Happy Halloween

Trick or Treat.

The White House claims that the stimulus saved more than 640,000 jobs but nobody believes it. CBS does not.

Michael Gerson: "... more Americans believe in UFOs than approve of the job done by Congress."

The WSJ interviews Nick Saban, head football coach of the University of Alabama. Asked what coach in college football got the most out of the least, Saban said, "When I was at LSU and Houston Nutt was a coach at Arkansas, we always had some knock-down, drag-out battles. The last game of the season, he got the most out the players that he had as well as anybody that we ever played against."

Politico:

Democrats want you to know that your McDonald's Angus Burger meal has about 1,500 calories -- before you buy and burp.
Buried deep in the House health care bill is a provision, likely to raise nanny-state hackles, requiring fast-food chains and vending machine owners to notify customers of calorie counts -- by conspicuously posting nutritional information on menus or machines.
The provision -- Section 2572 -- requires retail food establishments "part of a chain with 20 or more locations" to list calorie counts "on the menu board including a drive-through board," as is currently required in New York City and other localities.

If you follow higher education, you will be interested in this article. You also need to know about Higher Ed Holdings, which is described as "a company selling distance learning support to universities." The article mentions Arkansas State University's relationship with Higher Ed Holdings. See also Inside Higher Ed for more background on Arkansas State's experience with HEH. Read the comments.

The future of higher education may include more for-profit institutions, and definitely more distance learning. We already have high-quality private schools K-12, and this trend will probably spill over into higher education. What students want today is online courses, which may be farmed out to private companies.

The new wager in Washington: how bad will the Democrats' loss be next year?

Robert Robb: "...I think [Democrats] honestly don't appreciate how fundamentally they are changing health care incentives and what the huge consequences of such changes will be.

In short, the change in incentives in the Democratic reform will turn the entire health care market topsy-turvy. Politically, this could be disastrous.

I think they do understand.

Peggy Noonan: Americans are disheartened and our leaders don't even notice.

Politico: The House health care bill takes up 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words, or 4 reams of paper. It's longer than War and Peace.

Here's the final report on Cash for Clunkers. It's not good.

What do doctors have to say about health care reform? I've been waiting for this, if it's not too late.

"Unsilent Night"

Jay Nordlinger:

A reader from Boulder, Colo., sends a note that may interest you. It responds to an item in Impromptus today. She says, “In 1994, the Fairview High School Christmas concert was going to close with the students processing out of the auditorium singing ‘Silent Night.’ Huge controversy, with multiple cries against ‘religion in the public schools.’ The school district’s attorneys said no. Since it was too late for the music teacher to arrange for something else, the students began to recess in silence. The audience was having none of it, and started singing ‘Silent Night’ themselves. That story still gives me goose-bumps.”

AP: The House of Representatives has come up with a health care bill.

John Brummett analyzes Blanche Lincoln's dilemma on the health care vote.

Democrats as the Donner Party

The WSJ makes this observation:

You wake up in the morning and just like every other morning as far as the eye can see the only thing in the news is the president's health-care reform. It's starting to look like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are leading the Donner Party, the snowbound emigrants who bogged down in the Sierra Nevada winter in the 1840s and resorted to cannibalism to survive...

In a world defined by nearly 100,000 iPhone apps, a world of seemingly limitless, self-defined choice, the Democrats are pushing the biggest, fattest, one-size-fits all legislation since 1965. And they brag this will complete the dream Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1939.
The culture still believes the U.S. has a hipster for president. But the Obama health-care bill, and maybe this whole administration, is starting to look totally out of sync with the new zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

Arkansas is facing shortages of the swine-flu vaccine as well as influenza vaccine. The NYT analyzes the vaccine shortage.

Steve Chapman:

If Medicare were a bank, federal regulators would be closing its doors, selling its operations and sacking its managers. Thanks to soaring costs, the program is fast running out of money -- even though it pays such low fees that many doctors refuse to take Medicare patients. Meanwhile, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers some $60 billion a year, according to a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," making it among the most profitable fields for felons.
That's our experience with government-run health insurance for the elderly. So what do congressional Democrats propose to do? Offer government-run health insurance to everyone else.

