I’m glad to see Peter Orszag at least hinted at the key point in the current tug of war over the health care overhaul. Capitol Hill is now divided between those pushing for fundamental health care reform and those working to scuttle it. Only the people in the latter category know that that’s not politically palatable position. So those pushing to prevent action are advocating ‘delay’, which they know will make legislative action impossible.

Getting this truth in advertising on the table is probably the key hurdle for the reformers this week.

Michael Steele is in a Q&A right now on health care and just said that not only is the administration interested in intervening in the relationship between an individual and his or her doctor but also the relationship between the individual and their insurance company. I’m not sure most people see that latter relationship as so inviolate.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius say that the major health care reform proposal congress is working on is making progress, but Republicans remain entrenched in opposition to the President’s big push as the previously proposed August congressional recess deadline approaches. We examine the standoff in today’s Sunday Show Roundup …

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Michael Steel appeared this morning at the National Press Club to talk about health care. And listening, it seemed like not only was he trying to get his bit in on this week’s health care debate but also rebrand himself as a serious policy thinker rather than just the political comedy relief he’s embodied over the last six or so months. But that was a bit undermined when he got a question on whether the bill should include an individual requirement to purchase coverage and he didn’t know what that meant.

This is a critical week for the health reform legislative push, signaled by, among other things, the announcement by the White House that President Obama will be hitting the airwaves aggressively all week. There is such a profusion of information, a good deal of it put forth with the aim of sowing confusion for political reasons. So how do we make sense of it all, how do we understand the critical broad movements in the debate and not get bogged down in the endless detail?

In our editorial meeting this morning, I asked our reporting staff to focus on three pivot points, the pressure points in the conversation that, if they can be isolated and followed, will help us to understand which way the debate is going, who’s winning and losing and most of all who’s controlling the debate.

So here are the three key issues we’re going to be following in every public comment

1) Timeline. Who’s controlling the timeline? Do the White House and the reformers press for bills before the August break or give way to the opponents pushing the agenda of delay?

2) Public option. Particularly, is the White House making it a line in the sand, as Obama seemed for the first time to suggest over the weekend? Or do they continue to play for intentional ambiguity?

3) Aggregate Cost. In many respects, right now this is even more a political issue than a substantive one because of last week’s CBO chief’s comments, which seemed to push all before it late last week.

To be clear, there are numerous complex and very important policy questions not covered here. But that’s not the point of this exercise. We trying to understand the terms of the political debate. And I think if you can get clarity on these three points you’ll have a very good read on what kind of bill, if any, is going to end up on the president’s desk. We’ll be watching. You watch too and ping us when you see key developments.

From TPM Reader AH …

Not everyone loved Walter Conkrite. I remember when I was in college in the mid-’70s one of my classmates earnestly telling me that Walter Conkrite was a communist. His proof?? Before Nixon went to Peking (it was still Peking back then), Conkrite referred to the country as “Red China” – but afterwards, he referred to is as “the People’s Republic of China” (Conkrite wasn’t alone – most of the US media made this shift once Nixon took his trip). And that was the proof that Conkrite had been brainwashed and was now a communist and couldn’t be trusted.

One of my very first introductions to wingnut thinking….

From one standpoint, this probably surprises no one. But it is worth recalling that with all the deserved encomiums for Cronkite, it was as much as anyone else, Cronkite who was the target of the decades long right wing assault against the “liberal media.” In some ways, he represents the pre-cowed establishment media.

C Street, the bible fellowship and congressional group home, rebrands itself as a self-help group for bible-thumping womanizers “struggling to confront their personal demons.”

Fox News analyst: As far as I’m concerned, the Taliban can kill that captured U.S. soldier.

Note that even the Fox anchor can’t quite get on board with that sentiment. Watch.

I was born a few months after the first moon landing, but looking through our slideshow of the event, 40 years ago today, I’m reminded of the excitement surrounding the docking of the Apollo and Soyuz crafts six years later, in 1975, and the first shuttle launch six years after that, in 1981. The photos alone don’t convey the universality of the experience. A case where I think you definitely had to be there to appreciate it. What are your memories of July 20, 1969?

While Democrats are engaged in an internecine battle over health care reform, the conservative and moderate wings of the GOP are battling it out over Obama’s birth certificate. Dave Weigel has some good video.