Cellphones Do Not Give You Brain Cancer - It's an old hypothesis, with some evidence of support but . . .. . .There is, however, a simple way to settle this debate. If this group is correct about the size of the effect of cellphones on brain cancer, brain tumor rates should have been dramatically increasing since the introduction of the mobile phone. A study in the U.S. published in 2012 evaluated this possibility by comparing observed rates of glioma to projected rates from two studies for the period from 1997 to 2008. It found that brain tumor rates are pretty much unchanged since mobile phones arrived. If the Swedish team is right about the size of the cellphone effect, tumor rates would be 40 percent higher than they are. There is virtually no way its results are correct.It's a good thing this is Fivethirtyeight and not Vox, so we can have some confidence in its validity.
In the end, it is simply extremely unlikely that there is any link between cellphones and brain tumors. We can, perhaps, put this debate to rest and focus on the actual danger of cellphones: using them while driving.
The Ginger.io app is one of a new generation of health-surveillance technologies that doctors, hospitals and health insurers are starting to use. Where fitness trackers like FitBit record jogging distance and calories burned, newer apps and other tools measure text-message volume, vocal tone and other behaviors to peer into patients’ psychological well-being, which doctors say can have a high correlation with physical health. Health insurer Aetna Inc., for instance, says it uses voice-analysis software on some telephone calls to get people who receive short-term disability benefits back to work sooner.My sort of moronic phone isn't likely to report me to the authorities.
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Ginger.io’s app, called Ginger.io, is being used by 30 medical centers, including Kaiser Permanente and the University of California, San Francisco, the company says. The National Institutes of Health has given a $2.42 million grant to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health to develop a smartphone app that will analyze factors including when patients lock and unlock their phones to determine sleep patterns in people with psychiatric disorders. Researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a smartphone app that records and analyzes patients’ vocal patterns during telephone calls to predict if someone is on the verge of depression or mania.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places. Nicknamed "stingrays," the devices are decoy cell towers that capture locations and identities of mobile phone users and can intercept calls and texts.And how do they know the conversations they are recording were sent from "public" spaces, and not "private" ones? They don't, of course. But that won't matter:
The FBI made its position known during private briefings with staff members of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, the two lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, maintaining they were "concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests" of Americans.
Baltimore authorities cited a non-disclosure agreement to a judge in November as their grounds for refusing to say how they tracked a suspect's mobile phone. They eventually dropped charges rather than disclose their techniques. Further, sometimes the authorities simply lie to judges about their use or undertake other underhanded methods to prevent the public from knowing that the cell-site simulators are being used.
An Italian video journalist called Luca Lavarone conducted a social experiment with children on a busy street, to highlight the issue of violence by men against women.Sexist Italian boys.
. . .
The finally, the cameraman tells them: 'And now... slap her!'
Each boy he asks is shocked. Some frown or look perplexed, while others seem like they're about to cry.
But not one obliges.
. . .
One of the eldest boys tells the interviewer: 'As the saying goes: 'Girls shouldn't be hit, not even with a flower.'
Another replies: 'I'm against violence.'
The clip ends with one of the younger boys looking directly the the camera, saying: 'Why? Because I'm a man!'
The veto threat was not a surprise since Obama talked down the economic benefits of the Keystone pipeline in his final press conference before Christmas in December. Obama claimed that the pipeline creates only a few thousand temporary jobs only benefits one Canadian oil company. Earnest also reaffirmed yesterday that Obama is concerned about increased carbon emissions from the project, even though Obama's own State Department found the impact of the project on carbon emissions to be negligible.Given the amount of pipeline already in the United States, and the fact that transporting it by pipeline rather than by rail or truck is many times safer, the recalcitrance of the administration on this issue is criminal.
On Tuesday, however, Earnest repeatedly stressed that the White House had faith in the State Department's process for ruling on these projects and that, separately a Nebraska judge was also holding up the pipeline.
The application to begin construction on the Keystone pipeline was first submitted to the State Department in 2008 and the House bill would not affect the Nebraska suit since it is based on state law claims.
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| Major natural gas and oil pipelines in the United States. Liquid lines in red, gas transmission lines in blue. |
Until we see the full transcript (WhiteHouse.gov) for more context, that is the best we've got. And it's not good enough! Lest you have forgotten your civics, here we go:So an unsigned bill would become law after 10 days without his signature? Good enough for me.
Bill becomes law without president's signatureWhen Congress is not adjourned, and the president fails to either sign or veto a bill sent to him by the end of the 10-day period, it becomes law without his signature.We all remember the "pocket veto", where the President simply holds the bill while Congress adjourns within the ten-day window.
But a threat to "not sign" a bill is different from a threat to send it back with a veto message. Is this deliberate ambiguity, or just a chronic inability to articulate a clear message? well, if this is one more case of the mumble-mouths, at least it is only baffling a domestic audience and not, e.g, Putin or Kim Jong-Un.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation rated the Bay's overall health last year, based on an assessment of pollution, habitat and fisheries, as a D+ — a score unchanged from its 2012 condition. The organization's annual State of the Bay report, released Monday, showed some improvements in pollution reduction, but these were offset by declines in fisheries.I take a skeptical point of view on the value of such ratings. Clearly it is not in the self-interest of CBF and similar groups to be too optimistic about the state of the Bay, since their fund raising and salaries depend on selling the bay as a horrid mess to contributers, but at the same time, holding out hope that their contributions can make the difference.
CBF President William C. Baker said that the Bay watershed is still “a system dangerously out of balance” and called for the agriculture sector specifically to “do more” to help clean up the Chesapeake. “Agriculture is the largest sector of pollution coming into the Bay, but it is the least expensive to control,” Baker said.
The foundation, which has been pushing EPA and the Bay watershed states to implement strategies to reduce nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment pollution from multiple sources, uses the annual report card to track 13 metrics — from water clarity to forest buffers — which it ranks on a scale of zero to 100.
A score of 100 represents an unspoiled ecosystem at the time of Captain John Smith’s exploration of the Bay in the early 1600s. The 2014 D+ represents a total score of 32.
CBF gave a 12-point boost last year for dissolved oxygen, which is necessary to sustain fish, crabs, and other species, and lesser improvements in water clarity, oyster populations, and underwater grasses. However, these gains were offset by declines in the population of rockfish and blue crabs as well as inadequate reductions in phosphorous. (my bold)They haven't really had time yet to evaluate actual reductions of phosphorus into the bay yet (I'm sure the last six months or so's worth of samples are sitting around in freezers somewhere, let alone analyze the data), but they saying they are rating it on what they consider inadequate regulations on phosphorus use imposed on on agriculture. In other words, they are downgrading the Bay in part not because the Bay got materially worse, but because they didn't get their way on phosphorus regulations.
Just as lingerie turns on human males, tiny jackets do the same for male rats, a new study finds.
In an unusual study, researchers allowed virgin male rats to have sex with females wearing special rodent "jackets." Later, when scientists gave the males a chance to mate again, the animals preferred to mate with jacket-wearing female rats rather than with unclad ones.
The findings suggest that male animals can learn to associate the sight and feel of clothing with sex.
In other words, male rats learn that "each time my partner wears lingerie [a jacket], I'm going to have sex," said study co-author Gonzalo R. Quintana Zunino, a psychologist working in the lab of psychologist Jim Pfaus at Concordia University in Montreal.
In previous studies, Zunino, Pfaus, and their colleagues trained rats to associate a particular odor (almond) with having sex, and male rats preferentially mated with females bearing that scent.
And here I thought the tradition of perfumes and scents started to conceal the smell of bodies left unwashed for months. Women are just training us.This time, the researchers wanted to know whether rats could learn to associate sex with other contextual cues, such as texture. In one experiment, a dozen virgin male rats were allowed to mate with females wearing jackets. Then, the males were put in a chamber with two sexually receptive female rats, one wearing a jacket and one "au naturel."
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The trained male rats chose to mate with the jacket-clad females more often than with the unjacketed females, the researchers found. In addition, the males made more mounting attempts and ejaculated more quickly with the jacketed females.
Zunino and his colleagues also wanted to know how the jacket experience affected activity in the rats' brains. Right after the male rats mated with the jacketed females, the researchers sacrificed the animals and injected a dye into their brains that shows the activity of a gene called c-fos, which is a measure of neural activation. Specifically, they looked at c-fos activity in the pleasure centers of the rats' brains, including regions called the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens.They gave their all for science. . . I wonder if Victoria's Secret paid for this study; it seems a natural fit.
Males that mated with jacket-wearing females showed more c-fos activity in these brain areas than did males who mated with jacketless females, preliminary results showed.