Betsy's Page has some good comments on the public option.

The Wall Street Journal cites a study of projected insurance premiums under Obamacare. They are going through the roof. As the article states, anybody with any sense knows that.

Democrats have been selling health care as one huge free lunch in which everyone gets better insurance while paying less. But the policy facts simply don't add up, and Democrats are attacking WellPoint because they don't want anyone to understand what their health-care schemes will mean in practice. Democrats know that if the public is given the facts and the time to consider them, Americans might demand that Democrats stop pushing the country off this cliff and start all over.

Michael Tanner uses a little common sense on the Democrat's health plans. It's no free lunch.

What should the GOP do? Grow the economy and shrink the state. To me, that's what all the tea parties were about.

Larry Kudlow: "[T]he message for economic freedom fighters everywhere: Unite, and throw off your chains. Especially here in America.

On President Obama

Bonnie Erbe: "Whether it was his treatment of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail (as in his condescending remark that she was "likeable enough") or his clearly career-oriented mate who has been toned down and remorphed into a Stepford Wife, I just don't get the impression this man is comfortable with women. Nor do I believe he cares about them beyond needing women's votes. It's an act and a thoroughly see-through, amateur one at that."

Helen Smith adds, "This has to end. Obama must be called out on his good ol’ boy network. It is unfair, unjust, and discriminatory. He should be forced to put equal numbers of men and women in the White House, on the basketball court, on the golf course, and on his staff. Anything less would be hypocritical and must be considered blasphemy to the liberal playbook that Obama and his administration so greatly adhere to.

Democrats have sparked a "conservative counter-mobilization." See the following comments.
William Galston
Jennifer Rubin

AP: FAA has grounded the wayward pilots. You knew that was coming.

Telling it like it is

Thomas Sowell:

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

Government: The recession is over, well, almost. But unemployment will remain above 10 percent. What sense does that make?

Recent reports say that Harry Reid is reviving the public option. What is really going on? Reason has this summary.

Betsy's Page thinks it's just a political ploy: 

Reid got his announcement and one-day story in the media. The liberal bloggers are happy. But don't be so quick to assume that this was anything more than an appeasement of the left while Reid knows very well that he doesn't have the votes to pass what he's announcing that he'll introduce. In fact, if this plays out as expected, he'll introduce the public option and fail to get the votes and then he can tell the lefty bloggers that he tried, he really tried, but it was those darn moderates in his own caucus who blocked the public option. And he crosses his fingers that they don't realize how they've been played.

Health care and free enterprise

Arthur C. Brooks:

We will continue to hear both sides of the health-care debate argue about particulars of insurance markets, the deficit impacts of reform, and the minutiae of budgetary assumptions. These arguments, while important, do not address the deeper issues involved.
The health-care debate is part of a moral struggle currently being played out over the free enterprise system. It will be replayed in every major policy debate in the coming months, from financial regulatory reform to a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions. The choices will ultimately always come down to competing visions of America's future. Will we strengthen freedom, individual opportunity and enterprise? Or will we expand the role of the state and its power?

Robert Samuelson: "In reality, the public plan is mostly an exercise in political avoidance: It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn't."

James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed is an examination of state social engineering efforts to bring certain "outsiders" under their control.

According to the publisher's blurb,

One of the most important common factors that Scott found in these schemes is what he refers to as a high modernist ideology. In simplest terms, it is an extremely firm belief that progress can and will make the world a better place. But "scientific" theories about the betterment of life often fail to take into account "the indispensable role of practical knowledge, informal processes, and improvisation in the face of unpredictability" that Scott views as essential to an effective society. What high modernism lacks is metis, a Greek word which Scott translates as "the knowledge that can only come from practical experience." Although metis is closely related to the concept of "mutuality" found in the anarchist writings of, among others, Kropotkin and Bakunin, Scott is careful to emphasize that he is not advocating the abolition of the state or championing a complete reliance on natural "truth." He merely recognizes that some types of states can initiate programs which jeopardize the well-being of all their subjects.

