Mark Levin to GOP Establishment: ‘But for the Tea Party, You’d be Nothing’

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Photo Credit: Mark Taylor / Flickr

Photo Credit: Mark Taylor / Flickr

After the Republican establishment gloated on Tuesday for surviving primary challenges against underfunded Tea Party challengers, conservative talk radio host Mark Levin ripped into the Republican leadership for preferring candidates they can coerce to support policies their conservative constituents oppose.

Levin said the question of whether the Tea Party is dead is a stupid one, and he asked why establishment Republicans were spending “millions of dollars laundered through Karl Rove’s group and Mitch McConnell’s National Republican Senatorial Committee” to fight and trash conservatives:

These “Republican leaders” only want to be in the majority if they can control the people we send to Congress. Mitch McConnell does not want any more Ted Cruzes or Mike Lees, or anybody else who’s going to give him trouble. He wants Republicans who are going to lie down and do what he tells them to do.

John Boehner and Eric Cantor? Exactly the same thing. These people are not about empowering the American people; they’re about empowering themselves. They see a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, not as an opportunity to serve the people, but to serve themselves.

Levin also noted that establishment candidates often do not want their constituents to know of their more-liberal policy preferences; thus, they do not run television commercials informing their constituents of their enthusiastic support for amnesty legislation.

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Fed Chair Unsure If Capitalism or Oligarchy Describes the U.S.

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Photo Credit: AP / Charles Dharapak

Photo Credit: AP / Charles Dharapak

“Are we still a capitalist democracy or have we gone over into an oligarchic form of society in which incredible economic and political power now rests with the billionaire class?” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist, asked that question of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen at a hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

Yellen said she’d “prefer not to give labels,” but she admitted to being very concerned about income inequality.

“So, all of the statistics on inequality that you’ve cited are ones that greatly concern me, and I think for the same reason that you’re concerned about them. They can shape the — determine the ability of different groups to participate equally in the democracy and have grave effects on social stability over time.

“And so I don’t know what to call our system or how to — I prefer not to give labels; but there’s no question that we’ve had a trend toward growing inequality and I personally find it very worrisome trend that deserves the attention of policy-makers.

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Obama Says He Wants Pelosi Back as Speaker

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

President Obama said at a closed-door fundraiser Thursday that he wants to see House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) become speaker of the House again.

“Not only did we accomplish a great deal when she was speaker; we’re going to accomplish that much more once we get her back in,” Obama said at the event at a private residence in La Jolla, Calif.

Pelosi hasn’t said whether she’s aiming to become speaker again, but it’s unusual for former speakers to stick around after their party loses the majority, and some think the 74-year old would like to reclaim her gavel.

Republicans love to float that possibility in campaign ads, believing the liberal San Francisco lawmaker is an albatross for Democrats.

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White House on Lockdown for Second Time in 3 Days

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

For the second time in three days, the White House is on lockdown because of a security breach.

The Secret Service says two people threw something over the fence surrounding the White House complex — one person from the south side and one from the north.

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Brothers Yanked By HGTV Respond: “If Our Faith Costs Us A TV Show, Then So Be It”

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Photo Credit: Deadline

Photo Credit: Deadline

As they were swamped with media requests for interviews, David and Jason Benham issued a statement today about HGTV‘s decision not to move forward with their new show, Flip It Forward in the wake of a report issued by People For the American Way about the brothers, and their father:

The first and last thought on our minds as we begin and end each day is; have we shined Christ’s light today? Our faith is the fundamental calling in our lives, and the centerpiece of who we are. As Christians we are called to love our fellow man. Anyone who suggests that we hate homosexuals or people of other faiths is either misinformed or lying.

Over the last decade, we’ve sold thousands of homes with the guiding principle of producing value and breathing life into each family that has crossed our path, and we do not, nor will we ever discriminate against people who do not share our views.

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Obamacare Plans’ Unexpected Sticker Shock

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By John Tozzi.

Alarming predictions that the premiums for individual health plans would skyrocket in the first year of Obamacare turned out to be largely unfounded. But the roughly 8 million people who bought insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges may suffer some sticker shock as they begin using their benefits.

That’s because many of the plans make consumers shoulder a lot of the costs of their medical care through deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance—payments the newly insured may not have grasped when they signed up. Research suggests that most people don’t understand those terms.

“Most people, as soon as they have health-care coverage, they expect to go to the drug store and pay whatever their co-pay is for their prescription, not have to meet a deductible,” says Gina Boscarino, senior policy director at Breakaway Policies. She helped produce a new report (pdf) with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examining the new health plans.

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Photo Credit: USA Today Money

Photo Credit: USA Today Money

Companies: Obamacare is hurting our profit!

