Heading back down to LA. Traffic in the Bay area is a mess as a result of the BART strike, but we’ll be heading east, and it shouldn’t affect us. We’ll be back there this evening.
Teaching History
It isn’t happening:
Questioner: What was the Holocaust?
American College Student: Um…I’m on the spot.Questioner: Which country was Adolf Hitler the leader of?
American College Student: I think it’s Amsterdam?Questioner: What was Auschwitz?
American College Student: I don’t know.Questioner: What were the Nuremburg Trials?
American College Student: I don’t know.Questioner: How many Jews were killed?
American College Student: Hundreds of thousands.
We’re doomed.
“A Crock Of S**t”
That’s how a fellow warm monger describes Michael Mann’s latest papers.
ObamaCare’s Million-Dollar Question
It’s actually a trillion-dollar question: Will enough young people sign up?
There’s another self-inflicted wound that could prove fatal. Since the ACA allows young people to stay on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26, the law dramatically shrinks the pool of healthy young customers whose overpayments on insurance are supposed to subsidize the middle aged beneficiaries of the law.
…All told, we wonder if Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama are as happy today about Obamacare as they were on the day the law was passed. Beyond that, everything that has happened since passage has confirmed our view that far from solving the problems facing American health care, this poorly drafted, poorly executed system makes the problem of health care reform both more urgent and more difficult.
One of the myriad idiocies about the law is that they let people stay on their parents’ plans until they’re twenty six. Why did these morons imagine that those people that they needed to sign up for their own insurance would do so? It was just part of an incoherent grab bag of goodies they stuffed into the bill to try to sell it to low-infos.
[Update a while later]
Don’t worry, GOP. ObamaCare will defund itself:
With only a small penalty for abstaining, the numbers for signing up not only don’t add up — they’re absurd. Here’s one of the supposedly attractive deals: “One option available only to people under 30 is a so-called catastrophic policy that kicks in after a $6,350 annual deductible. In Monroe County, you can buy that policy on the New York State of Health exchange for as low as $131 a month for single coverage.”
Over fifteen hundred a year for a sixty-three hundred plus deductible? What healthy thirty year old would waste his or her money?
Who invented this plan? Certainly not Obama or Pelosi, neither of whom was paying close attention, I would bet. (Pelosi admitted she wasn’t. All Obama wanted was something to put his name next to, something that sounded vaguely “progressive.”)
Neither Obama or Pelosi is smart enough to even understand the problem.
Obama’s Agenda
He’s not interested in budget restraint or economic growth. It’s all about crushing his political enemies. That’s a war he wants to win, unlike the real wars overseas, that he just wants to “end.”
[Update a while later]
Sorry, link is fixed now.
An Alternate Vision For Mars Trips
Alan Boyle has a story on the current state of play for realistic concepts, something that SLS-based scenarios are not.
On Climate
Some historical perspective. Something that few in the media seem to have.
If you look over the long term (hundreds of thousands of years), cold is the norm, and interglacials are rare and short. We’re still in an ice age.
High-Speed Low-Speed Rail
Californians are in revolt.
What a monumentally stupid idea.
What American College Students Want
They want to be oppressed.
Well, the way they vote, they’re likely to get it. Just not in the way they hope.
Why We Need A Second Amendment
Congressman says that Tea Party Republicans are the domestic enemies he took an oath to defend against.
He’s serious. Listen to him. He’s telling you what he’d do if he had the power he wants. As Glenn says, buy a gun or two while you still can.