The New York state government took $140 million of the Obama stimulus money, and, along with $35 million from Soros, decided to give it to poor kids. But only poor kids! Sure, they are going to immediately go spend that money on school supplies, because poor families are not traditionally known for saving and investing effectively, and that will "stimulate" the economy and help poor kids, but we all know that giving money to poor kids is pointless and irresponsible.

That is why Drudge highlighted this miserable story of mothers in the Bronx taking the free money to buy uniforms for their kids, this morning. Presumably we're meant to skip to this bit at the end:

Paterson's Republican critics blasted the giveaway, saying he should spend the money to reduce property taxes.

"It is a plan that is ripe for fraud and abuse," said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos. "This is a totally irresponsible use of federal stimulus money."

Yes, right, lowering property taxes is definitely what should've been done with this $140 million of cash, because that is how stimulus spending works. Actually Paterson should've just given it directly to landlords, probably.

[Photo: Getty]

Because people can't afford to eat, and cheese has nutritional value that can help sustain life. One of the stimulus contracts Drudge links to—the implication being that the expenditure is somehow inappropriate or wasteful or contrary to the stated purpose of the stimulus package—paid Bongard's Creameries, a Minnesota farmer's cooperative, $5.7 million for processed American cheese.

We called Bongard's to ask what the contract was for. Vikki Anderson, the company's sales director, said she wasn't 100% sure, but she assumed that it was for the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—food stamps. "I think it was for SNAP," she told Gawker, "because most of our delivery locations are food banks."

Losers! What a waste. We assume that the various swine products that Drudge has searched for on Recovery.org—"$2,531,600 FOR 'HAM, WATER ADDED, COOKED, FROZEN, SLICED, 2-LB'"—are similarly intended to feed people who can't afford to buy food because they don't have jobs. Still—the porkulus is being used to buy pork! We thought it was supposed to stimulate the economy. How does using pork to buy pork stimulate the economy? Sean Hannity will ask this question in roughly 11 hours.

Well, one way would be by preventing people from starving, so that they might survive the recession and get jobs. Another way would be to employ people who slaughter and package pork for a living. Because when people can't afford to buy food, they don't buy food. So the people who make food don't have anyone to sell the food to, and so they lay people off, and then the people they laid off can't afford to buy food, etc.

Also: The stimulus package was intended to help people buy food. It says so right here on the same web site that Matt Drudge linked to in order to ridicule the notion of spending stimulus dollars to help people by food:

UPDATE: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has responded directly to Drudge. Which was a very bad idea, since a) all Drudge did was put up links, so there is no specific claim that needs a response, and b) now Drudge can put up a big headline bragging about how he dragged the secretary of agriculture into a fight about ham. Which of course he has. Also, Vilsack inexplicably zeroed in on the idea that Drudge is accusing the USDA of spending millions on one two-pound ham: "The references to '2 pound frozen ham sliced' are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy '2 pounds of ham' are wrong." It's crazy to think charges like that merit a response, and in doing so, Vilsack is just lending credibility to Drudge.

[Photo by Duncan Cumming via Flickr.]

"States' rights" is usually just code for "racism," but in Rick Perry's case he is just mad as hell about how he is being forced to spend billions of dollar in federal stimulus money in ways the federal government demands, rather than just blowing it on bribing Rush Limbaugh to move to Austin or whatever.

So he joined some state legislators in supporting a Texas House bill affirming Texas' sovereignty under the 10th Amendment.

It also designates that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed

Yes well we hope they do pass this bill, mostly because of that last bit, about the federal funding "incentives" for passing new laws. That was a favorite tool of Reagan and Bush II, who used it to raise the drinking age and enforce federal marijuana laws with raids on legal medicinal marijuana clinics and other fun things like those (and the Supreme Court has said that it's kosher).

If Texas actually becomes a legal underaged .10 blood-alcohol content spliff-smoking 100-mph libertarian autobahn paradise we will take Perry at his word, that he is concerned about the constitution and not just looking to aid his reelection bid by going hard-line anti-feds making him help poor people. Also if all that happens we might just move there! Who doesn't love getting wasted and speeding with high school seniors?

