The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

McConnell Says ‘Very Close’ to Deal on Debt-Ceiling Agreement With Obama UPDATE: Reid’s Bill Fails Senate Vote

Posted on | July 31, 2011 | 28 Comments

UPDATE 1:25 p.m. ET: The Senate just held a cloture vote on Harry Reid’s bill which, as expected, failed to get the 60 votes necessary to end debate and proceed. The vote was 50 “aye” and 49 “no.” So much for Reid’s bill being the “only game in town,” huh?

UPDATE 2:15 p.m. ET: Here’s the roll-call vote. Scott Brown of Massachusetts was the only Republican to vote “aye,” while Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Ben Nelson (Nebraska) both voted “no,” as did socialist independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Reid voted against his own bill on the cloture motion; this is a parliamentary maneuver, since voting “no” permits Reid to bring his bill up for a vote later.

Linked at Legal Insurrection — thanks!

PREVIOUSLY (11:45 a.m. ET): The outlines of the Neither Fish Nor Fowl Bipartisan Sellout Compromise Act of 2011 are coming into focus, and the Senate Republican leader is cautious:

McConnell said he is “very very close to being able . . . to recommend to my members that this is something that they ought to support.”
“You’ll see that this is a process that could get him (President Obama) past the election. We’re working on the combinations that will get us there,” McConnell said. “I’m particularly appreciative that we’re now back talking to the only person in America who can sign something into law and that’s the president of the United States.”

Getting Senate approval for a compromise plan will likely be much easier than getting such a deal through the House, as I explain at The American Spectator:

How many Republican votes can House Speaker John Boehner deliver for a compromise that abandons principles that were seen as essential to conservatives, when he could just barely get 218 votes for his own bill Friday? And if Boehner can’t deliver a majority for the compromise deal, can Nancy Pelosi produce any Democrat votes at all, considering that zero Democrats voted for Boehner’s bill?

If this deal does go through, the biggest loser will be Harry Reid, as Professor William Jacobson says: “We don’t know all the details of the negotiations between Mitch McConnell and the White House which apparently are closing in on an agreement, but one thing is clear, Harry Reid has become a sideshow.”

There’s always more room under Obama’s bus, isn’t there?

UPDATE: Linked by Da Tech Guy — thanks! — and the latest word is that there will be a procedural “test vote” in the Senate at 1 p.m. ET.

UPDATE: OK, here are details on the “test vote,” which is a cloture motion on Harry Reid’s bill:

Talks intensified ahead of a test vote in the Senate on the Democrats’ debt-ceiling plan. That vote is expected to fail, putting the onus on negotiators to come up with yet another alternative. . . .
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has postponed a vote on his deficit-reduction package until 1 p.m. ET. That vote is still scheduled to take place, but 43 Senate Republicans have already vowed to oppose it, putting more pressure on negotiators to come up with an alternative.

Right now, I’m watching C-SPAN2, where Barbara Boxer is blathering on with her usual partisan crap.

UPDATE III: Boxer’s crap has now ended, and John McCain is now debating Dick Durbin. It’s like Freddie Krueger vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator.

UPDATE IV: Amid the accusations of “betrayal!” and “sellout!” from conservatives angry at GOP concessions, let’s pause to look at what liberals are saying. Nate Silver of the New York Times:

The debt deals as reported really seem like more a capitulation by the White House than a compromise.

What the Left wanted — nay, demanded — were tax-increases on “The Rich” and “Corporate America.” Obama gave speech after speech demonizing “millionaires and billionaires.” But when push came to shove, he folded like a cheap suit.

If conservatives were in a mood to declare victory, we could easily do so on such grounds. Yet it seems to be Night of the Long Knives time, and there is a lot of grassroots anger toward the Republican Establishment.

Linked by Don Surber — thanks!


Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Congress, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Senate

Even Peggy Has Him Pegged. Finally.

