The solar wind was a blazing 423 km/sec today. Right now, there's a full Moon tonight and according to folklore it has a special name: the Full Wolf Moon. Arcing high through the winter sky, the bright orb turns night into a simulacrum of day and shines through freezing clouds, producing spectacular ice halos. Go outside, take a look, and try not to howl. There are 7 SunSpot clusters on the Sun today with AR2253 sporting gamma-delta magnetic fields capable of blasting an X-Class flare.

In 2014, four issues generated enough public concern over enough months for at least 10% of Americans, on average, to identify each of them as the nation's most important problem. Complaints about government leadership, the economy in general, jobs and healthcare. This does not sound like much, but let me help you connect the dots. The Economy has not dropped off as a major concern for most Americans. Actually, the Fascist activities of the US government have risen even higher than the economy as the main concern.

Beyond the top four issues, 8% of Americans named immigration as the country's most important problem, while 6% mentioned the federal budget deficit or debt and 5% cited ethical or moral decline. All other issues received less than 5% average mentions in 2014.

Some of the issues troubling Americans received uneven attention during the year. In particular, mentions of unemployment were consistently higher in the first half of 2014 than later in the year, reaching 23% in February. Also, race relations, usually mentioned by no more than 2% of Americans as the nation's top problem, surged to 13% in December as recent legal decisions sparked protests nationwide against police treatment of blacks. Similarly, mentions of immigration spiked in July to 17% as thousands of undocumented children from Central and South America created a crisis

at the southern U.S. border. But this is the first time since 2001 that no single issue averaged 20% or more for the year.

2014 was also the first year since 2007 that the economy was not the top ranking issue, and it was the first year ever in Gallup records that dissatisfaction with government topped the list. Without a dominant issue such as the economy, the Iraq War or terrorism crowding out other issues as they have in years past, this is also only the third time since 2001 when three issues garnered at least 15% in average mentions. Thus, 2014 joins 2013 and 2009 as years when multiple issues emerged as significant top-of-mind concerns for Americans.

Of the top five issues that most concerned Americans in 2014, the economy and unemployment are significantly less dominant than they were even two years ago. At the same time, concerns about government and immigration have been mounting, while concerns about healthcare have consistently simmered at a moderately high level since 2009.

Bottom Line

With unemployment and gas prices falling, the U.S. not being involved in any major wars and scaling back operations in Afghanistan, and no acts of domestic terrorism occurring, the factors that have caused Americans to converge on a single pressing concern in the past simply weren't present in 2014. Rather, as mentions of the economy and unemployment have dwindled since 2012, mentions of healthcare and government leadership have grown to join them, forming a set of comparably sized, moderate-level concerns that now define the public's view of what ails the nation.

Not only was this the average picture in 2014, but it remained the state of affairs in the last quarter, suggesting 2015 is starting on a similarly calm note. That is underscored by the significant improvement in the Gallup Economic Confidence Index in late December, reaching positive territory for the first time since before 2008.

The dispersion of public concern seen in 2014 may also have implications for the 2016 presidential election. Should it persist, the lack of a single defining public issue could make candidates' task of honing a message for the election more complex.

Survey Methods

Results for the monthly Gallup Poll Social Series surveys included in this analysis are based on telephone interviews conducted with a random sample of approximately 1,000 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The yearly averages from the combined results are based on the total sample of approximately 12,000 national adults, with a margin of sampling error of ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

The Sweet Taste of DiseaseIs sugar making us sick? A team of scientists at the University of California in San Francisco believes so, and they're doing something about it. They launched an initiative to bring information on food and drink and added sugar to the public by reviewing more than 8,000 scientific papers that show a strong link between the consumption of added sugar and chronic diseases.

The common belief until now was that sugar just makes us fat, but it's become clear through research that it's making us sick. For example, there's the rise in fatty-liver disease, the emergence of Type 2 diabetes as an epidemic in children and the dramatic increase in metabolic disorders.

Added sugars, Schmidt said, are sugars that don't occur naturally in foods. They are found in 74 percent of all packaged foods, have 61 names and often are difficult to decipher on food labels. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires food companies to list ingredients on packaging, the suggested daily values of natural and added sugars can't be found.

The FDA is considering a proposal to require food manufacturers to list information on sugars in the same way they do for fats, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates and protein. But because so much added sugar is dumped into so many products, one average American breakfast of cereal would likely exceed a reasonable daily limit.

"SugarScience shows that a calorie is not a calorie but rather that the source of a calorie determines how it's metabolized," said pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, a member of the SugarScience team and the author of "Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease." Lustig said that more than half of the U.S. population is sick with metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors for chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and liver disease that are directly related to the excessive consumption of added sugars in the Western diet.

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the category of heart attack/stroke as the leading cause of death in the United States. Every day, 2,200 Americans die of cardiovascular disease. That's about 800,000 a year, or one in three deaths.

The latest statistics from the American Diabetes Association show that 29.1 million Americans, or 9.3 percent, have diabetes. Of that number, 21 million have been diagnosed and 8.1 million have not, and the numbers continue to grow, according to the association.

It doesn't stop there. The American Liver Foundation says at least 30 million Americans, or 1 in 10, has one of 100 kinds of liver disease.

Clinicians widely believe that obesity is the cause of metabolic disease. Although it is a marker for these diseases, Lustig said, it's not the cause. "Too much sugar causes chronic metabolic disease in both fat and thin people," he said, "and instead of focusing on obesity as the problem, we should be focusing on our processed-food supply."

The average American consumes 19.5 teaspoons (78 grams) of sugar a day, substantially more than the amount recommended by the American Heart Association. The association sets these limits: 6 teaspoons (24 grams) for women, 9 teaspoons (36 grams) for men, and 3-6 teaspoons (12-24 grams) for children, depending on age. Just one 12-ounce soda contains 8 to 9 teaspoons (32-36 grams) of sugar.

Liquid sugar in sodas, energy drinks and sports drinks is the leading source of added sugar in the American diet. That represents 36 percent of all added sugars consumed, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And because liquid does not include fiber, the body processes it quickly. That causes more sugar to be sent to the pancreas and liver than either can process properly, and the resulting buildup of sugar leads to heart disease, diabetes and liver disease.

Consuming too much sugar causes the level of glucose sugar in the bloodstream to increase. That, in turn, causes the pancreas to release high levels of insulin that cause the body to store extra calories as fat.

Too much insulin also affects the hormone leptin, a natural appetite suppressant that signals the brain to stop eating when full. But the imbalance of insulin levels caused by the intake of too much sugar causes lipid resistance, and the brain no longer gets that signal.

Another member of the SugarScience team, Dean Schillinger, is a professor of medicine at UCSF and a practicing primary care doctor at San Francisco General Hospital. He believes the overconsumption of added sugars is a social problem, not a problem of individual choice and freedom.

"People are becoming literate about the toxic effects of sugar," Schillinger said, "and have more understanding of the idea that high doses are bad for one's health." He sees evidence that those in a higher socioeconomic bracket are taking steps to limit intake of sugar when compared with poorer, less literate people.

