A VICTORY FOR REPUBLICANS AND CONSERVATIVES ON HEALTH CARE:
"Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday abandoned plans for a vote on health care before Congress' August recess, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's ambitious timetable to revamp the nation's $2.4 trillion system of medical care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official word on what had been expected for weeks, saying, "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."
His words were a near-echo of Republicans who have criticized the rush to act on complex legislation that affects every American."
You know you're winning when the other side is echoing your talking points...
JUST THE FACTS:
Speaking of President Obama, why is he condemning police actions in cities far away from where he currently lives when he admits he doesn't have all the "facts"?
"President Obama said that police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "acted stupidly" in arresting a prominent black Harvard professor last week after a confrontation at the man's home. I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played," Obama said Wednesday night while taking questions after a White House news conference."
As for the rest of the President's news conference last night, dominated by the health care debate and most of which I watched, the editors of National Review have the right take--Mr. Obama is selling "snake oil":
"President Obama’s press conference Wednesday night offered an ideal encapsulation of the Democrats’ case for their health-care-reform proposals: outlandish promises about benefits and patently dishonest denials of the costs. He said essentially all of the uninsured would be covered, the insured could keep their existing coverage and would be guaranteed to keep it if they lost or changed jobs, the quality of care would rise, waste and fraud would be slashed, the deficit would decline, and no one would have to pay a price for all this except a few millionaires. Oh, and by the way, the plan would also “keep government out of health-care decisions.” If the president can persuade the American public of all that, then maybe we don’t even need medical care — we can just have him tell us all we’re perfectly healthy and we’ll go on our way. But in the end, the president does not in fact seem capable of persuading the public that he and congressional Democrats have found the magic cure-all for our health-care ills. Increasingly, the American people aren’t buying what Obama is selling. Support for his approach to health care has begun to fall below 50 percent in recent polls, as worries about cost, harming the quality and availability of health care, displacing millions who are satisfied with their insurance, increasing the tax burden on employers in the midst of a recession, and creating an enormous new entitlement are adding up."
And I just don't think the American people will buy the notion that one can have the government get more deeply involved in health care coverage, have pretty much everyone covered, but that it won't cost us more. People have more common sense than that.
IS THE GOP/CONSERVATISM DEAD? DEPT:
Not in Connecticut, where incumbent Democratic Senator Chris Dodd still trails his likely Republican opponent, Rob Simmons, by 9 points.
Dodd's disapproval rating remains over 50%. That's death for an incumbent.
BASEBALL DIARY: the Tigers last night got a great pitching performance from Armando Galarraga; he allowed only 1 hit in 7 plus innings. That's the good news. The bad news is that again the offense struggled, and they lost to Seattle 2-1.
But the Cubs finally got some hits, and ended Philadelphia's 10-game winning streak by beating the Phillies yesterday, 10-5.
And what about that Texas Ranger pitching? This time it's Dustin Nippert who does the job as the Rangers sweep the Red Sox, winning 3-1 last night.
BAD MOVE:
So a town manager of a south Florida community married a porn star. No, one doesn't have to approve of his marriage choice...
...but firing him because you don't approve of it is wrong, in my opinion.
The city officials who canned him basically claimed his marriage would be a big distraction.
Funny--he's been married to her for awhile; wasn't a problem up to now.
