The War on Conservative Minorities

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Photo Credit: Facebook Members of both political parties use sharp elbows to rough up and discredit the opposition, but the media are supposed to call “foul” on the worst abuses. But when the media are ideologically opposed to conservatives — especially minority conservatives — the abuses sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

Take what happened last week to New Hampshire state representative Marilinda Garcia, who announced she would challenge incumbent Democratic representative Annie Kuster in a highly competitive district that has switched party control in three of the last four elections.

Democrats were clearly rattled by the 30-year-old Garcia’s entry. Democratic-party communications director Harrell Kirstein said she would inevitably be part of a “reckless race to pander to the same extreme right fringe of the Republican Party that forced the federal government shutdown.” He called her a “loyal rubber-stamp” for the “irresponsible” agenda of former GOP house speaker Bill O’Brien.
Tough but in bounds.

But then prominent Democratic state representative Peter Sullivan, a self-described leader of the legislature’s “progressive” bloc, entered the picture. Using his Twitter account, he compared her unfavorably to O’Brien and conservative state representative Al Baldasaro this way:

She’s Al Baldassaro [Sullivan misspelled his name] in stiletto heels, a lightweight and O’Brien clone.

Bill O’Brien + Kim Kardashian = Marilinda Garcia

She is a right-wing, homophobic, anti-worker shill for the Koch Brothers.

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After ‘Holiday Tree’ Controversy, RI State House Has a ‘Christmas Tree’ Once Again

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Photo Credit: THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL/ BOB BREIDENBACHThe previous two years of Governor Chafee’s administration, the invitation for the annual tree lighting at the State House called it a “holiday tree.”

This year, it is going by another name: “Christmas tree.”

Ahead of Thursday’s tree lighting in the State House, which during the past two years tended to light up controversy over what to call it, the governor said in a statement Monday that in 2011, his “first year celebrating December in the State House I gave a simple six-word instruction to the planners of the annual tree lighting: ‘Do what they did last year.’ ”

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Obama’s Amazing List of Presidential Firsts

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Photo Credit: thelibertydigest.comWHAT AN IMPRESSIVE LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS!…

1. First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
2. First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
3. First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
4. First President to violate the War Powers Act.
5. First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

6. First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
7. First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party, a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
8. First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.
9. First President to recommend changing our National Anthem as it portrays and promotes violence and is warlike in its theme.
10. First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer Breakfast and activities.
11. First President to initiate a Cash for Clunkers Program to clean up exhaust that adds to global warming, then extended it because it was so

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GOP Rides Wave of Cancellation Notices

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Photo Credit: Politico Since the Affordable Care Act was introduced in 2009, Republicans have dismissed President Barack Obama’s oft-repeated promise that anyone who liked their insurance plan would be able to keep it.

But was anyone paying attention?

For years, the media turned a blind eye to conservatives’ insistent warnings, often taking the president’s promise for granted. But this week, as health insurance cancellation letters started showing up in Americans’ mailboxes and the website rollout flopped, the GOP message finally broke into the mainstream.

On Monday, NBC News reported that at least half of the approximately 14 million Americans with individual insurance are set to have their health plans shut down by insurers under Obamacare. On Wednesday, the story was featured on the front page of some of the nation’s leading newspapers and was the main talking point for Republican lawmakers during the congressional hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

For Republicans, it’s been a long time coming.

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President Embraces Role as ‘Salesman’ for Obamacare

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Photo Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak)President Obama in his weekly address Saturday said he was proud to be a “salesman” for Obamacare despite criticism over the glitch-filled rollout of the law’s insurance exchanges.

“Some people have poked fun at me this week for sounding like an insurance salesman. And that’s okay,” said Obama. “I’d still be out there championing this law even if the website were perfect.”

Obama’s comments came after another week of withering criticism over the administration’s rollout of a new website designed to enroll consumers in the health care law’s public insurance exchanges.

Obama said at an event Monday that he is frustrated with the website and vowed it would be fixed, but also defended the health care law as a “good deal” for the public.

Opponents of the health care law criticized Obama, saying he was forced to resell the public on supporting his signature legislative achievement.

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Richard Dawkins On Real Time: ‘I’m Sure Obama is an Atheist and I’m Sure Kennedy Was’

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Photo Credit: mediaite.comOxford professor and celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins joined Bill Maher Friday night to talk about his personal evolution from theism to atheism, why a scientific view of the universe does not entail a series of random events, and which public figures he believes are secretly atheists.

Maher and Dawkins agreed that people like them are often called “militant” atheists, when, in fact, the real problem people have with them is their “clarity” and how steadfast they are on these issues. Dawkins acknowledged he used to be religious, adding, “When I became a man I put away childish things.”

Dawkins dispelled some truly erroneous myths about science and atheism, said that something as simple as a sneeze can change the fabric of human history, and shared this colorful metaphor for the creationists.

“If you believe that the world is only 6000 years old, as some of these people do, given that the true age of the earth is 4.6 billion years, it’s equivalent to believing the width of North America is eight yards.”

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Faculty: Sexual Harassment Policy Approved by Feds ‘Orwellian’

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Faculty members expressed alarm at new sexual harassment policies at the University of Montana approved by the Departments of Justice and Education.

Of special concern is a requirement that those professors who fail to complete training are being reported to the federal government.

Faculty members questioned exactly what information the university felt obliged to report to the DOJ and asked how the agency plans to use the information in a letter to University of Montana President Royce Engstrom, the Missoulian reported last week. They also asked what additional information the university would provide to the DOJ if the agency asked follow-up questions.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education criticized the new “unconstitutional” policy and the DOJ’s request for a list of faculty names.

“Not only has the federal government approved an unconstitutional speech code, it has demanded a list of the names of faculty members who don’t attend a training session about it,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff in a statement.

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Obama on Obamacare: “We did Raise Taxes on Some Things.”

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Obama-self-satisfiedDuring his Tuesday remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative, President Obama admitted that his health care law raises taxes: “So what we did — it’s paid for by a combination of things. We did raise taxes on some things.”

“Some things” is an understatement. Below is just a partial list of Obamacare’s new or higher taxes on Americans:

Starting in tax year 2013:

Obamacare Medical Device Tax: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will make everything from pacemakers to artificial hips more expensive.

Obamacare High Medical Bills Tax: Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). Obamacare now imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income.

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Navy Yard: Swat Team ‘Stood Down’ at Mass Shooting Scene

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Picture - Navy Yard ShootingOne of the first teams of heavily armed police to respond to Monday’s shooting in Washington DC was ordered to stand down by superiors, the BBC can reveal.

A tactical response team of the Capitol Police, a force that guards the US Capitol complex, was told to leave the scene by a supervisor instead of aiding municipal officers.

The Capitol Police department has launched a review into the matter.

Aaron Alexis, 34, killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard…

Capitol Police Officer Jim Konczos, who leads the officers’ union, said the Cert police train for what are known as active shooter situations and are expert marksmen.

“Odds are it might have had a different outcome,” he said of Monday’s shooting and the decision to order the Cert unit to stand down. “It probably could have been neutralised.”

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Obamacare Will Question Your Sex Life

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A man holds a sign at the Tea Party Patriots 'Exempt America from Obamacare' rally on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”

Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.

“This is nasty business,” says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He couldn’t think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information — but he knows he’ll be pushed to ask for it.

The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.

Embarrassing though it may be, you confide things to a doctor you wouldn’t tell anyone else. But this is entirely different.

Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they’ll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives.

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