Healthy food is expensive and less readily accessible in poorer neighborhoods, and because corn is so abundant and cheap, it is added to many food products. "Dumping high fructose corn syrup into cheap foods, sodas, sports drinks and energy drinks is toxic to the body, causing epidemic metabolic diseases and a serious health crisis," Schillinger said.

To underscore the scope of the problem, he pointed out that during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 1,500 American soldiers lost a limb in combat. In that same period, 1.5 million people in

the U.S. lost limbs to amputations from Type 2 diabetes, a preventable disease. "We have yet to mobilize for a public health war," he said, "but the time has come to do so."

Such a war would have to take on the root causes of the problem. As a nation, Schillinger added, we would need to look at our food policies, food pricing, availability of healthy foods, and the marketing being carried out by food and beverage industries to hook the public on unhealthy choices loaded with added sugar.

Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, is not a SugarScience researcher, but he agreed that the amount of sugar consumed by the American public is too high. SugarScience, he said, is being helpful by bringing the information about added sugar to public attention.

"It's just about impossible," Hu said, "to know from food labels what kinds and amounts of sugars are in a product." That's why he thinks the FDA should require food companies to list those amounts on all food labels so people know what they're eating, in what amounts they're eating it, and what amounts are safe.

Food labels are important, Schillinger said, and they need to be revised, but the most important change needed is to make the healthier choice the easier choice.

Russian Battle Robots Near Testing for Military UseMachine-gun wielding battle robots are going to be tested in Russia's Astrakhan region for use by the country's Strategic Missile Forces, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.Major Dmitry Andreyev, a representative for the Defense Ministry's Strategic Missile Forces, was cited as saying that preparation for the testing is currently in its final stage.

The trials will be focused on "exploring mobile and stationary robotic systems, including those that are responsible for the formulation of remote-controlled means of stealth technology and signaling," Andreyev said.

The testing is part of an initiative to deploy robots to protect the Defense Ministry's intercontinental ballistic missile launch sites by 2020, a plan announced by Andreyev last summer.

At that time, Andreyev described the robots as a "remote-controlled firing system" and said testing on the system would be completed by the end of 2014, Interfax reported. The robots, which weigh 900 kilograms and wield a 12.7 mm machine gun, first underwent testing last April. They boast a speed of up to 45 kilometers per hour, can function for up to 10 hours at a time and remain operational in standby mode for up to one week, Vesti.ru reported at the time.

Why Women Don’t Belong in CombatThree problems plague the debate over whether all combat units should finally be opened to women. (Actually, there are four problems: The fourth and most important being the likelihood that there will be no real debate, something that I hope this article will help to mitigate). Most career soldiers and officers I know believe the integration of women into Special Forces teams, and into SEAL, Ranger and Marine infantry platoons, is already a forgone conclusion. From

their perspective, politicians in uniform (namely, top brass) don’t have the intestinal fortitude to brook the vocal minority in Congress – and the country, really – who think mainstreaming women into ground combat units is a good idea.

As for the other three problems, the first is that every sentient adult knows what happens when you mix healthy young men and women together in small groups for extended periods of time. Just look at any workplace. Couples form. At some point, how couples interact – sexually, emotionally, happily and/or unhappily – makes life uncomfortable for those around them. Factor in intense, intimate conditions and you can forget about adults being able to stay professional 24/7. Object lesson for anyone who disagrees: General Petraeus.

Problem number two: Those who favor lifting the combat exclusion ban engage in a clever sleight of hand whenever they equate women serving in combat with women serving in combat units. Given women’s performance over the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, who but a misogynist would doubt their capacity for courage, aggressiveness or grace under fire at this point? But battles are like exclamation points. They punctuate long stretches when there are no firefights. Spend time around soldiers when they are coming down from adrenaline highs, or are depressed or upset; they are prone to all sorts of temptations. Alternatively, under Groundhog Day-like conditions, troops invariably grow bored and frustrated. How quickly we forget Charles Graner and Lynndie England, and the dynamic between them that helped fuel the sadism at Abu Ghraib.

Problem number three involves a different elision. Proponents of lifting the ban love to invoke desegregation and the demise of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Their intent in doing so is to suggest that all three are of a piece: Blacks now serve in combat units, as do (at least in theory) openly homosexual soldiers, and there have been no untoward effects. It is therefore past time to let women be all that they can be as well. Except that attraction between the sexes is nothing like the denigration of another race or the disinterest (or disgust) heterosexual men feel when it comes to the idea of one man pursuing another.Indeed, racism and bigotry lie at the opposite end of the spectrum from attraction. Lumping all three together is a canard.

There is no clearer way to put it than this: Heterosexual men like women. They also compete for their attention. This is best captured by the Darwinist aphorism: male-male competition and female choice. Or, try: no female has to leave a bar alone if she doesn’t want to, whereas at ‘last call’ lots of men do.

Cast back through history or just look cross-culturally: Men’s abiding interest in women (and women’s interest in having men be interested) creates limitless potential for friction. Is this really what we want to inflict on combat units?

More than a decade ago, I described the critical ethos on teams, and in squads or platoons, as ‘one for all and all for one.’ Introduce something over which members are bound to compete, that the winner won’t share, and you inject a dangerous dynamic. Worse, introduce the possibility of exclusivity between two individuals and you will have automatically killed cohesion.Interestingly – tellingly – proponents of lifting the combat exclusion ban routinely dismiss the significance of cohesion. Take the recent story about the Marine Corps’ new experimental mixed gender combat unit that appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. In it, correspondent Michael Phillips writes: “The debate over women in combat – similar to arguments about gays in the military – used to focus on so-called unit cohesion…”

That value-laden qualifier, “so-called,” made me sit bolt upright. Its use signals just how successful military sociologists and others have been at dismissing the idea that social cohesion might (still) matter. Their preferred cohesion is something they call ‘task cohesion,’ which refers to soldiers’ ability to do a job regardless of whatever inter-personal differences might exist among them. This, according to these academics, is the only kind of cohesion military units need. Forget shared interests, past-times or proclivities. Remaining effective over the long-haul in combat no longer requires that individuals have anything more than the mission in common.Except – dig beneath the political correctness that those in uniform know they better parrot, and it quickly becomes apparent that academics have split an impossible hair. For instance, U.S. Army Special Forces Command has been waging a quiet dissuasion campaign against Special Forces soldiers joining motorcycle ‘clubs.’ And though some wonder why any special operator would feel the need to join a bunch of wannabe outlaws when SF teams already constitute the ‘baddest’ gangs around, operators enamored with biker subculture are clearly seeking something SF does not provide. For many that something is camaraderie.

No question, stateside camaraderie is not what it is OCONUS (outside the continental U.S.). Family life looms large, wives have careers etc. There are a host of reasons why cohesion frays whenever teams return from deployments (to include how strained families are thanks to the sheer number of deployments). However, this fraying has consequences. Individuals go on benders and get into trouble; combat veterans commit suicide; PTSD festers. Old timers’ assessment is that team members no longer have each other’s backs except in combat. Ironically, their observation fits exactly what focusing only on ‘task cohesion’ prescribes.Talk to team leaders and they will describe how much effort it takes to get team members and their families to want to socialize once everyone is home. But they will also describe how rewarding it is once they do – all of which should be an indicator that social cohesion still does matter. It matters to those who join Special Forces in order to belong to something other than just a job. It also matters to those responsible for leading them, who recognize what a difference it makes downrange when a team ‘hangs together.’

