Win Some, Lose Some

A person can drown in a lake with an average depth of only two feet.  Or, a person could drown in Obams's broken promises and spin thereof.  From The Hill:

As many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided coverage because of President Obama's healthcare reform law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new report Thursday.

The figure represents the worst-case scenario, CBO says, and the law could just as well increase the number of people with employer-based coverage by 3 million in 2019.

The best estimate, subject to a "tremendous amount of uncertainty," is that about 3 million to 5 million fewer people will obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022.

However, reading on we learn that the most likely estimate of 3 to 5 million fewer people covered is a net figure:

Under CBO's best estimate, 11 million mostly low-wage workers would lose their employer coverage. About 3 million would choose to drop their coverage to go into the new subsidized health exchanges or on Medicaid, while another 9 million would gain employer-sponsored coverage, for a net total of 5 million people losing employer coverage in 2019.

So 11 million people will have a change in their health coverage foisted upon them, despite Obama's repeated promise that under ObamaCare people could keep their care:

"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.. 

But rather than confront reality the White House chose to focus on net numbers:

The White House for its part argues that the latest projections are in line with what the CBO estimated when it scored the bill at the time of passage two years ago.

"Today's report also does not project major changes in the number of workers who will get coverage through their job," Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy assistant to the president for health policy, wrote on the White House blog. "At the time of passage CBO projected a change of 3 million people; last year CBO projected 1 million; this year 4 million – out of the roughly 150 million people get insurance through their job today. Other respected independent analysts have concluded that the number of Americans who get their health insurance at work will not change in a significant way."

A million here and a million there, and pretty soon it adds up to real people - but not yet, not at least for Team Obama.  That is change they just don't want to believe in.

Comments

[Melinda Romanoff]

Three card monte as applied to human lives.

How academic of them.

[narciso]

I'm at a loss to find out where we won anything, except having our cynicism confirmed.

[AliceH]

Obama will just get a few czars out there to claim that those 11MM folks didn't really like their doctors or want to keep their plans.

[AliceH]

You know, sort of like the argument "those Catholics don't really BELIEVE that stuff" being used to support the HHS mandate.

[rse]

One of the local school districts is talking teacher furloughs in part because of the increased health care costs of staff like bus drivers and janitorial. Which means everyone.

Area blog does story and the common answer is to raise property taxes. To provide great health care coverage to people with defined-benefit pensions financed by more taxes on people without such pensions who pay out the nose for their own insurance.

[james D.]

We (defining "we" as the part of the populace that values freedom, believes in the principles of the Constitution, desires economic growth and prosperity for aall, and sees America as a force for good, with a proud and generally enviable history) haven't won anything, and we won't until Zero is out of office and his appointees are nothing but bad memories.

[pagar]

What CBO publishes may not always be an impartial report.

Terminated CBO Whistleblower Shares Her Full Story With Zero Hedge, Exposes Deep Conflicts At "Impartial" Budget Office

[Danube of Thought]

It just staggers me that this guy has 45-47% approval. I suppose if you're in the group riding in the wagon he looks just fine.

What a charlatan.

[jimmyk]

It's not just the 11 million who lose their employee coverage, everyone who "retains" their coverage will see it change and become more expensive because of all the mandates. No one gets to keep their plan.

[Ignatz]

--I suppose if you're in the group riding in the wagon he looks just fine.--

No kidding. Guy is quite inept otherwise, but he does crack a pretty mean whip.
Is there a talent the leeches of the world admire more?

[Jack is Back!]

Cross posting from the other thread:

Remember those dis-armed Marines the other day?

This makes it even more disgusting:

Marine shot in back of head while on guard duty by Afghan soldier.

[Gus]

But there is good news. Obama is going to require FUEL STANDARDS to double!!! POOOOOOOOOOF the KING says so, and cars get double the mileage, thereby netaging the DOUBLING of GAS PRICES!!!

I'm not buying the new GM MAGIC UNICORN even if it does double the mileage somewhere in the future. I can't afford it.

