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Under A Withering Industry Assault, Nuclear Safety Chief Resigns

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim - May. 21 (News Report) - Under a withering assault from the industry, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko is stepping down, effective upon the confirmation of his successor, according to a statement from Jaczko. The resignation follows months of bureaucratic knife-wielding by the four industry-backed members of the five-person panel.

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Advocates: '12 Budget Dance Has Heavier Beat

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

bkbureau.org - May. 21 (News) - After years of austerity, advocates say the annual ritual of protests against proposed cuts has taken on a more urgent tone.

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Bachmann’s Fundraising Whopper

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Robert Farley - May. 20 (Fact Check) - In several urgent fundraising appeals, Rep. Michele Bachmann falsely claims that biased “liberal judges” redrew her congressional district “in retaliation for repeatedly standing up to President Obama.” The truth is that only two of the five judges were Democratic appointees, and Bachmann’s Minnesota district has become even more Republican than … More >>

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Obama says Romney would cut his own taxes while raising others’

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Molly Moorhead - May. 13 (Fact Check) - President Barack Obama says Mitt Romney is the anti-Robin Hood. In a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 5, 2012, Obama said the Romney's economic plan would raise taxes for millions of low-income Americans while cutting them for the wealthy.

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President Barack Obama's shifting stance on gay marriage

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - May. 11 (Fact Check) - ABC broke into its daytime lineup May 9, 2012, to announce a historic shift: the president of the United States declaring his personal support for gay marriage. "I've been going through an evolution on this issue," President Barack Obama told ABC News .

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The PolitiFact guide to Medicare attack lines

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan, Louis Jacobson - May. 06 (Fact Check) - Barack Obama has slashed Medicare by $500 billion. Mitt Romney and House Republicans want to end Medicare. And a new board is going to ration care so Washington can waste more money. Believe any of that? You shouldn’t. But it’s what the political ads likely will be saying between now and Election Day in November. We have some advice for voters sorting out the claims: Believe nothing you hear in a 30-second TV ad. Here are a few facts about Medicare: • It’s the government-run health insurance for Americans over age 65. • It’s a Canada-style, single-payer system. Liberals love that; conservatives don’t. • It has approximately 50 million people on its rolls. • That 50 million will grow to 80 million as baby boomers retire. Paying for that will be a challenge. Those realities about Medicare have sparked a full-fledged political brawl for 2012.

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Who to blame for the price at the pump? Tough to say

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Molly Moorhead - Apr. 29 (Fact Check) - The price of gas is determined by a litany of complex and shifting factors (Brent derivatives, anyone?), few of which you’ll hear mentioned in :30-second political ads. But politicians are interested less in cause, more in effect. The effect in this case: your anger.

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Latin America v. Obama: U.S. Policy on Cuba, Drug War, Economy Under Fire at Colombian Summit

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - Historian Greg Grandin analyzes the U.S.-Colombia "free trade" deal and the deepening split between much of Latin America and Washington following the Summit of the Americas in Colombia. The summit, which was marred by a U.S. prostitution scandal, concluded Sunday without agreement on the key questions of whether Cuba should be allowed to attend the regional meetings and on the issue of the legalization of drugs. Latin American leaders said Cuba should be invited to the next Summit in Panama in 2015, but the United States and Canada dissented. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa boycotted this year’s meeting because of Cuba's exclusion. On Sunday the United States announced that a free trade agreement with host country Colombia will come into effect in May, far earlier than expected. The agreement had earlier been deferred because of Colombia's weak record on workers rights, including murders and attacks on union activists. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Fall Preview: Obama vs. Romney (and Ryan)

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Eugene Kiely - Apr. 07 (Fact Check) - President Obama says Mitt Romney has embraced a budget that could throw hundreds of thousands of children out of Head Start classrooms, eliminate air traffic control services in some places, and “ultimately end Medicare as we know it.” Romney says that’s just “rhetorical excess”

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Romney Fundraising Pitch Skews Stats

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Ben Finley - Apr. 07 (News) - In a March fundraising letter to Floridians, Mitt Romney skews economic statistics under President Barack Obama. Among the letter’s claims: Romney says the numbers for unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures are “soaring.” That’s simply not true. They all started rising sharply under Bush, continued to rise for a time under Obama ...

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Obama Slams Ryan Budget: Social Darwinism

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Sarah Seltzer - Apr. 03 (News Report) - President Obama came out swingin on economic issues today in a speech, in a preview of the showdown we're soon to see as the election heats up. A particular target of his rhetoric? GOP budgetary darling Paul Ryan, whose plans amount to "Social Darwinism," the President said.

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More Pipeline Piffle (And An Alaskan Absurdity)

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Mar. 31 (News) - The misleading assault on the president’s energy policies continues. A conservative group’s TV ad claims “we will all pay more at the pump” because the administration “blocked” the Keystone XL pipeline. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell claims that the pipeline “could have brought 700,000 barrels of oil to the market

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Racism in America: President Obama's Double-Bind on Trayvon Martin

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - Gingrich's comments are particularly egregious and opportunistic. People are murdered all the time. What makes the Trayvon Martin case noteworthy is that the police know who the murderer is and have so far simply refused to arrest him. It is highly unlikely that a white boy, even one wearing a hoodie, would have been followed, harassed and shot to death, but it is completely unthinkable that a white boy's death would not have resulted in an arrest.

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Mitt Romney: President Barack Obama is "ending Medicare as we know it."

