Jan Brewer, Arizona Governor, Rejects Obamacare Health Insurance Exchange

Arizona won't help implement a key component of President Barack Obama's health care reform law, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer said in a letter to a federal health official Wednesday.Including Arizona, there currently are 17 states that won't create so-called health insurance exchanges online marketplaces where uninsured people and small businesses will choose health plans and learn whether they're eligible for tax credits. Thirty million people are expected to gain health coverage through the exchanges by 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Brewer blamed the Obama administration for her decision. "The state of Arizona has made significant progress in its planning and design configuration for all of the required health insurance exchange core functions," Brewer wrote to Gary Cohen, the director of the federal Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. The administration failed to issue regulations or provide detailed information to states fast enough, she charged. The health insurance exchanges must be operational on Oct. 1, 2013, when millions of people are expected to use them to shop for coverage for the following year.

Although the federal government has the authority to step in and create exchanges in states that don't build their own, lack of cooperation from states could hamper how well they function, and how many uninsured people get coverage.Brewer reiterated her "unwavering" opposition to Obama's 2010 health care reform law, but said in a written statement that "this has been one of the more difficult decisions in my career in public service." By rejecting a state-run health insurance exchange, Brewer is ceding control of the new Obamacare insurance market in her state to the federal government. "Though I am a steady advocate of local control, I have come to the conclusion that the state of Arizona would wield little actual authority over its 'state' exchange," she said in the statement.

The Obama administration last week published several critical regulations governing what benefits must be covered by health insurance sold on the exchanges and establishing consumer protections, such as a ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.Like Brewer, other governors have complained they had to wait too long for federal regulations they needed to help evaluate their options. However, 17 states and the District of Columbia moved ahead with plans to create their own health insurance exchanges even without those federal rules in place. Six states will manage exchanges jointly with federal authorities and the remainder have until Dec. 14 to declare their plans, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Lindsay Lohan Hauled Off After Alleged Assault

Actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested Thursday after police said she hit a woman during an argument at a New York City nightclub. The "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday" star was arrested at 4 a.m. and charged with third-degree assault. She left a police precinct nearly four hours later with a black jacket pulled over her head. She was wearing leggings, a green mini dress and high-heels, and drove off in a black SUV with a driver, a woman and another man who was seen going in and out of the precinct. She allegedly got into the spat with another woman at Club Avenue, in Manhattan's Chelsea section.

She struck the woman in the face with her hand, police said. The woman did not require medical attention. Lohan's publicist did not immediately return a call for comment. The arrest is Lohan's latest brush with law enforcement in New York City. She was involved in a NYPD investigation in September after alleging a man had assaulted her in a New York hotel, but charges against the man were later dropped. Also in September, the actress was accused of clipping a man with her car outside another Manhattan nightclub, but prosecutors chose not to move ahead with charges. In October, police were called to her childhood home on Long Island after a report of a fight between her and her mother. An investigation revealed "no criminality." The actress was also involved in a car accident in California this summer that sent her and an assistant to a hospital, but didn't result in serious injuries for anyone.

The accident remains under investigation. In May, she was cleared of allegations that she struck a Hollywood nightclub manager with her car. Lohan remains on informal probation for taking a necklace from a jewelry store without permission last year. That means she doesn't have to check in with a judge or probation officer but could face a jail term if arrested again. Her latest film, "Liz & Dick," in which she portrays screen icon Elizabeth Taylor, premiered on Lifetime on Sunday. Lohan also recently filmed "The Canyons," an indie film written by "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho" author Bret Easton Ellis.

Syria's Internet Reportedly Shut Down

Internet service throughout Syria apparently went down on November 29.The country, embroiled in a civil war, dropped offline at 10:26 a.m. UTC (12:26 p.m. local Damascus time), according to research firm Renesys.

"In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet," reads a post on the company's blog, published on Thursday morning.When this occurs, Internet traffic coming into and going out of the country stops. The government of Egypt during the Arab Spring uprisings in early 2011 implemented an unprecedented crackdown on the Internet, ordering the nation's Internet service providers to cease international communications.

