A Tale of Two Pakistanis

12
6 days ago
by Monotreme in
Nawaz Sharif: every legitimate vote counts.

Nawaz Sharif: every legit­i­mate vote counts.

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of fool­ish­ness, it was the age of fool­ish­ness, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the epoch of incredulity…

One is dead. The other has been res­ur­rected from polit­i­cal death.

Saturday’s Pak­istani elec­tions for the National Assem­bly resulted in a resound­ing win for for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Mus­lim League (PML-​​N). For­mer cricket star Imran Khan’s party, Pak­istan Tehreek-​​e-​​Insaf (PTI), appears to be in oppo­si­tion. The Pak­istan People’s Party (PPP), founded and run by the Bhutto fam­ily, got walloped.

This al Jazeera info­graphic explains the Pak­istani elec­tion process. The May 11 elec­tions were for the National Assem­bly, leav­ing the PPP in charge of the Presidency.

If Sharif can form a gov­ern­ment, and the army can be per­suaded not to over­throw the demo­c­ra­tic process, then it will be the first legal tran­si­tion of power in the 66-​​year his­tory of the coun­try.
(more…)

The First Scandal of 2016

13
1 week ago
by dcpetterson in

Karl Rove, still in the game

The 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign has def­i­nitely started. No can­di­dates have announced them­selves, but the most likely play­ers are clearly evi­dent. For the Democ­rats, most spec­u­la­tion has cen­tered around two vet­eran politi­cians: for­mer Sen­a­tor and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, and Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. On the Repub­li­can side stands a bevy of brash young Turks, each try­ing to out-​​do the oth­ers for the most pos­si­ble cam­era time. You can tell which side is already run­ning scared, and which oppos­ing can­di­date is most feared. Fox “News” and Karl Rove (des­per­ate to remain a player after back­ing so many losers in 2012) have already cre­ated a campaign-​​style attack ad.

The attacks on Sec­re­tary Clin­ton con­sist of innu­endo and spec­u­la­tion fueled by hear­ings in the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee chaired by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dar­rell Issa (R-​​Vista, CA). Those hear­ings were in regard to a dif­fer­ent attack — the Sep­tem­ber, 2012, assault on the Amer­i­can diplo­matic post in Beng­hazi, Libya, an action which resulted in the deaths of Christo­pher Stevens (then America’s ambas­sador to Libya) and three other staffers. Repub­li­cans have already taken mul­ti­ple bites off this apple, includ­ing non-​​inhaling for­mer Gov­er­nor Mitt Romney’s clumsy and inef­fec­tive macho blus­ter­ing that began while the event was still under way; then a sen­sa­tion­al­ist first set of Con­gres­sional hear­ings in Jan­u­ary; and then the scut­tling of Susan Rice’s nom­i­na­tion for the post of Sec­re­tary of State. In no case was any wrong­do­ing revealed, only Repub­li­can frus­tra­tion at the Obama Administration’s insuf­fi­ciently pruri­ent use of the word “terrorism.”

Was any­thing sub­stan­tial dredged up in the most recent fish­ing expe­di­tion? Not accord­ing Karl Rove. Or Dar­rell Issa. (more…)

All Your Message Are Belong To US

29
1 week ago
by Michael Weiss in

He’s look­ing at us, kid.

We learned last week, on the May 1 edi­tion of CNN’s Out Front with Erin Bur­nett, that our gov­ern­ment has been spy­ing on all of us for years. In the rel­e­vant por­tion of the tran­script, for­mer FBI coun­tert­er­ror­ism agent Tim Clemente tells us so matter-​​of-​​factly that he almost seems sur­prised that we didn’t already know:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obvi­ously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone com­pa­nies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a con­ver­sa­tion. There’s no way they actu­ally can find out what hap­pened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We cer­tainly have ways in national secu­rity inves­ti­ga­tions to find out exactly what was said in that con­ver­sa­tion. It’s not nec­es­sar­ily some­thing that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the inves­ti­ga­tion and/​or lead to ques­tion­ing of her. We cer­tainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actu­ally get that? Peo­ple are say­ing, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, wel­come to Amer­ica. All of that stuff is being cap­tured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

At this point I don’t see any harm in dis­cussing it, though I’ve known about this for longer than I’d care to admit. One of the dif­fi­cult aspects of work­ing in the secu­rity realm is that I hear many things from many sources, and quite a few of them involve top­ics I can’t (or won’t) divulge to oth­ers. So it is in this case.

But now that the cat is out of the bag, it’s worth look­ing at this a bit more thor­oughly.  (more…)

Open Mic May 10

46
1 week ago
by Logarchism.com in
Science Exam

A real sci­ence quiz. Click to zoom in and see just how scary it is.

