The Peasants are Revolting!!

indyfromaz|

“Sire, The Peasants are Revolting.”
“You’re telling me, they stink on ice” (Mel Brook’s History of the World Part 1)

And from one of the best films ever, Monty Python & The Holy Grail.
ARTHUR: I am your king! (Think Obama, The Ivy Tower Harvard Educated Community Organizer and Academic Professor )

OLD WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
OLD WOMAN: Well, how did you become king, then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held Excalibur aloft from the bosom of the water to signify by Divine Providence … that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur … That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Look, strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out swords … that’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ( and ours ignores that in favor of  Socialist Keynesian Liberal Academic Fantasies and “democratic” cramdowns for your own good because we are so morally and intellectually superior)

ARTHUR: Be quiet! (HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Insurance Industry)

DENNIS: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away!
ARTHUR: (Grabbing him by the collar) Shut up, will you. Shut up!
DENNIS: Ah! NOW … we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up! (DAMN TEA PARTIERS!)

PEOPLE (i.e. other PEASANTS) are appearing and watching.
DENNIS: (calling) Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: (aware that people are now coming out and watching) Bloody peasant! (pushes DENNIS over into mud and prepares to ride off) (Bloody Teabagger!)

DENNIS: Oh, Did you hear that! What a give-away.
ARTHUR: Come on, patsy.
They ride off.
DENNIS: (in the background as we PULL OUT) did you see him repressing me, then? That’s what I’ve been on about …
Call the NAACP!!, LA Raza, or MSDNC…


But now to the more serious point. This amazing article by Victor David Hanson.
Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.
In contrast, Western civilization began with a very different ancient Greek idea of an autonomous citizen, not an indentured serf or subsistence peasant. The small, independent landowner — if left to his own talents and if his success was protected by, and from, government — would create new sources of wealth for everyone. The resulting greater bounty for the poor soon trumped their old jealousy of the better off.
Citizens of ancient Greece and Italy soon proved more prosperous and free than either the tribal folk to the north and west, or the imperial subjects to the south and east. The success of later Western civilization in general, and America in particular, is testament to this legacy of the freedom of the individual in the widest political and economic sense
We seem to be forgetting that lately — though Mao Zedong’s redistributive failures in China, or present-day bankrupt Greece, should warn us about what happens when government tries to enforce an equality of result rather than of opportunity.
Even after the failure of statism at the end of the Cold War, the disasters of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, and the recent financial meltdowns in the European Union, for some reason America is returning to a peasant mentality of a limited good that redistributes wealth rather than creates it. Candidate Obama’s “spread the wealth” slip to Joe the Plumber simply was upgraded to President Obama’s “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
The more his administration castigates insurers, businesses and doctors; raises taxes on the upper income brackets; and creates more regulations, the more those who create wealth are sitting out, neither hiring nor lending. The result is that traditional self-interested profit-makers are locking up trillions of dollars in unspent cash rather than using it to take risks and either lose money due to new red tape or see much of their profit largely confiscated through higher taxes.
No wonder that in such a climate of fear and suspicion, unemployment remains near 10 percent. Deficits chronically exceed $1 trillion per annum. And now the poverty rate has hit a historic high. We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don’t get richer.
The public is seldom told that 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 40 percent of the income taxes collected, while 40 percent of income earners are exempt from federal income tax — or that present entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are financially unsustainable. Instead, they hear more often that those who managed to scheme to make above $250,000 per year have obligations to the rest of us to give back about 60 percent of what they earn in higher health care and income taxes — together with payroll and rising state income taxes, and along with increased capital gains and inheritance taxes.
That limited-good mind-set expects that businesses will agree that they now make enough money and so have no need to pursue any more profits at the expense of others. Therefore, they will gladly still hire the unemployed and buy new equipment — as they pay higher health care or income taxes to a government that knows far better how to redistribute their income to the more needy or deserving.
This peasant approach to commerce also assumes that businesses either cannot understand administration signals or can do nothing about them. So who cares that in the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement, quite arbitrarily the government put the unions in front of the legally entitled lenders?
Health insurers should not mind that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just warned them to keep their profits down and their mouths shut — or face exclusion from health care markets.
I suppose that no corporation should worry that the government arbitrarily announced — without benefit a law or court ruling — that it wanted BP to put up $20 billion in cleanup costs for the Gulf spill.

What optimistic Americans used to call a rising tide that lifts all boats is now once again derided as trickle-down economics.

In other words, a newly peasant-minded America is willing to become collectively poorer so that some will not become wealthier.

The present economy suggests that it is surely getting its wish. (Townhall.com)
But damn it will feel good, at least for liberals, to stick to the rich bastards.
Class warfare is like the fire they set at night to keep them warm and to warn off the predators lurking in the dark. It warms the cuckolds of their hearts and give them sustenance.
Envy, and Fear. Fear and Envy.
FEAR IS HOPE
Mind you, Everyone in Congress and the President are “rich”, millionaires in fact. But they aren’t evil because they are Liberals. And they are in “Public Service” so they are the Insufferably Morally and Intellectually Superior Left and not evil “rich” millionaires.
And big companies run by Millionaire CEOs (hello, GM,Chrysler etc) or Unions are not evil capitalist bastards out to destroy everyone in their path, because they are Liberals.
Evil “rich” people are only Republicans and Conservatives, you notice. Funny how that works out.
No partisan politics involved there.
Orwell was piker compared to these guys.
Did you see him (the evil “rich” and/or republican) repressing me?

