'Please R.S.V.P. to Attend Our Summit. And F.Y.': If you were going to write an  invitation designed to make sure Republicans don't come to President Obama's 2/25 "bipartisan" health care summit at Blair House, it would be this one , no? .... Do Rahm Emanuel and Kathleen Sebelius want Republicans to attend? If so, you'd think they'd be less agressive and argumentative . Sample:

Now is the time to act on behalf of the millions of Americans and small businesses who are counting on meaningful health insurance reform. In the last year, there has been an extraordinary effort to craft effective legislation. There have been hundreds of hours of committee hearings and mark-ups in both the House of Representatives and Senate, with nearly all of those sessions televised on C-SPAN. The Senate spent over 160 hours on the Senate floor considering health insurance reform legislation and, for the first time in history, both the House of Representatives and Senate have approved comprehensive health reform legislation. This is the closest our Nation has been to resolving this issue in the nearly 100 years that it has been debated.
The Blair House meeting is the next step in this process.

Unsubtle subtext : We like our bill and the purpose of this meeting is to set things up so it can pass. ... But what if, as a Republican, you don't think we are "the closest ... to resolving this issue in ... nearly 100 years"? Maybe you don't think the bill will resolve the issue at all! (I disagree, but I'm not a Republican.) ... Even if Obama's only trying to appear bipartisan, his aides are doing a mighty poor job of conveying that impression. Did they hire Chris Lehane to draft it? ... 5:44 P.M.

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And your body says, "This won't be cheap:"  NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman drawing lessons last night from ex-President Clinton's recent heart incident, which she called a "real 'listen to your body' moment":

And I think this is going to be true not only for the president, but for everyone out there who's [got] heart disease. Once you've been diagnosed with underlying heart disease, you get treatment, but the word cure is never something that's really been tossed around. So making sure the cholesterol and triglycerides are under control, the diet and exercise are rechecked. But also that intuitive button that if you don't feel well, if you're short on breath, and if you just have this brooding idea that something's wrong, that's when you pick up the phone, you call your doctor and then you go in promptly. [E.A.]

Seeing your doctor every time you have a brooding, "intuitive sense" that something's wrong? That's not going to bend the curve, is it? (It will in fact generate a lot of false alarm doctor's visits and tests that can then get classified as "waste" by the curve-benders, no?) ... 12:43 A.M.

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Husband cheats on you? Sue the husband's aide. I mean, of course! Death by 1000 Papercuts is on it . ... I say we let Elizabeth Edwards sue Andrew Young for "alienation of affections"  when we let Warren Buffett sue both Edwardses** for obtaining campaign contributions  under massively false pretenses.  ...  P.S.: Since as part of her "alienation" lawsuit Elizabeth would have to prove she previously had a genuine marriage, I suppose it would be relevant whether John had had affairs with other women before Rielle Hunter. A much-neglected aspect of this case could be brought to light in pretrial discovery. ... P.P.S.: Why is everyone so down on Andrew Young? He's the John Dean of this case, no? ...

**--and all the other cover-upping aides, of course. ...  11:54 P.M.

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Counterproductive overspinner Chris Lehane is going to work for an "independent" group working on behalf of former CA governer Jerry Brown , who's running for governor again and who might face former EBay CEO Meg Whitman. This is the best news Whitman's had after a  rough and tumble week . ... Lehane previously masterminded media strategy for President Al Gore, President Wesley Clark and President John Kerry. ... [ via New West Notes ] 10:16 P.M.

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And they say Hollywood is hooked on sequels: "Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find New Acceptance." The New York Times' Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff write ... wait, didn't the NYT run exactly this story a few months ago? . I think they did! On November 28, 2009. "Food Stamp Use Soars and Stigma Fades."  ... And people accuse Times editors of having an agenda. ...

I claim that what I said about the first version of this piece applies to the dub: "It's one thing to relax the stigma on welfare in times of epic economic decline. It's another if the stigma doesn't return with the possibility of employment." ... P.S.: [ Bad sign when bloggers start quoting themselves-ed True. But  what does it mean when a great daily newspaper starts obsessively making the same point over and over again, like a blogger ? It might simply mean the editors are on a crusade. But it might also mean that the stream of information now goes by so fast that even the New York Times isn't sure that any one front page article will actually get noticed . Times reporters and editors want to get noticed--so they write the same story over and over again, like a twitter poster who learns to repeat every tweet four times  because most people don't monitor their twitter streams around the clock. ... 10:14 P.M.

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"Gore Group Targets Bayh, McCaskill, Lincoln To Build Support for Climate Legislation": I thought we'd agreed there were some tactics that  were f***ing re ..... re .....  what's the word I'm groping for? I know it begins with an "r" ... [ via alert TPM reader TP ] 10:42 P.M.

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