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U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been diagnosed with a brain tumor called a primary glioblastoma. (AP photo)

A fake news story that claimed former President Barack Obama tweeted that he wanted U.S. Sen. John McCain to die from a brain tumor originally came from a parody website looking to troll conservatives.

The headline on a July 20, 2017, post on DailyThings.world read, "Barack Obama tweets sick attack on John McCain, says he should have died." Facebook users flagged the story here and on NewsFeedHunter.com as being potentially fabricated, in an effort to cut down on fake news.

The story included an image of a July 19 tweet from Obama that read, "John McCain is NOT a war hero. If there were any God in heaven, he would have died from that brain tumor." The post said Obama quickly deleted the tweet.

The story came on the heels of the announcement that McCain, R-Ariz., was diagnosed with a brain tumor called a primary glioblastoma. The American Brain Tumor Association said that a 2009 study showed almost 10 percent of patients may potentially live five years or longer. The 80-year-old is considering treatment options.

McCain returned to the U.S. Senate for votes on Republican health care reform, most recently casting a deciding vote against a last-ditch "skinny repeal" bill to end the Affordable Care Act.

But lets be clear: This story is completely fake.

There was no such tweet for Obama to delete. It was no doubt the product of any number of websites that allow you to create a fake tweet that appears to come from another account.

The only thing Obama tweeted on July 19 were words of encouragement for McCain, whom Obama defeated in the 2008 presidential election.

"John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I've ever known. Cancer doesn't know what it's up against. Give it hell, John," Obama wrote.

There is no record of another tweet from Obamas account that day.

The fake story originated the same day on OurLandOfTheFree.com, a parody website with hidden registration information. It appears to be affiliated with a network of websites run by liberal trolls who run fake news sites in an attempt to fool conservatives.

The footer note on OurLandOfTheFree.com said that the site makes "no guarantee that what you read here is true. In fact, it most definitely is not." It echoes the warning on its About Us page.

Our ruling

Bloggers wrote, "Barack Obama tweets sick attack on John McCain, says he should have died."

The story and the tweet it described appeared on multiple outlets, but sprang from a website devoted to writing absurd stories about liberals in an attempt to fool conservatives. Obamas only tweet about McCains brain cancer was encouraging.

We rate this statement Pants on Fire!

Read more:
Fake tweet said Obama hoped McCain would die from brain tumor - PolitiFact (blog)

Former First Lady Michelle Obama showed that her investment in the future of the youth in our country is a real commitment by attending the Beating The Odds Summit at Washington, D.C.s Dunbar High School Thursday.

Mrs. Obama, as well as executives from Spotify, including Troy Carter, VP of Creator Services, and Danielle Lee, VP of Partner Solutions, shared their experiences of overcoming obstacles and the lessons they have learned on their personal and professional journeys with 35 high school students, at a day-long event meant to inspire the college-bound students to consider majors or careers in the tech industry. Reach Higher at Civic Nation also participated in the event.

The day included college transition workshops, a panel during which Spotify execs discussed the important role music plays in culture and communities, as well as a performance by R&B artist Kevin Ross.

Check out more pictures from the event below.

Read this article:
Michelle Obama Teams Up With Spotify To Help Students Prepare For College - The Root

An Obama official made hundredsof unmasking requests during the final year of the previous administration, according to a letter from a top Republican who raised new concerns that officials sought the identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports for improper purposes.

Unmasking refers to the formal request to identify Americans in an intelligence document.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE LETTER

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has questioned whether Obama officials improperly sought the names of Trump transition members in this way and, in the letter obtained by Fox News, Nunes provided new details about what his investigators have found.

[T]his Committee has learned that one official, whose position has no apparent intelligence-related function, madehundredsof unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration, he wrote to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Only one request, Nunes wrote, offered a justification that was not boilerplate and articulated why the identity was needed for official duties.

Three of the nations intelligence agencies received subpoenas in May explicitly naming three top Obama administration officials: Former CIA director John Brennan, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power.

Nunes letter appears to make reference to Power as the official who made hundreds of requests.

However, David Pressman, counsel to Power and partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, stressed Powers responsibilities in her capacity as a member of the National Security Council and denied she leaked anything classified.

