Real Time Thoughts on Meet the Press
The broader subject of today’s broadcast of Meet the Press is all about the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. BP’s latest “top kill” strategy to plug the leak with mud has not worked. The oil spill is now the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Much of the debate is a blame game. All of it is ex-post facto reasoning. Yes there was not enough due diligence done before contracts were handed out. We must have known that then. That an accidental event occurred is not causally related to 1) greater oversight 2) a much more rigorous examination of infrastructure–were that the case, almost no oil rig would be up and running.
The ex-post examination is important, but there a lot of scape goating going on here. A lot of people who act as if they had no idea business of this sort was afoot.
Now the conversation is about immigration. Luis Gutierrez is representing the left. J.D. Hayworth, the conservative candidate from Arizona are going to thrash this out, but of course to no end.
The adminstration sent down 1200 U.S National Guardsman to “protect the border.” Congressman Gutierrez’s point is that barring comprehensive reform, individuals who have come within U.S. border legally will overstay their welcome. That’s a fact. Patrolling the border will not change that.
Former Congressman Hayworth is saying that Comprehensive Immigration Reform is a poll-tested phrase. So he wants the law to be enforced and that those people who have crossed the border into the United States should be prosecuted in some legally mandated manner. The bill is, to him, double speak for amnesty. (To that, I ask, what’s wrong with that?)
To that David Gregory has pointed out that as a practical matter no government can prosecute and deport 12 million illegal immigrants from Mexico.
David Gregory is asking though the Arizona law states that police officers may ask for paper work legitimating their immigration status, what but their features would set them apart from further investigation. How does this law not invite racial profiling?
This law is overwhelmingly supported in Arizona and in much of the country. Congressman Gutierrez is saying that though police officers do pull paper work for individuals who have been pulled over, their writ was not to engage with their legal status as such. His point is that this law overwhelmingly requires individual carry their immigration paper work. This is an burden that falls on a certain segment of the population, as a practical matter. Caucasians will not think to carry that relevant paper work.
E.J. Dionne and David Brooks are the round table today.
E.J. Dionne is saying that we must realize that much of what can be done resides with B.P, notwithstanding all the things the Obama Adminstration is saying.
David Brooks is saying that as long as we can see live images of an oil leak, there will be huge problems for the Obama presidency.
The issue, as Dionne is pointing, out what could we have done earlier to prevent this disaster. (The realistic approach is that we can no longer rubber stamp a permit, but to say that we were criminally negligent is too strong.)
Joe Sestaks job offer to get out of the Senate race in Pennsylvania is up now. (I don’t see the big deal in this.)
David Brooks is surely right to say that every administration offers jobs connected to politics, but that nevertheless, the Obama administration need not be “better than thou” in insisting that it is different than any other administration.
E.J.Dionne is saying that Sestak triggered this himself by saying that he stands against the Obama administration.
