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Entertainment

Argentina_Judge_Justin_Bieber

INDIO, CA – APRIL 13: Singer Justin Bieber performs with Chance The Rapper onstage during day 3 of the 2014 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on April 13, 2014 in Indio, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella)

An Argentinian judge said Friday that there is enough evidence against Justin Bieber to question him in a 2013 criminal case that arose during his South American tour.

Bieber is accused of sending bodyguards to attack a photographer outside a Buenos Aires nightclub. The trip was also when he was forced to apologize for defiling the Argentine flag on stage and got into trouble with police for allegedly spraying graffiti in Brazil and Colombia.

“The evidence from witnesses, footage and photos shows that he didn’t wanted his pictures taken,” Judge Facundo Cubas told The Associated Press in an interview. “That led his bodyguards to chase down after the photographers and it was followed by a beating.”

Cubas has now summoned Bieber for questioning and has formally asked Interpol to notify the singer that he has 60 days to appear in compliance with the summons. The judge says that he’ll issue an international arrest order if Bieber fails to comply.

Argentine photographer Diego Pesoa has alleged that he was beaten on the night of Nov. 9, 2013, by Bieber’s bodyguards outside the INK nightclub, where the singer and his entourage partied. According to Argentinian law, Bieber could face as little as one month or as much as six years in prison if he was convicted on a charge of causing injuries, the judge said.

Representatives for the Canadian-born singer could not be reached for comment.

An Argentinian judge said Friday that there

Politics

obama_immigration_cotton_senate

Arkansas Sen-elect Tom Cotton, right, adds his name to a list of Republicans proposing to pull the purse strings on targeted legislative actions in response to President Obama’s plan to issue executive amnesty. (Photos: AP)

With President Obama’s decision to issue executive amnesty looming large, a consensus GOP response is beginning to emerge and it doesn’t consist of impeachment or shutdowns. Arkansas Sen.-elect Tom Cotton became the last of a growing list of Republicans suggesting the GOP will selectively block the president’s spending like the GOP has repeatedly and successfully done with the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Cotton, a Republican congressman who was recently and overwhelmingly elected to the Senate after he defeated incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor, told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that the Republican-controlled lower chamber could pass a series of spending bills that limit the president’s ability to spend on Social Security cards for illegal immigrants.

Cotton, along with Oklahoma Sen.-elect James Lankford, who also is a GOP House member, both said that the GOP will not be pushing for a shutdown, which is thought to be largely unpopular with Americans.

“I don’t think anybody wants to shut down government,” Cotton said. “We’re not pursing some government shutdown,” Lankford added.

While the two rising stars in the GOP seemed on the same page, they are but freshmen senators, nonetheless. However, senior Senate Republicans have echoed the strategy in recent days following the news reports.

“Congress has the power of the purse. The President cannot spend a dime unless Congress appropriates it,” Republican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions wrote in a recent op-ed in Politico. He said Congress would stop Obama by barring money from being used for that purpose.

He argued that similar tactics have been used by both Democrats and Republicans in the past to prevent the president from closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, another move that is widely unpopular among the American people.

“This is an action by the president of the United States to give amnesty to millions of individuals, which Congress has explicitly refused to do,” Session said in a statement. “Under the current law, they are illegally here and unable to work.”

Cotton also compared the plan to the GOP’s strategy of passing a Defense spending bill in June that included a provision that barred funding for transferring detainees in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay. With Cotton and other newly-elected senators enjoying the support of groups that are staunchly opposed to the president’s move to issue executive amnesty, as well as a slew of new House members, it is worth noting that it would appear those groups are on the same page. That is, at least for now.

“This is a fight Republicans can win if they unite in opposition to the president and refuse to fund his executive order,” said Senate Conservatives Fund President Ken Cuccinelli. “If Republicans hold strong, they can put enormous pressure on the Democrats to abandon the president on this issue.”

Of course, the president could simply not budge and hope to force a government shutdown. He has made it crystal clear he is willing to “poison the well” by issuing the order for executive amnesty, a move most D.C. operatives on both sides agree is meant to pick a fight with the newly elected Congress, rather than actually fix the issue of illegal immigration.

“Yes, it may lead to a temporary government shutdown because the president has good reason to think Republicans will blink,” Cuccinelli said. “But if the party holds strong, Democrats in Congress will be forced to abandon the president’s reckless action.”

