Under the Fedora: A bad week...

A lot has happened this week that has not been fun for a conservative.

On Monday the Senate passed the Corker Hoeven amendment and managed to get cloture on the “immigration” amnesty bill.

It amazes me that the same republicans who have complained loudly in the budget debate that we can’t have tax increases with the promise of spending cuts later are willing to allow legislation with the promise of future securing of the border.

I’m particularly disappointed with Senator Rubio & Senator Ayotte.  Both had been supported by Sarah Palin and  Tea Party groups and both had promised not to be supportive of amnesty. 

Palin is not amused:

Palin said Rubio had promised that "border security would come first," and he would not support "legalization of illegal immigrants" and "amnesty" before border security while running in the Florida Republican Senate primary against Charlie Crist in 2010. She said Ayotte, whom she endorsed, had on her campaign website in 2010 that there were "no excuses" not to secure the border and also said she would not support amnesty. 

"I think that they should be challenged. I don't have a problem with heated debates and contested primaries where they have to answer to constituents regarding their flip-flopping on such a fundamental position as amnesty for illegal immigrants," she told Gibson. "I don't have a problem at all with contested primaries. In fact, competition makes us all better and makes us be held accountable and I'd like to see them held accountable and answer as to why it is that they flip-flopped."

On Rubio there are two possibilities that come to my mind.  Rubio might have been played, he’s fairly young and occasionally such people are played.  If he just came out and said so people would let it go.

As for Senator Ayotte I suspect part of this flip is out of deference to her allies McCain and Graham who she has worked closely with on Benghazi (and done yeoman work) but I suspect part of it is because she was trying to get the left off of her back over the Toomey Manchin.

If she had only waited

Nashua Mayor DonnaleeLozeau said she resigned from "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" on May 10, shortly after joining the nationwide coalition, because it went beyond its stated principles of "keeping illegal guns out of dangerous hands."

Lozeau said she did not know when she joined the group that it would "unfairly attack" fellow Nashuan Sen. Kelly Ayotte in a $2 million barrage of ads after Ayotte opposed an amendment calling for universal background checks for gun purchases in April.

The heat might have decreased. And if this report is true

Speaker John A. Boehner reiterated to House Republicans this morning that he will not bring up the Senate’s immigration overhaul for a vote in the House. “Weeks ago, I — along with Eric, Kevin, Cathy and Bob Goodlatte — issued a statement making clear that the House is not going to just take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” Boehner told lawmakers, per a source in the room. "We’ll do our own bill, through regular order and it’ll be a bill that reflects the will of our majority and the people we represent.” ...

As Sean Connery’s Character said in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen “Wait, always wait”

On Tuesday in Massachusetts Ed Markey running in a special election with no other democrat on the ballot managed to only pull 60% of the vote that one of the worst candidates in US Senate History Martha Coakley.

Opposing him was Gabriel Gomez, Navy Seal, Navy Pilot, successful businessman and a 1^st Generation immigrant from Columbia.  With the GOP arguing loudly that the immigration bill needed to pass to get Hispanics to be willing to vote Democrats Gomez who won the primary with over 50% despite straying from the bases position on Climate Change, Gun Control, was apparently a perfect fit since he also endorsed the gang of eight bill even before the Corker Hoeven was suggested.

And while Gomez won several towns back that Brown had lost in 2012 the appeal among Hispanic voters was apparently overstated:

So on election day they went to a city with many people from “Hispanica” and said: “Look our candidate is a child of Hispanica just like you! Come vote for him!”  But the people of that city said: We’ve never heard of a country called “Hispanica” Our parents come from a country called “The Dominican Republic” and they voted for the party they always did.

Then they went to another town and said “Look our candidate is from the land of Hispanica just like you” and the people of that town said: “We’ve never heard of a land called ‘Hispanica” our fathers came from a land called “Brazil” and they voted for the party they always did.

Ok that’s not exactly how it happened but the bottom line is he drew only 45% of the vote.

I’m sorry, Gabriel Gomez is a nice guy with a great personal story but if supporting amnesty doesn’t do the trick with Spanish speaking voters when you’re running a 1^st generation Columbian with the last name “Gomez” odds are you aren’t going to do better supporting this kind of bill with the last name “Alexander” or Graham.

Then later in the evening after a long Filibuster in the Texas was finally broken the mob managed to stall long enough to block a bill that would have prevented the next Kermit Gosnell in Texas.  Stopping the bill made the left absolutely giddy. 

Donna Brazille compared the fight to stop that abortion bill to the civil rights era.  She was right in on respect, just like in the old days the people fighting hardest for the right to kill black children were democrats.

Then came Wednesday and a pair of Supreme Court rulings, first the a section of DOMA was overturned meaning the Federal government has to treat gay married couples in state where it is legal in terms of benefits.  The most amazing thing about the ruling was the impugning of the motives of all those who have opposed Gay Marriage as Rush put it:

In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives 342 to 67.  It passed the Senate 85 to 14.  What a bunch of bigots! The Supreme Court majority today said that all of those 342 in the House and those 85 in the Senate passed the Defense of Marriage Act 'cause they hated gays.

And they wanted to punish gays, and they wanted to demean gays, and they wanted to impugn gays, and they wanted to impugn homosexuality.  That's why 342 members of the House passed DOMA, and that's why 85 Senators voted for it.  Bill Clinton signed it into law, and today Bill Clinton and his lovely and gracious wife, Hillary Rodham Rodham, issue a statement hailing the decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act which he signed into law. 

Nobody was talking about this at all 20 years ago.  Who knew the entire population of the country since its founding was a bunch of evil bigots all that time?  No wonder the self-righteous left hates them so.

Worse than the first decision was the second that effectively repealed California’s Prop 8 which was a ballot initiative forbidding gay marriage in the California constitution.

The court rules the people appealing a lower court that cancelled out the successful referendum did not have standing.  The problem the folks who DID have standing to appeal, the state had vehemently opposed the referendum (which is why the people went that route) and absolutely refused to defend it in court:

Why go through all that time and effort and expense when even if you win, all the party machine needs is a single sympathetic lower court judge to rule in their and violà  you’re foiled without standing to appeal.

Fans of Gay Marriage might be cheering today, but not as loud as fans of one party autocratic  government.

But the thing that hit me the hardest this week is this:

I have been banned in Britain.My crime?My principled dedication to freedom. I am a human rights activist dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights for all before the law. I fiercely oppose violence and the persecution and oppression of minorities under supremacist law. I deplore violence and work for the preservation of freedom of speech to avoid violent conflict.

I have never been convicted of any crime. I have never been arrested. I became a writer and activist in the wake of 911.

For this I am banned. I shed no tears. I am banned from Mecca, too.

When the current queen dies England will die.  There will still be a place on the map called “England” but the name will mean nothing.

And to top it all off the Bruins blew the Stanley Cup and June has been the worst month for DaTipJar all year and my brother-in-law is bad….Very Bad

Not the best of weeks.

 





Follow @NACBU_bloggers