Paul Krugman is pissed

Anyone interested in the erudite commentary form of "will you ignorant motherfuckers please shut the hell up and do your goddamn jobs" should read today's column. I'm starting to hope suspect that he's one or two more Harry Reid "aw shucks" program cuts away from storming Congress with a nail bat and a length of chain...

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

Preach it, Brother/Dr./Laureate Krugman.

Also worthy of a gander is this Times piece comparing Japan's "Lost Decade" stimulus activity to our own current predicament. While the scenarios are certainly not identical, there are plenty of lessons to be learned: fix dilapidated infrastructure instead of just paying people to dig holes and fill them back in, investments in schools and health care have high R.O.I., tax cuts solve nothing.

In other words, history and one of the planet's best economists are telling us to do one thing. Republicans are telling us to do the opposite. Democrats are too busy bending over -- in all fairness, they've grown accustomed to the position -- to state plainly, "You fucked up. We won. We will now do what we think is best."