Mr. Benen, I take serious issue with you and others talking about Neanderthals as if they were stupid. They were in no way collectively stupid, and actually were a very realistic bunch, capable of surviving harsh environments (i.e. Ice Age) and an economy much more uncertain than ours (i.e. hunting-gathering) for 200,000 years. I would imagine Neanderthals would be very intelligent and effective in today's politics. So please, lay off the Neanderthals! Compare the Republicans to someone actually dumb.

David Shuster just had a report on MSNBC, that looks promising for at least Collins and Snowe, as well as Ben Nelson to be onboard. Something about a few changes being made, though not saying what they were, but that the WH was likely OK with them. This is about what I figured would happen, with the rest of wingnuts making a last stand, probably one of many last stands to come, to salvage the conservative movement. Maybe like the cat and mouse last stands of Lee's Army in the Shenandoah before packing it in and trying something different.

90% of the Senate caucus -- voted against the very idea of a stimulus plan.

Uh, no. They voted for stimulus through tax cuts. That is why it was called an alternate stimulus plan. Get your argument right.

Get YOUR facts straight, Mike. They voted for tax cuts, mostly of a kind which are next to worthless as a stimulus. CALLING it a stimulus doesn't make it so, otherwise every farmer with a pile of manure could become rich by calling it gold.

RSM..."stimulus through tax cuts"...because what we really need to sort this mess out is trickle down economics. Sheesh!!!

It's time for someone to tell the Republicans that more tax cuts will not cause the Supply-side Fairy to fly over the countryside sprinkling her magical pixie dust over the economy to ensure that roads, bridges and water pipes will never wear out, that schools will improve with no additional money until every single student's test scores are above average and that "clean coal" will solve all our energy problems.

Maybe they're stupid, and maybe they aren't. Maybe they know that the Republican party can come back only if things are worse in 2010 (and worse still in 2012), and they're doing what they need to do to make that happen.

CALLING it a stimulus doesn't make it so, otherwise every farmer with a pile of manure could become rich by calling it gold.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne

I agree a tax cut-only package is crappy stimulus. Same as a progressive agenda masquerading as a stimulus package.

As much as I admire President Obama's genuine idealism and desire to put his personal integrity into action, he has to learn soon that he's dealing with children who would rather see this country turned to ashes than admit to themselves that they are no longer in power.

He *must* be the adult in the room and do what needs to be done even if it sends the children into hysterical crying jags, otherwise everyone continues to suffer.

And he should watch some GEICO commercials for heaven's sake. Haven't Neanderthals suffered enough? ;)

Why aren't the Dems talking more about last year's rebate checks that didn't work? We tried it their way, it failed.

+I truly believe that the Repugs have the mentality that whatever they say is the wisdom of God coming forth from their mouths. Most of them are professing Evangelical Christians and I am more than positive that they probably "pray" for God's wisdom on how they are to govern. They firmly "believe" that God's talking points are one and the same as Gooper talking points. You cannot reason with people like this.

The problem is that Obama and the Democrats are interested in stimulating the economy as a whole, through policies that "spread the wealth" to the increasingly indistinguishable middle class and working class, and the Republicans are not interested in that.

The Republicans are interested in enriching and empowering their rich and powerful owners, namely America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc. -- a.k.a. "the top one percent", a.k.a. "Bush's base".

Why would anyone expect anything else from the Republicans? They are doing what they are paid to do.

Free Proton - you may have a point. Perhaps Neanderthals were reasonably intelligent for their time, but they are extinct, afterall. Apparently their survival skills weren't advanced enough to overcome the big adversity that finally got them.

Sadly, the US has become a dysfunctional family and as a result it has largely become a dysfunctional state.
I am not hopeful about our future and believe the decline here and around the world is going to be a lot quicker than people currently realize or can imagine.
Obama, I believe does get it, but with the current structure of our society and how it operates from day to day; the media, the various establishments (political, governmental, business, etc) he has almost an impossible job.
Look around and you will find quite that there are quite a few prophets out there in the wilderness - and they have been largely classified as cranks or marginalized if they are able to get any attention.
Just take a look at Zimbabwe as an example; 80%+ unemployment, widespread poverity and decimation of the urban Middle Class, hyperinflation, disease (cholera) spreading through the populace, shortages and the President there is still able to hold on to power. I think Zimbabwe illustrates on how hard it is going to be for Obama to do meaningful change and necessary restructuring of most of our society. Unfortuanely, I think our nation's future is going to resemble somewhat of what Zimbabwe is now.

Actually, scientists are revisiting the "Neanderthals are extinct" theory and re-examining DNA. We may be partially them.

And when one looks at a group of people who came up with the idea of an afterlife, who show evidence of caring deeply about their fellow group members, and living peacefully with others, calling Republicans "Neanderthals" is definitely a slur on a fine group of humans.

There is, in some quarters of the scientific community, a theory that Neanderthals were hunted to extinction by a more evolved species of human. Given this rare opportunity to test the validity of that theory, one could argue that we should hunt Republicans to the point of extinction, thus discovering if they can somehow magically reappear (which, I might add, could at least help those now-extinct Republicans to disprove Darwin's Theorum of Evolution)---or if they actually remain extinct (therefore proving Darwin to be correct in his hypothesis).

Let's remember that Bush himself joked about his base being "the Haves and the Have-Mores".

Humor is often more truthful than the polite euphemisms and Orwellian language used in political discourse...

