MATT DRUDGE SLAMS BOEHNER FOR PROMISING TO PASS OBAMATRADE: ‘CLEARLY TREASON’

Matt Drudge took to Twitter to deliver an ongoing tirade against Republicans’ eagerness to deliver a fast-track trade bill to President Obama’s desk. The bill’s details have not been made public — which hasn’t stopped Republicans from surrendering Congress’s power to make amendments to a president’s future trade deals.

Should a Republican presidential candidate lose the 2016 general election, the Trade Promotion Authority bill could be to blame. Keeping the bill’s details from voters was “clearly treason,” Drudge tweeted.

   

Via: Breitbart

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Are You a #ProudAmerican? Here's How to Share Your Pride!

FNC

Are you Proud American? Show your pride and send Fox News your pictures on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using #Proud American !

TIto Alvarez

@titoalva51

getting ready to celebrate memorial weekend!. Thanks to the heroes who died while serving the best country in the world.#ProudAmerican

6m

Fox News Opinion

@fxnopinion

The day President Bush's tears spilled onto a Marine's face at Walter Reed ow.ly/NjnNn #ProudAmericanpic.twitter.com/w9wT1h1jMN

Via: Fox News

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The President Finally Gets an Official Twitter Account

Yesterday morning, Barack Obama officially joined Twitter — except, didn’t he do that already!?

Wait, whoa, what?! Why are you now @POTUS? Bobama, didn’t you practically invent political Twitter? Aren’t you already @BarackObama? Or @WhiteHouse? What’s the deal here?

Let us explain!

According to the White House, @POTUS will be the official account of the President of the United States, regardless of who holds the office. So while Obama will be able to tweet from @POTUS for the next two years, showing the world his fighter jets and Instagrammed breakfasts and policy whatnots, the handle will be given to the next President as a symbol of the peaceful democratic transfer of powerthat makes America great.

(As an analogue, Pope Francis inherited @Pontifex from Pope Benedict XVI, who is currently locked in a library with old encyclicals and probably doesn’t care for having his own Twitter account. The Vatican itself has its own Twitter account.)

On the other hand, the White House’s Twitter account belongs to whatever administration sits in the executive mansion, while @BarackObama, which became a symbol of 2008 Obama’s tech-savvy campaigning, is run by the Obama for America team. Obama himself occasionally tweets from that account, but by having an official account for the Presidency, can disentangle his official Tweets from his campaigning/advocacy/community organizing Tweets.

As for why it took so darn long to get an official @POTUS account up and running — let’s just assume the White House and Twitter worked for a long time to secure a direct Presidential Twitter account that doesn’t allow the President to DM Anthony Weiner pics.

Welp, this is a neat story out of the White House; nothing could possibly make it seem odd. Oh…

Via: Mediaite

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Tweet Of The Morning: U.S.S. Obama On The Way To Confront Putin

Via: Weasel Zippers

Follow-up: Tweeters Indicate Thanksgiving Obamacare Conversations Didn't Help the President's Cause

In the runup to Thanksgiving, Organizing For Action, the group whose sole mission is to promote President Barack Obama's agenda, with the "help" of an absolutely horrid video, encouraged its members to "have the talk with your loved ones" about signing up for Obamacare.

Just before Thanksgiving, as P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters noted on Thursday, two Huffington Post writers suggested that changing the subject away from Obamacare might be the better move. Even Andrew Rosenthal at the Obama-loving New York Times was concerned: "I question the wisdom of directing people to a cheery ad for the exchanges before they, you know, work. The president’s communications team is just asking for it." Based on tweets collected by the intrepid Twitter monitors at Twitchy.com, they got it (some individual tweets were given minor edits; bolds are mine):

Thanks, Obama! Here’s what happened when Obamacare came up at Thanksgiving dinners

... For some families, Obamacare at the holiday table was a recipe for disaster. New Thanksgiving tradition: Screaming arguments.

