I think one of the big problems Obama has is that liberals have become too accustomed to getting lip service from politicians on both sides of the aisle, and in particular, are accustomed to the way Bushies played rhetorical word games with how they describe their support of an issue. For example, Bush always pretended as if he didn't want to invade Iraq, right up until the moment the bombs started dropping; and then it became the most important mission in history. And so when Obama doesn't draw a line in the sand on the public option, but instead only describes his support as strong; it sends up red flags that he's about to sell us out. Same for issues like gay rights.

And while there should always be reason to watch cautiously, it needs to be seen from the other side: If Obama draws a line in the sand on ANY issue, it sends out a strong message to Republicans to do everything they can to defeat him, in order to damage his reputation for getting things done. As it is, they've already got plenty of reasons to oppose him on these issues. But by staking his political reputation on any specific policy, he's drawing a giant target on himself. And if we get anything short of his stated goal, the media will rant endlessly about how crippled and powerless Obama is. And there's no upside to this, as Democrats won't necessarily see a line in the sand as being a requirment for them, and the "centrist" types are likely to see it as a challenge, for them to demonstrate their "centrism" by going against Obama.

And this is how all negotiations work. It's rarely a good idea to signal to your opponent which area they can target you on. And for as frustrating as that is for us outsiders, who can't mindread Obama's true intentions, it's unfortunately necessary. We just need to have faith that Obama is intelligent enough to understand why he needs to pass these policies. So far, he's shown himself to be the smartest politician in our generation. Only time will tell if he was smart enough. So while we need to stay cautious, there's no reason to be discouraged by it. As I keep saying, it's Congress we need to worry about, not Obama.

> calling for Gov. Mark Sanford's resignation. . . .

I have to say, as a Democrat, that I hope the governor stands firm and resists calls for his resignation, and serves out the remainder of his full term. Oh, and that he give at least one extended interview per week to a major media outlet on this subject.

According to Matt Tiabbi in his new Rolling Stone article the Cap & Trade bill was ginned up by the United States of Goldman Sachs to make them billions trading CO2.

Seems like a reasonable theory to me.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, is still "hard at work" drafting a public option that "competes on a level playing field with private insurance companies."

Someone may surprise me and tell me that this politico story has some substance, but since politico usually makes my computer crash, I'll take that chance. A public option would be an insurance without costs associated with advertising, executive compensation or sales commissions. Hopefully it would also have selling features like no recission or denial for previous conditions. And it wouldn't be designed to make profits for shareholders. So where is Schumer looking to find that "level playing field"?

An addition to the Mini Report, Fox News declares Dems really don't have a super majority.

Even the smartest President in the world would have little success dismantling the existing powers.

FDR came from an old, powerful family and even he had very limited success. Traitors to their class like FDR are rare.

Obama isn't rich or well connected and we all know about his greatest handicap.

I bet he's painfully aware of the precariousness of his position.

Why the hell is Sanford still giving his personal tragedy oxygen? Seriously, why can't he shut the hell up?

Wait, what am I saying-- keep on talking Sanford, you're quickly becoming a joke of absurd political proportions. Not to mention driving the last stake into the GOP's "traditional family values" corpse.

It sure is confusing when the bullets and the footnotes are the same character.

The NYT reported that that "an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured."

Which proves one of my long standing criticisms of the present system. The people most at risk are often those who believe they are well-covered by their current insurance plan only to discover after the worst happens that they are royally screwed.

* [...] Sanford had vowed to release personal financial records to help prove he did not use state money for trips to see his mistress. Today, he changed his mind, and said he would not release the records. -- Steve Benen

Could be, because, on actually checking, he has discovered -- ooopsie! -- that he *had* misused state monies. Or could be something much simpler: he's gonna play broke in the divorce proceedings and doesn't want Jenny to know just how much cash he's got salted away (and never mid how much he'd spent on sweet Maria, his soul-mate).

