Food Stamp Cuts could Hurt South Fla. Families

South Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are decrying a massive cut to food stamps that takes place tonight. House Republicans want even deeper reductions.

According to politicians and nutritional experts, losing $10 a month per person in a low income household in south Florida could have catastrophic impacts. That $10 is being lopped off food assistance locally because Congress is allowing a $5 billion cut to the program nationally. 

Congressman Alcee Hastings says the repercussion's will be lasting.

“All of the evidence points to the health of children being connected with the food that they receive in the early stages of their life”, warned Hastings.

Hastings says the cuts don't make sense in an already wobbly recovery.

"It really pumps money back into the economy and I’ve never understood the resistance to it”, said Hastings.

Meanwhile House Republicans are pushing legislation to cut just under $40 billion from the program over a decade. They say too many people have become dependent on the program.

Via: WGCU

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[VIDEO] 'Healthy Ho's Party': ObamaCare Registration Drive For Prostitutes

Just when you thought you've seen everything, along comes what's called a "Healthy Ho's Party."

As reported by CNN Money, this is what a "sex worker" in San Francisco called her effort to register others in her "profession" in ObamaCare (video follows with commentary):

Organized by "Siouxsie Q," a Bay Area sex worker, the event was meant to encourage other sex workers to enroll in the new insurance exchanges. It was a rousing success: Nearly 40 men and women attended and almost all of them filed enrollment paperwork.

In the all-cash, off-the-books sex industry, workers can be particularly high risk and insurance is often out of reach. Many sex workers -- a broad term that can refer to a number of services, including sexual massage, prostitution, and escort and dominatrix work -- consider themselves self-employed entrepreneurs who can't afford to purchase healthcare. But that could all change with the Affordable Care Act. [...]

Volunteers from Siouxsie's weekly podcast, The WhoreCast, staffed the event. "Jolene," another sex worker who had already enrolled through the California exchange, was also on hand to talk users through the process. A key detail for the crowd: Enrollment doesn't require users to report their employment.

Via: Newsbusters

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Krauthammer: Moment of Truth ... A Disaster Exposed -- ObamaCare Laid Bare

Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”

The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.

(a) Those letters are irrefutable evidence that President Obama’s repeated you-keep-your-coverage claim was false. Why were they sent out? Because Obamacare renders illegal (with exceedingly narrow “grandfathered” exceptions) the continuation of any insurance plan deemed by Washington regulators not to meet their arbitrary standards for adequacy. Example: No maternity care? You are terminated.

So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges. Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesn’t even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage. That’s a lot of people. That’s a pretty big lie.

But perhaps Obama didn’t know. Maybe the bystander president was as surprised by this as he claims to have been by the IRS scandal, the Associated Press and James Rosen phone logs, the failure of the Obamacare Web site, the premeditation of the Benghazi attacks, the tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone — i.e., the workings of the federal government of which he is the nominal head.

Via: Fox News

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America’s real president wears a skirt

Barack Obama is not the Emperor Without Clothes; he’s a president in a skirt.

Nor is Obama, in effect the real President of the U.S.  Without even a single vote cast her way, Valerie Jarrett is.

From a well-hidden lair somewhere in the White House, Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett builds the figurative bombs that Obama later throws at America.

Tied to a Teleprompter and instructed what to say, Obama only ventures out to speak mainly to captive audiences of high school and university students, easily impressed from having been spoon-fed the indoctrination of anti-American Marxism in their classrooms.  Only those who cheer him on in canned applause for later media sound bites are allowed wherever Obama speaks.

Many repeatedly ask why it is that Valerie Jarrett gets to travel, like a modern day Cleopatra,  with her own contingent of secret service agents in tow, and why she is the only known person with 24-7 access to the Obama private living quarters in the White House.

The answer is obvious: payback.

Jarrett payback comes from being the first one to give both Barack and Michelle Obama a stab at life in public office.

“But even before Michelle married Barack, she was consulting him about her career decisions. Jarrett was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s deputy chief of staff when she first met Michelle and offered her a job—whereupon Michelle asked Jarrett to meet with her and Barack to discuss his reservations about the offer.” (Vanity Fair, December, 2007).

