1. Restore spending to 2008 levels

2. Extend Bush era tax cut forevah!

As noted:

So on the one hand, a measure that will make a small dent in the deficit. On the other hand, a measure that will lead to a huge increase in the deficit. There’s no theory of the economy in which this really makes sense: If the market is worried about the government’s finances, this makes them worse, not better. …

Simply brilliant!

Rachel Maddow points out that the GOP is in strident, table pounding opposition to themselves on cap and trade, the health insurance individual mandate, aid to small businesses, a deficit commission and disclosure of corporate campaign donations. The really astounding part is they seem to get a pass on all this crass hypocrisy by nearly all of the press:

As Rachel says: “How do you campaign against people who are simultaneously both for and against every major issue facing our nation?”

This needs to be turned into a campaign commercial series. Slap them in the face with sound bites of them taking both sides of all these issues.

OK, even by contemporary standards, this is rich: the official Republican stance is now apparently that Bush left behind a budget that was in pretty good shape. Mitch McConnell:

The last year of the Bush administration, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.

They really do think that we’re idiots…

…I’d like to think that the raw dishonesty of this latest Bush defense would be obvious to everyone. But after the past decade, I’ve stopped believing such things. They think we’re idiots — and they may be right.

If it’s not so obvious, check the chart in the NY Times link. It’s an old trick, they use fiscal years (which end Sept 30) instead of calendar years. McConnell conveniently leaves out the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, both of which are before Obama’s stimulus package went into effect. It also cuts out the TARP bank bailout that Bush signed into law in the last quarter of 2008. By the end of first quarter of fiscal year 2009 deficits were already at 9% of GDP, before Obama’s stimulus went into effect!

I think this gets to heart of what irritates me so much about the modern republican party. They really do think the American public is as dumb as truck load of bricks. I believe most people simply aren’t interested enough to follow the ongoing national political conversation. Perhaps their too busy trying to make ends meet, working and raising families. Maybe they think the whole thing is a corrupt game where the scum rises to the top. All three (and more) are probably true to some degree. The press is horribly complicit in amplifying false narratives to curry favor and all important access to policy makers. They’re so caught up in hawking stories that drive ratings and advertising revenue, they often miss the truth. The recent Shirley Sherrod affair is a good example of what I mean. It was exceptional in one way: they got caught in a blatant effort to smear her. Usually no one notices.

Three prominent Republican lawmakers on Sunday questioned whether Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, can effectively lead the party after he called the conflict in Afghanistan a misguided “war of Obama’s choosing.”

via Senior Republicans Question Steele’s Ability to Lead – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com.

Former Democratic party chair Ed Rendell called Steele “the gift that keeps on giving” for all his past misstatement. It’s ironic that for all the repeated gaffes by Steele, it’s his truthful comment about the the war being unwinable that starts howling on the right for his resignation.

via Junior Florida Republican Party staffer had $1.3 million charged to party credit card – St. Petersburg Times.

And:

Florida House leaders lived big on GOP plastic – St Petersburg Times.

This simply a way for GOP donors to bribe public officials. It’s unlikely that the law will change to knock our so=called leaders off the teat until until it costs the GOP a few seats. It’s hard to get lawmakers to vote for changes that take their plastic away.

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and upstart 2008 presidential candidate, told CNN’s Larry King Monday night Cheney is in no place to criticize Obama’s handling of the war on terrorism.”I think he had his eight years, and he’s caused a lot of trouble for our country and perpetuated a war in Iraq unnecessary and wrong-headed,” said Paul. “I would say it would be best he not be so critical right now.”

via CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – Paul takes aim at Cheney « – Blogs from CNN.com.

I was rather wondering when the speculation would begin. I’ve seen her on many news shows defending dear old Dad’s policies, but is she ready? Hmmm a one time political appointee is the next rising star of the GOP?

As Neiwert points out, she is a big step up intellectually from Quit Bull Sarah, but that’s not really saying much is it? Liz needs to let this cook a while longer. She doesn’t have much experience. Maybe she should consider running for some state-level office, perhaps for Congress. You know, pay the dues everyone (who doesn’t have a former VP for a father) has to pay.  I would think those who’ve paid dues, raised money for others and ran for elected office successfully, might be a wee bit miffed the Liz gets a whack at the big time on the power of her last name. It would make for an interesting GOP primary.

Love the Frank Luntz quote here:

With Specter’s defection, it’s all but lost the ability to filibuster legislation in the Senate — it will lose it if Democrat Al Franken is seated from Minnesota, as expected — and with it the power to command attention or influence the national agenda.

