Wednesday opinionating, Sarah Palin and wonkery. Bet you never thought you'd see Palin and wonkery in the same sentence.
Greg Sargent:
The pattern is becoming overwhelmingly obvious. Palin's current role of celebrity quasi-candidate works for her. It's allowed her to insulate herself from direct media cross-examination and to communicate directly to the Palin Nation hordes, who remain as transfixed as ever. But the rest of the world continues to find her more and more distasteful, and it's growing less likely that she'll succeed if she ever steps outside the bubble she's crafted for herself.
UPDATE, 1:03 p.m.: It gets better: That new poll out of New Hampshire also finds that 51 percent say they're less likely to back a Palin-endorsed candidate; among moderates that number is 65 percent.
Susan Jacoby:
You can be sure of one thing: if Sarah should become the Republican nominee: She'll have cleaned up the Bristol-Levi-baby trio into something more suitable for middle-class consumption. Because the truth is that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston are most middle-class American parents' worst nightmare, but they are a nightmare that arises directly from the daily dream world propagated by politicians like Sarah Palin and her supporters.
Whenever I hear liberal-to-centrist pundits saying that even if Sarah gets the Republican nomination, she will only ensure Obama's re-election, I shudder. That this representative of pure ignorance, retrograde religion, and class envy is being taken seriously at all speaks volumes about the dumbing down of America.
CBPP:
To help reduce projected budget deficits, some have suggested paring back the tax credits that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 provides to help low- and moderate-income families afford health coverage through new state-based health insurance exchanges. Those deficit hawks recommending this course should set their sights on other prey: the credits are not generous (even with the credits, families will pay a substantial and growing share of their income on health insurance premiums with each passing year), and shrinking them would put the law’s insurance market reforms — and its cost-control measures — at serious risk.
Maryn McKenna:
Pertussis is an awful disease. A child in the throes of a paroxysm sounds like nothing else on earth. Children turn blue, give themselves black eyes, die. We kept it down to manageable levels with the help of a vaccine. That we would willingly bring it back it is beyond belief.
Paul Offit, MD:
What Michael Smith and Charles Woods did that I think was really interesting is they mined that dataset to see whether there was any relationship between the timing of receipt of vaccines and neurologic outcome. They divided these children into 2 groups. The first group were children who had received vaccines according to the CDC-AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] schedule, and the second group were children whose parents had chosen to delay vaccines or not to give vaccines. What they found was that there was no difference between these 2 groups in terms of their neurologic outcomes.
I think that parents can be reassured here that a choice to delay vaccines or not to give vaccines does not in any sense decrease the risk for a poor neurologic outcome or autism; all it does is increase the period of time during which children are susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases. Delaying vaccines or separating vaccines or withholding vaccines offers no benefit, and only increases the risk to the child. I think it would be of value for doctors to read this study and to share it with parents who are concerned about vaccines.
Maryn gives a reason to vaccinate. Paul gives reasons not to delay.
CNN:
About 300 additional firefighters joined a battle Tuesday to contain a growing wildfire in California's Sequoia National Forest.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the fire had spread across roughly 6,000 acres, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Michelle Puckett said. The bureau is working with the U.S. Forest Service and the Kern County Fire Department to fight the blaze.
This can't be good.Update [2010-7-28 8:26:13 by DemFromCT]: An alert reader notes low intensity surface fires help sequois propagate, but not sure where this fits...
Harold Meyerson:
The problem isn't merely the greatest downturn since the Great Depression. It's also that big business has found a way to make big money without restoring the jobs it cut the past two years, or increasing its investments or even its sales, at least domestically.
This can't be good, either.