NYT/CBS poll finds only 1/3 of Americans think the ACA will improve the health care system.

The full numbers won't come out until later today, so there aren't specific percentages at the squib just published at the NYT, and there isn't even a rough fraction to suggest how many of the rest thought things would get worse and how many took the neutral middle position. The headline is "Broad Skepticism on Health Care Law," and I'm just going to guess that the negative group is more than 1/3. Here's some teasing text:

Among all adults, nearly half think the law will not affect them at all, while among uninsured adults, just over one-quarter say that. And while a nearly 4 in 10 plurality of uninsured Americans think the health care law will hurt them personally, they are twice as likely as the general public to say the law will help them.

You can't figure out from that what either group said about thinking that the law would help them. I'll be interested to see how low those numbers are. It could be as high as 6 out of 10 and 3 out of 10 or much lower — 2 out of 10 and 1 out of 10 or worse. [ADDED: If 4 in 10 is indeed a "plurality," then 3 out of 10 for the uninsured think the law will help. You can figure that out. And that would mean that 1.5 out of 10 in the "general public" think it will help them. I guess the "general public" includes this uninsured, so the numbers of already-insured who think it will help them must be less that 1.5. I am relying on precision in the NYT language.]

The promise was that vast majorities of Americans would be helped, including nearly everyone with inadequate or no insurance, and that nearly all of the rest would remain [at worst] in a neutral position, keeping what they had if they liked it. So we are experiencing a monumental reversal of expectations. It's hard to fathom how crushed people feel, both in having the huge promise so badly broken and in having so much upheaval with such an effect on one's personal finances and physical well-being.

This is so different from other huge events in American politics. One political party chose to cause this great disruption. It's not like a terrorist attack or a war that demands that we change. It was chosen, and it was chosen with no decent understanding of how difficult a disruption it would be.

I think back to something Michelle Obama said in early 2008, which seemed ominous to some even then:

Barack Obama... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Maybe it's true that Barack has successfully prevented us from getting back to our lives as usual, our lives that many of us liked and wanted to keep. And it's true that he demanded that we shed our cynicism, and that was only the most ironic of the many way that he inspired our cynicism.

I predict we'll all — most of us — go to Helle.

You think she's off the norm — the gleeful, man-magnetizing Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who took the famous funeral selfie with Barack Obama and David Cameron leaning into the shot.

But I think this is where we are going. Years ago, we scoffed or cried out in horror at the man who walked down the street talking on a cell phone. Why, he seemed like those crazy people who walk and talk to phantoms. Doesn't he know how ridiculous and presumptuous and into himself he looks? Can we even remember how intensely we experienced that disapproval of walking cell-phone talkers?

Helle Thorning-Schmidt — love the name! — assures us the mood in the stadium was "festive," and it was not wrong to take a selfie, and, indeed, she thinks all the fuss is "funny."

Thorning-Schmidt declined to talk about the way Michelle Obama looked. Me, when I look at the famous photo of the photographing — the second one down at the link — I see Michelle existing in the old world — where most of us are — and the other 3 having entered the next stage. Some day, we'll look back and think we're all relaxed and free to quickly record the occasion, even if it's a funeral. After all, lots of people come together at funerals. They are great reunions and celebrations of the life that has ended. We see the life in ourselves and in each other on these occasions, and perhaps this is the last time we will be here together like this. Take the selfie!

Picture yourself in the casket and: 1. Take a selfie now before it's too late, and 2. Ask yourself if you'd like the people who showed up for your funeral to feel they need to sit stiff and grim like poor last-century Michelle or if you prefer Helle?

"Aboard Air Force One, former President Bush shows photos of his paintings to... First Lady Michelle Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..."

"... Valerie Jarrett, National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, Attorney General Eric Holder and former First Lady Laura Bush, Dec. 9, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)"

"My Tumblr was once a collection of evidence, convincing the world that something very strange actually existed, but now everyone believes..."

"... and everyone has seen, and Thorning-Schmidt has the evidence on her phone. So it was time to do the only sensible thing: It was time to declare victory, to revel in drawing a line from the bottom to the top."

The creator of the blog Selfies at Funerals declares victory and ends the project after Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt gets British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama to pose alongside her in the selfie she made at the Nelson Mandela memorial service.

AND: There's a strange amount of talk about Michelle Obama's look of seeming disapproval (caught not in the selfie but in the photograph of the selfie getting taken). At Salon, Roxane Gay collects and reacts to the reactions to the First Lady's reaction.

More than anything, the response to these latest images of Michelle Obama speaks volumes about the expectations placed on black women in the public eye and how a black women’s default emotional state is perceived as angry. The black woman is ever at the ready to aggressively defend her territory. She is making her disapproval known. She never gets to simply be...

