A month later, it doesn’t seem like such a great bargain.

Causey’s trade, it turns out, didn’t qualify for a rebate based on the cash-for-clunkers’ mileage requirements. Though she’d signed all the papers, swapped the tags and updated her insurance policy, Causey was called back to the dealership shortly afterward and presented with two options: either accept a new contract — one that would grant $1,000 for the old Buick and require that she pay back the $2,500 difference — or give up the truck. Thinking a deal’s a deal, Causey and her husband chose a third route: they stormed out, and hired a lawyer instead.

“I didn’t even look at the new paperwork,” the 68-year-old Causey said in a telephone interview Friday. “I’d signed a contract. We walked off with the contract thinking we owned a truck.”

As the Obama administration begins winding down the $3 billion cash for clunkers program, similar stories of consumer frustration are popping up nationwide. While a great deal of ink has been used to chronicle the trials of the auto dealers — many of whom have become rankled by the slow pace of federal reimbursement — much less has gone to point out that there are consumers out there feeling roughed up as well. Some bargain hunters have been prevented from driving their new vehicle off the lot until Washington approves the rebate. Others have been asked to sign liability waivers placing all the risk on themselves rather than the dealers. And in episodes like the one involving the Causeys, some dealers are allowing trades under the cash-for-clunkers banner only to retract them later, leaving both dealers and consumers pointing fingers in agitated blame.

John LaPuma is in one such bind. In July, the 48-year-old man from Olathe, Kan., traded his 1998 Ford Windstar, a 6-cylinder mini-van boasting around 192,000 miles, for a spanking new Nissan Frontier pickup. After the dealer gave him a $3,500 clunkers’ discount for the swap, he paid the remaining balance in cash and drove off. The next evening, however, the dealer called with bad news: the Frontier didn’t qualify for the rebate. Yet when LaPuma checked Nissan’s Web site afterward, he found that his trade was still being advertised as eligible for the discount. “We’d made a deal here,” LaPuma, an employee of Anheuser Busch, said in a telephone interview Friday. If his trade didn’t qualify for a clunkers’ rebate, he added, the dealer “should have known this ahead of time.”

Dave Tolbert, managing partner at Olathe’s McCarthy Nissan, where LaPuma bought the pickup, said the confusion arose because the truck qualified on the DOT’s Web site one day, but was dropped from eligibility the next — an updating of mileage standards that’s affected dozens of vehicle models and left frustrated dealers and buyers alike as they feel their way through the young program. McCarthy has resubmitted the application, Tolbert said, along with a print-out of the original Web page indicating that the Frontier once qualified for a rebate. The verdict should arrive, Tolbert said, by the middle of the week.

Matthew Nappi, 27, a systems administrator, said he also ran into trouble under the clunkers program. It wasn’t that his dealer wouldn’t grant the $4,500 clunkers’ rebate when Nappi scrapped his 1995 Infiniti J-30 in favor a 2010 Toyota Corolla. But the salesman did ask the Coram, N.Y., native to sign a contingency agreement putting him on the line for that amount if Uncle Sam rejected the application. Initially, the dealer also prevented Nappi from driving the Corolla off the lot, forcing him back into his clunker even after the sale. “In my ignorance I really didn’t know that wasn’t normal,” Nappi said by phone on Friday.

For Nappi, the saga ended happily. After learning more about the program guidelines, the dealer eventually voided the contingency agreement, he said, and allowed him to drive away in his new Corolla. “They weren’t being malicious,” Nappi said. “They just wanted to cover their backs.”

Still, such tales have ignited concerns among consumer advocates that some dealers might be gaming the clunkers program by asking consumers to front the rebate money from one end, while the government pays from the other. While there are safeguards in place to ensure that trades qualify and clunkers are scrapped, there’s “no mechanism” to guarantee that the dealers haven’t already collected rebate money from consumers, according to Rosemary Shahan, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.

Joined by Public Citizen and Consumer Action, Shahan’s group is asking the Department of Transportation to require dealers, as a condition of receiving their federal reimbursement, to attest in writing that they haven’t already collected the rebate from the customer — “a basic audit,” Shahan said, “to see if some of these dealers are double dipping.”

