Mandela, King, Gandhi … Blagojevich

I like to tell myself that Obama cancels out the emabarrassment I feel as an Illinoisan for this mess, but it’s just too freaking ridiculous.
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*weeps*

Is Mandela, King and Gandhi code for Capone, Baby Face Nelson and Dillinger?

In which Blagojevich reveals himself to be a Jedi Master of sociopathy. Just . . . wow.

KT can you post that CBO report, or a link to it?
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PS, and thanx for covering this story, which frankly hasn’t gotten enough attention in the media.

Blagojevich and his wife should appear together. They do have time delay to bleep out the swearing don’t they?

He’s only got one more historical figure left to compare himself to, as happens about halfway through this clip.

KT, this is the CBO report I’m referencing, as reported in Time magazine:

“Not helping matters is a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that came out Tuesday, which shows that only 38% of the $350 billion in appropriated funds — which includes $274 billion for infrastructure investments — would make their way into the economy within two years of enactment.”
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1873192,00.html

If I was a defense lawyer, and one of my guys was in jail from when Blago was a prosecutor, I would be writing my appeal briefs currently.

Blago sounds like Bogart in the Caine Mutiny when he was talking about those damn strawberries.

With the criminal charges pending, and the impeachment verdict certain, why would he appear in an official capacity and say anything that might come back and bite him with the feds?

Blago is the best new show on TV. I hope it never gets canceled.

It appears Gov. Blag is aiming for a reality show. Team him up with Paris Hilton, the Hulk and maybe some MTV hoes and they might get an interesting show out of it. Of course with his language it will have to be on cable.

Jay Newton-Small, playing the Republican stenographer, writes about a mythical study touted by the Republicans that doesn’t exist. Does that stop JNS? NO!! She runs to print without any fact checking whatsoever. Let’s see if JNS will correct her piece. Don’t hold your breath. Time Mag generally doesn’t DO corrections, even for stuff that is factually incorrect.
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Jay sez:

Not helping matters is a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that came out Tuesday, which shows that only 38% of the $350 billion in appropriated funds — which includes $274 billion for infrastructure investments — would make their way into the economy within two years of enactment.

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Reality:
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“We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study,” a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.
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Rather, the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score — how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.
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Because it dealt with just a part of the stimulus, it estimated the spending rate for only about $300 billion of the $825 billion plan. Significant changes have been made to the part of the bill the CBO looked at.

Source: Controversial CBO Report On Stimulus Turns Out Not To Exist
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Let’s hope that this embarrasses Jay Newton-Small enough to correct her piece and to be more careful about printing Republican-generated handouts wholesale without independent fact-checking in the future. How optimistic are we that will be the case? Anyone?
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The ashhatitude continueth…(yeah I agree the censored version looks pretty lame).

Last time we saw this degree of delusional self-pantheonization (whew!) it was Nixon, musing about all the great writing that’s been done in prison – King, Gandhi, et al. It always surprised me he didn’t slip up and include Hitler.

James the ironic part is JNS has had some pretty good pieces on tax and economic issues in the past.
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That she wrote it in a fashion that let the reader think she actually read the (non-existent) report is pretty slippery.

PNNTO-
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Agreed. You’d be surprised at how helpful those Republican handouts are. They helpfully write a lead paragraph for the hard-working journo, bolding the stuff that they want included in the piece, nice bullet points so the journo can select what he/she wants to use. Someday the Dems will learn how do be so very, very helpful to the hard-working journo. Sigh!
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Trouble is, when the journo gets found out, turns out you have to fact-check everything they write. And then it gets tiresome asking for corrections to their factual errors. They get so very very defensive, you know, when caught including factual errors in their pieces, that often they flail around defending demonstrably erroneous stuff. Then you can never believe them again.
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Evidently Jay Newton-Small didn’t bother getting any input on the non-existant “report.” It really WOULD have ruined the narrative, wouldn’t it?

Gibbs told the press that the report looked at “only a portion of the legislation and looked at that portion of the legislation before it began the committee process.” Gibbs added that it reflected “a snapshot in time that’s long past.”
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The White House followed up with a letter from Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget. The CBO “analysis, however, did not assess the overall package,” wrote Orszag. “Our analysis indicates that at least 75 percent of the overall package (including its tax component and the other spending provisions that were not analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office) will be spent over the next year and a half.”

Hmm. Where was Michael Scherer, Time’s White House Correspoindent in this? Did he not have time to get a statement from the White House for Jay Newton-Small’s piece? That would be standard practice for journos, one would think. Guess he was too busy with his YouTube videos?
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Let’s see if Time reporters can rectify this egregious lapse.
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Here’s a better, more responsible analysis:
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CBO will produce an analysis next week that will examine the bill in its current form. It is also important to keep in mind that the preliminary analysis (and probably the analysis that will be produced next week) relied on standard rules of thumb for spendout rates rather than the spendout rates for the specific projects in the stimulus package.
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There can be a big difference. For example, as a rule of thumb, the spending for highways in the first year after an appropriation may be just a small percentage of the total cost of the highway, with spending in the second year being on a little bit higher. It takes time to plan a highway and to bid out contracts.
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However, if there are maintenance projects where planned maintenance has been deferred, then it is likely that spending can proceed far more quickly.