Think before you jerk.” “Jerking isn’t a joke." Such slogans, as reported in the Washington Post and elsewhere, garnered national attention when used to remind drivers in South Dakota not to over-correct their steering on slick roads. Indeed, the standard theory behind the way we steer our cars dates back to the 1940s but has left us with a longstanding mystery: data shows that we have a habit of jerking the wheel from time to time, puzzling researchers. Now, experts in Sweden are explaining the phenomenon, and their findings could lead to better safety systems in cars, according to a release at Eureka Alert. The jerkiness is tied to the way humans reach for things: When something is close by, we move our arms more slowly to grab it than we do when it's further away. The result is that both movements take the same amount of time.Just not very far into the future.
"We immediately recognized this pattern" as similar to steering behaviors, a researcher says. "It was a bit of a eureka moment. Was it possible that this basic human behavior also controlled how we steer a car?" A study of more than 1,000 hours of drivers' movements suggests that it certainly was. The team developed a mathematical model addressing the behavior; now, "it is possible to predict how far the driver is going to turn the wheel, right when the person starts a wheel-turning movement. It's like looking into the future," the researcher says. . .
WASHINGTON — For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.Remember telling all your less educated friends it would save $2500 a year per family? Welcome back to the real world, Mary.
Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.
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Mary D. Lewis, a professor who specializes in the history of modern France and has led opposition to the benefit changes, said they were tantamount to a pay cut. “Moreover,” she said, “this pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for vendors to run its "National Data Warehouse," a database for "capturing, aggregating, and analyzing information" related to beneficiary and customer experiences with Medicare and the federal Obamacare marketplaces. Although the database primarily consists of quality control metrics related to individuals' interactions with customer service, potential contractors are to "[d]emonstrate ... experience with scalability and security in protecting data and information with customer, person-sensitive information including Personal Health Information and Personally Identifiable information (personal health records, etc.)." Vendors are also instructed that one of the requirements of a possible future contract would be "[e]nsuring that all products developed and delivered adhere to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance standards."Something to occupy NSA excess computer capacity?
Tevi Troy says that 2015 is shaping up as Obamacare’s worst year. That’s quite a statement, considering how bad a year it had in 2014 — roll-out problems, false claims of 7 million enrollees, and the defeat of congressional supporters of the legislation.Go nuclear. Elections have consequences, as do past actions.
The key challenge to Obamacare in 2015 will come in the Supreme Court. A defeat there would certainly make 2015 a potentially near-fatal year for Obama’s only major domestic accomplishment:
If the states without state exchanges no longer provide subsidies, they would also no longer have an employer mandate. The individual mandate would also not apply in many cases, specifically where the cost of the cheapest qualifying health-insurance policy amounts to more than 8 percent of an individual’s income.Obamacare will also face new challenges in Congress, now that Republicans control both chambers. Repeal will not make it past the Senate because of the 60-vote requirement.
However, Tevi identifies three reforms that conceivably could command enough support from Democrats to pass the Senate. They are: (1) repeal of the “medical-device tax,” (2) raising the definition of the full-time work week from 30 hours, so as to end the incentive for employers to cut employee hours below 30 per week, and (3) repeal of the so-called Cadillac tax on high-value employer health-care plans, which encourages employers to reduce the value of their health-care plans, lest they be subjected to the tax.Half of Obamacare subsidy recipients may owe refunds to the IRS
President Obama would be free, of course, to veto any of these changes, and might do so. But, as Tevi argues, the fact that these matters, and others like them, will be on the legislative agenda will keep Obamacare on the defensive. And the next president, from whichever party, will likely be far more open to significant alterations.
As many as 3.4 million people who received Obamacare subsidies may owe refunds to the federal government, according to an estimate by a tax preparation firm.Sounds like a hidden tax increase to me.
H&R Block is estimating that as many as half of the 6.8 million people who received insurance premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act benefited from subsidies that were too large, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
“The ACA is going to result in more confusion for existing clients, and many taxpayers may well be very disappointed by getting less money and possibly even owing money," the president of a tax preparation and education school told the Journal.
the problem for Democrats here is that this is going to happen every year. The system is more or less designed to assume that people would twiddle with their coverage on a regular basis: as plans changed, improved, or degraded the consumer would be obligated to follow suit, in order to keep the subsidy. This sounds perfectly reasonable… if you’re not the one doing it. But out in the real world? Well, I’ve written about this before:
- April, 2014: “The uncertainty is really the killer. And, bizarrely, it’s about the only thing that’s reliable about Obamacare. There’s no way to plan around this monstrosity of a health care rationing system. Nobody is really certain that they’re not going to end up being smacked around by the new rules. And it would be better in a lot of ways if the law was even worse, as long as it was consistently worse. An inconsistent, unpredictable law is more or less guaranteed to become an object of fear.”