Via: Canada Free Press

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EXCLUSIVE: Rev. Jesse Jackson says Ronald Reagan wanted to ban blacks from playing football with whites

Deceased-Republican President Ronald Reagan sought to to permanently ban African Americans from playing college and professional football in the South with white people, civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. alleged in a speech to Furman University on Wednesday evening.

In the same speech he also alleged that modern Tea Party was born from efforts to sustain segregation.

“Goldwater and Reagan – had they been successful, it would have been illegal for blacks and whites to play together on a Saturday afternoon,” he said.

“You couldn't have had the Carolina Panthers behind the cotton curtain playing the Atlanta Falcons…[inaudible] it would have been illegal.”

In the tirade, recorded by a Furman University student, Jackson went on to claim that if Reagan and former GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had their way, there would have been no Olympics in Atlanta, and basketball legend Michael Jordan would have ineligible to play basketball at the University of North Carolina (UNC), where he got his start.

“Michael Jordan couldn't have gone to UNC… [inaudible] it would have been ineligible for him to play at UNC,” he continued “You couldn't have had the Olympics in Atlanta Georgia. You couldn’t have had the Dallas Cowboys in Houston, Texas, you couldn't have had the Super Bowl in New Orleans or in Atlanta or in Jacksonville or Miami.”

Jackson may have been referencing Reagan and Goldwater’s vocal support for state and individual rights, which a small number of far left critics interpreted as thinly veiled appeals for segregation.

In the hour long speech, which focused on race but meandered through a number of subjects, Jackson made other incendiary comments, for example suggesting that the Washington Redskins name is a reference to the scalping of American Indians.

“How about pictures we see of Indians stabbing the cowboys” he asked. In reality what happened was if If you killed an Indian... [inaudible]…finally you got paid for the scalps of the red skins of the Indians…and that’s how we got the Washington Redskins football league.”

He repeatedly calling the United States South “the land of the free, the home of genocide” and suggested that the modern day Tea Party was born from efforts to maintain "the walls" of slavery and segregation.

Via: Campus Reform

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[CARTOON} Obamacare Going Down

Via: California Political Review

Bill de Blasio’s Communist Pals

Who will train New York’s finest — Sandinistas or former Stasi? 

When the New York Times revealed that New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio had been an enthusiastic supporter of Nicaragua’s communist Sandinista regime, old arguments from the 1980s were suddenly rekindled, with renewed debate over the nature of that regime. The left once again emerged from the woodwork to insist that the Sandinistas were never bad guys (or even communists) — quite the contrary. The Times quickly published letters-to-the-editor whitewashing the Sandinistas’ tyranny, and one Times’ blogger went so far as to publish a post declaring: “Whatever their failings, the Sandinistas did not impose a repressive regime on their impoverished Central American nation. There was no mass jailing of opponents nor mass execution of opposing soldiers.”

Gee, that’s good — assuming that it’s even true. Of course, it isn’t true.

To cite just once source, the Russian-born scholar, Dr. Jamie Glazov, who came to America as a child when the KGB forced him and his pro-democracy, dissident parents into exile, is among those who beg to differ. Glazov wrote:

The Sandinistas quickly distinguished themselves as one of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America, carrying out approximately 8,000 political executions within three years of the revolution. The number of “anti-revolutionary” Nicaraguans who disappeared while in Sandinista hands numbered in the thousands. By 1983, the number of political prisoners inside the new Marxist regime’s jails was estimated at 20,000. This was the highest number of political prisoners in any nation in the hemisphere — except, of course, in Castro’s Cuba. By 1986, a vicious and violent Sandinista “resettlement program” forced some 200,000 Nicaraguans into 145 “settlements” throughout the country. This monstrous social engineering program entailed the designation of “free-fire” zones in which Sandinista government troops shot and killed any peasant of their choosing.

Via: The American Spectator

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Obamacare marketing push on hold

Team Obamacare is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of essentially frozen assets — yet another consequence of the failed launch of healthcare.gov. 

There’s no point in an ad blitz directing people to sign up on a website that doesn’t work. And while advocacy groups say they had always planned to spend more money on the back end to boost enrollment in lagging states at the end of this year and early next year, they didn’t count on the opening month fizzle.

