Obama’s Media Lapdogs Ban ‘Dirty’ Word…

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Two of America’s largest mainstream media outlets have decided reporters should cut down on the use of the term “Obamacare,” fearing it’s gotten too negative of a connotation.

Tom Kent, the deputy managing editor and standards editor of The Associated Press who is responsible for “accuracy and balance” across the stories carried on AP’s newswire, wrote a column Tuesday telling reporters to back off using the term “Obamacare” when referring to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“‘Obamacare’ was coined by opponents of the law and is still used by them in a derogatory manner,” Kent argued. “It’s true that the White House, and even Obama himself, have used the term on occasion. But the administration hasn’t totally embraced ‘Obamacare’ and still uses the Affordable Care Act much of the time. We’re sticking with our previous approach to ‘Obamacare’: AP writers should use it in quotes, or in formulations like ‘the law, sometimes known as Obamacare.’”

At at NPR, Stuart Seidel, managing editor for standards and practices, announced in a memo ruling earlier this week that reporters should cut back on use of the term.

“‘Obamacare’ seems to be straddling somewhere between being a politically-charged term and an accepted part of the vernacular. And it seems to be on our air and in our copy a great deal,” Seidel said. “[W]ord choices do leave an impression. Please avoid overusing ‘Obamacare.’

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Enrollee in Media Spotlight Hasn’t Completed Signup Process

Photo Credit: POLITICO Screen grab

Photo Credit: POLITICO Screen grab

The Georgia college student who basked in national media attention after claiming he and his dad were among the first to enroll in Obamacare is changing his story.

“I never said that I had actually purchased a plan,” said Chad Henderson, 21, who was thrust into the national spotlight after announcing Tuesday on Twitter that he had “enrolled in Obamacare.” He told POLITICO Friday he had been online to shop in the federal exchange, but had never completed the final steps of getting in the health plan.

Henderson, an Organizing for Action volunteer and supporter of President Barack Obama, said he was “sorry for this confusion” and never intended to mislead the numerous media outlets, including POLITICO, that contacted him to hear his story. “I’ve received so much flak for something that has been misinterpreted,” he said.

Questions arose after Reason’s Peter Suderman contacted Henderson’s father, Bill, who owns a shaved ice company in Chattanooga, Tenn. He posted a story outlining discrepancies.

Read more from this story HERE.

What a ‘Shutdown’ Means: $63B Spent, $26B Taxed; $1.6B Borrowed; $1B Paid in Salaries–in Just 2 Days

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In general terms, politicians and the press may be referring to what has been happening in Washington, D.C., over the past few days as a government “shutdown” or a “partial government shutdown,” but the actual accounting sheets of the U.S. Treasury show that massive amounts of taxed and borrowed money were flowing in and out of the government during the first two days of fiscal 2014.

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for Oct. 2, which was released yesterday at 4:00 p.m., the Treasury spent a total of $63.262 billion in the first two days of fiscal 2014. At the same time, it took in $25.681 billion in tax revenue.

The Treasury also sold $1.648 billion in new Treasury securities–which is government debt.

Read more from this story HERE.

Priests Threatened with Arrest if they Minister to Military During Shutdown

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy/Johnny Bivera/Getty

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy/Johnny Bivera/Getty

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown.

“With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.”

According to its website, the Archdiocese for the Military Services “provides the Catholic Church’s full range of pastoral ministries and spiritual services to those in the United States Armed Forces.”

In his piece, Schlageter worries about this restriction as Sunday nears. “If the government shutdown continues through the weekend, there will be no Catholic priest to celebrate Mass this Sunday in the chapels at some U.S. military installations where non-active-duty priests serve as government contractors,” he wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.

US Scientists Boycott Nasa Conference Over China Ban

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Nasa is facing an extraordinary backlash from US researchers after it emerged that the space agency has banned Chinese scientists, including those working at US institutions, from a conference on grounds of national security.

Nasa officials rejected applications from Chinese nationals who hoped to attend the meeting at the agency’s Ames research centre in California next month citing a law, passed in March, which prohibits anyone from China setting foot in a Nasa building.

