What Is Even Going On With This Nuclear Option Balls-Out Filibuster Vote Thingie

Did you tune into C-SPAN2 this AM to watch an epic rap battle between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, two of the best rhetoricians the Senate has ever produced? Of course you did! Except the whole time you were just whisperyelling at your computer "do it, Harry. Do. It. DO IT AND DROP THE NUCLEAR OPTION HAMMER." Yes, Harry Reid grew a pair and finally decided to change the filibuster rules so that Mitch and his merry band of nihilists couldn't just say "naw mang, we don't like that dude because Democrat. Consider this our filibuster while we go back and take a nap." Majority vote, baby! Up or down like God intended.

We had lots of feels during the livestream, most of which involved yelling at Mitch McConnell for being Mitch McConnell, but let's see if we can't run this down for you in some coherent fashion. After a lot of dithering and inexplicable quoting of the Old Testament (Book of Numbers represent what what!) Reid finally got around to the BOOM and made the motion to change the Senate rules to an up-or-down majority vote for everything but Supreme Court nominations. Wait. That's not entirely fair to Harry Reid. We just dozed off trying to remember the middle part of what he said, which was actually quite important. Reid reminded us that basically the GOP is nothing but a wall of petulant obstruction that has been cockblocking nominations -- judicial and otherwise -- for no good reason. Except he didn't just say that. He droned on for like one million minutes reading names. But that is OK, Harry Reid, because ultimately you got around to the good part and gave the GOP what for.

And then we had to endure the root-canal-without-novocaine that is listening to Mitch McConnell speak. Seriously, Harry Reid is snoozeville, but next to McConnell he's fucking MLK. McConnell has a weird habit of repeating the exact same phrase in the exact same monotone and trust us when we say it is RIVETING. Mitch got up and mumblewhined about Obamacare, because the entire GOP is now genetically engineered to only talk about Obamacare. Mitch found some tenuous way to link this back to the filibuster by explaining that the whole battle is just a way to distract from the health care website failures and also too to jam more things down our throats. Does no right-winger ever think through that before saying it? Some more boring whining about how they've been super fair to this president, which is a meaning of the word "fair" that we were hitherto unaware of, but whatevs. Basically, the gist of McConnell's droning was that they've done quite enough to confirm people, thankyewverymuch, and also too the DC Circuit doesn't have enough work to do so why confirm people. Mitch also made a plea for tolerance of respecting minority views and no, we are not kidding. He really did that. Oh, and also, too, just because Obama got himself elected is no reason to allow him to pick judges, the end.

After all that, living breathing human dynamo Harry Reid called for a roll call vote, which passed, and now the Senate rules have changed to allow an up-or-down vote on nominations we think. Yay! But instead of just moving on, we are in some parliamentary procedure hell of cloture votes on the original DC Circuit nominee and Mitch McConnell making nonsense parliamentary inquiries . You guys, this particular portion of yr Wonkette was once a parliamentarian for a government body and it does not matter one bit because we still cannot follow Senate rules. After approximately one million votes, we thought that maybe it meant that the judge-in-waiting that is at the center of this kerfuffle, Patricia Millett, would now be seated on the U.S. Appeals Court for the DC Circuit but honestly WE HAVE NO IDEA. Now we have to spend the rest of the day watching CSPAN2 instead of porn. Dammit.