Sen. Sanders: Anyone want to get rid of the VA? I didn't think so.

I enjoyed this bit from Bernie Sanders. Complete w/ a nonsensical interjection from Sen. McCain....

Compared to what?

The congressional Republicans would like you to know just how complicated our health care system will be under the Democrats' proposed reforms. Yes, they've tried this trick before, but they're generally right: it'll be complicated.

But--like their claims that health care post-reform will cost a lot of money, that some of that money will go to bureaucrats, and that these bureaucrats will make decisions about allowing and preventing care--the Republicans tend to skip the part about how whatever bad thing they're describing IS ALREADY TRUE UNDER THE CURRENT SYSTEM. That's a fairly significant thing to leave out. (Someone should point it out to them; I'm sure it was an honest mistake they made! All those times, over and over again.)

Anyway, TNR has a good corrective: a chart showing how convoluted health care is right now. Oh nos! We can't give this up for something COMPLICATED!

Meanwhile, Jonathan Chait details how the Republicans aren't really acting like Republicans on health care--they're being awfully spendy. What they're acting like is health insurance lobbyists--e.g., by opposing cuts to Medicare and Medicaid payments. WTF? Here's Chait:

Conservatives certainly have understandable ideological reasons to oppose the Obama health care reform as a whole. It's the particulars of their opposition that arouse curiosity. The right has presented its opposition to health care reform as principled disagreement with "big government." But opposing "big government" can mean different things. Does it mean opposition to regulation? To spending? To the direct funding of public services as opposed to via private sector middlemen? The Republican Party and its ideological allies have defined it increasingly as whatever suits the profitability of the health care industry.

It's not that every conservative apparatchik is walking around Washington toting a suitcase of Pharma cash and a conspiratorial grin. Intellectual corruption doesn't work that way. The health care industry has spent vast sums to influence politicians and opinion leaders, mostly on the right. Health care is an issue where precious few conservatives have paid any attention to the details of policy. And the industry is a natural ally of the conservative goal of preventing single-payer health care. So the industry has managed to define its self-interest as the conservative position on health care.

And Jonathan Cohn reminds us to stop comparing our health care future to Canada and England, neither of which represents a model that's remotely on the table here, and to look instead at France and the Netherlands--countries whose citizens have no interest in trading places with us when it comes to health care.

Salmon vs. DeLong on stimulus

Felix Salmon: The economy's still bad. This means we spent too much on the stimulus bill, and any more will be useless.

Brad DeLong: That's "like sticking your toe into the ocean and pointing out that your hair is still dry."

That we may be several

The Episcopal bishops have voted to affirm gay and lesbian ordination. Now the resolution returns to the House of Delegates.

Anglicans in the Wilderness declares a "golden opportunity to pray online for The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion," adding the following:

For the sake of preserving an atmosphere of peace, when you come to pray we hope your prayers posted online will not presume or ask for any particular outcome at General Convention, nor preach on any hot-button issue.

Okay, fair enough. But then there's this from their Twitter feed, complete with a link to a not-exactly-neutral writeup:

Thank you Lord for the clarity of TEC's D025. Help us now to choose. Help us to decide rightly. http://bit.ly/kPYXi

Thank God for the clarity of confirming that TEC is apostate and deserves to be cut loose? That's a rather suspicious-sounding prayer. If your wish is to stay in communion with a TEC that doesn't ordain gays and lesbians, wouldn't the appropriate prayer be one of lament that the bishops decided this way, or petition that the House of Delegates will somehow decide the other way, rather than gratitude for CLARITY? If your goal is for the apostate liberals to be even more so and thus further marginalized, fine, but don't call that praying for the church.

Elsewhere, Mark Silk: "Give the Duncanites a couple of decades, and they'll be fighting over the ordination of gays and lesbians to.

"Cruising down Wilson / All up in my Prius"

Northern Virginia's Arlington County is an interesting specimen of urban-village planning, with walkable business districts and high-rise residential buildings built around subway stops. By no means a worst-case scenario when it comes to suburban living.

Still, this video (via FPR) about Arlington's yuppy-and-chain-store landscape is pretty funny:

Yet another reason not to shop at Trader Joe's

They're the 17th best Chicago-area grocery chain on sustainable seafood issues.

Safeway/Dominick's is fifth.

James Stambaugh's "Christianity must..." list

I don't think I'll ever agree 100 percent with someone else's list of what Christians need to believe / do / say / focus on / whatever. But James Stambaugh's 10 Things Christianity Must Do gets closer than most.

I'm not quite as absolutist as he is about either #3 or #8 on his list. But I think I'm pretty much with him on the rest of it. Take a look--good stuff.

Rick Warren among the Muslims

The latest episode in Rick Warren's ongoing effort to roughly alternate when he's pissing off liberals vs. his own base: he's speaking at the Islamic Society of North America's annual convention this weekend. On Our Nation's Birthday, no less!

Good for him.