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Looks like George Will is at it again. This time carrying some water for James Inhofe on the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia. Paul Krugman reminds Will that there was no "smoking gun" in those emails and also asks Will why he hates the free market so much with his opposition to cap and trade.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, he is also going to be dealing with health care, right now on the floor of the Senate. He announced this week to Copenhagen to deal with climate change. And it comes at a time when the politics seem to be changing a little bit in this.

Let me show our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. It shows whether people believe global warming is occurring. That number is going down. July 2008, 80 percent of the public; down to 72 percent now. And there's been a sort of a real partisanship. Look at Republicans, 74 percent believed global warming was occurring back in 2008. Now, a 20-point drop to 54 percent.

George, there has been a partinizing of this issue, and let me turn to one more complication we've had over the last week. This Climate Research Institute at East Anglia University, someone hacked into their e-mail account and showed a bunch of emails between scientists, which opponents of climate change legislation said proves that they are rigging the science and trying to hide information that runs counter to their theories.

WILL: It raises the question of -- we're being asked to wage trillions of dollars and substantially curtail freedom on climate models that are imperfect and unproven. And the consensus far from being as solid as they say it is, and the debate as over as they say it is. The e-mails indicate people are very nervous about suppressing criticism, gaming the peer review process for scholarly works and all the rest. One of the e-mails said it is a travesty, his word, it is a travesty that we cannot explain the fact that global warming has stopped. Well, they shouldn't be embarrassed about that. It's a complicated business, and that's why we shouldn't be (inaudible).

KRUGMAN: All those e-mails -- people have never seen what academic discussion looks like. There's not a single smoking gun in there. There's nothing in there. And the travesty is that people are not able to explain why the fact that 1988 was a very warm year doesn't actually mean that global warming has stopped. I mean, that's loose wording. Right? Everything is about -- we're really in the same situation as if there was one extremely warm day in April. And then people are saying, well, you see, May is cooler than April, there's no trend here. And that's what -- the travesty is how hard it has been to explain...

WILL: One of the emails, Paul, said he wished he could delete, get rid of the medieval warming period. That lasted 600 years...

KRUGMAN: It's not -- read -- this has all been explained. What he meant is they want to put a start on it. We have an end to it, we don't have a start on it. There's a lot of loose use of language when you're just talking among each other. And what the deleting really meant, the deleting would be meant that, you know, we don't know when this thing started, because we don't have very good data back then. There weren't any weather stations. And that's what the context was.

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Nicole Wallace wants us to think that the party of no has not been using scorched earth policy and trying to undermine the President at every turn-- even though she worked for the likes of George Bush and the John McCain campaign which brought us that totally non-scorched earth wonder Sarah Palin. You know... the one who said that Barack Obama was "palling around with terrorists".

How could anyone ever get the idea that the Republicans wanted to resort to a "scorched earth" policy after watching that campaign in action?

Of course, that would be asking too much of Anderson Cooper to possibly bring that up to Ms. Wallace, wouldn't it?

And she thinks Bill Frist and Jeb Bush are people "who could end up on the landscape in a presidential landscape down the road".

Really? Jeb-- who's last name is mud since his brother messed up his chances of ever running-- and the cat killer Bill Frist? Bring 'em on Nicole. Bring your good buddy Palin on with them while you're at it if that's the GOP's hope for the next presidential election. I welcome any one of them as the GOP's next nominee.

COOPER: Nicolle, have -- critics of the Republicans say, basically, look, they have a scorched-earth policy going on right now, that they are opposing anything that President Obama supports.

Is that fair?

WALLACE: That's not fair. And it's not true.

I mean, Jeb Bush has been very complimentary of Obama's Education Department secretary so far. Today, he said he was encouraged. Bill Frist was on, you know, as a very credible voice, as a doctor, talking about the need for health care reform. John McCain is -- is a statesman's statesman. And he is providing a lot of leadership and I think productive and constructive ideas...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: But you're kind of clutching at straws. I mean, Jeb Bush and Bill Frist?

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: These aren't straws. These are certainly people that...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Bill Frist is like, you know...

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: But these are people who could end up on the landscape in a presidential landscape down the road.

So, I think when you -- you look at Washington, sure, you look at House members. But when you look at the American public at large, you know, not all of what happens in Washington breaks through.

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Paul Krugman writes an excellent column on the mental state of the Republican Party and compares their collective glee over the United States losing our Olympics bid to that of a "bratty 13-year-old", and who better to make him go up against but Lady McCheney who's never found someone she could not bully on the set of CNN? If CNN wanted to have an honest discussion about the points he was trying to make in his column, they wouldn't have put him up against this Cheney hack who represents everything that's been wrong with the last nine years plus of our politics in this country.

