http://tinyurl.com/kmgtnv

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908030038

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/26/climate-change-obama-administration

“We need to bring new language to this debate,” Republican message man Alex Castellanos wrote in a memo to fellow GOP strategists this month. “If we paint the house the same color, no one will notice anything has changed: We will still be the same, outdated Republicans who have no new ideas and oppose everything.”

Castellanos, a consultant to the Republican National Committee, offered poll-tested language that the party could use to kill President Obama’s health-care legislation in Congress. “If we slow this sausage-making process down, we can defeat it,” he reasoned.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele must have liked what he read. When he gave a speech at the National Press Club on Monday, he all but read aloud from Castellanos’s memo.

“Slow down, Mr. President: We can’t afford to get health care wrong,” said the memo.

“Slow down, Mr. President: We can’t afford to get health care wrong,” said the chairman.

For the rest:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072002484.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Editorial

California’s sick waste of free money
A hospital provider fee would keep the state from missing out on federal Medi-Cal reimbursements.

July 18, 2009

The federal government has free money for California, in the form of reimbursement for Medi-Cal expenses — if only the state would pick it up. But to pick it up, the state needs to put up matching funds at a time when there isn’t exactly a lot of extra cash lying around.

Nearly half of the other states qualify for their full federal reimbursement by imposing a provider fee on hospitals, and California lawmakers and the Schwarzenegger administration are discussing a similar move. It’s a good idea. But they aren’t yet ready to impose a fee because they’re still in talks with private hospitals that oppose the move. The delay means California could again leave too much federal money on the table.

Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) has come up with a way to stake a claim to federal medical reimbursements for the current fiscal quarter and the next one, and still leave enough time to get skeptical hospitals on board with a provider fee. AB 1383 would lay down a marker of sorts that would permit the state to apply for the money once it passes a follow-up bill that would address all the thorny details about which hospitals pay how much and which reimbursement dollars go to which state programs.

Skeptics say there’s little chance of reaching agreement on that follow-up bill before the Legislature concludes its business in September. We’re not quite so hopeless; agreement may well be within reach. But either way, the state ought to take an unmistakable step toward grabbing its full reimbursements by quickly adopting AB 1383 and allowing talks on the fee details to go forward.

A provider fee makes sense. Last year, California hospitals lost by some estimates $3.8 billion in unpaid Medi-Cal costs; in exchange for paying a fee, they would be reimbursed much of those costs. Even the supposed net losers — the hospitals whose patient mix consists mostly of the privately insured rather than lower-income Medi-Cal enrollees — could benefit. The higher reimbursements elsewhere decrease the burden on emergency rooms while keeping interdependent hospitals strong. Those hospitals still may not see it that way, but there is room for negotiation to limit their losses or secure for them some benefits if the state can buy itself another month or so to work out the details.

A provider fee strongly resembles a portion of the healthcare reform plan that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to his credit, called for in 2007. The plan fell short, but it got a crucial conversation started. It’s a conversation that should continue, especially now, when California needs every dollar it can get.

In some cases that come before the Supreme Court, the justices are being asked to apply laws which seek to place restrictions or conditions on conduct are “reasonable”. How can a person’s life experience not affect their view of what constitutes “reasonableness” under a particular set of circumstances? Or, If the law requires someone to do something within a “reasonable” time period, isn’t there a difference between how a person who has never faced having to do something quickly under those circumstances and the way a single parent who can’t get off work or who can’t afford to hire a baby sitter to free them up to address legal responsibilities might honestly judge a particular case that turns on the “reasonableness” definition? Or, the difference of a reasonableness time frame requirement for someone who can afford to hire investigators and someone who can’t and therefore must discover all the relevant facts that give rise to their claim on their own.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-palin-gop13-2009jul13,0,2642211.story

Since announcing her resignation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been pummeled by critics who have called her incoherent, a quitter, a joke and a “political train wreck.”

And those were fellow Republicans talking.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/07/13/sotomayor_video/index.html

In that great interview in the NYT mag, Emily Bazelon asks Ruth Bader Ginsburg whether the attacks on Sonia Sotomayor as “bullying” and “not as smart” were sexist: “I can’t say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They’ll seize on any handle.” That said, it’s not just any Obama nominee who would be slagged for getting her period by the ever-classy G. Gordon Liddy. Sotomayor’s sex and ethnicity couldn’t help but play a role in her media treatment, and it wasn’t always pretty. Ginsburg continues: “One is that she’s a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that.”