Chattanooga gunman reportedly blogged about Islam, showed increased signs of devotion

The man authorities say killed four U.S. Marines when he attacked two military sites in Chattanooga, Tenn. was a practicing Muslim who reportedly showed signs of becoming increasingly devout in recent weeks.
Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, was shot and killed by police after he allegedly attacked the Marines at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center at around 11 a.m. Thursday. Before attacking the military center, police say Abdulazeez sprayed an Armed Forces recruiting center seven miles away with bullets, leaving a police officer with a non-life threatening ankle wound.
“While it would be premature to speculate on the motives of the shooter at this time, we will conduct a thorough investigation of this tragedy and provide updates as they are available," an FBI official told Fox News, hours after the deadly attack. A law enforcement source told Fox News that Abdulazeez was not on the FBI’s radar prior to the shooting.
The Daily Beast reported that Abdulazeez kept a blog that contained just two posts, both published on Monday and both concerning Islam. The first refers to a hypothetical test, designed to, as the writer puts it, "separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire."
In the the second post Abdulazeez says his fellow Muslims have a "certain understanding of Islam and keep a tunnel vision of what we think Islam is."
"We ask Allah ... to give us a complete understanding of the message of Islam, and the strength the [sic]live by this knowledge, and to know what role we need to play to establish Islam in the world," he writes. The posts do not make any specific reference to current world events, such as the civil war in Syria or U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State terror group (ISIS).
The New York Times reported that recent family photographs posted on Facebook showed Abdulazeez with a newly grown beard. Dr. Azhar Sheikh, a founding member of the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, told the paper that Abdulazeez had also begun attending Friday prayers regularly over the past two to three months. Sheikh said the suspect's family had attended services in Abdulazeez's younger days, but he had stopped doing so, and Sheikh assumed that he had moved away.
According to the Times, Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait to a family of Jordanians. A federal official told the paper that Abdulazeez had become a naturalized American citizen, though it is not clear when. Abdulazeez grew up in a middle-class suburban subdivision just across the Tennessee River from Chattanooga itself. The Chattanooga Times Free Press, citing county property records, reported that Youssuf Abdulazeez, the family patriarch, had owned the house his son grew up in since 2001. It was not clear whether the family had lived elsewhere in the U.S. before arriving in Chattanooga.
Neighbor Dean McDaniel described Abdulazeez and his sisters to the Times as being polite and well-behaved. He said the girls and their mother wore head scarves in public, while Abdulazeez dressed in jeans, T-shirts and shorts. He added that Youssuf Abdulazeez and his wife spoke in a foreign accent, but their children did not.
Mohammed Abdulazeez graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and was a student intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South.
Hussnain Javid, a 21-year-old senior at the university, said he and Abdulazeez graduated from Chattanooga's Red Bank High School several years apart. Javid said Abdulazeez was on the high school's wrestling team and was a popular student. He added Abdulazeez was "very outgoing" and that he was well known.
Javid said he occasionally saw Abdulazeez at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, but the last time was roughly a year ago.
During his school years, Abdulazeez's faith was most noticeable during his athletic exploits. Ryan Smith, a high school wrestling teammate of Abdulazeez, told the Times Free Press that Abdulazeez would sometimes get in trouble with coaches for fasting during the season, putting him at risk of running afoul of the sport's weight requirements.
Scott Schrader, one of the owners of a Chattanooga gym who trained Abdulazeez in mixed martial arts, told the paper that the then-teenager would stop training every day at 6 p.m. to pray.
"He was honestly one of the funniest guys I'd ever met," said Smith. "I never saw a violent bone in his body, outside of the sport he was doing."
Little is known about what Abdulazeez did after he graduated from college. Smith said he recently saw his former classmate working at cell phone kiosks at two local malls. On April 20 of this year, Abdulazeez was arrested and accused of driving under the influence after failing a sobriety test. Court records showed that he was released on $2,000 bond. Until Thursday, it was his only recorded run-in with the law.
Sheikh told the New York Times that the Chattanooga Islamic Society had canceled its planned Friday celebration of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"We have canceled out of respect and remembrance for our fallen Marines," he said.

Trump Cartoon

I published this in a nice way, as I would vote for the guy to be President!

Just goes to show you that even a conservative cartoonist doesn't want to acknowledge or hear the truth.

