video At yesterday's White House briefing, the hot topic du jour was the House Democrats' procedural "Deem and Pass" maneuver, also known as "Demon Pass," the "Slaughter Rule," and if I'm not mistaken, the "Cider House Rule?"  I'm not sure about that last one. All this after Fox News' Brett Baier spent a good chunk of his POTUS exclusive grilling President Obama on whether he supports the maneuver. Just to be thorough, I took a shot at the question with First Dog Bo Obama. Not surprisingly, he agreed with the President. (more...)

Last week's health care summit was largely the result of outrage over the lack of promised transparency in health care reform. While that criticism focused on conference negotiations over the health care bill, the true failure of transparency occurred in the spring and summer of 2009, as the White House met with leaders from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. I asked Robert Gibbs about it Friday. Listen carefully to what I asked, and to his response: (more...)

On last night's Countdown, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs left host Keith Olbermann shaking his head like a tourist who'd just lost his fun money in a game of 3-card monte.

At issue was the contradiction between the President's call for the Senate not to push anything through in advance of Scott Brown's swearing in, and Gibbs' assertion that the House voting on the Senate healthcare reform bill was still on the table. Gibbs explains, but Keith is still muttering about it long after the pre-taped interview.

This is what I get for watching The O'Reilly Factor.

I've found that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who hate "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" (like me), and those who don't. I've also found that members of the latter group are really, really amused by it. It is for them that I post Ray Stevens' latest ode to mythological Grandmomicide, "We the People."

Seriously, I know people who laugh at "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" every single time!

If I didn't know any better, I might think that Stevens is making fun of wingnut opponents of healthcare reform. While the whole thing smacks of self-parody, what I really love is how Stevens warns against the infringin' of our right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I guess the operative word here is "our."

Watch and enjoy, if only for the knowledge that opponents of healthcare are being led by a guy who wants to let Joe the Plumber "crunch the numbers."

The sparks kicked up by C-Span's request to televise healthcare negotiations have erupted into a firestorm, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was grilled about the President's campaign promise of complete transparency, and responded testily. CNN's Jack Cafferty delivered a stinging j'accuse to President Obama, calling the pledge a "lie just to get elected."

At today's White House briefing, Robert Gibbs answered another raft of questions about President Obama's campaign promise to show all healthcare negotiations on C-Cpan. He was testy from the start, referring Chip Reid "to yesterday's transcript."

When pressed, Gibbs reiterated his answers from yesterday, asking if the media had lacked information about the healthcare reform process in producing stories. Finally, Fox News' Major Garrett asked Gibbs if the President kept his promise. The answer he gave was surprising.

"Yes." That's not what I got from his answers yesterday. It sounded more like "We did pretty well with that," a debatable position, but there's no way to square this with the President's promise to air everything.

On the other end of the scale sits Jack Cafferty, whose apoplectic comments during the 2008 campaign made him an unlikely darling of liberals. He came out firing at Gibbs and the President, saying the transparency promise was a lie.

While Gibbs is clearly wrong, Cafferty well overstates his case here, saying that President Obama "hasn't even made a token effort to keep his campaign promises of more openness and transparency." To be sure, the failures at transparency are big ones, but this administration still has a record of openness that is unprecedented.

The decision to skip formal conference committee negotiations, and not to televise them, is going to continue to cost the administration politically. The calculation here, I believe, is that entrusting the healthcare reform bill to a full conference of a Congress that can't get out of its own way is a recipe for disaster. If skipping conference saves the bill, it may well be worth all the bad press.

video Although most news operations seem more concerned with transparency as it relates to our clothing at airport scanners these days, the White House is taking fire anew over the President's campaign pledge to strip-search healthcare negotiations in full view of the public. There may be good, reasonable answers to these questions, but what the White House gave us yesterday isn't it.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was pressed on the issue of Health Care transparency yesterday, spurred by a letter from C-SPAN which requested access to the upcoming process of reconciling the House and Senate bills. Here's some of what Gibbs had to say:

Transcript:

Q Okay, just lastly, why can't you answer the C-SPAN question --

MR. GIBBS: I did.

Q Well, you didn't, because you said --

MR. GIBBS: I said I hadn't seen the letter, which I haven't --

Q Why do you need to see a letter? I mean, this is something the President said during the campaign and he talked about he wants everything open on C-SPAN --

MR. GIBBS: Dan asked me about the letter and I haven't read the letter.

Q Well, I'll just ask you about having it on C-SPAN --

MR. GIBBS: I answered Dan's question and I answered this before we left for the break, Keith. The President's number-one priority is getting the differences worked out, getting a bill to the House and the Senate. We've filled your newspaper and many others with the back-and-forth and the details of what's in these bills. I don't want to keep that from continuing to happen. I don't think there's anybody that would say that we haven't had a thorough, robust, now spanning two calendar years' debate on health care.

Q There are a lot of reasons not to do it on C-SPAN -- people could showboat. Does he regret making that statement during the campaign?

MR. GIBBS: No.

