Planned Parenthood supporters might be surprised to discover the newest use of their donations — funding Christmas presents for journalists.
On December 28, Vox’s deputy managing editor for visuals Sarah Kliff tweeted a photo of her gift with the caption “Planned Parenthood sends a holiday gift to reproductive health reporters: Emergency Chocolate.”
Last Friday your humble correspondent noted the absence of Sarah Kliff on the topic of ObamaCare and now he is unhumble enough to believe that this put pressure on her to return to that painful topic today at Vox after nearly a month of avoiding it. As you can read, poor Sarah seems to have gone from acting like a cheerleader aboard a sinking Titanic to taking on the role of radio reporter Herbert Morrison breathlessly reporting on the crashing Hindenburg:
For years, first at the Washington Post's Wonkblog and now at Vox, Sarah Kliff has been happily chirping away about the wonders of Obamacare. She has been perhaps its biggest cheerleader by far. And then the predictable collapse of its cooperatives hit and now poor Sarah has gone silent on the whole topic of Obamacare since November 19 when she sadly delivered apocalyptic news about the nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealth:
Anxious much, Sarah?
Sarah Kliff of Vox.com sounds like she needs to take a page out of the playbook of South Park's Eric Cartman who couldn't wait the three weeks for the Wii video game console to be released so he had himself frozen to spare himself the waiting time from his POV. Although Kliff only has to wait another day or two until the Supreme Court releases its ruling on the Obamacare King vs Burwell case, she is equally as anxious so perhaps the freezing method will spare herself the incredible level of anxiety she is currently enduring. Even though Kliff recently discovered that Obamacare stinks, she is so emotionally invested in that bloated program that she just can't let go. Therefore let us now join our Miss Kliff in the middle of her amusing King vs Burwell anxiety attack:
Over the past few years there has been no greater Obamacare cheerleader than Sarah Kliff of General Electric Vox. Therefore it was quite a revelation today to discover she had a change of heart and has found her formerly beloved program to be deeply flawed. Is it too harsh to claim she now thinks Obamacare stinks? Well the Vox headline on her article used the term "crummier" as in "Health insurance plans are getting crummier, and these charts prove it."
So just how much crummier have the Obamacare insurance plans gotten, Sarah? Let the former Obamacare cheerleader tell us why the program stinks:
Please believe in the integrity of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber. If he disavowed his own remarks, emphatically repeated several times on video, that only state based health exchanges were eligible for subsidies you can believe this honorable gentleman. Such is the attitude of General Electric Vox's Sarah Kliff as she regales us with the history of the King vs Burwell case which will be heard this week at the Supreme Court.
Forget about the legal merits of the King vs Burwell case which states that the Obamacare law actually means what it says: that subsidies should only go to state-run, not federal exchanges. What really counts according to Sarah Kliff of Vox is that the plaintiffs in this case are guilty of the thought crime of thinking ill of (GASP!) President Obama.
The straw man argument is a fundamentally dishonest fallback tactic employed by someone whose side is losing a debate: Make up a position the other side has never taken, and then shoot it down.
The leftist fever swamp known as Vox, perhaps reacting to the utter implosion of Rolling Stone's University of Virginia fraternity gang-rape story and the potential impact it might have on keeping universities from imposing due process-denying regimes on campus, has produced a graphic employing that tactic against the apparent hordes of Americans who think that rape "isn't a real issue in America" (HT Twitchy):
Up a creek without a paddle. That pretty much describes the situation next year facing states that decided to set up their own Obamacare exchanges. And who is reporting this gloomy outlook? None other than one of the biggest media cheerleaders for Obamacare, Sarah Kliff of General Electric Vox.
Kliff delivers the sad news in a story appropriately titled, "States don't know how they'll pay for year two of Obamacare." And since almost all the states in question are Blue states, that also means their finances are already in bad shape. Here is Kliff playing a mournful dirge lamenting a massive Obamacare problem that seems to have taken her by surprise:
Sheesh! Talk about poor timing...
On Sunday, Sarah Klifff of General Electric Vox gleefully reported on the "success" of the Connecticut Obamacare website. In fact so successful according to Kliff that Access Health CT is now thinking about selling its software to other states. However, unknown to Kliff who trumpeted her story with "How Connecticut built a healthcare.gov that actually works," a dark cloud appeared on the horizon that would rain on her parade just a day later. That rain came in the form of a report today from WTNH TV that a security breach had been discovered in her beloved website. However, before we present the gloomy reality, let us first indulge Kliff in her all too brief joy over an Obamacare website that finally, finally worked...until it was breached:
At first liberals were blaming Republican governors for "sabotaging" Obamacare as an excuse for its failure. However as Obamacare failure reports poured in from liberal states with liberal governors such as Oregon, Massachusetts, and Maryland, a new excuse was desperately needed. And now Sarah Kliff of General Electric Vox reports on the latest Obamacare failure excuse: lousy management.
According to this excuse, the incredibly complex 2000 plus page Obamacare law along with its nearly 11000 pages of regulations are not at fault. No, the real problem as Kliff reports lies in the management. This latest liberal talking point comes to us via one of the usual suspects, the Center for American Progress:
The government is paying private contractor Serco $1.2 billion over five years — and likely more, as will be seen later — to process paper Obamacare applications. In turn, according to a report by television station KMOV, Serco has hired and continues to pay a reported 1,800 workers who have virtually no work to do.
Massive waste like this should develop into a national story and create a journalistic swarm. If it does, it will be unusual, because the press has been avoiding stories which make President Barack Obama's "signature accomplishment" of state-controlled health care look bad like the plague. We'll see if it's different this time. The KMOV report follows the jump (HT Gateway Pundit's Progressives Today blog):