Posted on | July 31, 2011 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

Joining the Formidable Ann Althouse in the self-identifying rube chorus is Peggy Noonan. Sort of.

The [Republican] establishment was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledge reality, respect it, and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of—careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens.

Had you been paying attention, Peggy, you’d have realized that this establishment you revere was really just a pack of Ruling Class Overlords, building since the Wilson administration. For all Reagan’s tactical success, he really didn’t leave much in the way of an intellectual heir, to continue the resurgence of America as Intended.
Thus, matters have decayed to the point where we have a POTUS of whom Peggy can say, in closing:

He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.

Political Clown Parade brings this statement home in a rather heavy ‘shop. Also, thanks for the pointer to Peggy’s article, PCP.
Yet even here, Peggy stands too close to the problem. She doesn’t grasp that BHO is a losing product of a system geared to produce losers, all the while talking about creating fair-adise. The Progressive Paradise is always Paradise Lost.

Update: linked at The Mind Numbed Robot, who aggregates the Peggy-flogging nicely.

Category: Uncategorized

VIDEO: ‘You’re Gonna Pay’

Posted on | July 31, 2011 | 18 Comments

The radical punk-rock anthem of our age:

Via Powerline — anybody want to transcribe the lyrics in the comments?

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who transcribed the first verse:

Old people grumblin’ ’bout funded medications
Subsidized housing in the capital of the nation
3 trillion dollar deficit on top of 15 trillion dollar debt
Bullet trains, windmills, and monkeys on cocaine
Monkeys on cocaine
You’re gonna pay
You’re gonna pay
You’re gonna pay
Someone’s got to pay

Welcome, Instapundit readers! The professor rounds up a slew of positive reviews from Mark Tapscott, Jim Hoft and Jonah Goldberg.

UPDATE II: The composer himself is now among our commenters and provides the complete lyrics:

Old people, government funded medication
Subsidized housing in the capital of the nation
3 trillion dollar deficit on top of 15 trillion dollar debt
bullet trains, windmills and monkeys on cocaine

you’re gonna pay, cuz someone’s got to pay

for federally funded cowboy poetry
federally funded condoms for preteens
federally funded books and magazines
I need federally funded air to breathe

chorus

for the 21st century entitlement state
where there are crickets in the coffers and pensions to pay
we need less military presence throughout continental Europe
and more fiscally responsible punk rock music now

chorus

for 70 million baby boomers’ social security

chorus

You can follow Wilson Getchell on Twitter.

Category: Music, Power Line, Taxes, Video

VIDEO: Harry Reid Exposed; Democrats Filibuster Their Own Debt-Ceiling Bill! UPDATE: Republicans Reportedly Reach Compromise Deal With White House

Posted on | July 30, 2011 | 36 Comments

I could scarcely believe it when Michelle Malkin blogged this earlier: Democrats spent more than 24 hours refusing to call a cloture vote on Harry Reid’s own debt-ceiling bill. Cloture — the motion to end debate and bring a measure to a vote — requires 60 votes and, if such a vote falls short of the 60-vote threshold, debate continues and the measure is thus said to be “filibustered.”

What has actually happened since Friday, however, is not a filibuster. Democrats led by Reid, who know they don’t have 60 votes for his bill, have refused GOP calls for the cloture vote. Democrats are thus in effect filibustering their own bill!

In one of the most amazing moments in Senate history, on Saturday afternoon Harry Reid called a “live quorum” — requiring all senators to be present in the chamber — and threw what can only be described as a tantrum, demanding that the cloture rule be waived. Malkin describes what happened:

He repeated “filibuster” 100 times and even spelled it out — f-i-l-i-b-u-s-t-er.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell asked why Reid wouldn’t allow a cloture vote on the Reid proposal at 6:30pm Eastern.
Reid let out a thin laugh and meekly said: “I object.”

