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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday said that she would be willing force a "thoughtful" shutdown of parts of the United States government if President Barack Obama did not agree to deep spending cuts.

"What we want to make certain is that this president, this administration, this bureaucracy realizes that kicking the can must stop," she told MSNBC's Chris Jansing. "It is spending cuts and it is imperative that we reduce the size of the federal government, that we get in on a mega-diet, that we end this out-of-control spending."

"There is the option of government shutdown," the Tennessee Republican continued. "There is an option of raising the debt ceiling in short-term increments... There's also the plan of three dollars in cuts for every one dollar of debt limit increase. So, the healthy thing is this, we are having a good discussion on it."

Jansing pointed to a study by the Bipartisan Policy Center which found that the government could continue to fund interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps during a shutdown -- but it would mean that almost every other federal program would grind to a halt.

"[B]ut doing all that will mean defaulting on everything — really, everything — else," The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote last week. "The FBI will shut down. The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs. The prisons won’t operate. The biomedical researchers won’t be funded. The court system will close its doors. The tax refunds won’t go out. The Federal Aviation Administration will go offline. The parks will close. Food safety inspections will cease."

"I think that there is a way to avoid default," Blackburn insisted. "If it requires shutting down certain portions of the government, let's look at that. Let's put these option on the table, be very thoughtful, but get this spending pattern broken. We cannot afford a $4 billion a day deficit and trillion dollar plus deficits every single year."

"So, it requires thoughtfulness and it requires that we are going to have a plan to work through this. I think that's where we as Republicans are headed."

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Sadly it seems MSNBC has found yet another former Pennsylvania Democrat to come on the air to advocate for rewarding Republicans for their obstruction and intransigence over the last four years. We were already treated to "Fix the Debt" corporate shill Ed Rendell arguing for cutting benefits to our seniors with the chained CPI as way to figure the cost of living increases for Social Security and for raising the age for Medicare eligibility. And in a subsequent interview, he was not only pushing to cut our social safety nets, but to help get more Republicans elected to office as well.

This Saturday, former Rep. Joe Sestak took up Rendell's mantle and recommended that President Obama nominate former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for transportation secretary. I probably would not be as irritated at Sestak for this interview had I not heard him earlier this week talking about how reasonable cutting the benefits to our seniors would be and that Democrats are going to have to give into the idea that this chained CPI is coming and there's nothing they can do about it if we want to fix our deficit problems. Never mind that Social Security does not add a dime to our deficit. He did the same thing a little later in this segment but wasn't quite as specific as he'd been in the previous interview on which cuts are going to have to be made to our social safety nets.

Sestak took to the air here to call for more privatization of our infrastructure and nominating a Republican who could get that passed as the solution to fixing our crumbling roads and bridges. It makes me start to wonder if anyone besides MSNBC is signing a paycheck for him just like they are for Ed Rendell, because these sure as hell aren't positions Democrats who don't want to have themselves considered as Republican-lite should be advocating for.

As long as we've got Democrats like Rendell and Sestak shilling for Republicans and their policies on that so-called "liberal" network MSNBC, who needs Republicans?

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In yet another day in upside-down land at Fox "news" good old Mike Huckabee, just after going on a rant about the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal and how that irresponsible government spending was going to destroy our country, brought in wingnut Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) to heap praise on him for supporting a bill that freezes Congressional salaries and to pretend that he and his fellow obstructionist Republicans have actually been governing responsibly.

I guess Duffy finally decided that it wasn't too much of a "struggle" to get by on their $174K a year salary, since this is the same guy that was complaining about how much they were paid not that long ago as Nicole wrote about here: Break Out The Tiny Violins: WI Rep Eager To Cut State Employee Salaries Says "It's A Struggle" To Make It on $174K A Year.

Of course, Huckabee and Duffy's ideas about what constitutes wasteful spending is probably a little different than what most of the readers here would feel is wasteful. They were complaining about how we can't afford the unemployment insurance extension, stimulus spending to get us out of the recession and needing to do something about "entitlements," or in other words, all of our New Deal social safety net programs.

So more austerity for you Americans or your grand children are doomed! I'm not sure if it's humanly possible to have a much more substance free debate on the topics these two were talking about here, but I am sure if it's out there to be found, it will either be on Fox or right-wing radio somewhere.

