www.justaminuteradio.blogspot.com - Just A Minute: meaningful commentary on today's issues: OBAMA CARE: PROGNOSIS - EXTREME UNCERTAINTY

Things get so hectic on the political front we hardly have time to look at the wars.

But perhaps it’s good to get the wars off the front pages and in the teaser RTV HEADLINES. This weekend the BIG story was the snowstorm in October – that isn’t supposed to come until we’re ready to go to Grandmother’s house just before Thanksgiving. So there we were… trees still full of leaves… Big fat wet snowflakes come pouring down from the errant nor’easter that came climbing over the beaches and the eastern parts of the Blue Ridge, Alleghenies, and a few other ridges and rivers…

It’s been a long time since I saw the Bay at Boston put on such a White Snow Bonnet so quickly – and all the road crews got to scrambling to see if they had enough sand and salt left over from last year since a lot of them were caught with their sand boxes nearly empty and salt mills too. Well… it just goes to show the weather CAN be capricious if it wants to take a notion.

I’m not a New Englander but the region holds a lot in common with some of the back woods of the states above and below the Mason-Dixon line. By that I mean to bestow a compliment. Making things work… being self-contained or self-sustaining… I guess it was more common in the days of yore. My Dad grew up in north Alabama – and my Mother in South Carolina almost on the same latitude as Dad…just a part of a couple of states over. I carried on in the traditions of really being in the southern tip of the Shenandoah Valley… and the Valley is firmly wedged between the Fall line… the Tide-Water and the rest of the Appalachian train of peaks…

Altogether… they represent a group of self-sufficient, hardworking, wear it out, come up with a solution crowd of people who are NOT represented by the Charleston, Baltimore, Phila, NY, Boston crowd. I have nothing against them…except I don’t like New York entertainers considering everything between the Hudson River and the western slopes of the Rockies as ‘Flyover’ country. (J) Well…I don’t want to start irritating regionalisms… but there are a LOT of people out there who are as smart as, as innovative, as persistent and admirable as the more media-rich metro eastern and western seaboard crowd.

I better quit before the soap box collapses and I get dumped in the snow. (J) Just don’t use the term ‘flyover’ again… especially if you’re planning a changeover in Atlanta. (J)

Cordially, IN HIM

Jack Buttram

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“JUST A MINUTE”

OBAMA CARE: PROGNOSIS EXTREME UNCERTAINTY

Just a Minute: "Hanging by a thread" – is the informal tag on what’s ‘informally” known as ‘Obama Care’. The Kaiser Family Foundation – one of the least politically influenced polls in the business released its latest numbers on Friday, which means it mostly gets lost in the weekend news.

The name change is the “Affordable Care Act” and its popularity score has been steadily dropping. Last summer it was at 65% supported by Democrats; dropped to 52% in August and 41% in September – October’s score shows it now down at 34%.

The Kaiser measurement is something of an ‘outlier’. This is their lowest overall measurement for the law or on this or that provision. Real Clear Politics says they measure current support at 38.4% down from a summer high of 41 and a half.

The Wall St. Journal says it reflects the hostility evident when the Democrats were writing the bill two years ago and ramming it through Congress. They add the durable and growing opposition results from higher not lower costs as promised by the President.