HHS extends more Obamacare deadlines

The Obama administration on Thursday announced it would take steps to push back an already-delayed deadline to help those struggling to obtain health coverage on Jan. 1 -- and extend a federal insurance program for those with preexisting conditions.
Amid lingering questions about the health law's insurance exchanges, the tweaks were yet another attempt by the administration to quell concerns that the botched rollout of healthcare.gov would keep consumers from receiving coverage.
The administration had already delayed the deadline to receive insurance coverage on Jan. 1, moving the cut-off date from Dec. 15 to Dec. 23. On Thursday, they made yet another change.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/hhs-extends-more-obamacare-deadlines/article/2540659?custom_click=rss 

Science journal rejections suppress clean energy research

The recently published Volume 12 December 2013 Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science has an article detailing censorship by science journals.
“How the Flawed Journal Review Process Impedes Paradigm Shifting Discoveries” by P.A. Mosier-Boss, L.P. Forsley, and F.E. Gordon describes the experience of these researchers as they submitted papers describing their low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR )experiments to mainstream science journals.
From the Abstract:
The purpose of scientific journals is to review papers for scientific validity and to disseminate new theoretical and experimental results. This requires that the editors and reviewers be impartial. Our attempt to publish novel experimental results in a renowned physics journal shows that in some cases editors and reviewers are not impartial; they are biased and closed-minded. Although our subject matter was technical, its rejection was not: it was emotionally charged. It was an agenda-laden rejection of legitimate experiments that were conducted in US DoD and DoE laboratories. This paper describes the flawed journal review process, detailing our own case and citing others. Such behavior on the part of editors and reviewers has a stifling effect on innovation and the diffusion of knowledge.

http://coldfusionnow.org/science-journal-rejections-suppress-clean-energy-research/ 

Get off that couch

THE tentative budget deal being worked out by Paul Ryan and Patty Murray will probably not include an extension of long-term unemployment benefits, reports Greg Sargent. And while much of the brewing tea-party anger over the deal is driven by opposition to government spending tout court, the specific opposition to long-term unemployment insurance has a theory behind it. That theory conforms to Albert Hirschman's classic "perversity, futility, jeopardy" model of conservative rhetoric: as Rand Paul (pictured) put it on Fox News on Sunday, conservatives think that offering unemployment insurance for longer raises the unemployment rate.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/12/unemployment-insurance 

Chinese Chicken Processors Are Cleared to Ship to U.S.

The Department of Agriculture on Friday approved four Chinese poultry processors to begin shipping a limited amount of meat to the United States, a move that is likely to add to the debate over food imports.

Initially, the companies will be allowed to export only cooked poultry products from birds raised in the United States and Canada. But critics predicted that the government would eventually expand the rules, so that chickens and turkeys bred in China could end up in the American market.

“This is the first step towards allowing China to export its own domestic chickens to the U.S.,” said Tony Corbo, the senior lobbyist for Food and Water Watch, an advocacy group that works to promote food safety.

The U.S.D.A.’s decision follows years of wrangling over the issue, and comes as Americans are increasingly focused on the origin of their food. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/business/chinese-chicken-processors-are-cleared-to-ship-to-us.html?_r=0 

Vast Freshwater Reserves Found Beneath the Oceans

A new study, published December 5 in the international scientific journal Nature, reveals that an estimated half a million cubic kilometres of low-salinity water are buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world.
The water, which could perhaps be used to eke out supplies to the world's burgeoning coastal cities, has been located off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.
"The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900," says lead author Dr Vincent Post (pictured) of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and the School of the Environment at Flinders University.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131208085304.htm 

The FDA Stifles the Advance of Modern Molecular Medicine

We are at a turning point in medicine. Knowledge of the individual's genetic makeup will soon allow molecular medicine to reach deep inside each of us to cure most of the maladies that afflict us—and perhaps even slow the rate at which we age. First we will learn to understand each person's genome; then we will learn to craft treatments tailored to his or her genetic constitution.
But it may not be so easy—and not for purely scientific reasons. Consider 23andMe, a commercial enterprise launched in 2006 that was merely looking to inform Americans about their potential genetic vulnerability to certain diseases. Regulators from the Food and Drug Administration have dropped the hammer on the company, citing baseless fears that its customers will do something dangerously stupid in reaction to the information that the tests provide. The FDA's regulatory labyrinth is not only slow to digest the science behind the genetic testing involved in 23andMe. It also can't quite figure out what to do with the proliferation of molecular biomarkers that can predict treatment efficacy more quickly than the conventional clinical trials the agency relies upon.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/08/how-the-fda-stifles-the-advance-of-moder 

ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across nation

Aaron Key wasn't sure he wanted a tattoo on his neck. Especially one of a giant squid smoking a joint.
But the guys running Squid's Smoke Shop in Portland, Ore., convinced him: It would be a perfect way to promote their store.
They would even pay him and a friend $150 apiece if they agreed to turn their bodies into walking billboards.
Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed.
He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid's. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, "Squid," and the store clerks.
So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones.
It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid's were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street.

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-rogue-tactics-in-storefront-stings-across-the-nation-b99146765z1-234916641.html#ixzz2mw59BC2O

Obama's foreign policy failures

Critical analysis of Obama administration foreign policy is rendered more difficult by America's neo-isolationist mood. The bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left most Americans in no mood for further military engagements, particularly in regions long known for their tribal and sectarian strife.
The angst is spread far beyond the anti-war left, too. Middle America 's sons and daughters have witnessed enough carnage to make future adventurism a dubious proposition. Accordingly, leaders from both sides of the aisle understand that any proposed new mission must come with a compelling moral rationale, achievable "victory strategy" and viable "after care" plan.
America has now twice elected an anti-war activist uncomfortable with the sustained projection of U.S. military might. The record speaks for itself. The Obama "reset" began with a world apology tour directed to the Muslim world. Over time, it developed into incremental American retreat from the international stage. Indeed, it is now the French (of all people) engaged against Bashar Assad in Syria, the mullahs in Iran and a resurgent Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-ehrlich-1208-20131206,0,2417775.column#ixzz2mw4jad3e

Seymour Hersh Alleges Obama Administration Lied on Syria Gas Attack

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has dropped yet another bombshell allegation: President Obama wasn't honest with the American people when he blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a sarin-gas attack in that killed hundreds of civilians.

In early September, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had proof that the nerve-gas attack was made on Assad's orders. "We know the Assad regime was responsible," President Obama told the nation in an address days after this revelation, which he said pushed him over the "red line" in considering military intervention.

But in a long story published Sunday for the London Review of Books, Hersh — best known for his exposés on the cover-ups of the My Lai Massacre and of Abu Ghraib – said the administration "cherry-picked intelligence," citing conversations with intelligence and military officials.

http://news.yahoo.com/seymour-hersh-alleges-obama-administration-lied-syria-gas-204437397.html 

The True Cost of a Higher Minimum Wage

In his speech at the Center for American Progress this week, President Obama devoted considerable time to an issue suddenly much in discussion: the minimum wage. This is not a new debate. In fact, it neatly echoes the last time Congress raised the minimum wage, in 2007, which echoed the debates before that. Few economic issues are such sweet catnip to ideological camps, and there is precisely zero consensus about whether these minimums have positive, negative or no effect.
Supporters say that a higher minimum wage will give people a better standard of living and boost consumption. Detractors argue that it will lead companies to hire fewer workers and kill job creation. One thing no one addresses, however, is that regardless of whether the government raises the minimum wage, our society can’t endlessly coast with a system that includes wage stagnation for the many and soaring prosperity for the few, nor can the government snap its legislative fingers and magically produce income. Someone will pay for these increases; nothing is free.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/the-true-cost-of-a-higher-minimum-wage/282131/ 

The challenge is growth, not inequality

Can anyone think of a more boring, banal, irrelevant or stale speech than the one he gave this Thursday in D.C.? The speech was allegedly on the economy, but more likely it was to divert attention from the Obamacare catastrophe. Whatever the motive, his idea that the defining challenge of our time is to reduce income inequality is completely wrong. In truth, the defining challenge is to restore more rapid economic growth, create substantially more jobs and significantly reduce unemployment.
This is the worst recovery in the modern era going back to 1947. But Obama is always more interested in income redistribution than growth. He never speaks the language of growth, such as a rising tide would lift all boats. That’s the basic economic truth of the remarkable prosperity of the ’80s and ’90s, a period during which tax, regulatory, trade and monetary barriers were reduced, and the door opened to innovation, entrepreneurship, capital formation and job creation.
Obama comes from a long line of liberals whose guiding star is the equality of result, i.e., income leveling, rather than the equality of opportunity, which is the heart of free market capitalism. But in reverting back to his obsession with income inequality, he repeats his tired mantra of raising the minimum wage, ending so-called tax loopholes, launching shovel-ready infrastructure projects and ending budget caps and the spending-cut sequester.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/12/06/the-challenge-is-growth-not-inequality/ 

