…cracks:
Alternate headline: The rats are jumping off the sinking ObamaCare ship. Remember all that talk about how damaged the GOP was after the Obama/Reid government shutdown? My, how things change in just a week. No longer able to obsess over Ted Cruz, the media realizes what a shambles the Democrats have become.
They’re not happy about it, either, but they’ve reached a point at which they can’t ignore it any more.
In which Emily Yoffe offers common-sense advice, is accordingly attacked by “feminists,” and defended by Ruth Marcus.
It’s in danger of collapsing.
I’d say it’s collapsed. As Glenn often says, another Jimmy Carter was a best-case scenario in terms of foreign policy.
It’s time to propose some.
Yes, I think it’s ripe now, thanks to the monumental cluster effery of the administration.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Republicans next strategy to kill this monstrosity:
Alexander, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has a plan for replacing Obamacare. It includes providing governors with more flexibility in operating state Medicaid programs, strengthening workplace wellness programs, permitting small businesses to pool their resources and offer lower-cost insurance plans for employees, expanding opportunities for consumers to purchase insurance across state lines and providing greater access to health savings accounts.
Alexander said his plan offers “step-by-step reforms that would reduce the costs of healthcare.”
Alexander isn’t alone in advocating for a process known as “repeal and replace.” The House Republican Study Committee, a conservative group within the GOP caucus, also has offered an Obamacare alternative that it intends to continue pursuing.
“American families and businesses deserve and demand real solutions to the serious problems that exist in our healthcare system,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the committee chairman. “The RSC’s American Health Care Reform Act is a common-sense bill that will lower costs using conservative, free-market solutions which give American families more choices without the unworkable mandates and billions in taxes included in President Obama’s healthcare law.”
The 200-page bill offers $20,000 in tax deductions to families and a $7,500 deduction to individuals to purchase insurance from vendors in any state — thus, supporters say, allowing people to save money by selecting lower-cost providers.
The measure also offers altered proposals to some of the more popular aspects of Obamacare – creation of a $25 billion fund to lower costs for those afflicted with pre-existing conditions, permitting people to carry their insurance from job to job and permitting coverage for adult children up to age 26.
That last remains stupid, regardless of how popular it is.
Aiiiieeeeeeee! It’s melting!!!!
Those horrid little Tea Partiers:
What is at issue here is not some sacred moral value, such as “In God We Trust.” Domestic politics or the affairs of nations are not an avocation for angels. But the coin of this imperfect realm is credibility. Sydney Greenstreet’s Kasper Gutman explained the terms of trade in “The Maltese Falcon”: “I must tell you what I know, but you won’t tell me what you know. That is hardly equitable, sir. I don’t think we can do business along those lines.”
Bluntly, Mr. Obama’s partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don’t trust him. Whether it’s the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they’ve all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world’s important business doesn’t get done. It sits in a dangerous and volatile vacuum.
The next major political event in Washington is the negotiation over spending, entitlements and taxes between House budget chairman Paul Ryan and his Senate partner, Patty Murray. The bad air over this effort is the same as that Marco Rubio says is choking immigration reform: the fear that Mr. Obama will urge the process forward in public and then blow up any Ryan-Murray agreement at the 11th hour with deal-killing demands for greater tax revenue.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a president reach complete lame-duck status so soon into his second term.
Who knew so many of them were Democrats?
“If the problems are intense as they are this morning, then maybe we would have to consider a short delay in terms of the individual mandate,” New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, told Yahoo News on Wednesday….Pascrell joins Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Sens. Jean Shahaan and Joe Manchin in expressing support for extended enrollment and individual mandate deadlines.
Why isn’t Harry Reid denouncing these terrorists, these people trying to sabotage settled law?
[Update a cou0ple minutes later]
Joe Manchin is an anarchist Democrat who hates poor people and wants them to be sick:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is burnishing his “blue dog” credentials and working on a bill that would delay Obamacare’s mandate by a year.
What a monster.
Yes. Next question?
When you’ve lost the LA Times…
[Update a few minutes later]
“When saturated fat got mixed up with the high sugar added to processed food in the second half of the 20th century, it got a bad name,” noted UC San Francisco pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig. On the question of which is worse — saturated fat or added sugar, Lustig added, “The American Heart Assn. has weighed in — the sugar many times over.”
Yes. Also, eating fat doesn’t make you fat. Two of the most damaging nutrition myths are that you get cholesterol build up from eating cholesterol, and you get fat from eating fat. Both are based on the primitive “you are what you eat” theory. Stop counting calories, eat things that are good for you (which include saturated fat) and avoid things that are bad (grains and sugar).
A collection of links on the Ditherer-in-Chief.
Actually, he’s not absent. He just continues to vote “Present.”
Don’t worry, wildlife would kick undead ass:
…zombies are essentially walking carrion, and Mother Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste.
Yup.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s really worth a read:
North America’s large mammal predators would be more than a match for zombies. We have two bear species, brown (or grizzly) and black bears. Male brown bears can weigh in at 1,000 pounds. They are not afraid of humans. They can deliver a bite of 1200 pounds per square inch and have long, sharp claws designed to rip open logs and flip boulders in search of insects and other small critters to eat. They would easily tear apart rotting zombie flesh. Black bears are much smaller and typically run from humans, but even a black bear, when approached or cornered, would make short work of a zombie. Both bear species have an incredible sense of smell and both love to eat carrion, so even if zombies didn’t approach them, the bears eventually would learn that these walking bags of flesh make good eating.
Like black bears, gray wolves are very shy of humans and typically run away at the first sight of us. Nor are they strangers to scavenging. They’d soon take advantage of the easy pickings presented by lumbering zombies. Coyotes are far less shy than wolves and can happily live alongside humans, including in the heart of our cities. These intelligent canids would quickly learn that they could take down zombies one by one, especially the eastern populations of coyote, which are larger and bolder due to past interbreeding with wolves and domestic dogs.
Though I’d point out that it they think black bears are shy around humans, they’ve never run across one in Alaska. They’re very aggressive up there — Alaskans seem to fear them more than grizzlies, which will generally leave you alone if you don’t surprise them. I suspect it’s because they’re much less used to humans, with the low population density. It’s almost like they’re a different species from the lower forty nine. Alaska would be a particularly gruesome place to be walking dead. The moose alone would make quick work of them.
…that won’t save it:
I don’t know how to fix the broken programming system. But I do know what sort of “fixes” could make the insurance market break further. If we’re going to delay, then we need to delay the whole thing — guaranteed issue, community rating and so forth. Otherwise, we’re just asking for, well, a quagmire.
They’re calling for a “surge,” without an exit strategy.