The rise of the filibuster

The filibuster has been around a long time in the U.S. Senate, but it's use has shot up over the past fifty years:

The fact of the matter is that the frequency of filibusters has increased by a factor of 50 since the days of (then Democrat) Strom Thurmond jaw-jacking for 24 hours to stop a civil rights bill. So too has the general use of delaying tactics on major pieces of legislation. Consider some data points.

According to research by UCLA political scientist Barbara Sinclair, there was an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. That number has grown steadily since and spiked in 2007 and 2008 (the 110th Congress), when there were 52 filibusters. More broadly, according to Sinclair, while 8 percent of major legislation in the 1960s was subject to "extended-debate-related problems" like filibusters, 70 percent of major bills were so targeted during the 110th Congress.

Read that again: from 8 percent--pretty infrequently--to 70 percent, or rule of the day.

And while Republicans easily own the record for forcing the most cloture votes in a single Congressional session (112 in 2007-08, twice as many as any year when the Democrats were the minority), it's obviously a bipartisan problem.

LGBT rights: Perry vs. Schwarzenegger

The federal court challenge to California's proposition 8 has the potential to establish a strong precedent for equal rights for gays and lesbians or, conversely, to legitimize laws that discriminate against them. "Gay on Trial" over at The American Prospect provides an in-depth look at the risks and rewards of turning to the federal courts for resolution of the gay marriage issue:

The stakes are high. If Perry v. Schwarzenegger reaches the Supreme Court and Boies and Olson are successful, gays and lesbians nationwide would not only have the right to marry, they stand to gain many of the legal rights they have sought for decades. Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be invalidated, as would employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. In the eyes of the law, gay people would be equal to straight people, and any legislation that discriminated against them could be challenged and easily struck down against this precedent. However, defeat could legitimize such discrimination against LGBT Americans, making it far more difficult to sue for parental or housing rights. The door to any federal litigation on marriage equality would be shut for decades.

Wow... an E. coli outbreak in Portland's water supply

Apparently one of Portland's reservoirs is contaminated with E. coli, and residents on the west side have been told to boil water before drinking it. Unfortunately Tommy visited this weekend and has been sick all day... bad timing!

UPDATE

The Portland Water Bureau has provided a map of the affected area:

Today...

is a "Calgon, take me away" kinda day.

(Video link)

Politics: the art of what's irrational

It amazes me that otherwise intelligent people will try to argue that quitting your job (e.g. governor) is a virtue. Yet those are the mental hoops that people will jump through when it comes to someone like Sarah Palin. Here's RNC Chairman Michael Steele making just that argument at the 2:03 mark:

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Steele is basically arguing that since Palin was getting a lot of attention that she couldn't serve effectively as governor. But wouldn't she (or anyone else, for that matter) draw similarly intense scrutiny as President of the United States? And he says she'd been under "an enormous amount of stress." Uh, hello? Wouldn't the ability to handle a lot of stress by not quitting be more indicative of someone who could handle the pressures of the White House?

Story of my life (lately)

Last night I had a dream that I was supposed to play a short piece of music on my guitar. I must have been in a class; everyone else also had to play this same piece of music for a small audience.

The piece was only a few bars long. Though it was posted on the wall, we had to play it from memory. I realized that I had forgotten to memorize it, so I sat down to do so.

Then I remembered that I hadn't learned how to play the guitar. Whoops. So I picked up the guitar to try to figure out how to play the notes, only to notice that the guitar hadn't been strung.

Suffice to say that stringing the guitar--which turned into a group project--was just big enough of a disaster to wake me from my slumber.

LATER I dreamt that I had to go somewhere on my motorcycle, but in the dream I didn't know how to ride one. So I was googling "motorcycle controls" and "learn to ride motorcycle" on my cell phone.

Hmm.

Check out The Frontal Cortex

I've recently discovered Jonah Lehrer's great science blog, The Frontal Cortex. Yesterday he included a fascinating excerpt from a review he wrote for a book about our ability to read and all the amazing things the brain does to allow you to do what you're doing at this very moment.