So don't you dare give Rick Perry some of the money necessary to fund the state's bankrupt unemployment trust fund and expect him to do something about that forthcoming $750 million shortfall! (He would really appreciate more federal help with those wildfires, though!)

The guy owns a solar power something-or-other called—wait for it—"Namaste." Which meant that half the press conference involved the assembled officials, from Biden to Obama to the governor of Colorado, amusingly mispronouncing a fruity yoga word.

Then the secret hippie who who's stealing all the stimulus money to buy hemp called our Vice President "Joe Bidden." Namaste!

(Thanks to video guru Nicole Keller for putting this package together, and saving the economy. Namaste! Mahalo!)

CNN: The stimulus package: Is it a good deal for you? Let's calmly discuss it, with Anderson Cooper.


Fox News: The stimulus package: Is it just a black man trying to take your money? Sean Hannity explores, while pretending he knows how to read.


MSNBC: The stimulus package: Obama stroking a pen; flexing his muscles; Chris Matthews is Hardball. If you know what we mean.

No one in congress has read it, either. The religious right "news" service CNS reports this as if that were a stunning thing, that these Democrats showed up with this long and complicated bill that no one had time to read before they demanded a vote on it, but yeah, that's how congress works. You think anyone reads the fucking farm and transportation bills all the way through?

Still, here is a handy quote that explains why democracy doesn't work:

Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) shared that sentiment. "The American public expects for us to get in and know what we're voting on," Boozman said. "But there are very few members from Congress that are going to have time to actually read this thing."

"This is not light reading," Boozman added. "It's difficult reading, it involves policy and things."

"Right now, because of those things, I will probably vote against it," he added.

John, you are a congressman. This is your job. To understand "policy." We don't actually expect any of your heroic citizen legislators to have a keen understanding of economics, but we do hope you have someone on staff who does. Who can maybe explain it to you?

Well, don't blow your stack yet, Galbraith. The bill is smaller because they cut the individual and family tax cuts and reduced the fucking home purchase tax credit, two immoral and pointless wastes of money. And House Dems got some of their state aid and they might get the school construction money back! The House version of the bill would maybe have created more jobs, and it looks like we're moving back to something that resembles that bill, maybe.

So—after fucking up the entire stimulus rollout by somehow assuming people would be reasonable about it and not just demand crazy new concessions and then still not vote for it, it looks like Obama's attempt to shame everyone into passing something vaguely resembling a plan an economist would tentatively agree with worked. His prime time presser wasn't terribly impressive but it did mostly successfully reframe the debate as "pass this bill or do nothing at all and let America burn." This reframing didn't really work on shameless Republicans but people like Ben fucking Nelson seem a little more amenable to econ 101 arguments.

And, conveniently, cutting the "rich people buying houses" tax credit helps "trim the cost" of the bill, which makes everyone look good, even if the bill should actually be bigger still, but whatevs, Obama didn't dream big enough to begin with.

Anyways, looks like the economy's saved, everyone, let's go party!

The problem with radical pragmatism is that you end up having to sell a crappy bill that no one believes in. Obama's poor, beat-up stimulus bill is hated by the Republicans because, hey, it's government spending, and its hated by Democrats because it's not as big and substantial and country-saving as it should be. If Obama's philosophy is the art of the possible, well, he fucked up by thinking that a good-faith effort to make a bill palatable to moderate conservatives would actually work to appease any of them.

And so he's out there selling something he knows isn't actually that good, which is why he's forced to couch his pitch entirely in negative tones: if we don't pass this bill, if we do nothing, we are all seriously fucked. Not, like, "once we pass this bill things will get better," but just pure it's-better-than-nothing. Inspirational!