But none of the responses Gay quotes refer to race or talk about Michelle Obama as anything other than one individual reacting to one particular thing on one occasion. But Gay seems so sure that it's those other people who are failing to perceive Michelle Obama as an individual: "On and on the punditry goes, ascribing very specific, historically racialized narratives to what Michelle Obama is thinking and feeling in one candid moment."

Now, it's not just the selfie. At The Daily News, there's a whole string of photos showing Michelle looking grouchy while Obama seems to be enjoying his interactions with the pretty Danish Prime Minister. But still, there is no reference to race. The closest reference to race is at the rather scurrilous website Gawker:

[T]here is a new sexy spy prime minister in town... and she is maybe kind of pretty if you are into “tall” and “blonde” and “pretty.” You know who does not seem to be that into “tall” and “blonde” and “pretty”? Michelle Obama, that is who! That is some side-eye not seen since the one time John Boehner grabbed her ass at lunch and slurred something about shayna tushies before falling face-first into his organic grassfed triple martini lobster bisque.

I had to go to the "that one time" link to see what that John Boehner incident was and was highly amused to see that Michelle Obama reacted to John Boehner with exactly the look look I described in the previous post as the best response to someone who makes a sexist remark in a social situation.

"The most important photo of all White House photos."

"Michelle Obama: Realizing that this will look bad," the 2 Nonchalance Boys, the "BEST.DAY.OF.LIFE." Reporter Girl, and all the rest... including the tiny little girl that got killed by Obama's dog. Nah. She just got knocked down by the uncontrollable beast.

And you thought the government was an uncontrollable beast. No, the government is a happy, friendly, family dog. It wouldn't hurt anybody.

Michelle, Malia, and Sasha "have made a lot of sacrifices on behalf of my cockamamie ideas, the running for office and things."

Said Barack Obama (talking about staying in Washington after his term in office, especially given Sasha's interest in completing high school at Sidwell Friends).

"I pledge to be a servant to our President."

From January 2009, offered today for your amusement/outrage/nostalgia.



Meade pointed me to that just now, and it made me laugh (and cringe). I knew I'd already talked about an Obama nostalgia movement — here, 3 days ago — but I see I was talking about it as far back as October 2011.

I know you may scoff and say that every single reference to the abstractions and fuzzy feelings of 3 years ago will only draw derision and intensify the pain. But there's so much pain... At some point, won't people want to take the drug that worked so well that other time. What intense pleasure! What brilliant hallucinations! It calls to you.

Ouch. At the time, the old video I highlighted was Michelle Obama's 2008 line "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Barack will never allow you to go back.... But what if you want to go back... back to the day when a line like Barack will never allow you to go back did not feel like a warning... but you can't go back... Barack will never allow you to go back... 

Writing this, I played an old song in my head:

I think I'm goin' back
To the things I learned so well in my youth
I think I'm returning to
Those days when I was young enough to know the truth

Time to end Halloween.

Really this is the last straw. No, not Michelle Obama saying "Kids Will One Day Trick-or-Treat for Vegetables."

This lady, thinking she's got "the spirit of Halloween":

The woman who answered the door was wearing an apron covered in blood and had a mask covering her mouth and was waving a fake knife. She had a table out and on it were things like hearts and intestines and mince....

The woman reportedly grabbed one of the girl’s hands and gave her one of the hearts, and the children thought it was a fake heart. After placing the lamb’s heart – which was wrapped in a plastic bag – into the children’s hands, the woman picked up a fake knife and chased after the group.

Now, seriously, why isn't that the spirit of Halloween? How are people supposed to know how to do a night of transgressiveness that's scary and creepy, but just the right way?

I never want to read another story about a little kid that went as a KKK guy, when it's just completely normal to go as Satan. He didn't get on the right wavelength of EVIL. You can be Attila the Hun but not Hitler. You're supposed to understand that. When you are 7.

Come on, time to quit altogether. Why are we handing out candy? Why are we answering the door at night to strangers? Why are we sending kids around to the houses of strangers? Why are we publicizing children's costumes mistakes? It no longer makes any sense as anything other than a party time for adults. End Halloween.

"NO BID CONTRACT: Michelle O's Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare site..."

Headline today at Drudge, linking here.

The link goes to The Daily Caller, where we learn that Toni Townes-Whitley is a senior vice president at CGI Federal and also graduated from Princeton in the same year as Michelle Obama. Given that over 1,000 highly able persons graduate from Princeton in any given year, it's not that amazing that you'd find a Michelle Obama co-grad somewhere at the executive level of a large corporation, so this story seems a bit dumb, unless...

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni....

... unless your point is that black people are in a cabal.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

Jeez, the writing in The Daily Caller is bad! So Townes-Whitley decided to return to work as an African-American woman? What was she before? A white man?

