White House Adviser: Obamacare Didn’t Kill Jobs Because People Have Been Hired Since It Passed

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles DharapakWhite House health care adviser Phil Schiliro maintains that Obamacare can’t be bad for jobs because some jobs have been created since it passed.

“You can’t say the Affordable Care Act has killed job growth,” Schiliro told an audience at a Kaiser Family Foundation presentation Wednesday. “In the 46 months since it passed, over 8 million jobs have been created… No one would say the Affordable Care Act created those jobs, but you can’t say the ACA has killed job growth.”

Schiliro’s comparison presumes that were Obamacare damaging at all, it would have stopped job growth entirely — including any recovery from the financial crisis in late 2008.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the financial crash and resulting recession lost the U.S. economy 8.8 million jobs, Schiliro’s estimate still leaves the economy.

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Allegheny Admin to Pro-Lifers: Your Opinions are Dangerous and Harmful

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Photo Credit: Brendan Hoffman/Getty ImagesThe incident occurred on Feb. 7. Apparently, someone slipped pro-life flyers under the doors of professors’ offices in the Arter, Quigley, Steffee and Arnold buildings. Joseph DiChristina, the dean of students at Allegheny, decided to treat this like a security breach, and wrote in an email to campus that security personnel were investigating it.

“Promoting a particular point of view through this type of anonymous method is seen as an act that is antithetical to the kind of environment where open dialogue and conversation can take place,” he wrote in the email. “We ask that individuals engage in respectful behavior that promotes a free exchange of ideas. It is important that we value all people and that we not promote behaviors that cause harm and that can be seen as intimidating.”

DiChrstina did not respond to a request for comment as to why the pro-life viewpoint “causes harm.”

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Woman Dragged to Jail for Recording Cop (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND“Get off of me! You are breaking the law!” shouts a South Florida woman as a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy enters her car and drags her out, all because she was recording her traffic stop on Interstate 95.

Now, the police agency is facing serious legal action for alleged battery, false arrest and false imprisonment.

The saga of single mother Brandy Berning began last March when she was driving alone in the HOV carpool lane, which is designed for vehicles carrying more than one passenger during rush hour.

She was pulled over by Broward Sheriff’s Lt. William O’Brien, who told Berning about her traffic infraction. That’s when she then informed him she was recording audio of their conversation on her cell phone.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you I was recording our conversation,” Berning said on the recording.

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2 Former Navy SEALs Found Dead on ‘Captain Phillips’ Ship

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Photo Credit: AnonymousTwo security officers have been found dead aboard the Maersk Alabama container ship, the same vessel portrayed in the movie “Captain Phillips,” police said Wednesday.

The men, both former Navy SEALs, were found on Tuesday while the ship was moored in the Seychelles, Fox News reported.

“A postmortem will be carried out this week in order to establish the cause of their sudden deaths while the police investigates the possible circumstances which led to these incidents,” police in the Seychelles said.

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Poll: Only 79 Percent of Obama Voters Would Choose Him Again; Loses Support in Key Demos

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Given a chance to do it all over again, only 79 percent of those who voted for President Obama would vote for him again and 71 percent of Obama voters now inclined to vote for somebody else “regret” their vote to reelect the president, according to a new poll.

The Economist/YouGov.com poll found that Obama would lose enough votes in a rematch with Mitt Romney that the Republican would win. “90 percent of people who voted for Romney would do it again, compared to only 79 percent of Obama voters who would,” said the poll…

It also found that among Obama voters interested in voting for somebody else, 71 percent regret their vote. After Secrets posted a story about that finding, YouGov.com noted that the sample for the question was small and recharacterized the sample as “those who reported voting for Barack Obama in 2012 but would vote for someone else if the election were held again” from “those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012.”

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New Moderate Republican Group Funding AK US Sen Candidate Dan Sullivan and Others in Targeted States

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Photo Credit: APA group of major GOP donors, led by New York billionaire Paul Singer, is quietly expanding its political footprint ahead of the midterm elections in an increasingly assertive effort to shape the direction of the Republican Party.

The operation was launched discreetly last year, with the previously unreported formation of a club called the American Opportunity Alliance to bring together some of the richest pro-business GOP donors in the country, several of whom share Singer’s support for gay rights, immigration reform and the state of Israel. Around the same time, Singer and his allies also formed a federal fundraising committee called Friends for an American Majority that raised big checks for a select list of the GOP’s most highly touted 2014 Senate hopefuls.

Those candidates are among the big names expected at a two-day retreat organized by the American Opportunity Alliance set for the last week of February at a swanky Colorado resort. The closed-door event — which is also expected to draw House Speaker John Boehner and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, according to Republicans familiar with the plans — is seen in GOP finance circles as a grand debut of sorts for Singer’s still-amorphous club….

“[D]ozens of donors…forked over checks for a December fundraiser in New York for Friends for an American Majority. Its beneficiaries were three highly competitive Republican Senate candidates: Reps. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Steve Daines of Montana, as well as Alaska’s Dan Sullivan, the former head of the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

The joint committee routed nearly $530,000 to those three candidates combined last year, according to recently filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission. The contributions came from many of the top names in the Republican donor community. In addition to Ricketts, Asness, Schwab and Crow, donors included Craft, hedge fund managers John Paulson and Ken Griffin, and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts. Along with his son Todd, who has worked with Singer on gay rights issues, Joe Ricketts leads a deep-pocketed political outfit — a linked nonprofit and super PAC both called Ending Spending — that is focused on fiscal issues.