Activists and authorities in Syria also told the AP on Thursday that cell phone networks and landlines were also unavailable in parts of the capital."The government has previously cut phone lines and Internet access in areas where regime forces are conducting major military operations," reports the AP.

AllThingsD notes that tweeters are using the hashtag #SyriaBlackout to discuss the outage.

UPDATE 1: Calling this the worst Syrian communications disruption since the uprisings began over a year and a half ago, Reuters reports that the Assad's forces are said to be preparing for a "military showdown around Damascus."

"Rebels and activists said the fighting along the road to Damascus airport, southeast of the capital, was heavier in that area than at any other time in the conflict," writes Reuters. At the time of writing, only the Dubai-based Emirates airline had suspended flights into Damascus, per Reuters.

UPDATE 2: Internet content delivery network Akamai corroborates Renesys' earlier report of a total Internet blackout in Syria. The company on Thursday morning tweeted the following: "Akamai traffic to Syria has dropped to zero as well."

Akamai followed that tweet with a chart visualizing a dramatic drop-off in Internet traffic that evidently shortly before 10:30 a.m. local time:

Slate is reporting that top news sites located in Syria, including Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) were offline before noon EST.Some Twitter users are providing dial-up numbers that Syrian 'net users may be able to use to get back online.

UPDATE 3: Reuters reports that Syria's communication minister attributed the Internet outage to "terrorists."

"It is not true that the state cut the Internet. The terrorists targeted the Internet lines, resulting in some regions being cut off," the official said according to a "pro-government TV station," per Reuters. He also said that work is underway to repair the damage.Take a look at the slideshow (below) to see how Twitter is reacting to the blackout in Syria.

Obama Addressing 'Fiscal Cliff' In White House Speech

Newly re-elected President Barack Obama will use a White House appearance to set the tone for upcoming talks with congressional Republicans on avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff. Republicans continue to draw a line in the sand against higher tax rates for upper-income earners as they seek to topple the conventional wisdom that Obama has the upper hand in upcoming negotiations on averting the potentially economy-crippling set of tax increases and automatic spending cuts due to hit in January. Obama faces a tough, core decision: Does he pick a fight and risk a prolonged impasse with Republicans or does he rush to compromise and risk alienating Democrats still celebrating his victory? Many of his Democratic allies hope Obama will take a hard line when he addresses the matter Friday. Republicans warn that a fight could poison efforts for a rapprochement in a bitterly divided Capitol and threaten his second-term agenda. Obama has been silent since his victory speech early Wednesday morning, but Capitol Hill Republicans have filled the vacuum with vows to stand resolutely against any effort by the president to fulfill a campaign promise to raise the top two income tax rates to Clinton-era levels. "Raising tax rates is unacceptable," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, declared Thursday on ABC. "Frankly, it couldn't even pass the House. I'm not sure it could pass the Senate."
A lot is at stake. A new Congressional Budget Office report on Thursday predicted that the economy would fall into recession if there is a protracted impasse in Washington and the government falls off the fiscal cliff for the entire year. Though most Capitol-watchers think that a long deadlock is unlikely, the analysts say such a scenario would cause a spike in the jobless rate to 9.1 percent by next fall. Some analysts believe that the fiscal cliff is more like a fiscal slope and that the economy could weather a short-term expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and that the government could manage a wave of automatic spending cuts for a few weeks. But at a minimum, going over the fiscal cliff would mean delays in filing taxes and obtaining refunds and would rattle financial markets as the economy struggles to recover. The CBO analysis says that the cliff – a combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts – would cut the deficit by $503 billion through next September, but that the fiscal austerity would cause the economy to shrink by 0.5 percent next year and cost millions of jobs. The new study estimates that the nation's gross domestic product would grow by 2.2 percent next year if all Bush-era tax rates were extended and would expand by almost 3 percent if Obama's 2 percentage point payroll tax cut and current jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed were extended as well. All sides say that they want a deal and that now that the election is over everyone can show more flexibility than in the heat of the campaign.

