One Small Step, Opposed By Republicans

If blood is thicker than water, as the old saying goes, guns are thicker than immigration. This was demonstrated with the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, which would extend both the background checks to private dealers, such as purchases made at gun shows and on the Internet, and the time limit for the checks.  On March 2 the New York Daily News reported

An unapologetic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unloaded Saturday on the “splinter group” of fellow Democrats who backed Republicans on a controversial gun control bill amendment involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“If you’re mad that I think people SHOULD KNOW when Dems vote to expand ICE powers, then be mad,” the freshman Democratic congresswoman wrote in a series of sharp-edged tweets.

“ICE is a dangerous agency with (zero) accountability, widespread reporting of rape, abuse of power, + children dying in DHS custody. Having a D next to your name doesn’t make that right.”

The party infighting followed a bipartisan vote where the minority Republicans, aided by middle-of-the-road Democrats, added a provision to a gun control bill that requires notification of immigration authorities if an undocumented immigrant attempts to purchase a weapon....

“Mind you, the same small splinter group of Dems that tried to deny (Nancy) Pelosi the speakership, fund the wall during the shutdown when the public didn’t want it, & are now voting in surprise ICE amendments to gun safety legislation are being called the “moderate wing” of the party,” she wrote.

Ocasio-Cortez is flat-out wrong on this, as was Speaker Pelosi, who urged Democrats (largely successfully) to vote against the motion to recommit. The vast majority of illegal immigrants work, obey the law, and keep a low profile while trying to remain in the country. Those brazen enough to try to purchase a weapon not only should be reported to ICE but are precisely those immigrants (along with those who commit a felony) who most need to be detained and deported.

All but 26 Democratic House members voted against this GOP proposal, On final passage, Ocasio-Cortez was one of 232 (one not voting) of 235 Democrats voting in favor of the bill while 188 of 197 Republicans (one not voting) voted against the proposal.

So Republicans- and a few wise and courageous Democrats- got what they wanted with agreement to have immigration enforcement notified when a person in the country illegally attempts to purchase a firearm, the most lethal weapon an individual might commonly possess. (Note to most Republicans and a few Democrats: not all persons are entitled to a firearm for any purpose at any time.) 

With opposition from the National Rifle Association, a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell's GOP, and a President who won't cross the gun lobby, passage is unlikely.  However, this is a reminder (including to those liberals and progressives who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton in November 2016) that there are a lot of differences between Democrats and Republicans, some of them deadly.

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A Policy Argument Can Be Made. Omar Declined.

With passage in the House of Representatives of a resolution denouncing hate, meat loaf, and neighbors with loud lawn mowers- and GOP surrender on the issue- the Ilhan Omar saga itself appears over.

For now, anyway. Yet the disagreement over the path of Mideast peace and justice continues, and will continue.

One week ago the New Republic's Ben Ehrenreich argued that following Omar's remarks at the event at Busboys and Poets bookstore in Washington, D.C. "All attention went to just five words: “allegiance to a foreign country.” Never mind that Omar was talking about politicians, and not about Jews at all..."

Alas, a transcript has been provided by a defender of Omar's remarks. Two paragraphs prior to the Minnesotan stating "so for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is ok for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country," Omar had maintained

And so for me I know that when I hear my Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues speak about Palestinians who don’t want safety, or Palestinians who aren’t deserving I stay focused on the actual debate about what that process should look like. I never go to the dark place of saying “here’s a Jewish person, they’re talking about Palestinians, Palestinians are Muslim, maybe they’re Islamophobic.” I never allow myself to go there because I don’t have to.

She refers here to "my Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues speak about Palestinians who don't wan't safety or Palestinians who aren't deserving." That's Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues who in her view are narrow-minded. 

Ehrenreich wants us to understand that "criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism."  Of course, it only seems to be anti-Semitic when the words come from an individual who had the previous month tweeted "it's all about the Benjamins, baby" in favorable response to a tweet by Glenn Greenwald criticizing the allegedly reflexive support of politicians for Israel. And suspicion of anti-Semitism was inevitable when the subject had several years earlier referred (in a tweet , like the other, now deleted) to Israel's "evil doings," to which she hoped Allah would "awaken" people. 