GOP govs test ObamaCare compromise: Make Medicaid recipients pay

Republican officials, after battling for years with Washington over ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, are testing a middle ground that could reshape the program – by making recipients pay for part of their health care.
Indiana has gone the furthest with this plan, but other states are enacting or debating similar measures. While some worry making low-income recipients pay for part of their Medicaid costs is unfair, the change is notable in that the Obama administration is not fighting it tooth and nail.
“It’s a very fluid scenario,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “There’s now a handful of states that are engaged in direct negotiations with CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] or are having [a] back-and-forth debate within their house.”
Indiana, led by GOP Gov. Mike Pence, approved the Healthy Indiana Plan in February. In doing so, the state replaced traditional Medicaid and expanded it, as sought under ObamaCare – something a number of Republican-led states have still not done.
The catch: Indiana’s plan requires recipients pay for part of the cost. In order to get insurance, recipients would pay monthly premiums (based on income, ranging from $1 to $27), in addition to various co-payments (anywhere from $4 to $75). If a recipient pays their premiums on time, they can qualify for expanded benefits and have co-pays limited to only non-emergency ER visits.
If it works, it would be a breakthrough for GOP-led states that want to expand Medicaid and cover the uninsured – yet don’t want the program to be an all-expenses-paid entitlement. About 297,000 Indiana residents have enrolled in the program as of July 1. The state says 72 percent are paying their premiums on time.

More on this...

• Truth Serum: Cost of health insurance premiums

Under the traditional Medicaid expansion, the federal government would cover 100 percent of the cost for states, and ratchet that down to 90 percent by 2020.
Indiana’s plan relies solely on its own resources, but Pence says it “will require no new state spending and no new taxes.” The Healthy Indiana Plan will be financed by state cigarette tax revenue and fees collected from hospitals. State figures estimate that the program will cost $1.63 billion.
Four other states also have gotten federal waivers for their own cost-sharing expansions. Arkansas got the ball rolling with its approval in September 2013, followed by Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Indiana, though, went a step further. The state’s plan was unprecedented because it says recipients can lose coverage for not paying premiums.
Alaska, Montana, Utah, and Tennessee are now debating similar shared-cost proposals – borrowing elements from the Indiana plan -- according to Salo. Most, though not all, of these states are led by GOP governors.
“The Healthy Indiana Plan … is aspirational,” Brian Neale, Pence’s health policy director, told Governing.com. “We believe that individuals, if offered the opportunity, will make the right choices.” The plan requires recipients to contribute to a health savings account that tracks medical expenses. Patients get care as long as they make their payments, and can lower their rates by getting various preventive care.
But charging poor patients can be problematic. Studies show that charging premiums and co-pays, and penalizing people for excessive emergency room visits, typically steers poor people away from the doctor’s office.
“People don’t get necessary care,” Judith Solomon, a health analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Governing.com. She said plans like Indiana’s often prevent the poor from actually getting decent treatment.
But the federal government has become more open to alternative plans.
In late January, then-CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner approved Indiana’s waivers and congratulated the state on its program. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell has said the administration is open to alternatives.
ObamaCare itself calls for Medicaid to be extended to childless adults making up to 138 percent of the poverty line. The Supreme Court, however, ruled the expansion optional for states in 2012. Twenty states remain resistant to any expansions. Indiana originally was in that group, but reversed course with its cost-sharing plan.
Salo said the program represents a deep change in philosophy, bringing a conservative approach to a longstanding entitlement. “What you’re seeing from more conservative states is that they want more consumer engagement in health care … skin in the game,” he said.
Further, Salo said Pence is “a bona-fide conservative red state governor” and it may be “hard for other states to say Medicaid can’t be a conservative thing.”

Planned Parenthood facing investigations over ‘abhorrent’ video on body part shipments

A shocking video showing a top Planned Parenthood official casually discussing the shipment of aborted fetus body parts to research labs is fueling calls in Washington and state capitals for investigations and hearings.  
The video, shot last July, was released by the Center for Medical Progress on Tuesday. It shows two undercover CMP activists posing as employees from a biotech company having lunch with Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical research, and chatting about which body parts are in demand.
Calls on Capitol Hill for hearings were swift.
"Nothing is more precious than life, especially an unborn child," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. "When anyone diminishes an unborn child, we are all hurt, irreversibly so. When an organization monetizes an unborn child -- and with the cavalier attitude portrayed in this horrific video -- we must all act.  As a start, I have asked our relevant committees to look into this matter."
Boehner also urged President Obama to "denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices."
Pro-life members of the House held a press conference Wednesday afternoon and likewise backed congressional hearings on the matter. Already, the House Energy and Commerce and Judiciary committees have announced an investigation.