Meanwhile, I drive the car I own and pay double for gas.
This issue will bring Obama down.

[Jane]

It just staggers me that this guy has 45-47% approval.

I wrote about that at You Too this week:

Last night I ran into a young woman I know who is quickly becoming successful in the banking field. She told me she didn’t like Obama, but she also didn’t like any of the republicans so she doesn’t know who she will vote for. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t about likeability but freedom. Since we were in a noisy bar with 137 of our closest friends it didn’t seem like the time or place. But she illustrates the problem. She is too young to realize the president makes a difference, and this one is stealing our freedom and prosperity on a daily basis. She has no idea that the reason things are so bad in this country now is because of the president’s policies. And she is too busy doing precisely what she should be doing, working hard and living her life, to figure it out. That’s a pretty big problem and one without a solution.

[I R A Darth Aggie]

Remember: one person is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic.

[Jack is Back!]

Same day audios of Health Care arguments before SCOTUS will be available on CSpan3 and CSpan Radio.

[Dave (in MA)]

Homophonophobia*.

Captain Hate's favorite pol uses slur* against Republicans.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Off to another storied JOM meet up!

[Jack is Back!]

Ouch!

Obama the Self-Proclaimed Visionary

In Obama’s mind, his critics aren’t just wrong, they’re idiots. Obama, in contrast, is a grand visionary of epic capacity – the type of man who in the past would have ended up on Mt. Rushmore or captaining the voyage that led to the discovery of America.

[Jack is Back!]

Obama Constitutional Law class Part III

The last paragraph summarizes the lesson:

So here’s what we’ve learned: Obama believes that the right to privacy should encompass everything up to and including cloning; he thinks that religious morality must be struck down by courts when implemented in law, even though it is supported by thousands of years of tradition; he believes that the state has no interest in family formation; he wants the state to implement morality only when it is his morality.

Sounds about right to me.

[MarkO]

It's not about health care; it's about powerr.

I accidentally heard Obama rail about energy of the future. Is there a single thing he does that is not powered by oil? House, cars, aircraft? He's out of touch.

[bgates]

THE CLAIM:
11 million people will have a change in their health coverage foisted upon them, despite Obama's repeated promise that under ObamaCare people could keep their care:

THE FACTS:
Partisan Republicans have tried to make an issue of a seemingly uncontroversial statement by the President, "If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan." But every expert we talked to said the Republicans were ignoring the way such statements are commonly interpreted. Ivy League professor Irving Plushbottom pointed out, "Any number of events could happen to a person resulting in a changed or lost health care plan. What if the person dies? Or moves out of the country? Obviously nobody would think those events would invalidate the President's statement. The Republican party wants to pretend that we're living in some kind of perfectly static world, and we're not. What the President said is equivalent to 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it, unless it has to change for some reason', and I think everyone who listened in good faith understood that when he said it."
Sunshine Sunshine, who teaches classes in Existence and Storytelling at Pitzer College, focused on the lyrical nature of the repeated phrases in President Obama's remarks. "When you take in the rhythm of 'your health care plan....your health care plan', and 'your doctor....your doctor', you can get to a place of deep truth, and you realize that the source of that truth is Barack Obama, not just the words that he uses. If you're open to that truth you can experience a true sense of truth and peace and unity with all living things, and that's the fundamental thing about Barack Obama that asshole Republicans like my brother-in-law will never be able to understand."

FactCheck rates this claim by Tom Maguire "pants on fire".

[Captain Hate]

Captain Hate's favorite pol uses slur* against Republicans

He's such a POS. To his credit, he's using a perfectly apt word about which only the ignorant with poor vocabularies take offense. As for the substance of his argument, not only is he mischaracterizing Repubs but he's ignoring how El JEFe has specifically called for the military to pay for their own health care in his joke of a budget.

