If you follow this link, you’ll find a scan of an editorial expressing skepticism about the need for the president’s proposed health care reform, and confidence that capitalism and American ingenuity will eventually take care of any problems our health care system might have.

The editorial is from the May 2, 1949 issue of Life magazine, and the president in question is Truman.

Sixty years later, we are still having the same debate (with some minor differences, of course — the John L. Lewis United Mine Workers health fund has not to my knowledge figured significantly in the current incarnation). And we are still being told by opponents of reform that capitalism and American ingenuity will eventually solve everything. Maybe in another sixty years!

(Found this cleaning out my files — I think I set it aside during the last h.c. debate. Sorry for the illegible spots, it’s that way on the original.)

Just brilliant.

This Jake Tapper post on Twitter may be one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen :

The re-tweeting Paula Abdul, the Smurf avatar, the succinct “WORD!” response, the fact that this is from a high-profile White House correspondent…wow.

There’s a ten minute Pearl Jam promo video here. I was there in the rehearsal space the day it was shot, lurking in the shadows, drinking wine from a plastic cup. It’s no wonder I came back from Seattle enthusiastic about the experience of working in an office.

If Democrats behaved more like Republicans.

A week or so ago, I posted a couple of emails from a couple caught in a bureaucratic nightmare trying to get their adopted daughter out of China. Unfortunately the story did not have a happy resolution. You can read the entire follow-up email after the jump.
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You know what the healthcare debate could use right now? Profanity.

Seriously. I’m not kidding.

The debate over healthcare has become so poisoned with lies and bitterness, we need something to really shake it up. Something that really grabs attention and is a game changer media-wise. If I were in charge of media strategy for the White House, I’d get Joe Biden on a high profile interview show and when the subject turns to the townhall protests/death panels/etc., I’d have him say that it’s “bullshit”.

Do it on a Monday and the VP’s potty-mouth will be the trivial topic du jour for the entire week. Republicans will spin up the faux outrage machine, reporters will pepper Robert Gibbs about whether or not Obama would repudiate Biden, and news outlets across the country would report the story and its various twists because, like it or not, it would be one of those silly little news stories they can’t help but obsess over.

Sure, there’s downsides. Biden looks like a jackass (again), it would distract from the White House’s wonkish healthcare messaging (that people aren’t really following anyways), but there are two huge upsides.

One, it energizes the base. When Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy to fuck himself, liberals nearly passed out from all the faux outrage, but at the end of the day Cheney refused to apologize and conservatives respected him all the more for it. With liberal enthusiasm pretty much at a nadir, we could use a galvanizing middle-finger like gesture to feel more empowered (because our majorities in both houses of Congress don’t seem willing to stand up for anything).

Secondly, if Joe Biden calls protester bullshit for what it is, every mention of the story just repeats the association. Death panels, bullshit, pulling the plug on grandma, bullshit, euthanasia, bullshit, socialism, bullshit, Hitler, bullshit. It’s a seed that needs to be planted in the minds of every uninformed person who’s seeing footage of these rabid townhall protests and thinking “If they’re THIS mad, there must be something wrong.”

Ummm…no, it’s just a bunch of bullshit.

Behold, the shocking future that awaits us if Obamacare gets passed (h/t):

Strange days.

Just now on CNN, Jack Cafferty is reading responses to the question of whether “government insurance” should cover abortion and brings up this doozy courtesy of “Jan from Illinois” :

“No. I am the government. I am the taxpayer. I don’t want anything to do with abortion; this makes me part of it and I refuse to be part of it.”

Welcome to democracy, Jan. You got your pointless war in the Middle East, now we get universal(-ish) healthcare…if we’re lucky.