Free Republic

WASHINGTON — One of the latest Obamacare pitches to get young adults to sign up for health insurance starts out with a mother's kitchen note reminding her grown son to enroll. "Mom, you know I can't afford it," the young black man protests, as he sits down at a kitchen table next to a bespectacled woman with a laptop computer linked to the U.S. federal enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. "But for the first time you can," she replies reassuringly. "You go to the HealthCare.gov website, compare quality plans and you could get help paying for it."

**SNIP** In a detailed, national poll released last month by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, nearly half of young voters said they would recall President Obama if they could. Only 41 percent approved of the job Obama was doing, an 11-point drop from six months earlier. It’s a trend line that top Democrats are worried about, and one that top Republicans are trying to exploit leading into the 2014 midterm elections. “People should be concerned about those numbers,” said Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic strategist. “We’ve got to make sure young voters understand the stakes.”

Under Obama, Youth Misery Index Hits All-Time High A Youth Misery Index that measures young Americans’ woes has skyrocketed under President Barack Obama and hit an all-time high. The index, released Wednesday, was calculated by adding youth unemployment and average college loan debt figures with each person’s share of the national debt. While it has steadily grown over the decades, under Obama the figure has shot up dramatically, from 83.5 in 2009 to 98.6 in 2013. The index has increased by 18.1 percent since Obama took office, the highest increase under any president, making Obama the worst president for youth...

The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a "target-rich communications network" where intelligence targets could "hide in plain sight". Games, the analyst wrote, "are an opportunity!". According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a "deconfliction" group was required to ensure they weren't spying on, or interfering with, each other. If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the NSA document. They could be used as a...

Mounting opposition to ObamaCare among young adults is creating a new crisis for the White House. While the federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov appears to be improving by the day, polls show the “young invincibles” key to making the law work are becoming less likely to enroll. Younger people were skeptical of the healthcare reform law even before its troubled rollout, despite their support for President Obama. But polling indicates the problems facing HealthCare.gov — a site the administration initially touted as a hip, tech-friendly experience — have reinforced their doubts about the need to have health insurance at all. “The...

If I were a young person, I would think twice about signing up for ObamaCare. Besides the healthcare.gov website being a huge hassle, here are some reasons to just BLOW IT OFF: --It is not worth the price you are being charged to pay for yourself AND us older folks who don’t need your help, AND pay for a lot of things you don’t need that are required in ObamaCare policies (like sex-change operations). --Not only are you paying for old people’s healthcare, you will be paying an estimated 18% more for insurance over your lifetime. It’s a bad deal!...

The terrorists who attacked the Benghazi consulate last year knew the location of the safe room where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his security team sought shelter, according to a congressman who spoke for 90 minutes with the diplomatic security agent severely injured in the assault. "He confirmed this - that it was a very well orchestrated, and well organized, almost a military operation, using military weapons and using military signals," the late Florida Rep. Bill Young said after meeting diplomatic security agent David Ubben at Walter Reed Medical Center last summer, when both were patients there. ...

(CNN) - The White House tried to woo young Americans into the new health exchanges Monday night, releasing a study suggesting nearly half of eligible Americans between 18 and 34 can purchase coverage for less than $50 per month. The study also helps to push back against consumer tales of Obamacare sticker shock and frustration of some Americans that their current health plans can't continue under the new law. But one insurance industry source told CNN the vast majority of Americans on the individual insurance market will see modifications to their existing plans, or even cancellations.

<p>Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.</p>

Guy already delivered the pathetic news of only 51,000 people signing up for Obamacare so far, but to make things worse, young people are still dodging the exchanges like the plague. Cathy Reisenwitz explains why in Forbes: Experts say that young, healthy people must enroll in ObamaCare’s health exchanges to cover the cost of insuring sicker, older people. It’s a simple math equation: Charge everyone roughly the same rate for access to basically the same product. The people who use it less will subsidize the people who use it more. The problem with this plan is that it hoses young,...

The Obama administration is eager to hear your sob stories about how the government shutdown is inconveniencing you (ignoring, just like after Sequestration occurred, that it was their own bad behavior and poor choices that led to this “shutnadown”) all because they want to try to remind people that they are miserable and they totally had nothing to do with it. It was all the Republicans! Look! Something shiny! In the interest of sharing both sides of the story, I’m sharing a letter written by a friend on tumblr about her Obamacare “sob story” which seems a lot more menacing...

Neil Young, a high-profile proponent of cars powered by alternative fuels, was recently stranded on the highway when his own $1 million biomass-powered hybrid car broke down. **SNIP** Young was on his way to an environmentalist festival in Canada, according to the Sierra Sun, driving his custom-made hybrid electric 1959 Lincoln Continental.

WWE star Darren Young gave a TMZ cameraman the shock of his life. During a standard interview at Los Angeles Airport LAX, the cameraman began quizzing Young about his opinions about gay wrestlers, asking if “a gay wrestler could be successful within the WWE.”

School officials in Calvert County, Maryland have denied a request to expunge the suspension of the kindergartener who brought a plastic cap gun on a school bus last month and then wet his pants during a subsequent interrogation. The refusal came in the form of a letter dated Friday, reports The Washington Post. The letter stated that the five-year-old “did bring a cap gun in his book bag.” It also charged that some other children were frightened and told school officials that they couldn’t discern if the orange-tipped cowboy-style gun was real or fake. The unidentified kindergartener had brought the...

Today’s teenagers are more materialistic and less interested in working hard than the baby boomers were in their teens, according to a new study. But sorry, boomers, the researchers say it’s probably your fault for creating a culture that breeds narcissism and entitlement.

Newly minted college graduates soon entering the job market could be facing another hurdle besides high unemployment and a sluggish economy. Hiring managers say many perform poorly—sometimes even bizarrely—in job interviews. Human resource professionals say they've seen recent college grads text or take calls in interviews, dress inappropriately, use slang or overly casual language, and exhibit other oddball behavior.

“What’s the matter with Kansas?” syndrome of young people voting against their economic interests. Thus follows the constant courting of the hip and cool Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lena Dunham, Occupy Wall Streeters, and others who blend pop culture, sex, youth, energy, and fad — almost anything to avoid the truth that today’s teenagers are starting out each owing a lifetime share of the national debt amounting to more than three-quarters of a million dollars. Those who ran up the debt enjoyed the borrowing, but won’t be around to pay back their proverbial fair share.

I’ll say this much: At least in this example it’s her own kid instead of a room full of other people’s children (and I’m assuming the audience watching the segment at the time consisted of fewer people than the average kindergarten classroom). From The Blaze: Regardless of where you stand on the issue of gay marriage, few will likely agree with MSNBC host Krystal Ball’s decision to use her young daughter to promote gay marriage during a segment titled “Political Playground” on Thursday. “What if you were in love with a girl? Would you marry a girl?” Balls asks her...

For a Republican Party embarked on a mission of modernization, an ethnic slur uttered by a senior House Republican this week offered an unwelcome reminder of the past. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) used a derogatory term for Latinos in a radio interview Thursday, less than two weeks after the Republican National Committee issued a post-election report that called for broadening the party’s tent. The comment, coupled with an anti-gay remark that an RNC official posted on his Facebook page this week, highlighted the challenge Republicans face in their nascent effort to woo a more diverse cross section of America as...

WASHINGTON - One of the House of Representatives’ longest-serving Republicans now says he meant “no disrespect” when he used the term “wetbacks” to describe migrant workers his family once employed. His comment, which drew a strong rebuke from the House speaker, flies in the face of his party’s effort to improve outreach to minority groups.