Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War

It wasn't an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign's decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to "undermine one of Obama's central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types."

On Brad Delong's blog Richard Eskow Talks to David Cutler:

David Cutler: I'd like to start with a general comment.... Two possible reasons why people don't have health coverage are usually given. One is that the uninsured are gaming the system. The other is that they can't afford it and don't know where to get it. Most of the literature suggests that the explanation is mostly the latter. That means the single biggest thing we can do to help the uninsured is to make coverage affordable and accessible.

That's why all the Democratic plans focus on removing excessive profits where they exist, improving information technology, and so forth. All the plans do those things, although I think the Obama plan does the most.

The mandate argument is: You must buy something %u2013 but I'm not going to tell you what it is, how much it will cost, or where you're going to get it.

It comes down to this. You'll never get someone to buy something if it's not affordable and not accessible. People just don't do it.

Jump over and read the whole thing.

On the way home today, listening to NPR's coverage of Mitt Romney I was struck by a very weird turn of words. One of the commentators they interviewed mentioned that McCain's status was "the greatest resurrection sinze Lazarus"  Lets review the timeline of relevant events, as I recall them from my time at St. James:

1. 1ish AD - Jesus is Born
2. 18ish AD - Jesus goes to the fortress of solitude to learn from his father. I may be a bit hazy on this event and getting my savior mythologies a bit muddled.
3. 30ish AD - Jesus preaches in HOly Land, along the way bringing back Lazarus from the dead.
4. 33ish AD - Jesus is crucified and then resurected.
5. 2008 AD - McCain resurrects political career and becomes Republican front-runner

Now, you may be thinking along the same lines as I am. First, saying "the greates resurrection since Lazarus" sounds like an attempt to not utter something blasphemous by comparing McCain to Jesus. But if you think pedantically, that pretty much means that McCain's return from political death is greater than Jesus' resurrection.