[AliceH]

bgates, heh. "Professor Plushbottom"

[Jane]

Storytelling at Pitzer College, focused on the lyrical nature of the repeated phrases in President Obama's remarks. "When you take in the rhythm of 'your health care plan....your health care plan', and 'your doctor....your doctor',

BGates, you are a treasure!

[Jack is Back!]

Jane,

You should link the Chas. Murray test you took and tweeted.

I scored 39.

Be fun to see how the others here fare.

[centralcal]

I got a 43, Jane and Jack. I followed Jane's link posted on Twitter.

[Captain Hate]

Btw, I've been busy the last couple days and haven't had a chance to weigh in on most things; but does anybody know why the jugeared fellow decided to weigh in on the merits of Rutherford Hayes? It's pretty well established that nobody in his circle of toadies is able to dissuade Stanley Ann's petulant little bastard when he gets something into his otherwise empty head. I just want to know how it got in there in the first place.

[centralcal]

Here is the quiz Jane posted to Twitter:

Do You Live in a Bubble?

[Clarice]

BGATES, I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW IT>

[Clarice]

Jane, ask her to do just one thing. Read TM's daily posts or Instapundits' and his political links. Pick one.

[Thomas Collins]

I scored 53. Although that is somewhat bubblish, I guess it means I'll never be invited to a Save the Planet brunch!

[Thomas Collins]

Happy Birthday MarkO!

[Thomas Collins]

CH, I'm thinking Axelplouffe must have something in mind. Perhaps Axelplouffe reasoned that if bubble persuadable voters had Hayes' image in their minds as representing the GOP, they would be more likely to pull the lever or fill in the oval or punch the chad for Obama.

[henry]

I scored 61. Happy Birthday MarkO!

[Captain Hate]

I got a 35. Thanks for the feedback TC.

[Jane]

I got a 53 also.

I'm not sure 100 is a good thing.

[BB Key]

I scored 48 but attribute it to the fact that I live in the rural south, have hitch hiked and rode a bus once .

[Stephanie]

51.

I think it was the restaurant question regarding Waffle House. Guilty as charged.

[NK]

I scored 48-- I may have been a bit higher if I counted Referee Uniform as a 'uniform' although I doubt that's what Murray was getting at;
I feel great shame, I am a bigger ponce than I realized. Henry-- despite your Yale pedigree, you are a real 'Meriken.

[fdcol63]

"When you take in the rhythm of 'your health care plan....your health care plan', and 'your doctor....your doctor', you can get to a place of deep truth, and you realize that the source of that truth is Barack Obama, not just the words that he uses. If you're open to that truth you can experience a true sense of truth and peace and unity with all living things, and that's the fundamental thing about Barack Obama that asshole Republicans like my brother-in-law will never be able to understand."

Sounds eerily like this video, positing that Obama used "covert hypnosis" and "neuro-linguistic programming techniques" during the 2008 campaign.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4iDwV7hCmw&skipcontrinter=1

[Thomas Collins]

Oh, Stephanie, I love Waffle Houses. One of the highlights of my road trips. Last time I was at a Waffle House, near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, I had the staff dancing to Kardinal Offishall songs on my phone. Couldn't try that at a Ruling Class restaurant!

Another time I was at a Waffle House in Meridien, Mississippi during an unseasonal cold wave. All those Meridien Waffle House people were amazed I wasn't shivering!

[AliceH]

57, which seems wrong to me.

[Gus]

CH, Opie the Jugeared Kenyan use ROOTHERFORD B.HAYES, to show off how really really reallllly reallllly soooooper doooooooooper smart he is. But if you heard his speech, AS USUAL OFF TOTUS, he mumbled stammered stutttered and made a general ass of himself.
I guar-an-damn-tee one thing. Opie didn't use algae in his limo of Air Force one to get to where ever he spoke.
I too used petroleum to get to work. I PAID FOR MINE.

[fdcol63]

Gus, you paid for Obama's, too! LOL

[Captain Hate]

Gus, I heard part of the speech and he sounded like the stuttering nincompoop he always is off prompter.