Press 1 for Save the Elites Press 2 for Pandering...

indyfromaz|

Remember this beauty, it’s 80 Miles from the Border.
The Democrats, and specifically Harry Reid have decided to bring the issue back up, but in an underhanded manner that is a cynical political ploy.
Put simply, Harry Reid has attached the DREAM Act (Amnesty) to a Defense Bill so you can vote against the troops or vote for Amnesty. The so-called “Blue dog” Democrats won’t vote for it. The Republicans certainly won’t. So it’s just red meat thrown to the troops as “Hope”.
HOPE IS FEAR
And the cynical ply doesn’t stop there.
Oh no, why would it.
No, this is a blatant attempt to energize a demoralized base to turn out at the polls to save themselves from a taxpayer revolt.
It’s all about them.
“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.
Late Sunday night, White House advisers denied that a national ad campaign was being planned. “There’s been no discussion of such a thing at the White House” or the Democratic National Committee, said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser.(NYT)
Which means they are have produced the ads and are just waiting for that last minute all-out Nuclear Armageddon strike.
The more people they can get out to the polls to vote against the anger wave headed their way, the better.
So let’s throw a “hope” out. A “hope” that has no real hope of actually passing. But we can stir up the Hornet’s nest  and try obscure what we’ve done to destroy this country.
And besides, if you disagree, you’re a racist!
After all, the Democrats main strategy seems to be, Want More Bush? or Want these kooks and extremists (aka Tea Party) to takeover??
They can’t and won’t run on their own “accomplishments” because none of them are positive.

Heath Care: The Majority still favors repeal. Despite the campaigns to “explain it better” so you’ll love have the government deciding whether you live or die.
Debt: It was George Bush’s Fault that the 10 Trillion Deficit is now over 14.
Financial reform: It was Bush’s Fault that they’ve stiffeled business and burdened them with choking regulations and made uncertainty the only certainty.
It  was the Democrats fault for the Subprime-Meltdown because they got the ball rolling that eventually turned into the mountain. But you won’t hear that from them either.
And does anyone seriously think that the sequel to the 1980′s Anti-Reagan movie “Wall Street” is anything other propaganda?? I mean really…
Stimulus: A miserable failure. A Trillion dollars that “saved or created” jobs that either didn’t need saving (because they were saving Union Pensions instead) or they cost $2 million per jobs (as in LA).
Vice President Joe Biden on Friday cited one in which the New York City Department of Transportation is spending $175 million to renovate bridges and a parking lot, putting all of 120 people to work. That’s $1.46 million per job. Another job on Biden’s list, a highway project in Ohio, has created 300 jobs and costs $138 million — $460,000 per worker.
When the Democrats are in charge, the rich just get richer. Wait — isn’t that what we’re supposed to say about Republicans?
Not so when federal stimulus funds are being spent.
Washington has taken trickle-down economics to a whole new level of inefficiency. Those closest — literally — to the seat of federal power get the most. By the time the funds make their long journey to paychecks for people doing productive work, there’s not a whole lot left. (IBD)

But don’t worry, there’s always hope.
Taxes: they are going up on 1/1/11 and The Democrats are ideologically incapable of stopping it. It’s like staring into mouth of hell for Democrats to raise taxes on anyone but “the rich” which the Bush tax Cuts WILL do and they are hypnotized by it. So they just conveniently forget about it and go for class warfare instead.
Then there are all the taxes associated with their “Reforms”, Aka health Care and Financial that they won’t talk about.
Jobs: Well, the President’s “focus” has been a bit lazy. And when his economic team promised if you spend a Trillion dollars on the stimulus the maximum unemployment will be is 8% (That person has now left the team).
It’s nearly 10% and has been for the better part of a year and now many pundits and economists are talking about a permanent underclass and permanent structural unemployment.
So Mission accomplished there!
You have plenty of people completely dependent on your largess and will do whatever you want them to do and think whatever you want them to.
And that were the illegals come in again.
They are apart of that underclass. And they have to stay there to be manipulated. So keep dangling the carrot!
And just like the NAACP, Hispanics have plenty of organizations that “speak form them” that are only interested in their own self-interest of self-perpetuation of their own power and self-importance.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says illegal immigrants do essential work in the U.S. and he has firsthand knowledge of that — because they fix his house.
Powell, a moderate Republican, urged his party Sunday to support immigration generally because it is “what’s keeping this country’s lifeblood moving forward.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said a path to legal status should be offered to illegal immigrants because they “are doing things we need done in this country.”
He added: “They’re all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs, and I’m sure you’ve seen them at your house. We’ve got to find a way to bring these people out of the darkness and give them some kind of status.”
Powell did not say whether he has hired illegal immigrants directly or they showed up with contractors.
They do Gen. Powell’s house so they must be ok! Let’s just give them all Amnesty!
So what about the Legal American Construction Worker?
Oh, he’s on the unemployment line looking for a job ,for the past 2 years.
The unemployment rate for the construction industry edged down to 17 percent in August.
Who cares about him. Because if you’re against illegal aliens taking his job, you’re a racist!


“While we may have a handful of nominees out of the mainstream, the American people have come to the conclusion this administration and this Congress are out of the mainstream,” said John Weaver, a Republican consultant.(NYT)
The elites are better than you, remember. You should trust people who are smarter,better educated, slicker than oil itself, after all.
And besides, if you disagree you’re a racist and/or a bigot!
Or even better, An EXTREMIST!  (not that they aren’t, by they the way-just ignore the socialist behind the curtain).
So Press 1 for Elitism
Press 2 for Pandering
Press 3 for Creative Lying
Press 4 for Out-and-Out Bold faced Lies
Press 5 For Class Warfare
Press 6 For Ministry Truth/mainstream Media Spin
Press 7 to VOTE THE BUMS OUT!
7 has always been a lucky number.