I'm putting it on my reading list. I think we always have to respect the intelligence of people who are outsiders or whatever you want to call them. Their focus is on the practical, on what works and what does not.

Surprise! The NYT has figured out that a government mandate that forces people to buy health insurance will leave them worse off.

Welcome to government health care.
Get in line. Wait.

AP Fact Check: The claim that the insurance industry earns obscene profits is wrong. They earn less than Tupperware, farm machinery, railroads, and Hershey's.

Matthew Continetti: Is Obamacare inevitable?

Michael Barone reports that opinion polls show increased skepticism for global warming. Why?

To what do I attribute this decline in belief in global warming? One factor may be the weather, not just this year but over the past decade; it has gotten a little cooler, contrary to the predictions of the computer models of global warming alarmists. More important, I think, is that the election of Obama and a Congress with larger Democratic majorities has raised the real-world possibility of legislation that could inflict serious damage on our economy in order to avert a danger predicted by global warming alarmists’ computer models for the far distant future. It's one thing to accept a line peddled by most of mainstream media when it's not likely to cost you anything. It's another thing when it looks like it might cost something. The prospect of hanging, as Dr. Johnson said, tends to concentrate the mind.

Barone does not believe Congress will pass any global warming legislation this year. 

This AP story really makes me feel good about flying. The pilots flew right over their destination and didn't realize it. They missed it by 150 miles. It's not clear what was going on.

UPDATE: The pilots are still not talking.

UPDATE 2: The pilots were working on their laptops, lol.

This video shows Dick Morris comparing Obama's reaction to his critics with Roosevelt's reaction during the New Deal. He says Roosevelt ran to the right in the early New Deal, but he realized he couldn't get unemployment down any lower. So in 1936 or so, he launched his attacks against the "economic royalists" and so on. He he lost control of Congress after 1938 and the New Deal was over.

Morris may be wrong about some of his interpretation, but he claims that Obama is following the same pattern: he can't get unemployment down any lower than it is (in fact it may go up), health care legislation is stalled, foreign policy problems are intractable, so he's attacking Fox News, the chamber of commerce, etc. He hopes this will rally the Democrat base against all opposition.

The AP has a map that displays home foreclosurers from 2005 to the present.

Time: Many Americans are planning to work past age 67, and 27 percent expect to work 5 years longer than they expected. It's the economy, but it's a good idea.

Like the SEC, MLB is having trouble with its umpires and their bad calls. See post for October 21 on SEC.

Rasmussen: 73 percent of people in a telephone poll think the GOP has lost touch with ordinary Republicans. I think that. And notice that Obama said that Republicans do what they are told. LOL.

Roll Call: 36 moderate Democrats threaten to vote down Obamacare.

What do doctors think?

What do doctors think about health care reform? I've often wondered. When I see a doctor I just want to say, forget about my problem for a minute, what do you think about this health care reform mess? What's going to happen? Here's the answer, and it's scary.

Pew Research: Fewer Americans see global warming as a serious problem. It's a political movement, not an environmental movement.

Blanche Lincoln is involved in a controversy over whether local radio stations should pay performers royalties when they play their music. Senate Bill 379, the Performance Rights Act, would not be the end of free radio, but in these difficult economic times the end of local radio stations. Well, same thing.

The St. George, Utah, Spectrum and Daily News has a story on a "controversial but overlooked" Mormon pioneer, Amasa Mason Lyman. That's a gross understatement. He is described as follows:

After more than 30 years of service to his church, and following a series of conflicts with Brigham Young, Lyman began to move away from its teachings. He was one of the first Mormons to openly criticize the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which led to his dismissal as an apostle. Lyman was excommunicated in 1870 and became one of the foremost spokesmen of the Godbeite Church, the Church of Zion movement until his death in 1877.

