HR 3548

president obama will sign the UI extension bill today. it's a victory for the republicans though. they managed to hold the thing up for a month by insisting on the inclusion of a number of wholly unrelated amendments. and the bill being signed will, thanks to the republicans, have one of those amendments still attached: the controversial homebuyer's tax credit. controversial because of the fraud associated with it and because it's basically been acknowledged that it isn't spurring anybody to buy a house. nearly everybody who's benefitted from the credit would have bought a house anyway.

it's a victory for the republicans because they were able to hold the bill up for a month using a bunch of frivolous amendments to do so and most of the mainstream media let the story pass without comment. do you remember the coverage during the bush administration on the rare instances when the democrats occasionally slowed down the legislative process? the republicans spend most of their time in the senate nowadays preventing the democrats from getting things done. where's the reporting on this? it's deliberate obstructionism. the republicans held up a bill for UI extensions and as each day passed, more and more unemployed people found themselves with no source of income. where's the outrage? meanwhile, the crazies who are comparing obama to hitler because of the dem healthcare plan get quite a lot of fairly credulous coverage. remember how the anti-war movement lost face with the media after the move-on dust-up where someone submitted an anti-war ad that compared bush to hitler? that came up over and over again. why doesn't it happen with obama's virulently insane critics? why isn't the entire movement discredited based on the prevalence of extremists within it? because the supposedly liberal media has allowed itself to be boxed into a corner regarding conservatives and republicans. republicans have loudly complained about liberal bias in the media for so long that it's now accepted as the truth. as a result, the media is simply loathe to do honest reporting when conservatives are involved. and conversely, they're delighted when they can report scandals that make the democrats look bad, because they can use that coverage to disprove their liberal bias. and of course it doesn't work, because there's always something else that, according to cons, proves how liberal the newsmedia is. and on it goes...