Don’t Mince Words: Gruber Tapes Show President Obama Is A Liar

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

President Barack Obama is a liar.

That’s the takeaway from Massachusetts Institute for Technology professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s video oeuvre of narcissistic honesty.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies,” Gruber said in one of several videos recently uncovered of him explaining at forums and panels over the last several years how Obamacare was dishonestly sold to the public.

“In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in — if you made it explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed,” Gruber went on to say in the 2013 video. “Lack of transparency is a huge advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

“Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance,” Gruber said in another video, speaking at the Pioneer Institute in Boston in 2011.

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Franklin Graham Slams Muslim Service at National Cathedral

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of “America’s Preacher” the Rev. Billy Graham, has slammed the Washington National Cathedral for allowing Muslims to hold their first prayer service there Friday.

On his Facebook account, Graham wrote, “Tomorrow, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. — one of the most prominent Episcopal churches in America — will host a Muslim prayer service to Allah.

“It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins.

“Jesus was clear when He said, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).”

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Congressman Exposes Secretive Obama Program to Strangle Politically Out-of-Favor Businesses

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Photo Credit: Bill Clark / Newscom

Photo Credit: Bill Clark / Newscom

Calling a secretive government operation to strangle politically out-of-favor businesses “more dangerous” than the IRS targeting scandal, a congressman with a background in banking is preparing to introduce legislation to kill the Obama administration initiative.

“I believe this activity is probably more dangerous and more disastrous than that of the IRS scandal because this is running people out of business for no reason and it’s harming livelihoods, incomes [and] families,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., said today in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Luetkemeyer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, was comparing the Department of Justice’s Operation Choke Point to the Internal Revenue Service’s much-reviled targeting of tea party and other conservative groups.

Operation Choke Point seeks to cut off the financial lifeblood of payday lenders and other industries the Obama administration doesn’t like by pressuring banks to close their accounts with such businesses.

The government contends that Operation Choke Point combats unlawful, mass-market consumer fraud. However, a congressional report revealed that the initiative’s targets include legal businesses such as short-term lenders, firearms and ammunition merchants, coin dealers, tobacco sellers and home-based charities.

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62-Year-Old Man Unties Himself And His Wife During Home Invasion, Shoots Attacker Dead

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

A 62-year-old Washington man was able to retrieve his gun after untying both himself and his wife during a home invasion earlier this week — a heroic act which left one of the bandits dead.

The incident unfolded Tuesday night in Lakewood after the homeowner answered a knock at his front door, The News Tribune reported. The man’s 66-year-old wife was taking a bath at the time.

The homeowner did not know the three men, but when he tried to close his door they barged into the house, armed with one gun and one knife.

The attackers pistol-whipped the man, who needed stitches in his head. The woman suffered a cut to her hand as the attackers dragged her out of the bath tub in order to tie up the couple.

When the three attackers went outside of the house momentarily, the man was able to bust loose and retrieve his gun, which he kept in a lock box.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Responds to Jerusalem Synagogue Attack: 'Too Many Palestinians Have Died'

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By FRANCES MARTEL.

President Obama has responded to [yesterday’s] terrorist attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem in which four Israeli Jews attending morning prayers condemning the attack, and stating that “the majority of Palestinians” want peace.

In a statement delivered to the White House press pool, President Obama responded to the attack by declaring that “too many Palestinians have died,” as well as Israelis, in the struggle between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hamas and its affiliates, including the internationally active Muslim Brotherhood. “At this difficult time,” the President told reports, “I think it’s important for both Palestinians and Israelis to try to work together to lower tensions and reject violence.”

“We have to remind ourselves that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis overwhelmingly want peace,” the statement concludes, before the President begins remarks on the Ebola crisis in West Africa. The President did not take questions.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash 90

Photo Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash 90

Terrorists’ Families Celebrate, Pass out Candies in Jerusalem

By Ari Yashar.

The families of cousins Uday and Rassan Abu Jamal in Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukabar celebrated wildly on Tuesday, after learning that the two had murdered four Jews and wounded eight others with hatchets, knives and guns in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood.