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Source: Dean Baker at The American Prospect
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That kind of ruins all the fun of the established narrative, doesn’t it?
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How many main stream reporters does it take to re-write a republican talking point? None. They just recite it verbatim.

Wow this thread got hijacked…

yutsano: so Blag is a self-aggrandizing blow-hard headed for the clink – one can hope. Meh. Who couldn’t see that coming?
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Now, JNS, on the other hand, probably wishes that the Repugs would just send her a .doc file so she wouldn’t have to type anything. Cut-and-paste FTW!

Well if they insist on posting trivialities the thread ought to be hijacked. Come on KT you can do better than Blago there are serious things going on.

Now, JNS, on the other hand, probably wishes that the Repugs would just send her a .doc file so she wouldn’t have to type anything. Cut-and-paste FTW!
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Are you sure that’s not the actual sequence of events? It sure would make it easy to sneak out the door on time on a Friday!

He’s being modest. He left out Oscar Romero and Suu Kyi.

Clay Davis:
“Promethus Bound. An ancient play, one of the oldest we have. About a simple man who was horrifically punished by the powers that be for the terrible crime of trying to bring light to the common people. In the words of [checks author] Ascyllius, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ I cannot tell you how much consolation I find in these slim pages.”

The weekend threads get hijacked anyway. Blago is good political theater. I wish swamp had more serious posts about the stimulus package and fewer gossipy puff pieces. (MS I’m looking at you.)
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Swamp tech guys: (1) The preview script is cute but not working. Bring back the preview button. (2) Also, please stop inserting a new page every 50 posts. It’s hard enough to follow threads on Swampland. (3) Line breaks!!!

Mayor Daley summed up it up best the other day with his description of Blago in describing him as “cuckoo”.

Actually, I think that the more technical/medical term is Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

Unlike some Jay, I actually read govt forecasts, including the recent forecasts for the US economy for 2009-2013 issued by the CBO. It indicates expected changes in GDP and unemployment at the end of 2010 (or, Jan. 2011) will be 9%. Given that most recent reports put the unemployment rate nationally at 7.6%, that means that 2 years from now, things will still be much worse than they are today. The only difference is that hopefully by then we will be on an upswing.

I should have added that the fact that some of the stimulus package won’t hit our economy until 2010 is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing, since even though we will hopefully no longer be in period of declining GDP, unemployment will still be much higher than it is today.

Does JNS ever write anything of her own?

Blago is delusional. (Yeah, lk312 – Narcissistic Personality Disorder works, too.) I can’t wait to see what happens when the Legislature removes him from office and he refuses to leave. What a circus!

As Elvis Elvisberg points out above, Rod Blagojevich needs to step it up if he wants to catch up to Tom Delay, who is just like Jesus.

KT, several people have suggested that you cover the CBO report that wasn’t.
People like J-LA: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/01/25/mandela-king-ghandi-blagojevich/#comment-36593
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I agree – this needs to be covered both here and in dead tree. And I would humbly suggest that the correct, honest frame for such a story is “lookee here, repugs are playing fast and loose with the truth to try to derail President Obama’s infrastructure stimulus package that has broad and deep support by the American people and honest economists everywhere.” The headline might be: Republicans Lie Again, No One Surprised.

To clarify my earlier posting, I was referring to the CBO report issued Jan. 8th and titled: “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009-2019″. I was not referring to any report (real or Republican fiction) that supposedly crunches the numbers from any stimulus package.
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For more details on it, check out Paul Krugman’s blog (not his column) from Jan 10th. Good stuff.

On the msm’s continuing RW bias, Adam Green asks a really terrific question:
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If you want a treat, watch this 5 minute segment from the show. As you watch, ask yourself, "What would this segment be like if Krugman wasn’t there?"
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More from Yglesias on The Tilted Media

Hey KT is there some sort of women in journalism association that could take Contessa Brewer aside and provide examples of how to be less airhead and more of a knowledgeable member of the industry?

wvng: Instead, the headline will be “Republicans, Democrats Spar on Stimulus Bill”. I think you can write the rest…

Off-topic, with hat-tip to Sully:
At the end of today’s column, the NY Times says “This will be William Kristol’s last column.”
What’s up with that? And what say the Swamplanders?

Kristol will be lying to the Washington Post’s readers from now on.

Kristol was only at the NYT to give strategy advice to the GOP during the campaign. And that worked out real well!

