Protesters Chain Themselves to Stop Deportations in Arizona

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Photo Credit: notonemoredeportation .comImmigrant-rights protesters have chained themselves in front of an detention facility in Eloy, Ariz., and planned to blockade the main federal immigration office in Phoenix later Monday, hoping to stop anyone from being deported.

The moves are the latest act of civil disobedience from activists who are demanding the Obama administration halt all deportations. Among the protesters were illegal immigrants.

“Undocumented — unafraid,” the protesters chanted as they blocked the road at the facility Monday morning, which is southeast of Phoenix and is one of the busiest detention locations in the country.

The protesters aired their action in a webcast.

While activists have demanded action from Republicans in Congress, they are increasingly critical of President Obama over his record of deportations. Under his watch, immigration authorities have set records by deporting about 400,000 immigrants a year.

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Cruz, Lee, Palin Speak at WWII Memorial – Protestors Tear Down Barricades (+video)

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A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, according to WTOP radio. Cruz said President Obama is using veterans as pawns in the shutdown.

“Tear down these walls,” the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang God Bless America and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza.

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.

Sunday’s rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.

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IMF Chief: U.S. Dance with the Debt Limit is ‘Very, Very Concerning’

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Photo Credit: AP/Alex BrandonBy Tom Howell Jr.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund says the U.S. government’s stalemate over spending and its debt limit is “very, very concerning” and could roll back economic progress around the world.

Christine Lagarde, who took over the financial watchdog-and-rescue organization in 2011, said global finance ministers assembled for meetings in Washington last week feeling like Japan had finally turned the corner and that economies in the U.S. and Europe were on the upswing.

“And then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue,” she said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They found out that the government had shut down and that there was no remedy in sight. So it really completely transformed the meeting in the last few days.”

Ms. Lagarde, a lawyer from France, added a global perspective to the standoff that has roiled Washington for weeks and befuddled overseas investors who typically view the U.S. as a paragon of financial rectitude.

Instead, Senate leaders are trying to forge a deal that would extend the federal debt limit and end a government shutdown about to enter its third week.

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Budget Talks at Impasse; Democrats Won’t Agree on Spending Cuts

By The Associated Press.

Senate Republicans and Democrats hit an impasse Sunday over spending in their last-ditch struggle to avoid an economy-jarring default in just four days and end a partial government shutdown that enters its third week.

After inconclusive talks between President Barack Obama and House Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took charge in trying to end the crises although no resolution seemed imminent.

“Americans want Congress to compromise,” Reid said at the start of a rare Sunday session in the Senate in which he pressed for a long-term budget deal.

The two cagy negotiators are at loggerheads over Democratic demands to undo or change the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs that the GOP see as crucial to reducing the nation’s deficit.

McConnell insisted that a solution was readily available in the proposal from a bipartisan group of 12 senators, led by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., that would re-open the government and fund it at current levels for six month while raising the debt limit through Jan. 31.

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Across the Country, Donors Chip in to Help Programs Hurt by Federal Government Shutdown

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Photo Credit: L. Allen BrewerAs the partial government shutdown rolls on, programs that rely on federal money are feeling the strain — and so are the people who depend on their services.

For 16-year-old Alishe’ah Sockwell, federal money makes a big difference.

It helps put a roof over her head. It allows her mother, Nia, to undergo job training. And it pays for childcare for Sockwell’s young daughter so that Sockwell can go to high school every day in Little Rock, Ark.

But with some federal funds out of reach because of the shutdown, Sockwell may have to stay home from school in order to watch her daughter. If the shutdown drags on much longer, her housing could be in jeopardy, too.

So, to fill in the gaps, the nonprofit organization that provides Sockwell and other homeless people in Little Rock with childcare, shelter and other assistance, has asked community members to chip in.

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N.J. Gov. Christie Flips, Says He Now Wants In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Mel EvansImmigrant-rights activists say New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reversed himself Saturday and endorsed giving illegal immigrants in-state college tuition rates, and said he will try to get the issue through his legislature in a lame-duck session.

Mr. Christie, who is up for re-election in November, is also seen as eyeing a bid for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination — but his support for in-state tuition could complicate that.

“We need tuition equality for everyone in New Jersey,” the activists said the governor said in a speech to the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey.

Afterward, the activists said, Mr. Christie told one of them that, “We will get it done in the lame duck.”

A message left with Mr. Christie’s office Sunday morning wasn’t returned.

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Wall St. Elites Reason it’s Time for a ‘De-Americanized World,’ China’s News Agency Says

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Photo Credit: AP/Eugene HoshikoBy Fox News.

China’s official news agency is calling for a “de-Americanized world,” in a blistering editorial characterizing the United States as a “meddling” and “hypocritical” nation that introduces chaos into the world for its own ends.

