Hey, these things are hereditary, right? Friday, my son Jim graduated from high school and Saturday, my daughter Kennedy graduated from college. I thought readers might want to see a few photos of these young scholars and their siblings. Continue reading My Kids: Smart and Good-Looking →
Good News! ObamaCare Helping Insurance Companies Make Record Profit! (And Rick Ungar Rides Again)
Because stuffing profits into the pockets of Corporate America is what the progressive movement is all about, right?
When last we heard from Rick Ungar, the death of a Census worker in Kentucky prompted him to declare: “Send the Body to Glenn Beck.” Two months later it was revealed that Beck had nothing to do with it, and the supposed victim of a right-wing lynching had in fact committed suicide.
However, progressives (who apparently include the editors of Forbes magazine) are quite flexible in their standards of journalistic credibility, so that the otherwise discredited Ungar is permitted to inform us that ObamaCare is working just fine and dandy.
Ungar’s “reporting” is for the most part a rehash of a May 3 story — which Ungar doesn’t bother to link, much less credit — by Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News:
Hundreds of thousands of young adults are taking advantage of the health care law provision that allows people under 26 to remain on their parents’ health plans, some of the nation’s largest insurers are reporting. That pace appears to be faster than the government expected.
WellPoint, the nation’s largest publicly traded health insurer with 34 million customers, said the dependent provision was responsible for adding 280,000 new members. That was about one third its total enrollment growth in the first three months of 2011.
Other large insurers said they have added tens of thousands of young adults. Aetna, for example, added fewer than 100,000; Kaiser Permanente, about 90,000; Highmark Inc., about 72,000, and Health Care Service Corp., about 82,000.
The Health and Human Services Department has estimated that about 1.2 million young adults would sign up for coverage in 2011. The early numbers from insurers show it could be much higher . . .
Ungar’s plagiarism of a three-week old story is nevertheless treated as sufficiently newsworthy to merit its own Memeorandum thread, and no one seems to notice that the “good news” is not really so good at all.
These 20-somethings, whose coverage under their parent’s insurance plans is now mandated by federal law, obviously don’t have employment sufficiently lucrative to include health benefits of their own. Many of them are no doubt unemployed — as are nearly 17% of Americans under age 30 — and living back home with their parents, as do most recent college graduates, saddled with an average of more than $20,000 debt.
So ObamaCare has compelled insurance companies to subtract a few hundred thousand young people from the ranks of the uninsured, although it is impossible to say how much actual healthcare will be delivered as a result. This is exactly the problem with mandated coverage: Most young people are healthy and don’t need insurance, except for catastrophic coverage policies (i.e., with a $5,000 deductible) in case of a car wreck or something.
Never mind. Their parents are now paying to have their grown kids covered up until age 26. The insurers are no doubt happy to have the new clients, although the additional coverage doesn’t really solve any health-care problems — unless the profitability of insurance companies was a problem you were worried about.
Tornado Destroys Joplin, Missouri
Via Associated Press, here’s video of the killer storm:
At least 90 people are confirmed dead and a news photographer who visited Joplin said: “The Home Depot is leveled. . . The Wal-Mart is destroyed. Gas stations, buildings. Everywhere I could see was either heavily damaged or completely destroyed.” The headlines at the Drudge Report sum it up:
Three-Quarters of Joplin, MO Destroyed...
Damage Unimaginable...
Town Unrecognizable...
All of which is to say, it’s a catastrophe. Longtime reader Nathan Cossey, who lives in the suburbs of Kansas City, called today to tell me that his relatives in Joplin are alive and well. But with this kind of devastation, the survivors are going to be suffering for a long time. The Red Cross is responding. Now would be a good time to hit their tip jar.
‘That’s Not a Poll That’s Psy-Ops!’
So says Da Tech Guy about an Associated Press poll that surveyed nearly twice as many Democrats (35%) as Republicans (18%). You will perhaps not be surprised that this poll shows Obama with a 63% approval rating.
Speaking of “psy-ops” — psychological warfare — let me explain something: Nothing so sways the independent voter as bandwagon psychology.
Lacking any clear partisan or ideological commitment, the independent voters is likely to support whichever candidate his friends and neighbors support. This is why yard signs and bumper stickers make a difference in campaigns. Believe it or not, some voters may base their vote on whichever candidate has the most yard signs in his neighborhood.
