Bad guys win immigration cloture vote 69-23: So, 41 Senators can't block the Kennedy-Bush immigration bill and it can pass with 50 votes (plus Cheney).
Harry Reid wants to extend debate in Senate to a second week, following Memorial Day. But no hearings.
Sen. Kyl says the final version of the draft bill will be finished tonight. Well, that's a relief! We wouldn't want the World's Greatest Deliberative Body™ casting a crucial vote on a monumental bill that will vastly affect the United States of America for the rest of the 21st Century that wasn't even finished being written yet, much less read. Oh, wait ... they just did ... Nevermind.
Watching C-SPAN, it appears that Ted Kennedy is functioning as the MC of the Senate proceedings, a lot like he did with the 1965 immigration bill and the 1990 diversity visa bill, neither of which turned out to function at all like Senator Ted told his fellow Senators they would. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice ... ah, to hell with it ...
A commenter adds:
Fool me thrice, and it's time to purchase lethal finials.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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22 comments:
Here are the heroes and the villians:
Heroes:
Dole, Enzi, Inhofe, Sessions, Sununu, Roberts, Thomas, Vitter, DeMint, Byrd, Bunning, Crapo, Corker, Sanders, Dorgan, Shelby, Allard, Coburn, Cornyn, Thune, Tester, Baucus, Hutchison.
Villians:
Everybody else.
I think we can safely conclude that the presidential of campaign of John "Bananas" McAmnesty is over. How do you say "Straight Talk Express" in Spanish? Better yet, with his comment toward Romney about varmint rifles and Guatemalans, how do you say "Tough Talk Express" in Spanish?
Fool me thrice, and it's time to purchase lethal finials.
It's pay-back time for the Potato Famine, the Armada and Guy Fawkes.
"Right, now! Ha, ha, ha!
I am an anti-Christ
I am an anarchist,
Don't know what I want
But I know how to get it.
I wanna destroy..."
As the longest-lived scion of the Kennedy political clan, Ted is irrefutable proof that only the good die young.
The biggest mystery is why Sanders voted for immigration restriction. I mean Bernie Sanders! Who would have thought? Him of all people....
I'm very disappointed to see that Democrats who ran on anti-immigration platforms, like Webb and McCaskill, and, well, virtually all of the class of 2006, sold us out. To think I was rooting for McCaskill over Talent, who probably would have voted "No," because I thought they were equivalent on this issue.
May the voters remember next time around. I certainly will.
c23
The biggest mystery is why Sanders voted for immigration restriction. I mean Bernie Sanders! Who would have thought? Him of all people....
Of course, Sanders may be just voting against cloture. He may still line up behind the immigration bill itself. Also, some reports suggest that Sanders thinks the bill is too heavy-handed towards illegals!
Best amnesty joke of the evening:
If You Can Read This You Aren't My Gardener!
The point behind jiminykrikit's brilliant but obscure quote from the Sex Pistol's "Anarchy in the UK" above is explained here:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/whiteness.htm
"The biggest mystery is why Sanders voted for immigration restriction. I mean Bernie Sanders! Who would have thought? Him of all people...."
Sanders is a socialist, and also a pretty bright guy. Maybe he realizes that a generous welfare state isn't really compatible with open borders: after all, the more poor people we import, the less government resources are available per each poor person we have now.
Also, Sanders doesn't have a lot of Latino constituents in Vermont.
And in unrelated (?) news:
Bill Richardson officially enters the presidential race:
Democrat Bill Richardson officially entered the presidential race Monday with a naked appeal to Hispanics, saying in an interview that it's ``rudimentary politics'' to make sure the country's fastest growing voting bloc knows he's one of them.
Coincidence, or not?
One day, we'll be the minority. One day very soon.
I actually hope this bill passes. Then I hope Americans get very, very mad. If they don't, they never deserved to keep their country to begin with.
