More Shamnesty Post-Game
Came across these few items after Thursday's post-mortem but was unable to cram them into today's show.
***Chucky Schumer appears to be as clueless of who voted for and against cloture on Thursday morning as George Voinovich was:
I think those two grafs tell you all you need to know about the degree to which Chucky knows what the devil he's talking about. The pic of Schumer ambling amiably down the hallway next to the diminuitive (in poll numbers and physical stature) Lindsey Grahamnesty may explain the source of the New York senior senator's dazedness.
***Mel Martinez, the junior GOP senator from Florida and erstwhile chairman of the RNC - Now THERE's a presigious job - pulled a Schumer (or a Teddy) yesterday, only at a significantly higher decibel level:
Admiral Ed didn't have any apparent difficulty meeting Martinez' challenge:
"WHAT AAH THEY FOR!" thundered the Massachusetts Manatee on the Senate floor Thursday. But he knows the answer; so do Schumer and Martinez and Reid and Grahamnesty and Lott and Kyl and McCain and the Bush Administration and every other senator who tried to steamroll this unwanted amnesty over the top of an aroused and resistant American public. They just don't want to acknowledge the answer, because then they'd have even less of an excuse for all these years of ignoring it, and then trying to make the status quo even worse while selling the attempt as its opposite.
We, the People, got another nauseating look at how, well, anti-democratic "the world's greatest deliberative body" can really be. The members of that body got a harrowing (and stupendously frustrating) taste of the reality that they can no longer pull "jam-downs" like they used to.
***Think the ASSociated Press wasn't a little bent out of shape that the GOP managed to escape the "comprehensive immigration reform" noose?
Lest any possibility of AP's readers not getting the "Sessions is an f'ing racist!" drift be left to the slightest degree of chance, Ben Evans, the article author, later elaborated further:
Ahh. Senator Sessions is the new Zachary Taylor, aiming to send the U.S. Army sweeping through Mexico, burning and pillaging and raping and stringing up as many [insert favorite anti-Hispanic epithet here] as humanly possible. Gotcha.
Kinda harkens back to K-Lo's point above, doesn't it?
The K.I.S.S. principle would seem to have applied to this mess. Any "sweeping," "comprehensive" overhaul of ANYthing, particularly on so sensitive and controversial a topic as immigration, is pretty much the worst, most inefficient, unwieldy, fragile approach one can take if one actually aspires to see true "reform" enacted. It depends on too many people and too many factions with too many mutually exclusive priorities to stand more than a vanishingly remote chance of surviving the legislative process. Which, naturally, is why Bush/McCain/Kyl/Kennedy/Lott/Grahamesty/et al was a backroom deal whose hatchers tried to sneak it past all that scrutiny in the first place, and when that didn't work tried to bludgeon it through with a battering ram of graft, lies, and cynicism. And now they're all pissed because the American people - there theoretical superiors - rose up and stopped them.
It is said that in a democracy, the people get the kind of government they deserve. After last November's results, I'd say that adage is more vindicated than ever. After this past month, I'd say we've taken the first step towards, perhaps, taking it back.
***Chucky Schumer appears to be as clueless of who voted for and against cloture on Thursday morning as George Voinovich was:
....Chuck Schumer, this morning complained on the Senate floor about the impact of an “ideological, extreme group” that “set back our country” by opposing the immigration bill. He said: "Yesterday was a very sad day for America…an ideological, extreme group set back our country. On immigration we had lots of prattling, lots of scare tactics, and, as a result, the immigration bill is paralyzed."
Are Max Baucus and Evan Bayh and Jeff Bingaman and Sherrod Brown and Robert Byrd and Byron Dorgan and Tom Harkin and Mary Landrieu and Claire McCaskill and Ben Nelson and Mark Pryor and Jay Rockefeller and Bernie Sanders and Debbie Stabenow and Jon Tester and James Webb all ideological extremists in Senator Schumer's book? They all voted against the immigration bill.
I think those two grafs tell you all you need to know about the degree to which Chucky knows what the devil he's talking about. The pic of Schumer ambling amiably down the hallway next to the diminuitive (in poll numbers and physical stature) Lindsey Grahamnesty may explain the source of the New York senior senator's dazedness.