- May, 2014: “The administration, in its boundless wisdom, decided to handle [the government's inability to calculate subsidies in real-time] by simply estimating the subsidy in problem cases. If it’s too low, they’ll probably cut the applicant a check or give a tax credit. Eventually. Probably before the end of the decade. But if the subsidy is too high… well, the government is going to need that tax money immediately… This is where you distinguish the wonks from the politicos, by the way. The former won’t understand why the latter are wincing at the situation, and the latter will wonder how on earth the former manage to go through life without a keeper.”
- November, 2014: “Health insurance is scary because being sick is scary, and people do not like to think about scary things. So when they have a policy that they like, they want to keep it because then they can stop thinking about the scary thing. This is, by the way, not a silly or unreasonable desire to have, much to the disgust of Obamacare’s more sociopathic boosters: people should be allowed quiet enjoyment of their lives whenever possible. Unfortunately, nobody told the Democratic party leadership that.”
Legislation signed by president Barack Obama on Dec. 23 includes a provision to allow companies to stagger the use of seasonal foreign workers using the US H-2B isaisa program.Traditionally, a group of black women on the Eastern Shore was the labor force responsible for picking most of the crab on the Eastern Shore.
This will support harvests during peak periods, and without this provision, Maryland’s seafood businesses would be required to bring all H-2B visa workers here at the same time, creating costly burdens, US Senator Barbara Mikulski said in a release.
“Maryland’s seafood industry is critical for jobs on the Eastern Shore and for our way of life,” Mikulski, who is chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and worked to get the provision included in the newly-passed legislation, said. “From harvesting crabs to shucking oysters, temporary and seasonal workers ensure Maryland’s seafood industry continues to prosper. By staggering the work periods of these seasonal employees, businesses can get the help they need when they need it.”
Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting fell into the "I'm not a feminist" trap and had to apologize to extricate herself.Feminists were not amused and began a Twitter campaign which forced her to recant:
A win for feminism or a win for anti-feminism? Maybe more like a win for tweet-shaming.
Cuoco-Sweeting, star of The Big Bang Theory, stepped into a wasps' nest when she made a mild comment about whether she considers herself a feminist in an interview with Redbook.
"Is it bad if I say no? It's not really something I think about," she mused. "Things are different now, and I know a lot of the work that paved the way for women happened before I was around. ... I was never that feminist girl demanding equality, but maybe that's because I've never really faced inequality."
She also said she loves cooking for her husband, Ryan Sweeting, five nights a week.
"It makes me feel like a housewife," she said. "I love that. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I like the idea of women taking care of their men. I'm so in control of my work that I like coming home and serving him. My mom was like that, so I think it kind of rubbed off."
By New Year's Day, Cuoco-Sweeting was trying to explain, via her Instagram page. Her comments were taken "out of context," she said, and then she apologized.Liberals value any opinion, as long as it's theirs.
"I'm completely blessed and grateful that strong women have paved the way for my success along with many others. I apologize if anyone was offended. Anyone that truly knows me, knows my heart and knows what I meant. ❤️"
Since the local favorite, the Redskins failed (by a mile) to make the cut, I must shift my limited 
A police report shows that the nephew had brought his girlfriend to his father’s house after the two had attended a New Year’s party. The nephew left and he told police he returned to hear moaning from outside the door of the room he shares with his girlfriend.Stacy also has a report on the 2nd amendment in action: Three Home Invaders Shot After Trying to Rape Man’s 19-Year-Old Granddaughter
He told police he kicked the door down and found his uncle, Mattson, who also lives in the house, on top of his girlfriend. He claims he drove his uncle from the home, striking him repeatedly.
Armed self-defense in North Carolina:
A Lumberton man traded gunfire with three men who forced their way into his home, robbed the family, tried to rape his granddaughter and stole his car Monday, Robeson County authorities said.Feminists had no comment, as these would-be rapists were not members of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
One of the men, identified as Jamie Faison, 20, was shot and found dead in the stolen Cadillac parked at his home on the 600 block of Singletary Church Road, Sheriff Kenneth Sealey said in a news release.
