Percent Uninsured Worse Under Obama than Bush

Commenting on Gallup's graphic of the percentage of uninsured people (right), Charlie Martin at PJTatler writes:

At the start of the Obama Administration, the rate was 15.6 percent; the peak was 18 percent — in roughly the third quarter of last year. Remember that, when people were objecting because they'd had their insurance canceled? Harry Reid said all those people were lying, but Gallup says different. In fact, 1 percentage point on this chart is, roughly, 3 million people. The change from Q1 to Q3 was about 2 percent — or roughly 6 million people who became uninsured.

And now for the punchline: Since Obama was inaugurated in 2009, the net change is from 15.4 percent uninsured to 15.6 percent. So the net effect has been that by the Gallup Survey the number of uninsured has improved in the last year, but gotten worse since Obama was inaugurated, and is 1.2 percent worse than under Bush.

Chick-fil-A, Gays, Marriage, and Tolerance

Chick-Fil-A had a great day Wednesday, as did the millions of Americans who quietly showed their support for traditional marriage, free speech, and free enterprise. Fr. Dwight Longenecker called it “the triumph of the ordinary.”

Yesterday’s Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day was the sort of ‘revolt’ this country needs, but it was even better than the non violent revolutions and peaceful protests which have changed the world because it was so ordinary. It was just plain, ordinary Americans getting in their cars and doing a plain, ordinary American thing: going out for lunch to a fast food joint. It was just plain, ordinary Americans doing something plain and ordinary, but positive and joyful and good. In buying an ordinary tasty chicken sandwich at their corner fast food emporium ordinary Americans were expressing the wish to be left alone to be ordinary Americans.

Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are a tiny fraction of the U.S. population—3.5% at most, according to demographer Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA. (The population is even smaller in the United Kingdom, where a national 2010 Integrated Household Survey found that only 1.5% of Britons say they are gay, lesbian or bisexual.)

Yet they so militantly promote their lifestyle and agenda that they have fooled many Americans into believing that they are a much larger segment of the population.

A 2011 Gallup survey found that only 4% of American adults estimated—correctly—that gays and lesbians were less than 5% of the U.S. population.  Over half (52%) of adults in the U.S. thought 1 in 5 Americans were gay, and 35% of adults thought 1 in 4 were gay.  Women, young people, lower-income and less educated Americans have been snookered most (see chart below):

Americans with lower incomes and less education give the highest estimates, on average, of the U.S. gay and lesbian population, and far higher estimates than those with higher incomes and more education. Americans aged 18 to 29 give a higher average estimate than older Americans, and women give a far higher average estimate than men.

"For all the talk of the traditional marriage supporters being full of hate, there was not hatred apparent” on Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, notes Fr. Longenecker.  Hate is the currency of the Left these days: Hate for centuries of traditions and definitions that don’t suit its contemporary whims. Hate for speech that isn’t synonymous with its own. Hate for a free-enterprise system that refuses to buckle to the un-ordinary demands of a tiny segment of the population.

No, no hate Wednesday, just (as Fr. Longenecker put it) "ordinary Americans sticking up for their way of life by buying a chicken sandwich with their friends and neighbors.”

Gallup: Jobs, Reducing Federal Corruption Top Priority

"Creating good jobs, reducing corruption in the federal government, and reducing the federal budget deficit score highest when Americans rate 12 issues as priorities for the next president to address," reports Gallup. Increasing taxes on the wealthy, or tax 'fairness', came in last.

Gallup: Eroding Confidence in MSM

Only 21 percent of Americans have a "great deal/quite a lot" of confidence in TV news, according to a July Gallup poll, and only 25 percent have that level of confidence in newspapers.  "Liberals and moderates lost so much confidence in television news this year," reports Gallup, "that their views are now more akin to conservative views" (see third graphic below).

---

---

Confidence in Public Schools Hits New Low

"Americans' confidence in public schools is down five percentage points from last year," reports Gallup, "with 29% expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them." The chart below shows the near continuous decline in public confidence over the past 40 years of Gallup's tracking.

The low confidence level will surprise no one except perhaps the teachers union, given U.S. students' downward spiral in international math and science achievement comparisons, and it should greatly encourage those who have long advocated universal school choice and an open, free market in K-12 education.