Cyber Monday Deals Week

Hey, thanks to a number of readers who bought through my Amazon links, one of whom picked up a Kindle Paperwhite, 6" High Resolution Display with Next-Gen Built-in Light, Wi-Fi, and another a Philips Norelco PT730 Powertouch Electric Razor.

Click the widget for the savings. Thanks!

George Will on #ObamaCare Fix: 'All Hell is Going to Break Loose...'

At National Review, "Will’s Take: ‘All Hell is Going to Break Loose’ When Employers Dump Plans Due to Obamacare":

“Watch the employers, because if they start dumping people into Medicare and into Medicaid, and the doctors then say, ‘The burdens are too high, and the reimbursement is too low, we’re not seeing Medicaid patients,’ then all hell is going to break loose,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

Watch it here.

VIDEO: #Auburn Beats #Alabama with Spectacular Final-Seconds 100-Yard TD Return

At the Los Angeles Times, "No. 4 Auburn stuns No. 1 Alabama, 34-28, with a last-play touchdown."

And at Sports Illustrated, "Auburn delivers indelible BCS moment in stunning Alabama":

AUBURN, Ala. -- They didn't want to leave. That's what happens when the craziest finish in the history of college football unfolds on the sleepy Alabama plains. It kicks off a party that's a graduation celebration, wedding reception and sorority formal all rolled into one primal scream. Photos flashed straight to Instagram. Elderly couples hobbled on the field and pecked lips. Families posed for Christmas card pictures. In one mad dash down the left sideline, Auburn's Chris Davis sprinted straight into college football lore. His 109-yard return of Adam Griffith's 57-yard field goal attempt gave No. 4 Auburn a 34-28 victory over No. 1 Alabama as time expired.

As Davis waltzed into the end zone escorted by two teammates, he delivered the BCS generation its indelible Doug Flutie moment. (One that even trumped Ricardo Louis' unlikely 73-yard touchdown catch to cap Auburn's 43-38 victory over Georgia two weeks ago.) Only this one had a more improbable finish, and impossibly higher stakes.

Davis' dash capped a furious comeback that saw Auburn score 13 points in the final 32 seconds. The only thing that matched the veracity of celebration was the magnitude of the situation. In one stunning twist, Auburn ended Alabama's chance to win its third consecutive national championship, clinched a spot in the SEC title game and launched the Tigers into the BCS title conversation. "God is good," Davis said after the game, with divine intervention seemingly the only possible explanation.

Auburn linebacker Kris Frost cried tears of joy as he wandered the field in disbelief. Davis needed four Auburn officials to surround him for his postgame ESPN interview. Offensive lineman Tunde Fariyike shook his head and gazed to the sky: "That's all God," he said.

Who knew it would take the man upstairs to finally end the numbing efficiency of Alabama coach Nick Saban's process? Saban has emerged the as the collegiate version of Bill Belichick, a sideline genius whose teams win with crushing monotony. Yet in the sport's biggest rivalry, with everything at stake, Saban's in-game coaching backfired at the worst possible time.

Keep reading.

And then check out the Other McCain, "INCREDIBLE DISASTER! CATASTROPHE! APOCALYPSE!"

Seriously, though. How could that dude score from 100-yards out like that, in the final seconds, with the game on the line? Simply amazing.

White House: We've 'Met the Goal' of Making Healthcare Inaccessible to Millions of Americans!

Doug Powers has the story, at Michelle's, "Victory! HealthCare.gov team has ‘met the goal’."

Also at the Hill, "HealthCare.gov team claims victory: ‘We have met the goal’" via (Memeorandum).

The Contradictions of Socialism in the United States

At the People's Cube, "Old Soviet jokes become the new American reality":

The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America:

-- America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
-- Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
-- They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
-- Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
-- The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
-- They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

RTWT at the link.

Bronx Train Derailment Leaves at Least 4 Dead, More Than 60 Injured

Man, a harsh way to wind down the long holiday weekend.

At NYT, "4 Dead in Metro-North Train Derailment in the Bronx":

At least four people were killed after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx along the Hudson River, officials said.

A total of 67 people were injured — 11 critically — a New York Fire Department spokesman, Jim Long, said.

The derailment occurred when several cars of a train headed south from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., left the tracks about 7:20 a.m. near the Spuyten Duyvil station under the Henry Hudson Bridge on the Hudson Line, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, Aaron Donovan.

Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, who represents the area and was at the scene, said the accident was “certainly the worst one on this line.”

