If nothing else, Barack Obama is a glutton for punishment. Apparently confident in his ability to manhandle the Republican leadership in the wake of his televised beat-down of the House GOP caucus two weeks ago, Obama has invited McConnell, Boehner and company to the White House for a health care summit. But instead of applying a full-court press on recalcitrant members of his own party to finally pass a Democratic bill the country so badly needs, Obama will waste yet more time in his futile quest for bipartisanship.

After a year of unprecedented obstructionism by the Republican Party, it begs the question:

Mr. President, what part of "no" don't you understand?

Within days of Obama taking the oath of office, Clinton health care assassin Bill Kristol counseled his Republican colleagues to repeat their obstructionism at all costs. (Not, of course, because Democratic health reform plans might fail, as Orrin Hatch later admitted, but precisely because they might succeed.) Despite facing almost total GOP opposition to his economic stimulus plan, on health care President Obama reached out to mythical moderates like Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME). All voted against the Senate bill, including Snowe (who supported it in the Finance Committee) and Grassley (who was among those regurgitating the "pull the plug on grandma" fraud).

And the 220-215 margin in the House and the complete 60-39 Republican rejection in the Senate came despite, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein reported, "The six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill":

At this point, I don't think it's well understood how many of the GOP's central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill.

On July 20, 2009, weeks before the August town hall disruptions and a full seven months before President Obama's proposed bipartisan health care conclave is to meet, Bill Kristol penned a memo telling Republicans to "Kill It, and Start Over." And for months, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, John Kyl, John Cornyn, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and myriad other Republican leaders have faithfully coughed up that same talking point. As Boehner reproduced it in September:

"It's really about the president pushing the reset button. There's a way to start this process over, and I think that's really what the American people want. Let's start over."

And as Eric Cantor and John Boehner made clear today in the responses to the President's invitation, that rejectionist position is still operative.

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I saw President Obama talking to Katie Couric before the Super Bowl, and I didn't breathe for a few minutes as I took in what he was proposing. I guess they are spooked by the losses of the mythical independent voters in recent polling, but even if that's the case, it's a horrible idea from my perspective.

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health-care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do.

I understand the strategy behind them doing this, but the country is too polarized at this point to really turn perceptions enough to make any difference.

This will accomplish nothing except to possibly empower Republican obstructionists even more. They will tell us what wonderful new ideas they have and that if only Obama opened up competition in all the states, it would solve all the problems in health care. Here's Crying Boehner's response:

"The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access. The House Republican alternative, which would lower premiums by up to 10 percent while increasing access for Americans without health insurance, would be a solid starting point. I look forward to discussing these issues with the Democratic Leadership and the President."

America didn't elect President Obama so that Republicans could rule the legislative process, but through the guidance of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, that's what's happening now. There is no way Republicans will sign on to anything at this point unless the president gives in to all of their demands.

Funny thing how Obama keeps reaching out to the other side instead of his own. I'd much rather have a liberal blogger meeting with President Obama instead of having to endure this.

Digby also adds a lot to this discussion and brings a really smart observation to the discussion. Much sharper than what you'd hear from the MSM.

It's fascinating, of course, because it's gossip and because some in the White House and others close to the administration have decided to try to dethrone these four. The courtiers are rebelling...read on

UPDATE: And here comes the reinforcements. There's and article in FT.com that says the Chicago team is hurting the Obama White House and I can't disagree on that one.

Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce has written a granularly informed insider account about those who hold the keys to the inner most sanctum of Obama Land -- Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

--
The article goes on to document how people like Health Secretary and former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius were kept off television -- along with others like Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Add to this others that Luce does not name -- including important voices like Paul Volcker and Austan Goolsbee on Obama's economic team, who saw their public voices choked off by a media-dominating Lawrencean Summers with support from Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel.

I've been complaining about the lack of surrogate speakers to go out and sell his ideas and the lack of a cohesive legislative strategy and that's been a huge problem also. Read the piece---it's very good. Oh, and Obama is the president and isn't a child so he still has the ultimate say.