The Truth of Power

I, like many others who read the health care bills, unlike the mainstream Media, which did it’s best to hide and deny what was going to happen, have now been shown the light of our truth.
But I’m sure the Ministry of Truth will do it’s best to diminish, dismiss and deny it even now.
That is that Mandatory Health Insurance is a TAX.
Shocking revelation, I know…

On poor people no less!!
CBS Sept 2009: President Barack Obama says requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don’t would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. “I absolutely reject that notion,” the president said.
“My critics say everything is a tax increase,” Mr. Obama said on “This Week.” “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.”
ABC: The—for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore . . .” In other words, like parents talking to their children, this levy—don’t call it a tax—is for your own good.
Mr. Stephanopoulos: “But you reject that it’s a tax increase?”
Mr. Obama: “I absolutely reject that notion.”
President Obama said in his not quite State of the Union address that Americans earning less than $250,000 would pay “not one dime” in new taxes.
Well, it’s time to reveal Lie #4,362. The Big Whopper.
The one all of us “racist” “teabagger” “idiots” and “terrorist” warned you about.

WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.
Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.
In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.
Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.
While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.
“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”
When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
Congress anticipated a constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Accordingly, the law includes 10 detailed findings meant to show that the mandate regulates commercial activity important to the nation’s economy. Nowhere does Congress cite its taxing power as a source of authority.
They knew they were lying. They didn’t care. Because the end justified the means.
And the Mainstream Media was either brain-dead stupid or in on the lies. Period.
Under the Constitution, Congress can exercise its taxing power to provide for the “general welfare.” It is for Congress, not courts, to decide which taxes are “conducive to the general welfare,” the Supreme Court said 73 years ago in upholding the Social Security Act.
Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, described the tax power as an alternative source of authority.
“The Commerce Clause supplies sufficient authority for the shared-responsibility requirements in the new health reform law,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “To the extent that there is any question of additional authority — and we don’t believe there is — it would be available through the General Welfare Clause.”
The law describes the levy on the uninsured as a “penalty” rather than a tax. The Justice Department brushes aside the distinction, saying “the statutory label” does not matter. The constitutionality of a tax law depends on “its practical operation,” not the precise form of words used to describe it, the department says, citing a long line of Supreme Court cases.
Orwell is smiling on you, Mr President and AG Holder.
Masters of Doublespeak.
Orwell on “The Party” of Big Brother: The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.  Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them… – (Orwell, New American Library, 1981, p35)
Moreover, the department says the penalty is a tax because it will raise substantial revenue: $4 billion a year by 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
In addition, the department notes, the penalty is imposed and collected under the Internal Revenue Code, and people must report it on their tax returns “as an addition to income tax liability.”
2009: What’s more, the agency is limited in the actions it can take to enforce compliance. “Congress was very careful to make sure that there was nothing too punitive in this bill,” {IRS Chief} Shulman said. “There’s no criminal sanctions for not paying this, and there’s no ability to levy a bank account or do seizures or [use] some of the other tools” available to the agency for enforcing laws.
If necessary, the IRS will levy fines against individuals who fail to purchase adequate insurance and collect them though tax return offsets. But the agency’s “first line of defense is education,” he said.
Because the penalty is a tax, the department says, no one can challenge it in court before paying it and seeking a refund.
Jack M. Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School who supports the new law, said, “The tax argument is the strongest argument for upholding” the individual-coverage requirement.
Mr. Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill,” Mr. Balkin said last month at a meeting of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal organization. “This bill is a tax. Because it’s a tax, it’s completely constitutional.”
Mr. Balkin and other law professors pressed that argument in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in one of the pending cases.
Opponents contend that the “minimum coverage provision” is unconstitutional because it exceeds Congress’s power to regulate commerce.
“This is the first time that Congress has ever ordered Americans to use their own money to purchase a particular good or service,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah.

In their lawsuit, Florida and other states say: “Congress is attempting to regulate and penalize Americans for choosing not to engage in economic activity. If Congress can do this much, there will be virtually no sphere of private decision-making beyond the reach of federal power.”

In reply, the administration and its allies say that a person who goes without insurance is simply choosing to pay for health care out of pocket at a later date. In the aggregate, they say, these decisions have a substantial effect on the interstate market for health care and health insurance.
In its legal briefs, the Obama administration points to a famous New Deal case, Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court upheld a penalty imposed on an Ohio farmer who had grown a small amount of wheat, in excess of his production quota, purely for his own use.
The wheat grown by Roscoe Filburn “may be trivial by itself,” the court said, but when combined with the output of other small farmers, it significantly affected interstate commerce and could therefore be regulated by the government as part of a broad scheme regulating interstate commerce.