"Long before receiving an invitation to engage the Congressional committees, Ambassador Power was unambiguous about her support of bipartisan efforts to determine the full extent of this threat to our national security," he said in a statement. "While serving as our Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Power was also a member of the National Security Council responsible for advising the President on the full-range of threats confronting the United States. Any insinuation that Ambassador Power was involved in leaking classified information is absolutely false."

The Nunes letter also said he plans to introduce a bill requiring individual, fact-based justifications for such unmasking requests. Cabinet members and other senior political leaders cannot be permitted to continue to seek access to U.S. person information within disseminated intelligence reports without documenting a specific, fact-based requirement for the information, he wrote.

Explaining his concerns, Nunes said in the letter that Obama-era officials sought the identities of Trump transition officials within intelligence reports without offering any meaningful explanation as to why they needed or how they would use the information.

The committee, Nunes wrote, is left with the impression that these officials may have used this information for improper purposes, including the possibility of leaking. He noted that some of the requests were followed by anonymous leaks of those names to the media.

Intelligence agencies typically are required to conceal the identities of Americans picked up or mentioned in surveillance of foreigners in the U.S. Formal requests need to be made to release those names.

Several Obama administration officials met privately last week with staffers on Capitol Hill. Among them, Rice met Friday with Senate Intelligence Committee staffers. Power also has agreed to testify before the House Intelligence Committee.

Rice told MSNBC in April that allegations Obama administration officials used such intelligence for political purposes is false.

Media reports earlier this year revealed, among other conversations, those between then-national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. Reports of those conversations led to Flynn's resignation in February.

Nunes is continuing to pursue the unmasking issue, though he has stepped aside from leading the Russia investigation and is facing an ethics inquiry over whether he improperly revealed classified information. Nunes disputes the charge.Fox News asked a spokesman for Brennan for comment but there was no immediate response.

Fox News Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

The rest is here:
Obama official made 'hundreds of unmasking requests,' GOP chairman says - Fox News

We took a look at recent historical patterns of economic growth.

How bad was the economy under President Barack Obama? Pretty bad, argues former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

In economic growth, "Obama's best year was slower than Bill Clinton's worst year," Gingrich told Fox News Maria Bartiromo on July 23, 2017. "That's astonishing."

Weve previously looked at why its so hard these days for the United States to sustain 3 percent annual economic growth a benchmark President Donald Trump says the country can again reach with his leadership.

But we wondered whether the difference in economic performance under the two most recent Democratic presidents was so stark.

We found that Gingrichs talking point is correct, though he leaves out some important context.

Annual economic growth is typically measured by the change, up or down, in gross domestic product from year to year, after adjusting for inflation. This data is collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a federal office.

As it turns out, Clinton had two years tied for last place -- 1993 and 1995. In both years, GDP grew by 2.7 percent.

As for Obama, his best annual showing came in 2015, with 2.6 percent.

In the following chart, the worst Clinton years and the best Obama year are marked in blue.

So by the primary measure, Gingrichs statement is correct.

However, its worth noting that a related statistic shows the record on Obamas watch in a somewhat more favorable light.

Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, said that GDP growth depends on two major factors -- how productive workers are, and how many workers there are. And Clinton was blessed with a worker population that was growing much faster than it later would under Obama.

When Clinton was president, Burtless said, the population between the ages of 15 and 64 increased by 1.2 percent a year. Under Obama, the increase was just 0.6 percent.

"So it seems to me a bit absurd to compare overall GDP growth in the two administrations without somehow accounting for the different rates of growth in the population," Burtless said.

Its possible to use a variant on our previous metric GDP growth per capita that lessens this problem. Heres what that measurement looks like:

Using this measurement, Obama exceeded Clintons worst annual performance during four years (2010, 2012, 2014, 2015).

In other words, while Clinton still did better overall when population growth is taken into account, the Obama administration had a better experience using this metric than is implied by Gingrich's statement, Burtless said.

Gingrichs office did not reply to an inquiry.

Our ruling

Gingrich said that in economic growth, "Obama's best year was slower than Bill Clinton's worst year."

Measured by the annual change in inflation-adjusted GDP -- the typical measurement -- Gingrich is correct. But its worth noting that if you strip out the impact of population growth, the Clinton-Obama comparison is more mixed. We rate the statement Mostly True.

