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- The headline of this Roll Call article might be "Pelosi backs away from deal with Blue Dogs" but read eight paragraphs in: "Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and a group of fellow Blue Dogs had negotiated a deal with Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) in July that would remove the link to Medicare. ... But Ross returned from the August break saying he couldn't support a public option under any circumstances, essentially withdrawing his support for the deal." Something to keep in mind as the inevitable Pelosi-the-backstabber myth develops.
- This latest piece of "analysis" from The Atlantic's least persuasive blogger assumes that not only do the American people want bipartisan legislation, but that they demand it. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll confirms that the public likes bipartisan solutions, but that doesn't mean they punish politicians who "ram" legislation through Congress on a party line vote. Furthermore, while only 23 percent of the public would blame both parties for failing to pass health care reform, 37 percent would blame congressional Republicans.
- Ryan Grim reports on a funny side effect of the Republicans' zeal to go after ACORN: "The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadlythat it applies to 'any organization' that has been charged withbreaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws,campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federalor state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractorsor other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things."
- Has a sitting Senator ever led a delegation to a international conference with the explicit intent to undermine the official position of the United States on an international matter? Leave it to Senator James Inhofe. The president has always had the widest latitude in international affairs, with the Senate limited to treaty ratification and funding war. Inhofe is throwing that basic institutional relationship out the window because of the conspiracies in his fevered mind.
- Speaking of global warming, I think it's a pretty big deal that PG&E is leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest of the business lobby's fanatic climate change denial. Undergirding every flavor of climate change denial is a belief that regulating emissions will utterly transform the economy for the worse. PG&E's departure is a challenge to the idea that profits are so fundamental to a healthy economy that not even the slow destruction of the planet is worth slightly reducing them.
- Remainders: You can always count on the editor of National Review to respond to the president's foreign policy priorities with the equivalent of junior high school joke; anti-government sentiment might be on the rise, but it's nowhere near the levels that ushered in the GOP class of '94, Kevin Drum yawns at the Great NEA Conference Call Scandal of aught-nine; and I think inviting the former governor of Alaska to speak to an investor's forum ought to call into question to judgment of the investing class in general.
--Mori Dinauer
