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Lots of good points, @Karoli; much to meditate on. Would love clarification on the following comment, though: "Can anyone familiar with history point to any time where a bill has made it this far, been pulled back by proponents, and lived as a stronger version of itself?" How is it a "stronger version of itself?" I don't follow Congressional maneuvers with the same background knowledge or attention to detail that you do; I'm probably missing some key information that would clarify your meaning. Really like your myth-busting data. It's refreshing to see a recap of details that can easily escape us. In some cases, your data gives me a point of departure for further research, so I can come to my own conclusions. Without your article, sorting out the key questions to investigate would be much harder for me. Also, I agree that waiting for a better bill, with so many "people hanging by a thread," is a luxury that only the well-heeled can afford. For many legislators, insulated from financial woes, much of this healthcare debate is about anything and everything except healthcare reform. All that said, I'm obviously an idealist who yearns for global, systemic change. I would want to change the fundamental nature of dance competition's culture, if my daughter were involved. It would be hard for me to keep my eye on the pragmatic truths: deep, systemic change of any cultural institution (socioeconomic, sociocultural, or sociopolitical) is a project for centuries, for eons. It's evolutionary. For today, how does your daughter keep following her passion in a system that's unfair? For today, how do we facilitate efforts to get as many health insurance benefits for the most people in a system that's unjust? I'm not sure I entirely buy your solution―but overall, it's a hell of a lot more practical than the one I was about to employ: sinking into helplessness, hopelessness, and depression... In fact, it's a hell of a lot more idealistic than sinking into despair, too! I fe

Most Americans, regardless of political party, don't understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don't get. How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries? How can we slash funding for education and clean energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don't need and didn't ask for?

Both Republicans and Democrats have been explaining that "There Is No Alternative," we need public policies promoting austerity because government is "out of money." The question seems to be not "do we need austerity?" but "will we be austere sooner or austere later?" Meanwhile, the bipartisan consensus is that the government is definitely out of money. But these assertions are at odds with the common knowledge that the U.S. government literally creates its own money. Unlike the euro, the dollar is a sovereign, fiat currency, unconstrained by exchange rates or treaties. And since Nixon closed the gold window, government can issue dollars without waiting for gold or silver mines to provide any backing for them. So we can't possibly be "out of money," any more than the Bureau of Weights and Measures can be "out of inches."

Can Greece pay its debts? What about Portugal or Spain? Can a new prime minister reduce Britain's gaping budget deficit? Will the crisis rocking Europe spread? And what about the American economy?

Either/or thinking, especially when used with the force-of-reason thinking, which believes in using only coercion and raw power or forcing people to accept the truth which might in the end be untrue, are very dangerous doctrines. They can readily be viewed by observing the US-led pre-emptive wars and post-lengthy occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan that have caused mayhem, death and destruction for millions. They can also be seen by how the US is unwilling to work with Iran and continues to threaten the Islamic Republic with sanctions and war.

Speaking at the Twitter Town Hall at the White House today, the president said Congress "shouldn't be toying" with the debt ceiling and cautioned against risking the financial health of the country in order to protect the interests of the super wealthy.   "Never in our history has the United States defaulted on its debt. The debt ceiling should not be something that is used as a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners, for oil and gas companies that are making billions of dollars because the price of gasoline has gone up so high.  I mean, I'm happy to have those debates.  I think the American people are on my side on this," Obama said. The president was adamant that when it comes to fixing the economy and solving the deficit problem "we should go with what works," and that's a tax increase on the wealthy. "If the wealthiest among us -- and I include myself in this category -- are willing to give up a little bit more, then we can solve this problem.  It does not take a lot… when people say, you know, "job-killing tax increases, that's what Obama's proposing," we're not going to," he said. "You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.  And the facts are that a modest increase for wealthy individuals is not shown to have an adverse impact on job growth." "We can test the two theories.  You had what happened during the '90s.  Right?  Taxes for wealthy individuals were somewhat higher, businesses boomed, the economy boomed, great job growth;  and then the 2000s, when taxes were cut on wealthy individuals, jobs didn't grow as fast, businesses didn't grow as fast. I mean, it's not like we haven't tried what these other folks are pitching.  It didn't work.  And we should go with what works," he said.

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody," she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the "social contract" that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

"Pollin, Robert 18 Million Jobs by 2012: How Obama Can Save His Presidency Publication Date: 3/1/2010"

"Pollin, Robert | Wicks-Lim, Jeannette | Garrett-Peltier, Heidi Green Prosperity: How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standards in the United States Publication Date: 6/18/2009"

"A Student Debt Strike Force Takes Off Debt-and the shame that surrounds it-is the tie that binds the 99 percent. Can young people reimagine it as something productive, rather than a tool for profiteering? "

"Why regulate a broken system when we can build a better one? Welcome to New Economy 101. "

What should our priorities be for the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight? What hearings would you like to see? What contract or program needs additional oversight? What laws, regulations, and policies need to be changed? I'll need all the suggestions and support I can get -- I'll draw heavily on your input as we move forward toward a system that better serves the government and the taxpayer. -Senator Claire McCaskill

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search (and copy) -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.\n\nThe policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.\n\nBut representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.\n\n"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."

Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. The magic is when an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. Information visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data. We all deal with data that we'd like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.

"It is by now commonplace to observe that democracy is in a weakened state in the United States. But could it be that the U.S. is no longer a democracy at all, if it ever truly was?"