Brown’s possible defection from the bill increases the chance of a successful Republican filibuster this time unless Democratic leaders can find another vote.
Democrats control 57 seats in the Senate and Republicans 41. Two independents usually vote with the Democrats. It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster.
“While I’m still reviewing the bill’s details, these provisions were not in the Senate version of the bill which I previously supported … I’ve said repeatedly that I cannot support any bill that raises tax,” Brown said.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid had no comment on Saturday when asked if Brown’s concerns posed a serious obstacle to final passage of the bill.
The three other Republicans that voted for the financial regulatory reform package in May were Senator Susan Collins and Senator Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa.
A spokeswoman for Grassley said he was still evaluating the conference report.
Two Democrats, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Maria Cantwell of Washington, voted against the Senate financial regulatory reform package in May.
I’m all for seeing a de facto shut down of Congress until the next election.
Nothing good has, or likely can, come from the slow-motion heist known as the 111th Congress.
Update: Senator Byrd is in the hospital. Pray he comes to and does no harm.
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Alabama Republican 2nd District congressional candidate Rick Barber:
A source close to the campaign asked my opinion of the ad, and all I could say was, “You’re going to get heat, but you’re going to get light, too.”
The GOP primary runoff is July 13, and Barber is a Tea Party underdog up against a well-funded establishment candidate. So, as they say in Vegas, it looks like Rick is going “all in.”
We might assume, arguendo, that regular readers have been following The Other McCain’s relentless mockery of the 2010 World Cup. However, for those who may have joined the mockery in progress and missed the set-up for this particular running gag, let’s recall how liberals have portrayed American contempt for soccer as inherently racist:
“I was reminded about why when the United States wins in international tournaments, it can bring a nasty undercurrent in its wake. . . .
“It’s yet another reminder why it is so important for progressives to not just thrill to the joys of sport but be conversant in the politics of sports. The right will forever try to pump the worst kind of racist, nationalist garbage through our play, even at moments that by all rights should be above and beyond politics and just about the electric thrill of the moment.”
— David Zirin, The Nation, June 23
Anyone who has read Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed (as everyone should) recognizes in this a signature trope of elitist liberalism: “We are enlightened and sophisticated, whereas conservatives are benighted and bigoted.”
Sowell summarizes the danger of this tendency in his book’s subtitle: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. That is to say, liberals support certain policies not because those policies are demonstrably effective, but because supporting such policies makes liberals feel good about themselves.
This nonsense about conservatives hating soccer because we are xenophobic jingos is merely a variation on the argument that conservative opposition to nationalized health-care is motivated by racism. The liberal worldview needs to be mocked, and often, and by someone who knows how, which was the primary motivation of World Cup Fever — Catch It! — here:
This recap is not necessitated by any need to allay fears that I’m turning into a soccer-loving elitist faggot, but rather to set up the punchline:
At one point in our Twitter exchange, Johnson used the term “wetback,” and asked what slur I would apply to the Ghana team.
This demonstrated that he did not recognize the premise of the joke, i.e., to employ derogatory terms for various nationalities — French “frogs,” Irish “micks,” Italian “dagos,” etc. — whereas Johnson had in mind racial slurs, which terms I had of course avoided. At one point, I asked readers to suggest an epithet for Algerians, a situation where generic anti-Arab terms would not do.
Charles Johnson is simply too dull-witted to get the joke. Members of the Mexican soccer team are obviously not “wetbacks,” a term referring specfically to illegal immigrants. If they were “wetbacks,” they’d be playing for the USA and voting for Obama. Had the U.S. team ever played Japan, I might have been in trouble, but we need not waste much thought on that moot possibility now that America’s World-Class Losers have been eliminated.
Too bad Charles Johnson didn’t seek my advice before contacting R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., as I might have warned Charles that it has been a standard policy of The American Spectator since its inception to report all disgruntled letter-writers to the FBI for investigation as subversives.
We’ll wait and see whether I collect that $20 from Weigel.
UPDATE (Smitty): Clarification of “s32porchmanque” can be located here. Summary: ya got nothin’. Keep trying.
UPDATE II: Well played, Admiral, well played, indeed! Smitty’s penchant for Carrollesque word-play is notorious, as his authorship of Oedipotus Wrecks and Waiting for O-Dough demonstrates. His choice of monikers when installing SiteMeter for the new WordPress version of the blog was, perhaps, not what I would have advised. Yet he did not seek my advice, so I suppose he must suffer whatever pun-ishment is apt.
Johnson’s obsession with the SiteMeter calls attention to an interesting fact: Little Green Footballs does not display a SiteMeter link, so that no one can study LGF’s traffic trends. Whereas, as recently noted, June has been the Best. Month. Evah! hereabouts, and anyone can study the SiteMeter to analyze the trend.
While you’re mentally extrapolating November’s traffic based on a trend of April 106K to June 165K, take a gander at The Rules, a/k/a “How to Get a Million Hits.” Among the growth strategies advised is Rule 3: “Make Some Enemies.” So I guess that worked pretty good.
This recent drama — including an evidently authentic comment by Mad King Charles himself — occurred while I was briefly asleep. Donald Douglas at American Power displays the unfunny cartoon that one of the lizards composed.
We now have a Memeorandum thread, so I suppose I’ll be drinking free next time I run into Dave Weigel. Many conservatives have asked me about Dave — “How can you be friends with that dirtbag?” — and I admit that this is becoming a difficult thing to defend. But I’m averse to the Total Vengeance mode of blogging, the compiling of Enemies Lists, trying to get people fired, and so forth.
