Due to the influence of New York as being the financial center of the world, they want to make sure they create solid and consistent regulations without stifling innovation. When asked by the interviewer if the NYDFS is afraid of getting this wrong, he responded that they have given a lot of thought into this and adamantly discards the possibility of a failure.

In a very likely scenario of widespread adoption, New York would like to serve as an example, he adds.

It is another ponzi scam. Just because they are paying out today does not mean they are going to continue to pay forever. They eventually will end up running away with investor money

I think the reason that bitcoin sees so many ponzis is because it is so easy to hide your identity when dealing with bitcoin 

But in the restive regions where the Islamists passage is barely opposed by government forces, few facts – as human rights groups told The Independent yesterday – are verifiable. Even as President Goodluck Jonathan launched his campaign for re-election this week, evidence appeared to emerge indicating that his government’s attempt to prevent Boko Haram forming an Islamic “caliphate” in the northern regions is failing.

As the militants swept through, over-running government forces, one town populated by thousands, Baga, had until last weekend held out against the insurgency.

Protected by a multinational military base manned by troops from Niger to Chad, it was the last place in Borno State under the national government’s control. Over the weekend, that changed. “They came through the north, the west and from the south of the town because the eastern part is only water,” one resident told the BBC. “So, when we [went] toward the western part, we saw heavily armed Boko Haram men coming toward us.”

...
Interestingly enough, Kim Jong Eun also made a different choice than that of his father (Kim Jong Il). In truth, he was engrossed in “Kim Il Sung costume play” ever since his days as successor. He gained weight in order to look like Kim Il Sung, and took on the hairstyle and clothing that were popular in Pyongyang several decades ago. After Kim Jong Il died, he personally delivered the New Year’s Address instead of releasing in the form of the New Year’s Joint Editorial. North Korea’s supreme leader himself is the most effective method of propaganda and agitation: his words become the government’s objectives and the places he visits become managed as “revolutionary historical sites”. People who have personally met the supreme leader are referred to as “receivers” and their consideration by and advancement in the Workers’ Party is guaranteed. These factors would one to assume that North Korean media outlets would be very effective tools in fostering Kim Jong Eun's emulation of Kim Il Sung.

However, Kim Jong Eun’s New Year’s Address delivery on KCTV on Janaury 1st was cloaked in failure. It was said that Kim Jong Eun’s authority was showing a trend of stabilization after Jang Song Thaek’s execution, but Kim Jong Eun appeared patently uneasy in the footage released by North Korean media outlets.
...
The footage reveals Kim Jong Eun to be visibly nervous from beginning to end. He seems unable to be still for even a single moment. The most embarrassing instant is when he grips the podium with both hands and pushes out his rear end. The only way to describe this is to say that he “sways.” Although the lower half of his body from his waist down is hidden by the podium, his hands, shoulders, and gaze lean forward then push back-- and at some moments rock from left to right. Whether due to his smoking or obesity, Kim Jong Eun’s lower half keeps trembling. The camera that must follow Kim Jong Il’s movements also shakes with him.

1)  Stop looking at the market price, dumb idiots

2)  Bitcoins destiny won't be related to its market behavior until consumer adoption begins to affect it.

3)  Right now the entire market "world" is a bunch of day traders, manipulators, speculators, and whales.  

4)  The Bitcoin Market has nothing to with whats going on -------> out there in the field.  In the ecosystem.

5)  The ecosystem is building its infrastructure.  Then will come consumer / enterprise adoption.  

6)  Then you will see a Bitcoin market price that is affected by its actual utility and use.

Not a day before.

Until then, the Bitcoin price has nothing to do with Bitcoin.  Its potential for success.  Nor its potential for failure.

Period.

-B-

Stop treating trolls like celebrities. Morons.

...Everyone make mistakes, but these days police officers do their job while under the often unfair scrutiny of anti-police activists, reporters looking for a big story, and politicians who want to get votes.

Our critics demand that we scrupulously follow ever-shifting rules of engagement as we try to pursue and capture the most dangerous and violent people in our society. And those we seek to apprehend have no such rules of engagement for themselves. They will beat us, stab us, and shoot us if they think it will help them escape.