This is one of those things you can’t actually believe unless you see it, so here’s the video:

You see Reid claims that Republicans are “threatening” a filibuster, but GOP leader Mitch McConnell isn’t making any threats at all — he’s just saying that the Senate should follow established procedure and have a cloture vote. Then Reid accuses Republicans of “putting lipstick” on a filibuster. As I wrote at The American Spectator:

Of course, there was not actually a filibuster. Reid simply refused to bring his own bill up for a cloture vote because he knew it would have failed to get 60 votes, thus exposing the truth that it isn’t House Republicans who are the real obstacle to passing a debt-ceiling bill. But the Democrats have invested so much propaganda in the myth of House GOP obstructionism — it’s those crazy Tea Party extremists! — that Harry had to whine, whine, whine about a “filibuster” in order to attempt to maintain the charade.

For connoisseurs of inside-the-Beltway gamesmanship, this is one of those Kodak moments you want to frame and put on the mantle.

BTW, the plan had been to bring the bill to a vote at 1 a.m. ET Sunday– an hour past midnight – but about 10 p.m. Democrats announced an adjournment until noon, with a planned vote at 1 p.m. ET Sunday.

UPDATE: You may have noticed during that video that McConnell said he’d interrupted a conversation with Vice President Joe Biden in order to meet Reid’s call for a live quorum. Now there are unconfirmed reports that a deal has been reached between the White House and GOP leaders. So this leaves Harry Reid — who had previously said his bill was “the only game in town” — playing with himself.

What a complete chump!

UPDATE II: Jimmie Bise was one of the first to blog the (alleged) deal, and Ed Morrissey says:

It’s a deal we could have reached two weeks ago, but were never going to reach until time ran out.

Of course, but that’s like complaining about having to take a girl on three dates even when you knew from the start she was never going to put out until the third date.

UPDATE III: Linked by POH Diaries — thanks!

UPDATE IV: Jennifer Rubin has details of the deal:

Two senior Republican offices have confirmed that while the outlines of a debt-ceiling deal are in place, no “paper” has been exchanged. The agreement would take the country through the 2012 election, but the Boehner bill two-step cutting process would remain. A trillion in cuts up front would be followed by $1.8 more to be determined by a bipartisan commission.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) The important thing: No tax increases on those “millionaires and billionaires” in “corporate jets” that Obama has been demonizing for weeks. So any conservatives in a mood to claim victory can score that a “win.”

Of course, what we’re actually going to hear from conservatives is a lot of bitter complaints about GOP sellouts, while liberals whine about weak-kneed Obama “caving” to right-wing extremists.


Category: Budget, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Senate, Video

FMJRA 2.0: This Is Your Life…

Posted on | July 30, 2011 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Death Toll Now Reported at 91 in Norway ‘Christian Fundamentalist’ Terror Attack UPDATE: Video Added; Gunman Posed as Policeman and Boasted, ‘I’ll Kill You All’

A One-Way Ticket to Des Moines …

LATEST: BOEHNER CANCELS VOTE! EARLIER: Pizza Delivery to Boehner’s Office Could Signal an All-Nighter UPDATE: Boehner Yanks Debt-Ceiling Bill at Last Minute! Vote Postponed UPDATE: Sarah Palin Sends Cryptic Message to Republican Freshmen UPDATE: Boehner Now 2 Votes Short?

Democrat Sex Scandal: Teen Accuses Oregon Congressman David Wu

MSM Goes LGF: Media Trying to Blame Norway Massacre on Pamela Geller?

CAIR Loves ‘Em Some LGF: ‘Glad to See That Chaz Is Now Marketing the Caliphate’

Obama’s Foreign Policy Is About as Successful as Obama’s Domestic Policy

Holy Freaking Crap: White House Spokesman Admits It’s Just Kabuki? UPDATED: Now With Video

BLACK MONDAY? Obama’s Debt-Ceiling Crisis Strategy Could Sink Wall Street

I Have, In Fact, Fathered One Ridiculously Handsome Fellow

Bad News, America: NASCAR Is Now Allowing French-Canadian Drivers …

A: Have You Considered Tendering Your Resignation, Sir?

