Host Amy Robach diagnosed with breast cancer after 'Good Morning America' on-air mammogram

ABC News correspondent Amy Robach says she has breast cancer, a month after she was given a mammogram on the air for a "Good Morning America" story.

"Honestly, I was a little reluctant at first," Robach admitted on "GMA" Monday morning. "I'm 40, I'm the age and I've been putting it off."

Robach got the screening as part of the show's October Pink initiative, aimed at encouraging viewers to get checked, according toPeople.

She said she was shocked by the news, as she has no family history of the disease. A doctor has since told her that the mammogram saved her life, and she'll have both breasts surgically removed Thursday, she announced. 

"It's still hard for me to say the words out loud: 'I have breast cancer,'" Robach said. 

Robach was a frequent fill-in on ABC's morning show while Robin Roberts was fighting a serious blood and bone marrow disease.

Roberts held Robach's hand as her "GMA" colleagues wished her well. 

"You're going to beat this," they told her. 

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

This says it all about #ObamaCare

Obamacare: Who’s Crying Now?

Our progressive friends dislike the taste of their own cooking.

It is wrong, of course, to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. Still, I must confess that I have derived no small amount of schadenfreude from news stories about Obamacare advocates who have been adversely affected by the not-so-Affordable Care Act. It would take a stronger man than yours truly to suppress a smile as the law’s media pimps pule about their canceled health plans, when smug urban progressives get mugged by the reality of “reform,” and lifelong Democrats publicly denounce President Obama as a brazen liar while declaring their intention to become foot soldiers for the Republican Party.

One of the most exquisitely ironic complaints about Obamacare has come from former MSNBC blowhard, Dylan Ratigan. During the debate preceding the law’s passage, this character regularly suggested that we who opposed the Democrat plan to take over U.S. health care were all racists. It appears, however, that this erstwhile scourge of bigotry has now joined the knuckle-dragging enemies of our first black president. Recently, he fired off the following querulous tweet: “I bought a catastrophic health policy for $170/mo when I left MSNBC. Obamacare cancelled the policy. New rate $600/mo. Thnx Mr. President!”

If Ratigan had stopped abusing his opponents long enough to hear what we were saying, he wouldn’t have been surprised by the cancellation. What did he think Obamacare’s authors intended when they stipulated that a plan must provide “minimum” levels of coverage? What did he think the President meant by “cut-rate insurance”? If he had shut up long enough he would have learned the truth, as he himself expressed it in a follow up tweet when he finally pulled his head out of … er … the sand: “I have been a long time advocate of catastrophic with a transparent mkt for routine. Struck me as interesting that that is illegal now.”

Via: American Spectator

Continue Reading.....

Anti-Gun Activist Shannon Watts: Open Carry Texas ‘Like the Taliban,’ Might Shoot and Rape Moms

At the end of my conversation with Shannon Watts, of gun-control group Moms Demand Action, Watts said something rather astonishing. The reason that the moms in Dallas were so intimidated by the counter-protest outside, she told me, was that Open Carry Texas is “like the Taliban” and could feasibly have planned to open fire. “You don’t honestly believe they were going to shoot you?” I asked.

“I have no idea why you would actually assume that,” Watts replied. “You never know with these mass shootings. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know if these people have had background checks. Or if they have had any training.” Watts also suggested that Open Carry Texas was full of people who mightrape the women involved in Moms Demand Action. I suggested that this was a “little extreme,” but she said that OCT’s website featured some choice comments and that she had inferred it from that.

I don’t know too much about OCT, I grant you. But I do know that one is probably unlikely to plan to shoot up and then rape a restaurant full of mothers after one has alerted the press to one’s presence and brought along one’s wives and children for good measure.

Via: NRO

Continue Reading.....

Obama's Stunning Snub

He almost was not asked to speak.

In October 1863, President Abraham Lincoln received the same plain envelope that was sent to hundreds of people, requesting attendance at a dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery here.

Col. Clark E. Carr, a confidant of several U.S. presidents and a member of the commission that organized the event, later admitted that commissioners scrambled to send a more personal invitation after Lincoln indicated he would attend.

Asking Lincoln to deliver a “few appropriate thoughts,” Carr said, was “an afterthought.”

