Eric Boehlert Needs Some Cheese With His Whine

Media Matters' resident jerk Eric Boehlert is complaining because journalists don't call Senate Republicans "obstructionists" at every reference. I have to say, given journalists' usual penchant for demeaning R's, it is a little surprising that one doesn't see this term in every news story, but I chalk that up to nuance.

Boehlert's complaint goes to the heart of the liberal view of the MSM. It isn't there to report what happens. Reporters are there to shape what you think of the news. So, if Democrats, say, run across the border to stop redistricting in Texas, that's not labelled "obstructionist," but Senate Republicans exercising their right to shape the legislative agenda is.

What makes Boehlert's complaint so silly is that the problem isn't Senate Republicans; it's Harry Reid, who didn't have to bring up other legislation to challenge Republicans. And if anyone thinks Democrats in a similar situation wouldn't use the filibuster to block particularly noxious legislation, they're delusional. The difference is that the country is closer to Republican ideas than the poisonous, disasterous legislation Democrats have tried to cram through Congress. Besides, Democrats poisoned this well with the Obamacare votes--particularly on Christmas Eve--and it's a little late to complain about civility now.

Democrats Are Only Interested in Compromise When They Can't Cram Their Agenda Through Procedurally

Steve Benen is complaining that there's no compromising with Senate Republicans.

Obama practically begged congressional Republicans to work with him on everything from the stimulus to health care, financial regulatory reform to energy. The GOP minority not only refused to compromise or negotiate, they conceded, publicly and on the record, that this was a deliberate strategy -- even in a time of crisis, Republicans decided it was important to deny Democrats victories for their own partisan purposes.

Does "begging the GOP minority" include snarky exchanges that demean the GOP?

As he left the White House, House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina was asked about Republican complaints that Democrats aren’t listening to what their GOP colleagues have to say. “We’re responding to the American people,” he said. “The American people didn’t listen to them too well during the election.”

And then there's President Obama attacking Republicans for disagreeing with him on issues like health care, financial regulatory reform, and energy. Does begging include Obama using the GOP as a punching bag even when Republicans compromise?

We've seen what the Democrat playbook is going to be the next two years: Those mean ol' Republicans won't compromise with us. Of course, compromise to Democrats means rolling over and doing what Democrats propose, ruining the country in the process. Well, in the words of James Clyburn, the GOP is responding to the American people and the American people didn't listen to the Democrats too well during the election.

I Hope Republicans Remember Democrat Dirty Tricks When They Take Over the House in January

For two straight years, we've heard Democrats whining and complaining about how much they tried to work with Republicans to get "bipartisan" legislation. Of course, everyone knew that was horseshit, but today's maneuvers to raise taxes on Democrats' preferred target is probably the best example yet of just how horseshitty Democrats actually are.

This afternoon, House Democrats will hold an up or down vote on vote on President Obama's plan to extend tax cuts to income below $250,000, and they've figured out a way to prevent the Republicans from pulling procedural tricks that might sink it -- a straight vote on whether or not wealthy people deserve an additional tax break. Today, at his weekly press conference, House Minority Leader John Boehner compared the move to fertilizer.

"I'm trying to catch my breath so I don't refer to this maneuver going on today as chickencrap, alright?' Boehner said. "But this is nonsense."

Brace yourself for some procedural jargon: Dems once believed they were faced with two mixed options for holding this vote. The first was to hold an up-or-down vote under the normal rules. But that would give Republicans the opportunity to introduce what's known as a motion to recommit -- a procedural right of the minority that would have allowed them to tack an extension of tax cuts for high-income earners on to the legislation.

The second option -- suspending the rules -- would have foreclosed on that right, but would have required a two-thirds majority of the House for passage: 290 votes, an impossible hurdle.

But Democrats figured out a way to avoid this. They're attaching their tax cut plan as an amendment to a separate bill [the Airport and Airway Extension Act, to wit]. That legislation already passed the House, and has just been returned from the Senate. The rules say it can't be recommitted. So the GOP's hands are tied.

That's what Democrats call bipartisanship.

