2014 elections

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News/Politics 11-13-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Looks like the President is once again going to ignore the will of the American people.

From FoxNews  “President Obama is planning to unveil a 10-part plan for overhauling U.S. immigration policy via executive action — including suspending deportations for millions — as early as next Friday, a source close to the White House told Fox News. 

The president’s plans were contained in a draft proposal from a U.S. government agency. The source said the plan could be announced as early as Nov. 21, though the date might slip a few days pending final White House approval. 

Obama was briefed at the White House by Homeland Security officials before leaving on his Asia-Pacific trip last week, Fox News has learned.”

“The plan calls for expanding deferred action for illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children — but also for the parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. The latter could allow upwards of 4.5 million illegal immigrant adults with U.S.-born children to stay, according to estimates.”

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2. Add another to the list of Democrat losses.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Dan Sullivan has defeated Democratic incumbent Mark Begich in the Alaska Senate race, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday evening.

The Republican challenger led by more than 8,000 votes with 100 percent of precincts reporting the day after last week’s midterm elections. The AP had been waiting on Alaska to begin counting more than 53,000 absentee, early-voting and questioned ballots.”

“But Alaska officials counted roughly 20,000 votes on Tuesday, and Sullivan’s lead remained at about 7,900 votes.”

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3. Oh look, ACORN is back (again) and instigating in Ferguson.

From AmericanThinker  “Ferguson’s Don’t Shoot Coalition members are supplemented by professional social activists, from in, and outside, Missouri.

Two such groups are profiled below – one that is a member of the coalition, and one from outside Missouri that saw the crisis in Ferguson as an opportunity to “accelerated the quest for social justice.”

“But Hands Up United has a vision that “means an end to state sponsored violence, including the excessive use of force by law enforcement. We are committed to an America that comes to terms with the trauma of its painful history and finds true reconciliation for it.  Mass incarceration and the criminalization of black and brown people must forever end, leaving in its place a culture that embraces our histories and stories.  This means an end to racial bias and white supremacy in all its forms.”

“MORE’s Form 990’s for 2010-2012 list annual gross revenues for those three years as $90,943, $127,308 and $333,896. On the 2012 Form 990, Jeffery Ordower is listed as the unpaid Executive Director and Secretary. A phone call to MORE confirms Ordower is still the group’s Executive Director.

On September 28, 2009, a 24thstate.com article, entitled “‘Show Me’ The ACORN CEO’s Rolodex,” identified Ordower as the Midwest Regional Director for ACORN, based in St Louis.”

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4. Why college isn’t for everyone.

“The funny thing is: Every time the federal government increases the amount of money that college students can borrow, college tuition goes up. But teaching isn’t a commodity like oil or wheat or steel whose actual value goes up and down due to market forces.

Standing in front of kids and twice a week and teaching them that America is responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened in the world—and anyone who has the audacity to disagree with a college professor is completely evil—pretty much costs the same year in and year out.”

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News/Politics 11-5-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Ride the Wave.

From TheAP  ” Riding a powerful wave of voter discontent, resurgent Republicans captured control of the Senate and tightened their grip on the House Tuesday night in elections certain to complicate President Barack Obama’s final two years in office.

Republican Mitch McConnell led the way to a new Senate majority, dispatching Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky after a $78 million campaign of unrelieved negativity. Voters are “hungry for new leadership. They want a reason to be hopeful,” said the man now in line to become majority leader and set the Senate agenda.

Two-term incumbent Mark Pryor of Arkansas was the first Democrat to fall, defeated by freshman Rep. Tom Cotton. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado was next, defeated by Rep. Cory Gardner. Sen. Kay Hagan also lost, in North Carolina, to Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state House.

Republicans also picked up seats in Iowa, West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana, all states where Democrats retired. They had needed a net gain of six seats to end a Democratic majority in place since 2006.

In the House, with dozens of races uncalled, Republicans had picked up 11 seats that had been in Democratic hands, and given up only one.”

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2. I’m kind of glad she won because she has some explaining to do.

From FoxNews  “Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was looped in on a plan with Lois Lerner and President Barack Obama’s political appointee at the IRS to lead a program of harassment against conservative nonprofit groups during the 2012 election, according to letters exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) did not want to publicly release 2012 correspondences exchanged between the IRS and Jeanne Shaheen at her personal Washington office: the agency delayed releasing the information to a major conservative super PAC multiple times, even threatening to see the super PAC in court, according to emails.

