US Air Force Unveils Picture of New Stealth Bomber

The US Air Force on Friday unveiled the first image of its next-generation bomber that will replace antique B-52s first developed during the Cold War.

The all-black plane has a distinctive, zigzagging shape and a super-low profile that will make it hard to spot on radar, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Air Force’s B-2 bomber, which is also made by Northrop Grumman.

The new stealth bomber has yet to be built, so Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James displayed an artist’s rendering at an Orlando event.

She said the plane, previously known as the Long Range Strike Bomber, would be called the B-21 until a new name has been agreed on, and she invited air crews to help. (Read more from “US Air Force Unveils Picture of New Stealth Bomber” HERE)

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This GOP Candidate Sees Latest Polling Data, Immediately Cancels Massive Campaign Event

By Jim Hoft. Senator Ted Cruz (R-AL) dropped out of Saturday’s Republican presidential candidate forum at Samford University after dropping to third place in the latest polling.

Senator Ted Cruz is in third place behind Trump and Rubio and has one-third of the support of Trump in the state.

(Read more from “This GOP Candidate Sees Latest Polling Data, Immediately Cancels Massive Campaign Event” HERE)


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Ted Cruz Drops out of Samford Presidential Forum Scheduled for Saturday

By Howard Koplowitz. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is bailing on Saturday’s Republican presidential candidate forum at Samford University, leaving one of his 2016 rivals, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, as the only candidate to take part in the discussion. Yellowhammer News, the organizer of the forum, said the sold-out event would still go on.

An unnamed political consultant who spoke to the Alabama news outlet said the next string of primary states on March 1, which includes Alabama and several other states in which has been dubbed the “SEC Primary,” could doom Cruz’s chances at the nomination. (Read more from “Ted Cruz Drops out of Samford Presidential Forum Scheduled for Saturday” HERE)

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The Shame of Substandard Care

It is rare that politicians step into the nightmare of shame that is today’s nursing home industry in an effort to protect the innocent and condemn an industry rife with greed and substandard care.

“Nursing homes are rapidly becoming nothing other than legalized scams…a place to ‘warehouse’ the elderly, suck away their money, treat them like children, let them die, and then take in another from the waiting list.” – Former Iowa State Senator Dennis Black

Senator Black’s lament reveals the desperation of families across the nation.

“It is hard for people to accept reality about people being abused. Out of sight, out of mind. Unless it happens to you, people do nothing about it. My experience has been extremely heart wrenching. I did not really know the man. He was not even a constituent. I just stepped in and tried to help.”

In a nation that prides itself on quality health care, first-hand investigations and extensive research reveal a shameful truth that must be brought out of the shadows. While embedded as a journalist for years in the elder care system from hospitals to nursing homes, what became evident was a broken system of care for families and their elderly loved ones. In a system where too frequently profits trump care, the results are ugly, inhumane and often deadly.

What the Iowa Senator details, in addition to deficient care, is a great moral collapse undergirded by greed in today’s America. The continuing degradation of the nursing home industry is forcing a crisis of conscience. Senator Black speaks of a man, a father, a grandfather and a U.S. veteran:

“America needs to know that he is but one of untold or unknown numbers of people who are being ‘farmed’. They represent a certain amount of cash and assets, and are seen as such by the money changers who only see them as a cash crop. He was just a ‘throw-away’ person that this system of DHS [Department of Human Services] has deteriorated to in Iowa and apparently across the nation. We allow our elderly to be placed in confinement in a nursing home at $6,000 per month, drain them of their life’s savings and assets, medicate them into a stupor of near comatose…” Sharon, I can’t go on with this. It brings back too much from my experience and memory. [But,] I can’t put it away, because my buddy is six feet underground, placed there without the truth being told.”

Senator Black continues:

“I am not broad-brushing the entire nursing home industry. Readers know who the good and the evil are, for you have either experienced it with your elders, or had reliable verification of the travesties that occur to others. Frankly, I’ve been exposed to an epidemic of abuse that emanates from the fact that ‘the bottom line’ is the first statistic viewed by the management of these [nursing home] corporations… As always, the almighty dollar dictates.”

