Turning tide?

For anyone who missed it, monumental news earlier - the House defeated the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill. What's the big deal? Glad you asked:

Many members said the bill's defeat, by 224 to 209 votes, was the first rejection of an appropriation measure they could recall since Republicans assumed House control in 1995.

Moderate Republicans have jumped ship en mass for the first time in a very long while. Ideologically-driven cuts by their peers to the right have gone too far, perhaps. This is good news on more than purely partisan grounds, of course; the House version of the bill drastically underfunded the Global Fund, and now the Senate's higher number ($100 million that the AIDS activist community has been counting on) may prevail.

... so actually, the LHHS bill properly funded the Global Fund, but not medicaid. So, it would have been good on one front, but totally screwed a lot of AIDS patients in this country. Lots of confusion in the AIDS advocacy community right now over what to make of this.