But it will bring prices down: Lie #4,264
The Democratic co-chair of President Obama’s fiscal commission said Wednesday that the president’s health care bill will do very little to bring down costs, contradicting claims from the White House that their sweeping legislation will dramatically impact runaway entitlement spending.
“It didn’t do a lot to address cost factors in health care. So we’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, speaking about the new health law, which was signed into law by Obama this past spring after a nearly year-long fight in Congress.
Esrkine Bowles is one of the two stooges who will anounce AFTER the mid-term election that all is crap and we have to have massive Tax increases in order to save us all, including likely, the VAT.
And if the republicans are in charge of at least one side or both of Congress it will be even  more there fault!
And Obama is going to, “Well, I have to do what the report says…”
It’s the ultimate Dog & Pony show.
Just keep that in mind.
Bowles, speaking at an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that even with the passage of Obama’s legislation, health care costs are still going to “really eat us alive” unless dramatic changes are made. The commission will submit recommendations on how to fix America’s long term fiscal problems to Congress in December.
Bowles’ point will be amplified Thursday when a conservative think tank releases a paper arguing that Obama’s health plan “is not entitlement reform,” at an event intended to highlight an alternative plan for reforming health care spending that is the brainchild of Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican.
James C. Capretta, a former White House budget adviser on health care to President George W. Bush, will present the paper for the Galen Institute at an event on Capitol Hill with Ryan, one of the Republican Party’s rising stars, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top conservative economist.
Even as many on Capitol Hill are talking about addressing Social Security spending, Capretta writes in the 19-page paper that Medicare is the real problem.
Most Democrats and Republicans agree, Capretta says, that the 30 to 35 million seniors in Medicare’s fee-for-service (FFS) insurance program are “the engine … pulling the rest of the health system down the tracks at an accelerated and dangerous rate.”
And who just got recess appointee to the job of head of Medicare, a NHS Single-payer Health Care rationing lover.
No coincidence there mind you.
Most FFS participants pay nothing out of their own pockets for health care, and hospitals and doctors are incentivized to provide them with as many services and tests as can be loosely justified.
But Capretta says in the paper that the Obama health bill is not reform because it attempts to stop price inflation and inefficient care through top-down government control rather than bottom-up consumer demand.
“When attempts have been made in the past to steer patients toward preferred physicians or hospitals, they have failed miserably because politicians and regulators find it impossible to make distinctions among hospitals and physician groups based on quality measures that can themselves be disputed,” Capretta says.
Capretta goes on to say that Paul Ryan’s plan would move Medicare recipients from defined benefits to defined contributions, in which “cost-conscious consumers choose between competing insurers and delivery systems based on price and quality.”
“Beneficiaries would get to decide which insurance plan they want to enroll in. If the premium were more than the amount they are entitled to from Medicare, then they would pay the difference. If it were less, they would keep all of the savings,” Capretta says.
“Millions of otherwise passive Medicare participants would become active, cost-conscious consumers of insurance and alternative models for securing needed medical services,” Capretta writes. “Cost cutting innovation would be rewarded, not punished as it is today.”
White House officials pointed to recent blog posts by White House budget director Peter Orszag, who said that “if implemented effectively, [Obama’s health care bill] can play an important role in moving toward a healthier fiscal future.” (Daily Caller)

Welcome Big Brother Obama and Big Mother Michelle’s New and Improved IRS:
If it seems as if the tax code was conceived by graphic artist M.C. Escher, wait until you meet the new and not improved Internal Revenue Service created by ObamaCare. What, you’re not already on a first-name basis with your local IRS agent?
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the IRS, highlighted the agency’s new mission in her annual report to Congress last week. Look out below. She notes that the IRS is already “greatly taxed”—pun intended?—”by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public,” like tax credits for first-time homebuyers or purchasing electric cars. Yet with ObamaCare, the agency is now responsible for “the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history.” And without “sufficient funding” it won’t be able to discharge these new duties.
That wouldn’t be tragic, given that those new duties include audits to determine who has the insurance “as required by law” and collecting penalties from Americans who don’t. Companies that don’t sponsor health plans will also be punished. This crackdown will “involve nearly every division and function of the IRS,” Ms. Olson reports.

Well, well. Republicans argued during the health debate that the IRS would have to hire hundreds of new agents and staff to enforce ObamaCare. They were brushed off by Democrats and the press corps as if they believed the President was born on the moon. The IRS says it hasn’t figured out how much extra money and manpower it will need but admits that both numbers are greater than zero.
Ms. Olson also exposed a damaging provision that she estimates will hit some 30 million sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations, two million farms and one million charities and other tax-exempt organizations. Prior to ObamaCare, businesses only had to tell the IRS the value of services they purchase. But starting in 2013 they will also have to report the value of goods they buy from a single vendor that total more than $600 annually—including office supplies and the like.
Democrats snuck in this obligation to narrow the mythical “tax gap” of unreported business income, but Ms. Olson says that the tracking costs for small businesses will be “disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance.” Job creation, here we come . . . at least for the accountants who will attempt to comply with a vast new 1099 reporting burden.
Meanwhile, the IRS will be inundated with useless information, because without a huge upgrade its information systems won’t be able to manage and track the nanodetails.
In a Monday letter, even Democratic Senators Mark Begich (Alaska), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) and Evan Bayh (Indiana) denounce this new “burden” on small businesses and insist that the IRS use its discretion to find “better ways to structure this reporting requirement.” In other words, they want regulators to fix one problem among many that all four Senators created by voting for ObamaCare.
We never thought anyone would be nostalgic for the tax system of a few months ago, but post-ObamaCare, here we are.(WSJ)
On Friday, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. His plea to fellow Democrats to pass a $22.9-billion fix for Medicare doctors’ fees reveals the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime.
Remember the health care issue? Well, the fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of Obamacare. He was back on the House floor on Friday delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently—or, perhaps, unavoidably—revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime.
It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember? “This legislation will lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades,” Obama said when he signed the bill.
On Friday, Waxman declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. He went to the House floor to “urge” his colleagues to vote for a bill that includes $102 billion in new federal spending and would add $54 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years — $25 billion of it in the few months remaining in this fiscal year.
Why did Waxman believe this new borrowing-and-spending was necessary?
“It’s absolutely critical to do this if we are going to keep doctors in Medicare and keep the promise to Medicare beneficiaries that they will have access to physicians’ services,” said Waxman. “This provision will provide a moderate increase in physicians’ fees, 2.2 percent for the rest of the year. If we don’t act, doctors’ fees will be cut by 21 percent from where they are today. This would be unconscionable.”
It would not merely be unconscionable. If the 21-percent cut in Medicare fees for doctors—that, in fact, legally took effect on June 1 — is allowed to stand, many doctors in this country will simply stop seeing Medicare patients. They will not be able to afford it. The cost to them of serving their patients will exceed what they are paid. Their profit margin will be swept away.
To make precisely this point, 12 national surgeons’ associations—including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery—sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter last Wednesday warning her what would happen if Medicare doctors’ fees are slashed as they are scheduled to be under current law.
“These continued payment cuts, rising practice costs and a lack of certainty going forward, make it difficult, if not impossible, for already financially challenged surgical practices to continue to treat Medicare patients,” the surgeons’ associations told Pelosi.
The letter pointed the speaker toward the results of a survey of more than 13,000 physicians done in February by the Surgical Coalition, a group of more than 20 medical associations. The survey asked these doctors what they would do if Medicare fees were slashed by the scheduled 21.2 percent.
Twenty-nine percent said they would opt out of the Medicare system entirely. Almost 69 percent said they would limit the number of appointments they would take from Medicare patients, 45.8 percent said they would start referring complex Medicare patients to other physicians, 45.3 percent said they would stop providing certain services, 43.8 percent said they would defer purchasing new medical equipment and 42.7 percent said they would cut their staff. Almost 4 percent of the doctors said they would close or sell their practices.
Why did Congress plan to slash the doctors’ Medicare fees in the first place? It didn’t. In the past, the majority in Congress has routinely enacted budget bills that fraudulently assumed that on some future date the federal government would dramatically slash the Medicare fees paid to doctors, knowing that before that date arrived the majority would pass “emergency” legislation postponing the cuts to some still-future date. The majority in Congress does this so the long-term deficits caused by their spending bills appear to be smaller than they actually are.
As originally proposed, Obamacare would have ended this practice, permanently setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors at the true anticipated level. But the Congressional Budget Office determined that doing so would have added $208 billion to the cost of Obamacare over 10 years, forcing the CBO to declare that Obamacare added to the deficit rather than reduced it. That would have cost Obamacare votes on the House floor and quite possibly defeated the legislation.
So the congressional leadership stripped the “doc fix” out of Obamacare and left it to another day.
Waxman went down to the floor last Friday to declare that day had come. Unfortunately, for him, the Senate had already left town for its Memorial Day vacation. So, the current fix will have to wait until it returns.
Even then, the fix only accounts for $22.9 billion of the $102 billion cost of the bill the House did pass on Friday. Most of the rest of the money is for extending unemployment benefits and special targeted tax breaks.
The $22.9 billion fix for the doctors’ fees—if passed by the Senate—would only last through September 2011. Then Congress will presumably do it all again—or let the Medicare system collapse.
And they did.
In the meantime, Obamacare is supposed to cut half a trillion in spending from elsewhere in Medicare, while Obama’s budget—not counting the $54 billion in new debt included in this bill—is expected to add $9.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.(IBD)

