Tommy Vietor: “Dude, Where’s my Van?”
Methinks Mr. Vietor will soon be back living in his van, down by the river.
Via our summer intern, @BiffSpackle and based on a true story.
Miami Police Shooting Revealed: 377 Shots Fired By 23 Cops At 2 Men In Car (+video)
On December 10, more than two dozen police officers from across Miami Dade County converged on a blue Volvo that had crashed in the backyard of a townhouse on 65th Street just off 27th Avenue.
As the car was wedged helplessly between a light pole and a tree, nearly a minute passed before officers opened up – firing approximately 50 bullets at the car and the two unarmed men inside the vehicle.
The two men inside the car survived that initial volley of gunfire, according to witnesses, who said they could see the men moving inside the Volvo. Everything went quiet for nearly two minutes before the officers opened up a second time – unleashing an unrelenting torrent of bullets that lasted almost 25 seconds. By the time it was over, the two men inside the car were dead.
CBS4 News has learned a total of 23 officers fired a total of at least 377 rounds.
Bullets were sprayed everywhere. They hit the Volvo, other cars in the lot, fence posts and neighboring businesses. They blasted holes in a townhouse where a 12-year-old dove to the ground for cover and a four month old slept in his crib.
Read more from this story HERE.
Obamacare Plans’ Unexpected Sticker Shock
By John Tozzi.
Alarming predictions that the premiums for individual health plans would skyrocket in the first year of Obamacare turned out to be largely unfounded. But the roughly 8 million people who bought insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges may suffer some sticker shock as they begin using their benefits.
That’s because many of the plans make consumers shoulder a lot of the costs of their medical care through deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance—payments the newly insured may not have grasped when they signed up. Research suggests that most people don’t understand those terms.
“Most people, as soon as they have health-care coverage, they expect to go to the drug store and pay whatever their co-pay is for their prescription, not have to meet a deductible,” says Gina Boscarino, senior policy director at Breakaway Policies. She helped produce a new report (pdf) with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examining the new health plans.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: USA Today Money
By Matt Krantz.
Companies find all sorts of excuses during earnings season for disappointments, with the weather being an all-time favorite. But some companies are finding a new scapegoat: Obamacare.
Thirty companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500, including United Parcel Service, General Electric and retailer Dollar General, have mentioned the Affordable Care Act during their conference calls since March 1 and all through the first-quarter earnings season, says John Butters, analyst at financial data research firm FactSet. That’s a healthy cross section of companies if you consider that so far, 446 companies in the S&P 500 have reported first-quarter results.
Exactly half the companies that mentioned the Act are in the healthcare industry, where there’s a direct interaction with the new law. But in the other half, companies ranging from many industries discussed the fallout of the Affordable Care Act on their business.
Most of the companies talking about the law did so negatively, pointing out how it either hurts demand for their business or causes costs to increase. “There are legitimate complaints,” says Kip Piper, an independent consultant that advises companies on health-care plans. “The ACA does impose costs and obligations that cost money.”
Some companies are pointing to the Affordable Care Act for driving up insurance costs. And this comes as health-care spending rose at an annual rate of 9.9% last quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says, the fastest rate of increase since 1980. But others are saying that the new law is affecting demand for its products…
Read more from this story HERE.
Report: White House Aide Linked to Al-Qaida Funder
Photo Credit: WND
The thread is more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the Muslim World League, a group accused of financing al-Qaida fronts. The organization’s offshoots have been declared official terrorist organizations by both the State Department and the United Nations.
Yet despite the troubling facts, Muslim World League-linked individuals have been in key national security positions and are currently helping to run the military’s chaplain program.
The case of Mehdi K. Alhassani, special assistant to the Office of the Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, drew attention last week in the blogosphere after former PLO operative Walid Shoebat reported on Alhassani’s ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups.
Alhassani’s name emerged in an administration email made public last week as part of a Judicial Watch lawsuit. The email was sent three days after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack to Alhassani and other officials from Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication.
Read more from this story HERE.
Islamic Militants in Nigeria Slaughter Hundreds in Border Town Massacre
Photo Credit: AFP / Getty
As many as 300 people were killed when a band of extremists attacked the town of Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, according to local press reports. The attack and hundreds of casualties were confirmed Wednesday by Borno state information commissioner Mohammed Bulama who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday. Shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the attack, he said.
