Friday roundup

Speaker Stalin
Something happened late last night in the House of Representatives that hasn’t made the papers. The Politico is reporting a huge blow up between Dems and Reps. The issue that caused the blow up was an immigration bill motion to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. The motion was passed 215-213. Dems hold about a 30 seat majority in the house. So, 17 or so Democrats had to side with Republicans in passing this bill. If even one Republican sides with the Democrats on a measure, our heroic MSM never fails to call it a bipartisan agreement - that’s if even just one Republican crossed the line to vote with Democrats. Here we have about 17 Dems crossing over.

The Democrat leadership, not happy with the outcome, took a page from Stalin and simply closed the vote; called it tie; said the motion failed and expunged records of the vote. One wonders how such a thing could happen in America. What’s next, bridges collapsing into the Mississippi?

Rudy on fire
Rudy has been hitting Democrats hard on their tax and spend philosophy of government – that is when they aren’t shutting that government down when a vote doesn’t go their way.
He’s been hitting them on their isolationist tactics for waging the war on terror – that is when Dems aren’t advocating invading our coalition partners. He has pegged their healthcare plans as socialized medicine while offering a pro private payer system himself. He has pulled well ahead of the Republican field and stands one point ahead or behind of any Democrat candidate in the polls. He is capable of contesting every state in the union to include NY and CA. So what’s the down side? Hmmm, I’m thinking.

Bridges collapsing into the Mississippi
Actually, bridges collapsing are not all that rare an occurrence. When a cable station started to list the history of bridge failures in the US, the report went on for some time. We don’t know what caused this collapse. One theory a local guy posited was that bridge repair crews didn’t allow for enough room for the expansion of the concrete that they were pouring. When the concrete expanded, it knocked the bridge off its pilings.

Hmm, sounds plausible. It is a bit odd that the bridge was undergoing repair at the time of the failure.