“Is our chil­dren learn­ing?” We received con­fir­ma­tion this week of exactly what some of them are learn­ing.

Three women, miss­ing for a decade, were found alive and rel­a­tively healthy (at least phys­i­cally) in a house in Cleve­land, Ohio. Charles Ram­sey, a man with his own check­ered past, got tagged as a hero for res­cu­ing them, though it appears he played more of a bit part than did Angel Cordero. Ram­sey, how­ever, made a far bet­ter impact in tele­vi­sion inter­views and has become an Inter­net phe­nom­e­non…prob­a­bly for some of the wrong rea­sons. Ariel Cas­tro, who is sus­pected of kid­nap­ping the women and hold­ing them hostage, report­edly left a sui­cide note con­tain­ing a detailed con­fes­sion.

Mean­while, House Repub­li­cans con­tin­ued to blow smoke and declare that it proves there’s fire.

And today is Fri­day, which means you have the floor. Maybe you could sweep it…I see a lot of debris around.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Nunn Dare Call It Treason

23
1 week ago
by Monotreme in
Running a no Nunn sense campaign.

Run­ning a no Nunn sense campaign.

The Jan­u­ary announce­ment of the impend­ing retire­ment of Sen­a­tor Saxby Cham­b­liss (R-​​GA) has set off a scram­ble for his seat in Geor­gia, per­haps the best Class 2 Sen­ate seat pickup oppor­tu­nity for the Democ­rats. (Sen­a­tors are divided into three Classes for elec­tion dates, and the elec­tion of Class 2 Sen­a­tors will take place in Novem­ber 2014.)

You might remem­ber Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Bar­row (D-​​Augusta, GA) as the only remain­ing Con­gres­sional White Demo­c­rat in the Deep South. Bar­row was reëlected in 2012 after Repub­li­can ger­ry­man­der­ing changed his dis­trict from D+1 cen­tered on Savan­nah to R+10. This rated the redis­trict­ing as #5 on Char­lie Cook’s list of most polit­i­cally adroit ger­ry­man­ders of the 2010 Cen­sus cycle.

(To be fair, Cook calls his list “25 Biggest Redis­trict­ing Swings Against the Incum­bent Party” but I renamed it for empha­sis. Before I hear squawk­ing, notice the ger­ry­man­der of Maryland’s 6th Dis­trict by Democ­rats is #1.)

Bar­row had to leave Savan­nah and move to Augusta to hold his seat, which he did by a wide mar­gin (54–46 per­cent) against a weak Repub­li­can oppo­nent. He report­edly con­sid­ered the Sen­ate run, but has just demurred. (more…)

The Cost of Opposing Reform

45
1 week ago
by dcpetterson in

20130131_Immigration-ReformWith immi­gra­tion reform nearer to real­ity than it has been in decades, voices on many sides of this issue have been speak­ing up. Bear in mind that the bill being con­sid­ered in Con­gress is pretty weak tea. It allows a path to cit­i­zen­ship for immi­grants who are in the coun­try ille­gally, but places tremen­dous bar­ri­ers in their way, and requires more strin­gent enforce­ment of exist­ing laws. Nev­er­the­less, anti-​​immigrant forces have been arrayed to oppose even this step, label­ing it with their pre­ferred trigger-​​word, “amnesty.”

On both human­i­tar­ian and prac­ti­cal polit­i­cal grounds, the pro-​​reform move­ment has the bet­ter hand. In human terms, it’s hard to deny that Amer­ica is an attrac­tive place to live, and peo­ple come to this coun­try — legally or not — because it is an improve­ment over where they were. As a prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tion, no major polit­i­cal party can afford to anger vot­ers (pri­mar­ily Latino and His­panic, but also black and Asian) who iden­tify with the eleven mil­lion or so undoc­u­mented immi­grants in the coun­try today. It is widely thought that Repub­li­cans can­not win the White House with less than 40 per­cent of the His­panic vote, and immi­gra­tion reform may be an impor­tant key to help­ing GOP can­di­dates move toward that mark.

Just imag­ine how it could play out. Imag­ine the Repub­li­can Party, which des­per­ately needs His­panic votes, sud­denly came to sup­port a plan to grant full Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship to all cur­rent undoc­u­mented immi­grants, on the two sim­ple con­di­tions that they not be guilty of any felonies, and they pass the stan­dard cit­i­zen­ship test. Repub­li­cans would win the next dozen elec­tion cycles in a series of unprece­dented landslides.

Aside from these eth­i­cal and polit­i­cal rea­sons to pass immi­gra­tion reform, there is another com­pelling jus­ti­fi­ca­tion — eco­nomic. Immi­grants, legal or not, are good for the econ­omy. (more…)

Go to Top