Thanks, Obama (six tweets on this list and the one which follows were selected from longer compilations — Ed.):

- "My family is drunk and screaming at each other about Obamacare."
- "Family fighting over Obamacare. lol here we go."
- "Yay! Inevitable Obamacare extended family argument time!"
- "Arguing about Obamacare and social media at the dinner table…. I'm so done wow can I sleep now?"
- "Oh no. Someone brought up health insurance and obamacare and now theres lots of yelling."
- "Everybody's drunk and yelling at eachother about obamacare and its not even 5 yet."

But Obamacare chatter at the dinner table didn’t just lead to misery. For some, there was family unity … but not in the way Dems intended:

- "We held a family vote on Obama Care and we were unanimous in being "agin" it. First time we've all agreed on anything."
- "Followed obama's advice to discuss #obamacare during turkey dinner. Family consensus was obama is worst Pres in US history."
- "Well we sat down as a family and all talked about the failure of #obamacare today at dinner. Thats what we were supposed to do, right?"
- "We discussed #Obamacare at Thanksgiving dinner. We all still agree that it sucks."
- "The only remotely liberal family member at Thanksgiving dinner today didn't say a word in defense of Obamacare. Sorry, @OFA."
- "Here was our conversation about O'care at dinner; Obamacare sucks, now please pass the mashed potatoes" - "#Obamacare talk w family went better then expected. They all agreed ACA should be repealed!!"
- "We discussed obamacare over dinner as we were instructed. First time this family has been in total agreement about anything. Obamacare SUCKS"

I wonder if Rosenthal of the Huffington Post writers plan any kind of follow-up on the "Health Care for the Holidays" initiative? (/sarcasm)

Via: Newsbusters.org

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Healthcare.gov site advertising SQL injection attacks

Via Alex Hern on Twitter, we find that the Obamacare website has attempted website attacks in its search box, automatically prompted for you if you type or mistype the right letters or punctuation.

This tells us a few things: there is a lack of polish in the Healthcare.gov website, there are many people who want to break into the website, and there isn’t much confidence in the security of the website. All of these things should be troubling to people with data in that system.

For the curious, let me explain what’s going on with these searches. These searches are attempting variants on a website attack called an SQL Injection attack. SQL is a programming language used very commonly for databases attached to websites, storing information used by the site.

Sites that store information in databases need to take input from the user (such as a URL, or a search box) and put that into a request to the database. The text from the public has to go into the SQL. That’s a problem, because malicious users who understand SQL could put SQL into their searches, running whatever commands they want on the database.

There are ways to fix that, though. The programmer can pre-process the text from the user to remove any ability to harm or control the database. It’s not always easy, because attackers can be tricky, but it’s a solved problem. Sanitizing inputs is a known, defined problem with known, defined solutions at this point. Any website worth anything should be using it, as long as the developers are competent at all.

However, people don’t have much confidence in the government to be fixing this properly.Randall Munroe made light of the problem way back in 2007. So what we’re seeing is that many, many people are attacking Healthcare.gov to test for these basic exploits, enough that the attacks are being suggested in the autocomplete feature!

Via: Red State

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Top Clinton Aide Podesta Calls for Single Payer Health Care

Clinton confidante John Podesta came out as another critic of Obamacare just moments after President Barack Obama finished his tense press conference announcing changes to the law.

Podesta remarked on Twitter that it just took him only five minutes to apply online for Medicare, a clear contrast with the disaster that individuals attempting to sign up for Obamacare have faced.

“Single payer anyone?” remarked Podesta, alluding to a major difference between Medicare and Obamacare, and one of the major policy objectives of many on the left.

Podesta is reportedly in discussions to take over the leadership of super PAC Priorities USA as it prepares to transition into full support of Hillary Clinton’s potential 2016 run for president. Podesta formerly served as chief of staff to Bill Clinton during his presidency, and has had a role with the Clinton family foundation as well. His brother, Tony, runs one of the largest lobbying firms in Washington, which the two cofounded together. Medicare does not appear to be a client of the firm.

Bill Clinton also came out as a critic of Obamacare earlier this week.

“I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got,” said Clinton in an interview on Tuesday.

Via: WFB

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Twitter's huge rally draws its share of skeptics

Twitter's debut as a publicly traded stock couldn't have gone much better Thursday, yet market pros remained cautious about its future.

In fact, it was the ferocity of the share price increase that scared even those who are bullish on the microblog social media network.

