That Billo bit is stunning. The man is a total self-parody.

Epic Stewart.

Yeah but we've learned by now - Billo just doesn't care about little things like "consistency" or "logic" or "reality."

Y'all check out that chart showing the difference between the House and Senate versions of the stimulus? Pretty interesting.
I hope we can put some money back into the energy portion in particular. Seems like the most innovation/job creation will happen there. Plus it hastens our departure from the oil teat. Head Start has to have dollars too. And if it were up to me, clean water, but I'll sacrifice a little if it helps the grid.

Kadima will end up with more seats than Likud, it looks like, but both parties are far short of a majority, and it looks like Likud might wind up in charge of the country, using a coalition in which the Likud people are the moderates.

"* I wrote a few more posts than usual today (17). Sorry about that. Since the homepage only allows 15 posts at a time, this is a few too many."

Ohh, the shame of writing tooo many posts. Keep up the good work Steve, and for you, there is no such thing as too many posts.

"The Club for Growth believes supporting the stimulus bill is 'treason'. Those folks really aren't well."

Hard to tell whether they need to double up on their meds or cut their doses in half.

Re: Stewart/O'Reilly.

Wasn't Bill O'Reilly an anchor for the notorious anti-paparazzi educational television program Inside Edition before becoming a Fox News clown?

I'm with barkleyg. Worry not about quantity when the quality is there, Steve.

Hey, it's Tuesday, so 17 posts is a good productive day. But I worry about bloggers who stay inside all weekend. You should get out and smell the wind more on Saturdays and Sundays.

In his last appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, George Carlin was on with Stephen Moore of the Club For Growth. Moore started pissing & moaning about taxes or capital gains or something related to the complaint that his ilk was getting screwed somehow.
Carlin went off on him, letting him know that he and his privileged brethren had gamed the system to their advantage so much he had no place whining about anything. It was great.
I miss him. George Carlin, not Moore.

Bank stocks going down is good news.

Someone once told me their method of paying for things in a foreign country, when you don't speak the language and not sure of the value of the currency: You count out the money one bill at a time, waiting until the shop owner starts to smile, then you take one bill back.

Maybe that is what is up with the leaks: leak part of the plan and see if the bankers are upset. If they aren't, it is probably a bad idea, move on to the next leaked idea. Eventually they will start to complain. This is how you find out you are getting close.

Any good plan should drive the share price of these companies down, not up. Remember they are worthless right now, anything which might expose this threatens the stock price.

The "stress test" is a tool to find out if the banks have gotten to the point where they don't have enough capital on their books. Banks don't even have to be insolvent for the FDIC to replace management, but you have to be able look at their books first. The other reason for the stress test is to produce a plan for takeover ahead of the takeover. It also provides a reason for the government to be snooping around, looking through the bank's books. Otherwise, this information might leak out and the stock would react do to uncertainty.

Steve, this blog is so awesome--had a crazy busy day, but all I need to do is turn to your site and catch up on things well enough. The links you (and fellow readers) provide are amazing time-savers and ones I might not otherwise know of.

The Senate and House versions of the stimulus bill look at first glance a lot more similar than I expected them to be. Not that there isn't a lot of room for improvement but it's not like the Senate version is completely devoid of useful items. It actually gives more money to railroads than the House bill, which I like, although it shortchanges some other valuable items at the same time.

If people can just stop shouting at each other and be just a bit flexible on both sides I'd bet that the final result will do a lot of good, regardless. Fat chance about the shouting, I know, but still.

Steve -- never apologize for being prolific. You only have to apologize for writing something that is a waste of our time -- something you almost never do. You are producing a thoughtful, provocative, informative blog. Write more, not less ;-)

I wrote a few more posts than usual today (17). Sorry about that. Since the homepage only allows 15 posts at a time, this is a few too many.

Its not too many posts, but given how prolific you are, it wouldn't hurt to add keywords or topic areas and have quick links to the most recent posts by topic areas.

This is hilarious.

Isn't this the same moron who told GOP canvassers to talk up the "connection" between Obama and bin Laden?

It seems pretty clear that the Club for Growth meant treason to the Republican party, not to the country.

Go Dems - if Sen. Collins et al. are so worried about the price tag then they should have no objection to restoring the emergency aid to states and school construction $ and govt bldg energy efficient upgrades - all highly stimulative - and take out some of their lard-filled tax breaks.

Having been annoyed by Scarborough on Morning Joe perpetually running down everything Obama, I appreciated the link to Talking Points Memo where Joe said maybe he and the people on the show have been wrong about the stimulus and let's look at the polls.
Thanks.