To be sure, Ehrenreich is not alone in failing to recognize Omar's motivation.  Less critical of the congresswoman than I, Michelle Goldberg (though below, overly generous of Omar's motives) noted

As that resolution was being hashed out, The Hill published an interview with House Majority Whip James Clyburn that poured gasoline on a trash fire. Defending Omar, who spent four years of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp, he seemed to describe her suffering as more visceral than that of Jews. "There are people who tell me, 'Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.' "My parents did this.'" Clyburn said. "It's more personal with her: I've talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain."

Truly, when you see that your god has not extinguished a nation which you consider "evil," it would mean a lot of pain. The likes of Clyburn and Ehrenreich may not understand that criticism of the Israeli government would be more credible coming from someone more credible.  Allow New York Times columnist and Jew Thomas Friedman to explain that, like Omar, he doesn't like the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, in his case

because I strongly believe in the right of the Jewish people to build a nation-state in their ancient homeland — a nation-state envisaged by its founders to reflect the best of Jewish and democratic values. And I believe Aipac for many years has not only become a rubber stamp on the right-wing policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has resulted in tens of thousands of Israeli settlers now ensconced in the heart of the West Bank, imperiling Israel as a democracy. Aipac has also been responsible for making support for Israel a Republican cause, not a bipartisan issue, which poses a real danger to Israel’s support in America in the long run, and particularly on college campuses.

I dislike Aipac because I am devoted to Israel as a Jewish democracy and because I believe that only a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians can ensure that. Given how Aipac has let itself become the slavish, unthinking tool of Netanyahu, who opposes a two-state solution, I believe Aipac works against Israel’s long-term interests.

Aipac is a self-appointed lobby that does not represent my feelings as an American Jew. But neither does Representative Omar.

Everything I have heard from her leads me to conclude that she dislikes Aipac because she dislikes Israel, because she does not really believe the Jewish people have a right to an independent state in their ancestral homeland. She seems to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, known as B.D.S.

Representative Omar has not made a similarly, or even differentiated, reasoned argument against the policies of the Netanhayu government. She has not even had the awareness, courage, or whatever it would take to call out AIPAC itself. Rather, it has been about the Benjamins, the Almighty, and dual allegiance, twin brother to treason. Nor has the vast majority of Representative Omar's defenders, unlike Friedman, explained why they believe that the current Israeli government is simultaneously injurious to Palestinians and Israelis. 

This certainly does not mean that most of them are anti-Semitic. But for many of them, it does mean that they condone that sentiment at this moment in history from this individual, and that does not bode well for either American support of Israel or justice in the Middle East.

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Rooseveltian Wisdom

Understandably, it's doubtful that Elizabeth Warren would endorse the recommendation of author David Frum in his article in The Atlantic that the USA begin "reducing immigration, and selecting immigrants more carefully." It's also unlikely that Senator Warren or any other candidate seeking the Democratic presidential nomination would suggest an immigration policy which would

enable the country to more quickly and successfully absorb the people who come here, and to ensure equality of opportunity to both the newly arrived and the long-settled—to restore to Americans the feeling of belonging to one united nation, responsible for the care and flourishing of all its people.

Nonetheless, when MSNBC's Ari Melber on Friday asked the Massachusetts senator whom her "dream running mate" whether "living or dead" would be, she picked Theodore Roosevelt

Because he was brave, and he took on the trust and he didn`t care how many people were going to be mad about it, and he did it.  This is what`s amazing for the right reasons.  It wasn`t just that they were big. It wasn`t just that they were dominating an economy.  It wasn`t just that they were putting farmers out of business and competitors out of business and small companies out of business,  it was that they had too much political power.

 Not only was it a good choice and for very good reason, but another reason to celebrate Theodore Roosevelt is embodied in this passage from Frum's ("from Frum?") piece:

Where once the nation’s cultural leaders condemned “hyphenated Americanism,” today the hyphen has become a tool of cultural power. Those white Americans who might not have a hyphen obviously at hand now scramble to invent one. They have become “hardworking Americans” or “everyday Americans” or “real Americans”—separating themselves from a shared destiny with other Americans.

No American more eloquently deplored hyphenation than Theodore Roosevelt. Read his words in full, and you see that Roosevelt’s insistence on a singular national identity was founded not on any sense of hereditary supremacy, but on his passionately patriotic egalitarianism.

The children and children’s children of all of us have to live here in this land together. Our children’s children will intermarry, one with another, your children’s children, friends, and mine. They will be the citizens of one country.

That does not dictate a specific formula for determining the number and nature of individuals who should be admitted to the country. However, as Frum notes, "the challenge for today’s Americans is to allow that new demography" of ever-greater ethnic diversity "to develop in an environment of social equality and cultural cohesion." It is a concept T. Roosevelt would have understood, Democrats should embrace, and by which President Trump is appalled.

