Bi-Partisan Benign Neglect

Dorothea Lange Photograph. Mississippi Sharecropper’s Daughter.

The fact that Republicans are debating whether 11 million residents working and living in the US should have a path to citizenship shows the state of Republican confusion! Clearly, it is more disruptive to industry, markets, and labor to remove 11 million people out of the economy than to grant them citizenship! And when the President proposed the removal of criminals without papers first, these same candidates growled he exceeded his authority by making bad folk a priority prosecution!

Where lies the greater danger: ISIS or Chicago? Chicago: democratic, budgets bleeding, schools broken, high unemployment, youth murders topping the nation’s charts is less frequent a target for political attacks than the violent world Scheherazade redeemed with her tales. But her redemption stories were not filled with darkness and betrayal, but with courage, love and new hope matched to strength.

Where is the hope in shooting down Russian fighters? Who feeds the people on the ground, educates their families, restores the state? Is Carly’s love dysfunctional when she disparages current generals by implying they don’t measure up to tasks? At home, are 12 million jobs and low inflation a weakness? Where is the courage in the litany of misrepresentations and lies?

Oh, on the silence on Chicago: the GOP in a show of bi-partisanship, follows a former Democratic senator for NY, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and offers to cities only “benign neglect.” Where Democrats are losing or in charge of major messes, Republicans, who fantasize about trouble, ignore the conditions, and offer no real help.

Republican Insecurity – The New York Times http://nyti.ms/1ZdSxuM

The Homeland

Dorothea Lange Photo. Texas girl whose family traveled to 7 states.

What is the homeland? Apparently a place of feckless leadership that saves governors and their citizens from drowning in need after disasters; speciously a belief that Big Brother, the source of fear and loathing, should know more about a young couple’s pledge to kill than their own family; an imperfect place where the President is held responsible and blamed as incompetent for every individual complaint and bad dream Americans have while living in a free society in which Presidential efforts to attack a death threat with gun safety measures is roundly blocked by the very people who call Obama weak!

Is it weak not to go to war–again–halfway around the world, against a stateless enemy? Or is it weak to lie about threats to America while imposing a blind silence on what we all know: police have become executioners, white supremacy is on the raise, 9 Christians died in Charleston and only 2 GOP candidates campaigning in the region paid their respects.

For all the yelling, massive silence (like London’s blackouts) is imposed: on Christie theft of state pensions, his $2.7 billion budget shortfall; Huckabee’s class hatred for famous people and places to be sites for resettling refugees and donors to AIDS research. (Note: refugees have resettled without notice and the wealthy give to AIDS care.) Silence: on Cruz’s foreign policy beyond bluster-and-bomb (China, Europe, free trade), on education, jobs, infrastructure.

For all the noise, a lot was left unsaid.

Fear, Loathing and Republican Debaters – The New York Times http://nyti.ms/1T3CE6z