‘Obamacare’ National Marketing Campaign To Cost Nearly $700 Million

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Photo Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty ImagesIt will make you stronger. It will give you peace of mind and make you feel like a winner. Health insurance is what the whole country has been talking about, so don’t be left out.

Sound like a sales pitch? Get ready for a lot more. As President Barack Obama’s health care law moves from theory to reality in the coming months, its success may hinge on whether the best minds in advertising can reach one of the hardest-to-find parts of the population: people without health coverage.

The campaign won’t come cheap: The total amount to be spent nationally on publicity, marketing and advertising will be at least $684 million, according to data compiled The Associated Press from federal and state sources.

About 16 percent of Americans are uninsured, but despite years of political debate and media attention, more than three-quarters of them still know little about the law known as “Obamacare,” according to recent surveys.

“It’s not sugar cereal, beer and detergent,” said Brooke Foley, chief executive officer of the Chicago-based Jayne Agency, one of the advertising firms crafting messages to reach the uninsured.

Read more from this story HERE.

The West Should Prepare for Assad’s Victory in Syria

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty ImagesThis morning’s report that hundreds of former Syrian rebels are laying down their arms and taking up the government’s offer of an amnesty is further evidence of what I have been saying (and writing) for months: President Bashar al-Assad is winning Syria’s brutal civil war.

Ever since Assad’s forces turned the tide of the conflict by retaking the strategically important town of Qusayr on the Lebanese border earlier in the summer, there has been an almost immutable momentum building in favour of the regime gaining the upper hand in the conflict.

A combination of the deep divisions with the rebel ranks, with the Syrian Free Forces declaring war on their al-Qaeda allies (a civil war within a civil war), together with the tangible support Assad has received from his Iranian and Russian allies, means that the rebel cause is now all but lost. No wonder some of the rebels have decided they are fighting for a lost cause, and have decided it is no longer worth risking their lives.

Moreover, as General Sir David Richards, the former head of Britain’s Armed Forces, explained in my valedictory interview with him for the Telegraph last week, calls by the likes of David Cameron and William Hague to arm the rebels now seem likely to fall on deaf ears.

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Federal Agents Raid Marijuana Dispensaries in Washington

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Photo Credit: APFederal agents have raided a number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the Puget Sound region.

Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Jodie Underwood said Wednesday afternoon the operation ended Wednesday evening, but she declined to provide any specifics of the operation.

Washington state legalized adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana last fall, but marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Read more from this story HERE.

Darrell Issa Reveals Yet Another Potential Obama Administration Scandal: That’s ‘Against the Law’

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Photo Credit: The BlazeU.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials ordered subordinates not to talk to congressional investigators about their investigation into illicit hiring practices and related whistleblower retaliation allegations, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.).

Issa, in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, revealed that the deputy secretary of energy issued a gag order following the release of a highly critical inspector general report last week.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a division of the DOE, allegedly violated DOE hiring guidelines in a manner than disadvantaged military veterans, according to the scathing IG report.

The BPA employees who cooperated with the IG’s investigation were fired, suspended or disciplined in other ways, the report found.

Further, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman “verbally instructed Elliot Mainzer, the individual [Poneman] chose to serve as acting administrator of BPA, that no BPA employees were to talk with anyone regarding these allegations, including congressional investigators,” Issa wrote in a July 17 letter.

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Apocalyptic, Fiery Clouds Gathering Over Midwest Captured in Video

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Eerie round, orange clouds were spotted over a Michigan town, making the sky appear “on fire” and leading residents to worry that wild weather was coming.

The bizarre sight formed in the skies over the Michigan town of Iron Mountain at around 8:30 p.m. local time, and led to worries that severe thunderstorms or tornadoes were approaching.

National Weather Service Warning Coordination meteorologist Jeff Last, who posted images of the curved, tinted clouds to Twitter, said they were a rare phenomenon called Mammatus, which means “breast cloud.”

Mammatus, or mammatocumulus, clouds are often associated with severe thunderstorms, said Iron Mountain Daily News reporter Chris Tomassucci.

“The pictures don’t really capture how eerie the whole experience was,” he wrote.

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Army’s Giant Surveillance Blimp to Start Tracking Objects in DC Region

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While Congress debates the merits of spending tens of millions of dollars to add missile interceptors on the East Coast while increasing the number already in place out West, a long-running developmental Army radar system is packing up and heading for Maryland.