“We responded with shouts of joy when we received the news about their deaths,” Ala’a Abu Jamal said of his cousins to Yedioth Aharonoth. “People here distributed candies to guests who visited us, and there was joy for the martyrs.”

Trying to justify the horrific attack using the situation on the Temple Mount, where Jews are forbidden from praying and Muslim visitors riot on a near daily basis, he continued by calling the attack “a normal thing that can be expected from every man who has courage and a feeling of belonging to his people and to Islam.”

“The attack was a surprise for us, we didn’t expect that it would occur,” claimed Ala’a Abu Jamal. “The two killed (terrorists – ed.) were regular workers and weren’t associated with any organization. One of them was married with three children. Thank Allah, someone who dies as a martyr, that’s a great thing.”

Despite his claims the two were not affiliated to any group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack, which was also praised by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.

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Obama Just Stepped In A Pile Of Gruber (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Dan Riehl.

There are at least two notable issues that emerge from this brief clip of Barack Obama’s latest remarks on the current fire storm surrounding Jonathan Gruber, ObamaCare and the White House.

First, Obama describes Gruber as “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” While that may be technically correct, it would depend on what the definition of “staff” is. While Gruber didn’t take the pay cut that joining Obama’s staff may have cost him, certainly he was specifically sought out and retained by the administration as a key figure in their efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act.

The other issue raised by Obama’s comments is significant and pertains to Gruber, as well.

In 2009, just one month after President Obama took office, the Department of Health and Human Services put out a sole-source solicitation titled “Technical Assistance in Evaluating Options for Health Reform.” The contract would be with Gruber, who the document said was the only person “reasonably available to satisfy agency requirements.”

As the agency put it, “Dr. Gruber developed a proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model that has the flexibility to ascertain the distribution of changes in health care spending and public and private sector health care costs due to a large variety of changes in health insurance benefit design, public program eligibility criteria, and tax policy.”

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Obama in 2006: ‘I Have Stolen Ideas From’ Jonathan Gruber

By Daily Signal Video Team.

President Obama was casual on Sunday about the role Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jonathan Gruber had played in the creation of Obamacare, saying Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.”

Gruber has been under fire in recent days after several videos emerged of him discussing the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. In one clip, Gruber called the American people “stupid.”

Read more from this story HERE.

That's an Order: Obama Announces Action on Immigration…

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Obama to announce immigration action Thursday

By Jim Kuhnhenn and Erica Werner.

In a broad test of his executive powers, President Barack Obama declared Wednesday he will sidestep Congress and order his own federal action on immigration — in measures that could spare from deportation as many as 5 million people illegally in the U.S. and set up one of the most pitched partisan confrontations of his presidency.

Obama declared that Washington has allowed America’s immigration problem “to fester for too long.”

The president will use an 8 p.m. EST address Thursday to announce his measures and will sign the executive actions during a rally in Las Vegas on Friday. In doing so, Obama will be taking an aggressive stand that he had once insisted was beyond his presidential power.

As many as 5 million people in the country illegally are likely to be protected from deportation and made eligible for work permits under the plan. They would not have a path to citizenship, however, and the actions could be reversed by a new president in two years. Officials said the eligible immigrants would not be entitled to federal benefits — including health care tax credits — under Obama’s plan.

The 5 million estimate includes extending deportation protections to parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for five years. The president also is likely to expand his 2-year-old program that protects young immigrants from deportation. The administration had considered extending the executive action to parents of young immigrants covered under the 2012 Obama directive, but immigration advocates said they did not expect the parents to be included in the final plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jason Reed

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jason Reed

Obama to act unilaterally on immigration

By Steve Holland and Richard Cowan.

President Barack Obama will outline a plan on Thursday to relax U.S. immigration policy for as many as 5 million people, bypassing Congress and angering Republicans.

U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, the leading Republican voice on fiscal policy and a potential 2016 presidential candidate, called the plan a “partisan bomb” while a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner branded the president “Emperor Obama” for acting unilaterally.

The White House said Obama will deliver a televised speech at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday (0100 GMT Friday) laying out the plan followed by a trip to Las Vegas on Friday. Nevada is home to the highest proportion of undocumented immigrants.