[Jack is Back!]

If I read the scoring correctly, being below 23 puts you on the west side of Manhattan, drinking skinny mocha lattes, reading the Times while planning your next summer idyll in Nantucket.

If you are above 80 you are sitting in a Flying J truck stop drinking your 8th cup of black coffee, smoking a Lucky Strike, while BS with the waitress who calls you "hon" and thinking about that bass boat your cousin Jim Bob won down a the local grange.

[hit and run]

40

[AliceH]

JiB, when you put it that way, 57 sounds just about right.

[NK]

JiB-- your 2:47 is correct. That is why my 48 is shameful.

[DrJ]

Well, I got a 51 on the test, whatever that means.

[Jack is Back!]

So far, we are the great unwashed fly-over muddle.

Of course, jimmyk, hasn't checked in yet:). He being a little sensitive about his domicile.

[henry]

NK, we always had a roof & food when I was growing up (it was a close call at times) plus my friends in MO public schools were total rednecks with lots of Christians. I can play in the bubble, I just choose not to.

[Ignatz]

I scored a 65.
Which I guess makes me the reining bumpkin of JOM, for now anyway.
If I ever went to the movies or watched TV and drank beer I probably would have topped JiB's magical 80.
Could I have refill, hon?

[Dave (in MA)]

40

"0–43: A second-generation (or more) upper-middle-class person who has made a point of getting out a lot. Typical: 9."

I call BS. I make a point of not going out a lot, and I wouldn't say I was second-generation upper-middle-class.

[Captain Hate]

Yeah I'm pretty embarrassed by my score.

[fdcol63]

Whew! I got 80, too. But if JiB got an 80, then maybe that's not too bad. LOL

[Thomas Collins]

Most of us score on the bubblish side, but we are able to apply our non-bubble life experiences and our reason to see beyond the bubble. Besides, one's social class need not define oneself. My father worked as a factory worker and security guard all his life, and I've never met anyone who appreciated Beethoven, Shakespeare and the Greeks more than he did. When we put the gloves on in the basement for a sparring session, we sparred to Beethoven. As a high schooler I could beat the Brown students at chess, but I couldn't beat him.

[Chubby]

Cap

the context of his comment was that Republicans are paleos because they mock his support of alternative energy sources such as solar, algae, etc.

[Thomas Collins]

Ignatz and fdcol63 will have to invite us to a Pabst Blue Ribbon party! Ritz crackers and Velveeta spread as the appetizer!

[cathyf]

Obama believes that the right to privacy should encompass everything up to and including cloning;

Well except that he believes that every woman's employer should know the exact brand of contraceptive she uses.

[AliceH]

I 'should' have gotten a much lower score ("Range: 0–43. Typical: 9"), since I'm one of long line of white collar, college educated professionals.

Some of the things that inflated my score to 57: putting self through college (points for poverty, factory, uniform, aches, bus...) also bunches for now living in v. small town miles full of poor people and far from anything.

[Ranger]

I scored a 40, probably because I don't watch much TV, go to movies, or eat out these days.

[Captain Hate]

Yeah I got that, Chubby; I was just surprised by him using Hayes to make his point.

[Dave (in MA)]

TC, Haven't you heard? PBR is for hipsters because drinking it is ironic.
Do you live in a bubble? You're from Needham, right? MetroWest == Bubble. ;-)

[Ignatz]

I prefer Henry Weinhardt's ROOT beer, Cheez Its and abhor Velveeta, preferring instead black label extra sharp Tillamook, TC.

[Thomas Collins]

Oh, yeah, Dave(in MA), it's a bubble. You should hear the room go silent at a gathering when I respond to a particularly ignorant "we are the world" type comment. I try to keep the discussion to sports and stay away from politics, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

[hit and run]

Ignatz:
If I ever went to the movies or watched TV and drank beer I probably would have topped JiB's magical 80.

I just wish it asked how much domestic beer.