We're expected to know our communities, be present in schools, and be visible to citizens but we have to do it while being under-staffed and struggling to simply answer each call that comes in; sometimes without any backup.

When we confront someone who a dispatcher or a crime victim says is potentially dangerous, we're expected to know in a split second if that person is grabbing for a gun or just reaching for ID. Our detractors, acting as armchair police commanders, claim that we ought to be able to recognize the difference between someone who’s not following our directions because of a bad day and someone who is escalating a dangerous situation.

And while all this plays out, our families hope and pray that we simply come home safe at the end of our shift.

We chose this job. Most of the time, we love our work. But there’s no doubt that it’s a tough time to be a cop.

So when people step up and “stand with cops,” that helps us. Our spirits lift. Our outlook brightens. That’s when we know that we’re not alone in this dangerous work.

Please join “stand with cops."

~Jay McDonald
President
Ohio Fraternal Order of Police

Yeah, when banks get robbed, you don't lose your money. Just ask Cyprus.  :-)
See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160292. I guess it just depends on if the robber has government backing...

Insurance will be key for Bitcoin businesses holding coins, you are right. Coinbase is a good example of the right way to do it.

There’s nothing like a warm shower when we want to relax or even warm up on a cold winter day. The idea of subjecting ourselves to cold showers can actually seem crazy at times given how luxurious it has become to enjoy hot showers. But the truth is a cold shower can provide a lot of benefits that you may want to consider.

1. Improves Immunity & Circulation

Running cold water over your body at the end of a shower can improve circulation as blood is sent throughout your arteries to surround your organs. It can be viewed in the same way we run certain systems at high performance every so often to keep it maintained and well oiled. Increased blood flow can also help certain skin and heart issues as well as lower blood pressure, help clear blocked arteries and improve our immune system.

2. Improves Hair and Skin Condition

Hot water can dry out your skin and hair. Of course, it doesn’t help that there are high levels of chlorine coming out of our showers which has a drying-out effect on skin and hair as well. If you can run your shower colder or finish cold at the end, it’s a natural way to keep your skin and hair from drying out as cold water tightens cuticles and pores. This helps to prevent natural oils on the scalp and skin to be stripped away so easily. By keeping a proper oil balance you will have soft, shiny natural looking hair. This also helps to keep the skin and scalp cleaner as well.

If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties in America today are under siege.

It didn’t happen overnight. It took many years of neglect for our liberties to be given away so casually for a promise of security from the politicians. The tragic part is that the more security was promised — physical and economic — the less liberty was protected.

With cradle-to-grave welfare protecting all citizens from any mistakes and a perpetual global war on terrorism, which a majority of Americans were convinced was absolutely necessary for our survival, our security and prosperity has been sacrificed.

It was all based on lies and ignorance. Many came to believe that their best interests were served by giving up a little freedom now and then to gain a better life.

The trap was set. At the beginning of a cycle that systematically undermines liberty with delusions of easy prosperity, the change may actually seem to be beneficial to a few. But to me that’s like excusing embezzlement as a road to leisure and wealth — eventually payment and punishment always come due. One cannot escape the fact that a society’s wealth cannot be sustained or increased without work and productive effort. Yes, some criminal elements can benefit for a while, but reality always sets in.

Reality is now setting in for America and for that matter for most of the world. The piper will get his due even if “the children” have to suffer. The deception of promising “success” has lasted for quite a while. It was accomplished by ever-increasing taxes, deficits, borrowing, and printing press money. In the meantime the policing powers of the federal government were systematically and significantly expanded. No one cared much, as there seemed to be enough “gravy” for the rich, the poor, the politicians, and the bureaucrats.

This is no wonder because all government is rotten, but the huge scale of Washington’s rottenness is such as to command our attention. The word “rotten” has 4 different meanings, and the U.S. government qualifies on all 4 counts. One, suffering from decay. Yes, Washington (as center of government) is filled with maggots and worms. Washington is a heap of garbage. Its policies stink and so do its pronouncements. An unpleasant spirit of deceit, lies, cover-ups and secrecy emanates from it and spreads. Two, morally, socially or politically corrupt. Any government that attacks and ruins one nation after another is morally bankrupt. Any government that surrenders to special interests is politically corrupt. Any government that spies relentlessly on its citizens, inflicts huge debts on its children, and treats drug users as criminals is socially corrupt. The lies and violence that Washington imposes on its subjects alone qualify it on this dimension. Three, very bad, meaning atrocious, inferior and substandard.