The propaganda of dehumanization, turning individuals into symbols — Emmanuel Goldstein in the Two-Minutes Hate — is what incites such episodes as Michelle Malkin being swarmed by an Alex Jones-led mob in Denver. Having been vilified in that manner, I don’t hate the player, I hate the game.
Charles Johnson has played the game so long that he has forgotten it’s a game. He is now just a semi-professional bully. As I said of his vindictive campaign against Pamela Geller, if CJ was a Sioux, his tribal name would be Fights With Girls.
Bullies are not attractive, except to people who admire sadism. And I wasn’t raised that way. Generosity and kindness ultimately triumph over selfish cruelty, and honesty over lies. I don’t owe Bob Belvedere a hat-tip for this lesson.
“And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city . . .”
While I was in Manassas at the Celebrate the Constitution rally, I ran into some people complaining about what a tool Gerry Connolly is. I countered that I’m in VA-8, and, with the exception of Speaker Pelosi and maybe Steny Hoyer, nobody out-tools my tool. Judicial Watch added Rep. Moran’s name to it’s 2009 10 Most Wanted list, as a part of the PMA group:
When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.)
Look: two Republicans. Shocking.
The following clip from Hardball features Gentleman Jim Moran at his Orwellian finest:
Skipping past the introduction, here is an unofficial transcript of Moran’s stump speech. I went over it several times, so I think the fidelity is good with respect to what he actually says:
Moran:This may be the most successful last six months in American Presidential history. I can’t think of a time we have accomplished as much as we have.
In the last six months, more jobs were created than Bush was able to generate in eight years, Chris. People don’t understand that. The economy has recovered. Matthews:But you got about 41,000 civilian jobs in May. Is that a good number? Moran:Well, uh, eh, we had a lot of Census Bureau employees, granted. But the fact is, the economy has come back from the brink. And a lot of that is because of Presidential leadership. It is the economic stimulus that pumped money into the economy. It worked.
Health care reform. That’s transformational. And it was an enormous legislative victory. When you figure that the Republican party has decided they’re going to vote against everything. Anything that he offers, they’re going to vote ‘No’. And yet, he got that through.
In the House, we got the energy bill through. I think we’re probably going to get an energy bill, and now we’ve gotten Wall Street reform. Those are enormous legislative victories.
Now, I know that people think it’s not enough, somehow. Because President Obama doesn’t get on the stump and ‘rah-rah’. But, uh, he’s kind of an understated guy. I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. But the fact is he’s shown a lot of results.
And then when you look at foreign policy. I know we’re in an intractable situation in Afghanistan. But the reality is that the reputation of the United States around the world has improved immeasureably. He’s going to the G-20 summit, they’re all going to listen to him, they all take him seriously, which was not the case in the last eight years with President Bush.
We’re getting out of Iraq. And, we’re going to figure out what to do with Afghanistan too, even though it’s perhaps one of the most difficult foreign policy conundra that any President has faced.
[Later, near the end. . .] Moran: We may lose 10, 20 seats. I don’t think we’ll lose anywhere near 30. We’re still going to have the majority.
Do watch the whole thing. Everybody in VA-8 needs to watch this and familiarize themself with Jim Moran and his Salvador Dali world view. Here is a man who will tell you that the cart is the horse, and then blame someone else when the goods don’t move. Retiring Gentleman Jim has reached the level of patriotic duty, Virginians.
Owning the House Ethics Committee as Moran’s party does, we’ll get as much justice there as Eric Holder’s Department OJ. I really don’t know whether his disconnection from economic reality and US Constitutional history is diabolical or demented. With twenty years in office, it could break either way. Given his beautifully un-critical recitation of talking points received from a non-White House source, I’m leaning towards the former.
But it doesn’t matter. We must RETIRE JIM MORAN.
Visit Murray for Congress.
Rule 5 enjoyed another active week. Thanks to all those sending in batch submissions as URLs. We may not be President, but, nevertheless, to the links!
Fortune Rest Edith Shain
Rule 5 salutes an icon of the day when “girls were girls and men were men” who has passed. There was a time when an impromptu pose for a timeless photo in public would not result in a subpoena or a trip to the free clinic. Blogs reporting on the event included:
I feel ashamed to ask, but any donations you can make at this time would really really help my family out. And would of course replace any kind of July fundraiser.
Pro-capitalist bloggers should never be “ashamed to ask.” It’s fee-for-service and running a site as popular as Jeff’s is a tremendous service. Asking readers to support the site, especially at a time of personal crisis, is nothing to be ashamed of.
Two months is enough time to get our ducks in a row as far as covering the event goes.
I’m not a regular Beck viewer, so Bluegrass Pundit’s post was news to me. BGP was reacting to Bill Press’s ludicrous assertion concerning the rally that:
If you ask me, that’s like granting al Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11 – at Ground Zero.
Well, Bill, if your purpose for making scurrilous remarks like that is to motivate Americans to oppose false mainstream media filth, then you’re about to be visited with sweet success. If the country was not beset with problems orders of magnitude greater than Bill Press, his remark might even be worth specific sign mockery at that rally. But all he really merits is passing mention in a blog post.
More Press love at NewsBusters.Beck’s site mentions other attendees here, including Sarah Palin.
The big names are all fine, but the real point is to gather We The People and underscore for this Congress and Administration that the 2008 election was not a Leftist takeover, and the two year election frequency was envisioned by the Founders for exactly the current circumstance. And the Left would have got away with it, too, if not for those meddling white dudes in wigs.
