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I confess that I almost wish I would be invited to sit on a panel for "This Week" now. Whatever they are serving in the green room is some pretty strong stuff, based on how loopy Peggy Noonan is in this clip. Or maybe she's dipping into the Captain Morgan provisions in the limo on the way in to the studios.

Either way, Nooners is in love with her bizarre "Republicans should be pirates and steal Democratic ideas!" column and endorses it again while simultaneously wailing about President Obama's inability to play along with the implacable Republican obstructionism and destructive Republican policies.

Luckily, Paul Krugman takes the role of sane person (because you know that's too much work for host George Stephanopoulos) and tries to direct Noonan out of her circular logic loop. But then Stephanopoulos asks her about this nutty pirate theory, giving her the opportunity to wax rhapsodic and slightly tipsily:

First of all, don't be the depressed gray-suited gaggle that comes forward in the halls of the House once a day to speak in a sort of a almost furtive and sad manner about what's going on. No great themes ever emerge, nothing ever seems to get said.

Look, this is a time to remember in a way the joy of politics. The Republicans are in a bad position right now. They just lost a big election. They are a bunch of folks in Washington, the president is one man with a mike. That man, the president, can always overpower them. My feeling is this is a wonderful time to be daring and surprising. Go to the populist right on economic issues, on things issues like breaking up the banks and the carried interest loopholes. Go for immigration, don't wait for the president.

I know. I'm just here to amuse, Paul.

If anyone can figure out a sensible and likely political angle from that strange salad of pollyannish optimism and flat out delusion, please share, because I'm not seeing it.

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Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the push by congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the costs elsewhere could end up being "disastrous" for the economy.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Greenspan expressed his disagreement with the conservative argument that tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by generating revenue and productivity among recipients.

"They do not," said Greenspan.

"I'm very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money and the problem that we have gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money," he said. "And at the end of the day that proves disastrous. My view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here."

The comments from the former Fed chief were an elaboration of a position he outlined in an interview earlier in the week. Speaking with PBS' Judy Woodruff, Greenspan expressed his opposition to passing legislation that would hold tax rates steady (under law the tax cuts Bush passed ten years ago are going to expire, thereby bringing rates back to Clinton-era levels). President Obama has pledged to continue the tax breaks for those individuals making under $200,000 and those families earning less than $250,000.

But Republicans want the entire package kept in place. Even so, they have declined to say how they would pay for it, saying, in part, that keeping the Bush tax cuts in place will pay for itself.

In addition to throwing cold water on that theory, Greenspan also weighed in on broader economic issues and trends. The former Fed Chairman relayed some sobering economic predictions, saying he expected the nation's unemployment rate to remain at its current level, mainly because there were few tools left to change it.

CNN [also being aired on MSNBC]:

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will come together Thursday night for half-hour appearances at a TIME-sponsored forum on national service at Columbia University in New York.

The candidates will not speak together at the forum, but they will both participate in a discussion about national service with Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel and PBS's Judy Woodruff.

[WWII National Service poster from here]

CNN's Judy Woodruff on E-Voting problems!

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Slowly the media is starting to catch up with the story!

On Inside Politics Karl Rove has this to say:

Rove:... "Unfunded obligations in Social Security are $12 trillion. In 2008 the payments in to the Social Security system will peak and the Social Security surplus peak, 2017, we start spending more money each year than we're taking in, and 2041, about the time our kids and grandkids get set to retire, the system goes bankrupt. That is a problem."

The problem Karl, is that your party started out with this lie, and refuse to stop saying it.

We all know that the system does not go bankrupt in 2041. According to The 2005 OASDI Trustees Report: "Even if a trust fund's assets are exhausted, however, tax income will continue to flow into the fund. Present tax rates would be sufficient to pay 74 percent of scheduled benefits after trust fund exhaustion in 2041 and 68 percent of scheduled benefits in 2079." This lie has not worked for the GOP so far. My question to John King who is filling in for Judy Woodruff is : Why can't you correct this calculated falsehood? Is it too much to ask that the hosts of these shows actually say something like:

King: Actually Karl, the system doesn't go bankrupt in 2041, so why are you saying it does?

We called CNN today and asked that Robert Novak make an on-the -air apology to Howard Dean for purposely lying about Dean's statements at Cornell University last week. We talked to the PR department and told them that it wasn't up to Judy Woodruff to make a bogus apology on Novak's behalf, because it was the second time that Novak had spread the same lie. The first time being on The Capital Gang on 2/26. I was told that they would talk to the Inside Politics producers and get back to us. We'll let you know what happens.

