YOUR OBAMACARE FAIL OF THE DAY: Another Obamacare Co-Op Exits Exchanges, Leaving Only 5 Co-Ops in 2017.

Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. of Maryland announced earlier this month that it is withdrawing from the Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, leaving only five co-ops in operation. The co-op will not offer or renew individual health policies in 2017.

“After many months of working closely with Evergreen management, leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and outside investors to find a workable solution, we have run out of time to meet the deadline for a January 1 effective date,” said Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. “We remain committed to a viable, competitive insurance industry in Maryland.”

This action will force 6,000 customers serviced by the co-op to be automatically enrolled in new plans. The co-op was awarded $65.5 million in taxpayer-funded loans in 2012.

Assuming the incoming Congress repeals ObamaCare, it will be a much bigger story that ruthless Republicans put the remaining co-ops out of business — and never mind that 18 others did little more than suck up tax dollars before going broke all on their own.

JUDICIAL WATCH: Austin Mayor, Feds Colluded as Texas Gov. Sued to Keep Syrian Refugees Out.

After the governor of Texas announced that the state would stop accepting Syrian refugees, the Obama administration went behind his back secretly conferencing with a mayor that offers illegal immigrants sanctuary and Syrians a welcome mat. The plan, evidently, was to continue sending Syrian refugees to the Lone Star State, even as the governor initiated litigation to halt the flow. This week Judicial Watch obtained records of the administration’s behind-the-scenes efforts to keep sending Syrians to Texas despite fierce opposition from state officials over the security threats created by refugees from an Arab nation that’s a hotbed of terrorism.

The White House looked to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, going around the governor to confer with a city leader who espoused the controversial Syrian resettlements, the records show. Shortly after Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state wouldn’t accept any more Syrian refugees, the administration responded by colluding with Adler, according to records of a conference call between the mayor’s office and the White House. The administration also furnished Adler with “talking points” involving the refugee resettlement and the parties discussed Abbott’s lawsuit. It seems bizarre that the feds would discuss legal action with a town mayor operating in the state suing them.

“Bizarre” is spelled “Modus operandi” for the outgoing administration.

YES, BUT… Any Food Can Be Turned Into Beer.

The beauty of the craft beer world is the unbridled enthusiasm to brew something that’s never been tasted before. However, creating a beer with a familiar taste can be an almost greater challenge.

Take Shmaltz Brewing’s new Pastrami Pilsner. Created in partnership with Barcade, an East Coast chain of game-filled craft beer bars, the Pastrami Pils grew out of the simple desire to collaborate on something adventurous. Why did they pick pastrami? That detail has been lost to empty pint glasses.

Brewers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

JUST DON’T TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATT YGLESIAS: Sex robots could kill humans because they’ll be too good in bed.

SCIENCE: Milk or Sugar in Your Low-Viscosity-Liquid Dynamic? Scientists Seek the Perfect Cup of Coffee.

In recent papers they have examined the quantum mechanics of caffeine, the thermal properties of stovetop coffee-maker steam, the capillary action of the “coffee ring effect” and the low-viscosity-liquid dynamics of hot coffee. Some insist that aroma is the secret, others argue it is all about the ions in the water. One group of researchers attempted to calculate how long it would take to heat a pot of coffee by yelling at it.

Alfred Renyi, a Hungarian academic famous for both his love of coffee and his contributions to probability theory, once said, “A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.” A 2011 study by Dunkin’ Donuts and CareerBuilder concluded that U.S. scientists and lab technicians are the heaviest coffee drinkers in the country.

What’s surprising about this effort to crack the coffee mystery is how resistant coffee seems to being cracked.

“It is the most challenging example of applied chemistry I have come across,” said computational chemist Christopher Hendon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who recently co-wrote a 134-page treatise on the effects of water chemistry on coffee. “There are a lot of variables that go into solving the perfect cup of coffee.”

Perfection can wait until after that first cup, strong and with just enough cream that you don’t have to wait before gulping it down.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Wages of Merkelism, and the Death of Europe.