FBI impeding inquiry into IRS targeting of conservative groups

The House’s chief investigator says the FBI is stonewalling his inquiry into whether the agency and the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative group True the Vote for special scrutiny, and Rep. Darrell E. Issa is now threatening subpoenas to pry loose the information from FBI Director James B. Comey Jr.
Mr. Issa, California Republican, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, are leading the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s IRS inquiry. They also said the FBI is refusing to turn over any documents related to its own investigation into the IRS, which began in the days after an auditor’s report revealed the tax agency had improperly targeted tea party groups for special scrutiny.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/2/lawmakers-suspect-fbi-is-impeding-irs-inquiry-targ/#ixzz2mteZRrR1

Doctors Disappear

A curious feature of recent U.S. health care reform efforts — easily overlooked amidst the daily media grind of canceled plans, crashing websites and new restrictions — is the irrational belief that we can extend more health care to more Americans while rendering a career as a family physician increasingly unappealing.
Government has grown increasingly entangled in healthcare markets, complicating the working lives of physicians and, in many cases, threatening their bottom line. The result, according to a Deloitte Survey of U.S. Physicians: a growing number of doctors are convinced that “many physicians will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years.”

http://spectator.org/articles/56982/doctors-disappear 

The Filibuster and Post-Modern Democrats

If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then calling Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden hypocrites for abandoning their previous “principled” defense of Senate filibusters is an insult to hypocrites. Hypocrites, after all, recognize the power of principles and try to squirm out of the vice of violating them, but today’s post-modern Democrats feel no shame in making contradictory “principled” arguments because they no longer pay any tribute whatsoever to the virtue of neutral, non-partisan principle.
These Democrats are practicing the philosophy of post-modernism preached by liberal theorists for nearly a generation. For example, Stanley Fish, one of the most influential of these theorists, discovered that to defend racial preferences, it was necessary to reject the widely held principle that everyone should be treated by the state without regard to race, and that in order to do that, it was necessary to discredit the very idea of principle itself, which he proceeded to attempt:

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-filibuster-and-post-modern-democrats/?singlepage=true 

House Judiciary versus the imperial President

Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., says the president, “doesn’t have a debate in the Oval Office about what he wants to do,” adding, “he does what he wants to do, and then you no longer have representative democracy.”
George Washington University law professor and Obama supporter Jonathan Turley says he’s troubled by the expansion of executive power under both President George W. Bush and now President Obama.
“The problem of what the president is doing is that he is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he is becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid: that is, the concentration of power in any single branch,” he said.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/12/05/house-judiciary-versus-the-imperial-president/ 

Obamacare Insurance Workaround Reveals Law that Remains Unfinished, Unaccountable, and Unworkable

In October, when it became clear that Obamacare's online enrollment system wasn't functioning, President Obama gave a speech in which he told people who wanted to sign up to contact call centers instead, or fill out pen and paper applications.
This week, the administration announced that it would be employing another manual workaround, this time for critical insurer payment systems. In this case, it's not because the payment system is broken. Instead, it’s because the part of the system that is supposed to both calculate how much money the government owes insurers in premium subsidy and cost-sharing payments and make the appropriate payments simply hasn't been built yet.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/05/obamacare-insurance-workaround-reveals-l 

Cutting the U.S. Budget Would Help the Economy Grow

As the House and Senate budget conference meets to decide the fiscal course of the United States, lawmakers should focus on reducing federal spending. Federal spending is growing rapidly and will accelerate outside the 10-year budget window. Even though tax revenues are projected to grow faster than spending over the next decade, the nation faces chronic and increasing deficits. Research finds that high spending, high debt, and tax increases are harming economic growth and prosperity. Putting the budget on a path to balance with spending cuts would spur economic growth by reducing uncertainty and freeing up resources for investment and job creation. As the European crisis demonstrates, the option of making gradual changes will expire, and Americans and the U.S. economy will suffer a self-inflicted wound from unavoidable austerity measures if lawmakers continue to procrastinate the inevitable.
Austerity is the result of countries’ democratic decisions to wait until the last minute before acting, under the pressure of the markets, mainly by raising taxes rather than implementing long-waited reforms. 

