No dump Friday

You know it's summer when there's nothing of great consequence in the Friday news dump. There's just a few items worth reading that don't require a whole lot of commentary.

The health care debate is heating up and this looks like good news. A coalition of 80 progressive House Dems won't vote for a health reform bill that doesn't include a real public option. I put up a linky post on this at DetNews today and it appears the sold out pols are trying to foist off some bogus co-op plan to be run by the private insurers but the progressives aren't buying it. Guess those phone calls and emails are working. Meanwhile I'm seeing a bit of chatter about single payer. Maybe that's not as dead in the water as I think it is, but I'm still not holding my breath for it.

I did two posts at DetNews yesterday on the right wing's hatemongering. Today, Krugman picks up that thread and says pretty much the same thing, albeit more mildly and with more elegance. Of course he writes to a high brow crowd and is more mannerly than me. I'm willing to draw a straight line between the violence the wingnut framing.

Speaking of calling out the wingnuts, they're on a vendetta against Shepard Smith for daring to barely mention that the DHS report on far right extremism was on target and a stray remark about how hateful the Fox email is becoming. They're trying to pull a Dan Rather on him to get him fired for it. To quote their favorite bloated gasbag, I hope they fail.

And Bill Maher has a surprisingly good piece today on Obama. He's right when he says screw the audacity of hope. Just give us the audacity.



[More posts daily at The Detroit News]