92% Safety Not Guaranteed

A man puts a classified ad in the newspaper asking for an unusual companion. No, it's not some weird sex thing. Kenneth (Mark Duplass) intends t travel back in time to correct a few regrets. He's looking for a partner, though he specifies his traveling companion must bring his or her own weapons and that safety is not guaranteed. This quirky ad grabs the attention of Jeff (New Girl's Jake Johnson), an egotistical writer for a Seattle magazine. He takes long a pair of interns, the surly Darius (Aubrey Plaza) and the nerdy Arnau (Karan Soni). Together, the gang heads out of town to seek out Kenneth and determine whether or not he is for real. However, Jeff's real intention for this "work vacation" was to travel back to his hometown and try and score with Liz (Jenica Bergere), an old high school flame he is horrified to discover has... aged. Darius is the only one who can get close to Kenneth, but what starts as an opportune assignment into investigating a weirdo becomes something more. The guy, sweet if a little off, may be on to something... big, and Darius may be falling for him despite her own misgivings. Safety Not Guaranteed is a modest film but does it sneak up on you and deliver an emotional wallop. I'm a romantic at heart, and so I'm generally affected by seeing two lonely people find their special something in the world reserved for them, and it's even more affecting when these people are oddballs, and thus it's even more resonant and meaningful for them to find that connection so elusive before. At its heart, Safety Not Guaranteed is a quirky yet naturally developing love story, and those are my favorite kind. I found my heart melting every time Darius couldn't help herself and smiled. Perhaps it's because Darius is our outside heroine or that Plaza is best known for her stone-faced deadpans on TV's Parks and Recreation, but every one of those smiles felt so richly earned and rewarding. These aren't the typical rom-com characters that are going to lapse into great speeches about love at key clich?d moments; while dabbling in some fantastical elements, Safety Not Guaranteed exists in our own recognizable world. And with that established, the unguarded moments of genuine happiness for characters we care about translates into a surprisingly touching experience. My heart felt so full at different points, melting and swelling and doing other non-medically accurate things. I honestly had tears in my eyes at different points. By the perfect end, I was so hopeful and overjoyed and left the theater soaring on my good vibes. I can't guarantee everyone will find the same level of engagement in the romantic relationship, but I believe that the movie is inspired, clever, and authentic enough to deliver a crowd-pleasing finish. It's earnest without being hokey. I'm trying to tiptoe around spoilers, though for those critical readers out there I'm sure you can infer a thing or two about the end of the film given my positive, beaming response. I'm sure my reaction would have been quite different if, say, Darius and Kenneth died in a horrible fireball because he was criminally insane from the start. All I'll say is pay attention to certain discrepancies and see if they might prove to be a conversation-starter when you leave the theater. Have I mentioned how truly funny this movie is? I've been talking all about the "rom" portion of the equation, but Safety not Guaranteed is a consistently funny movie, with a few big laughs. Thankfully the movie's sharp sense of comedy is more than everyone simply derisively laughing at the nutball. To be sure, Kenneth provides plenty of comedy in his super serious demeanor, and the movie doesn't overplay the idea that he may be mentally unbalanced. The jokes come from the character interaction more than any contrived set piece, and the pleasure is in watching conflicting personalities bounce off one another. Every character contributes nicely to the comedic rhythms of this picture, adding a line here, a reaction there, to assemble one very funny movie. In movies where one character enters a relationship under initial false pretenses, usually you just keep waiting for that particular shoe to drop. You wait for the truth to come out and then deception reconciliation dominates the third act. Thankfully, the movie speeds over this narrative trap and gets us to the good stuff. We don't need an entire act for people to be contrite and prove their love when what we see onscreen is obvious enough. What elevated Safety Not Guaranteed for me was that beyond the oddball romance, there's careful and compassionate attention played to a slew of supporting characters. Now with a scant 80-minute running time, and