Obama will leave office with the country more divided that it has been it decades, and a government more corrupt and dysfunctional that it ever has been. Crazy thing is, as it stands right now I'd lay odds that a democrat wins the white house in 2016. Current presidential line up of Republicans got nothing dramatically different to offer the average guy in the street. Having given the Gruber comments some thought I'd have to say he's right on the money about one thing. The average American voter is dumber than a f'n rock, so we get what we get. Two sides of the same corrupt coin, and a gamed system that won't allow a real third party contender anything other than a token gesture of chance.
Given that conservatives have worked for over thirty years to encourage division, the responsibility for our current divisiveness can hardly be laid at Obama's feet. As for dysfunctional, that appears to have been conservatives' chief goal over the past six years.
This cartoon, which appeared on the Indianapolis Star website for a few hours today, has been generating a lot of outrage: One problem with the cartoon is the stereotypical portrayal of Hispanics. (The Star edited out the mustache from the guy in the red cap in attempt to eliminate the racist overtones. Then they apparently realized this was hopeless and took down the cartoon altogether.) Hispanic Americans celebrate Thanksgiving like the rest of us, and it's hard to imagine very many of them find this cartoon funny. A second problem with the cartoon is that it gives a misleading impression of the president's immigration announcement. The centerpiece of the plan is a proposal to give greater legal certainty to 4.3 million people who are already in the United States — and have been for several years. So it doesn't authorize a big flood of new immigrants (it does allow around 40,000 new high-skilled immigrants over the next decade). Indeed, leaving the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants in the United States wasn't even Obama's idea. Congress has only appropriated enough money for the government to deport around 400,000 people each year. So Obama couldn't deport the bulk of the undocumented population even if he wanted to. The president's plan simply gives 4.3 million people who were not going to be deportation priorities greater certainty about the next three years. But the larger problem with the cartoon is that it seems oblivious to the meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday. Remember, the classic Thanksgiving story is about Pilgrims — a.k.a. immigrants — who showed up on American shores uninvited, and in precarious economic circumstances. Thanksgiving is a celebration of the fact that the native-born Americans who lived in the area welcomed these newcomers, shared their food with them, and helped them make the transition to their new home. Over the next four centuries, the United States followed the example of those native Americans, welcoming wave after wave of immigrants from countries all over the planet. Almost everyone in America today is descended from some of those immigrants. Thanksgiving is partly about celebrating our immigrant heritage, and partly about reflecting on the many unearned blessings most of us enjoy by virtue of living in one of the freest and most prosperous nations on earth. So it's pretty tone-deaf to use the holiday as an occasion for mean-spirited immigrant-bashing. Timothy B. Lee