Cruz: Blame Senate GOP for ACA Defeat

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreSen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is blaming his fellow Senate Republicans for opposing a movement in the House to defund ObamaCare, which ultimately caused Republicans to win few concessions in the deal to reopen the government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

In an interview with the National Review posted on Saturday afternoon, the senator said that there would be “consequences” for supporting the funding bill.

“Unfortunately, rather than supporting House Republicans, a significant number of Senate Republicans actively, aggressively, and vocally led the effort to defeat House Republicans, to defeat the effort to defund Obamacare,” he told the conservative magazine. “Once Senate Republicans did that, it crippled the chances of this effort, and it caused the lousy deal.”

Late on Wednesday, the Senate voted 81-18 to restore government funding until Jan. 15 and raise the debt limit through Feb. 7.

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Hillary Clinton Stumps for Terry McAuliffe

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Photo Credit: APHillary Clinton made her first campaign appearance in nearly five years on Saturday to support Terry McAuliffe, her old friend who’s running as the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia.

But for the media and the majority of attendees packed into The State Theatre here for the event, it was all about her.

She laid out a case for him that rested strongly on women’s equality, gay marriage and rejecting the “scorched earth” politics that have defined Washington over the past several months. Though she didn’t directly call out Republicans, it was clear who she was talking about when she said some politicians have been operating in an “evidence-free zone”, “do not believe in America’s progress” and are trying to “hijack” the future.

“There are times when none of us can sit on the sidelines,” Clinton told the crowd of more than 700 people. “And right now, here in Virginia, is one of those times. … The whole country is watching this election. Watching to see whether the voters of Virginia lead the way of turning from divisive politics [and] getting back to common sense and common ground.”

The crowd chanted “Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!” before she even started speaking. McAuliffe served as her warm-up act, describing Clinton as an “inspiration to men and women all across Virginia and all across the globe.”

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Obama: Washington ‘Has to Change’ after Shutdown and Debt Ceiling Crisis

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Photo Credit: The Guardian Barack Obama used his weekly address on Saturday to repeat his appeal for greater co-operation between political parties in Washington DC, in the aftermath of the government shutdown and national debt crisis. The president also restated his claim that despite the Republican climbdown that cleared the way for a resolution of the crisis on Wednesday night, “no winners” had emerged from the political drama of the last two weeks.

Later in the day the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the presumed frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, echoed Obama’s words in a speech delivered in support of Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for the governorship of Virginia. Clinton said the US people were looking for a return to “common sense and common ground” and would look to the Virginia race – McAuliffe faces the Republican Ken Cuccinelli – for a turn away from “divisive politics”.

It was Clinton’s first public campaign event since leaving the State Department in February, although she is also helping Bill de Blasio, a former aide, in his attempt to be elected mayor of New York.

On Thursday, Obama used remarks to the press to appeal for Republican co-operation over issues such as the federal budget, immigration reform and a farm bill. Discussions over the budget, involving the Republican representative Paul Ryan and the Democratic senator Patty Murray, have begun. However, optimism over bipartisan co-operation is in short supply.

On Saturday, in his address, Obama said: “There’s been a lot of discussion lately of the politics of this shutdown. But the truth is, there were no winners in this. At a time when our economy needs more growth and more jobs, the manufactured crises of these last few weeks actually harmed jobs and growth.

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Bishop: Pope Leading Church to ‘Disaster’

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Photo Credit: WNDCiting the famous prophecies of Fatima, traditionalist Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard Fellay warned in an address in Kansas City that Pope Francis is precipitating the church’s decline and could be a herald that the world is entering the age of the Antichrist.

Fellay, who leads a society that has no canonical status in the Roman Catholic Church, said the “modernist views” professed by the pontiff are at odds with traditional Catholic teaching.

“The situation in the Catholic Church is a real disaster and the present pope is making it 10,000 times worse,” Fellay charged Oct. 12 at the Angelus Press Conference in Kansas City.

Fellay is superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, whose ministers, according to the Vatican, do not legitimately exercise ministry in the church.

Fellay, in his address, drew heavily from the Third Secret of Fatima, which many Catholics believe was given by the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Lucia Santos, one of three poor children who claimed to experience a series of six apparitions of Mary in Fatima, Portugal, between May and October in 1917.

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Church: Gov’t Engaged in ‘Conscious Political Strategy to Marginalize and Delegitimize’ Catholic ‘Religious Views’

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Photo Credit: APThe Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is arguing in a new lawsuit that the Obama administration is engaged in a “conscious political strategy to marginalize and delegitimize” Catholic “religious views on contraception by holding them up for ridicule on the national stage.”

At issue in the lawsuit is whether the administration can force the archdiocese to secure a third-party administrator for its self-insurance plan who will provide sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs at no cost to church employees at some of the archdiocese’s separately incorporated subunits.

These subunits include a number of Catholic schools and charities, including Archbishop Carroll High School and Catholic Charities of Washington.

“[T]he Archdiocese operates a self-insurance plan that encompasses not only individuals directly employed by the Archdiocese itself, but, in addition, individuals employed by affiliated Catholic organizations,” says the church’s lawsuit.

Because the Obama administration’s sterilization-contraceptive-abortifacient mandate does not deem these Catholic organizations to be “religious employers,” says the lawsuit, “the U.S. Government Mandate requires that the archdiocese either (1) sponsor a plan that will provide, pay for, and/or facilitate the provision of the objectionable products and services to the employees of” these church organizations “or (2) no longer extend its plan to these organizations, subjecting them to massive fines if they do not contract with another insurance provider that will provide the objectionable coverage.”