More on this...

• Republicans call for investigation into Planned Parenthood

Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., called the video “abhorrent” and said it “rips at the heart.”
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said the matter would be investigated but noted "that which is legal is not necessarily moral or ethical."
Planned Parenthood responded to the allegations Wednesday, saying they were politically motivated, “outrageous” and “flat-out untrue.”
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal, a presidential candidate, announced he was ordering an investigation as well as calling for a suspension of the group's license in the near-term.
It is illegal to sell fetus body parts, but Planned Parenthood maintains the discussions shown in the undercover video only pertain to donations they make to researchers, for which they say they only recoup shipping costs.
But the video threatens to reignite a debate not only over Planned Parenthood's federal funding, but also the use of fetal tissue harvested through abortions for research and a proposed 20-week abortion ban.
In the video, Nucatola is seen and heard discussing Planned Parenthood's policy of donating fetal tissue to researchers. The activists ask Nucatola whether clinics charge for the organs, which she skirts around.
The language is graphic.
"Yesterday was the first time she said people wanted lungs," she says. "Some people want lower extremities, too, which, that's simple. That's easy. I don't know what they're doing with it, I guess if they want muscle."
She described how they are able to get other organs without "crushing" them. "We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I'm not gonna crush that part, I'm gonna basically crush below, I'm gonna crush above, and I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact."
The California-based citizen's group claims the nearly nine-minute video shot on July 25, 2014, is proof Planned Parenthood is breaking the law by selling aborted baby organs for possible profit.
Jindal was among several 2016 candidates who weighed in, and among five attending the Right to Life Convention in New Orleans. "If the Republican Party can't turn defending innocent human life into a winning issue nationally, we should fold up the Republican Party and start all over again," he said.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, called the video "absolutely horrifying and disgusting." As governor of Wisconsin, Walker signed off on legislation that defunded Planned Parenthood in 2011.
But the group still gets millions of dollars in federal funding, with restrictions barring the money from being used for abortions. On Capitol Hill Wednesday, protesters urged Congress to strip that money. And 2016 Republican candidate Ben Carson, in a written statement, urged the same.
But Planned Parenthood called claims they profited off abortions a "gross mischaracterization" of the organization's work.
With a patient's permission, Planned Parenthood said, clinics may sometimes donate fetal tissue for use in stem cell research, but the group added that their affiliates, which operate independently, do not profit from donations.
"There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood," Eric Ferrero, the organization's vice president of communications, said in a written statement. "In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed which is standard across the medical field."
Critics say the leaked video suggests otherwise.
"It is stomach-churning to hear a top doctor for the national Planned Parenthood organization admit, on videotape, that Planned Parenthood abortionists can and will alter late abortion procedures to facilitate the harvesting of intact baby body parts - she specifically mentioned hearts, lungs, livers, even intact heads -- in order to fill specific pre-orders," National Right to Life President Carol Tobias told FoxNews.com. "Numerous statements by Dr. Nucatola cry out for probes by Congress and other investigatory agencies -- and quickly."
In a separate statement released Wednesday afternoon following calls for an investigation, Ferrero said, "These outrageous claims are flat-out untrue, but that doesn't matter to politicians with a longstanding political agenda to ban abortion and defund Planned Parenthood."

White House reportedly offers to boost military aid to Israel after Iran deal

Is this a trick or joke from Obama??