Consequently, one question that should be posed to those who fixate on ‘task cohesion’ as the only glue the military needs is: Don’t social scientists owe it to those who already serve in special operations (and infantry) units to pay attention to what they say (and do), rather than rely on what members of mixed gender non-combat units self-report regarding ‘task cohesion’?Of course, the idea that there can be any social ‘science’ answer to whether the U.S. military should integrate women into ground combat forces is silly. Proponents might like to think that objective metrics can be devised. But metrics that measure what? Whether a unit can gel? Whether it will stay solid? Whether it will be able to recover from disaster effectively?Granted, there are some critical performance criteria – such as the ability to meet physical standards – that can be gauged in advance. But it is essential to remember that just because an individual meets these does not mean he or she will fit well into any group. Nonetheless, physical standards now amount to the Rubicon in the combat exclusion debate.

Opponents of lifting the ban believe that so long as standards remain high – and do not get gender-normed – few women will either want to serve in the combat arms or be able to make it through selection. Thus, certain Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs) – they hope – will remain protected. For their part, proponents question the relevancy of the physical standards that special operations units and the Marine Corps infantry do still use. Their position is that if you look at any unit, tasks are rarely undertaken by individuals alone. Instead, members shift and share burdens, and help each other out. Invariably the group finds creative ways to get the job done regardless of individuals’ weaknesses.

Ergo the Marine Corps’ new experimental unit, the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force (the subject of Phillips’ article). What the Marine Corps tests will find as they train up both male and female volunteers for combat should be interesting, to say the least. Forget just the gender dimension. Each service should ensure that today’s standards reflect real world requirements, and not some arbitrary, holdover notions of what combat pre-9/11 entailed. After all, it could be that numerous physical standards will need to be raised, not lowered – something that is all too imaginable given the sheer weight of today’s combat loads. If so, it will be interesting to then see what tack proponents take, since thus far they have shown zero interest in acknowledging why we even have combat units. Their impetus all along has been equity instead.

Equity is a quintessentially progressive and thus classically American goal. It is also a goal that increasingly attracts uniformed fathers who want to see their uniformed daughters excel. This reflects a remarkable societal shift. Proponency by men who have served in the combat arms is powerful and persuasive. It can also be extraordinarily moving. However, no decision about the future makeup of ground combat units should be influenced by what opening such units will do for anyone’s offspring, or sibling or spouse. Instead, the only thing that should matter is whether the presence of women will contribute positively to the combat effectiveness of combat units.No question, women are a boon for certain types of missions, especially certain special operations missions. No one I know disagrees with that, and in fact most special operators are anxious for more qualified women to be able to work with them. But there is a world of difference between women participating on certain missions and women serving alongside men as permanent members of ground combat units.

This difference has everything to do with why combat units exist – they exist to be sent into harm’s way. Maybe they won’t take casualties. But the military can never count on that. The prospect of attrition requires that the military treat individuals not as individuals, but as interchangeable pieces of a complex system. Not only does every combat soldier need to be capable of accomplishing the same essential tasks as every other combat soldier (according to rank, MOS etc.), but every potential replacement has to be able to easily fit into an already-stressed group. This introduces the equivalent of a Goldilocks challenge: Groups must be flexible enough to quickly absorb new members, while new members need to be sufficiently similar to both old members and surviving members that they readily fit.Unfortunately, proponents of lifting the combat exclusion ban don’t seem to get this. So, while it might make academic sense to assume squads, platoons and teams will simply be able to work out their own division of labor (read: task cohesion) under duress, what invariably happens when new members of the opposite sex arrive on the scene? In any setting, group chemistry changes – in predictably unpredictable ways.

Unfortunately, the services aren’t likely to use their sexual assault data to make the case that injecting women into hard-charging, all-male units isn’t a sound idea. But surely other statistics exist. For instance, how much time do command staffs already spend on boy-girl troubles? Anecdotally, fraternization and related issues eat up way too much time. Is this really what Washington should now saddle combat units and commanders with as they fight ISIS or whomever else in the future?

Or what about combat soldiers’ spouses, who already have more than enough worries? Why don’t their concerns count? This is a question that leads to a cascade of others for anyone who truly cares about equity. Whose equity should most matter? And who should get to determine this?

The irony is that combat units are ‘it’ when it comes to protecting all the other equities we Americans value. That is inconvenient truth number one. We have no other front-line/behind-the-lines first responders. Why would we want to do anything that jeopardizes their cohesiveness and integrity?

Inconvenient truth number two is that men and women have been each other’s most consistent distraction since the beginning of time. To pretend that we don’t know what will happen when men and women are thrown together for prolonged periods in emotionally intense situations defies common sense. Being overly academic and insufficiently adult about adult behavior isn’t just irresponsible but imperiling, and belies the deadly seriousness with which we should want combat units to perform.

Mystery at the sun's south pole: Nasa reveals huge 'coronal hole' on the solar surface where winds reach 500 miles per SECOND

There were no fireworks on the sun to welcome in the New Year - and in fact, scientists say the end of the year was relatively quiet on the solar surface.

However, the sun has started 2015 with a mysterious event - a huge hole has appeared.

Coronal holes are regions of the corona where the magnetic field reaches out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface. 

Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow, giving us the lovely AIA images. 

In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark.

Coronal holes were first seen in images taken by astronauts on board NASA's Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974. 

They can be seen for a long time, although the exact shape changes all the time. 

The polar coronal hole can remain visible for five years or longer. 

Each time a coronal hole rotates by the Earth we can measure the particles flowing out of the hole as a high-speed stream, another source of space weather.

Charged particles in the Earth's radiation belts are accelerated when the high-speed stream runs into the Earth's magnetosphere. 

The acceleration of particles in the magnetosphere is studied by NASA's Van Allen Probes mission.

As Solar Cycle 24 fades, the number of flares each day will get smaller, but the coronal holes provide another source of space weather that needs to be understood and predicted.

Coronal holes are a typical feature on the sun, though they appear at different places and with more frequency at different times of the sun's activity cycle.

The holes are important to our understanding of space weather, as they are the source of a high-speed wind of solar particles that streams off the sun some three times faster than the slower wind elsewhere. 

While it's unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, failing to loop back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere.

The material constantly flowing outward is called the solar wind, which typically 'blows' at around 250 miles (400 km) per second. 

When a coronal hole is present, though, the wind speed can double to nearly 500 miles (800 km) per second. 

Late last year one of Nasa's most powerful space telescopes has turned its gaze on the Sun for the first time to capture this stunning image.

Nasa's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has produced the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy X-rays.

The mission is primarily designed to look at black holes and other objects far from our solar system.  

'NuSTAR will give us a unique look at the sun, from the deepest to the highest parts of its atmosphere,' said David Smith, a solar physicist and member of the NuSTAR team at University of California, Santa Cruz.

Solar scientists first thought of using NuSTAR to study the sun about seven years ago, after the space telescope's design and construction was already underway, but before the telescope launched into space in 2012. 

Smith had contacted the principal investigator, Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who mulled it over and became excited by the idea.