Dave:
PBR is for hipsters because drinking it is ironic.

I just found that out this Christmas when I picked some up in Idaho and my brother broke the news to me. As long as the hipsters stay away from my High Life,they can keep their PBR.

[fdcol63]

I prefer Chicken In A Biskit, Swiss cheese, and Yuengling. LOL

[AliceH]

Cracks me up that PBR is "hipsters" choice.

Growing up in WI, I learned it was "high school beer". If you wanted to be taken seriously, you'd order Heilemanns Old Style like the college kids.

[Dave (in MA)]

I try to keep the discussion to sports and stay away from politics, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

Watch out when someone brings up Tim Thomas or Curt Schilling.

[Thomas Collins]

Cheez Its, Tilamook and Weinhardt's it is, then, Ignatz. But please include some chili nachos on the menu!

[Gus]

Whatever the BEST POSSIBLE score. Obama got it. Just ask him.

[Thomas Collins]

No Narragansett Lager, fdcol63? How gauche of you!

[fdcol63]

Before I spent a couple of years in the Army in Germany, "what kind of beer do you want" meant Budweiser, Busch, Miller, Schlitz, etc.

Then I learned the answer was pilsener, lager, weizen, bock, stout, porter, etc. LOL

[AltaMike]

38. Somewhat surprising given how I interpret some of the questions. I guess I got dinged for Freedom of Disassociation...

[Chubby]

Cap, I just did a 2 minute search and wonder if he decided to pick on Hayes for poetic resonance to Bush:

Rutherford B. Hayes | The White House
Rutherford B. Hayes . Beneficiary of the most fiercely disputed election in American history, Rutherford B. Hayes ... Copyright 2009 by the White House Historical Association

www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/rutherfordbhayes

[Gus]

Growing up in Wisconsin myself, PBR was what the TEAMSTERS drank, and drank and drank and drank. As college kids we made up a pitcher at the local bar. We called it OLD PLITE.
OLD STYLE PABST and LITE all mixed together.
I'd miss those days, if I could remember most of them.

[fdcol63]

Thomas, I've never had it. Or PBR! Is it any good?

[NK]

ThomC-- I agree, Murray's Bell Curves are meant to fit people in a wide spectrum of social possibilities, he's always careful to point out that one's place in a social bell curve is NOT destiny of how they will act as an individual-- that's especially true of racial characterization. Me I like a lot of Manhattan weenie and Euro cultural things, but I'm a big time God Fearin,' free market, pro military right winger. Go figure.

PS: sounds like you had a great dad.

[Thomas Collins]

But AliceH, you haven't addressed the key issue. Chili nachos or goat cheese on a bed of arugula?

[Janet]

I got a 66.

[AliceH]

AltaMike - Know what you mean. I admit I may have stretched a point wrt a few of the questions that depended on "close" friends. If your parents tell you they are born again, I think it counts as "knowing an evangelical", for example.

[Thomas Collins]

Thanks, NK, he was quite a guy. Stayed back three times in school (he was slow to catch on, but when he caught on to something, he knew it back and forth), but noone was foolish enough to argue with him about classical music or Shakespeare.

Narragansett Lager was a cheap beer that was sold in the Providence area, fdcol63. It was affectionately referred to as horse piss. It went out of production for awhile, but it is back with a more "bubble friendly" taste!

[Porchlight]

JiB is correct. The higher you score, the less of a bubble you live in. But 100 is not the top score, at least not in the quiz in Murray's book. The PBS one appears to be modified somewhat from that one.

I got 28 on the book version, but I'm a churchgoing, pro-life, hardcore right winger and stuff. And I did wear a uniform at my job out of college.

I got a 33 on the PBS online version.

My brothers and my dad took the Murray book version.

My prog brother got a 2.

My other prog brother got 37 but only because he lived in a tiny town in Virginia for a few years after college and made some good friends there.

My dad scored 42 and he is the first person in his family to go to college. He's a winger like me.

