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- Obviously, this business of the Senate Finance Committee Gang of Six's desire to "take your time to get it right" is Grade-A B.S. Every other House and Senate committee has already done their work. They've been done for a month. Hell, even Max Baucus had his proposal outlined last year. And unless Harry Reid makes good on his threat to take this to a floor vote under budget reconciliation rules, this is how health care reform dies.
- It's hardly worth bringing it up, but Michael Goldfarb must think people who read The Weekly Standard are idiots, because how else could one explain his contention that because FDR and LBJ were able to secure some Republican votes for their signature domestic legislation, Barack Obama has clearly failed to garner the necessary opposition support for his top domestic priority. Either Goldfarb sincerely believes that partisan and ideological alignment have not changed in over 70 years or he is deliberately misleading people. In either case, The Standard clearly has pretty low, er, standards for the content they publish.
- When I talk about institutional reform, I don't just mean the U.S. Senate. It's dispiriting that the press -- who can only reform themselves -- are still unable to call a lie a lie and do the essential fact checking that is part of their social utility. I doubt some strong words from the president on the matter will changes things much, nor do I have any hope for cable news, which prefers guests who are inflammatory, regardless of how deranged and mendacious they are.
- This nonsense about evoking the 10th Amendment for "nullification" of any federal effort to provide health care might rally the base, but it's not as though it's going anywhere in the courts. Josh Marshall puts on his history professor hat to remind us that nullification was initially rejected in the 1830s (the next attempt led to the Civil War) and we all know how it failed during the South's more recent efforts to resist civil rights legislation.
- Remainders: It's tough out there for multimillionaires; Texas public schools will soon be an excellent place to educate your children on American history from a parallel universe; and compassionate conservatives love that the poor suffer in the richest country on Earth.
--Mori Dinauer
