Israel's Prime Minister spoke on the floor of our national legislature yesterday to rebuke the foreign policy of our president. A goal of the Prime Minister's speech and the Republicans who secretly invited him is to sabotage treaty negotiations aimed at preventing Iran from building an atomic bomb. The deadline for these negotiations is in just 4 weeks.
Yet what is the opponents' alternative to a verifiable treaty? The Prime Minister and Republicans have none. Opponents misdirect us by questioning Mr Obama's treatment of Israel and making us afraid of Iran's near capability to make a bomb. Fierce sanctions have brought Iran to the negotiating table, and now is the time to impose inspections, limit their possession of nuclear material and processing technology, and not allow Iran to have a bomb. The alternative to a treaty by the treaty's opponents is, I fear, redux of our Iraq War.
The Supreme Court today will hear arguments whether the Affordable Care Act should be crippled due to a single phrase. A ruling against Obamacare by the conservative Court members would ignore the context in which that single phrase is used and ignore their Chevron Rule stating ambiguous language can be reasonably interpreted.
Yet what is the alternative to Obamacare? Opponents have none. They wave their flags and shout socialism and scare us with fake horror stories. Five years after its passage, Republicans have no viable alternative, but they choose to destroy it despite overwhelming data showing Obamacare is working. The Supreme Court's conservatives could remove insurance subsidies for the poor and send Obamacare into a financial death spiral.
Democrats with several Senate Republicans passed comprehensive immigration reform. It includes deportations of those here illegally, increased border security, and tackled the questions of those brought here as children who only know America and foreign parents of citizens. Wingnut Republicans blocked it, never bringing it to the floor of the House despite its probable passage.
Yet what is the opponents alternative to comprehensive immigration reform? They threatened to defund the entire Department of Homeland Security in their Obama-deranged snit. We're already deporting record numbers of those here illegally, we're already patrolling the border at record levels. This is what opponents want, and we're already giving it to them. The opponents offer fear of disease and strangers and terrorists, while millions burden our system cowering in the shadows of America.
Proposals for infrastructure repair, raising taxes on those who have flourished while their tax burden has decreased, cutting spending on our military, and holding police and military accountable for doing their difficult jobs are discounted as unserious, unpatriotic, and ungrateful. Yet those serious folks who crashed our economy, ran up huge deficits through unpaid-for wars, tax cuts and give-aways, and ignore police and military difficulties remain in our spotlight influencing our nation with little accountability.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, "I couldn’t forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...."
We must keep fighting and inspiring others for our fact-based solutions. And we must hold the Toms and Daisys of the world in check and accountable.