"So he’s been talking about immigration reform for seven years, so you’re using his words as if they actually mean something, and ask me to respond to it. He’s been talking about this when he had 60 votes in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House and they didn’t do a darn thing."Leaving DACA aside, which I guess I will for rhetoric's sake--let's just say Obama does something without Congress, since he is pretty sure he's getting nothing from them. Is there any way at all he wouldn't think the unified GOP-led Congress would not be on his overreaching self faster than, hmm. See, the problem with part of the "Obama's overreaching and/or has never wanted to really do something" trope is that Congress could conceivably work with him to everyone's benefit and pass needful legislation, and we could call it something like, I don't know, a "functioning democracy". (The other, bigger part is that it's self-contradictory, as so much Obama criticism actually is.) It's not like the House leadership can pretend they have to deal with much obstruction from the Senate, anymore. And it isn't like Boehner and McConnell haven't at least attempted to strike a pose of wanting to work with the White House. (If they can promise no government shut-downs, and want to strike a deal at tax reform--I'm pretty open to hearing them out, especially if they will stop chiseling at the ACA). If they don't work things out, they have to accept some responsibility.
The RNC chief added that "all he’s been doing for the last year is lying to Hispanic voters across the country." Priebus pointed to Obama initially saying he would act on immigration before the end of the summer, then delaying the action until after the midterm elections.
Instead of not believing that McConnell and Boehner can, under the new paradigm, work better with the White House--I'll take them at their word that they might try. I'll keep track of whether it looks like they are, as folks say "Getting'er done." But if they aren't doing it...well...
Watch this space for the usual grievances.
3 comments:
Hi Vixen, mostly this election means that I grateful don't have to spend as much time thinking about politics.
I am not really certain how you can designate the Democratic majority, the House, and the Presidency a "trope" when they could have easily done whatever they wanted when Democrats had all three.
Those of us who live in border states are acutely aware of how dangerous the drug cartels are to American citizens. The drug cartels have at least some association with Islamic extremists. At one time Phoenix was regarding as the kidnapping capital of the world because of kidnappings related to the drug trade.
I live in a part of the country that has a lot of Hispanics. Most of them have family in Mexico. they are afraid to go visit Grandma because there is a very good chance that they will wind up with their severed head hanging from a bridge.
The drug cartels have attacked entire police departments and killed so many that some towns have no police department. They torture people before they kill them. In one Mexican town the mayor was killed and his body desecrated. His sister then assumed the position of mayor and sometime later her tortured body was found in the desert. If 1 of the drug cartel members decided to go to rehab, the cartel would go and kill everyone at the rehab center. They kill children as quickly as they kill adults.
Their narcotics become an insidious influence at every level of government. It is a multi-billion dollar per year business. They hire intelligence operatives from third world countries. They hire computer personnel from IBM. They can lose half of their exports to law enforcement and still dismiss it as the cost of doing business.
We have had prolific serial killers from Mexico come to the US to do their killing and then go back, untouchable in Mexico.
There is cooperation between the left and right on this issue already: The Chamber of Commerce easily dismisses the problems connected with the drug trade if their members can hire cheap Mexican labor. Democrats want to naturalize a huge number of Hispanics that they feel would become Democratic voters.
What you just saw in this election is not about partisan wrangling or inside baseball in Washington. The American people want to feel safe in their own country. They want Islamic extremism to be confronted more aggressively, and they want the border secured and an immigration policy that vets more carefully the people who come to settle here. Right now many drug cartels will send an undocumented worker with no police record into the US to help set up a drug franchise. It is only a matter of time before police chiefs and congressmen are being offered lead or silver as their family members' names are read along if the police chief and congressmen don't go along.
We don't care who does what in Washington. We put these guys in there to protect American citizens and America. We don't give a hoot about their blind ambitions. The drug issue and immigration policy issue are two factors that drove this election, and we don't care whether a Democrat or a Repuplican fixes it. We just want it fixed.
