I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Blue - Great pictures and beautiful family.  That makes all of life doesn't it.

QuinnCat - Is that your kitty?  Didn't know that about cats.  You are right about diplomacy.  I like it when other leaders are forward on the positions.  I think it is important for the US to step back and recognize that this is a world problem..  So often we need to be all the glory and I find that polarizing.  Our old, white, conservative men will never get that.

Here are some pictures of one of the fields after haying.  These fields are off our back deck.

Beautiful pics brigadoon - are those your hay fields?  Oh to have that view.  Quinn is the kitten I got in March at 4 months old - a Red Devon Rex.  My older female rescue is ok with him, but she doesn't want to be touched.  She tolerates it for about 10 seconds and then she hisses and scraps with him.  Not exactly playful, though they sometimes play chase.  He seems kind of lonely and bored at times, so I've decided to get him a male (neutered) friend of the same variety.  Normally the time from decision to procurement for this breed seems to be about 7 months (waiting lists), but both times I've lucked out for various reasons.  Establishing a relationship with the breeder(s) helps!!  I think that 12 hour rt drive I made, once, to a cat show is paying off on this one.  Breeders like to meet their baby's future owners.

QuinnCat - Yes they are our fields but we don't use the hay.  A couple who have a farm cuts it for us and we let them have it.  It is a win/win.  They will do a second cut in the fall which will give them about 10,000 bales total and us bare fields so that everyone can ride the snowmobiles and cross country ski on virgin snow. 

I love cats.  We have two dogs who are about 5 years old.  I should have gotten a cat before the dogs as then they would have grown up together.  Now I think the dogs would be too rough with a cat.  Our old cat was with us before we got our prior dog.  They played hide and seek al the time and got along famously. 

Good luck with the search for a friend for your little one.

Brigadoon, we once had two dogs and added a cat to the mix. I don't remember the dogs' age at the time but they weren't puppies. I put the kitten in a cage in the middle of the living room and let the dogs sniff her, get to know her - letting her out only when I was right there. It didn't take long before they were all buddies. They curled up together for naps and one of the dogs (both males and brothers from the same litter) even kind of mothered the kitten, licking and grooming and watching over her. It went much easier than I would have imagined.

295 people have died tragically in Ukraine - must you play "my leader is tougher than your leader" seriously???

No one here showed an ounce of sympathy - just were happy it wasn't a US plane.

Seriously?  Like your comment was a display of compassion?  

http://prospect.org/article/7-foreign-policy-crises-show-republicans-prefer-disaster-solutions

7 Foreign Policy Crises That Show Republicans Prefer Disaster to Solutions

Leaders like Cheney seem more concerned with appearing muscular than solving global conflicts. In fact, attempt a solution, and you'll be called weak.

Robert Kuttner            

July 22, 2014           

It's hard to recall a time when the world presented more crises with fewer easy solutions. And for the Republicans, all of these woes have a common genesis: Ostensible American weakness projected by Barack Obama.

People in the Middle East, former Vice President Dick Cheney recently said, "are absolutely convinced that the American capacity to lead and influence in that part of the world has been dramatically reduced by this president." He added: "We've got a problem with weakness, and it's centered right in the White House."

It's instructive to ask: What exactly would a Republican president advised by Cheney do in each of these crises?

Really? It's instructive to ask: What exactly would a Republican president advised by Cheney do in each of these crises? Let's take them one at a time.

1. Iraq. It's now clear that Cheney's invasion of Iraq and its subsequent Shiite client state under Nouri al-Maliki only deepened sectarian strife and laid the groundwork for another brand of Islamist radicalism, this time in the form of ISIS, and more backlash against the U.S. for creating the mess. What's the solution—a permanent U.S. military occupation of Iraq? Republican presidential candidates should try running on that one.
2. Syria. Obama took a lot of criticism for equivocating on where the bright line was when it came to Syrian use of chemical warfare. In fact, American military pressure and diplomacy has caused Syrian president Assad to get rid of chemical weapons. But the deeper Syrian civil war is another problem from hell. How about it, Republican candidates -- More costly military supplies to moderate radicals, whoever the hell they are? A U.S. invasion? See how that plays in the 2016 campaign.
3. Israel-Palestine. A two-state solution seems further away than ever, and time is not on the Israeli side. No American president has had the nerve to tell the Israeli government to stop building settlements on Arab lands, despite $3 billion a year on U.S. aid to Israel. What Would Jesus Do? (What would Cheney do?)
4. Putin and Ukraine. Russian President Putin's fomenting of military adventures by ethnic Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine has created a needless crisis. But our European friends, who have trade deals with Russia, don't want to make trouble. So, what will it be -- a new U.S.-led Cold War without European support? A hot war?
5. Iran's Nuclear Capacity. The policy of détente with Iran in exchange for controls on Iranian ability to weaponize enriched uranium is a gamble that could well pay off. The alternative course of bombing Iran, either ourselves or via a proxy Israeli strike, seems far more of a gamble. Who's the realist here?
6. China's New Muscle. The U.S., under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, has become pitifully dependent on borrowing from China. Our biggest corporations have put the attractions of cheap Chinese labor ahead of continuing production in the U.S.A., creating a chronic trade deficit that requires all that borrowing. Now, China is throwing around its economic weight everywhere from its own backyard in East Asia to Africa and South America. Our troubles with Putin have helped promote a closer alliance between Moscow and Beijing. Anyone have a nice silver bullet for this one?
7. Those Central American Kids. What do you think -- failure of immigration policy or humanitarian refugee crisis? On the one hand, American law says that bona fide refugees can apply for asylum and that children who are being trafficked fall into the category of refugees. On the other hand America is never going to take all the world's refugees. Border Patrol agents interviewing terrified nine-year-olds lack the capacity to determine who is a true candidate for asylum. If shutting down the border -- ours or Mexico's -- were the easy solution, we would have done it decades ago.

