2010-01-06
C-SPAN to Democrats: You Lied About Healthcare Debate & You Suck
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Democrats including President Barack Obama promised that the health care debate would be brought before the public on C-SPAN. I thought it was pretty clever, actually, because nobody actually watches C-SPAN except crazy people from both sides of the spectrum who like to call in to the open lines and make complete asses out of themselves.
Anyway, up until this point, the Republican Party and the rest of the American population have been dragged by their hair in this health care reform process, kicking and screaming. Unable to override the 60 vote Democratic majority in the Senate, we've really been forced to resort to obstructing them wherever we can and telling the truth about what's in the bill to the American people.
Well, now we've reached the most critical stage of the entire process. Both Houses of Congress have passed their forms of the bill and now it's up to them to iron out their differences and create the final bill that both Houses will vote on and send to the President. Well, the negotiations to this political pow-wow are closed to both the Republican lawmakers and C-SPAN.
In other words, the Democratic Party has broken it's promise to not only keep this process out of secrecy and on C-SPAN, but to reform the corruption that has run rampant through Washington under both parties. These sort of secret deals, like the one that was brokered with Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) that gives Nebraska citizens certain tax exemptions for no practical purpose other than to win Nelson's vote, are proof that Democrats are even worse than Republicans when it comes to corrupt politics.
C-SPAN is actually quite upset about it. Brian Lamb, the CEO over at C-SPAN, wrote Democratic leaders in Congress promising to use the latest in digital camera and lighting technology to make their presence at the meeting at unobtrusive as possible. Democratic leaders responded by saying:
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I didn't forget the quote. They just didn't respond. Brian Lamb is actually covering C-SPAN's butt in all of this. If he didn't speak up about this publicly, the Republican Party would have criticized the Democrats for keeping this meeting off C-SPAN and the Democrats could have lied (again) and blamed C-SPAN for not wanting to cover it. It'd then be a battle of "He Said, She Said" that wouldn't go anywhere. By speaking out, Brian Lamb is declaring that he and his network are not going to be blamed for this and, essentially, that Democrats plain ol' suck for not letting cameras into the room and the American people into the process.
I'd say the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves right now, but I think we've all learned from this process that Democrats don't have shame.
