MY USA TODAY COLUMN ON THE OBAMACARE DEBACLE: Big government project, big failure. “Even Obama himself is evidence of this problem. His 2012 presidential campaign was famous for its mastery of technology, building up an electronic campaign infrastructure in just a few months that helped him win the election. But, of course, it wasn’t a government operation. Obama without the government — a technological success. Obama within the government — a technological embarrassment.”
Archive for 2013
October 28, 2013
ROGER KIMBALL: A bite at the Apple: thoughts on an “unmitigated disaster.” Maybe Apple’s iWork release was just an effort to make the ObamaCare launch look better.
STEPHEN GREEN: Profits Up, Earnings Down. “The good news seems to be everywhere — until you look past the big headline numbers.”
WHAT DIFFERENCE, AT THIS POINT, DOES IT MAKE? CBS News: HHS Secretary Sebelius: Should she stay or should she go?
PROF. JACOBSON: “While looking for something else, I stumbled up this interview by Prof. Glenn Reynolds and the Insta-Wife of Andrew Breitbart from February 2010. It may be the best interview of Andrew I’ve ever seen.” Well, watch it and see what you think.
PRESIDENT CHAUNCEY GARDNER: White House: Obama Didn’t Know NSA Was Tapping World Leaders’ Phones.
IF YOU MISSED THE BENGHAZI EPISODE OF 60 MINUTES, you can see it here.
THE WAGES OF DODD FRANK: Money Never Sleeps.
Related item here. “Andrew Morriss, of the University of Alabama law school, sees the shift as an entrepreneurial response to a century’s worth of governmental distortions made through taxation and regulation.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it.”
ROB NATELSON: Rebutting the Claim that an “Anti-Corruption” Principle Should Re-Write the First Amendment. “Law professors are overwhelmingly left-of-center, and they spend an undue amount of time trying to justify nearly unlimited federal power. Sometimes they torture constitutional history to do so.”
If there’s really an “anti-corruption” principle in the Constitution, its honest application to academia, and media, would not produce the results its advocates anticipate.
IF YOU’RE A GANG MEMBER UNDER 20 WHO GETS SHOT, you’re considered a “child” killed by a gun. And note the way — I can hardly see it as anything but deliberately misleading — the story focuses on the very rare gun-accident case involving a kid instead of the much more common teenaged-gangbanger-shot case.
OLD WAR ON WOMEN: Not paying for birth control. New War On Women: Suggesting That Women Not Binge Drink. “This has to be one of the crazier things I’ve ever seen, and I have to read a lot of tripe on this job.”
IT’S NOT SMART TO STEAL FROM BLOGGERS: ‘Around the World in 80 Jobs’ blogger battles big guys and wins. “Turner Barr had been working in various jobs around the world for two years, such as caring for elephants and tigers in Thailand and harvesting tequila in Mexico, all the time documenting his experiences on his blog, ‘Around the World in 80 Jobs,’ until May, when he discovered his blog concept was being used for a company’s marketing campaign. . . . ‘It’s pretty much a wholesale swipe of me, which is probably the creepiest thing you could ever think of.'”
ROGER SIMON: Obama Should Be Impeached . . . For Cluelessness. “When I read Sunday evening in the Wall Street Journal that Barack Obama was ‘unaware’ until last summer that the U. S. spied on thirty-five world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, I was frankly stupefied. No wonder Obamacare and practically everything else from foreign policy to energy policy is an unmitigated mess. This president and his administration have taken hands-off leadership and leading from behind to unprecedented levels. What exactly does our president do for a living? What’re we paying him for?”
He reigns, but does not rule. He leaves the actual work to the likes of Valerie Jarrett, people formidable enough in their milieu but rather narrow in skills and knowledge.
SALENA ZITO: The View From ‘Tea Party Country.’ “Washington should note that the public’s patience is finite and that no party is immune to growing populism. Out here in ‘flyover country,’ that makes tea party activism seem, well, like a dainty tea party.” Certainly compared to what might come next, if the Tea Party fails.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Rise In College Tuitions Slowing But Still Outpaces Inflation. “Continuing a trend over the past decade, the increase for tuition and fees at private colleges was about twice the 2 percent inflation rate for the year ended July 2013. Increases at public universities marked a departure. Over the past 10 years, the institutions had raised tuition and fees at almost three times the inflation rate.”