From Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, we learn that back in May, Ben Carson proposed replacing all health insurance with "health savings accounts" -- and that includes Medicare. So Ben-Carson-the-Medicare-killer might be the Ben-Carson-campaign-killer. But if the "liberal" media couldn't be bothered to report it the first time, I bet they're even less inclined to report it now. (We also learn that Mr. Carson thinks the Iraq war was a bad idea. What tremendous courage, to oppose a war more than twelve years after it's begun.)
Colorado citizens will mull a single-payer-style health care reform in a 2016 ballot initiative. But Colorado's plan doesn't actually get rid of the private insurers; it merely streamlines the way they collect money by assessing taxes instead of charging premiums, and it also puts the responsibility for running the system into an elected board of trustees, rather than the state legislature. It's not really single-payer, but it would probably be an improvement upon the Affordable Care Act.
Andy Greenberg at Wired writes about the Syrian citizen Bassel Khartabil, whose 3-D models of the ruins at Palmyra have become, in the wake of ISIS attacks upon Syrian historical treasures, a critical historical artifact. The Assad regime has imprisoned Mr. Khartabil for over three years -- and a la Kafka's Joseph K., probably hasn't charged Mr. Khartabil with anything -- but further efforts by scientists and historians to preserve Syrian history in 3-D models may yet wield the Big Stick of Bad PR and get Mr. Khartabil out. (As an aside, ISIS must be quite insecure to insist that respect for one's own history is itself blasphemous. Why do insecure people get all the say about everything? Because they are the best tools against democracy Our Glorious Elites could ever hope for.)
Jeb Bush, obviously flabbergasted that he's nowhere near being the front-runner in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, has "remov(ed) senior staff from the payroll" and cut payroll by 40 percent, in an apparent effort to stay afloat. You're tempted to respond, "because nothing improves morale like cutting jobs and pay," until you remember that the Right to Rise SuperPAC, which is of course dedicated to Mr. Bush's election though not formally affiliated with Mr. Bush, still has a lot of money.
Finally, in Louisiana's all-in gubernatorial primary, Democrat state Rep. John Bel Edwards (no relation!) and Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter advance to the November runoff. Mr. Edwards garnered nearly 40% of the vote, to Mr. Vitter's 23%; but the two other Republican candidates running, public safety commissioner Scott Angelle and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, garnered 19% and 15%, respectively, and though Mr. Dardenne certainly isn't Mr. Vitter's biggest fan, one would expect most of those votes to go to Mr. Vitter in the runoff. And I'm not sure Mr. Edwards is, well, different enough from Mr. Vitter to take advantage of all the bad press Mr. Vitter's been getting lately (most, but not all, of said bad press relating to Mr. Vitter's "very serious sin" first reported in 2007).
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