What's happening both inside the U.S., and around the world in the Ukraine, is a bear of a situation today.
Here at home, the Eastern half of the country, from Kansas and Oklahoma to Washington, DC, and northward up the Atlantic Coast, began experiencing what is hopefully the last blast of bitter cold and snow this weekend. The predicted snowstorm in Washington, DC today already gave Congress yet another excuse for not doing anything, as the nation's capitol is almost completely shut down today. To say this weather is a bear is a serious understatement - at least from the half of the country that's had more than its fair share of winter this year.
What's happening abroad, however, is a whole different kind of bear - a Russian bear, specifically, that some journalists like Russian experts Julia Ioffe and Fred Kaplan have been expecting for some time.
In case you missed the news this past weekend, Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine, an area of the world current Russian President Vladimir Putin has never really acknowledged was its own nation. That invasion - in the wake of the Winter Olympics and just before the start of the Paralympic Winter Games - also happened in the midst of a Ukrainian uprising, which has included the ouster of their most recent corrupt President, and a revolt against the interim government by Ukrainians in the Western half of Ukraine, centered in the Crimean region.
Another way to put it might be that Russia has finally gotten into the geopolitical game Vladimir Putin has been itching to enter for years - and now, they're playing keep-away with the future of the Ukraine.
Worldwide political reactions, and those in the U.S. especially, have been so textbook typical, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones outlined many of those events Saturday morning, before most of of them had occured.
From Putin's belligerence, to Republicans demanding the U.S. do something (Anything but send troops, of course - it's an election year), to President Obama denouncing Putin's actions and calling Putin on the phone, to journalists admitting the truth that America's options to force Russia to do anything are extremely limited, Drum nailed exactly the series of events that have been happening this weekend.
What Drum said of course, could be summed up simply: There's nothing truly unexpected about these circumstances. Indeed, as we already mentioned, Julia Ioffe notes that most of the West should have seen this coming long ago. Vladimir Putin has always been pessimistic, opportunistic, and hungry to return Russia effectively to the size, scope, and nature it was during the heyday of the Soviet Union.
As Sam Tannenhaus and others wrote about over the weekend, many in the political media are once again referring to the Cold War and thinking of this latest action as a whole new chapter in the long standoff between Moscow and Washington, DC. As Tannenhaus also makes clear, however, thinking of this new conflict in that framework - and indeed thinking of the original Cold War through that prism - is a mistake.
The Ukrainian conflict going on now is no more a controlled proxy war between the West and Russia than Syria is. Like Syria, the people of the Ukraine have complex loyalties, generated over many, many hundreds of years, and no one truly knows what differing groups of nominally Ukrainian people will do.
While the Russian bear can and will play keep-away with the future of Ukranians for the immediate future, the cold, messy, ugly truth is that - regardless of what either Russia or the U.S. does - Ukrainians can and will make their own decisions as to their ultimate future.
Sometimes the bear bites first - but someday, likely soon, Ukrainians WILL bite back. To think all Ukrainians will simply side with Russia at the threat of Russia's military is to ignore everything that has happened in that region over the last thirty years.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Friday, February 28, 2014
Illness And Honesty
At this time of year, it's not always easy to be anything but tired, grumpy, and even a bit pessimistic. After a week of stupid political battles, some minor technical glitches, and struggles to keep healthy, staring down yet another weekend of bitterly cold winter weather isn't exactly a recipe for a positive Friday.
The vile threesome of intolerance, hate, and bigotry represented by the events in Arizona might have been enough to spoil this weekend weekend on its own, if Arizona's Gov. Brewer hadn't finally vetoed the gay hate bill this week.
Indeed, since much of our focus this week has been on the anti-gay legislation in Arizona and around the country, that some other very important stories have slipped through the cracks, as Alec Macgillis pointed out on Thursday.
From the Medicaid expansion fight that Macgillis wrote about, to the fight over voting rights Ana Marie Cox addressed beautifully, to the economic wedge between mainstream Republicans and right-wing extremists that Greg Sargent honed in on, there were plenty of other important political topics that didn't get the ink and pixels from us that they deserved this week and we were all set to tackle more than a few of those topics today.
Then one of our staff members came across the story of comedy writer Laurie Kilmartin and her father - and we pretty much gave the bird to covering any more intolerance, hate, and bigotry this week.
Kilmartin - who is a friend of a friend of one of our staff members - is a well-known stand- up comedian, and also a comedy writer for the Conan O'Brien show.
She's also been "live tweeting" her father's last days on her Twitter account, in a raw, real, funny, running stream of thoughts and images that shook us up just a little bit. As Carol Hartsell covered over at the Huffington Post, Gilmartin's account of her father's exploits right now are both gut-bustingly funny, and heart-breakingly sad.
