Texas GOP Congresswoman Blocks Obama’s Effort to Slip Egypt $450 Million

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The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The aid is part of the $1 billion in assistance that the Obama administration has pledged to Egypt to bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. Its fate, however, was clouded by concerns over the new government’s policies and, more recently, the protests that damaged the American Embassy in Cairo.

The United States Agency for International Development notified Congress of the cash infusion on Friday morning during the pre-election recess, promptly igniting a smoldering debate over foreign aid and the administration’s handling of crises in the Islamic world.

An influential Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, immediately announced that she would use her position as chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign aid to block the distribution of the money. She said the American relationship with Egypt “has never been under more scrutiny” than it is in the wake of the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I am not convinced of the urgent need for this assistance and I cannot support it at this time,” Ms. Granger said in a statement that her office issued even before the administration announced the package.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Huckabee Says Libya Lie is Obama’s Watergate & Worse

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In a compelling interview yesterday, Governor Huckabee compares Obama’s repeated lies about the Libyan murder of the US ambassador and its connection to an American pornographer’s YouTube video (the Innocence of Muslims) to Nixon’s Watergate lies.

He says there’s a big difference though: unlike Nixon’s prevarication, Obama’s lies probably got people killed:

Million Swing State Voters Getting DVD Claiming Obama’s Real Father Was Davis, Mother Bondage Star of Adult Photos (+video)

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More than a million voters in swing states are being sent an anti-Obama documentary that claims the President’s mother once posed for pornographic photos wearing bondage gear.

The shocking – and totally unfounded – claims made in the DVD represent a new low in the election dirty tricks war today provoking fury among Democrats and likely to trigger outrage in the White House.

‘Dreams From My Real Father’, made by a right-wing film-maker who is a long-time critic of Obama, includes images of a woman it claims is the President’s mother Ann Dunham clad in leather gloves, boots and a corset posing seductively on a couch.

The film also alleges that Mr Obama’s real father is left wing poet poet and Communist party activist Frank Marshall Davis, and that Ms Dunham’s marriage was a ‘sham’ to cover this up. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a trailer from the controversial movie:

Convicted TSA Agent Blows the Whistle: TSA Stealing from Airline Passengers (+video)

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A former TSA agent who spent three years in prison for stealing from passengers’ luggage says the practice is “commonplace.”

Pythias Brown admits to stealing more than $800,000 worth of cash, clothing and electronics over a four-year period at Newark Liberty International Airport. He was finally caught trying to sell a stolen CNN camera on eBay.

“It became so easy, I got complacent,” Brown told ABC News.

Though Brown says he might have been one of the biggest thieves at the Transportation Security Administration, he believes the agency has a culture of entitlement — and of looking the other way.

“It was so easy. One day I walked out of there with the video game, the Nintendo Wii. I walked right out of the checkpoint with the Nintendo Wii in my hand,” he said. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s an interview with the agent:

Christians ‘flee Egypt town after death threats’

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Several Christian families have fled their homes in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula after receiving death threats from suspected Islamist militants, officials and residents told AFP on Friday.

Last week, flyers began circulating in the town of Rafah on the Gaza Strip border demanding that its tiny Coptic population move out, residents said.

Officials at the local church informed the authorities of the threats, but no actin was taken, they added.

Days later, a shop belonging to one of the families was fired on with automatic rifles, witnesses said.

The events prompted the families to leave Rafah but there were conflicting accounts over whether they had done so voluntarily or been evicted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Trouble for Romney: Obamaphones Skyrocketing in Swing State-Ohio

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A program that provides subsidized phone service to low-income individuals has nearly doubled in size in Ohio in the past year — now covering more than a million people. At the same time, federal officials say they’re reining in waste, fraud and abuse in the program.

The Federal Communications Commission announced recently that reforms have saved $43 million since January and are expected to save $200 million by year’s end. In Ohio, savings are expected to be $2.9 million a year.

The savings were realized in part because the government gave out fewer cellphones to ineligible people and took steps to avoid issuing duplicate phones.

But the size of the program in the state — and profits to the increasing number of cellphone companies involved — has exploded in recent months, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of program data.

The program in Ohio cost $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2012, the most recent data available, versus $15.6 million in the same timeframe in 2011. Compared to the first quarter of 2011, the number of people in the program nearly doubled to more than a million. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a video of one the Obama-phone recipients singing Obama’s praises and going off on Romney.

Iran’s Ahmadinejad Seems to Believe Romney Will Lose; Like Putin, Thinks 2nd Obama Term Will Be Good

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said talks over his country’s development of enriched uranium will be more productive after the U.S. election and expressed optimism the two sides will “be able to take some steps forward.”

“We have seen during many years that as we approach the United States presidential election, no important decisions are made,” Ahmadinejad said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” program. “Following the election, certainly the atmosphere will be much more stable, and important decisions can be made and announced.”

Ahmadinejad, who is completing his second and last term as president, said meetings over Iran’s nuclear program with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, will result in “a very important decision” following the U.S. November election. Iran contends its nuclear facilities are for peaceful civilian purposes.

“We have set forth proposals, we are holding dialogue,” he said in the CNN interview, according to a transcript of the program scheduled to air today. “We do hope to be able to take some steps forward.”

U.S. President Barack Obama, in Sept. 25 speech before the General Assembly, said that time “is not unlimited” to reach a diplomatic resolution and vowed that the U.S. “will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Read more from this story HERE.

“Obama Boyz” Gang Member Charged With 10 Felony Counts After St. Louis Shootings

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A St. Louis teen who authorities say is a member of a gang called the “Obama Boyz” has been charged with two shootings on Saturday.

Anthony Jamal Lee, 18, fired at a group of people from the window of a Grand Prix at 2:17 p.m., according to charges.

A 13-year-old boy was struck in the side of his body and had to be hospitalized; a 17-year-old boy was grazed by bullets on his face and arm.

Lee, according to authorities, then fired from his car at two passengers in another Grand Prix, grazing one of them in the back.

Read more from this story HERE.

Venezuela’s Chavez May Lose Election Next Week

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The crowds are bigger, his speeches slicker, and Venezuela’s young opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, is on a roll in a final, frenzied push to end President Hugo Chavez’s socialist rule. With just one week left before the Opec nation’s presidential election, the 40-year-old state governor is whipping up crowds like never before, creeping up in the polls and becoming increasingly aggressive in his attacks on Chavez’s policies.

“We’ve never had a candidate like him,” gushes shopkeeper Andrea Gomez, 42, screaming at Capriles like a teenage fan at a pop concert, as the passing politician blows kisses from an open-top cavalcade on the Caribbean coast north of Caracas.

Capriles has made big inroads among the working class where Chavez has his power-base, but still faces suspicions that he is too much of a rich kid and will end Chavez’s popular welfare programmes.

The 58-year-old incumbent remains a formidable campaigner and has a strong connection with many Venezuelans, especially the poor. Yet while a majority of big pollsters still put Chavez in front, two – Consultores 21 and Varianzas – have Capriles just ahead.

Opposition activists insist the poll numbers are distorted by a “fear factor” – government employees wary of reprisals if they show support for Capriles, for instance – and therefore underestimate their man’s real popularity. Either way, Capriles seems certain to have the best tilt at Chavez that anyone has managed during his 14-year rule.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Absolutely Uncertain

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A new, 18-minute mini-documentary follows the journey of Irina, a 23-year-old liberal, Jewish New Yorker who voted for Obama in 2008. Yet as her connection to Israel has grown, and she has learned more about the President’s policies across the Middle East and towards Israel in particular, Irina has come to realize that “when the chips are down,” the President may not “have Israel’s back” as he says: