Monthly Archives: October 2013
October 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
In response to my post below called Education, Immigration, and Diversity, one of my favorite readers writes: You hit a bunch of nails squarely on the head, most of which are routinely overlooked or disallowed from the discussion. As you know, economic and political questions are often, at root, moral and behavioral in nature. A foundational premise of economics is that “Money is like fertilizer: whatever you throw resources at,
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October 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
According to a just-released study, eighth-grade students in more than half of the U.S. states performed better than the international average on a test in science. In math, eighth-graders in 36 states outperformed the international average. On the other hand, even students in top performing states were significantly outperformed by their counterparts in South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. I imagine that the results of this study will provide fuel for
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October 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama and John Kerry finally have enabled Israel and key Arab states to reach accord. Both sides agree that current U.S. efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran over it nuclear program are dismaying. The Washington Post reports: The Obama administration on Wednesday acknowledged a widening gulf with key Middle Eastern allies over nuclear talks with Iran, as Israeli and Persian Gulf Arab leaders pressed for drastic cuts to
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October 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler gave United States Senator Tom Coburn the treatment yesterday. He awarded Senator Coburn three Pinocchios for Senator Coburn’s assertion that the United States has $128 trillion in unfunded liabilities. You may have caught the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Interview with Stanley Druckenmiller; Druckenmiller actually provides a higher number (more here). I reached out yesterday to Senator Coburn’s office for a response. Coburn spokesman John
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October 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So we’re told now that the “glitches” in the Obamacare rollout are really just “kinks.” Well that got me to thinking: just what would The Kinks say about this? Would they complain about the misappropriation of their good name? Or, perhaps, is their song oeuvre suitable for this situation? So let’s head over to ultimateclassicrock.com, and check out the official list of the top ten list of The Kinks hits,
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October 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I devoted a ten-part series to the proposition than Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin is worse than stupid. In Washington, that places him in a crowd, but he is something special. His name isn’t Biggus Dickus, but it should be. He is the biggest Dick in Washington. Most recently, Durbin alleged that a Republican leader told President Obama to his face in a meeting during the shutdown: “I cannot even
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October 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The long NRO column by Heather Higgins — “History of a shutdown” — is must reading for those wanting to understand what happened. Heather explains: The developing narrative, whether on talk radio or in these pages and other publications, about the shutdown fight — who was on what side, what the options were, and what was gained or not — often starts from incorrect premises, based on incomplete or erroneous
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October 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Is Kathleen Sebelius really the principal behind the fiasco that the Obamacare rollout has become? Drawing on her CNN interview with Sanjay Gupta, Rich Lowry has fun with her in “Heckuva job, Sebelius,” and Rich doesn’t even touch on her memorable appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Sebelius pushed back yesterday in Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s New York Times story “Sebelius thrust into firestorm on exchanges.” Don’t shoot her,
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October 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I’ve just returned from a Tom Cotton fundraising event. The outlook is pretty good for Tom’s bid to unseat Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, a bid that probably must succeed if Republicans are going to regain control of the Senate in the 2014 election. Tom cited three recent polls of his race, each of which contains essentially the same good news. A poll by Arkansas Talk Business-Hendrix College shows basically a
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October 23, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Washington is abuzz tonight with talk of delaying Obamacare’s individual mandate. The Obamacare launch has been such a flop that Democratic Senators who are up for re-election next year are supporting the proposal. How fast the worm has turned! Two weeks ago, delaying the mandate was a wacko bird idea promoted by Republican anarchists and traitors. Today, it is advocated by the likes of Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Pryor. Schadenfreude?
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October 23, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Can Kicks Back is a web site, and a campaign, run by a group of millenials. The group has embarked on a national tour in support of generational equity, which is described here. This video provides a quick introduction: The group’s theme is generational equity: young people are being shafted by the Obama administration and everyone else in Washington who refuses to do anything about the federal debt. This
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October 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Will President Obama sack Kathleen Sebelius? She certainly deserves the sack, given the massive technical problems that have plagued the rollout of the health care exchanges. I doubt that Obama will let her go, however. Even more so than other administrations, Team Obama believes in hunkering down in situations like this. That’s the primary reason why Eric Holder is still Attorney General. Jim Manley, formerly Harry Reid’s top henchman, provides
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October 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John Wittman of the House Republican Conference writes to alert us to the release of a video highlighting excerpts of an actual online chat between a potential customer and a customer service representative for Healthcare.gov. For the full chat transcript or to share your story, visit www.gop.gov/YourStory. “Dean” (as the customer service representative was named in the chat window) tells the potential customer not to “lose your sanity over this
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October 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Back when the Democrats were in the process of pushing Obamacare through Congress without the support of a single Republican (not even Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins), I made what seemed like an obvious point: once Obamacare kicks in, Democrats will be cursed almost every time something goes wrong with someone’s health insurance and, indeed, will frequently be cursed when things go wrong with the health care system in general.
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October 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I’m not even going to bother looking up HHS Secretary Sebelius’s comment that the “glitches/kinks” of the Obamacare rollout are analogous to a bad Apple product launch, because, first of all, remember what happened to the guy at Apple who botched AppleMaps? He was promptly fired. The failure of HealthCare.gov is much worse than one failed app: it’s more analogous to the whole darn iPhone failing right out of the
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October 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In my second week here in Boulder last August I attended a conference hosted by the philosophy department that displayed a range of opinions that spanned all the way from the far left to the extreme left—except for me. Naturally I offered a ringing attack on John Rawls’ egalitarian redistributionism, which left much of the audience with their jaws on the floor. Who let this guy in here? In the
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October 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The next best thing to clamming up about the serious technical issues that have plagued Healthcare.gov is being interviewed by CNN’s Sanjay Gupta about them. Inviting him in for an interview yesterday, Kathleen Sebelius recited the party line on the beauties of Obamacare while testifying that the issues were kept from Obama prior to October 1. It’s a good thing she wasn’t under oath at the time. CNN reports on
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