COOPER: In "Raw Politics" tonight: the mounting pressure on President Obama, under attack from his critics and on the defense about his policies. The shocks are not just coming from the right anymore. Check out who "Saturday Night Live" chose as their newest target over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")

FRED ARMISEN, ACTOR: On my first day in office I said I would close Guantanamo Bay. Is it closed yet? No.

I said we would be out of Iraq. Are we? Not the last time I checked.

ARMISEN: I said I would make improvements in the war in Afghanistan. Is it better? No, I think it's actually worse.

ARMISEN: How about health care reform? Hell no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The sketch then went on to lampoon Mr. Obama for Chicago losing the 2016 Olympic Games.

Now, some of the president's conservative critics literally broke out in applause when the news broke that Chicago had been rejected.

Today, "The New York Times"' Paul Krugman said the GOP has become a party ruled by spite, eager to see the president fail, even if it's on something that is good for America. His latest book is "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008."

Paul Krugman and political contributor Mary Matalin, who's -- who was a counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, joined me earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: There is a narrative right now that -- that President Obama has lost his mojo. There was a couple people saying that the last couple days, "Saturday Night Live." Do you -- do you buy that?

KRUGMAN: No.

I mean, I think there are -- there are a lot of problems. And he -- you know, it's very difficult to be a strong, successful president when the employment picture is still worsening. And the employment picture is still worsening. And the stimulus law, while it has helped, isn't big enough to turn that around any time soon. So, he's got some problems.

But, look, health care, the -- the mood I get from the people who are really working on health care legislation is that this thing is now going to happen. A few weeks ago, there were real doubts about whether it was going to happen. But now it looks like it is going to happen. And that is going to be a huge thing.

Regardless of exactly what happens in the midterm elections, if we come out with legislation establishing universal health care by the end of this year, which I now believe we will, My God, that is transformational. We will be a different country. So, that is mojo in -- in the space that matters.

COOPER: Mary, do you believe that he has lost his mojo? I mean, there's people saying: Look, health care has not worked out. He's been weak on. He hasn't been out in front of it enough. The situation in Afghanistan, certainly, and other issues. The Olympic thing is just the -- the latest.

MATALIN: I don't -- I don't know if he lost his mojo. I never drank the Kool-Aid in the first place.

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It looks like Rush Limbaugh's glee over the United States losing the bid for the Olympics was even too much for Joe Scarborough to take.

Scarborough: I would like Rush Limbaugh to tell me Mike Barnicle...who's he helping there other than Rush Limbaugh? Because I would tell you middle Americans--Rush is smarter than that--middle Americans that swing elections see that and "Oh my god, Republicans have gone off the deep end."

I hate to tell you Joe but a lot of people I know realized the Republicans went off the deep end a long time ago. And Katrina Vanden Heuvel is exactly right. The Republicans would have attacked Obama no matter how this went down. If he hadn't gone, they'd have been saying the other heads of state went and he lost it for America. If he'd gone and the U.S. had gotten the bid, they'd be attacking Chicago for their dirty politics. You cannot win when dealing with these people who as Paul Krugman rightly pointed out that you were so dismissive of later in the segment... have "the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old".

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Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman weigh in on Sarah Palin’s misguided talking points in her recent speech to financial executives in Hong Kong. Palin apparently thinks that the solution to our economic mess in the United States is less government regulation rather than more to rein the bankers and Wall Street in for their bad behavior.

As Krugman notes we need more regulation and consumer protections and if we can’t even fix the simple things that should be a no brainer like consumer protections, how are we going to fix the bigger problems?

From Think Progress-Delegates walk out of Palin’s first international speech:

Sarah Palin made her international debut today in a closed-door speech at the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong. AFP reports that Palin’s speech, which touched on issues like international terrorism and the U.S. debt, “divided” the audience and even prompted a few delegates to leave in disgust:

Former US vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin divided an international audience of financial big-hitters at her first speech outside North America on Wednesday with some leaving in disgust. [...]

Some listeners praised her forthright views on government social and economic intervention but others walked out early citing boredom or disgust. [...]

A US delegate leaving early with a colleague said: “it was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer.”

As Krugman noted during this interview unfortunately Sarah Palin is not that far out of the mainstream of the Republican Party with her views on regulation.

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Paul Krugman calls out John McCain for his double talk on controlling Medicare costs during this panel discussion with George Stephanopoulos on This Week. As Krugman notes, the Republicans and John McCain are trying to have it both ways and one one hand saying Medicare's costs need to be kept in check, and on the other hand scaring seniors into thinking that the President wants to cut their Medicare benefits, and refusing to have a rational debate on how those costs end up being controlled.

David Frum tries to defend the Medicare Advantage program which is one of the things the Obama administration wants to go after to control costs, and Krugman shoots a hole straight through his arguments and reminds him that wasteful spending is what Republicans are supposed to be against. George Will wraps things up with showing his love for the pharmaceutical industry and their profits.

WILL: We’ve been talking about this for about five minutes and the subject of cost, which is tiresome and depressing, has not come up.