'At first I thought the whole idea was crazy,' says Harrison. 

'Why would we have the most sensitive high energy X-ray telescope ever built, designed to peer deep into the universe, look at something in our own back yard?' Smith eventually convinced Harrison, explaining that faint X-ray flashes predicted by theorists could only be seen by NuSTAR.

While the sun is too bright for other telescopes such as NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, NuSTAR can safely look at it without the risk of damaging its detectors. 

The sun is not as bright in the higher-energy X-rays detected by NuSTAR, a factor that depends on the temperature of the sun's atmosphere.

This first solar image from NuSTAR demonstrates that the telescope can in fact gather data about sun. 

And it gives insight into questions about the remarkably high temperatures that are found above sunspots -- cool, dark patches on the sun. 

Future images will provide even better data as the sun winds down in its solar cycle.

'We will come into our own when the sun gets quiet,' said Smith, explaining that the sun's activity will dwindle over the next few years.

With NuSTAR's high-energy views, it has the potential to capture hypothesized nanoflares -- smaller versions of the sun's giant flares that erupt with charged particles and high-energy radiation. 

Nanoflares, should they exist, may explain why the sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona, is sizzling hot, a mystery called the 'coronal heating problem.' 

The corona is, on average, 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), while the surface of the sun is relatively cooler at 10,800 Fahrenheit (6,000 degrees Celsius). It is like a flame coming out of an ice cube. Nanoflares, in combination with flares, may be sources of the intense heat

If NuSTAR can catch nanoflares in action, it may help solve this decades-old puzzle.

'NuSTAR will be exquisitely sensitive to the faintest X-ray activity happening in the solar atmosphere, and that includes possible nanoflares,' said Smith.

What's more, the X-ray observatory can search for hypothesized dark matter particles called axions. Dark matter is five times more abundant than regular matter in the universe. Everyday matter familiar to us, for example in tables and chairs, planets and stars, is only a sliver of what's out there. While dark matter has been indirectly detected through its gravitational pull, its composition remains unknown.

It's a long shot, say scientists, but NuSTAR may be able spot axions, one of the leading candidates for dark matter, should they exist. 

The axions would appear as a spot of X-rays in the center of the sun.

Meanwhile, as the sun awaits future NuSTAR observations, the telescope is continuing with its galactic pursuits, probing black holes, supernova remnants and other extreme objects beyond our solar system. 

The images comes weeks after warnings that Earth could be hit by a series of damaging solar flares after the largest sunspot to be seen on the star for 24 years aligns with our planet.

The sunspot, previously known as Active Region 12192, began facing Earth in October but did not produce any coronal mass ejection (CMEs).

CMEs are the most energetic events in our solar system, involving huge bubbles of plasma and magnetic fields being spewed from the sun's surface into space. 

The region, renamed Active Region 12192, has now rotated around to face Earth again, and is likely to create CMEs, Nasa scientist Holly Gilbert told Space.com during a video interview.

'This time around, it's more likely to have some coronal mass ejections associated with it, even though the solar flares might be smaller,' she said.

'We have a good idea, based on the structure of that magnetic field and the sunspot, that it's very possible that it will create some mid-level flares.'

Magnetic fields in sunspots can store vast amounts of energy, but looping magnetic field lines can get tangled up and snap, releasing their energy as explosions called flares. 

According to Dr Gilbert, the sunspot is still large enough for 10 Earths to fit inside it, and is believed to be the 33rd largest of 32,908 active regions recorded since 1874.

The Jupiter-sized sunspot produced six eruptions in October and early November, before disappearing for two weeks.

Earlier this year, Ashley Dale, who is a member of an international task force, dubbed Solarmax, warned that solar 'super-storms' pose a 'catastrophic' and 'long-lasting' threat to life on Earth.

A solar superstorm occurs when a CME of sufficient magnitude tears into the Earth's surrounding magnetic field and rips it apart.

Such an event could induce huge surges of electrical currents in the ground and in overhead transmission lines, causing widespread power outages and severely damaging critical electrical components.

Mr Dale, carrying out doctoral research in aerospace engineering at Bristol University, said it is only a 'matter of time' before an exceptionally violent solar storm is propelled towards Earth.

He says such a storm would wreak havoc with communication systems and power supplies, crippling vital services such as transport, sanitation and medicine.

Without power, people would struggle to fuel their cars at petrol stations, get money from cash dispensers or pay online,' he said.

'Water and sewage systems would be affected too, meaning that health epidemics in urbanised areas would quickly take a grip, with diseases we thought we had left behind centuries ago soon returning.'

The largest ever solar super-storm on record occurred in 1859 and is known as the Carrington Event, named after the English astronomer Richard Carrington who spotted the preceding solar flare.

This massive CME released about 1022 kJ of energy - the equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima bombs exploding at the same time - and hurled around a trillion kilos of charged particles towards the Earth at speeds of up to 3000 km/s.

However, its impact on the human population was relatively benign as our electronic infrastructure at the time amounted to no more than about 124,000 miles (200,000 km) of telegraph lines.

Mr. Dale says these types of events are not just a threat, but inevitable.

Nasa scientists have predicted that the Earth is in the path of a Carrington-level event every 150 years on average.

This means that we are currently five years overdue - and that the likelihood of one occurring in the next decade is as high as 12 per cent.

Lighter that Planet Ships

One of NASA's new citizen science endeavors could involve high-tech, record-breaking airships designed to aid scientific research projects.

NASA has proposed a challenge that calls for airship designs that can fly higher and longer than existing airships. At the moment, no airship — blimp-like devices — can maintain an altitude of 65,000 feet (20 kilometers) for more than 8 hours. Weather balloons can soar to that height, but the balloons are difficult to control and vulnerable to winds.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California think airships could aid them in research on astronomy and climate change and even be more capable than weather balloons. An airship could carry telescopes into the stratosphere to observe stars and other celestial bodies. Right now for example scientists are working on an airship that could survey the skies of Venus. Airships could also provide valuable insight into weather patterns.[10 Most Amazing Flying Machines Ever]

"You would be able to follow weather patterns, even get above a hurricane," Jason Rhodes, an astrophysicist at JPL who is leading the proposed challenge, said in a statement. "A satellite can't do that because its orbit can't be changed."

The proposed challenge would include two tiers. The first tier would call for designs for an airship that can lift 44 pounds (20 kilograms) and hover at 65,000 ft. for at least 20 hours. The second tier designs would need to be a little more complex. Those airships would have to support 440 lbs (200 kg) at the same height but for at least 200 hours.

Familiar blimps that hover around sports games are just one example of an airship. By definition an airship must be lighter than air and able to navigate through the air under its own power. NASA officials say there could be between $2 million and $3 million in prize money available for the competition.

While studies have shown that there is significant interest in using airships for scientific experiments, airships could also have important industry applications. Telecommunication companies could use them to deliver wireless access to remote areas. Military personnel could use them for surveillance operations and missile defense warning.

The proposed 20-20-20 Airship Challenge would become part of NASA's Centennial Challenges program that offers prizes to citizen-designed tech that solves research problems that are of interest to NASA. NASA will first gauge public interest in the airship competition before officially launching it.   

