That’s one of the top links at cnn.com today, bringing one, oddly, to a “small business”-categorized report that hookers, er, sorry, sex workers are flocking to Obamacare.  The article profiles a “sex worker” (actual activities unspecified) who calls herself “Siouxsie Q” who’s happy to be buying health insurance.  Like any self-employed individual, she didn’t have health insurance from her employer and, the article tells us, prior to Obamacare, “she and her partner recently reviewed their healthcare options and found that a... Read more

You know, I used to think of myself as a “crafty” sort of person — back when I was a kid and crafts meant needlepoint and sewing.  Now sewing is obsolete, when the fabric costs more than the completed piece of clothing, and the crafts of the 2010s are scrapbooking and jewelry-making, neither of which suit me (I don’t have the eye for, or interest in, scrapbooking, and the only jewelry I wear is my wedding ring), but once a year... Read more

This opinion piece by Kay Hymowitz in the LA Times, linked to by National Review, gets back to the issue I’ve been thinking about lately: fatherless kids, particularly boys, and the seemingly endless cycle. Apparently, this is a condensed version of an article in the City Journal, but that’s not available online yet. Nothing that Hymowitz says is particularly novel, except that there are cross-country studies that indicate that these “Boy Problems” exist even in generous social welfare states such... Read more

I could come up with hundreds of links like this one, the Washington Post’s 4 Pinocchio rating for Obama and friends’ claims that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it.”  But the reality is, anyone who followed the law knew this was a lie.  It was clear that the requirements were being upped, including identical coverage/pricing for men and women, full coverage of the “10 essential benefits,” a laundry-list of preventative care, and other plan design requirements which substantially... Read more

OK, you guys have convinced me: I’m planning on, experimentally, making a point of blocking out a certain length of time in the day to commenting. But I’ll pair that with not commenting on the blogs I usually follow, to try to keep the amount of time I spend on this blogging project under control. I’ll report back on whether this seems to work out or not (or whether my comments are lame enough that they’re less satisfactory than nothing... Read more

That’s the headline in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, discussing a lawsuit by the Illinois attorney general against a California for-profit adoption agency, Adoption Network Law Center, which has been marketing to prospective adoptive parents and expectant mothers considering adoption, in Illinois, via ads that pop up in Google searches, specifically targeting Illinois (e.g., “click here if you’re interested in adoption in Illinois”).  Prospective adopters are enticed with the promise of a faster process; the mothers are promised financial benefits. According to... Read more

Just for fun (having watched two more episodes last night while folding laundry. . .)! Read more

As often seems to be the case, the comments section in this Slate article are more interesting than the article itself, about poor mothers who reuse diapers because they can’t afford new ones.  Specifically, the dump the poop out and rediaper the child until it’s full of pee.  Now, the article has a few holes — the author says that cloth diapers aren’t an option because the daycare won’t accept them, but clearly the diaper re-using is happening at home,... Read more

So I was thinking about this the other day — comments are great because you know that a live person is reading what you’ve written and engaging with your ideas, but I hardly ever comment back. This is why: 1) For reasons that I’m not clear on, but I think may have to do with cookies, even though I’ve told blogger not to count my own pageviews in its pageview totals, it does so anyway, at least sometimes. And, since... Read more