Obamacare Options

A better Republican strategy would be designed around Ryan’s stated goal. It would begin with the understanding that Obamacare’s worst features are its overregulation of health insurance and its centralization of regulation in Washington, D.C. The way Obamacare regulates insurers’ treatment of people with preexisting conditions, the benefits they have to offer, and the difference between what they can charge the young and the old have raised premiums and deductibles, resulted in insurance policies that are not attractive to the young and healthy, and so made the exchanges shaky at best in much of the country even with the help of the individual mandate.

Republicans already have a set of legislative ideas (if not yet actual legislation) that builds on that insight. The main Republican alternative to Obamacare — advanced in different forms by Senators Bill Cassidy, Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr, and Marco Rubio, by the House Republicans, and by Tom Price, Trump’s nominee to be secretary of health and human services — is to create a much less regulated market.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444564/obamacare-republicans-repeal-replace-strategy-congress-paul-ryan

Opposed to Obamacare, Divided About Obamacare

The main problem is that Republicans are a diverse bunch who opposed Obamacare for a variety of reasons. Those most focused on shrinking the size and reach of the federal government thought Washington was already too involved in health care and should pull back, not expand its role or raise taxes to pay for new health spending. Those preoccupied with personal freedom balked at being required to buy health insurance. Others thought the widespread use of insurance to fund health care was already driving health spending too high and objected to further expanding health insurance. Still, others thought broadening health coverage was a desirable goal, but that the subsidies and regulations that Obamacare used to accomplish this goal were poorly designed and transferred too much power from the states to Washington. All of these Republicans could agree on trashing Obamacare, but they did not have a common intellectual basis for designing a replacement and they still don’t. 
http://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2017/02/09/why_is_it_so_hard_for_republicans_to_replace_obamacare_110432.html

Gorsuch Is A Home Run

If Democrats are looking for a point of vulnerability in either Gorsuch’s integrity or impartiality, they won’t find it. He is basically a Boy Scout. He’s a faithful husband, a good father, a caring neighbor, a generous friend, a man of probity who holds himself to the highest ethical standards. Oh, and he will bring religious diversity to a Court that is entirely Catholic and Jewish: He’s an Episcopalian.

Gorsuch will be a hard man to depict as a ferocious partisan or an ideological judge, which isn’t to say he won’t be described this way by ideologically partisan critics for whom the prospect of a conservative intellectual giant on the Supreme Court is anything but welcome. As Gorsuch himself has frequently observed, including in a widely noted tribute to Scalia, good judges sometimes have to vote or rule in ways they do not like — because that is what the law requires.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/01/ignore-the-attacks-on-neil-gorsuch-hes-an-intellectual-giant-and-a-good-man/?utm_term=.882f42809c67

Obamacare Be Gone

They will also deal with the difficult political task of reforming a massive expansion of Medicaid (the vast majority of Obamacare’s “newly insured” are actually new welfare recipients). They will have to answer Kristof’s claims that “millions of Americans will lose insurance, and thousands more will die unnecessarily each year because of lack of care.” Republicans will have to convince voters that opening up affordable and competitive markets without coercion is preferable to preserving unsustainable state-run programs that grow in perpetuity.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/06/gop-does-have-a-plan-to-replace-obamacare-thats-what-scares-democrats/

300 Hacked Emails, That Will Leave a Mark

Then, last Sunday evening, during the NFL playoff game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers, the FBI posted on its website more than 300 emails that Clinton had sent to an unnamed colleague not in the government -- no doubt her adviser Sid Blumenthal -- that had fallen into the hands of foreign powers. It turns out -- and the Sunday night release proves this -- that Blumenthal was hacked by intelligence agents from at least three foreign governments and that they obtained the emails Clinton had sent to him that contained state secrets. Sources believe that the hostile hackers were the Russians and the Chinese and the friendly hackers were the Israelis.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/12/andrew-napolitano-why-criminal-investigation-hillary-clinton-is-back-to-front-and-center.html?intcmp=ob_article_sidebar_video&intcmp=obnetwork

Energy Poverty Worse than Climate Change

As with so many things, we the well off think of great ideas that crush the poor.

http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/25/energy-poverty-is-much-worse-for-the-poo

Precision in Language

Everyone knows that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but somehow people seem to forget. Endogeneity is a word that can help you remember. Something is endogenous when you don’t know whether it’s a cause or an effect (or both). For example, lots of people note that people who go to college tend to make more money. But how much of this is because college boosts earning power, and how much is because smarter, harder-working, better-connected people tend to go to college in the first place? It’s endogenous. The media is full of stories about how which kind of people stay married, or what diet is associated with better health. Whenever you see these stories, you should ask “What about endogeneity?”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-05/5-economics-terms-we-all-should-use

If things are getting hotter and carbon levels in the atmosphere are rising, does that mean carbon is causing the temperature changes?  Or are warmer oceans off gassing more carbon dioxide?  Hmmm....