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- Health care reform roundup: The Senate HELP Committee passes its reform bill on a party line vote; details emerge on the House Dems' income surtax; Harry Reid promises to consider both Senate bills before the August recess; total enrollment in the public plan would only equal about 4 percent of the U.S. population; the House bill would open the door for federalizing Medicaid; and John Boehner's latest scary chart isn't all that scary.
- Paul Krugman has a useful post on how deficit-expanding automatic stabilizers saved the world from another Great Depression. This is worth keeping in mind when you hear pronunciations that Medicare has been a "disaster" -- the disaster being that the government spent money. As usual, this is totally divorced from what the money was spent on, namely medical care for the poor and elderly. Seems like a success to me.
- Hillary Clinton gave clear articulation of the Obama administration's foreign policy priorities vis-a-vis the State Department in a major speech delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations today. Most encouraging is the emphasis on de-nuclearization and ceasing proliferation, and a rigorous defense of diplomacy and negotiation. Of course, the real challenge at State is more IT than IR.
- It's definitely a toss up for the most conceited right-wing belief between conservative activists thinking that throwing Sonia Sotomayor into the Barack Obama-Bill Ayers terrorism nexus will have any effect whatsoever and Richard Viguerie's insistence that the confirmation hearings will "pay huge dividends for Republicans" because it will help Americans understand how radical the president and his nominee are. In astronomy terms, these people aren't from a different planet, they're from another galaxy altogether.
- On the 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech, there's been no shortage of gleeful bashing of the 39th president. But as Andie Coller points out, far greater damage was done to Carter's presidency by his subsequent decision to fire his entire cabinet, leaving Americans with the sense that the administration was incapable of dealing with crisis.
- Remainders: Democrats and Republicans name the members of the new Pecora Commission; David Frum's renewed love for France ought to deepen the divide between him and the rest of the conservative movement; Liz Cheney's grasp of foreign policy is pretty poor; right-wing SNL alums tirelessly work to drag conservatives down to sub-mental levels; the "stupid or evil" conundrum is solved for one conservative writer; and Meghan McCain manages to say something insightful for a change.
--Mori Dinauer
