U.S. President Speaks to U.N. About YouTube Video Posted in June by Southern Californian

(CNSNews.com) - In an address to the United Nations General Assembly today, President Barack Obama dedicated several long passages to discussing and condemning what the New York Times has described as a 14-minute "amateurish video" that a 55-year-old Southern California man posted on YouTube in June.

Obama also told the United Nations that with modern technology efforts to control the flow of information have become “obsolete.”

The Obama administration had originally suggested that the video in question—which the New York Times said was a trailer for a movie entitled “The Innocence of Muslims”—may have been responsible for inspiring a mob to attack the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11 and to kill U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

However, the Libyan prime minister said last week that the attack on the U.S. consulate was pre-planned. Also, the chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday that not only was the attack planned but also that there was reason to believe it had been carried out by al Qaeda or an al Qaeda-affiliated group and that he had seen no evidence that there had even been a demonstration outside the consulate before the attack.\

Via: CNS News

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U.S. Government Celebrates Terrorist Who Craved to Nuke the U.S.

 Last week the Environmental Protection Agency kicked-off its celebration of “Hispanic Heritage Month” with an e-mail message featuring Che Guevara along with his famous slogan, “Hasta la Victoria Siempre.”

Let’s hope these U.S. civil servants were innocently unaware of some of Che Guevara’s other slogans:

• “The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!”
• “Against those hyenas [Americans] there is no option but extermination!”
*” We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies’ very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! (the U.S.)
• “We must keep our hatred [against the U.S.] alive and fan it to paroxysm! “
• “If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

U.S. taxpayers pay U.S. government employees to celebrate the author of the charming sentiments above. Fine. As usual only a few Americans of Cuban heritage have complained about the EPA’s “gaffe.” As usual, most of the people Che Guevara craved to incinerate view this EPA “gaffe” as silly obsession by hyper-sensitive and loudmouthed Cuban-Americans.

But Che Guevara’s hate-obsession was actually the U.S. Most of the defenseless Cubans he murdered in cold blood, he murdered because he thought they were affiliated with the U.S. (“U.S.-Backed” Batista, the CIA, etc.) In fact probably 90 per cent of the men (and boys, and some women) his regime murdered had no affiliation with Batista whatsoever and most had fought the Batista regime‚Äîbut alas, as non-communists

Via: Canada Free Press

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Chevy Volt Battery Plant Struggling Despite $151M From Obama Admin

Another in a long list of Obama-touted and tax-supported "green energy" companies is on the verge of going out of business, this time in Michigan.

Two years ago, President Obama visited the LG Chem battery plant in Holland, Michigan. He then hailed the plant, saying, "You are leading the way in showing how manufacturing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America."

But today, those LG Chem jobs Obama claimed were "coming back" are seeing intermittent layoffs instead of growth.

In 2010, the plant, which supplies batteries for the Chevy Volt, received $151 million in tax money from the U.S. Department of Energy, but it has been good money after bad.

Today, $133 million of that $151 million has been spent, but since April, the company's 200 workers have been on "rolling furloughs" because the electric vehicle market has failed to blossom as promised by many.

In 2010, the plant was projected to create 443 new jobs within five years. Those projections have been shelved as the company says it can't predict when the furloughs will stop for its current employees.

A second Chevy Volt battery plant in Michigan has also been forced to implement layoffs due to the failure of the electric car market in the U.S.

Lithium-ion battery manufacturer A123 Systems was awarded $249 million in federal government tax dollars but ended up laying off employees despite the government's cash infusion. The plant might have closed entirely if China hadn't invested an additional $465 million in the plant. Even still, its future is murky.

Via: Breitbart

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ROMNEY CAMPAIGN TO SHIFT STRATEGY: WHAT WILL NEXT FOUR YEARS LOOK LIKE?

According to Mitt Romney adviser Ed Gillespie, the campaign willrefocus its message this week to hone in on President Obama’s vulnerabilities in the Rust Belt, particularly in Ohio. “We are talking not only on the president’s performance over the past four years, but the cost of his policies going forward,” said Gillespie this morning. Romney would center his argument on “how four more years of the last four years is not going to be good for the American people.”