Rescue workers from the Police and Fire Departments converged on the scene and lowered stretchers into the train cars, which were lying nearly on their sides; one car was just above the water.

The train was the 5:54 a.m. out of Poughkeepsie, and was due at Grand Central Terminal at 7:43 a.m., Mr. Donovan said.

“We are just not sure” what caused the derailment, he said. “That will be the subject of a detailed investigation.”

More at Memeorandum.

Erin Gloria Ryan, Jezebel News Editor, Wishes Death on Scott Walker After 'Faster and Furious' Actor Dies

Saw this just now on Twitter:

Wtf. RT "@moderncomments: The disintegration of political discourse, right here. Stay classy, @morninggloria pic.twitter.com/sfsIutloew"
— Krystle (@TarheelKrystle) December 1, 2013

And at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Paul Walker of Fast and Furious dies – leftists wish it was Scott Walker."

Also at Twitchy, "Jezebel editor on Paul Walker’s death: Why couldn’t it have been Scott Walker? Update: Tweets deleted."

EARLIER: "Paul Walker, 1973-2013."

Paul Walker, 1973-2013

Just 40 years-young. What a shame.

At the Los Angeles Times, "'Fast and Furious' actor Paul Walker dies in fiery Valencia car crash":

Actor Paul Walker, who gained fame as an undercover detective in the hugely successful “The Fast and the Furious” franchise, was killed Saturday in a car accident in Valencia, his representatives confirmed.

The single vehicle collision occurred about 3:30 p.m. in the 28300 block of Rye Canyon Loop. Deputies from the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station and the Los Angeles County Fire Department arrived to find a vehicle engulfed in flames. Two people in the vehicle were pronounced dead at the scene.

The cause of the collision is under investigation, said Sheriff’s Deputy Kim Manatt. According to a statement on his Twitter account, Walker, 40, was attending a charity event to aid Filipino victims of Typhoon Haiyan for his organization Reach Out Worldwide, formed in 2010 as a quick response first-aid organization.

“It is with a truly heavy heart that we must confirm that Paul Walker passed away today in a tragic car accident while attending a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide,” the statement read. “He was a passenger in a friend's car, in which both lost their lives. We appreciate your patience as we too are stunned and saddened beyond belief by this news.”

More at that top link.

Also at Gateway Pundit, "'Fast and Furious' Actor Paul Walker Dies in Car Crash" (via Memeorandum).

'Silicon Beach' — Crush of Tech Start-Ups and Web Giants Fuels Housing Grab in L.A.'s Westside

At LAT, "Silicon Beach housing prices surge as techies move in":

In Venice, 25-year-old Snapchat co-founder Bobby Murphy has bought a new two-bedroom house for $2.1 million, or nearly double the median price of homes in the neighborhood.

A few blocks away, a three-bedroom town house with a rooftop sun deck was just rented for $7,000 a month — a year ago, an identical unit was renting for $5,900. "Totally Silicon Beach living," the ad on Craigslist proclaimed.

And farther south in Marina del Rey, hundreds of apartments were recently completed and aimed at drawing the tech crowd, with high-speed Internet in every unit, free Wi-Fi in common areas and an online application process.

The Westside has long been a desirable place to live, attracting entertainment executives, sports stars and financial gurus. But there's a new guard moving in.

The burgeoning tech community known as Silicon Beach is fueling a Westside housing grab that has enabled landlords to push sky-high rents even higher and helped send home prices above their pre-recession highs. Real estate agents say that within these neighborhoods, techies have made a brutal real estate market for buyers and renters even tougher.

"Everyone wants to buy here because this is the hot, cool space," said Brian Maser, a real estate agent who specializes in selling condos in the area.

Amid last decade's housing bubble, the median home price in Silicon Beach — the area west of the 405 Freeway from Santa Monica south to Marina del Rey — peaked at $925,000 in the second quarter of 2007 before plummeting 25% to $694,000 in the first three months of 2010, according to research firm DataQuick.

But Silicon Beach prices have risen sharply this year. The median price in that area reached $952,500 last quarter, 19.2% higher than in the same period last year.

Overall housing prices in Southern California, meanwhile, are still far below their peak during the bubble.

Tami Pardee, principal of Pardee Properties in Venice, said tech workers from Silicon Beach have descended upon the Venice market, and her agents have been busy showing homes to employees of Google and Facebook. She estimated that 30% of her buyers work in the industry.

"They have the money to buy," she said. "We're excited but cautious." As more techies move into the Westside, there are fears that the area — and especially the eclectic, funky vibe in Venice — could go from charmingly quirky to overly techie.

