And never the twain shall meet:
Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy’s account of his mother’s death as a “sob story” exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a “kiddie shield” to defend their health care legislation.
Marcelas Owens , whose mother got sick, lost her job, lost […]

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Sometimes I actually like what Peggy Noonan has to say. Other times she seems to have spent too long marinating in the Kool-Aid - like today:
Excuse me, but it is embarrassing—really, embarrassing to our country—that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he’s having […]

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I love the smell of desperation in the morning.
Although I suppose it’s now the middle of the afternoon…
The Congressional Budget Office estimate on the Dems’ health care plan is out, and while Drudge, et al, is touting the overall cost - $940 billion - the CBO is saying the plan will reduce the deficit by […]

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Drudge bannering this one today: It’s starting: Regional Walgreens says no new Medicaid:
Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won’t take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.
The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will […]

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Great call from Steve Benen:
MAJOR LEGISLATIVE BREAKTHROUGHS ARE ALWAYS CONTROVERSIAL…. Americans now consider programs like Medicare bedrocks of our society, but it was not always thus.
Dem leadership staff is highlighting a series of numbers from 1962 on President John F. Kennedy’s proposal. In July of that year, a Gallup poll found 28% in favor, 24% […]

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Via David Kurtz over at TPM, check out this video. Especially check out around the :50 second mark, where the guy with the sign saying he has Parkinson’s sits down in front of the Tea Partyers.
Pictures really are worth thousands of words. We are going to have a field day with this in our own […]

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So for the past couple of days I’ve been reading all the stuff about recently “retired” Democratic Rep. Eric Massa of New York, his claims that he was railroaded by the likes of Rahm Emanuel because he (Massa) opposed health care reform. This, of course, made him a hero to the likes of Glenn Beck, […]

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If health care reform passes:
LIMBAUGH: My guess in even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. And once they’ve opted, they can’t see anybody Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer and it’ll be a […]

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Ah, the Wall Street Journal editorial page rarely disappoints.
Today’s topic is how the Dems might ram through the health care bill via “reconciliation” -basically doing an end-run around the filibuster, limiting debate and permitting the measure to pass with a simple majority in the Senate. Though the WSJ notes that both Republicans and Dems have […]

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Because when a congressional majority passes legislation, it’s tyranny.

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Big health care summit going on right now. I should care, but am finding it hard to muster the energy. Because whatever emerges from Congress is likely to be insufficient/a giveaway to the drug and insurance industries, and that’s the best case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that we do nothing, and things go on […]

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Check out Drudge this morning:

Man! It’s a wonder anyone’s left alive in England, don’t you think? Do they all walk with a limp?
Do you think, if I spent 10 minutes with Teh Google, that I could find similar stories of hospital mishaps here in the United States? And that wouldn’t be the fault of Teh […]

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Taibbi responds to a tea party letter to the editor in - of all places - the York Daily Record:

· We protest against a heavy-fisted form of government that seeks to further regulate private enterprise and hinder future profits (i.e., banking and energy industries…).
via We, the Tea Partiers – The York Daily Record.
The writer goes on […]

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Via Sullivan, James Fallows gets a note from a longtime political observer who claims to have personally heard this exchange:
“GOP member: ‘I’d like this in the bill.’
“Dem member response: ‘If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?’
“GOP member:  ‘You know I can’t vote for the bill.’
“Dem member:  ‘Then why should we […]

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Market up 100 points today on expectations that Brown will win in Mass. Check it out:
The prospect of a logjam in Washington over health care eased concerns that profits at companies like insurers and drug makers would suffer.
So electing Brown means profits at insurers and drugmakers won’t suffer.
And this is good for the American health […]

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Sitting in a doctor’s office yesterday morning, way too early for a day off, and I’d only managed to suck down two cups of coffee on the way out the door. Dutifully and dazedly I sat, plowing through the morning paper, when a middle-aged woman hurried in and announced to the receptionist that this was an emergency.
Emergency? The […]

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First question I get as I get into the office today: Who’s gonna win up in Massachusetts?
My answer: Coakley, the Dem, but by a razor-thin margin.
Brown, the Republican, could take the seat. But you know what? If he does - good. Health care reform may be dead; and despite saying a few weeks back that […]

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First things first: Merry Christmas eve to you, I keep hearing these O’Reilly inspired conservatives yammering on about how they’re so oppressed and not allowed to say “Merry Christmas” and evil lib’ruls like me want to rub out “Merry Christmas” forever.
Right. And may all your Christmases be white.
In addition to a visit from the jolly […]

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Christmas season has been particularly heinous this year. The snow didn’t help.
Light blogging over the next week or so. Read Glenn Greenwald’s “The Underlying Divisions in the Health Care Debate” - the cratering of the left, the “virtually complete dominance of government by large corporations, even a merger between the two” - strong stuff. But […]

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Been halfheartedly following the “progress” of the health-care legislation, been reading a lot of stuff by those who think it’s a horrible bill, but others, like Nate Silver, say progressives are nuts (well, OK, he uses the term “batsh*t crazy”) to oppose the bill:
I understand that most of the liberal skepticism over the Senate bill […]

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