Political Animal: IT STILL DOESN’T EXIST…. In an apparent effort to appear even more foolish, the Wall Street Journal editorial board rails against a proposed economic stimulus package today, relying on support from the Congressional Budget Office. … The Washington Times’ Donald Lambro does the same, pointing to the CBO report as proof that the stimulus plan won’t improve the economy. The problem, for those who were away from their computers over the weekend, is that the CBO report conservatives are relying on doesn’t exist.
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KT, youse guyse really need to pick up on this story. Please.

Contessa Brewer should be at best a local news weather forecaster.

Contessa Brewer and Kyra Phillips should be asking me if I want fries w/ that….
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“Not helping matters is a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that came out Tuesday, which shows that only 38% of the $350 billion in appropriated funds — which includes $274 billion for infrastructure investments — would make their way into the economy within two years of enactment.”

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1873192,00.html
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Karen, I still can’t find a link….help?

I just watched the View. From my Twitter stream”
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surreality: Blago being interviewed by Walters in the form of a HD TV upper body and a fern from the waist down. she’s playin hardball, tough questions and scowling.(BW was in LA and Blaqo on NY, so she was on a large screen and he was on a small chair.)
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Blago gives Whoopie a pat on the knee, and blames himself for his wife’s potty mouth (he’s been a bad influence).
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another knee pat! Does she like it, or is she going to push back at some point?
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more touching! half embrace and another knee touch. Joy and Sherri are getting no love at all
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Joy touching Blago and begging for his Nixon impression, “I am not a crook”
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Overall: bipolar View appearance. Bad Cop Walters beat him with a billy club, then his ego got pampered by the other ladies. (pat pat pat)

and from the HuffPo today:
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the press has built themselves a nice little narrative on the stimulus bill that centers on a report from the Congressional Budget Office. That report, though, does not exist. Another narrative that’s emerged over the closing of Guantanamo Bay, tells of sixty-one former prisoners who have “returned to the battlefield.” That number is just made up out of whole cloth. In either case, all it takes is source verification to determine the truth, but that, I suppose, would fall under the category of “achievement,” and anyway, after a day, everyone can just cite everybody else. It’s just like Bernard Madoff drew it up!
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Meanwhile, the press did a fantastic job nailing down the truth over whether the music played at the Inauguration was live or recorded! I bet that news, plus a fifth of bourbon, helps you sleep better at night.

I just heard from Drudge that the CBO report once spent $400 on a haircut…Karen?

Cinci_

SOURCE INFO/CLARIFICATION ON THE CBO REPORT: The supposed CBO report on the stimulus looks to be based upon a actual recent CBO report issued Jan. 7th or 8th. The “fake” report is actually the real report recalculated using the stimulus numbers so as to show the difference that the stimulus package would have on the economy (i.e., a with or without scenario).
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You can find the report at the link below. See page 3 for the key stats.
CBOreport

” The Congressional Budget Office recently released an analysis of a component of the economic recovery proposal; that analysis, however, did not assess the overall package. Our analysis indicates that at least 75 percent of overall package (including its tax component and the other spending provisions that were not analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office) will be spent over the next year and a half (the rest of fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2010).
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We are committed to maintaining at least a 75 percent spend-out rate for the package as a while as the legislation moves through the Senate and House and into conference. In addition to jumpstarting the economy in a timely manner, we remain committed to providing unprecedented levels of transparency to the American people and the highest standards of accountability to the taxpayer about how the funds are spent.
-OMB Director Peter Orszag
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/01/why_the_world_needs_an_omblog.php
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Again, who is it you claim ‘recalculated’ the last CBO report?

Cinci-response to your posting is in the next blog entry.

Reid said that OMB director Peter Orszag explained to the group today that the CBO study only analyzed 40% of the bill.
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“He said he would guarantee that at least 75 percent of the bill would go directly into the economy within the first 18 months,” Reid said of Orszag’s prognosis.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/01/obama-presses-f.html

Frankly, this sounds like Kurtz is calling you out KT:
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“Ben Pershing: It’s true that there is no official report from the CBO yet “scoring” the entire stimulus package. What the agency did is run a portion of the stimulus through it’s standard formula and then gave the basic data to some members of Congress, and it’s those results that we’ve seen written about in the press. The coverage has been a bit misleading.
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Howard Kurtz: I agree that the media coverage should have made clear that 1) this wasn’t an official CBO report, and 2) this was spoon-fed to the media by Republicans to make their case. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth reporting, but the reporting was incomplete.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/01/23/DI2009012303458.html

Cinci-I’m as much of a neo-Keynesian and Democrat as you’ll find, so I hope that you realize that my statements are basically defending Republicans who are criticizing the stimulus package by stating that they were using an actual report/CBO data to calculate their numbers.

To quote and old Econ Stats prof: “There are 3 types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics!”