President Barack Obama meets with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Thomas Brandon, and FBI Director James Comey to discuss what executive actions he can take to curb gun violence
Bloomberg reports that the Feds have indicted Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli on fraud charges.
Surely you remember Martin, no? He founded Turing, bought the rights to a drug used to treat AIDS patients, and proceeded to raise the price from $13 a pill to $750 a pill, thus earning him the title to “the most hated man in America”. Even Donald Trump said he was a “spoiled brat”.
Shkreli promised to reduce the drug price cost after receiving a torrent of abuse, but then reneged on that promise. And just this week, in what can only be described as a “fuck you” to the world, he bought the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million. Because when you’re a sociopath, you do things like that.
As the Bloomberg article points out, when he was again prodded to reduce the drug’s price, his response was a tweet which merely said “lol”. He also said if he had to do it over again, the would have raised the price even more, as his investors expected him to “maximize profits.”
"It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people have been shot by the police” FBI director to college student washingtonpost.com/world/national…
Detroit Free Press: Auto Sales Forecast: Buyers Back After Government Shutdown
With four days left in the month, auto dealers apparently can let out a few sighs of relief.
Auto buyers seemed to have shrugged off the government shutdown and gone back to helping to make 2013 a banner year for the auto industry, two forecasts of October auto sales suggest.
Kelley Blue Book predicts an 8% rise in auto sales in October compared to the same month last year. Edmunds.com is even more optimistic, predicting an increase of 12.7% over the same period.
Sun Times: Durbin “Stand Your Ground” Hearing Tuesday: Trayvon Martin’s Mother To Testify
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) will chair a hearing Tuesday on the controversial “stand your ground” laws that played a role in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman. Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, will be testifying.
Durbin is holding the hearing in his role as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights. The hearing was originally scheduled for September…..
Syracuse.com: Obama To Campaign For Terry McAuliffe
President Barack Obama plans to campaign for Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, on Sunday.
A spokesman for McAuliffe’s campaign said Obama will join McAuliffe at a rally in northern Virginia. No additional details were available.
Polls show McAuliffe, a native of Syracuse, is ahead of Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia race, one of two gubernatorial contests being held this year…
TIME: Password-Reset Security Glitch Fixed On Healthcare.gov
A security flaw in the original design of HealthCare.gov that could have disclosed e-mail and other account information to hackers was eliminated Monday during an overnight fix, a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman has told TIME.
“We are eliminating this theoretical vulnerability by preventing users from seeing the specific reset functionality when trying to reset their password,” said Brian Cook, who works for the agency that oversees the troubled website portal for federal health-insurance exchanges. There is no public evidence that these design flaws were ever exploited to compromise user accounts.
USA Today: Insurance For The Young Could Be Less Than $50 A Month
Almost half of young, single, uninsured adults in 34 states could pay $50 or less a month for insurance through the online exchanges after receiving subsidies, according to a study released by the Department of Health and Human Services Monday. The HHS study said there are 7.2 million uninsured Americans 18 to 34 in single-person households in the 34 states. Of that total, there are 2.9 million who are eligible to buy insurance on either federal or state partnership insurance marketplaces.
Of those 2.9 million young people, HHS found that 1.3 million, or 46%, could pay less than $50 a month for a bronze plan. The exchanges offer coverage from the bronze to platinum level. Bronze is the cheapest. About 1.9 million of uninsured young people in those 34 states, the study showed, could pay $100 a month or less for health insurance with the tax credits.
As Germany’s “Handygate” has become a mass phenomenon bordering on hysteria, one of the strangest aspects has been the fact, which I’ve noted previously, that Chancellor Angela Merkel was using a quite insecure cellphone to conduct government business. According to numerous media reports, the cellphone in question, said to have been intercepted by NSA for years, was used by Merkel for political party affairs, and was supposed to be used only to the classification level of VS-NfD, which is roughly equivalent to the U.S. category of For Official Use Only (FOUO), in other words, not actually classified at all.
Except the actual story is coming into focus now and it’s a rather different one than what Berlin’s been complaining so loudly about. While Merkel has indeed had a quite vulnerable cellphone, her “real”Chancellor-Phone, as the Germans call it, is quite secure from interception.
Bloomberg: Obama Tells FBI Leaders He’ll Press Congress To Lift Budget Cuts
President Barack Obama said he will keep pressing Congress to lift across-the-board budget cuts to ease the limits they have placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other critical agencies.
At the formal installation ceremony for James Comey as the seventh director of the FBI, Obama said resources for the agency have been trimmed by the automatic cuts known as sequestration even as the the FBI’s mission has been expanding to confront the threat of terrorism.
A congressional committee will meet this week to come up with a plan for taxes and spending to replace the automatic spending cuts approved in 2011. Comey said in a speech in Philadelphia last week that the budget limits mean that as many as 3,500 positions will be cut and agents will be furloughed, radio station KYW reported.
President Obama talks on the phone with Israel PM Netanyahu, in the Oval Office, Oct. 28, 2013 (Photo by Pete Souza)
****
Rollling Stone, November 2012 (Photo released Oct 29, 2012)
****
Oct. 29, 2009 – Pete Souza: “This photo was taken about 4AM after the President made an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base to pay respects to fallen troops coming back from Afghanistan. After meeting privately with the families, the President walked alone up the ramp of the cargo plane carrying the 18 caskets, all draped in American flags. I could see the emotion on his face as he walked from casket to casket, leaving a Presidential coin on each. When he was done, he paused for a few minutes, head bowed in prayer. I heard him tell others later how that was the most difficult moment of his Presidency thus far. Out of respect for the families, not all of who wanted their ceremony photographed, we can’t show those pictures (but they will become part of Presidential archive).”
****
On This Day:
President Obama rests his foot on a desk as he talks with Phil Schiliro, assistant to the President for legislative affairs, in the Outer Oval Office, Oct. 29, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama greets Girl Scouts prior to a signing ceremony for the Girl Scouts USA Centennial Commemorative Coin Act in the Oval Office, Oct. 29, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
The Obama Diary 
You must be logged in to post a comment.