I am tranquil about this

Volkh: Senate Goes Nuclear, Expect Fallout.

Rule passed 52 to 48. Always so close. I heard the antique say, "Look at what's happened. Look at what's happened." Yes, Harry, we look at what has happened. I started paying attention to this sort of obstruction at the time of Clarence Thomas where observers notice this sort of bullshit began in earnest as stated policy of Democrats. Your Party did create this and now rues the situation of its own creation, or says it rues.  

What was that Clarence Thomas said back there about your Party's activities? 

It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.

That is what your Party did. That is who you are, what you have become.

Volkh is interesting but says what we're already thinking. This helps Republicans more than it does Democrats because Democrats are by far more obstructionist, the record shows that, just wait. The desperation is showing and this is most pleasing to observe.

Over 400 comments over there and they get interesting right off. 

Bill Bentnickel links Dr. Strangelove riding the bomb.

JohnSkookum 

• 6 hours ago

I am tranquil about this.

Number one, it's perfectly Constitutional. The houses of Congress set their own rules.

Number two, it is the most convincing evidence yet that the Democrats are completely panicked about losing the Senate in 2014. This would not be true if they held the House also, of course, but they don't, and they know that nothing they want is going to make it through both houses. Instead, they want to pack the courts as a final f**k-you on their way out the door they know is shortly to be held open for them.

Number three, the ongoing cataclysmic failure of Obamacare bids fair to wreck the Democratic Party for a generation. it is delicious to contemplate the kind of judicial nominees President Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Scott Walker will now be able to get approved starting in early 2017. I hope they throw the filibuster in the trash altogether and start dismantling entire Cabinet departments willy-nilly.

I find them interesting comments. Just a few more:

curmudgeoninchief 

• 7 hours ago

In ancient days where there was ideological overlap between the 
Parties, where in the Senate the most liberal Republican was 
significantly more liberal than the most conservative Democrat, and so 
forth, the Senate could have political discussions and they would not 
usually have far-reaching ideological consequences. Everybody was an 
anti-Communist, some were more so than others. Everybody believed the 
US should have a strong military, some felt it needed to be stronger 
than others, etc. Today, there is essentially no overlap between the 
Parties in the Senate, or anywhere else for that matter. They are now 
two ideologically distinct political organizations, and the Democrats 
are by far the most militant.

This is the kind of move that a radical political organization filled with 
ideological extremists would pull to prove that results are all that matter, and they won't put up 
with anybody getting in their way. It is not an accident that this 
happened directly after the catastrophic "roll-out" of ObamaCare. The 
entire Democratic Party is reeling politically, and they are afraid 
that ideologically important nominations will be denied them because the
Republicans will now have no trouble finding 41 votes to filibuster 
anything they want to. Hence this move. The Revolution cannot tolerate
being stalled over political niceties; forward the Revolution!

monsterdog  Dan 

• 6 hours ago

I used to be a Dem/Liberal. I flipped right about 2000. It had been building awhile, but the catalyst in my particular case was the incredible outpouring of invective over the 2000 election results. I voted for Gore, but I couldn't BELIEVE the nasty, vicious garbage I heard coming from my own side mostly for the first time in politics. And the entire time since. I am not a Repub and have my issues with them and their ideology, but when I treat them respectfully I've never really been the target of viciousness. Not so with the Dems. All you've got to do to be called a racist is suggest that ObamaCare won't work. All you've got to do to be called a woman-hater is express a dislike for abortion. I was called a "scummy conservative shitbag" who "hates poor people" when I suggested that we couldn't keep running trillion dollar deficits and had to make some cuts. Funny...I don't feel like a shitbag, or particularly scummy for that matter.

That may be a result of the Dems being more vicious in general as a species or it may be that both parties got more vicious, or maybe it's just my personal experience. But the stuff I saw in the national media after the 2000 election, plus the stupidity I saw out of that segment of the political spectrum after 9/11 and a few other smacks in the face are why I left the Dems and will never return. I don't see myself ever being a Pubbie either, but I suppose it could happen if they can lose some of the more insane social con stuff.

But in my own personal view, yes, the Dems on the whole are much sharper, much more pungent, much more offensive in general, more in-your-face, more willing to blow up conventions of all kinds, more hostile to tradition, and generally more hostile to those they perceive as political adversaries. That's why the slashed tires in WI during the 2004 election. That's why the goons in military fatigues at the polling areas in Philly in 2008 and 2012. That's why members of the anti-gun party sometimes fire guns at Repub campaign headquarters the last few elections. That's why the Dem-aligned occupy movement shits on cop cars and trashes everything they see while the (mostly) Repub-aligned tea party cleans things up after demonstrations/protests. That's why Dems view an unborn child as a sort of wart to be removed from a womb while the very idea strikes a lot of Repubs as abhorrent (the one traditional social-con view I can get fully behind). There are a hundred other examples, and yes, there are a few that work the other way. But in my view, those are a pretty small minority and pretty weak tea overall.

I still participate in these threads because I got on usenet in about 1995 and have had the habit ever since, but I know some conservatives who just don't bother anymore. If you don't enjoy the insults and are seriously looking for real political discourse, there's not really any reason to I guess.

And many more like this.