We've got some of the most irresponsible hostage takers running one of the three branches of our government right now and this clown is going to paint them as though they've got one iota of concern about our economy, the welfare of our citizens other than the wealthiest among us or the real work of actually governing this country and negotiating with someone in good faith. They're ready to burn the place down if they don't get their way and the two of them are pretending like the only thing that would happen if they refuse to let the government pay its bills is a government shut down, when everyone knows the consequences would actually be much more dire.

Even John Boehner admitted that the failure to raise debt ceiling would mean "financial disaster" a couple of years ago on Fox during an interview with Chris Wallace, but the two of them conveniently decided to ignore that here.

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During the lead up to the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, their senior senator, Chuck Grassley, made an appearance and took the opportunity to rail on about Obama not taking responsibility for his policies and apparently was very unhappy with Republicans being blamed for any of our economic problems. He also lied and repeated the same tired old line we've heard out of them time after time:

GRASSLEY: By any measure of the economy or the fiscal policy, you [President Obama] have made every statistic worse.

I hate to break it to the good senator, but no, he hasn't as the article linked from Media Matters documents. He went on to say we need new leadership and a president who will take responsibility for their actions. What followed was a lot of cheerleading for American “exceptionalism” and more repetition promoting what we know are the failed fiscal policies of conservatism that we've seen slowly destroy what's left of our middle class over the last thirty or forty years.

President Obama is not far enough to the left to suit me. And I've been extremely irritated to see his administration adopting way too much of the same language from the right on anything from deficit reduction to tax cuts, to the confidence fairy to you name it. That said, a member of what has been a part of one of the most obstructionist Senates in the United States in history that continually blocked the hundreds of bills that were passed by the House of Representatives that could have improved our economy when the Democrats had control of both houses of Congress has absolutely no credibility whatsoever railing on about how President Obama hasn't done more to get Americans back to work and our economy back on track.

Our own Jon Perr wrote about that in March of last year here -- GOP Wins Filibuster Gold Medal.

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I was thankful to see Paul Krugman get some air time on PBS's Charlie Rose on this Friday's show, but sadly he got stuck debating David Brooks, who blathered on endlessly in the segment previous to what I clipped here, calling austerity measures reasonable and chastising Republicans for being unwilling to strike a deal with President Obama on spending cuts during this debt ceiling debate debacle.

Krugman did a nice job of shooting down Brooks' talking points defending the astroturf "tea partiers" on the size of government being too large and with pointing out the extreme level of obstructionism we've seen from Republicans since Obama took office. He also expressed his concerns that many of us have with President Obama governing way too far to the right and with being way too accommodating to Republicans while this madness from the other party is going on.

ROSE: There are two questions. One, if you look at the dysfunctionality of government in this case, who's responsible for them?

BROOKS: I don't pretend it's symmetrical... I wouldn't say it's symmetrical here. I do think the president and the Democrats have been much more flexible than the Republicans have been. I say that with a little pain maybe, but that's just simply the case. The president, to his credit has made his allies extremely uncomfortable, and if you were around in Washington yesterday when the entire Senate Democratic caucus erupted in fury, you saw that first hand. And so I think the Republicans are... it's a good short term negotiating strategy, but they are not seizing a deal which should be out there for them.

I'm sort of mystified why if the president is offering a $3 trillion in the reduction of government, why they're not seizing upon that and potentially settling either for nothing or maybe $500 million. I mean, it's just mystifying to me why they don't take this deal.

ROSE: Well, then take a guess. What's the answer?

BROOKS: Well, there are a lot of things. One, they will tell you they go home and nobody wants any more taxes. We ran on that, we pledged it. Second, and I think this part is bipartisan, the hatred is so strong, there is great personal resistance to doing a deal with the devil. And they regard Obama, or Boehner and Cantor as the devil. There's just sort of this emotional resistance to getting in a room, shaking their hand and having your picture taken.

And so even beneath the substance of it there's a great deal of emotional resistance, and when... even when the president makes an offer, which is a pretty good offer for Republicans, they're always looking for the weaknesses in it.