This is a strategy Romney should have embraced long ago. President Obama has failed entirely to say what he would do with a second term, other than “finish” what he started – which could mean anything from full-scale social engineering to implementing Obamacare to raising taxes. Romney should have been pointing out all along that the only indicator of what Obama will do for the next four years is what he has done the last four years – Romney has been far more specific about what he would do in a first term than Obama has been about what he would do in a second.

Gillespie also said that Romney would hit Obama on trade policy, particularly with regard to China. Ohioans are generally less pro-free trade than other states around the country, since they have a heavy manufacturing base consistently undercut by foreign nations who use cheap labor and environmentally unfriendly working conditions, and who don’t tolerate private unions. “I think it’s clear that the message on China has resonated not only with the voters,” said Gillespie, “but you can tell with the response from the Obama campaign.”

It’s about time Romney embraced a campaign that has both strategy – broad overall messaging – and tactics. Targeting specific group will be necessary for him to swing particular states, especially battleground states that rely on small numbers of independents to swing for or against a candidate.

Via: Breitbart

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Complaints Mount Against Michelle Obama’s New Lunch Menu

In Wisconsin, high school athletes are complaining about not getting enough to eat each day, due to the skimpy new school lunch menu mandated by the United States Department of Agriculture and First Lady Michelle Obama.

The story we published earlier this week on that subject is unfortunately not unique. Students across the country are complaining about the new school lunch regulations.

Perhaps the real motive is to starve students into slimming down. Just ask students in Pierre, South Dakota who, too, are in an all-out revolt.

"I know a lot of my friends who are just drinking a jug of milk for their lunch. And they are not getting a proper meal," middle school student Samantha Gortmaker told Keloland.com.

Despite the fact that the new regulations have increased the cost of a lunch 20 to 25 cents per plate, it’s not pleasing students.

Some are throwing away their vegetables while others are adapting to the rules by becoming industrious. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, students have created a black market - for chocolate syrup. The kiddie capitalists are smuggling in bottles of it and selling it by the squeeze, according toSouthCoastToday.com.

Nancy Carvalho, director of food services for New Bedford Public Schools, was quoted as saying that hummus and black bean salads have been tough sells in elementary cafeterias. That means even smaller children are going through the day fighting hunger pains, which can never be considered a good thing.

One government official tried to put the blame on the students.

"One thing I think we need to keep in mind as kids say they're still hungry is that many children aren't used to eating fruits and vegetables at home, much less at school. So it's a change in what they are eating. If they are still hungry, it's that they are not eating all the food that's being offered," USDA Deputy Undersecretary Janey Thornton was quoted as saying.

Ms. Thornton just put her finger on the problem. The government is trying to impose a new diet that children are not accustomed to. It’s not reasonable to expect them to either eat what the government deems healthy or go hungry.

Many will opt to go hungry, and that’s the government’s fault.

Via: Townhall

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'60 Minutes’ Interview Causes Headache For White House

AP

’60 Minutes’ interview causes headache for White House

President Obama, in agreeing to a lengthy interview with "60 Minutes," may have created his own "bump in the road."

The president was facing heavy criticism from Republicans Monday for, in the course of that interview, referring to Middle East unrest as "bumps in the road," conceding "mistakes" in campaign ads and appearing to dismiss concern about Iran's nuclear program as "noise."

Romney's campaign seized on all three of those comments, and by Monday afternoon was hammering the president for the Middle East remark -- perhaps in a bid to return the favor after Democrats kept Romney against the wall last week defending his hidden-camera remarks on the "47 percent" of Americans who don't pay taxes. In the CBS interview, Obama said supporting the Arab Spring was the "right thing" to do but acknowledged there would be "bumps in the road" in the process.

"These are no bumps in the road. These are human lives," Romney retorted at a campaign stop in Colorado. On ABC News, Romney also said: "I can't imagine saying something like the assassination of ambassadors is a bump in the road."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was hit with a string of questions at Monday's briefing about the "60 Minutes" interview. The most aggressive accusation by the Romney campaign merited the most aggressive response from Carney.

The accusation about Obama's Middle East comments, Carney said Monday, is "both desperate and offensive."

He rejected the idea that the president was minimizing the recent violence -- in which four Americans were killed in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and others have been killed in the course of raging protests across a number of countries.