I agree with Dana Goldstein's post over at Tapped that we really should stop using the word "mistress" for situations such as Sanford's. The term does seem to have the effect of objectifying the woman in the relationship. Chapur and Sanford appeared to be co-equals in this relationship. We need not demean Chapur by calling her a "mistress." I think "lover" might be a better word for both.

If they ever do a movie about Mark Sanford, they can use Lady Lane (Rolling Stones) as a theme song. A romantic, almost renaissance-like ballad, the singer tells Lady Jane "on bended knee" that he pledges his love to her. In the second verse, he tells Lady Anne their affair is over. And in the last verse, he tells Sweet Marie that he must leave her, too, because Lady Jane's "station's right, my love. Life is secure with Lady Jane".

Try this link for Lady Jane lyrics, since I screwed it up the first time.

So where is Schumer looking to find that "level playing field"?

Your description of the public plan could be a 'level playing field' plan. The 'non-level' issues would be things like taxpayer subsidies to the public option or exempting the public option from the regulations that private insurance must follow.

Journalist David Shuster and guest Chris Kofinis are doing an awesome job of exposing right wing craziness and fantasy tonight on MSNBC, and----it was great to behold.
"Let's GOP Crazy"
Even rightie Steve Schmidt has said the Republican party needs to move ***left.***
Good interview with Shuster/Kofinis that Palin and Sanford and other repubs have passed judgment on others, i.e, family values, etc--they have now become the kings of hypocrisy, and the party is now a joke with the American people.
Palin, referred to as the ever-ready bunny of the republican craziness. Ha ha ha. See you soon, barricuda???
Good for the Democratic Party.

I'm worried that they'll get the public plan, insist that pay its own way, force it to take anyone who wants in, but let private plans continue to reject anyone they want.

This will lead to no increased competition since the public plan's rates will be sky high as it becomes strictly the last refuge for the unhealthy who no one else will insure.

Portions of a letter from Greg Lydon, found on line, and worth a review

"...At this point in time, more people die younger, suffer more, and live less happy lives than they otherwise might because science has been so badly treated by conservative politicians. That is indisputable fact. It will take years to undo the damage that right wing ideological anti-science has done.

Although there is still a great deal of work to do, it is a fact that as we speak the nature of science funding, evaluation, reporting, and implementation is rapidly changing in a post-Bush environment. Suddenly, science can breathe.

But many elements of the right wing hang tenaciously on to the ideological approach in which real science is denigrated and damaged wherever doing so will produce either profit or power.
As a long time voice of this sort of conservatism ("Right from the beginning" is his motto, after all) Pat Buchanan now represents the damaging fringe, the corrosive edge, the untenable underbelly of political commentary at MSNBC. As the anti-science gambit of the right wing is moved, still struggling but doomed, off the stage, Pat Buchanan is left on your stage ... the MSNBC stage ... playing a tune on the atonal kazoo of ignorance to which fewer and fewer people dance.

That era of political whitewash of scientific truths and mean spirited hobbling of progress in medical, life science, and earth science studies is flanked by several events. The election of Ronald Reagan and the daparture of Bush II from office are volcanic layers dating the rise and fall of the eclipse of science. The publication of The Republican War on Science and Unscientific America are literary bookends. The first Earth Day, which some will remember as a radical act, and the IPCC report on climate change are the embryo and the wise sage representing different ends of a remarkable developmental period.

Perhaps the retirement of science-friendly Walter Cronkite in 1981 and the retirement from MSNBC of science-unfriendly Pat Buchanan ... this year ... would be appropriate era-markers for the dark ages of science's role in the American political forum."

"Did you know that Rick Santelli's well-publicized rant on CNBC Feb. 19 wherein he called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest the White House's mortgage bailout plan was set up by a vast, rightwing conspiracy to bring down President Obama run by the co-founder of the John Birch Society and former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey?

You didn't?