FAA Shutdown Goes Mostly Unnoticed; Really Futile And Stupid Gesture Required

Obligatory Hollywood Teen Bride and ‘OMG! Bristol Palin! Scandal!’ Blogging

Possible T-Shirt Slogan?

Don’t Mess With the Zilla!

‘Notification of Donation Received’

FMJRA 2.0: Steam

Rule 5 Sunday: Too Fast For Love

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.25.11

HuffPo Blogger Talks About Liberty Like It’s A Bad Thing

The Economic Kabuki Is A Bigger Problem Than The Political

Bogus ‘Facts’? Twisted Logic? Raw Hate? Of Course: It’s Democratic Underground!

Terrorists for Tax Increases

Spooky Kabuki: More Free Primetime TV for the Summer Bummer Obama Drama

More Honest and Interesting Than Whatever Obama’s Gonna Say on TV

Zilla Wins the Internet

A Democrat Admits the Truth

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.26.11

Going-In Position: The Opposite Of Jim Moran’s Ideas Are Good Ones

Obama Kabuki Wrecking Your 401(k)

Nancy Pelosi’s Class-Warfare Rant: ‘We Get the Sacrifice, They Share the Wealth’

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.27.11

‘F*** JOHN McCAIN!’

VIDEO: Dick Morris Interview With Herman Cain: ‘What an Impressive Guy!’

Hey, If You Listened to Glenn Beck …

Hmmmm …

Pamela Geller Vindicated, Again, While the LGF Auto-Beclownment Continues

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.28.11

House Will Vote Today on Revamped Debt-Ceiling Bill; Senate Dems Say ‘No’

Wow. Just … Wow.

BLACK FRIDAY? Betting Market Reaction to Failure of Boehner’s Debt-Ceiling Bill

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.29.11

Obama Speaks, Markets Fall

Pete Wins the $10. I Blame Soros.

Top linkers this week:

  1. The Pro From Poca (21)
  2. (tied) The Lonely Conservative and The Camp Of The Saints (12)
  3. Da Tech Guy (7)
  4. (tied) Zilla Of The Resistance  and Conservative Commune (6)
  5. (tied) Rhetorican and That Mr. G Guy

Want to be included in next week’s FMJRA festival of linkagery, but WordPress rejects your unworthy Blogspot links? Send your links (along with The Other McCain post you linked) to Wombat-socho with “FMJRA” or “Shameless Blogwhoring” in the subject line by midnight August 5, and you too will be numbered among the worthy!

…and it’s ending one minute at a time.

Category: Blogging, FMJRA Award, Rule 2

What’s Bigger Than the Cato Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and AEI?

Posted on | July 30, 2011 | 11 Comments

TheOtherMcCain.com — at least according to The Top 150 Conservative Websites list compiled by Doug Ross, based on Alexa rankings.

We’re at No. 68, ahead of the Web sites of those three think tanks, and closing in on such traffic monsters as Hannity.com (#64), MarkLevinShow.com (#60) and AnnCoulter.com (#58). I’m also pleased to see that the list includes such of our blog buddies as Wintery Knight (#150), Sundries Shack (#137), Moe Lane (#135), Legal Insurrection (#99) and The Lonely Conservative (#96).

However, notice that Ace of Spades HQ is included at #28 on the list only as part of the whole mu.nu universe, an oddity that casts in doubt the accuracy of the rankings, as does the ranking of PajamasMedia.com — including Instapundit — at #16, below Mediaite among others.

Well: Go read the whole thing. If Doug’s gonna go to the trouble of compiling a list like that, the least you can do is read it! (And you might want hit his tip jar while you’re over there.)

Category: Blogging, Doug Ross

Go For The Trifecta

Posted on | July 30, 2011 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

Volokh has links to a debate on the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Let me take a broad, general swipe at lawyers and say that they often stand too close to the problem. If you consider the 16th & 17th Amendments, plus the Federal Reserve act in isolation, you can come up with one set of arguments. That’s the mathematical combination of three things, one at a time.