"The president was referring to the transformations in the region," Carney said. "There is a certain rather desperate attempt to grasp at words and phrases here to find political advantage and, in this case, that's profoundly offensive."

That wasn't the only line Carney had to carefully explain Monday.

Romney's campaign had also criticized the president for his comments on Israel.

Via: Fox News

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CBC Chairman: ‘We Cannot Even Find an Instance of Voter Fraud’

(CNSNews.com) - Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emmanuel Cleaver said Thursday “we cannot even find an instance of voter fraud,” but a Justice Department fact sheet tells a different story.

“We’ve had 176 restrictive bills regarding voting laws that have been proposed in 41 states. Now understand that we cannot even find an instance of voter fraud. In the last 20-something years, the Justice Department has investigated like two,” Cleaver said during a panel discussion on voter ID laws.

However, according to a Justice Department fact sheet dated July 2, 2008, over 140 individuals have been charged with election fraud offenses and over 100 people have been convicted of voter fraud since the Attorney General’s Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative was launched in 2002.

Cleaver claimed that the voting public has been under attack since 2011.

“We never would have predicted in the 1970s or in the 1980s that in the year 2011 that we would be fighting an attempt to suppress or discourage minority voting power,” he said.

Via: CNS News

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Polls Show Romney Crushing Obama Among Veterans In Key Battleground States…

Veterans retreating from Barack Obama

President Barack Obama is trying hard to win veterans, but it looks like they’d prefer a new commander in chief.

The Obama campaign had been hoping that veterans and their families — especially among the post-Sept. 11 generation that served in Iraq and Afghanistan — would be part of their path to victory: They’re a high turn-out demographic and concentrated in battleground states, with nearly 1 million each in North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, and 1.6 million in Florida.

But recent polls make clear that the president’s campaign is losing the battle. Even as Obama leads in Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Mitt Romney is up by double digits among veterans in those states. Nationwide, he’s got a commanding 20-percentage-point lead over Obama and has even overtaken the president with younger veterans.

(Also on POLITICO: Mitt's transition efforts intensifying)

“It’s no contest,” said Maurice Tamman, a Reuters data news editor who has polled on veterans and the presidential campaign.

Obama’s campaign has been trying to improve on a historical Democratic disadvantage on national security and among veterans by touting the killing of Osama bin Laden, ending Iraq combat operations and winding down the war in Afghanistan. They’ve also been talking up the administration’s attention to veterans’ benefits and efforts spearheaded by first lady Michelle Obama, hoping to appeal not just to the troops but to the spouses and other military family members who have coped with long separations and multiple deployments.

(Also on POLITICO: Dan Senor: U.S. 'looks impotent')

Instead, even as Obama has been gaining in the overall polls, several NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls conducted from Sept. 9-11 had Romney well ahead of Obama among veterans in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. And in Colorado, a poll released Sept. 16 by SurveyUSA and the Denver Post found both veterans and military families supporting Romney over Obama 53 percent to 39 percent in a survey that included third-party candidates.

Via: Politico

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Carry on campaigning: Romney sweeps critics aside

Republican battles to revive his fortunes in Ohio as allies turn their anger on candidate

Even as he prepared to answer calls from within his own party to sharpen his message and ramp up his schedule of public rallies, beginning with a three-day bus tour through Ohio, Mitt Romney managed to insist that he was running a "very effective" campaign for President last night , adding that it was "doing a very good job".

One week after voters glimpsed the Republican challenger telling a private gathering of rich donors that 47 per cent of Americans are welfare-dependent "victims" he can't worry about, Mr Romney now finds himself under brutal pressure to return to the offensive against President Barack Obama and reverse a recent slide in public opinion polls, especially in battleground states including Ohio.

Yet, the candidate may have startled even his closest loyalists by professing in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes last night that all remains well with his campaign. That has hardly been the verdict of some pundits even in the Republican camp like Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, who clarified at the weekend what she had said earlier last week about the 47 per cent debacle. "The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant 'rolling calamity'," she wrote.

But Mr Romney appeared to view things very differently. "I've got a very effective campaign. It's doing a very good job … It doesn't need a turnaround," he boldly told CBS. Referring to some recent national polls that show him and President Obama in a dead heat, he went on: "We've got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent President."