Victor Davis Hanson sums up just how low the Obama administration has fallen.

AP: The Democrats' huge majorities in Congress are not enough to get health care passed. Some of them don't want to jump over the cliff into defeat next year. Blanche Lincoln is mentioned as one such Democrat.

Michael Barone's description of the Obama administration's recent behavior: "thuggery."

The officiating crew at the Arkansas/Florida game last Saturday has been suspended. Their job performance was not up to expected standards, the local news said. These same officials were involved in the LSU/Georgia game that included questionable calls.

Vincent Carrollt: Health care reform just makes matters worse.

Mitch McConnell (R-Kty and Senate minority leader): How did health care reform get off the track?

End User: How to tell if Windows 7 will work with your stuff.

Victor Davis Hanson describes himself as a cultural drop out. I am too. I have not seen a new movie in years, don't watch prime time TV, don't read best-sellers, etc.

Yale University study: Women in the future will be shorter and fatter.

Megan McArdle: "The White House has long since outrun conservatives’ powers of exaggeration." See the video.

I came across a book by sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas entitled Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America. The WSJ has a review here.

I know what it's like to leave a small town and move to a city. I've done that and I want to go back. I was not looking for the bright lights, I was looking for a place to retire. Bad choice.

Helen Thomas, the NYT, and the Nation warn the Obama administration not to take on Fox News.

 PC World: Don't upgrade to Windows 7. Buy a new PC instead. Probably good advice. But I'll stick with what I've got and save my money.

Mountain Meadows Massacre: A reaction of the recent commemoratration by a Mormon.

Rasmussen: 54 percent of voters oppose Obamacare, 42 percent are for it.

The local ADG has an editorial today on Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. school system. The editorial was highly positive. She is fighting deadwood, teacher's unions, and politicians who are quick to play the race card.

As the editorial noted, we need somebody like her right here in Little Rock. For more about her, see these links:
Newsweek
Washington Post
Time

Americablog: On the Sunday talk shows, Obama's advisors backed off from the public option. Obama still think it's the best option, but he says he won't fight for it.

I used to have a Lionel train. Loved it. But it's gone like my old comic book collection and a lot of other things.

The AP is reporting that the recent balloon incident was a hoax. Here is information on Richard Heene, the father of Falcon, the boy who was said to have been carried off in the balloon. 

Powerline: Blanche Lincoln has backed out of a dinner with an anti-Israel organization.

Harris poll: Obama's approval rating is down to 45 percent.

Herbert London, president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University, is trying like many other people to understant Obama. He calls him "a man apart," a man without cultural roots in America.

He is not merely outside the mainstream. He doesn’t even recognize it. He is a basketball player who has been asked to step up to the plate and bat.
At first I thought his initial popularity would carry him through to a second term. But as each day passes and the false, almost inappropriate gestures register with the people, Americans are beginning to recognize this president as a man apart. He is our stranger in a land he doesn’t understand...

Perhaps this president will learn. But I am not confident that can happen. His life experience without a father in his home and a mother seeking adventure abroad was unstable. His closest associates vilified the nation he now leads. Is it any wonder his wife said she could take no pride in America till now? The past is to be rejected. Milestones in history are erased from memory as storage, cast aside as unnecessary.
This is a unique moment in our history. It is certainly the only time in my life when our national instincts are being reconditioned. From a nation that was a model to the world, we are now told that superiority is unbecoming, a hindrance for the emergence of global egalitarianism.
President Obama, as a man apart, may attempt this recasting of America. But, as I see it, America is not yet ready for his experimentation and, most likely, never will be.

Eugene Robinson: "President Obama's brief display of drive-by compassion Thursday in New Orleans was, for me, by far the worst outing of his presidency thus far — and the biggest disappointment."

Lynn Forester de Rothschild: Americans are judging Obama by his record and not his rhetoric.

It is for this reason that so many Americans are uneasy about Obama's health-care plan. The promised benefits don't add up. It's just not possible for the government to simultaneously a) provide care for 30 million more people, b) not increase the budget deficit and c) allow anyone who is satisfied with their health care package to experience no change.