You see, the dedication's real headliner was Edward Everett. A former secretary of State, U.S. senator, Massachusetts governor and Harvard president whose nationwide tour helped to save Mt. Vernon as a national shrine, Everett was considered the great orator of his time.

When Lincoln arrived, Gettysburg remained raw from the horrific battle that raged here for three days just five months earlier. More than 70,000 Confederate troops engaged 83,000 Federal troops around this crossroads town; the battle claimed more than 50,000 souls and 3,000 horses, and it changed the course of the war in the Union's favor.

The bones of dead horses still were strewn over surrounding farmlands; vultures hovered over the landscape, and unburied coffins stood stacked in town.

Lincoln had plenty of justifiable, honorable reasons to beg off from the ceremony: His 10-year-old son, Tad, lay sick with a fever in the White House; the war was going poorly out West; he was locked in a budget showdown with Congress; and his re-election bid looked grim against a general he fired for incompetence a year earlier.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

Study: Just 3 percent of projected Obamacare enrollees have signed up

Just 3 percent of those expected to eventually sign up for Obamacare’s state-based health markets in a dozen states running their own markets have actually signed up so far, according to an analysis Monday from a health consultancy that predicted the pace will eventually pick up.

Avalere Health said that by the end of next year, the 12 states are expected to have 1.4 million enrollees in their health exchanges. As of Sunday, though, 49,100 had actually signed up.

“I would expect to see these numbers to grow over time. This happens gradually,” Avalere CEO Dan Mendelson said in an interview, citing the slow start to the Medicare drug benefit program during the George W. Bush administration.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that 7 million people would enroll in the health exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. Some states elected to set up their own exchanges, but most left the job to the federal government, whose website supposed to help enroll potential customers has been plagued by problems since its Oct. 1 launch.

Some states, meanwhile, have reported their own website problems.

Via: Washington Times

Continue Reading....

Fitch downgrades Chicago bond ratings

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Fitch Ratings has downgraded the credit worthiness of Chicago's bond debt because of its public pension problems.

Fitch dropped the rating from AA- to A- on $8 billion in general obligation bonds, backed by property taxes.

It also dropped the rating on $497 million in sales tax bonds — paid for by both the city's local sales tax and its share of the state sales tax. And the rating was downgraded on $200 million in commercial paper notes, financed by a general obligation pledge from any available city fund.

Friday's downgrade stems from "the lack of meaningful solutions" to the city's pension situation. City and fire pension programs have no more than 30 percent of the money needed to cover obligations.

The downgrade makes it more expensive to borrow money.

Via Yahoo FInance

Continue Reading.....

RECORD: OVER 47 MILLION ON FOOD STAMPS FOR ENTIRE YEAR

Food stamp enrollments have remained over 47 million for an unprecedented 13 consecutive months. 

According to the most recent figures available from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the food stamp program, in August 2012, 47,102,765 individuals were enrolled in the program, known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Enrollments never fell below 47 million in subsequent months and as of August 2013 stood at 47,665,069, representing nearly one out of every seven people in America. 

Recent years have seen an explosion in food stamp enrollments. Since January 2009, the number of individuals on food stamps has skyrocketed from 31.9 million to 47.6 million. 

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading.....

Prepare For In-Home Gun Inspections

The leftist war against the Second Amendment continues to intensify in the wake of several high-profile – and highly politicized – mass shootings.

Among the latest outrageous attacks on the right to bear arms came recently from a local politician in Massachusetts. Barry Greenfield, a Democrat selectman in Swampscott, wants to give law enforcement the right to enter residential homes without a warrant to make sure firearms are being stored appropriately.

“We need the ability to enforce the state law,” he explained, referring to an ordinance that restricts how firearms may be kept within a home.

Greenfield said he has already spoken with the town’s authorities, though fellow selectman Glenn Kessler expressed concerns likely echoed by Swampscott’s approximately 600 gun owners.

Kessler explained the proposal raises significant constitutionality concerns, noting he wants to hear feedback from legal experts, law enforcement professionals, and, most importantly, members of the community.

When a similar proposal began to gain traction in Washington state, similar concerns fortunately prevented any decisive action.

