Tom Faranda's Folly

Author of "The Exorcist" says Kathleen Sebelius "is demonic."

And he's not happy with Georgetown U.

“If you truly love someone that you think needs to be in rehab, you’ll do everything you possibly can to get them into rehab,” Blatty says. The last straw, he says, was Georgetown’s invitation of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to be a commencement speaker in May of last year. Sebelius has a record of supporting abortion rights, and abortion is the issue that really sets Blatty’s nerves on fire.

Came across this picture of Brigid, about to go on a night dive in the Cayman Islands

Sometime in 1981. I actually took this photo off of a color xerox that was the original print and then cropped it.

Not too bad. She's wearing an old rugby jersey and a pair of surgical scrub pants. You can just make out the yellow scuba tank to the right.

Great! The little boy and the Pope -

Very nice. My son Tim did something like this once, when I was the lector at Mass. I have a fond memory of it.

UPDATE: Here's more

CNN: Big jump in Medicaid enrollees through Obamacare

That's OK with me and not a surprise. Now if they can just make sure that the people enrolling in medicaid are poor and SHOULD be on the program AND if they can put it on a sound financial footing ... Unfortunately neither very likely.

 

Kathleen Sebelius explains why single men need maternity coverage

At the end, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers asks the obvious question.

Pretty funny: For Jon Stewart, the bloom is off the Obama rose

Especially for fisherman, check out the Sea Lion!

YIKES! Whale of a tale!

 

CNN tracks down "Obamacare Girl"

On a milk carton?

 

The Atlantic (magazine): "50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel"

Neat article put together by polling "experts".

Why did it take so long to invent the wheelbarrow? Have we hit peak innovation? What our list reveals about imagination, optimism, and the nature of progress.

The Atlantic recently assembled a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others to assess the innovations that have done the most to shape the nature of modern life. The main rule for this exercise was that the innovations should have come after widespread use of the wheel began, perhaps 6,000 years ago. That ruled out fire, which our forebears began to employ several hundred thousand years earlier. We asked each panelist to make 25 selections and to rank them, despite the impossibility of fairly comparing, say, the atomic bomb and the plow. (As it happens, both of these made it to our final list: the discovery and application of nuclear fission, which led to both the atomic bomb and nuclear-power plants, was No. 21 of the top 50, ahead of the moldboard plow, which greatly expanded the range of land that farmers could till, at No. 30.) We also invited panelists to add explanations of their choices, and I followed up with several of them and with other experts in interviews.

Here are some of the picks:

#1 The Printing Press (the 1430's)

#2 Electricity (late 19th century)

#3 Penicillin (1928)

#10 The steam engine (1712); one place behind the internet (1960's)

#25 Alphabetization (fist millenium BC) Why wasn't this higher on the list?

#41 Paper money (11th century)

# 50 The combine harvester

It's an interesting list to look over. #11 was something I naver heard of (or heard of when I was taking chemistry and had since forgotten): Nitrogen fixation (1918). Allows for whole new classes of fertilizers.

Some of the choices are crazy; "the pill" is #20, ahesd of a whole slew of vastly more imoratn things.

CNN White House reporter asks why the President "was in the dark" on so many issues

Carney, stumbling and bumbling ...

 

NBC: Administration knew millions would lose their current insurance under Obamacare

UPDATE: Here is tonight's coverage of this on NBC.

NBC News. Not members of the vast right wing conspiracy.

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” 

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”  

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

There's plenty more if you hit the link.

Since it's World Series time, here are two baseball stories, one historical, one human interest ...

This one, very poignant and very fascinating - the 1946 Series between the same two current teams, St. louis and Boston.

A World Away, the Seventh Game; Close at Hand, Condemned Nazis

And then there's this - remember Luid Tiant?

Born in Mexico, Living in Florida, Tiant’s Wife Is a Fervent Boston Fan

In a stunning non-surprise, the NY Times endorses the Democrat for NY Mayor

He's terrible, as is the Republican - I wouldn't dream of voting for either.

Bill de Blasio for Mayor

Bizarre World Series game #3 ending: A walk off obstruction call

Crazy. But the correct call for sure.

Entertaining & Illuminating: Charles Krauthammer on The Daily Show

Very good. Some witty back and forth as Krauthammer schleps his new book.