The Club for Growth believes supporting the stimulus bill is "treason." Those folks really aren't well.

It is always worth keeping in mind what Adam Smith wrote about the Club for Growth—or at least the capitalist class which comprises it—in Chapter 11 of Book I of The Wealth of Nations:

Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Similarly, from Matt Finklestein--
As Think Progress has reported, Republican lawmakers appeared on the five cable news networks to discuss the economic recovery package nearly twice as often as their Democratic counterparts during the past two weeks, causing some to suggest that President Obama was losing the stimulus message war. However, Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) office has compiled statistics showing that progressives may be winning the battle on local news:

Democrats looked at 29 districts that Democrats took over in either 2006 or 2009, districts that tend to be swing or conservative districts. Democrats determined that 92 percent of the local stories portrayed the stimulus in a positive light, touting the benefits the spending would bring to struggling local economies.

Of newspaper stories, 91 percent were positive; TV, 96 percent; and radio, 85 percent. The analysis excludes editorials and columns and stuck exclusively to reported stories.

"The Obama administration on Tuesday overturned another Bush-era energy policy, setting aside a draft plan to allow drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts."

This will keep fuel prices high enough that alternative energy sources can become competitive. Unless alternative fuel sources are developed fairly rapidly, it probably will increase American oil imports from the Middle East and Venezuela. It also makes California, Oregon and Washington even more dependent on Texas and Louisiana for their fuel supplies, since Gulf of Mexico drilling is still permitted.

My wife and I do not mind paying the extra cost -- we cut our energy use and donate to environmental restoration -- but the extra cost will be heavier for the poorer Americans, and will probably slow economic recovery.

Kadima is unlikely to be able to form a coalition, though.

I have been meaning to ask about that - why isn't there a link to page 2? Or previous posts? Why is the only way to read yesterday's stuff to go hunting through the whole previous month of posts? It seems a little silly.

"It seems pretty clear that the Club for Growth meant treason to the Republican party, not to the country."

Even in that context, it's still a pretty unpleasant and inflammatory word to use. One can disagree without being disagreeable.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Read all about it!

Cops and Firefighters don't have jobs!

Because they work for the government, and according to the RNC, those are not jobs. That's "work" not "jobs.

Spread the word!

Red districts, we're counting on you.

Red states, we're counting on you.

Email, call, button hole when they come home.

Tell them. TELL THEM!

Being a cop is a job.

Being a firefighter is a job.

Building a school is a job.

Business owner TELL THEM!'

Tell them you need CUSTOMERS!

NOT a tax cut. No income, tax cut means bupkis.

TELL THEM!

Although I love your posts, I do worry that writing so many in one day will cause your head to explode, like that bad sci-fi movie "Scanners." No one wants that.

* Joe Scarborough considered the possibility this morning that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

no problem clarifying that for Joe - he most certainly does not have the faintest idea what he's talking about; no one should listen to him; and he should not be hosting a television show. (phew, glad we cleared that up.)

A clue!!

As you all know, I am interested in what exactly happened to cause consumer collapse, not what drunken bankers do. So I searched for marketing studies, and I continue to look, that indicate what was the thing on consumers' minds just prior to the crash. Good old Zogby to the rescue, in the link below.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1956058820080521?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

What Zogby found, and what I expected to see, is consumers focusing on the bottle necks to consumption. Once one knows what the actual bottleneck was, then one can define exactly the stimulus at exactly the proper rate to yield exactly a very large gain in wealth for poor people.

The bottle neck is.... the personal freight cost of casual shopping at $4.50 per gallon. As one of the commentors pointed out to me, and as I observed from my neighbor, when the consumer does only essential shopping his cost per trip goes way up, the price becomes extremely noticeable.

We will never see casual automobile shopping in the USA for ten years, do not encourage that behavior.

Instead, find ways to move commercial freight closer to the consumer so he sees dramatic drops in the transportation overhead of a purchase.

That is why this bubble arrived at the federal foot step, the feds have the major influence on the roads. The federal government must restructure its approach to the use of asphalt roads, and let ingenuity find cheap transportation modes on those same roads.

What Zogby found,[...] -- Matt Young, @ 22:18

Young by name and young by experience :) Zogby couldn't find his own butt to wipe, even if it relocated to his face.

I used to participate in Zogby polls. Their questions are so poorly worded, I always ended up answering "not sure" on all of them (except age, sex and location), even where I knew the subject and had an opinion on it. They're as skewed to the right as Planned Parenthood is to the left (I told *them* to go fly a kite, too). So, any sausage that comes out of the Zogby factory has to be viewed with suspicion. Best give it to the nearest Repub representative.

