Senate bill to boost immigrant-voters bloc by 32 million voters in 2036

The Senate’s immigration rewrite would boost the number of new immigrants eligible to vote by 10 million in 2024 and by 32 million in 2036, according to a new report by the Center for immigration Studies.

The flood of new voters could greatly aid the Democratic party, which won the Latino and Asian voting blocs by more than 40 percentage points in 2012.

“The current level of immigration plus the additions from [the Senate immigration bill] S.744 would create nearly 10 million [extra] potential voting-age citizens by 2024, and more than 32 million by 2036,” said the Oct. 10 report, “How Many New Voters Would S.744 Create?”

The current immigration rate brings in roughly 1 million legal immigrants per year, and will add almost 15 million new voters by 2036, said the report. That inflow will create a 3-million-vote advantage for Democrats in 2036, assuming half of the eligible immigrant voters cast ballots and also that the Democrats maintain their 40-point advantage.

The additional immigrants added by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” bill would add another 4-million-vote advantage to the Democrats’ tally in 2036, even if only 50 percent turn out to vote.

The combination of existing and increased immigration could provide Democrats with a 7-million-vote advantage from new immigrants in 2036. That margin is greater than Obama’s advantage of 4.5 million votes in 2012.

The CIS report does not discuss the economic impact of the new immigrants, which proponents say will be beneficial to America, and critics say will be harmful to Americans.

The GOP’s leaders in the House have declared they support a major rewrite of immigration law, but have yet to schedule floor votes. Polls show that increased immigration is very unpopular, especially among the voters needed in 2014 to re-eleect the GOP majority in the House.

Via: Daily Caller

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We’re not gonna take it! Americans use 1st Amendment to storm shutdown barriers

Taking their lead from the veterans who first pushed through the barricades to visit the World War II Memorial, Americans nationwide are defying the federal government shutdown, tossing aside traffic cones and toppling wooden fences to get to national parks and other federal lands that the administration has deemed out of bounds.

As the shutdown hits the middle of its second week, civil disobedience has become a sensation. Some proudly post online photos of themselves overcoming the government’s obstacles, and others use more subtle ways to make their point.

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PHOTOS: Civil disobedience: Angry Americans flout shutdown rules

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In Arizona, one road-stop inn is quietly giving visitors directions on how to use Forest Service roads to get a glimpse of the Grand Canyon, a national park that has been shut down.

In Washington, D.C., a South Carolina man said he has spent the past week picking up trash around the shuttered Lincoln Memorial, taking the place of National Park Service employees who have been furloughed.

In Massachusetts, Minuteman National Park is closed, but that hasn’t stopped the leaf-peepers from crossing the barricades to watch as autumn blooms in the Northeast.

Via: Washington Times

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Obama’s national debt rate on track to double

Says raising limit ‘won’t add a dime’

President Obama likes to say that raising the nation’s borrowing limit “won’t add a dime” to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office.

When Mr. Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood at $10.6 trillion. This week, it hit $16.7 trillion — an increase of 57 percent. In the same time frame under President George W. Bush, total federal debt rose 38 percent. Under President Clinton, it rose 32 percent.

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PHOTOS: Civil disobedience: Angry Americans flout shutdown rules

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The administration says the government will run out of authority to pay its bills by Oct. 17 unless Congress raises the debt limit again to allow more borrowing. The president portrays the move as one of simple responsibility.

“It does not increase our debt,” Mr. Obama said. “It does not grow our deficits. All it does is allow the Treasury Department to pay for what Congress has already spent.”

The president rarely mentions that he, by law, approves congressional spending, and his argument glosses over the nation’s burgeoning total debt.

“It’s certainly not the whole story,” said Alex Brill, a budget specialist at the American Enterprise Institute. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the debt held by the public in the last four or five years, and it’s projected to only get worse.”

Via: Washington Times

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[VIDEO] NBC News Host: 'The Constitution Is the Problem'

GATEWAY PUNDIT: MSNBC host Chris Hayes thinks he’s got it figured out.
It’s not Obama’s unwillingness to negotiate. It’s not the Democrat’s unwillingness to cut spending.

It’s the Constitution’s fault that we are having stalemates and shutdowns.

“The political disfunction that has brought about the shutdown and now threatens default, isn’t so much gridlock. It is exposing the fatal flaw in our Constitution and highly distinct system of government. In other words, it’s the Constitution’s fault. Something truly catastrophic was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Via: Fox News

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Congressmen Demand Answers from National Park Service

Congressman Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.) sent a letter to the National Park Service (NPS) on Wednesday demanding answers to the agency’s “dubious” handling of the government shutdown.

Ninety-three additional members of Congress have signed onto the letter sent to NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis questioning if politics is involved in the closings of the World War II Memorial,privately owned parks, and other sites across the nation.

“The National Park Service continues to act in an arbitrary and punitive manner to exclude veterans from memorials built in their honor and the American people from many of our country’s national treasures,” said Rep. Huizenga, in a statement.  “I have serious questions about the tactics and decisions being implemented by the National Park Service and clearly many of my colleagues do as well.”

“Director Jarvis cannot simply make up the rules as he goes along, which is one of the major reasons my colleagues and I sent this letter requesting concrete and definitive answers,” he said.

The letter asks Jarvis to explain the barricades erected to block out veterans from the World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War memorials, all of which are open-air sites.

The World War II Memorial, in particular, has been the subject of controversy since the government shutdown on Oct. 1, with the NPS attempting to block veterans who fought in the conflict and had traveled across the country to see the site.

Rep. Huizenga, whose father is a disabled WWII veteran, has visited the memorial several times during the shutdown to help constituents gain access.