Those 140-character messages from Gilmartin remind us of how funny being brutally honest and totally real can be.
We usually seek to remain a bit more removed from you, our audience, as you aren't coming here to see any of our staff members. You want to see our work, Paul's fantastic cartoons, our finely honed prose, and the trove of links in our expanded daily edition.
The personal struggles we face daily - sick kids, sick pets, being mind-numbingly sick ourselves, business trips, family trips, tripping over new technology. These are all things we usually choose not to share with you, our audience, in large part because doing so isn't professional.
Being a journalist or a member of the professional media most often means you don't make yourself the story, you don't draw yourself, and you don't insist that the part of the content you're creating that you identify with most is kept in - especially when it's the one part you need to edit out.
Every once in a while, though, you say "What the hell," you throw the rulebook out, and you do what Laurie Kilmartin is doing now. You be brutally, totally open to the world - and you laugh.
Sometimes, giving the world the bird and just being real is exactly what the doctor ordered.
The vile threesome of intolerance, hate, and bigotry represented by the events in Arizona might have been enough to spoil this weekend weekend on its own, if Arizona's Gov. Brewer hadn't finally vetoed the gay hate bill this week.
Indeed, since much of our focus this week has been on the anti-gay legislation in Arizona and around the country, that some other very important stories have slipped through the cracks, as Alec Macgillis pointed out on Thursday.
From the Medicaid expansion fight that Macgillis wrote about, to the fight over voting rights Ana Marie Cox addressed beautifully, to the economic wedge between mainstream Republicans and right-wing extremists that Greg Sargent honed in on, there were plenty of other important political topics that didn't get the ink and pixels from us that they deserved this week and we were all set to tackle more than a few of those topics today.
Then one of our staff members came across the story of comedy writer Laurie Kilmartin and her father - and we pretty much gave the bird to covering any more intolerance, hate, and bigotry this week.
Kilmartin - who is a friend of a friend of one of our staff members - is a well-known stand- up comedian, and also a comedy writer for the Conan O'Brien show.
She's also been "live tweeting" her father's last days on her Twitter account, in a raw, real, funny, running stream of thoughts and images that shook us up just a little bit. As Carol Hartsell covered over at the Huffington Post, Gilmartin's account of her father's exploits right now are both gut-bustingly funny, and heart-breakingly sad.
Those 140-character messages from Gilmartin remind us of how funny being brutally honest and totally real can be.
We usually seek to remain a bit more removed from you, our audience, as you aren't coming here to see any of our staff members. You want to see our work, Paul's fantastic cartoons, our finely honed prose, and the trove of links in our expanded daily edition.
The personal struggles we face daily - sick kids, sick pets, being mind-numbingly sick ourselves, business trips, family trips, tripping over new technology. These are all things we usually choose not to share with you, our audience, in large part because doing so isn't professional.
Being a journalist or a member of the professional media most often means you don't make yourself the story, you don't draw yourself, and you don't insist that the part of the content you're creating that you identify with most is kept in - especially when it's the one part you need to edit out.
Every once in a while, though, you say "What the hell," you throw the rulebook out, and you do what Laurie Kilmartin is doing now. You be brutally, totally open to the world - and you laugh.
Sometimes, giving the world the bird and just being real is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
The Rising Tides Of Consequence
Actions have consequences. Poorly thought out actions often have drastic, unforeseen consequences.
The perfect example of these axioms were visible this past week in Arizona, as the state's proposed anti-gay "religious freedom" bill nearly passed into law. As we thoroughly discussed on Wednesday, and throughly displayed in Wednesday's extended edition, the bill would not have protected anyone's religious freedom. It also could have led to severely negative economic consequences for Arizona, from the potential loss of next year's Super Bowl, to the potential loss of jobs from major businesses like Apple & Intel.
In an action that only seemed to surprise the bigots on the extreme right, after being blasted by progressives, liberals, Democrats, and in a pleasant surprise, corporations and even some Republicans, the tide made a signifcant turn and Wednesday evening Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the anti-gay bill. What's more, the firestorm that exposed the heinous Arizona bill also seems to have scared politicians in Georgia and Ohio who've now dropped similar doomed legislation.
As we recently mentioned here, when Democrats and rational Americans stand together, America tends to win. That theory has been proven through growing numbers of wins on major policy issues, and those successes have continued to embolden progressives and liberals. Some Democrats have even begun to go on the offensive against major right-wing boogiemen like the Koch Brothers, as Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday.