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/11/cutting-the-us-budget-would-help-the-economy-grow?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=homepage&utm_content=bottom&utm_campaign=headline131121 

Another Day, Another Obamacare Propaganda Session

On Tuesday afternoon, in yet another example of Barack Obama’s inability to start a presentation (much less a giant website) on time, the president defended the disastrous health care law that is colloquially named for him and asked for help to “spread the word” about the law’s purported benefits.
Obama began with the usual liberal talking points:

• A broken health care system was creating “anxiety” (but liberals never admit that the system’s dysfunction is entirely the result of government regulation, and that Obamacare just exacerbates that problem. How much anxiety do people have about their auto insurance or renters insurance, i.e. products which exist in competitive markets because of the relative freedom from federal over-regulation?).

http://spectator.org/articles/56962/another-day-another-obamacare-propaganda-session 

Who Really Betrayed Detroit?

A federal judge’s ruling yesterday that Detroit worker pensions can be cut as part of the city’s bankruptcy case has angered city workers and shocked some of their supporters. Workers carrying signs outside the federal bankruptcy court yesterday blamed big banks for Detroit’s fiscal woes and demanded, “No cuts to our pensions.” They carried photos of Michigan governor Rick Snyder, painted to make him look like the devil. But if workers seek a culprit, they might look at the city’s pension-system trustees and the unions that were supposed to have influence over them. For years, the trustees granted annual bonuses to retirees and fattened worker-savings accounts with high guaranteed rates of return, siphoning crucial assets out of the retirement system, even as Detroit’s finances deteriorated. By one estimate, reported in the Detroit Free Press in September, the bonuses and guaranteed-interest programs cost the pension funds nearly $2 billion in contributions and foregone investment returns—money that might have made the pension system well-funded today and allowed retirement benefits to remain untouched.

http://city-journal.org/2013/eon1204sm.html 

DHS stalls no-fly list trial by putting witness on no-fly list

Phil writes, "Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project is doing a fantastic job of reporting on-site from Ibrahim v. DHS, the first legal challenge of United States government's no-fly list that has ever seen a courtroom. On the first day of trial, the judge learned that the plaintiff's daughter, scheduled to testify, was delayed because she had been denied boarding of her flight because she was put a Department of Homeland Security no-fly list. DHS staff deny this. The government's lawyers told the judge that the daughter is lying. The airline provided documentation of the DHS no-fly order. The subject matter of this trial is intense---restriction of movement based on blacklists---but there's no sign of an end to the jaw-dropping entertainment."

http://boingboing.net/2013/12/04/dhs-stalls-no-fly-list-trial-b.html 

Frack-Water Recycling, an Emerging Market

Some 21 billion barrels of wastewater a year flows from oil and natural gas wells in the US, and while the market to recycle frack water has been slow to emerge, the potentially multi-billion-dollar arena is now starting to take off in earnest.
It takes between 70 billion to 140 billion gallons of water to frack 35,000 wells a year, the industry's current pace, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and while recycling frack water is still a relatively new idea, companies are coming under increasing pressure to do so, and Schlumberger predicts a strategic boom in the business.

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Frack-Water-Recycling-an-Emerging-Market.html 

Sustaining Resilience at Sea

On the face of it, the value of a marine reserve — the equivalent of a national park or wildlife preserve on land — seems obvious. The oceans are in trouble, and setting aside regions of biodiversity, where fishing is strictly limited, if not prohibited, is one of the few effective means of protecting many species at once. But politically, there is nothing simple about creating marine reserves in international waters. Recently, China and Russia succeeded in blocking, yet again, the creation of a large marine reserve in Antarctica.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/opinion/sustaining-resilience-at-sea.html?_r=0 

The 2014 Shrimp Season In The Gulf Of Maine Has Been Canceled

They’re small and sweet, beloved by locals and tourists alike, and will soon be indefinitely unavailable. The Northern shrimp population in the Gulf of Maine has officially collapsed and a moratorium on shrimping is being recommended for the 2014 season. Restaurants in Maine are rushing to get their hands on whatever is left over from last year’s catch.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission announced the news Tuesday after voting unanimously to halt shrimping for the upcoming season.
The Gulf of Maine Northern shrimp fishery has never been big. But the season, usually between December and May, helps make ends meet for Maine fisherman during otherwise difficult winter months, before the lobsters and tourists arrive. In 2012, the value of the Gulf catch was about $5.1 million. Historically, as much as 25 million pounds of shrimp have been caught in the Gulf of Maine. The last time the fishery had to shut down, way back in 1977, just 1 million pounds of shrimp were landed. Regulators closed the fishery the following year, and since then, shrimp populations have rebounded to record highs.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/04/3021451/maine-shrimp-season-closed/ 