Murray's explanations for each question are proxies for various things - they're interesting. If you've lived in urban and suburban areas your whole life, like me, you're going to score lower even if you have less bubble-ish worldviews.

[Thomas Collins]

Not good enough, Janet. I'm stripping you of your "Redneck Janet" moniker!

[AliceH]

TC: Nachos or goat cheese... nachos AND goat cheese? Hmmm.

[Bill in AZ sez it's time for Obama/Holder murder trial in Mexico]

52 for me. True Grit did me in, whatever in is. Off to a JOM meetup.

[Thomas Collins]

Great idea, AliceH. I hadn't thought of that!

[rse]

42-but I regularly let the kids go with just their dad to WH for breakfast because they see so much of me.

If you grew up in a family where your dad owned a blue collar bus, is that managerial?

Plus the summer I raised money to spend the following summer abroad by picking up trash gave me excellent bonus points. Or that job putting insulation in a commercial business attic.

But never domestic beer. Usually Hefeweissens.

And jimmy-if the economists you cite to support your position are kw kapp, galbraith, and heilbroner, I think we can characterize that person as an interventionist statist if not more.

[cathyf]

I got a 43, which I think is artificially low -- where I live is so small that the closest Waffle House is an hour drive away. And Chilis and Applebees are high-falutin treats that require a long car ride.

[cathyf]

If you wanted to be taken seriously, you'd order Heilemanns Old Style like the college kids.

Q: Why is Old Style like making love in a canoe? A: They are both f***ing close to water.

[fdcol63]

rse, Paulaner Hefe is my favorite, followed by Weihenstephan, Spaten, etc.

I'll drink Tucher, too, but I always prefered Patrizier, which was the other major weizen that we could get in Nurnberg.

[Jane (Bad says Obama sucks)]

Oh, Stephanie, I love Waffle Houses.

As soon as I read that I knew you wrote it TC.

The guy who likes to get lost.

[Porchlight]

Happy birthday MarkO! I think I got that onto the other thread but I may have missed it.

Also Happy 100th Birthday to First Lady Pat Nixon. Ben Stein has a nice tribute at AmSpec. http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/16/pat-nixon-at-100

[cathyf]

Ok, there is this that he uses as an example:

Having grown up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood inevitably means some restriction to your exposure to average American life. If you grew up in an exclusive part of town such as Chicago's North Shore or northwest Washington,

In 1975, when I was 12, I moved from northwest Washington to Chicago's North Shore. (My parents have owned two houses in their marriage -- in northwest Washington and the North Shore.) So I suppose given my deprived childhood a 43 is a pretty good score.

[Janet]

Happy Birthday, MarkO!!!

[Thomas Collins]

"The guy who likes to get lost."

I'd call it "being inclined toward spontaneous driving adventures," Jane. :-))

[JeanD]

I did the bubble test a few weeks ago and discovered what I already knew; namely that this type of quiz tells you very little because it asks one-size-fits-all questions. Good news: I am not an elitist snob. Bad news: All of the people running our lives and our media are elitist snobs.

O/T LauraW over at Ace has a great video up that shows our nuanced, deep thinker in action.

http://minx.cc/?post=327568

Brutal.

(and because I am not an elitist snob, I don't care if my colons and semis are right or not.)

[cathyf]

Although northwest Washington in the 60's was hardly bubbly -- we lived on 20th St, and the riots in 67 came as far as 18th St. The 18th St / Columbia Rd area that was just up the street from us has been for 30 years a hip elite neighborhood with tons of fabulous restaurants. When we lived there it was alternating gun shops, thrift stores and abandoned buildings.

[daddy]

Just heard this guy do a segment on the Dennis Miller Show.

Dan Bongino.

He is the Secret Service Agent who resigned to run for US Senate from Maryland.

He sounded very sharp and very pumped up, and did a good job on Dennis's Show.

Sounds like a guy who has really seen from up close the ugliness of the Dem elite and is doing something about it.