the attention-grabber of a guy who thinks he can travel through time, naturally the supporting characters have minimized roles, but what I enjoyed was that they were not just relegated as stock players. The film has two stock roles, Nerd and Jerk, and fleshes them out further (though, to be assured, those are still defining characteristics). Arnau is a guy who is convinced any interaction with girls will ultimately lead to personal embarrassment. He's only focused on the future and what he needs to get there, barely living in the present. It's nice to watch him grow some confidence, albeit a small amount, and find some degree or enjoyment. And then there's self-described asshole Jeff, who only submitted the story so he could come back and bang his old high school girlfriend. Some will find Jeff's minimal personal growth to be disappointing and stagnate, but I thought anything substantial for this character over a three-day period of time would be unrealistic. Jeff is chasing his past memories, a faded time that had so much possibility when he was a stud in high school. The movie explores this notion of returning to a period of innocence as well. Going back to a time before overwrought cynicism, before settling, before compromising, before life became work, it's something of a wish that the characters seem to be chasing. Jeff realizes how truly empty his life is, yet he's probably set in his ways to alter his path, which is a shame because Liz certainly seems like a lovely, caring, and capable romantic opportunity. Hey, she bakes, too (Bergere is great and easy to fall for). The unlikely friendship that emerges between Jeff and Arnau is also quite enjoyable and disarmingly sweet. I also need to single out the score from first time composer Ryan Miller, the lead singer and guitarist for one of my favorite alternative rock bands, Guster. The music has a lilting, dreamy quality to it but then follows a steady melodic rock path, reminiscent of the melancholic score for Little Miss Sunshine. The strumming guitars, plinging pianos, and swelling violins come together in harmony with little sci-fi touches. The score gives the film another sense of enchantment. I've been listening to "Big Machine," the song Kenneth plays for Darius, on a loop for over an hour, if that gives you any indication on how much I enjoyed the original tune. The fact that "Big Machine" plays over the end credits when the movie meets its perfect end has got to account for some of my positive association. I think Miller has a bright future in crafting film scores. Plaza deserves to break out in a big way after this film. She's the heart of the movie and deeply vulnerable, covering it up with nonchalant cynicism. Darius is well within her surly comfort range so it's no surprise that she excels with the hipster character, but the moments of dramatic weight are not given flippant treatment. Duplass (TV's The League) just about everywhere in 2012, delivers a committed performance, though it seems mostly committed to the goofiness of his character. Yet when Duplass is able to show you some of the edge to his character, that's when the performance walks a line between dangerous and exciting. The movie hinges on the two actors working together and they have good chemistry; the goofball and the cynic. It's so nice to discover a movie that lifts your spirits, that touches your heart without reaching for the treacle, and delivers a funny experience without compromising its modest aims and modest tone. Safety Not Guaranteed obviously plays a deliberate dance with the audience, vacillating between moments that make Kenneth seem crazy and moments that make you question whether he's legit. The movie reminded me in a lot of ways with the underrated 2000 flick Happy Accidents, which featured Vincent D'Onofrio as a romantic suitor who also might be a time traveler or just plain nuts. Safety Not Guaranteed is a charming movie that seems to work a spell on you while watching; you get so invested in watching lonely people find meaningful human connections that you are compelling the movie to end under some happy scenario. Director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly deserve to make waves in Hollywood with what they're able to accomplish with a tidy budget and some clever yet earnest writing. This beguiling love story is all about stretching out of your comfort zone and taking a plunge into the unknown. Just like Kenneth, we're all looking for a partner worthy of that plunge (not necessarily a romantic partner, mind you). Take the plunge and go see Safety Not Guaranteed, one of the best movies of the year. Not bad for a movie potentially based upon an Internet meme, huh? Nate's Grade: A