And in a recent post that looked at the emotional dimensions of our decision-making process with respect to going for a first down rather than punting, he also made this observation which is relevant to the recent changes in mammogram and Pap smear screening recommendations:

Just consider health care: the only way we're ever going to reduce medical costs is to restrict procedures that haven't passed evidence-based efficacy tests. Maybe that means 40 year old women don't get mammograms, or that we treat prostrate cancer less aggressively, or that we stop performing spinal fusion surgeries. Although there's solid evidence to question all of these medical options, such changes provoke intense debate. Why? Because our emotions don't understand statistics. Because when we have back pain we want an MRI. Because when it's our father with prostate cancer we want the most aggressive possible treatments. And so on.

The point is that there's often an indefatigable gap between the rigors of cost-benefit analyses and the emotional hunches that drive our decisions. We say we want to follow the evidence, but then the evidence rubs against a bias like loss aversion, and so we make an exception. We'll follow the evidence next time.

AND SPEAKING OF HEALTHCARE AND CHOICE, Harry Reid has decided to let the Senate vote on an amendment to his healthcare bill that will incorporate on a very small scale the key idea from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden's own bill: that people who currently get their health insurance from their employer have the choice to instead buy it on an open insurance exchange.

New recommendations on mammograms and pap smears

If your wondering about those new recommendations about women getting fewer cancer screen procedures (mammograms and Pap smears), it's important to keep in mind that there is some evidence that more screening often results in unnecessary treatment (here and here) and that all procedures have some risk. The latter point seems to underly the fact that studies show that in places where doctors perform more tests and procedures, people are sometimes less healthy.

More is not always better.

Irony, 1962-style

One oil company had no idea how prescient its ads were in the 60s when it referred to glaciers melting.

Quote of the day

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

--Virginia Woolf

Vitamin D and the cardiovascular system

More evidence is out that vitamin D is important to the cardiovascular system and helps to prevent heart disease and strokes.

You can read more about vitamin D here. It's hard to get enough from food, and many parts of the country don't have enough sunshine, especially in the winter, for people to make enough on their own.

Ten years in seven minutes

How, oh, how, did we already make our way to the brink of 2010? Weren't we just worried about Y2K a few months ago. Sigh.

Newsweek has put together a seven minute video montage of America's highlights over the past ten years.

As far as my own decade has gone, I wouldn't say it compared favorably to the 90's, but I suspect the 'teens will look good when compared to the "aughts." :-)

And if nothing else, the Newsweek video whet my appetite for other such compilations (which I'm sure will be barraged with soon!).

The Center for Reproductive Rights' new commercial

The Stupak amendment in the House healthcare reform bill blocks insurers from offering abortion coverage in health insurance policies that are sold on the federally-sponsored insurance exchange. Low income women would likely be most affected.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has released this ad, "It's No Joke."

(Video link)

The truth behind the whole "death panel" fiasco

Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer shares the backstory on the healthcare reform provision that sparked a summer of lies and distortions about supposed "death panels." It's a sad tale of how fracked up U.S. politics have become:

I found it perverse that Medicare would pay for almost any medical procedure, yet not reimburse doctors for having a thoughtful conversation to prepare patients and families for the delicate, complex and emotionally demanding decisions surrounding the end of life. So when I was working on the health care bill, I included language directing Medicare to cover a voluntary discussion with a doctor once every five years about living wills, power of attorney and end-of-life treatment preferences.

I was especially committed to this issue because helping patients and their families clarify what they want and need is not only good for all Americans, but also a rare common denominator of health care politics. Indeed, the majority of Congressional Republicans supported the similar provisions for terminally ill elderly patients that were part of the 2003 prescription drug bill. In the spring of 2008, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska issued a proclamation that stated the importance of end-of-life planning.

With this history in mind, I reached out to Republicans, including conservative members of Congress who often expressed support for the concept, and worked with national experts in palliative care and advocacy groups in devising the end-of-life provision. My Republican co-sponsor, Charles Boustany of Louisiana, told me he had many end-of-life conversations as a cardiovascular surgeon but unfortunately they often were too late. He wished that he could have spoken to patients and their families when they could have reflected properly, not when surgery was just hours away.