Families in every state across America feel abandoned as government policies fail to adequately regulate the multi-billion dollar nursing home industry. Contract fraud is rampant. An average of $5,000 is paid monthly for each resident’s care. Yet, the shortage of actual services rendered to patients often reveals a theft that would not be tolerated in other businesses. With no one taking account, nursing homes regularly cutback on staff, nutrition and supplies (such as toothpaste and diapers) in order to shave costs. Savings stolen from patient care are applied to bottom-line profits for the owners who are reaping a reported financial boon of billions of dollars during a down-economy. The average nursing home administrator’s salary is over $100,000 annually.

What would be condemned or prosecuted just outside of the doors of nursing homes goes unchecked once inside. Prosecution of abusers is rare to nonexistent in the majority of cases where people are subjected to physical harm. Physical assaults, mental taunting and emotional bullying occur regularly to frail, defenseless victims and go unpunished. America cannot consider itself a civilized society when our aging and fragile parents and grandparents are left in the hands of bullies and predators without protection or relief.

The first critical step is strict enforcement of the laws that are on the books, both financial and criminal. Closing down what some call “houses of horror” is another. Marjie Lundstrom of The Sacramento Bee reports that the California State Attorney General’s Office filed involuntary manslaughter charges against a nursing home in suburban Los Angeles: “Two registered nurses on staff also were charged with felony abuse. Public officials in neighboring South Pasadena continue to press the Attorney General’s office for criminal charges against another nursing home – a facility the local police chief denounced as a “cesspool” and a “community menace.”

What Senator Black and others may not know is that many nursing homes owners reward nursing home administrators with thousands of dollars in bonuses if they can get a four-or-five-star rating from State and Federal inspectors. Akin to the atrocities that have gone on in the Veterans Administration and its treatment of our veterans, nursing home managers have become adept at hiding the ongoing neglect and abuse during inspections. First-hand experience reveals that inspectors are easily fooled or choose to look the other way.

With a nursing home dependent on profits, a good rating from government inspectors, even when false, attracts customers and potential investors. To affect the bottom line or mollify stockholders, nursing homes cut services and care to increase profits. What is at stake is quality-of-life and, oftentimes, life itself. Prioritizing cost cutting over basic care is endemic throughout the industry. The result, according to Whistleblowers, is that people suffer or die. The good deserve credit, whereas the bad remain profiteering merchants of misery.

Every ten years a study comes out proclaiming that nursing home “care” is every bit as shameful as it was ten years prior. That pattern remains unbroken. Conditions have worsened since U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) wrote a letter to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services over a decade ago after reviewing an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General. Senator Grassley complained that: “…facilities are given too many ‘free passes’ to correct deficiencies… Surveyors’ noted that in most instances a facility would, as an initial matter, correct the deficiency only to revert back to its “old ways” once a follow up review is completed.”

Grassley further adds and recent investigations reveal that surveyors state that: “…patients and/or family members are rarely interviewed; administrative and medical records are rarely reviewed; valuable information is routinely recorded incorrectly; and the word of the facility is often taken at face value over that of a resident and/or family member. As a result of these inherent procedural failures, complaints are rarely substantiated and serious quality problems are therefore not corrected. Despite years of reports, evaluations, and investigations, the surveyors that we interviewed portray a bleak and dismal situation in America’s nursing homes. The surveyors themselves are demoralized when blatant quality of care deficiencies and findings are watered down, substantively altered, and/or blatantly ignored or dismissed. These surveyors have raised enormously disturbing issues for anyone who cares a wit about the very health and safety of frail nursing home residents.”

Senator Grassley asserts that government ratings’ systems are unreliable and misleading since nursing homes are allowed to “self-evaluate” as part of the government’s five-star system of ranking. Families are unable to discern which are the good ones and which are bad.

Grassley denounces Medicare’s rating s as notoriously outdated and incorrect: “The concerns include questions about the integrity and reliability of the information provided to the public through the Nursing Home Compare [Medicare] website. A plan of attack is needed to restore the integrity of the system… The survey process, I am sure you will agree, is meant to improve the quality of care for residents, not to ignore it, gloss over it, and most of all, not make it worse. If the survey and certification process is not working–and it looks like it is not–it must be fixed.”

