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Donna Brazile takes the rest of the CNN panel to task for their concern for the deficit at a time when our main concern should be putting people back to work. Of course Bill Bennett continues to claim we need more tax cuts and thinks the Democrats are going to "go off the cliff" if they increase the deficit. Brazile reminds him "we've been off the cliff".

Transcript via CNN.

KING: And, Donna, on that point, I want you to listen to Larry Summers because Gloria notes they're starting to talk about the deficit because they're going to raise the federal debt ceiling this week and the numbers get incredibly high. Republicans are starting to say, you know, where's the fiscal discipline here?

And yet, if the you listen to Larry Summers, he seems convinced that they have a little more political space to make the case, that, in the short term, spending to help the economy is more important than reducing the deficit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUMMERS: We've got to do a lot more. There's no more important issue facing the country than job growth because, if we don't create jobs, we've got no prospect that the kind of budget deficits we want. If unemployment stays high, we're not going to have the strength in the world that we want, if unemployment stays high.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: They get away with that a bit longer?

BRAZILE: All the politics aside, the administration is walking a real tightrope between creating the jobs that the American people clearly want and trying to focus on the long-term fiscal health of the nation, the debt.

The Republicans raised the debt ceiling 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007. SO this is customary sometimes during a budget process, to raise it that way. But because of the additional spending that we have on the wars and other issues, we have to raise it again. That's a responsible thing that Congress needs to do.

On the other hand, I think the president is absolutely right to use some of the additional TARP money that will be utilized to pay down the deficit, but to use some of it to create jobs.

Now, hopefully, the private sector -- the president will be able to put some fire under the bankers tomorrow for them to start lending to small businesses so we don't have to continue this rate of government spending.

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From CNN Ensign says he did not breach ethics rules:

Embattled Republican Sen. John Ensign told CNN Tuesday he did not break Senate ethics rules by helping to secure a lobbying job for the husband of the woman he had an affair with.

"I think it's pretty clear. I said in the past, I recommended him for jobs just like I've recommended a lot of people," Ensign told CNN senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash and congressional producer Ted Barrett. "But we absolutely did nothing except for comply exactly with what the ethics laws and the ethics rules of the Senate state. We were very careful in everything that we did. You can see our statements on that."

The comments come four days after The New York Times reported the husband of the woman Ensign had a affair with, Doug Hampton, has since lobbied the Nevada senator on behalf of his clients. The New York Times also reported evidence that suggests Ensign played an active role in getting Hampton the lobbying position. Hampton, a former senior aide to Ensign, is barred by congressional ethics rules from lobbying his old boss for one year after leaving his post in the Senate.

While Republicans continue to distace themselves from the Senator, it appears he still may have one friend in Nevada--Harry Reid-- who continues to call the Ensign scandal a 'personal matter'. Time to end the 'gentlemen's agreement' Senator Reid.

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If it weren't Lou Dobbs saying it and knowing he always likes to take a shot at the Obama administration ever since the black man got elected and his brain exploded, I'd almost be inclined to agree with Dobbs on this one. I don't think it's "authoritarian" to want everyone to have to pay into a system that makes sure everyone is covered and has health insurance of some sort. I do agree that what Baucus is proposing looks like nothing less than making sure all of us are going to pay into the health insurance industry monopoly whether we like it or not with no assurance they're not going to still rip everyone off on premiums since there is not at least a public option in his plan.

And why in the hell is Baucus at this late date still pretending that any Republicans are going to vote for any of this? They already had the Democrats take all of their amendments and then still said they wouldn't vote for what the Democrats compromised on with the bill.

All I can say is, let me in a poker game with any of these guys since I'd go home with a pocket full of money. Never show your hand or let the other person call your bluff until you have to. And as a twenty some year union member, I can also say that the Democrats obviously haven't learned what the term "bargaining in good faith" means. They could use a few of our Business Reps showing them how not to be played for suckers when you negotiate.

I'm not sure just what Max Baucus' game is here, but I've grown tired of it. He's had months to get something done and what he's come out with is a sell out to the insurance industry. I hope to hell the Progressive Causus in the House isn't going to stand for this.