Winning is something everyone likes, but like any action, winning has consequences, too. We think it's important Democrats take a look at some of the consequences of our energy policies, before a rising tide of small political victories, relatively cheap oil, and high efficiency technology blind us to the mess we're creating around us.
Even as one of our own staff members is now driving a car that gets over 100 mpg daily, and even as America's position as a world oil and energy leader continues to grow, that still doesn't mean we've solved the problems of our dirty energy economy.
A major oil spill in the Mississippi River just last weekend closed the mouth of the nation's largest interior shipping lane and the Port of New Orleans. Federal regulators are issuing emergency testing guidelines for shipping oil by rail, even as railroads scramble to institute new safety measures.
The pipeline and fracking wars aren't over yet either. As Dave Domina, the attorney for the Nebraska landowners battling TransCanada, assured his clients and the public this week, the fight to stop that pipeline isn't yet a done deal. As Katie Valentine detailed in Think Progress, a second 600 mile pipeline known as the Flanagan South line has aready been rammed through with very little media attention.
Meanwhile, even as cities like L.A. are moving to ban fracking, major oil companies like Exxon continue to push for more fracking almost everywhere - except in the neighborhood of Exxon's CEO - even as more negative consequences of fracking continue to be discovered.
There are some wins, even on the issues of dirty energy. Colorado's Gov. John Hickenlooper successfully pushed through the Colorado legislature tighter pollution rules for oil and gas producers. The world's largest solar power plant opened in the Nevada desert earlier this month, and after seeing what the U.S. did with that power plant, Mexico is now set to build Latin America's largest solar farm to replace an aging, oil-driven power plant.
Every step forward, as a society, is a good thing. That said, if we're going to truly support progress, we must make sure that the political moves we make, as well as those we stop, don't have unintended negative consequences that rise up and drown out any good we might do.
The perfect example of these axioms were visible this past week in Arizona, as the state's proposed anti-gay "religious freedom" bill nearly passed into law. As we thoroughly discussed on Wednesday, and throughly displayed in Wednesday's extended edition, the bill would not have protected anyone's religious freedom. It also could have led to severely negative economic consequences for Arizona, from the potential loss of next year's Super Bowl, to the potential loss of jobs from major businesses like Apple & Intel.
In an action that only seemed to surprise the bigots on the extreme right, after being blasted by progressives, liberals, Democrats, and in a pleasant surprise, corporations and even some Republicans, the tide made a signifcant turn and Wednesday evening Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the anti-gay bill. What's more, the firestorm that exposed the heinous Arizona bill also seems to have scared politicians in Georgia and Ohio who've now dropped similar doomed legislation.
As we recently mentioned here, when Democrats and rational Americans stand together, America tends to win. That theory has been proven through growing numbers of wins on major policy issues, and those successes have continued to embolden progressives and liberals. Some Democrats have even begun to go on the offensive against major right-wing boogiemen like the Koch Brothers, as Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday.
Winning is something everyone likes, but like any action, winning has consequences, too. We think it's important Democrats take a look at some of the consequences of our energy policies, before a rising tide of small political victories, relatively cheap oil, and high efficiency technology blind us to the mess we're creating around us.
Even as one of our own staff members is now driving a car that gets over 100 mpg daily, and even as America's position as a world oil and energy leader continues to grow, that still doesn't mean we've solved the problems of our dirty energy economy.
A major oil spill in the Mississippi River just last weekend closed the mouth of the nation's largest interior shipping lane and the Port of New Orleans. Federal regulators are issuing emergency testing guidelines for shipping oil by rail, even as railroads scramble to institute new safety measures.
The pipeline and fracking wars aren't over yet either. As Dave Domina, the attorney for the Nebraska landowners battling TransCanada, assured his clients and the public this week, the fight to stop that pipeline isn't yet a done deal. As Katie Valentine detailed in Think Progress, a second 600 mile pipeline known as the Flanagan South line has aready been rammed through with very little media attention.
Meanwhile, even as cities like L.A. are moving to ban fracking, major oil companies like Exxon continue to push for more fracking almost everywhere - except in the neighborhood of Exxon's CEO - even as more negative consequences of fracking continue to be discovered.
There are some wins, even on the issues of dirty energy. Colorado's Gov. John Hickenlooper successfully pushed through the Colorado legislature tighter pollution rules for oil and gas producers. The world's largest solar power plant opened in the Nevada desert earlier this month, and after seeing what the U.S. did with that power plant, Mexico is now set to build Latin America's largest solar farm to replace an aging, oil-driven power plant.
Every step forward, as a society, is a good thing. That said, if we're going to truly support progress, we must make sure that the political moves we make, as well as those we stop, don't have unintended negative consequences that rise up and drown out any good we might do.
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