In a recent report, commercial real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap found signs that renters "are beginning to balk at the area's high rents," which may be forcing some people to other regions.

"We want Venice to remain Venice," longtime Westside resident Briana Chalais, 35, said. "We don't want to be overtaken by all tech people."

Continue reading.

And who's moving in? Well, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all opened corporate campuses, and start-up entrepreneurs are streaming into this hot location. As the accompanying photo indicates at LAT, rent at the nicer Venice townhouses is upward of $7,000-a-month.

And the Snapchat dude Bobby Murphy's the one who turned down that $3 billion buy-out offer from Facebook. He must've thought Zuckerberg was low-balling him, heh.

And it's interesting to note how L.A.'s Silicon Beach feeds the growing class divide in the American economy, discussed by Charlotte Allen, at the Weekly Standard, "Silicon Chasm: The Class Divide on America's Cutting Edge":

Atherton, Calif.

"If you live here, you’ve made it,” David Berkey said to me as I rode shotgun in his car two months ago through the Silicon Valley’s wealth belt. The massive house toward which he was pointing belongs to Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google. With a net worth of $24 billion, Brin is Silicon Valley’s third-richest denizen and the fourteenth-richest man in America, according to Forbes. Berkey was chauffeuring me down Atherton Avenue, a wide, straight, completely tree-lined boulevard nicely bifurcating the city of Atherton (population 7,200), located 29 miles south of San Francisco, boasting no commercial real estate, and with a zip code (94027) that was recently listed by Forbes as America’s most expensive.

You couldn’t really see Brin’s house from the car, though—just a swatch of rooftop, maybe a chimney—because the point of the trees lining Atherton Avenue and nearly every other street in Atherton is to hide the dwellings behind them. Where the screens of trees happen to thin, property owners have constructed high hedges, high wooden fences, and high brick walls, so that when you look down Atherton Avenue from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west toward the commuter railroad station to the east, you see only the allée of trees—pine, palms, eucalyptus, sycamore, and juniper—shades of gray-green and brown-green shimmering placidly in the early autumn sun. “This is the Champs-Élysées of Atherton,” Berkey explained. The other thing we didn’t see from Berkey’s car is people, except for the occasional driver on the road.

Turning corners, we drove past other fancy and half-hidden real estate owned by other Silicon Valley grandees; Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, and her husband David Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, have a 7,200-square-foot house somewhere in the hedge maze. Before there was such a thing as Silicon Valley—that is to say, 40 years ago—Atherton was an affluent bedroom town for white-shoe law-firm partners and Old Economy executives who liked to ride the Southern Pacific Peninsula to their jobs in San Francisco, imitating their East Coast counterparts who rolled on the Hartford-New Haven line from the Southern Connecticut Gold Coast into Manhattan. That was before today’s hiding-the-house custom, and the executives’ front lawns surged out like green carpets to Atherton Avenue and its side streets. Now, Atherton is mostly teardowns and brand new mega-mansions—or at least as mega as their owners can get away with, given Atherton’s highly restrictive zoning laws that mandate enormous lot-to-footprint ratios. To increase their overall square footage, Atherton’s new breed of homeowners typically tunnel out vast underground extra space—wine cellars and home theaters—beneath their dwellings. The dominant style these days is a fanciful mix of Palladian Neoclassic, Loire Valley château, and Mediterranean villa, spreading out manor-house-style to cover as much ground as the zoning laws allow.

“This was a vacant lot five years ago,” said Berkey as we cruised by one of the spanking new stone-faced Atherton domiciles with its multiple dormers, chimneys, tile-roofed turrets, and columned porticos. “Now it’s worth $5 or $6 million. And this house here—it recently sold for $7 million, $4.4 million more than the asking price.” We passed the Menlo School, tuition $38,000 a year, where the parents pick up their kids in Range Rovers and fly them in private jets to exotic foreign locations for birthday parties. Down the road lay the Sacred Heart School, the Menlo School’s Catholic opposite number, where the tuition is only $34,000 a year. Their feeder is Atherton’s Las Lomitas School, rated among the top elementary schools in the state of California.

