Once again Hollywood is on the attack. This time with a “PSA” about Protecting Insurance Companies. Click HERE to view the video via Funny Or Die (a new window will open). NOTE: I didn’t embed the video due the preview slowing down the site. Of course the predictable “Hollywood are a bunch of stupid, clueless, latte liberal elites” (implied not said) from various sources in...

Alastair Sim had more charm, I think. Via Think Progress.

Headline writers for newspapers and the larger Internet websites have the power to sell, taint, cajole, tease and distort the writer’s works in order to lure the reader to take the bait. I took the bait, hook, line and sinker this morning from the following headline on MSNBC’s web page: WHY OBAMA WISHES HE WERE KING Or at the very least, he wishes he were Mel Brooks The article was written by Bill...

Those who long for less government, less government “interference,” and more privatization may want to take a look at The Netherlands. In an article in the Dutch NRC Handelsblad that starts with the assertion that “Nobody is in charge in the Netherlands – even democracy has been privatized,” Marc Chavannes, a Dutch journalist and political columnist, tells us: The Netherlands was late in professing...

Over at TPM, Brian Beutler has an excellent post up on why Democrats likely won’t use the reconciliation process to pass health-care reform with a simple majority in the Senate. Aside from the fact that the process could actually result in a less-than-desirable bill, given that non-budgetary matters could be thrown out by the parliamentarian (with Republicans pushing to have as much thrown out as possible),...

The other day Matthew Yglesias pointed to the Treehugger for a good summary of a new report finding Contraception Five Times Less Expensive Than Low-Carbon Technology in Combating Climate Change: The report concludes that when taken purely as a method of reducing carbon emissions, family planning is far more cost-effective than the current leading low-carbon technologies. Between 2010 and 2050 each $7 spent...

Olle Johansson, Sweden All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Can you blame President Obama for “snubbing” Fox News yesterday? Steve Benen: “Fox News spent months promoting last weekend’s right-wing protests in Washington, encouraging viewers to go register their outrage. And during the event itself, the Republican news network went a step further, encouraging the crowd to get louder once the cameras were on.” (HuffPo has more.) This is a...

I often read that health insurance company profits are the major problem in the system and if only insurance was run by an entity without profit motive then things would be OK. This is uh, not the case at all. As NPR notes, insurance profits make up approximately 1% of total health expenditures. By contrast, health cost inflation is averaging 5-8% a year. This means that eliminating insurance profits would...

Yesterday I took some friendly fire from readers for my dubious response to President Obama’s claims to George Stephanopoulos that charging people money if they don’t have health insurance was not a tax increase. George broke out the dictionary definition of “tax,” which the President blew off. In other areas, people like Steve Benen crowed about how Obama had “schooled” George...

WASHINGTON — It’s time to cast aside the political shorthand and ideological pigeonholing that distort our debates over health care in particular and government’s role in American life more broadly. The way words such as “centrist” and “bipartisan” are now deployed turns the discussion away from useful arguments over how various proposals might work and toward...

In recent weeks a friend has been suffering a severe bout of asthma. With him in mind I perked up when I heard the story of Jasper Lawrence — “a modern-day entrepreneur whose passion for hookworms stems from lifelong battles with allergies and asthma” — in this fascinating Radio Lab hour on parasites. Lawrence believes he has been able to keep his asthma and severe allergies in complete...

As part of his weekend press junket around the dial, President Obama stopped by This Week with George Stephanopoulos. George has, in the past, been somewhat shy at times about questioning Democrats too harshly. (To put it kindly.) But today, he did himself proud when he tried to pin down the President on the effect of taxing millions of middle class Americans by imposing a government mandate on them to purchase...

This is not the sort of topic I usually write about, but there’s a New York Times article today by Neil Lewis — mostly based on a book proposal by Andrew Young for a book about the affair between John Edwards and Rielle Hunter. Here is one of the more arresting passages (emphasis is mine):

Is Barack Obama trying to hide some innate shyness? After being on 60 Minutes almost as often as Andy Rooney and rivaling Oprah on weekday TV, the President will go for overexposure records with five Sunday talk shows tomorrow to be followed by Letterman Monday night. The All Obama All the Time blitz is meant to explain and sell health care reform to confused Americans, but it calls up that ancient resistance...

Reuters reported on this study done by researchers at Harvard Medical School:

Let’s Make a Deal: Beltway Edition by Michael Winship If you ever needed proof that Washington is governed by the Golden Rule – the one that says, he who has the gold, rules – you only have to look at the wagonloads of cash being dumped by big business into crushing President Obama’s domestic agenda. Good gosh, how the money rolls in. And I’m not only talking about the millions...

If you, like me, missed Micheal Pollan’s OpEd in the NYTimes last week, it’s worth a read: No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the...

Georgia congressmen Sanford Bishop and David Scott are both ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats. And both are being put to the test by the raging health care debate. McClatchy Newspapers: While both men say they’re comfortable balancing the fiscal conservatism and strong support for the military that the Blue Dog Coalition advocates with the black caucus’s socially progressive platform — which includes pushing...

I lived in the Netherlands for many years and I fondly remember its windmills, its gorgeous fields of tulips, and of course its delicious cheese—made from that great Dutch koe melk (cow milk). I don’t remember, however, seeing any camels grazing in the luscious Dutch pastures. That’s why the headline in this morning’s news.scotsman.com got my attention. Under the banner, “Dutchman...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), responding to bipartisan dissatisfaction with the bill unveiled by Max Baucus (D-MT), blamed the Democrats. They could have come up with a better bill that everyone would have liked if they had just had more time, he complained. All they needed was two more weeks and they could have produced a truly bipartisan bill. They weren’t given enough time; the Democrats were rushing...

Congratulations to Americans Against Food Taxes for producing a political issues ad that is accurate. The group opposes a one-cent per-ounce tax on sugary soft drinks that Congress is eyeballing to generate more revenue. The ads claim the regressive tax would hit those who least can afford it the most. On the flip side, sugar tax advocates say the products they are targeting pose a significant contributor to...

So much of our regularly scheduled show yesterday was eaten up by ACORN and the shelving of the missile defense shield, that Cindy and I will be broadcasting a bonus edition of Mid Stream Radio at 10 AM eastern this morning, primarily to discuss the Baucus compromise and the latest revelations to pop up in the news. Feel free to join in the chat with your own thoughts or call in at (646) 595-3963. If you wish...

Here is a roundup of analysis and commentary about the health care reform bill prepared by Max Baucus and the Gang of Six on the Senate Finance Committee. Pretty much nobody likes the bill. Baucus scraps a “simple employer mandate that forces every employer over a certain size to provide health-care insurance or pay a small fee,” and replaces it with a “free rider” provision, which...

Can you imagine the cries of outrage and gales of mocking laughter from the right if they had heard complaints like this after the huge anti-war demonstrations in the former administration?