Strange Object in Milky Way

A mystery object at the center of the galaxy has astronomers scratching their heads, and a new piece of information won't be solving the case before the New Year. 

In yet another twist to a saga of astronomical proportions, astronomers now say a gas cloud called G1 made a tight orbit around the supermassive black hole at the center of

the Milky Way galaxy 13 years ago. The object could be one in a series of gas clouds , the second of which may soon become a snack for the black hole.

The G1 object can be seen in observational data sets as early as 2004. An object known as G2 has been in the news for more than a year, ever since astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany hypothesized that it was a gas cloud. If that is true, it should lose some of its material to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way (known as Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*). This giant black hole — its name is pronounced Sagittarius A(star) — doesn't dine on material often, so the event would be a rare chance for astronomers to watch a black hole eat. [Top 10 Strangest Things in Space]

While the scientists at Max Planck contend that G2 is a gas cloud, a group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by astrophysicist Andrea Ghez, argue that G2 is more likely a star surrounded by a layer of dust and gas. Over the summer, G2 made its closest approach to the black hole and was not torn apart. Ghez and her group argued that this was a knockout punch for the gas cloud theory — clear evidence that G2 is a solid body. 

Using a combination of simulation and high-resolution images, researchers at the Max Planck Institute concluded that the G1 object (blue) would have taken a path very similar to the G2 object (red) around the super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (marked with an "x"). Credit: Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial PhysicsView full size image

 

But the researchers at the Max Planck institute countered with an explanation for how G2 could have remained intact even if it is a gas cloud. Their theory incorporates the idea that G2 was once part of a larger gas cloud that subsequently broke up into smaller gas clouds that all follow the same path, like beads on a string. This "beading" of gas has been observed in the universe before. If additional clouds of gas could be identified following the same path as G2, that would strongly indicate that G2 is a gas cloud and not a star, the scientists say.

In their newest paper, the Max Planck group provides a computer model that retraces the path of G1. According to their research, G1 followed a path nearly identical to G2. The model does make certain assumptions about G1's motion — for example, that it decelerated near closest approach to the black hole.

"The good agreement of the model with the data renders the idea that G1 and G2 are part of the same gas streamer highly plausible," Stefan Gillessen, a co-author on the new research , said a statement. 

The new study was first published on the online preprint journal arXiv.org and has been accepted to the Astrophysical Journal.

How to Stop the DC Crime Gangs Once and for AllI have struggled with thr algorythms by which currency is valuated.  I have concluded  that it is manipulated by two things.  First, the speculators have sophisticated programs that do microtrades about a dozen times a month.  They only shift the currency about 0.1% at a time, but cumulatively, they add up to about a 36%-50% return on a quarterly basis.  There are safeguards against massive manipulation, like the one that broke the Bank of England by George Soros.

So, the second method must be more dramatic.  It involves institutional shorting of the currency.  The Chinese Yuan is immune, because they artificially set the value of their currency.  The Trans-Atlantic banks do not like this at all.  

The establishment of the BRICS was an effort to stop this institutional shorting of currencies and to disconnect the dollar from oil as a base value.  In the last four months, four things have happened in what I believe is an effort to destroy this new "Development Bank" formed by the BRICS nations.

Brazil had a presidential candidate assassinated (the number three guy a distant third).  The elimination of this man made the race between two men instead of three.  The fact that the vote against the front runner was no longer divided meant that he could actually lose the race if it was shifted to an issue rather than a personality.  It was.  His opponent is against the BRICS.  Add to that the fact that Brazil has been cut off from capital, and the nation is on the verge of bankruptcy.  

India had the Rupee shorted against the dollar by 28% last year, and it has not recovered.

Russia has had their Ruble shorted to less than 50% of its gold-backed value in less than 2 weeks, while at the same time "revealing" the oil gut and sliding the price of oil down by 35% in less than a month.  This makes Russia's money worthless, their oil worthless, and their interest rates skyrocketing.  

Well, that is three of the top five BRICS nations economically attacked by the trans-atlantic banks.  Sounds like war to me.  How about you?

We did this to another nation in 1939.  We held our foot on their neck for two years, until in December of 1941 they paid a little visit to Pearl Harbor.  Now, we are doing it to four nations.  I forgot to mention Mexico.  The US starves Mexico of capital, forcing them to export 15% of their non-productive population to survive.  The productive population is making a fortune selling drugs to Americans.  The trans-atlantic banks love it.  The DC crime gangs love it.  And the Taliban heroin factories in Afghanistan love it.  Dirty money

for a community full of perfectly manicured DC villains willing to fill prisons and morgues with bodies so they can get rich.  

Don't you think it is about time they were stopped?  I know a foolproof way to do it without firing a single shot or protesting in any way.

Obama's DHS failing on all 5 main missionsU.S. Senator Tom Coburn released his final oversight report on the Department of Homeland Security, which has found major problems in the branch.The report finds that Homeland Security is not successfully executing any of its five main missions.

“Ten years of oversight of the Department of Homeland Security finds that the Department still has a lot of work to do to strengthen our nation’s security,” Coburn explained.  “Congress needs to review the Department’s mission and programs and refocus DHS on national priorities where DHS has a lead responsibility.”

Homeland Security spent $50 billion over the past 11 years on counterterrorism programs, but the Department cannot demonstrate if the nation is more secure as a result.Coburn also found that 700 miles of the nation’s southern border remain unsecured. The DHS is not effectively administering or enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, while only 3 in 100 illegal immigrants will ever face deportation.

The report also found that the DHS spends more than $700 million annually to lead the federal government’s efforts on cybersecurity, but struggles to protect itself, federal and civilian networks from the most serious cyberattacks.

The Department has spent $170 billion for natural disasters since 2002 because of an increased federal role in which the costs of small storms are declared “major disasters.”Even with the grim findings, Coburn expressed optimism about the Department’s future if Congress acts swiftly to address the problems in the report.

“I am confident that Secretary Jeh Johnson is leading the Department in the right direction,” Coburn commented.  “One of the biggest challenges that Sec. Johnson and DHS face is Congress and its dysfunctional approach to setting priorities for the Department.  Congress needs to work with the Department to refocus its missions on national priorities and give Secretary Johnson the authority to lead and fix the Department.”Coburn served his final day as senator. He thanked his fellow members of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Marsha Catron said: "The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security salute Dr. Tom Coburn for his outstanding service in the United States Senate. (But)Dr. Coburn’s report on DHS overlooks much of the concrete and recent progress we have made over the past year to improve homeland security and the manner in which DHS conducts business. That progress is outlined in the attached fact sheet.”

The findings of both the 2010 and 2011 assessments contradict public statements by DHSofficials who have described fusion centers as “one of the centerpieces of our counterterrorism

strategy,”2 and “a major force multiplier in the counterterrorism enterprise.”3Despite reviewing 13 months’ worth of reporting originating from fusion centers fromApril 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010, the Subcommittee investigation could identify no reportingwhich uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion centerreporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot. Instead, the investigation found:

The Subcommitteeinvestigation found that the fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriateintelligence reporting to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever.• Nearly a third of all reports – 188 out of 610 – were never published for use withinDHS and by other members of the intelligence community, often because they lackedany useful information, or potentially violated Department guidelines meant toprotect Americans’ civil liberties or Privacy Act protections.

