Politics > People.

That was some serious emotion behind the immigration bill that tanked in the Senate today. Setting aside the obvious effort on the part of the President to salvage what credibility he's lost with Americans because of his failures in Iraq by approving this bill, it is perhaps the one measure backed by him recently that I actually found sufficient reason to support. Which is why I was puzzled by Democrats when they started sounding off all these populist-sounding concerns about mistrust of government and how the American people wouldn't buy it even if the president delivered on his promises of tightened border-security and amnesty for illegal workers. It's a plausible concern: would the promises of the measure have materialized? While it's hard to say, any bit of hope for illegal workers and their families got sacrificed on the altar of power politics. It cut two ways.

1. Dems used it as yet another excuse to make Bush look like an ass. (Like this was even really necessary).
2. We're racist and who can't face up to the fact that we don't want to share our resources and rights with people whom we don't perceive as deserving to belong here.

Try as it will, Congress can't escape the 8 pound gorilla in the room. Which means that this issue gets blissfully frozen for the time being only to start up again at fever pitch once the problem get so big as to threaten to swallow us whole. Ignoring it seems tantamount to coping with an illness by pretending that it's simply going to go away.

Why We Shouldn't Ignore the Poor

I had an interesting encounter with a man on the street this evening. I'd just gotten out of an appointment with my therapist/counselor after an hour of rehashing old childhood memories which could be used to explain some of my current struggles, some of which were so painful to dig up that I'd spent the whole last hour suffering from a bout of leaky-faucet syndrome. At any rate, I guess I wasn't looking my hottest after that, but I was pretty dry-eyed by the time I'd hit the street so as not to announce to the whole world that I was feeling like crap. Pioneer Square being the characteristically poor neighborhood it is, I reacted with no surprise when a young black man in a baseball t-shirt walked up to me and asked me if I could spare some.
"Two dollars?" he asked. His accent I couldn't quite put a finger on.
"I'm sorry, I don't have any cash on me right now." (I truly didn't). "Plus I just started working after 6 months without a steady job, so I feel ya. Sorry."
"Let me tell you something about money," he said. Oh god, a penny lecture from a homeless person who thinks he's better than all the money grubbing status-hounds who trounce through downtown after work. "Money carries you, that's all it does. If you handle it just right, it lifts you up and gets you where you need to go. And I really hope you get there."
I blinked. That certainly was not what I had expected to come out of his mouth. Who was this person?
"You've nice eyes," he said. "If I had your eyes, I'd cry every day."
"What's your name?" I asked. Now I was smiling.
"Vladimir."
"I hope you get there too. It's funny you say that. I was just crying a little while ago." The faucet already was leaking.
"Maybe we'll meet in heaven, then," he replied, reaching out to give me a hug. "Just love, girl. You'll conquer the world."
And you already have, Vladimir. You already have.