And surprise, surprise it turns out that "just when you thought the Baucus revolving door couldn’t spin faster: the Senate staffer responsible for devising the tax policies at the heart of the Baucus plan is a former lobbyist for health insurance and pharmaceutical interests, including an insurance industry front group".

Color me not shocked. Obama needs to decide which side he's on in this debate whether he cares about keeping his base. As John has said, he's going to lose the left if he sells us out.

Transcript below the fold.

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Well what do you know. It looks like there may be some problems with Sen. Mitch McConnell's favorite Canadian health care horror story. h/t The Political Carnival

33.7 million Canadians are not Shona Holmes:

To my American friends: I sincerely hope you’re not taken in by the GOP propaganda featuring Canadian Shona Holmes trashing our system of universal healthcare. The problem is both that Ms. Holmes and her Republican masters misrepresented her condition and that the tactic itself is reprehensible. The GOP can’t produce any logical argument against a system that is entrenched in every Western society except yours, so they resort to fear-mongering and lies, claiming that one Canadian’s skewed view trumps the experiences and beliefs of the rest of us.

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From The Ottawa Citizen:

Holmes has become the darling of conservatives and the stop-public-health-care movement in the United States. She's testified before Congress, been on Fox TV as well as CNN, and her story is retold on hundreds of right wing blogs. She's now doing a nasty TV ad for Patients United Now, a Republican-led group opposed to Obama's reforms. You can see the ad at www.patientsunitednow.com. The group is spending almost $2 million on it to target politicians in Washington.

For a person living with cancer, the idea that someone's care could be unreasonably delayed is truly scary. It also doesn't reflect the experience I've had or the experiences that have been shared with me by so many other patients. Even CNN interviewed Doug Wright, a more typical patient in Toronto who is receiving very speedy treatment for his cancer.

Still, I found Holmes tale both compelling and troubling. So I decided to check a little further. On the Mayo Clinic's website, Shona Holmes is a success story. But it's somewhat different story than all the headlines might have implied. Holmes' "brain tumour" was actually a Rathke's Cleft Cyst on her pituitary gland. To quote an American source, the John Wayne Cancer Center, "Rathke's Cleft Cysts are not true tumors or neoplasms; instead they are benign cysts."

There's no doubt Holmes had a problem that needed treatment, and she was given appointments with the appropriate specialists in Ontario. She chose not to wait the few months to see them. But it's a far cry from the life-or-death picture portrayed by Holmes on the TV ads or by McConnell in his attacks.

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CNN's Dana Bash does a report on the Canadian health care system, and as its center piece she features the person Mitch McConnell has been using in his Senate floor speeches as an example of what's wrong with Canadian health care. How many similar stories of people in the United States being denied coverage because they don't have any health insurance at all does anyone think CNN could be doing if they went out and looked?

In fairness, Bash does point out those that disagree with the generalizations about the system, and that the Democrats are not trying to get universal health care here in the United States. That said, seeking out the person McConnell has been citing in his Frank Luntz talking points on health care as the main portion of the segment strikes me as nothing short of Republican propoganda.

As our own Jon Perr has more on McConnell fear mongering about the Canadian health care system:

In his demagoguery regarding President Obama's health insurance proposals featuring a "public option," Senator McConnell trotted out horror stories from Canada and the UK to illustrate "health care denied" by "government-run" systems. But as the New York Times suggested, McConnell's examples of Canadian Shona Holmes and Briton Bruce Hardy in essence made his opponents' case for them:

What Mr. McConnell did not disclose was that Ms. Holmes paid for her treatment, at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, on her own - an option that is available to patients with financial resources all over the world regardless of their nation's health insurance system...
As for the case of Mr. Hardy, the particulars seem to make it hard to tell how his situation differed from the countless Americans who battle their private insurers every day for access to the newest, most advanced and most expensive treatments.

[....]

Despite Mitch McConnell's grandstanding, Americans' health care is frequently denied - even when they are already paying for it.