• In 2009, DHS instituted a lengthy privacy and civil liberties review process whichkept most of the troubling reports from being released outside of DHS; however, italso slowed reporting down by months, and DHS continued to store troublingintelligence reports from fusion centers on U.S. persons, possibly in violation of thePrivacy Act.

• During the period reviewed, DHS intelligence reporting suffered from a significantbacklog. At some points, hundreds of draft intelligence reports sat for months beforeDHS officials made a decision about whether to release them to the intelligencecommunity. DHS published many reports so late – typically months late, butsometimes nearly a year after they were filed – that many were considered “obsolete”by the time they were released.

• Most reporting was not about terrorists or possible terrorist plots, but about criminalactivity, largely arrest reports pertaining to drug, cash or human smuggling.

• Some terrorism-related “intelligence” reporting was based on older news releases ormedia accounts.

• Some terrorism-related reporting also appeared to be a slower-moving duplicate ofinformation shared with the National Counter Terrorism Center through a muchquicker process run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist ScreeningCenter.

In interviews, current and former DHS officials involved in the fusion center reportingprocess stated they were aware that “a lot of [the reporting] was predominantly uselessinformation,” as one DHS official put it.4 A former reporting branch chief said that while he wassometimes proud of the intelligence his unit produced, “There were times when it was, ‘what abunch of crap is coming through.’”5

The Subcommittee investigation also examined DHS’s management of the fusion centercounterterrorism intelligence reporting process. The investigation discovered:• DHS required only a week of training for intelligence officials before sending them tostate and local fusion centers to report sensitive domestic intelligence, largelyconcerning U.S. persons.

• Officials who routinely authored useless or potentially illegal fusion center

intelligence reports faced no sanction or reprimand.

The Subcommittee investigation also reviewed how the Federal Emergency ManagementAgency (FEMA), a component of DHS, distributed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars tosupport state and local fusion centers. DHS revealed that it was unable to provide an accuratetally of how much it had granted to states and cities to support fusion centers efforts, insteadproducing broad estimates of the total amount of Federal dollars spent on fusion center activitiesfrom 2003 to 2011, estimates which ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion.The Subcommittee investigation also found that DHS failed to adequately police howstates and municipalities used the money intended for fusion centers. The investigation foundthat DHS did not know with any accuracy how much grant money it has spent on specific fusioncenters, nor could it say how most of those grant funds were spent, nor has it examined theeffectiveness of those grant dollars.

The Subcommittee conducted a more detailed case study review of expenditures of DHSgrant funds at five fusion centers, all of which lacked basic, “must-have” intelligencecapabilities, according to assessments conducted by and for DHS. The Subcommitteeinvestigation found that the state and local agencies used some of the Federal grant money topurchase:• dozens of flat-screen TVs;• Sport Utility Vehicles they then gave away to other local agencies; and • hidden “shirt button” cameras, cell phone tracking devices, and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of a fusion center.

All of those expenditures were allowed under FEMA’s rules and guidance, DHS officialstold the Subcommittee. Yet none of them appeared to have addressed the deficiencies in thecenters’ basic information analysis and sharing capabilities, so they could better contribute toFederal counterterrorism efforts.

Report information that falls within one of five authorized I&A intelligenceactivities, showing a nexus to Homeland Security issues. This includesinformation related to:a. Terrorist threats to the homeland.b. Priorities for protective and support measures in response to actual orpotential threats or hazards to the homeland, including criticalinfrastructure or key resources; a significant public safety, publichealth or environmental impact; political, societal and economicinfrastructure; border security; the proliferation or use of weapons ofmass destruction; or other potential catastrophic events including manmadeand natural disasters.c. Departmental support, such as the furtherance of law enforcementactivities of a component.d. General tasks directed by the Secretary of Homeland Security.e. Specific tasks directed by statute or presidential directive.2. Satisfy valid IC [Intelligence Community] collection requirements

The Department of Homeland Security employs about 188,000 federal employees, as well as about 200,000 contracted workers.

The Military Police"Across this country, we seem to be under attack in the law enforcement profession," Yoes said. "We are public servants. We are not public enemies." Yoes at the funeral of Officer Liu who was executed in his car while on patrol.

There is a beast afoot in the United States and he's becoming increasingly out of anyone's control with each passing day. In Radley Balko's study of police raids of the homes of civilians for the CATO Institute, he described the mayhem currently taking place at the hands of federal and state governments in the United States in the name of law enforcement:

 

"Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

"These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects."

Wearing full body armor and armed with assault weapons, SWAT teams’ tactics make it much more likely that people will be killed. Using no-knock raids, they rush into a resident’s home by breaking the door. Immediately upon entry, they commonly use “flash-bang” grenades, which render people temporarily blind and deaf. Naturally, the targets of such raids might assume that their home is under attack by criminals. If the residents are armed and try to defend themselves, they are likely to be killed by the SWAT team.This is what happened to Eugene Mallory, an 81-year old retired engineer in Southern California. A SWAT team broke into his home and shot him dead before he had a chance to leave his bed. The raid turned up two marijuana plants, for the possession of which Mallory’s step-son had a California medical license.

The Economist (March 22) article titled Armed and dangerous, describes how U.S. police departments have become highly militarized. The article is significant not only for the information it provides but also because a mainstream corporate media outlet is

publishing it.

The article focuses specifically on SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) units, and how frequently police departments around the country are using them. It cites an Eastern Kentucky University study that estimates that the annual number of SWAT raids around the country has skyrocketed from around 3,000 in the early 1980s to around 50,000 raids today. Originally, SWAT teams were intended to be used only in specific circumstances such as confronting major drug operations. Nowadays, police departments are using SWAT raids routinely, at times for operations as trivial as breaking up unlicensed poker games.

Through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, specifically Section 210402, the US Congress mandated the Attorney General to collect data on the use of excessive force by police and to publish an annual report from the data. [5] Two national systems collect data which include homicides committed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty. Unfortunately, only the number of police killed in the line of duty are measured. The best records we could find indicate that In the last decade alone the number of  people murdered by police has reached 5,000. The number of soldiers killed since the inception of the Iraq war, 4489. A total of 1,533 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty during the last 10 years, an average of one death every 58 hours or 153 per year.

In protest to the Mayor of New York, police stopped patrolling the streets and conducting non-knock raids. Arrests dropped by more than 65%. In short the police were not leaving the precinct until they were called by 911. Results? The city is just fine.

The bottom line is that no-knock raids by SWAT are the main reason why the police are now the enemy of the public. The clear and indisputable fact that 422,000 incidents of police violence are reported every year in the U.S. These are only the incidents that are reported. These range from beatings, tazing, shootings without death, and torture which includes choking and exerting MMA tapout techniques to force victims to stop resisting arrest, where no arrest should occur.

Add to this more than 34 million vehicles are pulled over each year where drivers provide in excess of $1.2 billion a year in revenue for local precincts, not including more than $2 billion in civil forfeitures by police.