Debbie Schlussel has something to say about the proposed background checks. In addition to summarizing many of the problems with the checks that others have mentioned, she makes one very good point that hadn't occurred to me and that I hadn't heard anywhere else before:
All applicants to the TWP and citizenship parts of the bill have at least a 24-hour until their fingerprints and info go online all over the country. That means they have a 24-hour window to apply at multiple CIS offices to get multiple citizenship documents under various names and identities. There is no check on this.
If these CIS offices are in close proximity of one another, this sounds like a fraudster's dream.
The hypocrisy of Hispanic activists is disgusting. I didn't watch the whole segment tonight but surfing channels I caught Edward James Olmos and Jim Gilchrist (sp?) on Larry King Live. Olmos asked Gilchrist about his ancestors who killed the Indians such as the Arapaho and took their land. What moral high ground does Olmos have? Olmos isn't an Arapaho name. Anglo-America is signing it's own suicide pact.
Schlussel also goes after Mr. "Awesome." You know Mr. "Awesome," don't you? The one who claims that many of the (always unnamed) opponents of the amnesty will settle for nothing short of capital punishment? The one claims this repeatedly.
Then, there's Chertoff's latest utterance--comparing those of us who oppose this immigration sieve to Goldilocks (yesterday on CNN):
If all people want to do is complain and say, well, this isn't good enough--that's the Goldilocks solution, where it's always too hot or too cold.
Hard to believe this dude is Harvard-educated because he can't even get his childhood fairy tales right. Not sure who changed his version of Goldilocks, but the one I remember--the one replicated in the Brothers' Grimm Fairy Tales--is the one in which Goldilocks constantly finds the right temperature porridge, the right size chair, etc. After trying the Momma Bear's and Poppa Bear's accouterments and finding them not to her liking, the Baby Bear's food, chair, etc. all work out.
It's just that unlike Chertoff and his revisionist version of Goldilocks, the actual, fabled Goldilocks not only did trial and error, but she actually learned from it and didn't choose the wrong options over and over and over. She eventually discovers that the Baby Bear's items worked for her. It's like Chertoff keeps picking the adult bears ill-fitting plans and schemes, even though we've tried them in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s--through each new "this will be the last, last amnesty" bill. And they never work.
Yes, we'd be better off with Goldilocks running the show, instead of Chertoff. She learned from her mistakes, as we have. The Goldilocks policy of tightening our borders and sending illegal aliens home works is JUST RIGHT.
Debbie can be a bit shrill at times, but she does do some amusing photoshops and manages to land a few good ones from time to time.
One last piece. This one features Gingrich in Human Events where he provides the Fort Dix angle to the amnesty story:
When the FBI arrested six terrorists in New Jersey two weeks ago it turned out that three of them had been in the U.S. illegally for at least TWENTY years.
These three had crossed our unprotected border and had been living in New Jersey.
But here's the even more outrageous part: The police had filed 75 (SEVENTY-FIVE!) charges against them, including drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.
In 75 interactions, the police never once learned that these three people were here illegally.
The government failed twice: First, by failing to secure the border, and second, by failing to determine that these people were here illegally. The result was that more than five years after 9/11 we were saved from a mass killing at Fort Dix only because of the patriotism and courage of a clerk at an electronics store.
Compare the 75 charges made against the would-be Fort Dix terrorists with how we rounded up German spies in World War II. In June 1942, it took a total of 15 days to track down and arrest eight German spies who landed in Florida and New York from submarines. We executed six of them and gave one life in prison and the other thirty years. We were serious about winning that war).
Oh, Newt! Did you just mention execution and immigration in the same article? Chertoff will hear about this!
Faced with this level of failure of bureaucracy, how could anyone believe for a minute that this new immigration bill will work? The fact is it can't and it won't. It will rely on the same failed bureaucracy and produce more years of failure.
"Then, there's Chertoff's latest utterance--comparing those of us who oppose this immigration sieve to Goldilocks (yesterday on CNN)"
Chertoff got it backwards. We're the Bears - the illegals are Goldilocks, rifling through our stuff.