That Merkel — like all the politically correct liberals across the European Union who have brought Europe to its present low estate — could not see this coming speaks to the tyranny of cultural Marxism that imposed itself on the nation-states of Europe in the form of the EU: a form of compulsive national suicide, preached as the logical consequence of guilt over World War II and imposed using the stick of “racism” with which to beat a gullible public.

Until now, Germany has suffered relatively little blowback to the willful blindness of its leaders: a suicide bombing here, a mass shooting there, a machete attack. Even the rape and murder of Maria Ladenburger in Freiburg by an Afghan “minor” “migrant” could not wake the country from its torpor.

And now comes Berlin. The site of the attack — the plaza near the famous Ku’damm (the main street of the former West Berlin) and a stone’s throw from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial chuch — demolished during the war but left to stand as a ruined memento mori of the war’s devastation — now becomes a new memorial to a new war: a war that must be prosecuted with the same zeal and finality that rid the world of Nazi Germany in 1945. For the world now faces an even more worrisome, atavistic, and implacable foe that must be destroyed if western culture is to survive without fear or compromise.

Read the whole thing.

POSTMODERN VIRTUE SIGNALING: Lena Dunham: ‘I Wish I Had’ An Abortion.

ASIA PIVOT: China offers $14 million arms package to the Philippines.

BUT OF COURSE: Bitter Young White People at MTV News Want You to Know White People are Bad.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Russians weren’t that good; the Obama administration was that bad.

The Democrats want to play the victim, blame Donald Trump and declare Trump the beneficiary of the Russians’ interference in the 2016 campaign, but in fact, it was their own leadership that dropped the ball and gave the Russians the opening they needed. And, Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s silence on this was deafening. Where was she when her agents were trying to get the DNC’s attention? Probably somewhere carrying out her audition for a job in a Clinton administration.

Anyway, the tale of incompetence doesn’t stop there. In a Keystone Cops-worthy episode revealed in no less than the New York Times, it turns out the FBI repeatedly called the DNC beginning in September 2015 to warn them about hacking attempts, but the Democratic staffer the FBI agent reached wouldn’t return the agent’s calls because “he wasn’t certain the caller was a real FBI agent and not an imposter” and because the DNC had “nothing to report.” Not to mention, another Democratic staffer made the world’s most inexplicable “typo” and called a phishing email a “legitimate email” instead of an “illegitimate” one, opening the path for a hacker to gain access to all of John Podesta’s emails. Oops.

It’s unbelievable. And as troubling as it is that Obama and the Democrats allowed the Russians to interfere in the election and engage in cyberwarfare without any ramifications, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Putin knew exactly what he was up against — at the very latest — when Obama warned Eric Cantor, “Don’t call my bluff.”

AND SO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE DRAWS TO A CLOSE: Deaths from Fentanyl Overdoses Double in a Single Year.

UNEXPECTEDLY: CA Gun Sales Surge Ahead of ‘Assault Rifle’ Ban.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Laser helps unlock antimatter secrets.

“Because we have this mystery about the disappearance of antimatter from the creation of the Universe, we always try to look at antimatter very carefully,” added Prof Hangst.

Writing in Nature journal, the Alpha team reports the first ever measurement of how antihydrogen responds to laser light at a precisely tuned frequency.

“We’ve tried to shine the same “colour” of light, if you will, on an antihydrogen atom that we would use for hydrogen, to see if it responds in the same way. The answer so far is yes,” said Prof Hangst.
The team found no differences in how antihydrogen behaved compared with ordinary hydrogen, a result that’s perfectly in line with the Standard Model.

“We’d like to take a good look at an antimatter system that is commensurate with a matter system that we know very well. Hydrogen is the most basic atom that we’ve been studying for about 200 years – we know everything about hydrogen. So it’s really compelling to try to compare the two. That’s the overall goal of our programme,” Prof Hangst told me.
…
Even a slight difference in properties between hydrogen and antihydrogen would break basic principles of physics – and possibly shed light on the matter-antimatter imbalance in the Universe.

MILLIONAIRE: Don’t Cut My Taxes.

The Patriotic Millionaires Chair Morris Pearl weighs in on why he feels wealthy Americans should pay taxes at a higher rate than everyone else.

“No, I don’t [want tax cuts], not for the rich people,” Pearl told the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney.