President Obama has offered to increase U.S. military aid to Israel in the wake of the Iran nuclear agreement, according to a published report. 
According to the New York Times, Obama broached the subject in a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. White House officials said that Obama told Netanyahu that he was prepared to hold "intensive discussions" on bolstering Israel's defense capabilities.
The paper reported that Netanyahu denied to discuss the subject with the president, leading U.S. officials to believe he wants to wait and see what Congress has to say about the deal, which was agreed to after long talks involving the U.S., Iran, and five other world powers. Lawmakers have up to 60 days to review the agreement.
Netanyahu has been the staunchest critic of the agreement, calling it a "bad mistake of historic proportions" mere minutes after it was agreed to. He continued his criticism on Wednesday, saying there were "absurd things" in the agreement, and accusing world leaders of falling into "a trap of smiles set by the tyrannical Iranian regime."
In remarks to Israel's parliament, Netanyahu said he was not bound by the terms of the deal and could still take military action against Iran.
"We will reserve our right to defend ourselves against all of our enemies," said Netanyahu, who sees Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon as a threat to Israel's existence.
The Times reports that under a memorandum of understanding that runs until 2018, the U.S. provides Israel with $3 billion per year in aid, most of which is used to buy military hardware, such as jets. An official familiar with ongoing negotiations told the paper that Israel has asked for between $4.2 and $4.5 billion per year for 10 years in a new aid agreement. According to The Times, negotiations on the agreement began long before the Iran talks ramped up.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is scheduled to visit Israel next week, while Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog has said that he will soon visit the U.S. to discuss "security measures to suit the new situation."
Any lobbying campaign in Congress by Israel would likely be futile, mainly because Obama doesn't need Congressional approval. Lawmakers will likely try to derail the agreement by passing new sanctions or preventing Obama from lifting existing sanctions — the key incentive for Iran to comply with the deal.
Obama has already threatened to veto any resolutions from Congress seeking to undermine the deal, meaning opponents would have to muster a two-thirds majority in Congress to override the veto.

Former President George H.W. Bush in stable condition after breaking bone in neck

Former President George H.W. Bush was in stable condition late Wednesday after breaking a bone in his neck in a fall at his Maine home, his spokesman said.
"He is fine -- but he'll be in a neck brace," Spokesman Jim McGrath tweeted about the 41st president.
The Associated Press reported that Bush was being treated at Maine Medical Center in Portland, where a children's hospital is named for his wife, Barbara. The medical center confirmed his condition was stable but said it was premature to speculate about when he'll be released. It said Bush would be there at least overnight.
Bush, who celebrated his 91st birthday last month, is the oldest living former U.S. president. He was hospitalized in Houston for about a week this past December for precautionary treatment after experiencing shortness of breath. He said he was "grateful to the doctors and nurses for their superb care" after his treatment there.
In 2012, Bush spent nearly two months, including Christmas, at the same Houston hospital for treatment of a bronchitis-related cough and other issues. The former president also suffers from a form of Parkinson's disease that has forced him to rely on a motorized scooter to get around.
Despite his health issues, Bush kept a long-standing promise to make a parachute jump on his 90th birthday in June 2014. A former World War II naval aviator, Bush also skydived on his 80th and 85th birthdays.
The Kennebunkport, Maine home where Bush's fall took place is the former president's summer home. He and Barbara live in Houston during the winter.
Bush, the father of former President George W. Bush and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush, was elected president in 1988 following two terms as Ronald Reagan's vice president. After one term, highlighted by the success of the 1991 Gulf War, he lost to Democrat Bill Clinton amid voters' concerns about the economy. He had previously served as a U.S. Congressman, CIA Director and ambassador to China.

World Going to Hell in a Handbasket Cartoon

Denver Broncos WR Demaryius Thomas' mother's drug trafficking sentence commuted by Obama

Double Standards at work here?

Demaryius Thomas received some good news Monday and it had nothing to do with his contract stalemate with the Denver Broncos: his mother is getting out of prison early.
President Barack Obama cut the prison sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders, and one of them was Katina Smith, who has been incarcerated in Georgia since 2000.
She and her mother, Minnie Pearl Thomas, were arrested on drug trafficking charges in 1999 when Thomas was 11 years old.
Smith was scheduled to be released in 2017. Now, she'll be released on Nov. 10.
Smith had declined to testify against her mother in exchange for a reduced sentence. Her mother received a life sentence as a multiple offender.
After his mother and grandmother were jailed, Thomas went to live with an uncle and aunt. Also helping to raise him was their oldest daughter, Angela Spencer, now 37.
"We are very happy that she is going to be free. It's time for her to be a part of Demaryius' life," Spencer said. "No matter how your situation goes in life, everybody needs their mother. It's time for her to be out from behind bars and into his life."
Denver's star receiver and the Broncos have until Wednesday to work out a long-term contract or Thomas will play this season on a $12.82 million franchise tag.
Thomas skipped all of the Broncos' offseason workouts to the chagrin of general manager John Elway, who said he wanted Thomas to work out with the team so he could adjust to new coach Gary Kubiak's offense.
Quarterback Peyton Manning said last month that he wished Thomas had been in Denver for offseason workouts, too, but also wanted his top target to get what he deserves in a new contract.