But the letter in question comes out now, on the eve of Jeanne Shaheen’s bid for re-election to the United States Senate.

“The IRS is aware of the current public interest in this issue,” IRS chief counsel William J. Wilkins, a White House visitor described by insiders as “The President’s Man at the IRS,” personally wrote in a hand-stamped memo to “Senator Shaheen” on official Department of the Treasury letterhead on April 25, 2012.”

This proves that it was a lie that this was just rogue agents in Cincinnati. Democrats and the White House orchestrated it.

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3. And in other election eve/night news dumps….

From NationalReview  “Justice Department officials provided House investigators with thousands of documents related to Operation Fast and Furious that President Obama had previously claimed were exempt from congressional review.

In an “election eve dump,” as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) put it, DOJ handed over 64,280 pages of documents, a release that is still only a partial fulfillment of the committee’s request.

“This production is nonetheless a victory for the legislative branch, a victory for transparency, and a victory for efforts to check Executive Branch power,” Issa said of the release.”

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4. Now maybe some of those House passed bills will see the light of day in the Senate. Harry being bounced is an extra bonus.

From Politico  “Chuck Todd seems to believe that Harry Reid’s days as the top Senate Democrat are through.

“I don’t think — I will be surprised if Democrats keep Harry Reid,” Todd, the moderator of NBC’s “Meet The Press,” said late Tuesday night. “I think this is going to be an open question inside the Senate Democratic Caucus.”

Todd’s remark, made during a late night NBC News livestream, was among the boldest calls made by a member of the media on Tuesday, and certainly the most dire for the current Majority Leader. It’s not an unfair projection, either. As Nevada’s Jon Ralson recently reported, Reid’s “vaunted political machine” failed to drive Democrats to the polls this year, and Reid’s poor Senate stewardship has “induced senators and candidates he has helped to muse openly about not voting for him as leader.”

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News/Politics 11-3-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let’s hope they’re accurate.

From FoxNews  “Republican Senate candidates are pulling away in the final days of key races, according to polls released this weekend.

Republicans are either leading in Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana or will likely win runoff elections, according to a NBC/Marist poll released Sunday.

In addition, the Republican nominee in Iowa, Joni Ernst, now has a 7-point lead over Democratic challenger Rep. Bruce Braley, according to a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday.

Most polls have shown until now that the four races have essentially been deadlocked in the closing weeks.”

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2. The govt. made 20 billion in purchases this year that it’s allowed to keep secret from taxpayers.

From NBC/Washington  “The federal government has spent at least $20 billion in taxpayer money this year on items and services that it is permitted to keep secret from the public, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team.

The purchases, known among federal employees as “micropurchases,” are made by some of the thousands of agency employees who are issued taxpayer-funded purchase cards. The purchases, in most cases, remain confidential and are not publicly disclosed by the agencies. A sampling of those purchases, obtained by the I-Team via the Freedom of Information Act, reveals at least one agency used those cards to buy $30,000 in Starbucks Coffee drinks and products in one year without having to disclose or detail the purchases to the public.

A series of other recent purchases, reviewed by internal government auditors, include wasteful and inappropriate purchases by government employees — including a gym membership and JC Penney clothing — that were not detected or stopped until after the purchase was completed.

The I-Team’s findings have been the subject of a Congressional hearing and created scrutiny from taxpayer watchdogs for the Department of Homeland Security, which made the Starbucks purchases and declines to publicly detail them.”

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3. Here’s more waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money.

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4. Not shocking to anyone who’s been connecting the dots.

From TheDailyCaller  “The deadly EV-D68 enterovirus epidemic, which struck thousands of kids this fall, was likely propelled through America by President Barack Obama’s decision to allow tens of thousands of Central Americans across the Texas border, according to a growing body of genetic and statistical evidence.

The evidence includes admissions from top health officials that the epidemic included multiple strains of the virus, and that it appeared simultaneously in multiple independent locations.

The question can be settled if federal researchers study the genetic fingerprint of the EV-D68 viruses that first hit kids in Colorado, Missouri and Illinois to see if they are close relatives to the EV-D68 viruses found in Central America.”