July 2, 2012

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/safety_not_guaranteed/

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Push to ban gay marriage flagging in Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? Ever since gay couples began flocking to Iowa to marry three years ago, conservative Republicans have been looking forward to amassing enough political power to put an end to it. But now that the opportunity is finally approaching, their goal may be slipping out of reach.

Conservative lawmakers are watching public opinion move away from them on the gay marriage issue, and now fear that voters might not approve a ban even if the GOP can put one on the ballot by winning control of the Legislature in the November elections.

The shifting views come as a bitter disappointment for the state's prominent Christian conservative community which has long bridled at Iowa's status as a gay rights haven in the heartland ? the only place outside the Northeast where gays can marry.

"People are getting comfortable with it and that's a shame to tell you the truth," said Susan Geddes, an Iowa Republican and social conservative organizer who worked for Mike Huckabee's 2008 presidential campaign in the state.

Even Republicans seem to be more accepting, said Julie Summa marketing director for The Family Leader, a social conservative advocacy group. She and other evangelical leaders attribute the change to libertarian Republicans, like supporters Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who oppose restrictions on personal freedoms.

The issue is less prominent now in conservative campaigns, they said.

Iowa became the third of six states to legalize gay marriage after the state Supreme Court struck down the state ban in 2009. Since then about 4,500 gay couples have wed here.

Republicans can move to end gay marriage if they win two more seats in the state Senate this year, a goal that could be within reach. That would give them full control of the statehouse and the power to begin preparing a public referendum on the issue.

But the legislative process would take at least two years, and public interest in the cause is already declining. A Des Moines Register poll in February showed 56 percent of Iowans opposed an amendment banning gay marriage, up slightly from a year earlier. The results tracked with the trend in national opinion on the issue.

Geddes, who is managing a handful of GOP statehouse campaigns, said internal polls in conservative Iowa districts show that fewer than 10 percent of Republican voters now consider overturning gay marriage a high priority.

GOP Senate leaders no longer list the issue high on their agenda, although they have promised to propose a ban if they control the legislature. A handful of Republican leaders, such as former county Linn County chairwoman Kathy Potts of Cedar Rapids, recently have announced support for gay marriage.

"If it weren't for the loud voices of a few in our party, I do believe more Republicans would stand up in support" of gay marriage, said Potts, a social conservative who backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential bid.

The atmosphere is much changed from 2010, when conservative advocacy groups mounted a major media campaign against gay marriage and won removal of three justices who had voted to strike down the state ban.

Chuck Laudner, who ran the campaign to dump the judges, said the anti-gay marriage cause has "lost a little of its zip." The political landscape now is dominated by the economy and other issues, he said.

Elsewhere in the nation, gay marriage questions will appear on the November ballot in four states -- Maine voters will consider legalizing it, while those in Maryland, Minnesota and Washington will vote on banning it. North Carolina voters approved a ban earlier this year. President Barack Obama announced his support for gay marriage in May.

The National Organization for Marriage, which spent more than $500,000 in Iowa in the 2010 elections, is planning to spend at least as much this year to help Republicans win in the state.

The outcome of closely contested races for several Democratic-held seats is expected to determine whether the GOP wins control of the Senate. Republicans won control of the House and the governorship in 2010.

Summa said she hopes Christian conservatives will rally for the cause. "I think people still care about the issue," she said.

Iowa gay rights advocates say they are encouraged by the fact that a ballot measure would come no earlier than 2015, considering it must pass both houses of the Legislature in consecutive two-year general assemblies.

Meanwhile, public acceptance should continue to grow, said Des Moines lawyer Sharon Malhiero, a leading Iowa gay rights activist. "It's not a big deal, three years past. The world hasn't collapsed," she said, adding, "But we're not taking anything for granted."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/push-ban-gay-marriage-flagging-iowa-202615959.html

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West trying to 'distort' Syria deal says Russia

Russia accused the West of seeking to distort an agreement for a political transition in Syria, after international peace envoy Kofi Annan said a ceasefire was imperative.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed the Geneva accord based on proposals by Annan as an "important step" but said that Western capitals had read more into the final statement than what was written on paper.

"These (Geneva) agreements are not there to be interpreted. They mean exactly what is said in the communique and we need to follow the agreements that were made," he said.

