Michele Bachmann was on Glenn Beck's show yesterday -- with Judge Andrew Napolitano sitting in for Beck, who came down with appendicitis after his candidate, Doug Hoffmann, lost in the NY-23 race -- plumping her big Tea Party protest of the House health-care reform bill today on Capitol Hill -- which she calls "Super Bowl of Freedom".

According to ThinkProgress, Bachmann is calling on protesters to “scare” members of Congress into killing health-care reform. “Republican organizers are planning for activists to go into the House office buildings and the U.S. Capitol and confront members directly.”

You have to be a little concerned about the kinds of nutcases she's calling upon to visit their Congresscritters. After all, Bachmann herself is a promoter of far-flung "constitutionalist" conspiracy theories about replacing the American currency, youth re-education camps and Obama-ordered "concentration camps." Napolitano opened the segment with a clip of Bachmann grilling Tim Geithner with her otherworldly questions about the "constitutionality" of the stimulus package.

So of course, they couldn't help but indulge in a fresh round of paranoia about security for today's 'Tea Party':

Napolitano: I have to give you a little bit of a warning. I have a friend in the American intelligence community who lives and works around Washington, D.C., who told me: 'Watch out for Mrs. Pelosi making the security requirements almost impossible to get to this rally.' You guys have to watch out for that, that she doesn't do something to make it very difficult for the folks to come to this gathering at noon tomorrow.

Bachmann: Well, she controls the Capitol. She's a very powerful individual. And she controls ingress and egress, and so, I think it would be a big mistake for Speaker Pelosi to prevent the American people from coming to their House. This is their House, after all. This is why we need to make this emergency 'House Call' on Congress tomorrow.

One can only imagine some of these doofus teabaggers getting lost on the Metro and then blaming Nancy Pelosi for it.

The Glenn Beck candidate wouldn't denounce Rush Limbaugh using a bestiality quote against Dede Scozzafava. That's not surprising for a phony teabagger like Hoffman.

Frank Rich had a great article about the NY-23 race on Sunday:

And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. But she has occasionally strayed from orthodoxy on social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) and endorsed the Obama stimulus package. To the right’s Jacobins, that’s cause to send her to the guillotine.

Sure enough, bloggers trashed her as a radical leftist and ditched her for a third-party candidate they deem a “true” conservative, an accountant and businessman named Doug Hoffman. When Gingrich dared endorse Scozzafava anyway — as did other party potentates like John Boehner and Michael Steele — he too was slimed. Mocking Newt’s presumed 2012 presidential ambitions, Michelle Malkin imagined him appointing Al Sharpton as secretary of education and Al Gore as “global warming czar.” She’s quite the wit.

The wrecking crew of Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the government-bashing Club for Growth all joined the Hoffman putsch. Then came the big enchilada: a Hoffman endorsement from Palin on her Facebook page. Such is Palin’s clout that Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor (and presidential aspirant), promptly fell over one another in their Pavlovian rush to second her motion. They were joined by far-flung Republican congressmen from Kansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and California, not to mention a gaggle of state legislators from Colorado. On Fox News, Beck took up the charge, insinuating that Hoffman’s Republican opponent might be a fan of Karl Marx. Some $3 million has now been dumped into this race by outside groups.

Who exactly is the third-party maverick arousing such ardor? Hoffman doesn’t even live in the district. When he appeared before the editorial board of The Watertown Daily Times 10 days ago, he “showed no grasp” of local issues, as the subsequent editorial put it. Hoffman complained that he should have received the questions in advance — blissfully unaware that they had been asked by the paper in an editorial on the morning of his visit.

Last week it turned out that Hoffman’s prime attribute to the radical right — as a take-no-prisoners fiscal conservative — was bogus. In fact he’s on the finance committee of a hospital that happily helped itself to a $479,000 federal earmark. Then again, without the federal government largess that the tea party crowd so deplores, New York’s 23rd would be a Siberia of joblessness. The biggest local employer is the pork-dependent military base, Fort Drum.