Via: The Independent

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Blamer-In-Chief: I Bear “Full Responsibility For Everything”…

(CNN) – President Barack Obama discussed his frustration with gridlock in Washington, saying his "biggest disappointment" in his nearly four years in office has been the failure to oversee change in the nation's political climate.

"My biggest disappointment is that we haven't changed the tone in Washington as much as I would have liked," Obama said in a CBS News interview that aired Sunday.

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Asked if he bears any blame for the stalemate, Obama said the buck stops at his desk.

"I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything, to some degree," he said on CBS' "60 Minutes."

Throughout the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney's campaign and Obama’s critics have dogged the president for failing to get certain legislation passed in recent years, while Team Obama responds by faulting congressional Republicans for not compromising.

The tension has especially heightened as Congress faces a looming, end-of-the-year deadline to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a massive amount of tax hikes and spending cuts set to take place at the beginning of 2013 if Congress fails to act. Lawmakers on both sides have already showed signs of firm partisan division on the issue.

Obama's comments aired days after the president drew criticism from Romney over separate remarks about change in Washington, comments that suggested a slight tweak in Obama's 2008 ideals of "hope" and "change."

Via: CNN

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Chart of the Week: 70% of Spending Goes to Dependence Programs

Federal spending concentrated on the 47 dependence-creating government programs that include housing, farm subsidies, and entitlements now comprises more than 70.5 percent of total federal expenditures as of 2010, according to Heritage’s Index of Dependence on Government.

This represents the fourth year in a row that the Index of Dependence on Government has risen, increasing by nearly a third — 31.73 percent — in that time span.

As Heritage’s Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, noted this week:

The 2012 Heritage Index of Dependence on Government found that 63.7 million Americans received either Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Social Security, or support for higher education—an 8 percent increase over the previous year. These same people were very likely to receive other federal benefits, such as Medicare or food stamps. Separately, The Wall Street Journal found that in 2011, 49 percent of Americans lived in a household where at least one member of the family received a government benefit.

Then there are the 78 million baby boomers who have begun to head into retirement. Further whittling the taxpayer rolls, many  are projected to be substantially if not entirely dependent on Social Security and Medicare, further exacerbating the federal spending crisis that currently exists.

Via: The Foundry

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SHHH… OBAMA’S APPROVAL RATING TANKS TO DANGEROUS NEW LEVEL

Shhh… Don’t tell the biased Obama media.

Obama’s approval rating sank to a dangerous new level this month. The president has an approval rating at 46 percent and a disapproval rating at 48 percent.
Business Insider reported:

Obama’s approval rating in Gallup’s rolling survey has plunged 6 percentage points in two weeks, a troubling sign that puts him on shaky historical ground for re-election.

Obama’s approval rating is down to just 46 percent, down from a high of 52 percent after the Democratic National Convention. His disapproval rating, meanwhile, now stands at 48 percent, up from 42 percent after the DNC. Altogether, that’s a 12-point swing in two weeks.

Recall why the 50 percent threshold is important, per Gallup managing editor Jeffrey M. Jones:

The 50% approval mark is significant because post-World War II incumbent presidents who have been above 50% job approval on Election Day were easily re-elected. Presidents with approval ratings below 50% have more uncertain re-election prospects. Historically, two presidents below 50% in their final approval rating before the election — George W. Bush and Harry Truman — won, and three, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, lost.

Don’t expect this to make any headlines.

Via: Human Events

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BUSH TAX CUTS VS. OBAMA STIMULUS

President Barack Obama is presiding over what even CBS News admits is “the worst economic recovery America has ever had.” During this “recovery,” unemployment has been over 8 percent for 43 months in a row. The President has tried to spin his way out of these numbers, recently announcing, “Today we learned that after losing around 800,000 jobs a month when I took office,business once again added jobs for the 30th month in a row, a total of 4.6 million jobs.” While not perfect, he admits, this performance is better than what we can expect to see under President Romney, who wants to return, says Obama, to “the failed policies of the past,” that is, to “the same tax cuts and deregulation agenda that helped get us into this mess in the first place.”

BUNK.

The idea that George W. Bush was some kind of deregulator is easily debunked: as Obama himself admitted, “I have approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.”

But Bush did indeed cut taxes, most notably in 2003. Did that policy “fail”? How did it’s results compare to Obama’s record?

