Obama signs bill boosting spending on cancer research

WASHINGTON –  On a "bittersweet day" that brought back memories of loved ones lost, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that makes new investments in cancer research and battling drug abuse.
Obama signed the bill Tuesday at a ceremony on the White House campus flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and key lawmakers. The 55-year-old president recounted that his own mother did not even reach his age, dying of cancer in her early 50s.
"It's not always easy to remember, but being able to honor those we've lost in this way and to know that we may be able to prevent other families from feeling that same loss, that makes it a good day," Obama said. "It's a good day to see us doing our jobs."
The 21st Century Cures Act invests $1.8 billion for a cancer research "moonshot" that is strongly supported by Biden. The vice president's son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015.
The bill also authorizes giving states $1 billion over two years to prevent and treat the abuse of opioids and other addictive drugs like heroin.
Overall, the measure plans $6.3 billion in new spending over the coming decade. The bill also streamlines the approval process for drugs and medical devices at the Food and Drug Administration.
Biden said he believed the bill would inject new urgency into fighting cancer and would give millions of Americans hope that they will be able to have their lives extended through research that will bring about new cures and treatments.
"Every day, millions of people are praying, praying for hope, praying for time," Biden said.

Biden’s brief, unofficial 2020 White House bid; ‘fake news’ from the left?

Everyone likes a good story. And that’s precisely why the “fake news” parade catapulted to the fore in this year’s election cycle.
So, let’s get in on some “fake news” about the next election cycle, as well.
The fake news phenomenon recently visited the U.S. Capitol. And not quite in the way you might think.
Vice President Joe Biden came to the Capitol recently to preside over a key procedural vote on the “21st Century Cures Act.” The legislation beefs up medical research for Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and helps combat the opioid epidemic.
The measure enjoyed wide, bipartisan support. Biden’s vote wasn’t necessary (in his capacity as president of the Senate) to break ties or anything like that. He was simply there to observe the bill vaulting an important procedural hurdle on its way to passage.
The vice president had a couple of stakes in this legislation. A year ago, President Obama charged his vice president with heading the cancer “moonshot” efforts. Obama thought that Biden was the perfect person to lead the initiative since he lost his son Beau to brain cancer last year at age 46.
“He’s known the cruel toll this disease can take,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of Biden. “He hasn't let it defeat him. He's chosen to fight back.”
McConnell then asked his fellow senators to rename the National Institutes of Health cancer section of the bill after Beau Biden.
Tears pooled in the vice president’s reddening eyes as he presided over the Senate from the dais.
“Without objection,” Biden managed to cough, his voice phlegmatic with emotion.
Senators from both sides of the aisle rose to face the vicepPresident. The body erupted in bipartisan applause.
Biden clasped his hands together and looked at the desk before him, lost in the moment and thinking about Beau.
A senator for 36 years, Biden loves the Capitol. He’ll soon miss his periodic visits to preside over the Senate and pal around with his old colleagues. Once he recomposed himself, Biden was back to being “Ol’ Joe.”
He flashed his electric smile. He glad-handed and backslapped with senators from both parties. He talked to the interns and posed for pictures with pages and junior aides.
And then when he was just about to zip down an ornate staircase near the Senate floor and leave the building, a small contingent of patient reporters summoned the vice president over for a word about McConnell moving to rename the cancer section of the bill after his son.
“For a colleague to do that ... out of a gesture of friendship and affection, it means a lot,” Biden said. “It matters. It validates what we do here.”
Elated by the Senate taking action on something important to him personally, Biden spoke about his passion for the body, wistful that his time in the game may be coming to a close.
“Every time I come up here, I feel invigorated,” he said.
A reporter then half-jokingly asked if the vice president might run for President in four years.
“I'm going to run in 2020. For President. So, what the hell, man,” replied Biden with a smile.
Reporters then pressed Biden on if he was serious, informing the vice president they’d print and broadcast the story if he was wasn’t screwing around.
“That’s OK. That’s OK,” said Biden.
This was one of those moments when a reporter goes with his or her gut. Was he serious or being silly? Here’s the vice president of the United States -- emotion spilling over him as the Senate renames part of a major medical research bill after his son -- saying, indeed, yes, he’s going to run for President.
That’s a big deal -- especially after Biden took a pass on challenging Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, this cycle. Maybe there’s Monday morning quarterbacking going on as Biden considers who the voters did elect.
Lesser things have compelled people to run for office in an effort to make an impact. Do something good. Right the ship.
So better follow up. Again.
Was Biden “kidding?” a reporter asked, “just to be clear.”
Biden paused.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds.
Biden sighed.
“I’m not committing not to run. I’m not committing to anything. I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening,” Biden said.
The loss of Beau was hardly the vice president’s first tragedy. Just after winning his Senate seat from Delaware in 1972, Biden’s first wife and 1-year-old daughter died in a car crash.
“I’ve got to get better and I will. Sometimes the second year is tougher than the first,” said Biden about the loss of his son.
But was Biden in?
The best way to find out would be to inquire of the vice president after he slept on it for the night. Biden returned to the Capitol the next morning to huddle with House Democrats.
“I’m going to start my campaign tomorrow,” Biden replied when asked about 2020 as he walked to the session with House Democrats.
Once inside the conclave, an unnamed Democratic House member hollered “2020!” at Biden. But the Vice President didn’t take the bait.
When he  left the meeting, a squadron of reporters pursued him down the hall, barking questions about 2020.
“I’m focused on 2018,” said Biden, a reference to the midterm elections.
Reporters continued to hector the vice president.
“I don’t make decisions that far in advance,” Biden said. “It’s never worked for me.”
But, but … what you said last night was … .
Biden returned to the Capitol for a third-consecutive day, the next day. On this occasion, the Senate was poised to honor the exiting vice president in a series of tributes on the floor.
“Joe Biden has spent his entire adult life working across the aisle in Washington to get things done for the American people and representing our country proudly on the world stage, but he’s also cherished by his colleagues past and present as a good man, a loyal friend, and a true patriot,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who now holds Biden’s Senate seat. “I look forward to seeing what Joe and his family accomplish in their next chapter in public service.”
And that’s precisely why reporters waited in a Senate corridor for the vice president to arrive on the third day to find more clarity about his future plans.
What about this 2020 talk?
“20/20,” said Biden as he breezed through en route to the Senate floor. “That’s my vision.”
When he finally departed the Capitol following all of the tributes, reporters pestered Biden again.
“I have no intention of running,” Biden replied.
Biden backed off during an appearance on CNN.
“Age could be very much an issue, and it may not be. It depends on the state of my health and the health of whomever is running,” he said.
The vice president then dropped away from his initial statement when pressed about 2020 by Stephen Colbert on the “Late Show.”
“I don’t plan on running again,” said Biden, but noted the age of the president-elect should he seek a second term.
“Hell, Donald Trump’s going to be 74. I’ll be in 77. In better shape,” said the vice president. “I mean, what the hell?”
So were Biden’s initial comments about 2020 authentic? Even when given multiple chances to walk it back?
Or was this just a momentary jest? Was his response a byproduct of the outpouring of sympathy from his colleagues over Beau Biden and the 21st Century Cures Act? What about his joking the next day? No one truly knows.
This was the bind for reporters. Was a potential Biden 2020 bid real or was it fake? Who knows.
Or to quote the Vice President, “What the hell, man.”

