If you work out the math, one of them is wrong, as Tim Johnson isn't voting.

Pete Domenici's surprise "no" announcement has put pressure on fellow NM senator Jeff Bingaman, who both sides are counting in their column.

I don't feel very good if we're counting on Democrat Bingaman to save the day.

Apparently Domenici's status as an Old Guard Senator is helping to sway other senators -- it's his no that is making Stevens and others reconsider. He's usually a reliable soldier following the leadership's marching orders, but he's broken with them here, and other Senators are taking notice.

Isn't it great to know a controversial, transformational bill rushed through the Senate and opposed by 60-70% of the public is coming down to considerations like "Oh, Pete Domenici's voting against cloture? I didn't know we were allowed to do that" ?

More... Coleman, Brownback, and to a lesser extent the buffoon Ensign are the most susceptible to voter pressure right now. They should be the first three to be called tomorrow a.m. Especially Ensign, because even if you're not from his state, he runs the Republican Senatorial Committee, and he's counting on you (giggle) to donate to the Senators who refuse to abide by your strong wishes.

We Must Win: Chat session with "Colonel Y:"

It's bigger than party..like you I wouldn't have one [if this passes].

But [winning on this would be like] storming the Bastille and beheading Graham and Specter and the like.

These jokers honestly believe themselves to be untouchable.

It would be one of the biggest shock to their political system to have occurred in the last 40 years....

If we kill this bill, it's going to usher in a ton of bloodletting in the party.
The Sessions/Vitter/DeMint wing will gain all the momentum away from the McCain/Graham/McConnell wing

Because these Senators will see that the public stands behind the purists.
And they'll be pulled to the right out of fear for their own futures.

If the bill passes, the Rino wing will be stronger.

Posted by: Ace at 06:39 PM | Comments (9)
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John McCain expressed "sadness" that the "Party of Teddy Roosevelt might not have the courage to vote itself into oblivion."

Trent Lott mused, "If we can't get this [destroying the conservative coalition that has sustained the GOP for forty years] done, what good are we? Are we mice or are we men and women?"

In other words, some of the jackasses who were willing to sell us out to ADM are reconsidering doing so.

Allah's count is that we might -- might -- be down to 59 votes for cloture, as several of the Republican Wobblies are considering voting against it.

If they do, good for them, and all is forgiven.

For those who vote for this abomination -- it will never be forgotten. Ever. The Republican Party itself may yet endure. They will not.

Note: Stevens and Murkowski of Alaska are said to be leaning against cloture. Bennett, with his new Border Security Office in the middle of fucking Utah, is not said to be so leaning.

Gotta give it to him -- when you buy him off on the cheap, he stays bought off on the cheap.

Posted by: Ace at 05:34 PM | Comments (32)
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Being carbon neutral doesn't take any effort at all. Just ask Prince Charles who spent (by his count) about $60,000 to offset his "carbon footprint."

Fewer chartered planes, more train trips and a royal Jaguar that runs on cooking oil have helped Prince Charles achieve a carbon-neutral household, an annual review of the prince's accounts said Tuesday.

The annual review by the prince's Clarence House office said Charles cut his annual carbon emissions by 9 percent, to 3,775 tons, between April 1, 2006 and March 31 of this year. The prince offset those emissions by investing in an agency that promotes tree planting and sustainable energy projects. [...]

The report — printed on recycled paper in vegetable-based ink — said the prince had reduced the number of plane and helicopter journeys he takes, introduced green electricity at Highgrove, and converted his Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles to run on biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil. [...]

The total cost of offsetting the prince's carbon emissions for one year was about $60,000, the review said.

Chalk it up as a further proof of just how ridiculously out-of-touch hyper-rich people like Al Gore really are. I bet that's a low-balled number, too.

Posted by: MatthewSheffield at 03:20 PM | Comments (34)
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An over-the-horizon border enforcement deployment in the border state Utah.

Oh, and for pork-loving corrupt morons Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, offices for controlling illegal immigration -- in the middle of FUCKING ALASKA.

Are we, ehh, concerned about illegal caribou, I wonder?

These God-damnable corrupt cocksuckers. Not a dime. Not a vote.

Posted by: Ace at 03:04 PM | Comments (30)
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Maybe we should subcontract it to the Israelis.

Maybe everyone knows this but I was astounded by the actual cost of Israel's wall when I watched a liberal documentary (Wall, 2004, directed by Simone Bitton) about all the problems caused by Israel's wall. In it, Israel's Minister of Defense described the wall and how much it cost. It included: a layer of razor wire, a trench to stop cars, the actual wall (including electronic sensors, radar, etc. so that the army could tell when it was breached), a dirt road that would evidence footprints of would-be crossers, an asphalt road for quick deployment to areas where crossing had been detected, and another layer of barbed wire. It was approximately 50 meters wide. The cost--roughly $2 million dollars (10 million shekels) per kilometer.

According to Wikipedia, the US border is 1951 miles. This equal approximately 3140 km. At $2 million dollars each, this comes to $6,280,000,000. That's it!!! For all that!

Six billion is a lot. But it's peanuts compared the costs of illegal immigration.