Las Lomitas is technically a public school, although its main support comes from a lavish parent-funded foundation that last year alone raised $2.8 million. “It’s going for $3 million this year,” Berkey said. “For the parents, it’s an attractive tax write-off. We can do good and feel good at the same time, because it benefits our own children.” Also not to be missed was the Menlo Circus Club (initiation fee: $250,000), featuring daily tennis, Friday polo matches, and state-of-the-art stables for horse people who can’t afford or don’t want to be bothered with the ranch-size spreads of owners who stable their own horses, farther up into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Berkey himself doesn’t live in Atherton. He can’t afford to. He’s a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and his wife, Eleanor Lacey, is general counsel at SurveyMonkey, which occupies Facebook’s old startup quarters in downtown Palo Alto. That makes them part of what is known as the “middle class” of Silicon Valley: two-career couples with family incomes in the low-to-mid six-figure-range. They and their two daughters live in neighboring Menlo Park, in what is essentially a modest 1950s tract house, the kind of flat-roofed, three-bedroom, two-bath, sliding-glass-patio-door, under-2,000-square-foot residences, pleasant but not pretentious, that were built en masse well into the 1970s as cheap starter homes, because back then it was conceivable that there could be such a thing as a cheap starter home in the valley. Berkey says his own house is currently valued at $1.2 million.

That’s par for the course. Open on any random day the Daily Post, the throwaway newspaper serving the mid-peninsula, and there will be a full-page ad for a “charming updated contemporary home” in Menlo Park or Palo Alto or Mountain View or Sunnyvale, with its single story, its gravel-topped roof, its living-room picture window, its teensy garden strip running alongside the jutting two-car garage that plugs into the kitchen, its pocket-size but grassy front lawn reminiscent of The Wonder Years—and its 1,216 square feet of living space—all “offered at $949,000.” That’s a bargain for the valley.

Berkey drove us out of Atherton, across El Camino Real, the peninsula’s main commercial highway, and across the railroad tracks past the tiny Atherton station, now part of California’s state-run Caltrain system and a commuter stop only on weekends. We were now in the featureless, nearly treeless, semi-industrial flatlands of Menlo Park stretching eastward to the bay. The demographic change was instant: ¡No se habla inglés! There were suddenly plenty of people on the sidewalks—and nearly every single one of them was Latino. There were suddenly plenty of commercial establishments—ramshackle, brightly painted, graffiti-adorned storefronts with hand-painted business signs mostly in Spanish: “Comida Nicaraguense,” “Restaurante Guatemalteco,” “Carnicería” (pork chops and steaks crudely painted on the walls), “Pescadería” (fish and crustaceans crudely painted on the walls), “Panadería,” “Check Cashing,” “Gonzalez Auto Sales,” “Sanchez Jewelry,” “Check Cashing,” “Arturo’s Shoe Repair,” “99¢ and Over,” “Check Cashing.”

Menlo Park is actually only about 20 percent Hispanic and is unabashedly affluent in its own right, but its Hispanic population concentrated next door to the hedgy scrim of Atherton makes for a startling study in contrasts. No one pretends that the gravel-roofed, shack-size houses in this particular neighborhood are “charming” midcentury modern gems. That would be hard to do, what with the weeds, the peeling paint, the chain-link fences, the chained-up guard dogs, and the front lawns paved over to accommodate multiple vehicles for multiple dwellers. The phrase “the other side of the tracks” has vivid meaning. “Look at the newspaper police blotters, and you’ll see that in Atherton the main reported crime is identity theft,” said Berkey. “Here, it’s break-ins.”

You can laud this underbelly barrio as vibrant immigrant culture or you can decry it as an instant-slum product of untrammeled illegal border-crossing, but it represents an important fact on the ground: These are the people who earn their livings tending to the needs of the high-tech “creative class” that has made Silicon Valley famous. I could see them on Atherton Avenue, the amanuensis class heading up from Menlo Park in their wee panel trucks and Dodge minivans and their Ford flatbeds fitted out with racks for garden tools among the Bentleys, BMWs, Audis, and Lexuses that are the standard Atherton vehicles. They tend the meticulously clipped lawns, flower beds, hedges, and trees of Atherton (Berkey said that it’s not uncommon for an Atherton sentence to begin, “My arborist .  .  . ”). They clean the houses and the swimming pools, they deliver the catering, they watch the children, and they repair the roofs, the plumbing, the balconies, and the wine cellars of the very affluent and the very busy. You might say that across-the-tracks Menlo Park, along with down-market Latino neighborhoods just like it up and down the peninsula—East Palo Alto, parts of Redwood City, the southern end of San Jose—functions as a kind of oversize servants’ wing. It’s safe to say that almost every hotel maid, restaurant busboy, cashier, janitor, retail stocker, and fast-food worker in the valley is Latino.