And then there’s still more on the “Financial Reform” bill related to the IRS:
“Small businesses are America’s job creators and essential to our nation’s economy,” Roberts said in prepared remarks. “Under the new healthcare law, small businesses will be hit with a costly tax reporting provision that will increase the cost of doing business at a time of economic uncertainty.”
Beginning in 2012, the law states that businesses, tax-exempt organizations, and state and local governments must submit a separate 1099 form for every business-to-business transaction totaling more than $600. The impetus behind the requirement is help the IRS better enforce the tax law by forcing companies to disclose whom they do business with.
Several organizations, including the IRS watchdog The National Taxpayer Advocate, have questioned how effective this requirement will be on enforcement.
The new mandate applies to everyday purchases, like shipping costs, supplies, even Internet and phone service. The senators argue this will overburden companies. The Taxpayer Advocate questions the IRS’ ability to handle all the documentation.
“Unless corrected, this time-wasting mandate of 1099 filings on common purchases needed to do business, will stifle economic growth and job creation while the IRS will be handed a paperwork nightmare,” Roberts said.
The senators contend the requirement will affect 40 million businesses nationwide.
“I have heard from many Kansas small businesses and farmers, already burdened with government bureaucracy, that these new reporting requirements will waste time and negatively impact their bottom-line,” Roberts said.

Abortion, anyone?
As reports are coming out that Pennsylvania is receiving $160 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to set up a new high-risk insurance pool program that will fund abortions, we are seeing, yet again, that the Obama Administration will say and do anything to pass their liberal agenda — ignoring public opinion along the way…
LIES: “You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion – not true. These are all fabrications.” — President Obama on August 19, 2009
D*MN LIES: “The executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation’s restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.” — White House Statement on March 21, 2010
STATISTICS: 67 percent of Americans oppose funding abortions with public funds under the health care bill. — Quinnipiac University Poll, January 14, 2010
As pundits have commented in recent weeks, and many of us have realized, you need to watch what the President really does, not listen to what he says, as the two are often in vast contrast of one another. As you can read above, nowhere is this truer than on the issue of abortion.
Back in March, when the offer to sign an Executive Order was made, many pro-lifers questioned why the order was needed after President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Sebelius had been saying for months that no federal dollars would be used to fund abortions. On the day of the vote, I personally spoke on the House floor about how an Executive Order has no effect of law and cannot override the clear intent of a statute, as well as on how an Executive Order is only a piece of paper. Now that we know how little the President values his word and that he is comfortable violating an Executive Order, we are only left to wonder what other secrets are lurking for us in the dark. (The Hill)

Remember, it was abortion that was the very last hurdle that Obama had to jump over to get his power over life and death.
He promised to Federally ban it.
He said Health Care Reform wasn’t tax.
The Stimulus will create 3 Million Jobs. (not “save or create”)
I said at the time he was lying.
I got called a racist so many times I could have paid off my house with the money if I got paid for it.
Saying this President is lying when his lips are moving is like saying the sun will come up tomorrow.
It’s an absolute certainty.

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”-Orwell

Thank you, Big Brother and Big Mother and Big Sis…
Anyone got a crate of Tea handy…

The Politics of Food

As an amateur home cook and a junkie for The Food Network and other Food Shows I take food seriously.
But not like our President and his Food Nazis.
And no, I don’t mean “Seinfeld”.
This is not a comedy.
This is your usual socialist tragedy.
Busy bodies with a moral superiority complex.

