Predictable CNN: Tea Party Could Destroy GOP

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Screen Shot 2014-12-09 at 11.39.33 PMOn Sunday, CNN’s Inside Politics spent several minutes hyping the supposed headache Tea Partiers could give GOP leadership despite the Republican Party winning their 54th Senate seat following Saturday’s runoff in Louisiana.

During the discussion, Robert Costa of The Washington Post insisted that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying “to govern responsibly and he wants to set the party up for major gains in ’16. And that started in 2014 by pushing back the Tea Party and it starts now by making sure that all the passions and eagerness in the House don’t overtake the party.”

The segment began with host John King arguing that despite the GOP controlling both houses of Congress “gas prices are down. Friday’s job numbers were robust. The president’s executive actions on immigration are stoking the Republican civil war and has promised now to take steps to narrow the trust deficit between law enforcement and African Americans offers a chance to be, well, presidential.”

For the next several minutes, the panel discussed possible legislative deals that Congress and President Obama could make in 2015 before they turned to how the Tea Party will factor into any future negotiations.

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America is Among the Least Racist Countries in the World

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Screen Shot 2014-12-10 at 1.25.17 AMWith all the recent race clang clanging on MSNBC and other cable news networks, now’s probably a good time to remind everyone that America is among the least racist countries in the world.

I know this statement will be shocking news to regular viewers of “PoliticsNation,” but it also has the quality of being true.

From 2010 to 2014, the World Values Survey asked residents in over 50 countries who they would not want as neighbors. Just over 5 percent of respondents in the United States said “people of a difference race.” That’s far more tolerant a response than citizens of most European, African and Asian countries gave. As a comparison, 15 percent of Germans, 41 percent of Indians and 22 percent of Japanese said they wouldn’t want to live next to “people of a different race.”

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Muslim Stabs an Israeli in Brooklyn Synagogue, Saying 'Kill the Jews' (+video)

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Screen Shot 2014-12-10 at 12.56.34 AMA knife-wielding man stabbed an Israeli student in the head inside a Brooklyn synagogue early Tuesday before being fatally shot by police after he refused to drop the knife, authorities said.

The man stormed into the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic world headquarters in Crown Heights at about 1:40 a.m. and attacked Levi Rosenblat, who was studying inside the synagogue, spokesman Motti Seligson said. He said there were other people inside at the time.

According to witnesses, the attacker was heard saying repeatedly “Kill the Jews,” said Chaim Landa, another spokesman for Chabad-Lubavitch. Several other people immediately intervened, he said.

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The Illinois House and Senate Passed a Bill That Could Make Recording Cops Illegal

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Illinois State HouseThe Illinois House and Senate have overwhelmingly passed an amendment that would make it unclear as to when it is legal to record an encounter with a police officer and when it is illegal.

Earlier this year, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a similar law which made recording conversations with police or anyone else without their permission illegal. The court ruled that the state does not have the constitutional authority to criminalize recording in situations where individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

But the legislature dodged that legal barricade, sending an amendment to Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk December 4. The legislation would make it a felony to record a “private conversation,” which it defines as “oral communication between two or more persons” in which at least one person has a “reasonable expectation” of privacy.

But since it does not clearly state what a “reasonable expectation” is so that one can know for certain whether or not he or she is breaking the law, opponents worry it will cause people to stop recording police encounters altogether.

The Illinois Policy Institute, an independent research and education organization that focuses on personal freedom and prosperity, opposes it. IPI points out the stiff consequences for breaking the prospective law on its website. Recording conversations with police (which also includes attorneys general, assistant attorneys general, state attorneys, assistant state attorneys and judges) could result in a minimum of two years in prison with a maximum of four years (class 3 felony). Recording a private citizen would carry with it a minimum of one year in prison and a maximum of three years (class 4 felony).

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FDIC Targeted Gun Dealers Under Operation Choke Point

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Photo Credit: AP / Jeff Roberson

Photo Credit: AP / Jeff Roberson

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report Monday that said the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation unfairly treated gun dealers and other companies as illegal entities, and convinced banks to stop doing business with them under the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point.

Choke Point is a program run by the Departments of Justice and Treasury that is ostensibly aimed at making sure illegal businesses don’t have access to the U.S. financial system. But many Republicans have said the Obama administration is using it to create hurdles for companies it doesn’t support, such as gun dealers and payday lenders.

The secretive program is rarely cited by banks as they close down banking services to companies. But many have said they believe they are victims of Choke Point, such as the Oregon gun maker who was told this year it no longer had access to credit card processing services.

The House oversight committee, run by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), has been looking at Operation Choke Point for the last year, and said in its final report that the initiative has prompted banks around the country to end relationships with “high-risk” companies identified by the government. But those companies, which FDIC encouraged banks to abandon, including many legal businesses, such as gun and ammo dealers, coin dealers and others.

Chokepoint

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A Few White Lies: Gruber ADMITS Obama Lied About Obamacare Costs

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

By Patrick Howley.

Infamous Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber told people not to read Obamacare, admitted he never knew how to control costs in the law and said he designed it by “throwing stuff at the wall” in one of his most characteristic public speeches. In between taking personal shots at conservatives, he actually thanked congressional Democrats for voting against their constituents.

As Gruber faces the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Tuesday morning, here are some classic Gruber-ish quotes from a San Francisco podcast appearance in January 2012:

Obama lied about the law and told congressmen to vote against their constituents’ wishes:

“I wish that President Obama could have stood up and said, ‘You know, I don’t know if this bill is going to control costs. It might, it might not. We’re doing our best. But let me tell you what it’s going to do…” (goes on to explain that some people would die without insurance) (49:55)

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Photo Credit: Tea Party Patriots

Photo Credit: Tea Party Patriots

Gruber to face hostile House panel, tea party ‘I’m with Stupid’ T-shirts

By Tom Howell Jr.