Share the Facts

2017-07-27 21:06:23 UTC

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In economic growth, "Obama's best year was slower than Bill Clinton's worst year."

Newt Gingrich

Former House Speaker, R-Ga.

an interview on Fox News

Sunday, July 23, 2017

2017-07-23

Read the original post:
Was Barack Obama's best economic year worse than Bill Clinton's weakest? - PolitiFact

Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice / Getty Images

BY: Adam Kredo July 27, 2017 7:08 pm

Key lawmakers are threatening to cancel the authorization of sensitive U.S. spy operations until congressional leaders investigate efforts by former top Obama administration officials to leak highly classified national security information in what many believe was a targeted campaign to undermine the Trump administration, according to senior congressional sources familiar with the situation.

Key Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee are pressuring Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) to investigate former senior Obama administration officials believed to be responsible for these anti-Trump leaks, including former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and National Security Council official Ben Rhodes, according to sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon about mounting frustration over Congress's failure to adequately investigate these leaks.

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee are prepared to halt key spy operations related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, until Congress performs a full investigation into how damaging classified surveillance information targeting the Trump campaign and administration officials was leaked to the press.

The House Intelligence Committee is engaged in a separatebut related probe into efforts by Obamaofficials to "unmask," or formally identify individuals named in classified intelligence community reports related to Trump and his presidential transition team. That investigation is currently focussed on Power, Rice, and former CIA Director John Brennan.

Sources in the Trump administration and Congress believe the classified intelligence information was"weaponized"andlater leaked to the press in order to handicap the Trump administration's credibility and national security priorities.

Still, senior Republican members of Congress do not feel that enough is being done to hold those responsible for the leaks accountable.

By threatening to withhold the reauthorization of section 702 of the FISA Actwhich permits the U.S. intelligence community to intercept communications outside of Americalawmakers believe they can force a thorough investigation into these Obama aides, who are suspected of exploiting FISA laws to gather and later leak sensitive intelligence damaging to Trump allies.

Congress is "not going to reauthorize a program if no one is held accountable for breaking the law," said one senior congressional source familiar with the situation. "No one is being held accountable and Congress has done no oversight."

Goodlatte is said to have initially been "really taken aback" by the stiff opposition to reauthorizing section 702, but is now making moves to examine the former administration's role in classified leaks and potential opportunities to question these officials.

Republican members on the committee are said to be "all united" in their desire to investigate former Obama officials such as Rhodes, Rice, and Power, sources said.

These lawmakers "want answers on these Obama officials in order to continue [spy] authorizations they may have abused," one congressional source said. "The members in the conference and these committees have reached a boiling point."

Senior Trump administration officials, as well as those in Congress, have named former Obama administration officials such as Rice and Rhodes as key suspects in the dissemination of classified national security information.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security, which deals with these issues, told the Free Beacon earlier this month that Rhodes and others must be held accountable for any role they might have had in the leaking of classified information.

"I think Congress and some members on the Intelligence Committee can call Ben Rhodes to testify," DeSantis said at the time. "He may be able to invoke executive privilege from when Obama was president, but he definitely can't do that in any interactions he's had since then."

DeSantis further identified Rhodes and other senior Obama administration officials as being "involved with feeding journalists some of these [leaks]. I believe he's in touch with people on the National Security Council. It would be absolutely legitimate as part of leak investigation to bring him in and put him under oath, and I would absolutely support doing that."

The Free Beacon first disclosed last week that Power, a key Obama confidante, was emerging as central to the investigation into efforts by Obama administration officials to identify individuals named in classified intelligence community reports related to Trump and his presidential transition team.

Power's role in this unmasking effort is believed to be particularly questionable given her position as the U.N. ambassador, a post that does not typically require such sensitive unmasking activities, according to former U.S. officials and other sources.

"Unmasking is not a regular occurrenceabsolutely not a weekly habit. It is rare, even at the National Security Council, and ought to be rarer still for a U.N. ambassador," one former senior U.S. official told the Free Beacon.

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Congress Could Halt Spy Authorization Over Obama Aides' Anti-Trump Leaks - Washington Free Beacon