2 minutes of Ted Cruz on how to win elections

UPDATE: Here's an article about this speech:... Ted Cruz addressed the concerns of any Iowa Republicans who reject him as too rigid, arguing he knows exactly how to unify the GOP and turn the country around. The answer: “Restore historic economic growth.”

At the Reagan dinner.

 

Nice short video on Johnny Cash's authentic Christian witness

Pretty good. The interviewer is Matt Lewis, a young journalist. The man answering the questions is Russell Moore, the new head of the Southern Baptist Convention.

 

College football: recruiting high school stars; how's it done, how much money?

I heard this guy on Imus a couple of weeks ago - very revealing.

The book is "The System." Before you go out an duby it, read the amazon reviews.

 

In 20 seconds: Scotty, from Star Trek, explains what Obamacare needs

If you're into radically "Greener Living" consider recyclable TP

For some of my friends -

the sub-title of the website is "Small Steps Toward Greener Living"

"Sustainable Baby Steps": The Dangers of Recycled Toilet Paper And a Safer Alternative

Huh?

If you're really ready to go green and live healthy, cloth toilet paper is the answer. I know, I know...it sounds pretty "out there" when you first hear about it. ...

Toilet paper itself is a pretty new invention. Historically we've used Sears catalogs, soft plant material (such as broad leaves) and yes, cloth. There were a few key differences: Cloth wipes back in the day weren't washed after each use and family members may have actually shared the same dirty cloth. Um yeah, that's not what we're recommending here.

The first concern of most is: Is it sanitary?

The answer is absolutely...if it's done right.

Urine is 100% sterile, so absolutely no worries there. Feces obviously isn't ...

As I've mentioned above, we've found pretreating or presoaking to be unnecessary and may actually lead to the need for extra care if they soak too long or get too stinky.

Cloth wipes can be washed in any load of laundry that doesn't include cloth napkins, dishcloths, towels etc. Be wary washing them with jeans as you'll likely find a few in your pockets when you go out and then get to explain it to curious friends. ...

There's more - hit the link.

As predicted: Obamacare helpline operator who talked to Sean Hannity is fired

Here's the prior post I put up a couple of days ago, with the enitre conversation.  Audio: Sean Hannity calls Obamacare helpline, gets a cordial operator. Will she still have a job tomorrow? I actually heard the original conversation while driving.

The lady was on Hannity's TV show last night.

 

Vatican permanent Observer to UN calls for disarmament

In a speech at the UN. Primarily about eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Remind me again why we still have thousands of nuclear weapons and plenty of poison gas?

“The willingness of the world as a whole to move forward in a constructive manner to eliminate nuclear weapons has never been more evident,” Archbishop Chullikatt said. “ Yet a very small number of States stand in the way, trying to block progress and to find a comprehensive solution to the problem that goes on year after year in paralysis and obfuscation.”

“It is sadly ironic that States vociferous in their condemnation of chemical weapons are silent on the continued possession of nuclear weapons.  The international community must appeal and act with one voice to ban all weapons of mass destruction,” the Archbishop said.

Archbishop Chullikatt appealed to the international community to “counter the logic of fear with the ethic of responsibility.” In doing so, nations can begin to foster trust and dialogue for the greater good of the world. Citing an often-used phrase of Pope Francis, the Archbishop said that failing to do so would only risk falling into a “globalization of indifference.”

Pediatric surgeon and professor on "Obamacare 2016"

As the Dr. jumps into the future to describe how things are going in 2016, as in the worst is yet to come. Read the excerpt below or hit the link - but here's the last line in the op ed: "It is also no wonder that three years ago members of Congress got themselves exempted from the Affordable Care Act. They may have passed the law, but they're not stupid."

Three years after the disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act, most of the website troubles finally have been ironed out. People are now able to log on to the government's ACA website and to most of the state health-insurance exchanges. The public has grudgingly come to accept higher insurance premiums, new taxes and increases in part-time workers who were formerly full-time. But Americans are irate anyway—because now they're seeing the health-care law's destructive effect on the fundamental nature of the way their care is delivered.