A little known fact regarding the past government shutdown was that the GOP actually had a slight majority support for delaying ObamaCare until the leadership began to get week in the knees. Weekly tracking polls conducted before and after the shutdown found a clear trend — as the GOP Senate leadership abandoned Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, so did the people.

It remains wholly unclear whether the Democrats — who ended up losing badly despite the shutdown anyway, let’s not forget — will feel as inclined to back the president this time around. The first shutdown transpired before Obama was awarded PolitFact’s “Lie of the Year” award, and before his approval ratings and favorability ratings both began to plummet.

With President Obama's decision to issue executive

Opinion, Video

This week, we learned President Obama will ignore the U.S. Constitution and the Republican midterm wave, and grant amnesty through executive fiat. Brit Hume, George Will, Jackie Kucinich, Juan Williams and join Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday to debate executive amnesty.

In part two, the panel debates the latest on ObamaCare, particularly the MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who was widely cited by Democrats during the process debating the bill before it became the president’s signature health care law. Gruber was caught on video saying the Democrats relied upon “a lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American voters” to pass the bill.

A recent PPD investigation tied Gruber to top Democrats and the president, himself.

Brit Hume, George Will, Jackie Kucinich, Juan

World

Islamic_State_Beheads_Peter_Kassig

This undated photo provided by Kassig Family shows Peter Kassig standing in front of a truck filled with supplies for Syrian refugees. (Photo: AP/Kassig Family)

In a graphic new video, the Islamic State terror group is claiming to have beheaded American hostage Peter Kassig, the aid worker and former Army Ranger. Though U.S. officials say they have not yet verified the footage, one Pentagon official told PPD that they have little reason to question its authenticity.

National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a formal statement that intelligence officials were “working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity. If confirmed, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American aid worker and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends.”

The video had some similarities, but differed greatly in certain ways to previous beheading footage. First, it was far longer and, second, it didn’t focus specifically on one hostage.

In the nearly 16-minute video released via social media on Sunday, a black-clad militant presumed to be Jihad John with his face concealed stands before a severed head that he claims is that of the U.S. aid worker. Jihadi John was responsible for previous hostage beheadings, but was reportedly injured in a U.S. airstrike.

The video also showed what appeared to be the mass beheading of more than a dozen captured Syrian soldiers, but did not show the beheading of the person identified as Kassig, 26. Showing the execution of the soldiers was also a switch from previous videos, which did not show the actual act of beheading. The soldiers’ executioners are also not wearing masks in the video. They go on to warn they will carry out similar actions outside the region, hinting that more U.S. and allied attacks are in the making.

While PPD is in possession of the actual video, we will not be posting it for several reasons. First and foremost, the family has requested media not do so, and we will honor that request.

Ed and Paula Kassig, Peter’s parents, released a statement early Sunday saying they were aware of the reports of their son’s death and were awaiting confirmation of their authenticity.

“We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family,” the statement read, “not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause.”

“This is Peter Edward Kassig, a U.S. citizen, of your country; Peter who fought against the Muslims in Iraq, while serving as a soldier,” the militant says toward the end of the video, which was released shortly after President Obama departed for Washington from the G-20 summit in Australia.  . He is clearly speaking with a British accent, which is easily recognizable despite attempts to make it more difficult to identify him. They tried to hide his voice by distorting it.

“We say to you, Obama …you claim to have withdrawn from Iraq four years ago,” the militant said. “Here you are: you have not withdrawn. Rather, you hid some of your forces behind your proxies,” he said, apparently referring to Western-backed Syrian rebels, Kurdish fighters and the Iraqi military.

“Here we are, burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive.”

The video also attempts to tie ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, from which Islamic State claims descent. Baghdadi, whom they call the caliph, was also reportedly injured in a U.S. strike last week, but intelligence and Pentagon officials never substantiated the claims that originated from Iraqi officials, and it has become clear that he survived if he was even hurt.

Sky News reported that the man featured in the video spoke in English with a British accent. The Associated Press reported that his voice had been distorted to make him harder to identify. It was not immediately clear whether he was the same militant who has appeared in other beheading videos and has been referred to as “Jihadi John” in accounts given by former hostages of their captivity.

The video identifies the militant’s location as Dabiq, a small town in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. The urban setting is another departure from previous beheading videos, which were filmed in the remote desert of northeastern Syria.