His comments came soon after Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters a "shift" in positions by Russia and its diplomatic ally China at the Geneva talks should not be underestimated.

A two-day meeting of opposition groups which has been held behind closed doors in Cairo meanwhile ended late Tuesday with a consensus statement, according to Egypt's official MENA news agency.

The conference was boycotted by two of the largest groups -- the Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC) and the Free Syrian Army.

On Saturday, world powers agreed a plan for a transition in Syria that did not make an explicit call for President Bashar al-Assad to quit power, but the West swiftly made clear it saw no role for Assad in a unity government.

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Russia will not attend a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Paris on Friday aimed at coordinating Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence in the country.

"Russia was invited. They made it known that they did not want to participate, which is not a surprise," he told reporters. Russia, a traditional ally of Syria, and China did not attend any previous meetings of the group.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the Russians were free to decide whether to attend the Paris talks or not.

"It's their choice. We think this is a very valuable forum that brings together a much larger group of countries. The door is open to them if they want to join. It's up to them if they don't," Nuland told reporters.

"From our perspective, (this) meeting is important and will add energy and lift to this effort to come to a post-transition strategy" in Syria.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead the US delegation, an official said, with Nuland saying more than 100 countries would attend the talks "to support change and democracy and pluralism" in Syria.

The Paris meeting will be the third such gathering after one in Tunis in February and another in April in Istanbul called for tougher action against the Assad regime.

Annan said a real ceasefire was imperative in Syria, as the death toll mounted to 77 on Tuesday, according to monitors, nearly three months after a truce he brokered failed to take effect.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay warned that foreign arms deliveries to both government and opposition are fuelling a conflict that rights monitors say has killed more than 16,500 people since March last year.

Pillay said both sides were guilty of "serious" rights violations, adding that "any further militarisation of the conflict must be avoided at all costs."

But a pro-Damascus Palestinian militant leader said the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Iran would fight alongside the Syrian regime if it is attacked by foreign forces.

In the event of "a foreign attack, we discussed with our brothers (in the Syrian regime), with (Hezbollah chief) Hassan Nasrallah and our brothers in Iran, we will be part of this battle," said Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Human Rights Watch documented 27 detention facilities across Syria it said were used to hold people swept up in the government's crackdown on an uprising now in its 16th month.

The group said it had carried out more than 200 interviews with former detainees, and military and intelligence defectors, "almost all" of whom described experiencing or witnessing torture, including "prolonged beatings, often with objects such as batons and wires."

Other methods included "holding the detainees in painful stress positions for prolonged periods of time, often with the use of specially devised equipment, the use of electricity, burning with car battery acid, sexual assault and humiliation, the pulling of fingernails and mock execution."

Meanwhile, as Turkey reported a new defection of Syrian troops across the tense border, Assad said he regretted "100 percent" that his country's defence forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet on June 22, but still insisted the plane was in Syrian airspace.

He rejected Turkey's accusations that the Syrian defence forces intentionally shot down the aircraft, which was on a training mission over the Mediterranean.

"A country at war always acts like this. This plane was flying at a very low altitude and was shot down by anti-aircraft defences which mistook it for an Israeli plane, which attacked Syria in 2007," Assad said in an interview with Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper"

Assad said Syria had no plans to send troops to the border with Turkey, even after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent reinforcements to the frontier.

In Cairo, meanwhile, MENA reported that participants in the opposition conference "were unanimous that a political solution in Syria must begin with the departure of the regime of Bashar al-Assad."

They called for a end to the killing by the Syrian army and gave their support to the Free Syrian Army made up of deserters from the Assad regime force.

They also called on the Syrian army to lift its siege of Syrian towns and for the release of all detainees.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/west-trying-distort-syria-deal-says-russia-032828655.html

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Oh, baby! A young star flaunts its X-ray spots in McNeil's Nebula

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

X-ray observations have revealed something curious about the young star that illuminates McNeil's Nebula, a glowing jewel of cosmic dust in the Orion constellation: The object is a protostar rotating once a day, or 30 times faster than the sun. The stellar baby also has distinct birthmarks?two X-ray-emitting spots, where gas flows from a surrounding disk, fueling the infant star.