Owning and running nursing homes is based on a financially strategic decision where making a profit is central. Some open their doors to provide a decent service to meet a critical need. For others it is an ugly, get-rich scheme off the backs of families and our most vulnerable members of society. Dr. Charlene Harrington, has researched nursing home standards and regulations for more than three decades. I posed questions to Professor Harrington:

Q. How do nursing homes cut their operational costs? Is it by chronic understaffing, cutting supplies, and poorer quality meals?

A. There is really only one major way to cut costs and that is to cut staffing especially RN staffing since it is the most expensive. The chains often have very low supplies and equipment and spend little on meals but they can’t go much lower on those [food] expenditures.

Q. If sufficient funds are paid [average $5,000 per month nationwide] and insufficient care is provided, is that fraud against the government and those paying thousands of dollars monthly per resident for the promised quality care that is most often advertised by these companies?

A. Yes, that is fraud and false advertising and there have been a number of legal actions on this, but unfortunately not enough to put the bad companies out of business.

The book, “Aging Warning: Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental and Financial Minefields details how widespread substandard care is and provides insight on how families can protect themselves and their loved ones medically, mentally and financially.

Nursing homes are licensed by the State to provide quality care and protection for their residents. As a care facility, they have a greater calling to decency, morals, ethics, kindness, and patience – in addition to appropriate levels of skill and training. Yet, the system is corrupt. A symbiotic arrangement exists between many in the billion dollar nursing home industry and politicians. Whistleblowers report that State and Federal politicians’ pockets are lined as lobbying occurs across party lines. Wealthy owners’ with deep pockets buy influence from both sides of the aisle to influence legislation favorable to the industry. Quality skilled long-term nursing facilities are an important part of the future. Along with families, ethical nursing home owners must demand a purging of the fraud and corruptness that permeates the industry.

Without the public holding government overseers accountable, conditions will continue to worsen inside nursing homes. Expect overcrowding, understaffing and the hiring of less skilled personnel handling more patients, including an increase of those with brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Our elderly and their families face a dismal future unless strict enforcement of criminal and civil laws inside of nursing homes becomes a reality nationwide.

Daily, people are being physically hurt, emotionally traumatized and bullied. The vulnerable must be protected. Ongoing suffering at the hands of predators must stop. A quality level of services must be rendered. The shame on this great nation will manifest itself as a grievous moral and financial crisis that could have been avoided — if only the warnings were heeded.

Take action. Email this article to your representatives in Congress and to legislators in your state.

Sharon Sebastian, author of the book, “AGING: WARNING– Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields,” is a columnist, commentator, and contributor in print and on nationwide broadcasts on topics ranging from healthcare, culture, religion, and politics to domestic and global policy. Sebastian’s political and cultural analyses are published nationally and internationally. Website: www.AgingWarning.com

Huge Endorsement For Trump

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday endorsed businessman Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president, becoming the New York billionaire’s most noteworthy endorsement to date.

The endorsement was made at a news conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

“We don’t need any more of these Washington, D.C. acts,” Christie said.”We don’t need Washington politicians to come in and fix it.”

He said Trump is the best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton and “fix” the mess in Washington. (Read more from this story about the endorsement for Trump HERE)

Exposed: Obama Admin Caught Making Illegal Move That Makes Obamacare Look Even Worse

By Randy DeSoto. The Obama administration has been caught — once again — seeking to circumvent the law related to Obamacare by diverting billions in funds intended for the U.S. Treasury to cover private insurance companies’ losses.

In 2014, Sen. Marco Rubio inserted language into the omnibus spending bill which specifically barred the Department of Health and Human Services from dipping into the general funds of the Treasury to bailout failing insurance companies, the Washington Post reported.

Marc Thiessen, writing for the Post, observed that the provision is “quietly killing” Obamacare, while the New York Times headlined in December, “Marco Rubio Quietly Undermines Affordable Care Act.” The Hill called the provision, “the biggest blow in the GOP’s five-year war against Obamacare.”