Not that the administration isn’t aware of some of these problems. The website for cash for clunkers — formally called the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save, or CARS, program — addresses several of them specifically. “Consumers are not required to sign contingency agreements to pay back the dealer should the CARS credit be rejected,” one passage reads. “If the dealer has the new car in stock, the dealer must allow you to take possession of the new car before the dealer may submit the credit application to the government,” states another.

Still, those rules haven’t prevented some dealer groups from continuing to endorse a system that protects dealers at the expense of consumers. The Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association, for example, has posted on its Website a standardized form designed to transfer all the risk surrounding cash for clunkers’ deals from the dealer to the consumer. “The dealership believes in good faith that your trade-in vehicle qualifies for the CARS incentive and that funds will be available,” the form states. “However, the risk of the federal government not paying the incentive is yours — not the dealerships.”

That stipulation, advocates say, puts an unfair burden on the consumer, who might not have bought the vehicle without the promise of a clunkers rebate. “This is a new program,” said Shahan. “It’s complicated. It’s confusing. And you’re in the showroom relying on the dealer to help you through it.”

In some part, the troubles facing the clunkers’ program are symptoms of the program’s wild success. Launched precisely a month ago, the $3 billion initiative — which grants cash rebates up to $4,500 to drivers who scrap their gas guzzlers in favor of more efficient new vehicles — has stimulated more than 457,000 new auto sales, tallying $1.9 billion in dealer rebate applications. The White House, being careful not to outspend its allotment, has scheduled the program to end at 8 p.m. Monday.

But the sheer volume of applications ensures that the processing of payments will continue for weeks longer, if not months. Not expecting the deluge, the government was initially understaffed. Traffic to the CARS Web site has been so heavy at times that some dealers wait to log on at midnight, when the site might function faster. The combination of factors has caused government approvals to lag well behind voucher submissions. Indeed, of the $3 billion the DOT expects to spend on the clunkers program, the agency has paid out only $145 million to dealers, a senior administration officials told reporters last Thursday. The slow pace of approvals has left both dealers and consumers to negotiate an uncomfortable limbo while they await the OK from federal screeners.

James Wang is in such a position. In mid-July, the Orlando accountant traded his 1993 Toyota Camry for a 2009 Honda Civic, getting a $4,500 clunkers rebate in the process. But the DOT altered some of the eligibility rules later in the month, disqualifying the Camry as a trade-in vehicle. The dealer asked Wang for either the $4,500 or the car, calling frequently, sending certified letters, and threatening to report the car as stolen if Wang didn’t comply. More recently the 28-year-old learned that, because he’d bought early in the program, his Camry would be eligible for the rebate.

The deal hasn’t gone through just yet, Wang said, but “instead of calling me every other day, at least they’ve stopped bothering me now.”

Many dealers have lost their patience, dropping out of the program altogether.

Bob Loquercio, owner of four Chicago area dealerships, said his experience with cash for clunkers has been “a giant nightmare.” His dealerships have sold 227 vehicles under the program, but so far he’s been reimbursed for only four. The government, he added, owes him “more than $1 million.”

“It’s a typical Obama administration, giant-government screw up,” said Loquercio, former chairman of the Chicago Automobile Trade Association.

For Anna Causey, of South Carolina, the future remains uncertain. She and her husband have hired an attorney in an effort to keep their new Dodge Ram. In the meantime, they’re still driving it around. “We own the truck,” she said.

Kris Whittemore, sales manager at Hoover Dodge in Moncks Ford, S.C., where the Causeys made their trade, declined to comment, his brief statement providing indication that the clunkers program still has a few kinks to be ironed out. “My take,” he said by phone Friday, “will be through my attorney.”

Mike Lillis is Congress reporter for the Washington Independent.

(WDCpix)

This week Minnesota’s members of Congress went back to work after the July 4 break, except for Sen. Al Franken who was showing up — finally — for the first time. Rep. Keith Ellison put forward a credit reform bill, Rep. Betty McCollum announced her plan to expand the Peace Corps, and Republicans criticized the Democrats’ energy and stimulus policies. Here’s how the week shook down:

Rep. Keith Ellison introduced legislation to reform credit rating agencies on Wednesday. “When these agencies put their mark of approval on complex products they confer a legitimacy that may not actually exist,” he said. “We’ve learned of instances where credit rating agencies have given top ratings to products backed by dubious mortgages and other loans. Under current law there was really no one looking over the agencies’ shoulders to make sure that they were making reasonable assumptions or had even a basic understanding of the risks they were assessing.”

