CEO of Gallup calls jobless rate 'big lie' created by White House, Wall Street, media

The chairman of the venerable Gallup research and polling firm says the official U.S. unemployment rate is really an underestimation and a “big lie" perpetuated by the White House, Wall Street and the media.
What CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton revealed in his blog Tuesday about how the Labor Department arrives at the monthly unemployment rate is no secret -- including that Americans who have quit looking for work after four weeks are not included in the survey.
The department's current rate of 5.6 percent unemployment is the lowest since June 2008, with President Obama using his State of the Union address and campaign-style stops across the country to tout an economic recovery.
“Our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999,” Obama said in the opening lines of his January 20 address before Congress.“Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis.”
Clifton says the “cheerleading” for the 5.6 number is “deafening.”
“The media loves a comeback story,” he writes. “The White House wants to score political points, and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.”
Since the start of the Great Recession, which economists largely agree began in late 2007, the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 and finally got under 6 percent in September 2014.
Clifton says Americans out of work for at least four weeks are “as unemployed as one can possibly be” and argues that as many as 30 million of them are now either out of work or severely underemployed.
He points out that an out-of-work engineer, for example, performing a minimum of one hour of work a week, even mowing a lawn for $20, also is not officially counted as unemployed.
In addition, those working part time but wanting full-time work -- the so-called “severely underemployed” -- also are not counted.
“There's no other way to say this,” Clifton says. “The official unemployment rate … amounts to a big lie.”
His arguments are similar to those made by Washington Republicans after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the rate each month during the height of the recession. However, Gallup is an 80-year-old, nonpartisan firm.
The bureau did not return a request for comment.
Clifton suggests the biggest misconception about the official rate is that it doesn’t denote “good” full-time jobs.
“When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't ‘feeling’ something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class,” he said.

Republicans unveil new ObamaCare replacement plan

Congressional Republicans are unveiling what they say is a new plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but the ‘blueprint,’ as they call it, looks an awful lot like what’s been floated before.
The Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment – or CARE – Act was crafted by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.
The first bicameral proposal of the 114^th Congress calls for the outright repeal of President Obama’s signature health care law, and with that, the individual mandate to buy insurance or pay a fine.
It provides for targeted tax credits to individuals and families up to 300 percent above the poverty line to encourage people to buy plans in the market place.
It also allows insurers to sell plans across state lines and caps the amount of monetary damages that can be awarded in medical malpractice litigation. 
Like the Affordable Care Act, dependents are able to stay on their parents’ healthcare plans until they’re 26, and no one can be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions - although this plan calls for a specific ‘continuous coverage’ protection where individuals moving from one plan to another cannot be denied.
Gone, however, are age-rating ratios banning insurance companies from charging older Americans more than three times what they charge younger individuals. The new federal baseline would be five-to-one, essentially lowering costs for younger, lower risk consumers.
To pay for it, Burr, Hatch and Upton propose taxing the value of health insurance plans above $30,000 a year as regular income. 
If these proposals sound familiar it’s because most of them are. Many are based on an outline pitched last year by Burr, Hatch, and former Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
“One of the reasons that you don't see massive changes is we thought we had a decent product last year based on feedback as we've talked with governors, with industry,” an aide familiar with the plan said. “A lot of industry frankly thinks this is a very durable sustainable, credible alternative from a market perspective, and they think it's operationally viable.”
Even if it’s viable don’t expect a vote - in either chamber - anytime soon. Aides are very quick to point out that this should not be hailed as the “GOP Plan.” 
“It’s just one plan,” as one adviser put it, and more input from governors and legislators will be needed before anything moves forward. Even hearings haven’t yet been discussed.
Same old song and dance we've been seeing for years, critics say.
Still pressure for viable alternatives is increasing.  
There currently is a case about to come before the Supreme Court challenging ObamaCare’s subsidies for private insurance for people who don’t have access to it through their jobs. If that provision is struck down, millions of consumers could drop coverage.
“As soon as we get feedback we are going to keep updating our proposal because now there is a different sense of urgency being in the majority to try to put something together, especially as we are headed to 2017," one Republican aide said.  “Not to mention what the Supreme Court may decide on June 30th.”
A larger bill will almost certainly wait until there is a new occupant in the White House.
“Let's all be realistic, the president, who the law is named after, he's not repealing his bill. So what we are doing is putting a very credible idea out there because what our bosses were sick and tired of hearing is the Republicans have no ideas," one aide said.  
“Will this whole thing happen before 2017, I find that hard to believe, but we're going to prepare for 2017.”

