Wiretap: Percentage of Americans without health insurance way down

 
“Thanks Obamacare!” It may remain a political hot potato — forever — but the controversial law appears to be doing exactly what it was intended to do. Gallup: “The percentage of U.S. adults lacking insurance coverage in the first two months of the second quarter of 2014 is down from 17.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 and from the 15.6 percent average in the first quarter of 2014. The current 13.4 percent average for the second quarter of 2014 is the lowest level recorded since Gallup began tracking this measure in 2008.”

We get the leaders we deserve. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post on the Tea Party and the GOP primary races this week: “One of the triumphs of the Tea Party has been to nationalize every race, meaning that the interests of a particular state, or even a particular state’s GOP, get subsumed beneath what the conservative movement sees as its broader interests. And the voters, bless their hearts, will sometimes get exactly what they want, and what they deserve.”

Related: Politicians are still horrible. These offenders were for released American soldier Bowe Bergdahl before they were against him. And America has the tweets to prove it.

Did you know that, over three days beginning May 13, a cyclone named Tamara drenched the Balkan states with three months’ worth of rainfall? It’s a catastrophe all around. The New Yorker explains: “There are already estimates that the cost of the damage caused by the floods will exceed that of the wars that split Yugoslavia, and is estimated in the billions. The question is: Who cares? The answer seems to be no one — at least no one in the major media.”

balkan floods

Denver so far not among top most traffic-congested cities in the country. Did they take account of construction-plagued US 36 between Boulder and Denver? Los Angeles is still the worst. The others:

2. San Francisco
3. Honolulu
4. Seattle
5. San Jose
6. New York
7. Miami
8. Washington
9. Portland, Oregon
10. New Orleans

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia — run by former Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput — and a group of Philadelphia religious nonprofits filed suit against the federal government over the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employee health insurance plans cover contraception. The archdioses doesn’t have to provide contraceptive coverage under the law but the religious nonprofits do. The similar “religious freedom” Hobby Lobby case likely to be decided this month by the U.S. Supreme Court involves for-profit businesses. Hobby Lobby is a craft store chain owned by Christians who oppose contraception.