I suppose the president is doing this as political cover for the eventual use of reconciliation. But I suspect he really thinks he's going to change the way things work in Congress -- either he's crazy, or a genius. Personally, I wish he'd give up trying to be the Great Mediator and just ram through his agenda - the same way George Bush did with much less public support:

President Obama moved to jump-start the stalled health-care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to participate in a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on the subject this month.

The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric hours before the network televised the Super Bowl.

Obama challenged Republicans, who have been largely unified in opposing his proposals, to bring their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system to the public discussion.

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama said. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

The invitation to meet together on Feb. 25 -- and to do so live in front of the American public -- represents an effort by Obama to hit the reset button on the top domestic priority of his first year in office. It also reflects a recognition that he must have at least some Republican support if he hopes to see health-care reform pass.

[...] GOP leaders on Sunday said they welcomed the outreach but called it evidence that Obama knows he must start over if he wants to earn their support going forward.

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson did a bang-up job in the new issue dissecting what happened to Obama's campaign apparatus -- and why. Lots of meaty stuff. For one thing, there were a lot of unintended consequences to rolling Obama For America's volunteer organization into the DNC.

It may interest you to know that the same president who can't seem pull it together on healthcare -- the same one who both Obama and David Axelrod insist isn't even thinking about re-election -- already has his reelection infrastructure in place:

OFA has quietly deployed paid staff to all 50 states, building a network from state directors all the way down to a corps of supervolunteers, trained in organizing, who recruit an army of neighborhood team leaders. "There's a skeleton of a re-election campaign already set up -- beyond a skeleton," says Figueroa, the campaign's former field director. "There's already meat to the bone in every state in the union. Three years away from the next election, that army is already being continuously fed. If you're Barack Obama and his political operation, revving the engine, how is that not a good thing?"

For the rest of us? Perhaps not so much. If Obama's putting this kind of effort into his re-election, and not into passing healthcare reform, well, it seems he's getting ahead of himself.

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President Obama ignored warnings not to appear at the National Prayer Breakfast today, since it was organized by fundamentalist religionists whose animus towards not just him but all progressives has been all too obvious for years. But he did anyway -- and, as Sam Stein at HuffPo reports, actually managed to deliver an important message about the critical role of civility in a democratic society.

The main point was that right-wing nutcases, and their frothing about Obama's supposed foreignness and radicalism and hatred of Christianity, make it impossible to even have a rational discussion:

Obama: Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable -- understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, 'Civility is not a sign of weakness.' Now I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. But surely, you can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or for that matter, my citizenship.

No doubt, the talkers at Fox will take this as evidence that he hates the "jes' folks" who populate the Tea Parties.

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President Obama met with the Senate Democrats today, just like he did last week with House Republicans, and he made a point about the media and the influence they are having on the members of the Democratic party.

President: Last point I would make about this. You know what I think would actually make a difference, Michael -- I think if everybody here -- excuse all the members of the press who are here -- if everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, your -- just turn off the TV -- MSNBC, blogs -- and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics -- the topic is politics. It is much more difficult to get a conversation focused on how are we going to help people than a conversation about how is this going to help or hurt somebody politically.

And that's part of what the American people are just sick of -- because they don't care, frankly, about majority and minorities and process and this and that. They just want to know, are you delivering for me? And we've got to, I think, get out of the echo chamber. That was a mistake that I think I made last year, was just not getting out of here enough. And it's helpful when you do. (Applause.)

It's a little late with this recommendation, Mr. President. The time to have spoken up was long before the August recess. Your strategy basically allowed conservatives to take over the messaging and make the debate exactly what political operatives like Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich had hoped for. Hell, Luntz told Samantha Bee that not being able to control a town hall meeting in 2005 could produce disastrous results for Bush. Well, that came true. The town halls became an exhibition of hatred, insanity and ignorance.

And as usual Fox News ignored this event, as they usually do.

The president also told Senate Dems to stop being afraid and get health-care reform done.

The president's appeal on health care was especially noteworthy, given the initiative's precarious future. As has been the case of late, Obama didn't give lawmakers specific instructions -- at least not publicly -- but he made clear they must take advantage of this opportunity and deliver on the promise of reform.