The news of the attack adds to Nigeria’s growing crisis from the Islamic extremists’ violent campaign of bombings, attacks and abductions. The militant Boko Haram rebels are holding captive 276 teenage students, after abducting them from their boarding school in Chibok, also in northeastern Borno state.
Read more from this story HERE.
Harvard Will Host ‘Reenactment’ of Satanic Mass
Photo Credit: Harvard.edu
A non-consecrated communion host will be used in the reenactment, according to Lucien Greaves, spokesman for The Satanic Temple.
“While Black Masses are supposed to utilize a consecrated host, ours is merely representative of a consecrated host,” Greaves told CNSNews.com. “It is not consecrated. We neither believe in nor invoke the supernatural.”
“To us, the Black Mass is an amalgamation that developed through time based on witch-hunting fears and later adopted by some as a declaration of personal Independence against what they felt to be the stifling authority of the church,” said Greaves.
He further said that during the Black Mass reenactment, representatives of The Satanic Temple will provide narration on the academic and historical aspects of a Satanic Mass.
Read more from this story HERE.
HGTV Pulls New Home-Flipping Series After Report Emerges Identifying Its Stars As Traditional Marriage Supporters
Photo Credit: Deadline
HGTV has decided not to move forward with the Benham Brothers’ series.
— HGTV (@hgtv) May 7, 2014
Right Wing Watch reported Tuesday that David Benham had led a prayer rally outside of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC in 2012, in which he told conservative radio host Janet Mefferd that America’s Christian majority must repent for tolerating “homosexuality and its agenda that is attacking the nation” and “demonic ideologies tak[ing] our universities and our public school systems.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Obama Court Nominee Wrote Memos Justifying Drone Strikes On U.S. Citizens (+video)
Photo Credit: AP
The White House has agreed to allow lawmakers to review at least one of the drone memos after U.S. senators and the the American Civil Liberties Union expressed concerns, technology website Ars Technica reported Wednesday.
Some Democrats, including SenateJudiciary Committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, say it isn’t Mr. Barron’s memos, but political theater, that is tying up his selection.
“Senate Republicans have consistently blocked most of President Obama’s judicial nominees so it comes as no surprise that they continue to do so with this nominee. David Barron is a brilliant lawyer who is committed to public service,” said Sen. Leahy, Ars Technica reported.
Read more from this story HERE.
Obama’s Economy Helps Democrats, Says Wasserman Schultz
Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster
“No question the economic issues are an advantage for Democrats,” Wasserman Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, said at a May 7 breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
The GOP’s attempts to repeal Obamacare, and its support for the budget plan drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, show “Republicans are focused on making sure a select few are able to do even better,” she said.
But she latter admitted that her constituents are unhappy with President Obama’s economy, even as she spun the admission to highlight Democrats’ spending plans. Voters, she said, “are asking about investing in education, focusing on continuing to create jobs, on making housing more affordable, the bread and butter kitchen table issues that will add to the confidence that Americans have that this economy is continuing to improve.”
“There is certainly room for improvement” in the economy, she acknowledged, as she downplayed a river of bad economic news about income, the middle-class, the widening wealth gap, more use of foreign workers, and the rising number of people who have lost hope for economic change.
Read more from this story HERE.
American Marine Chained In Mexican Jail Is Unshackled But Remains Behind Bars (+video)
Photo Credit: Fox News
Jill Tahmooressi’s son, Andrew, has been held inside La Mesa Prison in Tijuana since April 1, when he was arrested after unintentionally going into Mexico from California’s San Ysidro border crossing while carrying three, registered firearms. After an escape attempt and having his wounds treated at Tijuana General Hospital following a self-inflicted stabbing, he was placed in the jail infirmary with his arms and legs restrained.
Tahmooressi called his mother Friday to let her know that the shackles had been removed, but phoned her again on Monday to inform her that Mexican prison officials had once again restrained him by clamping a chain on one of his legs.
“Honestly, that’s a lot better than having all four of his limbs chained up,” an emotional Jill Tahmooressi told Fox News Latino. “He can at least stand up and exercise to get his muscle strength back.”
An active U.S. Marine reservist who served two combat tours in Afghanistan, including a 2010 stint in the violent Marjah district, Tahmooressi was moving to San Diego area with a Marine friend to be close to his treatment center for his post-traumatic stress disorder when he made a wrong turn into Mexico and ended up under arrest.
Read more from this story HERE.