Trump: U.S. should let China keep seized drone

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to say that the United States should let China keep the U.S. Navy's unmanned underwater glider that it seized in the South China Sea.
"We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!" Trump tweeted shortly after the U.S. military announced an understanding had been reached with China for the Navy glider’s return.
Officials at the Pentagon said the drone was seized Thursday while collecting unclassified scientific data in the South China Sea, which China claims virtually in its entirety.
China said the reason its military seized the glider was because they wanted to ensure the safe navigation of passing ships. China has said they would give the glider back to the U.S.
The U.S. has called the incident an "unlawful seizure" in international waters.
The evening tweet was the second time the President-elect injected himself into the controversy through Twitter on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, Trump took to twitter saying, "China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act." He later reissued the tweet, correcting the spelling of "unprecedented.”
Relations have been tense with the U.S. and China following Trump's phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in early December. He said he did not feel "bound by a one-China policy" regarding the status of Taiwan, unless the U.S. could gain trade or other benefits from China.

Michelle Obama Cartoons

Sour grapes gloom and doom from Michelle Obama on Trump?

Who's the real racist?

Who's the real racist?

Michelle Obama recently sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview that was previewed on “CBS This Morning” Friday in which she said following the election of President-elect Donald Trump, Americans now know what "not having hope feels like."
The show aired a clip of the sit-down that included a portion where the First Lady discusses the Presidential election.
Winfrey asks Obama, “Your husband’s administration… was all about hope. Do you think that this administration achieved that?”
Obama responded by commenting on the most recent election.
“Yes, I do. Because we feel the difference now,” she says. “See now we are feeling what not having hope feels like, you know. Hope is necessary. It is a necessary concept.”
She said her husband believed in that concept wholeheartedly.
Obama added, “What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”

White House, Clinton Tied To PR Firm Behind Electoral College Fight

The public relations firm working behind the scenes with the faithless electors is rife with ties to prominent Democrats like President Obama and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Megaphone Strategies, whose stated mission is to “use PR as a tool to diversify progressive movements,” typically works with progressive causes like Black Lives Matter. The firm is representing the handful of “faithless electors” trying to keep President-elect Donald Trump from winning the Electoral College vote.