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Baseless Charge

You will read many stupid and/or dishonest things today but none more so than this:

We learned today what we knew for a long time. Never Trumpers like @davidfrum believe many of the same things about immigration and race as Donald Trump they just say it more politely and with the imprimatur of liberal media outlets.

— David Slavick (@davidslavick) March 11, 2019

Frum is being condemned across Twitter for taking on a topic few people will, in an article entitled "How Much Immigration is Too Much?" in the print edition and "If Liberals Won't Enforce Borders, Fascists Will" online.

Imagine whether Donald Trump would ever say

across the developed world, very high levels of immigration have coincided with widening class divisions, the discrediting of political and economic elites, and the rise of extremist politics.

Discrediting of political and economic elites and the rise of extremist politics, exemplified by the rise of Turkey's Erdogan, Egypt'sel-Sisi, Hungary's Orban, and the USA's Trump, has coincided with a high level of immigration, or what Americans believe is a very high level of immigration.  Class divisions, not unlike what the the American left refers to as "income disparities," also have increased. That is not a good thing.

Frum explains

Neither the fiscal costs nor the economic benefits of immigration are large enough to force a decision one way or the other. Accept the most negative estimate of immigration’s dollar costs, and the United States could still afford a lot of immigration. Believe the most positive reckoning of the dollar benefits that mass immigration provides, and they are not so large that the United States would be crazy to refuse them.

For good or ill, immigration’s most important effects are social and cultural, not economic. What are these effects, then? Some are good, some are bad, and some depend on the eye of the beholder.

Since Donald Trump became a candidate, the number of times he has said- in whatever words- "for good or ill" or that some effects "are good, some are bad, and some depend on the eye of the beholder" ranges from zero to, well, zero.

It is not surprising, then, that Frum is right about the impact of immigration.  So, too, is he when noting immigrants "are lowering America's average skill level." He notes also that they "are making America safer" and "are making America less self-destructive."  These are things Donald Trump has said, and will say, approximately never.

If you're wise enough to read this blog, unlike President Trump and the Twitterer quoted above, you might have noticed that visa overstays are a critical problem. Frum boldly takes aim at the GOP's rallying cry of "secure the border," arguing

The phrase border security seriously distorts our understanding of illegal immigration. By some tallies, more than half of the most recent immigrants in the country illegally arrived legally—typically as a student or tourist—then overstayed their visa. They obeyed the law when they entered. They broke it by failing to leave. They get away with this because the U.S. concentrates its immigration enforcement on the frontier—while slighting the workplace. President Trump seethes against illegal border crossings. Yet at least five of his golf resorts employed undocumented laborers for the first two years of his presidency. At one of his resorts, fully half the winter-season employees worked illegally.

We never have heard candidate or President Trump argue

Even more urgently, employers who take advantage of immigration status—to cheat workers of their pay, or harass or abuse them sexually, or force them to work in unsafe conditions—should be prime targets for criminal prosecution. As states raise their minimum wages, the temptation to hire people of precarious immigration status will intensify. It is the workplace that most needs additional enforcement resources.

As one of those employers himself, Donald Trump is not anxious to target such unscrupulous employers for criminal prosecution, and is at best barely interested in additional resources for workplace enforcement. Accused of saying the same things as the President about race, Frum mentions Mexicans only once, in which "illegal immigration to the United States by Mexicans is now declining."

Without details- because "Americans are entitled to consider carefully whom they will number among themselves"- Frump believes the USA would benefit by "reducing immigration" and "selecting immigrants more carefully."  Nonetheless- or perhaps therefore- he recognizes "the Trump-era debate about a wall misses the point."  Trump "thinks about immigration in terms of symbols, " especially the "slabs of concrete arrayed like incisors in a line running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean."

Trump was elected President most of all because of his promise to build a wall financed by Mexico. If Frum believes the same things about immigration and race as that guy, there must be a second "Donald Trump" running around somewhere.