Kassig would be the fifth Western hostage killed by ISIS in less than three months, and the third American. Previous Western beheading victims were American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Britons David Haines, a former Royal Air Force engineer, and Alan Henning, a taxi driver from northwest England. The group is also holding British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several other videos released by the group functioning as a de facto spokesman.

It is not clear when the video was filmed. Last month, a Twitter account linked to ISIS posted a message warning that Kassig had only days to live. A video released last month appeared to show Kassig, of Indianapolis, kneeling as a masked militant says he will be killed next, after Henning’s purported beheading. Kassig had been held in Syria since October 2013.

Kassig formed the aid organization Special Emergency Response and Assistance, or SERA, in Turkey to provide aid and assistance to Syrian refugees. He began delivering food and medical supplies to Syrian refugee camps in 2012 and is also a trained medical assistant who provided trauma care to injured Syrian civilians and helped train 150 civilians in providing medical aid.

In a graphic new video, the Islamic

Politics, Video

This week on The McLaughlin Group, Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Mortimer Zuckerman and Tom Rogan debate U.S.-China relations and weakening U.S. hand. Pat Buchanan said the Chinese taking a page out of the U.S. foreign policy playbook, doing to the U.S. something akin to what America did to the British in the days of its own waning strength.

“This was a huge triumph for the Chinese, John. You’ve got $85 billion in American exports to China, they run a $300 billion surplus at our expense every year,” Buchanan said. “They’ve got $4 trillion in foreign trade currency reserves. They’re building a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

“Like Napoleon tried to do in Europe, they’re trying to bring all those countries under their control,” he added. “They use their investment and aide to get tangible and hard gains for them. The Chinese are really doing to the United States in this century and at the end of the last century what the United States did to Great Britain at the end of the 19th century. We’re basically eclipsing them and moving them out as the first military and economic power on earth.”

This week on The McLaughlin Group, Pat

Politics, Video

 

“I support president’s the position on the policy, on the substance of it,” David Brooks of The New York Times said on PBS News Hour. “A lot of what it does is going to keep families together. And so, on the substance of it, I think it’s fine. On the politics of it, on the effect on our country, I think it’s just a terrible, terrible idea, sort of a Ted Cruz stick in the eye of any chance we would have bipartisanship.”

PPD learned last week that President Obama will issue an executive order that will grant amnesty unilaterally, without even giving the newly elected Congress a chance to hatch out a deal. While agreeing with the policy, Brooks said the order is not in the president’s authority, regardless of the GOP’s lack of response.

The Republicans were saying reasonable things after their victory: We want to start out small. Let’s try to pass some legislation on things where we agree on.

And they weren’t major pieces of legislation, but they were pieces. It would be nice to pass a law. We haven’t passed a significant piece of legislation in this country in like four years. It would be nice to do something just to get something done.

I think this very aggressive way the president has led with a very difficult issue makes that much less likely. Second, I do think it takes immigration reform much less likely over the next five or 10 years. I think the Republicans were eventually going to have to get around to it. Just — they just know eventually they have to get around to passing this thing. That makes it much less likely.

And then, finally, I just think it’s constitutional overreach. Basically, five million people, maybe six million people are going to be affected by this. I think it just, constitutionally, for the sake of our system, when you have something that major, redefining the status of five million or six million people, I think it should go through the legislative process. I’m not a constitutional lawyer. I don’t know the effect of that.

But I just think it’s a major change in American policy, and it would be nice to go through Congress, rather than just by the signature of a pen.

Appearing on PBS News Hour, New York

Polls

delay obamacare

In July, the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated ObamaCare subsidies for health insurance obtained through the federally-run HealthCare.gov. The ruling was a major blow to the president’s signature health care law, and it teed-up the second time the constitutionality of the law would once again be decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Nov. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the legal challenge to ObamaCare and, now, more voters than not say it is a good idea to delay ObamaCare until the high court has a chance to rule.

A new survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports found a plurality — 47 percent — thinks implementation of ObamaCare should be put on hold until all legal challenges are exhausted, while just 40 percent disagree and 13 percent say they are not sure.

The appellate court said the Internal Revenue Service — thus, the Obama administration — broke the law by offering tax subsidies in all 50 states to offset the cost of health insurance. The administration was attempting to limit the damage caused by the fundamental flaws within the law, such as higher-than-expected risk pools and various other enrollment misses.

The suit maintained that the language in ObamaCare actually restricts subsidies to the 14 state-run exchanges and never authorized subsidies to be given in the 36 states that use the federally run system, or the unsecured HealthCare.gov.

ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber, who is making headlines now that he was caught on tape saying Democrats used a “lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American voter” to pass the bill, made a number of comments and accusations after the ruling was handed down, including calling those who say the law should be interpreted as it was written “screwy,” “nutty,” “stupid,” and “desperate.”

The man who recently said that he knew “more about this law than any other economist,” insisted that those who crafted the law “had no intention of excluding the federal states,” and even outrageously proclaimed that anyone who disagreed with that statement was a “criminal.”

“Literally every single person involved in the crafting of this law has said that it`s a typo,” Gruber said in an interview with MSNBC.

However, PPD previously published two videos clearly proving Gruber was — once again — lying. He was lying about the subsidies during the interview with MSNBC and on other occasions, but flat-out admitted that federal subsidies were left out of the bill for political reasons.

In a shocking rebuke of the law, which Americans never wanted and still do not want, Scott Brown was elected in deep Blue Massachusetts to replace the late liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, a long-time advocate of government-run healthcare.

Democrats simply didn’t have the votes to take up another piece of legislation similar to the even more centralized House bill. They had no choice but to settle on the version that had already been passed in the Senate, which specifically barred ObamaCare subsidies for consumers in states that did not set up SBMs, or state-based marketplaces. The House went on to pass the Senate version, and here we are.

The survey of 1,000 likely U.S. voters was conducted on November 12-13, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.

Amid comments from architect Jonathan Gruber, a

Politics, Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqHz2XcUGok

Jonathan Gruber’s mouth is the gift that won’t stop giving to Republicans, as a series of videos surface more than suggesting what the American people already know — the administration lied about ObamaCare. But as Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the White House, attempt to distance themselves from the toxic elitist, details indicate he was one of the top go-to advisors during the health care debate.

Gruber was retained by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009 to the tune of $297,600 to provide “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform.” Gruber also confirmed to The Washington Post that he was paid another $95,000 prior, bringing the running total to approximately $400,000, all funded by the very people he was compelled to mock as stupid — the American people.

Gruber was recently caught shooting off his mouth yet again on video, this time bragging how the Massachusetts health care system he helped design worked by ripping off millions of dollars from the federal government.

On top of that, another video has surfaced from Vermont showing him mocking a critic of single-payer health care, comparing him to an “adolescent” child.

The latest videos of Jonathan Gruber come after House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed Thursday she didn’t know who he was. However, as we demonstrated this week, Pelosi was lying. She actually cited Gruber’s analysis — repeatedly — several years ago to counter Republicans’ arguments against passing ObamaCare. Amazingly, her office continues to insist he played no real role in the crafting of their bill, and that she wasn’t familiar with the man.

Yet, video after video has emerged of Gruber boasting about the behind-the-scenes efforts to ram the Affordable Care Act down the throats of the American people, who have never offered majority support for the bill. The latest videos pertain to state health overhauls, in both Massachusetts and Vermont.

One video, which is viewable above, was taped in January 2012 at the University of Rhode Island, and shows Gruber discussing the Massachusetts overhaul under then-Gov. Mitt Romney. He explained how the state was able to bill the feds over hundreds of millions of Medicaid dollars.

“The dirty secret in Massachusetts is the feds paid for our bill, okay?” he said. “In Massachusetts we had a very powerful senator you may know named Ted Kennedy. … Ted Kennedy and smart people in Massachusetts had basically figured out a way to sort of rip off the feds for about 400 million dollars a year.”

In yet another video, reported by Watchdog.org and shot by TrueNorthReports.com, Gruber in 2011 mocked a critic during a Vermont House committee hearing examining a publicly financed health program. At the hearing, a lawmaker read aloud one comment that warned of “ballooning costs” and “bureaucratic outrages.”

As the hearing participants began to laugh, Gruber said: “Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?”

According to Watchdog.org, Gruber is currently being paid to advise the state of Vermont on a new health care plan. Watchdog.org also spoke with the man who wrote the comment that drew Gruber’s snarky rebuke, former state senator and Reagan adviser John McClaughry.

“No one should trust this man,” McClaughry told Watchdog.org. “Based on the rest of the stuff that’s come out on the videos, nobody can trust this guy.”

Even though Pelosi claimed she wasn’t familiar with Gruber, at least some other Democrats are no longer attempting to insult the intelligence of the American people. They have made clear they do in fact know him and aren’t too pleased with him at the moment.