Furthermore, independent voters like to vote for the winner. Polls showing Obama ahead will, of course, encourage Democrats and discourage Republicans. More importantly, however, such polls will sway independents toward Obama.
It is always a mistake to think of independent voters as moderates or “centrists.” It is more helpful to think of them as “low-information voters” who don’t pay much attention to politics, and whose judgments are influenced more by superficial impressions of candidates than by deeply held political beliefs.
Did National Magazine Award Winner Scott Horton Spin a Guantanamo Myth?
The award considered the “Pulitzer for magazines” went to Scott Horton of Harper‘s for an article asserting that three detainees at Guantanamo Bay were tortured to death in 2006. U.S. officials say the suspected terrorists committed suicide in a sort of jihadi publicity stunt.
Alex Koppelman explores the possibility that the award-winning article promoted a hoax, noting that several investigative reporters — including Sy Hersh, Brian Ross of ABC News and Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News — all researched the same story, and spoke to the same sources, and concluded that the death-by-torture allegations were at best unproven:
A New York Times reporter was also approached by the parties who’d been pushing the allegations of homicide and cover-up at Guantánamo, a person close to the situation says.
Only after the big guys passed was the story shopped to Horton. He won for reporting, but in fact the story fell right into his lap, factual flaws and all.
“We couldn’t really believe it when the piece came out,” one of the reporters who looked into the story says. “I can’t believe Harper’s, I really can’t.”
(Via MediaGazer.) The “investigative” story that falls into a reporter’s lap — handed to him pre-packaged, as it were — is more common than people outside journalism suspect. This was the basic narrative of David Brock’s big Anita Hill scoop: Brock was supplied with a research dossier by Republican staffers for the Senate Judiciary Committee, and parlayed that “gimme” into a reputation as an ace investigative reporter. Or at least that’s what my sources say.
‘Nice Bit of Driving!’
So shouts one of the Irish spectators in Dublin, where Obama’s limousine got stuck on a speed-bump while leaving the U.S. Embassy there:
At the 10-second mark, you hear the first scrape as one of the police cars leadintg the motorcade bottoms out. Then at 16 seconds, the presidential limo (an armor-plate vehicle known as “the Beats”) gets stuck and the crowd says: Ooooohhh!
Drew M: “My question is, what the hell was the Secret Service agent driving the limo doing drinking a Slurpee while on duty?”
Sully: Israelis ‘Got Their US Media Mouthpieces’ to Criticize Obama’s Speech
“So it’s pretty obvious that it was the Israelis who immediately got their US media mouthpieces to spin the speech as some sort of attack.”
— Andrew Sullivan, May 20
Doug Ross called attention to this rather disturbing accusation: U.S. criticism of President Obama’s speech was not really of domestic origin, Sully says, but rather was the result of Israeli manipulation.
Sullivan makes specific mention of Matt Drudge, Fox News and Mitt Romney. Which of these, or which others, does he outright accuse of being “mouthpieces” issuing “spin” at the behest of Israelis?
My own response to the speech was to aggregate the reactions of others, and I noted that Max Boot of Commentary, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air and John Tabin of The American Spectator all initially saw Obama’s speech as very Bush-like. William Jacobson was immediately critical, as was Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, but there seemed to be a delay before John Podhoretz and Omri Ceren came out with negative reactions.
It may be fair to suppose that some of Obama’s critics took their cue from Israeli sources: “Let’s see what Bibi says” is a reasonable stance for those who profess friendship for Israel. But that is a very different thing than Andrew Sullivan’s depiction of Israeli puppeteers secretly pulling the strings of their American media marionettes.
You can’t just casually drop that kind of accusation into a post and then walk away as if you hadn’t said it.
UPDATE: Jeff Dunetz sees widespread use of the “Jewish media manipulation” meme on the Left.
UPDATE II: Linked by Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom — thanks!
UPDATE III: Linked by Moe Lane, although I’m pretty certain it’s spelled “Joooozz!”
Prosser Wins in Wisconsin
Remember when Democrats and unions claimed that Scott Walker’s agenda was electoral doom for the GOP? Not so much:
A grueling statewide recount concluded Friday that Justice David Prosser defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg to win another 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a race driven by the debate over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to curb the union rights of the state’s public employees.
The recount that began on April 27 ended Friday afternoon after Waukesha County officials finished tallying their last remaining precincts. Unofficial results showed Justice Prosser had 752,697 votes — 7,006 more than Ms. Kloppenburg’s 745,691.
State election officials plan to meet on Monday to verify the results.