Now, if you blow away all three of these federal zombies in one one shotgun chorus (great name for a band there), then you can undo the 1913 Progressive triumph of Woodrow [censored] Wilson. He may have emoted well about the need for Progress, and the imperfections of the Founding Fathers, but his ideas have proven ruinous.

Let’s get some conservative candidates in 2012 who will ‘do the deed’ for the centennial of Wilson’s dubious achievement. What would be the effects? Well, if DC is no longer the Pockets of Infinite Federal Reserve Depth, then we could have, you know, forthright spending. States can pick up the tab for the social programs for their citizens that they feel like funding. Granted, this may not be so much as under the current vote buying scheme.

Having the states control their senators in a regime where the federal government isn’t a cornucopia would shift the balance of power away from DC. When a change of party in the governor’s mansion means that the same old tools will not be sent back to DC if their stint is up, the incumbency rate may well plummet to reasonable levels, retaining statesmen* of actual value, and affording the Reids more time to suck elsewhere.

Finally, having the income tax removed would let states be a blast shield for their citizens from federal financial overreach. The virtue of the 10th Amendment, currently hovering down around that of a slut in Toronto, could begin to recover.

What’s not to like? Well the crappy half of the economic distribution of these United States are going to look really, really crappy. They already kind of are, but stripping off the redistributionist veneer is going to front load the crappiness.

Then there is the huge, older demographic that is going to find out just how big a ripoff all this Progressive nonsense has been. Legitimate problem. I say, delegate it to the states. Not that that is going to lower the overall suction of the situation. Nothing will. The magic wand no worky-worky, sahib. Give it up.

However, consider this: our problems, in general, are the result of the substitution of Progress for liberty. I submit that any courses of action that don’t favor liberty over all else are just variations on the theme of suck.

Full circle, then: let’s consider repeal of the 17th Amendment, but also consider the broader systemic implications. Otherwise, we’re merely fannying about. Isn’t a century of fannying about a sufficiently worked example of suck?

* In the sense of ‘humans’, for the sexists out there.

Category: Constitution, Senate, Volokh Conspiracy

A. Single Moms

Posted on | July 30, 2011 | 24 Comments

Q. Who could possibly think it’s harmless
to provide pole-dancing classes for 7-year-olds?

In her brilliant book Guilty, Ann Coulter called attention to how single mothers are celebrated by liberals as emblems of a form of saintly victimhood. (Somehow, Bristol Palin is exempted from this sense of sacredness, which goes to show how liberal “principles” become disposable when they conflict with the partisan political interests of the Democratic Party.) Nevertheless, Coulter is absolutely right: Single mothers are never to be criticized per se, and thereby liberals also exempt fornication, bastardy and divorce from criticism.

Nor can we be permitted to observe that single motherhood is not distributed randomly among the population, but rather tends to fall disproportionately upon Women Who Make Stupid Mistakes.

Helpful advice — “Don’t drink wine coolers in a pup tent!” and “Never have sex with Charlie Sheen!” — is either not offered or else is ignored, and thus otherwise promising young women find themselves in the Single Mom category, where they are idolized as symbols of virtue, possessed of that glorious victimhood status that everyone envies because it places them above all critical scrutiny in our politically correct culture.

So when we learn that pole-dancing classes are being offered to 7-year-olds, even a conservative like Cody automatically blames fathers for failing in their parental obligations. In fact, we have every reason to believe that the women who think there’s no harm in teaching pole-dancing to 7-year-olds are single mothers, and that the only role fathers have ever had in the lives of these young girls was (a) as sperm donors and (b) as payers of child-support.

And to our “young American” friend Cody, then, I offer this helpful advice: Read more Ann Coulter books!

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Category: Ann Coulter, Culture, Feminism
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