Shocked Jordanians rally behind king, against ISIS after video of pilot's killing

The shocking images of a Jordanian Air Force pilot being burned alive in an outdoor cage by ISIS terrorists have galvanized the country, once seen as possible fertile recruitment ground for the group, behind King Abdullah II's calls for a stepped-up military campaign.
Jordan's monarch has vowed to wage a "harsh" war against ISIS after consulting with his military chiefs Wednesday. Abdullah cut short his scheduled trip to the U.S. after the video showing the killing of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh was released Tuesday.
In a statement, the king said Jordan is waging a war of principles against the militants. He said that Jordan's response to the killing of the pilot "will be harsh because this terrorist organization is not only fighting us, but also fighting Islam and its pure values."
Abdullah pledged to hit the militants "hard in the very center of their strongholds."
Jordanian officials have not presented details of their response, but said they would be working closely with their allies in the anti-IS coalition.
The New York Times reported that the king was greeted warmly upon his return Wednesday by thousands of people who lined the main roads to and from the airport. The paper reported that many waved flags and displayed pictures of both the king and the pilot.
The Guardian reported that radio and television station played patriotic songs and F-16 jets performed flyovers over the capital and al-Kaseasbeh's hometown. 
"I swear to God we will kill all those pigs," one man said of the terror group. "Whatever it takes to finish them is what we will do."
"We are all Hashemites and we are following the government with no reservations in this fight against these godless terrorists," a cafe patron, Yousf Majid al-Zarbi, told the paper. "Have you seen that video? I mean really, how in humanity could this be a just punishment for any person?"
Jordan had previously been thought to be home to thousands of supporters of ISIS. The kingdom is beset by several social problems, including a sharp economic down turn that has led to high unemployment among young men, who are typically a reservoir of potential ISIS recruits. Adding to a potentially destabilizing mix are the presence of hundreds of thousands of war refugees from Iraq and Syria who have poured across the border in the preceding decade. 
In recent months, Jordanian authorities have rounded up dozens of suspected ISIS supporters. In an early response to the grisly video, Jordan executed two Iraqi Al Qaeda prisoners, Sajida al-Rishawi and Zaid al-Karbouly, before sunrise Wednesday.
In Washington, lawmakers from both parties have called on the Obama administration to speed up deliveries of aircraft parts, night-vision equipment and other weapons to Jordan.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expected his panel to swiftly approve legislation calling for increased aid. He repeated his criticism that the Obama administration has "no strategy" for dealing with the Islamic State group, and said he hoped the video of al-Kaseasbeh's death will galvanize not only U.S. leadership but "the Arab world."
All 26 members of the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Jordan's situation and the unanimity of the coalition battling the extremists "demands that we move with speed to ensure they receive the military materiel they require."
At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration would consider any aid package put forward by Congress, but that the White House would be looking for a specific request from Jordan's government.

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Pro-Palestinian students heckle Cal-Davis opponents with cries of 'Allahu Akbar!'

I thought that the University of California was located in America, guess I was mistaken!

Anti-Israel activists at the University of California, Davis heckled Jewish students and shouted “Allahu Akbar” at them during a vote last week on a resolution endorsing a boycott of the Jewish state, according to video of the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The commotion erupted late Thursday evening as pro-Israel students attempted to counter a student government resolution to divest from Israel as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Activists waving Palestinian flags shouted at the Jewish and pro-Israel students as they left the meeting room ahead of an eight to two vote in favor of the divestment resolution, which is part of a larger movement by anti-Israel groups to attack Israel and pro-Israel students on campus.
“Allahu Akhbar!” a large group of activists shouted in unison as the pro-Israel students filed out of U.C. Davis’ meeting room, according to video provided by a member of Aggies for Israel, a pro-Israel student group at Davis.
Following the vote, which was championed by the pro-Hamas group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), unknown vandals spray-painted swastikas on a fraternity house belonging to the Jewish AEPi organization.
Additionally, Azka Fayyaz, a member of the U.C. Davis student senate, posted on her Facebook page a triumphant message following the vote: “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis.”