"I Won" Is Gonna Bite Obama's Butt

Words are powerful things, and I can't imagine that Republican leaders aren't remembering Barack Obama's "I won" snark after the 2009 inauguration. Now, Republicans are rebuffing the President's invitation to the White House, recalling how he crashed their retreat to lecture them on their duty as citizen legislators.

Obama has a long, long way to go to rebuild any kind of bipartisanship.

I'm Sure Glad Glenn Beck's Rally Is Over

I just couldn't take any more of the civility and biparisanship on display from the Left.

More Evidence of "Change"

Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

Remember when it was only those greedy Republicans who did shady things like no bid contracts? Democrats were really gonna clean up that mess.

Democrat Myths on Health Care Reform: Republicans Have Offered No Alternatives

It's a whole lot easier to disregard your opponent's arguments when you mislabel them. Take this Democrat Myth: Republicans are the "Party of 'No'" and only want to stop Obamacare. They have no plan of their own."

Facts are inconvenient things.

Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican who heads the House GOP Study Committee, came to President Obama's speech Wednesday night itching to make a point. Price, who also happens to be an orthopedic surgeon, has often heard the president accuse Republicans of criticizing Democratic health care proposals while having no plans of their own. He expected Obama to do the same Wednesday night.

"We knew the president would at some point say something like, 'and the other side has no ideas,' " Price says. So Price and his Republican colleagues brought with them copies of the more than 30 health care reform bills they have proposed in the House this year.

Obama didn't directly accuse Republicans of not having a plan. But he did say he would welcome "serious" health care proposals. "My door is always open," Obama said.

That's when Price held up the sheaf of papers he was carrying -- a copy of H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, which Price and the Republican Study Committee proposed in July. Other GOP lawmakers held up their own bills. Some raised a list of all the health care bills -- there are more than 30 -- proposed by members of the Study Committee.

Why use the props? "To say in a quiet and respectful way, 'Here are our ideas,' " Price says. "To say to the president, 'You're not being honest with the American people when you say that there haven't been ideas put forward, and that you've listened to them, because you haven't.' "

What Democrats really mean is, "Republicans have no plan we will even consider. And since we're the majority, we can lie about what they're doing with impunity."

Shocker: Democrats Condemn Behavior They Themselves Participated In

It's deja vu all over again. Democrats are up in arms that Joe Wilson called President Obama a liar but didn't have a problem with Harry Reid calling President Bush a lair or heckling GWB during his State of the Union address.

The outrage is precious, and now the destruction of Joe Wilson has begun (see here, here and here). There is a certain irony, of course, to outrage over caffeine, when Teh One used cocaine. But consistency isn't their strong suit.

Wilson has set up a donation page to defend himself, which seems a little seedy. But given the excitement of Democrats to subsidize Wilson's opponent, I say hit the link for Wilson. Or, better yet, get a free "I'm with Joe Wilson" T-shirt. Wear it proudly.

More Democrat Civility and Bipartisanship, Part 3: Budget Reconciliation

As Allahpundit notes, Democrat civility and bipartisanship has a deadline: October 15.

It's been in the works for a while and now, according to senior Captiol Hill staffers, it's a done deal: The final budget resolution will include a "reconciliation instruction" for health care. That means the Democrats can pass health care reform with just fifty votes, instead of the sixty it takes to break a filibuster.

The deal was hatched late afternoon and last night, in a five-hour negotiating session at the office of Senate Majoriy Leader Harry Reid. A trio of White House officials were there: Rahm Emanuel, Peter Orszag, and Phil Schiliro. Also present, along with Reid, were House Budget Chairman John Spratt and Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad.

The reonciliation instruction specifies a date. That date, according to one congressional staffer, is October 15. (The original House reconciliation instruction had a late September deadline.)

We're nationalizing a huge portion of the American economy and you'd better like it.

More Democrat Civility and Bipartisanship, Part 2

If you can't win the election, post the other guy's donor credit card numbers on the internet.

Classy.

The Importance of Bipartisanship

Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained -- by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.

If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'

--Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

Via The Wall Street Journal.