This isn't the first time this has come up, and Gibbs' responses are pretty consistent. This White House, as even consummate skeptic Jake Tapper points out, has an excellent record of transparency relative to past administrations. This has been the White House's drumbeat, that the Obama administration has been more transparent than any in our history. The release of the White House visitor logs and the almost real-time reporting of Recovery Act data are good examples of this, as well as some of the problems that can accompany this kind of openness.

Even on Health Care, the promise of openness has been partially fulfilled. Gibbs is quite correct that there has been an unprecedented level of public involvement in the debate. An extensive healthcare summit at the beginning of this process was a model of what the President had promised, engaging a wide variety of stakeholders in full view of C-Span's cameras. Along the way, there has been copious coverage of various debates and votes in Congress.

But Gibbs' responses yesterday failed to address the most important part of that pledge, the one that has gone unfulfilled. Secret negotiations like the one between the pharmaceutical lobby, the White House, and the Senate Finance Committee are the Obama pledge's raison d'etre. Hours of debate and information are nice, but the real value of transparency is in keeping everyone honest. By meeting with insurance and pharmaceutical industry leaders in private, the administration has shielded the parties most in need of being kept honest, the ones most likely to poison the process.

In fact, the President even referenced the pharmaceutical lobby specifically when explaining the benefits of an open process:

If there had been television cameras at those negotiations with PhRMA, would that deal have ever been struck? Probably not, and that might be the tough answer that's being left unsaid. If the administration felt that removing the pharmaceutical lobby as an obstacle was crucial to getting reform done, so much so that it outweighed their pledge for transparency, that would be an ugly truth, but a truth nonetheless.

We were promised transparency filet mignon to replace the bread and water of  previous administrations, and we've ended up with Domino's Pizza. Granted, it's the new and improved Domino's, but still. The White House owes the American people a better explanation of the menu change.

On Wednesday, Business Insider reported that Facebook users were being plied with virtual cash (for games like Mafia Wars) to email their Senators to oppose a public health insurance option. The health insurance industry-backed website to which the ads directed users, Get Health Reform Right, is down today. We contacted the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, who runs the site, to find out why.

I'll be honest: I didn't read the Health Care bill. I didn't attend a Tea Party or or a Town Hall. On any given day, I couldn't tell you the state of the public option or Sarah Palin's views on death panels. In many ways, therefore, I'm a regular voter. Most people, even accounting for inflation, weren't involved in protests over health care, and didn't make calls for Obama. Most people didn't watch C-SPAN all day yesterday. Most people don't pay attention, but get their information tangentially. With the exception of the C-SPAN thing, that's me. And, as a regular voter, not a Capitol Hill wonk, it's hard for me to see the House vote on health care as anything but a massive victory for President Obama. (more...)

For 73 days now, I have been investigating the $80 billion deal struck between the PhRMA lobby, the White House, and the Senate Finance Committee. Specifically, I've been trying to find out why the White House and the Finance Committee didn't disclose a monumentally important fact when I asked them about it in June, only to have it leaked by the PhRMA lobby in early August, and confirmed by the White House. (more...)

As the debate over health care reform continues to dominate the news, there is the inevitable criticism of media bias on both sides of the debate. Aside from their editorial pages, the Wall Street Journal is well known for its unique focus on reporting facts, keeping its reputation as an unbiased source of news untarnished. But since its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. two years ago, has the WSJ succumbed to the alleged bias that has afflicted other News Corp. properties Fox News and the NY Post? (more...)

VIDEO Ever find that sometimes when you’re talking with friends or co-workers that a certain word keeps getting repeated over and over again? Maybe it’s a flashy one or just a really useful one, but it just keeps making the rounds in e-mails or chit-chat? Well, you’re not alone – the media also loves to reuse and recycle (not so much reduce). Welcome to Mediaite’s Meme Watch, a compilation of the media’s most talked-about words… literally. This edition? Death panels! We're resisting the urge to say, "We told you so," but we totally told you so. (more...)

Watching a few hours of Fox News these days amounts to a non-stop infomercial opposing  the Obama Administration's effort to reform Health Care.  While there is always room for a healthy debate on the issues, please don't look to Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck for a measured discourse - they  rarely, if ever, present a constructive solution to the current health care problems (though there is the occasional admission that there is need for reform.) No single entity seems more entrenched in the opposition to the health care reform than Fox News. (more...)

In June, I wrote a story that raised big questions about the value of the government's $80 billion deal with Big Pharma, and wondered if the deal came with the trade-off of killing legislation that would enable the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices. Such a trade-off would be indefensible. That week, I took extraordinary steps to determine if this was the case. I spoke personally with a White House Deputy Press Secretary twice, followed by multiple emails. I also spoke, personally, to the press official for the Senate Finance Committee, followed by multiple emails. There was no doubt as to what I was asking. I never got a response from either of them. (more...)

The Democratic National Committee released a web ad Tuesday that seems to have hit a "Marathon Man"-style nerve with conservatives online. Entitled "Enough of the Mob," the ad features clips of recent disruptions at health care town hall meetings, including a "Birther" with what looks like a large wonton wrapper in a Ziploc bag. (more...)