A while ago I did a post conjecturing how this might be done with sewer discharge and robotic sewer crawlers. Well now there's people working on a crapper that will do it.

...It also analyzes your pee. “It’s what you’d get if you go to the doctor now, and you need to be checked for diabetes or kidney disease and they check things like the phosphates in the urine,” Sheard says. “In the U.K., many people with diabetes are diagnosed late, which adds billions of pounds a year in health costs.” By checking up on users, the toilet aims to help catch diseases earlier...

...It could also replace the ubiquitous home pregnancy test...

...he toilet could also analyze nutritional deficiencies. All of the health feedback could be sent to a smartphone through an app...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:37 PM | Comments (138)
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Even the slowest boats eventually reach the river's bank.

A Harvard study that tracks the attitudes of young voters (and, I guess, the #WHYouth) finds that they've gone sour on Obama.

The results blow a gaping hole in the belief among many Democrats that Obama's two elections signaled a durable grip on the youth vote.

...

Obama's approval rating among young Americans is just 41 percent, down 11 points from a year ago, and now tracking with all adults. While 55 percent said they voted for Obama in 2012, only 46 percent said they would do so again.

When asked if they would want to recall various elected officials, 45 percent of millennials said they would oust their member of Congress; 52 percent replied "all members of Congress" should go; and 47 percent said they would recall Obama. The recall-Obama figure was even higher among the youngest millennials, ages 18 to 24, at 52 percent.

Obama needs these young fools to sign up for his massively redistributive trainwreck. But they've gotten word it's intended to harm them:

According to the poll, 57 percent of millennials disapprove of Obamacare, with 40 percent saying it will worsen their quality of care and a majority believing it will drive up costs. Only 18 percent say Obamacare will improve their care. Among 18-to-29-year-olds currently without health insurance, less than one-third say they're likely to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges.

It's an online survey, though performed by what seems to be a respectable outfit. But I'm not sure how the polling industry feels about online polls, which include a healthy dose of self-selection.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (181)
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Via Naked DC, where you can see what songs these are parodying/ripping off or whatever.

Barack Obama is an incompetent idiot, but he does understand one thing. It's a creepy thing -- the Nazis and Soviets understood it as well -- but he definitely does get it.

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.

Give a man a Cult of Fish, which talks a lot about the Wonders of Fish and the cult-leaders' ability to provide fish to all who want them (despite not doing so),
and then he won't mind that you're not giving him any fish or teaching him how to fish either.

Because you've given him something better. You've given his empty life a semblance of meaning, and you've given his incoherent and craven thoughts some structure.

And he'll thank you for that forever. Even though, still, no fish.

He'll blame the Cult's list of approved devils for the lack of fish, and he'll praise you for your wondrous intentions to provide fish.

Or at least your determination to talk a lot about fish. Fish, fish, fish, And The Middle Class.

Even if you never actually produce a single fish, and in fact cancel the fish-plans of five million people.

I haven't gone Godwin. It's just not capable of being unnoticed any longer.

A lot of people are noticing just how creepy the Cult of the State is.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (361)
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MSNBC has a stable of troglodytes, but Bashir's vulgarity was too much even for them.

A couple of idiots from Politico were discussing MSNBC's lineup on their video podcast a couple of weeks ago, and one likened it to "Animal House."

Central to the leftist's sense of vanity is his mistaken belief that he is an elevated person, in taste, intellect, and culture. In fact, he is none of these things. In almost all cases, he actually aspires to mediocrity -- or at least he would aspire to mediocrity, if he weren't already so convinced he had nothing else to prove to the world.

Martin Bashir directly challenges that self-flattery. Not only is he thick-headed and crude as a general matter, but he routinely resorts to provocations so vulgar that only the crudest malefactors in the Fightin' Fightin' Nutroots could fail to notice their vulgarity.

As such, he's bad for business. Starbucks could not con people into buying $6 cups of coffee if, directly beside the register, stood a magazine rack openly displaying vintage copies of Hustler.