Even before the ACA's launch in 2013, many physicians—seeing the changes in their profession that lay ahead—had begun talking their children out of going to medical school. After the launch, compensation fell, while nothing in the ACA stopped lawsuits and malpractice premiums from rising. Doctors must now see many more patients each day to meet expenses, all while dealing with the mountains of paperwork mandated by the health-care law.

******

But doctor shortages are only the beginning.

Even before the ACA cut $716 billion from its budget, Medicare only reimbursed hospitals and doctors for 70%-85% of their costs. Once this cut further reduced reimbursements, and the ACA added stacks of paperwork, more doctors refused to accept Medicare: It just didn't cover expenses.

Then there is the ACA's Medicare (government) board that dictates and rations care, and the board has begun to cut reimbursements. Some physicians now refuse even to take patients over 50 years old, not wanting to be burdened with them when they reach Medicare age. Seniors aren't happy.

Medicaid in 2016 has similar problems. A third of physicians refused to accept new Medicaid patients in 2013, and with Medicaid's expansion and government cuts, the numbers of doctors who don't take Medicaid skyrocketed. The uninsured poor now have insurance, but they can't find a doctor, so essentially the ACA was of no help.

******

Patients who can't afford concierge medicine but have seen their doctor take that route are out of luck: They have been added to the swelling rolls of patients taken care of by the shrinking pool of physicians. So even people with "private" insurance have found that the quality of their health care declined. Nowadays, many are forced instead to see a nurse or other health-care provider. The traditional doctor-patient relationship is now reserved primarily for those who can pay extra.

All of the above, and more if you read the op ed, are sure to happen. Which is really why Obamacare, even when/if they fix the website, will never really be implemented - or if implemented eventually thrown out.

The Pope boots a Bishop

Here's a quote from Pope Francis last month: "Jesus cannot be known in First Class".

 

16 second video: Kathleen Sebelius brings in "the A-Team"

Ha! Why didn't they use them to begin with?

 

Rugby: New Zealand vs. Australia

While the Southern Hemisphere Championship is over; this is the third match between New Zealand and Australia for the Bledisoe Cup, indicative of their annual competition. The match is a "dead rubber" since New Zealand has already retained the cup by winning the prior two matches. Unlike the World Series, you still play these matches in rugby (and in cricket).

Very good match, with seven tries. The full match can be seen on youtube here.

Highlights:

 

In-depth article on Westchester Medical Center

And the head, execs, making a pretty good penny. BUT, they have stabilized the Center fiscally and their salaries and bonuses are in-line with other medical centers in the area.If you don't want to read the whole feature, which isn't that long and is good, the 2 minute video does sum it up.

CEO's prescription is healing Westchester Medical's financial ills, but at what cost?

 

 

 

"The site was very easy to use." It only took 3 days

A quite amusing look at the Obamacare fiasco and it's supporters. (Deja vu; go here for my experience as I tried to navigate the system as part of a CE course.)

Perhaps the hardest core of ObamaCare defenders can be found at Salon.com, where a debate has broken out over the degree to which it is appropriate to deny reality.

Joan Walsh favors total denial:

On the one hand, yes, it's important for Democrats to acknowledge when government screws up, and to fix it.

On the other hand, when liberals rush conscientiously to do that, they only encourage the completely unbalanced and unhinged coverage of whatever the problem may be. . . .

Since I had heard Obama's Monday remarks widely previewed as an "apology" for the problems of Healthcare.gov, I was glad to hear him take a defiant tone.

Here's the end of the column -

A reader passes along a Reuters story from June 2010, during the BP oil spill: ...

... A New York Times story from the preceding month quotes then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: "Our job is basically to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum."

Our reader wonders why Obama and Kathleen Sebelius have been so much more muted in their response to the ObamaCare fiasco. No doubt the answer is that for them to kick the ass or put a boot on the neck of the responsible party would require an impossible degree of physical flexibility.

The NY Times: "Law reviews are not really meant to be read."

Almost amusing, but I guess if you're a lawyer or professor it rankles.

From the (Law Professor) Ann Althouse blog. And she links to the original "meant-to-be-read" NY Times article.

Ever stop in the middle of trying to read a law review article and say to yourself: What am I reading? What this is is a line on somebody else's resume. It wasn't meant to be read. It was meant to be a title with a citation that would be a line on someone else's resume.

