NPR: “VENEZUELA HAS LOADS OF OIL. IT SHOULD BE RICH. YET VENEZUELANS CAN’T GET FOOD. HOSPITALS DON’T HAVE BASIC SUPPLIES.”
Gosh, whatever could explain this “unexpected” run of “bad luck?”
And speaking of “unexpected” bad luck, “CBS anchors on spiraling Obamacare premiums: Hey, what’s up with that?”
Heck, I can remember when CBS anchors read holiday poetry on the air in effort to beg for Obamacare’s passage. Other than half the country, who knew it would be such a debacle?
UNEXPECTEDLY: Offering Poor Value, Obamacare Exchanges Have Become Medicaid-like Ghettos. “To moderate premium spikes, insurers have done what Medicaid managed-care plans do: Narrow networks. Consultants at McKinsey note that three-quarters of exchange plans in 2017 will have no out-of-network coverage, except in emergency cases. And those provider networks themselves are incredibly narrow: one-third fewer specialists than the average employer plan, and hospital networks continuing to shrink. In short, exchange coverage looks nothing like the employer plans that more affluent Americans have come to know and like.”
THE HILL: ObamaCare Premium Hikes Leave Democrats Exposed:
Democrats are increasingly acknowledging that the Affordable Care Act has an affordability problem.
Former President Bill Clinton said recently that people who are ineligible to get subsidies to buy ObamaCare insurance are “getting killed.”
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said this month that “the reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.”
Even President Obama said in a speech last week that “there are going to be people who are hurt by premium increases.”
Every one of these Democrats made the argument that ObamaCare is working well for most people and that the problem of rising premiums is specifically focused on a minority of consumers who earn too much money to qualify for federal subsidies.
Clinton said the system “works fine” for people who get subsidies under the law to help them afford coverage, while Dayton said that “the law is working” for most enrollees and that those negatively affected amount to about 2 percent of Minnesotans, with individual coverage.
Yet the problems with the law are leaving Democrats exposed to GOP attacks.
Republicans have been beating the drum about higher premium increases this year, which are on average about 25 percent for a benchmark plan, the administration said Monday.
Well, maybe if they hadn’t passed a bad law on a party-line vote using a technicality to slip it through, they wouldn’t be “exposed to GOP attacks.”
BEER IS CERTAINLY THE BETTER VALUE: Aetna CEO says young people pick beer over Obamacare.
Bertolini’s comments, made at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead Summit in New York City, came a day after the Obama administration announced that Obamacare premiums will spike and plan offerings will be significantly down for 2017.
He brought up a problem that has plagued the Obama administration — convincing enough young, healthy people to enroll so that insurers are bringing in enough revenue to cover sicker patients while keeping premiums lower. With rates jumping next year, it could be a challenge for advocates for the Affordable Care Act to increase the share of healthy enrollees.
“As the rates rise, the healthier people pull out because the out-of-pocket costs aren’t worth it,” Bertolini said. “Young people can do the math. Gas for the car, beer on Fridays and Saturdays, health insurance.”
Just don’t call it a death spiral!
OUR FRIENDS IN ANKARA: TURKEY DETAINS KURDISH MAYORS.
The co-mayors of the largest city in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast have been detained for questioning as part of a “terrorism” investigation, according to Turkish media reports.
The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that anti-terrorism police took Gultan Kisanak into custody late on Tuesday at the city’s airport. The second politician, Firat Anli, was held at his home.
The agency cited an ongoing probe into the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as the reason for their detentions, without providing further details.
I’m starting to wonder how much longer before the ethnic cleansing — or worse — begins.
JAYVEE UPDATE: Mosul Fight Unleashes New Horrors on Civilians.
A sulfur plant set on fire by the Islamic State has sent dozens of people for treatment for respiratory problems, and several journalists have been hurt, and two killed, covering the fighting. And a wayward attack — either an artillery shell or an airstrike —– hit a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, killing more than a dozen women and children.
Just 10 days into the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, the campaign has unleashed a fresh set of horrors across a wide stretch of the country. Although the government’s military operation itself is largely meeting its goals in progressing toward the city, the turmoil surrounding it is a sign of just how difficult it would be to secure a lasting peace across Iraq’s many divisions even after a victory.
The tragedy is that if ISIS had been treated seriously in the beginning, things wouldn’t be so serious in the end.
WHEN FAILURE BECOMES OBVIOUS: Grey Lady Worried On ObamaCare.
If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.
If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.
if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.
On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.
We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.
We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.
Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)
Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
It’s who they are, it’s what they do.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College threatens police response for students wearing ‘offensive’ costumes. “The Dean of Student Affairs at Tufts, Mary Pat McMahon, is urging people who feel offended to file reports to campus authorities.”
Well, conservative students should give her something to work with if they see anything that offends them. I like that this article notes how absurdly expensive Tufts is, especially given the idiocy of its administration.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Lifting weights could make you more intelligent, study suggests.
Reminds me of Nassim Taleb on how to spot someone who is “an intellectual, yet idiot” with ease: “He doesn’t even deadlift.”
VITAMIN D UPDATE: Genetic Risk Score for Vitamin D Predicts MS Relapse. “A genetic risk score identifying the risk for low vitamin D levels may help predict the risk for relapse in pediatric patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and also offers evidence, albeit not proof, supporting the theory of vitamin D as having a causative role in the disease, according to new research. . . . With low vitamin D levels known to be associated with the risk for MS relapse, neurologists prescribe supplementation to most patients and monitor their vitamin D levels.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: ‘Reverse Racism’ Not a ‘Reality.’
