Obama's Flippity-flip-flop

Why don't we hear this anymore--any reporting about the flip-flops of our currently in-charge administration. Oh, why ask why, since the answer is so obvious: In-the-tank journalistic malpractice.

However, Byron York in an opinion piece at washingtonexaminer.com is willing to look at Obama's latest flip about the effectiveness of Congress.

Here's what The Won said in a campaign fundraising speech in Denver on Thursday:

"Look, something you got to understand -- for those who don't believe in government, those who don't believe that we have obligations to each other, it's a lot easier task. If you can gum up the works, if you make things broken, if the Senate doesn't get anything done, well, that's consistent with their philosophy. It's a whole lot easier to say no to everything. It's a whole lot easier to blame somebody else. That politics that feeds on peoples' insecurities, especially during tough political times -- that's the easiest kind of politics. There's a long, storied history of that kind of politics."

Oh, this is hilarious on so many levels. How many votes "NO" did Obama make during his 147 days' career  as the Junior Senator for Illinois? But now that he's president, evidently voting "No" as part of the loyal opposition is "gumming up the works" and "making things broken." Not to mention his swipe at the Congress "blaming somebody else"--has he actually not heard himself, about 10,000 times in the past year, blaming Bush for everything that's gone wrong in his own administration? Has he somehow forgotten that for the entire first year of his term, the Democrats had the majority in both the House and the Senate? You'd never know that from his statement.

As Byron York points out in his opinion piece, Obama's words in Denver are a striking flip-flop from his earlier statements praising Congress' ability to get things done. At a campaign speech fundraiser in California last October, Obama said this: "If we stopped today, this legislative session would have been one of the most productive in a generation."

Really? So which is it, Champ? York's opinion about the 180-degree flip-flop in Obama's complaint about the Congress not being able to get anything done is that Obama is talking about one thing: the inability of Congress to pass the health crap bill.

The fact is, when you hear the president and Democrats in Congress complain about not being able to get anything done, or about Washington being broken, they're talking about one thing: their inability to pass a national health care reform bill. Congress can do, and is doing, lots of things -- just not sprawling, omnibus "comprehensive" bills that are unpopular with the American people. (The same can be said for cap-and-trade legislation, now dead in the Senate.) If you put aside enormous bills that would re-order the American economy in ways the public does not want, Congress can do things just fine.