Michelle Obama’s ‘Just Move!’-Inspired Stamps Halted Due to Safety Concerns

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Photo Credit: Letsmove.govThe U.S. Postal Service halts its Michelle Obama-inspired “Just Move!” stamp series because many of the children depicted in the stamps aren’t wearing safety gear, The Daily Caller reported.

“The stamps are on hold with the printer and we have not made a decision at this point, right now, with respect to how we are going to move forward,” a USPS spokesman told the website.

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Limbaugh: Obama’s Approval Down to 37% and Republicans Still Think They’re Losing?

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Photo Credit: Rush Limbaugh RUSH: So Bo Snerdley walks into my compound here, broadcast facility, oh, I guess about an hour ago. And he’s somewhat stuttering, trying to pay me a compliment. He says, “How did you… I mean, well, I know you know, but how did you… how did you…” I said, “What are you talking about?”

“How did you know we were winning this?” He had just seen the AP story with Obama’s approval rating at 37%. Grab sound bite number two. Barack Obama’s approval rating at 37%. That fact is in an AP story. Would you like to hear the headline of that AP story? I have it right here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. “Poll: GOP Gets The Blame In Shutdown.” And then if you read the story, you find out that as an incidental item, the president of the United States’ approval number is at 37%.

This is before that insulting, juvenile, petulant, spoiled-rotten little kid press conference from yesterday, about which there was not one question asked about Obamacare and its rollout. Not one question in that presser yesterday. We have also learned that the Park Service and Obama okayed a pro-amnesty immigration reform rally on the National Mall that is closed to everybody else, including World War II vets. Nancy Pelosi and a number of Democrats, who are, I think, in a time warp, a bunch of them went over there and got arrested as though this is still the 1960s. John Lewis got arrested. Charlie Rangel got arrested, as though it’s some badge of honor to get arrested. These people are totally tone-deaf.

The president’s at 37%. The shutdown is going on. Now we learn that five military families were insulted profoundly with the way the deaths of their service member relatives were treated. Folks, it is obvious that this administration is acting purposely to inconvenience and to harm people it considers its political enemies. Why in the world, in the middle of this, when you’re losing, why call that press conference yesterday and why go out there and keep saying, “I’m willing to negotiate” and this sort of thing, why do that on the same day that you are permitting — I mean, you talk about a thumb in the eye. You talk about almost being spat upon to allow the closed — because of the shutdown — National Mall to open up for a pro-amnesty immigration rally. The people allowed in there were illegal. They were not American citizens.

Meanwhile, outside the fences, not permitted in, American citizens, World War II vets and their families are not allowed to go to the World War II Memorial. And the Democrats and the media and the president somehow think that this is adding up to their benefit? Here’s Pelosi yesterday. Grab sound bite 13. This is Pelosi yesterday on the National Mall during a rally in favor of amnesty, comprehensive immigration reform.

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House Republicans Eye Short-Term Debt Ceiling Fix, Ahead of White House Meeting

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Conservative lawmakers are exploring the possibility of a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, perhaps trying to seize the opening after President Obama said a day earlier he would consider the option.

Members of the Republican Study Committee, the most conservative bloc in the House, told Fox News they’re looking at that possibility. Their inclination is to consider a short-term increase only if there is an agreement on a broader spending framework.

But the option could help buy time for lawmakers to nail down the specifics of a longer-term deal. The U.S. government is facing what the Treasury Department says is an Oct. 17 deadline to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

Though a short-term deal would by definition be only a stopgap fix, the development Wednesday pointed to at least a sliver of possible common ground — something to potentially work toward, after nine days of a partial government shutdown during which lawmakers seemed to mostly talk past one another.

“Clearly, Republicans want to avoid default,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said, adding they also want to cut spending.

