Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

In which Republicans announce they would be thrilled -- really, just thrilled -- to support a stimulus package...as long as it is exactly as they would have written it if they hadn't been kicked to the electoral curb as utterly discredited failures, and is completely congruent with their ruinous and roundly repudiated crackpot economic theories.

So, go bipartisanship!

Although they are willing to say nice things about the parts of where Democrats have caved in and sugared up the packages with Conservative Cyclamates in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars more in economically reckless cut taxes.

So, go Buy-partisanship!

On “Meet the Press”

David Gregory starts the fun by rolling over and letting John Boehner -- the Umber Weephole of Rightwing Umbrage -- scratch his furry, white tummy while telling tall tales about sunny Guantanamo (from C&L):

"We've already found 61 of those we released back on the battlefield," said Boehner.

A study published by Seton Hall Law Professor Mark Denbeaux on Jan. 15 finds the Pentagon wrongly altered its figures on terrorist 'recidivism' 43 times, with the latest figure being "the most egregiously so."

Boehner then sobbed out big, inconsolable Conservative Jebus-tears

over the prospect that some poor, Republican trustifarian somewhere may this very evening have to go to bed without a tax cut:

Democrats want to piss away your munnies on sod and contraceptives! OMFG! Everyone knows that the only way to save us all is to keep cutting taxes. For rich people. Forever. So we want to work with this President. This isn’t about Democrat and Republican. We want him to succeed. And we want our party to be the party of better ideas.

Like, say, maybe…tax cuts.

Hellz yeah!

Hey, did someone say tax cuts?

Sure, why not!

Bigger and awesomer tax cuts.

Tax cuts visible from space.



Later, Tom Friedman reassured a worried nation that Moustache of Understanding’s Strategic Cliché Reserve is in no danger of running dry.

On the economic package (after an excruciating, 70-minute explanation of the movie “Jaws” up to the moment he is referring to, for the nine adults in America who are unfamiliar with the movie): Your gonna need a bigger boat.

On the Middle East: Gaza & West Bank iz hard. Gonna take Presidential leadership.

On terrorism generally: One more massive attack on America and that’s the end of open society as we know it. That happens and you’ll be taking of more than your shoes at the airport

On “Fox News Sunday”

John McCain believes that Barack Obama is perhaps walking into the worst situation since Lincoln, and that he can maybe help him devising a strategy in Afghanistan.

OK, but....

According to Big John McCain, the stimulus should have more…what?

A) Limes.
B) Carbon neutrality
C) Tax cuts

And the …what?…should be made permanent:

A) Republican minorityhood.
B) The Conflateriarchy.
C) Bush tax cuts.

McCain: As-is, the Liberal Stimulomicon sucks ass and I won't sign it.

McCain: Yeah, waterboarding is torture, but people who did it were just following orders and should not be prosecuted.

Wallace: How much ouchy boo-boo was it losing to that Scary Socialist?

McCain: I have been humbled and honored to work for this country.

Wallace: But bathos makes such better teevee, so please be peevish and self-pitying.

McCain: No

Wallace: What about Mooselini?

McCain I think the world of Sarah Palin. I’m pleased to know her, and she has a bright future.

Later, Chuck Schumer explains that the 1/3 of the stimulus based on tax cuts was to make the Republicans happy.

Schumer: There are three goals for the economic package. Immediate assistance. Creating jobs. Improve the efficiency of the economy. Health care IT. Energy gird. This last will make it possible for the economy to have someplace to go once it recovers.

Almost all economists say it is the right balance, and most – several conservative – say it is not big enough.

Wallace: What about the fucking bankers?

Schumer: The problem with the first package was that, for some mysterious reason, opening up the bellies of C-5s


and indiscriminately dumping bales of untraceable cash on people


doesn't work as either military or domestic policy.

So maybe this time we’ll try keep track of this shit?

Wallace: Communist!


