Well, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The GOP shouldn't be surprised they're being ignored, considering their treatment of the Democrats for the last 8 years.
I anticipate the blue dog democrats will screw this all up somehow.

Actually he did compromise: that's where the tax cuts came from, and the size of the bill has been pared down considerably. And now the Republicans managed to get influence over some of the content of the bill while still being innocent of its passage in the eyes of their supporters (who are presumably as right-wing as they are). It's the kind of move that will be lauded as clever if it works out for them, and fucking terrible otherwise. They're basically betting that a) the stimulus won't work and b) we'll still be in recession come 2010 so that they can say "see, we did our best to oppose all this spending, and look, they overrode us and it didn't even help!" It's also a push towards making Obama the W Bush of the democrats: just ignore the opposition to do what you think is right, thereby becoming a divisive unpopular figure. I don't think it'll work out for them, but since they apparently decided in advance that helping out doesn't pay sufficient political dividends, it's probably the best they could do for an opening move.

Oh, and to RandomNerd above me: they tried, but there weren't enough of them. You might be right in the senate, though...

there were some compromises and guess what? the republicans still didn't vote for it, because they're not trying to solve problems at all, but looking to ruin obama to take back the power. i think it's fairly brilliant that he's done all this reaching out, so they are the ones who look like whiny obstructionists who take their toys and go home if they don't get their way.

fuck politicians! they do not have our country's best interest in mind. PERIOD! its a sick game

Yep, 500 billion here, 700 billion there, woo hoo! Who cares where we get the money!

the GOP certainly didn't care when it was handing out those tax cuts to the richest businesses in the world, nor when it dangled insanely low interest rates in front of the middle class in order to further inflate the corporate bottom line. basically, trickle-down economics fucked the country, and in order to fix it, we're going to have to deal with inflation for a while.

and the worst is yet to come. you think things are bad now, wait until the derivatives market crashes.

Weh, weh. After Republican initiatives like the Commodities Future Modernization Act helped exercerbate what would have been a mild housing bust in context of our current economic situation, Republicans should feel fortunate that Democrats are even listening.

i forget who it was specifically, but there was one republican representative bitching about the increase in federal spending on education on fox news today. put a fork in the GOP.

Seriously. I keep hearing Republicans on the radio talking about how they have to become the "party of ideas" to rebuild a succesful party, but right now it sounds like the Rush Limbaugh & Sean Hannity Crybaby Hour. When the hell is a non-reactionary going to step up and take charge?

Maybe in about 16 years(fingers crossed).

greg palast needs to read a book before he writes another one. anything on history or ecomonics.

your detailed, point-by-point disassembly of Palast's article has convinced me.

I would like learn more about this ecomonics topic of which you speak.

woah.