Of course, the rest of MSNBC's lineup is similarly crude and thuggish. Ed Schultz is a red-faced rage-drunk, Al Sharpton is a rabble rouser with a body-count, Lawrence O'Donnell gets menacingly angry talking to women and occasionally challenges people to streetfights (people he knows won't accept the challenge, by the way), and Chris Matthews alternates between frothing accusations of racism and sending video selfies of his on-air visible erections to Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, of the alleged "smart ones" -- the ones who play to the leftist's erroneous self-conception of belonging to the intellectual and cultural elite -- Rachel Maddow is a conspiracy-theory loving imbecile whose concept of analysis is a sneering head-tilt, and who routinely pushes Alex Jones level nonsense out to a gullible public. Chris Hayes, despite his pretenses of reasonableness, is true-believing hyperpartisan goon.

But Martin Bashir's ratings were the lowest of The Low lineup, and so he's gone.

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (227)
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The "fixed" website is fixed in the sense it lets you enter all of your personal information into a massive sucking black hole of identity theft. That it permits you to do.

Well, it permits you to do that sometimes. Other times it makes you wait for the privilege of entering your most personal and confidential data into a Hacker's Paradise.

After a glowing news conference yesterday citing “night and day” progress on HealthCare.gov, I decided to log in this morning and take the Web site for a test drive, as I’m sure many others are doing. Early reports had been promising. What I found was hardly encouraging — long delays loading pages, an endless circle of tasks (some already completed) and ultimately an error message.

How about shopping for insurance policies? Nah bro, it won't let you do that. Comparison shopping between different products on a website is the sort of Star Wars like technology we can only yet dream of.

So I decided to try the site again this afternoon. This time, I didn’t see the “Please Wait” flags that bogged me down yesterday, but I had a more fundamental problem. When I got to the step of comparing health plans, I couldn’t see any.

So far so good! Healthcare.gov has three big steps: Apply. Shop. Buy. So far you can't do either of the first two. But I have high hopes for the third.

Well not really, because the code for buying a policy hasn't even been written yet. Oh well!

But at least it will calculate your subsidy for you.

Nah bro, it can't do that either. So Obama has pulled out his Magic Legislation-Rewriting Pen again and willed that the Insurance Companies should illegally "estimate" your subsidy for you.

President Barack Obama's administration has found a short-term fix to pay insurance companies for plans selected on HealthCare.gov, the not-yet-complete government website used to shop for insurance required under Obama's healthcare program.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet finished building the part of the website that would transfer billions of dollars in subsidies for plan premiums and cost-sharing payments to insurance companies.

It is part of a long technical to-do list that has so far focused on fixing the errors and lag times in the part of the website used by consumers.

...

The administration is planning a "workaround" for payments, said Daniel Durham, vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at America's Health Insurance Plans.

Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to "true up" payments, he said.

What does "true up" mean? Who pays the difference? Apparently not the consumer -- it will be the government and insurers reconciling the estimate to the actual subsidy. So apparently the government will pay the difference between estimated and actual subsidy?

And don't insurance companies have an incentive to estimate upwards, suggesting a bigger subsidy than the real one, to sign people up?

How much will this fresh incompetence cost us?

The fix puts an additional "burden" on insurance companies, already taxed by having to double-check faulty enrollment data from the HealthCare.gov system.

And here's the kicker: Insurers have to build this system to estimate subsidies in... like a week.

Now, companies need to quickly put together financial management systems to make the payment estimates, so they can be paid beginning in January, he said.

Actually, that's not the kicker. I lied. I do that that a lot. Lying is my cardio.

The real kicker is this: Insurers may begin exiting the exchanges entirely if they can't get paid for policies they're supposed to be covering. The article mentions that some big insurers may have a pile of money to "cushion" them during a period of paying out claims and yet not receiving any premium checks, but smaller companies don't.

"They cannot survive if they don't get paid. And even the larger carriers, it can only go on for so long," Lucia said. "The last thing we need is for a carrier, especially a large carrier, to walk away from this."

