Photo Credit: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
During the ceremony, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performed “Same Love” alongside Mary Lambert and Madonna while Queen Latifah officiated the marriages of 33 gay and straight couples, the Huffington Post reported.
“How did you like the Grammy’s all out assault on the traditional family?” the “Growing Pains” star asked on Facebook.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Gun Owners
And, this morning, shortly before 9:00, MSNBC commentator Dick Gregory announced that House Speaker John Boehner, the day before, had told a private meeting of reporters that he had been talking with Barack Obama “a lot” about pushing immigration reform.
It’s pretty clear why Barack Obama wants a bill which would either legalize or grant citizenship to as many as 11.5 million people who, according to Latinos expressing their opinions in a Pew poll, would cast 88% of their votes for liberals like Barack Obama.
It’s also clear what Speaker Boehner has in mind: If he sabotages his own party, the liberal media will throw him a “doggie treat.”
But, for other House Republicans, the advantage of having an Obama/Boehner knife in their back is a little less clear.
A note on why gun owners have “skin” in the immigration game: By turning a net 8,000,000 people into an “Obama army,” even “legalization” without immediate citizenship would fundamentally change electoral politics for the 2014 elections.
This is why, along with gun control, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made immigration “reform” his central priority.
The anti-gun Bloomberg knows that “legalization” of persons unlawfully in the U.S. will create an “Obama army” which will transform the 2014 elections and achieve the almost impossible task of delivering the House and the Senate to the party of gun control.
With Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in power in 2015, the “Obama army” will then get their “citizenship” reward — and gun control will advance.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
“They need to act in that window,” Lew said of Congress, warning that “extraordinary measures” he was employing to avoid a default would run out next month.
He added that while there had been some confusion among lawmakers about when the Treasury would hit its borrowing limit, that had now been resolved.
“I think they’ve accepted the deadline,” the secretary told reporters aboard Air Force One, as he accompanies President Obama to an event in Pittsburgh, where they will tout new “MyRA” retirement accounts announced in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.
In a letter to Congress last week, Lew said he would no longer be able to take steps to avoid a default by the end of February and told lawmakers they needed to act earlier in the month to provide a cushion. The revised date pushed up the deadline, which Lew had initially projected to fall in early March.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Larry Downing-Pool/Getty Images
The contrast was stark: Obama’s Democratic predecessor used the language of restraint. This president, on the other hand, spoke of doing more in a campaign-themed “Year of Action”—and doing it on his own.
The White House is gambling with this new message, betting that a public disheartened by years of gridlock and distrustful of government will welcome a president vowing to act unilaterally, particularly to help the economy. Obama’s team is hoping, guessing, that the public won’t fear him.
It’s a risk—one the White House may not fully appreciate. As one frustrated Democratic strategist put it: “People are suspicious of executive power, so you have to tread carefully.”
But worse yet for Obama, whether he realizes it or not, is the effect this approach could have on Democrats trying to hold onto the Senate. Indeed, while the White House aims to demonstrate that this president remains large and in charge (and aims to boost his flagging stock as a result), the tactic poses a not insignificant chance of denigrating the role of Congress, and by extension the Senate Democrats fighting to preserve his party’s majority rule. Obama may end up hurting that cause more than helping it.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Breitbart
A few weeks ago, the Girl Scouts designated Wendy Davis as an “incredible woman” who deserved to be on the list of 2013 “Women of the Year.” Only a month earlier, the organization promoted Kathleen Sebelius as a woman of “courage” on its Facebook page.
Davis is not known for much more than exaggerating her life story and for her filibuster of a pro-life bill in the Texas legislature. Her critics point out that the bill she filibustered was one that limited abortions after viability.
Kathleen Sebelius has been the bête noir of the pro-life movement for her role in Obamacare and mandating abortion coverage even for religious entities, what some Catholic bishops have called the largest expansion of abortion in the country since Roe v. Wade.
All this was too much for Pisciotta, who will ask families across America not to participate in the Girl Scouts’ fundraising through cookie sales.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
What happens with premium tax credits if a couple gets divorced? If the premium tax credit is based on the previous year’s income when the couple filed taxes jointly, many wouldn’t qualify. But once someone is divorced, one individual might have little income. What is the subsidy based on in that situation?
If a couple divorces, each person’s eligibility for premium tax credits will generally be based on his or her own annual income. The former spouse’s income won’t be counted, even if the couple filed taxes jointly the previous year.
Premium tax credits are available to people with incomes up to 400 percent of the 2013 federal poverty level ($45,960 for an individual).
During the application process, people are asked to project their income for the year. If someone estimates income that’s more than 10 percent lower than the previous year’s taxes or wage information or Social Security data would suggest, the system will flag it.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Larry Downing
The gross average audience of 13 networks airing President Barack Obama’s speech puts viewership at 33,299,172. That’s down from the 33.5 million that tuned in for the 2013 speech for its lowest showing since 2000. (President Bill Clinton’s final address in office averaged 31,478,000.)
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Weekly Standard
In the new year, Americans would become “hooked on the subsidies, addicted to the sugar,” Cruz told a Tea Party gathering in his home state on August 19, according to the Texas Tribune. “If we get to January 1, this thing is here forever.” This belief was a main justification for the last-ditch campaign to fund the government if, and only if, Obamacare was defunded.
But on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, a month after Obamacare subsidies began flowing, Cruz told reporters that he no longer believes that January 1 was the deadline to stop Obamacare. “I believe we will repeal Obamacare,” he said.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday following the president’s State of the Union speech, CNSNews.com asked Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz, “What do you think of the criticism about using executive order(s) to get things done on climate change or [the] minimum wage?”
“Well, the ball’s in their court,” she said, in reference to Republicans in the House of Representatives. “I mean, they have an opportunity to work with him.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Newsbusters
Two days later, The Ed Show lead segment repeatedly showed a graphic depicting the President as Uncle Sam, holding a pen in his boxing glove-covered hand:
After the montage on both Monday and Tuesday, host Ed Schultz gave his commentary in front of a graphic trumpeting President Obama as an “action hero,” and touted the liberal politician’s controversial vow to take executive action on several issues, as a means to motivate Congress to pass his legislative agenda.
Read more from this story HERE.