The young star, V1647 Orionis, first made news in early 2004, when it erupted and lit up McNeil's Nebula, located 1,300 light years away in a region of active star formation within the constellation of Orion. The initial outburst died down in early 2006, but then V1647 Ori erupted again in 2008, and has since remained bright.

More recently, astronomers combined 11 observations of V1647 Ori from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Japan-led Suzaku satellite, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton to determine the source of the high-energy emission. The team began monitoring the star shortly after its eruption in 2004 and continued to keep watch through 2010, a period covering both eruptions.

Strong similarities among X-ray light curves captured over this six-year period allowed the lead author on the study, Kenji Hamaguchi, astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, to identify cyclic X-ray variations. Hamaguchi and the rest of the team determined the star is rotating once per day, making V1647 among the youngest stars whose spin has been determined using an X-ray-based technique. Results from the study will appear in the paper "X-raying the Beating Heart of a Newborn Star: Rotational Modulation of High-energy Radiation from V1647 Ori," in the July 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

"The observations give us a look inside the cradle at a very young star," says co-author Joel Kastner, a professor of imaging science and astronomical sciences and technology at Rochester Institute of Technology. "It's as though we're able to see its beating heart. We're actually able to watch it rotate. We caught the star at a point where it is rotating so fast as it gains material that it's barely able to hold itself together. It's rotating at near break-up speed."

The team identified V1647 Ori as a protostar in formation. "Based on infrared studies, we suspect that this protostar is no more than a million years old, and probably much younger," Hamaguchi says.

V1647 Ori presently feeds on gas channeled from a surrounding disk and will likely continue to do so?though not nearly so rapidly?for millions of years. At that point it will finally be able to generate its own energy by fusing hydrogen into helium in its core like the sun and other mature stars.

Hamaguchi's analysis focused on repetitive behavior found in the data from all three of the X-ray observatories. By combining data, he pieced together a picture showing the daily rotation of two X-ray-emitting spots on V1647 Ori that are thousands of times hotter than the rest of the star.

The hot spots are located at opposite sides of the star, with the southerly one five times brighter than its companion. Each spot is about the diameter of the sun. In comparison, the low density of V1647 Ori bloats the star itself to nearly five times the size of the sun.

"We think these spots are showing us X-ray-emitting regions that are very tightly constrained to a couple positions on the star by magnetic fields," says Kastner, director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics in RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. "For six years, through two different eruptions, we've seen it rotate like this. That means the magnetic field configuration?the overall geometry between the disk and the star?is very stable. At the same time, the local disruption of magnetic fields probably generates the X-rays."

"One attractive possibility for driving such high-speed matter involves magnetic fields that are undergoing a continual cycle of shearing and reconnection in mass accretion," says co-author David Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University.

In this picture, X-ray outbursts result from interplay of the magnetic fields belonging to the star and the disk. The star spins faster than the disk and winds up the magnetic fields until they snap like rubber bands. The pent up energy creates a powerful blast when the tangled magnetic fields fall back into place. The process, called magnetic reconnection, also powers X-ray flares on the sun.

During the outbursts, the star's luminosity varied at optical and infrared wavelengths. The astronomers associated this to changes in the protostar's main energy source, the inflow of matter onto the star. Because changes in the X-ray brightness of V1647 Ori closely followed those in the optical and infrared, the team established that its higher-energy emission is also closely linked to accretion.

"V1647 Ori gave us the first direct evidence that a protostar surges in X-ray activity as its rate of mass accretion rises," says co-author Nicolas Grosso, an astrophysicist of the French National Center for Scientific Research at the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory.

The finding that an accretion burst could be accompanied a surge of high-energy X-rays during the formation of a young star was originally announced by essentially the same study team, led by Kastner, in a paper published in Nature in 2004. In that paper, the team first argued that X-rays emitted by V1647 Ori were coming from material falling onto the star from a surrounding disk.