On “Face the Nation”

Vice President Joe Biden explained that because the Bush Administration’s attention span for all things non-Iraq was about 16 seconds, Afghanistan has reverted to the same Taliban-ruled, narco-funded pesthole that it was before 9/11. Which means now we have to go back and retake the same ground we fought and bled over seven years ago.



On ”The Chris Matthews Show”

Bob Woodward: The problem is, my banker friends the banks are not making money.

Howard Fineman: Obama needs one, big idea. Like Reagan’s tax cuts. Because Americans are idiots who cannot comprehend, say, Two Ideas at once. Or, god forbid, Three.

Woodward: We need more of my banker friends banks to be able to come out and say “I’m making money.”

Fineman: Republicans are a lot more partisan than I expected them to be.

Shorter Kelly O’Donnell: If you investigate stuff, the Republicans will say bad things about you.

Shorter Bob Woodward: Too late anyway.


Then, a perfect example of the Mouse Circus’ dark antics: “What do you think was in the private note between Bush and Obama?”

In other words, let’s spend five minutes on completely out-of-our-asses speculation about a subject which it is inherently impossible for any of us to know a damn thing about.



On “This Week”

George Stephanopoulos: Aren’t you screwing the GOP out of a voice in the process? Where’s the effing biparty-time goodness?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: No. We listened to them and we took up their amendments in committee.

Pelosi: There isn’t any economist in the world that thinks things are anything but screwed sideways.

Pelosi: The investments were making will create more jobs than tax cuts, but to make the GOP happy we’re including tax cuts too.

Stephanopoulos: How about throwing more hundreds of billions at the banks? Shall we nationalize?

Pelosi: Whatever you call it, the American people should get an equity share in the banks.



Then, the roundtable pairs off Paul Krugman (Noble-prize winning economist) with Carly Fiorina (HP kamikaze-CEO and former ace-adviser to the McCain Campaign), as well as the usual suspects; Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts and George Will.


Krugman: The delay in spending is probably not a bad thing since the CBO is predicting that the economy will still be sucking the tail-pipe in 2011.

Krugman: None of the things that worked 25 years ago have any prospect of working today.

Krugman: We have been underinvesting in infrastructure.

Fiorina: But none of this solves the credit crisis…

Krugman: The problem is we have a borderline-insolvent financial system. Banks are holding a bunch of worthless crap.

Fiorina: Government shouldn’t own the banks, but the money should come with stings attached. Tiny, spider-web-thin, free-market strings, one of which should be they have to actually lend me some fucking dinero it.

Krugman: So you want the government to run the banks…without owning the banks. How charmingly magical thinking of you.

Will: Democrats don’t want to unwind this problem because it lets them do what they’ve wanted to do for 30 years: permeate corporate governance with what they call the social good.

Krugman: Who?

Will: Barney Frank.

Krugman: Barney Frank just wants to regulate banks the way we always have.

Will: Grrrr...

And this is why you have people like The Shrill One on these shows; so when George Will poops out for the millionth time some tired, Republican talking point about Democrats being Sekrit Socialists, someone is actually present at the scene of the crime to get up in his grill and demand that he back his piffle up with the bare minimum of journalisming standards: specific names and specific acts.

Which is where most GOP homilies about the horrors of the Gummint and the glories of unfettered capitalism tend to melt down.

At least that’s what some people say…

So when Fiorina says that, instead of scary government regulations, Murrican Bidniz should regulate itself -- should step up -- that people who have driven their companies into the ground (like HP?) shouldn’t be given fat bonuses -- I would agree.

Because, hey, if multi-billion-dollars corporations ran on shoulda-woulda-coulda that would be nine different kinds of awesome.

But they don’t. And in my lifetime they never have.

And wouldn’t it be nice if someone – anyone – were around to mention those little, inconvenient facts before one more cubic yard of Conservative free market bullshit is allowed to dry into another cinderblock of congealed conventional Villager Wisdom to be hung around our dirty hippy throats?