(crosstalk)

KRUGMAN: This is a longer term story. It's not just what's happened during these negotiations. The underlying reason we have dysfunctional politics right now is the radicalization of the Republican Party. I mean, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican, or maybe now an excommunicated Republican just said basically Obama is a moderate conservative. He's basically governing to the right of Richard Nixon. But what's happened is that the Republican Party has gone so far off into an extreme right wing position that we have gridlock because basically one party cannot say yes.

They cannot say yes to anything that might be coming from the other party. In a basic sense they don't accept the legitimacy of government by the other party.

BROOKS: To be fair to them, they would say that we've had government at a certain level of GDP for decade after decades, and roughly the same, and over the last couple of years its leapt up significantly, so if we want to bring it back to that level, to the 2008 level (crosstalk) that's the argument they would make.

KRUGMAN: David, all of that is the recession. All of that is that the ratio of government to GDP is higher because GDP is down and safety net programs; unemployment insurance and Medicaid and a few other programs that respond to hard times are up. If you take that out, there has been no increase in the size of government. That's an entire myth.

BROOKS: There is a long term trend of health care spending. I mean this is, and Paul and I have come back to this a couple of times in this conversation...

KRUGMAN: Right.

BROOKS: Health care spending is the problem.

KRUGMAN: Yeah.

BROOKS: And so there are two wildly different views of how you address that issue. And Republicans look out and see health care spending increasing, swallowing up everything else and they say we need something like the Ryan plan in order to fundamentally reform the structure of the program. And that's not a radically irresponsible position. It's a position you can disagree with, but it doesn't make them loons, I would say.

KRUGMAN: Well... we can go on. We should also point out that we have an enormous amount of obstructionism at all levels. Right? There's a tremendous number of unfilled positions. To a large extent Obama is trying to govern now with a hollow administration because he can't get officials approved. We had my former MIT colleague, Nobel Laureate Peter Diamond rejected for the Federal Reserve Board.

This is a crazy... uhh... this is what is making America ungovernable. It is the extremism of one party. You actually have an extremely accommodating, I would say alarmingly accommodating Democratic president, but a Republican Party that just won't deal.

I found Brooks' doublespeak on these “tea party” Republicans amusing – and I use that term loosely, because there is no “tea party”, it's the extreme right wing of the Republican base – where he had to admit that they're completely incapable of governing because of their deep-seated hatred for President Obama, but he felt compelled to defend them anyway after that admission.

Naturally Brooks played the Villager game of “both sides” are equal in this segment where he tried to pretend that there is some visceral hatred by Democrats of Boehner and Cantor that somehow compares to the right wing literally losing their minds from day one after our first black president got elected, which is just nonsense. When Brooks can find some Democrats out there with posters of Boehner and Cantor as witch doctors with bones through their noses or something similarly crazed and just downright hateful someone let me know, will they?

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Mike Pence promises more of the same that we've seen from Republicans during the first two years of the Obama presidency -- more obstruction. While defending keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich in place, Pence also seems to have a little trouble with "sophisticates in Washington" and their accounting. Apparently Eliot Spitzer hasn't figured out that Mike Pence isn't going to let a little thing like mathematics get in the way of his talking points.

Pence has absolutely no interest in governing and hates government, but he wants to be president in 2012. Looks like he'll fit right in with the rest of them on the GOP's short list of potential nominees.

PARKER: He is one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington and he says, "no compromise." He promises to stand in the way of an aggressive liberal agenda. That's how he sees it, anyway. And joining us from Wadesville, Indiana, Congressman Mike Pence.

Welcome.

PENCE: Thank you.

SPITZER: Congressman, you and I may not be on the same side of the aisle on this one, but enjoying keeping up your energy and making the most of the last couple days. And by the way, more important, perhaps, congratulations. I know you can't quite say it this way, but you're running for president, we hear and that's going to be one big endeavor for you. So enjoy it and we wish you nothing but luck.

PENCE: Well, thanks, Eliot. I've read that too. I tell you, my focus is entirely on November 2. You know, I really do believe this is one of those -- this is one of those generational moments in electoral politicians. You know, I'll agree with President Obama who said that this election is a choice. I don't think it's a choice between the failed economic policies of the present and the failed economic policies of the recent past, but I think the American people are going to decide and I hope in definitive terms, whether we're going to continue this pathway of more government and more spending and more bailouts and more takeovers or whether we'll turn back to fiscal responsibility and pro-growth policies and I'm honored to be some small part of that debate. And we'll let the future take care of itself.

