DOWNLOADS: (139)

PLAYS: (254)

Embed

Here's yet another example of why our beltway Villager White House press corps is completely useless. Here's Urban Radio's White House correspondent April Ryan talking to Greta Van Susteren on Fox about the Shirley Sherrod firing.

Ryan: But I'm going to say this. Greta there is a lot of blame to be laid. I'm going to start as a reporter who started out in this business going from the basics, the facts and learning how to put the full context of the story out there. It started shoddy, the reporting was done shoddily and I'm sorry, the full context was not put out and then yesterday when the tape started coming out the full forty three minutes, we understood that it was about racial redemption and reconciliation.

Now some say, maybe she shouldn't have said it. Some say maybe she should have but either way the context of the story was not put out at the very beginning and that's where it starts. There is blame to be laid in almost every facet. You know you can say the NAACP, they're having a meeting this evening. They're very upset about the fact that they had to retract a statement and all the racial aspects that's going on. Then you have the White House having to retract. I mean so many people are involved in this now and it started from shoddy reporting.

While what she said is true, the problem is what she didn't say -- Fox News and Andrew Breitbart. April if you care about "shoddy reporting", don't go on one of the first shows to do the shoddy reporting and complain about how the story wasn't reported properly without bothering to mention that pesky little fact. The story went from Breitbart's site to Fox News' web site straight to O'Reilly, then to the show she's appearing on now, to Hannity. Pitiful.

DOWNLOADS: (512)

PLAYS: (1343)

Embed

Greta Van Susteren allows man-on-dog Rick Santorum to pretend that the Democrats changed the rules in the House of Representatives to get the health care bill passed and say "they cheated". This is particularly egregious since as a former member of the Senate, I'm fairly sure Santorum knows he's lying his ass off here.

The only measure that the House might have taken that was being questioned as violating House procedures that the Republicans were already way too fond of in the past was the "self-executing" rule, and they decided against using it and did the additional votes in both chambers of Congress to reconcile the health care bill instead.

How the Democrats "cheated" to get the bill passed is beyond me. Of course ClusterFox Republican stenographer Van Susteren is not going to point out that Santorum is lying to their sheeple that think her show is "news".

DOWNLOADS: (602)

PLAYS: (3448)

Embed

This was one of the more lively moments on the House floor during the health care bill debate. Rep. David Dreier tries to throw cold water on the notion that Harry Reid can be trusted to have fifty votes to get the fixes that the House wants reconciled. Rep. Louise Slaughter was having none of it.

Dreier: Is it not true that the only thing that we know with absolute certainty, if in fact that it passes is that the Senate bill will become public law? We have heard all about this reconciliation package and the gentlewoman seems to be certain of its passage. But is it not true that this rule guarantees that the only thing that will be law for sure is the Senate bill which has the cornhusker-kickback, the Louisiana purchase and those other items?

Slaughter: Mr. Dreier it’s absolutely true that the Senate bill does contain those things. It has already been passed and requires no further action in the Senate. What we will do today is pass the bill which will then be sent to the President and become law. We will this afternoon pass the…

(crosstalk)

Slaughter: Please let me answer. […]

Dreier: Madam Speaker we now know with certainty that the only thing… (crosstalk)

Slaughter: No you don’t. No you don’t! No! You don’t know that!

Dreier repeats his point that the only thing they know is the Senate bill will become law. Slaughter goes on to explain the reconciliation process they’ve agreed to with the Senate. This was followed by Darrell Issa asking if Rep. Slaughter broke a House rule “lobbying the Senate” from the House floor. Slaughter came back and explained that she wasn’t addressing the Senate.

This was pretty much par for the course with that we saw from both Issa and Dreier for the better part of the day.

DOWNLOADS: (111)

PLAYS: (213)

Embed

Lindsey Graham continues to tell the lie his BFF John McCain was telling on the Senate floor last week, that Sen. Robert Byrd does not think reconciliation can be used to fix the health care bill.

GRAHAM: Well, number one, they related to income and spending. And this is one-sixth of the economy about to be affected here. Under reconciliation, you can't make any changes to Social Security because Senator Byrd understood it was never meant to be used for a purpose like this.

Senator Byrd said you couldn't pass Senator -- President Clinton's health care plan through reconciliation. It was never meant -- and you can repeal the Bush tax cuts if you don't like it. If they use this device called reconciliation to deal out Republicans, it will open up Pandora's box.