In repeatedly insisting that he'll deliver all three results at once, Obama has lost credibility: 80 percent of Americans polled said that his health-care reform will raise costs or diminish quality of care.

The Baucus bill is based on cuts in Medicare to keep its projected budget in balance. But I don't believe the Democrats will ever make such cuts to Medicare. They can't even let a year go by without increasing Social Security's COLA when inflation has been neutral. Betsy's Page takes a look at this situation.

Betsy notes that Harry Reid, who is up for re-election next year, is running scared. He has 100 percent name recognition among voters but half of them just don't like him.

Byron York: The Democrats are feuding among themselves. That may kill their agenda, not the Republicans.

The WSJ has a column called "Cash for Oldsters" about the $250 that Obama is proposing to dole out. Clearly, it's a bribe, a transparent attempt to garner support for Obamacare, which is wildly unpopular with this age group. Sure, I'll take the money, so what? Nothing's changed.

Victor Davis Hanson: "Americans want out of the recession and wish long-term problems of war, energy, and health care to be solved. They welcomed a young, charismatic president who seems eager to tackle these challenges head-on. The problem, however, is that they are not convinced that he understands the challenges, let alone that he offers the right solutions. In short, what Obama says seems pleasant to the ear, but an increasing number of Americans believe that his answers are not just unlikely, but perhaps not even possible."

The Hill: Mike Ross (D-AR) is back in the news. Now he proposes that we open Medicare up to everyone who's uninsured. And all the time we thought he opposed the public option.

Journalist Ronald Kessler's In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect seems like a real page turner. He interviewed about 100 members of the Secret Service going back to the Kennedy administration, asking them about their impressions of the Presidents they protected. Here is a summary:

Kennedy - serial adulterer
Johnson - serial adulterer and a lunatic
Nixon - strange and  unsociable
Ford - friendly but cheap
Carter - a phony
Reagan - friendly, concerned, apologetic for taking them on trips away from their families
Bush - decent and thoughtful
Clinton - liked but inconsiderate; "Hillary did not speak to us."
Bush 43 - in person not uncomfortable like he is in front of a microphone, down to earth
Obama - personally a decent man

The closed frontier of government

Peggy Noonan: What's really behind the opposition to Obamacare is the historical context.

... [A] big part of opposition to the health-care plan is a sense of historical context. People actually have a sense of the history they're living in and the history their country has recently lived through. They understand the moment we're in.
In the days of the New Deal, in the 1930s, government growth was virgin territory. It was like pushing west through a continent that seemed new and empty. There was plenty of room to move. The federal government was still small and relatively lean, the income tax was still new. America pushed on, creating what it created: federal programs, departments and initiatives, Social Security. In the mid-1960s, with the Great Society, more or less the same thing. Government hadn't claimed new territory in a generation, and it pushed on—creating Medicare, Medicaid, new domestic programs of all kinds, the expansion of welfare and the safety net.
Now the national terrain is thick with federal programs, and with state, county, city and town entities and programs, from coast to coast. It's not virgin territory anymore, it's crowded. We are a nation fully settled by government. We are well into the age of the welfare state, the age of government. We know its weight, heft and demands, know its costs both in terms of money and autonomy, even as we know it has made many of our lives more secure, and helped many to feel encouragement.
But we know the price now. This is the historical context...

Death spiral

James C. Capretta: The Baucus bill will cause a "death spiral" in the insurance industry.

Insurance death spirals occur when regulators force insurers to offer coverage (“guaranteed issue”) at premiums below the known risk of those they are insuring, without any assurance that the shortfall can be made up elsewhere. When insurers comply with these rules and offer relatively low cost health insurance policies to all comers, quite predictably, many sick people step forward to sign up. When the insurers then try to turn around and charge higher premiums to the relatively healthy to cover their costs, the healthy, also quite predictably, are more reluctant to enroll because they can see the premiums they would have to pay would very likely exceed their health-care costs. So they often say "no thanks" to the insurance and decide to take their chances by going without coverage instead. As more and more healthy people exit the marketplace, insurers are then forced to raise premiums for everyone who remains, which only further encourages the lower risks to opt out. This vicious cycle of rising premiums and an increasingly unhealthy risk pool is called a ‘death spiral’ because it eventually forces the insurer to terminate the plan.

