Unhinged Matthews Sneers at 'So-Called Independent Media' Giving 'Racist' GOP a Free Pass

What world does Chris Matthews live in? The MSNBC anchor worked himself into a frenzy on Monday night, ranting that the "so-called independent media" are just too soft on all the "racist" elements within the Republican Party. Talking to his fellow liberals David Corn and Ed Rendell, the Hardball host balked, "I look at the free ride the media has been giving the Republican Party." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

According to Matthews, it's conservative media bias that causes most journalists to ignore the "40 million people [Republicans] want to commit to the emergency room!" Conservatives "don't want to lift a finger for them!" Yet, "the so-called independent media out there never brings it up!" If the problem is that reporters don't call Republicans racist enough, Matthewscertainly does his part – and continued his cries of bigotry on Monday night.

The cable anchor began by demanding, "...I think it's time for the President to stick it to his enemies." Matthews identified:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: No, his true enemies are the backers and kissing cousins of the birthers, the people like John Boehner, who refuse to stand up to them, who makes common cause with the haters even as he positions himself as not quite one of them, who keep their hands clean even as they benefit from the garbage their birther buddies are throwing out at the latest right-wing feeding time at the zoo.

Via: Newsbusters

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Rand Paul Warns: FDA Is ‘Coming After Your Doughnuts’

In some of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) first non-plagiarism news in a while, the Kentucky senator warned on Monday that the Federal Drug Administration’s new ban on trans fats was another intrusion by the nanny state, this one aimed at your morning indulgences.

“They’re coming after your doughnuts!” Paul told a crowd at The Charleston Meeting in South Carolina, in addition to taking a shot at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempted soda ban.

“Some unelected bureaucrat has banned trans fat,” he continued. “So I say, we need to line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this. Not only that, any of them with a BMI over 16, or whatever the number you’re supposed to have, I want to see them on the treadmill, and I want to see someone from OSHA lashing them while they’re working on the treadmill.”

“If we’re going to have a nanny state, and everybody’s gotta eat the right thing, and you can’t eat a doughnut, maybe we ought to enforce it on the government workers first,” Paul said.

New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait was quick to rebut Paul’s charges:

They are not, in fact, coming after your doughnuts. Trans fats are not essential to make doughnuts or, really, anything. Some restaurants still use trans fats because, even though they’re incredibly bad for you, they’re longer-lasting and slightly cheaper than other oils, and very few customers would ever know the difference.

Via: Mediaite.com

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The plot thickens: ObamaCare website project manager claims he wasn’t told that security flaws posed “limitless” risk

It’s Henry Chao, who warned people back in March that he was “nervous” about the state of Healthcare.gov’s development and hoped that using the site wouldn’t be “a third-world experience.” Eight months later, that’s exactly what it is: The front end barely functions, the back end is a ripe target for thieves, and the people in charge are either dangerously ignorant about its operations or covering up what they knew. Money quote from CBS’s story about this:

Chao said he was unaware of a Sept. 3 government memo written by another senior official at CMS. It found two high-risk issues, which are redacted for security reasons. The memo said “the threat and risk potential (to the system) is limitless.” The memo shows CMS gave deadlines of mid-2014 and early 2015 to address them…

It was Chao who recommended it was safe to launch the website Oct. 1. When shown the security risk memo, Chao said, “I just want to say that I haven’t seen this before.”

A Republican staff lawyer asked, “Do you find it surprising that you haven’t seen this before?”

Chao replied, “Yeah … I mean, wouldn’t you be surprised if you were me?” He later added: “It is disturbing. I mean, I don’t deny that this is … a fairly nonstandard way” to proceed.

Note well: The estimated fix for the unspecified security problems was the middle of next year at the earliest. HHS says they rolled out the site on October 1 even though it wasn’t functioning because they thought they could fix it on the fly relatively quickly after launch. This memo proves that that’s a lie.

Via: Hot Air

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Interior secretary says Obama may bypass Congress on monuments

SAN FRANCISCO — Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says she will recommend that President Obama act alone if necessary to create new national monuments and sidestep a gridlocked Congress that has failed to address dozens of public lands bills.

Jewell said the logjam on Capitol Hill has created a conservation backlog, and she warned that the Obama administration would not "hold its breath forever" waiting for lawmakers to act.

"The president will not hesitate," Jewell said in an interview in San Francisco last week. "I can tell you that there are places that are ripe for setting aside, with a tremendous groundswell of public support."

PHOTOS: Best political moments of 2013

Congress has not added any acreage to the national park or wilderness systems since 2010. Jewell blamed ramped-up rhetoric in Washington for the impasse. She said the appetite for preserving American historic and cultural sites remains high but some officials seek to avoid the appearance of publicly embracing more government protection.

Jewell, who has been on the job scarcely six months, came to California to promote several intiatives and tour a site that could be added to a national monument along the Mendocino coast.

She began with a meet and greet at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. On a bright day with gulls wheeling against a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge — the velvety green Marin headlands in the distance — Jewell stood in one of the nation's most-visited national parks and made the case for the value of public lands.

