News Nuggets 1334

DAYLEE PICTURE:  A Black Bear Cub in the Wyoming Rocky Mountains.  

From the Daily Mail of the UK.

Medicaid is Health Overhaul's Early Success Story from the Associated Press
"The ugly duckling of government health care programs has turned into a rare early success story for President Barack Obama's technologically challenged health overhaul. Often criticized for byzantine rules and skimpy payments, Medicaid has signed up 444,000 people in 10 states in the six weeks since open enrollment began, according to Avalere Health, a market analysis firm."
Daily Kos does some good analysis of this issue HERE.

Longer School Days in Store for Children in Five States... and Why They Might Actually LIKE it from the Associated Press
"Extra hours will be used to study world cultures, healthy living, foreign languages, fitness.  The average school day in the U.S. is 6.7 hours.  Around 300 extra hours per year will be added in the 2014-15 schedule."

What Typhoon Haiyan Tells Us About Obamacare (Matt Miller) from the Washington Post
"If you feel it’s urgent to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, then deep in your heart you also support Obamacare. It’s possible you haven’t made this connection yet, so let me explain."

What the Obamacare Enrollment Numbers Really Tell Us (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"That confirms two things we’ve long known to be true: the website is a disaster, and short term enrollment figures are a serious political problem for the White House and Democrats. But to Larry Levitt, a vice president at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, another very telling number is this one: over 975,000 have been determined eligible for a marketplace but haven’t yet chosen a plan."

Obamacare is in Much More Trouble than it was One Week Ago (Ezra Klein) from the Washington Post
Klein lays out clearly the danger in "quick fixes" that are currently floating around Congress right now.  Can Obama et al., stave off these efforts and yet keep the public engaged?  
"The bill Landrieu is offering could really harm the law. It would mean millions of people who would've left the individual insurance market and gone to the exchanges will stay right where they are. Assuming those people skew younger, healthier, and richer -- and they do -- Obamacare's premiums will rise."

The New Politics of Evasion (William A. Galston & Elaine C. Kamarck) from Democracy Journal
"New thinking and favorable demography have largely addressed the Democrats’ old problems. Now it’s the Republicans who can’t face reality."

Four Years Later, the Tea Party has Learned Nothing (Jonathan Bernstein) from Salon
"After a few election cycles, they’re no longer a new entity. Yet, they haven’t grown at all – and that’s by design."

Tea Party Shocker: Even Right-wingers Become Liberals when They Turn Off Fox News (Paul Rosenberg) from Salon
"America's center is to the left, and even Tea Partyers are liberals when they turn off Rush and learn real facts."

How to Rain on the Chris Christie 2016 Parade (Ana Marie Cox) from the Guardian [of the UK]
"The New Jersey governor's re-election win has exacerbated hype about a GOP presidential nod. Let me burst the bubble."

The Jeb Bush Boomlet (Ben White) from Politico
"But there is growing chatter in elite New York financial circles that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is giving more serious consideration to getting in the race, especially if it appears at any point that Christie is not drawing big national appeal beyond the northeast. Several plugged in GOP sources said Bush has moved from almost certainly staying out to a 30 percent chance of getting in. The “70/30” odds pop up in so many conversations they almost seem like circulated talking points."
"New York financial circles" -- where else?  If the Bush people are floating this trial balloon now, the odds are probably more like 50/50 that he's going to run.  As regular readers know, I have long viewed Jeb as the most serious threat to Hillary in 2016.  He has none of the northeastern taint of people like Romney and Christie and has been exceptionally disciplined in not giving offense to the Tea Party & evangelical wings of the GOP.  At the same time, he and Christie will be competing for many of the same more "moderate" primary voters in 2016 and could easily divide that vote, creating an opening for folks like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.  Either way, Jeb will need a lot more love from folks outside the "financial circles" to really make a go of it in three years.

HOLLYWOOD NUGGET!!
Netflix and Marvel’s ‘Luke Cage’ and a Brief History of Black Superheroes (Chancellor Agard) from the Daily Beast
"Was Shaquille O’Neal’s turn in the ’90s dud ‘Steel’ really one of the only superhero movies with a lead black character? Get ready for Netflix and Marvel’s ‘Luke Cage’ TV show."

WOLRD WAR II LETTERS NUGGET!!
Daughter pieces together the dramatic untold story of her parents' young love during WWII in 1,000 letters her father wrote from the warfront from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Arizona retiree Jane Bartow was shocked to find the reams of emotional letters her father sent her mother while the war kept them apart between 1941 and 1945.  She believes her deeply private father Darrow Beaton, who was in the Merchant Marines, accidentally included the letters in a box of photos he sent her before his death in 2008.  'He remembered kissing her in the snow that first night they met': Bartow has turned the amazing story of her parents' tragic separation and triumphant reunion into an historical novel about love during wartime."

PREHISTORIC CREATURES NUGGET!!
The Secrets of the Woolly Mammoth Brain to be Revealed after 39,000 Years from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"The remains of 10-year-old Yuka were discovered in Siberia in 2009 and offers one the most complete example of a woolly mammoth brain ever found Researchers are now carrying out a full-scale mapping exercise in bid to significantly boost our knowledge about the mysterious species."