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- Confirming Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin's remarks yesterday that there will not be a vote on health care reform before the August recess, Majority Leader Harry Reid has come out saying that the vote will have to wait until September. Meanwhile, the notoriously partisan organization known as the Rand Corporation confirms the obvious: that in the absence of reform, health care costs are going to ultimately crush the U.S. economy.
- While there seems to be disagreement about Barack Obama's performance last night in talking about health care, there does appear to be consensus on his remarks about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. Obama left himself open to attack, the thinking goes, and this will distract us from more serious issues (as if the press is normally consumed by deep discussions of public policy). I'm not so sure. You have the GOP making this their signature issue, fitting the pattern we saw during the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. But if they spend all their time warning that whitey is under assault in Obama's America, doesn't that temporarily drown out their attacks on health care reform?
- It's rare that RNC Chair Michael Steele makes a good point, but his expressed desire that Democrats should pass a bill without any Republican support is correct. There is no such thing as bipartisan health care reform. Democrats (mostly) want reform, Republicans (mostly) do not. Otherwise, they would have an alternative plan, instead of kinda sorta maybe promising to think about crafting one. But despite all this, here's Chuck Grassley defining a bipartisan bill as one in which 80 Senators support it. Does that mean at 79 it's hopelessly partisan?
- It's astonishing the degree to which the anti-choice movement views women as essentially inhuman. This proposed bill that would require consent of the father before performing an abortion is pretty much the modern equivalent of saying that women are little more than machines whose sole purpose in life is to be the vessels through which men sire their heirs. Maybe they can attach a rider to the legislation that makes property ownership and voting rights contingent on consent from their husbands or fathers as well.
- Remainders: The White House identifies some of its visitors; Olympia Snowe wants to have her cake and eat it too; The Washington Post op-ed page loves misinforming readers; Bobby Jindal's shamelessness isn't just an isolated incident; don't miss the 2010 edition of the Death and Taxes chart; the funniest thing about this birther video is the Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen soundtrack; and Americans sure do love their conspiracy theories.
--Mori Dinauer
