MOE LANE TALKS WITH CHARLES LOLLAR, who may run against Steny Hoyer.

ARE THE TALIBAN WINNING IN AFGHANISTAN? Milbloggers say the WSJ got it wrong.

DAVID HYMAN: “Only Two Things Scare Me: And one of them is antibiotic resistance.” “Antibiotic resistance is a major public health problem. Every year, two million Americans acquire bacterial infections in the hospital, and 70% of those infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic. MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staph aureus) has attracted the most media attention: the CDC estimated that MRSA caused 94,000 life-threatening infections, and 18,650 deaths in 2005.”

BEN CARDIN JEERED AND BOOED AT TOWN HALL. “Cardin said how to pay for the bill has not yet been worked out, a comment that prompted even more derision from the audience.”

C-SPAN video is here.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Was Hillary jetlagged? That’s a hell of an excuse for the lady who purveyed the 3 a.m. ad! It’s always 3 a.m. somewhere.

C-SPAN IS SOLICITING CITIZEN VIDEO from the health care town halls. So is PJTV. No reason you can’t send your stuff to both.

IN THE MAIL: From Lynn Sandra Kahn, Performance Networks: Transforming Governance for the 21st Century.

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Beyond the Angry Mobs. “Run for office. Yes, you. Go to Washington. Fly economy and talk to people.” What, no Gulfstreams?

PETER SUDERMAN: If Health-Care Reform Passes, Will Protests Increase? The French example says yes. . . .

MEGAN MCARDLE: RATIONING BY ANY OTHER NAME:

Robert Wright notes that “we already ration health care; we just let the market do the rationing.” This is a true point made by the proponents of health care reform. But I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be so interesting. You could make this statement about any good:

“We already ration food; we just let the market do the rationing.”
“We already ration gasoline; we just let the market do the rationing.”
“We already ration cigarettes; we just let the market do the rationing.”

And indeed, this was an argument that was made in favor of socialism. (No, okay, I’m not calling you socialists!) And yet, most of us realize that there are huge differences between price rationing and government rationing, and that the latter is usually much worse for everyone. This is one of the things that most puzzles me about the health care debate: statements that would strike almost anyone as stupid in the context of any other good suddenly become dazzling insights when they’re applied to hip replacements and otitis media.

And note her point on diffusion of responsibility via rules.

UPDATE: Also, the market doesn’t deny you a hip replacement or a pacemaker because someone in government thinks your political views are “un-American.” Given the cronyism and thuggery we’ve seen with the bailouts, etc., I’m not confident this would hold true under a government health program. And I’m absolutely certain there would be a special track for insiders and favorites.

I WONDER IF HE’LL SAY THAT THE SEIU ACTED “STUPIDLY” in sending thugs who beat up Ken Gladney? Obama to enter town hall fray. I predict more nuance. It’s not like this was Skip Gates. Funny how the story leaves that beating out while playing up some non-issue “incidents with firearms.” Not up to The Hill’s usual standard — seems like a lot of the stuff comes straight from a ThinkProgress press release. Which is a dangerous source of information.

UPDATE: I dropped an email to The HIll’s online editor, Bridget Johnson, and got this reply: “Your point is very valid, Glenn. I’ve just had a talk with staff on the need to carefully balance coverage on this issue. Thanks for sharing your concerns.”

Thanks for listening to them!

CONGRESSMAN STEVE ROTHMAN: Listening To New Jersey. “We’re broke!”

KEITH HENNESSEY ROUNDS UP some “fishy” statements about health care reform.

TOWN HALLS AND ANGRY CONSTITUENTS: Some history. I had forgotten the story of Dan Rostenkowski fleeing an angry mob.

BROOKS & DUNN ARE SPLITTING UP. The historic tale of my only meeting with the famed pair is told here.

ED KOCH: Falling Out of Love With Barack Obama. Koch, who just got a quadruple bypass at 84, wonders if his medical care would be regarded as not worth it under ObamaCare.

NEW POSTER reveals the ugly face of racism.

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: Cognitive deficits putting the APA’s nonprofit status at risk? It’s by Barbara Oakley, author of Evil Genes.

WE MAY BE ABOUT TO SEE Tropical Storm Ana. “This would be the latest formation date for the Atlantic basin’s ‘A’ storm since… well, since 1992, when Andrew formed on August 17, not far from where proto-Ana is now. Not to suggest that Ana is likely to be another Andrew, but it just goes to show that a slow-starting or below-average hurricane season is no guarantee we won’t see devastating storms.” I’d rather we didn’t.

WELL, HE WOULDN’T NEED HEALTH INSURANCE if SEIU thugs hadn’t beaten him up. It takes chutzpah to try to turn him into a poster child for ObamaCare. This is close to killing your parents and asking for mercy as an orphan . . . .

UPDATE: By the way, Gateway Pundit is Gladney Central these days.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Never mind!” Reader Joe O’Rourke writes:

At the bottom of the thinkprogress article, it mentions an update that, in fact, Gladney is insured.

Of course, they left this update at the very bottom instead of mentioning it at the top. It sorta negates the article’s premise….

An army of Emily Litellas. Really, you couldn’t make this kind of thing up. Well, you could, but thanks to ThinkProgress and the Obamacare gang that can’t shoot straight, you don’t have to.

RON BAILEY ON climate-change geoengineering.

MICHAEL LIND: Are liberals seceding from sanity? The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a group. He’s right, of course. But isn’t insulting white Southerners one of the main pleasures of liberalism? I mean, if you have to give that up, what’s the point? “Reform is difficult and expensive. And it is much less fun than caricaturing entire ethnic or regional groups, particularly those whose members tend to have less money, less education and less power than those who lampoon them.”

POLITICO: Congressional Jets May Be Scrapped. “The new congressional jets may be getting scrapped. After an uproar over a proposed purchase of new executive jets for use by senior government official, including members of Congress, the top Defense appropriator in the House has offered to eliminate funding for the planes – but only if the Pentagon, which operates the jets, agrees. . . . The controversy is not going unnoticed in the Senate Democratic leadership circles either. Senate insiders said the Senate Appropriations Committee is unlikely to approve the additional plane funding, although Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the panel, was unavailable for comment on Monday. Yet when the Pentagon-spending bill was taken up by the House, first in the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, then the full committee, and finally on the chamber floor, the executive-plane provision attracted no notice and no opposition emerged from either side of the aisle.”

Whatever. I don’t want to hear any more sanctimony about carbon footprints. I’ve got nothing against private jets, but when it comes to global warming, carbon emissions, and the like, those who fly on ’em instead of going commercial, should — what’s the President’s phrase? — oh, right: “Don’t do a lot of talking.”

MICKEY KAUS: Get Your Latest John Edwards Love Child Rumor Right Here! I’m more interested in financial fraud, but we may hear about that, too.

BLUE ON BLUE: ABC News: White House Disputes Pelosi Contention That Town Hall Protests are “Un-American.”

“I think there’s actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the comments.

True enough. He’s obviously reading the right papers.