Cokie Roberts and her husband just penned an article that attacks liberals who have gone after the Ben Nelson's of the Democratic Party that are sabotaging health care reform. Steve and Cokie Roberts: Blessed are the majority makers. You see in Villagese, it's the few Ben Nelson's that has given President Obama the majority in Congress and not the other 257 House members and 59 Senators that actually give him the majority. To Cokie, the public option is nothing more than a gift to liberals that has no inherent significant in it that will impact health care reform. Sitting from her desk on the set of ABC, Cokie says she can craft the perfect health care bill without blinking an eye. Isn't she special?

STEPHANOPOULOS: it'll force him to go slower, which is probably a good thing, but the problem he may have is actually managing his liberal base.

ROBERTS: Absolutely, I think that is going to be the problem because look....you could sit here right now, even though it's complicated we can sit at this table and write a bill...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Insurance reforms, some costs control...

ROBERTS: And, but no public option and it's a bill that's actually been there for a very long time. You can take the Wyden-Bennett, it is a bipartisan bill. And Howard Baker and Bob Dole have a bill, you know there are bills out there that are doable. And if I had to guess in the end I think that's probably what is going to happen is something much more watered down ...

STEPHANOPOULOS:...But will the Howard Dean wing of the party go along?

ROBERTS: No, they are going to be absolutely furious and that is the problem that he's got right now. He's already got the liberals

NOONAN: Maybe it would be good for the president if he got absolutely furious about something.

ROBERTS: Well, I think that's the middle advantage. (Cokie's last words were tough to hear)

NOONAN: I understand what's going on, we got a little middle stuff going on around here, we got some centrism. That ain't so bad.

Peggy Noonan is so cute talking about centrism. That's a word she would never use if Reagan and Bush were in charge. Cokie is insufferable with her rant because it makes no sense, but that's a Villager for you. See, any elitist gasbag can craft sweeping health care reforms in an hour. I'm shocked that ABC didn't devote a ten minute segment so that Cokie could lead the round table to write the exact legislation that Congress should vote on and President Obama would sign into law. It would have saved the country so much time and energy. Why didn't she think of that? That Cokie is so brilliant.

In Cokie's world, we're the problem. It's not the obstructionist Republicans and all the health care establishment groups that have fought to block health care reform since 1948. Naw, it's OK for them to destroy it just like ABC's first guest---Newt Gingrich did. What Gingrich does is perfectly acceptable to the beltway weenies because that's the way she likes it. It's those dirty f*&king hippies that want true health care reform that are the problem. We actually have a voice at the table now and that's too much for her. How dare we ask for a good bill and not some watered down piece of crap that Roberts has a hankering for? The serious people in Washington think that Obama should trash his base while Bush should embrace his. Typical 1988 conventional wisdom. Conservative opposition to everything Democratic is the way the world turns under Cokie and the DC insiders. Oh, and what type of health care does she enjoy today? Conservative opposition to everything Democratic is the way the world turns under Cokie. Oh, and what type of health care does she enjoy?

There's no shortage of wingnuts out there, so why would George Stephanopoulos invite on someone too crazy for even Bill O'Reilly? Only people with a Malkin brain would believe and push across the notion that Americans would rather collect three hundred dollars a week on unemployment insurance rather than get a job that supplies benefits and pays a salary.

Yea, because there are so many jobs available, people will just wait until the insurance ends and then immediately get hired. I'm sorry, where are all these jobs again? On ABC's THIS WEEK Malkin made this bogus claim. A quick Google search uncovers that when Michelle claims Larry Katz once said that the benefits could discourage people from seeking employment, Katz actually said just the opposite during our current financial mess:

Traditionally, many economists have been leery of prolonged unemployment benefits because they can reduce the incentive to seek work. But that should not be a concern now because jobs remain so scarce, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard.

