Thursday, April 06, 2017

Optionally Nuclear

     Oh, Chuck, you still can't rewrite history--

     To give Senator Schumer his due (and let me be quite clear, I regard public sanitation workers as an inherently more honorable class of civil servants than U. S. Senators, since when the garbageman or sewer tech has done their work, the world is inarguably bettered), he wasn't in favor of the "nuclear option" when his fellow Democrats pushed it through for Cabinet nominees in 2013.  On the other hand, I don't recall him showing Majority Leader Harry Reid any dramatic opposition at the time; even sympathetic accounts have Mr. Schumer "working quietly behind the scenes" to forestall what eventually happened, on a party-line vote in favor.  Including his vote

     And yet there he was on the evening news last night, cheaters sternly low on his nose, as serious as a boiled owl, intoning, "...Democrats have never believed in changing the rules...."  No, dammit, no.  Maybe you do not, sir, and if so it's one of your few admirable positions, but your Party fellows have an irrefutable history of changing the rules of the Senate when it suits them, and most of the Democrats who voted to yank the ol' filibuster when it was in the way of their President four years ago are still around to vote to preserve that hallowed tradition now.  Go be a good soldier for your side, but don't stand there and lie to people with access to search engines like you were acting in a summer-stock production of 1984.

4 comments:

Blackwing1 said...

Sadly, why should he NOT lie? What's the down-side for him when he does so? It's a ripe dead certainty that he'll never be called on it by the Dem-wing media. If he's ever called on it by any one else it will never see the light of day.

The vast, nay, overwhelming majority of people who primarily get their "news" from the lame-stream sources of TV (NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS/CNN) or print will never, ever use a search engine, and probably couldn't even if it occurred to them.

This is why our current crop of professional liars (politicians and most "reporters") can (and do) lie with utter impunity. Because they routinely get away with it. This is also why they are so desperate to censor the Web.

Anonymous said...

The Democrats have to learn that threatening some course of action to get their way is pretty much just as bad as using such an action, and provokes a strong response in retaliation, often of the same nature.

If some flashes a gun and threatens to shoot you if you don't give them your wallet, you draw your gun and shoot them. You don't wait for them to fire first.

If the Democrats threaten to use the "nuclear option" against the Republicans, the Republicans should consider it a valid option in all things and use it accordingly.

Threatening to use some hostile action signals an intent to use it, and an in-kind response is, therefore, appropriate.

Roberta X said...

Anon, 8:44 AM: "Threatening?" "Threatening?" They already did it, in 2013, for Cabinet appointees and judges for lower courts! Either read the links or refrain from commenting, and maybe try to read the occasional newspaper or newssite. If you donlt know what's going on, you don't know where the real threats are. Listen to NPR; think of it as oppo research.

rickn8or said...

I'm pretty sure the 60-vote rule was not brought down from a mountaintop on stone tablets. "Our forefathers could not have forseen it being used for partisan politics."