Shutdown: Bush’s Fault? (+video)

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MRCTV’s Dan Joseph had a question on his mind that he couldn’t shake: who bears the brunt of the blame for the government shutdown? Who really is responsible for the mess we’re in right now? Is it President Obama or former President George W. Bush? He decided to take these questions to the heart of our misery: Washington D.C.

Despite the fact that “Dubya” has been out of office for the past five years, most of the respondents said former President George W. Bush is to blame for the shutdown.

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De Blasio Tells Muslims He’ll End Broad NYPD Spying If Elected

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Photo Credit: Jim Smith/WCBS 880Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio told a group of Muslim supporters Wednesday that they won’t have to live in fear of being under constant surveillance if he’s elected mayor.

As WCBS 880′s Jim Smith reported, de Blasio, the front-runner in the Nov. 5 general election, said that, on his watch, NYPD surveillance tactics would only be authorized to follow up on specific leads and that the police force would be under the supervision of a new inspector general.

“The efforts of surveillance have to be based on specifically specific information, and obviously you need to go through a careful vetting process,” de Blasio said during a rally at Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn.

Based on internal NYPD reports and interviews with officials involved in the programs, the NYPD has conducted wholesale surveillance of entire Muslim neighborhoods, chronicling daily life including where people eat, pray and get their hair cut, according to a series of reports by The Associated Press. Police also reportedly infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups.

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Why Oreos Are As Addictive As Cocaine To Your Brain

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Photo Credit: WikipediaA small new study suggests the brain responds to Oreo cookies quite like it responds to actual drugs – at least if you’re a rat. The “pleasure center” of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, apparently gets just as activated in response to Oreos as it does to cocaine and morphine, which could actually have some major public health implications. While the study was done in rats, the authors say it’s likely relevant to humans as well, and could explain why people have such a hard time resisting eating an entire sleeve of the cookies. The study, which will be presented at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual conference next month, also made another discovery: Rats, like humans, like to eat Oreo’s creamy center first.

To test how the animals responded to Oreos vs. drugs, the team trained mice to navigate a maze. On one side, Oreo cookies were provided, and on the other side plain rice cakes were offered. As you’d guess, the rats were significantly more likely to spend time on the Oreo side of the maze. The team also compared these results to rats who were trained with morphine or cocaine rather than Oreos. They found that regardless of what “substance” the rats were offered (Oreos, cocaine, or morphine) they spent about the same amount of time on the “drug” side of the maze.

These behavioral data aren’t so surprising, but the researchers also reported some interesting neurological results. When rats were given Oreos, a protein called c-Fos was expressed strongly in an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is well known to be active in pleasure and addiction.

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Alaska Has Zero Obamacare Enrollees

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Though Alaska’s Sen. Mark Begich (D) promised an “aggressive strategy” to assure the success of ObamaCare in his state, not one Alaskan has been able to sign up for his state’s exchange.

In June, Senate Democrats who voted to approve ObamaCare vowed to double down in their support of the law that has proven to be a disastrous nightmare in its rollout.

“I don’t run from my votes,” Begich told the Associated Press. “Politicians who sit around and say, ‘That’s controversial so I better run from it,’ just ask for trouble. Voters may not always agree with you, but they respect people who think about these issues and talk about them.”

Begich reminded voters that, as a 2008 candidate, he called for an end to insurers denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, an end to lifetime coverage limits, and an easy transition for workers to leave their jobs and still have insurance under the new exchanges.

“There’s a lot of good that people will realize as this all comes online,” Begich said of ObamaCare’s exchanges.

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Obama: Boehner Can’t Control “Extreme Faction” of His Caucus (+video)

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama on Tuesday said talks over a budget deal had been complicated because Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) “can’t control his caucus.”

In an interview with WABC, the president was asked about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) proposal that the president and congressional leaders lock themselves in a room to hammer out a deal to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government.

But Obama said the problem with that solution is that one-on-one negotiations with the Boehner “isn’t necessarily good for the extreme faction in his caucus.”

“It weakens him,” Obama said. “So there have been repeated situations where we have agreements, then he goes back, and then it turns out that he can’t control his caucus. So, the challenge here is, ‘Can you deliver on agreements that are made?’ ”

“One thing that I’ve shown is that if I say I’m prepared to compromise on something, then I can deliver votes,” the president added.