Master and servant. Cornucopian wealth for a few tech oligarchs plus relatively steady but relatively low-paying work for their lucky retainers. No middle class, unless the top 5 percent U.S. income bracket counts as middle class. Silicon Valley is a tableau vivant of what many economists and professional futurologists say is the coming fate of America itself, a fate to which Americans, if they can’t embrace it as some futurologists hope, should at least resign themselves...

Continue reading.

Mind you, these people are overwhelmingly "progressive." The power and privilege doesn't fit the left's endless class-warfare campaigns. The Koch brothers pale in comparison to this towering pedestal of leftist prestige.

Hat Tip: Bob Belvedere and Instapundit.

Hilarious Healthcare.gov Revamped!

At Twitchy, "This revamped HealthCare.gov homepage is hilarious [Photoshop]."

That's from Caleb Howe, who's a freakin' gut-buster on Twitter.

'Baby Jesus Butt Plug' Assigned by Comparative Literature Professor at Long Beach State

It's Jordan Smith, who's listed as an "Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature" in the Department of Comparative Literature and Classics.

Oh boy, that's classic alright. And required reading!

At Campus Reform, "Prof at public college assigned students ‘The Baby Jesus Butt Plug’ as mandatory reading" (via Gary Fouse):

A professor at the California State University - Long Beach, assigned students a 104-page book entitled “The Baby Jesus Butt Plug” last week as part of the mandatory reading for an upper level comparative world literature course.

That book, which is described on Amazon.com as “Trashy and dark,” invites readers to “Step into a dark and absurd world where human beings are slaves to corporations, people are photocopied instead of born, and the baby jesus is a very popular anal probe.”

More at the link.

Funny how I just blogged about this depraved phenomenon a couple of days ago, "Increasingly Leftist Colleges Abandon Greats and Teach Garbage."

These people are freakin' disgusting. Leftist butt-plug losers. This reminds me of the assholes at Lawyers, Gays and Marriage. Yep, depraved and disgusting butt-plug losers all around.

Leanne Scotton

Via Twitter.

Leftists Attack 'Douche' Josh Romney After He Tweets Photos from Car-Wreck Rescue

Althouse has the background, "'Mitt Romney’s son rescued four people from a car crash—then tweeted a photo of himself grinning next to the wreck'."

And at Twitchy, "Josh Romney called a ‘douche’ and ‘megalomaniac’ after tweeting about rescue."

@joshromney so cute watching you brag, trying desperately to get people to respect you. Douche.

— SheriffFruitfly (@sherifffruitfly) November 29, 2013

Also, Josh Romney is a douche prick.

— Leahtron (@leahmrb) November 29, 2013

I don't know if I would have tweeted it, but he's a Romney, so the left would melt down no matter what.

Here's the more respectable response, and accurate:

@joshromney Good for you, too many people would simply drive by.

— Andy Richardson (@arichardson31) November 29, 2013

Fight Breaks Out During Ohio State-Michigan Game

At USA Today, "It was ugly."

'I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention...'

That's Sebastian Thrun, Google's top research scientist, at Foreign Affairs, "Google's Original X-Man: A Conversation With Sebastian Thrun."

A phenomenal interview:

There are people who feel that the prospects of life are diminishing and that the next generation is not going to have a better life than the previous one. Do you think your child’s life will be more interesting and exciting and filled with larger prospects than yours?

If you look at history, the fear that the next generation would be worse off than the previous one has been around for many centuries. It’s not a new fear. And it’s often due to the lack of imagination of people in understanding how innovation is moving forward. But if you graph progress and quality of life over time, and you zoom out a little and look at the centuries, it’s gotten better and better and better and better.

Our ability to be at peace with each other has grown. Our ability to have cultural interchanges has improved. We have more global languages, we have faster travel, we have better communication, we have better health. I think these trends will be sustained going forward, absolutely no question. If you look at the type of things that are happening right now in leading research labs, I see so many great new technologies coming out in the next ten to 20 years. It ought to be great.

So you disagree with the notion that innovation is dead, or that we’re in a great stagnation, or a period of decline?

I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention. If you look at the way society has transformed itself in the last 20 years, it’s more fundamental than the 50 years before and maybe even bigger than the 200 years before.

I’ll give an example. With the advent of digital information, the recording, storage, and dissemination of information has become practically free. The previous time there was such a significant change in the cost structure for the dissemination of information was when the book became popular. Printing was invented in the fifteenth century, became popular a few centuries later, and had a huge impact in that we were able to move cultural knowledge from the human brain into a printed form. We have the same sort of revolution happening right now, on steroids, and it is affecting every dimension of human life.