But before long:

Then Betsy McCaughey entered the fray. A former lieutenant governor of New York, Ms. McCaughey had gained notoriety in the 1990s by attacking the Clinton health plan. In a radio interview, she attacked the end-of-life provisions in the health care legislation, claiming it “would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.” The St. Petersburg Times’s fact-checking Web site PolitiFact quickly excoriated her: “McCaughey isn’t just wrong; she’s spreading a ridiculous falsehood.”

But in today’s vicious news cycle, lies take on lives of their own on Web sites, blogs and e-mail chains and go viral in seconds. Ms. McCaughey’s claims were soon widely circulated in the thirst for ammunition against the Democrats’ health care reform plan. “Mandatory counseling for all seniors at a minimum of every five years, more often if the seasoned citizen is sick or in a nursing home,” was how Rush Limbaugh described the provision a week later. “We can’t have counseling for mothers who are thinking of terminating their pregnancy, but we can go in there and counsel people about to die,” he added.

Two days later, the lie found its way into Republican politicians’ statements.

And unfortunately, it went downhill from there. :-/

Two little lovebirds

Ellen and Portia get some attention from the New York Times which hopefully suggests:

Culture leads politics, and support for familiar, respected individuals precedes support for a larger, more abstract idea.

Quote of the day

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

-- Frank Tibolt

The orchid hypothesis

Andrew Sullivan over at The Atlantic noted today that there's a fascinating article about the "orchid hypothesis" in this month's issue. I completely agree. An excerpt:

Gene variants generally considered misfortunes (poor Jim, he got the “bad” gene) can instead now be understood as highly leveraged evolutionary bets, with both high risks and high potential rewards: gambles that help create a diversified-portfolio approach to survival, with selection favoring parents who happen to invest in both dandelions and orchids.

In this view, having both dandelion and orchid kids greatly raises a family’s (and a species’) chance of succeeding, over time and in any given environment. The behavioral diversity provided by these two different types of temperament also supplies precisely what a smart, strong species needs if it is to spread across and dominate a changing world. The many dandelions in a population provide an underlying stability. The less-numerous orchids, meanwhile, may falter in some environments but can excel in those that suit them. And even when they lead troubled early lives, some of the resulting heightened responses to adversity that can be problematic in everyday life—increased novelty-seeking, restlessness of attention, elevated risk-taking, or aggression—can prove advantageous in certain challenging situations: wars, tribal or modern; social strife of many kinds; and migrations to new environments. Together, the steady dandelions and the mercurial orchids offer an adaptive flexibility that neither can provide alone. Together, they open a path to otherwise unreachable individual and collective achievements.

I've long thought that societies benefit when there's a wide range of individuals within them. Years ago I drove to Santa Cruz to see a friend in a play. The story involved a young man whose great-grandparents had been making the trek from the east coast to the west coast but had ended up putting down roots in Montana. It led me to think about the way that some people stay put and others keep pushing the frontiers; how some of us are satisfied with how things are and others have to keep trying something new. The orchid hypothesis explains this perfectly: we're a "weedy" species that has thrived because we're adept at adapting, even if that means under certain conditions some of us are more vulnerable than the norm. Under more ideal circumstances, those more vulnerable may actually be the most successful.

Song of the day

Everything But the Girl's acoustic cover of "Downtown Train."

(Video link)

You can't have one but we can

Guess whose health plan covers elective abortion? The Republic National Committee's. So while they're actively campaigning to prevent the public funding of abortion and to restrict a women's right to choose, they're taking donations from conservatives across the country and using them to pay for their own health coverage which covers abortion. Hmm.

Now that it's become public (the policy has been in place since 1991), they're opting out of that part of the plan.

Hypocrisy, sigh.

Moral dilemma for our times: drone warfare

I've been worried about the moral and practical implications of relying on robots rather than soldiers for three years now (an old post here). Roger Cohen is on the same wavelength in his latest New York Times op-ed piece, and Jane Mayer has a recent article in The New Yorker which I'm reading now.

