Poll: Obama Approval at All-Time Low

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama’s job approval has dropped to an all-time low, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows that a mere 42 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s job performance, down five points from a poll conducted in early October. The president’s disapproval rating stands at 51 percent, tying an all-time high for Obama.

In all, 41 percent of respondents say they have a less favorable opinion of the president since the 16 day government shutdown, compared to 21 percent who say they have a more favorable view since the shutdown.

The Affordable Care Act has made headlines since the flawed launch of HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1, and the poll shows that the website’s glitches might have raised concerns about the entire law’s tenability. Forty percent say they are less confident in the law based on what they have heard about it in the last several weeks, while 50 percent say the last few weeks have had no influence on their confidence in the law.

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U.S. Deficit Falls to $680 Billion

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Photo Credit: Treasury The federal government’s latest annual deficit is the smallest it’s been since 2008, according to Treasury Department data released Wednesday.

At $680 billion, the fiscal 2013 deficit is 51% less than it was in 2009, when it hit a record high nominally of $1.4 trillion.

As a percent of the economy, it’s also considerably smaller than it’s been in the past five years, coming in at 4.1% of gross domestic product. By contrast, the annual deficit in 2009 topped 10% of GDP. And last year it was 6.8%.

Overall, Treasury said higher receipts accounted for 79% of the decline in the deficit from last year.

Several factors have contributed to the strong improvement in the nation’s near-term fiscal picture. They include an improving economy and a mix of fiscal restraint — primarily, the expiration of stimulus measures, the imposition of across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester, and tax increases on high-income households during the 2013 fiscal year, which ended September 30.

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Romney Rejects White House Effort to Compare Mass. Health Law Rollout to ObamaCare

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Photo Credit: APMitt Romney had an unmistakable message for President Obama on Wednesday: Don’t drag me into this.

The president was in Boston, giving a speech at historic Faneuil Hall and drew on comparisons between the Massachusetts law and the problem-plagued Affordable Care Act.

During his speech, Obama acknowledged the problems with ObamaCare and apologized for his clunky rollout.

“There’s no denying it, right now the website is too slow, too many people have gotten stuck and I’m not happy about it,” Obama said.

Obama, in accounting for the troubled launch of ObamaCare, cited the Massachusetts health care law’s slow start in an effort to keep expectations low. Romney, as governor, signed that law in 2006.

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A Chip In The Head: Brain Implants Will Be Connecting People To The Internet By The Year 2020

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsWould you like to surf the Internet, make a phone call or send a text message using only your brain? Would you like to “download” the content of a 500 page book into your memory in less than a second? Would you like to have extremely advanced nanobots constantly crawling around in your body monitoring it for disease? Would you like to be able to instantly access the collective knowledge base of humanity wherever you are?

All of that may sound like science fiction, but these are technologies that some of the most powerful high tech firms in the world actually believe are achievable by the year 2020. However, with all of the potential “benefits” that such technology could bring, there is also the potential for great tyranny. Just think about it. What do you think that the governments of the world could do if almost everyone had a mind reading brain implant that was connected to the Internet? Could those implants be used to control and manipulate us? Those are frightening things to consider.

For now, most of the scientists that are working on brain implant technology do not seem to be too worried about those kinds of concerns. Instead, they are pressing ahead into realms that were once considered to be impossible.

Right now, there are approximately 100,000 people around the world that have implants in their brains. Most of those are for medical reasons.

But this is just the beginning. According to the Boston Globe, the U.S. government plans “to spend more than $70 million over five years to jump to the next level of brain implants”.

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There are Lies, Damned Lies and Democrats

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Steny Hoyer certainly is a creative man. Asked about Barack Obama’s promise that everyone would be able to keep his health coverage if he liked it and the recent revelation that the Democrats knew all along that millions of Americans would lose their health plans under ObamaCare, he had an answer.

“I think the message [the promise] was accurate. It was not precise enough…[it] should have been caveated with – ‘assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do,'” reports National Review.

My, that’s rich. Almost Frank Rich.

Since Hoyer’s lie about a lie speaks for itself, let’s just have a little fun here. Try this on for size:

Subject: “But you said that if we supported your law, no one would lose his freedom of speech!”

