Mike Dennison on Baucus' health-care listening tour: "Staffers for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus got an earful last week at public meetings organized by the senator to talk about health care reform, and one message came through loud and clear.
"Yes, we heard plenty from supporters of a single-payer system (in other words, publicly funded health insurance for all), saying it is the best solution to America's health care ills."
Confederated Salish and Kootenai health official, Kevin Howlett, notes that the Baucus health plan does nothing to raise health care standards on reservations.
Paul Richards on Dennis Rehberg's opposition to Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act: Rehberg is just plain WRONG when he claims Montanans do not support these priceless wildlands. Rehberg is WRONG when he says we don't appreciate their pure water, clean air, and abundant fish and wildlife. Rehberg is WRONG when he claims Montanans and other residents of the Northern Rockies want to destroy these public wildlands with taxpayer-subsidized road-building, logging, mining, and other development.
"Despite Rehberg's claims: Private land is NOT affected by NREPA; grazing and existing mining claims are NOT changed; gun rights are NOT taken away; and environmentally-sustainable logging outside roadless areas will continue. We're NOT talking about already-developed national forestlands. These are federally-inventoried ROADLESS AREAS, for God's sake! They have been wild for millennia. Their remaining so will not bring about apocalypse."
The New York Times' Gail Collins calls out Montana: "So, with the town council's enthusiastic support, Hardin volunteered to take the Guantánamo prisoners.
"It's unlikely that the White House would have accepted the offer, but it was certainly an example of pluck and you'd think everyone would give Hardin three cheers. Instead, Montana's Democratic senators went ballistic.
"'We're not going to bring Al Qaeda to Big Sky Country - no way, not on my watch,' said Max Baucus.
"'If these prisoners need a new place, it's not going to be anywhere near The Last Best Place,' said Jon Tester.
"This shows us two things:
"1) Montana has given itself many nicknames.
"2) Montanans are more easily frightened than Manhattanites."
Ann Friedman on George Tiller's murder: "It is the culmination of an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services."
Bill O'Reilly's come under a lot of heat in the murder of George Tiller. Why? Because of this: "But there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on 'The Factor' on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as 'Tiller the Baby Killer.'" O'Reilly also accused Tiller of child molestation and rape, said he was the "moral equivalent of NAMBLA and al-Qaeda," and said he was guilty of "Nazi stuff." Check out the video.
Andrew Sullivan: "Imagine an Islamist fanatic had assassinated a pro-Israel rabbi in a synagogue, and had harassed synagogues for years, including one arrest for bomb materials in his car. Imagine if one of his associates had tried to kill the rabbi before. Would there be any question that this was Islamist terror? So why is this not Christianist terror?" By the way, I am against this ridiculous "-ist" suffix appended to "Islam" and "Christian." What the h*ll?
Libertarian Will Wilkinson on the opposition to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination for the SCOTUS: "As far as I can tell, there is nothing especially worrying about Sotomayor. She's obviously super-qualified. And from what I've read, she seems like a highly competent, fairly moderate liberal who sticks pretty close to the law (which nobody really likes when they don't like the law!) and is perfectly willing to side with Republican-appointed judges when that seems to her the right thing to do. What are people going batshit crazy over? I don't get it. And I really don't get why many Republicans have taken this opportunity to reinforce the already widespread impression that they are morally odious morons."
SoS Hillary Clinton's declaration that the US government wants the establishment of Israeli settlements to stop not only seems to be genuine, but apparently is also backed by Congress.
Matt Taibbi on the origins of the banking crisis: "The problem isn't a few technical glitches in the system that allowed the Cassanos of the world to drive Mack Trucks of leverage through a loophole or two. The problem is, at its roots, a profound collapse of morals on Wall Street that would have found its way to financial destruction using any available set of instruments and laws. We are talking about people who sold giant rafts of bullshit mortgages to pensioners, who stuck municipalities, innocent taxpayers, with time-bombs of subprime debt. And not just one trader here and there, but thousands of them, with the sober approval of the highest level executives in the biggest firms. On its most basic level what these people did is rip off huge institutional investors - old people, taxpayers, you and me - by finding ways to game the system and trick the big institutional fund managers into buying what they thought were safe investments, but were actually financial lemons that could barely make it out of the lot."
Is fusion power the answer to our energy crisis? Outlook doubtful; Tom Friedman likes it, and he's wrong about everything.