My news of the day: I slammed the door so hard in a Mormon boy's face I think I gave him a new cowlick.

Marketeer- The draft plan for offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific would have had negligible affect on crude oil supply in the US. Offshore drilling is incredibly expensive ($25 million per platform) and even if companies were to start now, the petroleum would take nearly a decade to reach your neighborhood pump.

Oil companies have slowed down or dropped plans to drill easier known reserves than offshore oil plays because crude prices are so depressed and there's no money in increasing supply in a global economic slowdown where demand for oil from all sectors and nations is shrinking.

Last year, the US had 40% more drilling rigs operating on its soil and waters than the entire rest of the world combined. Colorado has more drilling rigs working there than in all of Saudi Arabia. Don't fall for the right's "we're not drilling enough" arguments.

I think you are doing a fanatastic job, Steve.

Peace, good health, and a big paycheck to you.

Steve. You could write 38,000 posts a day, and I would consider myself lucky. I don't even mind having to expand to the archive to keep reading. Keep up the excellent work!

Let me see if I understand what's happening concerning the medical treatment people receive in our for-profit medical system.

In 2004, the lobbyists running the Bush administration got the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Act passed through the Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by arch-conservative Bush.

This right-wing lobbyist-crafted legislation was solely meant to facilitate the profit making of HMOs and health insurers by setting up a national health database, from which HMOs and health insurers would be able to glean information about what doctors were prescribing and patients were receiving...to cut back coverage and make more profits for the HMOs and health insurers.

One of those sadly unfortunate side-effects of what the Republicans did, however, was that people DIED because their doctors were blocked from treating them for whatever was ailing them.

And the Republicans in Congress and the Bush White House, through the passage and signing of this act in 2004, "dictated treatment," but not necessarily to the benefit of desperately-ill patients but to the benefit of the HMOs and health insurers who have used this national database to "dictate" to doctors what "treatments" are allowed, with the goal being to cut out expensive and long-time treatments that might cut into the profits of HMOs and health insurers...just let the patient die.

Now that Democrats control Congress and the White House, this Bush/right-wing-lobbyist crafted act from 2004 will actually go toward helping U.S. citizens who are ill to get much-needed treatment and medication, on the advice of their professional doctors, while possibly bypassing (or at least not taking into account first) the profit-making desires of the HMOs and health insurers.

Which is really upsetting the money-making schemes of the culture of corruption Republicans, the right-wing industry lobbyists, the HMOs and the health insurers, leading them to make the false claim that the federal government is going to "dictate" what treatments patients will receive or not receive from doctors and health providers, essentially accusing the Democrats in Congress and the White House of what the Republicans, HMOs and health insurers have been doing for the past five years, "dictating treatments" for maximum profit...no matter how many U.S. citizens die. (Hmmm, this sounds suspiciously like the reason behind the Iraq War that BushCo started in 2003, except just substitute HMOs and health insurers with the word war-profiteer).

Geez, Louise. These conservative crooks just never quit, do they?

related fake news

GEITHNER TO EMBARK ON SPEAKING TOUR
Groundswell of Support Expected

President Obama is sending Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on a nationwide speaking tour to explain the bank bailout plan carefully crafted by Geithner and his team of experts. While there were some doubters, most who heard his initial speech on the Plan were impressed by the way he brought light and understanding to the immense detail that he had to present.

Just as the President has gone to the country to give the public confidence in his stimulus plan, Mr. Geithner will be seeking citizen support for his Plan. It has not yet been decided whether to adopt the town hall style used by the President or to make a series of riveting speeches that will raise the level of enthusiasm for the Plan.

In any event, it is expected that Secretary Geithner's tour will not only drum up additional grass roots support, but will also serve to entice private investors to join the government in acquiring some of the assets of the banks.

homer www.altara.blogspot.com

shortstop wrote: Isn't this the same moron who told GOP canvassers to talk up the "connection" between Obama and bin Laden?

It's so hard to tell the GOP morons apart anymore...

marketeer wrote: [Obama's canceling Bush's oil drilling policy] will keep fuel prices high enough

Even for someone who professes faith-based free market principles, this is an astonsihingly ignorant statement -- so much so that one can only conclude it's deliberately dishonest.

Bush's oil drilling policy would not bring oil onto the market over anything resembling the short term, so the move will have no effect on oil prices whatever. And as you well know, oil is fungible so even if production started immediately, there's no reason to believe the oil produced would address the demand of the American market. So no, Obama's reversal will have no impact on low income Americans, thank you very much.

Shame on you for citing a phony economic impact on low income Americans to advocate a policy that only benefits oil megacorporations, marketeer.

Jackass.