The website bomb is more than just an inconvenience for the groups, stocked with people who have been working for years to ensure that insurance is available to all Americans. The ad effort is an integral part of the plan to sign up enough people — particularly the “young invincibles” so critical to making the law’s exchanges a success — to make the system both accessible and affordable.

“You can have the greatest PR program imaginable on all different platforms — social, media, advertising and earned media — but you have to have a product that is functioning,” said Peter Mirijanian, a Washington PR veteran.

The pro-Obamacare interest groups have been holding back, according to White House and insurance industry sources, in large part because they don’t want to direct people to a website that’s not working.

“There was definitely a pullback,” said one health insurance company executive, noting concern about “money wasted” on advertising. “Why would you spend $1 million sending people to a website that’s broken?” the executive asked.

Enroll America, which is closely tied to the administration, has always focused its effort on digital advertising and field organizing rather than broadcast television, according to Justin Nisly, a spokesman for the group. Officials there also looked at October as a month for educating consumers, so the main shift has not been in expenditures but in directing folks to get information from human beings rather than the troubled website.

Via: Politico

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ObamaCare: Illegal Voter Mine for the Democratic Party?

While many Americans remain focused on the ominous implications of ObamaCare with regard to health insurance or the faulty website, a far more serious issue remains under the radar. On Wednesday, two national election watchdog groups alleged that ObamaCare is really a massive voter registration vehicle masquerading as ahealthcare bill.

Gregg Phillips, the founder of the election integrity group Voters Trust takes it one step further. “I think [it] is the biggest voter registration fraud scheme in the history of the world,” he told Breitbart News.

Phillips, along with Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote, cited a report published by Demos, an organization founded by left-wing activist billionaire George Soros.“Building a Healthy Democracy: Registering 68 Million People to Vote Through Health Benefit Exchanges,”couches this effort in noble terms, contending that “the freedom to vote must be fiercely protected for all citizens, regardless of class or privilege.” Yet the report focuses on the problems encountered by lower-income Americans who register and vote in far lower percentages than those earning more than $100,000 per year. Report author Lisa J. Danetz notes that of the approximately 68 million individuals she envisions being registered by the law, most of them will be low-income individuals “who will eventually enroll in subsidized health care under the law.”

Democrats enjoy a huge political advantage with regard to low-income, largely uninsured Americans. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll taken last summer reveals that uninsured Americans favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of 62 to 27 percent. Among insured Americans, Obama’s edge was only eight points. Part of the political divide is explained by the fact that Hispanics and black Americans comprise half the nation’s uninsured citizens. Thus, any surge in voter registration facilitated by ObamaCare will undoubtedly favor Democrats.

Via: Canada Free Press

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AP editors: Obama relies on staged propaganda photos

Editors of The Associated Press condemned the White House’s refusal to give photojournalists real access to President Obama, who prefers to circulate press release-style pictures taken by his own paid photographers.

These official photographs are little more than propaganda, according to AP director of photography Santiago Lyon.

The AP has only been permitted to photograph the president in the Oval Office on two occasions. Both were during his first term. All other pictures of Obama in his office were taken by White House photographers and distributed to the press.

Previous administrations were less strict about photos, undermining Obama’s frequent claim that he strives to run “the most transparent administration” in history.

Lyon made his remarks at the AP Media Editors national conference in Indianapolis on Wednesday.

AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll echoed Lyon’s concerns.

“This works because newspapers use these handout photos,” she said at the conference, according to attendee Jack Lail, digital editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Carroll advised newspaper editors who were present to stop using the White House’s preferred photos in their own stories, according to Lail and other attendees.

Via: Daily Caller

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As Ken Cuccinelli rebounds, Terry McAuliffe warns he could lose

As the polls tighten in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is dropping his front-runner swagger and warning that he could lose.

In an email to supporters meant to inspire them to vote, he said simply: “Ignore the polls.”

Some polls show that the race is getting close, with Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli getting to as close as three points in one poll, though most still show McAuliffe with a significant lead.

But the former Democratic Party chairman is worried about turnout in a year when voters are turned off by both candidates and there is no other headline-grabbing election dragging voters to the polls.

“No matter what pollsters are reporting, newspapers are writing, and your friends might be telling you — we're facing two hard truths,” said McAuliffe’s email.