Up until then, the more widely accepted mechanism for producing X-rays from protostars was thought to be via coronae that are far more powerful than the sun's, Kastner explains. Signatures in X-ray observations of a handful of stars in formative stages had led to the hunch that accretion might also contribute to or even dominate protostellar X-ray emission. The eruptions of V1647 Ori and a few other young stars that were accompanied by elevated X-ray emission levels have since underscored this connection, Kastner notes.

"The exciting and unexpected thing about our fresh look at the whole set of X-ray data for V1647 Ori is that this is the first time we've seen a star in such an early stage of formation with a regular rotation that you can measure in X-rays," Kastner says.

Kastner and team hope to confirm the X-ray study's findings at infrared wavelengths using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

###

Rochester Institute of Technology: http://www.rit.edu

Thanks to Rochester Institute of Technology for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/121450/Oh__baby__A_young_star_flaunts_its_X_ray_spots_in_McNeil_s_Nebula

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Right Wing Joke of the Day: Anderson Cooper Teabagging Durr Hurr (Little green footballs)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

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Four foreign aid workers rescued in Somalia

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/four-foreign-aid-workers-rescued-somalia-army-062948312.html

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FACT CHECK: On keeping your current health plan

FILE - In this Thursday, June 28, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, after the Supreme Court ruled on his health care legislation. The victory will help define Obama's legacy. However, if Obama does not win a second term in November, he risks losing both the law and the core of his legacy. (AP Photo/The New York Times, Luke Sharrett, Pool, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, June 28, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, after the Supreme Court ruled on his health care legislation. The victory will help define Obama's legacy. However, if Obama does not win a second term in November, he risks losing both the law and the core of his legacy. (AP Photo/The New York Times, Luke Sharrett, Pool, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In promoting the health care law, President Barack Obama is repeating his persistent and unsubstantiated assurance that Americans who like their health insurance can simply keep it. Republican rival Mitt Romney says quite the opposite, but his doomsday scenario is a stretch.

After the Supreme Court upheld the law last week, Obama stepped forward to tell Americans what good will come from it. Romney was quick to lay out the harm. But some of the evidence they gave to the court of public opinion was suspect.

A look at their claims and how they compare with the facts:

___

OBAMA: "If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance. This law will only make it more secure and more affordable."

ROMNEY: "Obamacare also means that for up to 20 million Americans, they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep."

THE FACTS: Nothing in the law ensures that people happy with their policies now can keep them. Employers will continue to have the right to modify coverage or even drop it, and some are expected to do so as more insurance alternatives become available to the population under the law. Nor is there any guarantee that coverage will become cheaper, despite the subsidies that many people will get.

Americans may well end up feeling more secure about their ability to obtain and keep coverage once insurance companies can no longer deny, terminate or charge more for coverage for those in poor health. But particular health insurance plans will have no guarantee of ironclad security. Much can change, including the cost.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the number of workers getting employer-based coverage could drop by several million, as some workers choose new plans in the marketplace or as employers drop coverage altogether. Companies with more than 50 workers would have to pay a fine for terminating insurance, but in some cases that would be cost-effective for them.

Obama's soothing words for those who are content with their current coverage have been heard before, rendered with different degrees of accuracy. He's said nothing in the law requires people to change their plans, true enough. But the law does not guarantee the status quo for anyone, either.

So where does Romney come up with 20 million at risk of losing their current plans?

He does so by going with the worst-case scenario in the budget office's analysis. Researchers thought it most likely that employer coverage would decline by 3 to 5 million, but the range of possibilities was broad: It could go up by as much as 3 million or down by as much as 20 million.

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ROMNEY: After saying the new law cuts Medicare by $500 billion and raises taxes by a like amount, adds: "And even with those cuts and tax increases, Obamacare adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt, and pushes those obligations onto coming generations."