"So many of us campaigned on the idea that we were going to change this health care system," the president reminded the senators. "So many of us looked people in the eye who had been denied because of a pre-existing condition, or just didn't have health insurance at all ... and we said we were going to change it. Well, here we are with a chance to change it.... I hope we don't lose sight of why we're here. We've got to finish the job on health care." Here's hoping Democrats take the advice to heart.

And Obama made the point that they still have a huge majority in the Senate, which is something they don't know how to use. I understand that the GOP is using the filibuster at an insane level, but for those of us who worked hard to help get Dems elected, this has been incredibly frustrating.

And just as an aside, it was also interesting to see that the president apparently keeps up fairly well on media developments: "There was apparently a headline after the Massachusetts election. The Village Voice announced that Republicans win a 41-59 majority. It's worth thinking about. We still have to lead."

If the majorities change hands, you can be sure that if the Democratic Party obstructed like conservatives have, and turned the filibuster into a potent weapon for saying "no", the Villagers would be screaming for the Dems to not be obstructionists, with David Broder leading the way.

The rule is that conservatives can do NO wrong.

It really is frustrating to hear the President and the VP go on and on about how bad the deficit is. They feed right into the right-wing narrative that even if you have no job, no health care and your neighbors are al-Qaeda, the deficit problem is still much, much worse. This is obviously a David Axelrod strategy designed to try and capture some imaginary "independents" and prove that their administration is very serious when it comes to this problem.

Listen, it's really simple. If Americans were working, then they would spend more, the country would make more, and the deficit wouldn't be the "national security" issue Pete Peterson is making it out to be.

Here's Obama:

President Barack Obama warned on Tuesday that high budget deficits could hurt U.S. economic recovery now as he sought to reassure Americans that his latest budget would help create jobs and tackle surging debt levels. -- A day after unveiling a $3.8 trillion spending plan for the 2011 fiscal year beginning on Oct 1, Obama took his policy agenda on the road, highlighting his program to create jobs and calling for stalled healthcare reform legislation to be passed this year.

In remarks tinged with criticism of opposition Republicans, Obama, a Democrat, said both political parties should join forces to bring down the deficit. "We should all be able to agree that we've got to do something about our long term deficits," he told a "town hall"-style meeting with people in New Hampshire.

"These deficits won't just burden our kids and our grandkids decades from now. They could damage our markets now, they could drive up our interest rates now, they could jeopardize our recovery right now," he said.

Isn't that grand?

Digby explains it this way:

Suddenly, you can't turn around without getting a panicked lecture about the deficit. But in all the discussions about the horrifying, worse-than-terrorism, scarier-than-nuclear-war threat to everything we hold near and dear, nobody ever seems to discuss the fact that much of the deficit is due to unemployment. (Gosh, it turns out that if everyone were working, they'd be paying more taxes and the government would have more money!) We are supposed to believe that the deficit stems from profligate spending on old people and undeserving little dark children who refuse to get a job...read on

Vice President Joe Biden, who the administration refuses to use as a spokesman for their causes for the most part, joined Mrs. Greenspan and was assaulted right from the get-go about those damned deficits.
Here's her first question:

Mitchell: First of all the budget ... and these deficits.. Deficits, red ink as far as the eye can see! Even if you can achieve your very optimistic goal,s and that is to bring down some of these deficits by 2015, they go back up again by 2019 and 2020! beyond the level that is considered sustainable. Larry Summers, long before he was in the Obama White House has said,"how long can the world's greatest borrower remain the world's greatest power?"

Have we reached a point where our deficits have become a national security issue?

Joe Biden said no, but it could happen if we don't bring down spending.

It's not just Republicans claiming that deficits are worse than terrorists. It's the whole Village. Oh boy.

People haven't lost their jobs because of the deficit, but from the financial meltdown -- which, you may remember, happened under the watchful eye of George W. Bush and his fellow conservatives. Biden doesn't have to apologize for saying as much, either.