For every job that becomes available, about six people are looking, Dr. Katz said. “Unemployment insurance gives income to families who are really suffering and can’t find work even if they are hustling to look,” he said. With the economy still listing, he added, a temporary extension can provide a quick fiscal stimulus. And, Dr. Katz said, when people exhaust unemployment and health insurance, many end up applying for disability benefits, which become a large, unending drain on the Treasury.

It does help to fact check what conservatives say.

Malkin: If you put enough government cheese in front of people they are just going to keep eating it and you're just kicking the can down the road and just to hammer this point about the unemployment benefits extension again it was Larry Katz, who's a chief labor economist under the Clinton labor department who came out with a study and there are a lot of these economists who say this that if you keep extending these "temporary" unemployment benefits you're just going to extend joblessness even more.

Stephanopoulos: I don't know if I follow that though

Malkin: That was a Clinton economist who said it George...

Stephanopoulos: Choosing to take the unemployment benefits when a job is available?

Malkin: Seventy nine weeks already and then they're going to extend it by another thirteen weeks and what happens is according to these economist who have seen it including this Clinton economist is that people will just delay getting a job until the three weeks before the benefits run out.

Tucker: Well, that might be true when there are jobs out there that are available, but there are very few jobs available at the moment so I don't think people are using that unemployment benefit to be lazy instead of going out and searching for jobs...

Malkin: I'm not making a moral judgment, it's an incentive problem.

Tucker: But when businesses advertise the few job openings they have, they'll advertise twenty openings, they have six thousand applicants so I don't think that's the problem...

Hunt: If Starbucks were hiring, suddenly you'll see lines around the block. Anecdotally George, I have a kid who has some friends from college and many of them don't have jobs and boy, they are looking.

Stephanopoulos: And there are other states especially that are hard hit.

I know she probably worked on her government cheese talking point for a while, but it makes no sense except if we've all turned into little mouses now. With unemployment so high, where are the jobs that people are not bothering to take that bears any of this out? There's good money to be made in wingnutland, so she can attack Americans just trying to stay afloat by receiving unemployment compensation. I never realized how wonderful not having a job is.

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Paul Krugman joined the round table discussion on ABC's THIS WEEK and highlighted the misleading CBO report on the costs of health care and he singled out Doug Elmendorf as the culprit..

Krugman: I think I should say something about that CBO thing which really surprised a lot fo people because...

George: it was important and interesting timing...

Krugman: And also because most of the health care economists I talked to think that MedPac reform, that having these judges would actually be quite important especially in the long run so they were really kind of surprised. There's a kind of sense that the CBO faced with a, no one can put a hard number on this, but CBO sort of said that if we can't put a hard number on it we're going to say it's zero and that seems to be wrong. There's every reason to think that what Medicare is willing to pay for can save a lot of money and this was a kind of destructive comment by Doug Elmendorf of the CBO.

Ywa, think? How can the CBO give an effective cost analysis without the entire bill being presented to them? And suddenly the CBO is the judge and jury on whether we get health care reform passed and gives detractors a vehicle to complain. The media sure seems to be rooting for an Obama failure on health care reform, but what's their stake in it outside of loving the prospect of running with that story? I actually saw a segment on CNN which discussed the ramification of having no health care and how it affects Americans. There's too little of that and too much of imaginary numbers.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the author of the meaningless "co opt" plan appeared on ABC's THIS WEEK and said that even with a 60 vote majority in the Senate a health care bill can't get passed without Republicans.

It's just not possible to have a Democrat-only bill?" I asked Sen. Conrad.

"No, it is not possible," he told me, "and perhaps not desirable either. We're probably going to get a better product if we go through the tough business of debate, consideration, and analysis of what we're proposing."

Conrad would not commit to Obama's August recess deadline for health reform legislation.

"Look the critical think is that we do get this right. This is going to affect every American. Very few legislative initiatives affect every single American. And it's one-sixth of the national economy, so it's critically important we get it right. But that shouldn't be used as a pretext to kill it," Conrad told me on "This Week."

Conrad added, "Jim, I think has been very clear, he wants to kill it. And I think that would be a tragedy because we've got a crisis here for the country."