Rating agencies are currently subject only to limited oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but are critical elements of the financial system.

Rep. Michele Bachmann sent a video to people attending the Tea Parties over the weekend; she was appointed to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Advisory Board; and she says that President Obama is destroying the American dream — or, rather, the American dreams of Chrysler auto dealers.

Rep. Betty McCollum is gearing up for a Congressional softball game. Proceeds from the game be donated to the Young Survival Coalition (YSC), a group that works to educate and support young women living with breast cancer.

McCollum also spoke passionately on the House floor on Thursday about expanding the Peace Corps.

[T]oday the Peace Corps, one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives, is at a crossroads. Peace Corps is not capable of meeting the demand of Americans of all ages who want to serve… We have an opportunity here today in this moment to reinvigorate Peace Corps for the next new century, but it’s going to take leadership from Congress. The President’s request simply was not enough, even though the President does propose to double, increase and fully fund Peace Corps out into the years.

Rep. James Oberstar is still pushing a $450 billion funding bill and $50 billion for high-speed rail. Also, Oberstar was in New York on Friday with Obama’s transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, to mark the 50th anniversary of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which is crucial to Duluth’s status as a seaport.

Rep. Erik Paulsen talked to the Eden Prairie News about the cap-and-trade energy bill working its way through Congress. “If we’re going to be serious about securing our energy future, we need to focus on having nuclear energy be a part of that,” he said.

Rep. John Kline penned an editorial for the website “America’s Right” slamming Obama’s stimulus policies. “Republicans are committed to pro-growth policies that will get our economy back on track without saddling future generations with unmanageable debt,” he wrote. “We offered a stimulus plan that would have created twice the jobs for half the price.”

But Media Matters says his statement doesn’t hold water: “[T]he GOP got its ‘twice the jobs’ claim by misusing a formula in an academic paper that they later admitted they weren’t able to understand in the first place.”

Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar split their votes on immigration policy, specifically on the border fence between the United States and Mexico. Franken voted against it. Klobuchar voted for it.

One of Franken’s first tasks as senator was to sign on to the Employee Free Choice Act, a pledge he’s made throughout his campaign. “I just became a cosponsor of my first bill in the Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act,” he said on Tuesday.

Palin is sending back 45 percent of the $930 million her state had coming — $160 million of which would have gone to educating people in a state where 40 percent drop out of high school. Maybe some of it could have been spent on sex ed: Alaska’s teen pregnancy rate is the fastest-growing in the land. But no, Palin insisted that any money she took fit her requirements to a T: ”timely, targeted and temporary.”

Oh, for the wisdom of Solomon! Wait — was Solomon a maverick or a community organizer? No matter — spurning half the federal government’s largesse to Alaska isn’t really like splitting the baby. For a GOP governor with lofty ambitions, it’s more like being half pregnant.

False political smears involving Las Vegas? You’d think U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen wouldn’t want to go there after being on the receiving end of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad last year that took a tortured, six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon route to link him to a Vegas strip club.

Yet in a new report titled “GOP Stimulus Myths,“ FactCheck.org singles out Paulsen for false claims made Friday in a constituent form letter in which the freshman congressman lists seven projects as examples of federal stimulus “spending on many things that are unrelated to saving or creating jobs.” The projects range from golf course amenities to “butterfly gardens” and, yes, “$2 million for neon signs in Las Vegas” — none of which are actually in the stimulus package.

Read an excerpt from the FactCheck.org report and Paulsen’s letter after the jump.

Rather, they represent selections drawn from a laundry list of potential projects that mayors across the country compiled (pdf) — selections that also appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s the full Paulsen portion of the report from FactCheck.org:

In a form letter to constituents (e-mailed to one of our readers on Feb. 20), Rep. Erik Paulsen of Minnesota claimed that the bill (now law) “contains a huge amount of spending on many things that are unrelated to saving or creating jobs.” He said that it “will fund requests such as $2 million for neon signs in Las Vegas, $4.5 million for an eco park featuring butterfly gardens and gopher tortoises, $500,000 for a dog park, $3 million for a municipal golf course clubhouse, $886,000 for a 36-hole disc golf course, $1.8 million for replacement tennis courts, $6 million for three aquatic centers with water slides … the list goes on and on.”