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The Bigger Battle Behind the Shutdown

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Photo Credit: saul loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesAt its core, the shutdown is part of a much bigger battle to restrain the federal government. It is spending $3.6 trillion per year without a budget, and its expenditures are expected to increase rapidly in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, the government has piled up $17 trillion in debt and $60 trillion more in unfunded spending promises. The Federal Reserve will borrow $1.1 trillion in 2013 alone to buy bonds—and it reserves the right to borrow unlimited amounts for future bond purchases without congressional or presidential permission.

These are crisis-level problems. Whether the government is open or closed, they are surely grounds for immediate talks between the president and Congress on ways to pare ineffective federal programs, restrain spending and reduce borrowing.

Ducking governance decisions year after year will leave the U.S. too weak to face global challenges. Big government has meant slow growth, painfully high youth and minority unemployment and falling median incomes—except in the Washington, D.C., area, which recent census data show is growing ever richer.

Under current law, the federal government and Federal Reserve are in a sharp upward trajectory in their power and the riskiness of their policies. Federal domination of the economy and financial markets is only increasing. The government shutdown reflects a Republican demand for permanent new checks and balances—to restrain a government that spends wildly without a budget, buys $1 trillion per year in overpriced bonds from an already-rich Wall Street, and micromanages federal medical care but exempts unions and Congress from the sting of regulations that affect others.

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Obama: Won’t Negotiate ‘With a Gun At My Head’

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Photo Credit: APBy Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan, Burgess Everett and Jonathan Allen.

President Barack Obama told House Democrats on Wednesday that he would negotiate with Republicans but “not with a gun at my head,” according to one lawmaker who attended a caucus-wide meeting at the White House.

As he has before, Obama said he was open to short-term agreements to open the government and raise the debt ceiling if that’s what it took to help Republicans out of what he described as a political box, the lawmaker said.

After the meeting, House Democratic leaders suggested that they would accept short-term deals on both matters.

“All we want is a short-term CR because we think the number is unacceptable,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, using shorthand for a continuing resolution that would fund the government for as little as a few weeks at current levels.

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Photo Credit: CHARLES DHARAPAK/APObama Apologizes for Shutdown – but Says it’s Other Guy’s Fault

By Anita Kumar and William Douglas.

President Barack Obama apologized to the American people Tuesday for the bitter fiscal impasse that’s shut down parts of the federal government, but he continued to blame Republicans for it.

“I know the American people are tired of it,” Obama said at a White House news conference. “I apologize that you have to go through this stuff every three months, it seems like. And Lord knows I’m tired of it.”

The president again urged Republicans in the House of Representatives to pass bills immediately to reopen the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit, even while continuing to call them irresponsible hostage takers.

An hour later, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, scolded Obama for his remarks, saying the president must negotiate before they pass the bills.

Boehner said Congress and the White House had negotiated on government funding and the debt limit dozens of times over the years, resulting in “significant policy changes that would in fact reduce spending and put us on a saner fiscal path.”

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Obama Seen as Chicken Little on Default

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Photo Credit: IshronaA growing number of economists and politicians say President Obama is just factually wrong when he claims the United States is risking default by not raising the debt celing.

They also say Obama is mistaken in claiming that failure to raise the debt ceiling would be a disaster, or as he put it, “insane, catastrophic, chaos.”

One famous economist even goes so far as to portray the president’s dire warnings as outright dangerous and irresponsible. CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow accused the president of threatening “to pull the whole system down for (his) own gain.”

No default

Obama has repeatedly insisted that not raising the debt ceiling would mean the United States could not pay the bills it has already accumulated – the payments Congress has already authorized – and would result in a default.

Not true, wrote Jeffrey Dorfman in Forbes. The University of Georgia economics professor explained, “Reaching the debt ceiling does not mean that the government will default on the outstanding government debt. In fact, the U.S. Constitution forbids defaulting on the debt (14th Amendment, Section 4), so the government is not allowed to default even if it wanted to.”