The follow up question should have been "why can't Democrats pass health care legislature with a 60 vote majority?" That would be asking a little too much. The conservative Dems are destroying any real chance we have at reform. Here's a memo to these bipartisan trolls. Republicans want to kill the bill and destroy President Obama's presidency. Wingnutter Jim DeMint from SC already said it so why does Conrad feel that he can work with them? Orrin Hatch dropped out of the negotiations for a reason. I'll be calling Conrad's office on Monday and ask him to work through the August recess if they try to stall the bill.

(h/t Heather)

The Villagers were up in arms Sunday morning over on the set of ABC's This Week about the possibility that Eric Holder might appoint a special someone to look into the Bush/Cheney torture practices. Watch in awe and see how the Villagers feel about trying to get accountability from the Bush years.

Why, an investigation would just trash the place. Oh, the bitterness in D.C. would be too much to handle, all because those other people (that is, non-Villagers) would like to get to the truth.

Bob Woodward, who's trying to be the next David Broder by living off his long-degraded rep as the man who uncovered Watergate, wonders how we will ever be able to keep secrets again if there is some inspection. Um, isn't that what the Bob Woodwardses are supposed to do? Uncover stuff? Nope, not anymore. He's appalled that there might be a frakking investigation.

And he was all a-giggle with the thought that the CIA could actually lie. What a joke. I didn't hear him open his mouth when Newt Gingrich went all whiggy on Nancy Pelosi.

Cokie goes "Cokie" on us for a while and then after much trepidation comes down on the rule of law. Good for her, but she better take some R&R if it happens.

ROBERTS: I must say, I have very mixed minds about this. Because on the one hand, the whole idea of a prosecution gets Washington into that kind of horrible slog where everybody hates each other and the poison just gets very thick.

DONALDSON: Unlike at the moment, right?

ROBERTS: Well, no, it hasn’t been as bad lately as it was in the last 16 years.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And it seems like they’re trying to avoid at least in the design of this, criminalizing of policy.

ROBERTS: And just the whole atmosphere of getting that way again. On the other hand, the rule of law is terribly important. And we have to have it -- you know, we cannot operate in this country without the rule of law.

DONALDSON: So which hand do you come down on?

ROBERTS: I’d probably come down on the rule of law.

Digby writes much more:

Stephanopoulos reported on This Week that the possible Holder investigation is going to be very narrow and will not pursue policy makers or anyone who took orders directly from the policymakers. He's going after "rogue interrogators" who inflicted more torture than was strictly allowed.

The Village roundtable all gasped in horror anyway because who knows where such an investigation might lead and as Cokie complained, it would mean that the whole town would be mad at each other again and nobody wants that! "Everybody hates each other and the poison gets very thick." She did finally come down on the side of following the rule of law even though it would make her uncomfortable at cocktail parties, but it was a close thing.

Bob Woodward was very upset at the idea that the government can't keep secrets because "we need them!" Besides, Holder shouldn't be like Janet Reno and just initiate investigations willy nilly. (He seems to think that Reno authorizing independent counsels to investigate her own president for trivial political reasons is the same thing as investigating whether the previous administration tortured prisoners.) They all chuckled at the notion that Holder was really independent and if he is, that means he's a rogue interrogator himself.

George Will thought it was all just a bunch of balderdash because nothing bad ever happened during the Bush administration. Sam Donaldson said that reporters should probably pursue stories and Donna Brazile added that these things were coming out anyway so they might as well be investigated.

They all snorted and giggled and laughed throughout the whole segment about how silly it was to be upset that the CIA lied because well, that's what it does. And they all thought it was a ripping good joke that Cheney kept everything secret because well, everyone knows that's what he does. Hahahahaha.

Full transcript below the fold.

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You know, sometimes it's hard to keep a straight face when I watch the Sunday shows. Did a Republican strategist actually come up with this one? Case in point: Rep. John Boehner used cow farts to defend global warming deniers' spurious claims that carbon emissions do not cause climate change.

