I am putting this blog post up as bait for all of our imaginative commenters who, when the mood strikes them, can lay into one of our own with as much zest as they take on the opposition.

Having felt their sting myself, I know of what I speak.

Anyway, here's Arlen Specter - who is going to vote for the $827 billion stimulus tomorrow - and the reasons he gives why he must:

Wave after wave of bad economic news has created its own psychology of fear and lowered expectations. As in the old Movietone News, the eyes and ears of the world are upon the United States. Failure to act would be devastating not just for Wall Street and Main Street but for much of the rest of the world, which is looking to our country for leadership in this crisis.

The legislation known as the "moderates" bill, hammered out over two days by Sens. Susan Collins, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and myself, preserves the job-creating and tax relief goals of President Obama's stimulus plan while cutting less-essential provisions -- many of them worthy in themselves -- that are better left to the regular appropriations process.

Our $780 billion bill would save or create up to 4 million jobs, helping to offset the loss of 3.6 million jobs since December 2007. The bill cuts some $110 billion from the $890 billion Senate version, which would actually be $940 billion if floor amendments for tax credits on home and car purchases and money for the National Institutes of Health are retained.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the proposed cuts "do violence to what we are trying to do for the future," especially on education. Her objections are a warning to conservatives that more cuts would be unlikely to win House approval. They are also an admission of the high price that moderates have been able to extract for their support of stimulus legislation.

This is too good: "See? Nancy Pelosi doesn't like it so it must be OK." I wonder if he listens to himself sometimes. 

And then there's this bit of hypocrisy:

"In politics," John Kennedy used to say, "nobody gets everything, nobody gets nothing and everybody gets something." My colleagues and I have tried to balance the concerns of both left and right with the need to act quickly for the sake of our country. The moderates' compromise, which faces a cloture vote today, is the only bill with a reasonable chance of passage in the Senate.

For the "sake of the country," you couldn't throw this piece of baloney out and start over? Maybe the reason the vote is so close is because it's a horrible bill, ever think of that Arlen?

Read the whole thing to get your blood nice and hot and then move on to the comment box and let the guy have it. He and Collins and Martinez along with probably Olympia Snow will be in a rogues gallery of turncoats once this bill becomes law.