| #Adulting is hard! CNN has an unintentionally funny look at 26-year-old "new" adults who are having trouble leaving the nest and finding health insurance. Marguerite Moniot felt frustrated and flummoxed. Despite the many hours she had spent in front of the computer this year reading consumer reviews of health insurance plans offered on the individual market in Virginia, she still did not know what plan was right for her. Poor Marguerite! Hours, you say? Imagine having to make investment decisions for one's retirement! This line slayed me: That [enrollment] window is half as long as last year's, hampering those who wait until the last minute to obtain insurance. Typical Millennials, always waiting until the last minute! It gets better: Reminders and help are scarcer than before: The federal government cut marketing and outreach funds by $90 million, and federal funding to groups providing in-person assistance was whacked by 40%. "I think it's definitely going to be difficult. There's just additional barriers with [less] in-person help, just fewer resources going around," said Erin Hemlin, director of training and consumer education for Young Invincibles, an advocacy group for young adults. First off, "Young Invincibles"? How about Young iCal Reminders? As a friend put it, shouldn't people willing to wait hours and hours for a $1,000 iPhone be able to look at a calendar and set a reminder? Apparently not. Fact-Checking Jimmy Kimmel. Over at the Post, Glenn Kessler has a sober read out of Jimmy Kimmel's S-CHIP monologue. Kimmel often got it wrong, Kessler found: Again, Kimmel’s frame of reference is off. CHIP funding is being negotiated even as Congress is debating a tax plan. Both the House and Senate have signaled they support reauthorization of CHIP. The impasses over funding had led to some uncertainty in a handful of states, but there is no immediate crisis — and the recent stopgap funding bill provides flexibility to keep CHIP programs running in states. (Update: the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission says that in order to have an orderly shutdown some states, such as Colorado, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, Alabama and Connecticut, have sent notices or announced they will send notices about possibly ending the program if funding is not renewed.) Mamas, don't let your kids grow up to be viral sensations. Our friend and former colleague, the Always Correct™ Sonny Bunch, has a great item over at the Washington Post about parents, kids, and viral sensations. For God’s sake: Stop putting your kids’ tears online for the rest of us to either laugh at or empathize with. Everything on the Internet will be there forever. Your children shouldn’t be forced to live with your need for attention. Preach, Brother Sonny. What's wrong with the partisan brain? Warren Henry has an interesting write up on his pseudononymous eponymous blog: What’s wrong with partisans now is that their supposed egos — the two major parties — have not effectively functioned as egos for some time now. A party’s “establishment” — Congressional leadership, sometimes party leadership, the donor class, many ensconced at the think tanks and journals — know in the abstract how their party is supposed to act, including on matters of public morals. But these folks aren’t really much by themselves. The populists among a party’s base are the id — they often provide the party’s energy and drive, but are often more interested in gratifying themselves and have impulses that occasionally need to be suppressed. The Republican and Democratic parties are supposed to be the institution that mediates between these two forces, which is why they are occasionally beset by denial, repression, rationalization etc. People accept these shortcomings of political because we understand the overarching function of balancing an ideological agenda against more pragmatic and tribal impulses. Read the whole thing. Emotional support bees? Yes, this is satire, but who knows? Maybe 2018 will see somebody want to bring emotional support bees on an airplane. St. Louis Public Library to offer free WiFi. To Go. The working poor in America have trouble accessing the Internet 24/7 like their better-off neighbors. St. Louis, Missouri's library systems are trying a new solution: letting patrons borrow WiFi hotspots. The Post-Dispatch reports: In St. Louis County, patrons can keep the device two weeks; in the city, it’s three weeks. They can be renewed, but if they aren’t returned, the library can cut off service remotely. A patron who doesn’t return the hotspot will be fined $100. “We hope people will be conscientious,” McGuire said. Obviously, some won't be conscientious, but that hopefully won't be an impediment to helping the less fortunate. —Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editor Please feel free to send us comments, thoughts and links to dailystandard@weeklystandard.com. -30- | 