GOP-led House votes to repeal ObamaCare

WASHINGTON –  The House voted Tuesday to repeal the Affordable Care Act, getting Republicans on record in favor of overturning the law for the first time since the party took control of Congress.
The bill passed on a 239-186 vote. 
President Obama already has threatened to veto the legislation -- and like past bills to repeal ObamaCare, it is unlikely to go far under the current administration, despite Republicans now controlling the Senate and having a bigger majority in the House.
But the vote serves as an opening shot in the 114^th Congress’ efforts to chip away at the law. Several lawmakers have introduced bills to change or undo parts of the Affordable Care Act, and some could garner bipartisan support. 
"We need health care reform that makes the system more responsive to patients, families and doctors -- reforms that preserve and protect the doctor-patient relationship. Right now, ObamaCare is moving our health care system in the exact opposite direction where the American people are paying more and getting less," Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said in a statement after the vote. "In the House of Representatives, we are saying we need to get rid of this law that's not working and focus on solutions that will embrace the principles of affordability, accessibility, quality, innovation, choices, and responsiveness." 
Prior to the vote, Obama questioned the logic behind it.
“So my understanding is the House scheduled yet another vote today to take health care away from folks around this table,” Obama said during a meeting with 10 people who have written him letters about how the ACA has helped them.
He added, “I’ve asked this question before. Why is it that this would be at the top of their agenda? It was maybe plausible to be against the Affordable Care Act before it was implemented. But now it has been implemented and it is working.”
The House has voted more than 50 times in the past two years to repeal all or parts of the law.
The legislation would go next to the Republican-controlled Senate.
While some say the vote is a symbolic gesture, the push to repeal ObamaCare comes as the Supreme Court weighs the King v. Burwell case, which challenges the legality of some subsidies offered through the president’s signature health care law. If the Supreme Court upholds a lower court’s verdict, it could severely undermine the law and fuel GOP efforts to at least change it. 
Republicans, as their next major step, are planning to draft legislation offering an alternative to the ACA. The bill approved Tuesday also directs House committees to begin work on an alternative plan, in case the Supreme Court rules against the law.

Secretary of Defense nominee Ashton Carter says he'll focus on ISIS, may expand counterterror operations

Ashton Carter, President Obama's nominee to replace Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, will tell Senators at his confirmation hearing Wednesday that counterterror operations may need to be expanded to stem the tide of foreign fighters joining up with the ISIS terror group. 
"I believe foreign fighters pose a threat to the U.S., and that this threat is exacerbated by the ongoing political and security instability in Libya," Carter says in remarks prepared for testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee and obtained by The Washington Times. "If confirmed, I will focus attention on the foreign fighter flow as the department works with regional partners in North Africa to address the challenge posed by the terrorist safe haven in Libya and broader counterterrorism issues."
Carter will face the panel one day after the terror group released a grisly video showing a captured Jordanian Air Force pilot being burned alive. In response to written questions from the committee, Carter said that he is aware of reports that ISIS may try to expand into Afghanistan, and that he will work with NATO coalition partners to ensure that does not happen. 
Carter also said he would consider changing plans for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 if security conditions worsen. About 10,600 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan.
Wednesday's hearing is likely to focus as much on Obama's foreign policy as on Carter's own vision for the Defense Department, with the 60-year-old likely to face questions on Russian actions in Ukraine, Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Obama's push to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, among other issues.
Another thorny issue Carter faces is an uncertain outlook for the defense budget. In his remarks, Carter is expected to acknowledge that the Pentagon must end wasteful practices that undermine public confidence even as he criticizes the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration.
  "I cannot suggest support and stability for the defense budget without at the same time frankly noting that not every defense dollar is spent as well as it should be," Carter says in his remarks. "The taxpayer cannot comprehend, let alone support, the defense budget when they read of cost overruns, lack of accounting and accountability, needless overhead and the like."
If confirmed, Carter would be the fourth Secretary of Defense to serve under Obama, after Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, and Hagel. The relationship between the White House and the Pentagon has often been strained, with some officials in the department saying Obama views the military skeptically and centralizes decision making in the West Wing. Hagel, in particular, is said to to have grown particularly frustrated with the policymaking process overseen by national security adviser Susan Rice. Gates and Panetta have publicly aired their grievances with what they saw as White House micromanagement.
Carter served twice previously in Obama's Pentagon, most recently as deputy defense secretary from 2011 to 2013. He was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy during the administration of President Bill Clinton.
Carter would be the first defense secretary who has not served in the military or Congress since Harold Brown, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and led the Pentagon from 1977 to 1981.

Jordan hangs 2 Al Qaeda prisoners after ISIS video shows Jordanian pilot burned alive

