While Obama is desperately trying to bring back the manufacturing economy of the mid-20th century, a completely different industry is taking off right under his nose. This industry is, of course, tech, where new startups providing all manner of services are appearing left and right, promising to radically reshape the workforce. As software development and new business formation has been streamlined, innovation is happening faster than ever before.

How might a decision not to buy Obamacare insurance play itself out? Over at Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz printed an email he received from a healthy thirty-two year old who has decided to pass on getting insurance. Unsurprisingly, many readers were disgusted at the Brooklynite’s email, saying it was his own bad choices that had put him in this position. But young adults are suffering the effects of, among other things, high costs of living in many cities, exploding educational costs, a dysfunctional health care system, and a poor job market—all problems caused or made worse by Boomers and the blue model systems they support

The protestors were marching past a university in central Bangkok toward the opposition leaders’ main rabble-rousing stage when the grenade exploded. 36 injured people were rushed to nearby hospitals. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban was in the crowd but unhurt. Minutes later, on stage, Suthep railed against the government agents he says were responsible for the attack: “We are not afraid and we will fight on,” he thundered.

If you’re one of the 40 million Target shoppers whose credit card information was compromised last month, you’ve probably been wondering who, exactly has control of your data. Although we still have no conclusive data, a new report found that much of the code the hackers used was written in Russian, and many are speculating that the criminals in Eastern Europe and Central Asia may be behind this. If the Russian Mob is this good, just think what the world’s governments are up to.

Rather than passive-aggressive–and sometimes just aggressive–tit for tat between China and India, the Chinese ambassador to India has chosen a softer tack, penning a couple of soothing op-eds in mainstream Indian newspapers rather than the usual angry rants issued by the foreign office in Beijing.

After promising to create a series of “manufacturing institutes” to bring manufacturing jobs back to America almost exactly a year ago, President Obama is finally ready to open the first one. On a visit to North Carolina this week, Obama announced to a group of college students that the first of these institutes will soon open in their state thanks to a $70 million grant from the Department of Energy and a the contributions of a number of manufacturing firms.

Wikileaks struck again earlier this week, releasing a draft report of the Environment Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The report was written in much the same style as the edicts issued after the annual meeting of the do-nothing UNFCCC: a lot of verbiage surrounding what countries should be doing to protect the environment and stave off climate change, but no binding resolutions to back up these suggestions. As predictable as this lack of enforcement mechanisms should have been, various green groups are shocked, shocked, that the enormously complex trade agreement didn’t include green provisions with any real bite.

American democracy suffers when we place the responsibility for defense on an increasingly narrow segment of the population. We need a more republican country, and a more democratic military.

The dangerous saboteurs that comrade Stalin warned us about are keeping baby formula off of Venezuela’s shelves. President Nicolas Maduro is here to stop them. In the mean time, add milk and sugar to the list of chronic shortages in the country with the world’s biggest oil reserves.

A group of former generals and senior defense officials is warning against the seductive myth of American energy independence. Fracking and horizontal well drilling are giving the United States a lot more oil and gas, but they aren’t making us independent from foreign suppliers. In fact, because oil is a globally traded commodity, even if we produced as much oil as we consumed (an unlikely proposition), supply disruptions abroad would still affect the price of oil here. Barring an isolationist energy policy—a logistically fraught idea that would really upset our allies—America won’t be energy independent as long as it consumes oil. The Commission on Energy and Geopolitics expanded on these concerns in its inaugural report on U.S. energy security.