A tea party group said its members will greet Jonathan Gruber, the man at the center of Obamacare’s troubled public image, with T-shirts reading “I’m with Stupid” when he shows up to defend himself Tuesday before what’s likely to be a hostile congressional panel.

Republicans call Mr. Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a key architect of the Affordable Care Act, while Democrats are rushing to put distance between them and their erstwhile star after several rounds of caught-on-tape remarks about the “stupidity of the American voter” and the need to game budget rules to pass Obamacare were made public.

The T-shirts, which were produced by Tea Party Patriots, are another symbol of how controversial Mr. Gruber has become as he prepares to face the House oversight committee.

“With all that’s going on in the Capitol, we didn’t want Mr. Gruber’s curtain call to go unnoticed,” said Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots co-founder. “We commemorated his appearance, and in the spirit of the Season, we’d like to offer the Obamacare architect a dozen. He can use them as stocking stuffers for the economically unsophisticated.

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The Liberal Media And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

As the Rolling Stone UVA story continues to disintegrate, they weren’t the only publication that had a really bad week; it was the liberal media in general. First, let’s discuss the Rolling Stone fiasco. They added to their “note to our readers” after other media outlets, namely the Washington Post, eviscerated them when it was discovered that Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote the UVA piece, didn’t contact the alleged attackers of Jackie; the central figure of the article who alleges she was gang raped at a Phi Kappa Psi party. But, there are a few discrepancies in her account, like the frat never hosting a party on the night of her alleged attack to name one of them.

The Post’s Erik Wemple has documenting this meltdown extensively. On the Stone’s recent addition to their partial retraction, he noted how the magazine switched blame on the “misplaced trust” to them instead of Jackie, but noted that their continued investigation into the events of Jackie’s alleged account probably should’ve been done “before publishing.” While laying out reasons for why the UVA disaster is a case of media bias, Wemple discovered this interesting 2006 quote from Stone Managing Editor Will Dana, “we’ll write what we believe[italicized text is from Baker]:”

In a 2006 appearance at Middlebury College, Dana gave a speech titled, “The Myth of Fair and Balanced: A Defense of Biased Reporting.” According to a writeup in the Middlebury Campus, Dana put forth a common and compelling critique of contemporary standards under which journalists “worship the grail of objectivity” and “play twister to hide their bias,” said Dana, a 1985 graduate of Middlebury.

“I want to do stuff that’s biased.” He merely meant journalism driven by a worldview, as with Eric Schlosser’s 1998 Rolling Stone expose, “Fast-Food Nation” — a series that upended thinking on the world’s McDonald’s and the like. “We can become the seed pod for great things,” said Dana of such work.

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Obamacare's Destruction of Primary Care Doctors Continues

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Before Obamacare was pushed through Congress in 2010 by Democrats unwilling to consider opposition voices to the legislation, conservatives and doctors repeatedly warned the bill would destroy the ability for physicians to properly function inside a government controlled system. Those warnings went unheeded and now patients and those in need of medical care are experiencing even less access to primary care doctors specifically assigned to them under new healthcare regulations. From AP:

When Olivia Papa signed up for a new health plan last year, her insurance company assigned her to a primary care doctor. The relatively healthy 61-year-old didn’t try to see the doctor until last month, when she and her husband both needed authorization to see separate specialists.

She called the doctor’s office several times without luck.

“They told me that they were not on the plan, they were never on the plan and they’d been trying to get their name off the plan all year,” said Papa, who recently bought a plan from a different insurance company.

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Radio Host: Obama Has An ‘Anti-American Foreign Policy’

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Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Coming to talk radio entirely by accident after a long career in mainstream journalism, Chris Plante, 54, is a rising national star who excels at entertaining and informing his growing audience. With a unique, authentic voice, this quick-witted host often engages with callers who disagree with him by listening and then asking them tough questions.

If the caller won’t engage, he’ll dismiss them as just another “squirrel in the backyard,” while giving sustenance to listeners who frequently report altered thinking from listening to Plante, much to the chagrin of what he describes as “the loony left.”

We interviewed Plante after one of his successful 3 hour morning shows atWMAL in Washington, D.C. He can be found at iHeartRadio and is also a Cumulus host, a network which is, theoretically, in 110 cities and which could put him on air in other cities.

With 17 years spent at CNN, Plante is a frequent thorn-in-the-side of the mainstream media. In this exclusive 22 minute video interview, Plante says, “I think the Iranian regime wishes that they had a media as compliant as the American media is to the Obama administration. It is just a referee bought and paid for by one team, by the Democrats.”

Referring to the drone attacks that killed four American citizens on orders by our President, Plante says “he [Obama] literally, gets away with murder.” When you consider it, the precedent “is very, very bad.”

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New York Flags 278 Gun Owners as Mentally Unstable

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Photo Credit: AP / Tony Dejak

Photo Credit: AP / Tony Dejak

New York State’s tough new SAFE Act gun control law has flagged 278 gun owners who could lose their weapons because they have been deemed mentally unstable, a new report shows.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged lawmakers to pass the SAFE Act quickly after the 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The Syracuse Post-Standard reported last week that since the law’s enactment, the state has collected 38,718 names in a database of individuals who have been found at-risk for owning guns by psychiatrists and other health professionals.

The paper said when the database was checked against a list of pistol permit holders in the state, there were 278 matches, less than 1 percent.

Monroe County had the most matches at 36, followed by Westchester, 17, Suffolk, 16 and Dutchess, 14.

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