Leader: “My message was accurate. It just wasn’t precise enough. It should have been caveated with, ‘assuming you agree with me.'”

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Shocking Obama Videos Reveal Real Goal: Transition

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Photo Credit: APThe Obamacare plan – state and federal exchanges through which Americans are ordered to buy government-specified health care plans from insurance companies that signed up to offer coverage – perhaps should be called Obamacare 1.0.

After all, President Obama himself has advocated over the years for what Americans someday could see as Obamacare 2.0 – a fully controlling, nationalized, single-payer, universal health care plan.

With the government running everything.

There already are critics of Obama and Healthcare.gov website, in fact, who contend Obamacare rollout’s spectacular failure is part of an overall strategy to make the “transition” to single-payer, that is, socialized medicine, come more quickly.

In the collage of video clips, Obama states plainly, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan. … Everyone in, nobody out.”

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DHS Plan: Let Libyans Train Here for ‘Flight Operations,’ ‘Nuclear-Related Fields’

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Photo Credit: APA draft regulation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would lift a 30-year-ban on Libyan nationals coming to the United States to work or train in “aviation maintenance, flight operations, or nuclear-related fields.”

The 11-page proposed rule was obtained by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

In a statement on his congressional website, Rep. Chaffetz said that the draft final regulation could take effect without prior notice and comment. The congressmen say the prohibition was put in place in the 1980s after the wave of terrorist incidents involving Libyans.

“The administration justifies lifting this ban by claiming that the United States’ relationship with Libya has been ‘normalized,’” the statement said.

But the congressmen also say, “the terror threat continues and numerous news reports document recent terror-related stories coming from Libya. And just over a year ago the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was attacked, which resulted in the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.”

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Moose Hunter Shoots Norway Man On Toilet

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Photo Credit: news.sky.comA moose hunter in Norway has accidentally shot a pensioner who was sitting on the toilet in a nearby holiday home.

The rifleman had been aiming for the animal, but saw his wayward bullet pierce the wooden wall behind it and strike the unsuspecting victim.

Officials said the man in his 70s was rushed to hospital by helicopter from the site in the island Vesteroy, around 74 miles south of capital Oslo.

His injury was not though to be life-threatening. The moose also escaped unharmed.

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FBI to Lavabit Founder: ‘Do You Really Think Users Trust You Over Us?’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller The FBI fined, threatened, and forced Ladar Levison to suspend the operation of his secure email service, Lavabit LLC, telling the entrepreneur that his users were more likely to trust the government than him.

This year, the government demanded that Levison turn over his private SSL (secure socket layer) so that the FBI could investigate a single user account allegedly belonging to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

“By taking these keys from me they were able to unlock everything coming in and out…gaining access to email content, passwords, and credit card numbers,” Levison told The Daily Caller in an interview. The keys allowed the FBI to “masquerade” as Levison himself, giving the agency administrative access to his system.

“They were completely unwilling to provide any kind of transparency back to me to assure me that the only information they were collecting was the information on this one specific user,” said Levison. “Users trusted me to protect their private information and I was essentially opening up the doors wide for the feds to come in and take whatever they wanted.”

Levison said he was willing to provide the FBI limited access to what they wanted, but the bureau told him that was not sufficient, insisting on full access.

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Ted Cruz Explains to Trayvon Martin’s Mother How ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws Help Protect the Black Community (+video)

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Photo Credit: C-SPANSen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) came face-to-face with Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, on Capitol Hill during a Tuesday hearing on “Stand Your Ground” laws. After offering his condolences to Fulton, Cruz told the mother that the self-defense laws are not racist because they help blacks as much as whites, if not more.

Cruz also explained that, despite some efforts to exploit Martin’s death, George Zimmerman’s defense team never used Stand Your Ground laws as a defense in the murder trial.

“We know that some in our political process have a desire to exploit that tragic, violent incident for agendas that have nothing to do with that young man who lost his life. We have seen efforts to undermine the verdict of the jury and, more broadly, to inflame racial tensions that I think are sad and irresponsible,” the Texas senator added.

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