Obama Pressures States to Reverse Quarantine Orders

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Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Sunday night that medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa but did not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.

Mr. Cuomo’s decision capped a frenzied weekend of behind-the-scenes pleas from administration officials, who urged him and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to reconsider the mandatory quarantine they had announced on Friday. Aides to President Obama also asked other governors and mayors to follow a policy based on science, seeking to stem a steady movement toward more stringent measures in recent days at the state level.

The announcement by Mr. Cuomo seemed intended to draw a sharp contrast — both in tone and in fact — to the policy’s implementation in New Jersey, where a nurse from Maine who arrived Friday from Sierra Leone was swiftly quarantined in a tent set up inside a Newark hospital, with a portable toilet but with no shower.

It was the second striking shift in Mr. Cuomo’s public posture on the Ebola crisis in 72 hours; after urging calm on Thursday night, then joining Mr. Christie to highlight the risks of lax policy on Friday, Mr. Cuomo on Sunday night appeared to try to dial back his rhetoric and stake out a middle ground.

He said his decision balanced public safety with the need to avoid deterring medical professionals from volunteering in West Africa. “My No. 1 job is to protect the people of New York, and this does that,” he said. Those quarantined at home will be visited twice a day by local authorities, he said. Family members will be allowed to stay, and friends may visit with the approval of health officials.

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Citizen Groups Take Action on Vote Integrity After "Computer Glitch" Gives the Nomination to Establishment Candidate

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Your next representative in Congress could end up being, well, somebody like Mike Monroe, if something isn’t done about the electoral system, critics say.

Fed up with voting machine discrepancies, some folks are taking matters into their own hands and are organizing grassroots efforts to reduce voter fraud and electoral errors.

Citizen Task Force for Voting Rights is trying to tackle the vulnerabilities by alerting and educating voters to call in any irregularities with voting machines and election systems to their election fraud hotline.

Retired Air Force Col. Robert E. Frank, chairman and founding member of CTFVR, said he wants to make voters more aware of the system’s glitches and inspire them to demand independent audits.

The group’s impetus for action came last June when Monroe, a virtual unknown in the highly competitive race for Congress, made Nevada history taking 22 percent of the vote in the GOP primary for the immense 4th Congressional District, which covers northern Clark County and six rural counties.

A computer glitch has been suspected, though no wrong-doing was discovered, displacing popular candidate Niger Innis, who had a 10-point polling lead, and handing the party’s nomination to state Rep. Cresent Hardy. Innis is the spokesman for the civil-rights group Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE.

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Dems Accused of Exploiting Racial Tensions to Get Votes

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Photo Credit: WNDWill black folks let themselves be used again?

Yes, Barack Obama and the Democrats are shamelessly using black Americans once again.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Obama’s approval rating among blacks is still a generous 82 percent. The black voter turnout often drops for midterm elections, and Democrats are frightened their base may not show up.

So what are Obama and the Democrats doing to turn out the black vote? They’ve gone into their bag of tricks – exploiting racial tensions to scare brainwashed blacks to the polls.

Here’s the proof:

Despite the latest autopsy report – which shows that Michael Brown was not shot with his hands up (as initially reported) and that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson likely acted in self-defense when he shot the thug – the Democratic Party of Georgia is distributing a flyer that shows two young, black children holding signs that say, “Don’t Shoot.” The flyer reads: “If You Want To Prevent Another Ferguson In Their Future … VOTE.”

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Man Who Attacked NYPD Cops with Hatchet Wanted to Kill White People, Dad Says

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Photo Credit: ShutterstockThe father of the Navy veteran who attacked four New York City police officers with a hatchet earlier this week wanted to kill white people, his father told reporters Saturday.

Ralph Thompson told the New York Post that his son Zale “committed suicide” when he attacked the officers in Jamaica, Queens Thursday evening, striking two of them before he was fatally shot.

“And he was taking one of y’all with him,” the elder Thompson added, later clarifying that the “y’all” was a reference to white people.

“He just said, ‘They have to pay for all their unfairness,'” Ralph Thompson added. “Unfairness for the way they treat black people.”

The Post reported that three of the four officers Thompson attacked are white, while the fourth is Hispanic.

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Report Details Torture of ISIS Hostages Before Beheadings

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Photo Credit: APThe four hostages known to have been beheaded earlier this year by the Islamic State militant group in Syria suffered severe physical torture before their deaths, according to a published report.