Jordan executed two Al Qaeda prisoners early Wednesday in response to a graphic video released by the ISIS terror group that showed a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage. 
The release of the video sparked outrage and anti-ISIS demonstrations in Jordan, while Syrian activists reported that the terrorists gleefully played the grisly footage on big-screen televisions in their de facto capital, Raqqa.
Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani confirmed to the Associated Press that Jordan had executed Sajida al-Rishawi and Ziad al-Karbouly, two Iraqis linked to Al Qaeda. Another official told the AP that both prisoners had been hanged. The executions took place at Swaqa prison about 50 miles south of the Jordanian capital of Amman. At sunrise, two ambulances carrying the bodies of al-Rishawi and al-Karbouly drove away from the prison with security escorts.
Jordan had previously expressed willingness to trade al Rishawi for the pilot, Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, but froze the swap after failing to receive any proof that he was still alive. Jordanian TV reported that al-Kaseasbeh was killed as early as Jan. 3, though that could not be immediately confirmed. 
Al-Rishawi had been sentenced to death after her 2005 role in a triple hotel bombing that killed 60 people in Amman orchestrated by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of the Islamic State group. Al-Karbouly, a former aide to top Al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was sent to death row in 2008 for plotting terror attacks on Jordanians in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006. 
In the video, viewed by Fox News, al-Kaseasbeh, showing signs of having been beaten and clad in an orange jumpsuit, speaks under clear duress. A narrator speaking in Arabic blasts Arab nations, including Jordan, for taking part in U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS. The final five minutes of the video show the caged pilot, his clothing apparently doused in gasoline as the fuel is lit. His screams are audible as he collapses to his knees. After being killed, the burned man and the cage are buried by a bulldozer. The video ends with ISIS offering "100 golden Dinars" for any Muslims in Jordan who kill other Jordanian pilots, whose names, pictures and hometowns are shown.
Sources told Fox News it demonstrated the highest production values of any tape to date, suggesting it took considerable time to shoot and produce.
In Washington, President Obama spoke with Jordan's King Abdullah II in a hastily arranged meeting at the White House. Jordan is a member of the U.S.-led coalition that has been striking ISIS in Syria since this past September. 
"It's just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organization," Obama said. "And I think it will redouble the vigilance and determination on the part of the global coalition to make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated.”
In a statement before his meeting with Abdullah, Obama vowed the pilot's death would "redouble the vigilance and determination on the part of our global coalition to make sure they are degraded and ultimately defeated."
"Lieutenant al-Kaseasbeh's dedication, courage and service to his country and family represent universal human values that stand in opposition to the cowardice and depravity of ISIL, which has been so broadly rejected around the globe," Obama said, using another acronym for the terror group.
Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Ca., said after a meeting with congressional lawmakers and King Abdullah that the Jordanian monarch had been visibly angry and promised swift and certain retaliation against Islamic State group militants.
"They're starting more sorties tomorrow than they've ever had. They're starting tomorrow," Hunter told the Washington Examiner in an interview published online Tuesday night.
Hunter added the king also said: "The only problem we're going to have is running out of fuel and bullets." 
Jordan faces increasing threats from the militants. Jordan borders areas of the group's self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, while there are have been signs of greater support for the group's militant ideas among Jordan's young and poor.
After word spread that the pilot had been killed, dozens of people chanting slogans against the Islamic State group marched toward the royal palace to express their anger. Waving a Jordanian flag, they chanted, "Damn you, Daesh!"  -- using the Arabic acronym of the group -- and "We will avenge, we will avenge our son's blood."
"There is no religion [that] accepts such act," Amman resident Hassan Abu Ali said. "Islam is a religion of tolerance. (ISIS) have nothing to do with Islam. This is [a] criminal act."
Jordanian Army spokesman Mamdouh al-Ameri said the country would strike back hard. "Our punishment and revenge will be as huge as the loss of the Jordanians," he said.
Protesters marched in the pilot's home village of Ai and set a local government office on fire. Witnesses said the atmosphere was tense and that riot police patrolled the streets.
The pilot's father, Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh, was attending a tribal meeting in Amman when news of the video surfaced, and he was seen being led from the session. Other men were seen outside, overcome with emotion.
The Islamic State group has released a series of gruesome videos showing the beheading of captives, including two American journalists, an American aid worker and two British aid workers. Tuesday's was the first to show a captive being burned alive.
David L. Phillips, a former State Department adviser on the Middle East, said he believes the pilot's killing could backfire, antagonizing Sunnis against the extremists, including Sunni tribes in Iraq.
"They need to have a welcome from Sunni Arabs in Anbar Province (in Iraq) to maintain their operations," said Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Human Rights at Columbia University.
He said the extremist group's recent military setbacks may have fueled the killings. "They need to compensate for that with increasingly gruesome killings of prisoners," he said.
The latest video was released three days after another video showed the purported beheading of a Japanese journalist, Kenji Goto, who was captured by the Islamic State group in October.
The militants had linked the fates of the pilot and the journalist. A second Japanese hostage was apparently killed earlier last month.
The U.N. Security Council in a statement condemned the "brutality of ISIL, which is responsible for thousands of crimes and abuses against people from all faiths, ethnicities and nationalities, and without regard to any basic value of humanity."