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Female Genital Mutilation Remains Widespread in Many Countries.
The United States is in the midst of an election where allegations about mistreatment of women abound. But in parts of the world, women do not enjoy even the most basic of rights—let alone a shot at political leadership and power over their male counterparts. In some Middle Eastern, Central Asian and African countries, women are subjected to “honor killings,” sex trafficking and slavery. Female genital mutilation belongs among the most serious violations of women’s rights. In fact, as the World Health Organization explains, there are, four distinct types of FGM:
Removal of the clitoral hood, the skin around the clitoris, with partial or complete removal of the clitoris.
Removal of the labia minora, with partial or complete removal of the clitoris and the labia majora.
Removal of all or part of the labia minora and labia majora, and the stitching of a seal across the vagina, leaving a small opening for the passage of urine and menstrual blood.
Then there are miscellaneous acts of genital mutilation, including cauterization of the clitoris, cutting of the vagina, and introducing corrosive substances into the vagina to tighten it.
So no flying cars or moon bases, but we’ve got this crap. Sigh.
HER INSTINCTS CAN BE TERRIBLE: No kidding, Washington Post? So why not investigate her crimes? They’re terrible, too- they’ve compromised the FBI.
Oh dear. What have we here?
“I know this email thing isn’t on the level. I’m fully aware of that,” Tanden wrote in an August 2015 note to Podesta. “But her inability to just do a national interview and communicate genuine feelings of remorse and regret is now, I fear, becoming a character problem (more so than honesty).”
Tanden is Neera Tanden, a Hillary loyalist of the highest stench. But she admits the “email thing” isn’t on the level. Wow. And Neera’s not a Republican.
Another quote from the WaPo quoting the hacked Podesta emails:
We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat,” Podesta wrote to Tanden in September 2015, at a time when Clinton’s campaign feared that Vice President Biden was about to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. “Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts.”
Tanden responded, “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible.”
And an email nugget. Quoting John Podesta, “Laughing too hard,” he wrote, “is her authentic weirdness.”
John, for the good of our nation, she needs to express her authentic weirdness in prison.
CHANGE: Restoring evolutionary fatty acid balance may curb obesity. Plus: “It is the responsibility of the governments and international organizations to establish nutrition policies based on science and not continue along the same path of focusing exclusively on calories and energy expenditure, which have failed miserably over the past 30 years.”
OUR RACIST LIBERAL MEDIA: A New Yorker headline denies the humanity of Clarence Thomas.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Insurers use California’s assisted-suicide law to deny treatment for terminal patients.
About one-year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s assisted-suicide bill into law. It fully went into effect this June, with the opening of the first clinic. While there is no data on the number of California assisted-suicides, Oregon recorded over 130 last year as part of their legalized physician-assisted death program.
Now, one young mother says her insurance company denied her coverage for chemotherapy treatment after originally agreeing to provide the fiscal support for it, but indicated it would be willing to pay for assisted suicide instead. . . .
“As soon as this law was passed – and you see it everywhere, when these laws are passed – patients fighting for a longer life end up getting denied treatment, because this will always be the cheapest option.”
Packer attends a support group for terminally ill patients. She said legally sanctioned suicide has changed the tone of the meetings, which used to be “positive and encouraging.” With patients under new societal pressure to kill themselves, she said meetings “became negative, and it started consuming people. And then they said, ‘You know what? I wish I could just end it.’”
That’s not a bug to some, but a feature.
FASTER, PLEASE: Pembrolizumab Approved in US for First Line in NSCLC. “After causing a sensation at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting, the new data for pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck & Co) in the first-line treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have now secured an approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Pembrolizumab is now the first immunotherapy to be approved for first-line use in NSCLC and is expected to change practice, experts said at the meeting. . . . The approval for the new indication is based on results showing that pembrolizumab was superior to chemotherapy in the first-line setting.”
A RE-REVIEW OF the original 2001 iPod. It holds up surprisingly well.
YES. Internet of Things: Have We Bitten Off More Than We Can Chew?
“We definitely have a lot of work to do. Any device that has an IP address is vulnerable to tampering,” Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com told NBC News.
The crippling DDoS attack that last week shut down many popular websites, including Twitter, Amazon and Spotify, turned harmless web-connected home devices, such as smart cameras, into cyber soldiers in a “botnet” — a network of “bots.”
That botnet then flooded its target, internet service management company Dyn, sending it artificial traffic that made it impossible to access its customers’ websites.
We had four IoT outlet plugins, controlling nothing more dangerous than bedroom and living room lamps — convenient for having stuff switch on at dusk, and off again around bedtime. But they aren’t secured by any kind of encryption that I’m aware of, and they are “internet facing” for switching when we’re away from home. I knew they weren’t secure, but it didn’t seem as though anyone could do anything worse than switch my nightstand lamp on in the middle of the night.
When I read how hackers conducted Friday’s DDoS, I unplugged all four controllers, because it turns out that hackers can make a botnet — one capable of taking out huge swaths of the internet — out of seemingly anything.
RISE OF THE MACHINES: Army Tests Self-Driving Supply Trucks.
EAST BOUND AND DOWN: Self-driving semi-truck makes first trip — a 120-mile beer run.
WHERE’S THE MEDIA OUTRAGE?: Democrat operative Robert Creamer ran a political terror operation — with the goal of influencing the 2016 election.
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