Well that was quick. Yesterday, I wrote that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should try to kill Max Baucus' bill, despite the bills bipartisan support. I think he may have torpedoed it before I even hit publish. And so went the day that Reid, "cut a wide swath through the Senate."

From Politico:

"Grassley and three to four Republicans would have voted for it, but all the other Republicans would have beaten the living s—t out of us [during the 2010 midterms], claiming the bill was too bloated," said a Democrat who supported Reid's decision, explaining the leader's logic."

As the story says, the Majority Leader replaced the bill with a much smaller and narrower $15 billion version. There is some question as to whether the bill is too small, which is funny considering that Republicans have been bashing Democrats for about nine months now for wanting to pass big bills. How can you not love politics?

And if you ever wonder why people look down on voters, it might be because they believe this stuff.

Some links:

• You may have heard that Bill Clinton was in the hospital yesterday. He apparently will be released today and is alright after having two stents placed in one of his coronary arteries.
• Interesting look at Obama's politics and whether he really does want to be a "great one-term president." I also noticed this exchange and remembered it:
  

  "If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression . . . the result is going to be the same. I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us in this fix in the first place." He continued: "If our response ends up being, you know . . . we don't want to stir things up here," then "I don't know why people would say, 'Boy, we really want to make sure those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us.'"

• Uh, thing is, very few of you out there think DC is doing anything good right now. Thank goodness I don't have an approval poll. Just living here would bring it down.
• For those of you who just say, "a Kennedy could fix everything," well, for the first time in half a century, there will not be one in Congress.

What a week, huh? For me as well, since it included a redeye flight across the country, only to be sitting in my office less than an hour off the plane.

Anyway, wanted to start this off with a little anecdote from the New York Times. In the Week in Review section:

"A new insurance industry study found that bans on use of handheld cellphones while driving had made no difference in accident rates.

Researchers said they were puzzled, since it was clear that using a handheld phone while at the wheel increases accident risk and that the bans sharply reduce use of the phones. "We would expect to see a decrease in crashes," said Adrian Lund of the highway Loss Data Institute. "But we aren't seeing it."

Amazingly, the last sentence of the blurb notes that one theory is the "hands-free phones...may be just as distracting as the handheld kind.

Ya think? Seriously, it is somewhat amazing that this hasn't become part of this debate at all. Many cities (and the entire state of Washington) have banned talking or texting on cellphones while driving. None have admitted that the distraction is your mind being focused on the phone conversation, not holding the phone to your ear. If that were the case, we'd have to ban stick-shift cars too.

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To a review of the week. You all know that the president gave his State of the Union on Wednesday. It honestly doesn't nearly matchup with his visit to the House Republican's retreat in Baltimore on Friday. (By the way, how did the House GOP get so screwed that they only went to Baltimore, while the rest of the party is in Hawaii right now?)