Monday punditry. And respect for those celebrating MLK Day.
Paul Krugman:
Wait a minute, you may say. How can our mortgage payments be a cost of going out to eat, when we’ll have to make the same payments even if we stay home? But Mr. Boehner is adamant: our mortgage is part of the cost of our meal, and to say otherwise is just a budget gimmick.
O.K., the speaker hasn’t actually weighed in on our plans for the evening. But he and his G.O.P. colleagues have lately been making exactly the nonsensical argument I’ve just described — not about tonight’s dinner, but about health care reform. And the nonsense wasn’t a slip of the tongue; it’s the official party position, laid out in charts and figures.
EJ Dionne:
May I suggest in the warmest way possible that it would be an excellent start to a new era if opponents of the law would acknowledge that at no point did any version of the proposed reform include "death panels"?
The sensible idea on which this incendiary phrase was falsely based once had Republican as well as Democratic support and sought only to make it possible for those with life-threatening illnesses to get good information from their doctors - if patients wanted it - on the various treatment paths open to them. Really, nothing in the health-care debate was more destructive to honest discussion than the "death panels" charge. Can we at least put that behind us?
As The Post reported, the Republicans plan to argue "that Obama's health-care promises - including that the legislation would lower insurance costs and help spur job creation - have not materialized." Could they at least acknowledge that the law isn't even fully in effect yet?
And perhaps they should explain why it's fair to hold the 10-month-old health-care law to this standard while they insist on continuing the Bush tax cuts, which, after a decade, still haven't produced the jobs they were supposed to create. Please note that I could have described the impact of the Bush tax cuts less charitably.
NY Times:
In deference to the new vows of civility, the tone of the debate may be a bit more restrained. But Republicans have already said that they will not strip the word “killing” from the bill — which is titled, “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” Civility apparently goes only so far.
NY Times:
By the end of last week, after all, there were some positive signs amid the recrimination. Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel’s combative president and a pioneer of personally injurious politics, said he had called on his anchors and reporters to “shut up” and “tone it down.” Democrats in the Senate were pushing for a new seating arrangement for the upcoming State of the Union address that would force the two parties to intermingle — a symbolic gesture, to be sure, but one that would present a different kind of visual to a public weary of division.
They were tiny steps in the right direction. And even as the shots in Tucson still echo, that may be all any of us can really expect.
Mark Blumenthal:
Will President Barack Obama's Tucson speech affect his job approval ratings? If public reaction to Bill Clinton's handling of the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 is a guide, Obama is likely experience a bump in his ratings, but if so, it won't be because of some new ability to "connect" or show "empathy." It will be because as with Clinton nearly 16 years ago, Obama reminded voters of things they already liked about him.
Chris Cillizza:
"Worst Week in Washington" winner: Sarah Palin
Sometimes picking the winner of the "Worst Week in Washington" is tough. And, sometimes it's very, very easy.
This week, it was very, very, very easy.
Amy Silverman:
It seems that much of what we as Arizonans, as Americans, break over so bitterly is not whether President Obama is a socialist or whether Sarah Palin is fully cognizant of the derivation of the term "blood libel." Those are just shorthand ways of distracting and distancing ourselves from the real fights we are having in these unsettled times, fights about inclusion and exclusion.
Who should have citizenship? Health insurance? An organ transplant? A gun? Why should the guy across the street get his mortgage payments lowered when I've been working hard all these years and doing the right thing? Who is in and who is out?
And the truth is that few places are as exclusionary as Arizona, where butt-kicking cowboys and Barry Goldwater politics still rule the day, where anyone of Mexican descent better follow the speed limit, or risk getting pulled over and grilled over their right to be here. We are libertarians. Stay out of our big green back yards irrigated with water we can ill afford to use. Don't even come close. And don't you dare ask for help.
NY Times:
Governors appeared to be girding residents for a rocky road ahead — a path they seemed to sense residents may not yet grasp, given headlines of improvements in other parts of the economy.
Many called for bipartisanship in their efforts (the words “Republican” and “Democrat” are not mentioned in the Maine Constitution, reported Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican), and alluded to past moments of crisis (hurricanes, yellow fever outbreaks, even a “dark day” in 1780 when daytime skies were said to mysteriously appear nightlike in New England) as rallying points for the current gloom.
And here's a set of children's books, one by Obama and one by Lynne Cheaney, alike in every way except for the ways they are not. The author of this piece, Ian Reifowitz, will be around for comments.