One thing (actually one of many things) that puzzles me about this debate. The pro-criminal side is always saying: "Look, there are 12-20 million illegal aliens in this country. We need to pass a new law now."
12-20 million? They don't even know how many there are to any better than almost a factor of two, and yet we should pass a massive law, with massive social and financial ramifications? How could we even begin to predict the ultimate cost when we don't even know how many illegals are here? What if there are more? What if there are really 30 million? Afterall, it's entirely possible that the official government figures have been cooked, so that us meat-sticks out here in fly-over land don't overheat our dim little brains.
And what is the point of ever passing laws that no one could even understand in principle? We already have all the laws we need to deal with this problem, starting with the Constitution's guarantee of a "republican form of government".
The Senate has just renegged on that guarantee.
Anderson Cooper had a segment tonight about House committee chairmen (i.e., Democrats) who are using expensive Air Force passenger jets for various "fact-finding" missions (and breaking various rules in doing so.)
You know the kind of trips - to places like Death Valley, Waco, that town in Kansas where they had the Tornado...
Oops, sorry. You caught me dreaming. No, not those places - actually it was to places like London, Paris, an expensive resort island off of Mexico...
What's my point? Well, there's plenty of reasons besides the amnesty for the public to be angry about our congress. You'd think there'd be more excitement about the first female House speaker ever. Instead, people seem to have quickly caught on to how much about business as usual she's about.
(I thought women were supposed to raise the quality of debate, and be less vulnerable to corruption - instead the level of corruption in congress has risen pretty much in sync with the number of women there.)
All this won't be forgotten come next November. If you thought 1994's elections were awesome, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
YouTube links to the Anderson Cooper junket story I was talking about.
Rules are that if you use Air Force planes on such trips you must: 1) have 5 congressmen; and 2) have members from both parties. Husbands and wives are allowed along if there's extra seats (these are big planes - so there always are.)
When Barney Frank went to Europe, only 3 congressmen were on board, and no Republicans. No word on whether or not his wife went with.
When Barney Frank went to Europe, only 3 congressmen were on board, and no Republicans. No word on whether or not his wife went with.
Isn't Barney Frank gay?
aren't 60 votes still needed to end debate and bring the immigration bill to a vote? was the initial cloture vote on ending debate about bringing the matter to the floor FOR debate? or once it reaches the floor, is it passable with a majority. I think it's the former.
does the cloture vote end debate on the issue of taking up the bill, with a second cloture vote needed to end debate on the bill itself and vote, or does this cloture vote destin the bill for an eventual 50/50 vote?
Bernie Sanders explained why he opposed the bill in a press release. Basically, he doesn't like the guest worker provisions because they lower wages:
the same anti-worker businesses that have fought against an increase in the minimum wage, and that vigorously oppose the rights of workers to unionize, the same business groups that have proudly proclaimed their belief in outsourcing, and have literally urged companies to move American jobs abroad, are many of the same exact companies who are strongly supporting this bill and the guest worker programs contained in it....
Instead of paying American workers higher wages and better benefits if there are labor shortages, their solution is to simply bring low-wage workers in from abroad. And let me tell you, there is a never-ending supply of low wage workers from all over the world who would be delighted to work in America.
In terms of guest worker programs for low-wage workers, corporate America claims it need foreign workers to do the jobs ‘that Americans just won’t do.’
Really? If these same companies raised wages and provided decent benefits for their workers instead of lowering wages and benefits, I think they would find more than enough Americans flocking to those jobs. In fact, Wal-Mart, which is part of one of the coalitions supporting this immigration bill, found that thousands of workers applied for a few hundred of their jobs at two of their stores that they recently opened – even though their wages are not particularly good.
And, in terms of professional jobs, the corporate supporters of this legislation tell us they need more H-1B visas because Americans presumably aren’t smart enough to be computer professionals, engineers, university professors, accountants, financial analysts, nurses, psychologists, lawyers, elementary school teachers, etc., etc.
Well, I certainly don’t believe that.
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