Union-backed fast food proposal could cost half a million jobs

Hourly wage increases advocated by labor groups could kill more than 450,000 jobs, according to a new report.
Union-backed labor groups, including Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, are staging nationwide walk-outs and demonstrations at fast food chains across the country calling for starting wages of $15 per hour.
Their success could spell economic disaster for nearly 20 percent of the nation’s 2.5 million fast food workers, according to an analysis from the Employment Policies Institute.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/05/study-union-backed-fast-food-proposal-could-cost-half-million-jobs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fpolitics+%28Internal+-+Politics+-+Text%29 

Executive order: Obama ups green-energy mandate on feds to 20 percent

By 2020, federal agencies will have to up their use of renewable energy sources significantly and replace 20 percent of electricity with greener options, President Obama said in a new executive order due for release on Thursday.
That demand will almost triple the federal government’s use of renewable energy, The Hill reported. The order is applicable to all federal agencies, including the civilian and military sectors.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/5/executive-order-obama-ups-green-energy-mandate-fed/#ixzz2md68Irmv

The Economy Really is the Republicans’ Fault

In the “bad news is good news” economy that’s at the root of Obamanomics, the market has been rattled the last few days by signs that the economy is finally, again…did I say finally, again?... growing.
Well at least that’s the story THIS week.
I stopped counting the number of times that economy finally started growing.
Still, the market views robust numbers in the manufacturing sector released this week as cautionary.
Caution for the market that is, while welcome news to you and me.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2013/12/05/the-economy-really-is-the-republicans-fault-n1757532?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl 

Obamacare Is Good Enough for Government Work

The phrase “good enough for government work” used to be a boast. Then it became an insult. With Obamacare, it is an ethic.
On Cyber Monday, the federal government was the only entity on the planet touting a commercial website with the promise that it would work most of the time, provided people visiting during peak hours were willing to take a number and come back later.
Although HealthCare.gov was still plagued by what used to be known as “glitches,” it was working better. In fact, it appears to be well on the way to being fixed—except for the part where people pay for and actually get insurance. That is called the “backend,” or the payment system without which any other business would go bust. To be charitable, it is still a work in progress.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/obamacare-is-good-enough-for-government-work-100684.html#ixzz2md4jx91X

Global-warming ‘proof’ is evaporating

The 2013 hurricane season just ended as one of the five quietest years since 1960. But don’t expect anyone who pointed to last year’s hurricanes as “proof” of the need to act against global warming to apologize; the warmists don’t work that way.
Warmist claims of a severe increase in hurricane activity go back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. The cover of Al Gore’s 2009 book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” even features a satellite image of the globe with four major hurricanes superimposed.
Yet the evidence to the contrary was there all along. Back in 2005 I and others reviewed the entire hurricane record, which goes back over a century, and found no increase of any kind. Yes, we sometimes get bad storms — but no more frequently now than in the past. The advocates simply ignored that evidence — then repeated their false claims after Hurricane Sandy last year.

http://nypost.com/2013/12/05/global-warming-proof-is-evaporating/ 

Millennials Abandon Obama and Obamacare

Young Americans are turning against Barack Obama and Obamacare, according to a new survey of millennials, people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are vital to the fortunes of the president and his signature health care law.

The most startling finding of Harvard University's Institute of Politics: A majority of Americans under age 25--the youngest millennials--would favor throwing Obama out of office.
The survey, part of a unique 13-year study of the attitudes of young adults, finds that America's rising generation is worried about its future, disillusioned with the U.S. political system, strongly opposed to the government's domestic surveillance apparatus, and drifting away from both major parties. "Young Americans hold the president, Congress and the federal government in less esteem almost by the day, and the level of engagement they are having in politics are also on the decline," reads the IOP's analysis of its poll. "Millennials are losing touch with government and its programs because they believe government is losing touch with them."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/millennials-abandon-obama-and-obamacare-20131204