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5. This is how not to do it. Let people with no military experience micromanage military decisions.

From TheDailyBeast  “Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

Making matters worse, military officers and civilian Pentagon leaders tell The Daily Beast, is the ISIS war’s decision-making process, run by National Security Adviser Susan Rice. It’s been manic and obsessed with the tiniest of details. Officials talk of sudden and frequent meetings of the National Security Council and the so-called Principals Committee of top defense, intelligence, and foreign policy officials (an NSC and three PCs in one week this month); a barrage of questions from the NSC to the agencies that create mountains of paperwork for overworked staffers; and NSC insistence on deciding minor issues even at the operational level.

“We are getting a lot of micromanagement from the White House. Basic decisions that should take hours are taking days sometimes,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.”

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News/Politics 10-30-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. A glitch in the program or intentional vote fraud by the programmers?

From CapitolCityProject  “An Illinois man was well aware of the stories dealing with votes being switched from Republican to Democrat on touch voting machines in his county and decided to record his own results using the camera on his phone.

What exactly did he capture as he was voting? His votes appear to be marked Democrat even though he is trying to vote Republican. The video is slowed down at points to show where his finger is landing.”

I’d have an easier time believing it’s a glitch if it didn’t always seem to favor the Democrats.

Here’s another.

From BaltimoreCBS/Local  “Early voting just started last week in Maryland, but there are already accusations that some voting machines are changing Republican votes to Democrat. Now Republicans are calling for an investigation by the State Board of Elections.”

“As Marylanders go to the polls, there are concerns that the vote you cast may not be for the candidate you want.

“We’ve heard from scores of citizens in our district and around the state who have had this problem where they hit one button to vote for one person, and when they go to the summary they see that the other person was checked,” said Del Nik Kipke, (R) Anne Arundel County.

Republicans say they’ve received several dozen reports of Republican votes being changed to Democrat.”

So is the SEIU still involved with machine maintenance and programming?

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2. Sure, and the dog ate my homework. 🙄

From TheDailyCaller  “The Democrat-controlled Senate Select Committee on Ethics said that it never received a complaint pertaining to Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and the Obama administration’s efforts to approve visas for certain investors, according to a government watchdog group, despite previously confirming that it received the complaint — and saying that it opened an investigation.

The nonprofit government accountability organization Cause of Action sent the ethics committee, chaired by Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a recent letter asking for follow-up on its Dec. 16, 2013 complaint, which detailed Reid’s ex parte communications with then-U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas, who now serves as deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.”

“Senate Ethics Committee Chief Counsel and Staff Director John C. Sassaman called Cause of Action to state over the phone that the committee “never received” the complaint, according to Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein.

But Cause of Action received a signed returned receipt from the Senate mail dated Dec. 20, 2013, according to the organization.”

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3. Doctors are opting out of ObamaCare exchanges.

From CNSNews  “Over 214,000 doctors won’t participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It’s also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In January, an estimated 70% of California’s physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1.      Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar – they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. “It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60,” a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. “For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California’s Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement by up to 40 percent.”

2.      Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that’s not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. “Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been without insurance for extended periods of time, and therefore will require more of the PCPs time at lower pay,” says the study.

The study also points to two reasons that doctors might not get paid at all:“

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4. This lady has an attitude problem. The state is also seeking a court ordered quarantine.

From NBCNews  “Kaci Hickox, the nurse who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, vowed to fight Maine officials who are seeking a court order to force her to self-quarantine at home.

Hickox, who is holed up in a house in the town of Fort Kent, gave the state until Thursday to let her move freely and threatened to take the matter to court herself. But Maine Health Commissioner Mary Mayhew said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon that “when it is made clear by an individual in this risk category that they do not intend to voluntarily stay at home for the remaining 21 days, we will immediate see a court order.”

Mayhew didn’t use Hickox’s name because of privacy regulations, but Hickox is the only person in the state known to have had direct exposure to Ebola patients. Asked specifically about Hickox’s case, Mayhew replied, “We will make it mandatory.”

Hickox emerged from her home Wednesday to tell reporters that she and her attorneys had been in negotiations all day with state officials but that the impasse remained.”

The President says they’re unnecessary, yet the military is ordering it for returning soldiers. Talk about mixed messages.

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