Food Stamp Recipients Top 46 Million for 36th Straight Month

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The number of beneficiaries on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–food stamps–has now topped 46,000,000 for 36 straight months, according to new data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

From September 2011 through August 2014, the latest month for which data is available, the number of persons participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has exceeded 46 million.

FOOD STAMP CHART-AUGUST

In August 2014, according to USDA, there were 46,484,828 beneficiaries of the SNAP program. That was down slightly—2,060 beneficiaries—from the 46,486,888 who got food stamps in July.

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In Defeat, Obama Tells GOP: My Mandate is Bigger Than Yours

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

President Obama did something extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, in his news conference immediately after the midterm elections: He claimed a mandate on behalf of voters who didn’t vote.

“To everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you,” the president said. “To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.”

What did that mean? What did those non-voters say?

It would probably be more useful to ask what the president heard. And apparently Obama heard expressions of support from non-voters across the land.

The president explained that many more voters turned out when he was elected, and then re-elected, than in the midterms that left Republicans firmly in control of the House and Senate. “One of the things that I’m very proud of in 2008 and 2012, when I ran for office, was we got people involved who hadn’t been involved before,” Obama said. “Part of what I also think we’ve got to look at is that two-thirds of people who were eligible to vote just didn’t vote.”

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Stay Classy, Liberals: Gov. Rick Perry Gets Anal Sex Questions At Dartmouth

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

This is liberalism at its finest. Get really angry with someone who holds views different from your own, and then berate that person with hyper-emotional drivel. In this case, the victim was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who received sexually explicit questions from Dartmouth’s student body regarding anal sex during a visit to the college. Perry is a social conservative.

According to the Dartmouth, the student newspaper, Perry was there to discuss the midterms, border security, energy initiatives and foreign policy. There was a Q&A session–and that’s when things devolved. Both presidents of the College Democrats and Republicans condemned the actions of their peers [emphasis mine]:
When Perry opened up discussion to the audience, several students posed questions, deriding Perry’s views on same-sex marriage.

Emily Sellers ’15 asked if Perry would have anal sex in exchange for campaign contributions of $102 million, while Timothy Messen ’18 accused the governor of comparing homosexuality to alcoholism.

Ben Packer ’17, who wrote and distributed these and other questions, said Perry’s views were more insulting than the questions.

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Obama’s ISIS War Is Illegal

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Photo Credit: Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty

Photo Credit: Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty

For a generation, Democrats stood up against Republican presidents who they deemed to be too eager to go to war—or too ready to put troops in harm’s way without the full consent of the American people through their elected representatives in Congress.

Where have those Democratic protectors of the constitutional authority of Congress gone? Was it always just a partisan attack on Republican presidents?

If not, when will Democrats—who so vociferously opposed a Republican president’s extraconstitutional war-making powers—stand up and oppose President Obama’s unconstitutional usurpation of war-making powers?

Yale Professor Bruce Ackerman puts it succinctly: “The war against the Islamic State is now illegal. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gave President Obama 60 days to gain consent from Congress and required him to end ‘hostilities’ within 30 days if he failed to do so. This 90-day clock expired this week.” And yet, there’s been no consent, and no end to the fighting.

I believe the president must come to Congress to begin a war. I also believe the War Powers Act is misunderstood; President Obama acted without true constitutional authority even before the 90 days expired, since we were not under attack at that time.

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Starbucks' First LGBT Ad Features Drag Queens

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Photo Credit: AP / Alik Keplicz

Photo Credit: AP / Alik Keplicz

Starbucks is putting its support for the gay lifestyle into its marketing campaign with the release of an ad featuring drag queens.

“Well, here’s one place we certainly didn’t think we’d see the ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Girls’ pop up,” James Nichols wrote in an article for the Huffington Post’s Gay Voices section.

The ad features two men dressed as women who were featured in Season Six of the television series “Drag Race,” Adore Delano and Bianca Del Rio.

