Moderate to heavy losses

After an August recess marked by raucous town halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.

Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House — not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.

Top political analyst Charlie Cook, in a special August 20 update to subscribers, wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”

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Is the doctor in?

When it comes to the health care reform debate, Canada's single-payer system often is held up as an example of success by supporters -- and by opponents as a warning of the pitfalls.

Answering questions at the Summit of the Americas on Monday, President Obama seemed ambivalent about Canadian health care.

"I don't find Canadians particularly scary, but I guess some of the opponents of reform think that they make a good bogeyman," he said.

Obama went on to say the Canadian system wouldn't work in the U.S., but many American doctors believe it does some things better.

"Our health care system delivers probably the highest specialty quality care in the world but our primary care infrastructure is not good," said Dr. Joseph Ross of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

Canadians have a longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates and lower rates of obesity and diabetes than people in the United States. Canadians' primary care doctors get paid more and spend more time with their patients than doctors across the border to the south.

But Canadians also wait twice as long for non-emergency care and sometimes come to the U.S. for specialized treatment.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says the single-payer edifice is starting to crumble.

"What you're starting to see in Canada is that it is falling apart, and you're seeing the growth of a private market for a lot of essential services," he said.

That private market was born after a 2005 Canadian Supreme Court ruling ended the government's monopoly on some health care services.

But since people have to pay out of pocket for them, Canada's public system is still overloaded.

"The average wait time to get an appointment with a new primary care physician is 17 weeks and for specialty care it is even worse," he said.

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Which Obama did we elect?

The biggest concern for many in the healthcare debate is the move towards a single-payer heathcare system controlled by the government. Obama denies that this is the direction he wants, but he has advocated it in the past: Which Obama did we elect?

Something fishy in California

The Central Valley of California was once considered the bread basket of America. But now farms all over that region have been allowed to dry up. Now why? Because of a 2-inch minnow on the endangered species list.

Now, environmentalists claim that the fish was getting caught in the water pumps that provided the farms with water, so to protect the tiny fish, the pumps were turned off. And farmers, well, they were left high and dry, and entire communities are now feeling the impact.

Some towns in the area are now facing unemployment rates of up to 40 percent. And many residents are now forced to visit food banks. But the people of that great area, they've had enough, and they're speaking out tonight.

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Highest civilian honor goes to...Harvey Milk?

Among the 16 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Wednesday were physicist Stephen Hawking, Sen. Ted Kennedy, tennis legend Billie Jean King and the late gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official from a major city in the United States. He was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, and encouraged LGBT citizens to live their lives openly.

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Good choice for State

Short memory

A poster recently circulated depicting President Obama as the "Joker" has created quite a stir, prompting Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson to call it "politically mean-spirited and dangerous." But comparing the commander in chief to Batman's nemesis is nothing new in American political satire, as former President George W. Bush certainly knows. He appeared in a similar image submitted to Vanity Fair last July.



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If nothing else, this is the difference McCain would have made as president

WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. John McCain, his party's failed 2008 presidential contender, announced Monday he'd join the vast majority of the GOP to vote against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who's on track to be confirmed this week as the first Hispanic justice.

McCain's decision, the day before the Senate debates President Barack Obama's first high court nominee, underscored the degree to which Republicans -- even those who, like the Arizonan, represent large Hispanic populations -- have turned against Sotomayor. Conservatives argue she'd bring her own biases to the bench.

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Gates arrest: Just want to record this for posterity

Obama was asked about Gates' arrest at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care Wednesday night and began his response by saying Gates was a friend and he didn't have all the facts.

"But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry," Obama said. "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact."

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