Barack Obama gave his first press conference last night and a nation swooned… except for those Republicans who scoffed at blogger Ezra Klein‘s suggestion that we eliminate the filibuster in the Senate.
Did you watch the presse? I watched it without sound at a bar and discovered it is really hard to read captioning when you’ve already polished off 3 bottles of wine between 4 people. Anyway, apparently, President Obama really wants Congress to stop pussyfooting around and pass the stimulus, Helen Thomas was wearing something with fur and asking about “so-called terrorists”, HuffPo hottie Sam Stein asked about Leahy’s proposal to investigate the Bushies and then a bunch of other people asked a bunch of other things and we all went back to paying attention to one another because, really, we didn’t give a fuck about whether A-Rod depresses Obama or not. But, hey, at least Obama is acknowledging that bipartisanship requires that the other guys be less partisan, too.
Speaking of the other guys, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ain’t having any more of this bipartisan-shit than he was last week and RNC Chair Michael Steele thinks the stimulus is all just “bling-bling” because it’s a shiny, shiny win that Obama plans to metaphorically hang around his neck. (Seriously, if it wasn’t a black RNC chair using that terminology, we’d be outraged, right? Just checking.) I mean, for fuck’s sake, dudes, even the National Association of Manufacturers — helmed by a former GOP governor — is for the stimulus package. It’s time to stop being whiny bitches because someone else thought of stimulating the free market economy first.
In the meantime, the Dems have enough votes to stymie a filibuster which has led Ezra Klein to call for the elimination of the ability of the minority to filibuster and me to smack my forehead with the palm of my hand. I mean, really? I said it once to Rahm Emanuel, let me say it to Ezra: do we remember the judges that the Dems filibustered out of appointments in the Bush Administration? When Bill Frist was ready to employ the nuclear option and eliminate the filibuster to keep progressives from stalling the agenda of the majority and progressives all hollered? Because I do. I liked the filibuster then. I like it now. I liked it years ago. I’ll like it years from now. I don’t like what some people choose to do with it — the Civil Rights Act being a major case in point — but I don’t expect that the party I mostly agree with will always be in power and I like that the minority opinion in this country can hold some sway when it’s my opinion, so I don’t begrudge the same power to the guys I don’t agree with.