Who’ll Blink? Dems, GOP in Shutdown Stare Down

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

With the government teetering on the brink of partial shutdown, congressional Republicans vowed Sunday to keep using an otherwise routine federal funding bill to try to attack the president’s health care law.

Congress was closed for the day after a post-midnight vote in the GOP-run House to delay by a year key parts of the new health care law and repeal a tax on medical devices, in exchange for avoiding a shutdown. The Senate was to convene Monday afternoon, just hours before the shutdown deadline, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had already promised that majority Democrats would kill the House’s latest volley.

Since the last government shutdown 17 years ago, temporary funding bills known as continuing resolutions have been noncontroversial, with neither party willing to chance a shutdown to achieve legislative goals it couldn’t otherwise win. But with health insurance exchanges set to open on Tuesday, tea-party Republicans are willing to take the risk in their drive to kill the health care law.

Action in Washington was limited mainly to the Sunday talk shows and a barrage of press releases as Democrats and Republicans rehearsed arguments for blaming each other if the government in fact closes its doors at midnight Monday.

“You’re going to shut down the government if you can’t prevent millions of Americans from getting affordable care,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

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Boehner Slams Senate Dems’ ‘Arrogance’

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boehner_budgetSenate Democrats must meet Sunday to vote on legislation funding the government, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, calling their failure to do so “an act of breathtaking arrogance.”

House Republicans voted early Sunday on a spending bill that delays ObamaCare by a year. Senate Democrats say they’ll vote in down when they convene Monday, all but ensuring a government shutdown come Tuesday.

“The House worked late into the night Saturday to prevent a government shutdown, and the Senate now must move quickly, today, to do the same,” Boehner said in a statement.

“If the Senate stalls until Monday afternoon instead of working today, it would be an act of breathtaking arrogance by the Senate Democratic leadership.”

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Ten States where Obamacare Wipes out Existing Health Care Plans (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

President Barack Obama famously promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” He later got even more specific.

“If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said.

But as Obamacare’s rollout approaches, we have learned this is not true. Here are the ten states where consumers may like their health care plans, but they won’t be able to keep them.

1) California: 58,000 will lose their plans under Obamacare. The first bomb dropped in California with a mass exodus from the most populated state’s Obamacare exchange. Aetna, the country’s third largest insurer, left first in July and was closely followed by UnitedHealth. Anthem Blue Cross pulled out of California’s Obamacare exchange for small businesses as well.

Fifty-four percent of Californians expect to lose their coverage, according to an August poll.

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The Fed has Become a Creature of Politics

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Photo Credit: Tim Evanson

Photo Credit: Tim Evanson

Because Ben Bernanke’s public persona is as mild as milk, the transformation in American governance in which he has participated is imperfectly understood and hence insufficiently deplored. The change is dramatized by two recent developments.

One was the campaigning by several constituencies for and against what supposedly were the two leading candidates — Larry Summers and Janet Yellen — to replace Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Fed can no longer be considered separated from politics.

The second, and related, development is the semantic infiltration of journalism by language that ratifies the Fed’s increasingly grandiose role. A Financial Times column on Yellen, now Bernanke’s presumptive successor, described her as “poised to take the tiller of the US economy.” Oh? The economy has a tiller? And with it the Fed chairman can steer the economy? Who knew? On the Atlantic’s Web site, a columnist defends the Fed’s recent decision not to follow through on earlier intimations about reducing its monthly purchases of $85 billion in mortgage and treasury bonds. This, the columnist said, illustrates the Fed’s admirable “nimbleness.” A touch on the tiller here, a nimble reversal there — these express the fatal conceit of an institution that considers itself capable of, and responsible for, fine-tuning the nation’s $15.7 trillion economy.

Slowing the Fed’s bond purchases is called “tapering,” which means more modest “quantitative easing.” This is how governments talk when trying not to be understood. By continuing the pace of “easing” — printing money — the Fed has acknowledged that its fine-tuning has failed. The nimble, tiller-touching Fed assumed it would be more successful at reducing unemployment.

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Justice Department to Challenge North Carolina Voter ID Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Justice Department will file suit against North Carolina on Monday, charging that the Tar Heel State’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against African Americans, according to a person familiar with the planned litigation.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at 11 a.m. Monday at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. Attorneys from North Carolina.

The suit, set to be filed in Greensboro, N.C., will ask that the state be barred from enforcing the new voter ID law, the source said. However, the case will also go further, demanding that the entire state of North Carolina be placed under a requirement to have all changes to voting laws, procedures and polling places “precleared” by either the Justice Department or a federal court, the source added.