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Krauthammer: Hillary Achieved Nothing As Sec. of State, US Went Backwards (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeAppearing on on Tuesday’s Hugh Hewitt Radio Show Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer declared that Hillary Clinton did not have one achievement in her four years running the State Department, and further, the U.S. position in the world actually went backwards during her tenure…

Hewitt: That’s very true. Let me finish up there on Hillary. With these fiascoes underway in Kiev, a massacre, and in Venezuela, the arrest of opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez today, Hillary’s foreign policy trifecta is complete. She’s lost South America, she’s lost the Middle East, and she’s lot Eastern Europe. How does anyone recover from that and run for the presidency?

Krauthammer: By losing the Pacific Rim.Then you get a straight flush. You get a royal flush. Look, you know, when people talk about Hillary being a superb Secretary of State, I just ask one question. Name me one thing, just one, not three, give me one thing she achieved in her four years as Secretary of State. I have yet to hear an answer.

Hewitt: You’re right.

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Spy Chief: We Should’ve Told You We Track Your Calls

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong/GettyThe U.S. government long considered its collection of Americans’ call records to be a state secret. Now the Director of National Intelligence admits it would have been better if Washington had acknowledged the surveillance in the first place.

Even the head of the U.S. intelligence community now believes that its collection and storage of millions of call records was kept too secret for too long.

The American public and most members of Congress were kept in the dark for years about a secret U.S. program to collect and store such records of American citizens on a massive scale.The government’s legal interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act that granted the authority for this dragnet collection was itself a state secret.

Then came Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked the court warrant authorizing the surveillance—along with troves of other top-secret documents. Since that first disclosure of the secret warrant, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has had to defend the government’s activities against a skeptical Congress and wary public.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Clapper said the problems facing the U.S. intelligence community over its collection of phone records could have been avoided. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had,” Clapper said.

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Democrats in Denial Over Obamacare: Say They Can Fix It, Just Need Some Help (+video)

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Photo Credit: McClatchy/TribuneBy Josh Kraushaar

For nearly three years, the Democratic approach to the political unpopularity of President Obama’s health care law was denial. Deny it played a significant role in the party’s historic midterm losses in 2010. Insist, in the face of contradictory evidence, that as more voters experienced the benefits of the law, the more popular it would become. Deny it would be a major issue at all in the 2014 midterms.

The latest version of the argument points to polling showing that voters don’t want to repeal the law but prefer to see it fixed—perfectly in line with the newly adopted positions of vulnerable Democratic officeholders. In a memo leaked to the press, Democrats argue they can neutralize their health care vulnerabilities by promoting their desire to fix the law and blaming Republicans for intransigence in seeking a full repeal. But dig a bit deeper past the talking points, and it’s unclear what they want to fix—beyond their broken poll numbers.

Indeed, in a sign that Democrats are stuck in neutral on their Obamacare messaging, the “news” from the memo is months old. The strategy devised by the sharpest party operatives has already been in effect in numerous ads across the country and was promoted by the party’s top strategists two months ago. In those targeted races, public polling has shown Democratic standing worsening where the on-air Obamacare debate has already begun. (See: Landrieu, Mary; Hagan, Kay.)

The main reason 2014 is different than 2012 isn’t the quality of the messaging. It’s that the law is now a reality affecting millions of Americans—and more don’t like the changes. The most important test on the ultimate success of the health care law will be whether voters think they’re getting a better deal out of the law than not. And all available evidence, from polling to the government’s cherry-picked enrollment data, suggests that supporters face a tough challenge making the sell.

The actual number of Americans who gained insurance through the law is much lower than the 3.3 million the White House is claiming. The numbers released by the Health and Human Services Department include many people with insurance who were forced out of their previous individual market plans onto the Obamacare exchanges. It also includes those who signed up but never paid for insurance—which makes up about one-fifth of those enrollees, according to a New York Times analysis.

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Local Newsman Hilariously/Accurately Mocks Obamacare

By Caleb Howe.

FOX 13 News

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Health industry group: Yes, we’ve suffered massive Obamacare job losses

By Patrick Howley.

A new report from a top health care industry trade organization contradicts Kathleen Sebelius’ recent claim that no job loss will occur under Obamacare.

Obamacare’s medical device tax has already created a job loss of 33,000 in the medical device industry and 132,0o0 more job losses are expected, according to a new report from the industry trade group the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), obtained by the Daily Caller.

“There is absolutely no evidence, and every economist will tell you this, that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act,” Sebelius said Monday in Orlando. “Part-time physicians are actually down since 2010, not up. The number of full-time workers continues to increase. I know that’s a popular myth that continues to be repeated but it just is not accurate.”

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Congressional Budget Office: Wage Hike Would Lift Pay But Cost Jobs

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Photo Credit: REUTERSA plan by President Obama and fellow Democrats to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost roughly 500,000 jobs but increase wages for roughly 16.5 million Americans, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.

The report was immediately met with sharp Republican criticism for the wake hike plan.

“While helping some, mandating higher wages has real costs, including fewer people working,” said a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “With unemployment Americans’ top concern, our focus should be creating — not destroying — jobs for those who need them most.”

The CBO analysts said their estimate of employment losses was approximate. They said the actual impact could range from a very slight employment reduction to a loss of one million workers.

Increasing the minimum wage has emerged as a key part of Obama’s second-term agenda, with the president restating his intentions just hours before the release of the report, at a public event in suburban Maryland.

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