THE FACTS: In its most recent complete estimate, in March 2011, the Congressional Budget Office said the new health care law would actually reduce the federal budget deficit by $210 billion over the next 10 years. In the following decade, the law would continue to reduce deficits by about one-half of one percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the office said.

The congressional budget scorekeepers acknowledged their projections are "quite uncertain" because of the complexity of the issue and the assumptions involved, which include the assumption that all aspects of the law are implemented as written. But the CBO assessment offers no backup for Romney's claim that the law "adds trillions to our deficits."

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OBAMA: "And by this August, nearly 13 million of you will receive a rebate from your insurance company because it spent too much on things like administrative costs and CEO bonuses and not enough on your health care."

THE FACTS: Rebates are coming, but not nearly that many Americans are likely to get those checks and for many of those who do, the amount will be decidedly modest.

The government acknowledges it does not know how many households will see rebates in August from a provision of the law that makes insurance companies give back excess money spent on overhead instead of health care delivery. Altogether, the rebates that go out will benefit nearly 13 million people. But most of the benefit will be indirect, going to employers because they cover most of the cost of insurance provided in the workplace.

Employers can plow all the rebate money, including the workers' share, back into the company's health plan, or pass along part of it.

The government says some 4 million people who are due rebates live in households that purchased coverage directly from an insurance company, not through an employer, and experts say those households are the most likely to get a rebate check directly.

The government says the rebates have an average value of $151 per household. But employers, who typically pay 70 to 80 percent of premiums, are likely to get most of that.

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ROMNEY: "Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion."

THE FACTS: The tax increases fall heavily on upper-income people, health insurance companies, drug makers and medical device manufacturers.

People who fail to obtain health insurance as required by the law will face a tax penalty, although that's expected to hit relatively few because the vast majority of Americans have insurance and many who don't will end up getting it. Also, a 10 percent tax has been imposed on tanning bed use as part of the health care law. There are no other across-the-board tax increases in the law, although some tax benefits such as flexible savings accounts are scaled back. Of course, higher taxes on businesses can be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

Individuals making over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000 will pay 0.9 percent more in Medicare payroll tax and a 3.8 percent tax on investments. As well, a tax starts in 2018 on high-value insurance plans.

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OBAMA: "Because of the Affordable Care Act, young adults under the age of 26 are able to stay on their parents' health care plans, a provision that's already helped 6 million young Americans."

THE FACTS: Obama is overstating this benefit of his health law, and his own administration knows better. The Department of Health and Human Services, in a June 19 news release, said 3.1 million young adults would be uninsured were it not for the new law. Obama's number comes from a June 8 survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy foundation. It said 6.6 million young adults joined or stayed on their parents' health plans who wouldn't have been able to absent the law. But that number includes some who switched to their parents' plans from other coverage, Commonwealth Fund officials told the Los Angeles Times.

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ROMNEY: "Obamacare is a job-killer."

THE FACTS: The CBO estimated in 2010 that the law would reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent.

But that's mostly because the law will give many people the opportunity to retire, stay at home with family or switch to part-time work, since they will be able to get health insurance more easily outside of their jobs. That voluntary retreat from the workforce, made possible by the law's benefits, is not the same as employers slashing jobs because of the law's costs, as Romney implies.

The law's penalties on employers who don't provide health insurance might cause some companies to hire fewer low-wage workers or to hire more part-timers instead of full-time employees, the budget office said. But the main consequence would still be from more people choosing not to work.

Apart from the budget office and other disinterested parties that study the law, each side in the debate uses research sponsored by interest groups, often slanted, to buttress its case. Romney cites a Chamber of Commerce online survey in which nearly three-quarters of respondents said the law would dampen their hiring.

The chamber is a strong opponent of the law, having run ads against it. Its poll was conducted unscientifically and is therefore not a valid measure of business opinion.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Jim Drinkard contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-07-02-Health%20Care-Fact%20Check/id-410552da5495492fb25c1d9ee7845384

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