A century or two ago, you had innovations such as steam, electricity, railroads, the internal combustion engine, the telegraph and telephone and radio. Those things had ramifications that fundamentally changed the structure of society, the structure of political organization. Is the information technology revolution going to have that kind of impact?
I think the impact will be greater. I don't want to belittle any innovation. I think the steam engine, the car, television, all the examples you mentioned are landmarks of history. But if you zoom out a little bit, most of these inventions come from the last 150 to 200 years. Very few are a thousand years old or older, and given that humanity is much older than that, you could say that almost all inventions are recent. I believe the full potential of the Internet has not been realized yet, and we're not very used to it. But a hundred years from now, we will conclude this was one of the biggest revolutions ever.

I believe we live in an age where most interesting inventions have not been made, where there are enormous opportunities to move society forward. I'm excited to live right now. But I would rather live 20 years from now or 50 years from now than live today. It's going to be better and better.

'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire'

I took my youngest to see it yesterday. I'm very pleased with this franchise. I love the totalitarian politics. It seem so contemporary, considering.

From Kenneth Turan, at the Los Angeles Times, "Review: 'Hunger Games: Catching Fire' burns bright with fiery Katniss":

Second movies in a series can be such a comfort: We already know the key characters, we have a sense of where the plot is going, we just have to hang on and enjoy the thrills. Which is what happens with "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."

An effective piece of melodramatic popular entertainment that savvily builds on the foundation established by the first "Hunger Games" movie, "Catching Fire" layers in increased visual brio while remaining faithful to the essence of a trilogy popular enough to have more than 50 million copies in print.

That brio comes courtesy of director Francis Lawrence, who took over the series from Gary Ross. Though he's directed features such as "I Am Legend" and "Water for Elephants," it is Lawrence's music video work that's won him multiple awards, including a pair of Grammys, and the expansion in size and scope this project's larger budget allows proves well within his power.

That expansion is necessary because there is more at stake than ever in the world of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence). While the first film took her from small town huntress to victory in the kill-or-be killed national tournament called the Hunger Games, "Catching Fire" potentially gives her — much against her will — the possibility of a bigger role in the political landscape of the totalitarian future state known as Panem.

Lawrence's intertwined strength and vulnerability as Katniss were the sine qua non of the first film, and she is the sequel's biggest asset as well. Now an Oscar winner for "Silver Linings Playbook," Lawrence has clearly taken this role very much to heart, throwing herself into it to such an extent that she creates genuine emotion from what is essentially pulpy material.

Continue reading.

#ObamaCare to Accelerate U.S. Doctor Shortage

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, although things are working out just as planned for the Democrats.

At the New York Times, "Medicaid Growth Could Aggravate Doctor Shortage":

SAN DIEGO — Dr. Ted Mazer is one of the few ear, nose and throat specialists in this region who treat low-income people on Medicaid, so many of his patients travel long distances to see him.

But now, as California’s Medicaid program is preparing for a major expansion under President Obama’s health care law, Dr. Mazer says he cannot accept additional patients under the government insurance program for a simple reason: It does not pay enough.

“It’s a bad situation that is likely to be made worse,” he said.

His view is shared by many doctors around the country. Medicaid for years has struggled with a shortage of doctors willing to accept its low reimbursement rates and red tape, forcing many patients to wait for care, particularly from specialists like Dr. Mazer.

Yet in just five weeks, millions of additional Americans will be covered by the program, many of them older people with an array of health problems. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that nine million people will gain coverage through Medicaid next year alone. In many of the 26 states expanding the program, the newly eligible have been flocking to sign up.

Community clinics, which typically provide primary but not specialty care, have expanded and hired more medical staff members to meet the anticipated wave of new patients. And managed-care companies are recruiting doctors, nurse practitioners and other professionals into their networks, sometimes offering higher pay if they improve care while keeping costs down. But it is far from clear that the demand can be met, experts say.

In California, with the nation’s largest Medicaid population, many doctors say they are already overwhelmed and are unable to take on more low-income patients. Dr. Hector Flores, a primary care doctor in East Los Angeles whose practice has 26,000 patients, more than a third of whom are on Medicaid, said he could accommodate an additional 1,000 Medicaid patients at most.

“There could easily be 10,000 patients looking for us, and we’re just not going to be able to serve them,” said Dr. Flores, who is also the chairman of the family medicine department at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles.