Stephen Fowler

If you've never watched Wife Swap, you haven't missed much, but you would have missed Stephen Fowler, the pompous ass who insulted not just Gayla Long (his wife swap) by calling her "uneducated, over opinionated and overweight," but much of America as gun-totin', fascistic, militaristic yahoos. Here are the videos:





Apparently, Fowlers bizarre and obnoxious behavior has steamed more than a few of the Midwesterners he insulted repeatedly.

Internet message-board commenters went even crazier than usual, posting Fowler's home address, which in turn prompted him to threaten to sue the website where it had appeared. Someone launched stephenfowlersucks.com. On Friday, Fowler finally apologized publicly (on his wife's weight-loss blog) and resigned from the boards of two environmental nonprofits on which he served. And his wife apologized, too, stating that he needed "professional help."

Unfortunately, while watching the videos, I couldn't help but think that Fowler was simply expressing an opinion held by prominent liberals as well as bloggers and their commenters. You don't have to look very hard on the internet to see this opinion of Midwesterners expressed on liberal blogs everywhere. The outrage over Fowler's behavior is justified; unfortunately, he's just behaving like a large part of the lunatic Left.

Democrat Definition of Bipartisanship

You gotta love the Democrats idea of bipartisanship.

First, it's amusing to see Republican leaders redefine words. Democratic leaders and the White House negotiated for days with several Republican senators, and made painful and unnecessary cuts just to earn their support. This, however, isn't "true" bipartisanship, presumably because the far-right is still unhappy.

Um, no, what makes the "stimulus" bill partisan is the ham-handed way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid handled it. If Democrats were honest, they would admit that the financial crisis was used as an excuse to resurrect every Democrat pork project put on hold for the last few years, while Queen Nancy dismissed complaints about partisan way the bill was cobbled together as process arguments.

There was nothing painful about the cuts Democrats agreed to in reducing the price tag of this boondoggle to future generations. And if Democrats hadn't wanted to cut in one "painful" place, there were certainly literally billions of others.

Second, President Obama spent a considerable amount of time and energy engaging congressional Republicans directly, soliciting ideas, making changes, and hearing them out. To hear GOP leaders tell it now, Democrats deserve blame for not incorporating more failed right-wing ideas into the package. (Including hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts wasn't enough to satisfy Republican demands.) The goal, they insist, should be making the failed minority party happy, not rescuing the economy in a time of crisis.

Is this what this deranged fool is talking about when he says Obama engaged congressional Republicans? Was fearmongering and threatening part of "hearing them out"?

Contrary to what the delusional say, the goal of any stimulus package should be to stimulate the economy, not pay off Democrat minions and throw taxpayer money into black holes like the NEA (and no, "black hole" is not racist).

And third, it can't be stated enough that negotiating with people detached from reality is fundamentally impossible. Obama came to the table stating a simple truth: given the circumstances and exhausted options, the economy needs a government stimulus. He was prepared to have good-faith discussions over how much should be spent, where it should be invested, how quickly, etc.

No one in the Republican delegation argued that we didn't need a stimulus bill. The argument was over the scope and size of it. When Obama flippantly told Republicans "I won," he wasn't seriously soliciting their ideas. He was sending them a big FU. It was only once he realized that his plan was tanking that he actually decided negotiations were in order.

Democrats don't care about bipartisanship until they think it's necessary to getting what they want. In this case, a couple of "moderates" (read RINOs) are all they need. Republicans aren't crazy for thinking that stealing from our kids to pay for honeybee farmers today is a bad idea. One of the parties here might be insane, but it's not the Republicans.

That Didn't Take Long

Two weeks into the Obama administration and there are calls to reinstitute the unFairness Doctrine.

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.

Conservative radio hosts warned throughout the campaign season that electing Obama could cause the reimposition of the oppressive and anti-First Amendment unFairness Doctrine.

There's little doubt that the Supreme Court would find such a regulation as an unconstitutional repression of free speech. What was once a way to ensure that radio stations were not megaphones for one or two voices is now a threat to the freest speech available to most people (and the only one dominated by conservatives). With digital and satellite radio, there are literally hundreds of voices to choose from, rather than a handful as late as the 1980s.

