By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The blogosphere and the cable news channels are full of outrage at the fact that Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citi, and J.P. Morgan have received thousands of doses of H1N1 vaccine, while shortages across New York City have prevented pregnant women and high-risk children from receiving shots first. Believe me, as a parent of a high-risk child who had a heck of a time getting her a shot last week—I think this is outrageous.

But in the midst of all the anger at the bailed-out bankers getting their shots, no one seems to be noticing that the New York City government health authorities are the ones who sent the vaccines to the banks in the first place, after receiving their share of the state's shipment from the publicly-run Centers for Disease Control. Clearly we have a scarce supply of vaccines, with great demand nationally, and that supply is being rationed by the government.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The unemployment rate raced into the double digits this morning, hitting 10.2 percent for the first time in more than 25 years. Earlier this week, voters in New Jersey and Virginia sent the White House a strong message that they're concerned about three top issues: jobs, jobs, and jobs.

So are the House Democrats proposing a jobs bill? How about the construction-heavy highway bill? No, they're pushing a trillion-dollar healthcare reform bill that will be voted on this weekend, despite the fact that over 10,000 Americans turned out to protest it on the Capitol steps yesterday. Those protesters are upset that the House plan includes a public option, in which government-run insurance would be an option for consumers. NPR is reporting that the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the House bill showed that only 2 percent of Americans would be using the public option by 2019, when the legislation is fully implemented. That's an interesting fact that's gone unreported. Why are we running up a trillion-dollar bill to cover only 2 percent of the population and increase costs for the rest of us?

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Politico is running a story today on what it calls the Republican Party's "nightmare scenario" of conservatives challenging up to a dozen GOP candidates in key House and Senate races in 2010. Politico points to several examples of these challenges, one of which is Utah, where Rep. Bob Bennett is in trouble after, among several troubling votes, "his Wall Street bailout vote last fall."

In fact, when you read the article carefully, not one of the conservative candidates mentioned says a word about social issues. All of their opposition is to candidates, like Bennett, who supported or voted for Obama's massive expansion of the federal government.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Is what's going on in New York's 23rd Congressional District a GOP civil war or not? If you ask me, it's not.

The media and their friends on the left, including White House adviser Valerie Jarrett on ABC News, are doing their best to turn Dede Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race and endorsement of her Democratic opponent into another example of Republican feuding over "litmus tests." They just can't help themselves. In fact, Jarrett calls Republicans "more and more extreme," yet it's the liberals who have worked themselves into a hissy fit of angry rhetoric. Take a look at Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times—far more extreme than anything being said on the right: "The riotous and bloody national GOP civil war" has devolved into a "wacky paranoid cult" that is "re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode." It's not the people on the right—the ones who've been "outed" as moderates, supposedly—who are calling each other Stalinists. Ironically, it's the left who are upset about the Republican base.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

It's pretty clear what's going to happen in next week's gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and the Congressional special election in New York's 23rd district—both parties will start passing out blame for defeats by the time the polls close Tuesday.

The Virginia race in particular gives the GOP an opportunity to redefine itself. Bob McDonnell shunned the far-right angry rhetoric and stuck to kitchen-table issues—like jobs, taxes, and transportation—that conservatives, moderates, and independents wanted to hear about. The latest Gallup poll this week shows that many of those same independent voters nationally have started to move to the right, and between now and the midterm elections the Republican Party has an opportunity to keep that momentum from the Virginia race going if it sticks with McDonnell's winning strategy.

David Frum predicts a win in Virginia, and then takes a look at the other races:

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

My colleague Bonnie Erbe went after President Obama earlier this week for his all-male basketball game, which led her to this conclusion about him:

Whether it was his treatment of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail (as in his condescending remark that she was "likeable enough") or his clearly career-oriented mate who has been toned down and remorphed into a Stepford Wife, I just don't get the impression this man is comfortable with women. Nor do I believe he cares about them beyond needing women's votes. It's an act and a thoroughly see-through, amateur one at that.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Obesity is a public health crisis in the United States. There's no debating that it is caused by Americans' sedentary lifestyles and poor food choices. And, before we go any further, I should disclose that I am an active supporter of both the Obesity Institute and the Diabetes Care Complex at Children's National Medical Center. So I care very much about bringing down the rate of obesity in this country.

Having said that, controlling what we put into our mouths is not a job for the government. Ads are running on local TV here in Washington, D.C., urging Congress not to impose a tax on soda and juice drinks. Last month, in an interview, President Obama suggested that a soda tax was worth exploring. Currently a group in New York City supporting Gov. David Patterson's proposed soda tax is sponsoring an ad campaign in New York subways which, according to the Boston Herald, shows soft drinks morphing into yellow globs of human fat. (Actually I don't have a problem with the ads, just the tax.) Over the weekend, a Princeton University professor suggested a tax on red meat in the New York Daily News, since "high taxes on cigarettes have saved many lives." The difference is that cigarettes have been proven to kill people—I'm not sure the tax is what made people quit—while no one has proven that soda kills people.