REICH: I just mentioned it.

WILL: When we began this debate a few months ago, the costs were going to be paid primarily by two things. One, the proceeds from selling under cap and trade, the permits to emit carbon. And “B,” Medicare cuts. “B” is never going to happen. And we’ve given away what should have been sold, or so we say, the rights to emit carbon. Where are we going to pay for this?

KRUGMAN: Medicare stuff, I think, will, in fact, happen if anything passes. If you want to think about the utter, utter hypocrisy of the Republicans on this. We just heard John McCain . And early on in your conversation, he said basically Sarah Palin was right in saying death panels because the Democrats want Medicare to take into account the actual medical effectiveness --

STEPHANOPOULOS: They weren’t in support of the policy.

KRUGMAN: Right. And then later in the same conversation, he said, we have a terrible problem with entitlements with Medicare. We really need to do something to cut Medicare spending. And what possible way -- we should cut Medicare spending without any regard for the medical effectiveness of what it’s paying for? So, this is, you know, we have the Republicans actually standing fully against any sort of rational control of costs.

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Paul Krugman and Robert Reich both made some really great points during the panel discussion on This Week on the reasons for some real reform of the insurance industry, the mistakes made by the President in negotiating with the Senate, and the notion that there is a need for bipartisanship when the Republican party has moved so far out of the mainstream. And this statement by Krugman bears noting:

Krugman: Well, the public option again, this is something, that, there’s a question whether they're for it, or whether, are they willing to actually vote against cloture to stop this really quite modest but helpful piece of the reform being in there? (crosstalk) They have no intellectual basis to stand on, right? The argument against the public option is sheer nonsense. We know that. It's nothing except the insurance lobby.

Exactly. If these conserva-Dems want to block health care reform and getting the insurance industries in check, make them actually have to stand up and filibuster it along with the Republicans and show their true colors.

Transcript below the fold.

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Paul Krugman appeared on MSNBC to discuss his latest op-ed Republican Death Trip. Paul reiterates some of the points he made in his article.

Krugman: The way I look at it, these people are unappeaseable. It's not really about what it's ostensibly about. It's not actually about the end of life provisions. It's not about the specifics in the bill. They're just going to grab onto anything and try to turn some it into something awful. So they saw this. It seemed to have something to do with end of life and so they said, you know, death panels. It's not about the substance, and that you can't actually satisfy the crazies by offering substantive concessions. What they hate is the whole idea of any kind of health reform and more broadly what they hate is the whole idea of Democrats actually, you know, holding the White House.

Harwood: Interesting point Paul and I've got to tell you one White House official told me today, our problem right now is if we tell some of the Republican opponents in the Senate you can have everything you want in the bill, they still won't vote for it. So...

Krugman: That's right.

So why are they still reaching out to them? From the article:

The question now is how Mr. Obama will deal with the death of his postpartisan dream.

So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away.

What, then, should Mr. Obama do? It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

So can Mr. Obama, who can be so eloquent when delivering a message of uplift, rise to the challenge of unreasoning, unappeasable opposition? Only time will tell.

This is the most depressing segment I've ever seen on Comedy Central. Krugman looks even sadder than usual, and his sigh at the 2:45 mark regarding profit reports at Goldman Sachs speaks volumes.

As usual, Stephen Colbert illustrates the right wing naysayers perfectly, to paraphrase: "Ten percent of the stimulus money is spent, which means it's a one hundred percent failure. If I have a fever, and I'm not better after one penicillin pill, I'm back to the leeches."

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Part two of the Peggy and Kathleen show on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. This time the topic is health care. After some straight talk from Paul Krugman about the importance of including a public option to control costs and the fact that there is no real competition in the health care markets now, we get another "Oh my goodness" moment from Peggy Noonan. Noonan seems to think she knows what most "normal humans" think and forget all those mushy details those darned economists like Krugman tend to bring up. Let's just talk about taxes. Doing her best to channel a little bit of Sarah Palin here:

Noonan: Oh my goodness. Well let...you know how I feel from my column this week. I think things have become a little bit scattered. Um...Paul...if you just limit this conversation to taxes alone, you have some sense that people, normal humans in America, might be getting a little bit nervous about health care and energy care and all of this stuff. America has a huge deficit. We've never seen anything like it before.

Spending is very big. A Warren Buffet, who people tend to trust on economic matters says look, this energy thing the House just passed is a big tax. Health care, the Congressional Budget Office says is probably $1.8 trillion over the next ten years...

Krugman: No...it's not...

Noonan: Well, without gettin' into the weeds, you gotta' assume it's going to cost money. We've got California going under. We've got New York with I think a $20 billion deficit. They're going to be raising taxes. Income taxes are going to be going on up. At a certain point, you've got to realize, people are going to say "Whoa...this is no good. You've got to stop this." (crosstalk) Yes.

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