Via: Washington Examiner

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After His Health Plan Was Canceled, The Cheapest Option Under Obamacare Was Anything but Cheap

Despite assurances from his insurance broker, and even the President, that it wouldn’t happen, John Hawkins recently learned his health plan has become another casualty of Obamacare.

Hawkins is one of more than 3.5 million Americans (and increasing) who have had their individual health plans canceled because those plans don’t comply with the stringent mandates in the health law.

Once his plan was canceled, Hawkins found that the cheapest comparable plan that met the essential benefits from Obamacare would involve a “substantial price increase.”

Currently, I pay $191 per month. That will go up to $274. That’s nearly $1,000 a year more for a service that I already have. In addition, the deductible on my current plan is $200 and that will be going up to $6,000.

In spite of his setback, Hawkins writes he feels lucky the insurance fallout isn’t as bad as some insurance holders have reported.

Via: Foundry

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DoJ tells USAir, AMR to divest from 7 airports

The Department of Justice said Tuesday that it will require US Airways and AMR to divest facilities at seven airports in order to for their proposed merger to proceed.

Shares in US Airways were halted earlier Tuesday morning, after early reports saying that the two airlines were close to settling a state and federal antitrust suit.

The settlement with the Department of Justice will allow the deal to proceed.

USAir shares were up 3.4 percent before the halt. Shares in AMR, which has continued to trade despite its bankruptcy, rose 33 percent.

Other airline shares rose sharply as well on the news.

The government filed a lawsuit in August arguing that US Airways and AMR Corp, parent of bankrupt American Airlines, should be forced to scrap their proposed merger, which would create the world's largest airline.

Via: CNBC

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WOW: ObamaCare Navigators Caught On Tape Encouraging Lying On Applications

In a shocking video released on November 11, Project Veritas exposed Obamacare navigators in Dallas counseling applicants to lie on their applications in order to get lower premiums and higher subsidies.

The video showed Obamacare navigators telling a Project Veritas investigator to avoid reporting portions of his income to the IRS in order to avoid being audited and to remain eligible for HHS grants. Later, Obamacare navigators were shown telling a Project Veritas investigator to lie about being a not being a smoker in order to receive a lower premium, and one navigator even admitted to lying on her own application.

Via: Town Hall

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House this week will highlight Obamacare flaws while Senate clashes over the filibuster rule

NO AMOUNT OF TIME COULD IDENTIFY FLAWS IN OBAMACARE. TO MANY TO COUNT

While the House spotlights the flawed health care law rollout this week, Senate lawmakers are set to clash over confirming two new judges, with Democrats threatening Republicans with a major change that would weaken the filibuster if the GOP votes them down.

And while the Senate Democratic majority has refused to take up legislation altering the new health care law in the wake of a significantly flawed roll out, Republicans who run the House will pass their own bill to tweak the law, and likely with Democratic support.

"For the next several weeks we intend to focus our communications, legislative and oversight activities around Obamacare on the millions of Americans who are having their health insurance policies cancelled and the broken promise that 'if you like what you have, you can keep it,'" House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., outlined in a Nov. 7 memo to the House Republican conference.

The Senate fireworks could start as early as Tuesday, when the Congress returns from Veterans Day to vote on two nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Nina Pillar, a lawyer, and U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins are likely to be filibustered, according Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Republicans don't want anymore of President Obama's picks seated on the powerful court and last week blocked Obama pick Patricia Millet to fill a third vacancy.

Republicans argue that the Obama administration is stacking the court in order to expand the president's ability to legislate through the executive branch. The court's caseload, Republicans argue, does not require more judges.

But Democrats argue that there are three vacancies to fill and say Republicans are playing partisan politics, backing down on a deal cut earlier this year in which they promised not to block judicial picks.

If they stand in the way this time, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, there would be "almost an overwhelming effort to change the rules."

Via: Washington Examiner

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Insurers: Let Consumers Bypass HealthCare.gov

Health insurers have so little trust in the Obamacare website that they are pressuring the administration to allow consumers entitled to subsidies to bypass HealthCare.gov and go directly to the companies.

Since its disastrous rollout Oct. 1, the government website has been an epic failure. The list of technical problems is endless and growing. It began with system delays and timeouts and more recently has been plagued with capacity problems that surface when a consumer is further along in the application process.

The administration so far has thwarted allowing direct access by consumers to insurers, The New York Times reports, in part due to privacy concerns. The White House, though, is “continuing to pursue additional avenues by which people can enroll.”

Officials reportedly are worried that users’ personal data, such as financial and tax information and immigration status, might be compromised, according to the Times. 

Quality Software Services Inc., the company charged with fixing the website mess, already has put at risk the personal information of more than 6 million Medicare beneficiaries, The Hill reports.

Federal investigators this year called the company a “high risk” after it was revealed it “failed to stop its employees from connecting unauthorized USB devices (such as iPods) to highly sensitive Medicare systems.” 

Doing so risks malware infecting the system asnd opens the door to identity theft by allowing for inappropriate access to personal information. 

The company put additional safeguards in place following the government report, according to a spokesman.

Via: Newsmax

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