Category Archives: Politics
News Not Fit to Print
How do you draw an editorial cartoon about murdering babies after botched abortions? Especially when readers won’t know what you’re talking about because the national media are ignoring the story?
That’s the case with the Gosnell murder trial in Philadelphia. I’ve been following it for a while on Fox News and a few blogs like Breitbart but nobody else (except the Philadelphia Inquirer and other local outlets) seemed to be covering it. That is until Kirsten Powers blew the lid off in a USA Today article about the curious incuriosity of the mainstream media.
With the cat out of the bag, others, including Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic and Megan Mcardle in The Daily Beast, began to question the media lack of interest. By that time it was Friday, the traditional bad news dump day.
It’s Complicated
HHS Secretary Sebelius admitted that ObamaCare is complicated. Senator Jay Rockefeller calls it “the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress”. And he helped design it.
Meanwhile the ACLU says IRS is reading your email.
Political Stunts
As Human Events put it, the president “denounced political stunts during a political stunt”. Obama called the possibility of a Republican filibuster a political stunt and then flew off with family members of Sandy Hook victims to lobby Congress on gun control.
No relatives of Fast and Furious “gun walking” victims were invited.
Udate: Here’s an interesting Politico story about how professional and effective the lobbying of the Sandy Hook families is.
Sequester Scare
The White House is gamely sticking with its policy of Sequester Scare. The president has given himself a 5% pay cut as a show of solidarity with the tots without tours who are denied spring break access to the White House.
In February Janet Napolitano said the Border Patrol would be cut by 5,000 agents. This week it was announced those cuts would be delayed. Here’s Fox News’ Ed Henry asking Jay Carney if Napolitano had been deliberately misleading.
Obamascare
Health insurance rates are taking off under Obamacare, especially if you now carry a high deductible plan. Kathleen Sebelius agrees.
“Some of these folks have very high catastrophic plans that don’t pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus,” she said. “They’re really mortgage protection, not health insurance.”
Megan McCardle at the Daily Beast thinks Sebelius is confused about what insurance is.
Sebelius’ response is apparently that catastrophic insurance isn’t really insurance at all–which is exactly backwards. Catastrophic coverage is “true insurance”. Coverage of routine, predictable services is not insurance at all; it’s a spectacularly inefficient prepayment plan.
“This is not insurance anymore. This is regulation, this is government dictated rates, like the electrical company…”
