Sunday punditry.
Maureen Dowd:
Holy Roddy McDowall.
Christine O’Donnell doesn’t understand why monkeys can’t turn into people right before her eyes.
Bill Maher continued his video torment of O’Donnell by releasing another old clip of her on his HBO show on Friday night, this time showing one in which she argued that "Evolution is a myth."
Maher shot back, "Have you ever looked at a monkey?" To which O’Donnell rebutted, "Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?"
The comedian has a soft spot for the sweet-faced Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, but as he told me on Friday, it’s "powerful stupid to think primate evolution could happen fast enough to observe it. That’s bacteria.
CIDRAP:
As some of the key provisions of the Obama administration's healthcare reform law took effect this week, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced details of a public health funding component of the law that includes resources to help prevent and manage disease outbreaks.
The nearly $100 million in grants that Sebelius announced involve the law's Prevention and Public Health Fund, which are designed to help states and localities support a host of critical public health programs such as HIV prevention and testing, tobacco cessation efforts, and obesity prevention, according to an HHS press release.
NY Times:
Already a prominent presence as an analyst on Fox News Channel and a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Rove is also playing a leading role in building what amounts to a shadow Republican Party, a network of donors and operatives that is among the most aggressive in the Republican effort to capture control of the House and the Senate.
He has had a major hand in helping to summon the old coalition of millionaires and billionaires who supported Mr. Bush and have huge financial stakes in regulatory and tax policy, like Harold C. Simmons, a Texas billionaire whose holdings include a major waste management company that handles some radioactive materials; Carl H. Lindner Jr., a Cincinnati businessman whose American Financial Group includes several property and casualty insurance concerns; and Robert B. Rowling, whose TRT Holdings owns Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.
Rove's got The Math, and The Math sez tax breaks help Republican donors.
Dana Milbank:
"You know, the Republicans, I think, merged with the Tea Party, and in many instances they're finding out it's the Donner Party," Tim Kaine told CNN's Candy Crowley last Sunday, "because it's knocking off Republicans left and right."
The chairman may have thought it was a harmless people-eating joke, one that he had already served up to the New York Times and to reporters on a teleconference. But it set my teeth on edge. Comparing Republicans to cannibals is deeply offensive -- to the cannibals.
John Harwood:
Many in Washington fault President Obama’s cool public style. But in midterm elections, in a bad economy, showing empathy has rarely helped a president.
Since when have "many in Washington" known what they were talking about?
NY Times editorial:
If your premiums are spiking suddenly, you can blame economic reality. The cost of medical care continues to soar upward, and the recession led many healthy people to drop coverage, leaving less-healthy enrollees who cost more to insure.
As for health care reform, the major elements, and major costs, don’t even kick in until 2014. The only provisions with the potential to affect premiums right now are a handful of consumer protections that are popular with the public, and not especially costly to implement.
Matthew Yglesias:
As health care goes into effect and the GOP lays plans to repeal it, progressives are sitting on their hands. Matthew Yglesias on the case for going to war to help sick kids.
