As a buddy of ours used to say, nothing ever changes except the date on the calendar. Yet you'd never know it from the day's whirring headlines which keep spinning 'round and 'round faster than an old 78 rpm record.
"Insurer seeks 14.7 percent uptick in premiums," the right-hand lede on Wednesday's front page reports. But what else would you expect with Medicaid now being merchandised under more aliases than a small-time hoodlum? To name just one, there's the Private Option that's really a public one.
Appearances are as deceptive as ever as the day's headlines keep spinning like a top, only twice as wobbly:
At last a college/university has been rightly named--only it's in Ho Chi Minh City instead of in Fayetteville. And it will be a private school despite Vietnam's orthodox Marxist ideology. For the Vietnamese have learned what it took us backward Americans forever to realize: Private schools of students' own choosing will out-perform the old-fashioned public model every time.
Spin, spin, spin. Obamacare remains a crony capitalist's surest bet, and the piper will still have to be paid a lot sooner than eventually, and by the usual sucker: You, dear Arkansas and American taxpayer.
Spin, spin, spin. Cuba's economy is finally reviving. After years of the Brothers Castro's favorite prison isle, the Pearl of the Antilles is recognizable again under all those layers of grime, time and sustained neglect. But, alas, Nicholas Maduro's regime in Venezuela is now taking its place as hell on Earth. "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela . . ." Just change the name and locale, and--bingo! All is supposed to be changed. For the moment it's Venezuela whose economy has become a basket case thanks to the ministrations of its masters. Yet nothing has really changed except whether Svoboda!, Libertad!, Freedom! has been given a chance its wonders to perform.
Spin, spin, spin. But tomorrow's headlines will be just as predictable and maybe even more contradictory. Stay tuned--if you can bear it.
Editorial on 05/31/2016