California officials say they are confident that access will not be an issue. But the state is expecting to add as many as two million people to its Medicaid rolls over the next two years — far more than any other state. They will be joining more than seven million people who are already in the program here. One million of the newly eligible will probably be enrolled by July 2014, said Mari Cantwell, an official with the state’s Department of Health Care Services.

On top of that, only about 57 percent of doctors in California accept new Medicaid patients, according to a study published last year in the journal Health Affairs — the second-lowest rate in the nation after New Jersey. Payment rates for Medicaid, known in California as Medi-Cal, are also low here compared with most states, and are being cut by an additional 10 percent in some cases just as the expansion begins.

“The symbolism is horrible,” said Lisa Folberg, a vice president of the California Medical Association.

The health care law seeks to diminish any access problem by allowing for a two-year increase in the Medicaid payment rate for primary care doctors, set to expire at the end of 2014. The average increase is 73 percent, bringing Medicaid rates to the level of Medicare rates for these doctors.

But states have been slow to put the pay increase into effect, experts say, and because of the delay and the fact that the increase is temporary, fewer doctors than hoped have joined the ranks of those accepting Medicaid patients.

“There’s been a lot of confusion and a really slow rollout,” Ms. Folberg said, “which unfortunately mitigated some of the positive effects.”

Nigella Lawson Drug Use Allegations

Man, this is one nasty divorce.

At Telegraph UK, "Charles Saatchi devastated by Nigella's alleged cocaine habit and heartbroken over split, court hears."

Oh sure. He just hated it.

More here, "Nigella Lawson: death of a dream for a Domestic Goddess?":

Nigella Lawson’s hopes of finally making it big in American TV may have been thwarted by drug allegations.

As she shimmied on to the brightly lit Hollywood set, newly svelte in a tight red “wiggle dress” and wearing a smile primed to dazzle millions of American television viewers, Nigella Lawson might have been forgiven for thinking that – finally – her time had come.

After years of false starts and mixed critical receptions in the US, the self-styled Domestic Goddess had, in The Taste, at last found a major prime-time vehicle for the talents that had made her a national treasure – and a multimillionairess – on the other side of the Atlantic.

“Her dream has always been to conquer America, and she is now well on her way,” said a beaming Chris Coelen, the chief executive of Kinetic Productions, which made the programme and paid Lawson an estimated £250,000. “I am sure 2013 will be the Year of Nigella in America.”

The premiere of the show – a cross between Masterchef and The Voice that Lawson co-hosts and executive-produces – won six million viewers for the channel ABC. “Overall, it’s a good mix,” said the tough-to-impress Hollywood Reporter, which declared it was “hungry for more”. A second series was commissioned.

But Lawson’s newfound American profile and the series’ glossy, family-friendly image have now been jeopardised by shocking allegations by her former husband, Charles Saatchi, that she is a “habitual criminal” and hardcore recreational drug user. In one extraordinary email read out in court this week he dubbed her “Higella”.

These claims, made during the trial of two Italian sisters accused of fraudulent use of Mr Saatchi’s credit cards to the tune of at least £685,000, threw Lawson’s US operation into panic on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday. Executives at Kinetic refused to say whether they would stand by her, while a spokesman for ABC said coolly: “I’m not in a position to comment about or on behalf of Nigella.” The second series of The Taste had “already wrapped,” and would go out as planned from January 2, she said, but had nothing else to add.

The allegations, a shock to the millions of British fans who have Lawson’s books on their kitchen shelves, have the potential to wreak even greater damage in a country that remains more socially conservative, and which has for more than 40 years been fighting a tide of hard drugs being trafficked across its southern border.

More at that top link, especially this:

And, ironically, Anthony Bourdain, Lawson’s superstar co-host and co‑producer on The Taste, is himself a reformed drug addict who once sold his record collection to buy heroin. “We were high all the time, sneaking off to the walk-in refrigerator at every opportunity,” he said in his memoir of his days as a chef in Manhattan in the Nineties. “Hardly a decision was made without drugs.”

Bourdain, 57, who is married with a young daughter, was reported to be giving Lawson, 52, “emotional support”, having “taken her under his wing” in the aftermath of the traumatic publication in June of photographs showing Saatchi grabbing his then wife by the throat during a meal at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair. (This week Bourdain signalled his backing of Lawson in a tweet that identified him as “#TeamNigella”.)

Last Chance for Operation Last Chance

The Simon Wiesenthal Center campaign has legs, at the Charlotte Observer, "Wiesenthal Center expands hunt for Nazi suspects":

MUNICH The Simon Wiesenthal Center is expanding its poster and reward campaign in Germany in its push to track down Nazi war criminals before it is too late, following a strong response to its initial launch.