Republicans are a lot better at seizing on crises. 9/11 and Katrina both gave them opportunities to ram through bills tangentially related to those disasters filled with stuff they'd had on the wish list for a decade or more, all of it sold with conviction that it'd fix the nation. Democrats were handed an opportunity almost on the same scale, and they're haggling, once again, about tax cuts. All because Obama isn't a dick! If he was a dick he'd have stuck Card Check and probably single-payer health care reform and hell, why not gay marriage into a "stimulus bill," because that's what Liberal George Bush, Liberal Dick Cheney, and Liberal Tom DeLay would've done.

And now Obama's selling his watered-down and porked up bill directly to the American people, because he's still pretty damn popular, and people always like it when a president bitches about Congress. But will they like it when he won't get off their damn tvs? He's got an hour of prime time tonight (during House!), and now supposedly he's doing another one on February 16, and all of this is before his 2-hour State of the Union on the 24th! Who does he think he is, funnyman Jay Leno?

TV networks are expected to lose million of dollars in ad revenue, so let's hope at least one of these appearances is as entertaining and well-produced as his little Obama Informecial thing was. That was like a Frontline episode with a campaign speech thrown in!

Bonus: Over the weekend sci-fi sibling io9 went to New York Comic-Con and overheard Chuck co-creator Josh Schwartz complaining about how Obama has screwed their show.

Elkhart used to be "the RV Capital of the World," and now, oddly, no one in the world wants an RV, and so Elkhart County has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Obama's been to Elkhart twice already, during the campaign. He lost the city to both Hillary Clinton and John McCain, but now they're all totally psyched to hear him, because they all heard he's bringing with him some of those "government handouts" we used to give to shiftless lazy minorities but that we now need to rescue hard-working Americans suffering a run of bad luck (thanks either to evil bankers or minorities flipping houses or something, maybe ACORN?).

So Obama's going full-on campaign mode trying to sell this stimulus bill, with his appearance in Elkhart today, his primetime news conference tonight, and a Florida trip tomorrow.

So maybe we'll watch on Fox? We really hate Rick Sanchez! And, hah, right now Fox is interviewing Michael Steele about how obstructing passage of the stimulus is their victory plan for 2012. Just like how Democrats made us lose the Iraq war so they could win in 2008.

12:11 Oh, good, Evan Bayh is there. Obama is talking "folksy" again, he is totally back in campaign mode.
12:14 Obama totally didn't forget about poor unemployed bitter white Indiana people during his two weeks in office. FYI.
12:16 The politics of failure have failed! This is your first applause line, the bit about how Obama won the election and that means Republicans should fucking bend over and take it.
12:17 "To put Americans back to work, doing ther work that America needs to get done." That is a really weird explanation of a stimulus bill.
12:18 Here is a list of jobs! Jobs making jobs! This is not of one his "inspirational rhetoric" speeches, this is one of his "I am a Democrat and I promise you all health care and jobs" speeches. Clinton-style. There is an applause line about COBRA!
12:21 Now we are sending "thousands of Hoosier kids to college", so they can win the basketball and inspire us.
12:22 Gah, what the hell is so wrong with "government jobs," anyway? Especially if the government is paying people to do useful things around the country? Too many benefits? Now the President is giving shoutouts to local attractions like... an overpass. Everyone is fucking psyched about that overpass.
12:23 Obama would like Chicago to steal Indiana's WIND. Also Obama would like Indiana to produce some damn energy for once instead of just using all it, all the time, and giving back nothing but corn and CO2.
12:25 The fat guy with the bolo tie behind Obama is pretty great. The requisite military people look bored as hell. Jokes about how crappy Washington is always get a laugh!
12:27 Everyone wants to work hard and be rewarded for working hard and let's create jobs and help families and turn this economy around THANK Y'ALL VERY MUCH WHOOOO ECONOMIC RECOVERY it's question time!!
12:30 The questions at the town hall haven't been screened! The Bush era is over! Haha also Obama is going "girl, boy, girl, boy," because he's at a school we guess? First question: will the money go directly to Elkhart, in, like a big pile maybe? This question gets the first "LOOK" of the day from our President, who explains that there will be a website.
12:33 "Elkhart" sounds a little bit like "al-Qaeda." Why are they creating jobs in al-Qaeda? WE KNEW IT. Here come the people who don't actually have questions, they just want to talk. This guy hopes all the money goes to people without jobs, and not to banks. This isn't the TARP, this is the stimulus. Hahaha then Obama's mic went out?? When you give a tax cut to working families, they spend it on coats and cars. Rich people just save that money, because they are better with their money, which is good for them but our economy is built on spending way beyond your means, and frugal rich people hate America. Obama patiently explains that we have to give some money to the banks so that they can lend money to people who want to buy RVs.
12:39 No one will go to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers dime!! Hah we finally get some crazy questions. This one got the lady booed, because she mentioned Sean Hannity?? We're not even sure which appointment this crazy lady was upset about, one of the tax cheats. Obama is all "we have these great ethics rules which really screwed us over because there's no one qualified who is also ethical." Wait actual quote: "With respect to Sean Hannity, I did not know that he had invited me for a beer, but, you know, I will take that under advisement." Hah. "But I'm always good for a beer." Whooooo beer!
12:39 What about judges retooling all the mortgages? Eh, sure. Obama has ONE HOUSE. Haha why is he zinging McCain now? Because McCain is doing his "pork pork earmark pork" thing to the stimulus? Is it just a campaign reflex? South Side of Chicago! I have one house!
1:00 That was a really boring question. Here is a question about protectionism. America has the best workers in the world and they're so good at working! Tax breaks for companies that don't go to China or whatever! Also education! (Ok maybe this is a violation of liveblogging etiquette but right now we're watching this.)
1:05 Haha a nine-year-old wants to know what Obama will do to help our schools. Obama just finished his stump speech on rebuilding our schools, and he says, "James, I just finished talking about that." And then he repeats some of his talking points, all of which are way over James' head, probably. He should've just promised that he'd get James' class a new guinea pig, or something.
1:06 Ok god bless everyone bye!