It is, for the moment at least, what former Georgia Gov. and Sen. Zell Miller said so derisively of his fellow Democrats just a few years back: a national party no more.

“Anyone who tells you the Republican Party is on its way back is smoking grass,” said GOP strategist Frank Luntz. “For the party to win, it has to have a broad base. They’ve lost the broad base.”

Republicans are losing ground in a fast-changing America where women, minorities and the young make up bigger and bigger slices of the electorate, and they all tend to vote Democratic.

The GOP engine has thrown a rod, the oil is spreading up the windshield and the rest of the GOP just wants to floor it by targeting moderates during primaries and moving further to right. Go team!

Stewart nails the dysfunction that is the modern day GOP:

There’s not a whole lot of steel in Steele’s spine.  Limbaugh makes threatening noises and Steele folds like sweaty palmed Black Jack player. So our corpulent, drug addled friend Rush makes the GOP chairman dance to his tune. This does not bode well for the future of the GOP. If they want to be the permanent minority party of the South and parts of the inter-mountain West, then following Limbaugh is the way to go. I believe that the Democratic Party needs an opposition party for the health of the nation. But today’s GOP lacks the honesty and self-awareness to understand that they are headed for many, many years of minority status.

Fresh off his stint as a war correspondent in Gaza, Joe the Plumber is now doing political strategy with Republicans.

When GOP congressional aides gather Tuesday morning for a meeting of the Conservative Working Group, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher – more commonly known as Joe the Plumber — will be their featured guest. This group is an organization of conservative Capitol Hill staffers who meet regularly to chart GOP strategy for the week.

Wurzelbacher, who became a household name during the presidential election, will be focusing his talk on the proposed stimulus package. He’s apparently not a fan of the economic rescue package, according to members of the group.

This is from the party of business, of the MBA president? And they wonder why they lost the election? Hilarity ensues, I’m sure.

Frank Rich on the financial crisis, the stimulus bill and the “patriots” in the GOP:

The crisis is at least as grave as the one that confronted us — and, for a time, united us — after 9/11. Which is why the antics among Republicans on Capitol Hill seem so surreal. These are the same politicians who only yesterday smeared the patriotism of any dissenters from Bush’s “war on terror.” Where is their own patriotism now that economic terror is inflicting far more harm on their constituents than Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent W.M.D.?

The House stimulus bill is an inevitably imperfect hodgepodge-in-progress. Obama’s next move, a new plan to prevent the collapse of America’s banks, may prove more problematic still, especially given the subpar record of the new Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, in warding off calamity while at the New York Fed. No one should expect the Republicans to give the new president carte blanche, fall blindly into lock step or be “post-partisan.” (Though that’s exactly what the G.O.P. demanded of Democrats with Bush: You were either with him or with the terrorists.)

Yes, we definitely remember the for us or against us stupidity. So what has the “loyal opposition” have to offer in these dire economic times?

The Republicans do have one idea, of course, but it’s hardly fresh: more and bigger tax cuts, particularly for business and the well-off. That’s the sum of their “alternative” stimulus plan. Obama has tried to accommodate this panacea, perhaps to a fault. Mainstream economists in both parties believe that tax cuts in the stimulus package will deliver far less bang for the buck than, say, infrastructure spending. The tax-cut stimulus embraced a year ago by the G.O.P. induced next-to-no consumer spending as Americans merely banked the savings or paid down debt.

Yeah how’s that last GOP led stimulus plan working for you?

We also now know conclusively that the larger Bush tax cuts, besides running up record deficits and exacerbating income inequality, were also at best a placebo on our road to ruin. In a January survey of economists, including former McCain advisers like Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Mark Zandi, The Washington Post determined that the job growth the Bush administration kept bragging about (“52 straight months!”) was a mirage inflated by the housing bubble. Job growth — about 2 percent — was in fact the most tepid of any eight-year period “since data collection began seven decades ago.” Gross domestic product grew at a slower pace than in any eight years since the Truman administration.

Not so good, huh?

It’s about the economy stupid. The GOP has no interest in the good of the nation or the economy. They need to be punished for this at the ballot box (again). The only economists that agree that tax cuts are more effective than increasing food stamps, extending unemployment and infrasturture projects are wimgnut welfare recipients form right wing think tanks.

Kristoff seems to suffer from the common illusion that Republicans want to work together for the good of the country and putting them in charge of investigating Bush Administration abuse of detainees and blatant law breaking will somehow win them over. They only want one thing: to destroy Obama in particular and Democrats in general so they can take back power. There is no winning them over. They will take your grand gesture  of bipartisanship and use it as a political bludgeon.