I believe that's what he meant, anyway. In this segment, he is incoherent as ABC's George Stephanopoulos tries to get him to explain to the American people what the Republicans will offer -- if anything -- on the energy problems our country faces.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide. And so I think it's clear...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you don't believe that greenhouse gases are a problem in creating climate change?

BOEHNER: ... we've had climate change over the last 100 years -- listen, it's clear we've had change in our climate. The question is how much does man have to do with it, and what is the proper way to deal with this? We can't do it alone as one nation. If we got India, China and other industrialized countries not working with us, all we're going to do is ship millions of American jobs overseas.

So he's telling us that Republicans have no energy policy except to just say no to the administration. Can someone please write a few words into the threads about carbon emissions and what they do to climate change? I'm tired of linking and writing sentences to offset conservative climate-change deniers. Is it any wonder that Americans think the Limbaugh National Committee is out of their collective minds?

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(h/t Heather)

A typical Villager philosophy is that a Democratic President must always throw his liberal base under the bus as soon as he takes office to be taken seriously. That litmus test is never applied to Republicans, though. Was there an outcry that George Bush must buck conservatives to appear legitimate to the American people? Of course not.

THIS WEEK's roundtable turned their attention to the budget today, and Paul Krugman agreed that health-care reform is incredibly important to the state of the economy and something he hopes President Obama gets done. Matthew Dowd pivots away and evokes the Villager Mantra:

Dowd: At some point, in order for him to demonstrate to the American public, he at some point -- soon -- he has to take on some significant constituency of the Democratic Party. If he believes in change and he wants to do things, which may be the health-care debate, which he may have to take on, at some point, a constituency. As of yet, he has taken on no constituency in the Democratic party...

The panel immediately went into a discussion on Obama's Afghanistan War plan, which the left is not at all singing praises over, so Dowd was immediately proved wrong. But the idea that President Obama has to attack his own base is ridiculous and patently false. I wouldn't mind President Obama taking on the Blue Dogs or Evan Bayh's power hungry group, but that certainly wouldn't count in the minds of the Villagers.

Digby writes about this in her post: Soljah Politics

What, you don't recall the press insisting after both Bush elections that he needed to repudiate his most enthusiastic followers as often as possible to maintain his credibility?

Oh wait. Sorry. I'm mistaken. They didn't. They just celebrated the fact that Real Americans had insisted that there would be no oral sex in the white house and that the president would throw strikes at Yankee stadium. Even after the Terry Schiavo circus, they didn't say anything about Sistah Soljahing the Republican base. (I suppose they couldn't --- after all, the Republican base are Real Americans unlike the crazy hippies on the left.)

Dowd has no credibility on this since he helped elect Bush for two terms before he "soured on George." Isn't it interesting when the rats jump off a sinking ship?

How can this country ever get through this economic nightmare with leaders of the Banking Committee that are Republicans like Sen. Shelby, who just want the banks to go under:

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said today on "This Week" that the government should let troubled banks fail.

"I don't want to nationalize them, I think we need to close them," Shelby told me this morning.

"Close them down, get them out of business. If they're dead, they ought to be buried," he said. "We bury the small banks; we've got to bury some big ones and send a strong message to the market. And I believe that people will start investing [again] in banks."

I asked Sen. Shelby if he was referring specifically to Citigroup, the struggling bank that has received about $45 billion in taxpayer money.

"Well whatever. Citi's always been a problem child," said Shelby, who has long opposed giving federal TARP money to struggling banks.

But Thomas Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, disagreed.

"It's not practical to talk about closing a bank that is integrated throughout the whole global economy," he said. "It is practical to talk about buying some of those assets away from those banks and holding them in an institution that would have both public and private money." Donohue said federal bailout money for the banks was the right thing to do for the economy

How can we accomplish anything with a ranking member giving us the Hoover treatment? The banks are so interconnected to the global economy that you just can't treat them like a mom and pop grocery store, but thi sis what Republican leaders want to do.