The two other men turned up at area hospitals with gunshot wounds.
. . .
The Byrds were pushed to the back of their home and instructed to open a safe.
When the men tried to rape the couple’s granddaughter, Byrd grabbed a gun and exchanged shots with the assailants, Sealey said. . . .
Later, the Sheriff’s Office was notified that two people who had been shot came to McLeod Medical Center in Dillon, South Carolina. . . .
The Sheriff’s Office identified them as Brandon Carver Stephens, 28, whose last known address was N.C. 130 East in Fairmont, and Jamar Hawkins, 17, of Old Whiteville Road in Lumberton.
I would say two of them got off lucky. The appearance of this trio will not surprise you either: |
| Snow in southern Italy on New Years |
1) Two decades ago, the UN came up with several models that all predicted that by 2015, the Earth would have warmed by at least a degree Fahrenheit. Yet in the last two decades, there has instead been virtually no warming according to satellite temperature measurements.So they changed the name from "global warming" to "global climate change" to "global climate instability" to be able to place blame for nearly any negative weather event on human influence.
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| Yanomani village from the air |
2) Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, got famous for his 1968 book “the Population Bomb” which predicted that increasing human populations would spell doom.Rain forests remain under environmental pressure for wood, to clear for crops (often to grow biomass for alcohol for fuel), and even for living space, but vast areas of tropical forest remain, approximately 2.4 million square miles, or 5% earth's land area including areas large enough to hide natives people with no contact with civilization.
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“Half of the populations and species in tropical moist forests would be extinct early in the next century [the 2000s] and none would be left by 2025,” he warns on page 291. He added that that his model indicated that, on the upper bound, complete extinction would occur as soon as 2010.
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| Ain't fracking beautiful? |
3) A Pennsylvania state government “Student and Teacher Guide” reads: “Some estimates of the oil reserves suggest that by the year 2015 we will have used all of our accessible oil supply.”Frack, baby, frack.
4) “Peter Wadhams, who heads the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge… believes that the Arctic is likely to become ice-free before 2020 and possibly as early as 2015,” Yale Environment 360 reported in 2012.
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| Photographer is almost a good as seal |
Yet government data shows that arctic sea ice has increased since then. At its lowest point during 2014, sea ice covered about 1.7 million square miles -- an area nearly half the size of the United States.
And proxy studies suggest that Arctic ice cover was even less during the Holocene climate optimum approximately 6,000-10,000 years ago, maybe even ice free in summer. And Polar Bears got through it just fine.5) Dr. John Holdren, who currently serves as the White House Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, made dire predictions about global warming in the 1980s.Holdren is still holding out hope for a catastrophe by 2020. But the places that do starve, starve as a result of a lack of development, not too much.
Paul Ehrlich cites Holdren in his 1987 book “The Machinery of Nature”, noting that: “As University of California physicist John Holdren has said, it is possible that carbon dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.”
“It is a bit too soon, on the eve of 2015, to make any firm pronouncements about what will or will not happen by 2020,” Holdren wrote.And Ehrlich continues to linger on the planet, despite his belief it would be better off without most of it.
Yep, I remembered her from Lawn Order. Good enough for a Rule 5 post.Alana de la Garza (born June 18, 1976) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as ADA Connie Rubirosa on the NBC television series Law & Order. In 2014, she began starring as Det. Jo Martinez in the ABC series Forever.
De la Garza was born in Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, to a Mexican-American father and an Irish-American mother. She was raised in El Paso, Texas. She won the "Miss Photogenic" title in the Miss El Paso Teen USA local beauty pageant. . . .
In 2001, she was featured in the music video for Brooks & Dunn's song "Ain't Nothing 'bout You". She obtained the role of Rosa Santos on the soap opera, All My Children, guest-starring roles in JAG, Charmed, Two and a Half Men, (2004) and Las Vegas. She starred as Maria in the short-lived television series The Mountain, in which she received high marks for her acting.In the 171st issue of his blogging Magazine, GOODSTUFF is featuring the unearthly beauty of Persis Kambatta. I swear his intertube has tubes mine doesn't. Linked at Pirate's Cove in this week's "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup." Also linked at the American Power Blog in "New Year's Sunday Rule 5"; thanks Donald! At The Other McCain, Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Happy New Year!" ready. Linked at Proof Positive in "Best of the Web" (that I've seen this week).