The center's top Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said Monday that Operation Last Chance II, launched in July, resulted in tips on 111 possible suspects from 19 countries.

"The response was way beyond anything we expected," he said in a telephone interview.

The Coming Democrat Congressional Elections Massacre

Reid Wilson, at the Washington Post, is not so bullish on Democrat chances in 2014.

See, "Is another Republican wave building?":

President Obama’s poll numbers are at record lows. The health care law that serves as the cornerstone of his domestic policy legacy is even more unpopular. And there are few chances to change the conversation among a skeptical public that isn’t happy with Washington.

Sound familiar? It should: The national political climate today is starting to resemble 2010, when Republicans won control of the House of Representatives by riding a wave of voter anger. Wave elections are rare. Only a handful of times in the previous century has one party racked up big wins. Democrats won big handfuls of House seats in 1930, 1932, 1948, 1958, 1974, 2006 and 2008. Republicans won back more than 40 seats in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1966, 1994 and 2010. And with nearly a year to go before Election Day, voters’ moods can change dramatically.

But the rocky rollout of the Affordable Care Act and President Obama’s crumbling support suggests another wave might be building. While voters usually punish a president’s party in at least one midterm election, they may be winding up to deliver another smack to President Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill.

Voter dislike of ObamaCare cost Democrats the House in 2010. It could cost them the Senate in 2014. The poll numbers hint at the toll the Affordable Care Act has taken on the Democratic Party. A CNN/ORC International poll conducted November 18-20 shows 49 percent of registered voters favored a generic Republican candidate for Congress, compared with 47 percent who favored a Democratic candidate. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted November 6-11 shows the generic ballot tied, at 39 percent each.

Historically, Democrats have held an advantage of at least a few points on the generic ballot, even when election results are a wash: Democrats held a six-point edge just before Election Day 2000 and picked up a grand total of one seat. Democrats led Republicans by one point on the generic ballot just before the 2010 elections, when Republicans rode to a sweeping victory.

And there’s no sign that Obama will become more popular. Presidents who see their approval ratings dip so dramatically in the second term rarely see their numbers improve. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s approval ratings never recovered after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal (Nixon, of course, didn’t stick around to see just how far his ratings could fall). George W. Bush’s approval rating sank in the spring of 2005, and continued falling through the end of his term. Obama’s numbers are starting to resemble Bush’s trend lines.

For much of Obama’s tenure, even voters who say they disapproved of his job performance still retained a favorable impression of the president. That’s increasingly not the case: In the latest Washington Post/ABC News survey, conducted earlier this month, Obama’s unfavorable rating, 52 percent, tops his favorable rating, 46 percent. It’s only the second time [pdf] the number of unfavorable impressions outweighed the favorable ones. Reaction to the bungled rollout of the health care law is overwhelmingly to blame. Already, the fallout has been evident: Public surveys in Virginia showed Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe (D) leading Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) by wide margins in the wake of the government shutdown. But Cuccinelli made the final weeks of the race into a referendum on ObamaCare, and McAuliffe’s support began to erode. On Election Day, McAuliffe won by just 2.5 points, a narrower margin than even his internal polls showed. Another week, and Cuccinelli might be governor-elect.

Democrats will say the Republican Party is in even worse shape than they are, and they have a point: In the October Washington Post/ABC News poll, just 32 percent of voters said they had a favorable impression of the GOP, compared with 46 percent who had a favorable impression of the Democratic Party. And Republicans still have not articulated a clear governing vision for the country, even a year after failure to do so emerged as a central criticism of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.

But...

Continue reading.

And even if things swing toward the Democrats' in coming months, the fact remains they've got to pick up 17 seats to flip the House, a difficult proposition with the incumbency effect as strong as ever. See Charles Cook, "Anti-Incumbent Fever Won't Oust Many Incumbents."

Karl Rove had an excellent analysis on this the other day at WSJ, "Can the Democrats Retake the House in 2014?"

As for the Senate, see Hotline on Call, "The Hotline's Senate Race Rankings: Democrats on Defense."

It's going to be big. I can't wait until next November.

FLASHBACK: From November 2009, a year after Obama's election, and one year before the GOP takeover of the House, "Payback is a Bitch: 'Political Climate for 2010 Not as Favorable to Democrats'."

Yep, it's a gonna be a bitch for those f-kers. Screw 'em. Make them eat the ObamaCare turd-pile.