None of these projects are specified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In fact, golf courses, and many other recreational projects, simply can’t get funding under the law, which stipulates:

ARRA: Sec. 1604: None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by any State or local government, or any private entity, for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool.

The items Paulsen cites instead are taken from a lengthy wish list of infrastructure projects that the U.S. Conference of Mayors says are “ready to go” and could be funded quickly with federal dollars. The mayors’ report, dated Jan. 17, was compiled to demonstrate to Congress that localities should get a good amount of whatever stimulus money was approved, according to the city of Austin, Texas. In other words, the mayors were lobbying for federal money to come to them. The seven projects Paulsen singles out for ridicule are among 18,750 that the Conference of Mayors compiled through four surveys of U.S. cities conducted over three months. In an e-mail, the Conference of Mayors tells us that “we didn’t make any editing to the information [cities] provided us,” adding that these were just examples and that “the Government will decide what to fund, not us.”

All of Paulsen’s picks are also in a Wall Street Journal article highlighting these seemingly less-than-necessary requests. The Journal said “the bulk of proposals are roads, sewers and similar projects.” But “some localities,” it noted, “are using a kitchen-sink strategy.”

As Paulsen himself said of President Obama’s speech to Congress: “The devil is in the details.”

Here is the text of the email from Paulsen on which FactCheck.org based its report:

From: “Congressman Erik Paulsen”
Date: February 20, 2009
To: (Name deleted)
Subject: Responding to your message

Dear (Name deleted):

Thank you for letting me know of your support for the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the “stimulus bill.”

I strongly believe we need a swift stimulus package to stimulate our struggling economy and create jobs. I had serious concerns, however, about the makeup of this plan. An extremely low percentage of the plan is geared toward job creation, which is where we should be focusing our efforts. In addition, less than half of the stimulus plan will be spent in the next two years and some of the money will not even be spent during the new President’s first term.

In addition, it is unfortunate that the percentage of the bill dedicated to infrastructure spending, another key to stimulating jobs, shrunk to just 6% of the bill.

The $787 billion stimulus bill essentially turned into a supplemental spending bill and contains a huge amount of spending on many things that are unrelated to saving or creating jobs. The bill will fund requests such as $2 million for neon signs in Las Vegas, $4.5 million for an eco park featuring butterfly gardens and gopher tortoises, $500,000 for a dog park, $3 million for a municipal golf course clubhouse, $886,000 for a 36-hole disc golf course, $1.8 million for replacement tennis courts, $6 million for three aquatic centers with water slides .. the list goes on and on. Clearly, we should not be spending more on these programs than on helping small businesses create jobs.

One of my top priorities in Congress is to be responsible with the taxpayers’ money. The federal budget deficit is already projected to reach more than $1.2 trillion this year. Congress has more than doubled the national debt over the past few years, and after this bill, the annual deficit will reach more than $2 trillion.

I supported an alternative stimulus plan that would provide relief for Minnesota families and create jobs. The proposal contained a variety of incentives for small businesses to create jobs, including a 20% tax deduction for small businesses; a health insurance premium deduction for those who do not get health insurance from their employers; an improved homebuyer tax credit; an exemption to make unemployment benefits tax-free; and a variety of other initiatives that would help jumpstart our economy. In fact, analysis showed it would create twice the jobs at half the cost.

You can be sure of my continued effort to find bipartisan solutions to grow the economy and put people back to work.

Thanks again for sharing your concerns, as I appreciate hearing from you. Please let me know whenever I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

Erik Paulsen
Member of Congress

Here’s a final (?) irony from Paulsen’s list, for close watchers of the Third District race to replace the retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad. During the campaign, State Sen. Geoff Michel told about the day that news of Ramstad’s retirement broke. Michel said he was with three other potential Republican contenders for the suddenly open seat — at, of all places, a golf course. All action stopped, Michel said, while each member of the foursome madly mashed his personal digital assistant, consulting contacts on the political calculus.

There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.

Obama was referencing a revised city budget that Rybak, a Democrat, unveiled yesterday that applied stimulus money to patch holes in Minneapolis’ public safety budget caused in part by decreased aid from Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s cuts in funding to cities.

