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Obama Invokes Daughters As He Talks Up ‘Contraceptive Care’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Repeating his new talking point about the Affordable care act, President Obama mentioned his own daughters on Thursday as he made the point that the new health care law offers free preventive care, including contraception.

“Let’s say — let’s say you’re a young woman — I’m interested in this because I’ve got two daughters, right? Let’s say you just turned 26. Let’s say you can’t stay on your parents’ plan anymore. If you buy health care through the marketplace, your plan has to cover free checkups, flu shots, contraceptive care — so you might end up getting more health care each month than you’re paying for the premiums,” Obama said.

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Poll: President Obama’s Approval Underwater

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Barack Obama is viewed more unfavorably than favorably for the first time in his presidency, according to a new poll.

In a Bloomberg poll released late Tuesday, 49 percent viewed Obama unfavorably compared with 47 percent who viewed him favorably, the first time he has seen a net unfavorability in Bloomberg’s polling during his presidency.

While the Republican Party is still viewed more unfavorably than Obama, 56 percent to 34 percent favorable, more people blame Obama for pursuing the wrong policies than Republicans for stymying the economy, 32 percent to 28 percent. Thirty percent of those surveyed said the recession is too severe for government to help it rebound.

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Obama at the UN: Still Absent on Freedom and Democracy

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

In his speech today at the United Nations, President Obama continued his administration’s odd and somewhat schizophrenic policy with respect to freedom, human rights, and democracy.

In general, in principle, he is all for it. He said the United States “will continue to promote democracy, human rights, and open markets, because we believe these practices achieve peace and prosperity” though he also made clear that to him, this is not a “core interest” of the United States. He does mention in passing that we see “young people everywhere…who are eager to join the cause of eradicating extreme poverty, combating climate change, starting businesses, expanding freedom and leaving behind the old ideological battles of the past.” (Of course, one of those key ideological battles was precisely about freedom.) And Mr. Obama explains that “although we will be wary of efforts to impose democracy through military force, and will at times be accused of hypocrisy or inconsistency – we will be engaged in the region for the long haul. For the hard work of forging freedom and democracy is the task of a generation.”

Now this is very general. How does it apply when we deal with actual American foreign policy in a particular country? It does not.

The president said in this speech that “America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

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Iranian President Rejects Meeting with President Obama

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declined to talk to President Barack Obama after White House aides offered to arrange “an encounter” between the two leaders.

“What we indicated was we were open to the two leaders having an encounter here on the margins, officials said,” according to the White House pool report.

“The Iranians have an internal dynamic that they have to manage and the relationship with [the] United States is clearly quite different than the relationship that Iran has with other Western nations,” the pool report quotes a senior administration official as saying.

The official explained that the meeting was just “too complicated for Iranians to do at this point.”

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President Obama: Wife Stopped My Smoking (+video)

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Photo Credit: NewsBusters

Photo Credit: NewsBusters

…While in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, President Barack Obama struck up an off-mic conversation Monday with Maina Kiai, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association for the United Nations.

“I hope you’ve quit smoking,” he said to Kiai, according to a CNN report…

The audio is fuzzy, but Obama can be heard admitting: “No, no no I haven’t…in six years. That’s ‘cause I’m scared of my wife.”

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‘Obama Express’ Grocery Store Caught in Food Stamp Trafficking (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

After Obama’s election in 2009 a small grocery store/convenience store in Florida changed its name to the Obama Express. Several other stores across the country did the same thing. One of those was a location in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in 2013, the Maryland outlet is under investigation, accused of illegally trafficking in food stamps.

On September 17, WBAL reported that nine retailers in Baltimore County had been arrested for illegally redeeming food stamps for cash and kicking back a portion to food stamp recipients. The retailers did not sell them any merchandise or food.

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Lawmaker to Obama: ‘You’re Not a Dictator’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Congressional Republicans should absolutely fight to defund Obamacare in a fight over funding the federal government and President Obama has no right to demand a debt ceiling extension without Republicans demanding spending restraint in return, according to Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.

Current government funding expires at the end of September. The GOP is divided over whether to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at current spending rates across the board or to fund everything at current rates while completely defunding Obamacare. Many conservative members of the House and Senate are pushing to cut off funds, while leadership has been very cool to the idea.

Now, with Obama weakened by stumbles over Syria, at least 43 Republican lawmakers claim it’s time to wage all-out war on the president’s signature legislation.

Mulvaney said starving Obamacare makes perfect sense, and there are enough members committed to this course of action to force the issue.

“I don’t think the support exists within the Republican Party now to not fight. We have to fight,” Mulvaney said. “It’s not just folks you might think of ordinarily, the extreme right wing of the party. It’s a lot of the guys more in the center who are hearing from their districts back home that folks don’t want to fund Obamacare. I can’t imagine us not dealing with Obamacare in some fashion as part of this discussion.”

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Obama: ‘Raising the Debt Ceiling…Does Not Increase Our Debt,’ Though It Has ‘Over 100 Times’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: abangbay @ Malaysia

Photo Credit: abangbay @ Malaysia

Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t increase the nation’s debt, Pres. Obama declared in a speech today.

In a speech at the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington, D.C., Obama dismissed concerns about raising the debt ceiling by noting that it’d been done so many times in the past:

“Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress. It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.”

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Obama Takes on Coal with First-Ever Carbon Limits

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration will press ahead Friday with tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants, moving to impose for the first time strict limits on the pollution blamed for global warming.

The proposal would help reshape where Americans get electricity, away from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by cleaner sources of energy. It’s also a key step in President Barack Obama’s global warming plans, because it would help end what he called “the limitless dumping of carbon pollution” from power plants.

Although the proposed rule won’t immediatedly affect plants already operating, it eventually would force the government to limit emissions from the existing power plant fleet, which accounts for a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Obama has given the Environmental Protection Agency until next summer to propose those regulations.

The EPA provided The Associated Press with details of the proposal prior to the official announcement, which was expected Friday morning. The public will have a chance to comment on the rule before it becomes final.

Despite some tweaks, the rule packs the same punch as one announced last year, which was widely criticized by industry and Republicans as effectively banning any new coal projects in the U.S.

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Census Data on Obama Presidency: Record Number in Poverty

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

During the four years that marked President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

The record total of approximately 46,496,000 people in the United States who are now in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, is more than twice the population of Syria, which, according to the CIA, has 22,457,336 people.

In 2008, the year Obama was elected, real median household income in the United States was $53,644 according to the Census Bureau. In 2012, the last full year of Obama’s first term, median household income was $51,017. Thus, real median household income dropped $2,627—or 4.89 percent—from 2008 to 2012.

In fact, real median household income dropped in every year of Obama’s first term. In 2008, when he was elected, it was $53,644. In 2009, the year he was inaugurated, it dropped to 53,285. In 2010, his second year in office, it dropped to $51,892. In 2011, his third year in office, it dropped to $51,100. And, in 2012, his fourth year in office, it dropped to $51,017.

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