The law is part of a broad and aggressive move initiated by congressman Frank Wolf, chair of the House appropriations committee, which has jurisdiction over Nasa. It aims to restrict the foreign nationals’ access to Nasa facilities, ostensibly to counter espionage.

But the ban has angered many US scientists who say Chinese students and researchers in their labs are being discriminated against. A growing number of US scientists have now decided to boycott the meeting in protest, with senior academics withdrawing individually, or pulling out their entire research groups.

The conference is being held for US and international teams who work on Nasa’s Kepler space telescope programme, which has been searching the cosmos for signs of planets beyond our solar system. The meeting is the most important event in the academic calendar for scientists who specialise in the field.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA and GCHQ Target Tor Network that Protects Anonymity of Web Users

Photo Credit: Felix Clay

Photo Credit: Felix Clay

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency’s current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users’ internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls “relays” or “nodes”, to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘We’re Winning’: Ted Cruz on the Latest in Washington Amid the ‘Government Shutdown’

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) told Glenn Beck during a radio interview Thursday that conservatives are “winning” the battle in Washington over Obamacare and the “government shutdown.”

“We’re winning the debate,” the senator remarked. “That’s why they are scared and they are attacking us. The more shrill it gets, the more scared they are.”

Cruz — one of the lawmakers who led the effort to defund Obamacare, and brought the issue to the forefront during a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor last week — referenced a Shakespeare quote that the lady “doth protest too much.”

“Why are they screaming so loudly? Why are they so personal? Why are they so filled with hate and fear? It’s because the American people are mobilized, are passionate and energized,” he said. “And even worse, [they] understand that Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans, and that has the left terrified out of their minds.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Just Played His Big ‘Trump Card’ On The Debt Ceiling

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Early Thursday morning, Potomac Research Group analyst Greg Valliere predicted that if the debt-ceiling deadline grew closer, President Barack Obama would play his “trump card” in the debate. He would remind seniors that if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, seniors wouldn’t get their Social Security checks.

“GOP strategists like Karl Rove surely know that it’s just a matter of time before President Obama throws a game-changer — warning senior citizens that their Social Security checks won’t be mailed because of John Boehner,” Valliere wrote in a note to clients.

A few hours later, Obama did just that during a speech at M. Luis Construction Company in Rockville, Md. He spent much of the speech warning that while the ongoing government shutdown was damaging, failure to raise the debt ceiling by an Oct. 17 deadline would be even worse.

“In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time. In an economic shutdown — if we don’t raise the debt ceiling — they don’t go out on time,” Obama said. “In a government shutdown, disability benefits still arrive on time. In an economic shutdown, they don’t.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul Caught on a Hot Mic – What He Really Feels About Democrats and Their Shutdown Rhetoric

Screen shot 2013-10-04 at 1.13.38 AMA local Kentucky TV news station caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday morning discussing some congressional Republican messaging strategy regarding the showdown with Democrats over the government shutdown.

“I just did CNN and I just go over and over again ‘We’re willing to compromise. We’re willing to negotiate,” Paul is seen on-camera telling McConnell, who is standing by for his own interview remote from D.C. “I don’t think they (Democrats) poll tested ‘we won’t negotiate.’ I think it’s awful for them to say that over and over again.”

“Yeah, I do too and I — and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly,” McConnell said back.

Read more from this story HERE.

Treasury: Under Obama, U.S Gov’t Debt Held by Public Up 90%

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. Treasury released its last Daily Treasury Statement for fiscal 2013 yesterday afternoon, revealing that during the presidency of Barack Obama the U.S. government debt held by the public has increased 90 percent.

At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, the U.S. government debt held by the public was $6,307,311,000,000, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for that day.

At the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013—the last day of fiscal 2013—the Daily Treasury Statement said the U.S. government debt held by the public was $11,976,279,000,000.

The $11,976,279,000,000 in U.S. government debt held by the public on Sept. 30, 2013 was $5,668,968,000,000 more than the $6,307,311,000,000 in debt held by the public on Obama’s first inauguration day.

That is an increase of 89.879 percent—or approximately 90 percent.

Read more from this story HERE.