PERSPECTIVE

Ralph Sierra sends us this link, headed:  “Now I’ve seen everything.”  Indeed.  Everything!  From the Himalayas to the edge of the universe – and back – in six minutes.  Wow.

HEALTH CARE

Krugman says it best – as usual: pass the bill. 

By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.  But meanwhile, pass the health care bill.

☞ Click here to read his reasoning.

It’s beginning to look as though we just may pass the bill … although there is clearly a good long way to before the House and Senate bills emerge from conference for a final vote.

But we are making progress. 

And leaning the right way, finally, on climate change. 

And showing promise with education. 

And not far from enacting badly-needed financial reform.

FINANCIAL REFORM

A wide-ranging package passed the House and heads to the Senate.  Not one Republican voted for the reforms.  Krugman’s take, in part:

... Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative. ...

☞  Yet we seem to be making progress.  Keep the faith.