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Immigration Agents Rip House Lawmakers Push for Amnesty

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U.S. Immigration Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agents have expressed strong concerns over House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and other Representatives pushing for immigration legislation that would legalize the status of America’s at least 11 million illegal immigrants.

In a public statement that will be released Thursday morning but has been provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release, USCIS Council president Kenneth Palinkas warned that Goodlatte (pictured), House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-VA), House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) seem to be following the same pathway that Senate “Gang of Eight” members did, regarding how they are working on immigration legislation.

“At every step, this administration places obstacles and roadblocks in front of our adjudication officers in their attempts to protect our nation’s security and the American taxpayer,” Palinkas said. “I documented these abuses on more than one occasion with the authors of Schumer-Rubio-Corker-Hoeven [S. 744] only to have them ignored.

“I worry the House may be following a similar path. Media reports reveal that Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Chairman Paul Ryan, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are working to advance proposals to open citizenship benefits to the majority of those here illegally, in combination with proposals to expand visa programs.”

Palinkas warned, too, that any group of “step-by-step” House immigration bills may be used as a tool by congressional leaders to get to a conference committee, at which point they would be combined with the Senate bill and sent to the president for his signature, and illegal immigrants would start getting amnesty. That is exactly what House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Gang of Eight members Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and some Republicans have said they want to do.

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Obama’s Negative Polling Worse than Clinton’s in 1995 Shutdown

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Gallup released a poll last week showing President Barack Obama’s negative polling among Americans during the current government shutdown is substantially worse in comparison to the numbers the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had during his administration’s shutdown in 1995.

According to Gallup:

A majority of Americans, 57%, say they now view President Obama more negatively as a result of the shutdown, while 28% see him more positively. By contrast, during the December 1995 shutdown, 49% of Americans viewed Clinton more negatively and 35% more positively. Clinton’s overall approval rating would tumble to 42% by the end of the 1995-96 shutdown, but rebounded later in 1996.

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Roadside Inn Reopens After Feds Tried to Shut It Down Over Budget Impasse

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Photo Credit: PISGAH INN The owner of a privately run inn along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is back in business five days after the federal government forced him to close as a byproduct of the D.C. slimdown.

Bruce O’Connell, owner of the Pisgah Inn, told FoxNews.com on Tuesday he was “hopeful” that his business would reopen — and by Wednesday, it had.

A posting on the company’s Facebook page said the inn was reopening at 5 p.m. Suggesting an agreement was reached with the feds, the post thanked the National Park Service “for working with us through all of this mess.” An employee also confirmed to FoxNews.com that the inn was re-opening.

O’Connell was among a growing group of business owners who argued that the federal government was needlessly choking off their ability to earn a living, and were fighting back. O’Connell had been vocal about looking into his legal options following the forced closing.

Congress’s inability to come to a compromise on bills that would have kept the government fully funded forced the inn, which is in a leased building on federal land, to shut down last Thursday.

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Jerry Brown Signs Bill Permitting Non-Physician Abortions in California

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Photo Credit: Rose Palmisano, Orange County RegisterCalifornia on Wednesday became the only state in the nation this year to increase access to abortions, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing more medical professionals to perform abortions.

AB154 by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, would let nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives and physician assistants with special training perform abortion by aspiration — in which the uterus’ contents are suctioned out — which is the most common kind of first-trimester abortion. The Assembly passed the bill on a 50-25 vote in May, and the state Senate passed it on a 50-25 vote in August, with most Democrats and no Republicans voting for it.

“California is moving in a different direction than the rest of the country. So far this year we have seen 68 abortion restrictions become law, and California is the only state to make real progress to protect abortion rights,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights research group.

“This is just a common sense measure,” she said. “The state recognizes that abortion is not always available when needed and that advanced practice clinicians are well-placed to provide those services.”

But Brian Johnston, executive director of the California ProLife Council, said the bill “isn’t about helping women so much as about promoting abortion.”

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