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Student Loan Borrowers Face Payment ‘Pitfalls’

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Repaying a student loan should be simple. But a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds that’s often not the case. Loan servicers, the companies hired by lenders to collect payment for private loans, don’t always act in the borrowers’ best interests. And loan servicers sometimes take actions that increase the total cost of higher education.

“When servicers process payments to maximize fees and penalties, they undermine the trust of their customers,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray in a statement. “Student loan borrowers deserve better; they deserve transparency and accountability.”

The most common complaints dealt with problems encountered by borrowers, trying to pay off their loans early or in a certain order.

It usually makes sense to pay off the loan with the highest interest rate first. But the CFPB found that loan servicers don’t always do that. Instead, they frequently divide the payment or overpayment and apply it to all the person’s outstanding loans.

According to the report, these “payment processing pitfalls” can lead to increased costs, prolonged repayments and harm to a borrower’s credit profile.

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Clinton Ally Pens E-Book: ‘The Benghazi Hoax’

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Photo Credit: ReutersMedia Matters founder and Hillary Clinton ally David Brock has co-authored a 90-page e-book called “The Benghazi Hoax,” a tome intended as a counterweight of sorts to criticisms of the former Secretary of State and President Barack Obama over the 2012 attacks in Libya.

Brock previewed the book in an interview with POLITICO last week in the liberal group’s Washington offices. He described it as an important and necessary resource on the Benghazi attacks that left four Americans dead last Sept. 11 — and which some congressional Republicans have shown continued interest in probing.

Brock insisted the book is not intended as a de facto defense of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she comes under scrutiny ahead of a likely 2016 presidential bid. Supporting the Clintons is a fraction of Media Matters’ mission, he said, and her role in the Benghazi attacks is not the sole focus of the book.

But the mere fact of the book’s existence is an acknowledgement that Benghazi will remain a topic of debate, and one that could harm Clinton with independent and center-right Republicans. And it comes as Brock-affiliated groups could fill an organizational void for Clinton, who has no machinery of her own beyond a handful of staffers since leaving the State Department.

The book, which comes out Tuesday, is as much about pushing back against criticisms by the right that Obama is a weak president who has hurt America in the world, Brock said.

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Tentative Deal Hands JPMorgan Chase a Record Penalty

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Photo Credit: Leslye Davis/The New York TimesJPMorgan Chase and the Justice Department have reached a tentative $13 billion settlement over the bank’s questionable mortgage practices leading up to the financial crisis, people briefed on the talks said on Saturday. It would be a record penalty that would cap weeks of heated negotiating and underscore the extent of the bank’s legal woes.

The deal, which the Justice Department took the lead in negotiating and which came together after a Friday night call involving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, would resolve an array of state and federal investigations into the bank’s sale of troubled mortgage investments. That type of investment, securities typically backed by subprime home loans, was at the heart of the financial crisis.

While the deal would put those civil cases to rest, it would not save JPMorgan from a parallel criminal inquiry from federal prosecutors in California, the people briefed on the talks said. Under the terms of the preliminary deal, the people said, the bank would also have to assist prosecutors with an investigation into former employees who helped create the mortgage investments.

The $13 billion deal, which could still fall apart over issues like how much wrongdoing the bank is willing to acknowledge, would represent something of a reckoning for Wall Street, whose outsize risk taking in the mortgage business nearly toppled the economy in 2008. It might also provide a measure of catharsis to the investing public, which suffered billions of dollars in losses from buying bad mortgage securities.

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ObamaCare Site Glitches Run Risk of Turning Off Millenials

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Photo Credit: Fox News The prolonged glitches with the ObamaCare website are frustrating many of the president’s most high-valued customers — the young, tech-savvy generation that helped him win two terms and whose participation is critical to the success of the health care exchanges.

“You see this situation especially with college students,” Michael Cipriano, a student at American University told FoxNews.com on Friday. “They get frustrated, which creates a disincentive to sign up.”

President Obama is depending on young people being the backbone of his signature, 2010 health care law. Typically among the mostly healthy Americans, their premiums were supposed to help finance coverage for the elderly, poor and others with long-term illnesses and more frequent emergency-care visits.

However, the glitches and other problems that have plagued the exchanges since they went online Oct. 1 could put the plan in jeopardy. The administration runs healthcare.gov for the 36 states that chose not to have their own sites. The 14 other states and the District of Columbia run their own site but are still part of ObamaCare.

“Based on what I’ve seen, people were really excited at first, then turned away,” said Cipriano, who tried successfully to navigate the site and is a junior who writes for the conservative-leaning, online college publication The College Fix.

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Dick Cheney Feared Assassination by Shock to Implanted Heart Defibrillator

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Photo Credit: David J Phillip/APThe former United States vice-president Dick Cheney was so fearful of assassination by terrorists sending an electronic shock to his implanted heart defibrillator that he ordered doctors to fit a new device without a wi-fi capability.

The extraordinary admission comes in the 72-year-old’s new book Heart: An American Medical Odyssey, in which he also reveals that two months after his 2001 inauguration he prepared a letter of resignation to President George W Bush that he carried with him almost constantly, which he could hand over if he felt his health deteriorating.

Cheney, a fiercely loyal deputy during both terms of Bush’s administration, has suffered five heart attacks since the age of 37 and had a heart transplant last year. In an interview to support his book on the CBS show 60 Minutes, due to air on Sunday night, he describes his current health as “a miracle”.

But it is Cheney’s fear of assassination that will provide a major talking point from the interview and book, which was written in conjunction with his longtime cardiologist, Dr Jonathan Reiner.

A fictional vice-president in the hit US television drama Homeland was murdered by terrorists sending an electronic signal to his pacemaker, in an episode several years after Cheney had his device fitted, in June 2001. It was an alarming plotline, he said.

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