In case my caricatures were not clear enough, that's John McCain in the first panel, House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel in the second, and the President in the third.

CNN lists the items cut from the stimulus spending bill. The vast majority of the spending would have gone to education, followed by health care, energy efficiency, the FBI, prisons, and a whole grab-bag of other crap. What has struck me about the debate is how obtuse the conservatives can be regarding family planning issues. Nancy Folbre blogs at the New York Times site that family planning has long term economic benefits for poor and working class folks, especially women — not a group conservatives give a shit about, but if they care about economic health, then they should reexamine some priorities. Just sayin'.

While a lot of spending will still go toward education, aid to states and health care, I am with Paul Krugman and John Nichols in viewing the stimulus bill as evidence of the failure of President Obama's post-partisanship approach. Monday night he held a press conference that gave a forceful argument for government intervention on a huge scale in this economy; maybe, just maybe he is learning a valuable lesson soon that you can't play nicey-nice with these jackals. They don't care, they don't bargain in good faith. Screw 'em.