But this doesn't mean liberals like free speech on the radio, especially when Barack Obama is pitching a hissy fit because his "stimulus" package is going down in flames. So much for "bipartisanship." For Democrats, bipartisanship means doing it their way and if you don't, we're gonna punish you.

Now They Want Civility?

It's about eight years too late for that.

Beginning shortly after President Bush assumed office in January 2001 and running through his departure from the White House eight years later, Democrats directed nonstop invective at Mr. Bush, and his call for a "new tone" in Washington went unheeded on the left. From "selected, not elected" to then-Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri calling Mr. Bush "a miserable failure" in September 2003 to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid calling him a "loser" during a civics discussion with a group of teenagers at a high school in May 2005 to Howard Dean's many rants to the MoveOn crowd likening him to Adolf Hitler, the political incivility of "recent years" Mr. Davis decries has originated almost entirely on his side of the political aisle.

For the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee now to feign outrage (for fundraising purposes) at radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh's saying "I hope he fails," referring to President Obama's socialist economic agenda, takes some serious chutzpah - even for the DCCC.

No civility. No peace.

Spending Other People's Money

Worried about the stimulus package? Don't be! Make it bigger. After all, financial crises like these only come around once every 30 years or so, and you really can't waste an opportunity to get extra funding for your super duper projects, boondoggles, and constituents.

Well, that seems to be the thinking by Democrats, who want to cram all sorts of spending into a bill that's ostensibly about helping the economy. Except much of what they want to do either won't stimulte the economy (see: contraceptive spending) or won't happen for years (see CBO estimates).

If Democrats were honest, which they aren't, they'd admit that all this talk about pouring tons of money into green energy technologies and bridge projects is mainly about repaying Democrat constituencies and trying to cement their hold on government as opposed to helping anyone. That's why so many dislike tax cuts that could actually create jobs as opposed to giveaways that keep people unemployed as long as possible. And in the spirit of bipartisanship and civility, Democrats reject virtually every amendment Republicans offer that would actually stimulate the economy.

So, let's stop the lying here. This isn't a stimulus package. It's just the same ol', same ol' pork barrel politics that Democrats have always played so well.

Obama to Republicans: "I Won"

So much for bipartisanship.

President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who's in charge of these negotiations. "I won," Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package. They also raised red flags about a refundable tax credit that returns money to those who don’t pay income taxes, the sources said.

Elections have consequences. Remember this the next time somebody acts stunned at the Democrat definition of bipartisanship.

One (Wo)Man's Dissent Is Another's Obstructionism

Why is it that dissent was patriotic when Democrats were in the minority but it is obstruction when practiced by Republicans?

Transparency

Pelosi Reverses House Fairness Rules.

This is change but not the kind most people thought they were getting.

In the Spirit of Bipartisanship

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is supporting rules changes that would limit minority power to affect legislation.

An early partisan skirmish is likely in the House next week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to move a rules package that would curb the GOP’s ability to derail legislation through a parliamentary maneuver it has used over the past two years.

Democrats may also end the current three-term limit for committee chairmen — a limit adopted by Republicans when they took over the House in 1995 and retained in the House rules adopted by Democrats when they regained the majority in the 110th Congress.

A senior House Democratic aide said Pelosi was expected to discuss the two proposed rules changes with Democrats on Monday and had not made a final decision on moving them.

Still, Democratic leaders are taking a hard look at preventing the minority party from scoring easy political points with motions to recommit a bill to committee with instructions to make contentious language changes and then report it back to the House “promptly.” In the outgoing Congress, “promptly’’ has meant an indefinite hold, because committees were not willing to adopt poison-pill amendments sponsored by the minority.

Most motions to recommit require instead that an amended bill be returned to the floor “forthwith,” which means within minutes.

GOP aides complain that the possible limit motions to recommit would take away the minority’s ability to attack tax increases in must-pass bills. That’s because the pay-as-you-go budget rule, which is likely to be renewed, does not allow amendments or motions to recommit forthwith that would remove any of the offsets it requires in legislation.

Is anyone surprised Democrats would try to limit the power of the minority party? After all, it's not like Nancy Pelosi said more Democrats would mean more bipartisanship or anything.