The media is trying to frame today's election as some sort of referendum on President Obama, but NY-23 has voted Republican for decades and decades, so the real battle is between Republicans. If Owens wins, then I'd say conservatives have a real big problem. There will be a circular firing squad among Club for Growth, Limbaugh, Palin, Steele and Gingrich. Newt endorsed the moderate Republican after all, which is not the Fox flavor at the moment.

Last week, Gingrich became one of a small handful of conservatives who endorsed Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R) in her bid to fill Army Secretary John McHugh's now-vacant House seat. As a result, conservative bloggers said Gingrich had eliminated himself from contention for the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012.

And the wingnut bloggers attacked Gingrich over it too.

Right-wing bloggers have recently attacked Newt Gingrich for endorsing Republican Dede Scozzafava over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the special election to fill Army Secretary John McHugh's (R-NY) vacated congressional seat. On her blog, Michelle Malkin said "no thanks" to the possibility of a Gingrich 2012 presidential run, noting that he is the "most prominent GOP endorser of [the] radical leftist NY-23 congressional candidate," while at RedState.com, Erick Erickson reportedly wrote -- before removing the post -- that Gingrich "stands athwart history and pees on the legacy of 1994."

Hoffman doesn't even live or know anything about the district he's running in, but for teabaggers, that doesn't matter. Knowledge is a liability for the teabagger movement.

From Meet the Press, Joe Scarborough and Dan Senor think it's just fantastic that the GOP is running their "moderates" out of the party. Great game plan guys. Keep this up and maybe the GOP can get down to 15% instead of 20% of Americans that want to identify themselves as Republicans.

GREGORY: All right. Let--I've got about a minute left here. I want to talk politics here. Joe Scarborough, there seems to be, within the Republican Party, a litmus test going on. You had Sarah Palin on Facebook endorsing the conservative independent candidate in New York for that congressional seat in the 23rd district.

SCARBOROUGH: Mm-hmm.

GREGORY: Is this what's going on inside the Republican Party, this sort of run to see who can be the most conservative as a means of retaking power in 2010?

SCARBOROUGH: Well, it, it depends. How could any Republican, how could--let me strike that. How could any conservative be against the person that the Republican establishment in D.C. is for if they're conservatives? This woman, this Republican candidate, is for card check. She was for the Obama stimulus package. She has voted for taxes. I mean, she's been one of David Paterson's best allies. Why would a conservative support that Republican? This is, this is just one more example of how the Republican Party in Washington, D.C., is so disconnected from conservatives.

SENOR: You're seeing a revolt all over the place. In Joe's state, in Florida...

SCARBOROUGH: And, and I'm saying...

SENOR: ...Marco Rubio, who's running against Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate...

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.

GREGORY: Right.

SENOR: ...the Republican establishment in Washington rallied behind Charlie Crist because he was supposed to deliver the general election. Suddenly the polls in the Republican primary are closing, all the Republican primary conservative support is getting behind Marco Rubio, who's the start-up candidate.

SCARBOROUGH: And by the way, people love...

MAYER: This can't be good for the Republicans that have their own base being fractured, is it?

SCARBOROUGH: No. It's great for the Republican Party because...

SENOR: It's fantastic for the Republican Party.

SCARBOROUGH: ...when I, when I ran in 1994, the Republican Party on the state, national and local level tried to run against me a moderate Republican. And I'm not talking, I'm not talking abortion or gay marriage, I'm talking taxes and spending, small government. That's great to reinvigorate the base.

GREGORY: All right. And the president's out there for two big governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia this week, which a lot of people will see as some kind of referendum. We're going to leave it there.

Countdown's Worst Persons for Oct. 19, 2009 with winner Tom Donahue of the Chamber of Congress. Runners up Bill O'Reilly and Jack Kingston.

After having the majority of the unequally balanced panel on the McLaughlin Group trash the stimulus package as not having worked to create jobs and being politicized, Mort Zuckerman throws this gem out there.

Zuckerman: I disagree with the way you're describing this stimulus program. It was maybe perhaps well intentioned, completely badly conceived. It did not focus on unemployment. It does not focus on those kinds of activities that in fact could create jobs.