Maybe they know that the Republican party can come back only if things are worse in 2010 (and worse still in 2012), and they're doing what they need to do to make that happen.

Yet it was doing that crap in the first place which made this economic disaster possible at all!

It's obvious...that the economy needs a government stimulus.

Is it so "obvious"? We've had government stimulus, i.e. deficit spending and tax cuts for the last seven years. Is the cure really more of what got us into the situation in the first place?

I am most interested in a stimulus focussing on creating jobs in the private sector. Much of the stimulus bill sounds like special interest promotion and special interest spending - same ol same ole. Some of it will even help me in the short run. But in the long run, I am not interested in unemployment benefits, tax credits this year for things I purchased last year, but didn't get a tax credit for, or will purchase in five years and won't get a tax credit for. I want long term financial health with a banking system I trust and available jobs whenever I need to earn income and a reasonable tax rate with as little redistribution of income as possible.

I resent the comparison.

Let's all email/call Snowe, Collins, Specter, Nelson and tell them our best arguments for their supporting the stimulus plan and NOW. Delaying the bill can only jeopardize the effects of the stimulus and weaken the economy (and our democracy) further. And,if this emboldens the Repub extremists, it jeopardizes the critical changes we need in clean renewable energy and other environmental concerns, education, health care, etc. Repub or Dem, we NEED them to work to solve our problems for the best interests of the whole country (not to mention Earth), not just be a politician or to think only locally.

RSM: Same as a progressive agenda masquerading as a stimulus package.

Wait, are you claiming that actually fixing the economy is a progressive issue? And then complaining about that?

Republicans really don't want the Democrats to succeed at fixing the things that they screwed up, do they? Why, the Republicans might lose credibility, and that's worse than the country going to hell, isn't it?

I said: Maybe they know that the Republican party can come back only if things are worse in 2010 (and worse still in 2012), and they're doing what they need to do to make that happen.

Oddjob said: Yet it was doing that crap in the first place which made this economic disaster possible at all!

Yes, exactly--that's my point. They're pushing for the things that will make things worse in 2010 and 2012.

Oddjob: Yet it was doing that crap in the first place which made this economic disaster possible at all!

Oh, sure. But the Republicans here are banking on the painfully short memory and moronic, spin-consuming gullibility of their constituency. It's their business model.

You can disagree with someone about Economic Philosophy, but only if you're talking about the same philosophy.

You can't disagree with someone who is working on a wholly different philosophy.

For Republicans this isn't really about Economics, and never has been, it's about their own personal power and ability fuck with others and injure them.

That's the only philosophy Republicans have ever been working on, it has just rarely been this starkly exposed.

"Much of the stimulus bill sounds like special interest promotion and special interest spending - same ol same ole."

Sounds like? Get the facts.

This person appears to rely primarily on cable/network news. Relying on the so-called "liberal media" leads to ignorance.

As The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel points out, that question seems to have been answered in a Senate vote last night. When Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) offered an alternative stimulus plan that would replace all government spending in the stimulus with a series of tax cuts, 36 Republican senators voted for it...it's better to cut taxes yet again than inject capital into the economy...
*******************

Ooooh Kay, so then, WHY didn't the repigs say "No, no, no, a thousand times no!" to the bail-out money and just go for broke; Offer up a big ol' Texas-sized, crisis fix'in, economy saving, job creat'in tax cut to the Wall Street Shysters instead of injecting them with a TRILLION dollars of our money? I'm just ask'in...

Let there be no doubt. George Voinovich (R-OH) has voted the party line his entire career. The only reason he's now backing the stimulus package is that he announced several weeks ago that he's retiring at the end of his term (2010). From an article at HuffPo on 1/23/09:

"Without having to worry about reelection, said Voinovich, he's free to work on big-picture projects without concern for how they'll impact him. "It's exciting, because I'm going to try to make these the best two years that I have here and [I'm] going to be working on legacy projects," he said. "There are big things our country needs to do and I'm hopeful that somewhere along the line I'm going to have something to say about it, and I don't have to worry about raising money.""

In other words, now that he's retiring he plans on doing what's best for the country instead of what's best for Republicans in general and himself in particular. As an Ohio resident, I'd like to ask him why the hell he hasn't been doing that all along. On the other hand, why would I waste my time asking him anything. I've written him countless emails over the past several years and not one of those emails was ever even acknowledged much less responded to.

Rich people with more tax cuts will just do what they did before: look for investments with "better" returns, which will be risky crapola like credit default swaps and securitized mortgage obligations.

Doing the same thing and expecting a different result: your 2009 Republican'ts.

Talking with Republicans about the current economic crisis is like asking for help when you're bleeding to death, only to have the other person offer you sugar to get your energy back up to normal. It's just baffling how ignorant they are.

It led Josh Marshall to call the GOP the "Neanderthal Party,"

To call them Neanderthals would imply that they will evolve to a more sophisticated life form. And since most of their kind does not believe in evolution, they must have been "creatively designed", and therefore will remain for all eternity, that way.

red state mike: They voted for stimulus through tax cuts.

if GOP tax cuts and de-regulation worked..

why are we in this mess?

Shalimar: Talking with Republicans about the current economic crisis is like asking for help when you're bleeding to death, only to have the other person offer you sugar to get your energy back up to normal.

or as someone on a blog once wrote...

its like asking jeffrey dahmer for cooking tips...