Nobody seems to know what's going on with the potential public-option-drop I blogged last night. Ambinder and the Huffington Post indicate that Sebelius's comments are being walked back:

An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "misspoke" when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option "is not an essential part" of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president's view, the most important element of the reform package.

A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications for the administration, said that President Obama believed that a public option was the best way to reduce costs and promote competition among insurance companies, that he had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in the final bill.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (R-TX) also indicated that the public option may be a deal-breaker for the progressive caucus.

For his part, Krugman wrote on Saturday that there are viable alternatives to the public option, and SEK now thinks that public option was never really on the table in the first place, but was rather a kind of negotiating tactic with the long-term side effect of shifting the Overton Window left on health care. Nate Silver is still counting votes, but doesn't seem optimistic.

Sunday, Sunday.

* The New Yorker has fiction from the late great David Foster Wallace as well as discussion of his unfinished final novel. (There's also a profile of Rahmbo.) Discussion at MeFi.

* Even more six-word science fiction. More at MetaFilter.

* The twenty-first century: an FAQ from Charlie Stross.

* Hypothesis: Sufficiently usable read/write platforms will attract porn and activists. If there's no porn, the tool doesn't work. If there's no activists, it doesn't work well. (via)

* Maybe Dollhouse shouldn't have been as series: io9 clues into the central problem facing American television production, open-ended perpetual serialization. Discussion at Whedonesque.

* Sebelius to HHS.

* The formula that killed Wall Street. Some talk at MetaFilter.

* Anime Peanuts. More along these lines at MeFi.

* Reverse-plot movies. Reverse-plot games.

* Aside from their nihilism and incompetence, the biggest problem facing Republicans is that their mythology has become too difficult for the average person to follow. It’s like a comic book “universe” where the writers have been straining to maintain continuity for decades — all the ever-more-fine-grained details are really satisfying for the hardcore fans, but intimidating for potential new readers, who are left asking, “Trickle-what? Chappaquid-who? What’s that about Obama’s birth certificate? Obama’s European now? I thought he was a Muslim! Darn it, I’ll never catch up!”

I suggest, therefore, that the Republicans use their current time of wandering in the wilderness to do their own version of Crisis on Infinite Earths. They wouldn’t have to ditch their favorite heroes, of course — we could also be treated to limited series like Rush Limbaugh: Year One, Newt Gingrich: Year One, etc. They can reboot all the plotlines, free the beloved characters of the chains of continuity, and then do it again, and yet again — until finally they find success in some genre other than politics, much as comic book superheroes have moved on to the movies. GOP: Year One.

* See also: the GOP's voice and intellectual force, Rush Limbaugh.

* Forget Switzerland: Is Ireland the next Iceland? Don't forget your recession tourism.

* Slowly but surely, here comes marijuana decriminalization/legalization. Don't forget your revenue stream.

* Imprisoned fifteen-year-old beaten by police officer. On tape.

* And put aside that old question of "justifying" the humanities: the real problem is that for much of the past decade, the culture isn't listening to what the humanities have to teach.

Sebelius: senator (1, 2) or secretary (1, 2, 3)?

More eco and politics links.

* From the comments comes a link to drive55.org, a web site devoted to popularizing the largely defunct 55 mph speed limit in the name of carbon efficiency. A thing like this is long on science but short of politics—I don't think I know a single person who voluntarily limits their speed, and I know a whole lot of hippies and eco-freaks. Better to advocate policies that eliminate people's need to drive, like functional light and high-speed rail systems, than to try and rewrite human nature.

* Has the high price of oil put the brakes on globalization?

* John McCain: "A surprisingly immature politician."

* See also: Multiple Oil Company Executives Gave Huge Contributions To Electing McCain Just Days After Offshore Drilling Reversal. More at Grist, including a sharp new Obama ad.

* Why Kaine over Sebelius?

So far as I can tell, Kaine's advantages over Sebelius consist of these: his swing-state residency (not useless, but I thought consensus is that picking veeps for their regional influence is so last century), his faith (he's Roman Catholic), and his Y chromosome.

Update: Several readers point out Sebelius is also Catholic.

It's a good case, even if it shoots my Virginia Strategem to hell; the more I find out about Kaine the more I sour on him. More here.

Chris Dodd's on the short list for Obama's VP, as is Kathleen Sebelius, the latter getting Ezra Klein pretty excited. Who else? I guess we'll hear more as rumors trickle out.

By now a lot of you have probably seen that the Ted Kennedy endorsement is official. So let me just throw this out there: would they really use Ted Kennedy on Monday if they didn't have Al Gore waiting in the wings for the weekend?

UPDATE: And Sebelius for Tuesday/Wednesday, right after she's done with the State of the Union response. Although she's not necessarily all that well-known in North Carolina, she's apparently a big name in the Midwest; I've heard a lot of people throwing her name around for vice president in the last few weeks.