By Matt Krantz.

Companies find all sorts of excuses during earnings season for disappointments, with the weather being an all-time favorite. But some companies are finding a new scapegoat: Obamacare.

Thirty companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500, including United Parcel Service, General Electric and retailer Dollar General, have mentioned the Affordable Care Act during their conference calls since March 1 and all through the first-quarter earnings season, says John Butters, analyst at financial data research firm FactSet. That’s a healthy cross section of companies if you consider that so far, 446 companies in the S&P 500 have reported first-quarter results.

Exactly half the companies that mentioned the Act are in the healthcare industry, where there’s a direct interaction with the new law. But in the other half, companies ranging from many industries discussed the fallout of the Affordable Care Act on their business.

Most of the companies talking about the law did so negatively, pointing out how it either hurts demand for their business or causes costs to increase. “There are legitimate complaints,” says Kip Piper, an independent consultant that advises companies on health-care plans. “The ACA does impose costs and obligations that cost money.”

Some companies are pointing to the Affordable Care Act for driving up insurance costs. And this comes as health-care spending rose at an annual rate of 9.9% last quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says, the fastest rate of increase since 1980. But others are saying that the new law is affecting demand for its products…

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Islamic Militants in Nigeria Slaughter Hundreds in Border Town Massacre

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Photo Credit: AFP / Getty

Photo Credit: AFP / Getty

Islamic militants killed hundreds of people in an attack on a border town in Nigeria’s remote northeast, escalating the country’s violent insurrection in which more than 270 schoolgirls have been kidnapped.

As many as 300 people were killed when a band of extremists attacked the town of Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, according to local press reports. The attack and hundreds of casualties were confirmed Wednesday by Borno state information commissioner Mohammed Bulama who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday. Shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the attack, he said.

The news of the attack adds to Nigeria’s growing crisis from the Islamic extremists’ violent campaign of bombings, attacks and abductions. The militant Boko Haram rebels are holding captive 276 teenage students, after abducting them from their boarding school in Chibok, also in northeastern Borno state.

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Harvard Will Host ‘Reenactment’ of Satanic Mass

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Photo Credit: Harvard.edu

Photo Credit: Harvard.edu

A Satanic Black Mass reenactment is scheduled to take place at the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall at Harvard University on May 12, with the Mass performed by The Satanic Temple, which is being hosted for the event by the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club.

A non-consecrated communion host will be used in the reenactment, according to Lucien Greaves, spokesman for The Satanic Temple.

“While Black Masses are supposed to utilize a consecrated host, ours is merely representative of a consecrated host,” Greaves told CNSNews.com. “It is not consecrated. We neither believe in nor invoke the supernatural.”

“To us, the Black Mass is an amalgamation that developed through time based on witch-hunting fears and later adopted by some as a declaration of personal Independence against what they felt to be the stifling authority of the church,” said Greaves.

He further said that during the Black Mass reenactment, representatives of The Satanic Temple will provide narration on the academic and historical aspects of a Satanic Mass.

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HGTV Pulls New Home-Flipping Series After Report Emerges Identifying Its Stars As Traditional Marriage Supporters

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Photo Credit: Deadline

Photo Credit: Deadline

…Yesterday, HGTV said it was “currently in the process of reviewing all information about the Benhams and we will provide an update as soon as possible.” Then came a tweet today:

HGTV has decided not to move forward with the Benham Brothers’ series.

— HGTV (@hgtv) May 7, 2014

Right Wing Watch reported Tuesday that David Benham had led a prayer rally outside of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC in 2012, in which he told conservative radio host Janet Mefferd that America’s Christian majority must repent for tolerating “homosexuality and its agenda that is attacking the nation” and “demonic ideologies tak[ing] our universities and our public school systems.”

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Obama’s Economy Helps Democrats, Says Wasserman Schultz

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Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

The Obama economy will help Democrats in the November election, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz told reporters Wednesday.

“No question the economic issues are an advantage for Democrats,” Wasserman Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, said at a May 7 breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

The GOP’s attempts to repeal Obamacare, and its support for the budget plan drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, show “Republicans are focused on making sure a select few are able to do even better,” she said.

But she latter admitted that her constituents are unhappy with President Obama’s economy, even as she spun the admission to highlight Democrats’ spending plans. Voters, she said, “are asking about investing in education, focusing on continuing to create jobs, on making housing more affordable, the bread and butter kitchen table issues that will add to the confidence that Americans have that this economy is continuing to improve.”

“There is certainly room for improvement” in the economy, she acknowledged, as she downplayed a river of bad economic news about income, the middle-class, the widening wealth gap, more use of foreign workers, and the rising number of people who have lost hope for economic change.

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