HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: “Graduates of elite colleges and universities are opting not to apply to law school at a greater rate than graduates of less elite colleges and universities.”

A VIDEO TRAILER FOR VIRGINIA POSTREL’S NEW BOOK, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion.

SO LOOKING FOR SOMETHING ELSE IN SALON, I found this pre-InstaPundit letter of mine defending Andrew Sullivan. I had totally forgotten that.

FLASHBACK: Obama Told People They Could Keep Their Health Care Plans.

Related: Byron York: At the White House: Obamacare success stories that aren’t. “President Obama invited a number of people to stand behind him as he delivered his speech on the state of Obamacare at the White House Monday morning. One of them, Janice Baker, a small business owner from Delaware, introduced the president, and Obama spoke of Baker and the others gathered there as people who have benefited from Obamacare. But after reading the White House-provided descriptions of each of those behind the president, it’s clear the administration was stretching to present people who, beyond supporting Obamacare, have actually gained from it in any tangible way.”

Example: “So, Hassan is employed, not covered, and has not yet succeeded in finding coverage through Obamacare. That is, in the White House’s estimation, an Obamacare success story. . . . Presumably, the White House had many success stories to choose from in deciding who would stand behind the president at Monday’s event. But some of the successes they chose don’t seem to be successes at all.” Maybe they didn’t have many to choose from. The selection suggests that’s the case.

UPDATE: Obama: If the website doesn’t work, just use the phone. Which will refer you to . . . the website! “Can’t make this up. Got through 800-number, followed prompts, and got referred to http://Healthcare.gov.” So Obama’s now running behind Jerry Brown’s 1992 campaign, whose 800 number at least worked.

READER PEN PLUG: Reader Greg Shea writes: “I know you often do Reader Book Plugs…could you do a Reader Pen Plug, for my family’s line of USA Made pens and markers on Amazon? People can find it HERE. Thanks!” Done.

JIM CANTORE’S LIST: Essential Storm Gear. I’m a big fan of the Mophie cellphone case, too. Of course, I’d rather they’d just made my iPhone a quarter inch thicker and used the extra space for more battery. . . .

COMMUNICATIONS: NASA’s moon probe starts outer space Internet test: Spacecraft enters lunar orbit and begins test on next generation laser communications system.

AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER TONY ABBOTT puts himself in the line of fire. “For 14 long hours over the weekend, Tony Abbott was just one of 1392 anonymous, sooty-faced firefighters battling to keep the relentless NSW bushfires at bay. . . .If not for a couple of photos circulating on Twitter, it’s a fair chance that Mr Abbott’s weekend exploits would have gone unnoticed. His office did not issue a statement until the blurry image of the PM giving the thumbs-up from behind the wheel of a fire truck appeared on the social media site. While many Twitter followers praised his volunteering spirit, others questioned the wisdom of the nation’s leader putting himself in the line of fire. But for Mr Abbott, it was just another day as a volunteer firey with his local brigade, something he has been doing since 2001.”

DEBUNKING BOGUS SCIENCE: “It doesn’t give you confidence if two of the biggest names in the subfield are at the very least so sloppy.” Plus:

“It’s about the whole community. Why is it that no one before Nick—and I mean Nick was a first semester part-time Master’s student, at, let’s be honest, a fairly obscure university in London who has no particular training in mathematics—why is it that no one realized this stuff was bullshit? Where were all the supposed experts?”

“Is it really true that no one saw through this,” he asks, “in an article that was cited 350 times, in a field which touts itself as being so scientific?”

“Touts itself” being the key phrase.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 165.

WHY YOU CAN’T TRUST ERDOGAN’S TURKEY: “Last week, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius revealed that in early 2012, Turkey gave sensitive information about Israel’s spy operations to Iran—specifically, the names of up to ten Iranians who had been meeting with Israeli intelligence officers in Turkey.”

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: The ACA’s Million Dollar Question: Will Enough People Sign Up?

