This Week George Stephanopopoulos flies in a helicopter and tackles the subject of manliness in politics. And Immigration and Global Warming.
As a host and as a show, Stephanopoulos gets a big "meh" rating from me. He mostly just grins and looks at himself in the camera. His questions are very tame, periodically reminding the guests "but the President has said...".
Immigration
Sen. Arlen "Punxatawnee Phil" Specter
Rep. Tom "One Minute Lover" Tancredo (Wingnut-CO)
Steph: There are 11 million illegal immigrants, 500,000 protested in LA. Amnesty is an emotionally loaded word.
Spec: My proposed amendment is not an Amnesty. It would impose a fine, 6 years waiting time, criminal background checks.
Tanc: It is an amnesty, the crime they have committed is coming in to this country without our permission, the penalty is deportation.
Amnesty means rewarding people who do it the wrong way. A slap in the face to naturalized, who do it the right way.
That's right Tom. Discipline and Punish. Let's get the base all fired up about "rewarding" "those people" with human rights. Just like the Liberals want to "reward" lazy black people with Welfare and other "entitlements". I work hard and obey the law, why are "those people" "entitled" to anything? They're all criminals and should be punished mercilessly. That will make me feel better while the GOP and the Corporations send me and my trailer park community deeper into abject poverty.
Steph: Should we round 'em up and ship 'em home?
Tanc: I have a radical proposal: let's enforce the laws on the books. Laws against employers who hire illegals. If we do that there will be no more illegals, they will go home voluntarily.
Steph: Business is afraid.
Spec: They won't go home voluntarily if we crack down on businesses, that's wishful thinking.
It feels creepy to be on the same page as "Minuteman" Tom, but I highly doubt any politician, R or D, really intends to enforce anything about the demand, the business side of the issue. It's much easier to punish the economically cloutless victims: the illegal workers. Specter doesn't explain why it wouldn't work.
Steph plays clip of Hitlery Klintoon: This would criminalize the good samaritan, probably jesus himself.
Tanc: I'm not surprised that HC doesn't know the first thing about the bible. Har de har har.
Steph: So you would make it a crime to provide assistance to illegal immigrants?
Tanc: It's not a new law, it's been on the books. It only calls for prosecuting people who bring people in, not about going after soup kitchens.
Spec: It should be modified. People who provide assistance are rightfully concerned.
Tanc: The "aiding and abetting" law was amended out in an Agriculture bill. [outraged facial expression] It's not against all religious institutions, but there are some, oh I don't know... Islamic religious institutions have provided safe havens for illegal immigrants.
Scared yet? So we will be going after islamic soup kitchens then? Of course, nice white christian churches have nothing to worry about.
Steph: Senate version of the bill doesn't have proposal for 700 mile wall, House version does.
Spec: I'm in favor of a Virtual Wall: aerial drones, overhead telemetry (wha?) Walls only in metropolitan areas.
Tanc: The Wall is really just a Fence.
What you see in front of your eyes is not real. Trust me.
Steph: Frist said if Spec doesn't introduce an amendment tomorrow he will take Guest Workers off the table.
Spec: We're going to have to work late. We're a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.
Specter related the story of his family's immigration from the Ukraine. "Minuteman" Tom didn't say anything, but "Tancredo" doesn't sound like a name that appeared on the Mayflower's passenger manifest. Sounds more like a WOP name to me. Maybe someone in his family's history was WithOut Papers at some time or another. How would he feel about declaring them felons, retroactively?
Global warming with Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer
New polls:
85% think global warming is real
68% think someting should be done about it
Schweitzer tells Steffie as they fly over Glacier National Park: there used to be 100 glaciers, now only a couple of dozens. By 2025 there will be no glaciers in Glacier National Park.
Global Warming is changing the park's whole ecosystem. Spruce mugwort is killing trees which leads to more forest fires.
There is a proposal by the UN to save the park.
Change of scene, a hunting lodge setting reminiscent of Twin Peaks:
Schweitz: Montana is the Saudi Arabia of Coal. With Clean Coal technology CO2 is pumped back into the ground, it's called "sequestering".
China and India use coal fired plants. If we develop clean coal gasification technology then transfer that technology to India and China. We can save the world right here in Montana.
Now we're giving money to countries that are not our friends to buy oil. That money ends up being used against us.
We are doing nothing. You gotta take action, can't have just words. A chief executive should challenge the country. Public-private partnership. Technology we can export to the world.
My wife and I bought a Diesel VW jetta we will fill with fuel made from coal.
