You’ve probably heard the question—“How do you know when politicians are lying?"—as well as the humorous answer to the question—“Whenever they’re moving their lips.” However, it really ain’t that funny anymore, since it’s no longer a rib-tickler, but more like the truth.

Today, the United States Senate once again failed to reopen our government. In spite of being recessed for Easter, it was able to do so by using one of a slew of shenanigans it employs to snooker us into believing that it is populated by hardworking public servants. The failed vote to reopen the government actually took place in what is called a pro forma session, with only two United States Senators present, Republican John Hoeven and Democrat Chris Coons.

Democrats, who have seized the Senate’s filibuster rule, in order to perpetrate political extortion, by means of periodic government shutdowns, blame Republicans for the repeated shutdowns. According to Democrats, who are in the minority, they’re not to blame for holding our country hostage until they get their way, no matter how arbitrary their will is to the will of the majority of Americans. Instead, it’s all Republicans’ fault, since they are not only in the majority, but also in control of the White House and both houses of Congress. If Republicans could only govern, dictatorial Democrats argue, repeated government shutdowns would be easily preventable. Tragically, there is some truth in Democrats’ taunting of Republicans, as the following indisputably proves.

The Senate’s “sacred” filibuster, which senators have long claimed cannot be done away with without leaving the Senate in shambles, was neither envisioned by our Founding Fathers nor inscribed in our Constitution. It was sort of inadvertently created in 1806, thirty years after the founding of our country, when Vice President Arron Burr removed the Senate’s “previous question” motion from its rulebook, which required a simple majority vote to end all debate. In spite of this, the filibuster was not made formal until 1917, 140 years after our nation was founded, when the Senate adopted Rule 22, its so-called “cloture” rule, which required a two-thirds majority to end debate. 

In the past, unlike today, the Senate filibuster, which was a means employed by the minority party to prevent passage of opposed legislation, required that the minority maintain continuous live debate on the Senate floor. Obviously, this maneuver was not sustainable, but would eventually end when the filibuster was broken by the inevitable exhaustion of the minority party. However, in 1972, the Senate ended the talking filibuster with a senatorial slight of hand, called the “two-track system,” which not only allowed the minority party to block opposed legislation, but also allowed the Senate to move on from the minority-opposed legislation to other business. Not a single word had to be spoken, not a single second of time had to be spent on the Senate floor, and not a single bead of sweet had to fall from a minority member’s brow. Furthermore, the Senate could continue on at a snail’s pace from the minority’s pronounced death of majority-favored legislation to the minority’s next push-button filibuster.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of today’s Americans, the Senate filibuster has been amended six times since its formal creation in 1917. In spite of these amendments, which have both strengthened and weakened it, our representative republic still stands. In addition to the filibuster being repeatedly amended, Democrats actually sought to do away with it altogether during the Biden Presidency, but were prevented from doing so by two of their own, Democrat Senator Joe Manchin and Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who caucused with the Democrats. Interestingly, both Manchin and Sinema have since retired, after all hope of them being reelected was erased by Democrats’ excoriation of the dastardly duo for saving the filibuster. Of course, this means that there is now nothing in the way of Democrats ending the filibuster the next time they win majority control of the United States Senate. Indeed, they will probably do it on day one, so that they can steamroll Republicans and force their radical socialist agenda down all of our throats!

Well, I’ve finally come to the real target of this edition of Time For Truth’s The Wilderness Voice; namely, Swamp RINOs and their Senate leader, John “Pinocchio” Thune. According to Thune, he neither has the Republican votes to end the filibuster or to force Democrats into an old-fashioned talking filibuster. Now, in defense of his fellow Swamp RINOs, who refuse to pry the filibuster, Democrats’ means of political extortion, from their iron-fisted grip, “Pinocchio” Thune tells a couple of whoppers that grow his “schnozzola” to lengths that even Jimmy Durante would have envied. 

First, Thune suggests that by protecting the Senate’s arcane filibuster rule, Swamp RINOs are saving the Senate. The question is: “Saving the Senate from what?” They’re certainly not saving it from Democrats, who are using the filibuster to transform the Senate from the most deliberative body on earth to the most dysfunctional body on earth. In addition to this, Republicans’ preservation of the filibuster actually empowers Democrats to politically extort our populace, take hostage our country, repeatedly shutdown our government, defund our Homeland Security, and prevent legislation from being passed to safeguard the integrity of our elections, despite the fact that it is supported by 85% of all Americans. Then, adding insult to injury, Democrats hope to win back the Senate, so that they can squash the filibuster once and for all, by excoriating Republicans for being stymied by Senate filibusters. And “Pinocchio” Thune and his fellow Swamp RINO’s just stand there, looking like deer caught in Democrat headlights.

Second, Thune disingenuously defends his fellow Swamp RINOs for opposing an old-fashioned talking filibuster, because it would give Democrats the opportunity to file unlimited amendments, which would require endless votes and innumerable days of debate. However, “Pinocchio” Thune knows, as the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, that he holds in his hand a procedural devise, known as “the amendment tree,” which actually gives him the power to determine what amendments are pending and debatable. This devise, which has been used in the past by other Majority Leaders, prevents the minority from offering endless amendments. Therefore, it’s not a matter of whether or not Thune can limit a talking filibuster to two speeches by each Democrat in the Senate, as well as Democrat amendments to what he himself determines to be pending, but a question of whether or not Thune has the intestinal fortitude to do it. Unfortunately, we know the answer to this question, having witnessed the cowardice of gutless Republicans for decades. Still, at least you now know that Republican voters are once again being gaslighted by the political party of Benedict Arnolds and Joe Isuzus, while the Democrat Party continues to burn down our country, so that they can rule over its ashes.