More and more health care watchers are questioning whether enough young adults will sign up for insurance under the ACA to keep the system afloat. The latest is centrist think tank The Brookings Institute, which has a new report out on Obamacare entitled “The Affordable Care Act: A User’s Guide to Implementation.” The report argues, among other things, that there’s a possible flaw built into the law that could undermine the whole system. The penalty for not buying insurance could be too low to convince young healthy individuals to sign up for insurance, thus creating adverse selection.

Here’s the question: If ObamaCare needs twentysomethings to sign up in order to be a success, why did Obama support letting them stay on their parents’ insurance?

More:

We’ve known that adverse selection and enrollment failure could be a problem with the law for some time now, but the fact that the Brookings Institute is flagging it suggests that centrists are also feeling uncertain these days about the law’s ability to succeed. Indeed, the Brookings Report is part of a flood of appalled center and center left commentary about flaws in the ACA.

Now that the government shutdown is over, the MSM is beginning to increase its coverage of what, so far, looks like a systemic failure of the ACA in its early rollout. Negative coverage — of how hard it is to enroll, how badly the program as a whole is working, how unpopular it remains — will likely make all but the most motivated customers stay away. Those customers will be exactly the ones Obamacare does not need: customers with expensive pre-existing conditions whose need for insurance is so dire that they will fight through any and all obstacles to get enrolled.

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.

Ya think?

I’M SORRY TO REPORT that longtime blogger Norm Geras has died.

HEDGE FUNDS NOT PERFORMING SO WELL. Whenever I look at the mostly-modest performance of my retirement portfolio in recent years, I’m somewhat comforted that these guys can’t seem to do any better.

CHRISTMAS PRE-SHOPPING: Amazon’s Holiday Toy List is out.

Also, 20% off on new handbags and wallets.

And, today only: Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (Limited Edition) on Blu-Ray.

CHANGE: Exodus: Migration of Jews Out of France Begins. “They wonder whether classic anti-Semitism is not back with a vengeance all over Europe, after several decades of post-Holocaust toleration. The fact that campaigns to make kosher slaughter and even circumcision illegal are gaining ground in several countries, and were even endorsed at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, is seen as particularly ominous.”

CHARLIE MARTIN: Depression, Suffering, and Mindfulness.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Obamacare Tech Fail May Do What the GOP Couldn’t.

Related: IT Expert: May Have to Shut Down ObamaCare Applications For Weeks. You know, the GOP was offering Obama an out with that mandate-delay business. He may wish he’d taken it before this is over.

UPDATE: MSNBC: Obama Administration is lying about ObamaCare enrollments.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND, if you were out, you know, having a life or something:

Luggageblogging!

Consumer Reports: You might want to hold off on visiting Healthcare.gov.

Washington’s intergenerational wealth redistribution.

I appear on Next Generation TV, talking about zero tolerance idiocy, the higher education bubble, and more, with Michelle Fields and John Phillips.

Gay Talese: Nobody in the DC press corps has the guts to cover Obama honestly.

Dem Congressman calls Tea Party “domestic enemies.” ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, Steve.

Rich people love diversity — until they have kids.

Science not as self-correcting as we’d hope.

CAN THE GOP BLOW THIS? Democrats Will Look to Gut the Sequester in Budget Talks.

ELECTION FRAUD IN CONNECTICUT: “Ayala, a Democrat, allegedly listed an address where she did not live when applying for the Citizens Election Program, which provides campaign money for candidates who reach threshold limits of no more than $100 per contribution. An elections commission investigation found that Ayala voted in nine different elections using that address, when she actually resided elsewhere.”

CHANGE: Foreclosures dog even wealthiest home buyers.

A SOBERING GRAPHIC: The Reality Of America’s Finances.

Once again: Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Make your plans accordingly.

JAPAN: What if young people stopped having sex?

Somehow, this reminds me of The Screwfly Solution. . . .