Moe Lane

In other words: artificially boosted, likely to be impotent, and a major health risk if you’re a kid.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The AP did not so much bury the lede as it dismembered it and hid the pieces in separate locations, so we need to do some stitching:

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

[snip]

Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation.

[snip]

Obama’s public statements have conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were more sweeping and straightforward.

Also: Obama’s public statements have also conveyed the equally-false impression that the President has a clue about what’s actually in his signature legislation, but you can’t really expect the AP to write that out.  Although one gets the impression that the thought might have actually passed through the head of the writer.  Which would be an improvement, at least.

Anyway, you’d think that at this point the President would have the mother-wit to check the speeches that they hand to him.  He just doesn’t like to learn, does he?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

This Hill article is not quite accurate:

If this is any indication of where the healthcare debate has left Democrats, they could be in trouble.

Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) trails her reelection race by six points in the first public House poll conducted after the healthcare debate.

The Public Opinion Strategies (R) poll for Iraq veteran Adam Kinzinger (R), which is set to be released widely, shows him leading Halvorson 44-38. The congresswoman is largely unknown, with a 33 percent favorability rating and 31 percent unfavorable.

…it’s not the only poll. Sean Trende over at Real Clear Politics is reporting that newcomer pollster We Ask America is likewise showing Adam over Halvorson:

Moving into the Chicago exurbs, first term Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson appears to be in a heap of trouble against former McLean County Commissioner Adam Kinzinger. She trails 42%-30% in the R+1 Eleventh district, which has traditionally sent Republicans to Congress.

Take that with as many grains of salt as you like, of course. Still, this is one of the GOP’s bright spots, even in an election cycle full of them.

Adam’s site is here; the Public Opinion Strategy poll is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

And he does so, quite comprehensively.

I think that the Democratic party hasn’t quite internalized just how badly it’s going to miss its ‘conservative’ rump mini-wing, once the remnant of them go away after November…

Via POWIP:

Gun in Ala. campus shooting bought 2 decades ago
By DESIREE HUNTER (AP) – 15 hours ago

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The gun used to kill three people during a faculty meeting at an Alabama school was bought for the suspect’s husband two decades ago when he said he was having problems with a neighbor, an investigator testified Thursday.

The investigator told a judge that an acquaintance bought the gun in New Hampshire for Amy Bishop’s husband to skirt a waiting period where the couple lived in Massachussetts.

In no particular order:

1. There’s something going on with the husband.
2. Bill Delahunt should not get off the hook for letting this one back out onto the streets, just because he’s cutting and running from Congress.
3. If Amy Bishop had decided to cook off in MA instead of AL, the restrictive gun laws of the former wouldn’t have done a damned thing to make it harder for her to kill three people.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

And We Danced, The Hooters

What?  No, all men had hair like MacGyver‘s back then.  It was… complicated.

Turns out that the Obama administration is taking Stupak’s Executive Order as seriously as… well, everybody else:

President Obama signed the Senate health care bill into law Tuesday. He did not sign the executive order on abortion negotiated with Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak in an 11th-hour arrangement that may well have saved the entire health care reform effort.

A White House official told Fox, Obama will not sign the Executive Order Tuesday and has set no specific date to do so. Stupak predicted Obama would sign the order later this week. The White House said only that Obama would sign the order “soon.”

Now, it’s like this. It’s one thing to be a prostitute. It’s another thing to be a cheap prostitute. It’s yet a third thing to be a cheap prostitute who accepts Monopoly money. But to be a cheap prostitute who gets stiffed on your Monopoly money? That takes skill.

Moe Lane

PS: I recognize that Hot Air has a valid argument that eventually the President will stop tormenting Stupak and give him his Monopoly money, but AoSHQ’s implicit rejoinder that Stupak hasn’t degraded himself enough for it yet (he’s getting there) has a certain truth there, too.

PPS: My apologies to prostitutes, of course.

Crossposted to RedState.

God save the Republic.

[UPDATE]: Greek, Roman, what’s the difference? Dead white guy either way, and it’s not like anybody in this administration reads the classics anyway.

So that’s no literacy in English, no math skills, and no historical knowledge. I figured that I could get away with the nerd thing, being one myself – but I may have to apologize to the other members of my sub-group for the implied slur if this keeps up.

I swear, sometimes I almost think that those people pull this stuff just to embarrass me in public (f-bomb warning):

Also, apparently the Vice President uses the same online quote website that the President does. It’s like watching Revenge of the Nerds, only featuring functional illiterates who aren’t good at math.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

This being The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead. If only because it’s talking about zombie combat without firearms and written by a CERT first responder, which hopefully means that there’ll be believable arcane jargon. Lots of people can’t do arcane jargon properly.

Well, that’s why it’s arcane. And jargon.

Moe Lane

Let me preface this by saying that I have nothing against Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: he’s a Democratic pollster, sure, but he doesn’t bury polls that are unhelpful to his side.  Which is smart of him – it makes him more credible when he tells me things that I don’t particularly want to hear – but there’s nothing wrong with having a credible pragmatic reason for being virtuous.  It’s sort of an added free bonus.

That being said, he really should have stuck a DOOM in here somewhere:

In both Bob Etheridge and Heath Shuler’s districts we asked whether voters would be more or less likely to vote for their representative if they supported the bill, then whether they would be more or less likely to vote for their representative if the bill passed regardless of how their actual representative voted.

In Etheridge’s district 47% of voters said they’d be less likely to vote for him this fall if he supported the bill. And 47% said they’d be less likely to vote for him this fall if the Democrats in Congress passed the bill, regardless of how Etheridge himself voted.

It’s a pretty similar story in Shuler’s district. 51% of voters said they’d be less likely to vote for him this fall if he was a ‘yes’ vote.’ But 46% also said they’d be less likely to vote for Shuler this fall if the bill passed, whether it did so with his support or not.

(more…)

If I was a Democrat, I might suspect that Rasmussen waited with malice aforethought to release this poll:

Two of the three top Republican hopefuls for the U.S. Senate in Indiana continue to hold double-digit leads over Democratic Congressman Brad Ellsworth. Ellsworth supported President Obama’s health care plan in a state where opposition to the legislation is higher than it is nationally.

The two candidates with double-digit leads are Dan Coats and John Hostettler. The third – Marlin Stutzman (see Erick’s endorsement here) – is up ‘merely’ seven points, and that’s apparently because of a larger block of undecideds: Ellsworth is currently looking at 32-34% support across the board.  Which, probably not coincidentally, is about the percentage (35%) of Indiana voters who like the health care monstrosity that Ellsworth and his fellow-Democrats are about to wish upon us.  But, supposedly, the President is going to help out there, on the campaign trail and everything.  Since the Washington Post seems to have developed a sudden, fairly specific case of partial amnesia, let me refresh its institutional memory of candidates that President Obama has favored with his personal assistance: Jon Corzine, Martha Coakley – and Creigh Deeds.  Surely the Washington Post remembers Creigh Deeds?

No?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s all good.

Peaceful Easy Feeling, Eagles