Careful what you ask for

Those Democrats. They just bring a smile to my face every day. Guess I should consider it a good use of my tax money. Unfortunately I don't...

Documents Reveal AT&T, Verizon, Others, Thought About Dropping Employer-sponsored Benefits

In the days after President Obama signed the bill on March 24, a number of companies announced big write downs due to some fiscal changes it ushered in. The legislation eliminated a company's right to deduct the federal retiree drug-benefit subsidy from their corporate taxes. That reduced projected revenue. As a result, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) took well-publicized charges of around $1 billion. The announcements greatly annoyed Representative Henry Waxman, who accused the companies of using the big numbers to exaggerate health care reform's burden on employers. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, demanded that they turn over their confidential memos, and summoned their top executives for hearings. But Waxman didn't simply request documents related to the write down issue. He wanted every document the companies created that discussed what the bill would do to their most uncontrollable expense: healthcare costs. The request yielded 1,100 pages of documents from four major employers: AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere (DE, Fortune 500). No sooner did the Democrats on the Energy Committee read them than they abruptly cancelled the hearings.

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Big Brother's looking out for ya

Proposal: All New Yorkers Become Organ Donors

Organ donation has become a vital way to save lives around the world, but a vast shortage of donors continues to mean people are losing their lives while on waiting lists. But there is a unique proposal that could change all that. New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky nearly lost his daughter, Willie, at 4 years old when she needed a kidney transplant, and again 10 years later when her second kidney failed. "We have 10,000 New Yorkers on the list today waiting for organs. We import half the organs we transplant. It is an unacceptable failed system," Brodsky said.

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The REALLY scary thing is that Obama will likely jump all over this idea to get it added into his health care system!!!

This is what Uncle Sam calls healthcare

Senate Panel Previews Electronic Health Technology

The Senate Committee on Aging last week offered a preview of the government’s future role in health care, showing how Americans will interact with doctors and other health care providers. The demonstration offers a glimpse at an overlooked effect of health care reform. The effort, loosely called e-Health or e-Care, combines health-care technology with 21st-century Internet connectivity. It will allow doctors to interact with their patients through innovations such as video chats, telephone health checkups, and home-health monitoring devices that relay data over wireless Internet connections. "The development of the broadband network and health information technologies has the potential to truly transform health care and simultaneously enable better outcomes and lowering costs," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

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Obama's Muslim Love-a-thon continues

Obama Hosts Muslim-focused Entrepreneurship Summit

Delivering on a promise he made nearly a year ago, President Obama will host a two-day entrepreneurship summit beginning Monday designed to improve relations with the Muslim world. "It represents an opportunity to highlight and support business and social entrepreneurship in Muslim-majority countries, including their minority populations, and Muslim communities around the world," a statement from the summit's website said.

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Turning a blind eye

Funny I didn't see a thing about this in the US press (I wonder why?). I had to run across it in a UK release and even then I wondered if this was some form of delayed April Fool's joke. I'm going to guess that half of these crowds were composed of media personnel so they didn't want a lot of cameras around ;-)

High Times For American Marijuana Smokers As Police Allow Thousands Of '4/20' Pot Protesters To Light Up Across The Country

Marijuana smokers across the America lit up in public parks, outside statehouses and in the posh confines of a Hummer parked outside a pot gardening superstore to observe the movement's annual 'high holiday' yesterday. Those who weren't within whiffing distance of a college campus or a reggae concert may not have realised that Tuesday was '4/20', the celebration-cum-mass civil disobedience derived from '420' - insider shorthand for cannabis consumption. Advocates from New Hampshire to California trumpeted marijuana's rising commercial and political acceptance while producing collective clouds of pungent smoke - often under the watchful eyes of law enforcement officers who for the most part let the parties proceed.

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Abortion opt-out

Kudos to some state representatives who still have a backbone!

States Opt Out Of Paying For Abortion In Health Care

Concern over federal funding of abortion in the health care reform law has prompted several states to move toward "opting out." Tennessee is the first state to get a bill to its governor that prohibits taxpayers from funding abortion. Lawmakers in Georgia, Oklahoma, Virginia and Louisiana are all considering similar measures. Mary Harned, staff counsel with Americans United for Life, said AUL has model legislation ready for states to use, and many are taking advantage.

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WT gets mean

"President Obama is determined to promote the alleged climate crisis as a lever for pushing through his big-government agenda. The O Force doesn't believe in wasting a crisis, even if it's a mirage."

Obama's Climate Of Fear
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The Nanny State Never Rests

Incentives Not To Work

"The second way government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a 'reservation wage'—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer." Any guess who wrote that? Milton Friedman, perhaps. Simon Legree? Sorry. Full credit goes to Lawrence H. Summers, the current White House economic adviser, who wrote those sensible words in his chapter on "Unemployment" in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, first published in 1999. Mr. Summers should give a tutorial to the U.S. Senate, which is debating whether to extend unemployment benefits for the fourth time since the recession began in early 2008. The bill pushed by Democrats would extend jobless payments to 99 weeks, or nearly two full years, at a cost of between $7 billion and $10 billion. As Mr. Summers suggests, rarely has there been a clearer case of false policy compassion.