“In off-year elections like this one, Tea Party voters turn out more reliably than Democrats. For 45 years, the political party that controls the White House has lost our governor's race the next year. In 2009, fewer than 40 percent of Virginia voters cast a ballot for governor, despite the fact that nearly 70 percent voted in the presidential election the year before,” he explained.

“That's why we absolutely CANNOT afford to fall short of our $250,000 Get Out the Vote Fund Goal at tonight's midnight deadline — right now we're $48,345 away,” he said in his latest push for more money.

Campaign officials said that McAuliffe is focused on get out the vote initiatives, even bringing in former President Clinton and President Obama this week to urge voters to show up on Tuesday.

“If we allow ourselves to be complacent for any part of the next five days, Election Day will not be pretty,” he said.

Via: Washington Examiner

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ObamaCare Implementation Agency Paid Out $23 Million On Behalf of Dead People

The agency responsible for implementing ObamaCare erroneously paid out millions of dollars on behalf of dead people in 2011, according to a report released Thursday by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) paid $23 million to providers, suppliers, Medicare Advantage organizations and prescription drug plan sponsors on behalf of beneficiaries who died between 2009 and 2011, the OIG found.

That’s less than one-tenth of one percent of total Medicare expenditures, and the report says CMS “has safeguards to prevent and recover” those payments.

The OIG offered a handful of recommendations, such as taking action against providers and suppliers that had high numbers of claims with service dates after a beneficiary’s death, as a way to minimize further inappropriate payments.

CMS said it concurs with all the OIG’s recommendations and is committed to preventing and recovering the payments.

"Agency actions are underway, and in the areas where noted, we are working with law enforcement and other federal agencies, including OIG, to protect the Medicare program, the people using its benefits and services, and using additional resources made available under the Affordable Care Act to detect and prevent fraud from taking place," a CMS representative told The Hill in a statement.

Via: The Hill

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How Crazies Are Destroying Your Party

This is what happens when the two parties ruling Washington lose touch with America and pander to their crazy-extreme bases: President Obama's competency and personality ratings are nose-diving, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll; barely a sliver of the public thinks highly of the Republican Party; and two-thirds of Americans want to replace their own member of Congress.  

Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with Republican Bill McInturff, called this a "Howard Beale moment," a reference to the famous rant from the 1976 movie Network.

"We're mad as hell," Hart said, "and we're not going to take it anymore."

Privately, party strategists agree. On Obama, a Democratic operative who works with the White House emailed me to say: "It's his Titanic moment. He's hit the iceberg, but they keep acting like no water is coming into the ship."

A GOP operative who also requested anonymity said that Wednesday's hearing on Obamacare highlighted what's wrong with his party. "We looked like we were beating [up] the HHS secretary," he said of Kathleen Sebelius. "Why do we have to always overdo it?"

Like many other party regulars, these two operatives worry that hardheaded partisans are pushing both the GOP and Democratic Party away from the political center. The phenomena is playing out unevenly (the GOP is arguably more beholden to its base than the Democrats) and for a number of reasons, including hyper-redistricting, the democratization of political money and the polarization of the public itself.  

But with each self-inflicted Washington crisis, notions such as an independent presidential bid, the dissolution of one or both major parties, and the rise of new political organizations seem less outrageous. The thinking goes like this: If voters today are more empowered than ever via technology (consider the disruption of retail, entertainment, and media industries), how long will they wait before blowing up the two-party system?

Via: National Journal

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Senate Democrats wary of administration pledges to fix Obamacare site

Senate Democrats on Thursday offered mixed reviews of the Obama administration's briefing on progress it is making to fix the glitch-riddled federal Obamacare website.

Emerging from a closed-door Capitol Hill lunch with three of President Obama's top advisers, Senate Democrats expressed hope that the kinks in the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges would ultimately be ironed out. But they also said they were frustrated with the initial rollout of the program and were dubious that problems with healthcare.gov could be fixed by the administration’s self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline.

“I don’t think there’s confidence by anyone in the room. This is more a show-me moment,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. “We were all confident that the system was going to be up and operating on Oct. 1 and now we’re not confident until it’s real.”