"Twitter the product is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in 31 years of tech investing," Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners co-founder, said on CNBC's "Fast Money Halftime Report." "It just came out of nowhere."

However, investors know there's a difference between a great company and a great stock, and Twitter watchers fretted that enthusiasm may be outpacing fundamentals.

It's a trading stock today. Maybe it will be a trading stock for a while," McNamee added. "Me personally, I wouldn't buy here. Then again, I would never buy on the day of any IPO. That's just not how I work. I wait until things settle out and people have figured out what it's really worth. Once the emotions come out of it, that's the time I look to buy a stock like this."

Bob Peck, the first analyst to put a "buy" rating on the stock, told CNBC investors shouldn't be overly impressed with the debut and understand instead that they'll need to be in it for the long haul if they want to get real value.

He spoke as Twitter rolled to a 72.7 percent single-day gain to close at $44.90 after pricing at just $26.

The boom drew its share of skepticism, with Pivotal Research christening the stock with its first "sell" rating, based primarily on valuation. "With a price that pushes into the high 30s and beyond, Twitter is simply too expensive," the firm said.

Via: CNBC

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Twitter’s Market Valuation Suggests Wall St. Sees Huge Growth Potential

Twitter is a young company generating large losses as it competes in a highly uncertain sector of the economy.

And that is exactly why investors clamored for a piece of its initial public offering, which closed on Wednesday evening.

Twitter’s shares were priced at $26, giving the company an overall value of $18.1 billion, including stock that the company is likely to issue to employees. That makes Twitter worth more than many storied American corporations, likeAlcoa and Harley-Davidson. At that valuation, each of Twitter’s 230 million users around the world is worth $78. Going by such numbers, the public offering has been a tremendous success for the company, which raised $1.8 billion from the offering, a hefty war chest.

All this is impressive for a company that has racked up more than $300 million of losses in the last three years — and may not show real profits until 2015.

But investors are betting that Twitter is virtually destined to become wildly profitable as advertisers pay it increasing amounts of money to reach consumers who use the service.

“The possibilities and opportunities afforded by the platform are limitless,” Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, said in a company presentation to promote the offering. Still, if recent history has anything to teach, the euphoria is unlikely to last.

The fast-changing world of technology can be cruelly unpredictable. It tripped up companies like Groupon and, for a while, Facebook, Twitter’s much larger rival for advertising dollars. If Twitter also slips up, its shares could tumble fast, too.

“That’s always the peril of high-growth stocks,” said Lawrence Levine, a partner and a specialist in financial valuation at McGladrey, an accounting firm. “So much of the valuation is embedded in the expected growth rate.”

Via: NYT

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Twitter prices IPO at $26 per share

Twitter, the quirky 140 character messaging service that’s become a global phenomenon, priced its initial public offering at $26 per share, valuing the seven-year-old company at over $18 billion.

Twitter (TWTR) will raise $1.8 billion to fund future expansion by selling 70 million shares, which will open for trading on Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange. Some analysts say the shares are worth $50 or more, so the price could explode higher once trading begins.

Started in 2006 as a simple way to share short messages and status updates among friends, Twitter has grown to 232 million active users who post 500 million tweets per day about everything from personal thoughts to celebrity gossip and breaking news.

The deal is the highest profile Internet IPO since Facebook (FB) raised $16 billion last May. And Twitter could rank as the second-largest debut of a U.S. Internet company in history if it ultimately surpasses the $1.92 billion raised by Google (GOOG) in its 2004 IPO, according to Dealogic. Underwriters of the Twitter deal have the option to sell up to another 10.5 million shares, if needed, under a standard IPO clause called the greenshoe option, pushing the total value to over $2 billion.

Twitter and its Wall Street underwriters led by Goldman Sachs (GS) are hoping the deal goes smoother than Facebook’s IPO last year. Facebook shares faced delayed trading due to technical glitches, then couldn’t hold above the IPO price of $38 due to oversupply and doubts about the company’s mobile strategy.

Via: Yahoo Finance
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TWITTER BOOSTS IPO PRICE RANGE

Twitter's confidence appears to be increasing ahead of its initial public offering set for later this week.

