Book Details Obama Aides’ Talks About Replacing Biden on 2012 Ticket

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Photo Credit: Martin H. SimonPresident Obama’s top aides secretly considered replacing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2012 ticket, undertaking extensive focus-group sessions and polling in late 2011 when Mr. Obama’s re-election outlook appeared uncertain.

The aides concluded that despite Mrs. Clinton’s popularity, the move would not offer a significant enough political boost to Mr. Obama to justify such a radical move, according to a newly published account of the 2012 race.

The idea of replacing Mr. Biden with Mrs. Clinton had long been rumored, but the journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, in their new book, “Double Down,” provide a detailed description of the effort inside the senior circle of Obama advisers. It was pushed by the chief of staff at the time, William M. Daley, despite the close personal rapport Mr. Daley had developed with Mr. Biden, a fellow Irish Catholic and veteran of Washington politics.

“When the research came back near the end of the year, it suggested that adding Clinton to the ticket wouldn’t materially improve Obama’s odds,” the authors write in their sequel to “Game Change,” which chronicled the 2008 campaign. “Biden had dodged a bullet he never saw coming — and never would know anything about, if the Obamans could keep a secret.”

In a phone interview on Thursday, Mr. Daley acknowledged that he had wanted to research what the move would have meant for Mr. Obama, whose popularity, in the fall of 2011, was at its lowest in his presidency to date. He called it simply “due diligence.”

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Obama’s Military Coup Purges 197 Officers In Five Years

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Photo Credit: APDefense: What the president calls “my military” is being cleansed of any officer suspected of disloyalty to or disagreement with the administration on matters of policy or force structure, leaving the compliant and fearful.

We recognize President Obama is the commander-in-chief and that throughout history presidents from Lincoln to Truman have seen fit to remove military commanders they view as inadequate or insubordinate. Turnover in the military ranks is normal, and in these times of sequestration and budget cuts the numbers are expected to tick up as force levels shrink and missions change.

Yet what has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling and even harmful to our national security posture. We have commented on some of the higher profile cases, such as Gen. Carter Ham. He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.

Rear Adm. Chuck Gaouette, commander of the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, was relieved in October 2012 for disobeying orders when he sent his group on Sept. 11 to “assist and provide intelligence for” military forces ordered into action by Gen. Ham.

Other removals include the sacking of two nuclear commanders in a single week — Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, head of the 20th Air Force, responsible for the three wings that maintain control of the 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, the No. 2 officer at U.S. Strategic Command.

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Newt Gingrich: Sebelius Worse Liar Than Nixon

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreNewt Gingrich accused embattled Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Wednesday of being a worse liar than disgraced former President Richard Nixon.

The charge — which the former House Speaker delivered in a biting tweet — came Wednesday morning as Sebelius delivered testimony on the disastrous rollout of the new Obamacare health insurance website before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“Sebelius dishonesty in testimony this morning exceeds anything president Nixon was accused of. The Obama team can’t tell truth and survive,” Gingrich tweeted.

Sebelius’ testimony was her first appearance before Congress since the Oct. 1 debut of Healthcare.gov, the federal website that was set up to enable Americans to buy insurance.

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Obamacare On Trial: ‘You Deserve Better. I Apologize,’ Sebelius Says (+video)

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/APHealth and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized to the American people Wednesday for the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov – the web portal that is key to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“You deserve better. I apologize,” Secretary Sebelius said in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “I am accountable to you for fixing these problems, and I’m committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site.”

But even as she insisted that the site’s problems are fixable, the optics could not have been worse: The site was down, yet again, due to technical difficulties (though not HHS’s fault). Uninsured Americans have until Dec. 15 to sign up for coverage that goes into effect Jan. 1, the date the mandate to carry insurance starts.

The administration has promised HealthCare.gov will be functioning smoothly by Nov. 30, a month away, but has said it will reveal preliminary numbers of enrollees sooner – by mid-November. Even now, Sebelius admitted, the feature of the site that transmits the data of enrollees to insurers is still not working.

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NSA Secretly Tapped Google, Yahoo Data Centers Worldwide, New Report Claims

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Photo Credit: Fox News Massive cloud networks from companies like Google and Yahoo cache and serve up much of the data on the Internet — and the NSA has secretly tapped into the unencrypted links behind those company’s enormous servers, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

By tapping into that link, the NSA can collect data at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, the Post reported — including not just foreign citizens and “metadata” but emails, videos and audio from American citizens.

Operation MUSCULAR, a joint program of the NSA and its British equivalent GCHQ, relies on an unnamed telecommunications provider outside of the U.S. to offer secret access to a cable or switch through with Google and Yahoo pass unencrypted traffic between their servers.

The massive servers run by the company are carefully guarded and strictly audited, the companies say; according to Google, buildings housing its servers are guarded around the clock by trained personnel, and secured with heat-sensitive cameras, biometric verification, and more.

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw a drawing of the NSA’s hack revealed by Edward Snowden; the drawing includes a smiley face next to the point at which the agency apparently was able to tap into the world’s data.

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Obama Blames ‘Bad Apple Insurers’ for Canceled Insurance Plans

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesPresident Obama tried a new tack Wednesday as he fought back against criticism of his Obamacare claims.

Fact-checkers and journalists have ruled that Obama wasn’t being truthful when he claimed that people who liked their insurance could keep it. Obama during a speech in Boston sought to cast the issue Wednesday as trying to weed out “bad apple insurers” who don’t provide enough coverage.