I'm just going to remind you of one example. When you have Harry Reid, the Majority Leader in the Senate getting a $350 million grant for a UniRail to go from Las Vegas to Disneyland, you know where a lot of this money went. It's almost a farce. And we, unemployment is much worse than those numbers and it's going to be worse and be higher next year at this time than it is this year.

McLaughlin: What do you...

Zuckerman: And the Republicans are going to--34% of all people have had either a family member or close friend unemployed.

McLaughlin: If you were designing this stimulus, how would you have changed what the stimulus is?

Zuckerman: I would have put a heck of a lot more money into infrastructure development and focused on that. A lot of the money that went in for a lot of pet programs for the Democratic Party that had virtually no affect in terms of stimulating the economy and having a multiplier.

Yes, Mort Zuckerman's hatred for Harry Reid seems to have melted his brain to the point that he is complaining about an infrastructure project in one breath and saying we need more in the next. And he was McLaughlin's guest on the "left" side of the room. Zuckerman was crying about this project on one of the MSNBC programs last week as well, but I don't remember him saying we needed more infrastructure projects right after he did it.

h/t Digby

Update: h/t FilthyHarry
I appears Mort Zuckerman did do the same thing the other day on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

Gee, who could have seen this one coming? I know, Paul Krugman.

Stimulus arithmetic (wonkish but important):

Bit by bit we’re getting information on the Obama stimulus plan, enough to start making back-of-the-envelope estimates of impact. The bottom line is this: we’re probably looking at a plan that will shave less than 2 percentage points off the average unemployment rate for the next two years, and possibly quite a lot less. This raises real concerns about whether the incoming administration is lowballing its plans in an attempt to get bipartisan consensus.

[....]

I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell says “See, government spending doesn’t work.”

Let’s hope I’ve got this wrong.

Looks like Paul was right. It's not Mitch McConnell but Kristol and Hume are basically saying the same thing. And for the record, since Bill Kristol seems to think that it was a terrible thing for the economy for the minimum wage to be increased, I'd like to see him try to live off of it for a year.

Transcript below the fold.

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Out numbered as usual like any actual liberal on the Sunday bobble head shows, Katrina Vanden Heuvel makes some great points about why job creation is so important right now for some actual economic recovery to take place, and she's right about the so called health care reform.

VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, John Kenneth Galbraith once said that astrology -- that economic forecasting exists to make astrology look good. In these conditions, Matt, it’s very hard to have predicted what we would see. And don’t forget, the danger of the health care reform is that is it weakened and diluted in the way that the recovery package was so as to address Republicans’ concerns.

That could have been a stronger recovery -- but not strong enough to do what you rightly suggest, which is, parks, bridges, tunnels, an industrial policy, which may make George go berserk because it sounds like socialism, which it isn’t, every advanced industrialized country has an industrial policy which would address the auto industry. Build light rail, buses.

Full transcript below the fold.

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You have to give him pundit props: Krugman said from the start (this video is from February) that Obama's stimulus package was too small, and he was right. As expected, the unemployment claims went up to record-breaking levels this week. Via Bloomberg:

The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest since 1983, from 9.7 percent in August, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Payrolls fell by 263,000, following a revised 201,000 decline the prior month that was less than previously reported.

As someone who's sent out 250+ resumes in the past year and gotten one face-to-face interview and one phone call in return, I can tell you first-hand it's not looking good on the job front.

Krugman says if we don't do something about this, not only will the human costs will be high but our economic growth will be depressed for a long, long time:

Wait. It gets worse. A new report from the International Monetary Fund shows that the kind of recession we’ve had, a recession caused by a financial crisis, often leads to long-term damage to a country’s growth prospects. “The path of output tends to be depressed substantially and persistently following banking crises.”

The same report, however, suggests that this isn’t inevitable: “We find that a stronger short-term fiscal policy response” — by which they mean a temporary increase in government spending — “is significantly associated with smaller medium-term output losses.”

So we should be doing much more than we are to promote economic recovery, not just because it would reduce our current pain, but also because it would improve our long-run prospects.

