Leaving cool water in the blazing desert for migrants desperate to risk their lives to enter the United States without the proper paperwork is not a new act of kindness.

Yet, for an aid organization to start a crowdfunding campaign to help them leave water in the desert is new. La Cruz Roja (Red Cross) of Mexico is doing just that. The campaign, dubbed Agua en el desierto, is more than just leaving water in the desert — it’s about leaving coolers.

La Cruz Roja Mexicana wants to raise enough money to build 20 portable coolers that operate without electricity. The units would be left at strategic locations in the deserts of Sonora and Chihuahua. Each portable fridge holds up to 80 chilled bottles of water.

Unlike the U.S. side of the border where similar efforts have only targeted undocumented immigrants, the Mexican project also hopes to help the Tarahumaras Indians whose lands have been severely affected by drought in recent years and who also cross the deserts as part of their lifestyle.

La Cruz Roja Mexicana wants to install the coolers as a way to transform the heat of the desert into a sustainable method of keeping the water cool and accessible to the vulnerable communities that trek through the area.

The campaign’s goal is $68,168. As of this writing, a little over 50 percent of the money has been reached. The campaign ends on May 28, 2013.

LATINALISTA.COM

http://latinalista.com/2013/05/mexicos-red-cross-creates-crowdfunding-campaign-to-build-desert-cooling-stations-for-u-s-bound-migrants

Washington (CNN) –President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

But a CNN/ORC International survey released Sunday morning also indicates that congressional Republicans are not overplaying their hand when it comes to their reaction to the three controversies that have consumed the nation's capital over the past week and a half. And the poll finds that a majority of Americans take all three issues seriously.
According to the survey, which was conducted Friday and Saturday, 53% of Americans say they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president's approval rating was at 51% in CNN's last poll, which was conducted in early April.

"That two-point difference is well within the poll's sampling error, so it is a mistake to characterize it as a gain for the president," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Nonetheless, an approval rating that has not dropped and remains over 50% will probably be taken as good news by Democrats after the events of the last week."

The CNN poll is in-line with Gallup, which also indicated a very slight rise in Obama's approval rating over the same time period. And Gallup's daily tracking poll also indicated a slight upward movement of Obama's approval rating over the past week. But as with the CNN poll, it was within that survey's sampling error.

More than seven in 10 in the CNN poll say that the targeting by the Internal Revenue Service of tea party and other conservative groups that were applying for tax exempt status was unacceptable. While the White House and both parties in Congress are criticizing the IRS actions, congressional Republicans are depicting the controversy as a case of the federal government gone wild.

But more than six in 10 say that the president's statements about the IRS scandal are completely or mostly true, with 35% not agreeing with Obama's characterizations. And 55% say that IRS acted on its own, with 37% saying that White House ordered the IRS to target tea party and other conservative groups.

Only 42% of the public is satisfied with how the Obama administration has handled the September attack in Benghazi, Libya, which left the U.S ambassador to that country and three other Americans dead. Fifty-three percent say they are dissatisfied. But those numbers are virtually unchanged from November.

Republicans have ripped the administration for not providing adequate security for the Benghazi mission, botching the response to it, and misleading the public for political gain with the attack coming less than two months before last November's presidential election.

According to the poll, 44% say statements made by the Obama administration soon after the attack were an attempt to intentionally mislead the public. Half of those questioned say those statements reflected what the Obama administration believed, at the time, had occurred.

But 59% now say that the U.S government could have prevented the attack in Benghazi, up 11 points from last November. And only 37% say that congressional Republicans are overreacting in their handling of the matter, with 59% saying they've reacted appropriately.

It's the same story on the IRS controversy, with 54% saying the GOP in Congress has not overplayed its hand.

The White House has also been criticized by Congress for the Justice Department's secret collection of phone records from the Associated Press as part of a government investigation into classified leaks. According to the poll, 52% say the Justice Department's actions were unacceptable, with 43% saying they disagree.

Americans appear to be taking all three controversies very seriously, with 55% saying the IRS and Benghazi matters are very important to the nation and 53% saying the same thing about the AP case.

"More Republicans than Democrats or Independents say these three issues are very important to the nation, but even among Democrats, nearly half say the matters are very serious," Holland adds.

Are Americans’ trust in the government shaken?

Only 43% say they have a great deal or some confidence in the people who run the federal government. But 56% say they have a great deal or some confidence in the system of government.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International between May 17-18, with 923 adults nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

– CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

CNN.COM

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/19/have-new-controversies-hurt-obama-has-gop-overreacted/?hpt=hp_t1

For all the times that I write commentaries here about people ganging up on the growing Latino population in this country, I worry at times that I’m spewing conspiracy theories. Then, I read pieces such as one written recently by Patrick Buchanan, and it makes me think that, if anything, I’m going soft on the criticism of the ideologues who spew their nativist tripe.

THE GIST OF the thoughts that Buchanan (himself a former presidential candidate who has run unsuccessful bids for office that tried to appeal to all the people who have hang-ups about ‘all those Mexicans’) expressed on the WND.com website is that he doesn’t think much of efforts to appeal to Latino or black or Asian or any other ethnic-sort of voter.

He sees the modern-day Republican Party as the one that has an overwhelming composition of white people, and should probably focus its attention on turning out as many of them as possible come future Election Days in order to achieve electoral victory.

Buchanan reminds the readers of the “Southern Strategy” – the campaign tactic of 1968 in which Republican Richard M. Nixon appealed to those southerners who were disgusted with the Democratic Party for going so hard in favor of civil rights.

His strategy was to make Republican voters of them by making it clear he wouldn’t hold it against them that they had their objections to civil rights for all.

SO IS BUCHANAN hoping to get all the people who have a hang-up about immigration reform united against the Democratic Party to the point where they will vote Republican?

All too believable.

Yet also all too foolish. Because even by Buchanan’s own admission, the number of white people who cast ballots for president dropped between 2008 and 2012 – a trend that is only going to continue in future years.

After all, President Barack Obama only got 39 percent of the white vote in last year’s elections. A record low, but he still won re-election by an overwhelming margin.

BUCHANAN CALLS IT, “the crisis of the Grand Old Party.” I, and the real majority of our society, call it the coming of the 21^st Century.

The sooner that he, and all the ideologues, accept that reality, the sooner they can become a part of the solution to the problems that afflict our society.

http://www.southchicagoan.blogspot.com/

"During your working lives, you will have to reinvent yourselves many times," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told new graduates at Bard College at Simon's Rock on Saturday.

College graduates got some sage advice from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at their commencement ceremony Saturday.