Sounds logical to me. 

DRLs

Do you like daytime running lights on your vehicle? I do, but my new Prius does not have them. I was initially disappointed when I found out, since the salesman told me the car had them. Yes, I should have checked. But it's okay after all. If I need my lights on, I'll just turn them on. See this for criticism of DRLs.

Magic Health Care Kingdom

Karl Rove: "Mr. Obama's problem is that his Magic Kingdom Health Care World is colliding with reality. There is a big cost to any large government expansion—and the ways to cover the cost of Mr. Obama's plan are limited, unpopular, and sure to anger Americans once they are fully understood."

I've been amused by the photos of Olympia Snowe shown alone and isolated behind a desk or something.
See here.

The NYT has a good summary of what it calls the Medicare Maze. I've been through this maze and been lost in it: Medicare, Medicare Advantage, supplemental policies, donut hole drug coverage, the whole thing.

I've learned that when you are considering a medical insurance company, you will want to ask, Does your doctor/hospital take this or that insurance company? The answer often is Yes, they do. But don't be fooled by that. Take one more step. Also ask, Is this or that doctor/hospital in my network? If you don't and you stray out of your network, you will pay more. They may "take" your insurance, but you will getting a nice fat bill from them in a few weeks.

I'd also advise you not to take your sales representative's work for it. Check it out yourself. Use the company's web site, since it should be the most up-to-date.

More and more doctors don't take Medicare now, presumably because of the low Medicare payments. They just don't want you.

Social Security makes it official: No COLA for SS receipients next year. We already knew that. We may get an extra $250 anyway, and I'm planning on going out shopping.

Politico: Democratic intraparty fighting is what's holding back their agenda, not Republican opposition.

Monica Crowley also has comments on this situation, adding "As President Lincoln once said, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand,' particularly when that house is on the wrong side of the American people." 

AP: Since seniors will not get a Social Security raise next year, Obama is giving us $250.

Dick Morris shows how Obamacare will increase the cost of health care.

Megal McArdle shows how divided Democrts are on health-care reform.

Camille Paglia has been a critic of the Obama administration. Here she reviews some letters she has received. In reply to one letter she writes:

I have been deeply impressed by the citizen outrage that spilled out into town hall meetings this year. And I remain shocked at the priggish derision of the mainstream media (locked in their urban enclaves) toward those events. This was a moving spectacle of grassroots American democracy in action. Aggrieved voters have a perfect right to shout at their incompetent and irresponsible representatives. American citizens are under no duty whatever to sit in reverent silence to be fed propaganda and half-truths. It is bizarre that liberals who celebrate the unruly demonstrations of our youth would malign or impugn the motivation of today's protestors with opposing views.

The Wall Street Journal lists the Senators who merit watching as health-care legislation moves forward from this point. Blanche Lincoln is of course one of them. She has voted against the public option twice, and yesterday voted in favor of the Baucus bill.

Jay Cost has an analysis of the maneuvering behing the Baucus bill. The vote just keeps the game alive. He adds this:

Are the progressives willing to sacrifice a public option for the sake of the party's reputation? Alternatively, is Blanche Lincoln willing to sacrifice her job by supporting a public option for the sake of the party's reputation? That's the core challenge. One side, possibly both, will have to bend.

Maine Republican Olympia Snowe has announced she will vote for the Democrat's health care bill.

UPDATE: The Finance Committee has voted to approve the bill. Blanche Lincoln apparently voted in favor of the bill as well.

The Senate Finance Committee will likely vote on their health care bill today.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minn. complains about higher taxes and higher premiums.