The 7-year-old short messaging service on Monday boosted the price range for the IPO, saying that it now expects to price its shares at between $23 and $25 each. It previously planned to sell the shares for between $17 and $20 each.

At its new range, the IPO could raise more than $2 billion.

The increase doesn't come as a big surprise. Many observers considered the previous pricing to be relatively conservative, given that Twitter is poised to pull off the year's hottest IPO. And some predicted that rather than set its expectations too high; the company would likely raise its pricing in the days leading up to the IPO.

Twitter said in its regulatory filing that it still plans to sell 70 million shares. If all of those shares are sold, the offering's underwriters can buy another 10.5 million shares.

At the $25 share price, Twitter's market value would be around $15.6 billion. Twitter's value is based on 625.2 million outstanding shares expected after the offering, including restricted stock units and stock options.

Some analysts had expected that figure to be as high as $20 billion. But Twitter's caution suggests that the company learned from Facebook's rocky IPO last year.

Facebook's IPO was marred by technical glitches on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in May of 2012. As a result, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest ever levied against an exchange. Those problems likely led Twitter to the New York Stock Exchange.

The San Francisco-based company plans to list its stock under the ticker symbol "TWTR" on the NYSE. Twitter will begin trading on the NYSE on Thursday morning after setting a price for its IPO sometime Wednesday evening.

Via: Breitbart
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Fox's Jim Angle: HealthCare.gov Wouldn't Talk to Me, Knew I Was in the Media

Maybe the folks running the HealthCare.gov call centers don't have an enemies list. Instead, based on the experience of Fox News's Jim Angle, it might be an enemies directory, with anyone they're aware of in the media and perhaps other organizations included therein.

That's what one almost has to think based on the experience Angle recounted on the air and relayed via Twitter Friday (HT Twitchy; individual Angle tweets are here, here, and here):

---

The body of Angle's report was also important, because it showed how another aspect of President Obama's core promise to the Americans people — this time, it was "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period," won't pan out, because Obamacare plans are deliberately keeping the number of doctors in their networks low to try to control costs.

Angle's on-air summary: "So the site seems to be more successful at identifying reporters than explaining the options and signing people up for health insurance."

Based on how Angle relayed the story, it would appear that the only way the helpful HC.gov call center folks could have determined that Angle was a likely media member was by cross-checking his given address against an existing list or directory of media members' home addresses.

If that's the case ... Wow. Talk about paranoia.

If a member of the establishment press had received this kind of creepy treatment at a citizen service line during the Bush 43 administration, I daresay it would have gotten noticed by the likes of the New York Times and the Associated Press.

I don't think that's going to happen this time around.

Here's one reaction to Angle's second tweet:

 They can track you but they can't enroll you now that is weird.

I can think of a few other words more apt to the circumstances than "weird."

Via: Newsbusters

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Government ‘Mining’ Social Media for Information on Health Behavior

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is “mining” Facebook and Twitter to improve its social media footprint and to assess how Tweets can be used as “change-agents” for health behaviors.

The NLM, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will have software installed on government computers that will store data from social media as part of a $30,000 project announced last week.

“The National Library of Medicine is the world’s largest biomedical library and makes its stored information available online at no charge to consumers, health professionals, and biomedical scientists through a diverse suite of resources,” the agency said in a contract posted on Oct. 23. “Evaluating how its databases and other resources are utilized is an important component of continuing quality improvement and has long been an on-going program of NLM management through a potpourri of monitoring tools.”

“The world-wide explosion in the use of social media provides a unique opportunity for sampling sentiment and use patterns of NLM’s ‘customers’ and for comparing NLM to other sources of health-related information,” the agency said.

“By examining relevant tweets and other comments,” the contract said, “NLM will gain insights to extent of use, context for which information was sought, and effects of various health-related announcements and events on usage patterns.”

Via: WFB

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At President’s Urging, People Call Exchange Hotline But Can’t Get Through - Update - Lines are down

President Obama emerged on Monday to assure Americans that the “kinks” surrounding the federal and state health-care exchanges are improving and urged consumers to call the exchange hotline if they continue to encounter problems online. Shortly after he made the suggestion, Twitter lit up with reporters and others who attempted to do so but failed to get through to a navigator as promised. After dialing the number, some callers got a busy signal, others received an automated message, and yet others were referred back to Healthcare.gov.