The firm was co-founded by Van Jones, the former green jobs czar in the Obama White House who later resigned after it was revealed he signed a statement questioning whether the Bush administration had a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Jones now works as a CNN commentator.

Electoral College prepares to meet under old rules, new controversy

The members of the Electoral College will meet on Monday to decide the 45^th president of the United States and, for the second time in less than 20 years, they will do so amid a controversy over the results of November’s general election.
While President-elect Donald Trump picked up 306 electoral votes on Election Day – well over the 270 needed to clinch the election – Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular has risen to 2.8 million over Trump as the last remaining postal votes are counted.
This disparity – along with claims by so-called “faithless electors” that they won’t vote for Trump – has made an already confusing electoral process even more convoluted.
To help readers understand the process and what’s at stake, FoxNews.com has prepared a cheat sheet about the Electoral College.
The Electoral College

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The Electoral College meets every december, but it doesn't have a football team. (Associated Press)

• Who are the members of the Electoral College: There are 538 electors – representing the nation's 435 Representatives, 100 Senators and three non-voting representatives from Washington D.C. Electors cannot be federal officials and are usually chosen by the winning candidate’s political party among the party faithful. All states, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, have chosen electors on a "winner-take-all" basis since the 1880s, but there is no federal law requiring the electors to vote for the candidate who won their state.
• What does the Electoral College Process look like: The process begins after November’s general election, when state governors prepare a “Certificate of Ascertainment” that lists all of the presidential candidates, their respective electors, who won the state and which electors will represent the state at the meeting of the electors in December. At the meeting, the electors cast their votes for president and vice president on separate ballots, with the votes recorded on a Certificate of Vote. The state’s Certificates of Vote is then sent to Congress – as well as the National Archives –where votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
• Why does the U.S. have an Electoral College: The Electoral College was basically started as a compromise by the drafters of the Constitution as some wanted Congress to choose the president, while others wanted direct election by the people. The beneficiaries of the Electoral College in the nascent days of the United States were the southern slave states which were concerned that the country’s more populous industrial centers would dominate less populous rural regions.
• Where does the Electoral College meet: There is no Electoral College campus. There are no dorm rooms that house the electors or frat parties for them to go to on weekends. Instead electors meet in their respective state capitals to cast their votes for president and vice president.
• When does the Electoral College meet: Electors always meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. While the procedures vary slightly state by state, the basic process: reading of Certificate of Ascertainment, attendance, choosing a chairman, choosing tellers, voting, collecting and sorting the votes before placing them in special mahogany boxes to be sent to Congress.

The Faithless Elector

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In this Dec. 9, 2016, photo, President-elect Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally, in Grand Rapids, Mich. In claiming that he scored “a massive landslide victory” in last month’s presidential election, Trump turned history upside down. In fact, his winning margin in the Electoral College is on the other end of the historical spectrum, far closer to the narrowest win in history than to the widest. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

While the Electoral College vote is normally just a procedural step that gets overshadowed by the President-elect’s cabinet choices (the exception being 2000, with George W. Bush, Al Gore and the Florida recount), this year with Clinton winning the popular vote and the divisiveness of the election, there have been a number of electors who have said they might not cast their vote for the candidate who won their state.
Adding to the concerns of these faithless electors are assertions by the Obama administration that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized the hacking of Democratic officials' email accounts in the run-up to the presidential election to help Trump's campaign.
When news broke late last week of the CIA's conclusion that Russia likely sought to influence the U.S. election on behalf of Trump, Pell and nine other electors — all but one of them Democrats — quickly crafted and published an unprecedented letter to U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper demanding a briefing.

More on this...

• Anti-Trumpers trying to sow chaos in Electoral College

• White House, Clinton Tied To PR Firm Behind Electoral College Push

• Hysterical Liberals Call for End of Electoral College

Their letter, now with dozens of signatures, described the Electoral College as a deliberative body whose members have more than an "empty or formalistic task" to summarily cast their votes.
Despite Harvard professor – and former Democratic presidential candidate - Larry Lessig's claims earlier this week that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, a survey of electors taken by The Associated Press appears to suggest that there’s very little likelihood of derailing Trump's presidency in the Electoral College.
Only 19 of the 44 times the Electoral College has met have there been any faithless electors – and most of those involved only one elector. The most faithless electors ever came in 1832 when 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren and two National Republican Party electors from the state of Maryland refused to vote for presidential candidate Henry Clay and instead abstained.
Despite the loss of 30 votes, Martin Van Buren was elected as the vice president and Andrew Jackson president after receiving over 75 percent of the electoral votes.

