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After having the majority of the unequally balanced panel on the McLaughlin Group trash the stimulus package as not having worked to create jobs and being politicized, Mort Zuckerman throws this gem out there.

Zuckerman: I disagree with the way you're describing this stimulus program. It was maybe perhaps well intentioned, completely badly conceived. It did not focus on unemployment. It does not focus on those kinds of activities that in fact could create jobs.

I'm just going to remind you of one example. When you have Harry Reid, the Majority Leader in the Senate getting a $350 million grant for a UniRail to go from Las Vegas to Disneyland, you know where a lot of this money went. It's almost a farce. And we, unemployment is much worse than those numbers and it's going to be worse and be higher next year at this time than it is this year.

McLaughlin: What do you...

Zuckerman: And the Republicans are going to--34% of all people have had either a family member or close friend unemployed.

McLaughlin: If you were designing this stimulus, how would you have changed what the stimulus is?

Zuckerman: I would have put a heck of a lot more money into infrastructure development and focused on that. A lot of the money that went in for a lot of pet programs for the Democratic Party that had virtually no affect in terms of stimulating the economy and having a multiplier.

Yes, Mort Zuckerman's hatred for Harry Reid seems to have melted his brain to the point that he is complaining about an infrastructure project in one breath and saying we need more in the next. And he was McLaughlin's guest on the "left" side of the room. Zuckerman was crying about this project on one of the MSNBC programs last week as well, but I don't remember him saying we needed more infrastructure projects right after he did it.

h/t Digby

Update: h/t FilthyHarry
I appears Mort Zuckerman did do the same thing the other day on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

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John McLaughlin uses Pat Buchanan's fear mongering framing for his question on end of life counseling to begin this segment. Buchanan claims that to save money, a government official is going to visit your house if you're ill, and suggest suicide to you. Of course nitwit Monica Crowley is happy to chime right like the good little right winger that she is and agrees with him.

Eleanor Clift attempts to inject some sanity back into the conversation, but isn't helped by her supposed "liberal" (cough) on the panel, Mort Zuckerman who starts railing about whether people ought to have a right to kill themselves if they're in chronic pain, thus throwing a little red meat back to Buchanan and Crowley. Pat literally goes into a hissy fit about the government wanting to kill people to save money before the segment is over.

Does anyone else think that Pat Buchanan has just had a complete mental meltdown since President Obama got elected? Watching this guy is like looking at a car wreck in slow motion. I keep waiting for his head to literally explode on the air one of these days.

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Pat Buchanan continues hurling insults from his racist screed at Human Events at Sonia Sotomayor, this time on PBS's The McLaughlin Group. At least Eleanor Clift was there to attempt to keep him in check. Here are Buchanan's remarks from the segment.

Oh no she did not. She has said this six or seven times. I take the woman at her word. I believe her. I don't know why she didn't come out and defend all the experience she had, she thinks the richness of her experience had, she thought she would be an even better judge. Instead John what she did is she sat there and gave this rehearsed, robotic performance, you know, not being engaged.

It was like a junior in college who just wants to get through the oral exams on a pass fail basis. He doesn't want to get high honors, and that's what she did and quite frankly I think she diminished herself as a figure because she's a very passionate and intense person. She does believe in race based and ethic based advancement and promotion for purposes of diversity. And she didn't come off that way. I think she came off basically as look, this is Mr. Obama's choice as a Justice, and if that's what you want fine. And here's a guy, Obama, who voted against John Roberts to the Supreme Court and appointed this lady who really does not look like she fits up to Roberts' standards.

[.....]

Well, here's the problem in my view with it, and where I think the Republicans did a good job in some cases. Her whole life, I mean she goes to Princeton, first thing she does she sends a letter to HEW that they don't have enough Hispanic professors. They bring her in affirmative action to Yale. You know, they attack the Yale administration. She denounces the Bakke decision with a group of students. Her whole life....according to the New York Times!!! (crosstalk) But is she going to rule that way on the Supreme Court?

[.....]

But Mort, she comes off as Sam Alito's little sister. A strict constructionist, and I'm you know, oh yeah this law and order type. That is not why she was picked. She's a passionate Latino woman who is a liberal and I think frankly I would like to see more of her be herself.

[.....]