You may laugh about the White House assistant chef being appointed “Senior Policy Adviser.” You’ll stop laughing when you realize that those in power really do want to tell you what to eat.
You just can’t cook these things up. The 29-year-old Chicago chef that the Obama family for years paid to be their private cook, Sam Kass, was quietly promoted last month from his job as assistant chef at the White House residence and “food initiative coordinator” to the position of “senior policy adviser for healthy food initiatives.”
The long-suffering American people don’t get to know if an increase in salary is involved, because Kass is on the residence staff rather than the West Wing’s.
But we should know how much the taxpayers are paying this “bald, intense young man” who, according to the New York Times, is “part chef and part policy wonk” and is “reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion.”
He plays golf with the president at Martha’s Vineyard, attends the administration’s child-health briefings, and quizzes senior White House staff about policy.
“Do we have a toxicologist who specializes in colony collapse disorder?” Kass once asked in an e-mail to the Agriculture Department, according to the New York Times story.
Add the fact that Kass isn’t even a formally trained chef and you really start to wonder what’s going on here.
The law lets the president appoint anyone he wants as “senior policy adviser.” But if he wants to be the first president to employ a cook/food czar, he should make that plain to the public — and publish the man’s taxpayer-funded salary, as is the case with other White House policy advisers.
Of course, it all begs the question: Why on earth do the American people need a government-paid “food initiative coordinator”? This administration has been attempting to elevate nutrition to the level of a civil rights issue.
How much harassment is enough in regard to food? New York City has opened the door for every local government to ban trans fats. Then there are the ubiquitous nutrition labels on every food item in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants.
The food nannies are everywhere. Now in the White House, too.
If President Obama really wants to appoint a butcher, baker or candlestick maker to a top White House policy job, we humbly propose a better suggestion: Joe the Plumber. (IBD)
Because it’s such a dire situation, she has convinced her husband’s administration to spend $400 million a year to bring “healthy foods” to low-income neighborhoods and $10 billion to revise a decades-old federal measure that already feeds tens of millions of poor children at school for free.
This culinary revolution no doubt requires a trusted senior policy adviser—like Kass—who is an expert in healthy cuisine. The First Lady refers to her cook as a “partner in crime” and says it’s “just pretty powerful” to see what started out as talk in her South Side Chicago kitchen turn into a major initiative that “hopefully will change the way we think as a country.”
Makes you wonder what Kass, who also doubles as a White House chef, has been putting in the Obama’s food all these years. Incidentally, the “most transparent administration” in history doesn’t want Americans to know how much the famous family cook earns. Although he’s an important administration wonk, Kass’s salary is excluded in the Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff because he’s considered “residence staff” and those salaries don’t need to be disclosed. (Judicial Watch)


Even the private chef of the President is a political hack, for god’s sake!
Yet more “czars” from the “I’m not a socialist!” President.


In a statement released on June 22, the liberal Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) announced it was filing a lawsuit against McDonald’s for marketing toys with their signature Happy Meals. The statement’s creepy hyperbole nearly implied that Ronald McDonald should be featured on an episode of “To Catch a Predator:”

“’McDonald’s is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children,” said CSPI litigation director Stephen Gardner.
And the Liberal Media just easts it up.
“But would children still be happy with their meal without the joy of a new toy? That’ll be up to kids, and possibly a judge,” chided NBC’s Erika Edwards.
“It’s entirely appropriate and not at all intrusive for city government to take steps to discourage the sale of sugary sodas on city property.”–San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom after he “regulated” the sale of non-diet drinks in city vending machines.

“On its own, popcorn is a low-fat, low-cal, whole grain food,” said Good Morning America’s consumer correspondent Elizabeth Leamy, “but the Center (for Science in The Public Interest) says that the way some movie theaters prepare it, it’s more like eating a rack of ribs with a scoop of ice cream on top.”
UK Daily Mail: Teachers have used ‘Big Brother’ tactics to spy on children’s lunchboxes, it has been revealed. They secretly photographed pupils’ packed lunches over six months and analysed the contents.
Staff awarded marks to the food and then showed their findings to outraged parents, offering them advice on how to improve nutrition.
Education bosses have now put a stop to the scheme in Gloucestershire after discovering the extent of the surveillance.
Nineteen primary schools have been using the ‘packed lunch toolkit’, which was devised by Gloucestershire county council and NHS Gloucestershire.
Contents were taken out of a random sample of lunchboxes and then photographs taken.
Staff rated the contents against set nutritional standards. They looked for high fat, salt and sugary foods as well as fruit and vegetables.
NHS= National Health Service. HHS= Health and Human Services.
Brothers from a different mother?
But Yvette Gayle, whose nine-year-old daughter Renee Dougan attends the school, said she didn’t mind.
‘It might encourage parents to pack a healthier lunch for their kids anyway,’ she said.
Cheryl Ridler, an education co-ordinator at the school, said the scheme has led to ‘a definite improvement in the quality of food’ brought in.
‘All the parents were very positive about it and we did it in a very nice and careful way, and in no way demanding and intrusive,’ she added.
Big Brother smiles upon you Citizen. Rejoice.


Maybe we could have a reality show, showing a Nutritional Intervention or maybe an actual Food Police show, showcasing the worst slovenly, offensive offenders against the public good.
Unfortunately, it is their business, because too many of us have insisted on treating healthcare services as an entitlement rather than a commodity. As a result, we’ve implicitly given government the permission to interfere with anything having to do with “public health,” including our food choices. And for the most part, many people support these dumb food bans because they imagine it’s doing some kind of good. I find it hard to believe that could be true. As the failed war on drugs has taught us, government regulation is no match for the forces of supply and demand.(411mania.com)

And where have we heard of Health Care as an entitlement?
The Left
Who are the Food Police?
The Left.
Funny how that worked out.

And with Comedy comes Tragedy.
And her it is folks.
The reason why the Food Police are coming to get you.
You’re too Fat!!!, and that’s a negative impact on ObamaCare.
So we can’t have that.
If the government gets to decide who lives and who dies, they get to decide what you eat as well.
It’s for your own good, after all.
Rejoice.


Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

(CNSNews.com) – New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year–must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”
The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.
The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law.  Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers–including doctors and hospitals–must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.
Section 3001 of the stimulus law says: “The National Coordinator shall, in consultation with other appropriate Federal agencies (including the National Institute of Standards and Technology), update the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (developed as of June 3, 2008) to include specific objectives, milestones, and metrics with respect to the following: (i) The electronic exchange and use of health information and the enterprise integration of such information.‘‘(ii) The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014.”
Under this mandate in the stimulus law, Secretary Sebelius issued a regulation–developed by Dr. Blumenthal–that requires that all EHRs keep track of a person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) score. Body Mass Index is a ratio between a person’s weight and height, and is used to determine whether or not someone is overweight or obese. It is the preferred method of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for measuring obesity.
Michelle Obama has made dealing with the problem of childhood obesity the main theme of her term as First Lady.

According to the CDC,  “BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.”
A person’s BMI score is used as a tool to screen for obesity or excessive body fat that could lead to other health problems. While it does not actually measure body fat directly, according to CDC, the BMI scores generally correlate with a person’s body fat percentage.
The new regulations also stipulate that the new electronic records be capable of sending public health data to state and federal health agencies such as HHS and CDC. The CDC, which calls American society “obesogenic” – meaning that American society itself promotes obesity – collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesity nationwide.
“Electronically record, retrieve, and transmit syndrome based public health surveillance information to public health agencies,” the regulations read.
With the spread of electronic health records, the CDC apparently will be able to collect such data more efficiently and with greater accuracy because the electronic record keeping systems can send the data automatically, eliminating the need for government – both state and federal – to keep, send, and process physical records.

So how long until the BMI Tax or mandatory “health education”??
So you want that Big Mac, well, there’s a 20%  surcharge Tax and we have to record how many of them you have and when you have reached your limit you will not be allowed to eat it anymore until such time as the National Coordinator’s guidelines for your better health says so.
How far off is that?
Not far enough for my tastes.
But that’s why I was so vehemently against the whole thing to begin with.
But what do I know, I’m just a “racist” “teabagger” “idiot” who wants what’s bad for you, at least according to the Left and it’s Media pit bulls.
Have that Big Mac now, because in a few years it will be banned or so heavily regulated and taxed it will cost you $20 for just one and it will have to be registered with the HHS.
And if your BMI says you can’t have it, well, the Food Police will coming knocking on your door to “educate” you Citizen.
Just you wait and see.
Big Momma Michelle is watching you…

Bureaucrats Everywhere!

Sept 2009: President Barack Obama says requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don’t would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. “I absolutely reject that notion,” the president said.”for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax” (CBS)

OBAMA (On ABC): My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
The U.S. Justice Department officially responded to a legal challenge against the federal health-care overhaul Wednesday and called on a federal judge to dismiss the case.
Twenty attorneys general, led by Republican Bill McCollum of Florida, filed suit against the federal government immediately after President Obama’s health-care overhaul became law in March. The attorneys generals are questioning the constitutionality of the law, claiming that Congress does not have the power to require that all Americans purchase health insurance.
The federal health-care law requires that all legal U.S. residents be insured or else pay a penalty — beginning in 2014 — that fines individuals $695 annually or up to 2.5% of their income.
In its defense of the law, the Justice Department invoked the Commerce Clause and claimed penalties for Americans without health-care coverage were consistent with the federal government’s powers to regulate interstate commerce and impose taxes.

The Justice Department filing describes the penalty as a tax, stating that the law “imposes a tax on the choice of a method to finance the future costs of one’s health care.”

