Last Call For The Carson Show, Con't

I wonder how long Ben Carson will be leading in Iowa when the elderly FOX News crowd gets wind of the fact he wants to abolish their Medicare.

Carson, who now leads the GOP field in Iowa according to the latest Quinnipiac Poll, would eliminate the program that provides health care to 49 million senior citizens, as well as Medicaid, and replace it with a system of cradle-to-grave savings accounts which would be funded with $2,000 a year in government contributions. While rivals have been pummeled for proposing less radical changes, Carson hasn't faced the same scrutiny -- and his continued traction in polls has left GOP strategists and conservative health care wonks scratching their heads.

"This isn’t a borderline issue. The politics of this are horrific," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the American Action Forum and health care adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Carson's stance on the third-rail issue of Medicare is especially risky given his strength among elderly voters. In Iowa, Carson draws a quarter of the senior vote -- more than double any other candidate except Donald Trump, with whom he’s statistically tied among seniors. Carson’s support is even higher among voters between the ages of 55 and 64, who are on the verge of Medicare eligibility. He draws 34 percent of that age group, double Trump’s level of support, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

Carson's GOP rivals are largely holding their fire so far. Trump's campaign declined to comment, as did the campaigns of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio. A spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal noted the Louisiana governor's support for reforming -- but preserving -- Medicare and Medicaid.

“Without change, they will go bankrupt,” said the spokeswoman, Shannon Dirmann. “Abolishing them is bad policy.”

The answer of course is a combination of our Village betters have been letting Carson get away with it, and that nobody took him seriously enough to read the fine print.  Carson doesn't call it Medicare or Medicaid, he calls it "traditional health care".  He's had this plan for more than a year now, but he's gotten very, very good at selling it while not talking about it.

Now that he's a serious threat in the GOP race, the Village has suddenly re-discovered his plan to replace Medicare and Medicaid with medical savings accounts that wouldn't cover the cost of a hospital visit and wouldn't keep up with medical cost inflation.

We'll see how much traction this gets, but I'm betting it's not going to hurt him as much as people think.  He's had this position for over a year now, folks.  Hasn't hurt him so far.

And if it's because "people didn't know" then maybe we should ask why that is.

It Could Lead To Dancing

It's funny how Republicans are always for "small government" and "less government intrusion" unless it's telling other people that their daughters are probably sluts.

An Omaha Public Schools parent meeting devolved into shouting and violence when abstinence-only advocates accused district officials of not being upfront about a new sex education curriculum. 

According to Jay Irwin, a University of Nebraska at Omaha professor in attendance who wrote a detailed description of what happened, there were about 1,000 people in attendance at the Tuesday night meeting and people opposed to the optional curriculum known as comprehensive sex education, or CSE, wore red stickers. Video from the meeting shows total chaos as parents stand and shout about purity. 

“Planned Parenthood has came in. There is a big ring here. We are fighting this on the state level as well,” Amber Parker told local WDAM. 

One woman, who some have dubbed “#puritymom,” can be seen standing and screaming, “It’s my daughter! My daughter! Who’s going to keep her pure? Nobody! I am! Not OPS! Not OPS!”

Keep in mind, this is a completely optional class.  Parents have long had the right to yank their kids out of sex-ed classes if they didn't agree with what was being taught.  But no, the lunatics will stop anything from being taught.

Parent Bernie Garcia stood outside waving a sign that read, “Say No to Comprehensive Sex Ed.” He was upset over a rumor he’d heard that the course will teach children different sex positions and how to masturbate. 

“That’s disgusting,” he told LiveWellNebraska. “That’s not right. Children should learn about sex when they become adults.” 

The heightened interest is relatively new, LiveWell reports. An April meeting drew only 150 attendees, but the large, vocal crowd was spurred by social media posts, churches and other community organizations, including Nebraskans for Founders’ Values, a conservative Christian group. OPS officials told LiveWell some of the people in attendance Tuesday weren’t necessarily even OPS parents or students.

And there are so many examples of these local groups starting trouble like this in places all across the country, and it leads to dangerous confrontations like this and kids not being taught the facts about things.

But that was the plan all along, you know.  The fact that kids in Omaha might be learning about sex education is enough to enrage these idiots to make sure that children other than their own are kept just as ignorant as they are.

