Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up, Daily Kos, May 6, 2010, by DemFromCT, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Gail Collins:

“I think you’re going too far here,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. He was speaking in opposition to a bill that would keep people on the F.B.I. terrorist watch list from buying guns and explosives.

Say what?

Yes, if you are on the terrorist watch list, the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47. This makes sense to Congress because, as Graham accurately pointed out, “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying.”

Nate Silver:

Polling during the past 48 hours has tended to show very slight gains for the Conservatives and Labour at the expense of the Liberal Democrats. Our projection model now forecasts that Conservatives will have 312 seats in the House of Commons (up from 308 in our previous forecast), Labour 204 (up from 198) and Liberal Democrats, 103 (down from 113).

Kaiser Health News:

Politico reports that several goals of Republicans — including the repeal of the health care law — “put them at odds with the majority of voters, according to a new survey by Resurgent Republic,” a nonprofit polling and research group established by “GOP operative” Ed Gillespie to assist conservatives and Republicans. “The findings, unveiled at a Tuesday morning panel by the group, highlight a major challenge faced by Republicans headed into the 2010 election cycle: While their base appears more motivated than that of the Democrats, they will have to find ways to address hot-button issues like healthcare, immigration and climate change that do not alienate critical independent and swing voters.”

And even the enthusiasm gap is shrinking.

Republican registered voters’ enthusiasm about voting in this year’s midterm elections has declined significantly in recent weeks. As a result, Republicans’ advantage over Democrats on this measure has shrunk from 19 points in early April to 10 points in the latest weekly aggregate.

David Brown

Most [doctors] are in practices with five or fewer other physicians. They keep their records on paper in longhand. When they need to consult a colleague, they reach for the telephone. They bill for each visit. They have little idea about how their skills compare to those of fellow practitioners, nor do most know what their patients really think about the care they give.

The new health-care law aims to change most of that.

Fifty years from now, it is likely that almost all doctors will be members of teams that include case managers, social workers, dietitians, telephone counselors, data crunchers, guideline instructors, performance evaluators and external reviewers. They will be parts of organizations (which either employ them or contract with them) that are responsible for patients in and out of the hospital, in sickness and in health, over decades.

The records of what they do for a patient — and what every other doctor does — will be in electronic form, accessible from any computer. Software will gently remind them what to consider as they treat, and try to prevent, diseases. How the patients fare will be measured and publicized, and used in part to judge practitioners’ performance. At the same time, the health-care organizations, aided by the government, will make an effort to let caregivers know the “best practices” they’re expected to follow.

David Biespiel (poet and writer):

“…consider the balkanized world of American poetry. Like Americans everywhere, America’s poets have turned insular and clustered in communities of aesthetic sameness, communicating only among those with similar literary heroes, beliefs, values, and poetics. Enter any regional poetry scene in any American metropolis or college town, and you will find the same cliquey village mentality with the same stylistic breakdowns. Over here you have the post-avant prose poets, over there the kitchen-sink confessionalists, and across the road are the shiny formalists—and no one ever breaks bread together. As with politics, where you have “I’m voting for That One” liberals and “Time for a Tea Party” conservatives, poetry has evolved into a self-selected enclave, and also—exactly like other sectors of American life—it has stratified into enclaves within enclaves that are hyper-specific and self-referential.

“Such inclination toward stratification—whether it’s exemplified by the world of poetry or something else—is more than just an example of demographic sorting. It’s a modern American phenomenon that ultimately corrodes both self and society. Whether it’s in poetry or politics, self-exclusion catalyzes isolation and diminishes shared connections. In its more partisan forms, it impedes cooperation and contributes to a chronic inability to find common ground—whether it’s literary or political ground. Making fine distinctions in art, aesthetics, poetry, and politics matters, but honest discourse is about bridging differences, not just defending one’s side, something you rarely see in poetry’s rudimentary or even iconic debates—or, for that matter, in the country’s political ones. More, when you look at a fringe art like poetry in light of this civic gleaning, you quickly conclude that the capacity for poets to connect to audiences from more than some micro-segment of American life is fatally imperiled. Unless something gives, the fractures will just keep fracturing.”

Whether it’s music, experimental theatre, poetry or politics, if your audience becomes too small, we all lose something. David also posts political commentary at the Arena.

Speaking of the Arena, Greg Dworkin (that’s me):

Joe Lieberman hasn’t contributed much of anything useful to the national dialog since he lost the vice presidency in 2000, and he hasn’t added to his record with a proposal to strip citizens of their citizenship by presidential fiat. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican in the White House – absolute power will lead to abuse of power. This is a really bad idea that shouldn’t go any further than castigating Lieberman for suggesting it.

Now, if Lieberman wants to rehab himself, he should spend more time with John Kerry and Lindsay Graham working on those energy proposals. That actually shows some promise, though my faith in Lieberman to follow through in a productive way is just about out of gas. But hey, show me wrong, Joe. Do something useful.

Also see, David Obey won’t seek reelection, Politico, May 5, 2010, by David Rogers.

Morning Juice: Cheers and Jeers, Daily Kos, May 6, 2010, by Bill in Portland Maine, which has the full conversation from alleged emails between Family Research Council co-founder and his Rentboy.com young male prostitute hire. Juicy.

Watch Tom Friedman on Greece, BP and Terror, ABC news video, May 6, 2010 – 4:48.

See Trying to shirk responsibility for spill, BP CEO predicts ‘lots of illegitimate’ lawsuits because ‘this is America.’, Think Progress, May 6, 2010, by Alex Seitz-Wald, excerpt quoted verbatim:

BP is financially responsible for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, so it is desperately trying the limit the financial and legal fall out. The company tried to buy off coastal residents and local fishermen hired to help clean up the mess with payments and jobs in exchange for signing a waiver promising not to sue. Alabama’s attorney general and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano both decried the waivers and asked BP to stop circulating them, prompting the company to admit it had made a “misstep.” The company has vowed to pay all “legitimate” legal claims from residents or businesses who suffer from the disaster, but BP CEO Tony Hayward insultingly told the Times of London yesterday that because “this is America,” many of the claims will be “illegitimate”.

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DemFromCT is a longtime member of the Daily Kos community with interests ranging from polling to Iraq to bird flu, and has graciously agreed to allow us here at Evans Liberal Politics to publish his articles on an ongoing basis. He is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwikie.com) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum (www.newfluwiki2.com). Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links.

You can view his diaries at Daily Kos, here. DemFromCT is a featured writer at Daily Kos, and you can read more about him here. You are invited to email DemFromCT.

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