From Cohen's op-ed:

When the United States went into Iraq in 2003, it had a handful of pilotless planes, or drones; it now has over 7,000. The invasion force had no unmanned ground vehicles; the U.S. armed forces now employ more than 12,000....

But as [Jane] Mayer notes, “The embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.”

These are targeted international killings, no less real, and indeed more insidious, for their video-game aspect. The thing about robotic warfare is you can watch people get vaporized on a screen in Langley, Virginia, and then drive home for dinner with the kids. The very phrase “go to war” becomes hard to distinguish from going to work. That’s a conflation fraught with ethical danger. The barriers to war get lowered.

President Obama has apparently ordered as many Predator drone strike in his nine months in office as George W. Bush did in his last three years as president. That's not the kind of change I voted for.

UPDATE

I finished the Mayer article. An excerpt:

Peter W. Singer, the author of “Wired for War,” a recent book about the robotics revolution in modern combat, argues that the drone technology is worryingly “seductive,” because it creates the perception that war can be “costless.” Cut off from the realities of the bombings in Pakistan, Americans have been insulated from the human toll, as well as from the political and the moral consequences. Nearly all the victims have remained faceless, and the damage caused by the bombings has remained unseen. In contrast to Gaza, where the targeted killing of Hamas fighters by the Israeli military has been extensively documented—making clear that the collateral damage, and the loss of civilian life, can be severe—Pakistan’s tribal areas have become largely forbidden territory for media organizations. As a result, no videos of a drone attack in progress have been released, and only a few photographs of the immediate aftermath of a Predator strike have been published....

Critics have suggested that unmanned systems, by sparing these combatants from danger and sacrifice, are creating what Sir Brian Burridge, a former British Air Chief Marshal in Iraq, has called “a virtueless war,” requiring neither courage nor heroism.... Meanwhile, some social critics, such as Mary Dudziak, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, argue that the Predator strategy has a larger political cost. As she puts it, “Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on . . . endless war.”

The article is worth a read considering the number of strikes and hundreds of people who are dying... they're not all terrorists, folks. What kind of people are we to simply turn a blind eye to a war being waged remotely in our names?

Also in the Mayer article, a quote from former Army Ranger Andrew Exum:

There’s something important about putting your own sons and daughters at risk when you choose to wage war as a nation. We risk losing that flesh-and-blood investment if we go too far down this road.

A 180 for the Mormons?

The Church of Latter Day Saints supported the gay rights initiative just approved by the Salt Lake City Council and may support a similar statewide law. This is a big turnaround from a year ago when they actively campaigned in favor of Prop. 8 in California. More from the Salt Lake City Tribune here and here.

Democrats hope to repeal DADT next year

According to The Hill, Democratic leaders plan to use next year's defense spending bill to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell:

Democratic leaders plan to repeal the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in next year’s defense authorization bill.

Both the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) back the strategy of using the defense bill to change policy on gays in the military, an aide to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told The Hill on Wednesday. Frank, the openly gay chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is a close ally of Pelosi.

It's hard to believe but if this happens, DADT will have been in effect for seventeen years! It's about time to end this ridiculous policy and stop throwing competent and qualified servicemen and -women out of the armed forces.

Health care agita...

Over at the New York Times Gail Collins bemoans the Senate filibuster and the various senators who are threatening to hold up healthcare reform, and Nicholas Kristof worries about our spending priorities when an American dies from a lack of healthcare insurance every 12 minutes.

The simple joy of being alive

This elk calf feels it.

(Video link)

I'm reminded of Edward Hoagland's essay, "Endgame," from the June 2007 Harper's Magazine. I blogged about it here, here's an excerpt from the original:

But what did inspire our sense of beauty? My hunch is that, like our intelligence, it's an outgrowth of a gradual refinement of existing rudiments in other creatures.... Do the species that wear the splendid plumage or coats of fur or superb scaly camouflage we admire not feel an equivalent ebullience at the sight of one another, too? Not merely lust or rivalry, in other words, but something of what Emerson expressed in his essay: that "ecstacy is the law and cause of nature...."