The New York Times says that hostages were severely beaten, starved, underwent mock executions, and were even waterboarded by their captors. The paper reports that the American and British hostages, including beheaded journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were singled out for the worst torture, largely because Washington and London have refused to pay the ransoms provided by other Western governments. The Times claims that the waterboarding was so dreaded by the hostages that their fellow prisoners were relieved if they came back from an encounter with their guards covered in blood.

“It was when there was no blood,” a former cellmate told the paper, “that we knew he had suffered something even worse.”

The Times report cites five former hostages, local residents who assisted the Westerners in the region prior to their capture, relatives of the captives and a former member of Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS.

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Early Voting Alters Campaigns' Strategies, Costs

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Photo Credit: AP / Michael BloodFor over 1 million Californians, the Nov. 4 election is over. That’s because they’ve already voted.

A growing throng of early voters in the nation’s most populous state — perhaps comprising half of all votes to be cast in California’s general election — has stretched Election Day into weeks. Candidates who wait until the end to close the deal with voters will be too late.

“The election is not a one-day event anymore. It’s a 30-day event,” said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who is spearheading Kennedy clan member Bobby Shriver’s campaign for Los Angeles County supervisor.

The midterm elections are just over a week away and California is one of more than 30 states in which some form of advance voting is shaping the way campaigns must be conducted. In some rural areas of the state, 8 of every 10 ballots cast could come through the mail.

The strategy-shifting dynamics caused by early voting are coming into play in states such as Florida, where Republican Gov. Rick Scott faces a tough re-election challenge from Democrat Charlie Crist, and Iowa, where GOP Senate candidate Joni Ernst hopes to defeat Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley and pick up one of the six additional seats the party needs for a majority.

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Search for Accused Cop Killer in Pennsylvania Reportedly Turns Up More Blood

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Photo Credit: AP / Pennsylvania State PolicePolice reportedly are planning to examine blood found near a chicken coop Saturday to see if it belongs to a man who is suspected of ambushing a Pennsylvania State Police barracks and has eluded capture for more than six weeks.

The owner of the property in Barrett Township, where the blood was found, sent WNEP-TV photos of police collecting samples of the blood that turned up near the chicken coop and on a nearby walking trail.

Joyce Aleckna told the station investigators are going to test the samples in a lab to see if the blood belongs to 31-year-old survivalist Eric Frein, who is accused of opening fire outside the Blooming Grove state police barracks Sept. 12, killing a trooper and seriously wounding another.

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George P. Bush Says Dad 'Moving Forward' On 2016

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Photo Credit: JEFFREY COLLINS / APFormer Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “moving forward” on a potential 2016 White House run and it appears more likely he will enter the Republican field, according to his son, who’s running for office in Texas.

George P. Bush told ABC’s “This Week” that his father is “still assessing” a presidential bid, but suggested it was more likely that he would seek the White House this time. The ex-governor declined to run for president in 2012 despite encouragement from Republicans.

“I think it’s more than likely that he’s giving this a serious thought and moving — and moving forward,” said the younger Bush, who is running for Texas land commissioner.

Asked if that meant it was “more than likely that he’ll run,” George P. Bush responded: “That he’ll run. If you had asked me a few years back … I would have said it was less likely.”

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Elon Musk Says ‘We Are Summoning the Demon’ with Artificial Intelligence

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Photo Credit: ReutersElon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, said Friday that artificial intelligence is probably the biggest threat to humans.

Musk, who addressed MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium for about an hour, mulled international oversight to “make sure we don’t do something very foolish,” The Washington Post reported.

He was not specific about any particular threat, but appeared to theorize out loud.

“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” he said. “In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”

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Evacuations Possible As Lava Continues To Flow From Hawaii Volcano

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Photo Credit: U.S. Geological Survey / APThe Puna region of Hawaii is under alert as lava continues to flow from the Kilauea volcano. The Associated Press reports:

Authorities on Sunday said lava flow on the Big Island of Hawaii had advanced about 250 yards since Saturday morning. The flow front had entered a cemetery and was about a half-mile from Pahoa Village Road, the town’s main street.

Residents in the flow path, in the mostly rural region of Puna, were told to complete all necessary preparations by Tuesday for a possible evacuation.

The lava flow now threatening Pahoa, the largest town in Puna, began in June.

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