Though Pearl did support tax cuts for lower income Americans.

“I think that the poorest among us, yes, I think the people that make lower incomes should have tax cuts, I think the people who have higher incomes should pay more taxes than people at lower incomes.”

When asked whether higher income individuals would give back the money they receive from the tax cut, Pearl said, “Most of the people in my group mostly spend their money on philanthropic causes and do a good job trying to help their country be a better country.”

When Varney pressed him on it, saying Pearl was avoiding the question, Pearl responded, “No, I don’t think anyone gives back. I think everyone pays taxes as the law requires but we have to change the system.”

Wouldn’t it be even more patriotic to write a large check payable to the U.S. Treasury Department, in excess of what the law demands?

PROCUREMENT: 3-Star Rejects Trump F-35 Slam: ‘This Program Is Not Out of Control’

If [Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher] Bogdan could send one message to Trump, it would be that “this program is not out of control,” he said.

“Since 2011, we have basically been on schedule. Since 2011, we have basically been on budget,” he said. “We are delivering now today 50-plus airplanes a year that in the hands of the warfighter make a huge, huge difference.”

But despite his advocacy for the program, Bogdan said he and the Joint Program Office have not coordinated with industry to counter Trump’s messaging, nor do they plan to. His strategy, he said, was to tell the truth.

“I am not a salesman for the F-35,” he said. “Our job is going to be to give the administration the good, the bad, and the ugly about this program and let them make their own decisions. What I will tell you is, I think that this program is vital for air dominance for us and our allies for the next 50 years. It replaces many, many, many legacy fleets. It has tremendous international participation and involvement. And it is a necessary program for the United States to maintain its security. And I will tell, if given the opportunity, that to the next administration.”

There’s no getting around the fact that the F-35 program is late and way over budget. Whether or not it was the right aircraft for the many “near-peer” warfighting jobs it was given is something we probably won’t know until the shooting starts — and hopefully it will prove enough of a deterrent that we may never know.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela Deploys Troops After Weekend Riots.

President Nicolás Maduro’s government deployed 3,000 troops to the southeastern state of Bolivar on Monday after people desperate over the government’s elimination of much of the country’s currency looted stores and homes over the weekend.

The unrest took an especially heavy toll on Chinese immigrants, who own many of the grocery stores in the capital, Ciudad Bolívar, and nearby towns.

“Everything was left in ruin,” said Juan Carlos Ho, standing next to the China Cham supermarket in the town of Sifontes, which had been left gutted. “They took the stands, the carts, all of the merchandise, which was a lot, and the air conditioners.”

China, a key economic ally, on Monday called on Venezuela to protect Chinese immigrants and their property.

“China is very concerned about the development of the situation in Venezuela,” China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a news conference in Beijing.

Beijing should try picking better allies.

QUESTION ASKED: Are We In a New Era of Espionage?

The release of the surreptitiously gathered information, either to tip an election in one direction or just to sow disorder, is novel—especially in the context of American elections. During the 2008 and 2012 cycles, political campaigns came under cyberattack, but if anything was stolen, it was never shared with the public.

Despite the unique nature of this intervention, the 2016 cyberattacks square with Russian intelligence techniques reaching as far back as the Cold War. It’s an evolution of the Soviet Union’s “active measures,” a tactic favored by the KGB that involved covertly spreading politically damaging fictions in order to seed discord in an enemy. Houghton pointed to an example: Operation INFEKTION, a Soviet misinformation campaign in the 1980s that claimed the U.S. Army had created the AIDS virus at a research facility in Maryland. The Soviet Union pushed the story particularly hard in Africa, where AIDS epidemics had broken out in several countries, and where the Kremlin was wrestling with the U.S. for influence.

“What we’re seeing, essentially, is a long-running, old, traditional struggle, perhaps being conducted in new ways with new technology,” said John Hughes-Wilson, a former British intelligence officer and the author of The Secret State, a history of espionage. “Do you not think the CIA is working hard—I bloody well hope they are, actually—to try and do stuff in Russia? I mean, why do you guys pay your taxpayer dollars?”

There’s very little that can be done to save hubristic politicians and their enablers from themselves. And there’s plenty of evidence now that the DNC emails weren’t hacked by Russians, but leaked by Democrats.

