Jonah Goldberg at Chron.com:

"In March, [Rush Limbaugh], the talk-show host and bete noir of progressives everywhere, said that the health-care bill wending its way through Congress would eventually be dubbed the 'Ted Kennedy Memorial Health-Care Bill.' ... The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee initiated a petition drive demanding that the Republican Party formally denounce Limbaugh for his 'reprehensible' and 'truly outrageous' comments.

"Fast-forward to a few hours after the announcement of Kennedy's death. Suddenly, naming the bill after Kennedy would be a moving tribute [and a tactic to gain support for it]. ABC News reports that 'the idea of naming the legislation for Kennedy has been quietly circulating for months' but was kicked into overdrive by Sen. Robert Byrd, the Democratic Party's eldest statesman.

"Intriguingly, this suggests that either Democrats already had the idea when Limbaugh floated it, which would mean their protests were just so much cynical posturing, or they actually got the idea from Limbaugh himself, which would be too ironic for a Tom Wolfe novel."

Mixed up on Medicare

Joshua Holland at Alternet.com:

"As the health-care discussion has descended from contentious to surreal, there is perhaps one message that encapsulates better than any other the incoherence of those expressions of rage seen at town hall meetings across the country: 'Keep government out of my Medicare!'

"In South Carolina, an enraged constituent told Republican Rep. Bob Inglis to 'keep your government hands off my Medicare!' [and] a woman reportedly sent a letter to the White House stating in no uncertain terms, 'I don't want government-run health care, I don't want socialized medicine and don't touch my Medicare.'

Of course, Medicare is a government health-insurance program, which, by the way, usually does better in surveys of patient satisfaction than private plans.

In praise of angry mobs

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America wonders why anti-health-reform "mini-mobs" have been treated by media elites as a window into the American mind, a "phenomenon" (USA Today) staffed by a "citizen army" (Bloomberg News).

Mr. Boehlert notes that "during the week of August 10-16, the topic of health care, and specifically the politics and the protests of health care, accounted for a staggering 62 percent of all cable news coverage, according to the Pew Research Center's weekly survey. My guess is that you would be hard-pressed to find a single week during the run-up to the Iraq war when liberal anti-war protests accounted for just 6 percent of the cable news coverage.

"Why the gaping disparity? ... How come liberal anti-war protesters were shunned by the press, but the mini-mobs are showered with incessant coverage? It's because apparently when angry -- and overwhelmingly white -- conservatives protest, they come attached with a direct line to the American psyche. Liberals, though, most certainly do not."

What's up with women?

Sharon Lerner of The Nation:

"No group is doing well under our network of private insurers, which is more holes than net. But women fare particularly badly in terms of health, being more likely than men to leave a prescription unfilled; forgo seeing a needed specialist; and skip a medical test, treatment or follow-up.

"Financially, women are worse off, too, in large part because they earn less money. Despite the fact that they skimp on their care to cut costs, three in five women are still unable to pay their medical bills. All of which makes it surprising that men and women support health reform in almost equal numbers (38 versus 40 percent consider it a top priority, according to a recent Kaiser poll). Odder and ickier still is the sight of Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey and other women leading, or sometimes blindly following, the wacko town-hall movement against reform."

Pension freak out

Chris Briem at Null Space ponders a possible state takeover of Pittsburgh's "miasmic" pension system, a possibility that has the mayor freaking out because of the added cost over time to the city budget:

"Lost in the minutia, but beyond the immediate financial impacts, the biggest repercussion of a state takeover of the pension system is that the state is going to hire the next actuary who will evaluate the systems total liability. At least that is my assumption. I'm willing to give odds that any state-hired actuary is going to come up with a qualitatively different numbers than the city's actuary has in recent cycles for how big the pension liability really is and how big the minimum pension payment needs to be each year. The city has been over-estimating future investment returns, underestimating future mortality of city retirees and playing with other assumptions over the years. It will not be pretty if redone with more standard assumptions."

Dollars for dishwashers!

Via Slate.com: Now that cash for clunkers has wrapped up, get ready for the sequel: dollars for dishwashers! The $300 million federal program is coming to an appliance store near you, according to the Wall Street Journal. The initiative is intended to boost sales of energy-efficient appliances, but its scope will be small compared with the auto program. Thus, it's doubtful that the program will make much of a difference to the big appliance makers."