This is not law enforcement. This is Gestapo-style systemic intimidation of the average American of all colors with impunity. Fewer than 6% of police brutality charges are upheld in a court. Less than 1% of funds and property confiscated police is ever returned to the rightful owner. That means 99% of the time, if you are caught with cash in your possession by police, they will steal it from you, and you will have no recourse to get it back, regardless of the proof you have that it is yours.

Add to this the fact that this information can now reach every person in America within seconds, and the police have a real problem on their hands. Their crime spree is over. Theft by legal taking and the more often than not brutal engagement with the public by the police is now known by everyone. And now, the protest is hitting home.

So, turn your backs on your Mayor who may be telling the truth about how dangerous a cop can be. Turn you backs. In the meantime, how about taking a review of your personal commitment to force to uphold the law? How about refusing to be the revenuers for the bureaucrats trying to use you as the strongman to rob the people of their money and their lives? How about turning your back on the system that has turned you into a robber and a thug? How about opening your hands and laying down that club or that gun?

It is an axiom of war that the weapon of the enemy will improve with every conflict. It is a world-renowned truth that the only thing that keeps Americans free is the prospect of an armed American. Don’t test that prospect. Ever.

The Truth About “Discount” Airline Booking ServicesThe past few years have seen the rise in “disruptive” tech startups playing a game of almost pure arbitrage, taking advantage of market inefficiencies to benefit consumers.

Car services such as Uber and Lyft connect anyone with a smartphone directly to drivers, shortcutting the traditional street-hailing model. Uber is now valued at more than $40 billion.

Airbnb allows anyone with a spare couch or guest room to connect directly with renters. Airbnb is now valued at around $10 billion.

Lending Club connects private capital to small borrowers, bypassing banks. Lending Club went public this month and raised almost $1 billion.

Each of these start-ups identified a pricing inefficiency and capitalized on it. The services provided by these start-ups are purely information-based. The value of each company is derived from its “finders’ fee,” representing a portion of the benefits it creates by providing a new service desired by its customers. The rest of the benefits accrue to the consumer in the form of cost savings.

And each of these start-ups has been targeted by regulators in the United States and abroad, as legacy industries seek governmental support for the excess burdens they place on consumers.

The most recent example of industry playing hardball with disruptive technology is the lawsuit United Airlines and Orbitz filed last month against Aktarer Zaman and his company, Skiplagged.com.

Skiplagged operates by selling consumers information they could already find for free, but that airlines count on them not to find— a “hidden city” airline ticket in the middle leg of a multi-city fare.

Because layovers are unattractive, airlines often discount multi-stop itineraries. And in some cases, the cost of the entire itinerary is less than the cost of, for example, the first leg of the trip. In effect, an airline might pay a consumer to fly through multiple airports rather than take a direct flight.

For example, if you are traveling from Los Angeles to New York on United Airlines, you might have a stop-over in Chicago. And the cost of the entire itinerary (Los Angeles to Chicago to New York) might be less than the cost of a direct flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. In such a situation, a savvy consumer might purchase the Los Angeles to New York ticket, but simply leave the airport upon arrival in Chicago.

Using the airlines’ own websites, this can be done, but it is time consuming. And there are websites, such as Orbitz, that already search multiple airlines for consumers and allow seamless booking. Orbitz, however, is not entirely independent of the airlines, and therefore has an incentive to prevent consumers from capturing the “hidden city” value.  It was founded by and has been majority-owned by airlines, and even now is largely owned by hedge funds with significant positions in institutional airlines.Skiplagged allows consumers to search and find these “hidden city” fares, and redirects consumers to Orbitz for booking. It is unclear whether Zaman has profited at all from his website. He claims he has not.

Now, United Airlines and Orbitz have sued Skiplagged and Aktarer Zamen in federal district court, alleging, among other charges, that Zaman has breached a contract it had with Orbitz, and has wrongfully (“tortiously”) interfered in the contractual relationships United and Orbitz have with their customers.

These legal claims are highly questionable.Apart from technical questions of law, however, the economics of the practice that is being undermined are rather straightforward.

The prohibition on “hidden city” fees is attractive to airlines where the airline determines that there are a number of low-information, price-insensitive consumers seeking to fly to the “hidden cities,” and a number of extremely price-sensitive consumers who are willing to fly through hidden cities to more attractive locations.

In these situations, the airline will price a multi-stop itinerary bundle low, attracting new price-sensitive customers while counting on the low-information consumer to purchase the single-stop ticket at a higher price.

To be sure, some profit on any given high-priced ticket United no longer sells due to Skiplagged’s service might be lost to the airline (and perhaps to Orbitz, if it receives a portion of the higher fares through commission). Yet Skiplagged might actually increase

United ticket sales to those marginal consumers who previously were “priced out” (chose not to buy tickets) due to the airlines’ practice of withholding information and charging higher fares on “hidden city” fares.

Whether Skiplagged causes Orbitz or United any harm will have to come out in discovery—ironically, this will also tell consumers the precise magnitude of the harm they were suffering before Skiplagg’s service became available.

The broader point, however, is that Skiplagged—like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb before it—is being targeted by a legacy industry that sees litigation or lobbying to be cheaper than competition in the marketplace. In fact, Orbitz itself admits its intent and its impotence here:

“To counteract Zaman’s conduct, Orbitz is continuing to investigate ways in which it may detect customers originating on Skiplagged.com and prevent the ‘hidden city’ bookings from being made on the Orbitz site. Nevertheless, Zama’s repeated variation in redirection strategies and his use of technical approaches… have frustrated Orbitz’s efforts. Injunctive relief will be necessary to ensure that Zaman does not further alter his software in an effort to circumvent Orbitz’s corrective actions.”

It is unclear at this point how Skipplagged has interfered, tortiously or otherwise, with any contractual relationships that Orbitz or United has or what damages (other than greater difficulty charging artificially high prices) they have suffered.

Moreover, it appears that Orbitz has full control over its own destiny. To prevent “hidden city” ticketing, all it needs to do is stop offering hidden city tickets on its website, by, for example, refusing to sell multi-leg fares that are discounted relative to a direct flight. Yet such an option is unattractive, because Orbitz and United are perfectly fine selling the tickets, just at a mark-up.

Killing for Profit

Planned Parenthood clinics did 327,653 abortions in its fiscal year 2014 (which ran from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014), according to Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s newly released annual report.

That works out to an average of 37 abortions per hour or nearly 1 every 90 seconds.

Planned Parenthood also received $528.4 million from government grants and reimbursements, which equaled 41 percent of its revenue.

The federal government is prohibited from paying directly for abortions through Title X family planning grants and reimbursements, however, federal funds do pay for Planned Parenthood operations, including the clinics where abortions are performed.

The 327,653 abortions Planned Parenthood reports that it did in its organizational fiscal 2014 exceeds by 487 the number of abortions it did the previous year.

The report also reveals that Planned Parenthood actually provided fewer contraceptives -- 3,577,348 patients in fiscal 2014 compared to 3,724,558 in fiscal 2013.

According the latest 990 form filed with the IRS for 2013, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards’ base compensation was $396,138. Including retirement funds and other benefits, Richards’ total compensation was $492,200. Death becomes her, so they say.