Powerline calls the Baucus bill "stupidity."

The cost of Obamacare

PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm, has issued a study of health care costs:

The report makes clear that several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system. The report finds that the proposal “will increase premiums above what they would increase under the current system for both individual and family coverage in all four market segments for every year from 2010-2019.”
For example, the analysis shows that the cost of the average family policy is approximately $12,300 today and will rise to:

• $15,500 in 2013 under current law and to $17,200 if these provisions are implemented.
• $18,400 in 2016 under current law and to $21,300 if these provisions are implemented.
• $21,900 in 2019 under current law and to $25,900 if these provisions are implemented.

In fact, between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system.

This is from Keith Hennessey. See also here.

Summary: lower wages and higher premiums.

CNN: Hillary Clinton says she won't run for President again. I believe she means it, until she says she will run again.

On Columbus Day, I recommend this post by Instapundit, which in turns recommends Samuel Eliot Morison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. One of my favorite parts of the first survey course of American history was the Columbus story. I took two days to savor it all.

The reign of email as a form of communciation is over. Long live Twitter and Facebook. Well, okay, what's next?

Why Democrats are in such a hurry

Michael Barone is correctly skeptical about the true cost of health-care reform, and realistic about the politics involved.

There are no good public policy reasons to pass such a bill hurriedly and before it can be fully analyzed and debated. Only political reasons: line up enough Democratic members before they can process the public opinion polls that show most voters hostile to such measures and before they are faced with probable though not certain Democratic defeats in Virginia and New Jersey in November.

It's a real shooting war

The health insurance industry, until now quiet in the health-care debate, takes a shot at the Baucus bill, arguing that it will increase the cost of insurance by $1,700 a year per family in 2013. I don't like insurance companies, but neither do I like the idea of paying more for insurance than I have to.

UPDATE: The Democrats are fighting back against the evil profit-driven insurance empire. 

Looking back at the Andy Griffith Show, which still runs on cable TV.

The health insurance industry and the AMA are finally upset with the prospect of health reform. Oh my.

Congressional Budget Office: Tort reform would reduce the deficit by $54 billion. Sounds worth it to me.

Man bites dog

A fired white coach at Clark Atlanta University is suing a black college president for discrimination on racial grounds.

The Washington Examiner shows what the Baucus bill will really cost.

Medicare Advantage plans are under attack in Congress and seniors are going to be shocked when they learn about the proposed cuts.

My own experience with an Advantage plan has been good. In fact I have been shocked at how little the plan pays. Doctors and hospitals are definitely not being overpaid.

Blanche Lincoln is on Politico's list of Senators who are most likely to lose next year.

CATO Institute examines the Baucus health care bill and does not agree with the CBO's analysis.

Windows 7: To buy or not to buy?

Karl Rove cites polls that show Obamacare lacking widespread support. He notes that two fights are going on, one over health care and the other over who will control the next Congress.

The ADG reported this morning that Little Rock National Airport is listed on the nation's worst airports for on-time arrivals. During the period studied, the late arrivals averaged 53 minutes behind schedule. The problem may lie in the number of short flights to connection airports. If a flight to Memphis or St. Louis is late, then it will be late getting into Little Rock. You would have to fault air carriers, not the airport, in most instances. They in turn blame the FAA's air trafic control system. For more see here. The report is here.

Mary Lynn Cramer: Seniors need to speak out. Nobody will be hurt more than senior citizens.

For the first time this questions is being asked: Is Obama becoming a joke? SNL and Bill Maher have made fun of him. A joke always contains an element of truth.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) faces a tough town hall crowd. The townhallers are still upset, but Congressmen are not meeting with them much anymore.

Dick Morris: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Olymbia Snowe, a Maine Republican, are set up to play a critical role in the health care outcome. How they vote will determine how Congress goes on Obamacare. Lincoln is perhaps the most vulnerable Senator up for re-election next year. If she votes for Obamacare, other moderates will follow her. But can she afford to alienate her senior constitutents and vote to chop Medicare?