And I haven't even gotten to Afghanistan, or the problem of nuclear proliferation, or new Jihadist weapons that can evade airport detection systems, or the total failure of democracy to gain ground in the Middle East.

The Republican story seems to be: we don't need to bog down in details -- somehow, it's all Obama's fault.

Here's what these crises have in common.

• They have no easy solutions, military or diplomatic, and U.S. leverage is limited.
• They are deeply rooted in regional geo-politics. U.S. projection of either bravado or prudence has little to do with how recent events have unfolded.
• Some of these crises were worsened by earlier U.S. policy mistakes, such as the Cheney-Bush invasion of Iraq, or the bipartisan indulgence of Israeli building of settlements, or the one-sided industrial deals with China, or 20th-century alliances with Middle Eastern despots to protect oil interests.

When I was growing up, there was a nice, clean division between the good guys and the bad guys. Hitler was the ultimate bad guy. Or maybe it was Stalin. America won World War II, and we won the Cold War when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Policy choices were easy only in retrospect. The neat world of good guys and bad guys started coming apart with the Vietnam War.

Today's crises are nothing like the ones of that simpler era. Who are the good guys and bad guys in Syria and in Iraq? In China's diplomacy in South America? Who among the murdered Israeli and Palestinian children, or the children seeking refuge at our southern border?

To the extent that policy options are even partly military, the American public has no stomach for multiple invasions and occupations.

As Republican jingoists scapegoat President Obama for all the world's ills and try to impose a simple story of weakness and strength on events of stupefying complexity, you have to hope that the American people have more of an attention span than usual.

------------------------------------------------------

Stubbornness and pride.  Two things that are causing world suffering.  IMHO.

This country is awash with hatred and cruelty, Lassie.  They hate the President more than they love this country, and they are willing to kill people to make him look bad.  They hate him because he is black and he had the temerity to succeed.  (And oh, by the way, it isn't "playing the race card" to call people out on their racism.  It is calling people out because they hate the President because he is black.) 

They hate poor people and people who need help because they believe that poor people are poor because they deserve to be. They also hate them because small people need inferiors to hate so they can feel superior.

The comments sections of the newspapers are filled with hatred.  Go to the Washington Post or the NYTimes and read the comments on the articles about this.  People are full of ignorance about the law (it isn't government-run healthcare) and gleeful that President Obama's signature achievement stands on the verge of destruction.  Hate, hate, hate.

I can only hope this galvanizes even more voters to vote blue in November.  In the meantime, if the Federal subsidies go away, people will die.  There is no doubt about it.  And I repeat - the people cheering over this ruling are cheering for people to die. 

Hi Guys,

Libby ... that picture makes me gag. He kind of looks like Ahhrnold in that picture.  I guess Perry thinks he's the new Terminator!

hugs,

Bren

Mother Jones

Are the Kids Showing Up at the Border Really Refugees?

"I had a body cut up in a plastic bag left on my doorstep as a warning" just may qualify as grounds to flee.

The announcement comes amid mounting evidence of the horrific conditions causing so many people to flee Honduras, El Salvador, and parts of Guatemala: kids escaping rape, gang recruitment, and murder all around them, as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sonia Nazario detailed in a chilling op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times. With this new designation, the UNHCR hopes to pressure the United States to give more immigrants, including many of the 70,000-plus unaccompanied minors likely to arrive at the US border this year, political asylum.

But if the UNHCR were to make such a move, it still would have no legal significance for the United States. So is it really that important? Yes and no, says Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women's Refugee Commission. Brané and I talked about what a "refugee" designation could mean, and other ways the US can help ease the pain for immigrants—particularly those who've experienced targeted violence. Here are nine key takeaways from our conversation:

1. Casting this as a "refugee situation" isn't necessarily the important part.
"This population contains within it many children and mothers and parents bringing their children who qualify for refugee protection or for protection under international law. Whether you formally call it a 'refugee situation'—that to me is less relevant than acknowledging that this is a population that is being driven out of their country. And their government is not willing or able to protect them."

"Fifty-eight percent of the kids said, 'I received a death threat'."

