The NYT published today a fascinating (and somewhat frustrating) look at health care reform’s supporters and detractors in Congress, by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and two co-authors. Their thesis: Critics of the health care reform plan often refer to it derisively as “ObamaCare.” On the policy merits, this is highly questionable: the White House has taken a hands-off approach toward the legislation...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

This time when talking about the crowds Sarah Palin is attracting. (Oops!)

The entire text is online. It’s 2,074 pages. Via Ron Chusid, who has a reading plan:

WASHINGTON — Normal human beings — let’s call them real Americans — cannot understand why, 10 months after President Obama’s inauguration, Congress is still tied down in a procedural torture chamber trying to pass the health care bill Obama promised in his campaign. Last year, the voters gave him the largest popular vote margin won by a presidential candidate in 20 years. They...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Geeeesum! Could Jesse Jackson be more insulting with this? The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill. “We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” What...

Andrew Sullivan informs his readers that he is taking a brief pause to pore over Sarah Palin’s new book: Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin’s unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning – specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy – we feel it’s vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible....

On Monday, Think Progress trashed liberal pundit Mark Shields for allegedly saying, with regard to Obama’s patience on Afghanistan, [It] makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection. Kevin Drum read TP’s post and seconded the motion,...

Our political/diplomatic Quote of the Day comes via Professor John Brown’s must-read Public Diplomacy and Press Blog – where he points us to a post by Steven W. Lewis on the Baker Institute Blog dealing with President Barack Obama’s bow to the Japanese Emperor. This bow became the target of (what else?) a political controversy in the United States where Obama’s critics accused him of...

A new study out from George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services concludes that the Stupak-Pitts Amendment will have an expansive effect on abortion coverage over the entire insurance industry, “eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange.”

From the Weekly Standard: Republicans need to point out that Obama’s economic policies aren’t working. But they need to resist appearing to relish bad news for the country on Obama’s watch. When rising unemployment numbers come out, there is occasionally an unseemly sense of celebration in the emails that come from various GOP offices. More in sorrow than in joy, more in confirmation than in...

Monday NY Times, Page 1: Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an “open-ended” military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting. It is a concern that some of them say justifies Pakistan’s continuing ties to the militants who fight American...

From Politico: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health reform bill comes in at $849 billion, and will reduce the federal budget deficit by $127 billion in the first 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office says, according to a senior Democratic aide. More here. I wonder if that’s enough to perusade the Senate 3.

With the onset of H1N1 flu there are many experts who think that the biggest problem is not the flu itself but the panic that comes with it. The overwhelming majority of people who get the flu will recover with no problem and in fact most people who get it might not even be aware they have it the symptoms are so mild. Yet with the media hype everyone panics, rushes to the doctor or the hospital, insists on...

In what could be a significant development a federal judge in California has ordered damages to be paid by Sears to a same sex couple that was married during the five month period that same sex marriages were legal. This ruling would support the concept that any marriages performed during the period remain valid. I would think even those who oppose marriage equality would have to agree that since it was legal...

Some Christian conservatives are now praying for God to kill Barack Obama.

Palin reportedly doesn’t rule it out, although it was an idea prompted by Newsmax.com… Now, that would REALLY expand the GOP’s existing base, and attract moderate Democrats, independent voters, moderate Republicans and Latino voters. If he’s not available, why use the same approach to expand the GOP’s base by inviting Rush Limbaugh? Actually a ticket like this would make sense:...

What is it with people? Why is the media focused on a cover photograph that Sarah Palin posed for? She posed for the cover for another magazine and Newsweek got the rights to reproduce it on its cover. Obviously, Newsweek has a bias against Palin but to say the outfit is sexist is a bit of a stretch. If we must focus on the picture, I have a question… why is the American flag draped over the chair?...

President Barak Obama has now crossed the “danger zone” threshold: according to a new Quinnipiac Poll, his approval rating has now fallen below 50 percent for the first time in the latest poll that shows a gradual declining trend as he loses the support of a chunk of independent voters. The poll also finds that support for the war in Afghanistan has slipped — which suggest that if Obama’s...

This week the United States Senate briefly turned their attention away from Obama / PelosiCare and considered President Barack Obama’s nomination of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton to an appellate court position, and the results were instructive. During the tenure of George W. Bush, much was made of the judicial nomination and confirmation process, with debates raging over the upper chamber’s...

I’m a day or more late to this meme and many others have already chimed in. So be it. I’ll now add my voice to those who have risen to the defense of the Senate 3 — Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) — who are “proving tough sells” on health care reform. Importantly, I rise to the defense of the Senate 3 as someone who would actually...

Having taken the time to talk through the entire Khalid Sheikh Mohammed affair with people on both side of the aisle, I’ve finally drawn some conclusions. I don’t think the real problem here is whether President Obama – through the office of Eric Holder – made the right or wrong call on this. The sticking point is that he made both calls by deciding to send one group to civilian trials...

The media will continue to speculate about the outcome of President Barack Obama’s visit to China. However, small gestures matter. The Times of London observes that Obama carrying his own umbrella while alighting from the Air Force One “may be just the right stick for China”. “Perhaps that simple umbrella moment really mattered. It showed China’s people that the arrogant America of...

Andrew Sullivan reminds us all how Sarah Palin came to be driving the dialogue today: [W]hat I didn’t fully come to terms with, until the Palin farce, was the full extent of John McCain’s recklessness and cynicism. This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain. Certainly McCain’s VP pick brought some sudden life to his campaign....