But can we afford to do more — to provide more aid to beleaguered state governments and the unemployed, to spend more on infrastructure, to provide tax credits to employers who create jobs? Yes, we can.

The conventional wisdom is that trying to help the economy now produces short-term gain at the expense of long-term pain. But as I’ve just pointed out, from the point of view of the nation as a whole, that’s not at all how it works. The slump is doing long-term damage to our economy and society, and mitigating that slump will lead to a better future.

What is true is that spending more on recovery and reconstruction would worsen the government’s own fiscal position. But even there, conventional wisdom greatly overstates the case. The true fiscal costs of supporting the economy are surprisingly small.

You see, spending money now means a stronger economy, both in the short run and in the long run. And a stronger economy means more revenues, which offset a large fraction of the upfront cost. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the offset falls short of 100 percent, so that fiscal stimulus isn’t a complete free lunch. But it costs far less than you’d think from listening to what passes for informed discussion.

Look, I know more stimulus is a hard sell politically. But it’s urgently needed. The question shouldn’t be whether we can afford to do more to promote recovery. It should be whether we can afford not to. And the answer is no.

Robert Reich agrees, saying this is certainly not the time to worry about the deficit, and predicts if we do, the politics are going to get much uglier:

Let me say this as clearly and forcefully as I can: The federal government should be spending even more than it already is on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need. It should make up for cutbacks at the state level, and then some. This is the only way to put Americans back to work. We did it during the Depression. It was called the WPA.

Yes, I know. Our government is already deep in debt. But let me tell you something: When one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt.

[...] People who now obsess about government debt have it backwards. The problem isn’t the debt. The problem is just the opposite. It’s that at a time like this, when consumers and businesses and exports can’t do it, government has to spend more to get Americans back to work and recharge the economy. Then – after people are working and the economy is growing – we can pay down that debt.

But if government doesn’t spend more right now and get Americans back to work, we could be out of work for years. And the debt will be with us even longer. And politics could get much uglier.

Conservatives are so against President Obama that they actually hoped America would lose the 2016 bid for the Olympics. That would have been a huge stimulus package, but Republicans show their true colors about job creation for their own country.

Americans For Prosperity show their hatred for America.

During the Americans For Prosperity's "Defending the American Dream Summit," blogger Emily Marie Zanotti of American Princess interrupted a discussion about engaging the right online to announce that Chicago was out of the running -- and the room erupted in applause.

"If anyone cares, Chicago is out," Zanotti said. When the crowd asked what happened, she said, "The very first vote, they did not have any chance at even negotiating. They were out on the first vote." That news was met with more cheers and high-fives.

The Weekly Standard also embarrassed their publication with this one.

Soon after news broke that the International Olympic Committee had rejected Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, which President Obama had personally lobbied for, Weekly Standard blogger John McCormack published a celebratory post on the magazine’s blog, titled “Chicago Loses! Chicago Loses!.” McCormack wrote that “Cheers erupt at WEEKLY STANDARD world headquarters.
--
But the post has now been changed. The reference to cheers have been removed and the title has been shortened to a non-exclamatory “Chicago Loses.” The current post neither acknowledges nor explains the changes that were made.

(h/t Heather)

Rep. Alan Grayson had to remind the Republicans that they need to remember what country they live in.

"Someone should remind them what team they're really on"

And the money keeps coming in for Rep. Grayson.

Bobby Jindal Touts Louisiana's Economic Successes While Refusing to Credit Stimulus Package

I bet you won't hear about this on the Sunday Talk Shows even if you disagree with the way the president handled the stimulus.

From the WSJ: U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus

The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. "There's a method to the madness. We're getting out of this," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.

Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects.

Economists say the money out the door -- combined with the expectation of additional funds flowing soon -- is fueling growth above where it would have been without any government action.

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.

I can tell you now that this news will be buried deep into the tar pit of Bobble heads' lost dreams and missing pens. I challenge the media to cover this. Will they? We'll see. All the idiot conservatives that said the stimulus failed have to eat their words because Rupert, the Overlord of their Universe has put it in his WSJ pages.

