HOW CONVENIENT: 2014 Obamacare Enrollment Period Already Being Delayed Until After Midterm Elections. They’re pathetic, aren’t they?

#GREENFAIL: Energy Department takes $139 million loss on loan to electric car-maker Fisker. These subsidies don’t seem to have worked out as promised.

I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY: Businesses Wary as Obama Picks Get Edge in Senate Rules.

“FRAN, YOU GOT TEN BUCKS?” Joe Biden Borrows Ten Dollars From an Aide to Buy Lunch. Kind of a metaphor for the whole shebang. . . .

ROLL CALL: 6 Questions to Ponder About the Senate’s Nuclear Winter.

APPARENTLY, THE ANARCHISTS AND TERRORISTS ARE IN CONTROL NOW: O-Care sign-up deadline delayed.

MEDIAITE: In Their Panic, Dems Become Reckless Gamblers.

Prospect theory, a predictive model of economic behavior, stipulates that when a person begins to come to terms with increasingly likely losses, they become risk-takers. Losses sting, the theory asserts, more than gains reward. Thus, risk-seeking behavior increases as the acute pain of an imminent loss comes clearly into focus.

Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto astutely cited prospect theory on Thursday in the wake of the unprecedented maneuver by Senate Democrats to change the rules of the Senate by a simple majority vote along party lines.

The long-considered but never invoked “nuclear option” was appealed to at a conspicuous time. The ground is collapsing out from under Democratic feet. In a panic, they are falling back on maneuvers which mitigate immediate pain and provide short-term gains, all the while acknowledging that the risks they are taking are high and the prospect of long-term advantage extremely low.

Read the whole thing.

THE GROUP OF 88 WERE UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Duke lacrosse false rape accuser found guilty of second-degree murder. “Mangum stabbed boyfriend Reginald Daye with a kitchen knife during an argument in April 2011. Daye died at the hospital 10 days later from complications related to the stabbing.”

ANOTHER ANARCHIST TERRORIST: Al Franken: ‘We Have to Consider Extending the Deadline for the Mandate.’ IT’S THE LAW OF THE LANNNDDD!

PERFECT FORWARD SECRECY: Twitter Toughening Its Security to Thwart Government Snoops. “Perfect Forward Secrecy ensures that even if an organization recording web traffic gets access to a company’s private keys, it cannot go back and unscramble past communications all at once. Perfect Forward Secrecy encrypts each web session with an ephemeral key that is discarded once the session is over. A determined adversary could still decrypt past communications, but with Perfect Forward Secrecy the keys for each individual session would have to be cracked to read the sessions’ contents.”

BUILDING A TORNADO-PROOF HOUSE. Well, designing one, anyway.

THE NEXT RESEARCH FRONTIER: CONDOMS! Hey, here at the University of Tennessee we’re all over that.

AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals On Holiday Music.

Plus, Luxury Pens for fine writing enthusiasts.

Also: Deals in Video Games.

PROF. JACOBSON: Democrats Nuked The Ratchet.

The seemingly inexorable march towards economic socialism and political statism has been accomplished through legislative and judicial ratchets which, once established, were all but impossible to reverse in part because the filibuster helped lock in the agenda and those supporting the agenda.

Because of the ratchet, the nation moved only in one direction: Towards redistribution of wealth, and bigger government.

Because of the ratchet, there was little or no hope of fundamental reversals.

Not anymore.

Well, then, the GOP just needs to take the Senate back. And the White House.

IMAGINING THE POST-ANTIBIOTICS FUTURE.

Five years after my great-uncle’s death, penicillin changed medicine forever. Infections that had been death sentences—from battlefield wounds, industrial accidents, childbirth—suddenly could be cured in a few days. So when I first read the story of his death, it lit up for me what life must have been like before antibiotics started saving us.

Lately, though, I read it differently. In Joe’s story, I see what life might become if we did not have antibiotics any more. . . . Before antibiotics, five women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of nine people who got a skin infection died, even from something as simple as a scrape or an insect bite. Three out of ten people who contracted pneumonia died from it. Ear infections caused deafness; sore throats were followed by heart failure. In a post-antibiotic era, would you mess around with power tools? Let your kid climb a tree? Have another child?

Indeed. We need to move faster on new antibiotics, and especially on phages and other antibiotic alternatives, discussed here.

50 LIFE HACKS that will make your life easier.

ADVICE TO WOMEN: What To Say When Other Women Tell You You’re “Too Skinny.”

MARK LEVIN UNVEILS the Levin Plan.

COMING WITHIN A DECADE: 3D-Printed Hearts?

AT AMAZON, up to 60% off on Bosch Tools.

Plus, Early Black Friday Deals in TV, Audio & Video.

Also, new savings on Women’s Shoes.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Tuition Crunch Takes Big Toll: Net Revenue at Nearly Half of Colleges Loses Ground to Inflation in New Survey. The problem is costs. They should outsource most administration to low-paid, benefitless part-timers, as they’ve done with teaching. “Adjunct Administrators.” That’s just one of the ideas in my new book, out on January 7.

REPORTING FROM THE L.A. Auto Show.

I HAVE LEVERS INSTEAD OF KNOBS IN MY HOUSE. THEY’RE OKAY, BUT THEY CATCH ON THINGS. Vancouver Bans Doorknobs.

WISDOM FROM THE DALAI LAMA on farting.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Celia Hayes, The Quivera Trail.

Plus, a different kind of reader plug: Reader David Cooper writes: “Glenn, my wife is involved in a startup that makes tennis hoppers that they sell through Amazon. I was hoping you would give it a plug, it’s all private sector capitalism and they sell through Amazon. Here is the link.” Done!