Rybak had been rumored to be in the running for a job in Obama’s administration, but last month announced his intention to seek a third term this fall — while keeping open the option of a 2010 run to replace Pawlenty.

Rybak first made the claim about the stimulus saving 57 police positions on Monday in a speech to unveil his revised 2009 budget. Note two subtleties that Obama passed over: Rybak acknowledges one-time stim funds will only preserve the jobs for one budget cycle, and along with the stim funds he credits cost-trimming that includes reductions in overtime (so while not layoffs, effectively less policing):

If the Governor’s cuts were passed on directly to the Police Department, it would have led to the elimination of 57 sworn police officer positions and 19 non sworn employees. We will not have to do that because of two factors. First, working with Chief Dolan, we are proposing elimination of $1.5 million in non personnel costs, including overtime.

Second the federal Recovery Act’s one time public safety grants arrived just in time. President Obama said he would help cities keep police officers on the job and he has delivered. Because of this funding I will be proposing no personnel cuts in the Police Department. Next time someone asks you what the Recovery Act will do, start by telling them it will keep 57 police officers working on the streets of Minneapolis.

There is a catch, and it is a very, very big catch. The money we are using to avoid those public safety cuts are one time dollars. They can be stretched over 18 months but then they are done. In the 2010 budget and beyond we have to make up the funding for these officers and, as you will see in a moment, the 2010 cuts the Governor is proposing would lead to even deeper cuts in public safety funding.

 It didn’t take long for the White House Blog (yes, there’s a White House Blog) to pick up on the 57-cops line in a late Monday post. And Rybak kept up a drumbeat on Twitter right through Obama’s speech:

Ready to use federal stimulus funds to save and create jobs in Minneapolis www.MayorRybak.us
5:53 PM Feb 20th from web

Revised 2009 city budget has no cuts to public safety, thanks to commitment to debt reduction and using federal stimulus www.MayorRybak.us
5:36 PM Feb 23rd from web

I wish the Governor would quit criticizing the federal stimulus. It is being used to keep 57 police officers on the job in Minneapolis
8:00 PM Feb 23rd from web

White House blog posted on my budget proposal to use stimulus funds to keep police working in Minneapolis www.whitehouse.gov/blog
about 24 hours ago (approximately 7:45 a.m., Feb. 24) from web

Barack said it tonight but you read it here first: The Gov’s cuts would have eliminated 57 police jobs. The stumulus (sic) saved them.
about 10 hours ago (approximately 9:45 p.m. Feb. 24) from web

Her statements on the rich, ACORN, the stimulus package and health care led to rounds of debunking.

When the Republican congresswoman wrote, “We are running out of rich people in this country,” she really meant:

The Democrats claim they just want the “rich” to pay their fair share. But, we all know their definition of rich includes more and more middle class Americans each year…

The Democrats’ wealth redistribution scheme can’t continue on this runaway path. Sooner or later, they’ll be coming after you too.

And, because I dare to say so, they’re targeting all their resources to defeat me. They’ll stop at nothing to take your voice away in Congress.

Full text of her e-mail fund-raising pitch after the jump. …

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is after me again — mailing nationwide to raise $50,000 by Wednesday to use against me and other principled Members of Congress who are standing up to runaway spending in Washington.

DCCC Attacks Bachmann

The text of their email — sent to thousands of their liberal supporters — and signed by one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political masterminds — is reprinted for you below.

Contribute Now and Show Them You Won’t Be Silenced!

They just don’t get it, do they?

President Obama wasn’t in office a full month before he pushed through Congress a $792-billion spending bill cleverly packaged as a so-called “economic stimulus” package. But, the facts are startlingly clear: This was about spending on liberal policy agenda items, not about stimulating the economy.

From the Los Angeles Times to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), respected news sources and independent analysts said that the money they were spending would come long after the economic recovery has begun; that the bill’s priorities were skewed in favor of programs that have little to no stimulative value.

Commentators across the nation pointed to provisions of the bill that literally stripped away restrictions that Congress passed only months earlier to keep ACORN from getting billions in federal funding.

And, Republicans offered alternatives to redirect spending to shovel-ready transportation projects that are proven to create jobs and to small business and family tax relief with a history of getting an economy going. Our alternative would have created twice the jobs at half the cost.

