Free Republic

A record-number of people lost their power across the region thanks to a significant ice storm and power officials warn it could be days before everyone has their electricity back. "Based on the current conditions and the damage across the entire region, we believe service for the majority of customers will be restored by Friday night," said PECO spokesman Ben Armstrong. "However customers in more heavily-damaged areas will be without power through Sunday." PECO Energy, the largest power provider in the Philadelphia region, told NBC10.com the storm was the second worst in their history and worst winter storm outage ever with more...

THIS VIDEO WAS A GOOD MORNING LAUGH

Charles Krauthammer predicted Wednesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that "all hell's going to break loose" if the administration can't fix the problems with the Healthcare.gov website by mid-March. "Right now the insurers are guessing at the subsidy, so all of this is on the honor system and it can be wildly off," Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. "If they undershoot, the insurers are going to go bust. If they overshoot, the government is going to be stuck with a huge bill."

When toxic chemicals spilled into the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia a couple of weeks ago we got another glimpse into what the world might look like in the aftermath of a major, widespread disaster.

Democratic senator Kay Hagan refused to appear with President Obama during his trip today to her home state of North Carolina. But Obama went out of his way to "publicly" thank Hagan anyway: "Your senator, Kay Hagan, couldn't be here. But I wanted to thank her publicly for the great work she's doing," said Obama. Hagan's up for reelection this year.

What do times of disaster teach us about ourselves and society? Is our moral center what it ought to be? In 2005 I worked as a volunteer at a shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. We tried to console confused, hungry, frightened people who had been picked off the roofs of their houses in New Orleans and transported to San Antonio, Texas. One young woman sat on a cot staring aimlessly. In obvious shock, she ignored the activity swirling around her. I stopped, leaned down and asked her if I could help. She looked up with eyes filled with...

Vid at link

They continue to insist that they’re on track for “major improvement” or whatever to the website by November 30th, but if it was as major as they’d hoped, they never would have resorted to this. A little heads up for our twentysomething readers: In case you haven’t decided yet what you’ll be buying with the cash you get for Christmas, good news — Obama and the insurance industry have decided for you. Wait a sec. I thought the reason they set December 15th as the deadline for enrolling if you want your new coverage to start on New Year’s Day...

... The cleanup from Sunday's outbreak of tornadoes had scarcely begun, but people in storm-ravaged towns like Washington, 140 miles southwest of Chicago, had to keep moving.....

“Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.— Bill Clinton, Nov. 12 So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea. Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats...

Before Healthcare.gov’s troubled launch on Oct. 1, the White House estimated nearly 500,000 people would enroll in the Obamacare health exchanges within the first month and an estimated 7 million were expected to gain private coverage by the end of March, when the open-enrollment period is scheduled to end. Now – even before the administration can deliver on its promise to release an official head count of how many people have enrolled for insurance coverage in the first full month of operations – insurance industry analysts on Monday released figures showing the government has signed up a mere fraction of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - Typhoon-ravaged Philippine islands faced a daunting relief effort that had barely begun Monday, as bloated bodies lay uncollected and uncounted in the streets and survivors pleaded for food, water and medicine. Police guarded stores to prevent people from hauling off food, water and such non-essentials as TVs and treadmills, but there was often no one to carry away the dead - not even those seen along the main road from the airport to Tacloban, the worst-hit city along the country's remote eastern seaboard.....

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) - Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings - some of the 10,000 people believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves. As the scale of devastation became clear Sunday from one of the worst storms ever recorded, officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach parts of the archipelago cut off by flooding and landslides. Looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water as...

One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines province of Leyte, a senior police official said on Sunday, with coastal towns and the regional capital devastated by huge waves. Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of the area in its path as it tore through the province on Friday, said chief superintendent Elmer Soria, a regional police director. Haiyan, a category 5 typhoon that churned through the Philippine archipelago in a straight line from east to west, packing wind gusts of around 275 kph (170 mph), weakened significantly...

It has been a rough month for the roll out of the so-called Obamacare website, better known as Healthcare.gov. Although everyone from the administrator, to the Health and Human Services secretary, to the President of the United States has apologized for the chaos, and taken responsibility the failure, the problems still persist. So far, no one has lost their job - or their pay - over the ordeal and a mad scramble is underway to get it fixed. But even when they do get it working, there's likely to be another digital disaster right behind it. ***SNIP*** "The ineptitude of...

The military must prepare for major upheaval, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Tuesday, because meeting the budgetary and security challenges of the future will “require significant change across every aspect of our defense enterprise.” And deep cuts in end strength could be just one of the results. (snip) “We may have to accept the reality that not every unit will be at maximum readiness, and some kind of a tiered readiness system is perhaps inevitable,” Hagel said. “This carries the risk that the President would have fewer options to fulfill our national security objectives.” (snip) “We will need to...

Is this possible? The Wonkblog site shows zero accounts created so far for California, Nevada, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, and Washington.

Well well lookie what the cat dragged in. That's a link to the unsubsidized data dump -- all 78,437 records -- for each county and State under the Obamacare exchange program. I can verify that for at least my state and county the table is correct, since you can now look it up on Healthcare.gov without creating an account first (which I am not about to do.) There are several very interesting statistical facts that come from this. First, if you're "27", the average premium is $266.20/month or $3,194.40 per year. How many 27 year olds have an extra $3,200...

President Obama’s Monday Rose Garden speech replayed the same talking points he has been using for more than three years about Obamacare, while also offering old-tech suggestions, such as telephone hotlines and paper applications, to work around the law’s disastrous website. But enrollment in Obamacare insurance ultimately does depend upon the website’s problems’ being fixed, because the information gathered via phone calls and paper applications must be entered into massive federal government databases to check eligibility. A delay of the individual tax penalties will be inevitable if the site isn’t fixed soon; you can’t penalize people if they can’t...

President Obama promised that, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” But one insurance provider, Florida Blue, is ending about 300,000 policies by sending out cancellation notices to customers. This is about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state, NBC News reports. About 14 million people buy their own coverage because they can’t get it at work. Many have sent notices, according to calls to insurers in several states. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent out cancellation notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh...