In a letter to Obama today, Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Ted Kennedy, chair of the health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, not only outlined a timeframe for health reform but also put forward a strategy for overcoming the turf warfare of years past. The key bit:

Since our committees share jurisdiction over health care reform legislation in the Senate, we have jointly laid out an aggressive schedule to accomplish our goal. Both committees plan to mark-up legislation in early June. Our intention is for that legislation to be very similar, and to reflect a shared approach to reform, so that the measures that our two committees report can be quickly merged into a single bill for consideration on the Senate floor.

Ryan Avent notes that Ben Bernanke's rousing defense of financial innovation seems peculiarly retro.

"We have literally fallen from the middle-class to potentially having nothing," says Kate Michelman. But she's lying. Michelman, the former president of NARAL, was not middle class. You don't run one of the largest advocacy organizations in the country and make $42,000 a year. Similarly, her husband was a retired college professor. Between the two of them, they were almost certainly wealthy.

Which makes her story all the worse.

In 2001, Michelman's daughter was horseback riding. The horse spooked and fell backward, crushing her spine and paralyzing her. She had no health insurance. The bills neared a million dollars. Michelman cashed out her 401(k) and her IRA.

Like many folks in Washington, I've been making my way through Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism

• Health reform without a public plan: The German model.

• Israel -- a loud and promised land.

• An extremely negative book review.

• I can't tell if Nouriel Roubini is being gloomy here or not.

• That is so DC.

The Freakonomics blog wonders why standing ovations are so common amongst opera audiences. Are "classical music and theater are being diminished by a...scarcity of negative feedback?" They ask. "What if theater and orchestra audiences behaved more like blog commenters?"

I don't normally post videos of elephants on this site. Nor videos of dogs. But I do post videos of elephants who are best friends with dogs.

Happy Friday.