Look, I'm concerned about corruption and the appearance of corruption, but this is a low-quality effort at investigative journalism. And yet think of the traffic that story is getting with the Drudge link. The rewards are there for those who are hot to get them. Fine. You like that story? Then don't whimper about lefties' expressions of contempt for right-wing media.

"NSA COLLECTING CONTACTS FROM 500,000 'BUDDY LISTS' EACH DAY."

Drudge, linking to this Washington Post revelation.

AND: In the longer view, we see an artistic parallelism in the President and his wife. Note the facial expression and the hands:


There are 3 headlines under the First Lady:

Squirrels go nuts for First Lady's garden in shutdown...
...tomatoes are rotting
UNHARVESTED...

Something In The Water (Does Not Compute).

That's a Prince song title.

It came to mind today in the context of the Chinese blogger, confessing his computer sins on government TV, including a blog post that wondered whether there were contraceptives in the water.

Meanwhile, in America, First Lady Michelle Obama has a new health campaign with the message "When you drink water, you Drink Up," encouraging people to drink "even just one more glass a day," even though there is no medical reason for pushing people to drink more water. (Drinking too much water could kill you, and normally, drinking in response to whatever thirst you have is all you're supposed to do, though the advice to drink water instead of other things is good for those who want to lose weight.)

And who can forget that the 2012 presidential campaign was — at least some of the time — seemingly all about getting free birth control coverage into Obamacare.

Must be something in the water they drink/It's been the same with every girl I've had/Must be something in the water they drink/Cuz why else would a woman wanna treat a man so bad?

If I were a blogger in China, this post would be a crime, but only if it were deemed a rumor and it was also viewed more than 5,000 or reposted more than 500 times. I could get a 3-year prison sentence, not because of what I wrote, but because of what other people did with it after I wrote it — reading it, retweeting it, and construing it.

One must take care either: 1. not to become too popular or viral, or 2. to write in a manner that deters the construction that this is a rumor.

I'll do anything 4 U, anything/Why don't U talk 2 me?/Tell me who U are/Don't do this 2 me....

Questions, questions.

I was amused to find myself amongst the miscellaneous items at the end of "The Best of the Web" today. That stuff at the end is definitely not the best of the web. It's more of a grab bag of things that can be made funny by putting it under a funny heading.

Questions Nobody Is Asking

" 'Why Don't You Ask Me Next Time Before Writing That I'm Either Malicious or Dumb?'" --headline, Althouse.blogspot.com, Aug. 14

"Why Is Samantha Power Speaking to Invisible Children?"--headline, NationalInterest.org, Aug. 14

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking

"Michelle Obama: 'No,' I Will Never Run for President"--headline, WeeklyStandard.com, Aug. 15

"There are prison-like elements, but it’s a really nice prison."

Michelle Obama said. "You can’t complain. There are confining elements."

Leave Michelle Obama alone.

She's growing out her bangs, okay? Have you never gone through the issues of growing out bangs? It's not easy.

"The heckler wrote: 'After years of these lonely, isolating and dehumanizing experiences...'"

"'... I’ve only recently been able to find the strength to advocate for myself and millions of others.'"

So basically she waited until laws were changed, the political battles were fought, and even TV commercials and marketing ads contain openly gay themes in people presented as normal Americans. Then, when gay marriage and family life is normalizing legally and socially, she comes out of the closet as an aggressive, rude activist.

Sounds like she waited until it was safe, and now she is jumping on the wagon after it's left the barn, trying to be loud and attract attention to her false pretense of bravery.

Top-rated comment on the WaPo column "Why I confronted the first lady."

Ellen Sturtz, the 56-year-old lesbian activist, who heckled Michelle Obama and says she was "taken aback" when Michelle "came right down in my face."

As discussed in this earlier post today, Michelle Obama said "Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving," and now Sturtz would like us to know that "she told Obama she was happy to take the microphone to plead her case," which — she claims — "appeared to fluster the first lady."

“I said I want your husband to sign the executive order,” Sturtz said. “Her husband could sign this order tonight and protect 22 percent of the work force in this country.”

Sturtz said she paid $500 to attend the fundraiser, part of a protest cooked up by the gay rights group GetEqual, which gained notice in Obama’s first term for hectoring him during speeches and demanding more action on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

I get a whiff of sexism from the use of the word "fluster." That's a word that people have traditionally used — this is my observation — to portray a woman as incapable of standing her ground and dealing with emotional turmoil.

The (unlinkable) OED defines the transitive verb "to fluster" to mean "To flurry, confuse":

1785   A. Murphy Way to keep Him (new ed.) i. 26   Ma'am, if I was as you, I would not fluster myself about it.
1816   Scott Antiquary III. v. 112   The aged housekeeper was no less flustered and hurried in obeying the numerous..commands of her mistress.