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In 2006, she joined the cast of NBC's Law & Order during the premiere of Season 17, portraying Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa. Her performance as ADA Rubirosa has been widely praised by critics.
Federal workers who pack their lunches should also remember to pack their own utensils.Oh, the humanity!
A Government Accountability Office decision released last week determined that federal agencies cannot supply “disposable cups, plates, and cutlery” for employee use because they are for personal benefit and not a specific government purpose.
The issue was brought to light in a dispute between the Commerce Department and the National Weather Service employees. In 2009, Commerce had allowed the weather offices to supply hand sanitizer, paper goods and plasticware in response to the H1N1 flu outbreak. In 2013, Commerce determined that those offices could no longer provide “disposable plates, cups, and cutlery.”
The NWS employees organization objected and the subject went to arbitration. The arbitrator at the time sided with the employees that providing the disposable items could lead to a healthier, and thus more productive, workplace. But the Commerce Department appealed to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), and that decision is still pending.
Unbeknownst to the NWS employees, Commerce asked GAO to separately look into the dispute. The GAO made a final decision on Dec. 23 that the bar was very high for allowing taxpayer dollars to be used for anything viewed as a personal expense.
“Disposable cups, plates, and cutlery clearly constitute a personal expense,” the GAO concluded. “Commerce has not demonstrated that using appropriated funds to provide these items would directly advance its statutory mission and that the benefit accruing to the government through the provision of these items outweighs the personal nature of the expense.”
Say hello to Marisol. She's a shoplifter.Who say's being a cop, even a private cop isn't a shitty job?
"Big deal" you say, shoplifting is nothing special, who gives a shit?
Well kids, Marisol is something special. I shit you not. Very special. You know how some survival experts say to play dead if confronted by a bear? Well, Marisol has a very special defense against department store security guards.
When the guard confronted her about the items that she allegedly shoplifted, her fight or flight response kicked in.
Marisol shit her pants.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
After shitting said pants, Marisol reached deep down into the back of her pants, grabbed a handful of brown matter and smeared it on the guards face. . .
A Florida couple who were high on drugs spent two days believing they were trapped in a janitors closet and eventually called 911 for help, only to be told by police they could have just opened the door themselves.I think I might have gnawed through the door.
Amber Campbell, 25, and John Arwood, 31, were freed - and then arrested.
The strange incident occurred at the Marine and Environmental Science Center at Daytona State College on Tuesday.
Inside the closet, police said they found feces and copper scouring pads used to smoke meth and crack cocaine, according toThe Orlando Sentinel.
Obamacare’s insurance mandate on employers will quietly take effect for large companies Thursday, one year later than planned after a pair of unilateral delays fed into Republican claims the White House plays fast and loose with the implementation of its signature law.But now that the Preznit need never face the ballot box again, he can proceed with further complicating the lives of business people with no fear of consequences. Democrats in the Congress are not so fortunate.
Starting in 2015, companies with 100 or more workers have to provide affordable insurance to at least 70 percent of their employees or pay heavy fines under the “employer mandate,” which was supposed to take effect at the start of this year, alongside the health care law’s other key provisions.
. . .
But human resources departments will grapple with IRS reporting requirements from day one to document their compliance and avoid tax penalties, a task that can get Byzantine and expensive for companies with lots of part-time workers and seasonal workers, who add up to full-time “equivalents.”
The employer mandate has been a political football since the health care law passed in 2010, as critics say employers have stopped hiring or cut hours to stay under the mandate’s thresholds.
The White House delayed the mandate twice, moves that Republicans lambasted as political ploys to delay enforcement until after the midterm elections.
The ObamaCare-mandated fines for not having insurance are rising in 2015 -- and for the first time, will be collected by the Internal Revenue Service.Tax dollars at work: 87% of new Obamacare users given federal aid
The individual requirement to buy health insurance went into effect earlier this year. But this coming tax season is the first time all taxpayers will have to report to the IRS whether they had health insurance for the prior year.
The fines for the 2014 year were relatively modest -- $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold for filing taxes), whichever is more.
But insurance scofflaws face a sharp increase if they don't get covered soon. The fine will jump in 2015 to $325 or 2 percent of income, whichever is higher. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures.