The “girls” in the video are fighting in line over who gets served first, but in the end the Starbucks server gives them both their order at the same time.

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Mitch McConnell's Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company

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Photo Credit: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation

Photo Credit: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.

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President, VP May Differ on Immigration Strategy: 'Obama Angrily Cut Biden Off'

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Photo Credit: AP / Charles Dharapak

Photo Credit: AP / Charles Dharapak

President Obama and Vice President Biden might not see eye-to-eye on immigration strategy. A hint of an apparent disagreement was on display during Obama’s lunch with congressional leaders on Friday at the White House.

“The meeting was tense at times, according to a senior House Republican aide. The aide was not authorized to describe the back-and-forth publicly by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity,” the Associated Press reports.

“Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, about to lose his grip on the upper chamber, barely said a word. The aide said at one point as House Speaker John Boehner was making an argument on immigration, Obama responded that his patience was running out and Vice President Joe Biden interrupted to ask how long Republicans needed. Obama angrily cut Biden off, the aide said.”

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FEMA Asking Disabled, Elderly Residents to Repay Aid from Superstorm Sandy

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Photo Credit: AP / Kathy Willens

Photo Credit: AP / Kathy Willens

The residents of Belle Harbor Manor spent four miserable months in emergency shelters after Superstorm Sandy’s floodwaters surged through their assisted-living center on New York City’s Rockaway peninsula.

Now, the home’s disabled, elderly and mostly poor residents have a new headache: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked at least a dozen of them to pay back thousands of dollars in disaster aid.

Robert Rosenberg, 61, was among the Belle Harbor Manor residents who recently got notices from FEMA informing them that they had retroactively been declared ineligible for aid checks they received two years ago in the storm’s immediate aftermath. The problem, the letters said, was that the money was supposed to have been spent on temporary housing, but that never happened because the residents were moved from one state-funded shelter to another.

FEMA gave Rosenberg until Nov. 15 to send a refund check for $2,486 or file an appeal.

“We’re on a fixed income. I don’t have that kind of money!” said Rosenberg, who suffers from a spinal disability and other chronic health problems. He said he spent the aid money long ago on food and clothing, both of which were in short supply after the storm.

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Colorado Residents Get A "Marijuana Tax" Refund

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Thanks to TABOR, Colorado’s taxpayer bill-of-rights law, tax revenue that comes in over a certain threshold is mandated to be returned to the taxpayers. Colorado is expecting excess revenue this year, as Governor John Hickenlooper has said, and a rebate will be in order.

Why? Well, partly because taxes raised from the sale of marijuana have fueled the government’s coffers above and beyond what had been expected:

Gov. John Hickenlooper’s proposed $26.8 billion Colorado budget, unveiled Monday afternoon, includes two rebates for taxpayers.

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Democratic Domination of Coal Country Over?

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train cars in coalIt sure seems that way to Politico after the midterm elections. The writing has been on the wall since the Democratic Party nominated and elected a President who declared that his energy policies would “bankrupt” coal operators in a 2008 interview, but the cycle didn’t complete itself until after Barack Obama’s EPA began to pursue those policies in earnest. What used to be the heart of Democratic working-class union strength has now flipped entirely red, and probably permanently:

The Republicans’ romp this week may have permanently turned coal country from blue to red.

Coal-heavy districts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois that had been steadily moving away from Democrats in recent elections appear to have completed that shift Tuesday, when they overwhelmingly backed Republicans who vowed to oppose what they call President Barack Obama’s “war on coal.” …

In West Virginia, once a long-time Democratic stronghold, Republicans will take control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1931. Republicans picked up seven seats in the state Senate to bring the balance to 17-17, and then Democrat Daniel Hall switched parties Wednesday to give the majority to the GOP.

Voters there also elected Rep. Shelley Moore Capito as their first GOP senator in 56 years, and Republicans won three congressional contests, even kicking out 38-year incumbent Rep. Nick Rahall.

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