether this was a Watergate-like incident, some fringe right-wing group or just a random robbery.  If I were in Vegas, I would put twenty of those five-dollar chips on the first and second options.

More tomorrow

Again, as I wrote this morning, sorry that there were a pathetically small number of posts today.  I should be up to speed for tomorrow. 

The next post will be around Midnight Eastern time.