Asked if he liked what he heard from the administration about what is being done to address the myriad problems with the online marketplace exchange website, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said only: “They’re trying.”

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Director Marilyn Tavenner and Jeffrey Zients, who joined the administration temporarily to oversee work on the website briefed senators and, as one aide described it, allowed them to "vent" about the troubles directly to the White House.

McDonough declined to answer reporters’ questions following the meeting, saying only that “we had a really good discussion.”

Merkley said senators were told that the administration is working to “triage” the website, removing features that aren’t needed and improving the speed and functionality of core elements people need to access information and apply for health insurance.

Some members were more upbeat following the session. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the briefing “allayed” much of the concern senators have about the start of the Affordable Care Act’s implementation. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, conceded that he has frustrated constituents, but said he liked what he heard and is optimistic that the team in charge of rehabilitating the website can get the job done.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Democrat Bill Would Let Obama Increase Debt Limit; Congress Wouldn't Need to Vote

(CNSNews.com) - Democratic senators have introduced legislation that would grant President Barack Obama, and subsequent presidents, the authority to increase the legal limit on the federal government's debt unless Congress subsequently voted to disapprove the increase.

The bill would effectively take elected members of Congress off the hook for approving an increase in the debt. If the president certified that he was going to increase the debt limit, Congress could simply let him do it without taking a vote--and putting members on the record.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to borrow money. It says: "Congress shall have power ... to borrow money on the credit of the United States."

Sens. Chuck  Schumer (D-N.Y.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) have introduced the Pay Our Bills Act, which would “permanently allow Congress to disapprove debt ceiling increases, instead of approving them.”

“When our debt comes within $100 billion of the debt limit, the president can send Congress a certification that the debt limit needs to be increased by a certain amount. Then Congress has 15 days to vote on a resolution of disapproval, just like we’re doing here in a few hours. This would allow Congress to fully debate and vote on the debt limit. A majority vote would carry in the House and Senate,” said Boxer in a press conference on Tuesday.

Via: CNS News

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Deep cuts to country's food stamp program start Friday

WASHINGTON –  Forty-eight million Americans will have their food stamps benefits slashed starting Friday, when a recession-era boost in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program expires.

The move to cut back benefits will be the first wide-scale change to the program affecting nearly every single participant. The 13.6 percent cut comes out to about $36 a month less for a family of four getting government assistance or $420 a year, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Since 2000, the costs for the plan have increased more than 358 percent.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, cites lax eligibility requirements as one of the reasons behind the increase.

Enrollment in the food-stamp benefits also rose during the 2007-2011 recession.

Many anti-poverty groups have warned that cutting the program will leave millions of Americans vulnerable.

"People are living at the margins," Ellen Vollinger, legal director and SNAP advocate at the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger organization, told Reuters. "It's not an abstract metric for people. It's actual dollars to keep food in the refrigerator."

The slash in the program also means less money for discount grocers, dollar stores and gas stations that rely on low-income shoppers.

SNAP is the largest anti-hunger program in the country.

Via: Fox News

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Circuit Court Blocks NYPD Stop & Frisk Changes, Removes Manhattan Judge From Case

A federal appellate court on Thursday granted a stay in the landmark police stop-and-frisk ruling in New York City, and removed the trial judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, from the case.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Judge Scheindlin “ran afoul” of the judiciary’s code of conduct by showing an “appearance of partiality surrounding this litigation.” The panel criticized how she had steered the lawsuit to her courtroom when it was filed in early 2008.

The ruling effectively puts off a battery of changes that Judge Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had ordered for the Police Department. Those changes include postponing the operations of the monitor who was given the task to oversee reforms to the department’s stop-and-frisk practices, which Judge Scheindlin found violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution.

In a two-page order, the panel of three judges also criticized Judge Scheindlin for granting media interviews and for making public statements while the case was pending before her.

The judges ordered that the stop-and-frisk lawsuit be reassigned to another judge. The Second Circuit ruling instructs the new judge to put off to “all proceedings and otherwise await further action” from the Second Circuit.

Judge Scheindlin’s decision, issued in August, found that the stop-and-frisk tactics violated the rights of minorities in the city. With that decision, which came at the conclusion of a lengthy trial that began in the spring, she repudiated a major element of the crime-fighting legacy of the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

But the panel, citing an article by The New York Times in a footnote in the ruling, found fault with how the judge improperly applied a “related-case rule” to bring the stop-and-frisk case under her purview.

