Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Sunday punditry and opinionizing.

NY Times:

The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. They include such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient’s needs with an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure the seriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs, are treated properly. For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.

Earl Blumenauer (D-OR):

The news media was a particular culprit in this [death panel] drama. This was not just Fox News; seemingly all the national news organizations monitored any meetings they could find between lawmakers and constituents, looking for flare-ups, for YouTube moments. The meetings that involved thoughtful exchanges or even support for the proposals would never find their way on air; coverage was given only to the most outrageous behavior, furthering distorting the true picture.

Frank Rich:

The dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right.

Barton Gellman:

If it happens, the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed will make for riveting drama amid the dry routines of procedure in federal court. Of all the many risks in the contest, the greatest may be the drama itself.

David Biespiel:

On a different subject: I see that pro-secessionist Governor Rick Perry, Republican of Texas, is at it again. The governor of my former home, the great state of Texas, told a roomful of Republican women activists near Dallas in Midland Country the other day that the Obama Administration is "hell-bent toward taking American towards a socialist country. And we all don’t need to be afraid to say that because that’s what it is...

Would someone please tell the Guv that the oil and gas industry in Texas has been on the federal government's numero uno subsidy gravy train for decades to the tune of billions of public dollars, not to mention the old-fashioned pork brought to Texas in the back pockets of Texas congressmen and senators dating back at least to rural electrification and the dam-building days of the 1930s.

Jonathan Turley: "When a child dies, faith is no defense." Amen.

Kathleen Parker:

President Obama addressed civility directly in his commencement speech to Notre Dame this year and recently said, "One of the things I'm trying to figure out is, how can we make sure that civility is interesting?"

That's more than enough evidence to declare a trend. But do Americans really want to be civil?

Oh, shut up. (Just kidding.)