#Influenza B often comes later in the season, and is well covered by this year's #vaccine. #Flushot still important!
— @PedsGeekMD
:
They’re over her.
Sarah Palin’s odd, rambling speech last weekend before an audience of committed conservative activists in Des Moines has many influential voices on the right saying that the time has come to acknowledge that the romance has gone cold and the marriage is dead.
This is despite the fact that the 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee told reporters upon her arrival at the event that she is “seriously interested” in running for president in 2016.
Her address was a 34 1/2 -minute roller coaster ride of cliches, non sequiturs and warmed-over grievances. One line that stood out: “GOP leaders, by the way, you know, ‘The Man,’ can only ride ya when your back is bent. So strengthen it. Then The Man can’t ride ya.”
The critiques have been devastating — and those are the ones from her friends.
Never forget: John McCain gave us Sarah Palin. He made her a national figure. His judgement is atrocious. [And not 'was', 'is'. See next story.]
Apparently brain-dead John McCain says monumental nincompoop Sarah Palin would be a "great" presidential candidate.
http://t.co/...
— @BruceBartlett
:
How would Sarah Palin do if she decides to run for president? According to her former top-of-the-ticket running mate, quite well.
"She's very interesting. And I'm sure she'd do great," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told The Washington Post Wednesday in a brief interview.
Nieman Labs:
Andrew Sullivan — perhaps the archetypal news blogger, one of the earliest traditional-media journalists to embrace the then-new form — is calling it quits. The reasons: burnout, stress, health issues, and a general desire to do something else.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Katie Rose Quandt:
The perception of slipping out of middle class comfort is based in fact. Some economists define the “middle class” as those Americans making within 50 percent of the median income (so in 2013, those making between $25,970 and $77,909.) As more and more income is redistributed upwards, the group fitting into this literal “middle class” actually shrunk from 56.5 percent of the population in 1979 to 45.1 in 2012.
And, just a reminder of where all the money is going as the middle classes find themselves slipping into poverty:
Dan Diamond:
About 1-in-5,000 people who aren’t protected from measles will die from it. More than 300 people die from measles around the world every day, mostly children.
To put that another way: If you’re unvaccinated, you’re about 35,000 times more likely to die from measles than you are to win at PowerBall...
To their credit, many Americans are trying to be responsible.
And this matters, because if enough people vaccinate against a preventable disease — the target is more than 95% of the population — we keep our “herd immunity.” The more Americans that get vaccinated, the less likely it is that there will be an outbreak here, because a disease like measles just can’t get a foothold.
That means it’s up to the rest of us to protect the newborns, the ill, the people whose vaccinations secretly aren’t effective — they’re counting on us to take care of them.
Dylan Scott:
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) agreed to expand Medicaid under Obamacare Tuesday, but you'd be forgiven for not catching that if you actually listened to what he had to say.
"I believe Medicaid is not a program we should expand. It's a program that we should reform," Pence said. "That's exactly what we're accomplishing."
His office didn't mention the Affordable Care Act when announcing the plan, which will cover up to 350,000 low-income Indianans. When Pence's PR team tweeted a timeline of the state program being used to expand Medicaid in that state, they skipped over the 2010 passage of Obamacare. But Pence has accepted Medicaid expansion dollars authorized by Obamacare to pay for this alternative plan -- which the Obama administration had to approve.
An Obama administration official had actually primed TPM to be ready for Pence's semantical theatrics. That's because it's become the norm. More Republican-led states are signing onto the key Obamacare program, but they are very reluctant to call it that.
It must be weird to have to constantly lie to yourself.
Jonathan Bernstein:
Jaime Fuller at the Fix wonders what to call Bill Clinton if Hillary Clinton becomes president. First Gentleman? First Dude? First Bill?
I don’t care. But it gives the Big Dog a chance to make a small contribution to American democracy by relinquishing the title he should no longer use: “President.”
As the saying goes, a democracy has no higher title than “citizen.” Yet our politicians get to keep calling themselves senator, mayor, governor or whatever other office they once achieved for the rest of their lives. It doesn’t sit right. Especially when it comes to former presidents, who already get so many perks from their exalted non-office.
Unfortunately, it's hard to give up this tradition. If a former president refuses the title, it might shame the others into going along. Yet no former president is likely to do it. They expect the respect!
Robert Costa:
[Former Gov. Mike] Huckabee’s main message: He understands the working-class voters who feel disconnected from coastal elites. He framed the divide as “Bubba-ville” vs. “Bubble-ville.” He also made sure to describe his well-paid tenure at Fox News, which is based in New York, as time spent with a conservative “family.”
“No, I don’t live in New York,” Huckabee said. “I [would] go up there two or three days a week and I’d work there, but I don’t live there and I don’t want to live there. . . . I’d go to New York every week and back to the heartland of America.”
He went on to rail against “New York, Washington and Hollywood” for coarsening “the culture that is normal to us.” But he pointedly did not bring up a policy agenda, nor much about national politics. In short, it was more a book sale than an ideological argument.
Sigh. Another conservative scam to sell books.
WSJ:
The use of food-stamps has generally leveled off as the economy has picked up in recent years, but it appears children are still struggling.
Roughly 16 million U.S. children under the age of 18—about one in five—received food stamps last year, according to statistics on families released by the Census Bureau on Wednesday. The number of children on stamps remains higher than at the start of the 2007-09 recession. Back then, 9 million children—roughly one in eight— were on food stamps.