Via: WFB

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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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California Enacts Law Allowing Nurses to Perform Some Abortions

California's Democratic governor signed a law on Wednesday that will allow nurses and midwives to perform some abortions, a move aimed at increasing access to the procedure even as other states are tightening the rules.

Under the law, the most populous U.S. state would allow nurse-practitioners, nurse-midwives and physician assistants to perform a procedure known as aspiration, which uses suction to dislodge an embryo from the uterine wall during the first few weeks of pregnancy.

Four other states - Oregon, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire - already allow non-physicians to perform early stage abortions, but California is the first to codify the practice into law.

"Timely access to reproductive health services is critical to women's health," the bill's author, California state Assemblywoman Toni Atkins said in a statement after Governor Jerry Brown announced the signing of the law.

The intent of the law, said Atkins' spokeswoman, Dale Kelly Bankhead, is to expand access to abortion in areas of the state where there are no providers.

"In more than half of the counties in California there is no abortion provider," Bankhead said. "Women have to travel long distances to access these services."

California Assemblyman Brian Jones, the Republican caucus leader, said he was disappointed in the governor, calling the new law "dangerous for women."

"It's truly disheartening and disingenuous that Governor Brown and legislative Democrats created a law to lower the standard of care for the women under the guise of creating access," Jones said.

The measure, the progress of which has been closely followed by activists on both sides of the abortion debate, comes as a handful of states, primarily in the country's South and middle, have passed or enacted laws restricting abortion

Via: Newsmax

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What You Get When You Try To Register For Obamacare

Glitch-a-rama!

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Boehner Announces Short-Term Debt Deal, Claims GOP Is Meeting Obama ‘Halfway’

In a short press conference Thursday morning, one week before the October 17th debt ceiling deadline, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced a possible short-term deal the raise the debt ceiling and avoid default. The deal, which the House could vote on today, would only raise the debt limit through November 22nd, at which point another deal would be needed to raise it again.

Boehner began by castigating President Obama and the Democrats for refusing to “talk” over the last 10 days since the government shutdown began. “We tried to offer bills that would reopen parts of the government,” he said, “only to have them rejected by our counterparts over in the United States Senate.”

“So what we want to do,” he continued, “is to offer the president today the ability to move, a temporary increase in the debt ceiling, an agreement to go to conference on the budget, for his willingness to set down and discuss with us a way forward to reopen the government and to start to deal with America’s pressing problems.”

“I would hope that the president will look at this as an opportunity and a good-faith effort on our part to move halfway,” Boehner concluded, “halfway to what he has demanded in order to have these conversations begin.” Notably, as in Rep. Paul Ryan’s recent op-ed, there was no mention of the Affordable Care Act, which set off the budget stalemate and eventual government shutdown.

Following comments by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, Boehner took a few questions from the press, maintaining that he doesn’t want to “put anything on the table” or “take anything off the table” before the next round of negotiations begins. But once reporters started asking about hypothetical scenarios, Boehner delivered his standard rebuttal: “If ands and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.”

Watch video below, via Fox News:

Via Mediaite.com

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MSNBC's Joy Reid: GOP 'Shot a Hostage' by Shutting Down the Government

Appearing on the Tuesday, October 8, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC political analyst Joy Reid asserted that Republicans are "taking hostages" and have "shot a hostage" as they "went ahead and shut the government down." She began her over the top metaphor:

The Republican party, to Ari (Melber)'s point, they understand they have unpopular positions. They cannot enact their dream sort of Ayn Randian world through a legislative process. They can't win elections to enact the conservative policies. They think, you know, they might think better of the country, whatever, they believe this is the way it should be. But they cannot do it.

She added:

So they are now essentially taking hostages. But this is beyond a hostage situation. They have shot a hostage. They went ahead and shut the government down. Having done that, you cannot then go to the hostage negotiator and say, "Why won't you talk to me? Why won't you sit down and have a conversation with me?"

Reid concluded:

You shot one of the hostages already. What in anyone's rational thinking makes you believe they wouldn't go ahead and breach the debt ceiling at this point? Several of them are saying it's fine to do that. So we understand these are not people who can be negotiated with because they want fundamentally unpopular policies forced onto the majority in this country and forced even onto the majority of their own party.

Via: Newsbusters

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UN climate report sneaks in worldwide carbon emissions limits

The United Nations’ climate report has already garnered criticism from scientists, but now fights are brewing around the 2,200-page document’s advocacy for a global cap on carbon dioxide emissions.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fifth assessment of the Earth’s climate which asserted “95 percent” certainty that global warming was manmade while receiving criticism for glossing over the lack of significant warming in the last 15 years.

One highly contentious paragraph in the report states that society cannot emit more than one trillion tons of carbon dioxide for global temperatures not to warm more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

“[F]or warming due to CO2 emissions alone to be likely less than 2°C at the time CO2 emissions cease, total cumulative emissions from all anthropogenic sources over the entire industrial era would need to be limited to about… one trillion tonnes of carbon,” reads the report.

More than half of this carbon allowance has been used, according to the New York Times, and the report’s authors noted that carbon emissions would have to be limited even more than one trillion tons once other greenhouse gases other than carbon are taken into account.

“Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time,” said Thomas F. Stocker, IPCC co-chairman. “In short, it threatens our planet, our only home.”

UN scientists have not so subtly suggested that countries effectively limit their economic development, since the carbon-intensive energy is the main driver behind rapid industrialization in developing nations like China and India. This suggestion of a global carbon cap was not welcomed by developing nations who fear that their share of the emissions “pie” would be diminished through bullying from developed countries.

“Despite a concerted disinformation campaign to the contrary, there has been no increase in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or droughts over the past 50 years—a period over which we supposedly used half of our carbon budget for all time,” economist David Kreutzer of the conservative Heritage Foundation told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Via: Daily Caller

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