Bush Tells Senate GOP To Stop Obstructionism By: Mark W Adams

Monday: 46 Iraqis Killed, 11 Wounded
Sunday: 53 Iraqis Killed, 33 Wounded
Saturday: 1 US Soldier, 40 Iraqis Killed; 46 Iraqis Wounded; 41 Iraqis Kidnapped

Okay, no he didn't, even though when he told Congress to Get To Work, implying of course that the Democratic led Congress is to blame for the backlog of pending legislation, he seemed sincere.

But in light of the fact that the Senate Republicans have set a new record for filibusters, stonewalling almost everything coming down the pike, you'd think a simple phone call to Mitch McConnell would stop the nonsense.

So far in this first year of the 110th Congress, there have been 72 motions to stop filibusters, most on the Iraq war but also on routine issues like reauthorizing Amtrak funding. There were 68 such motions in the full two years of the previous Congress, 53 in 1987-88 and 23 in 1977-78. In 1967-68, there were 5 such votes, one of them on a plan to amend cloture itself, which failed.

For policy making, this is the legislative equivalent of gum on a shoe.

This makes everyone look bad, but in BushWorld, they love to confuse the public -- even after they're out of office and rewriting history. Just make no mistake about it. The GOP has not only filibustered more in this first year of this term than any full two-year term in the history of the body, but they're going to keep on doing it. At this rate it will surpass the number of all the filibusters from all the Congressional terms combined.

Since they hate government anyway, they're willing to take this shot in the gut as long as the Democrats can get smeared in the process of making the whole system look bad. They'll just lie about it later anyway, to us as well as themselves.

Remember, with Right Wing Authoritarians, it's not about policy, just power.