Are you buying into the confirmation vote record of Alito as evidence of the Dimocrat Congress being staunch, firm, fierce, and loyal? Yes? Congratulations, you just got hosed. That little caper, wherein it was made to seem that only four were Party traitors, was merely a mild form of PsyOps (Pyschological Operations). Do you remember what came just before that? That's right: a 72-to-25 Senate vote to end debate, bring cloture, and vote to confirm Samuel Alito. That was what guaranteed Alito his passage: all those joyously delivered Dimocratic cloture votes. Now, all you have to do is sit back and listen to the machinery endlessly bleating (because the quisling Congressionals will never say it with their own mouths) about "the poor, brave, hard-fighting, disconsolate Dims worrying about re-election chances in Red States"...hence their outrageous ballot-casting.
From there, you start buying into their re-education process. However, if you do accept venality that easily, there's no reason to read further; this article will make little sense to you. In fact, it'll probably piss you off.
The way the media - all the media; let me say that again: ALL the media - inferred it, was that there was still a filibuster opportunity after the cloture vote. There never was. There couldn't be. ‘Cloture' means ‘a closing' and it cut off any further procedural possibility of debate and, thus, filibuster. A congressperson can only filibuster while debate is open, not during the actual vote. But, um, you weren't really told that, were you? Certainly not by the Right press and...not by the Left either. This should be disquieting.
So, the Dims made absolutely sure there would be no filibuster at the very same time they were telling you that it was a wide open possibility. But think about it: most Dims voted for cloture absolutely knowing it would guarantee Alito his spot on the court. No doubt about it. Then they began the theater work, "standing firm", "supporting the rank and file", "holding strong to American principals" when it all was absolutely devoid of meaning. Didja fall for it?
Ah, but there was also the fusillade of diversionary role-playing all the while. The Sunday before, Minority Whip Dick Durbin informed the press he had 37 of the 41 votes needed to clinch the filibuster. What happened? No one cared to follow up his allegation, Right or Left. If Durbin's claim was indeed a truism, yet so jaw-droppingly many Dims voted for cloture - voted against filibuster - what went on there? Might Durbin have been lying? If not, was he being lied to? Without a micron of doubt, blatant prevarications were being told, it only remains to determine exactly where. I know what I think.
Note, too, that all eight Dims on the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted against Alito before the nomination appeared on the floor. That is, the Dimocratic members of a committee totally devoted to jurisprudential candidate fitness overwhelmingly rejected him on all fronts...and yet...the committee's comrades elsewhere were about evenly split on the question of filibuster. Isn't that interesting? Were they paying attention at all? The most involved Dim members as much as said "Drop this idiot like a scalding anvil!!!" and they were ignored...by their own.
John Kerry once again waffled. Early on, he was against filibustering, following the futile hope that his primary silence wouldn't be broached; then, at the last minute - hmmm, almost at the exact same time the entire PsyOps scheme would have been coming together - he flew in "valorously" to push for something it appears he may well have known hadn't a hope in Hades. Where'd he wing it from? Ah, well that was ignored too, again: by both Right and Left press. It was the Davos Conference, where the richest people on Earth gather to decide the fate of the globe. John Kerry, who married into immense wealth. John Kerry, who wouldn't raise even the feeblest leg up on a hideously obvious Vote Fraud and who caved in, in what may have been a world's record in concessions, amidst very public and very heated knowledge that something was criminally amiss in the electoral process...just as...hmmmm...just as Al Gore had also done during the last Vote Fraud. What a coincidence! Are we seeing a pattern here?
But also: John Kerry, who was once an icon, protesting the VietNam War and cracking open the biggest financial scandal in world history (BCCI), and now appears to be no more than an actor with lines written by divers hands, playing a Centrist role to attenuate the malefactions of what may not be a party opposite him, after all.
Oh, and remember "Hot Again, Cold Again" Dianne Feinstein, the corporatist's dream? You may recall the Dims were quietly, and not so quietly - certainly not on Feinstein's part - whispering that Alito was a "done deal" and that filibuster was foolish, until public pressure ratcheted up, then suddenly very grudgingly mouthing the public position, saying they'd support a filibuster, simultaneously stating such could never succeed. Say what??? Gentlemen and ladies, movies have been made about the filibuster as the most wildly successful ace-in-the-hole in American history. Does the name "Mr. Smith" ring a bell? How about "Jimmy Stewart". The Dims were hoping you never saw the flick. Maybe you didn't.
What, exactly, would be the only thing that could have defeated the confirmation process once it started, and at exactly what point? Filibuster, right at the cloture juncture and nowhere else. Oh, I forgot: neither the Right nor the Left press much cared to state that clearly enough. Odd, no? Well, as exculpatory nonsense currently goes, they probably "didn't even think of it!". Are you buying into that? They certainly hope so and, if polls (God help me, now I'm referring to the damn things!) are correct, you did. Or...did you? After all, what's prompting the polls, who's being poled [sic], what were the questions, and who are these faceless bastards running them? Doesn't matter, as any unwillingness to initiate the filibuster at all was a clear signal of collusion with the Repuglican status quo. The rest is horse manure. All the Dims now have to do is obfuscate that fact as much as possible, and that's what they're doing.
And by the way, where was "rebel" Howard Dean during all this? Did you like his weak-kneed from-the-closet Dim performance?
Merrily joining the flip-floppers, Barack Obama was said to have criticized filibustering, then, at the very last moment, pledged to vote it in. Note what went on there: one doesn't vote for a filibuster, one votes against cloture, then a filibuster just occurs. But that's not what Obama said. He was referring to something that doesn't exist. Makes for a good excuse later on. Let's see now, is he a lawyer? Obama didn't like the filibuster at all, instead averring, "There's one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court...reflect [Dimocratic] values and that's to win elections." So, voting for anything but candidates is a mistaken action, is that it, Mr. Obama, and screw anything like, oh, issues, law, Supreme Court Justices, and such trivialities? That's an alleged verity I find surprising in an American.
Joe Biden was equally cagey, gritting his teeth as he said, "I think a filibuster makes sense when you have a prospect of actually succeeding...I will vote one time to continue the debate." Pardon me? Condescending to follow the will of the people...one time? Because it perhaps goes against one's own private interests? Let me check again and see what Party Biden belongs to. He, all along, was heralding that "the fact of the matter" was that Alito's confirmation was - and one has to wonder where this came-from-nowhere sentiment originated - a done deal. Is that a "D" I see next to is name? Must be a typo.
Alito got through because the Dimocrats allowed it and for no other reason. The Repuglican vote was the only "done deal", and there was a possible several-member dissent there almost from Day One, which means the Dims could still have handily thwarted the necessary 60 vote halt. They didn't. Why?
You can either listen to their inane blather, delivered pontificatingly as received wisdom (and wisdom is gaining its hoariness in mere nanoseconds nowadays, it appears), amidst welters of hand-wringing, choked-back tears, looks of exhaustion, and other stage effects, or you can look at the facts, decide what's really going on, and quit regurgitating back the cue lines Dims are feeding you. That's where the PsyOps can be found - an' it ain't jes' yer down-home Repugs who're peddling it to ya, Jeeter. It used to be called propaganda...but that's what propaganda is: PsyOps. Goebbels knew it, Mussolini knew, Rove knows it, and now the Dimocrats know it.
Do you know it?
by Mark S. Tucker
February 3, 2006
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Mark S. Tucker, a critic, has written for numerous magazines and presently writes for Perfect Sound Forever on-line, as well as this forum. He can be reached at progdawg@hotmail.com. This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Mark S. Tucker, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
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