Bi-Coastal Nudity
George Davis is baring his soul and a lot more in his effort to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Indeed, he took his campaign across the country last week, getting naked in Times Square and espousing his campaign for the right to be nude in public.
His opponent in the race, incumbent Scott Wiener (yes, really), had introduced a public nudity ban in San Francisco in 2013.
Davis, who says nudity is a form of expression and has been arrested twice for public nudity, conducted his Times Square interviews in the buff and then walked over to where artist Andy Golub was body-painting another naked man as cameras flashed and onlookers laughed.
The San Francisco candidate also ran for mayor in 2007 and for District 10 supervisor in 2010.
Obamacare Mulligans
Remember the Obamacare mandate that if you don't buy health insurance, you'd have to pay a fine? Well, with exemptions, that doesn't cover too many people, and now the number's gotten even smaller, according to a Wall Street Journal report on an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
While 30 million Americans are believed to be without health insurance, the number expected to pay the fine in 2016 -- currently $95 per adult or 1 percent of family income, whichever is greater -- has dropped to 4 million from the last report of 6 million.
The Affordable Care Act originally exempted illegal immigrants, members of certain American Indian tribes and members of certain religious sects. Since then, the administration has added exemptions for hardships such as domestic violence, property damage suffered in a fire or flood, having a health plan canceled when Obamacare went into effect last October, and people who "experienced another hardship acquiring health insurance."
Almost anyone could come up with a good excuse for the last one -- too busy playing golf on Martha's Vineyard? -- and, to top it off, those who use the latter excuse don't need documentation.
People in states which have not opted to expand their Medicaid program under the health law also may be exempted. And those who receive subsidies through the federal Obamacare exchange may qualify for a hardship waiver if the subsidies are struck down in court.
The problem is, many of the exemptions are going to young people -- the people the administration planned would pay for the program. But if the insurance pool skews toward older, comparatively unhealthy people, premiums are likely to rise.
Business As Usual
Former Washington, D.C., Democrat mayor and current Councilman Marion Barry, as of last weekend, owed $2,824 in unpaid parking tickets. His car, a Jaguar, had been impounded. When a television investigative reporter pressed him about some of the tickets, Barry did what many of his fellow party members do -- change the subject.
"In this town," said Barry, who once did federal prison time for drug charges, "we decide what's important and not important at the station and in the community. And with all the stuff going on with the City Council up here, this going on over here, going on over here, you know. You're talking about parking tickets? That's ridiculous!"
He also dissembled, claiming the tickets were for a car he wasn't driving, though he claimed no one else would have been driving it.
No one will be surprised to know Barry somehow got his fine reduced by $1,000 before paying off the rest of the tickets and getting his car out of the impound lot.
Dems Gaffe-Prone This Time
In 2012, Republicans lost sure-fire Senate seat wins with gaffe-prone candidates Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. This time around, it's the Democrats who don't quite have it together. But don't look for Big Media to hound them as much as they did the GOP candidates in 2012.
Sen. John Walsh of Montana fell by the wayside Thursday, leaving the campaign for his seat after being exposed in The New York Times for plagiarizing his 2007 master's thesis. And it was recently reported that Georgia Democrat candidate Michelle Nunn's campaign plan was leaked, revealing its wording that she could come across as a "lightweight" and a "liberal" and that she and her family should be photographed "in rural settings with rural-oriented imagery" to combat her image as an Atlanta politician.
Also recently, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, thought Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system had something to do with stopping terrorists coming into the country through tunnels.