From Josh Marshall:

Something like this is both heartening and insanely distressing at the same time because what exactly does he think people are talking about when people talk about nationalization? They're talking about some form of FDIC-like takeover, though probably one that would take longer and be much more complicated since you simply can't find another bank that is going to buy up most or all of Citi's assets at some knock-down price over the weekend -- certainly not in the present climate. You either clean the bank up (which would require what amounts to a de facto bankruptcy proceeding) and sell it back into private hands or break it up and sell it off in individual pieces -- likely some combination of the two.

It would be one thing if Shelby were just one more Fox News robot. But he's the ranking member of the friggin' Banking Committee.

C&Ler David emailed me this:

Keith Olbermann: Shelby didn't just say the banks should be left alone to meet their own fate to fail if that's the case. He suggested having federal regulators come in and shut them down. How is that not government intervention? How is that not nationalization?. And just because there's no bank standing at the end of this, how is that not socialism by [Shelby's] own terms and definitions?

Richard Wolffe: Well, I love the "socialist" debate. It's just so
amazing that people throw the word around and they have obviously no idea what it actually ever meant. You just have to be grateful that this congress wasn't dealing with the Soviet Union otherwise they would have threatened Sweden with nuclear annihilation.

(h/t Heather)

This Week with George Stephanopoulos notes the passings of fashion critic Mr. Blackwell, Mr Olympia contest founder Ben Weider and newsman William Headline as well as 9 servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to icasualties, the total number of allied servicepeople killed in Iraq now total 4,501. According to Iraq Body Count, there were 150 confirmed Iraqi civilian deaths this week.

(h/t David)

McCain booster Sen. Lindsay Graham has his talking points and he's not going to deviate from them, no matter how much logic and reality may interfere.

Even though highly visible (and amazingly, still respected) Republicans have openly criticized the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president and endorsed Obama, Graham will have you know that Palin has energized the base like no other. Pay no attention to those polls, people. Strangely, Graham asserts that even though her appeal is to the Republican base, if she was a Democrat, she'd be more popular than "sliced bread". How does that work, Huckleberry?

But incongruously, even though that base is energized by Palin, McCain is still that mavericky man unafraid to take on his party. Does Graham think that might depress the energized base? Maybe this is where those sliced bread Democrats come in. But even more incongruously, Colin Powell (that 'not-real-Republican', according to Graham) is nervous about McCain's SCOTUS picks, which would be just like Bush's selections of Roberts and Alito. How mavericky that is.

My head is spinning from this bizarre, logic-free rationalizations of a campaign without a clear narrative and imploding on itself. So I'll merely leave with the best line from Graham:

Governor Palin is what John McCain has been trying to do in Washington, she has done in Alaska. She has -- filing a complaint against a sitting attorney general of your own party with a Democrat takes a lot of guts. Taking on the oil interests, you know, cutting taxes. She is -- running against an incumbent governor. John sees in her many of the qualities he sees in himself.

And this is a good thing?

Well, she's the gift that keeps on giving.

Sarah Palin told a customer at a Philadelphia restaurant on Saturday that the United States should "absolutely" launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the event that it becomes necessary to "stop the terrorists from coming any further in," a comment similar to the one John McCain condemned Barack Obama for making during last night's presidential debate.   During Friday's debate, Obama criticized the Bush administration for sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan without ridding the border region of terrorists.

 McCain fired back hard, arguing that newly elected Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has had his "hands full" and suggesting that Obama's tough talk was naïve.

"You don't say that out loud," McCain said. "If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government."

Palin's apparent disagreement with McCain's position on Pakistan came as the Alaska governor was picking up a couple of cheesesteaks at Tony Luke's in South Philadelphia. She was approached by a man wearing a Temple University t-shirt, who later identified himself as Michael Rovito...read on

Too bad she wasn't on any of the post debate network wrap up shows. She would have given the media the "sound byte" they were looking for to endlessly loop.  UPDATED:  (Nicole)

  Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

George Stephanopoulos asked John McCain about his running mate's loose lips and he reiterated his policy of not announcing attacks on a country ahead of time, to which Stephie pointed out that's exactly what Palin did.  McCain's response?

