Oft on the dappled turf I link ….

You may have heard that the Affordable Care Act will cost thousands of people their jobs. No, it will simply make it easier for people who can afford to stay home quit work, as they don’t depend on their job for insurance. As LGM notes, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post insists that reporting this as Bad News for Democrats is completely accurate—people think it’s going to cost jobs, so they’re reacting negatively so he’s just reporting public perception.
This reflects both media laziness about getting the facts, and the pose that they’re not really having any effect on public perception. As in, “the story stuck to [insert politician]” as opposed to “We kept talking about it and refused to let anyone forget it.” (see here).
Case in point: Astonishingly when politicians and pundits keep talking about the deficit as a terrible, terrible crisis, cutting the deficit doesn’t make the public feel better. Because there’s still deficit out there!
•Sen. Al Franken worries about the privacy risks of having face-recognition apps in Google Glass.
•Roy Edroso quotes from a fund-raising letter from the Public Advocate of the United States, begging for help in his fight against the homosexual agenda. The highpoint is his chilling story of how he found an army of gay men in a warehouse full of … petitions. According to some of the comments, the fund-raiser, Eugene Delgaudio, also thinks Obama staffs the TSA with gay agents so they can get off when they pat you down.
•Also from Edroso, a look at a proposal to split California into six states because big government bad, freedom, go team America! The article also links to a horrifying piece from Human Rights Watch about how for-profit probation services leech off the poor. They take the cost of probation off the taxpayers’ hands, then squeeze the poor for fees (like one man with a $200 fine who wound up in jail when his fees hit $1,000). Which seems a good lead-in to this piece from last year about the abuse of civil-forfeiture laws.
•”How to Survive Anything” books for boys and girls.” The boys’ book deals with earthquakes, shark attacks and plane crashes. The girls’ book deals with fights with your best friend, overcoming shyness and fashion disasters.