Private Sector to the Rescue: Top Tech Experts Sent to Save ObamaCare Website

Photo Credit: APAn A-Team of tech experts is being brought in to help the Obama administration iron out the cyber wrinkles associated with the rocky roll out of the Affordable Care Act.

Google, Red Hat and Oracle are loaning the government dozens of their top computer engineers, programmers and site developers to help the Obama administration fix the problem-plagued insurance exchange website.

“As part of the ‘Tech Surge,’ we’ve added key personnel from the government and private sector, including expert engineers and technology managers,” Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said.

Among those rushing to the rescue is Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer from Google, and Greg Gershman, the innovation director for smartphone application maker Mobomo.

“Michael is onsite working with QSSI, the general contractor, leveraging his experience stabilizing large, high throughput applications to improve HealthCare.gov’s reliability and performance,” Bataille said.

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Dems Resume ‘Nuclear Option’ Threats to Bypass GOP, Confirm Obama Nominees

Photo Credit: Susan Walsh/APSome Senate Democrats resumed calls for the so-called “nuclear option” Thursday after Senate Republicans blocked two presidential nominees.

Republicans have blocked the nomination of Democratic Rep. Mel Watt to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the nomination of Patricia Millett to the U.S. Appeals Court for the Washington, D.C. Circuit by voting against cloture, effectively filibustering the nominations.

If invoked, the nuclear option would allow Democrats to push through presidential nominations without any support from Senate Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell struck a deal in January to avert the nuclear option. In July, the two again negotiated on a “new normal,” in Reid’s words, to streamline the process for confirming presidential nominees. The deal, Reid said at the time, was that “Qualified executive nominees must not be blocked on a procedural supermajority vote.” An exception was made for “extraordinary circumstances.”

But after the Watt and Millett votes, the nuclear option is back on the table, some Democrats have declared.

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Privacy Becomes a Conservative Cause

Photo Credit: APAs Congress takes a closer look at Internet privacy with this week’s Federal Trade Commission oversight hearing in the House, conservatives have a unique opportunity.

Privacy used to be a dirty word among many conservatives because the liberal Warren Court of the 1960s used concepts such as “penumbras” – words not expressly found in the Constitution — to overturn state laws that protected traditional moral precepts or valid law enforcement.

In recent years, however, beginning with the passage of the USA Patriot Act during the George W. Bush years, but expanded seemingly without limit under Barack Obama, conservatives have awakened to the threat of the massive surveillance state.

Some of the leading Republican presidential prospects are taking a hatchet to the Obama administration over the scandal. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has introduced a bill to rein in the National Security Agency’s sweeping powers, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently knocked President Obama for allowing an “unprecedented and intrusive surveillance system” to take hold, eroding Americans’ privacy rights.

House conservatives have joined the fight, too. An amendment to shut down the NSA’s sweeping Internet and phone data collection programs sponsored by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) was narrowly defeated after leadership stepped in to vote it down. And just recently, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.), a Tea Party favorite, resumed a series of briefings focused on the growing threats to privacy and the collection of personal data.

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Rand Paul on NSA: “They Could Well Be Spying on the President, For All I Know”

Photo Credit: National Review In light of a recent report, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) fears the National Security Agency may be spying on President Barack Obama. “They could well be spying on the president, for all I know,” Paul says, in an interview with National Review Online. “He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president’s phone.”

Paul also believes the federal government may be tracking Pope Francis. “The most important question we need to ask the NSA is, ‘Are you telling us you’re collecting no data on the pope?’ And, ‘Did you collect any information on him when he was the archbishop, while staying in a certain residence in Rome at the time of the election?’ I don’t think they’re telling the truth.”

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Americans Packing Up In Search of Lower Taxes, Housing Costs

Photo Credit: ThinkstockWhere are Americans moving, and why? Timothy Noah, writing in the Washington Monthly, professes to be puzzled. He points out that people have been moving out of states with high per capita incomes — Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland — to states with lower income levels.

“Why are Americans by and large moving away from economic opportunity rather than toward it?” he asks.

Actually, it’s not puzzling at all. The movement from high-tax, high-housing-cost states to low-tax, low-housing-cost states has been going on for more than 40 years, as I note in my new book Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics.

Between 1970 and 2010 the population of New York state increased from 18 million to 19 million. In that same period, the population of Texas increased from 11 million to 25 million.

The picture is even starker if you look at major metro areas. The New York metropolitan area, including counties in New Jersey and Connecticut, increased from 17.8 million in 1970 to 19.2 million in 2010 — up 8 percent. During that time the nation grew 52 percent.

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Military Training Manual: “Healthy, White, Heterosexual, Christian” Men Hold an Unfair Advantage Over Other Races

Photo Credit: ARMY.MILA controversial 600-plus page manual used by the military to train its Equal Opportunity officers teaches that “healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian” men hold an unfair advantage over other races, and warns in great detail about a so-called “White Male Club.”