McCollum responded to the Justice Department filings Thursday, claiming that the government’s response contradicted the comments that President Obama made during the health-care debate earlier this year.
“The Justice Department’s defenses clash directly with comments made by President Obama during the debate on the health care reform bill, including the President’s insistence on national television that the purchase mandate was absolutely not a tax. Yet in its motion to dismiss, the Obama administration defends the individual mandate under Congress’ ‘taxing and spending’ power,” said McCollum in a press statement.
“Nothing in the Justice Department’s motion filed last night changes the States’ view that we will prevail. Instead, the Justice Department’s defenses clash directly with comments made by President Obama during the debate on the health care reform bill, including the President’s insistence on national television that the purchase mandate was absolutely not a tax. Yet in its motion to dismiss, the Obama Administration defends the individual mandate under Congress’ ‘taxing and spending’ power.
“Not only does the U.S. Department of Justice contradict public statements made by the President and Congressional leadership, it demonstrates in its motion to dismiss that it seems to view this lawsuit by the 20 states and NFIB as a significant challenge, signaling this lawsuit may pose more of a threat in its chances for success.
“Our lawsuit challenges the individual mandate that violates the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, the federal government is threatening our state sovereignty with this unprecedented expansion of federal powers and commandeering of state resources. This is not acceptable, and we will pursue this litigation as far as necessary to obtain relief for our citizens and our states.”
The lawsuit was filed on March 23, 2010 with 13 original state plaintiffs and was amended on May 14, 2010 to add seven additional states and the National Federation of Independent Business, as well as two individual plaintiffs.
So the Tax that wasn’t a tax is now officially a Tax.
I wonder how the Mainstream Media/Ministry of Truth will ignore that. (I already know BTW).
************
Sixteen crude-sucking barges are back in the Gulf of Mexico working to clean up oil, but the Coast Guard is defending its decision to ground the vessels because it couldn’t verify whether there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board.
“The Coast Guard is not going to compromise safety … that’s our No. 1 priority,” Coast Guard spokesman Robert Brassel told The Daily Caller.
The decision to ground the ships is under intense scrutiny after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal expressed his deep frustration with the decision Thursday.
“You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil,’” Jindal said to ABC News.
But don’t worry Obama is going to do everything he can to stop the Oil.
But the bureaucrats aren’t though.
Further, the government’s response is clumsy. “The Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, the EPA all these different agencies aren’t talking to each other,” Florida’s Okaloosa County commissioner Wayne Harris said.
Anyone seeing National Health Care Administration (aka ObamaCare) in your future?
So why is Obama so slow, it’s 60 days later.
Imagine Bush dithering 60 days after Katrina?
The meltdown would have been apocalyptic. (It already was according to the media back then, but they were “fair” and had no agenda…)
So why doesn’t he do it?
In a word: Unions.
The answer comes in the form of an obscure law called the Jones Act. A throwback to the days of American protectionism, the Jones Act is a piece of 1920s-era legislation that requires ships working in U.S. waters to be built here and crewed by Americans. This is why skimmers from the Persian Gulf, the heavy-duty ships that have proved themselves capable of cleaning up disasters like the one currently facing the Gulf, aren’t employed here doing the vital work for which they’re built. What’s more, it’s why they’re not on their way (which, considering the distance they’d have to cover, is in itself is no small feat).
The president, however, has the power to waive the Jones Act. His predecessor, the one so criticized for his failure to pull out all the stops in responding to Hurricane Katrina, did just that within days of that storm’s devastation. So why hasn’t President Obama taken the same measure?
Therein lies the rub. There is much talk about the political interests that have essentially prevented this administration from acting with common sense time and time again. It’s why many believe competitive market forces won’t be considered as options, even though competition, with little government involvement, would certainly contribute to cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. Are suspicions that foregoing market fixes is directly tied to protection of union jobs and, by extension, political allies? Using foreign technologies manned by foreign crews will, after all, necessarily keep union bosses from cash they so desperately need going into a tough election season.
This is the political cronyism of the worst sort. It is bad enough the president’s economic recovery plan was convoluted and weighted towards payback of labor unions; worse still are the bailouts being directed toward private and public sector union pensions. Now we have an entire region’s ecological and economic existence being held hostage to the president’s pro-Union myopia.
This is inexcusable.
The president needs to facilitate clean-up. He needs to immediately start cutting red tape and getting the federal government out of the way. First and foremost, he needs to immediately waive the Jones Act and get those foreign crews to the Gulf.
Millions of Americans, not just those suffering in the Gulf, are depending on this. Their voices are far more important than the ever-weakening unions constantly nipping at the president’s heels. (Daily Caller)
He’s a prisoner yet again of a very rigid ideology.
And these are the people from the Government who are here to save you, protect you, keep you healthy and make you “green”.
Doesn’t it just fill you will confidence!
I believe it was Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
And if we all strive to be mediocre we can all be at our best!
Rejoice Comrade, The Government has your back (it’s reaching for your wallet!).

Arrest The Hamburgular

Santa Clara County, Calif.: A dozen fast-food workers are lined up against the wall and sheriff’s deputies block the doors. The manager nervously tries to assure that everything is in order, but the hard-eyed detectives aren’t satisfied. Customers think this is a “sting” to round up illegal immigrants, but they are wrong.
One of the inspectors catches a glimpse of something shiny behind a freezer. He reaches behind, and pulls out a six-inch-long plastic Iron Man™ action figure, hard evidence that the restaurant stands in violation of Santa Clara County Ordinance No. NS-300.820. The manager desperately tries to assure the cops that the toy belongs to his son, who inadvertently left it behind. No dice – they haul him downtown on suspicion of using toys in promotions to lure kids and their parents into his restaurant to eat.
That’s right: As part of a crusade against childhood obesity, three politicians in a county of 180,000 people have decided that parents are not allowed to decide whether they can take their children to a restaurant where they might receive a toy alongside their meal.  (IBD)
Santa Clara County’s Board of Supervisors also voted four to one to enter amicus curiae in lawsuits challenging Arizona’s new immigration law. The county will soon consider a resolution commanding its law-enforcement officers not to check suspects’ immigration status, unless required by federal law. So illegal immigrants working in fast-food restaurants will be safer than Iron Man^tm action figures.
The fast-food toy ordinance, meanwhile, is so absurd that even the San Francisco Chronicle (April 30) editorialized on its futility. Somehow, I don’t think that being held up to ridicule is enough to stop politicians arrogant enough to fantasize a magic answer to childhood obesity.
After all, politicians have a desperate, emotional, need to be noticed doing “something” about your problems. Expect this ordinance to come to a California county near you in the near future. No child’s Happy Meal will be safe.(PRI)
The ordinance allows fines of up to $1,000, enforceable by the Health Department.
County supervisor Ken Yeager said Tuesday that the ordinance “prevents restaurants from preying on children’s love of toys to peddle high-calorie, high-fat, high-sodium kids’ meals,” and would help fight childhood obesity.
“This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes,” Yeager said. “Under this ordinance, restaurants are still permitted to give out toys. This ordinance merely imposes very specific, common-sense nutrition standards for children’s meals that are linked to these incentives.”
Saratoga Mayor Kathleen King has five children. “It starts with, ‘I’m hungry,’ and then it goes to what the toy looks like, so I know exactly where it’s going,” she said.
Yeah, weak parenting!
So the government must save you from yourself and parent your kids for you.
When they came for my kid’s Happy mean I said nothing.
Then they came after my fast food and I said nothing.
Then they came for my food to tell me what I can and cannot eat and there was no one left to say anything.
So, next time you see a Toy commercial for a Fast Food restaurant, think evil thoughts of those mean and evil, heartless, predatory capitalists whose only mission in life is to make your kids fat!! and think happy thoughts about how the government is going to stop them for you because you’re not strong enough to do it yourself.
Happy meal Toys are, after all, an evil capitalist Right-wing conspiracy to destroy your kids after all.
It must be George W. Bush’s Fault somehow…