John McCain: The Stimulus is a Failure, But Don't Dare Ask Arizona to Give Any of the Money Back

dday says:

The recovery is still jobless thus far, which means it's not a real recovery yet. And the White House made two mistakes - one, they soft-pedaled the recession, claiming that unemployment would not go above 9% or so, leaving them susceptible to the charge that the stimulus isn't working; and two, they put far too much of the stimulus into tax cuts instead of the public investment that would have made it even more successful, particularly on the jobs front.

But without the public investment the stimulus has thus far provided and will continue to provide, we'd be mired in more negative growth and a near-depression.

As we live through another anniversary of the man-made disaster on the Gulf Coast and the shocking lack of a federal response that caused thousands to die needlessly, thoughts turn again to whether anybody remembers New Orleans and its environs, and whether the proper resources are being deployed to rehabilitate the region. If you listen to the President, of course, his Administration is doing a heckuva job down there. Lots of cabinet members have visited the region, to be followed by the President later this year. The White House has untangled some bureaucracy to allow for more federal assistance to reach the Gulf Coast, and the stimulus has enhanced recovery efforts. And even some local Republicans have praised his approach, particularly the renewed sense of confidence in FEMA.

But that's the White House's spin. And not everyone agrees with it. The Institute for Southern Studies has reported on coalition groups blasting the Army Corps of Engineers for their slow response to restoring the natural barriers - wetlands, marshes, and barrier islands - that could help prevent future hurricanes. New Orleans resident Harry Shearer has more on that. To their credit, the White House has created a federal task force to speed up coastal restoration projects. But on other issues, the ISS has given the Administration low marks.

The Institute of Southern Studies recently released a report that assesses how Washington has handled the storm's aftermath. The ISS asked 50 community leaders to grade the Obama administration's Katrina recovery efforts: Obama got a D+, and Bush was given a D-. If graded on an E for effort curve, Bush probably would have gotten the edge given his authorization of millions in Gulf Opportunity tax credits and bonds, and an extension of time under which developers could use them.

Meanwhile, Obama has done little in seven months beyond distributing $50 million in housing vouchers. Unfortunately, families either won't be able to use them because there aren't enough houses built yet, or the vouchers will be of little use because they only cover a fraction of rents, which have risen substantially since Katrina. He's also instituted a plan to sell FEMA mobile units to families for $1 or $5, but many of those trailers are toxic from formaldehyde leaks.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) did little for recovery and reinvestment in the Gulf Coast area that needed it the most. Since calculations were made based off current population numbers -- many displaced people throughout the country are still waiting to return -- fewer ARRA dollars reached these congressional districts. ARRA's tax credit exchange program, which cashes in states' low income housing tax credits, also excluded the Go Zone tax credits, leaving over 17,000 housing units hanging in the balance.

The Lower Ninth Ward, already struggling prior to the flood, has been particularly slow to return to stability. Only 20% of its residents have returned full-time, and the area has lagged far behind the tourist spots and the Garden District.

The neglect of the Gulf both during and after the storm will not get turned around quickly or easily. I'm tempted to cut the White House a little slack on this one. But on the current trajectory, New Orleans is looking more and more in the post-Katrina period like a restored home for the rich and connected, and a nightmare for the voiceless. And given the moral outrage that the response to the storm correctly engendered, that is unacceptable. We have an obligation to those who were left to rot in the fetid waters, not just to give them a return to the same inequality, but a chance at a better life. Should Obama visit the city before the year ends, he shouldn't go to Bourbon Street, but the Lower Ninth, and he should not just tell them what he will do, but back it up.

David Brooks as usual, is wrong on just about almost everything that comes out of his mouth in this segment. Health care reform is popular. This mess that looks like it's going to be a sell out to the insurance industries is losing popularity. Obama's numbers are going down among his base and with independents as this thing plays itself out and it appears that not only was single-payer not on the table, but the public option wasn't either. It's not losing popularity because the President didn't look like he showed enough love to the Grassley's and Blue Dogs of the world.