Obama is not expected to offer specifics immediately. His long-held position – repeatedly rejected by Republicans – is that tax rates on family income over $250,000 should jump back up to Clinton-era levels. Republicans say they're willing to consider new tax revenue but only through drafting a new tax code that lowers rates and eliminates some deductions and wasteful tax breaks. And they're insisting on cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, known as entitlement programs in Washington-speak. The current assumption is that any agreement would be a multistep process that would begin this year with a down payment on the deficit and on action to stave off more than the tax increases and $109 billion in across-the-board cuts to the Pentagon budget and a variety of domestic programs next year. The initial round is likely to set binding targets on revenue levels and spending cuts, but the details would probably be enacted next year. While some of that heavy work would be left for next year, a raft of tough decisions would have to be made in the next six weeks. They could include the overall amount of deficit savings and achieving agreement on how much would come from revenue increases and how much would be cut from costly health care programs, the Pentagon and the day-to-day operating budgets of domestic Cabinet agencies. Democrats are sure to press for a guarantee that tax reform doesn't end up hurting middle-income taxpayers at the expense of upper-bracket earners. Republicans want to press for corporate tax reform and a guarantee that the top rate paid by individuals and small businesses goes down along the way.

Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says

As Republicans search for reasons why they came up short in Tuesday's elections, anonymous Mitt Romney advisers have described what it was like to be with the former governor as he came to terms with his loss.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser told CBS News.
Another unnamed senior adviser explained that as returns came in and battleground states went into President Barack Obama's Electoral College column, they felt their paths to potential victory narrowing. CBS reports that the campaign was unprepared for this in part because it had ignored polling that showed the races favoring Obama. Instead, it turned to its own internal "unskewed" polls, which it believed more accurately reflected the situation on the ground. They didn't.On the eve of the election, a number of polling aggregators, including HuffPost's Pollster and New York Times' FiveThirtyEight, showed Obama with a huge statistical advantage over Romney.When it was clear that Romney had lost the race and had to concede, his personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart in the Obama campaign, Marvin Nicholson, to connect the two men.

As CBS' Jan Greenburg writes in her article:

Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.
The New York Times' tick-tock of the events that night at the Boston Intercontinental Hotel includes this anecdote: Bob White, a close Romney friend and adviser, was prepared to tell the waiting crowd that Mr. Romney would not yet concede.

But then, Mr. Romney quietly decided it was over. "It's not going to happen," he said.As Ann Romney cried softly, he headed down to deliver his speech, ending his second, and presumably last, bid for the White House. As evidence of the Romney campaign's sincere belief that the former Massachusetts governor would emerge victorious on Tuesday night, the Boston Globe reported Thursday that it had planned to fete Romney's election with an eight-minute display of fireworks over Boston Harbor.

"It was not an intense, grand finale-type of display for eight minutes, but it certainly was a fast-paced show to cap off the evening, if it were necessary," Steve Pelkey, the CEO of Atlas Professional Fireworks Displays, told the Globe.Romney also told reporters on his campaign plane earlier this week that while he had written a victory speech, he hadn't prepared concession remarks.

Chris Christie Denied Mitt Romney Request To Appear At Campaign Event Days Ahead Of 2012 Election

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was effusive in his praise of President Barack Obama when the two leaders toured damage from Hurricane Sandy last week, turned down a request by Mitt Romney to appear with him at a rally on Sunday night in Pennsylvania, The Huffington Post has learned. Christie's decision will only add to questions among Republicans about what the governor -- who is up for reelection a year from now -- is thinking, and why he went out of his way to heap praise on the president, and then refused to appear with Romney. The Romney rally was held at a farm in Morrisville, Pa., not more than 20 minutes from Trenton, the New Jersey capital. The physical proximity of the event to New Jersey only added to questions in the Romney campaign about why Christie chose not to come. "You can't tell me he couldn't have gone over there for a night rally," a Romney campaign source told HuffPost. Romney, at the rally on Sunday night, praised Christie's handling of the storm from the podium, saying that the governor was "giving it all of his heart and his passion to help the people of his state.