From May 4 to June 14, Raytheon’s JLENS, or Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, was put through its paces by about 100 soldiers during user assessment tests out in Utah, but the company announced today that the 74-foot-high tethered airship is now headed to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland for a more ambitious operational assessment run by the US Northern Command.

The soldiers who were trained up to use the system in Utah will make the trip with the airship, but since JLENS will be running on a 24/7 basis once on the East Coast—and tracking anything that flies, drives, or floats near the National Capital Region—more soldiers will be trained to operate it before the assessments kick off in 2014.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lindsey Graham Says He Plans To Introduce An Authorization For The Use Of Military Force In Iran By Summers End

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Photo Credit: donkeyhotey Just days after saying the same thing in an interview at the Capital last Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham R-SC) again said in front of a friendly audience at a conference put on by the Christians United for Israel that he [will] introduce a resolution to authorize war with Iran.

“If nothing changes in Iran, come September, October, I will present a resolution that will authorize the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb,” Graham told the conference audience.

“The only way to convince Iran to halt their nuclear program is to make it clear that we will take it out,” he continues.

The National Iranian American Council came out today condemning Graham’s call to war.

Read more from this story HERE.

Trump: Weiner a ‘Sick Puppy’ That NYC Doesn’t Need

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Photo Credit: LandovNew York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is “a very sick puppy,” and the city doesn’t need him as a leader, says businessman Donald Trump.

“He’s a deviant. He’s got a real, real sickness,” Trump said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”

Weiner’s campaign is a big embarrassment to New York City, Trump said. “New York has enough problems without this.”

Obamacare: Massive New Rules Revealed for 2013

Weiner served in the U.S. Congress representing New York, but was forced to resign in 2011 after it was revealed he sent lewd text messages and photos of himself to women online. He announced earlier this year he was running for mayor and was running first or second in recent polls.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Pursuing ‘Stateless Income’ Tax Enforcement: Official

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe Internal Revenue Service is pursuing tax enforcement cases against companies over the issue of “stateless income,” a senior agency official said on Wednesday in a reference to corporate profits that are not taxed by any country.

Erik Corwin, an IRS deputy chief counsel, said there were international tax disputes with companies, “most involving consequences of complex restructurings designed either to create stateless income or to affect a tax efficient repatriation.”

“So those are a family of cases that are in the pipeline and being looked at,” he told tax lawyers in a speech in Washington.

Asked by reporters later to elaborate on any litigation, Corwin declined to comment. But tax lawyers said the references to stateless income and profits held offshore could signal a new enforcement approach by the IRS.

“I have not heard the IRS use the term before,” Edward Kleinbard, who coined the “stateless income” phrase in a 2007 research paper, said in a telephone interview.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawmakers Blast Guantanamo’s $2.7 Million Per Prisoner Cost

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Photo Credit: JTF GitmoDemocratic lawmakers pushing to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay said on Wednesday its cost has skyrocketed to $2.7 million per inmate this year and argued it is too expensive to keep open while the country is fighting budget deficits.

“This is a massive waste of money,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the base.

Guantanamo has been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth, and President Barack Obama in May cited its cost – then calculated at about $900,000 per prisoner – as one of many reasons to close it.

Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, testified during the hearing that the current cost of operating the facility has jumped to $454 million in the fiscal year ended September 30, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, or about $2.7 million for each of the 166 inmates.

Smith said overall, $4.7 billion has been spent running Guantanamo since the facility opened in 2002. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: GettyGuantanamo Bay Prison Divides Senate Panel

By Alexei Koseff. Sharp disagreement over the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp dominated the first Senate hearing on the issue in four years.

The meeting Wednesday of a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee, held in the wake of a high-profile hunger strike by inmates and renewed calls from President Obama to close the facility, made clear that deep partisan divisions remain over whether keeping the prison open is a threat to national security or a necessity.

Opened at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Guantanamo was established by President George W. Bush to hold detainees suspected of connections to global terrorism organizations.

Allegations of abuse and torture of inmates have led to repeated calls for Guantanamo’s closure, and Obama has campaigned twice on the issue, though Congress has passed repeated measures to keep the prison open.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who is chairman of the panel, urged Congress to support Obama’s efforts, which would end the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and either release them or charge them in American courts. Read more from this story HERE.