Both the Post and the Times pointed out that private insurers have been taking heavy losses participating in the healthcare exchanges, and to entice them to stay, the Obama administration had been subsidizing the companies with taxpayer dollars.

According to the Times, in 2014 “insurers lost $2.9 billion more than expected on Obamacare…Thanks to Rubio’s provision, the administration was allowed to pay only 13 cents of every dollar insurers requested. Without the taxpayer bailouts, more than half of the Obamacare insurance cooperatives created under the law failed.”

Several insurers have pulled out of the remaining exchanges. United Healthcare and Aetna, two of the nation’s largest providers, have indicated they are considering pulling out of Obamacare altogether, due to the billions in losses they have sustained. (Read more from “Exposed: Obama Admin Caught Making Illegal Move That Makes Obamacare Look Even Worse” HERE)

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Surviving Obamacare Co-Ops Facing Failure

By Richard Pollock. Eight of the 11 remaining Obamacare health insurance co-ops are in serious financial trouble and could collapse by the end of the year, Mandy Cohen, a top federal health official told Congress Thursday in testimony before a House oversight panel.

Cohen, the chief operating officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, generally stonewalled the House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rules during a hearing focused on the status of the surviving Obamacare health insurance co-ops and the additional costs taxpayers could face in the event of more failures.

Twenty three of the non-profit co-ops were established under Obamacare in 2012 to compete with commercial for-profit insurance companies. But so far half — or 12 — have closed their doors after only two years of operation. A thirteenth co-op in Vermont was never licensed to operate.

Cohen stubbornly refused to disclose which of the remaining 11 are struggling, but conceded that eight now face either federal “enhanced oversight” or are operating under a federal “corrective action plan.”

Cohen refused to guarantee any of the three co-ops not presently operating under a corrective plan would survive the year. “Too early to tell in the year,” Cohen said. “As new information comes up, if we need to, we will put more folks up on corrective action plans.” (Read more from “Surviving Obamacare Co-Ops Facing Failure” HERE)

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Comedian Made STUNNING 2016 Presidential Prediction 8 Years Ago That’s Catching Everyone’s Attention

While Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in the GOP might baffle some, at least one individual was predicting this phenomenon as far back as 2008.

On the Adam Carolla Show, comedian and host Carolla made this prediction while discussing the billionaire and poking fun at some aspects of his private life.

“He’s going to be president in eight years, you understand that everybody? You understand Donald Trump is going to be president? He will be president one day, it will be in our lifetime,” said Carolla.

Asked whether Trump would still be with his current wife Melania, Carolla jokingly responded, “No, no, no, no, because she will have seen her 38th birthday. There will be uh … I think they’re harvesting Eva Gabor’s eggs right now as we speak to make a new classy chick from ‘Classilvania’ for Trump to marry as his fifth wife.”

The comedian continued his predictions with a much more facetious tone, seeming to imitate Trump’s brash and sometimes simple way of speaking.

In regards to his children, Carolla noted that they would most likely be members of his cabinet. “The ‘Secretary of Class,’ that’s what you’ll be, Ivanka. Ivanka, you will be the ‘Secretary of Does Not Suck and Class.’” (Read more from “Comedian Made STUNNING 2016 Presidential Prediction 8 Years Ago That’s Catching Everyone’s Attention” HERE)

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Ben Carson: This Is How You Can Destroy America

In an apparent hit at President Obama, Republican presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson, told Republicans gathered at the Harris County GOP Lincoln-Reagan dinner that if “you wanted to destroy America, you would do it from inside.”

The soft spoken candidate then detailed exactly how that could be done. The examples he gave were strikingly familiar to what has occurred during the Obama administration.

Carson was in Houston to speak to Republicans at their annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner, and to participate in the GOP debate at the University of Houston on Thursday.

Dr. Carson said the first thing you would do to destroy the country would be to drive wedges between people. He said you would do so, not only on racial lines, but also with women, age, religion, and Republicans and Democrats.