The deficit has been polling strong as an issue that Americans are most worried about. The right-wing noise machine continues to win the framing wars, and is proving once again to be a powerful enemy of good government.

Still smarting after his budgetary beat down at the hands of President Obama Friday, Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling and the Republican Study Committee this weekend invited a second round of punishment. "I stand by what I said," Hensarling said Saturday, referring to his manifestly ridiculous claim the previous day that "the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats." As it turns out, he wasn't talking about the red ink Republican George W. Bush. What he meant, Hensarling instead made clear, is the House GOP is now taking credit for the budget surpluses of the Clinton years, surpluses fueled in part by the 1993 deficit reduction package every single Republican in Congress voted against.

As sentient Americans will recall, the U.S. national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan only to double again George W. Bush. In between, President Clinton erased the GOP budget deficits, producing a $236 billion surplus by his last year in office and leaving Bush a 10 year forecasted surplus of $5.6 trillion. As President Obama made clear in setting Hensarling straight on Friday, he inherited a $1.2 trillion annual deficit when he was sworn in January 2009:

"Now, look, let's talk about the budget once again, because I'll go through it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. -- $1.3 [trillion.] So when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly budget that is higher than the -- a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true."

While Obama is certainly right, Hensarling now insists was referring to something else. That something is Democratic blame for the Bush deficits and Republican ownership of the Clinton surpluses. As The Hill reported:

In anticipation of Obama rolling out his budget proposal Monday, Hensarling's Saturday statement cited Congressional Budget Office statistics putting the average deficit during 12 years of GOP House control at $104 billion and the average deficit under three years of Democratic control at $1.1 trillion.

The Republicans, as you'll remember, captured the House in 1994, maintaining control of the chamber until they were ejected in 2006. During that span, Bill Clinton presided over the end of the Reagan-Bush I deficits, only see to George W. Bush blow the surplus on tax cuts for the rich, the funded Medicare prescription drug program and the war in Iraq.

While Americans can look back fondly at the surpluses of the Clinton years, Jeb Hensarling wants them to forget that the Republican Party had very little to with it.

In 1993, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a half-billion deficit reduction package, one that included a boost in upper income tax rates to 39.6%. When Clinton's 1993 economic program scraped by without capturing the support of even one GOP lawmaker, the New York Times remarked:

Historians believe that no other important legislation, at least since World War II, has been enacted without at least one vote in either house from each major party.

Inheriting massive budget deficits and unemployment topping 7% from Bush the Elder, Clinton's $496 billion program was nonetheless opposed by every single member of the GOP, as well as defectors from his own party. As the Times recounted, it took a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Al Gore to earn victory:

An identical version of the $496 billion deficit-cutting measure was approved Thursday night by the House, 218 to 216. The Senate was divided 50 to 50 before Mr. Gore voted. Since tie votes in the House mean defeat, the bill would have failed if even one representative or one senator who voted with the President had switched sides.

The rest, as they say, is history. Except that Jeb Hensarling and Congressional Republicans are trying to rewrite it. In their telling, the spiraling deficits of the final Bush years are entirely the Democrats' fault. And the halcyon days of the Clinton surpluses and the flush Treasury he produced, Jeb Hensarling now mythologizes, were brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

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While speaking today at the House Republicans' retreat in Baltimore, President Obama explained something to his questioners I wasn't sure he actually understood until now: That he wasn't going to accept Republican bills or amendments that simply didn't work, just so he could claim bipartisanship.

Whew! It's about time.

He also said that he had, in fact, integrated many Republican ideas in the healthcare bill, and proceeded to list them. In fact, he did a great job. He was calm, engaging and evenhanded. And I don't even care if no Republican votes will change as a result - the rest of America saw it, live on TV and then on the news all night.

He was truly excellent.

And in perhaps his best moment, he called Republicans out on blaming him for the deficit:

THE PRESIDENT: Jeb, with all due respect, I've just got to take this last question as an example of how it's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we're going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign.

Now, look, let's talk about the budget once again, because I'll go through it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. -- $1.3 [trillion.] So when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly budget that is higher than the -- a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true.

And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade -- had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000 when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren't paid for.