And when we present long-stems on Valentine's Day, are we sharing something deep-seated in common with insects? ... As that vixen carried her young about in her mouth, how different were her feelings from a mama crocodile doing the same; or a human mother's protective hug? And when a drought ends in the desert and toothsome rains begin to fall, is just the pick-and-shovel prospector, with perhaps his donkey, happy? Do other living things only process the new conditions mechanistically? Or if antelope, bighorn sheep, cactus wrens, peccaries, and coatimundis experience a surge of gladness, does the chucawalla, the sidewinder, and the desert tortoise also?

Andrew Sullivan: From 9/11 to Fort Hood

Andrew Sullivan has an insightful post today on the lessons that continue to unfold in this post-9/11 world:

The awful truth is: what 9/11 revealed, and what it was designed to reveal, is that there is nothing we can really do definitively to stop another one. They had no weapons but our own technology. The training they had was not that sophisticated and the costs of the operation were relatively tiny. There were 19 of them. None of the key perpetrators has been brought to justice. Bin Laden remains at large. If you calculate the costs of that evil attack against the financial, moral and human costs of the fight back, 9/11 was a fantastic demonstration of the power of asymmetry to destroy the West....

And now, in the wake of Fort Hood, we face the possibility of radicalizing Muslims in America and polarizing more Americans against them. This does not help.

I remember thinking a year after 9/11 that as momentous as that event had seemed, nothing had really changed in the world. But eight years later we have both of our front paws on a rug that's being pulled out from under us while our rear legs are shackled in place. We've become a victim of our own reactions and trapped in an effort to finish a job that we were wrong to start in the first place. We can't win a "war" on terror; we can't buy safety by trying to use drones more than our own troops. As a country we may be too big and too slow to maintain our balance in a world where we're challenged not only by extremists in caves halfway around the world but also by those on our living room television sets.

President Obama's eulogy at Fort Hood today was inspiring and, in a sense, true. But remembering that our liberty is secured by the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform masks an important fact: those sacrifices are necessary, perhaps, but surely not sufficient, to ensure our liberty. Our nation needs the brave. And also the wise.

(Video link)

Today has been a glum for me already; Andrew's post only intensified that feeling.

The amazing larynx

Just saw this over at The Daily Dish... a video of four larynxes at work while a quartet sings. What awesome creatures we are!

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Armchair urge for the day

I want to move to Connecticut and volunteer for the campaign of anyone who will replace Joe Lieberman. Between his lapdog attacks against Obama last year, his talk of filibustering healthcare reform legislation if it includes a public option, and his decision to hold a Senate hearing to determine if the Fort Hood shooting qualifies as "terrorism" (if it does we sure have a lot of terrorism in this country, why do we keep selling them so many guns???), I just don't understand how this guy's brain works.

Let's get rid of the independent from Connecticut. To be frank, I'd rather see a Republican elected to his seat. Lieberman is the worst kind of friend to have.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the "was Fort Hood terrorism" question here.

Ellen could be fired in 29 states

In 29 states, it's legal to fire or refuse to hire someone simply because they're gay or lesbian. In 38 states, employment discrimination based on gender identity is also legal.

The ACLU has a campaign right now promoting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). You can contact your representatives in Congress and urge them to support ENDA by clicking here. I just did.

Give Readability a try

My friend Jack just forwarded me a link to a story about a cool new applet that makes reading web content easier. It's name: Readability.

For chocolate lovers everywhere

A couple of cups of skim milk cocoa a day appear to raise good cholesterol and reduce inflammation, potentially serving to ward off cardiovascular disease. Yum :-P

Paul Krugman worries about the "Californiafication" of the federal government

I don't always agree with Mr. Krugman, but I think he's got a legitimate concern here about the direction Washington is heading:

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

House health bill eliminates tax penalty for gay couples

Currently when a company offers healthcare benefits to an employee's domestic partner, the full cost of the premiums paid are taxed as income to the employee. Married couples get these benefits tax-free.

The House healthcare reform bill passed yesterday eliminates this inequity. Let's hope the provision survives into the final legislation!

Looking forward to November 20th...

When the movie Precious comes to Portland... it looks great, and Mariah Carey gets a chance to redeem herself after that Glitter mess. (Thanks, Randy, for the heads up!)