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It seems no matter what the Republicans do, it's always going to get framed as being good for them in the upcoming elections even when their actions are doing harm to actual Americans. Surprisingly, the usually hackish John King pointed out to Red State's Erick Erickson that there is quite a bit of meaningful legislation that the Republicans have been blocking. No matter though. In Erickson's book, it's all good for them in the upcoming mid-terms. I think unfortunately since so few people are actually paying attention to how they're governing and the media is allowing them to get away with it by not covering it properly, he's right that they won't pay a price for it.

Erickson also repeats their latest talking point about how "concerned" everyone is over the upcoming lame duck session. Media Matters has more on that.

Conservatives disappear GOP's Clinton impeachment to bash "corrupt" Democrat-led lame duck session:

Conservative media figures have repeatedly claimed or suggested that it would be unprecedented and "corrupt" for Democrats to address "controversial" issues during Congress' lame duck session following the 2010 elections. But in 1998, Republicans impeached President Clinton during such a post-election congressional session.

Go read the whole rest for a little trip down memory lane on what the Republicans did during their lame duck session.

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Thom Hartmann weighs in on Think Progress' mash up of GOP obstruction -- VIDEO: The GOP’s Solution To Everything — Let’s ‘Start Over’:

In their attempts to fight Wall Street reform, Republicans are already recycling the same old tactics that they used to fight health care reform and even the stimulus. Conservatives opposed to financial reform are repeating a familiar refrain — “start over”:

On the Recovery Act

“The Senate would do us all a great favor if it started again from scratch.”

– Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), 2/4/09

“Start over again on this bill and retarget it.”

– Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), 2/12/09

On Health Care Reform

“How much longer do Americans have to wait before Democrat leaders will give up this partisan quest and agree to start over?”

– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 3/10/10

“We should either scrap this bill completely and throw it away and forget about it. Or scrap it and start over again.”

– Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), 3/17/10

On Wall Street Reform

“Look, there’s no rush right now. We need to get it right.”

– Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), 4/21/10

“Start over please, Mr. President.”

– Fox News’ Steve Doocy, Karl Rove, 4/19/10

Unfortunately I've been watching this in real time, but seeing the clips together is enough to make one's head spin.

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Chris Dodd looks like he's finally had about a belly full of the GOP and their obstructionism. The Democrats need to say the hell with bipartisanship and just pass a good bill instead. Dare the GOP to filibuster it. It looks like Blanche Lincoln is actually willing to get derivatives regulated so who knows, maybe we'll get something with some teeth passed. It's long overdue.

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I can't believe the Obama administration almost hired this guy. John King allows Judd Gregg to blame Republican obstruction on the 24/7 news cycle and when asked if he's worried about Republicans being seen as the party of no he replies blames it on this centrist administration he almost worked for moving too far to the left.

GREGG: Well we do and we need to when we're confronting things that are very bad for our country either fiscally or from a standpoint of policy. I do not want to see this country move down the road of Europeanization of our nation and basically you've got a government now that's moving to the left. I think the fundamental area that this administration --

KING: That far left? You came pretty close to joining this --

GREGG: Yes, I did and that was my mistake. But the -- all American politics is historically played between the 40 yard lines. But this administration came in with what was essentially super majorities in the House and Senate and they decided to govern like a parliamentary system and they went down to the 20 yard line or the 15 yard line on the left and they basically moved very aggressively out on an agenda --

This kind of thing is just so irresponsible but we see it out of these guys day after day after day. I would love to see an honest debate about just what the "Europeanization" of our country would actually mean and see how many people would not like it if the issue was debated honestly. Shorter work weeks, more vacation time, universal health care, education paid for through college in many countries, more unionization... the horror. How could the people ever survive something like that happening in America?

Of course we're not going to get any push back from the likes of John King. I'd like to see this clown have to debate Thom Hartmann. He wouldn't let Gregg throw "Europeanization" out there like it's a dirty word without challenging him on specifically what he thinks is so bad about it.

But then, that's why Gregg is a guest on CNN and not the Thom Hartmann Show. Hartmann would chew him up and spit him out in a debate. Hell, he could barely hold his own debating a 94 year old woman. No, instead we get softballs from John King who just allows him to spew his talking points.

Full transcript below the fold.

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