You had a prescription drug plan -- the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades -- that was passed without it being paid for. You had two wars that were done through supplementals. And then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession. That's $8 trillion.

Now, we increased it by a trillion dollars because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus. I am happy to have any independent fact-checker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said.

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President Obama walked into the lion's den -- aka the House Republican caucus -- today for a blunt conversation about how to proceed with bipartisanship. Responding to a question from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., he lashed into them for the nutty and outrageous rhetoric so many of them have indulged in the past year:

Obama: Let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the health care package that we've presented ... But at its core, if you look at the basic proposal that we put forward, that has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool, and can get bargaining power the same way that big companies do, the insurance reforms that I've already discussed, making sure that there's choice in competition for those that don't have health insurance -- the component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year. Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and certainly you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that's not a radical bunch.

But if you were to listen to the debate -- and frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot! No, I mean, that's how you guys, that's how you guys presented it. And so I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist' -- no, look, I'm just sayin', I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans -- it's similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.

So all I'm saying is, we've got to close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you. But if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

I mean, the fact of the matter is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your home base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion, because what you've been telling your constituents is. 'This guy's doin' all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America!'

No doubt he was thinking of, among others, Blackburn herself. Her question to Obama was fairly straightforward and non-nutty, but when she's been out in the public, this is a woman who has defended the notion that the health-care bill contained "death panels," claimed the bill was "sacrificing our children's future," and joined the Tea Partiers in demanding "we want our country back."

But it's not just House Republicans who need to hear this. Some media folks need to be getting this message too.

While legal analysts like Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley lamented Justice Samuel Alito's "serious and substantive breach of protocol" during last night's State of the Union address, conservatives are predictably apoplectic about President Obama's temerity in questioning the Supreme Court's campaign finance decision in that setting. As it turns out, the right-wing hypocrisy in defense of Alito is double. After all, President Bush didn't just routinely use the State of the Union to castigate "activist judges." For years, Bush's amen corner in the conservative movement threatened judges to bring them in line.

Bush's Supreme politicking during his State of the Union speeches was a regular fixture of his presidency. For three straight years (2004, 2005 and 2006), President Bush denounced "activist judges" and insisted "for the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage." On the very day Samuel Alito joined the Roberts Court, Bush used his 2006 SOTU for a victory lap:

"The Supreme Court now has two superb new members -- new members on its bench: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law and not legislate from the bench."

Nevertheless, Republican leaders feigned outrage over President Obama's criticism Wednesday of the Court's Citizens United decision last week. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch called it "rude," adding "It's one thing to say that he differed with the court but another thing to demagogue the issue while the court is sitting there out of respect for his position." Texan John Cornyn took it a step further, calling Obama's strong disagreement with the Court "hysterical" and insisting:

"I don't think the president should have done what he did in trying to call out the Supreme Court for doing its job. They are the final word on the meaning of the United States Constitution, even when we don't like the outcome."

Of course, back in 2005, John Cornyn was one of the GOP standard bearers in the conservative fight against so-called "judicial activism" in the wake of the Republicans' disastrous intervention in the Terri Schiavo affair. On April 4th, Cornyn took to the Senate floor to issue a not-too-thinly veiled threat to judges opposing his reactionary agenda. Just days after the murders of one judge in Atlanta and the family members of another in Chicago, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Cornyn offered his endorsement of judicial intimidation:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country...And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

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Here's Sam Alito's "Joe Wilson" moment during the State of the Union speech. When Obama cited the Citizens United v. FEC decision and voiced his concerns that it opened the nation up to the undue influence of special interests, watch Alito grimace and roll his eyes. He says something as well. John Aravosis, from whom we were tipped this video, reads it as "not true," although it's hard to tell from the angle.

Whatever the case, it was sweet to see all the justices sitting uncomfortably while all around them, the audience gave the President a standing ovation for criticizing them.