Until this year, 40 North Carolina counties were under such a requirement. However, in June, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the formula Congress used to subject parts or all of 15 states to preclearance in recent decades.

The justices’ 5-4 ruling outraged civil rights advocates, but did not disturb a rarely-used “bail in” provision in the law that allows judges to put states or localities under the preclearance requirement. Civil rights groups and the Justice Department have since seized on that provision to try to recreate part of the regime that existed prior to the Supreme Court decision.

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Israel’s Netanyahu to Warn US, UN about Iran’s ‘Smiley Campaign’

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Photo Credit: Fox

Photo Credit: Fox

Just days after the first conversation between the leaders of the U.S. and Iran in 34 years was hailed as a “breakthrough” in relations between the two countries, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking an unpopular message to the White House and the United Nations: Don’t be fooled by Tehran’s “sweet talk.”

Netanyahu, who contends Iran is using conciliatory gestures as a smoke screen to conceal an unabated march toward a nuclear bomb, will meet with President Obama Monday to deliver strong words of caution to the U.S.

“I will tell the truth in the face of the sweet talk and the onslaught of smiles,” Netanyahu said before boarding his flight to the U.S. on Sunday. “Telling the truth today is vital for the security and peace of the world and, of course, it is vital for the security of the state of Israel.”

Netanyahu also plans to offer up fresh intelligence in his attempt to persuade the U.S. to maintain tough economic sanctions and not allow the Islamic republic to develop a bomb or even move closer to becoming a nuclear threshold state.

Israeli leaders watched with great dismay what they derisively call the “smiley campaign” by Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, last week. Rouhani delivered a conciliatory speech at the United Nations in which he repeated Iran’s official position that it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon and declared his readiness for new negotiations with the West.

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Obama, Holder to Place Good Guys with Guns in Schools

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obama-hugs-kids-wh-photoCNN reports that President Obama is “putting millions of dollars into funding armed police officers in schools around the country, an idea not far removed from a National Rifle Association proposal.”

According to CNN, on September 27 the DOJ announced $45 million in funding meant to “create 356 new school resource officer positions.”

The $45 million will be distributed in the form of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. One of the earliest grants will be to Newtown, Connecticut, to create two new officers for Newtown schools.

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UN Inspectors Prepare to Dismantle Syria’s Chemical Weapons Cache

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Photo Credit: Shaam News Network

Photo Credit: Shaam News Network

A 20-strong international team of engineers, chemists and paramedics leave the Netherlands for Syria on Monday to embark on the most hazardous mission in the history of disarmament: to dismantle one of the world’s biggest chemical weapons arsenals, during a civil war, under extreme deadline pressure.

In 35C heat inspectors from the international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will, at times, wear body armour and helmets over their chemical protection suits, sometimes carrying air tanks on their backs, in their efforts to abide by a UN security council resolution to destroy about 1,000 tonnes of nerve agents such as sarin and other poisonous gases such as sulphur mustard.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad vowed to co-operate with the mission in an interview with Italy’s RAI News 24 TV. “Of course we have to comply [with the UN resolution]. This is our history to comply with every treaty we sign,” he said.

The inspectors are due to arrive in Damascus on Tuesday. They will need to work quickly to meet the tight deadlines agreed by the security council on Friday.

In the first few days, a group of 20 inspectors drawn from about a dozen countries will have to fill the gaps in Syria’s initial disclosure of its inventory of poison gases, nerve agents, delivery systems and production sites and fine tune the logistics for visiting the declared sites.

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In U.S., Political Trust in “American People” at New Low

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pictures - Gallup trust in people lowPRINCETON, NJ — Americans’ trust in “the American people” to make judgments about political issues facing the country has declined each year since 2009 and, at 61%, is down nearly 20 percentage points from its recent peak in 2005. Still, that exceeds the 46% of Americans who trust the “men and women … who either hold or are running for public office,” which is one point above the historical low from 2011.

The results are based on Gallup’s annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. The same poll found that Americans’ trust in the federal government to handle domestic and international problems, their trust in the news media, and their trust in the three branches of the federal government, and in state and local governments are all at or near historical lows.

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Saturday Night Live Mocks Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: SNL Screenshot

Photo Credit: SNL Screenshot

Late night comedy show Saturday Night Live turned the tables on President Barack Obama and devoted an entire skit last night aimed at mocking his signature healthcare law.

The roughly seven-minute skit depicted an actor playing the president delivering a speech dedicated to showcasing the supposed benefits of the healthcare law.

Unfortunately the stories that “everyday Americans” deliver contradict the President’s message about the ease and enrolling and the benefits of Obamacare. “Senator Ted Cruz” also shows up to recite some Dr. Suess.

Watch here. (Warning video contains mature content):

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