Via: Western Center for Journalism

Continue Reading....

Hillary's Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren

We’re three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee. Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating her like she already resides in the White House. The New York Times has its own dedicated Clinton correspondent, whose job it is to chronicle everything from Hillary’s summer accommodations (“CLINTONS FIND A NEW PLACE TO VACATION IN THE HAMPTONS”) to her distinct style of buckraking (“IN CLINTON FUNDRAISING, EXPECT A FULL EMBRACE”). There is a feature-length Hillary biopic in the works, and a well-funded super PAC—“Ready for Hillary”—bent on easing her way into the race. And then there is Clinton herself, who sounds increasingly candidential. Since leaving the State Department, Clinton has already delivered meaty, headline-grabbing orations on voting rights and Syria.

Yet for all the astrophysical force of these developments, anyone who lived through 2008 knows that inevitable candidates have a way of becoming distinctly evitable. With the Clintons’ penchant for melodrama and their checkered cast of hangers-on—one shudders to consider the embarrassments that will attend the Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia—Clinton-era nostalgia is always a news cycle away from curdling into Clinton fatigue. Sometimes, all it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back.

Via: New Republic

Continue Reading.....

In New Orleans, Obama pushes plan to improve ports

NEW ORLEANS — President Barack Obama traveled to this waterfront city Friday to push a plan to spend more money on ports from Miami to Tacoma as a way to put Americans back to work.

“Nationally we’re falling behind. We’re relying on old stuff. . . . We should have some new stuff,” Obama told a crowd of 650 gathered at the Port of New Orleans. “That is going to help us grow and keep pace with global competition.”

Obama has proposed spending $50 billion on improvements on roads and bridges, airports and ports as he looks to boost the U.S.’s infrastructure investment, which has dropped 50 percent since 1960 and lags behind other nations, including China.

“We should close wasteful tax loopholes that don’t help our jobs, don’t grow our economy, and then invest that money in things that actually do create jobs and grow our economy,” he said. “And one of those things is building new roads and bridges and schools and ports. That creates jobs.”

Obama arrived in New Orleans as criticism of his health care law mounts. The website where consumers enroll continues to have glitches, and millions of people are losing insurance plans Obama promised they could keep. In a national TV interview Thursday, the president apologized for the problems.

Via: McClatchy

Continue Reading.....

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/08/207993/in-new-orleans-obama-pushes-plan.html#storylink=cpy

[VIDEO] CBS's Garrett: 'Desperate' Obama Admin. Hopes to 'End ObamaCare Blues'

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Major Garrett emphasized the Obama administration was "desperate" to reverse the debacle over its so-called Affordable Care Act, twice asserting the executive branch was trying to "end the ObamaCare blues". Garrett also pointed out that "the White House has lowered expectations – both politically and mathematically –about as low as humanly possible" regarding ObamaCare enrollment numbers.

However, unlike his colleague Jan Crawford, the correspondent failed to explicitly point out how millions of Americans are losing their current health care coverage due to the controversial law. Instead, Garrett played up the larger expense of the new ObamaCare-friendly plans: [audio available here; video below the jump]

MAJOR GARRETT: ...[T]he White House is going to look at that solution it hopes to offer this week for those in the individual market whose costs are higher than expected. The President apologized for that last week, and White House aides tell me the President never would have apologized if he didn't have a solution he could offer.

Via: Newsbusters

Continue Reading.....

Limbaugh Blasts GOP for Not Wanting Obamacare to ‘Hurt People’: ‘Why Not, If They Voted for It?’

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tore into the “establishment” within the Republican Party on Monday for backing efforts to ease the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Limbaugh wondered why the GOP is now attempting to save the American people from feeling the full effects of what they voted for.

Limbaugh began by introducing a clip of National Review editor Jonah Goldberg who, he said, “often times will tell you what the establishment thinks.”

Goldberg, appearing on Fox News Channel, responded to Limbaugh who had previously advocated for the GOP to take a hands-off approach to mitigating the pain felt by average Americans who are losing their health care plans as a result of the ACA. “That’s a hard political message for Republicans to sell,” Goldberg said.