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Obamacare Exchanges Required to Offer “Motor Voter” Registration

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaBy Sophie Novack.

As members of Congress continue to argue over the Affordable Care Act, one impact of the law on partisan politics has largely been left out of the conversation: voter registration.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the “Motor Voter” law, requires government agencies to offer individuals the opportunity to vote—and that includes the newly opened Obamacare exchanges.

That gives some Republicans one more reason to oppose the law. If low-income applicants lean Democratic, the argument goes, the exchanges could boost the party’s voter rolls.

“The practice raises longstanding suspicions on the right that the ACA exchanges are designed for political as well as regulatory purposes,” said Tim Miller, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been characteristically blunt on the subject. “The purpose of Obamacare got nothing to do with your health, and nothing to do with your insurance,” he said. “It’s about building a permanent, undefeatable, always-funded Democrat majority.”

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Photo Credit: AP11,588,500 Words: Obamacare Regs 30x as Long as Law

By Penny Starr.

Bureaucracies in the Obama Administration have thus far published approximately 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations, while there are only 381,517 words in the Obamacare law itself.

That means unelected federal officials have now written 30 words of regulations for each word in the law.

What is commonly known as the Obamacare law includes both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA). Since these bills were signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010, various agencies in the administration have published 109 final regulations spelling out how they are to be implemented.

These 109 final regulations account for a combined 10,535 pages in the Federal Register, where the government officially published them.

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House Pulls Back on Boehner Plan

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Photo Credit: APBy Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Seung Min Kim.

Everyone is asking the same question: What’s next?

For the second time this fall, Speaker John Boehner has had to pull legislation to lift the debt ceiling because of concerns from conservative lawmakers that their leadership was heading down the wrong path.

But this time, the economy could be on the brink of disaster. The United States runs out of borrowing authority on Thursday, and it does not appear at the moment that House Republicans are willing — or able — to lift the nation’s debt ceiling.

“We need to be prepared tomorrow to make some decisions,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas.

In practical terms, Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s inability to persuade 217 lawmakers to vote for their proposal means that the House could be sidelined in a fiscal fight they picked. Action could be rapidly kicked over to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

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Senate leaders race to draft debt-limit bill after House effort collapses

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane.

A campaign to persuade House Republicans to lift the federal debt limit collapsed in humiliating failure Tuesday, leaving Washington careering toward a critical deadline just two days away, with no clear plan for avoiding a government default.

Senate leaders quickly moved to pick up the pieces, saying they were “optimistic” that they could reach agreement to advance an alternative proposal that would raise the debt limit through Feb. 7 and end a government shutdown, now in its third week.

But it was unclear whether a deal struck by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could pass the Senate before the Treasury Department exhausts its borrowing power Thursday.

Meeting that deadline would be impossible if Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or other conservative hard-liners chose to throw up roadblocks, Democrats said. Republican leaders were leaning on Cruz and his allies to avoid unnecessary delays.

“The clock is ticking,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 Republican in the Senate. “Given the consequence of what we’re talking about here, . . . I would hope that we would have genuine interest among all parties in terms of trying to get this done as quickly as possible.”

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Miller Welcomes Dan Sullivan Into the U.S. Senate Race

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Fairbanks, Alaska. October 15, 2013 — Today U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller welcomed Dan Sullivan into the U.S. Senate race in Alaska.

Campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto stated, “Competition is good for the Republican Party. We look forward to a healthy debate about how to best restore what has been our nation’s true birthright: to live in a land where our constitutional freedoms are secure and where the American dream is alive and well. We trust during the course of this campaign the primary voters will learn the clear distinctions between the candidates and their views of the role of government in our daily lives.”

Sullivan joins Miller and Mead Treadwell, who officially announced his candidacy last month. John Jaramillo and Kathleen Tonn have also indicated they will seek the Republican nomination.

Must-See Video: Elk Chases Couple on Motorcycle

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Photo Credit: YouTube A couple taking in Montana’s scenic views on the back of a motorcycle were stunned when an elk approached their bike — then chased after them for more than a mile.

Heather Leigh was snapping photos of the scenery when the animal approached. After capturing several photos up close, Leigh’s boyfriend drove away with the elk in hot pursuit.

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Video- Obama: ‘Nobody Shares the Frustrations of the American People More Than I Do’

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Photo Credit: YouTube President Obama said “nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do” Tuesday in an interview with WABC.

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