We can and should however hack-proof our elections by requiring photo ID, paper ballots, and ink-stained fingers.

JIHADI JOHN II: British Extremist Beheads Terrified Prisoner in Shocking New ISIS Video.

EUROPE’S BAD DAY: Gunman Who Shot 3 at Zurich Islamic Center Is Found Dead, Police Say.

A gunman who wounded three people attending prayers after opening fire at an Islamic center in Zurich has been found dead, apparently after committing suicide, the Swiss police said on Tuesday.

“Our investigation says the dead man is the shooter,” Peat Jost, a spokesman for the Zurich police, said by telephone.

Mr. Jost declined to identify the gunman, who the police said was in his 30s, but he said investigators believed he had killed himself.

On Monday, in the hours after the attack, the police found the body of a man on the Gassner Bridge, near the city center and not far from the Islamic center, but did not immediately link him to the shooting.

As tense as Europe is, we’ll likely see more attacks like this.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. ‘Fake News’ Is The Legacy Media Shaking Down Facebook.

Robert Tracinski:

An overview of studies on the fake news phenomenon indicates that Facebook’s critics have it completely backward. People don’t form their political preferences by reading fake news, they seek out fake news to support their political preferences. That goes for both sides, mind you, but given the organizations Facebook has tapped to deal with this issue, I have a feeling that in the new system one side is going be flagged way more often.

Yet for readers of those stories, gaining the official disapproval of Facebook is going to be like being “banned in Boston.” For the right audience, it’s a selling point: “Read the news Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want you to hear!”

That’s why Facebook doesn’t just leave it to users to make their own choices. Instead, flagged stories will be harder to find in Facebook news feeds and won’t be able to promote themselves with advertising. Given how “fact checkers” have played favorites with their ratings, there is a massive incentive for them to abuse this power simply to suppress facts and interpretations that support the other side of the political debate.

That’s kind of baked into the whole idea. After all, nobody was all that bothered by “fake news” until they thought it produced an election result they didn’t like. Then it suddenly became an issue. So from the very beginning, this push to suppress “fake news” is motivated by a desire to suppress undesirable political outcomes.

If you think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, it all makes sense.

A NEW RECORD: Obama Delivers 231 Pardons and Commutations, 49 for Firearms Offenses.

FAKE NEWS: Dallas Cops Have No Record Of Eichenwald Police Report.

A Twitter user under the handle “@jew_goldstein” tweeted an image Thursday with flashing colors saying Eichenwald deserved a seizure. Theresa Eichenwald, his wife, responded from his account, “@jew_goldstein This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.”

Kurt said Friday that police are investigating whether this is a federal crime as he said it is a “cross-state assault.” The Dallas Police Department told TheDC that there is no police report from those dates from either Eichenwald and that they cannot have an investigation without one.

Newsweek told The Daily Caller on Friday that they could confirm that what Theresa has said was true. Newsweek’s managing editor Ken Li told TheDC Monday they had no comment about the lack of a police report filed with the Dallas Police Department.

Li had no further comment regarding Eichenwald. “We’re not handling that, you’re going to have to talk to Kurt,” the Newsweek managing editor said.

If I were having a seizure, I’d rather have my wife by my side than trolling Twitter trolls.

GOOD LORD: At Least 48 Dead in Russia After Drinking Scented Bath Lotion.

At least 48 people died in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after consuming hawthorn-scented bath lotion containing methanol as a cheap substitute for the ethanol in standard alcoholic beverages, the Russian authorities said on Monday.

As the death toll climbed throughout the day, a local prosecutor, Stanislav Zubovsky, told the Interfax news agency that a total of 57 people were known to have consumed the deadly liquid over the weekend.

Consumption of surrogate alcohol is widespread in Russia, particularly in the struggling districts outside the more prosperous cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The sheer number of victims in Irkutsk evoked memories of the years of lawlessness, poverty and social depression that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Leave it to The New York Times to portray Russian life as rosier under Soviet rule.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: Obama warns Trump against using the executive order too much — for real.

WHAT’S SO UNFRIENDING ABOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING? Dems more likely to unfriend people due to political posts.