The Comprehensive Black Death Act has been stopped

It has happened. The Senate had another cloture vote tonight, and it failed 45-50, and Sen. Reid has withdrawn Senate bill 1348 (1348—the year the Black Plague began that killed a third of the population of Europe) from consideration for the time being, which, we may reasonably hope, will be a good long time. Maybe we will be able to breathe normally again for a few months, maybe for another year, maybe even for two years.

I saw Senators Feinstein, Martinez, and Durbin delivering sad eulogies to their Precious on the Senate floor. Eulogy is the correct word. From the way they spoke there is no question but that they saw tonight’s events as a decisive defeat of the Great Compromise that had been hammered out in three months of negotiations between selected senators on one side and the administration on the other, in the persons of Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez and Secretary of DHS Chertoff, both of whom keep making it abundantly clear that they have no loyalty to America the country but only to immigrants and liberalism. Both men are exotics. Gutierrez looks like and indeed is a Latin American (a Cuban by birth) and has a professional identity as a Hispanic, while the wasted, pencil-neck Chertoff—who has forbidden the Department of Homeland Security to use the word “Islamic” when speaking about Islamic terrorists—looks like an AIDS poster. What a great figure of a man to be leading the defense of our nation against terrorists and to be writing our immigration laws!

As for the eulogists, in 15 years of watching Feinstein the Therapist ooze her condescending bromides on the Senate floor, this was the first time I had ever seen her troubled and agitated. It was great. She kept talking in an almost broken voice about all the good things in this bill that had been ignored. She showed no understanding of the things in this bill that made it totally unacceptable to many people. All she perceived was a small-minded refusal on the part of the opponents to rise to the great achievement that this bill really was. Her arrogant cluelessness increased my Schadenfreude. Similarly, after 10 years of watching Durbin, one of the most vicious liberals ever to darken the halls of Congress, I finally saw him come across as humbled instead of egregiously full of himself, and it made his personality strangely tolerable. As for Martinez, he, like Gutierrez and Chertoff, obviously gives his primary loyalty to something other than the America that was and is. Namely his loyalty is to the America That Will Be, the America that this evil bill was meant to bring about, and now he’s mad because he’s still stuck in the America that was and is.

One of the defeated senators, Feinstein I think, said that the amendments that kept being offered were not intended to improve the bill but to kill it. Sounds fine by me, Senator. Anything to take that smug nanny look off your face and that smooth creamy tone out of your voice.

Let us also remember the drumbeat of announcements we’ve heard over the last few weeks from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the rest of the liberal media, telling us that this was a done deal, that 60 to 70 senators were solidly behind the bill, that polls showed there was broad support among the American people for amnesty, that calls to senators from constituents against the bill had fallen off, and blah and blah and blah. They were lying to us. They were doing what the left ALWAYS does when trying to push through its ruinous innovations, which is to convince opponents that this new leftist measure is inevitable, that nothing can be done to stop it, that the “train has left the station” (as a Congressional insider said a few years ago about a bill to make Puerto Rico a state, and it wasn’t true, was it?). Like Aztec priests, the liberal media’s task is to cut the living heart out of conservatives so that their life energy will be transmitted to the gods of liberalism. Meanwhile the Conservative Hero himself, Slow Limbaugh, the Man on the Caboose of Societal Evolution, the man who went through the entire decade of the Nineties without saying a single word about immigration, sang in harmony with the liberal chorus, repeatedly making, alongside his faux opposition to the bill, definitive pronouncements that the bill was going to pass, period. In the midst of a battle to stave off the most ruinous legislative enactment in U.S. history, this happy warrior of our generation, this man who keeps Having More Fun Than Any Human Being Should Be Allowed to Have, kept throwing in the towel. He’s an empty windbag wedded to liberalism and he should be dismissed.

- end of initial entry -

(Note June 14, 2007: I’ve modified my above criticisms of Rush Limbaugh here.)

David B. writes:

Thanks for your comment on Slow Limbaugh. I repeat that right after the election, I heard him tell a caller that “amnesty will pass and the President will sign it.” For months Limbaugh was saying that.

Here is a transcript from Thursday. He’s still more concerned about the GOP than America itself. Also, he refuses to unload on Bush as Laura Ingram has.

LA replies:

We must remember this. Faced with the most damaging bill in American history, did Limbaugh oppose it with all his might? No. Just the opposite. He said over and over—he flatly predicted—that “Amnesty will pass and the president will sign it.” Limbaugh is to the open-borders destruction of America what Joseph Kennedy was to the Nazi domination of Britain.