2. It's not just general violence and unrest that's causing people to flee Central America and Mexico.
"It's true that general conditions of war or of danger are not sufficient to qualify for asylum. But the UN agency of refugees, in interviewing 400 of these children, for over an hour each, they found that 58 percent expressed a targeted fear. Not just, 'I was scared because my neighborhood was dangerous.' Fifty-eight percent of the kids said, 'I received a death threat.' Or, 'I had a body cut up in a plastic bag left on my doorstep as a warning.' One hundred percent come from a dangerous place. That we know. But 58 percent were targeted. That's the piece that people are not getting."

3. Using gang violence as grounds for international protection is not a novel idea.
"The UN committee for refugees has recognized for many years now that gang violence absolutely qualifies, depending on the circumstances, as persecution and as qualifying for status under the refugee commission. And the US has granted many claims. People talk about this being difficult to do. It is difficult, especially if you don't have an attorney. But children with attorneys requesting asylum are winning those cases. It's absolutely a grounds that has been accepted in the US. It's not something revolutionary."

4. Yes, this is a crisis—but we shouldn't throw our hands up.
"The numbers are small if you compare them to refugee situations worldwide. Like look at Syria. There's over a million Syrian refugees in Turkey. There's over 2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan. Those countries are tiny compared to the US, and the numbers are much bigger. It's absolutely our responsibility as the United States to manage this and handle it in a way that does not roll back protections. We have been the ones to stand up there and say to Turkey:' You've got to take these refugees'. For us to say, because of this small number, 'Oh, maybe we'll reconsider,' is crazy. It's absolutely manageable."

5. Very few migrants are faking persecution in order to get to stay in the United States.
"The US has excellent asylum screening procedures. The problem is, you need to beef up the system in order to accommodate these numbers. But that's something we need to do anyway. I know there's been a lot of allegations and concern that it's a system that can easily be gamed, and you can fake it—but it actually it's quite a rigorous process. There's several screening hurdles you have to get over, and then you have to go in front of a judge, and then there's security clearance."

6. And many of them migrate for multiple reasons.
"When people say they have family here, yes, that's true. But that's not what made them come entirely. Why are they coming now? A smuggler offered them passage to the US. Is the smuggler the reason you left? Part of it. But really, the reason you were looking for a way to come, again, goes back to the violence. Poverty, also. The majority of the kids coming also are experiencing poverty in their home country. Is that the main reason? Maybe, maybe not. It's combined.

"One interesting Vanderbilt study found that people who'd been victim of a crime were more likely to migrate than those who had not. It also found that people who feel their government is not responsive to their needs were much more likely to migrate than someone who's government didn't protect them. When you combine those two factors—both been a victim of a crime and felt their government couldn't protect them—they're exponentially more likely to migrate. It's always a combination of factors."

7. Requiring international protection, or refugee designation, for more migrants is the right start—but the US can't solve this crisis alone.
"Mexico also has to acknowledge that many of these children need protection. Mexico also has very good asylum laws on the books. What they don't have is the resources and the infrastructure to support implementing those policies. Frankly, I think one of the things the US should be doing, and could do if they talk about this in the context of a refugee crisis, is to provide support regionally, not just to Mexico but also to Belize, to Costa Rica, to Panama, all of the countries that are also seeing influxes of these children. Provide them with the support to implement their protection policies consistent with international law. And not all of these kids have to come to the US, right? The burden can sort of be shared in the region."

8. We don't have to wait to act until migrants get to our borders—we could process them before they leave their country.
"We've done that before: with the Vietnamese in the past, with Haitians, and with Cubans. The first thing that needs to happen is you have to set up what the criteria are going to be; who qualifies to be sort of preprocessed. You could limit it to kids with strong family connection to the US, who have been targeted and pass some sort of criteria. It can be done administratively. You do not need legislation to do that. And in doing it you basically cut out the smugglers. If you process the kids internally, they can get on a plane for $300 and fly over here—they don't have to pay $3,000 to a criminal organization. It really undercuts the smugglers and trafficking operation in a huge way.

"If children see there's a legal way that's safer to come—without taking this horrible journey—maybe they'll wait a little bit. And at the same time, you're building up the child welfare system and funding safehouses and anti-corruption campaigns. Maybe they'll see things get a little bit better; I can wait, I don't have to leave today. You slow the flow at that end. Not just by deporting people summarily, without a hearing. If you do that, and that's all you do, they're going to turn right around and come back."

9. Even if Obama's request for emergency supplemental funding to deal with this crisis isn't perfect, it's better than nothing.
"While we may not agree with all the details of where some of the money is going to—it's sort of heavy on enforcement, in my view—there's no question that they desperately need this money in order to be able manage the situation and get a handle on it. Frankly, it needs to go through. Blocking it will make the situation worse. They won't have any place to hold these kids while they process them, they won't have money to process them and deport them, and they won't have money to put them on planes and send them back. So it's crazy that there's discussion about blocking it."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/are-kids-showing-border-really-refugees