Article link

Truly we are an Obamanation

Public schools are dangerous!

Case in point:

Education Department Buying 12-gauge Shotguns

Civil libertarians are viewing with alarm a decision by the government to purchase dozens of shotguns for representatives of the U.S. Department of Education offices in Washington and Philadelphia, even though the government attests that the 12-gauge weapons are simply to replace other guns. "Viewed in conjunction with the destruction of the Bill of Rights through Patriot Act type legislation, we can see a pattern developing of an emerging Homeland Security state and a total surveillance society," said attorney and former Marine Corps officer Darrell Castle. He was the Constitution Party's 2008 vice president nominee, and told WND the fact the guns are being purchased by and delivered to the U.S. Department of Education is worrisome because of the agency's confirmation it has its own armed security force.

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Does this seem like Animal Farm to you?

It sure does to me:

Health Bill May Exempt Top Hill Staffers

The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates – but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate. Staffers and members on both sides of the aisle call it an “inequity” and an “outrage” – a loophole that exempts the staffers most involved in writing and passing the bill from one of its key requirements.

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With that in mind, see what this does for your sunny disposition:

Ten Inconvenient Truths About Obamacare

President Obama is promising a massive campaign to sell the health care plan just approved by Congress -- starting with his signature on the Senate version of the legislation on Tuesday. The sales pitch begins even as the Senate considers a raft of modifications to the plan already approved by the House. But as the president makes his pitch, critics will be looking to knock down many of the central claims he and other Democratic leaders have made. Here are 10 inconvenient truths that could dog the president...

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Welcome to the USSA!

United States of Socialized America

Time warp ... we're back in 1984

And these are the same people that a lot of Americans want to hand their health care over to? Amazing...

Census Threat: $5,000 Fines
U.S. congressman slams 'Big Brother' questions

The U.S. Census website for the American Community Survey warns that under Title 13 of the U.S. Code, Section 221, anyone who refuses to answer the 11-page 48-question survey, or who answers the questions with false information, will be subject to a possible $5,000 fine.
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In an e-mail to WND, [Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas] repeated his charge that the American Community Survey amounts to an Obama administration attempt to create a "government dossier on American citizens."
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"The government can take this detailed information about each person who answers the American Community Survey and use that information for its own purposes," he said. "This is Big Brother at its worst. To me, it's an invasion of privacy by the federal government all in the name of taking care of us."

Article link: click here

Obama funds (homosexual) education

While he won't lift a finger to continue funding the D.C. school voucher program (you know, the place where the public school system is attrocious by any metric - and that's being kind), Obama is more than willing to increase the funding by tens of millions to his homesexual propaganda czar:

President Obama Wants To Give More Taxpayer Money To Controversial Education Czar

President Obama's proposed budget would allocate $410 million for programs overseen by his new "safe school czar," gay activist Kevin Jennings. That's an increase of $45 million. Family advocates are concerned, because Jennings used the so-called "school climate" phrase as a tool to promote homosexuality in schools as the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Candi Cushman, education analyst with Focus on the Family Action, said parents should be concerned with how Jennings might spend the money. "He's been quoted saying he wants to spend as much as $70 million on so-called 'school climate' projects," she said. U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said the president is not to listening to the outcry over the safe school czar.

Article link: click here

Obama finally tells the truth!

In a recent FOX News interview regarding the struggle over the health reform bill, President Obama finally gave the American public what they deserve: the truth...

"Somebody who votes for this bill, they're going to be judged at the polls," Obama says.

USA Today article: Obama Says He Will Be Vindicated By History

If you give a mouse a cookie...

I think we need to change that expression to "if you give a donkey a cookie..."

Pelosi: 'Once We Kick Through This Door,' More Reform Will Follow

If you have any doubt that the Democratic leadership of the House views passing the current health care reform bill as the beginning, not the end, of the process of creating a national government health care system, just note what Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of bloggers on Monday. "My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive," Pelosi said, according to an account by Washington Post reform advocate Ezra Klein. "We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow."

Article link: click here

History in the making

Pay attention people or history might just pass you by. This should be ranked right up there with the rise to power by Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and all the others who were just doing what was best for their people...

Slaughter House Rules

We're not sure American schools teach civics any more, but once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely "deem" that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway. Under the "reconciliation" process that began yesterday afternoon, the House is supposed to approve the Senate's Christmas Eve bill and then use "sidecar" amendments to fix the things it doesn't like. Those amendments would then go to the Senate under rules that would let Democrats pass them while avoiding the ordinary 60-vote threshold for passing major legislation. This alone is an abuse of traditional Senate process. But Mrs. Pelosi & Co. fear they lack the votes in the House to pass an identical Senate bill, even with the promise of these reconciliation fixes.
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So at the Speaker's command, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, may insert what's known as a "self-executing rule," also known as a "hereby rule." Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.

WSJ article link: click here

WP article link: House May Try To Pass Senate Health-care Bill Without Voting On It

I'm sure George Washington and company would be proud. The United States of America: a government of the Democrats, by the Democrats, for the Democrats (sorry Abe).