The inconvenient truth for the GOP is that “defunding Obamacare,” as the House tried to do, wouldn’t stop most of the major provisions of the healthcare law, some of which have already gone into effect. That’s because the new insurance rules, premium subsidies and many other features of the law don’t rely on discretionary dollars; they’re on fiscal autopilot.

via The GOP’s shutdown sham – latimes.com.

An estimated 10,000 Pacific walrus have gone ashore on Alaska’s northwest coast and are bunched along a beach near the village of Point Lay.

The National Marine Fisheries Service says 1,500 to 4,000 walrus were counted Sept. 12 and numbers had swollen to 10,000 on Friday.

The animals are counted using aerial photographs.

Walrus historically use sea ice to rest as they dive for clams and other food on the ocean bottom.

However, sea ice in recent years has receded far beyond the shallow outer continental shelf. Chukchi (chuk-CHEE’) Sea walrus in 2007 began showing up in large numbers on Alaska’s shore in late summer. Last year, there was enough remnant ice to keeps the mammals from going ashore.

Walrus in such numbers are in danger of being crushed in stampedes caused by airplanes, human hunters or polar bears.

via 10,000 walrus come ashore in northwest Alaska – Wire Nation/World – The Sacramento Bee.

By midnight on Tuesday, the leadership failure of Speaker John Boehner was complete. By encouraging the impossible quest of House Republicans to dismantle health care reform, he pushed the country into a government shutdown that will now begin to take a grievous economic toll.

via John Boehner’s Shutdown – NYTimes.com.

“You know, I think it was helpful to talk more about it,” Paul said. “We haven’t had a big debate about Obamacare really since it passed in Congress. And so I think it was helpful to have the debate.”

via Rand Paul Says There Hasn’t Been A ‘Big Debate About Obamacare’ (VIDEO).

It wasn’t a tsunami but it had the same effect: A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors to shut down – a phenomenon that marine biologists say could become more common.

Operators of the Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden had to scramble reactor number three on Sunday after tons of jellyfish clogged the pipes that bring in cool water to the plant’s turbines.

By Tuesday, the pipes had been cleaned of the jellyfish and engineers were preparing to restart the reactor, which at 1,400 megawatts of output is the largest boiling-water reactor in the world, said Anders Osterberg, a spokesman for OKG, the plant operator.

via Wave of jellyfish shuts down Swedish nuke reactor | News , International | THE DAILY STAR.