 

 

 

Neat Anti-McAuliffe, Anti-Democrat, Ad - (maybe the Republicans are waking up?)

An attack ad, against Terry McAuliffe, running for governor in Virginia. Evidently it polls very well with focus groups.

Matt Mackowiak of Potomac Strategy Group, writes in with some focus group research on one of their latest ads, a particularly hard-hitting one tying Terry McAuliffe to a "Gang of Five" who want to "Detroit" the state of Virginia. 

We ran a focus group, conducted by nationally-respected McLaughlin and Associates, to test the effectiveness of our "Don't Let Them Detroit Virginia" ad, which you exclusively reported a few weeks back.

Here's the ad, which has now been viewed over 20,000 times on YouTube alone.

Here's a short summary of ballot movement after viewing:

GOP voters: +8
Dem voters: +4
Independents: +2
Women: +4 (McAuliffe loses 4)
Men: +5
Over 40: +6
Overall ballot: +5

The question is, will casual, channel-flipping viewers give it the attention that folks in a focus group will?

 

Here's the ad.

The President implies the government shutdown caused the Obamacare enrollment mess

UPDATE: Woman nearly faints while President was speaking - he did get off a good one liner while she was being helped.

I guess if you're a supporter, it's good to know.

Audio: Sean Hannity calls Obamacare helpline, gets a cordial operator. Will she still have a job tomorrow?

A nice discussion. The lady was honest; even read her script to him. Hope she still has a job tomorrow.

 

Poignant story - the Titanic violin auction

From CNN.

 

The fire in Australia

Check the picture and article.

Of course Brigid has brother, two nieces and their families in Aussie - but not in Sydney.

Here's an article - and arson is involved!

"three major fires could merge and threaten the entire Blue Mountains region."

An interview with Robert Shiller, economics Nobel Prize winner

In the weekend NY Times. Very interesting; an economics wonk.

The Nobel committee described Professor Shiller as a founder of the field of behavioral finance, an innovator in incorporating psychology into economics and a pioneering analyst of speculative bubbles in the stock and real estate markets.

Here's a little bit of the Q & A - and the whole interview only takes a few minutes to read.

How does “Irrational Exuberance,” the title of one of your books, affect the stock market, and how does that fit into the efficient-market theory?

Well, the efficient-market theory is a half-truth. The half-truth is that it’s not easy to make a lot of money fast, and that you can go for years losing money, even if you’re a very smart person.

Where the theory goes wrong is that it says you should just assume that there’s no point in trying to beat the market — or that you should guide economic policy under the assumption that there aren’t any market bubbles.

So, are there bubbles?

Yes, they happen all the time. Most of the action in the aggregate stock market is bubbles. That wouldn’t be as true for individual stocks, but it’s true for the overall market.

You’ve been writing in your columns about real estate bubbles — like the bubble that burst and led to the financial crisis that we’re still recovering from now. You’ve found that real estate prices generally move more slowly than stock prices. Why is that?

It’s been true until now, anyway. One reason is that real estate is mainly a market of amateurs; it’s not easy for people to move quickly.

There’s a lot of momentum in that market. But professionals are coming in, and it could change.

 

Is the men's tie dead?

An amusing video and article from the Wall St. Journal.

I hardly ever throw a tie out (unless it's got a stain) so I am suddenly back "in"  and on the cutting edge with "skinny ties". Who knew? Of course some of mine are 25-30 years old (but still look good...). FULL DISLCOSURE: I wear a tie maybe once a week, if that.

The Tie Is Dead. (Long Live the Tie)

The Yeti - may really be out there!

From the Telegraph (UK)

Not only is the Italian Reinhold Messner the first climber to have reached the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen, but, after decades mastering the Himalayan terrain, he also declared himself a believer in the Yeti. “They call it a bear with human abilities,” Messner once said of the spellbinding tales told by his Tibetan hosts. “It goes on two legs when it meets people… it’s telling you to go away, or you are a dead man.”