The theme of the day among "political types" is this: Obama is bad at PR. Here we are, a couple weeks into this whole Obama administration thing, and where is his Big Speech to rally the country around the need for this stimulus package, or even, we daresay, to stimulate the country, all by itself? National TV networks should all be interrupted on a weekly basis, for an Obama speech. For hope!

Hey: he went and visited all the TV anchors this week to talk this stimulus package up. He even has an op-ed in the Washington Post today, which a nice, fancy, old-fashioned thing to do. In fact Obama is making the points that these same critics want him to make: namely, that the stimulus package is necessary, urgent, and if we don't do it now we are totally fucked, so don't fuck around with this, you Congressional hicks.

But he's doing it in that nice, reasonable Obama way that America came to know and love on the campaign trail. He won by grinding it out after Super Tuesday, retaining his equanimity, and making his opponents look like screechy fools in comparison.

During the campaign, though, if that strategy had failed, we would have just had Hillary Clinton as president. If it fails now our entire economy is shredded for the next decade. Which makes people nervous! Ironically, the most nervous are the fighting liberals who were Obama's biggest supporters when he was running. Now he's acting the same way in the White House. Surprise! Joan Walsh has already declared that he's no Great Communicator. What a disappointment this African-American president idea has been.

But we can all rest assured that Obama and Rahm and co. are breaking balls in their own low-key fashion. He doesn't want to bring the entire nation in front of a TV set to collectively listen to him rip the Senate Republicans in his first month, so they can work for the next four years to roadblock his liberal agenda items such as money for humans, out of spite. So hold off a bit, shouting heads. When this thing finally passes he'll look smart for going the reserved route. And nobody really likes listening to speeches, anyhow.

When we are all children, we learn that it takes a simple majority of votes to pass legislation in the senate. Unless someone filibusters! That is a rare and exciting and dramatic event undertaken only when a piece of legislation is so offensive or dangerous to one or a group of Senators that they'll try that famed last resort stalling technique, talking non-stop, day and night, until a bill's sponsors give up or two-thirds of present Senators (eventually 3/5ths of of sworn Senators) can be mustered to vote to end the non-stop talking. So dramatic!