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No help from the DNC in Maine

Apparently the Democratic National Committee asked Maine voters to make calls to New Jersey to get out the vote for gubenatorial candidate Jon Corzine but didn't urge them to vote "no" on state proposition 1 (which passed and thereby repealed the recently passed gay marriage law there). Gays and lesbians have been a reliably Democratic voting bloc, but the community's patience is rapidly diminishing...

The full story on Americablog.

Perspective on today's mass shooting at Fort Hood

From James Fallows:

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the "expert" talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre "mean"? A decade later, do we "know" anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

Healthcare and political wonkiness from Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein looks at why the Democrats are having some trouble getting to 218 votes for healthcare reform in the House and had an interesting two-part interview with the CEO of Kaiser Permanente. Worth a read, here are parts one and two.

UPDATE: First Read also has some analysis on getting to 218 votes in the House.

The current recession and unemployment

Here's a scary graph from finance and economics blog Calculated Risk; it compares unemployment statistics from the current and previous recessions.

The House votes on healthcare reform as early as tomorrow

Democrats are still working to get the 218 votes needed to pass healthcare reform in the House with a vote scheduled for as early as tomorrow. More on the situation from the New York Times.

Call your representative today and urge them to vote "yes" on this important bill! With the vote this close, your call may make a big difference.

I just called my Nevada representative, Dina Titus, who confirmed she is planning to vote for the reform legislation. And when I checked my email, I found this message from her:

For the past six months, I have traveled around the district talking with my constituents about health care reform. I have heard from thousands of Southern Nevadans at town halls and Congress on the Corners. I have hosted three telephone town halls to listen to concerns and questions about the health care reform bill that the House is expected to vote on in the coming days. Through roundtable discussions with doctors, health care providers, and small business owners, I have listened to their needs and fought to make changes to the final bill that address their concerns. Finally, through surveys and asking you to share your health care stories, I have solicited input from the people I am in Washington to represent.

I have heard strong voices on all sides of this important issue and the common theme has been that the status quo is no longer acceptable. I believe the new version of the health care bill in the House of Representatives will go a long way toward addressing the problems of Southern Nevadans, and it is legislation I intend to support when it comes up for a vote. It will reduce costs, improve access to care, increase choices, and strengthen Medicare.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act, which has been endorsed by AARP and the American Medical Association, will help millions of Americans by:

• Banning the insurance industry practices of discriminating against those with preexisting conditions or withdrawing coverage for people when they get sick.


• Immediately beginning to close the donut hole that forces nearly 13,000 seniors in our district to pay high out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs.
• Eliminating co-pays for preventive services.
  
• Eliminating “gender rating” by insurance companies which has led to women paying up to 48 percent more in premium costs than men for coverage through the individual market.


• Ending the insurance industry’s exemption from anti-trust laws that has allowed it to stifle competition.


• Establishing a grant program to encourage states to implement alternatives to traditional malpractice litigation.


• Permitting states to enter into agreements to allow for the sale of insurance across state lines.

The new bill also addresses key concerns I had with the impact reform would have on small businesses in Southern Nevada by:

• Increasing the income threshold at which households must pay a surcharge from $280,000 to $500,000 for individuals and $350,000 to $1 million for families so that 98.8 % of small businesses will pay no surcharge.


• Including my amendment to allow more small businesses to enter into the Health Insurance Exchange to leverage their purchasing power to get lower rates.

With Nevada families and small businesses suffering under the weight of rising health care costs, it is time to take action to reduce costs and increase access to health care. I believe the legislation before the House, which is fully paid for and will cut the deficit by $30 billion over the next decade, will take great strides toward reforming our broken health care system and giving Nevadans peace of mind and assurance that they will have the coverage they need at a cost they can afford.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Dina Titus

Payroll withholding

What if you your paystub actually showed where your federal tax dollars were going, particularly for other big ticket items like defense?

And if you want to the federal budget broken down visually by department, here's a very large picture that does just that for budget year 2007-2008. (To zoom in, click on the picture below and then save the larger version to your computer where you can explore it in more detail.)