The Batlle Over Ohio

Ohio Republicans are putting the finishing touches on legislation that would end public funding for Planned Parenthood in the state, legislation that "moderate Republican" Gov. John Kasich is expected to sign.

Anti-abortion advocates in Ohio have already banned Planned Parenthood from receiving state funds for family planning; the latest bill is a way to get at federal funds administered by the state government. The ultimate goal is to shut down Planned Parenthood entirely by cutting off public money,following Texas’s lead in gutting access to reproductive health care. In Ohio, Franklin says, “We’re trying to pursue a different kind of incremental approach."

Anti-abortion groups had been making the case for the bill since the beginning of the year, but the legislative push began in earnest in July, after anti-abortion activists first released undercover videos accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. The measure is now going through hearings in both the state Senate and House of Representatives. Supporters and opponents alike expect it to be voted out of committee, pass the General Assembly, and hit Governor John Kasich's desk by Thanksgiving. A Kasich spokesman said the governor would not comment on pending legislation, but he’s widely expected to sign the bill if it passes. Despite pitching himself as a moderate in his presidential campaign, and slamming House Republicans for threatnening the shut down the government over Planned Parenthood, Kasich has green-lit every significant restriction on abortion and family planning since he took office in 2011.

Even Democratic opponents admit that the bill has been cannily packaged and presented. “The Republican Party did a good job with this," says state Representative Greta Johnson. "They came out strong with these horribly edited videos and scared even moderate Democrats into thinking, ‘I can’t be affiliated with them.' " Anti-abortion advocates have touted the bill as bipartisan, having scored the support of Democratic state Representative Bill Patmon, who is co-sponsoring the measure in the House. But the vast majority of Democrats are vocally opposing it.

The Ohio strategy is more piecemeal than what we're seeing in states like Arkansas and Louisiana, whose governors have tried to go big by cutting the organization’s contracts with Medicaid, which provides roughly 75 percent of its funding. Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week announced that his state was dropping Planned Parenthood from Medicaid (court challenges will follow), and Ohio anti-abortion groups have clamored for Kasich to do the same. But Ohio’s current legislative strategy could ultimately prove more lasting, as federal courts have temporarily halted Arkansas andLouisiana's attempts to cut Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid funding. “In Ohio we’ve been careful to enshrine as much as we can in law," says Franklin. "It would stand longer and it would hold regardless of who is our state’s executive. That’s important to us for making long-term change."

Other states are taking a similarly incremental approach. North Carolina’s GOP-controlled state legislature passed a budget last month that bans Planned Parenthood from receiving state money for family planning and pregnancy prevention. Also last month, Wisconsin’s state Assembly passed a measure that aims to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Title X funds by having the state's health department apply for the federal grant instead.

Supporters of the Ohio bill say that the funds will simply be redirected to other clinics, community health centers, and local health departments, without interrupting health services. But the state's community health centers are already under strain, and might not have the capacity to take on the additional clients. “You’re going to take a proven, effective program that’s making a difference—you’re going to disrupt that and try to find someone else to replicate it,” says Copeland, who points out that Planned Parenthood clinics were awarded the federal grants through a competitive process.

This is another battle that Republicans are winning easily.  Ohio's state government is 100% controlled by the GOP and has been since 2011.  Midterm elections in 2014 only gave Republicans more power (and re-elected Kasich in a landslide). Now Ohioans are reaping that particular whirlwind.

Ending abortion and making contraception available to only the few was always the goal, and Kasich is leading the charge.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Patricia, now a record-breaking Category 5 storm with winds topping 200 MPH, is set to make a "catastrophic" landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast Friday.
• Victims of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle have received $100,000 a piece in restitution as part of his plea deal on child pornography and sexual assault charges.
• At least 42 people are dead in a bus crash near Bordeaux in western France as a head-on collision with a truck caused the bus to catch on fire.
• One American soldier was killed in a raid assisting Kurdish Peshmerga forces in rescuing more than 70 hostages from an Islamic State prison in Iraq on Thursday.
• A federal judge has struck down Indiana's law barring "ballot selfies", ruling that taking pictures of marked ballots and sharing them online is constitutionally protected free speech.