The Democrats rejected these commonsense proposals and pushed through their profligate spending. And, as a result, government spending on this recession has reached $9.7 trillion in the last year, placing an incredible burden not only on today’s taxpayers, but on taxpayers for generations.

The Democrats claim they just want the “rich” to pay their fair share. But, we all know their definition of rich includes more and more middle class Americans each year. Just ask any struggling family farmer who worries about the cost of the death tax. Or ask any middle class family that suddenly realizes it has to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

The Democrats’ wealth redistribution scheme can’t continue on this runaway path. Sooner or later, they’ll be coming after you too.

And, because I dare to say so, they’re targeting all their resources to defeat me. They’ll stop at nothing to take your voice away in Congress.

Please send what you can today. I need you to show them that we will not be silenced. Click here to make a secure donation:

I want to help, Michele!

Thank you for your generous support and your prayers.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

Video and transcribed excerpts after the jump, including Pawlenty’s concern about perceived “fraud or mischief” in the Senate election, the resolution of which he said “could take well into summer or longer.” 

Mike Barnicle, substituting for “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, asked the governor to respond to people who say, “There’s Pawlenty: He was against the stimulus package but he’s going to take the money. He’s a hypocrite.” Pawlenty defended Minnesota as a net contributor to the federal budget, but first parried on hypocrisy:

Where was that double standard when Democratic governors or liberal governors in the past said, “I’m against military spending but I’m going to take National Guard money” or “I’m against No Child Left Behind but I’m going to take education money” or “I’m against tax cuts but I’m not going to voice objection to my citizens receiving the benefits of those cuts or credits.” So let’s make sure we’re looking at that argument in its full glory.

Barnicle, apparently unaware how long Pawlenty’s been flying on no-tax auto-pilot, tried flattery …

You’re a good guy, you’re a bipartisan guy. I mean you’ve got the automatons in the House of Representatives, they stand up en masse and vote, not one Republican votes for the stimulus package.

… before pressing hard on why — “for the first time in history, from the time people went to war by throwing rocks at on another”  — Republicans under President Bush cut taxes while fighting two wars, running up the national debt. Pawlenty shot back by citing “recent history” that somehow doesn’t include the Clinton era:

It doesn’t matter it seems in recent history for most of the years, whether a Republican’s in the White House or a Democrat, or Republicans are in charge in the Congress or the Democrats, they have forgotten or let go of the goal and the importance of balancing the budget.

The weary world traveler looked more haggard than usual, seen against a wall of books rather than the standard Third Avenue Bridge-by-night Minneapolis backdrop that he and Sen. Amy Klobuchar used in their MSNBC appearances early in the week. (When will the new, blue-lit I-35W bridge make its cable TV news backdrop debut?)

Barnicle asked: “How does affect, if it does, or impact, if it does, the people of Minnesota, having only one United States senator?” Pawlenty’s reply, in part:

Well, it impacts us significantly because right now some of the big issues of our time are being decided in Washington, and having only one senator is a big disadvantage. So it’s very unfortunate, and it puts us at a disadvantage.

And yet he prefaced that by telling the national TV audience that:

We don’t want an outcome where people say there was fraud or mischief or some legal flaw.

How long will it take to make sure “people” don’t “say” such awful things? (My question, not Barnicle’s.)

If one side or the other decides to appeal the outcome to federal court, this could take well into summer or longer. It may be that one side or the other decides not to do that.

The interview ended on the topic of the Republican Party’s future, which some say Pawlenty embodies. He gave a hard supply-and-demand analysis to the party’s standing with the American voters:

In politics, we’re going to be the marketplace party? The marketplace is telling us they prefer the products and services of our competitors. And if we’re going to be a winning, growing, governing party, we need to be about including more people in, not throwing people overboard.

Which could explain his two appearances in one week on reputedly liberal MSNBC.

Here’s the video (MSNBC’s sometimes buggy video embed willing):

The big winner: the 6th Congressional District, represented by Republican Michele Bachmann, whose unhinged explanation for her opposition to federal stimulus has been dubbed “the craziest interview in American political history.”

The district with the least job hope: the 7th Congressional District, whose Rep. Collin Peterson was one of seven Democrats nationally to vote against the bill.

