Remember when your mother told you it's always in the last place you look? Certainly most of us looking for coherent thinking would never tune in MSNBC but as Mom said it in the last place you look. In the past week most of us consumed news like binge eaters on pregnane steroids, watching television with one eye and the Twitter feeds with the other. That compulsion drove me to MSNBC, that, along with Fox News' idiotic fair and balanced debates which one might think were produced by the WWE. I wouldn't go so far to call Fox News hell but purgatory? Maybe?
When domestic politics are discussed on MSNBC the tone ranges from subdued to crestfallen. Yes, they continue to defend Obama against all criticism both foreign and domestic but it's more like apologia for a parent or spouse who drinks too much. Obama has been a great disappointment and the prospect of 8 years under Hillary may in their minds be better than 8 under Kasich or Pataki but a great deal less the the bubbly hope and change that was so intoxicating in 2008. Listening to Chris Matthews, it is evident that the thrill up his leg has abated. He has reverted to his old heroes, JFK and Tip O' Neal.
Occasionally an objet d'art is found in the flotsam and jetsam of MSNBC reportage and opinion and Matthews makes a point that Republican critics of Obama's Syrian refugee program should. What sort of moral slackers are these people? To Matthews they are tantamount to deserters. They don't care enough about their own country to fight for it. Why should Americans die for Syria when Syrians will not? ISIS is taking the country from people who would rather flee to the West and what do we think of people who will not fight for their country?
The following evening Matthew was back on the same subject. He remarked that the Vietnamese refugees were welcomed into the US because they had fought along side of Americans but the Syrian refugees have yet to fight along side of anyone. It's a compelling point and when one sees the tempest tossed Syrians damning Europeans for their bad cooking and slow WiFi one wonders why the hell any country would want them. Maybe they deserve our scorn more than our pity.
What I don't get is why Republicans don't go for the job angle. Jobs are hard enough to find without importing millions of immigrants like Disney has. Where are the unions on this issue?
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