Thanks to John Ekdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (498)
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I'm angry about this ad. Not just because it's an attempt by a Democrat to invoke the name of God Himself to win an election.

But because of the predictable reaction to it by the determined, angry secularists of the New Class: The reaction will be nothing at all.

When Republicans play the Culture Card, the New Class is outraged. They are made filthy-angry by the injection of religion and tribal loyalty into what they feel should be a decision made upon the bases of reason and empathy and For Science.

But when a Democrat does it, they just nod approvingly, and maybe giggle: Well if that what it takes to move the Rubes...

As with any of the alleged principles of the Progressive Left, Fen's Law applies: They believe none of the things they say they believe. The only thing they actually believe in is that Progressives should rule the world, and they may use any tactic, including resorting to Nasty Jesus Talk, to achieve this long-dreamed goal.

It shouldn't be overlooked that this is a desperation move. Mark Pryor is calling upon the Power of God because it's looking like that's the only power in the universe sufficient to spare him an electoral drubbing. Hit Allah's link for Sean Trende's analysis of Democrats in trouble, generally; and check out the bio of Pryor's Republican opponent, Tom Cotton. Cotton's a Harvard lawyer who signed up in Army and got his officer commission so that he could kill terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not to slight JAG officers, but I would point out here that Cotton did not serve as a JAG; he served as a front-line soldier leading troops on the battlefield.

As an infantry officer and platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division, he was deployed to Baghdad as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom on May 19, 2006. In Iraq, Cotton was responsible for a 41 man air assault infantry platoon in the 506th Infantry Regiment, and planned and led daily combat patrols. He completed his first combat tour in Iraq on November 20, 2006, and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Iraq Campaign Medal, and various campaign/service medals.

...

Following his deployment in Iraq, Cotton was assigned as a platoon leader at The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery,[9] where he was responsible for conducting military honor funerals for veterans. In 2008, he volunteered to return to combat duty, was promoted to Captain on August 1, 2008, and deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 15, 2008. In Afghanistan, Cotton was assigned to Laghman Province, just north of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. He was assigned duty as the operations officer of a Provincial Reconstruction Team, where he planned and resourced daily counter-insurgency and reconstruction operations for an 83-member joint and interagency team.

I hope this isn't a violation, but God just cc'd me on an email to Mark Pryor. He writes, "I can move mountains, but even I can't get your fat dumper over 40% in the election. Y'all on your own."

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:21 AM | Comments (373)
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The story went viral on the left, of course. Touré made the story the centerpiece of a broader call for helping the poor (i.e., redistribution of wealth).

Tirado’s republished confessional in The Huffington Post received more than 4 million views and was featured by MSNBC host Touré. He was clearly moved by the plight of this woman.

“Poverty is sticky,” the MSNBC host opined. “It clings to you, leaves physical markers on the body.” He singled out a portion of Tirado’s essay that was particularly sympathetic.

I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on b12 and coffee, and nicotine, and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it and thatÂ’s how you get the job you need in order to be beautiful.

...

But an investigation into TiradoÂ’s background by the Houston PressÂ’ Angelica Leicht revealed that the blog postÂ’s author is a private-school-educated Democratic activist who wildly exaggerated her circumstances. She owns a home as the result of her parentÂ’s generosity. She has worked in politics since 2004 and has called herself a private political consultant since 2010.

SheÂ’s married to a Marine, has met President [Barack] Obama while interning for a politician (who obviously wasnÂ’t disgusted by those rotten teeth), and has plenty of time to visit Las Vegas on vacation. And blog about her privileged life on WordPress.
She speaks both German and Dutch, and has a well-rounded political blog that ended in 2011. ItÂ’s also a blog where she quite plainly references being paid to win [political] races.

What's her defense? Well, the left has three go-to defenses when they're caught saying things which are either untrue or disgraceful.

1. "I was being satirical."

2. "I was just trying to 'start a dialogue.'"

3. "You misunderstood."

4. "I've been taken out of context."