Granted, the stimulus plan wasn’t supposed to target areas where voters favored the Democratic president or Democratic legislators who made it law with the help of only three Republicans in the Senate. But still, it’s an enigma the likes of which stumped even Minneapolis’ Paul Westerberg, who wrote (in lyrics for the Replacements’ song “Bastards of Young” that are on display in his original scrawl at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame):

The ones who love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please
If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand

Or, less philosophically and more to the point, in his “God Damn Job” from the 1981-82 recession:

I need a God damn job
I need a God damn job
I really need a God damn job
I need a God damn job

God dammit
God dammit
God damn, I need a God damn job

So says MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. He spent seven minutes fact-checking Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent interview with KTLK’s Chris Baker. Olbermann pulls in Chris Hayes from The Nation to add some analysis to the critique of Minnesota’s most conservative member of Congress.

Videos and audio link after the jump, with Pawlenty missing a chance to promote Duluth and Klobuchar missing a chance to make a gratuitous Prince reference (we help her with that). 

Pawlenty, on NPR, had some discouraging words about the stimulus package’s prospects but volunteered that Minnesota has a list of transportation projects ready to go in the next 90 days, including Hwy. 610 in the northern suburbs.

By now, Pawlenty is eschewing his formerly wholesale rejection of the stimulus package for piecemeal pooh-poohing. On NPR you could hear him spit out mild contempt for decadent projects proposed for the state’s recreation and related tourist industries:

We had cities requesting snowmaking equipment, and that was Duluth, for something called Spirit Mountain outside of Duluth.

(Ahem, Governor? This is where you make a brief aside for the national listening audience about how great it is to visit Spirit Mountain and Duluth.) Anyway, back to the bad fun:

We had another community requesting funds to rehabilitate a country club at a golf course. We had another city that wanted to build some tennis courts. So those aren’t the kinds of things in this time of crisis that would be priority measures.

Pawlenty recently joined the chorus warning that the stimulus could result in a revival of that dread 1970s trend, stagflation:

You could see the whiplash effect of this being inflation, or stagflation even, in the intermediate term, so if people are going to rewrite the history, I would suggest they look at it not just one year out but three and five years out as well.

Tuesday was Pawlenty’s second appearance on Maddow’s show. The first time, Nov. 3, he opened with the announcement “I’m available, I’m available” (to go on the show, he meant, although the context of the ensuing interview was also his availability for higher office in the future). This time he greeted Maddow with the Goldie Hawn-ish endearment, “You’re funny.”

Here is the video clip of Pawlenty’s appearance on Maddow’s show Tuesday night:

Maddow’s online video archive indicates three previous appearances by Klobuchar (Sept. 17 and Oct. 8 and 31). A highlight of this one was the DFL senator’s prediction about how long it will take for Minnesota’s Senate delegation to be complete.  Here’s a brief transcription and Monday’s video clip:

KLOBUCHAR: My prediction, Rachel, is that we will have a new senator by the time the ice melts on Lake Minnetonka, which that is predicted to be April 11.

MADDOW: Is that the sort of thing where you guys throw a cinder block into it to really help things along?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, oftentimes people dive into it to show how tough they are in the cold. But anyway, hopefully we will get this done in a month or so because the trial’s been going on. It could be even sooner.

That may be the first time in 25 years that jumping into Lake Minnetonka has penetrated the nation’s consciousness. The last time, of course, was Prince’s “initiation” of Apollonia Vanity (that’s a character’s name, not a character flaw) in the movie “Purple Rain.” Here’s a transcript of that scene (a variation on the dog-bite routine from “The Pink Panther”):

PRINCE: You have to purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.

APOLLONIA: What?!

PRINCE: You have to purify yourself in Lake Minnetonka.

[APOLLONIA disrobes and gets ready to jump in.]

PRINCE: Hey, wait a minute that’s– [splash!] Uh, hold it.

APOLLONIA: What?!

PRINCE: That ain’t Lake Minnetonka.

YouTube has a video clip of the scene but it is not safe for work and not – repeat: not – safe for re-enactment by Norm Coleman or Al Franken, nor indeed by any of their attorneys, notably Joe Friedberg, Ben Ginsberg, David Lillehaug and Marc Elias.

But if they do, The UpTake will carry it live.