Next up: Frum/E.Warren/T. Roosevelt 

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Donald Trump, Author

Eleven months before the crook from Queens was elected president, Michael D'Antonio wrote

Trump's sense of entitlement has been affirmed throughout his life. In 1987, at a party marking the publication of Trump's book "The Art of the Deal," boxing promoter Don King turned to the crowd and proclaimed the arrival of Trump and his then-wife Ivana by saying, "Here's the king and the queen!" A few years later, when he appeared at an event at one of his Atlantic City casinos, an announcer bellowed, "Let's hear it for the king!" — and Trump burst through a large paper screen. When he visited the humble village of his Scottish ancestors he told his relatives that because of his TV show "The Apprentice," he was American royalty. "If you get ratings, you're king, like me. I'm a king. If you don't get ratings, you're thrown off the air like a dog."

And Trump does not believe he is superior because of hard work, upbringing, or education.  It's a case of nature over nurture, which helps explain why he is a classic racist. D'Antonio continued

Like history's monarchs, Trump believes that the qualities that make him successful are in-born. He once said he possesses a genetic "gift" for real estate development.

"I'm a big believer in natural ability," Trump told me during a discussion about his leadership traits, which he said came from a natural sense of how human relations work. "If Obama had that psychology, Putin wouldn't be eating his lunch. He doesn't have that psychology and he never will because it's not in his DNA." Later in this discussion, Trump said: "I believe in being prepared and all that stuff. But in many respects, the most important thing is an innate ability."

Perhaps Trump's conviction that DNA — not life experience — is everything explains why he proudly claims that he's "basically the same" today as when he was a boy. "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same," he said. "The temperament is not that different."

 Like father, like son:

His son Donald Jr. told me: "Like him, I'm a big believer in race-horse theory. He's an incredibly accomplished guy, my mother's incredibly accomplished, she's an Olympian, so I'd like to believe genetically I'm predisposed to [be] better than average"....

The racehorse theory of human development explains Trump's belief in his suitability for political leadership, despite the fact that he has never held office. He's absolutely convinced that America's problems will be solved by his God-given management skills, bankruptcies notwithstanding. You are either born with superior qualities — the right DNA — or you are not.

And it appears that Trump thinks that he himself is responsible for his God-given skills, now that 

Residents of a small Alabama city, still reeling after deadly tornadoes devastated their corner of the state, said President Trump’s visit Thursday was “a godsend.”

He punctuated his trip at a Southern Baptist church in Opelika, Ala., with another religious overture, one that was distinctly on-brand: When asked, the president signed several of the churchgoers’ Bibles.

After Trump added his unique, frenetic signature to a 12-year-old boy’s Good Book, the crowd of onlookers erupted in applause, a pool report noted. One church volunteer, Ada Ingram, told the reporters that Trump’s visit was a blessing. Hopefully, it brings the community together, she said.

“I enjoyed him coming,” Ingram said. “I think it’s a godsend.”

Another volunteer, Emily Pike, said the president and first lady Melania Trump signed her 10-year-old daughter’s Bible, which was already decorated with pink camouflage....

Some experts said that any signature on or in a Bible, no matter the penmanship, should be frowned upon.

“Growing up in a religious home, it would’ve been seen as blasphemous as having someone signing your own name,” said Jamie Aten, an evangelical and psychologist at Wheaton College.

Aten, who specializes in the effects of disasters on the religious mind, said it’s common for disaster survivors to use the Bible to help make meaning of what happened. However, he said, he has never seen survivors bring Bibles for someone to sign.

“Maybe you penned your own name so people knew it was yours,” Aten said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Making it just a little worse, the President with his indecipherable signature signed the cover of the Bibles. The best comment, however, came from Twitter:

Thousands of Alabama Republicans will have Bibles with the same signature that went on a hush money check to a porn star

— Bill Andy Farley (@billandy27) March 9, 2019

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Really Not Complicated

Seven years ago and seven years younger, Ilhan Omar tweeted “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel."  Responding in agreement to a tweet from Glenn Greenwald, last month she tweeted "It's all about he Benjamins baby."

In case Nancy Pelosi and Omar's other defenders didn't get her message, on March 1 Representative Omar explained "So for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country." Anti-Jewish message most certainly not received, given that

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) doubled down on her defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Friday, telling an audience at The Economic Club that the Minnesota congresswoman is not anti-Semitic.

During an interview Friday in Washington, Pelosi reiterated her belief that Omar does not hold anti-Jewish views, and maintained that her criticism of Israel had led her to espouse language that some viewed with a second meaning.

"The incident that happened with [Omar], I don't think our colleague is anti-Semitic," Pelosi said Friday.

"I think she has a different experience in the use of words, doesn't understand that some of them are fraught with meaning," Pelosi added of the freshman Democratic congresswoman who came to the U.S. as a refugee with her family in 1995.