Andrew Sullivan on The Colbert Nation

Here's my favorite member of the bear intelligentsia talking with Stephen Colbert about Obama, one year later. While Andrew comes across as fully supportive of President Obama on the program, he's a bit more circumspect on The Daily Dish.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Andrew Sullivan
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

(Video link)

AARP and the AMA support House healthcare reform bill

Both the AARP and the American Medical Association announced their support today for the House version of healthcare reform legislation. That bill (H.R. 3962) is up for a vote this Saturday. Here is a summary, and here is the full bill.

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein notes that the Congressional Budget Office has released it's analysis of the GOP's alternative healthcare reform bill. According to the CBO, the Democratic plan will provide coverage to twelve times as many people while reducing the federal budget deficit by a larger amount. Hmm, which should I choose...

And some good news from the Pacific NW

Not such news since it's almost 6pm :-) but Washington state's strong civil union measure was approved narrowly by voters last night. Woo hoo!

More election perspective

From First Read, some lessons from last night and some electoral history for Virginia and New Jersey:

After a while, you can't dismiss these trends: Yesterday became the NINTH-consecutive time (since 1977) that the party that won the White House lost Virginia's gubernatorial contest the following year. And yesterday became the SIXTH-consecutive time (since 1989) that the party controlling the White House lost New Jersey's gov race. Whether due to buyer's remorse, happenstance, or a combination of the two, those trends should give all us pause in making broad statements about last night's two contests -- and what they mean for the White House, the midterms, or the next presidential contest.

Song of the day

Saw Courtney Jones and Spencer Day last night. Here's Courtney's "Awake and Dreaming."

(Video link)

Very sad news out of Maine

From the NY Times:

With 87 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, 53 percent of voters had approved the repeal, ending an expensive and emotional fight that was closely watched around the country as a referendum on the national gay-marriage movement. Polls had suggested a much closer race.

For now, no gay marriage in Maine. Sigh.

Call the President a liar, get a reward from the Republican leadership

The GOP Congressional leadership has chosen Representative Joe "You Lie" Wilson to serve as an escort to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Hmm.

What happens at Guantanamo...

doesn't stay at Guantanamo.

The ACLU has released a video of interviews of former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. All were held--for years--and later released without being charged with any crime.

(Video link)

As difficult as their stories are to hear, these people were held in our name. Watch the video.

Song of the day

Here is Nightranger's "Sister Christian" from 1983. My first concert ever was Nightranger and ZZ Top in Wichita. :-)

(Video link)

I'm sitting at a coffee shop, and "Sister Christian" was just played. It's interesting which songs make it first into the collective psyche contemporaneously and then into the collective memory.

Election day perspective

First Read makes the case that people should be careful about claiming that GOP wins in the Virginia and New Jersey gubenatorial races would amount to a "no confidence" vote for Obama:

For starters, how much does Creigh Deeds losing in Virginia say about Obama, when the president’s approval rating in the state is at 57% among registered voters and 54% among likely voters, according to the most recent Washington Post poll? And if Jon Corzine’s favorable rating in the Quinnipiac poll was at 38% back in March (near the height of Obama’s honeymoon), and it’s at 39% now, how does that say much about Obama and his popularity/presidency? Likewise, if Democrats are able to split the races by winning in New Jersey or even pull off the upset in Virginia, does that mean Obama’s presidency is on easy street? Absolutely not. In short, these races say much more about Deeds/McDonnell or Corzine/Christie than they do about Obama.

AND IN MAINE, heavy turnout is being reported with a proposition on the ballot that would overturn the state legislature's passage of a same-sex marriage law.

In Washington state, voters are also being asked to vote to approve or reject a recent legislative expansion of domestic partner benefits that would create marriage-like civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.

Hopefully activists in Maine and Washington learned some lessons from last November's passage of Prop. 8 in California...

Repower America's video wall

Repower America has a new national ad advocating for climate change solutions. It's featured on their video wall which hosts short videos from all sorts of people who support action to address global warming. Pretty cool, check it out here.

Nevada residents can sign a petition here urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to move forward climate change legislation.