Thursday Open Thread [11.20.14]

“Rising Republican hostility toward President Obama’s impending immigration plan is as intense as has ever existed between the White House and the GOP,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“But the strong reaction by Republican leaders has less to do with opposition to the nuts and bolts of the president’s immigration policy and more to do with fear and anger that the issue will derail the agenda of the new Republican majority before the next Congress even convenes. Republican leaders who had hoped to focus on corporate tax reform, fast-track trade pacts, repealing the president’s healthcare law and loosening environmental restrictions on coal are instead being dragged into an immigration skirmish that they’ve tried studiously to avoid for most of the last year.”
I imagine that was the plan. And Republicans are too bigoted and dumb enough to fall for it. Indeed, this whole fucking immigration mess is due to their unabashed racism on the part of the GOP. All they had to do is pass the Senate plan, which was a compromise with Senate Republicans that provide much increased (and wasteful) border security. And this issue would be over with and the GOP would be back to wooing the Latino vote. Instead, they are going to freak the fuck out and let the racist flag fly proudly, and they are going to lose Latinos for multiple centuries. For the President's part, it is always golden when the right thing to do syncs up with the politically right thing to do.
Tom Carper just heaped praise on this Republican – You will totally believe what happened next

Tom Carper just heaped praise on this Republican – You will totally believe what happened next

Yesterday Tom Carper heaped praise on his GOP buddy Tom Coburm of Oklahoma. After praising Coburn, he handed over the gavel of an Ebola hearing to the nutbag:
“I don’t want to chair this hearing today. I want Tom Coburn to chair it,” Mr. Carper said from the dais on Wednesday. “So I’m going to pass tho gavel over to him and put him in charge, and I’m going to try to be a good wingman. All right, Thomas, it’s all yours.”
What did the grand gesture of bipartisanship get Carper? Well, LATER THE SAME DAY Coburn predicted "anarchy" and "violence" will be the result of any executive order on immigration.
New Blog In Town – Steve Newton Whiskey

New Blog In Town – Steve Newton Whiskey

Steve Newton has started a new blog.  Go read! What's interesting is this:
I'd rather have a system of ethics than an ideology. So I'm starting over here, in a sense.  As a historian I know that all phenomena involve both continuity and change.  I'm still the same person, with the same background, the same interests, the same flaws, and the same leanings, that I was about seven years ago when I first started publishing The Delaware Libertarian.  I'm just unwilling to confine my ideas, my observations, or my potential solutions to that framework any more.