“As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” writes the Xinhua News Agency.

“Meanwhile, the U.S. government has gone to all lengths to appear before the world as the one that claims the moral high ground, yet covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.

Read more from this story HERE.

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China wants a ‘De-Americanized’ world

By Rick Moran.

I suppose if I had a couple of trillion in dollar denominated bonds, I’d be a little worried too.

But really, “De-Americanize” the world? Just how does one go about doing that?

IBT:

China’s official news agency has called for the creation of a “de-Americanised world”, saying the destinies of people should not be left in the hands of a hypocritical nation with a dysfunctional government.

Heaping criticism and caustic ridicule on Washington, the Xinhua news agency called the US a civilian slayer, prisoner torturer and meddler in others’ affairs, and said the ‘Pax Americana’ was a failure on all fronts.

The official news agency of China, which is seen as the pretender to the world’s superpower crown, then rubbed in more salt, calling American economic pre-eminence just a seeming dominance.

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RNC Chair: Hillary Should Return Donations from Mcauliffe’s Convicted Pal

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Photo Credit: APOn Sunday RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called on Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and the Democratic National Committee to return political contributions made to their political campaign committees by Joseph Caramadre, a friend and business associate of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.

Breitbart News reported on Wednesday that Caramadre, who recently pled guilty to stealing the identities of terminally ill people, donated $25,000 to McAuliffe’s 2009 gubernatorial campaign and that McAuliffe had invested $47,000 in his illegal business venture.

Also on Wednesday, McAuliffe said he would donate the $25,000 he received in contributions from Caramadre and the $47,000 he invested in Caramadre’s business venture—offered and managed by Estate Planning Resources, Caramadre’s Rhode Island-based business—to charity.

Priebus told Breitbart News exclusively on Sunday that “Terry McAuliffe has already given back part of his ill-gotten gains from Joseph Caramadre. It is now up to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and the DNC, to decide where they stand.”

Priebus called on Clinton and Reid to return the substantial contributions they have received from Caramadre. “Will they continue to keep the hundreds of thousands of dollars they received from a convicted fraudster who illegally profited off terminally ill patients?” he asked.

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John McCain: Let Joe Biden Out of Witness Protection

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesJoe Biden to the rescue!

A top Senate Republican called for President Obama to get the long absent Vice President Joe Biden “out of the witness protection program” to restart stalled talks to end the government shutdown and stop a US credit default.

“I hope the president will become engaged. Maybe we need to get Joe Biden out of the witness protection program,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Biden has been the chief White House negotiator in previous high-stakes budget talks, including the deal that averted the 2011 “fiscal cliff.”

McCain said the vice president’s mysterious absence this time underscored the uncompromising position of the White House, which has refused to negotiate with House Republicans.

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Palin and Lonegan Rev Up NJ Crowd Ahead of This Week’s Special Election (+video)

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Sarah Palin rode the Tea Party Express tour bus into Ocean County today to lend her political star power to Republican Steve Lonegan’s U.S. Senate campaign, urging the roughly 2,000 supporters to muster up “their Jersey fight” to help him defeat Cory Booker.

In the final weekend before the special election on Wednesday, Booker also revved up his campaign by launching a bus tour in north Jersey for a series of events he delayed after his father’s death on Thursday.

With polls putting Lonegan within 12 percentage points of Booker — a much closer margin than pundits had predicted — both camps worked aggressively to energize their supporters. Both candidates capitalized on the public discontent with the federal government shutdown, 12 days old with no end in sight.

If New Jersey, a blue state, sends a conservative like Lonegan to Washington, President Obama and the Democratic leaders in Congress would understand that their policies and message are failing, Palin said.

“New Jersey, know that the eyes of America are on you now,” Palin said. “You can turn things around. Something big is happening here,” the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor told an enthusiastic crowd at the New Egypt Speedway.

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Boehner says Obama Rejected GOP Plan to End Shutdown as Negotiations Shift to Senate

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Photo Credit: Getty Images By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER.

House Speaker John Boehner today told fellow Republicans that his talks with President Barack Obama have stalled.

‘The Senate needs to hold tough,’ Representative Greg Walden said Boehner told House GOP lawmakers. ‘The president now isn’t negotiating with us.’

Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government in exchange for a budget negotiating process.

Attention now turns to the Senate, where a bipartisan group of Senators are working on a separate plan to reopen the government.

Word of the negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the top Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, emerged as the Senate, as expected, rejected a Democratic effort to raise the government’s borrowing limit through next year.

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Photo Credit: APFocus on Senate after Obama rejects House plan

By JAKE SHERMAN, JOHN BRESNAHAN and BURGESS EVERETT.

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.

There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.

With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.

After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.

Read more from this story HERE.