And as far as such a wall being effective, well...

Graph from the Israei Ministry of Foreign Affairs (also known as the New York Money Men).

Question: Are the Amnestias against the wall because it won't be effective -- or against it because it will be effective?

They also claim they don't like the "symbolism" of the wall. But it strikes me that their main fear isn't what the wall represents (US sovereignty-- how ghastly!) but what it actually accomplishes.

Thanks to JamesR.

More:Instapundit, quoting Scott Johnson of PowerLine:

Virtually everything important that is happening with respect to the immigration bill seems to be happening under the surface, away from the eyes of prying journalists and concerned citizens. The procedural maneuvering is incomprehensible. The substance of the amendments before the Senate is extraordinarily difficult if not overwhelming given the limited time allowed for their consideration.

I have only my intuition to go on. My intuition tells me that it is impossible to be cynical enough about what is transpiring here.

My intuition tells me that if someone's trying to push you into signing something without even permitting you to read it -- in fact, without even having a finished copy to read at all, assuring you he'll put in all the details later -- you should probably not sign it.

Instapundit's evolution on this is suggestive. He began, I think, as a soft supporter of the general concept of amnesty, or at least "fixing" the problem. His daily links demonstrate is he is now hostile to the Amnestias and sympathetic to (as the WSJ terms us) the Restrictionists.

Why?

I can't help but think the unprecedented nature of this -- bills written in secret, bills not really written at all before motions for cloture are made, refusals to let Senators actually read what they're supposed to be voting in favor of, a rushed schedule designed to secure approval before the Senators, let alone the public, are even minimally informed about the text of the bill, general dishonesty (McCain claiming the bill requires the payment of back-taxes, the claim that $4.4 billion will go to enforcement, so long as you count processing z and y visas as "enforcement," "forgetting" to include Sessions' EITC semi-killer-amendment, etc.) -- not to mention, above all else, a political class determined to push a "risky scheme" on public that has not only not been given time to weigh this transformational bill, but is, at the moment, viscerally, widely opposed to it -- has flipped him, largely on grounds of integrity, honesty, transparency, and simple democracy.

For people who claim to have such faith in their Grand Compromise, they sure don't want the public or critics to have a chance to admire their terrific work, eh?

Speaking of unprecedented: Mitch McConnell is expected, as leader, to support his caucus on procedural votes. The rule is that a leader can disagree on substance, but in terms of procedure -- protecting the rights and interests of the majority of the caucus by voting in their favor on matters of pure procedural maneuvering -- you're supposed to represent the people who have placed you in a position of trust.

He's not doing that -- it is unprecedented for a caucus leader to continue voting against the majority of his colleagues on procedural maneuvers designed to deny them their right to debate and amend legislation.

What accounts for all this unprecedented unfair, undemocratic, unfathomable skullduggery on this bill?

If this bill gets through, can you imagine what the future of "democracy" may hold for us?

Posted by: Ace at 01:48 PM | Comments (72)
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If I'm taking Allah's post, why not his headline too?

This has to be read to be believed. The Democrats, who cry hysterically about the dawning New Age of Fascism ushered in by the Patriot Act, who scream that allowing people to invest Social Security money in investments that they themselves all invest in is somehow a crazy gamble, that any reform to Medicaid or Social Security constitutes a stealth euthanasia of the elderly, who shriek that the world is about to end due to global warming, etc....

...are taking comfort, yet again, in a self-flattering bit of psuedoscience and pop psychology that confirms the only real political issue that matters to them: That they're better, in some way, than someone else.

If Democrats are so gosh-darn scientifically minded, how can a liberal writer at liberal Newsweek quote a liberal book by a liberal writer and not note the glaring scientific problem here?

When voters are hooked up to brain-imaging devices while watching candidates, it is emotion circuits and not the rational frontal lobes that are most engaged. When voters assess who won a campaign debate, they almost always choose the candidate they liked better beforehand. The rationality circuit “isn’t typically open for business when partisans are thinking about things that matter to them,” Westen notes. Yet “this is the part of the brain to which Democrats typically target their appeals.”

What, precisely, does "neuroscience" back up? That people respond to emotional inputs? Obviously. One hardly needs a brain scanner to prove this point.

But what about the crucial part of this thesis -- that Democrats appeal to the rational sectors of the brain? Does "neuroscience," or any science, or any rigorous analysis of campaign pitches, back this up?

Of course not. This crucial evidence -- without which there is no thesis at all -- is simply assumed to be true.

How does a "rationally-minded liberal" miss the fact that he just assumed as true, with no scientific basis, the key evidence upon which his entire theory lives or dies?

Could it be that he's a tad emotionally invested in the proposition that he is rationally minded, and his ego-based self-affirmation emotions are somehow acting to blind him to the very real lack of empirical evidence for his claims?

Nah. He must be more rational. He's a liberal.

PS, he's also more compassionate than conservatives, too. He has more empathy for the poor, sick, and oppressed.

So he's got both advantages over you -- he's more rational, but also more in touch with his emotions.

