Who the hell objects to C-SPAN?

Can we call Obama a liar yet?  Watch the video below.

[Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of Fox News or Karl Rove.  But, the important thing to watch here is the words straight out of Obama’s mouth.]

In case you’re not quite sure what the problem is, C-SPAN has so far not been allowed to film the House-Senate health care negotiations.  The Democrats are even considering skipping the traditional conference committee and reaching a back-room compromise instead.

Now, Obama is not a member of the Congress, so he can’t take all the blame for this.  But, his campaign promises were largely about things he couldn’t do; they were about things the Congress would do.  I think it’s fair to interpret this as meaning he would pressure, or at least ask, the Congress to do what he was proposing.  So far, he has not.

Technically though, Karl Rove may have been right when he said he didn’t want to call Obama a liar.  For Obama to have lied, he would have needed to know at the time he made those speeches he wouldn’t push for the openness he said he wanted.  Obama may have been ineffective, weak willed, and just more politics as usual.  But at least on this front, he didn’t quite meet the definition of a lie.

Bobby Fisher Stole My Lunch Money

60 is not the magic number in the Senate.  But, you’ve likely heard a lot of noise from Dems and Friends about how they can’t pass things like health care reform, despite controlling the White House and Congress.  The reason they give is that they don’t really control the Senate; even though they have a majority, they have trouble reaching the 60 votes needed for cloture (a vote to end debate in the event of a filibuster).

So, they blame the Republican minority for getting in their way.  Trouble is that the Republicans haven’t filibustered anything.  In fact, I haven’t even heard of a Republican making a hard threat of a filibuster.

If the Dems want to be able to blame Republicans for blocking legislation supported by a majority of the Senate, they need to make a genuine effort to bring the measure up for a vote.  If they really think their bill is important, then force a the Republicans to go through with a filibuster.  Filibusters are hard to do and can fail on their own, without a cloture vote.  And, the Dems can get themselves on the record of having actually tried, rather than whining about the big mean Republicans.  This is like the big football player crying that he can’t get to his classes because he’s afraid the chess geek might beat him up.

…Except that the big football player wouldn’t be a Democrat.  So, it’s like whatever sort of athlete would be a Democrat.  I guess…a soccer player. And I guess a chess geek could probably glance at a soccer player and get him to fall over and fake an injury.  Pretty much the exact thing the Dems are doing when the much weaker Republicans give them the stink eye.

One of the reasons I’ve been really disappointed with the Dem leadership is that after controlling both houses of Congress in 2006, they didn’t even try to change anything.  They just assumed Bush would veto anything they really wanted and didn’t try for anything harder than a non-binding resolution.  The better strategy would be to pass a bill and force Bush to veto it and thus have a solid record of exactly what they would do if they had control of a united capital.  Although, the way things have gone in the past year, Dems probably didn’t want anyone to see an irrefutable record of what legislation they would pass if they held the White House.

PS: The chess geek would totally be a Republican, because check geeks fight communists.

Time of Possession

In the last 60 years, Republicans have controlled the White House and the Congress for only 6 years.  W. Bush had a united Washington for 4 years (he lost the House before losing the Senate), and Eisenhower had it for 2.  In that same time, Democrats controlled a united Washington for 19 years.  1 under Obama, 2 for Clinton, 4 for Carter, 5 for Johnson, 3 for Kennedy, and 4 for Truman.*  Republicans 10%, Democrats over 30%.

Just something to think about when you hear someone complaining about how all of our problems are the fault of the evil Republican rule we’ve been living under for so long.  Not only did it simply not exist as often described, but most mistakes by our government have had some degree of bipartisan support.

*Truman had a total of 6, but some of those didn’t make the 60 year cut off.