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, is pondering the cost of medicare care reform and is waiting on the cost estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. My guess is she would be a definite vote in favor if she were not up for re-election next year.

UPDATE: This is the report that Blanche is waiting for. Projected cost is $829 billion over 10 years.

The next big thing

3-D flat screen TVs

GM's market share continues to decline but they are cutting their local dealerships. Not a good idea.

KATV, Channel 7, has two videos on McArthur. See this link.

The ADG this morning reports that Bill McArthur died of natural causes. They gave no more new information.

For full details on the infamous case see Gene Lyons' Widow's Web.

Little Rock's Channel 7 announced on their 6:00 news that Bill McArthur is dead at 71. No information on their web site as yet. He was involved in the famous Alice McArthur/Mary Lee Orisini case in the early 1980s.

See these links:
Shoutback
Pine Bluff Commercial
Arkansas Matters

Three men have sued to opt out of Medicare and keep their Social Security benefits, which of course they have paid in. All they want to do is not accept Medicare, and that would save the system money. The Obama administration is opposed. A district judge has rule in their favor.

The health care debate has stirred up a conflict between AARP and Humana. It seems that both have financial dogs in this fight.

Cash for Clunkers: "In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices. The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey."

I confess that I took advantage of the program. The car I traded in was really ready for the junkyard. 

Rasmussen: Sixty-three percent of voters nationwide are afraid of losing their current health insurance and being forced to change to a public option. My fear is that private insurance will simply cease to exist or become too expensive and the public option will be forced on me. See this CATO Institute paper.

Roger L. Simon discusses the Hollywood types who are signing the list for the release of Roman Polanski. See the list here. They all will go on my list of people I won't watch.

Here is some advice about Medicare and Medicare Advantage for next year.

In an interview John Mackey looks back on his op-ed that caused Whole Foods so much controversy.

Rasmussen's latest poll shows that voters think government ethics and corruption are more important issues than the economy, despite all its troubles.

Chicago shocker!

Dick Morris offers a theory explaining why Democrats want to chop Medicare Advantage plans.

Robert Tracinski:

Some supercilious commentators on the left have snickered about the supposed contradiction of town hall protesters who say they are opposed to government-run healthcare and then say that they don't want Congress to touch their Medicare benefits. But this is not really a contradiction. The elderly know what it feels like to be dependent on bureaucrats and Congress for their health-care-and to be afraid that they will be denied medical care because Congress wants to cut costs. And they know that this is the future we're all headed for if Obama gets his health-care bill through Congress.

Charles Krauthammer: "When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom"

Megan McArdle: Post-Cash for Clunkers sales have plummeted. Down 47% at GM, 44% at Chrysler, 8.9% at Ford, 16% at Toyota, 23% at Honda, 11% at Nissan.

Betsey Wright has pleaded not guilty of smuggling contraband into an Arkansas prison.

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is voting with Republicans now. She's even voting against the public option.

Sean Trende looks ahead to the 2010 election. He seems to think that the key will be the health of the economy.

The Little Rock school integration crisis, as it is called, occurred 52 years ago, but it's not all over. You'd think when the schools were integrated, which they quickly were even after they were shut down for a year ('58-'59), that it would all be over. But no, the on-going story appeared in the ADG this morning. The state of Arkansas is still paying a lot of money to desegrate -- or make to unitary, as we say now -- the school districts in Pulaski County.

The state is trying to shut down these payments, but the resistence is strong.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota is already prepping for a 2012 presidential run. We can't start too early, I guess.

Class warfare among Democrats

Thomas B. Edsall looks at the chasm between the Democrat's upscale vs downscale factions. They have lost the middle class along with, geographically, the middle section of this country. It's just not your daddy's Democrat party anymore.

John Fund has some comments on this piece.

The health-care debate is focusing on Medicare Advantage plans, which some 10 or 11 million seniors have. They stand to lose if the Democrats get their way.

In early polls, Blanche Lincoln trails all of her Republican chanllengers.