Some of the day’s best reads:
- E.J. Dionne on the GOP and reconciliation: “For those who feared that Barack Obama did not have any Lyndon Johnson in him, the president’s determination to press ahead and get health-care reform done in the face of Republican intransigence came as something of a relief.”
- Stan Collender on reducing the deficit: “[I]nsisting that the only way to reduce the deficit is to cut spending is also deceptive and insidious. If you suspend your ideology and personal preferences for a moment, it’s actually quite easy to see how wrong it is to say that the deficit is solely a spending problem.”
- The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson on Obama and bipartisanship: “Closing the door on the bipartisan phantom was Obama’s coda on health care reform.”
- Reuters on a new EU biofuels study: “Biodiesel and other ‘green’ fuels that Europeans put in their cars can have unintended consequences for tropical forests and wetlands, European Union reports show — the first evidence of EU misgivings.”
- Ed Kilgore on Rahm Emanuel and the Beltway proxy wars: “Without question, internecine strife in the White House is a perpetual favorite of the beltway media. But the important thing for Democrats is to avoid the mistake of feeding this dangerous beast by making administration personalities proxies in fights over ideology, strategy or tactics, or scapegoats for disappointments and frustrations.”
