THE EVER-EXPANDING University of Phoenix. “In the world of for-profit higher education, and higher education in general, the University of Phoenix has historically been viewed as the 800-pound gorilla. As of Tuesday, it may be more like a 1,000-pound gorilla. As Phoenix’s parent company, the Apollo Group, reported its fourth quarter and annual earnings Tuesday, it announced that the university’s enrollment of degree-seeking students grew to 443,000 as of August 2009, up 22 percent from 362,000 in August 2008. . . . About two-thirds of the university’s new students as of August are female, 27.7 percent are African-American, and about half are 30 or over.”
Archive for 2009
October 28, 2009
TAKING “SOUTHERN COMFORT FOOD” ONLINE at Papaw Tom’s. The website’s here.
And speaking of Knoxville-based Internet businesses, Tradingo is still going strong.
TRAFFIC CAMERA UPDATE: TN attorney challenging revenue-light cameras.
MICKEY KAUS: “Does Twitter maybe censor ‘curate’ the search results for its celebrity Twitterers?”
WANT TO HELP WOUNDED WARRIORS? Support Project Valour-IT.
WHY YOU SHOULD want to pay for Hulu.
MICHAEL YON: Colors.
RUSSIA: Rebuilding The Soviet Union.
IN THE MAIL: From Bruce Feiler, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story.
BONNIE ERBE: Obama Not Comfortable With Women in Basketball, Golf … or Anywhere Else. Ouch.
Related thoughts here.
UPDATE: Prof. Jacobson: In Defense Of Obama’s Guy Thing.
BYRON YORK: How Dems Outmaneuvered GOP On Acorn. Republicans are insufficiently relentless.
TOM MAGUIRE ON the latest Afghanistan leaks: “Now, I am all in favor of an informed electorate, and I admire the preservation of the diplomatic niceties. However, I wish Obama could deliver the bad news about Afghanistan a bit more directly. If different factions are jockeying for favor in the press it makes the Administration look divided and confused.”
MICHAEL BARONE: Four races test the strength of Obama’s majority.
HOW THE MEDIA HAVE failed America on healthcare reform.
NOW IT’S PHONY SCALIA QUOTES. It’s almost like there’s a campaign to spread these.
SHOCKING RESEARCH FROM THE DOG-BITES-MAN DEPT: Study: More Gov’t Funding Of The Press, Less Political Corruption Reporting. “There’s been some talk of having the government bail out newspapers or somehow fundamentally support newspapers. Of course, for good reason, that scares a lot of people who believe that news organizations (not just newspapers, mind you) play an important role in acting as a government corruption watchdog. So it’s interesting to see a new study that found that the more government support the press gets, the less they covered government scandals.”
BRITAIN’S NEW STAR on the far, far right. “A media circus starring the Holocaust-denying, openly racist leader of an openly racist party.” Well, given how acceptable antisemitism has become in Britain, generally, it’s less of a stretch than it would have been a few years ago. And the general failure of the political system there has opened things up to what amounts to an opportunistic infection. “The economic chaos that accompanied the fall of the Labour government in 1979 was exploited by racist and nationalist groups, and it’s no coincidence that now, as then, such elements are growing in popularity during the death throes of a Labour administration. Thatcher was largely able to repair the damage. These days, however, the malaise runs deeper.”
OBAMA GIRLS SWINE FLU UPDATE:
Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, fall within the priority groups, and they received their injections last week from the White House doctor, who applied for the vaccine through the District of Columbia Department of Health “using the same process as every other vaccination site in the District.’’
Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for the District of Columbia Health Department, says that while there are lines at the District’s vaccination clinics, no one who is in a priority group has been turned away.
The vaccinations are bound to raise questions about whether the Obama girls were given special treatment. The administration is grappling with questions about why the vaccine is not more readily available. Officials, including the secretary of heath and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, say the holdup is with the manufacturers, whose production process has been slower than anticipated.
Hmm. Is this consistent with what Robert Gibbs said just the other day?
MEGAN MCARDLE: The Parlous Public Option:
The only way the public option saves money is by using fiat to slash reimbursement rates to some variation on Medicare reimbursements: Medicare +5%, +10%, or whatever rate they finally settle on. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that the thing will even compete on an even basis with private insurers, who have a lot more experience managing billing, claims experience, and negotiations with providers.
The problem is, Medicare doesn’t pay the average cost of providing services in many cases–in some cases, it doesn’t even pay the marginal cost of providing services. . . . But moral calumny aside, the thing about patients whose insurance doesn’t cover the average cost of treating them is that they cannot be 100% of your patient pool. Someone has to cover the cost of that MRI machine. If the public option does manage to crowd out other insurance–as it might well do, with the ability to dictate price controls–then suddenly, the public option won’t be cheap any more. Hello, fiscal crisis.
That’s the financial problem. Here’s the political problem: if you insert a strong public option, the providers will revolt.
And rightly so.
DUMB ATTACKS ON BLOGGERS in Arizona.
SHOCKINGLY, men don’t find super-skinny women attractive. Plus, from the comments: “Quite honestly, men are so happy to have any interesting pretty woman be with them.” As Marlene Dietrich once said, a man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him, than a woman with the most perfect legs in the world.
UPDATE: Important butterface research.
ALFONZO RACHEL: Conservatives Don’t Need A Leader. Well, they’d better not . . .