No record of 'faithless elector' Chris Suprun as a 9/11 first responder

9/11 Record Of Republican ‘Faithless Elector’ Called Into Question

DALLAS – The Republican elector who has gotten national attention for refusing to vote for Donald Trump at the Electoral College on Dec. 19 was apparently not a first responder on September 11, 2001 as he has stated for years and has a questionable career history, according to an investigation by WFAA.
Chris Suprun, 42, portrays himself as a heroic firefighter who was among the first on the scene after the third plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11.
In a heavily-publicized editorial this month for the New York Times, Suprun stated that as a member of the Electoral College he will not cast his ballot for Trump because the president-elect “shows daily he is not qualified for the office.”
The Republican “faithless elector,” who made headlines across the country when he wrote a blistering op-ed pledging not to vote for President-elect Trump in the Electoral College, is now under scrutiny himself after his claim to have been a firefighter on 9/11 has been questioned by a local news outlet.
Christopher Suprun, a Republican elector in Texas, wrote a piece for the New York Times on Dec. 5 called “Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump.” In it, Suprun cites his past as a firefighter on 9/11 as one of the reasons for not voting for Donald Trump on Dec. 19, despite Texas voting comfortably for Trump on Nov. 8.
“Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation. That attack and this year’s election may seem unrelated, but for me the relationship becomes clearer every day,” Suprun wrote.
In the piece, he calls on fellow Republican electors to vote their conscience and deny Trump the 270 votes he needs to win the White House, and to back a Republican alternative such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has publicly distanced himself from such efforts.
“The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience,” Suprun wrote. “I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.”
Yet, as the move to deny Trump the 270 votes has gained momentum and media coverage, Suprun’s past has come under scrutiny.
Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA reported that Suprun’s LinkedIn page claims that he was part of Manassas Fire Department in Sept. 2001, but found that he was not part of that Fire Dept. until October, and cited an anonymous first responder who knew Suprun, who contradicted his claims.
“He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories ‘I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn’t even employed there until October 2001,” the source told the outlet.
Even if Suprun had been hired by Manassas Park before 9/11, the fire chief there told WFAA that they did not respond to the Pentagon that fateful day.
“It’s no different than stolen valor for the military,” the source told WFAA.
Suprun responded to the allegations in a statement Friday:
“You’re right, I wasn’t in New York on 9-11,” he said [although WFAA did not make such a claim.] “I was a part of the response to the Pentagon attacks, as a member of the Dale City fire department in northern Virginia.”
He explained further in response to a question at an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit.
“That story exhibits a reckless disregard for the truth. I never claimed to be a first responder on 9-11 with the Manassas Park Fire Dept. I was a volunteer firefighter at the time for the Dale City Fire Dept. when I responded to the attacks at the Pentagon,” he said.
Suprun’s claim is backed up in part by a story in Philly.com in 2012, which reported on a talk Suprun gave for the Never Forget foundation. In that, Philly.com reports him claiming in that talk that he was indeed part of the Dale City Volunteer Fire Department.
However, that account does not present him as a firefighter, as he claims to be in his Times op-ed and his Reddit answer, but as a volunteer paramedic. His account does not have him fighting fires, but administering first aid in a nearby parking lot, before being deployed to a recreation center, where he treated first responders.
Calls to Dale City Fire Dept. from FoxNews.com were not immediately returned. Follow up questions to Suprun’s agent seeking to clarify his role that day were also not returned.
It was not the only question WFAA raised in regards to Suprun’s record.
On his LinkedIn profile, Suprun says he is presently a paramedic with Freedom EMS in Dallas, but WFAA reports that no such company exists. A spokeswoman for Air Methods ambulance service, where Suprun’s LinkedIn also claims he works, told the outlet he is not employed there either.
Electors make their decision on Dec. 19. Suprun is so far the only elector to publicly express his intent to change his vote from Trump. It would take 37 votes to deny Trump the votes needed, which would then send the question to the House of Representatives.
Trump would likely still win among the Republican-heavy legislature, but rogue electors hope that by presenting a moderate Republican, they can convince them to snatch the White House away from the billionaire.