Jim Himes bristles at the notion that he’s a corporatist, or that his statistics come from wingnuts like Pete Peterson who cherry pick them for the purpose of dismantling Social Security.

Ezra Klein has posted a link to a revised draft of health reform measures from Sen. Baucus’ Finance Committee. No public plan, co-op idea still possible, and there would be many fewer people eligible for subsidies to purchase mandatory insurance.

A quick look at current news on the morning of June 19, 2009

Random bleatings because I’m out of coffee.

Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women with special guest Dale Spalding – Ashgrove at Old Settlers Music Festival, Driftwood TX, Saturday, April 18, 2009.

What’s on your mind tonight?

Cliff May is the most persecuted person in the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD. Why, the torture he’s endured is a hundred billion times worse worse than, say, waterboarding.

So what would you pay for a business that has never turned a profit and has lost a million dollars or more every year in its fourteen years existence?

Hey, remember when Tom Daschle’s little tax problem forced him to withdraw his nomination for Secretary of HHS, and I said good riddance to spineless corrupt rubbish? Looks like I had something there.

James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, the ex-military psychologists identified as primary architects of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogations techniques” torture program, apparently did not spend all their time on the battlefield. As the Bush administration-approved coercive interrogation techniques spread from Guantanamo and Afghanistan to the new war in Iraq, Mitchell and Jessen were cashing in on their new-found influence.

If you want to understand how a so-called “bipartisan” health reform proposals can confuse just about everyone while giving away the store, just follow what’s happened since Mssrs. Dole, Daschle, Mitchell and Baker announced their “bipartisan compromise.”