It's true that blogs are up and coming and if you take a small sampling of the population, many people haven't caught on yet. (I'm sure Hugh Hewitt believes fifty percent of the population reads his blog) However, the numbers would probably be much higher for politically motivated individuals. MyDD speculates that by 2008, blogs might become the number one online source of news for Americans.

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MyDD notes that blogs are still read more often by the left: Partisan, Political Blogosphere Traffic Rankings (Crooks and Liars came in at #25. We are one of the fastest growing blogs on the net. :-)

Of the top fifty blogs that met the above listed criteria, twenty-six were on the right, and twenty-four were on the left. These twenty-six right-wing blogs combined for 6,077,648 page views per week, while the twenty-four left-wing blogs combined for around 7,918,437 page views per week. This is a roughly a four to three margin in favor of the lefty blogs, which has consistently been the margin between the two groups since I started these rankings in September. As a whole, these blogs receive more traffic than the websites of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News combined. By the 2008 election, blogs might become the number one online source of news for Americans. The rankings are in the extended entry.

via American Street on CNN's "Inside the blogs"

we don’t know if you’ve been watching judy woodruff’s inside politics for the past couple of weeks. if not, we’ll save you the trouble.

....but mainly, and, hold on to your seats now, because we’re sure that the following will come as a shock to you, but during the past 15 days, “inside the blogs” has mentioned, quoted, or otherwise referenced literally twice as many conservative blogs as liberal blogs. and that’s with the widest possible definition of ‘liberal’ we can use with a straight face. let’s look at the facts:

The Daily Show on: why blogs are more interesting than CNN

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"I misspoke"

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Crook and Liars
perseverance pays off. We called CNN and demanded an on-the-air apology by Novak himself because of the lie he spread about Howard Dean. Earlier in the week Judy Woodruff issued an apology for Novak's lie, but we felt that wasn't enough. We called and spoke to a PR person who said they would talk to the producers of Inside Politics and get back to us. We promised that we would not go away.

Since Novak claimed on February 26 edition of CNN's The Capital Gang: "Howard Dean gave a speech at Cornell on Thursday of this week in which he said that 80 percent -- over the years, 80 percent of the Social Security benefits will be lost." Then he repeated the lie on Inside Politics the following Monday. Off course Dean actually said: "if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now." The GOP repeated his lie with video on their website (scrubbed now) and subsequently Rush Limbaugh used the same quote on 3/3. Novak came on the air today and apologized saying: "On Monday I said, I misspoke myself...what I meant to say..."

We know that he knew the actual quote being a seasoned "journalist," but chose to try and tarnish Dean with a lie. Also he claimed to have said it on Monday only, which of course is not true. The fact that he got on the air at all shows what can be done if we put our minds to it. Media Matters was on top of the story as well and proved invaluable in getting Novak to denounce himself. Thanks to all that called and emailed their concerns to CNN.

(Update-many feel it wasn't a good enough apology. We do agree. He still tried to say that Dean didn't "toe" the party line, which of course is incorrect. However, we still feel that it was important to get him to acknowledge his lie on the air, "something that had to kill him to do," even in the under handed way that he did it. We never expected him to admit much more. We tried our best.)

Novak couldn't even look into the camera when he said:

Novak:...last week, I'm,.. I misspoke when I said that ahh...the new republic, democratic national chairman...

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He was so flustered that he confused the two parties. You'll notice that he didn't try to put a tag line on it this time either. Maybe because there were a few democrats in the room? With Judy Woodruff he was able to spin it to make it look like Howard Dean wasn't staying within the party line.

David Certner spoke briefly to Judy Woodruff about the smear campaign from USA NEXT

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Certner: This shows you the absurdity of the debate. Someone would try to take a social security debate and somehow try and bring in the military, and homosexuality...

We've been waiting for AARP to come out and say something in it's own defense against the slander that USA NEXT is putting out.

Dave Johnson has more on USA NEXT

I did some digging and found a few things to add:

The report says that Texans for Lawsuit Reform, an industry front-group working for "tort reform," is a funder of USA Next. Well, here's a name you'll recognize: Enron's Ken Lay helped start and fund Texans for Lawsuit Reform! See the following, which is footnote 47 from my report The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law:

I also found this about W. H. Regnery, former Boardmember:

W.H. Regnery Sr., patriarch of the nation's premier conservative pubishing house, was one of the principal financiers of the America First movement which advocated an isolationist policy prior to WWII and part of a group that founded the National Review in 1944.