“One of the things health reform was designed to do was to help not only the uninsured but also the under-insured,” Obama said. “And there are a number of Americans, fewer than 5 percent of Americans, who’ve got cut-rate plans that don’t offer real financial protection in the event of a serious illness or an accident.

“Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these bad apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received or used minor pre-existing conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy.”

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Facebook Tests Software to Track Your Cursor on Screen

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Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal Facebook Inc. is testing technology that would greatly expand the scope of data that it collects about its users, the head of the company’s analytics group said Tuesday.

The social network may start collecting data on minute user interactions with its content, such as how long a user’s cursor hovers over a certain part of its website, or whether a user’s newsfeed is visible at a given moment on the screen of his or her mobile phone, Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin said Tuesday during an interview.

Mr. Rudin said the captured information could be added to a data analytics warehouse that is available for use throughout the company for an endless range of purposes–from product development to more precise targeting of advertising.

Facebook collects two kinds of data, demographic and behavioral. The demographic data—such as where a user lives or went to school—documents a user’s life beyond the network. The behavioral data—such as one’s circle of Facebook friends, or “likes”—is captured in real time on the network itself. The ongoing tests would greatly expand the behavioral data that is collected, according to Mr. Rudin. The tests are ongoing and part of a broader technology testing program, but Facebook should know within months whether it makes sense to incorporate the new data collection into the business, he said

New types of data Facebook may collect include “did your cursor hover over that ad … and was the newsfeed in a viewable area,” Mr. Rudin said. “It is a never-ending phase. I can’t promise that it will roll out. We probably will know in a couple of months,” said Mr. Rudin, a Silicon Valley veteran who arrived at Facebook in April 2012 from Zynga Inc., where he was vice president of analytics and platform technologies.

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Robert GalbraithFacebook smashes analyst targets but executive comments spook Street

By Alexei Oreskovic.

Facebook Inc posted strong growth in its mobile advertising business on Wednesday but rattled investors after saying that it did not plan to boost the frequency of ads shown to users.

Shares of the world’s No. 1 online social network soared as much as 15 percent in extended trading before suddenly falling to $47.40, down 3 percent from its $49.10 close. The stock settled at $49.16.

In July, Facebook said it was showing one ad per 20 stories in the newsfeed, but Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman told analysts Wednesday that the current ratio, although slightly higher than 5 percent, would not increase much more going forward.

Ebersman’s comments, combined with remarks suggesting that young teenage users in the U.S. were beginning to use Facebook less frequently, soured the mood abruptly on an afternoon when the company topped Wall Street’s targets with a whopping 60 percent increase in revenue, driven by its accelerating mobile business.

“There seems to be concern about the ad load not going up,” said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.

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Has a Man Ever Delivered a Baby? Sebelius: ‘I Don’t Think So’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP/Ross D. FranklinDuring a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on the Obamacare website, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, “I don’t think so” when asked “has a man ever delivered a baby?”

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) asked Sebelius, “Now as far as the essential health benefits, correct me if I’m wrong, do men not have to buy maternity coverage?”

Sebelius: “Policies will cover maternity coverage for the young and the healthy—”

Ellmers: “Including men?”

Sebelius: “30-year-olds will also have a choice of a catastrophic plan which has no maternity coverage?”

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In Health Care Mess, Obama Reaps What He Sowed

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Photo Credit: Washington ExaminerGiven the Affordable Care Act’s multiple crises in its first month of implementation, there’s no way President Obama and his fellow Democrats could be having a good time right now. But imagine if, instead of passing national health care legislation with only Democratic votes in 2009 and 2010, the president had won even a little Republican support for his health scheme. What if Obamacare had passed with ten GOP votes in the Senate and 30 or 40 in the House? If that had happened, the program would still be a mess, but Obama’s political problems would be far less serious.

If Obama had 10 Republican senators and 30 or 40 GOP representatives on his side, those lawmakers would be invested in the program’s success. And the GOP would be effectively divided on Obamacare, instead of solidly united. Some Republican lawmakers would likely favor approving additional money for implementing the troubled program, or perhaps favor holding off on vigorous oversight for a while, or at least not attacking 24-hours-a-day. Instead, Obama is facing a solid wall of Republican opposition.

There’s a story about First Lady Hillary Clinton’s attempt to pass a national health care plan back in 1993 and 1994. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the old Democratic senator, told her that such far-reaching legislation had to pass with a really big majority to make sweeping changes in American life. “They pass 70-to-30, or they fail,” Moynihan told Clinton, according to a recent account by Todd Purdum in Politico.

Back in 1993, the Senate had 57 Democrats, meaning a major bill would have needed 13 Republican votes to pass Moynihan’s test. As it turned out, Clinton ignored Moynihan’s advice and her health care scheme went down in flames.

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Charlie Rose to Cheney: Would You Have Seen Iraq Differently If You Had More Oxygen to Your Brain? (+video)

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Photo Credit: APOn Tuesday’s Charlie Rose Show, former Vice President Dick Cheney came on to promote his new book about surviving heart disease and was treated to a nasty swipe from the host about his Iraq war decision making.

When Cheney told the PBS host and co-anchor of CBS’s This Morning that he had wished he had gotten his heart transplant done sooner, Rose took a swing, meant as a joke: “Might you have seen Iraq differently if we had more oxygen to your brain?” Cheney laughed off the cheap shot.

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