"You know this business of .... in all due respect people, going around and, with sticking a microphone while conversations are being held and all of a sudden that's ... that's a person's position ...it, it's a free country but I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitive policy statement made by Governor Palin and I would hope you wouldn't either."

Translation:  How dare anyone take her at her word?  You know you shouldn't listen to her!

This week we note the passing of Rick Wright, founding member of legendary band Pink Floyd, Green party activist and Ralph Nader's 2004 running mate, Peter Camejo, and famed yacht designer Olin Stephens. We also note the passing of 13 soldiers and marines killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Download | play   Download | play  

  It's a cold day in hell when the entire "This Week" panel rails against John McCain and his utter confusion when it comes to the economy. Cokie Roberts raises the specter of Herbert Hoover, Donaldson rightfully pins the deregulation racket on McCain and Republicans, calling McCain's promise to champion regulation a "hard pill to swallow,"  and George Will says McCain acted "unpresidential" and that the issue of age should re-enter the debate over whether McCain is fit for the job.

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Quote of the segment, from George Will of all people:

John McCain showed his personality this week and made some of us fearful.

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

There are so many aspects of the proposed bailout that should send shivers down any thinking individual's spine that I hope each and every C&Ler take a few minutes to contact their representatives tomorrow to express their distrust of the bailout as written.  From the ironically-labeled Section 8: 

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. 

to the announcement by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (oh hell, let's just call him President Paulson now, because he's effectively running the country) that the bailout would include foreign companies as well: 

STEPHANOPOULOS: The original legislation we saw said that you would be buying up the mortgage-related assets from financial institutions having headquarters in the United States. Yet last night, the fact sheet put out by the Treasury seemed to expand that. It said only that the financial institutions have to have significant operations in the U.S., and that you could waive that at your discretion.

So, will foreign financial institutions be eligible to have their assets bought?

PAULSON: Yes, and they should, because as you think about this, if a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution.

That's a distinction without a difference to the American people. The key here is about protecting the system.[..]

But, remember, this is about protecting the American people and protecting the taxpayers. And the American people don't care who owns the financial institution. If a financial institution in this country has problems, it'll have the same impact...

What a giant, steaming load of bovine excrement.  The LAST thing on Paulson's mind is protecting the taxpayers...we are financing his buddies' golden parachutes, with no oversight, no changes and no guarantees that we won't be IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE in a couple of months.  Because if Paulson gave two bits about the American people, he would be in favor of the Democratic plan to give some relief to homeowners instead of making sure that he can hand cash over to foreign companies.   Note the complete sidestep (shame on you, Stephanopoulos, for letting him get away with it) of what the taxpayers get back in return.  Even conservative blogs are finding this bailout to be ridiculous: 

We're setting precedents that will govern the behavior of the international business community for decades to come. Do we really want to signal that risks are public and rewards are private?

For that matter, do we really want such fundamental decisions being made by obscure, unaccountable men like Bernanke, Paulson, and SEC chair Chris Cox? Shouldn't Congress and the president be more than bit players?

Speaking of those who have forgotten history, dooming us all to repeat it, C&Ler Diane emailed me a link to this BBC-Radio4 documentary, Document, that has quite a few parallels to today's financial climate. 

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

This Week with George Stephanopoulos marks the passing of basketball coach Don Haskins, actress Anita Page and novelist David Foster Wallace as well as 7 soldiers and Marines who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, I also have to note the passing of Green Party founder (and former Nader running mate) Peter Camajo.

According to icasualties, the number of allied deaths attributed to Operation Iraqi Freedom is now 4,471. During this same week, Iraq Body Count lists 129 Iraqi civilian deaths.