I find it arrogant and annoying for this protester to claim to have flustered the First Lady. The First Lady was angered (and justifiably).

Michelle Obama — unlike Barack — will not be interrupted.

Everyone's paying attention to the way Michelle Obama insisted that everyone pay attention to her or she's leaving. When some lady yelled about gay rights during a fundraising speech, the First Lady said "One of the things I don’t do well is this" and that the heckler could "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving" and "You all decide. You have one choice."

The "you" is the heckler when she says "you can take the mic." But the "you" in "You all decide" and "You have one choice" is probably the whole audience. "You all" is a way to indicate the larger group, and she says that after the crowd, we're told, applauds loudly. She doesn't order the throng to throttle the heckler, but she's essentially saying you need to shut this woman up, because obviously, no one there wants Michelle Obama to walk out.

10 days earlier, Barack Obama was famously interrupted, also by a female heckler. He was talking about his military policies, and she was anti-war. Obama — amazing many people — went off script, engaged with her criticism, and even said she — or at least her "voice" — was "worth paying attention to"

Obama departed from his prepared script by responding: "Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike. I'm willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it's worth being passionate about. Is this who we are? Is that something our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that."...

After she was led out of the auditorium, Obama was applauded when he said: "The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.... Obviously, I do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn't listening to me in much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong."

Obama had his reasons for engaging with his protester. In fact, it could have been planned political theater. It might have made him look good, though it's also easy to mock him for it (or, more aptly, to mock the entire speech for going this way and that, evasively). There's no way the heckler made Michelle Obama look good, especially in contrast to her husband's recent performance. It's all too easy to portray her as arrogant and unconcerned about the interests of everyone who came to the event.

But let's be a little sympathetic. She began with self-deprecation: "One of the things I don’t do well is this." And I hear in that a reference to Barack: He does do these things well. You just saw him make vivid political theater out of engaging with a woman who yelled at him. I can't do that. I can't risk that. 

Even the statements she did make are getting critiqued! She attends these events, gives a dramatic reading of the lines in a competent, actorly fashion, and that's her public role. She can't ad lib policy on the topic of some random person's choice. (In this case, it was some executive order about federal contractors discriminating against gay people.) She only wanted to say: The planners of this event are responsible for keeping perfect decorum, and my appearance is conditional on their meeting this responsibility. They've already failed me, and they need to step up and get it right immediately.

On the spot, she found a way to say that in simple language that did not involve smacking down the heckler or ordering any minions around. She used the language of choice when addressing others and spoke of her own choice as if she were a simple and powerless person who could either continue to speak or stop.

Considering the alternatives, she did pretty well.

Don't say "there is a piece of Boston in me" when orating about a bombing in Boston that put shrapnel in many victims.

Obama at the memorial today:

“Boston is your hometown but we claim it a little bit too,” he said, referring to his days as a student at Harvard Law School. “I know this because there is a piece of Boston in me.”

Given the context, that's one of the worst figures of speech ever.

It's also bad for Obama to make the disaster about himself and to bring up an aspect of his life that entails time spent not with ordinary Bostonians, but amongst the elite academics of Cambridge.

And I'm surprised at the photograph the NYT is running (at the link). It's got Michelle slouching down so that her legs are overextended in a too-casual manner, and the photographer has lined up those legs directly under Obama so that they seem, surrealistically, like his legs.

"You know, if I was living out on a farm in Iowa, I’d probably want a gun, too."

"When somebody just drives up into your driveway and you’re not home, you don’t know who these people are, you don’t know how long it’s going to take for the sheriffs to respond, I can see why you’d want some guns for protection."

Obama, quoting Michelle (or purporting to quote Michelle), showing some understanding of principles of federalism related to the way people have different needs and different policy perspectives in different parts of the country.

Rereading the quote, I said: Why Iowa — of all places where people might have a preference for guns? Why Iowa and not, say, Idaho? Vocalizing the question made me instantly see the answer: They had to go to Iowa to campaign. Iowa's the big early caucus state. They know Iowa, but they don't know Idaho. Why would they?

By the way, how long does it take the police to respond in Chicago? They know Chicago....

I assume Obama likes to graciously acknowledge that there are some parts of the country — unsophisticated places — where people cling to their guns because that's all they've been able to figure out so far in their limited little lives. Show a little respect for these rubes before you proceed further, to school them on the need for gun control. But drag in Chicago, and it gets complicated. Chicago is the very place where he thinks the gun control is needed, the very point that must be explained to the blinkered farmers.

If you concede that you might want a gun when somebody comes up to your door in Chicago, it's no longer clear what the sophisticated people are supposed to think.

Michelle Obama calls herself a "busy single mother."

She corrects herself: "Sometimes when you've got the husband who's president, it can feel a little single, but he's there."