Either way -- both ways, really -- you just suck and should acknowlege he's your moral and intellectual superior. Because, and I stress, this is the only goddamned "political point" he cares about anyway. If you just concede this to him, maybe he'll go away.

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (95)
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That $4.4 billion for "enforcement" which critics of amnesty claimed was a sham?

Turns out, it's a sham. The money can be -- read as "will be" -- used simply to process Z-visas. It's money to speed along the amnesty process and nothing more. And that's the conclusion of the Congressional Research Service.

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) released Wednesday a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) which says the new Senate immigration bill contains a major loophole in border security. Supporters of the bill say it provides $4.4 billion in immediate mandatory spending for border enforcement, but according to the CRS analysis, the funds could also be used immediately to implement the amnesty provisions in the bill.

“This is just another example of how this bill claims to do one thing but does something else entirely. It’s another example of an empty promise being used to buy votes for amnesty,” said Senator DeMint. “The supporters of this bill have been running around trying to convince people that this money will be used to secure the border first, but now we know that’s not the case. If you read the fine print, the bill says this money can also be used for amnesty.”

According to the CRS report provided to Senator DeMint, the mandatory spending in the bill could immediately be used for Z visas. It says, “(r)eceiving, processing, and adjudicating applications for the Z visa authorized by Title VI of the Act is one of the trigger mechanisms outlined in Section 1; this means that funding from the Immigration Security Account could be used for this purpose.”

...

“Not only can this money be used for things other then border security and enforcement, it looks like another backdoor trick to promote amnesty,” said Senator DeMint. “If Congress appropriates money later this year for the border, the money provided in this bill will turn into a slush fund the Administration can use to ensure illegal immigrants are legalized.”

Via Hot Air, with the good news that Ben Nelson is sounding like an anti-cloture vote, and Kit Bond is a likely one. Two down, four or five to go.

Slublog sends me these two items from The Corner. First of all, the bill isn't even written yet; what's there is filled with glitches and not-legislatively-precise placeholder language, which they're trying to fix in back rooms even as they're debating "the bill." They're debating a bill that doesn't exist yet. Will they actually read the bill, or even have it finished, before they take a vote on it?

Is that even constitutional? Can you vote on a bill that doesn't yet exist? If it passes, what is passed, exactly? The version that existed at the time of the vote or the "fixed" version?

As if the Senate floor situation could get any worse, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's staff is now rewriting the Clay Pigeon amendment behind closed doors. It is the intent of the Majority Leader to bring this new unread Amendment up without the Republicans seeing the language. Yesterday Senator Reid did not have his massive 373 page amendment ready when he started debate on it and mistakes were made in the initial drafting. This fact was not discovered until Republicans objected to waiving the reading of the bill, and the Senate Clerk had nothing to read.

...

This morning Republicans announced that Reid's amendment did not include the Sessions EITC provision in the touchback section, despite the fact that all previously passed amendments were supposed to be incorporated in the bill and the Clay Pigeon amendment. This oversight is the only mistake so far found, yet there may be other mistakes and intentional omissions in the 373 page amendment. This morning Reid put the floor back in morning business and sent his staff off to rewrite the mega amendment once again. Today, "the most deliberative body in the world," is left to debate legislation that they do not have a copy of.

Given the secret provision about using the 4.4 billion for amnesty application processing, this rather underscores the need to, you know, closely read a bill's actual language before voting on it and stuff.

Sessions' amendment -- the EITC one -- was a major one, one that passed previously with some support from Democrats, which would have made amnestied aliens ineligible for the earned income tax credit, saving the taxpayer a fair amount. Of course the left doesn't like this provision. So what a shock that it just happened to have been mistakenly omitted from the clay pigeon amendment.

And if that's not bad enough...

The Grand Bargainers are playing "hide the ball." We are not seeing language - they are trying to move this thing through without allowing full review and debate. 373 pages thrown together yesterday - AND AILA, a liberal advocacy group, gets to see it before fellow Republicans? What a slap in the face...

Enough. The bill isn't even fucking written yet. No senator upholding his constitutional duty can even vote in favor of cloture on an unfinished, unread bill, nevermind actually voting in favor it it.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (32)
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Once you've gone down the I Question The Timing road, there's no connection too absurd or trivial.

Conservative Princess, I'm pretty sure, got spoofed by a fake-news site, but hey, I can hardly blame her.

"I don’t see how Steve Jobs can call himself a ‘liberal’ and then try to silence my film,” said Moore. “Americans should be learning about our corrupt healthcare system on Friday, but instead they’re going to be lining up for a silly $600 dollar gadget.”

See, he really could say something like that.

But he didn't. Alas.

So why am I posting this?

Because Michael Moore is a fucking dick.

That's why.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (21)
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Who knew -- Die Hard is now officially a fanboy thing like Star Trek and Sttar Wars.

Content warning for the Yipee-ki-yay Motherfucker chorus.

Thanks to steve_in_hb.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (11)
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Well, if you name your golf course "Cherry Valley," what do you expect? Might as well call it "Fairway 69."

Moderate content warning on the video.

It's like an out-take from Happy Gilmore.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (21)
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