President Barack Obama on Friday will propose making two years of community college free for students.

In a White House video posted Thursday evening, Obama said he wanted to offer “a little preview” of his plans for the Jan. 20 State of the Union address.

“What I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody who’s willing to work for it,” Obama said. “It’s something we can accomplish, and it’s something that will train our workforce so that we can compete with anybody in the world.”

The proposal would make two years of community college free for students with a C+ average who attend school at least half-time and who are making “steady progress” toward their degree.

Obama will visit Pellissippi Community College in Tennessee on Friday. Beginning this year, any state high school graduate is eligible for two years of free community college tuition under the Tennessee Promise.

Federal funding would cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college, and Obama is asking states to pick up the rest of the tab — assuming Congress agrees to the plan in the first place.

“I hope we’ve got the chance to make sure that Congress gets behind these kinds of efforts to make sure that even as we rebound and grow in 2015, that it benefits everybody and not just some,” the president said in the video.

To be eligible, community colleges would have to offer academic programs that fully transfer credits to local public four-year colleges and universities or training programs with high graduation rates that lead to in-demand degrees and certificates. Community colleges must also adopt “promising and evidence-based institutional reforms” to improve student outcomes.

If all 50 states participate, the proposal could benefit 9 million students each year and save students an average of $3,800 in tuition, the White House said.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a fellow likely 2016 GOP presidential candidate, is a “moderate.”

“I think the party is big enough to have moderates in the party,” Paul in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. Paul was discussing the appearance of inevitability created by the establishment media around Bush’s announcement he is actively exploring a potential presidential candidacy.

“When we have a primary, voters will have to pick whether they want a moderate leading the party or a conservative,” Paul says. “That’s what the primary will be about, people presenting their ideas and they’ll have to decide whether they want Common Core, whether they want more spending, more taxes, whether they want a candidate who will not pledge to not raise taxes. There’s a lot of things that will go on, we have plenty of time for that, but I would say that time will tell.”

Calling a Republican who’s seeking the GOP nomination a “moderate” is a clear insult in Republican presidential primary politics. During that selection process, each of the candidates is likely to focus on highlighting conservative credentials to please GOP base voters. Paul further hinted Bush would be open to tax increases and more government spending, positions no candidate is likely to take while trying to win the nomination.

It’s not the first time Paul has zeroed in on Common Core as being a killer issue for Republican presidential candidates.

Unless, of course, the Stamp guys actually have something to hide ... But that obviously can't be true!!! It's not like some Bitcoin exchange owner would ever tell a lie to his customers! That's impossible!

Navy veteran and former police officer Donald Montgomery filed a lawsuit in federal court on December 17 against New York state officials and Eastern Long Island Hospital after his guns were seized under the newly-passed SAFE Act following a doctor visit in which he sought treatment for insomnia.

It's hard to deny that 2014 was a very good year for the Republican Party. Two years after its 2012 train wreck, the GOP returns to Washington this week with an eight-seat majority in the Senate and a deep bench of contenders who want to take on Hillary Clinton in the next election. And while the party hasn't quite managed to shake its reputation as a political nursing home for jowly white dudes, Republicans managed to creep out of the tech Stone Age this fall, and finally started making dents in the Democrats' digital campaign juggernaut.

Vincent Harris isn't impressed. The 26-year-old Republican strategist, best known for putting Ted Cruz on the internet, has relentlessly criticized his party for their technological backwardness, telling any reporter who calls that the GOP's digital operations are second-rate and that the party's claims of progress are "a lot of talk." Begrudgingly, other Republicans have started to listen, bringing Harris on to translate the 21st century for high-profile conservative campaigns.

Isn't it always a tale of two bitcoins? It seems to be going from strength to strength in terms of infrastructure and adoption and money going in but sadly the price doesn't reflect this. Hopefully it will gain some traction this year.

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says the new Republican-led Congress will vote to repeal all of Obamacare. And when President Obama vetoes that, they'll vote to repeal parts of Obamacare.

And what happens if Republicans are successful in repealing Obamacare? Fox New's Greta Van Susteren asked the senator Monday night.

"We could try freedom for a while," Paul responded. "We had it for a long time. That's where you sell something and I agree to buy it because I like it. That is how we operate in most of rest of the marketplace other than health care. Now the president has said you can only buy certain types of health care that I approve of, and anything I don't approve of, you are not allowed to purchase. We could try freedom. I think it might work. It works everywhere else."

Paul rejected Van Susteren's suggestion that poor people would "end up back at the hospitals, and the hospitals would be providing free care again, and now we've got the financial burden back on the hospitals."

The burden is still on hospitals, Paul said: "Even under Obamacare, there are people that get subsidized insurance. But that has a $6,000 deductible. What do you think they do with that $6,000 deductible? They are still a non-payer" (when they go to the hospital).

Paul noted that even before Obamacare, the government took care of the bottom 5-10 percent of the public who were on Medicaid.

"And then there is also charity. There are different ways that we take care and help the poor. Nobody is saying we would not still do those things if we didn't have Obamacare.

"What Obamacare did was take some of the things we did for the poor and expanded the government to basically the whole marketplace. That I think will ultimately bankrupt the country and then nobody will have good health care."

When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush announced in mid-December that he would “actively explore” running for the Republican presidential nomination, curious parties took to Google to learn more about him. While they were there, many of them were greeted by another politician’s name at the bottom of the page—one they hadn’t searched for.

“Join a movement working to shrink government. Not grow it,” read one of the ads, placed by RandPAC, the political action committee supporting Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who is himself expected to run for the nomination. Another read: “We need leaders who will stand against Common Core.”

A few weeks later, when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced that he would leave his talk show at Fox News to ponder a presidential bid, the phenomenon occurred again: “Less Taxes Not More… We Need Leaders Who Will Cut Taxes Not Raise Them. Join Us!”

For Team Paul, this passive-aggressive trolling campaign is the equivalent of lurking in the back of the room during your opponent’s debate prep and pelting them with spitballs.

The ads have a dual purpose. First, they allow Paul to siphon off attention from whichever potential candidate is making news. Second, they allow his campaign to underscore the weaknesses of other candidates by highlighting Paul’s strengths.

With a verbal wink, Paul’s senior adviser Doug Stafford said they had chosen this method of pre-campaign campaigning “mostly because we like to amuse ourselves.”

 

I thought it would be fun to be the jaded old-timers here, but it rings a bit hollow