It’s true that the private sector has added 4.6 million new jobs over the past 30 months. But during the 30 months after the Bush tax cuts went into effect in August 2003, the private sector actually added even more jobs – 5.3 million according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Survey.

Via: Human Events

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160! – We have 160 Federal Programs That Deal With Housing

Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) senior communications advisor and speechwriter, Amanda Carpenter, who was recently a columnist for The Washington Times, penned an interesting post on the senator’s page, the Pickpocket, concerning how many federal programs deal with housing.  A whopping 160 federal programs is “how many the Government Accountability Office tallied in a recent report that noted, ‘fiscal realities raise questions about the efficiency of multiple housing programs and activities across federal agencies with similar goals, products, and sometimes parallel delivery systems.”

The post, which Carpenter wrote on September 20, also reported that:

…HUD runs the majority of the programs, 91. The United States Department of Agriculture, which also administers farming aid and the nation’s food stamp program, offers 18 different types of housing assistance as well. The Internal Revenue Service has 14 programs. The Department of Treasury offers 8 programs; the Department of Veterans Affairs 7; the Department of Labor 2; Federal Home Loan Banks 3.

The rest of the activities are run through a number of organizations, such as the Department of Interior,  the Federal Reserve System, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, Farmer Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to name a few.

Here’s GAO’s complete inventory of programs, available in the “Table of Contents” on this page.

If President Obama had truly wanted to consolidate wasteful government programs, he sure had the chance. Especially when it comes to housing. He just never took it.

GAO recommended that the government begin taking action to consolidate programs at HUD, USDA, and Treasury, a goal completely compatible the Single Family Housing Task Force that the Obama Administration announced in February 2011.

Carpenter noted that this finding has amounted to little more than a press release.  However, it’s another episode in the annals of government inefficiency.  For a minute – I thought that this could be the foundation for a good movie, but I forgot that it’s already been made.

Via: Green Room

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President Obama: Redistributionist in Chief and ACORN's president

The truth is still the greatest threat to Obama and the greatest hope for the American dream.

It's incredible, but true, that a redistributionist ACORN guy could be elected President of a center-right nation like the United States.

It's true because the truth about Obama and his socialist views and ACORN connections was not generally known and the liberal media establishment wanted it that way.

Audio (www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFSY2dnTSZQ)of Obama:

"...I definitely welcome ACORN's input. You don't have to ask me about that. I'm going to call you even if you didn't ask me.

"When I ran Project Vote, voter registration drive in Illinois, you know, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it. Once I was elected, there wasn't a campaign that ACORN worked on down in Springfield that I wasn't right there with you. Since I've been in the United States Senate, I've been always a partner with ACORN as well. I've been fighting with ACORN, alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career."

It should not be a shock that Obama lied about his redistributionist views. He previously lied about his involvement with the ACORN political party in Illinois, known as the New Party. See www.wnd.com/2012/06/obama-member-of-acorns-3rd-party/, where it is reported that "[t]he socialist-leaning New Party had such a close relationship with the controversial group ACORN that at one point the two shared an office address, fax lines and email addresses" and the New Party "sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda."

As an Illimois state senator in 1998, Barack Obama told an audience at Loyola University in Chicago the truth: He actually believes in redistribution.

A video is available at http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/19/video-rnc-jumps-on-obamas-redistribution-quote/.

But President Obama, running for reelection, rejecting the charge that his economic plan amounts to a redistribution of wealth.

During a "60 Minutes" interview by Steve Kroft last December, President Obama claimed that his real goal is to rebuild a strong middle-class America, not to redistribute wealth.

"What's happened to the bargain?" Obama said in an interview with CBS correspondent Steve Kroft. "What happened to the American deal that says, you know, we are focused on building a strong middle class?

Kroft specifically asked Obama about his mention of "income inequality" in a recent speech. "People will say this is socialist Obama," said Kroft. "And he's come out of the closet," Kroft added.

Obama rejected that as nonsense and insisted that income inequality has nothing to do with socialism. "Everybody's concerned about inequality," Obama said. "What's happened to the bargain? What's happened to the American deal that says, you know, we are focused on building a strong middle class?"

Video is available at http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/19/video-rnc-jumps-on-obamas-redistribution-quote/.