Nonetheless, if there is such a thing as the soft bigotry of lowered expectations, it is that a 37-year-old member of the United States House of Representatives "has a different experience in the use of words, doesn't understand that some of them are fraught with meaning."  Omar has a different experience in the use of words because, Pelosi claimed.... well, she didn't say why the Somali-born, American-raised Omar is daft enough not to understand words have meanings.  There are Jews in Minnesota, doubtless even in her own district.

Believing Representative Omar was victimized by a double standard, Michelle Goldberg argues

Earlier this week, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, accused Representative Jerry Nadler of doing the bidding of the wealthy liberal donor “Tom $teyer,” whose father was Jewish. (“To be clear, this tweet counts both as inane AND anti-Semitic,” Nadler responded.) Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is one of Trump’s fiercest defenders, once brought an internet troll who’d denied the Holocaust to the State of the Union. Omar gestured at the idea of dual loyalty, but Donald Trump, speaking to American Jews last December, referred to Israel as “your country.” Indeed, no president has done more to mainstream classically anti-Semitic ideas about an authentic volk at war with parasitical globalists. It’s maddening to watch men who’ve flirted with outright fascism — like former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka, who wore the medal of a Nazi-aligned Hungarian group to one of Trump’s inaugural balls — act like sanctimonious defenders of the Jews.

Between approval of a House anti-hate resolution urged by the Speaker and the latter's remarks to the Economic Club, we heard from Five Thirty Eight's Nate Silver:

That's why I think Pelosi should have done more to de-amplify the Omar controversy. Like roughly: "You know what, I have 235 members, and some of them are going to say stupid shit I disagree with. Her views are not representative of the Democratic Party." And left it at that.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 8, 2019

Not a bad suggestion, but Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to state unequivocally that she disagrees with Representative Omar's remarks. The Minnesotan, she maintains, is not anti-Semitic, leading one to wonder how obvious a colleague must be before the Speaker recognizes anti-Semitism. Hopefully, Omar will learn to curb her tongue and Twitter finger- or we will find out how far the leader of the Party will go in condoning the hate she purports to be offended by.

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What's Good For The Goose....

Politico Magazine has titled a piece written by assistant law professor Daniel Hemel "Democrats Demanded Trump's Tax Returns. Then They Dragged Their Feet." Before the text of the article, we read "The House has the authority to request anyone's tax documents. But, inexplicably, the leadership has taken it slow."

It's obvious that she/he did not read the article because it's not inexplicable at all.

In an interview with her hometown newspaper last October, Nancy Pelosi stated that if Democrats were to retake the House of Representatives, demanding President Trump's income tax returns “is one of the first things we’d do — that’s the easiest thing in the world. That’s nothing."

Yet, as Hemel notes, Minority Leader Pelosi has been Speaker Pelosi for over two months and "the one House Democrat who has the statutory authority to obtain the documents—Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.)—insists he still doesn’t have a timeline' for moving forward on the matter."

Hemel explains that a 95-year-old law authorizes the chairman to demand the president's tax returns from the Secretary of the Treasury. After Steven Mnuchin refuses the request, the House could issue a subpoena and if it is still resisted, obtain a Civil Action order in federal district court.  Legal maneuverings could take a few years.

Nevertheless- or maybe therefore- the Ways and Means Committee should have requested the returns by now. Although Hemel is too polite to make it explicit, he evidently knows why it hasn't done so. Chairperson Neal has not released his returns and- more importantly- the individual second in line to succeed the President (first after the VP), Nancy

Pelosi isn’t aiding matters by refusing to release her own returns, a fact that the conservative media frequently—and not entirely unfairly—emphasizes. The arguments for why the president should release his returns apply similarly, if not quite as strongly, to the speaker. Congress is, as Pelosi says, “a co-equal branch of government,” and she is that branch’s most powerful member. Congress sets the IRS’ budget, so if we are concerned about the agency showing bias toward the president, shouldn’t we also be concerned about the treatment of powerful lawmakers who pull the agency’s purse strings?

The chairperson of Ways and Means answers to the Speaker- and the Speaker has not released her own tax returns. That does not excuse the President but makes a little less credible any formal plea for him to do the right thing (video below from mid-December).

Nancy Pelosi still is an effective leader of her party and the chamber it controls, whatever her refusal to recognize anti-Semitism. However, not only is her refusal a stumbling block but, if she were to make a dramatic, public release of her tax returns, the contrast to the President would be striking, if not compelling.

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