And now it seems that Messner, like other locals and climbers who have long reported strange footprints and fearsome silhouettes in the snowy landscape, is neither misguided nor mad. DNA analysis of two “yeti hair” samples, one collected from the Western Himalayas and one from Bhutan, has uncovered a genetic match to a species of ancient polar bear. Professor Bryan Sykes, the Oxford University geneticist who conducted the analysis by comparing the hair DNA to a polar bear jawbone found in Norway, has called the finding “exciting and completely unexpected”.

The dazzling discovery raises the possibility that a mysterious beast previously unknown to science indeed roams the peaks, and not just the fevered imaginations of locals. Professor Sykes offers two alternative explanations as to how an animal living today in the Asian mountains shares its genes with a Nordic polar bear that existed between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago: the creature is possibly a sub-species of brown bear that shares a common ancestor with the polar bear, or there has been recent interbreeding between brown bears and descendants of the polar bear.

From the news yesterday: new thoughts on human evolution

Iread about this in about four differnet places yesterday; the video is from CNN and the article beneath it is from The Guardian (UK).

 

The Guardian article is more in-depth and presents several perspectives on the story -

Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray. A haul of fossils found in Georgia suggests that half a dozen species of early human ancestor were actually all Homo erectus

Anthropologists unearthed the skull at a site in Dmanisi, a small town in southern Georgia, where other remains of human ancestors, simple stone tools and long-extinct animals have been dated to 1.8m years old.

Experts believe the skull is one of the most important fossil finds to date, but it has proved as controversial as it is stunning. Analysis of the skull and other remains at Dmanisi suggests that scientists have been too ready to name separate species of human ancestors in Africa. Many of those species may now have to be wiped from the textbooks.

******

The site was a busy watering hole that human ancestors shared with giant extinct cheetahs, sabre-toothed cats and other beasts. The remains of the individuals were found in collapsed dens where carnivores had apparently dragged the carcasses to eat. They are thought to have died within a few hundred years of one another.

******

The odd dimensions of the fossil prompted the team to look at normal skull variation, both in modern humans and chimps, to see how they compared. They found that while the Dmanisi skulls looked different to one another, the variations were no greater than those seen among modern people and among chimps.

The scientists went on to compare the Dmanisi remains with those of supposedly different species of human ancestor that lived in Africa at the time. They concluded that the variation among them was no greater than that seen at Dmanisi. Rather than being separate species, the human ancestors found in Africa from the same period may simply be normal variants of H erectus.

Very interesting: Dick Cheney on his 35 year battle with heart disease

From the NY Times - Cheney has a book coming out about his health battle, which ended with a heart transplant.

"In New Book, Cheney Recalls 5 Heart Attacks and His Brush With Death"

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was so close to death in 2010 that he said farewell to his family members and instructed them to have his body cremated and the ashes returned to Wyoming, he writes in a new book on his long battle with heart disease.

Mr. Cheney ultimately survived the emergency surgery that night and went on to have a heart transplant at age 71 that has left him re-energized five years after leaving office. But for the first time, he describes a 35-year medical struggle that he kept generally private in vivid personal detail.

Now, in case you're wondering (and who wouldn't?), here's the answer to whether Cheney got "special accomodation", jumping the line to get a transplant.

He spent nine hours on the operating table and 35 days in the hospital, much of it unconscious, dreaming about living in a villa in Italy. He spent 20 months waiting for a new heart from a donor who has never been publicly identified. Dr. Reiner says the former vice president received no “special accommodation” and in fact waited twice the average time.

And the last paragraph of the article:

Mr. Cheney says his survival was possible only because of medical innovation: “The health care system that produced such rapid development and has driven the dramatic reduction in the incidence of death from heart disease over the past 40 years is a national treasure and deserves to be preserved and protected.”

WSJ editorializes on Obamacare

A few excerpts, but hit the link for the full blast.

"Why the exchanges are worse than even the critics imagined."

This isn't some coding error, or even the Health and Human Service Department's usual incompetence. The failures that have all but disabled ObamaCare are the result of deliberate political choices, which HHS and the White House are compounding with secrecy and stonewalling.

The health industry and low-level Administration officials warned that the exchanges were badly off schedule and not stress-tested despite three years to prepare and more than a half-billion dollars in funding. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her planners swore they'd be ready while impugning critics and even withholding documents from the HHS inspector general for a routine performance audit this summer.