Here’s what the last 8 years have taught me. They have no interest in truth, morality, the Constitution, human rights, international treaties or the rule of law. Their only interest is in the exercise of raw political power to reward their narrow constituancies (Big corporations, the ultra-wealthy and religious extremists, in case you haven’t been paying attention the last 8 years). The rest of you, well you can just go fu%& yourself.

Everything the Obama administration does needs to be viewed through this prism of sad experience. They will take your consessions and hopefull promises to work together and turn them into a garrote to throttle the life from their enemies, which are defined as any and all who fail to mindlessly mouth GOP talking points or have the audacity to point out the reality doesn’t match their idealized fantasies. Working together is an illusion.

The GOP only want to obstruct. They have no economic arguments worth repeating in support of massive tax cuts primarily aimed at top income earners and corporations doing anything other than skewing income distribution further to the wealthy. We’ve had 8 years of that already and the results are in: It was a miserable failure and brought us to where we are today.

Will the press let conservatives get away with simultaneously claiming that we can’t afford large new temporary deficit spending but can afford large new permanent tax cuts? Actually, there’s scarcely any need to ponder. Just prepare yourself to be upset.

Yes, Matt the GOP most certainly will try to argue opposites. Sometimes in the same sentance. The MSM by and large, will find it rude to point out obvious logical fallicies, silly distortions and outright lies.  Set your phasers to mock and have at them.

Paul Krugman – Bad Faith Economics – NYTimes.com.

As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.

Read the whole thing and arm yourself with the tools to beat back the rising tide of stupid from the GOP and it’s mouthpieces from a Nobel laureate. Here’s bit of oush back against the idea that tax cuts will fix everything:

The point is that nobody really believes that a dollar of tax cuts is always better than a dollar of public spending. Meanwhile, it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts — and therefore costs less per job created (see the previous fraudulent argument) — because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.

This suggests that public spending rather than tax cuts should be the core of any stimulus plan. But rather than accept that implication, conservatives take refuge in a nonsensical argument against public spending in general.

Balloon Juice
One would expect Republicans to take it worse than anybody that managers of the embassy project handed the project to a firm that never did embassy work before, mismanaged the proceedings and then buried evidence of major safety issues. They won’t, of course. A central theme of modern Republicanism is that appearing to do something is more important than doing it well. The mentality isn’t limited to the embassy, of course. It pervades contracting throughout Iraq. When Stuart Bowen, the Inpector General responsible for Iraq, uncovered evidence that America’s contracting money was largely disappearing down a fraud hole the White House reponded by trying to sack him. If any right-wing voices complained about that I don’t remember hearing about it.

Take abstinence only education. Studies have variously showed that it either doesn’t work or causes more underage sex than doing nothing, yet ordering teens to cross their legs until marriage remains a central point of the White House’s education agenda. The disparity between goals and results has gotten so stark that some states have given up federal funds so that they can implement sex ed programs that work. Hurricane FEMA. Setting aside programs that are meant to contradict their official purpose, which include mine safety, climate science and environmental protection, more often than not programs which Republicans want to work still collapse from miserable implementation.

Sure, as a guy who shares almost none of their agenda I won’t be supporting modern Republicanism any time soon. The billion dollar question is why anybody would.

Sadly the answer is too many gullible people who prefer to believe their leaders would not, could not mislead them on such a grand scale would still believe them.

I Wonder Who Jonah Goldberg’s Favorite Candidate Is? – The Carpetbagger Report
I also feel obliged to note that while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both faced criticism based on their “lack of experience,” Fred Thompson’s lack of qualifications, his one and a half term spent in elected office, have drawn less scrutiny. Likewise, Rudy Giuliani’s campaign may be plummeting to Earth, but it’s not because the press did an effective job of vetting his claims of “foreign policy experience”.

Questions about the qualifications of Republican candidates are better discerned not by their expertise in matters of policy, but by the width of their shoulders or what they smell like.

I don’t watch the debates, I don’t have a high enough threshold for nausea. Between the inane stupidity from the moderators and the genuinely stoopid answer, I just can’t take it. In the latest dolt-fest that passes for a GOP debate, all candidates promised to extend the Bush era economic policies that are doing so very well (if your a millionaire) right now. The Huckster repeated his call for his “Fair Tax” plan to make the tax system much more regressive. It seems he gets his economic advice from the same village idiot that told him he cut Arkansas taxes.

They then moved on to see who could thump their chest the loudest over the dust up with Iranian US navy ship in the Persian Gulf. Oh boy another war. It looks as if they’d like to fall over each other to see who gets to be the next war President. The last possible thing the US needs right now is a conflict with Iran.