On CNN, former White House press secretary Jay Carney said of the tapes, “It’s not good” and acknowledged he helped write ObamaCare and the Massachusetts law.

Gruber “speaks from the ivory tower with remarkable hubris about the American voter and by extension the American Congress,” Carney added. “To speak that way [is] very harmful politically to the president.”

Speaking of the president, Gruber is heard several times in at least two videos purporting to have meetings with Obama.

A brief search of the White House visitor logs reveal President Obama was, in fact, present for the July 20, 2009, meetings that also included Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Phil Schiliro, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle, Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag (a former CBO director himself), National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Christy Romer, senior adviser David Axelrod, and press secretary Robert Gibbs.

The Department of Health and Human Services adviser Meena Seshamani, Harvard University economist David Cutler and Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institute, who was founding director of CBO from 1975-1983, were all present, as well.

According to an account from Gruber, himself, which is backed up by a now-dead link erased by Elmendorf yet archived by Google’s way-back machine, the president was aware of all the deception and lies.

“He talks himself about being in the Oval Office, on loan to Congress, particularly the Senate Budget Committee,” Rich Weinstein, who helped dig up the Gruber tapes.

Gruber is still raking in the people’s money hand over fist. According to reports in July, he was hired by Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin for $400,000 to study how to create a revenue stream for a single-payer health care system. Records show Minnesota paid him nearly $330,000 for health care work in 2011 and 2012. And around the same time, a 2012 contract from Michigan offered $481 million for health care analysis to a team of three firms, including Gruber and his “Gruber Microsimulation Model.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10XTtRYX3wA

Despite Democrats' attempts to distance themselves from

Economy

import export

(Photo: REUTERS)

The Labor Department said on Friday import and export prices fell in September as the cost of petroleum fell relative to a stronger dollar, 1.3 and 1 percent respectively.

U.S. import prices fell in September by the most in more than two years, which was the biggest decline since June 2012. Still, the drop was shy of expectations for 1.5 percent. The drop in overall import prices was fueled by lower costs for imported fuels, with the cost of petroleum down 6.9 percent.

While the U.S. economy has shown modest signs of improvement in recent months, the global economy is clearly beginning to slow, including in the world’s second-largest economy — China.

But the data in the report also show many non-fuel prices falling, as well, which suggest a stronger dollar was making it cheaper for Americans to buy imports.

The dollar has gained roughly 9 percent against the currencies of U.S. trading partners in the four months up until the month of October. In October, prices for imports from the European Union fell 0.2 percent, while prices for Canadian goods and services dropped 2.3 percent. Prices from Mexico dropped 0.9 percent. Prices ticked higher by 0.1 percent for goods and services from China and Japan.

The Labor Department said on Friday import

Polls

net_neutrality_fix_the_internet

Americans are already satisfied with their online service and they strongly oppose Obama’s so-called plan to “fix the Internet’ or net neutrality, which would allow the federal government to regulate the Internet.

The vast majority of Americans don’t believe the government should fix the Internet, and believe the Obama’s net neutrality plan is all about government control. According to a new survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports, just 26 percent of American adults agree the Federal Communications Commission should regulate the Internet like it does radio and television.

Meanwhile, 61 percent disagree and think the Internet should remain free of government regulation and censorship. Further, 68 percent are concerned that if the FCC does gain regulatory control over the Internet, then the government will abuse the power and attempt to control online content, or promote a political agenda. A whole 44 percent plurality are “very concerned.”

Since Rasmussen began polling the issue, most Americans held the same views as they do now, but the level of concern has risen substantially in recent days following the president’s announcement. In December 2010, 56 percent expressed concern the government would abuse the power, but now just 8 percent say they aren’t concerned at all.

Now, only 19 percent of adults trust the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time, with cynicism ironically increasing the most among younger adults.

Perhaps usage is at the center of the results, particularly because they use the Internet more than other groups, but opposition to government regulation of the Internet is highest among Americans under 40 and those who use the Internet regularly.

As far as partisanship, 65 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of adults not affiliated with either major party oppose FCC regulation of the Internet. Democrats agree but by a much narrower 48 percent to 37 percent margin.

The bottom line is that all age groups say they are perfectly happy with their Internet services and want the government to stay out of the Internet business, including Internet taxes. Most Americans — 63 percent — disagree with the idea of government taxing business on the Internet.

The vast majority of Americans don't believe

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