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Amid news that the country’s uninsured rate has fallen to its lowest level in years, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) claimed this week that the opposite is true in his home state of Kansas.
I've just launched a discussion in The Hive (sub req) about the transformation from reading paper books to digital books. Baffling as it is to me, since for decades I was not only a voracious reader but a devotee of the physical book itself, I made the transition about three years ago. I'm just not able to read paper books anymore. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that. But it's true. Are you the same? Are you resisting? Can't stand reading on a Kindle or other device? Join us for the discussion.
It would be an understatement to say our tech team is truly gratified by the positive response (both numerically and in words) to our new comment system. So thank you. This is especially the case since initial reactions to significant changes on website with a long history are usually pretty negative at the beginning. (I was excited to see that in the first 24 hours online we had 3 stories that got into triple digits in comment count.) If you haven't tried it yet, I wanted to again flag this primer on how the new system works and some details about how to use it.
I've already explained where we are on the Obamacare policy front. TPM Reader JL does a very good job explaining how the politics of Obamacare changes overnight on November 5th.
On the politics of Obamacare, I think it’s important to realize how dramatically things will change on November 5th. We can debate how well anti Obamacare zealotry will work in the midterms, but I think most knowledgeable, reasonable observers would agree on some version of the following: if the goal is to preserve the majority in the House and to get 51 seats in the Senate, it will work tolerably well. Not a huge upside but most likely there’s enough anti Obamacare sentiment in the GOP base and limited enough pro Obamacare passion that for these limited goals, the old Obamacare playbook will work.
TPM Reader JOD chimes in with his experience with 'the Fox effect'. I think it's important to recognize in these stories that you don't just stand up a new TV network and suddenly you're changing the the political and racial attitudes of a whole generation of baby boomers and pre-boomers. There's much more cause and effect at work. But these things can be powerful catalysts. There's a reason why people invest in propaganda. It works. Just not in a vacuum.
I was brought up in a very multi-ethnic working class community where nearly everyone was more or less on the same socio-economic level. I ran around with white, black, Hispanic and Indian kids. We were all always in and out of each other’s houses and all of our parents got along very well. This was the 1970s.
You've probably seen the deeply disturbing reports of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine telling Jews to "register" with their would-be break-away government. But there are reasons to be skeptical.
