Taking Rupert's Cash

Detroit Free Press: "Are our bridges safe?"

Atlanta Journal Constitution: "Plenty Georgia bridges need repair"

New York Post: "84 percent of crossings are rated 'poor' or 'fair' . . . "

Not to mention The Washington Post: "Area Bridges Need Pricey Repair Work."

There's a newsroom phrase for all these stories: COULD IT HAPPEN HERE?

A GOP senator has a background lunch with some D.C. journos, and the New Republic's Michael Crowley was there:

"On Iraq, this senator said he expects that, come September and the Petraeus-Crocker report, the White House will announce 'a transition to a new approach.' He thinks that will involve a non-trivial drawdown of troops, and a returned emphasis to training Iraqi forces, though he wasn't too clear beyond that. He also said such a shift would head off any possible collapse in congressional GOP support for the war."

How long before someone outs the Mystery Senator? This happened when Maryland Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele dissed his party at a similar background meeting, before being belatedly ID'd.

A serious debate has broken out about the health plan Rudy announced this week. American Prospect's Ezra Klein says, Where's the beef?

"I'm supposed to be writing about Rudy Giuliani's health care plan today. And I would, if Rudy Giuliani had a health care plan. But Rudy Giuliani doesn't have a health care plan. What he has is a pretext with which to attack the Democrats. Indeed, just about all you need to know about Giuliani's thoughtfulness on the issue can be summed up by the following: In the speech introducing and detailing his new health care proposal, Giuliani refers to the 'Democrats' six times. 'Single-payer' is said eight times. 'Socialized medicine,' or some variant thereof, makes nine appearances. 'Uninsured' is never uttered -- not once . . .

"The New York Times headlined their story 'Giuliani Seeks to Transform U.S. Health Care Coverage,' before telling us, in the tenth paragraph, that 'Mr. Giuliani's speech offered very little in the way of specifics. He said his goal was to outline his 'vision,' with more details to come in the fall.' I guess the headline 'Giuliani Seeks to Transform One-Seventh of Economy, Couldn't Be Bothered to Offer Details on How' wasn't snappy enough?

"Failure of the press aside, let's examine this 'vision.' What Giuliani offered is this: A tax exclusion of up to $15,000 for families, and $7,500 for individuals, to help pay for health care. What Giuliani is relying on is people reading those numbers -- $15,000 and $7,500 -- without noticing that they don't denote the amount of money he's offering them, but the amount of money he's not taxing them on. And when we plug it into my magical Rudy Translation Machine (constructed with the help of friendly neighborhood economist, Dean Baker), we can watch how $15,000 can easily become . . . zero . . .