Frustrated by years of congressional inaction on what most in Washington agree is a broken immigration system, Obama said he is now prepared to use his executive authority.

Obama’s directives are expected to remove the threat of deportation for as many as 5 million of the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States.

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Senate Fails To Move Ahead With Keystone Pipeline and NSA Reform

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

By Matt Vespa.

As Dan wrote [yesterday], the Keystone Pipeline vote went down in flames. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Hail Mary ended in disaster; she fell one vote shy to invoke cloture on a bill that probably would not have saved her from defeat in her state’s upcoming runoff election on Dec. 6 against Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy.

Additionally, a bill to reform the National Security Agency post-Snowden also fell two votes shy of cloture; incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spearheaded the bill’s opposition. Yet, both bills are expected to return to the Senate floor next year. Keystone will probably pass, but the changes in the NSA bill will be quite different under a Republican Senate (via NYT):

[T]he vote only put off a fractious debate over security and personal liberties until next year. While a Republican-controlled Senate is less likely to go along with the kinds of changes that were in the bill, which would have ended the N.S.A.’s ability to collect bulk phone call data, the debate could further expose rifts between the party’s interventionist and more libertarian-leaning wings.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: TOM PENNINGTON / Getty

Photo Credit: TOM PENNINGTON / Getty

Democrats Block Keystone Bill, Landrieu’s Plea Rejected

BY BEN GEMAN, CLARE FORAN AND JASON PLAUTZ.

Mary Landrieu begged her fellow Democrats to back legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline, looking for a lifeline in her long-shot bid to keep her Senate seat. But on Tuesday night, she fell one vote short.

The Senate rejected an attempt to get cloture on the measure, with 41 senators—all Democrats or independents—voting to stall the measure.

It’s a victory for environmental groups and their Democratic allies, who oppose the oil-sands pipeline because of its contributions to global warming. And it saves President Obama a headache: The White House opposed the bill but will be relieved not to have to veto it.

For Landrieu, it’s another setback at an already low moment. Weeks away from Louisiana’s Dec. 6 runoff election and trailing Rep. Bill Cassidy in the polls, Landrieu had hoped to use her steering of the measure through the Senate to infuse new life into her campaign. She got a boost from her party’s top brass when they agreed to hold a stand-alone Keystone vote, a step they’d been loathe to take in the past.

And going into the vote, Landrieu had 59 assured supporters for her motion, but—despite her assurances she could break a filibuster—it was never clear where she’d get No. 60. Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin was seen as one of Landrieu’s last options, but he voted ‘no’ on the bill.

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30,000 Emails that IRS's Lerner 'Lost Forever,' Now Recovered

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Photo Credit: AP / Susan Walsh

Photo Credit: AP / Susan Walsh

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever.

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.

“They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

The IRS, in a statement provided to the Examiner, said the agency and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is fully cooperating with the investigation.

“As Commissioner Koskinen has stated, the IRS welcomes TIGTA’s independent review and expert forensic analysis.” The IRS statement said. “Commissioner Koskinen has said for some time he would be pleased if additional Lois Lerner emails from this time frame could be found.”

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My Immigrant Father's Warning: 'When Illegality Becomes the Law'

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Blue-State-BluesI am a legal immigrant. I did not choose to come to the United States—I was carried here, by my parents, who arrived with one suitcase and nothing else. They were not fleeing political oppression, religious persecution, or economic collapse. In fact, as white South Africans in the 1970s, they were born into a life of exclusive privilege and prosperity. My father had grown up poor but made his way to medical school. A life of wealth awaited.

Yet my parents chose to immigrate to the United States instead, living in a basement apartment with no family nearby, enduring a Chicago winter they could never possibly have imagined. My father had to redo part of his medical residency as my mother tended to an eight-week-old infant alone.

After many years and much hard work, they achieved the American dream. But they certainly would have been more comfortable in South Africa.

Years later, I asked my father why they had left South Africa. To this day, he has the same answer: “Illegality became the law.”

As students, he and my mother had both volunteered in the black and “coloured” townships where whites were rarely seen. They saw, firsthand, the injustice of a regime that stripped citizens of their vote, their property, and their dignity. And at that time, they could not have foreseen Nelson Mandela’s “miracle.”

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