“Simply put, a healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian male receives many unearned advantages of social privilege, whereas a black, homosexual, atheist female in poor health receives many unearned disadvantages of social privilege,” reads a statement in the manual created by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI).

The manual, which was obtained by Fox News, also instructs troops to “support the leadership of people of color. Do this consistently, but not uncritically,” the manual states.

The Equal Opportunity Advisor Student Guide is the textbook used during a three month DEOMI course taught at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. Individuals who attend the training lead Equal Opportunity briefings on military installations around the nation.

The 637-page manual covers a wide range of issues from racism and religious diversity to cultural awareness, extremism and white privilege.

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The Obama Facade Cracks at Last

Photo Credit: American ThinkerOnly now — five years into his presidency — are we seeing some cracks in the protective shield surrounding President Obama, and then only after the abuse of reporters’ privacy has been threatened. Mainstream journalists have not scrutinized his controversial policies, nor have they held him accountable for questionable actions that have caused outrage among fair-minded critics and produced irreparable harm to the nation.

Some facts are irrefutable, but the president has, by and large, deflected all blame and few in the media have dared question his policies and actions. Investor’s Business Daily reports that we are becoming a welfare state. The Census Department reported this week that almost half (49 percent) of Americans (151 million) are on federal aid. The U.S. has spent nearly $4 trillion ($3.7) on welfare over the past five years — that is five times greater than the money spent on transportation, education, and NASA, combined. Further, more than 70 percent of all federal spending goes to assistance programs, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that welfare spending will rise 80 percent over the next decade. Even with all that spending, though, 46.5 million Americans live in poverty and nearly half of all Americans pay absolutely no federal income tax. It doesn’t take an economics genius to realize that with the nation’s debt at $17 trillion and with more than $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities, we are in deep economic trouble. In short, the buck stops with President Obama when it comes to assessing blame for “the weakest recovery from a recession in modern American history.”

In the face of such dire statistics, it is instructive to review the president’s economic performance to date. President Obama has been late in turning in a budget to Congress in four of the past five years. Current “solutions” to the fiscal crisis are to print more money, raise taxes, and, in the process, weakened the American dollar, threatening its status as the sole world reserve currency.

The president’s signature legislation — his legacy, if you will — is ObamaCare. This massive health insurance legislation, taking over one-sixth of the American economy, was forced on the nation through a straight party-line vote. While the president constantly chided the Congress for not “negotiating” or being unwilling to be “bipartisan,” President Obama himself was unwilling to talk with Republicans and repeatedly stated that “He Won” the election and “shouldn’t have to offer anything.”

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Victory for Bored Air Travelers Everywhere: FAA Lifts Ban on Electronics Use (+video)

Photo Credit: Sean MacEnteeIn a victory for bored air travelers everywhere, federal aviation regulators gave airlines the go-ahead Thursday to let passengers keep their iPads, Kindles and other electronic gadgets switched on during takeoffs and landings — a change that had airlines jockeying to be the first to make the switch.

JetBlue said it would carry out the loosened policy “as quickly as we receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which can be as early as this afternoon.” That apparently hadn’t happened by early evening, however.

Delta Air Lines, which boasted of being the first carrier to file the necessary paperwork with regulators, said it hoped its passengers could see the change as soon as Friday. American Airlines said it will file its own plan with the FAA that day as well. Virtually all other major U.S. airlines said they’re working as fast as they can.

The FAA wouldn’t confirm anybody’s optimistic timing, and agency chief Michael Huerta told reporters that the airlines will first have to conduct tests to make sure the gizmos’ radio signals won’t interfere with their planes’ electronics. Still, airlines had been preparing for a decision such as this and will most likely try to roll out changes as soon as possible, with their eye on the Christmas travel season.

The changes don’t mean you’ll have to put up with a seatmate who yammers on his iPhone for the entire trip from Dulles to LAX. Cellphone calls will still be banned in flight.

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Senior Homeland Security Advisor: America is an “Islamic Country”

Photo Credit: Mohamed Elibiary/TwitterA senior advisor to the Department of Homeland Security, Mohamed Elibiary, says that America is “an Islamic country” and continues to argue that the Muslim Brotherhood is comparable to Christian evangelicals.

Elibiary is a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and was promoted in September. He also served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group and the Faith-based Security and Communications Advisory Committee.

He is also a long-time Texas Republican Party official and was a delegate for Senator John McCain in 2008.

On October 31, Elibiary tweeted that he believes the U.S. “is an Islamic country.”…

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High School Car Wash Shut Down Due to “Environmental Laws”

Photo Credit: benswann.comThe cheerleading squad at Lincoln High School in San Jose wanted to attend a national competition in April. In order to finance the trip, the squad decided to host a car wash.

This plan never materialized, however. The San Jose Environmental Services Department shut down the group’s car wash to “protect the environment.”

According to the environmental officials, the cheerleaders violated city water discharge laws.

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