Except of course now how a filibuster works is someone just says "ok I'm filibustering" and everyone present goes out for drinks or a smoke or even home to bed if they feel like it! The procedural filibuster ruined the filibuster.

If everyone had to actually go through with it and filibuster properly half of them wouldn't bother and the stimulus would probably pass with a simple majority because, look, the Republicans and moderate Democrats bitching about all the extra spending on stuff that doesn't actually count as stimulus? Oh no they're buying computers for the Interior Department! Well that leads to this:

The momentum to cut spending became apparent in votes on several amendments. First, the Senate fell two votes shy of the 60-vote threshold needed yesterday to add $25 billion for highway projects and transit programs.

Oh, which budding young Strom Thurmond was going to stand up there and talk all night—for weeks if necessary!—to stop those goddamn highway projects! Oh, but the simple majority works sometimes!

Then, on a 52 to 45 vote, the chamber stripped $246 million in tax breaks for Hollywood production companies, a measure offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the Senate's self-appointed watchdog on federal spending. Coburn, who almost always loses his quixotic efforts to cut funding, appeared jubilant — if somewhat surprised — by his unexpected victory.

Hah! All the Republican refuse to vote for the stimulus until it looks more like "Bush's tax cuts" and less like "economic stimulus," but then they do something like this?? Apparently we're allowed to tax some rich people and wealthy multinational corporations as much as we want, as long as they are godless Hollywood liberal rich people and corporations.

Long story short, "procedural filibusters" are ruining democracy and plunging us into a new great depression (side note: the filibuster, procedural or no, has pretty much only been used for evil since the 1940s, more or less). Also Harry Reid: get your fucking house in order, sir. This is not amateur hour you useless old mormon jackass.

Rush was just doing what he normally does, spitting venom to rile up his easily riled audience, and then suddenly people thought it was outrageous that he said some outrageous things about how he dislikes our black Democratic president. And then Obama mentioned his name, dismissively, and then suddenly Rush is demanding a meeting with the President, christ.

Obama already made his unnecessary tax-cutting concessions to the right-wing fringe, and yet here is Rush, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, opining on matters economic, because he's an expert. His op-ed calls for tax cuts to stimulate the economy, though it does note that tax cuts are a form of government spending, which is a step forward, we suppose.

Now the never-annoying liberals at MoveOn are just encouraging Rush, with another of their always-effective advertisements, and suddenly the AP has one of their wonderful analysis pieces—by the TV writer!—about how Rush Limbaugh destroyed post-partisanship and "the new politics" that Obama was supposed to usher in.

Well yes if you pay attention to Rush, who is doing what he has always done, and make his doing what he's always done news, than it will be news that Rush is doing what he's always done, which is be a dick. And then you can write your little thinkpiece on how the bugaboos of divisive partisanship just won't go away!

And guess what? We just had a wonderful campaign season where nothing Rush did or said mattered! He hated John McCain and desperately needed Hillary Clinton to stick around and it turned out that he and his audience didn't matter! Just like House Republicans don't matter! And yet there they are, on the cable news, all the time. Sigh. The old politics can't be over: they're the only kind of politics the newsmedia knows how to cover.

Instead, as an $819 billion stimulus bill wends its way from the House to the Senate, the Democrats and Republicans obsess over who's getting the larger slice, and whether the other guy got more whipped cream.

The Democrats' complaint: Taxpayer bailout money is going to pay bonuses to bankers. Even President Obama's carping about John Thain's $87,000 rug! The press mostly shares their outrage. The New York Times sniffed: "Some bankers took home millions last year even as their employers lost billions."

That ignores several realities:

• Bonuses are the primary way bankers get paid, in good years and bad.
• And what was the average bonus paid in 2008? $112,000, an order of magnitude away from "millions."
• Wall Street pay is crucial to the tax base of New York, a Democratic stronghold.
• Interior decorators need to earn a living, too.
• Those bonuses buy fancy designer suits, generating revenues for fashion houses which then advertise in magazines which employ editors and writers.