(Excuse the rant.)
Sigh. Cheap labor built up this country, and some days I think it's going to be the death of us. I've said before that I would like ICE to concentrate on businesses that entice undocumented workers north of the border, because they represent a piece of the problem I think can be better regulated.
It may be for the best that the Obama Administration didn't choose to tackle immigration reform in the first two years--the economy was in a bad way and I think the calculus was something like: 40 million uninsured we could get coverage for versus 12 million undocumented workers, most of whom aren't here for trouble, just work--they felt they could put it on the back burner. And also--doing "whatever they liked" might pose another problem. I'm getting to where I'm skeptical of one-sided solutions, and I think an immigration plan that didn't include Republican support might not have been satisfactory in the long run.
What I hope happens is that the sides dare each other into a transparent and effective debate on the subject instead of colluding to do nothing. There are some positive developments I've seen with respects to partnering with Mexican police forces to aggressively work against those violent gangs there:
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41349.pdf
And I think we could figure out ways to more effective strengthen border security (I have to admit, I am looking for something a bit better than a "build the danged fence" sort of thing--they can build ratlines under it). I think an intelligent conversation between liberals and conservatives might reveal more accord and some good solutions to what could be (and have been) tragic outcomes. If this thing is treated like a political football to be kicked about, though, I don't see it happening.
Hi Vixen, I agree with you and sincerely wish that the left and right would get together on many of these issues. I've come to believe that some people desperately want the left to win, and some people want the right to win, and then there's a category in which I place myself -- we want the people to win, and the political party is small beer. The clutch of new politicians is small beer as well.
As you know, despite the fact that my own views are conservative, I would favor getting rid of political parties altogether, as I see them more and more as an imposition on accomplishment rather than helping it. Apparently George Washington felt this way as well.
I think my view in respect to what the Democrats do is different than yours. I think the best thing for the Democratic Party and also for the country is for Democrats to move to the center. You once remarked that you were a marxist. Because of my background I do not find this to be especially upsetting. Back in the day, I might have been a marxist myself. I knew a guy who taught Marx and Engels.
The vast bulk of Democrats are not marxists. To me Democrats as they should be are in the John Kennedy mold. He definitely believed that government could reach out and extend assistance to people who were left behind. At the same time he was a WWII veteran and a cold warrior. He backed down Khrushchev when Russia attempted to put nukes in Cuba. Bertrand Russell wrote Unarmed Victory deploring Kennedy's actions. However Kennedy was right and a patriotic American and a Democrat.
Kennedy lowered taxes to increase money flowing to the public coffers with his famous "a rising tide lifts all boats" speech. He understood that more capital left in the private sector resulted in more jobs and larger salaries. Naturally he also understood that tax revenues then would increase because there was more income to tax and as a consequence more money flowed to the treasury and then more possibilities for public assistance lay within his grasp without going into massive debt.
A lot of Dems I know lean more to the John Kennedy mold. They are patriotic Americans unafraid of conflict when it is necessary and flexible about what to do to improve the possibilities for the American people.
You could say more Democrats are CNN Democrats than MSNBC Democrats.
For example we could link a raise in the minimum wage to border control so that working together both sides could get something they want. This would require working together on a lot of issues.
Incidentally, I appreciate and agree with your remarks about Epicurus. Additionally, bouncing off your view of guided imagery at death, one of the reasons that the near-death experience is so commonplace today is that we no longer have temples that bring people to a initiatory experience. A number of NDEs are really initiations being forced into a world that has been covered over by a materialistic world view and an extremely shallow view of metaphysics. When it is time for a person to undergo initiation and there is no place to go that can provide it (almost no place).
You know, Vixen, amusingly I know a woman who knows Dannion Brinkley (he has had 5 NDEs, one after being struck by lightening, and he works with veterans). She said to him, "Dannion, if you would just learn to meditate you would not have to drop dead all the time to receive the knowledge and experience that you are supposed to have."
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