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- I guess we'll never know how many sitting U.S. senators would vote in favor of a single-payer health-care system, because Bernie Sanders is withdrawing his amendment to avoid Tom Coburn's credible threat to read the entire text of the amendment into the record as part of an ongoing campaign by the Republican Party to make sure every piece of legislative business taken up by Congress is as inefficient as possible.
- I had to laugh when I read the headline, "Greenspan to Back Deficit-Reduction Commission," considering Uncle Alan's endorsement of President Bush's tax cuts helped put in place one of the largest structural contributors to the budget deficit. Hey, maybe we can get Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson to sit on this blue panel committee to offer their seriousness of purpose on this issue.
- Speaking of the influence of Fed chairs, I think Time magazine's decision to name Ben Bernanke its Person of the Year says a lot about how out of touch elite journalism is with the mood of the country. First of all, the truly laudable actions taken by Bernanke to avert a depression were made last year, not in 2009. Second, as the year closes, the public is cultivating resentment toward Wall Street and the federal government. Both are viewed (somewhat rightfully) as helping each other out while taxpayers suffer and foot the bill.
- There's nothing remarkable about Eric Cantor's candor in describing how he and his Republican pals would love to gut the social safety net and cause widespread suffering and misery. What's interesting is that this is another instance of conservatives talking tough but actually accomplishing very little when it comes to demolishing the welfare state. Killing these programs is extremely unpopular politically so Cantor's open embrace of miserliness can only be understood as a Randian cri de coeur designed to appeal to the identity politics of the ruggedly individualistic right wing.
- Remainders: Conservatives just love comparing themselves to insurgents and terrorists; it's difficult to discern the purpose of the John Birch Society in the absence of a conspiracy promoting global communism; Nate Silver has 20 questions for people who want to kill the health-care reform bill; increased opposition to the health-care reform bill is driven by liberal disenchantment over losing the public option; and could natural gas be a -- not the -- silver bullet to fight climate change?
--Mori Dinauer