RELATED: Rush Limbaugh Explains Why GOP Didn’t Want Cuccinelli to Win

Limbaugh said that this clip was telling in light of a “test” he was performing. “If I adopted the position of the establishment, I wanted to see what the establishment would do,” Limbaugh said. “It appears from this comment that there is no taste now for letting it implode because letting it implode would hurt people.”

“Why, a month ago, was it okay for it to implode and by definition cause pain and suffering happen?” Limbaugh asked. “Why were they ever in favor of this?”

“Is the establishment changing their opinion because I’ve agreed with them and they don’t want me on their side?” he asked.

Limbaugh went on to detail how the ACA implementation has devastated President Barack Obama’s approval ratings.

Limbaugh again asked why, if the GOP establishment was advocating for letting the ACA implode during the shutdown, they no longer think that is a viable option. “Now that it is imploding, it appears that there’s not the stomach for letting that happen,” Limbaugh asked. “Because the establishment thinks, ‘Well, it’s not a good lesson for the American people to have to suffer and be in great pain just to learn how bad Obamacare is.’ Why not, if they voted for it?”

Via: Mediaite.com

Continue Reading.....

The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this year in the twenty-first century, we pause to honor our veterans on this Veterans Day and remember that first of the great world wars, which ended the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

To those who served, we thank you.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)
Via: Red State Continue Reading.....

Joe Arpaio Restricts Unpatriotic Inmates To Diet Of Bread, Water

Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has issued a bold threat to any unpatriotic inmates in his jails.

According to CBS5, Arpaio is threatening to put any inmates who deface or vandalize the American flag on a diet of only bread and water. Arpaio told CBS5 10 inmates are already on the bread-and-water diet.

CBS5 reports:

Each cell is getting a sticker of an American flag. Any inmate who vandalizes the flag will be punished with the restricted diet.

In keeping with the patriotic theme, Arpaio has ordered that the playing of God Bless America and the National Anthem be done daily in every jail facility over the public address system and for all the inmates, regardless of national origin, to hear and sing-a-long.

This isn't Arpaio's first questionable move regarding inmates' diets. In March 2013, Arpaio announced he would start charging inmates $1 per meal. In September, he announced plans to transition all inmates to a cost-saving vegetarian diet.

Arpaio has a history of stirring controversy with his treatment of Maricopa County inmates. He's been criticized for making prisoners wear pink underwear and ordering his deputies to stay armed at all times -- even while off duty.

Via: Huffington Post

Continue Reading.....

Poll: President Obama approval at 41 percent

President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have continued their slide in his fifth year in the White House, with the latest number down 14 points from last December, according to a new poll.

Just 41 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing, while 53 percent disapprove, according to a Pew Research Center poll out Friday. That 12 point deficit in approval is the largest of Obama’s presidency, according to Pew’s polling.

Pew compared Obama’s approval to the last few presidents in their fifth year. Obama’s decline mimics that of George W. Bush, who registered a 36 percent approval rating at the same point in his term, down 12 points from the December before. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was at a 58 percent approval the year after he was reelected.

(PHOTOS: Obama’s second term)

Asked about their feelings on Obama’s handling of five specific issues, Americans only approved of his job on terrorism, 51 percent to 44 percent. The president registered his lowest rating ever on handling the economy, with 31 percent approving to 65 percent disapproving. His approval rating in each category besides terrorism was in the 30s.

Pew surveyed 2,003 American adults from Oct. 30 to Nov. 6 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Via: Politico

Continue Reading....

U.S. Wants BofA To Pay $864M Over Bad Loans: WSJ

WASHINGTON –  The U.S. government wants Bank of America to pay a penalty of $864 million for bad mortgages made from August 2007 until April 2008 and purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , according to a [l:Wall Street Journalstory|http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579187942897087218|NEW] that ran Saturday. The mortgages were part of a program called "Hustle," which aimed to quickly make loans that were then sold to government sponsored enterprises Fannie and Freddie, according to the Journal's story. The government said the sought penalty amount would cover Fannie and Freddie's gross losses from "Hustle," according to the story. "Hustle" was created by Countrywide, which Bank of America purchased in 2008.

Via Fox Business
Continue Reading