7.14.13: Blaming the Other Guy

For the purpose of actually having something real to say, it is a consolation that the verdict of the George Zimmerman trial came last night (Our comment below). The reason is because to listen to Senators Reid and McConnell this morning and pretend that either actually had something important to offer would have been too much.

Listening to both of them, clearly illustrates why Congress's approval rating is lower than North Korea's as Senator Reid said.  Think about that... North Korea, a dictatorship sworn to our destruction is actually more popular than American leaders.  Really?

Yes, really... The main gist of the discussion today concerned potentially changing the use of the filibuster in the Senate. Harry Reid (D-NV) has been threatening to change the rule for Presidential nominees only, but then cited numbers for the amount of filibusters Republicans have threatened on all legislation - 420.  On the other hand, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) objected to the notion that Mr. Reid was going to 'break the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate,' then noted that all the Senators were getting together tomorrow to discuss these traditions.  Blah blah blah...

Recently, filibusters by Senator Rand Paul (on drones) and State Senator Wendy Davis (on abortion law in Texas) made news because they were actual filibusters where the individual took to the floor to extend the debate valiantly.  Mr. McConnell loves these kinds of discussions about filibusters because they essentially hold up the entire legislative process so that nothing can get done.  From there it's easy to blame the President for any non-progress.  But have we ever seen him filibuster on the floor of the Senate?  Filibuster reform might not be necessary only if Senator Reid had backbone enough to call Republicans' bluff.  Don't fold at the threat of a filibuster, force them to put up or shut up.  Republicans wouldn't filibuster as much if they actually had to stand there and keep the debate open for 12 hours.  Let the American people see this in action and then it will be determined very quickly if our Senators are acting stupidly and if change is really needed.  All they did was blame each other for their chamber's inability to accomplish anything.

Even on the respective tough questions, both Senators gave non-answers.  Senator Reid said that he would look at a 20-week ban on abortion and wouldn't answer either way to whether he thought it was reasonable.  In other words, he wasn't going to give an answer right then and there because he doesn't know how it would play with his base.  

Conversely, Senator McConnell knows very well how his base feels about immigration so that's the reason for his non-answer as to whether the House should vote on it or not.  They want the bill to be killed but Mr. McConnell can't say that because it was created in his chamber with bipartisan cooperation and he's not going to throw his colleagues under the bus as it were.  

Everyone on today's roundtable saw Immigration Reform as in trouble, meaning most likely dead in the House.  Buttressing his joint column with William Kristol earlier in the week, Rich Lowry opined that the Immigration Bill from the Senate should be killed in the House because it doesn't completely eliminate illegal immigration, that in ten years we'll still have 7 million illegal immigrations.  Well, if the process for citizenship takes 13 years to complete, it would stand to reason that ten years from now, we'd still have individuals listed as illegal.  On the other hand, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt sees the Senate bill as essential not only for the country as a whole but for the future viability and success of the Republican party.  For Republicans, there are your two directions - the Lowry or the Schmidt.

 

Round Table: Rich Lowry; Former Democratic Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson; President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden; and Republican Strategist as well as former senior strategist to the McCain-Palin campaign Steve Schmidt, and MSNBC's Al Sharpton


Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman Verdict

Ultimately, this is another victory for the gun.  We, as an American society, have reached the point where the man with the gun, who fatally shoots someone, is given the benefit of the doubt in court.  George Zimmerman had his say, and you would have to sadly conclude that the 'Stand Your Ground' law worked. This is the reason some are saying Mr. Zimmerman should have never been prosecuted in the first place.

A gun provided George Zimmerman with false sense of strength and the ego to believe that he was in control of circumstances when the truth is his actions came from a place of fear and he wasn't in control.  And it is this kind of fear that is perpetuated and promoted by the NRA and the gun lobby that lead to these tragedies.

We can neither escape the key role race played in the entire case, and there is no amount of detail that we can go into here that would sufficiently cover all the aspects as it is even concerned strictly to this case.  However, it's worthy to get on record the question: Why is it that most people in the country, the general consensus, believes that if the roles were reversed and it was Trayvon Martin in Mr. Zimmerman's position he would have surely been found guilty?

A jury of six determined that Mr. Zimmerman acted in self-defense, which implies that Mr. Martin, the guy with the Skittles, was the perpetrator?  The absolution of any responsibility for Mr. Zimmerman is what's unjust in this case.  But in America today, it's not about responsibility, it's all about blaming the other guy.


Postscript: The moderator David Gregory explained a misstatement he made on last week's program, and it was a whopping mistake.  Last week, he said to Eugene Robinson that everyone is successfully being taxed for Obamacare, he said 'that part works,' while the other parts are troubled in their implementation.  He clarified this week that not everyone is being taxed for Medicare expansion, only individuals and families making over $250,000 per year.   It was a misstatement that essentially drove proponents of the law to the defensive unnecessarily and clouded the discussion.