Via: New York Times

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JAY CARNEY: FOOD STAMPS ARE THE ‘MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO COMBAT HUNGER AND FOOD INSECURITY’

\Anticipating what Democrats have already called the “food stamp cliff” reduction in benefits to take effect on Nov. 1, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that food stamps are “the most effective way of to combat hunger” and accused House Republicans of wanting to “punish” people who receive them.

He was also clear that the Obama administration wants Americans receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to be able to get off the program the right way by reaching a better economic condition.

The “food stamp cliff” is the expiration of the temporary increase in SNAP funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus act. Without an increase, a single adult’s benefits will reportedly be cut by $11 a month to a total of $189.

White House press secretary Jay Carney, wearing a cap of the World Series baseball champion Boston Red Sox, arrives for the daily press briefing a the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. (AP)

“These cuts come at a time when many hardworking American families are still struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the worst recession in decades and last year the additional resources provided by the SNAP lifted 7 million people out of poverty,” Carney said. “That is why the president acknowledged this need when he proposed an extension of the recovery act adjustment through 2014 or until March 2014 in his 2014 budget request and why the strategy currently under way in the House to reduce SNAP by removing millions of low income families from the program does not make sense.”

Via: The Blaze

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Inside China: Nuclear submarines capable of widespread attack on U.S.

Chinese state-run media revealed for the first time this week that Beijing’s nuclear submarines can attack American cities as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific.

On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People's Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force.

“This is the first time in 42 years since the establishment of our navy’s strategic submarine force that we reveal on such a large scale the secrets of our first-generation underwater nuclear force,” the Global Times said in a lengthy article titled “China for the First Time Possesses Effective Underwater Nuclear Deterrence against the United States.”

The article features 30 photos and graphics detailing, among other things, damage projections for Seattle and Los Angeles after being hit by Chinese nuclear warheads and the deadly radiation that would spread all the way to Chicago.

China’s sub fleet is reportedly the world’s second-largest, with about 70 vessels. About 10 are nuclear-powered, and four or more of those are nuclear ballistic submarines capable of launching missiles.

Enlarge Photo

Image for Yu column Inside China Source: Global Times more >

Heavily influenced by Soviet naval models that stressed underwater forces, China’s nuclear submarine development began with the reverse-engineering of a Soviet Golf-class conventional-powered sub in the 1950s.

In the 1980s, China developed its first ballistic missile sub, the Type 092 Xia-class, which has 12 launch tubes for the Julang (Giant Wave)-1 missiles. The JL-1 had a limited range and failed multiple test launches.

In 2010, a new class of missile sub, the Type 094 Jin class, entered the service. It is capable of launching 12 to 16 JL-2 missiles with a range of about 8,700 miles, covering much of the continental U.S. with single or multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicle warheads.

Chinese calculations for nuclear attacks on the U.S. are chillingly macabre.

“Because the Midwest states of the U.S. are sparsely populated, in order to increase the lethality, [our] nuclear attacks should mainly target the key cities on the West Coast of the United States, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego,” the Global Times said.

Via: Washington Times

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Federal appeals court reinstates most of Texas' abortion restrictions

A federal appeals court issued a ruling Thursday reinstating most of Texas' controversial new abortions restrictions, just three days after a federal judge ruled they were unconstitutional. 

A panel of judges at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the law requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital can take effect while a lawsuit challenging the restrictions moves forward. The panel issued the ruling after District Judge Lee Yeakel said the provision serves no medical purpose.

The panel's decision means as least 12 clinics won't be able to perform the procedure starting as soon as Friday. In its 20-page ruling, it acknowledged that the provision "may increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions." 

However, the panel said that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that having "the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate" a law that serves a valid purpose, "one not designed to strike at the right itself."

The panel left in place a portion of Yeakel's order that prevents the state from enforcing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocol for abortion-inducing drugs in cases where the woman is between 50 and 63 days into her pregnancy. Doctors testifying before the court had said such women would be harmed if the protocol were enforced.

Via: Fox News

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