Some 87 percent of people who just signed up for Obamacare are getting financial assistance to lower their premiums, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.Basically, if Mitt Romney or Warren Buffett decided not to take salary from the companies they run, and no income from stocks due to a bad year, they would qualify for full Obamacare subsidies. It's based on income, not wealth.
That is a jump from 80 percent during the last open enrollment period.
The department did not say how much it was offering to new Obamcare enrollees or what the total bill to taxpayers would be.
Admit it: you knew it was a scam from the way it was pushed through. Now, however, it’s clear what the plan all along was: 1) make it mandatory, 2) put the weight of the IRS behind it, 3) make premiums cripplingly “affordable,” 4) offer a “subsidy” carrot, and 5) make the subsidy level just too low for the middle class, so that the class Obama and the Left hate most would bear most of the burden. In other words, reward your friends and punish your enemies.Dr. Jon Gruber, the gift whose past keep yielding Obamacare Schadenfreude: Obama Adviser Jonathan Gruber In 2009: Obamacare Will NOT Be Affordable
Nice work, Democrats.
As Gruber continues to withhold documents while he awaits a call-back for more testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the new year, more shocking information is coming to light detailing the deceptions that went into the writing of the health-care law.They didn't care about controlling costs; they just wanted to give it away as cheap a possible to hook people into depending on the government for their health care; then, as always, rationing just happens naturally.
Gruber said that Obamacare had no cost controls in it and would not be affordable in an October 2009 policy brief, presented here exclusively by TheDC. At the time, Gruber had already personally counseled Obama in the Oval Office and served on Obama’s presidential transition team. Obama, meanwhile, told the American people that their premiums would go down dramatically.
“The problem is it starts to go hand in hand with the mandate; you can’t mandate insurance that’s not affordable. This is going to be a major issue,” Gruber admitted in an October 2, 2009 lecture, the transcript of which comprised the policy brief.
“So what’s different this time? Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”
And despite the president’s pitches to the contrary, Obama also knew that his health care bill was unlikely to control costs, Gruber said.New IRS rules crack down on nonprofit hospitals
“I wish that President Obama could have stood up and said, ‘You know, I don’t know if this bill is going to control costs. It might, it might not. We’re doing our best. But let me tell you what it’s going to do…” Gruber said on a San Francisco podcast in 2012.
The federal government is cracking down on nonprofit hospitals under ObamaCare in an attempt to prevent harsh collection practices and steep charges for the uninsured.So how are non-profit hospitals supposed to be able to pay their bills if they can't effectively collect what's owed them? It's pretty simple really; stop expending money on poor people who you expect to have trouble collecting from.
Newly finalized regulations from the Internal Revenue Service, announced Monday, will require nonprofit hospitals to “take an active role in improving the health of the communities” by making payment methods more fair and making costs more transparent.
For example, nonprofit hospitals are banned from asking for money in patients’ rooms or selling debt to third-party companies unless they make a “reasonable effort” to offer financial assistance. Each hospital must also take steps to improve the health of its community, including a semi-annual evaluation of the area’s “health needs.”
“For hospitals to be tax-exempt, they should be held to a higher standard,” Emily McMahon, a deputy assistant secretary for tax policy at the Department of the Treasury, wrote in a blog post Monday announcing the rules.
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| Kate Blanchett |
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| Evangeline Lily |
Multiple Iraqi and Kurdish media sources have claimed that some Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Mosul, Iraq, have contracted the deadly Ebola virus, Mashable reports.Instapundit asks "I doubt this is true, but I wouldn't mind if it were. Does this make me a bad person?
The Iraqi outlets reportedly claimed that Ebola had started to spread in a Mosul hospital. The city, known as ISIS’s most important strategic stronghold in Iraq, has been under the control of the Islamic State since June.
Christy Feig, the World Health Organization (WHO) director of communications, told Mashable, “We have no official notification from the Iraqi government that it is Ebola.” She said that WHO had reached out to authorities and asked if they needed help investigating the matter.
Kurdish media network Xendan reported that ISIS jihadists’ symptoms were similar to those shown by someone who has contracted Ebola. However, it is highly uncertain whether Mosul health authorities have the means, tools, or skill-set necessary to test for Ebola, given the current hostile environment in the area.
In late December, the Islamic State reportedly executed doctors who refused to treat their militant jihadis. The Washington Post said of the ongoing situation in Mosul, “Services are collapsing, prices are soaring, and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the ‘caliphate’ proclaimed in Iraq and Syria by ISIS.”