***Mel Martinez, the junior GOP senator from Florida and erstwhile chairman of the RNC - Now THERE's a presigious job - pulled a Schumer (or a Teddy) yesterday, only at a significantly higher decibel level:
The Chairman of the Republican Party on Friday lambasted Democrats and Republicans who helped kill an immigration bill in the Senate and challenged them to come up with a solution beyond "just build a fence along the border.''
"The voices of negativity now have a responsibility to come up with an answer,'' RNC Chairman and U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, R-FL said.
"How will you fix the situation to make peoples' lives better? How will you continue to grow the economy? How will we bring people out of the shadows for our national security and for the sake of being a country that is just?'' he demanded.
Admiral Ed didn't have any apparent difficulty meeting Martinez' challenge:
The answers seemed very clear to everyone outside of the Senate chambers for the past four weeks. Instead of offering a repeat of 1986, fix the underlying problems that allow for lousy border and visa security, as Congress has repeatedly promised, before saying "Trust us!" How difficult is that to comprehend?
"WHAT AAH THEY FOR!" thundered the Massachusetts Manatee on the Senate floor Thursday. But he knows the answer; so do Schumer and Martinez and Reid and Grahamnesty and Lott and Kyl and McCain and the Bush Administration and every other senator who tried to steamroll this unwanted amnesty over the top of an aroused and resistant American public. They just don't want to acknowledge the answer, because then they'd have even less of an excuse for all these years of ignoring it, and then trying to make the status quo even worse while selling the attempt as its opposite.
We, the People, got another nauseating look at how, well, anti-democratic "the world's greatest deliberative body" can really be. The members of that body got a harrowing (and stupendously frustrating) taste of the reality that they can no longer pull "jam-downs" like they used to.
***Think the ASSociated Press wasn't a little bent out of shape that the GOP managed to escape the "comprehensive immigration reform" noose?
When President Bush's "grand bargain" on immigration fell apart, Jeff Sessions, the Republican senator from Alabama who is named after a pair of famous Confederates, was very proud.
"Hopefully our Senate has learned some things," Sessions crowed on the Senate floor on Thursday after his colleagues killed a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration law, bouncing on his toes and struggling to contain a grin, like a boy who just popped his lynching-cherry. [emphases added by me, the last nine words added by Ace of Spades]
Lest any possibility of AP's readers not getting the "Sessions is an f'ing racist!" drift be left to the slightest degree of chance, Ben Evans, the article author, later elaborated further:
His deep Southern roots are evident in his full name: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a family name handed down from his father and grandfather after the former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and General P.G.T. Beauregard, who fired on Fort Sumter in 1861 to open the Civil War.
Ahh. Senator Sessions is the new Zachary Taylor, aiming to send the U.S. Army sweeping through Mexico, burning and pillaging and raping and stringing up as many [insert favorite anti-Hispanic epithet here] as humanly possible. Gotcha.
Kinda harkens back to K-Lo's point above, doesn't it?
The K.I.S.S. principle would seem to have applied to this mess. Any "sweeping," "comprehensive" overhaul of ANYthing, particularly on so sensitive and controversial a topic as immigration, is pretty much the worst, most inefficient, unwieldy, fragile approach one can take if one actually aspires to see true "reform" enacted. It depends on too many people and too many factions with too many mutually exclusive priorities to stand more than a vanishingly remote chance of surviving the legislative process. Which, naturally, is why Bush/McCain/Kyl/Kennedy/Lott/Grahamesty/et al was a backroom deal whose hatchers tried to sneak it past all that scrutiny in the first place, and when that didn't work tried to bludgeon it through with a battering ram of graft, lies, and cynicism. And now they're all pissed because the American people - there theoretical superiors - rose up and stopped them.
It is said that in a democracy, the people get the kind of government they deserve. After last November's results, I'd say that adage is more vindicated than ever. After this past month, I'd say we've taken the first step towards, perhaps, taking it back.
posted by JASmius at 3:08 PM
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