In his speech, President Obama said that there was “no excuse” for the problems plaguing the website and assured Americans, “These problems are getting fixed.” He also said that the issues with the online exchanges do not reflect flaws in the legislation itself, which he said offers a high-quality product.

Via: NRO

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'ASININE’: DAVID AXELROD’S STRANGE ‘SPIN’ FOR OBAMACARE SAVAGED ON TWITTER

David Axelrod may not officially work for President Obama anymore, but you wouldn’t know it by the former White House adviser’s Twitter statement Sunday defending Obamacare by spinning its failed online rollout:

Image source: Twitter via Twitchy

Twitter users didn’t take long to excoriate Axelrod’s eye-opening apologetic:

Image source: Twitter via Twitchy

Via: The Blaze

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Readers React: Our Health Insurance IS Going Up!

On Friday, Heritage asked: “How much is your health insurance going up?” Here are some of the answers that came pouring in through email, Facebook, Twitter, and even Tumblr.

Our email responses included this from Kristalyn N.:

From Twitter:

James Woods criticizes Obama, says he doesn't expect to find work in Hollywood again

Tell us what you really think, James.

Actor James Woods has been quite vocal with his criticism of President Barack Obama in the wake of the government slimdown, and the “Too Big to Fail” star said, as a result, he now expects to struggle to find work in Hollywood.

Woods has been busy tweeting about the slimdown and the President, focusing in particular on the fact that veterans have been unable to visit war memorials in Washington D.C.

“This President is a true abomination. To have barricaded the WW2 vets, but allow illegal aliens privilege...” Woods tweeted on Oct. 8.

But Woods, 66, was just warming up. The actor also called Obama “just vile. A small, small man.”

That prompted one of his followers to ask if the actor was concerned his political views would affect his ability to find gainful employment in Hollywood.

“Dude, aren't u worried about...u know..ever working again??” the Twitter user asked him.

Woods replied: “I don’t expect to work again. I think Barack Obama is a threat to the integrity and future of the Republic. My country first.”

Via: Fox News

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MEET THE ‘ONE-MAN MILITIA’ CUTTING GOV’T LAWNS WHILE D.C. REMAINS IN SHUTDOWN (AND WHO ONE OFFICER TRIED TO STOP): ‘IT’S JUST THE RIGHT THING TO DO

With Congress gridlocked and non-essential federal groundskeepers furloughed, one man has stepped forward to ensure the manicured hedges and lawns of the nation’s capital remain pristine in advance of this weekend’s Million Vet March, a protest of veterans demanding their memorials remain open.

Chris Cox, 45, has never served in the U.S. military, but his respect and appreciation for our nation’s veterans has inspired him give back. “You don’t have to be a veteran to have a love of country,” Cox explained in an exclusive interview with TheBlaze Wednesday evening. To that end, he turned a trip to a D.C. art convention into an opportunity to give back. “Everyone serves in a different way. I’ll just cut a little bit of grass.”

Armed with a leaf-blower, a lawnmower and the South Carolina state flag, Cox is on a one-man mission this week to clean up the National Mall and have it ready to welcome the veterans.  It’s not about politics, “it’s just the right thing to do,” he says.

Chris Cox mows the lawns surrounding the Lincoln Memorial as he carries the state flag of South Carolina. (Image: Twitter)

When a cell phone camera captured Cox in action mowing the lawns surrounding the Lincoln Memorial, his story spread like wildfire across Twitter. TheBlaze featured the inspiring image on the blog and it became an instant hit on Facebook.

After trying his hand as a stand-in security guard looking after the memorials, Cox says he quickly found a more effective role for himself.  “I figured out that I could play a… valuable role as a janitor, if you will,” he explained in an interview with All-News 99.1 reporter John Domen Wednesday. “So I started cleaning up the overflowing trash cans. I bought a blower and I’ve been blowing all of the trails, and today I cut the grass out here.”

Via: The Blaze

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