So apparently Obama is going to go on the TeeVee tonight and endorse a public option - but only sort of, and according to this Politico story, he’s already prepared to trade it away.
And so how, actually, the resulting bill would lower health care costs to consumers remains to be seen. If the public option […]

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Was interested to read the stories on LGH’s designs in northern Lancaster County, but was rather surprised that no one seemed to raise to me what seems to me to be one of the most important issues: What would the entry of LGH into the northern Lancaster market do to health care costs in that […]

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Via Kos, this is Franklin D. Roosevelt biographer Jean Edward Smith in the NYT:
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents — this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has […]

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Sweet. Via colleague MJ, a woman in a wheelchair at a N.J. town hall who speaks up for health reform gets heckled and shouted down.
Nice folks, these teabaggers.

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Thomas Frank gets at one big reason the Democrats are losing the health care debate, something we’ll get into in the print edition this week. But he echoes something we said a few weeks ago:
Those who have insurance, the argument goes, have it because they’ve played by the rules. Sure, insurance is expensive, but being […]

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Well, sort of. Blogging light next few days as I’m out of the office on work-related matters.
Read Taibbi’s piece on health care reform, “Sick and Wrong,” in the latest Rolling Stone if you can. Not online that I can tell, but well worth your five bucks - he says exactly what Bill Moyers said on […]

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This is, maybe, how you save print journalism. Looks like I’m going to have to go out and buy the latest edition of Rolling Stone, which not only features the Beatles on the cover (promo for Mikhail Gilmore’s piece on the real story behind the band’s breakup), but also a big new piece from Matt […]

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Jane Hamsher with a perceptive and profoundly depressing post on how it all works:
People make a mistake when they think the battle for health care reform is about ideology, because it’s not.  It’s about who controls K Street and the cash that flows from it, which could fund a 2010 GOP resurgenece — or not. …
<snip>
And it seems […]

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Teh stupid… it burns.
This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme that my Slate colleague Timothy Noah has been tracking about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is […]

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… health care reform must go down in flames.
Glenn Greenwald explains why:
The Obama White House isn’t sitting impotently by while Democratic Senators shove a bad bill down its throat.  This is the bill because this is the bill which Democratic leaders are happy to have.  It’s the bill they believe in.  As important, by giving the […]

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Yeah. No wonder you got it wrong.

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Remember the Smoketown Six?
Got into this discussion yesterday re: the people bringing guns to Obama rallies. And you will recall the OUTRAGE!!! that greeted the actions of the Smoketown Six - who dared strip down to thong underwear and re-enact a scene from the Abu Ghraib photos.
Going back through the letters to the editor that […]

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Cenk Uygur nails it:
It is the unbearable weakness of Democratic being. They cannot find it in their hearts to strongly argue for their own position. To be fair, in this case, the weakness is mainly Obama’s. The White House has clearly indicated this weekend that they have already given up on the public option — […]

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From an e-mail in response to last week’s print edition:
In addition, several programs like TARP, “Cash for Clunkers” and auto bailouts have many of us who pay a significant portion of the taxes concerned about our future. We see many of our citizens living with an entitlement mentality and taking advantage of the system.
This ties […]

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Spent the weekend camping up at Knoebel’s with seven other families, all with elementary-age (and younger) kids, a nice break from the intensive politics/online realm that consumes so much time and thought.
Still, politics intruded. One of the dads was a real conservative, and around the campfire the final night we got into it - mildly […]

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… it burns.
We got into this yesterday. More from Timothy Noah over at Slate.com:
Outside the school, the Journal’s Jonathan Weisman interviewed Diane Campbell of Kingston, N.H. Campbell’s mother has an autoimmune disease that “is treated with expensive transfusions of gamma globulin, paid for by Medicare.” Campbell’s sister, the story notes, “was born with no arms […]

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And David Frum is even a conservative. Though I suppose he’s out of the club these days, for daring to say things like this:
Hyperbolic accusation and fantasy murder may well serve a talk-radio industry facing a collapse in advertising revenues—down 30–40 percent over the past two years, reports NewMajority.com’s Tim Mak.
As revenues dwindle, hosts feel […]

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Sarah Palin is running real hard, trying to get out in front of the parade so she can lead it:
Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin defended her claim that the Democratic health care proposal would create “death panels” in a statement Wednesday night slamming President Barack Obama. …
<snip>
“Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for […]

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Ah, Fox.
See, now, you knew the wingers were going to get all bent out of shape about Specter’s line that the teabag rioters “don’t necessarily represent a majority of Americans.” Because right-wingers take it as a given that they are always a majority in this country, how dare you suggest otherwise, OUTRAGE!!!… but as noted […]

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OK, I’m gonna flag this one right here, 15 yards, personal foul, excessive stupidity:
Look at the faces at these chaotic congressional town hall events across the country. They are the faces of older Americans who paid into Medicare most of their working lives and are now enjoying the health care benefits they believe they’ve earned […]

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