A statement from one young woman, cited only as “Shireen” in the report but accompanied by a photo, says: “Birth control has changed my life. It has allowed me to attend college, travel and be a working woman. I get my birth control at Planned Parenthood because it is accessible and affordable, and because Planned Parenthood advocates for women like me – a young woman of color – every day.”

I guess they never informed Shireen that they recently discovered the cause of pregnancy, and it turned out to have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin. Of course, the access to a taxpayer-paid abortion is absolutely affected by the color of one’s skin. What white Cecile Richards is telling you, little girl, is that you are not supposed to get pregnant with a child of color. But if those free sterilization drugs don’t do the job for you, she will smile her million dollar smile and pay to kill that baby at taxpayer expense. Safe and legal. There you go.

Minorities should get the message. Liberals want to make sure you don’t reproduce, because this is a white man’s world, and Miss Cecile is Mr. Obama’s glamorous white face to make sure that policy is followed in every neighborhood in America. It is the Liberal Fascist way of stopping discrimination once and for all. Kill the race, and you won’t have to worry about discriminating against it.

Death and Taxes…even after Death

We all remember when Nancy Pelosi said that Congress needed to pass the Affordable Care Act in order to find out what's in it. Well, we just found another little Fascist nugget.

Benjamin Franklin famously said that only three things are guaranteed in life: Birth, Death, and Taxes. Well thanks to Obamacare, we can add a fourth… Estate Recovery.

Deep within the thousands of pages of law and regulations for the Affordable Care Act is a hidden provision that allows the government to take control of YOUR estate after you pass away in order to pay for any medical bills that the government covered while you were alive.

If you are healthy, you better pay for your own healthcare. Remember, healthcare is different than health insurance. Health care will cost 85% of Americans about $1,000 a

year. Health insurance will cost someone $1,000 a month. And, you still might not get your health care.

However, according to the next phase of the Fascist takeover of the healthcare industry that went into effect January 1, if the Government is able to claim they paid for ANY of your healthcare, they’ll come for their payment plus interest and handling fees when you are no longer alive to fight them. If you are one of the millions of people being duped today into signing up for Medicare and Medicaid, this gives the government free reign to raid your estate after you die.

Let me paint the picture for you: You work hard your entire life, paying into Social Security and Medicare in the hopes that if you need it down the line, it will be there for you. With the individual mandate requiring you to have health insurance, perhaps you sign up for Medicare or Medicaid as a free alternative.

Included in the Affordable Care Act is a hidden time bomb that allows the government to get its pound of flesh, one way or another with usury. The effect is two-fold. Not only will the government be able to tax your estate after you pass away, but this also allows them to redistribute YOUR wealth any way they see fit. Your home, savings, life insurance, and even your personal belongings can be seized by the State and sold into the government’s general fund.

That has always been the logic behind the Death/Inheritance Tax. The government wants to suppress familial upward-mobility and to prevent anyone from inheriting any wealth. The government wants to be able to choose who advances and who doesn’t. It is always the same with Fascist regimes. They advance, and you don’t.

But suppose you aren’t that wealthy and don’t have a large estate for the government to raid when you pass away… Surely you won’t be affected by this. You think that if you spend it all by the time you die, or hand it off in living wills or estates set up for your grandkids, that it will be safe from all this. Right? WRONG!

This estate recovery provision within the law allows the government to come after your family members until they get what they deem they are legally entitled to. Sure, it will pay your Medicare/Medicaid bills after you pass away, but the more your family resists the courts, the higher the costs will go. Regardless of whether they can afford to pay or not, the law’s new provision allows them to sell all your family’s houses, cars, stocks, and seize their bank accounts until the bills, plus their expenses to recover the money, are paid.

If you are 55 or older, I am giving you a warning. Go back, go back. it’s a loan. The National Affordable Care Act is a loan with payback requirements that are not well advertised. And it penalizes people who, despite having a low income, have managed to keep a home or some savings they hope to pass to heirs.

So, here’s the deal. There used to be a provision whereby the state could recuperate funds spent on a Medicaid patient post-55 years old from whatever assets that individual owned. So, a low-income individual in nursing home care after age 55 might pass away and his kids would find out the family home or car of whatever he had to his name had to be bought back from the state if they wanted it. It’s called estate recovery, and sounds pretty shady if it’s not boldly advertised as the terms for Medicaid enrollment, which it most definitely is not.

Before the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, there weren’t that many people in Medicaid who had much in the way of assets for seizing. But now that Medicaid enrollment requirements have been relaxed, more people with assets but low income are joining the program or being forced into it. For instance, a couple in their 50s who, say, retired early after losing jobs in the bad economy may have assets but show a very low income. Under Obamacare, if their income is low enough to qualify for Medicaid, they must enroll in Medicaid unless they want to buy totally unsubsidized coverage in the now-inflated individual market. As the Times notes, this is no small difference:

People cannot receive a tax credit to subsidize their purchase of a private health plan if their income qualifies them for Medicaid, said Bethany Frey, spokeswoman for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

But they could buy a health plan without a tax credit, she added.

For someone age 55 to 64 at the Medicaid-income level — below $15,856 a year — it’s quite a jump from free Medicaid health insurance to an unsubsidized individual plan. Premiums in King County for an age 60 non-tobacco user for the most modest plan run from $451 to $859 per month.

Some people can marry, combine their incomes, and get out of the Medicaid trap. Others will not be so lucky, and may not even read the fine print:

If you are married, you could “just squeak by” with enough income to qualify for a subsidized health plan — and avoid any encumbrance on your home you might leave to your kids.

For no one else in the world is it a-okay to give low-income people a loan that might endanger their family’s assets and not even clearly inform them they’re getting a loan.

This Daily Kos diarist has a nice write-up (I know) on the toll this could take on lower and middle-class people looking for relief and getting what amounts to a surprise predatory loan instead:

We haven’t had lots of people younger than 65 on Medicaid, because in most states simply earning less than the Federal Poverty Level did not qualify one for Medicaid.

And we haven’t had many people with lots of assets on Medicaid, because in most places you have to have less than around $2400 to your name before Medicaid will cover you. You can keep your house and your car, but Medicaid reserves the right to put liens on them and take them when you die.

But now we have the Affordable Care Act, and its expectation that everyone in the lower tier of income will end up in the Medicaid system. To accomplish this, they have dropped the asset test. So now we will have lots of people ages 55-64, who have assets but not a lot of income right now, for whatever reason, on Medicaid.

The kicker of it is, if you make the right amount to qualify for a subsidized health insurance plan, your costs are going to be shared and subsidized by the government. But if you go on Medicaid, you owe the entire amount that Medicaid spends on you from the day you turn 55…

How will this play out? No one knows, as far as I can tell. But it is easy to see how this could become a real problem. If someone is low income and goes on Medicaid, will Medicaid put a lien on their house? If they need to sell their house and move, will they then lose all their equity in paying off the lien? Will people get hit with bills and liens for many thousands of dollars, even if they were healthy and hardly ever went to the doctor?

The fact that this is being treated with seriousness at Kos is an indication of how large a liability it could be for this government program. Washington is scrambling to change the law. No doubt other states will start looking at their implementation of this part of Obamacare. But there will be people caught unaware that their houses effectively belong to the government because the government forced them into Medicaid coverage.