President Obama gave a very forceful SOTU tonight. He was very engaging throughout and brought his oratory skills to the table as he did during the election. I wish he was much more partisan though. He hemmed the republicans in on not supporting the bank fees to pay back the bailouts. He blasted the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court and asked Congress to create some legislation to overturn it. Obama finally threw some blame for the sorry state of this country at the feet of George Bush and conservatism. Cutting taxes and starting wars doesn't lead us to economic prosperity.

The camera caught McCain mouthing "blame it on Bush."

He called for Congress to get HCR finished. Really, he was calling the Democrats in Congress cowards and to get on with it. Axelrod is responsible for the tactics they've used from the outset which has resulted in this debacle, but I've been hearing HCR is not dead just yet.

I can't stand when he mentions Ronald Reagan in a positive fashion and he did that again tonight. When will he realize that conservatives will never support him and to suck up to the Gipper is a mistake?

As Chris Hayes tweeted: There are not enough villains in this speech.

We all know who they are and he should name a few. Tightening the government's belt is a horrible idea. He wants us to export more goods, but we have to actually make goods to export. He attacked the 60 vote obstructionism that's been taking place in the Senate.

Seeing Lieberman and Nelson sitting together was disturbing. Josh Marshall called them the "axis of weasels".

He brought back DADT and at the same time tried to bring back the idea of bipartisanship. Major Garrett had a soft porn problem.

Republicans sitting on their hands for Obama calling for the banks to pay back bailout funds!

Chris Matthews said that he forgot President Obama was black tonight. Good to know...

We wouldn't want anyone to overdo it (and we totally support recovery and sobriety for those who are practicing such). That said, Will Durst has the best of the drinking games:

The first time Barack H. Obama mentions bipartisanship, the last person to pretend to faint has to drink three shots of beer.

This open thread is for the speech (live-stream here) and the Republican "response," which is the main reason we do the drinking game first.

And if you're a totally sober sucker for punishment, there's an opportunity to publicly fact check FOX tonight. You guys deserve a round on the house.

Speech and follow-ups open thread below....

Live Streaming video of the SOTU

As President Obama prepares for his State of the Union address, two stories Monday regarding his stimulus package highlighted his political conundrum. USA Today's quarterly survey of 50 economists produced a median estimate that the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) prevented unemployment from reaching 10.8%, saving 1.2 million jobs as a result. But even as the economists praised the stimulus for restarting GDP growth, a CNN poll found that "nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half of the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted." Sadly for the President, perception - even when it's wrong - is reality.

To be sure, with unemployment at 10% and forecast to remain above 9% by the end of 2010, the continuing pain caused by the dismal job market is very real. But the dividends of the stimulus package to date, even with changing White House accounting rules for the 1.5 to 2 million jobs it claims to have saved, are clear and growing.

For the three month period which ended in June, the Economic Policy Institute announced the Obama stimulus measures overall added "up to 3 full percentage points of annualized growth in the quarter." For its part, the Wall Street Journal in September agreed with that assessment:

Many forecasters say stimulus spending is adding two to three percentage points to economic growth in the second and third quarters, when measured at an annual rate. The impact in the second quarter, calculated by analyzing how the extra funds flowing into the economy boost consumption, investment and spending, helped slow the rate of decline and will lay the groundwork for positive growth in the third quarter -- something that seemed almost implausible just a few months ago. Some economists say the 1% contraction in the second quarter would have been far worse, possibly as much as 3.2%, if not for the stimulus.

On Monday, the USA Today panel of economists concurred.

Further, they largely agreed stronger action is still needed:

Unemployment would have hit 10.8% -- higher than December's 10% rate -- without Obama's $787 billion stimulus program, according to the economists' median estimate. The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs.

But almost two-thirds of the economists said the government should do more to spur job growth. Suggestions included suspending payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, increasing spending on infrastructure, enacting a flat tax on income and extending jobless benefits.

Importantly, as ProPublica documented in its recovery tracking project, only a fraction of the stimulus pot has been spent to date. As of January 25, 2010, only $172 billion of the program budget had spent so far with another $157 billion in process, leaving $251 billion in remaining funding. Meanwhile, by ProPublica's accounting, $93 billion in ARRA tax cuts have been paid out, with another $119 billion still to come.

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