Rachael S. writes:

I just read your post on the defeat of S.1348, and I think this is my favorite bit:

“Like Aztec priests, the liberal media’s task is to cut the living heart out of conservatives so that their life energy will be transmitted to the gods of liberalism.”

Punchy, incisive and original (of course I also liked the article). :)

Thanks for the blog.

Jack S. writes:

Your comment about Chertov prompted me to write. If you look at pictures of this guy he looks satanic; is he the Beast or just one of his demons? Internet searches have turned up the unconfirmed fact that that his name means “of the devil” or “the devil’s own” in Russian.

I’m only half-joking about this.

Wolfowitz has a similarly devilish appearance.

The latter creature chose to destroy his career for a shrewish looking Muslima.

I also want to thank you for your recent comment explaining Muslim terrorism denial and comparing it to Holocaust denial. The apparent paradox of jew-haters denying the holocaust and then wishing Hitler had done a better in the next sentence always confused me. Confused is not the best word since I understood but had not put into words your very apt explanation of the phenomenon.

Tim W. writes:

I’m glad to see someone recognizes Senator Feinstein’s condescending attitude. Since she’s a liberal, a Democrat, and a woman, the mainstream media treat her as some sort of saint

I remember many years ago watching a committee hearing on C-SPAN I believe it was on the subject of homosexuals in the military. It may have been on some other homosexual-oriented issue, but I’m pretty sure it was an inquiry into President Clinton’s proposal to allow open homosexuals to serve in the armed forces. Feinstein, her voice simply dripping with superiority, announced that she was so very fortunate to come from an enlightened city and state, She said this freed her up to be enlightened without having to worry about creating too much of a storm back home. She coldly recognized that many of her colleagues weren’t as fortunate, and that they might risk voter wrath if they did the enlightened thing and voted pro-homosexual. But she called upon them to rise to a heightened level of enlightenment (hers, of course) and, for all intents and purposes, ignore their constituents’ wishes

There are a lot of senators I can’t stomach listening to, but Feinstein surely is in the top five.

The Dutch blogger who names himself after the famous Dutch Islam scholar Snouck Hungronje writes:

Congratulation to you and your fellow nationalists/traditionalists on seeing S.1348 defeated.

A question: the American Right showed a flicker of life as Rightists as a result of S.1348. Are you not worried it will slip back into the abyss now that the bill has been finished off?

LA replies:

I hope Snouck will allow us exhausted American rightists to breathe normally for a few days before we have to worry about whether the removal of a mortal threat to our country is actually a disadvantage to us!

Howard Sutherland writes:

This is great news, and you did a lot to keep the right-wing fanatics stirred up. Good job!

Still, this is no more than a truce (Moslem-style; to be broken as soon as the enemy feels strong enough). The amnesty/”guest” worker idea remains a serious threat for as long as Our First Mexican President remains in the White House. Still, it is gratifying to see Bush stuffed—do you really think he has fallen off the wagon? Resettling all his beloved Mexicans in the United States is very close to The Decider’s heart, and this is quite a rebuff. It is also nice to see that wily parliamentarian Kennedy knocked down for a change.

Something to celebrate this weekend! HRS

Robert B. writes:

Yes, indeed—and I notice that Senator Coleman voted the intelligent way—for now.

Well, it’s Friday, and at least one thing went right this week—so, time for a vodka martini, extra dry—shaken, not stirred with three olives.

Cheers Lawrence and fellow patriots!!!

A reader writes from Georgia

I was so incensed over this proposed legislation, that I actually called the offices of senators, Isakson (GA) two times, Chambliss (GA) three times, Graham (SC) two times, and Kyl (AZ) one time. On one of my calls to Chambliss, the person answering the phone tried to tell me it was not an amnesty bill. I told him to stop treating me like a fool. I got into a snotty exchange with someone who answered the phone on my second call to Isakson’s office. It was one of those young, recent College grads (with a degree in “policy studies” one might guess) and he actually tried to tell me I really didn’t understand how good the bill was for America. I finally just hung up on him. But, somehow we got through at least a bit. Both Isakson and Chambliss voted against Cloture both times. Graham is in deep do-do with the SC Republican electorate. I think Kyl has announced he will not run again, so what does he care?

Paul Cella writes:

A positively brilliant post, Larry. One of the best.

LA replies:

Thanks. Sometimes it’s right thing to get mean.:-)

LA writes:

See a further discussion of Rush Limbaugh’s motivations here.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 08, 2007 01:12 AM | Send