And the democratic process has not made Chuck Grassley do anything. Chuck Grassley is out to destroy the chances of anything meaningful being done with reforming our current system, and listening to his constituents at town halls has not changed that one way or the other.

From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer Aug. 21, 2009.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that or subtract?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I'm not sure it was inevitable.

JIM LEHRER: You don't think it was inevitable?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I mean, he's lost the independents, a group I don't think he had to lose. If he had taken a stimulus package of $400 billion instead of $787 billion, I think he would have held the independents, held a lot of the Republicans.

If he had taken sort of a more moderate version of health care reform, I think he could have held on to -- there's a Wyden-Bennett plan that he, I think, would have held on to some of those independents.

I mean, the major reason he's falling down now -- the secondary reason is the economy is still not -- you know, unemployment. But the major reason is health care reform. His major domestic initiative is unpopular. The majority -- a slight majority of the American people disapprove of it, and there's no sign that that's let up.

And so he really is in a sort of not freefall, but a serious slide. You know, Charlie Cook, who knows more about congressional elections than just about anybody, has a memo out today saying there's as much of a chance the Democrats will lose more than 20 seats in the next House elections than fewer than 20 seats, and that's a pretty serious thing. That's a terrible climate in which to try to enact health care.

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Bobby Jindal continues to refuse to credit the stimulus package for Louisiana's economic recovery even though as Think Progress noted, he was happy to go around the state presenting jumbo sized checks which included money from those funds.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) reemerged on the national stage yesterday, penning an op-ed in the Politico to slam efforts to reform health care and declaring the Economic Recovery Act a failure. Jindal declared the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” However, less than 24 hours before Jindal published his op-ed, Jindal traveled to Anacoco, Louisiana to present a jumbo-sized check to residents of Vernon Parish. The funds included hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from the Recovery Act — at least $157,848 in Community Block Grant money authorized by the Recovery Act and $138,611 for Byrne/JAG job training programs created by the Recovery Act. Rather than credit the federal government or the Recovery Act he opposed, Jindal printed his own name on the corner of the massive check.

When asked about this on Blitzer's The Situation Room, Jindal refused to acknowledge that the stimulus package has been successful, and instead touted the use of the line item veto and said the stimulus money should have been temporary and targeted, and included more tax cuts. Blitzer didn't ask him about the jumbo sized checks he was using for photo ops.

I thought they weren't going to allow that to happen?

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has a message for Republican governors hemming and hawing over whether to accept the stimulus money Uncle Sam is mailing to each state: Take it or leave it.

Several GOP governors, including Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and South Carolina's Mark Sanford, have cited ideological differences with the stimulus spending and suggested they may take some parts of it and decline the rest. For Schumer, it's all or nothing.

"No one would dispute that these governors should be given the choice as to whether to accept the funds or not. But it should not be multiple choice," Schumer writes in a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

So why is Jindal being allowed to use the line item veto to block part of the stimulus spending in Louisiana? Full transcript below the fold.

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John McCain with a bit of verbal acrobatics on CNN's American Morning, trying to say the stimulus package was a failure while decrying the "politics" being played when Ray LaHood told his Governor they were free to follow McCain and Kyl's advice and turn down the money for Arizona.

CHETRY: All right. Republicans are hitting the Obama administration hard, not only over the cost of overhauling health care, but also the stimulus plan. Whether it's working effectively and whether it's worth the billions it cost. In Arizona, it turned up to a dustup between one senator and members of the administration, and now Senator John McCain is joining that fight over whether the stimulus spending should be outright canceled. Senator John McCain is joining us live from Capitol Hill this morning.

Good to have you with us again, senator. Thanks for being here.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Thank you, Kiran.

CHETRY: Well, you know, your fellow senator, Arizona's Jon Kyl, has said that the stimulus should be canceled. He called it a failure. Do you think that we should stop the spending?

MCCAIN: Jon Kyl was on a talk show on Sunday, talking about how the stimulus has failed, which it has, and only 10 percent of the money has been distributed, and the predictions of the administration were there would be eight percent unemployment. We're now at 9.5 percent, headed for 10.