To be elected in 2008, Obama blatantly lied about his relationship with ACORN.

If the truth had been generally known, Obama would have lost.

The truth is still the greatest threat to Obama and the greatest hope for the American dream.

Via: Renew America

Obamacare: AARP's get-rich-quick scheme

A politician spoke to a top D.C. special interest group on Monday. He told them that his legislation helped make them richer at taxpayers' expense and received their applause for doing so. Sound outrageous? Well, consider this: The speaker was President Obama, and the special interest was AARP.

The president spoke to the senior group's annual conference via satellite to tout his health care law, arguing that it had strengthened health care for seniors. He also warned that a Mitt Romney presidency would do the bidding of the insurance giants.

"No American should ever spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies," Obama said.

What he didn't say was that the leadership of AARP had worked extensively behind the scenes with the White House to pass the law, acting against the wishes of its own members and spinning furiously to keep its own board of directors "in line."

Advocacy is only part of what AARP does. It is also heavily involved in the insurance business. Insurers pay AARP to use its name, and that accounts for 60 percent of the organization's revenue. Membership dues account for just 17 percent.

Thanks to its cuts to Medicare Advantage, Obamacare is expected to expand the number of seniors buying "medigap" supplemental insurance plans. AARP controls 34 percent of the market for such plans. According to a 2011 House Ways and Means Committee report, AARP stands to make between $55 million and $166 million from Obamacare in 2014 alone.

As emails recently unearthed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee show, the supposedly neutral, nonpartisan group coordinated with the White House on media strategy and lobbying reluctant lawmakers.

Via: Washington Examiner

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FLOTUS: Voting rights are the new sit-ins

First lady Michelle Obama likened citizens flexing the right to vote to the marches, sit-ins and struggles of the civil rights movement in a speech before the Congressional Black Caucus.

"We cannot let anyone discourage us from casting our ballots.  We cannot let anyone make us feel unwelcome in the voting booth.  It is up to us to make sure that in every election, every voice is heard and every vote is counted," Obama said in Saturday remarks.

Recalling the struggles of the civil rights movement, Obama said that it was imperative for ordinary citizens to flex their right to vote.

"This is the march of our time -- marching door to door, registering people to vote.  Marching everyone you know to the polls every single election," the first lady said. "This is the sit-in of our day -- sitting in a phone bank, sitting in your living room, calling everyone you know — your friends, your neighbors, that nephew you haven’t seen in a while, that classmate you haven’t spoken to in years —making sure they all know how to register, where to vote -- every year, in every election."

"This is the movement of our era -- protecting that fundamental right not just for this election, but for the next generation and generations to come," Obama said. "Because in the end, it’s not just about who wins, or who loses, or who we vote for on Election Day. It’s about who we are as Americans. It’s about the democracy we want to leave for our kids and grandkids."

"It’s about doing everything we can to carry on the legacy that is our inheritance not just as African Americans, but as Americans -- as citizens of the greatest country on Earth," Obama said.

Obama also bemoaned the level of apathy in the the country at large.

"How many of us have asked someone whether they’re going to vote, and they say, no, I’m too busy -- and besides, I voted last time; or, nah, it’s not like my vote is going to make a difference? See, after so many folks sacrificed so much so that we could make our voices heard, too many of us still choose not to participate," she said.

Via: Politico

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Report: Obama To Release 55 Prisoners From Gitmo

President Barack Obama is about to release or transfer 55 Gitmo prisoners, despite reports that the Libyan believed to be behind the killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was a former Guantanamo inmate transferred to Libyan custody.

The large percentage of those scheduled to be released are Yemeni, according to a list made public by the Obama administration.

Obama stopped the release or transfer of Yemeni inmates in 2010, because the conditions in the country were viewed as too "unsettled" at the time. 

A release or transfer of 55 inmates means Obama is moving out one third of the prisoners at Guantanamo. And while it doesn't represent a shutdown of the facility, it's certainly indicative of a move toward that end. 

Could it be that Obama is trying to set himself up to campaign as the man who is taking steps to finally close Gitmo, just as he recently reversed the Afghanistan surge in order to campaign as the man who's winding down the war in the Afghanistan? 

The ACLU has praised the releases as "a partial victory for transparency."

Via: Breitbart

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