Carson said you would bring the country to financial ruin by spending money at “unsustainable levels.” You would also bring people in from other countries and put them on public benefits. (Read more from “Ben Carson: This Is How You Can Destroy America” HERE)

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Rubio Attacks Trump, Claims This Is the Way Donald Would Build Wall

By Gabby Morrongiello. Marco Rubio attacked Donald Trump Thursday night over his immigration stance, and said that position is at odds with Trump’s history of hiring illegal immigrants, and getting fined for it.

“If he builds the wall the way he built Trump Tower, he’ll be using illegal immigrants to build it,” Rubio said of Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s an important point that you make on immigration, this is a huge issue for the country,” Rubio said to Trump at another point in the debate. “But I also think that if you’re going to claim that if you’re going to lift this into the campaign that you acknowledge that, for example, you’re the only person on this stage that has ever been fined for hiring to work on your projects illegally.”

“No, no, no,” Trump shot back. “I’m the only one on this stage that’s hired people. You haven’t hired anybody. I’ve hired tens of thousands of people over my job, you’ve hired no one.” (Read more from “Rubio Attacks Trump, Claims This Is the Way Donald Would Build Wall” HERE)

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Former Mexican President Vicente Fox to Trump: We’re ‘Not Paying for That F***Ing Wall’

By Tim Hains. In an interview Thursday with Jorge Ramos on Fusion, former Mexican president Vicente Fox responds to Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

“I’m not going to pay for that f***ing wall! He should pay for it. He’s got the money,” Fox said.

“Are you afraid that he’s going to be the next President of the United States?” Ramos asked. “What would that mean for Mexico?”

“No no no, democracy can not take that, crazy people that don’t know what is going on in the world today. This worries me, the last caucus in Nevada… he won 44 percent of Hispanics.” (Read more from “Former Mexican President Vicente Fox to Trump: We’re ‘Not Paying for That F***Ing Wall'” HERE)

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House Judiciary Committee Advances Bill to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organization

The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill on Wednesday that calls on the U.S. Department of State to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, citing national security as the reason the designation is needed.

H.R. 3892, or the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015, passed on a vote of 17-10, according to a press release distributed to the media.

“The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, remains headquartered in Egypt but operates throughout the world,” the press release stated.

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic goal ‘in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions,” it stated.

Aside from the terrorist designation, the bill would also deny admittance into the U.S. to those with ties to the Brotherhood. Those who provide material support to the group could face “federal criminal penalties,” and it would empower the U.S. Treasury Department to block financial assets associated with the Brotherhood. (Read more from “House Judiciary Committee Advances Bill to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organization” HERE)

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REPORT: Ted Cruz Trying to Secure Rand Paul Endorsement

After winning the Iowa caucuses, [Ted Cruz] has suffered three consecutive third-place finishes. And after spending a year courting the religious vote, Cruz has seen his pristine image blemished by charges — directed at him by Trump and Rubio — that his campaign plays too rough . . .

The debate precedes a slate of Southern Super Tuesday primaries that has been Cruz’s focus — and from which, without a good showing, it may be hard for him to recover. That means that during the debate he’ll reinforce his pitch that he is a conservative-minded Southerner whom voters in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas can relate to. He’ll also be tailoring his message for his home state of Texas, which also votes on March 1 — and where anything short of a victory would be devastating.

“The fact that Texas is a must-win for Cruz makes me suspect a lot of his strategy will be aimed at fortifying his position there by really demonstrating knowledge and key issues for Texas voters,” said Phil Musser, a former Republican Governors Association executive director. “Home state appeal — and a win — is a must.”

In the lead-up to Super Tuesday, Cruz is seeking other ways to reinforce his Southern credentials. In recent weeks, he has been aggressively appealing to Rand Paul for an endorsement. Yet three sources close to the Kentucky senator said Paul had rebuffed Cruz, saying that he had no intention of endorsing anyone anytime soon. A Cruz spokesperson declined to comment. (Read more from “REPORT: Ted Cruz Trying to Secure Rand Paul Endorsement” HERE)

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