All governments are bad, and all U.S. governments have been bad. The current string of U.S. governments since the year 2000 is, however, if not worse then certainly a contender for being among the worst. Seldom have we seen such stupidity, idiocy, blindness and obtuseness in any U.S. governments since the Vietnam war. And the U.S. entry into and conduct of that war were totally rotten. The Bush and Obama governments have been particularly stupid, having blundered destructively and murderously through one foreign country after another and now confronting both Russia and China. Their financial mismanagement domestically has been stupendous. The waste has been horrific. Fourth, extremely unpleasant. Yes, the government has been frightfully bad, terrible and lousy. Has there been even one bright spot of even minor significance? Having recognized torture and spying, has anything come of it? One cannot expect louses to de-louse themselves.

Can decay of this scale be reformed? Not within the confines of current institutions, current politics and current beliefs of Americans. Washington got this way under the current rules of the political game, the current alignment of political forces and the current underlying beliefs and values of Americans. Conventional thinking will not clean these stables. Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and all the other putative candidates with conventional careers and beliefs promise only more of the same: rotten government.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make significant changes to the employer mandate provision in President Barack Obama's 2010 health-care law, changing the definition of a "full-time employee" from one who works 30 hours a week, to one who works 40 hours. The effect of this bill is going to be negligible, because Republicans won't have enough votes to override a presidential veto. Even as a bit of political theater, it was puzzling.


The employer mandate is more popular than other elements, like the individual mandate, that Republicans might have attacked. So it's not clear what Republicans gain from going on the record in favor of quasi-repealing it.


Of course, Republicans might rejoin that they had an obligation to pass a good bill, even knowing that it would be unpopular and that President Obama would never let it take effect. That brings us to the next question: Why did they think this was a good bill?
I'm not arguing that Republicans now have an obligation to fix the bloated mess they've inherited from the Democrats; if they think that they can fatally damage a bad program, they have every right to do just that. What I am arguing is that weakening the employer mandate is not going to get them any closer to repealing Obamacare. Indeed, the reverse is true. If they actually succeeded in getting this bill passed into law, all they would do is further entrench the 2010 health-care bill.


After all, a weaker employer mandate will push more people onto the exchanges. Many of those people would be receiving subsidies. The more people who receive subsidies, the harder repeal of the whole law will be. And since the exchanges, and the associated regulations, are the law's most problematic part, it's hard to see why Republicans want to push more people into that part of the system, and hasten the sclerosis that makes programs so hard to kill or change once they have accumulated a lot of users. We haven't even discussed the extra cost of providing subsidies to millions more people.


Republicans seem to like taking votes against Obamacare so much that they'll vote for anything that undoes what Democrats put in place--even if that thing costs a bunch of money, and takes them further from their stated goal of repealing the whole bill. They need a better hobby.

Might I suggest they take up finding a viable replacement instead?

The Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul is concerned that a wave of attacks by jihadis with American passports could occur in the Unites States in the near future.

“Our investigation will include how are we identifying Americans over there and how are we stopping the travel back into the United States,” McCaul told The Daily Caller. “In other words, how can we keep them off airplanes? Are we doing that adequately enough? We are doing it currently, but the question is how well and efficiently are we doing it?”

McCaul discussed the similarities to the terrorists with French citizenship who committed the deadly acts in Paris this week. He said, “They are different than the guys radicalizing over the internet. These are clearly foreign fighters trained and came back to Western Europe and France,” he said. “We’re very concerned about that happening in the United States. My committee is going to launch an investigation into foreign fighters so we can stop this from happening here in the United States.”

WASHINGTON—The U.S. posted its strongest year of job growth in 15 years and the unemployment rate fell to a postrecession low last month, evidence of momentum for the labor market marred by softer wages and a rise in workforce dropouts.

Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 252,000 in December, the Labor Department said Friday, with broad-based gains across a wide array of sectors.

The unemployment rate, which is obtained from a separate survey of U.S. households, was 5.6% in December, down two-tenths of a percentage point from the prior month and now at its lowest level since June 2008. However, the decrease was driven in part because people stopped looking for a job.

“Today’s job’s report—again—was very strong and shows the labor market is maturing and economy performing soundly,” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. “However, the earnings data was a bit disappointing.”

Stagnant wages have limited household budgets and been a check on consumer spending. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers fell 5 cents to $24.57 in December. The average workweek held steady at 34.6 hours in December.

Over the past year, hourly earnings are up a mere 1.7%, barely ahead of inflation’s 1.3% rate.

“The simple fact is we cannot consider an employment report a success, no matter how healthy the headline may be, if wage data does not begin to accelerate,” Dan Greenhaus, chief strategist at BTIG, said in a note to clients.

Another month, another attempt by the BLS to mask the collapse in the US labor force with a goalseeked seasonally-adjusted surge in waiter, bartender and other low-paying jobs. Case in point: after a modest rebound by 0.1% in November, the labor participation rate just slid once more, dropping to 62.7%, or the lowest print since December 1977. This happened because the number of Americans not in the labor forced soared by 451,000 in December, far outpacing the 111,000 jobs added according to the Household Survey, and is the primary reason why the number of uenmployed Americans dropped by 383,000.

Record-low gas prices across the U.S. have given rise to fresh talk in Washington of raising the federal gas tax for the first time in over 20 years, with leading Republicans now saying a hike must not be ruled out.

The GOP has long resisted calls from business leaders and others to boost the 18.4 cent-per-gallon tax as a way to pay for upgrades to the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges.

Yet in recent days, senior Senate Republicans have said they want to keep options open and that "nothing is off the table" when weighing the best mechanisms to pay to finance infrastructure projects.

"I just think that option is there, it's clearly one of the options," said Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla.), new chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the third-ranking Senate Republican, also said they were open to the possibility of raising the tax.

Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress, meanwhile, declared this week that “now is the time” for an increase.

While major obstacles stand in the way — namely the House of Representatives —business groups believe there is a real chance to raise the tax in the final two years of the Obama administration.

“Comments this week from Sens. Inhofe, Hatch and Thune signal a growing recognition that the gas tax is a fair and consistent way to fund our infrastructure needs,” Association of Equipment Manufacturers spokesman Michael O’Brien said in an interview on Thursday.

Democrats have typically been more open to the idea of hiking the gas tax, but it’s the shift in Republicans' tone that is drawing more attention to the possibility.

Inhofe argues lawmakers "don't have a choice" but to consider raising the gas tax, which he says is more accurately called a "user fee" — a characterization the founder of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, has yet to sign off on.

Americans for Tax Reform said it is still opposed to the idea of increasing the gas tax, despite the recent decline in fuel prices.

“Before Congress even thinks about asking Americans to pay higher prices at the pump, it should make sure that the $33 billion the federal government collects annually from drivers is spent efficiently,” the anti-tax group said in a statement that was provided to The Hill.


The tax reform group, however, did not say whether it would consider a gas tax hike this year a violation of its anti-tax pledge, which is signed by almost every Republican in the nation who runs for federal office.

Inhofe said he has a response to those who may pushback against considering the fee as a viable option.

"I remind my conservative friends, and people who ask the question about maybe as a part of a package having to increase the user fees, that this is what we are supposed to be doing," Inhofe told The Hill in a brief interview.

"The user fee is very, very popular. The evidence of that is a lot of states are doing that on their own because 'well if the federal government won't do it we've got to do something about the roads,'" Inhofe said.

Thune (R-S.D.) isn't outright for raising the tax, but stuck by comments he made during an interview with "Fox News Sunday, saying "we have to look at all options."

Thune noted that he doesn't think a proposal to increase the tax would garner enough votes in Congress, "unless it's done in the context of the broader tax reform debate."

"That is not my preference for how to fix this infrastructure issue," Thune added.