"They're in a hard way, and we appreciate his hard work. Thank you, governor," Romney said. Christie, who considered a run for the presidency himself, had been one of Romney's most effective and vocal surrogates, using his blunt and plainspoken style to great effect for the Republican nominee. He was scheduled to campaign for Romney last week until the storm hit. But Christie's keynote speech at the Republican National Convention in August was a disappointment to many Republicans, and while no one in the GOP expected Christie to do anything other than appear with Obama last week to tour storm damage, it was the degree to which he went out of his way to sing the president's praises that surprised those in the governor's party.

An aide to Christie, who agreed to speak to HuffPost about the governor's decision in exchange for anonymity, noted that New Jersey still has 700,000 people without power, the state is on an odd-and-even day gasoline rationing system, there is still massive flooding in parts of the state, and many residents remain displaced. "The entire shore is devastated," the Christie aide said. "And if you're here on the ground, you have an appreciation of how tough it is." "All in all, it's a lot of things that require focus. We're moving toward sort of a new normal here in New Jersey," the aide said. "The governor's been pretty clear that his number one priority is the safety and security of New Jerseyans and all his efforts are focused on Hurricane Sandy recovery right now."

Stop Worrying: 2 Tools That Work

Are you a worrier? Do you come from a long line of worriers? Did you have fear-filled, overprotective parents or grandparents?

Here's the good news: It's not biological. There is no "worry" gene. What it is, instead, is a learned behavior. Nurture ousting nature.Worrying is actually a socially acceptable way of saying you live in fear of what may happen in the future. Most likely, you also lack present-moment consciousness, since you cannot be here now while constantly projecting catastrophically into the future.

It is an anxiety-provoking, ingrained thought pattern that can cause a host of stress-related physical and psychological issues.But don't worry: If you are a worrywart, there are some things you can do to get off the "What If?" highway.Two of my favorite tools -- which help improve your ability to keep your thoughts on the present moment -- are:

1. To allot five minutes a day to worrying. If you find catastrophic thoughts creeping up at another time, remind yourself that you cannot think about these until your designated worry time. Go back to focusing on what is happening right now. (When you get to your worry time, you may not even be able to remember what it was you were worrying about earlier.)

2. Try the "Then What" exercise. Imagine the event you are concerned about actually happening, then ask yourself, "Then what?" From that point, ask "then what?" again. Keep going until you have reached the end of the questioning. Oftentimes, you will see that the fear is bigger in your mind than what could actually happen. This exercise helps create perspective. It also gives you the opportunity to see how much time you may be wasting worrying about what might happen rather than focusing on what is actually happening.

Allow yourself to step out of fear and into freedom. The only moment you are guaranteed is the one that is happening right now. When you project into the future -- and a dismal one at that -- you miss your life as it is happening and draw the misery-perception-turned-reality toward you since you are resonating on that energetic frequency. (Your mind is like a garden; what you nurture and put your attention on, grows. Why not choose to nurture what you desire rather than what you fear?)

I have been through many traumatic and scary experiences in my life, from cancer to raising teenage sons. Worrying about them would not have changed how I handled them; it would only have robbed me of moments that I cannot get back.Worrying and preparing are two different things, so do not confuse the two. I am not saying be unprepared, I am only suggesting that ruminating on your fear fantasy does not better prepare you for anything.

Let's get honest and share -- we've all been there or are struggling still, so no need to judge or hold back your feelings. Are you an excessive worrier? What triggers your worry muscle? Are you confused by the differences between being prepared and worrying? What tools have you discovered that yank you out of future-tripping and back to the here and now?