The Republicans' complaint: The stimulus package contains "wasteful spending," like funding the National Endowment for the Arts, preventing of sexually transmitted disease, and re-sodding the National Mall, so recently and thoroughly trod by the boots of inauguration attendees.

Hello, wasteful spending is pretty much the point here! An AFP analysis quotes John Maynard Keynes, the patron saint of stimulative government spending:

To create jobs, he wrote, the government could "fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again."

(Photo by St0rmz)

For days, until a CIA officer raped some women, Drudge headlines were all about how the stimulus bill will fund STD prevention and, uh, birth control. (Well, not anymore!) Looks like it's all about stimulating something other than the economy, right?

What it's actually about stimulating, of course, is THE CULTURE WARS. Rush Limbaugh is relevant again, yay! The "spending too much money we don't have" argument against economic stimulus doesn't work because a) the GOP just spent 8 years doing that and b) no one besides the ideological Republicans care? This isn't a trillion dollars going to CORPORATE FATCATS, it's going to, like, everyone! And everyone would like this money, please! So the only way to galvanize support for obstructionism is to fan those dying flames of sexual puritanism. Obama will teach your little girl how condoms work and then she'll... not get pregnant? Which will save you money, as Nancy Pelosi pointed out, which got her in trouble.

And now liberals are starting in on the ol' "like it or lump it" argument. We won the election, so what we say goes! There's something so... uncouth about that sort of thing. Oh, sure, we all say we wish our liberal leaders were hard-nosed political hatchet-men who got things done like we used to think the Republicans were, but it's so unliberal, isn't it? So Barack Obama is working very hard to make his bill palatable to Senate Republicans. (House Republicans are basically shit out of luck, which is why they're being the most annoying, at the moment.)

And, oh god, it's all feeling like Clinton again, except with someone way better at managing Congress in charge.

Anyway Barack Obama is going to TAX AND SPEND our way out of this, and he will TAX you to SPEND on ABORTION and FLAG-BURNING.

What it really amounts to is doling out money to corporations:

To build a 21st century economy, we must engage contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools.

Contractors — you mean those companies that made out like bandits on the Iraq war? Great. President Change is switching from funding the military-industrial complex to funding the cement-industrial complex. What ever happened to the Works Progres Administration and all those awesome Art Deco buildings built in the 1930s? Barack, baby, let's do this stimulus with style, okay?

For that reason, writes Keen in the Daily Beast, we should not spend billions of dollars upgrading U.S. Internet connections. Expanding broadband access to the great unwebbed, at a time when the economy is in the tank, will just lead to the spread of halfbaked conspiracy theories and the rise of populist anger.

Wait, what happened to blogs stopping the rise of Hitler? Oh, well, Keen's a bit of a snob: He doesn't like blogs, YouTube, MySpace, or basically anything on the Internet that anyone else likes. But we had no idea he was actually, provably stupid.

First of all, let's get real about the broadband plan. It's not going to get that many more people on the Internet. Already, 90 percent of U.S. Internet users are on broadband. The ones who aren't are mostly happy with their dial-up connections, which they use to check email and download photos of their grandkids. And people who aren't online are generally old rather than poor. Anyone a demagogue would want to reach, they already can today.

No, what the broadband stimulus package really amounts to a bailout for phone companies, which would otherwise have to spend their own money upgrading their networks for higher capacity. This, in turn, will allow for faster delivery of online video.

And who's going to pay for all that video? Why, advertisers. And finicky advertisers are far better regulators of loopy extremists than the government will ever be. They hate controversy! As do Internet companies, if only because it means having to spend money on customer-service personnel. So much easier to let the community flag a video as "offensive" and take it down.

So the Father Coughlins of the world will be left broadcasting low-resolution bile over the slowest of connections, constantly running into bandwidth caps. Meanwhile, safe, apolitical pablum will zip speedily over government-subsidized lines, safely narcotizing the masses. Sure, we have plenty to fear from a national broadband plan. But it's not Andrew Keen's racist, classist paranoia that he might run into someone poorer and less white than him in a chat room.