Well, that's what Playboy magazine claimed Friday in a piece outlining a grand cabal that supposedly has been in the works since last August:

What we discovered is that Santelli's "rant" was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a "Chicago Tea Party" was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.

As you read this, Big Business is pouring tens of millions of dollars into their media machines in order to destroy just about every economic campaign promise Obama has made, as reported recently in the Wall Street Journal. At stake isn't the little guy's fight against big government, as Santelli and his bot-supporters claim, but rather the "upper 2 percent"'s war to protect their wealth from the Obama Adminstration's economic plans. When this Santelli "grassroots" campaign is peeled open, what's revealed is a glimpse of what is ahead and what is bound to be a hallmark of his presidency..."

Isn't this just too much,

Yes, I believe what you are saying. I made a comment over the weekend that this is what is happening in Cali. That Rep. Gov. Pete Wilson issued I.O.U.'s in Cali, now, Rep. Gov. Schwarzenegger (the Terminator) is set to issue I.O.U.'s.

This is all politics as well. It's no secret the GOP doesn't like labor-unions. In order to dismantle certain public assistance programs like Welfare, School aide/subsidies...it could end up in court, costing the state millions, if not, billions of dollars - so, declare a 'state of emergency' to do what your intentions are.

This reminds me of when Newt Gingrich shut down the federal govenment.

It saddens me that the GOP always use 'Extreme Measures' to do harm to people.

This will lead to no increased competition since the public plan's rates will be sky high as it becomes strictly the last refuge for the unhealthy who no one else will insure. -- Boronx, @21:06

Medicare already caters to the most unhealthy group -- the elderly -- and manages to survive, somehow. And, if the young and healthy "get the message" (we need to reinforce it, time and again) that their cheap deal with private insurance is only good as long as they don't use it, how long do you think they're going to stay with it? How long, do you think, they're going to stay with private insurance in today's "iffy" (at best) job climate, while public option will be portable from job to job as well as open to the self-employed and to those without any job at all?

Get real. If the situation was likely to be as you dread, the insurance companies wouldn't be squealing like stuck pigs; they'd be confident of riding the public option into the ground in no time flat.

Oh, and BTW... The new, *full*, CBO report is out. Another nail in the regressives' coffin:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/01/new-cbo-score-health-care/

South Carolina state senator Jake Knotts told ABC News in regards to Sanford, "If he would just shut up !". He went on to say that the Governor's recent string of confessionals are a sign of instability, and that "I think he needs to have some professional help".

exlibra,

"The new, *full*, CBO report is out."

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office

That's a Bunker Buster.

* President Obama hosted a town hall meeting in Virginia this afternoon on health care. Reading over his introductory remarks, I noticed he once again voiced unambiguous support for a public option, saying he "strongly" supports the provision, which he described as "important."

The bigger news is that Obama acknowledged that he is still firmly against Single Payer, and set on condemning the US to another 20 yrs of digging a hole on health care.

No comments on Waxman??? Gosh, I hope he's fine - the country needs him.

re: "That's a Bunker Buster."

But a one trillion dollar-plus war of choice is OK, right ?

Actually if one listened carefully they didn't hear Obama say he was "against single-payer"...he very eloquently and carefully explained why that isn't what he is promoting at this time in the process (too nuanced for some, I guess)..KISS...but I'm still frustrated that he/Congress so stupidly signaled that SINGLE PAYER wasn't their goal and gave away that position to negotiate from...more Pelosi and Reid than Obama as they are the LEGISLATORS (?) and really we are so poorly served by them...

rbe1,

"But a one trillion dollar-plus war of choice is OK, right ?"

EH ?

The new CBO scoring is a Bunker Buster against those opposing a Public Option.

And the saga continues...I'm willing to bet Knight Sanford (R), S.C. Gov. is shredding documents as we speak.

Knight Sanford's song should be "Distant Lover" by Marvin Gaye.