The Dish

Plouffe gets it:

Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay. Americans' health and our nation's long-term fiscal health depend on it. I know that the short-term politics are bad. It's a good plan that's become a demonized caricature. But politically speaking, if we do not pass it, the GOP will continue attacking the plan as if we did anyway, and voters will have no ability to measure its upside. If we do pass it, dozens of protections and benefits take effect this year. Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition. Workers won't have to worry that their coverage will be dropped because they get sick. Seniors will feel relief from prescription costs. Only if the plan becomes law will the American people see that all the scary things Sarah Palin and others have predicted — such as the so-called death panels — were baseless. We own the bill and the health-care votes. We need to get some of the upside. (P.S.: Health care is a jobs creator.)

If you're a worried Independent or reasonable Republican, read Jon Rauch's case for the Senate bill. Please.

Fallows found a chart (click to enlarge):

What states might look like if, as with Congressional districts, their borders were periodically redrawn to reflect population changes…This map is by Neil Freeman from FakeIsTheNewReal.org. It's based on a division of the country into 50 state units with more-or-less equal population — 5 to 6 million apiece — and preserving existing boundaries where possible. (As with the new state of "Missouri.") I love many of the other state names — Lincoln, Joaquin, Tombigbee. My childhood home would have been along the border of Coronado and Mojave. In a reapportioned Senate each of these units would have two votes.

Yglesias imagines the consequences.

A save-the-date to shame all others.

Michael Wolff's new journalism:

So here was a bit of perhaps no-more-than-fanciful scuttlebutt that I let fly—that, courtesy of Twitter, and a cacophony of re-tweets, I essentially published.

A very short while ago, this would have been unpublishable.

In a word, we're chuffed:

As for what Obama reads online, his advisers said he looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president.

Obama Skips Jury Duty

The Big Picture's best coverage yet.

Listen to an enraged Independent:

I believed that Obama would try to level the playing field between big business and small, between thieves and honest business people, between greed and moderation. Instead, he bailed out the most wicked and left the rest of us fail. I watched with horror as Obama followed Bush's lead in bailing out banks, auto makers, insurance companies, all of those companies deemed "too big to fail." What does that mean? My small company got thrown under the bus and my savings were ravaged – perhaps Wall Street is using them for bonuses this year.

Not to mention President Obama is recklessly spending our country's future into oblivion. It was clear after just 90 days what a mistake I'd made. My taxes have gone up and my quality of life has gone down.

If this is the basis for revolt, what can one say?

If Obama and Bush had refused to bail out the banks, does this small business owner believe she'd be in business at all? Is she demanding – in a conservative outlet – that the federal government bail out all small businesses in trouble? Or what? Who "threw" her small business under which bus? And then the usual reckless spending schtick – when basic economics will tell you that drastically tightening your belt in a recession that might have been as bad as the 1930s would not exactly have helped small business.

What you have here is big babyism. After the worst downturn in memory, bequeathed a massive and growing debt, two failing wars, a financial sector threatening to bring down the entire economy, Obama has betrayed this person by preventing a Second Great Depression.

We will hear more of these non-sequiturs; the 24-hour news cycle prevents any memory past the last six months; the easy, lazy meme of Obama-the-lefty will be pressed home by FNC/RNC and the MSM will grab onto it because it's a narrative they can understand and that helps insulate them from charges of bias. That none of this has any direct relationship with economic and political reality is barely relevant.

If you missed his emotional, classy speech from Friday, here it is.

(Illustration by Clay Larsen)