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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (247700)	3/20/2014 12:27:21 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542907

Good read, thanks. I still am puzzled on who the real Putin is. Is he a narcissist, something that should worry us all, or a pragmatist? Nothing he has done in Crimea surprises me. He has only taken advantage of a situation as might be expected of any leader that found themselves in the same situation. But like I said, an interesting thoughtful analysis.

To: JohnM who wrote (247700)	3/20/2014 1:45:38 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542907

Wisconsin Republican Legislator Tears Into His Own Party For Voter Suppression By Josh Israel on March 19, 2014 at 2:18 pm thinkprogress.org As his own party pushed through the Wisconsin Senate the latest in a series of measures to make it harder to vote in the state, Sen. Dale Schultz (R) blasted the efforts as “ trying to suppress the vote” last week. Schultz, who is not seeking re-election and was the lone Republican to oppose a bill last week to limit the hours of early voting in every jurisdiction in the state, was a guest on The Devil’s Advocates radio program on Madison’s 92.1 FM last Wednesday. Asked why his party pushed the bill, Schultz responded, “I am not willing to defend them anymore. I’m just not and I’m embarrassed by this.” Schultz argued that this and dozens of similar bills before the Senate this were based on “mythology” that voter fraud is a serious concern: “I began this session thinking that there was some lack of faith in our voting process and we maybe needed to address it. But I have come to the conclusion that this is far less noble.” Noting that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower championed the 1957 civil rights law, Schultz said that he could not “find any real reason” for his party’s effort to make it harder to vote: SCHULTZ: It’s just, I think, sad when a political party — my political party — has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics. And again, I’m a guy who understands and appreciates what we should be doing in order to make sure every vote counts, every vote is legitimate. But that fact is, it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted. And that we should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future, rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at the voting sites and trying to suppress the vote. Schultz added that the suppression was “just plain wrong,” adding, “It is all predicated on some belief there is a massive fraud or irregularities, something my colleagues have been hot on the trail for three years and have failed miserably at demonstrating.” The GOP-controlled Assembly has already passed a similar bill. A 2011 study by the non-partisan Brennan Center found just seven cases of voter fraud in Wisconsin’s 2004 election, out of three million votes cast — a fraud rate of just 0.0002 percent. (HT: Election Law Blog)

To: JohnM who wrote (247700)	3/20/2014 11:05:02 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542907

I am quite certain that no one who is pontificating about Russia and Crimea actually grounds what they are spouting in any real historical context. Here is a timeline of events which gets pretty detailed after 1990. refworld.org Crimea has been pro-Russian for quite awhile. In part because Stalin deported a large number of Crimean residents who supported Hitler in WWII, and in part because the Russians have always had a large naval presence there, so many of the people who live there are either Russian, related to Russians by marriage or dependent economically on Russia. Back in the early 90s there was plenty of support within Crimea for becoming part of Russia rather than Ukraine, and in 1994-- The Crimea holds the referendum 1.3 million voted, 78.4% of whom supported greater autonomy from Ukraine, 82.8% supported allowing dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship, and 77.9% favored giving Crimean presidential decrees the force of law. The first round of both Crimean and Ukrainian elections also take place. In the Crimea, the Rossiya bloc gets 67% of the vote, the Communist Party 11%, and the Party of Economic Rebirth 7%. However, as part of a complicated deal, Crimea was "given" to Ukraine despite the obvious wishes of its residents (so much for "self-determination", lol). Putin's ploy is just the latest chapter in a long winding story that these blowhard politicians and bloviating talking heads know nothing about (so what else is new?), and just use this opportunity to once again make asses of themselves. Here is a long, chatty, but very informative post on Crimean history and its relationship with Russia and Ukraine: pando.com