And so it goes. Back in 1993, GOP propagandist William Kristol famously mobilized his Republican colleagues, warning that Bill Clinton' success with health reform could lead to a Democratic majority for a generation. His talking point then was "no crisis." 16 years later, Mitch McConnell is frightening Americans with dark visions of a future system where health care is denied, delayed and rationed.

The future is now.

Transcript below the fold.

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Looks like Mrs. King Dana Bash is doing her good duty again with another softball interview for a Republican Senator. This time around it's Orrin Hatch and making sure his views on how a government option for health insurance is going to mean doom and gloom for health care reform are out there unchallenged.

If Bash wanted to do her homework on the subject, I'd recommend she watch Bill Moyers Journal's segment on single payer and see what some actual journalism looks like. I'm sure in her case that's asking too much since she seems to be content repeating meaningless party lines on what should be very serious topics for CNN if they wanted to consider themselves a news organization rather than a mouth piece for the RNC or the corporate wing of either party for that matter.

What kills me with the Republicans' argument of late is how unfair they now think it is for private insurance to have to compete with a government plan. I thought no one would want that lousy socialized system forced on them?

Heaven forbid we make the system we have now, which puts profits from denying care and lining the CEO's pockets, to have to compete with one that actually has as its primary goal providing services for those that pay into it. How could we ever survive without all those insurance industry workers fighting us tooth and nail finding ways not to provide the coverage we thought we paid for so their profit margin can go up?

Orrin, I hate to break this to you, but we already have something between a patient and their doctor and it ain't the government. That would be called their insurance company.

BASH: But, even as Democratic organizers start to rally thousands of activists across the country, Republicans are firing a warning shot, calling the president's push to expand health coverage with a new government insurance option a deal-breaker.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R), UTAH: There are a lot of people in my party, on the Republican side, who want to work with Democrats, who want to get this done, but who are totally against public plan.

BASH: Orrin Hatch is one of nine Republicans on the powerful Senate Finance Committee who wrote the president arguing, a government-run program competing with private insurers, would -- quote -- "inevitably doom true competition."

GOP senators insist, that would jeopardize quality.

HATCH: There is no way that we can be for a public-plan option, because that will put the government between you and your doctor.

Full transcript below the fold.

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This is rich. Dana Bash apparently doesn't know the difference between being a blatant racist and the trumped-up, partisan charges of racism lobbed at Sonia Sotomayor by the likes of Gingrich, Tancredo, Limbaugh and Hannity. Bash gives Jeff Sessions a softball interview where he claims he can feel Sotomayor's pain over being accused of being a racist since he's gone through the same thing himsef. Bash however, fails to fully explain just why Sessions was accused of racism.

Steve Benen has more:

Characterizing these as relative equivalents is silly. The attacks on Sotomayor are baseless and easily debunked. The charges against Sessions 23 years ago were based on extensive facts, an outrageous pattern, and were bolstered by a lengthy record.

As a U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions' most notable effort was prosecuting three civil rights workers, including a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on trumped up charges of voter fraud.

Also during his illustrious career in Alabama, Sessions called the NAACP "un-American" because it, among other groups, "forced civil rights down the throats of people." A former career Justice Department official who worked with Sessions recalled an instance when he referred to a white attorney as a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. Sessions later acknowledged having made many of the controversial remarks attributed to him, but claimed to have been joking.

What's more, Thomas Figures, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama and an African American, later explained that during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions once again acknowledged making the remark, but once again claimed to have been kidding. Figures also remembered having heard Sessions call him "boy," and once warn him to "be careful what you say to white folks."

How is this in any way similar to the attacks on Sotomayor? It's not. The CNN report, which includes extensive quotes from poor Sessions, and precious little about why he was accused of racism in the first place, is woefully incomplete.

Transcript below the fold.

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Dana Bash reports that although the Democrats and the Bush administration have reached a deal on an auto bailout the Republicans in the Senate are saying no deal. Apparently they are not happy that the "car czar" cannot mandate "long term" change in Detroit. Sounds like code for bust the union to me.

Dana Bash reporting that the McCain campaign turned off the news at their campaign headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.