And as Think Progress noted, he isn't being honest about the health care plan being very similar to what they passed in Massachusetts either.

GRAHAM: And the interview I just heard is spin, campaigning. I thought the campaigning was over. Are you trying to tell me and the American people that Scott Brown got elected campaigning against a Washington bill that really is just like the Massachusetts bill?

The American people are getting tired of this crap. No way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we're about to do in Washington. We didn't cut Medicare -- they didn't cut Medicare when they passed the bill in Massachusetts. They didn't raise $500 billion on the American people when they passed the bill in Massachusetts.

To suggest that Scott Brown is basically campaigning against the bill in Washington that is like the one in Massachusetts is complete spin. I've been in bipartisan deals, I was in the "gang of 14" to stop the Senate from blowing up when the Republicans wanted to change the rules and use the majority vote to get judges through.

If they do this, it's going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve this year or thereafter.

Poison the well huh... like it can't be any more poisoned than is is now. Digby has more on Graham's hackery this morning.

DOWNLOADS: (477)

PLAYS: (774)

Embed

What do you know... John McCain doesn't have to be on a one of his hundreds of appearances on the cable talking head shows to lie through his teeth. McCain with some help from Lamar Alexander conflates the Senate's filibuster rule with using reconciliation for the fixes in the health care bill that already passed with sixty votes.

As Think Progress pointed out, Senator Byrd refuted this talking point from McCain and Alexander last week -- Sen. Byrd Undermines GOP Talking Point That He Opposes Reconciliation:

Over the last few days, Republicans have repeatedly cited Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-WV) opposition to passing comprehensive health care reform through the reconciliation process as proof that Democrats are skirting Senate rules to “ram through” unpopular legislation. [...]

But as it turns out, Byrd doesn’t oppose using the reconciliation process to pass a small package of fixes to the Senate health care bill. In a letter to the editor published in Thursday’s Charleston Daily Mail, Byrd writes that it’s appropriate to use reconciliation on a package that reduces the deficit.

“I believed then, as now, that the Senate should debate the health reform bill under regular rules, which it did,” Byrd wrote. “The entire Senate- or House- passed health care bill could not and would not pass muster under the current reconciliation rules, which were established under my watch.” “Yet a bill structured to reduce deficits by, for example, finding savings in Medicare or lowering health care costs, may be consistent with the Budget Act, and appropriately considered under reconciliation.”

So now that “the longest-serving member of the Senate” has endorsed the Democrats’ strategy, will Republicans abandon their campaign against majority rule? It’s unlikely.

Well it's a week later and they're still doing it, so not likely indeed.

DOWNLOADS: (677)

PLAYS: (941)

Embed

I guess it's asking too much of Chuck Todd to challenge John Boehner when he comes on his show and lies through his teeth. Help me out if I missed something here. He claims they're going to cut Medicare, calls the United States health care system the "best in the world" and again infers that the health care bill is a "government takeover" of the health care system. Todd then allows a guy who was handing out checks from the tobacco lobby on the House floor back in 1996 to go on about House ethics and Eric Massa's problems. To Todd's credit he did at least bother to mention John Ensign, but when Boehner writes that off as not being his problem because he's in the House and not the Senate he lets that go as well.

Here's your supposed "liberal" television network folks. I expect we'll get something similar when Tom Brokaw interviews Karl Rove on Meet the Press.

The Rachel Maddow Show did some digging and it appears that Bart Stupak may not actually have all the votes he's claiming he has to stop the health care bill from being passed in the House. As Rachel also notes, since Stupak's requests for changes to the bill are either impossible to get passed under reconciliation or just based on lies about what's even in the bill, it's pretty obvious that he's just doing his best to get himself on the television for some face time so he can demagogue the abortion issue and it has nothing to do with the health care debate.

Bart Stupak might come to regret that if Rachel doesn't let up on the reporting she has done on the C-Street House and The Family. And as Susie noted, he's now got himself a primary challenger.

Maddow: Congratulations sir. I hope you’re enjoying your fifteen minutes. Now, who’s been paying your rent? Bart Stupak, you want to be famous? You’re getting famous right now. In terms of America getting to know you there is still one big piece of the puzzle you continue to dodge our questions about. Who sir has been paying your rent? Who paid your rent for years? You even got asked about it by your good friends at Fox today.