******

Other failures have the same political character. Consumers must set up a complex account with sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers before they are allowed to browse health plans. The government wants to show consumers only their net out-of-pocket premiums minus subsidies, not the true underlying cost of insurance. That's because those all-in quotes are so much higher than what's available on the individual market.

HHS continues to claim that the exchanges are all about competition—they're even trying to rebrand them as "marketplaces." But real marketplaces are transparent and let consumers know what they get for what price. ObamaCare's exchanges are intended to obscure price and service options.

******

Before the rollout, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Sebelius likened the exchanges to a new Apple product and asked for forbearance as problems were fixed. But Apple doesn't ship products that don't work and then force everyone to buy them, and a private business executive who supervised a fiasco like this would already have been fired.

Ann Coulter interviewed by Piers Morgan

CNN

 

CNN: Obamacare screwups, continued ...

CNN - "they're constantly upgrading the system ..."

 

Surveillance video from the Kenya Mall attack

Pretty grim; it includes one man on the ground being casually shot by one of the terrorists.

 

Who the networks blamed for the shutdown

No surprises.

The report, provided to Secrets, found that a total of 41 stories blamed Republicans for the shutdown. None blamed the Democrats. Another 17 blamed both sides.

Ted Cruz comments after the debt deal

He's probably right. 

CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash asks Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, how he feels about the new Senate deal.

Michael Bloomberg on the debt deal

I don't like Bloomberg, but in this he's right.

Bloomberg Faults Congress for ‘Kicking the Can Down the Road’

All this does is give the Dems a short term gloat, over how they "won." At the end of the year, and into January they will be at it again.

YIKES! What the average American man in his 30's looks like + comparison from other countries

Not necessarily a pretty sight. At least they left the undies on.

This is definitely worth a look.

Average American Male's Body Compared To Bodies Of Men From Other Nations

Lamm constructed the 3D models based on body measurements collected from thousands of men by universities and government agencies -- including the CDC, the Netherlands' RIVM, and France's ENNS. The average American male has a body mass index (BMI) of 29 -- significantly higher than Japanese men (who have a BMI of 23), men in the Netherlands (who have a 25.2 BMI), and French men (who have a 25.55 BMI.)

Lamm said he used BMI charts and photos for visual reference, and ran the models by Dr. Matthew Reed, an expert on body shape measurement, for accuracy.

"I chose the Netherlands because they are the tallest country and are clearly doing something right there," Lamm said. He chose Japan because it is well-known for its longevity, and France because, he said, "a lot of Americans like to compare themselves to that country."

Almost funny: "ObamaCare supporters go through the stages of grief."

Kind of an amusing take on the debacle (I chronicled my personal brush/take on the rollout here Went to the NY State health exchange last night and here NY State Health Exchange - pretty easy to get onto; then the nightmare begins ) from James Taranto in WSJ.

In a much-discussed post titled "Five Thoughts on the ObamaCare Disaster," the Washington Post's Ezra Klein manages to cycle through the first three of Elisabeth Kübler Ross's five stages of grief

Here's a bit more, as Taranto comments and quotes the NY Times op ed guys, as they whistle past the graveyard.

Some pro-ObamaCare commentators, including at the Times, are still dug in. Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman asserted Sunday that soon "ObamaCare will be working fine." And the day after that damning news story, columnist Bill Keller waved away the failure:

Unless you've been bamboozled by the frantic fictions of the right wing, you know that the Affordable Care Act, familiarly known as Obamacare, has begun to accomplish its first goal: enrolling millions of uninsured Americans, many of whom have been living one medical emergency away from the poorhouse. You realize those computer failures that have hampered sign-ups in the early days--to the smug delight of the critics--confirm that there is enormous popular demand. You have probably figured out that the real mission of the Republican extortionists and their big-money backers was to scuttle the law before most Americans recognized it as a godsend and rendered it politically untouchable.

The Ortiz playoff grand slam, and Hunter's incredible almost catch

Not to mention the casual catch by the Boston bullpen catcher, still in a crouching position (see the next to last replay on the tape, very funny)! This tied the playoff game and Boston then won, to even their series with Detroit. High baseball drama...

Medal of Honor for army captain in Afghanistan - action caught on helicopter camera

CNN.