She goes for 4 with a side of 3:

And that is the answer to the question many of you have asked. How is it that someone with such clarity and evocation has any right to assert that they are poor? It is likely untrue. Well, it is and it isnÂ’t. You have to understand that the piece you read was taken out of context, that I never meant to say that all of these things were happening to me right now, or that I was still quite so abject. I am not. I am reasonably normally lower working class. I am exhausted and poor and canÂ’t make all my bills all the time but I reconciled with my parents when I got pregnant for the sake of the kids and I have family resources. I can always make the amount of money I need in a month, itÂ’s just that it doesnÂ’t always match the billing cycles.

I am having trouble categorizing a woman who owns her own house (apparently assisted in this by her parents) as "lower working class."

Corrected: I wrote that she'd gotten $10,000 in donations. That was way wrong.

She got $100,000.

"Wlifully misread."

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (379)
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• Obamacare Website Has No System For Exchange Payment
  
• Taranto: WH Furor
  
• New Healthcare Pitch Isn't All That Convincing
  
• Another Democrat Finds God
  
• Democrat Proposes Taxing Drives By The Mile And Doubling The Gas Tax
  
• WH Won't Say Who Was Standing Behind Obama At Yesterdays Presser
  
• State Department Undermines Two Centuries Of US Doctrine
  
• Senior Hezbollah Commander Assassinated
  
• Some Of Reid's Staffers Are Exempt From Obamacare
  
• Americans Don't Trust The Government And That Could Be Great For America
  
• Young Women Are Driving Record Firearm Sales
  
• Almost 11 Million Americans Are On Disability
  
• Manatee Just Wants A Belly Rub
  
• How To Opt Out Of Obamacare
  
• President Leads Cheers For Himself
  
• American Decline Part 1,323
  
• Japanese Tire Commercials Are About What You'd Expect
  
• SpaceX Successfully Launched Its First Commercial Satellite
  
• Some People Switched Automatically To More Expensive Insurance Plans Under Obamacare
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 AM | Comments (308)
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Piss in the bottle byotches.

...The latest research from YouGov shows that Americans support requiring welfare recipients (64%) to submit to drug tests, but are even more in favor of requiring Congressmen (78%) to also prove that they do not take illegal drugs. People are only more likely to support requiring airline pilots (87%) to submit to random drug tests...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:39 AM | Comments (189)
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Happy Wednesday.

With the Obamacare website's "backend" yet to be completed, the Obama administration has decided that it will make subsidy payments to insurers based on insurers' estimates of what they're owed. What could go wrong? Also, I seem to have misplaced my section of the ACA that authorizes this.

CNN covered three big questions the Obama administration isn't answering about Obamacare.

The Democrats are having a tough time deciding whether to call it "Obamacare" or not. While they worry their dumb little noggins about what to call it, the families of cancer patients are losing their insurance because of it.

Today the French National Assembly will vote on whether to make prostitution illegal.

Update: Commenter J.J. Sefton reminded me. Today, there will be four House committee hearings on Obamacare. They are:

House Oversight Committee with a panel on "The Roll Out of HealthCare.gov: The Limitations of Big Government."

House Energy and Commerce Committee looking at Obamacare changes to Medicare Advantage program.

House Ways and Means Committee has a panel titled "Challenges of the Affordable Care Act."

House Small Business Committee is looking into "business aggregation rules" and how they impact small employers when it comes to health care.

The RNC is still passing around its "Deadline Missed" video and Chairman Priebus was on CNN last night kicking Debbie Wasserman-Shultz's butt up one side of the studio and down the other over her claim that Democrats will be eager to run in 2014 on Obamacare.

Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner's office was pointing out to reporters yesterday that on the very day the Obama administration began its "offensive" on Obamacare, not a single Democrat scheduled a healthcare related event. This was followed by statements to reporters from Boehner, Cantor, and McCarthy on Obamacare (see the video).

The Senate GOP has been a little quiet on Obamacare lately, so I can't point to anything they're specifically doing on it. That's a weak point. Fortunately, GOP hopes to retake the Senate are approaching "This Might Even Happen" levels of optimism thanks to Obamacare.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (296)
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