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Mar. 22 (Fact Check) - Mitt Romney is trying to turn the tables on President Barack Obama by using a favorite Democratic line against him, accusing Obama of "ending Medicare as we know it." That's been a trusty line for the Democrats, with variations used in campaign commercia

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Jeremy Scahill: Why is President Obama Keeping Yemeni Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in Prison?

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Jeremy Scahill - Mar. 15 (News Analysis) - The Obama administration is facing scrutiny for its role in the imprisonment of a Yemeni journalist who exposed the U.S. role in a 2009 bombing in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children. In January 2011, a Yemeni state security court gave the journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a five-year jail sentence on terrorism-related charges following a disputed trial that was condemned by several human rights and press freedom groups. Within a month of Shaye's sentencing, then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he was going to pardon the journalist. But Saleh changed his mind after a phone call from President Obama. Thirteen months later, Shaye remains behind bars. We speak award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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As NYCHA Seeks Flexibility, Tenant Advocates ConcernedCityLimits.org

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

City Limits - Mar. 13 (News) - The city's public housing agency wants rules relaxed to allow creative budgeting. But advocates for residents want stronger assurances that financial flexibility won't come at the cost of tenant rights.

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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Mark Gongloff - Mar. 09 (News Report) - Though lots of people grumble about the government bailing out banks in the financial crisis, we have at least taken some comfort in the idea that the government has turned a profit on that bailout. Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves.

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Murder is Legal, According to Eric Holder

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By David Swanson - Mar. 08 (News Analysis) - Holder isn't talking about those wars that still sort of look like wars. He's talking about a war paralleling the Soviet Threat, a war that is everywhere all the time, a war that encompasses the murder of anybody anywhere as an "act of war," even if there's nothing warlike about the victim or the situation other than the fact that we are mudering him or her.

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Super Tuesday guide: Finding truth in the attacks

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Becky Bowers - Mar. 04 (Fact Check) - As 10 states prepare to vote on Super Tuesday, here’s PolitiFact’s guide to the multimillion-dollar ad blitz. With the field down to four Republican contenders, campaigns and super PACs are attacking their opponents with hot-button allegations about supporting Planned Parenthood, Obamacare and even Nancy Pelosi that are designed to strike fear in the hearts of Republican voters. There's been some piling on. We've seen several examples where two (or more) candidates have made the same attack. The one candidate who hasn't been attacked much: Ron Paul. He's has been busy attacking others — but we didn’t find ads attacking him. ... >>More

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John Boehner says Bush tax cuts created 8 million jobs over 10 years

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Feb. 20 (Fact Check) - During an interview on NBC’s Today show, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, offered some job-creation statistics to cast a favorable light on the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. Host Matt Lauer said to Boehner, "You talk about creating jobs. When the Bush era tax cuts were passed in 2001, unemployment in this country was 4.5 percent. Today it's at 9 percent, just down from 10 percent. So why are the Bush era tax cuts creating jobs?" Boehner responded that the tax cuts "created about 8 million jobs over the first 10 years that they were in existence. We've lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession."

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Obama Advisor’s Call For Global Tax Part Of UN Agenda For Transfer of Wealth

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

infowars.com - Feb. 13 (News) - Paul Joseph Watson | Obama himself introduced global tax bill in 2007 under UN auspices.

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Obama To Unleash “Truth Teams” To Counter Negative Coverage

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

infowars.com - Feb. 13 (News) - Steve Watson | GOP describes squads of supporters as "propaganda teams to deceive voters"

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What’s the ‘Real’ Jobless Rate?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Robert Farley, Dave Bloom - Feb. 11 (Fact Check) - As the Obama administration basked in the news that the unemployment rate in January dipped to a three-year low of 8.3 percent, Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich threw a wet blanket on the announcement. Romney said the “real unemployment rate” was actually 15 percent, and Gingrich said that when you include people who have simply given up on trying to find a job, the rate “jumps up to about 12 percent.” Is the unemployment rate not the real unemployment rate? Neither Romney nor Gingrich put things quite right. But they are referring to legitimate yardsticks of “alternative measures of labor underutilization” put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The health care law, Catholics and birth control

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Becky Bowers - Feb. 10 (Fact Check) - Is President Barack Obama’s administration requiring the Catholic Church to provide birth control coverage to nuns? As rhetoric rises in a clash between Catholic leaders and the federal government over a rule requiring co-pay-free coverage of contraceptives in most health plans, here’s a guide. What the rule says The newly final rule stems from the Affordable Care Act of 2010 — what Republican presidential candidates call "Obamacare." It affects the health plans employers offer their ... >>More

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The State of Obama’s Facts

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, D’Angelo Gore, Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, Ben Finley, Lori Robertson - Jan. 25 (Fact Check) - The president’s State of the Union address got the facts right — mostly. Obama said “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken” in Afghanistan. But targeted assassinations continue, and at least one independent foreign policy expert says the enemy may just be waiting until the U.S. leaves. The president said a get-tough tariff on tire imports from China has saved more than 1,000 U.S. jobs. But tire industry officials say Chinese imports have simply been replaced by imports from other countries. He took credit for putting “more boots on the border than ever before.” That’s true, but the big increase was under George W. Bush. And a decrease in illegal border crossings is due mainly to the lack of jobs in the U.S., experts say. Often the president’s facts and figures were accurate — but not the whole story. It’s true (barely) that Bush issued more new regulations than Obama at the same point in their presidencies — but Obama didn’t mention that his cost more. The president pointed proudly to increased oil drilling, increased U.S. oil production, and declining dependence on imports. But understandably he passed over any mention of chronically high gasoline prices, which hit a record of sorts last year. And he boasted of recent increases in jobs — which still number nearly 1.7 million fewer than when he took office.

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