Not much happening out there but barbecues and sun, so I’m out to enjoy this beautiful Southern California day. Some links from the long weekend:

• More on this later, but the House is allowing a “clean” debt limit bill to get a vote tomorrow, a day before House Republicans meet with the President in the White House, in order to allow the bill to intentionally fail and “prove” that no debt limit increase without concessions on spending can pass. They’re so dead-set on laying down this marker that they’re calling up the clean debt limit under suspension of the rules, so it requires a two-thirds vote. Is there fear that some of the more antsy Republicans might vote FOR a clean debt limit?

• Medicare could actually solve the budget problem while leading to massive economic recovery. My “budget plan,” whenever asked, continues to be two-fold: let the Bush tax cuts expire, and Medicare for all. That, and more stimulus to boost recovery in the near-term. So three-fold.

• Germany’s closure of nuclear power plants by 2022 has a lot to do with Fukushima, but just as much to do with their innovations in solar technology and structures like feed-in tariffs, which has brought them much closer to a fully-renewable future than most other nations.

• The Tea Party ushered in a host of anti-choice, anti-woman lawmakers who are chipping away at a woman’s right to an abortion in the states. The above-linked articles focuses on the legal strategy to fight back.

• Yes, the way that President Obama has managed executive branch appointments has been extremely slipshod. It’s not just obstructionism at work here.

• The Ryan plan to end Medicare really does unite the Democratic Party, even the Blue Dogs. We’ve finally found the ideological fault line left in US politics.

• The Greek bailout conditions look a lot like “let the banks do anything they want in your country.” Granted, there is a serious tax collection problem in Greece, but I don’t think outside officials are likely to fix that.

• The torture of a child has given a rallying cry to the Syrian protest movement. And despite continued repression, residents in the country are now fighting back with force, including automatic weapons and RPGs. These are the first protests so far that have not been fully peaceful in Syria.

• As expected, the President appointed Martin Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among other military appointments (Ray Odierno becomes Army Chief of Staff, for example).

• Yet another profile of Fox News and Roger Ailes, but unlike the others, this one mentions Ailes’ extreme paranoia and underground bunker to protect him from Al Qaeda (and the gays).

• Republican governors are gradually implementing the Affordable Care Act, particularly the exchanges.

• Video evidence of British troops on the ground in Libya. Of course, we already knew they had “trainers” in Benghazi. But these are armed troops.

• Bin Laden, nearing the end of his relevance before his death, desperately tried to build a “grand coalition” of militants, kind of a real-life Legion of Doom.

• Suzy Khimm reports on efforts in the states to move Medicaid patients into managed care.

• Redistricting in Michigan looks like it will result in the decrease of one Democratic seat, but there could be a Democratic bonanza in Illinois.

• The LA Times finally picks up on that story about the denial of medical parole for a quadriplegic in California, which I wrote about last week. “In the end, fear won out over reason,” said the quadriplegic’s attorney. Indeed.

• Marcy Wheeler’s parsing of a Senate colloquy on secret law is well worth reading.

• Islamists take over their second city in southern Yemen.

• Best to Dan Choi, who faced down batons at a gay rights rally in Russia.

• Slower growth in China but they may still reject stimulative measures because of higher inflation.

• Less deaths in Haiti than at first reported would be good news.

• Goldbuggery (and silverbuggery) in Utah. Anyone who actually uses $38 worth of silver as a one-dollar coin deserves to lose that money.

• Indulge me in a moment of schadenfreude: Bye-bye Tressel.