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Whenever immigration rises to the top of the national agenda, we like to call on the best guys we know on the topic, Mickey Kaus and Mark Krikorian. We do a deep dive into the Dreamers, DACA, and The Wall. Also, that deal with Chuck and Nancy, Rob defends Betsy DeVos, and James remembers a dog named Scout.
Music from this week’s podcast: Bodhisattva by Steely Dan
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A great, great podcast. You folks touched on a lot of my most passionate dislikes: my #NeverTrump emotions still make one eye spin clockwise and the other counterclockwise every time I focus on him being our President for more than 20 seconds, The Art of the Choke ought to be the focus of your next podcast. You also brought up teacher’s unions, illegal immigration and, in passing, the most pernicious barnacle on our current political process, the filibuster.
An innocent question you could put to knowledgeable or influential people: Why can’t the House pass a clean Dreamer bill with E-Verify and chain migration eliminated? It could then go to the Senate, put on the floor and McConnell could demand that Dems bring out the cots and be on TV doing a full, real filibuster for a few weeks or months or how ever long it took. Why is this too much for Republican leaning peons out here in the sticks to ask for?
Rob: can you back off the silly claim that Trump will never cut entitlements because he promised not to? (He’s just not that principled.)
Sure, he is not a fiscal conservative (just wait for the Japanese-sized infrastructure bill), but he was willing to sign an ACA reform which cut Medicaid by $1 trillion dollars and restructured and federalized one of the tentpole entitlements of the Great Society.
The GOP was simply unwilling to cut a single dollar out of a massive expansion of Medicaid spending over the next decade. Not one buck.
Maybe the GOP signing machine in the Oval Office is no longer working, but the opportunity was there and the GOP Congress gave us a rerun of Failure Theatre.
This one isn’t showing up on the dedicated podcast feed.
“No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin has had multiple conversations with Jared Kushner and other top White House officials about how to protect young immigrants known as ‘Dreamers’ from deportation, the lawmaker said on Thursday.”
It’s time to start looking for a new GOP nominee for 2020 right now.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/624/private-geography?act=1#play
While I am not positive that the above is the podcast to which Rob referred. I think it is. It took me a little while to find. It is fair to Mrs. DeVoss. It does paint her in a favorable light, saying how she does care about children. But… being NPR… the woman speaking, and telling us about Betsy DeVoss makes clear that the Secretary’s approach is the wrong one. The Department was created to cater to PUBLIC education, and it must do that. I vote with Mrs. DeVoss: The children MUST come first!
What, specifically, would the “massive entitlement reform” Rob Long wants entail?
Does anyone believe that income taxes or the corporate tax with ever get up to 80 percent or more? Rob Long seems to be going into crazy territory there.
The GOP who holds the House, Senate and the Presidency couldn’t even pass a “skinny repeal” of Obamacare and Rob thinks the GOP is going to cut entitlements??!!! I wish I had whatever he’s smoking.
Trump isn’t a politician, he isn’t an ideologue. He isn’t playing by Washington’s rules. He doesn’t care about timelines because of elections and such, he wants something done and if he has to deal with Democrats he will. The Republican’s in Washington haven’t figured this out yet. They refused to work with him , this is what happens. McConnell and Ryan have to think outside of the box with this guy or lose everything.
“As if people who supported Trump were under illusions he was gonna be a master negotiator and gonna emerge as this, you know, just absolutely terrific advocate of the Restrictionist point of view. I don’t think anybody really had those illusions…”
– Mickey Kaus, with a straight face
I nearly swallowed my tongue when I heard this
Thank you!
I was just trying to search for this and couldn’t find it immediately.
Unlike you, I’m not that patient, so I came back to this post to see if Rob Long could send the link.
It’s the link @georgetownsend posted:
https://thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/624/private-geography?act=1#play
Thank YOU. I am not always that patient myself, but I am a big Betsy DeVos fan, and I wanted to find this.
I was just a little disappointed in the recording. While it did paint the Secretary in a much better light then I thought NPR capable, I could have done without the conclusion. She obviously made up her mind before hand about this. And some reporters nowadays are not capable of just reporting; they have to tell you the conclusion you are supposed to reach!
Listing to the pod cast now, did I just hear Mickey say that no trump supporters thought that he was gonna be a great negotiator? Hhahahhahaha. As I recall they absolutely thought that and many still do. He campaigned on making great deals with China with Mexico Japan everyone that was the whole point.