Open Thread for Monday, June 30, 2014

Some possibilities for discussion:

No hope on immigration reform — How depressing is that? The president of the United States holds a press availability in order to announce that there is no hope for commonsense immigration legislation. So much for change, and… that other thing we were supposed to get with this president. Not that I’m blaming him for a failing that seems entirely the doing of the House GOP, but I do wonder — would my West Wing friends have let Bartlet hold a press availability to say, “I give up. There’s no hope?” What’s next? A presser in which POTUS comments on “the predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos?

Bodies of three missing Israeli teenagers found — Outside of our inward -focused country, this is today’s lede story. This could be a watershed event, and not in a good way. Something about this feels kind of like an Israeli version of the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in this country 50 years ago.

Vincent Sheheen releases 2013 tax returns — He made $333,042 last year. Which on the Doug scale makes him the salt of the Earth, and on the bud scale makes him a lucky stiff. Or am I oversimplifying?

A topic from Twitter:

Other topics are welcome, assuming of course that they stay within certain limits of propriety…

 

8 thoughts on “Open Thread for Monday, June 30, 2014

      1. Doug Ross

        I wonder if he thinks 90k in taxes plus Medicare plus social security plus property taxes plus sales taxes is enough? Or does he want to pay more?

  1. bud

    Why is the tragic murder of three young men in Israel a news story in the United States? Don’t we have enough horrible killings here to keep us busy? I know the right obsesses over Israel but they are not the 51st state. So while it is fully appropriate to mourn the loss of life anywhere we should not inflate this tragedy to a higher level of tragedy than the loss of 3 young people anywhere and that includes Palestinians.

    1. Mark Stewart

      Bud, you might want to add Israel to your bucket list. It’s worth the visit. It’s a big, complex, human world out there (everywhere).

  2. Bryan Caskey

    Since it’s demonstrably impossible for Arabs to live in peace even with other Arabs, I’m starting to think that it might be a stretch to try and have Arabs to live in peace with Israelis.

    FYI bud, one of the murdered boys was an American citizen.

  3. Phillip

    I think we can all agree that the murder of innocent civilians, especially young people, is a terrible tragedy and a moral outrage. I’m curious, though, how the story of the Israeli teenagers “feels kind of like an Israeli version of the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in this country 50 years ago,” other than the fact that that was also a case where three young people were missing for a time, and the worst fears were realized when their bodies were discovered.

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      Three young men (really just boys in this case), the national/international hue and cry, the discovery of their bodies buried in a way meant to disguise that this was a grave…

      And the fact that they died because of the nasty politics in the world in which they moved. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were killed because of racial hatred. These boys were likely killed simply for being Israeli, or perhaps just for being Jews.

      And in both cases, I’m supposing (such details not being available yet in this case), the killers likely held a powerful conviction that these boys shouldn’t have been where they were…

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