If only we could tap into the massive reservoirs of Gas these Sunday Talk Shows represent, our energy addiction problem would be solved.
Steph: What can the Blue Governor of a Red state teach Beltway Democrats?
Schweitz: Montana is not red or blue. People are looking for someone with good ideas and who will talk straight to them. Beltway Dems mostly represent the coasts, they don't understand the heartland (pron. "hartlind").
Steph: Can you sell Hillary in montana?
Schweitz: Probably not.
Proposing solutions and talking straight to voters. What a concept. I agree with Brian, HC doesn't stand a chance.
Roundtable
Fareed "Onomatopoeia" Zakaria
George "Triumph of The" Will
Katrina "VanDenBooble" Van Den Heuvel
Immigration
Fareed: There is a practical reality: the demand. Immigrants are the single reason the US economy is booming compared to Europe and other countries.
Will: It will take 200,000 buses lined up from San Diego to Alaska to deport 11 million illegals. Not going to happen.
George Will, as a service to information hungry audiences everywhere, has done the math on this issue.
Katrina: Last year was the year of the Minutemen, this year is the year of the Immigrants
Steph: During the depate on California Prop 187, Mexican flags in the street propelled it to victory in the polls.
Yeah, you big dummies protesting in LA. Don't you know that speaking out about issues that affect you is political suicide? Do like the Democrats and shut the hell up.
IIRC, Prop 187 denies social services and health care to illegal immigrants. Another policy motivated by racial prejudice and not by a desire for practical solutions. Illegals are still here and get sicker without medical attention to minor problems. These problems end up in preventable Big health problems, Illegals end up in Emergency Rooms and have to be taken care of, at greater expense to taxpayers.
Ironic that 187 is the police code for murder, if West Coast hip-hop songs are correct.
Will: Fareed is wrong, IBM is the backbone of America, not illegal workers.
Fareed: That's because the women who work at IBM have an immigrant watching their kids at home.
Zing! Fareed was the only one who made any kind of sense in the whole show (this includes Steffie). George Will is senile, right wing thought processes having sclerotized his neurons a long time ago. VanDenBooble was boldly shrill in attacking the Republicans but was much less vocal about any kind of solutions.
Katrina: With people like Tancredo we see the demonization of immigrants. The white supremacist, David Duke perspective has been absorbed into the Right-wing mainstream.
Will: African Americans hate hispanics too..
See what I mean?
Fareed: The way you talk about immigration creates the environment. The European Green Card, yes they call it Green Card, guest worker program is a failure because it doesn't lead to full citizenship. The result is large groups of disgruntled, alienated people.
Race riots like the ones in Paris are a bad thing.
Steph: Nothing will happen this year.
Thanks for the insight, George.
Global Warming
Steph: Time Magazine cover: the debate about global warming is over.
Will: Reads a 1974 article warning of coming glaciations. Doing something about global warming will cost Trillions of dollars which could be spent on global development, AIDS in Africa, etc. Climate fluctuates on its own, naturally. The people who were wrong thirty years ago are wrong today.
Fareed: Why don't we err in the side of caution.
Will: Let's not make a trillion dollar mistake.
Now there's honest debate about an issue. All of the science done in recent years can be dismissed with a crumpled photocopy of a random newspaper article from decades ago.
Besides, fighting a man-made process that will make the planet uninhabitable by humans is risky and very expensive! Are you bleeding-heart liberals willing to sacrifice your other pet causes? Because that's the choice, really.
Katrina: It's no longer a debate, the question is: do we face a tipping point? The British Minister of pollution calls gobal warming deniers "climate loonies". These are the same people who denied cigarettes caused cancer #. This Administration rewrites science, silences scientists.
In Memoriam
Some guy who was on Hee Haw, a movie director, an opera producer and 9 US soldiers have died.
Manliness in Politics
From transcript, because I can't take it no mo, and it's absurd all by itself. Note Steffie's snarky setup.
As the political world continues to buzz about whether Condoleeza Rice or Hillary Clinton will be the first woman president, the Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, author of "Manliness," and Naomi Wolf, who taught Al Gore about earth tones, discuss the politics of manliness.
Mansfield: Manliness I define as confidence in a situation of risk, and I think men have that more than women.
Wolf: I don't know what bubble he's living in. He's making these sweeping arguments as if from this bubble in 1955.
Mansfield: Politics is a field of competition, and women are less interested in competition, just as they're less interested in sports. And, indeed, I think their interest in sports goes together with their interest in men more than in sports or in politics directly.
Snark Ipsa Loquitor.