(Cut to Fox clip)

Maddow: Always paid fair market value. Um… here’s why we’re a little worried about that claim. As we’ve talked about before Bart Stupak lived at C-Street House in Washington for at least seven years. The C-Street House is a $1.8 million, twelve bedroom, maid service townhouse right near the Capital. We have documented it is owned by the secret religious group The Family even though The Family has recently denied that fact. The Family has in the past acknowledged subsidizing the rent for members of The Family who live in the house, reportedly charging about $600 a month. Even though Mr. Stupak denies being a member of The Family it seems clear from news reports at least that he was paying below market rent to live there. And if he wasn’t all he has to do is answer the questions that we have put to him repeatedly.

Who did you pay your rent to Congressman Stupak? How much did you pay? And do you know who was subsidizing the rest? Did you report that subsidy as an in kind donation? Did you report it as income to the IRS? These questions don’t go away because you moved out when the heat got to you. Mr. Stupak you have succeeded in using this abortion stunt to get on TV a lot. If you really want Americans to know who you are tell us who has been paying your rent. We just learned that Bart Stupak now has a Democratic primary challenger back in Michigan. Her name is Connie Saltonstall. She said she decided to challenge him because of this anti-abortion grandstanding on the health care issue. Turns out this is going to be a very exciting year for Bart Stupak after all and it’s not because he’s going to kill health reform.

You can Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand and make a donation at Blue America to help Bart Stupak's challenger Connie Saltonstall among others.

Chris Hayes filling in for Rachel Maddow talks to Howard Dean about the protests held outside of the Ritz-Carlton "where the insurance companies were having their conference and plotting to kill health reform". Dean also weighed in on what he thinks should happen if the bill does pass -- the Senate should either include a Medicare buy-in or restore the House version which has a public option. He also thinks they should get rid of the individual mandate and that might make it a decent bill. I guess we'll find out if anyone's listening to Dean shortly if the bill does make it through the House.

Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains the reconciliation process that Democrats need to pass health care reform and what Republicans can do to drag it out.

Stephen Colbert opines that Americans don't want health care reform jammed down their throats - "unless it's first battered and deep fat-fried."

From the March 8, 2010 edition of The Colbert Report.

DOWNLOADS: (137)

PLAYS: (261)

Embed

Media Matters caught this one -- National Review's Lowry falsely equates reconciliation and nuclear option in order to accuse Dionne of hypocrisy in yet another example of why E.J. Dionne on the panel of Meet the Press this weekend was the only thing that made it watchable.

MR. DIONNE: Rich's point about process, I went back and looked at all the columns I wrote criticizing the Bush tax cuts. I never made a process argument about reconciliation. I argued about the merits of the tax cut, and I think instead of talking about process we ought to talk about the merits of the health plan.

MR. LOWRY: But you really, you did, E.J., you did write a very stirring column about the nuclear option in defense of the Senate...

MR. DIONNE: That was...(unintelligible).

MR. LOWRY: ...as an anti, as an anti-majoritarian institution.

MR. DIONNE: That has nothing to do with--I believe...

MR. LOWRY: And look, just one last thing...

SEN. HATCH: I've got it right here.

MR. LOWRY: ...E.J., the point you're saying if Republicans are united, the Democrats can't govern, is what they're saying. It would have been relatively easy--and Senator Hatch would be an expert on this because he worked so closely with Ted Kennedy on health issues--to get 65 or 70 votes for a major healthcare bill in the Senate. Not this, but $100 billion, $200 billion more for Medicaid, for SCHIP, maybe some version of this Plan B we've seen reporting about that the White House--after Massachusetts came up with a plan where they'd cover just 15 million people at a quarter of the cost. You do something like that and you would have picked off five or 10 Republicans in the Senate, but they didn't want to do it.

MR. DIONNE: Senator Baucus spent months holding hand--Senator Baucus spent months holding hands with Senator Bauc--with Senator Grassley and Senator Enzi and got nowhere.

SEN. HATCH: I, I, I...

MR. GREGORY: OK, quick final point then I'm going to take a break. Senator:

SEN. HATCH: I was a member of the gang of seven. He was so restricted by the Democratic process that he couldn't really do anything for Republicans. So I had to leave just out of honor because I couldn't--I'd walk out of there and, and trash everything they were doing, so I left out of honor. The other Republicans gradually left, too. There has been no real effort to try and get together on all the things we can get together on. It's just been "take it or leave it," and that's been their attitude.

MR. GREGORY: All right, we're going to, we're going to leave, we're going to leave it there.