So, in an arrogant use of power, the president's chief of staff, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, told four cabinet secretaries to send a letter to our governor and ask her if she wanted the money or not. Now, our governor is right in the middle of a fiscal crisis and doesn't need that kind of harassment. So, the point is that the money has been, is being spent. The money has been allocated, and it is a failure and that's what Jon Kyl was talking about. And what Rahm Emanuel did was an arrogant use of power, that's all.

CHETRY: Well, what you're referring to is letters that went out to the governor of Arizona. One of them came from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican, who wrote that if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.

But politics aside, do you think Arizona should say...

MCCAIN: Astonishing that they are making available? My state of Arizona is a donor state. We send more money to Washington than it sends back, so secretary of transportation is making available to Arizona our own money? I tell you, that's a remarkable statement. A remarkable statement.

CHETRY: What I'm wondering, though, is so we have Jon Kyl criticizing the stimulus, and saying that it's failing.

MCCAIN: As have I, and it is.

CHETRY: Right. And both senators from the state are saying that. So, what about perhaps putting your money...

MCCAIN: We're saying it failed.

CHETRY: What about putting your money where your mouth is and, OK, let's not take any money.

MCCAIN: We are saying that it failed, it has failed by any measurement. And by the way, one of the cabinet secretaries told me over the phone in these words that the letter that was sent is political b.s. That's what he said to me. And you know what? He's right.

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What world is this man living in? I was watching FOX News and Blue Dogger Dan Boren was on saying that the Democratic Party should be centrist,in the middle and pragmatic and not a left wing party. So what are we then? This is an attempt by the Blue Dogs to tank the House bill until they are catered to. He must love those co-opts. (rough transcript)

What is the hangup that you see?

Boren: I think most of us want reform...I think they main sticking point in the House bill is the surtax. Also we're concerned with other ideas to tax benefits. We want to cover people with preexisting conditions, but we need a bill that's in the center. We want bipartisan consensus. I think that's what most people want. We can't just have one or two republicans. We've got to have a broad swath of the Congress. It looks like it's starting in the Senate Finance committee, but in the House is a little bit bogged down with kind of a bill that's on the left flank and hopefully we can bring it to the center..

It's a district that John McCain carried with sixty six percent of the vote, but at the same time I'm still a democrat. I want to make sure that this administration and this country is successful and the way for it to be successful is to be bipartisan....For democrats to be successful is we've got to be seen as centrist, moderates as pragmatic...

Boren is saying that he'll only support something that republicans support. Is he kidding me? We had an election and the country wants to move left. Have the Republicans negotiated in good faith on one major piece of legalisation's so far? This is a case where he's worried more about his seat and his own personal gain than he is about doing his job and helping to fix the health care system for the country.

He was quoted today saying this via The Plumb Line:

The GOP’s latest strategy is to aggressively link the White House-backed energy and health care initiatives with the “already failed” stimulus package, and to say that health care reform is doomed unless it’s “bipartisan.”

Now the GOP strategy has picked up an assist from an unlikely — or perhaps likely — figure: Blue Dog Dem Dan Boren.

In remarks in his district that were reported by The Oklahoman, Boren aggressively trashed the Obama-backed cap and trade bill, said it could exacerbate the country’s economic problems, and challenged Obama to be “bipartisan” on health care.

Boren on health care:

“If health care reform is going to happen, it’s going to have to happen in a bipartisan way,” he said. “It’s really up to the president.

It’s worth noting that calls for “bipartisanship” have stopped having any meaning. Multiple Republicans have said that health care reform won’t have bipartisan support unless the White House’s main goals are ditched, so demands that Dems be more bipartisan basically mean “do nothing,” or “dump your top priorities because Republicans want you to.”

Greg Sargent summed it up nicely. The Republicans already said they want to kill the bill and tried to bring up images of Waterloo so the President and the Democratic party will be weakened. Boren's argument is hollow and a lie. That's typical behavior coming from the Blue Dogs and pointless I might add.