She'll be good for Republicans on the court in this sense because I think she is really the other, the other Sotomayor, and not the one we saw there. I think she's going to be passionate, intense. I think she's going to come down hard on affirmative action. That's what we want. If you've got a liberal judge on the court let them be like Wild Bill Douglas.

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From The McLaughlin Group March 27, 2009.

McLaughlin: Question. Are these bailouts sufficient to restore the economy I ask you Monica?

Crowley: No because you put out a consecutive list of companies, institutions, sectors that have required some money over the last couple of months. In just about every single one of those cases there was a redundancy there. AIG coming back. The auto industry coming back. What we have poured into all of these sectors has not nearly been enough and it will not be enough. This is like spitting into the ocean. It's not going to be enough to restore the economy and if we keep going down the path of having the government jackboot on the private sector, the private sector which will be the engine of this growth (crosstalk).

Clift: The government jackboot on the private sector...uh the private sector had its jackboots on American taxpayers for a good long while and we had companies like AIG basically operating like a hedge fund selling a little insurance on the side. And it is totally appropriate that we now try to get a handle on the new financial world that is...it's a titanic struggle between the Treasury Department and the financial community and who's going to run the economy.

It evolves into one of the typical shout fests The McLaughlin Group is known for. All but John McLaughlin and Monica Crowley on the panel agree that there needs to be some government regulation over these investment companies and hedge funds.

McLaughlin and Crowley both think the free market should rule at all times. Circumstances be damned and let the buyer beware. Crowley also said that the FDIC didn't do its job. Later in the show Eleanor Clift pointed out the flaw in that argument, as in they didn't have jurisdiction or they may have come in already and seized some of these companies. Somehow I doubt that will stop Crowley from repeating the line the next time she's on Fox News.

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On The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin starts off his panel discussion by citing the nonexistent CBO report debunked by the Huffington Post, but since that is the Republican talking point du jour McLaughlin's not going to let a few facts get in the way of his spin.

The other thing that really irks me about his show is that he constantly puts conservatives on the "left" side of the panel with Eleanor Clift. What, you can't find even one milk toast liberal to fill that seat John? This week's choice was Mort Zuckerman. Four conservatives (well three actually and one batshit crazy wingnut in the form of Monica Crowley) and one liberal. Fair and balanced huh?

Shorter Mort Zuckerman: "Oh boy, we're all screwed". 

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Financial expert Zuckerman appeared on Morning Joe to talk about the Federal bailout of Fannie and Freddie Mac - a move that he estimates will cost the taxpayer upwards of $500 billion added to an already record federal debt. The panicked looks on the faces of the hosts as he laid out just how bad it could be were the most vocal commentary though. Zuckerman says that Fannie and Freddie are "too big to fail" because their paper is held by financial institutions worldwide and if they fell then the world economy would plummet like a stone in a "systemic crisis".

But he also says that "this is not the end of the real problem", which is $5 trillion plus in mortgage loans with record foreclosures and falling house prices. In other words, America's piggy bank is broken. Zuckerman says that no-one should think the bailout is the end of the story: "this problem is still not measurable, we still don't know where the bottom is," and that the only way out in the long term is to "force savings upon the American people, and that's called taxes."

We're already seeing the immediate results of the the credit crunch. For instance the Highway Trust fund, which pays for infrastructure repairs and improvements, is almost broke. It's funded by the gas taxes it's tapped out. That has a knock-on in the ability of the federal government to provide construction contracts to businesses and construction jobs to those unemployed, in a time of rising unemployment. The massive amount of money that is going into financial bailouts could have been going to such projects instead, which would have provided some buffering against recession.

It's possible that the Bush administration will ask Congress to give money to the Highway Fund anyway - and it probably should - but yet again someone has to pay the bill eventually for deficit spending and that someone will be you and your grandchildren. Ditto the huge bills for Iraq, massive homeland security and defense spending, the trade deficit and so much else we can thank the profligate Bush administration and Republicans in Congress for. They have, as a solid group, opposed any kind of financial regulation legislation. For Republicans, it's a free market only until John McCain's "middle class" with over $5 million in the bank are hurting, then its socialism for the financial markets all around.

Just remember, though, that the economy does better with Democrats in the White House and Congress and that in this election, while John McCain cares most about personas, the Democratic convention revealed that Democrats care most about the economy.