ObamaCare Ruled Unconstitutional By Florida Judge

Another ruling in the peoples favor. The uncertainty now rests with the Supreme Court.

Excerpt: PENSACOLA, Fla. – A federal judge declared the Obama administration's health care overhaul unconstitutional Monday, siding with 26 states that argued people cannot be required to buy health insurance.

Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed with the states that the new law violates people's rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties. He went a step further than a previous ruling against the law, declaring the entire thing unconstitutional if the insurance requirement does not hold up.

Attorneys for the administration had argued that the states did not have standing to challenge the law and that the case should be dismissed.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Monday the department strongly disagrees with Vinson's ruling and intends to appeal.

"There is clear and well-established legal precedent that Congress acted within its constitutional authority in passing this law and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail on appeal," she said in a statement.

The final step will almost certainly be the U.S. Supreme Court. Two other federal judges have already upheld the law and a federal judge in Virginia ruled the insurance mandate unconstitutional but stopped short of voiding the entire thing.

At issue was whether the government is reaching beyond its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce by requiring citizens to purchase health insurance or face tax penalties.
Vinson said it is, writing in his 78-page ruling that if the government can require people to buy health insurance, it could also regulate food the same way.

"Or, as discussed during oral argument, Congress could require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals," he wrote, "Not only because the required purchases will positively impact interstate commerce, but also because people who eat healthier tend to be healthier, and are thus more productive and put less of a strain on the health care system."

Read full article here.

About That School Obama Highlighted in the State of the Union…

Michelle Malkin posted this on Facebook today:

*Written by Doug Powers

In spite of the woeful state of education in many areas of the country, there are still reasons to be encouraged. President Obama outlined one such example in his State of the Union speech last week:

When President Barack Obama spotlighted a successful school in his State of the Union speech, he picked Bruce Randolph School in Denver.

“Take a school like Bruce Randolph in Denver,” the president said. “Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado. Last May, 97 percent of seniors received their diploma.”

Wow, that’s an impressive turnaround. How did they go from bad to great? Well, that part of the story ended up on the cutting room floor during the SOTU editing process, for obvious reasons:

Bruce Randolph was a middle school when it opened in 2002. In 2007, Denver Public Schools gave Bruce Randolph School permission to operate autonomously. It was the first school in the state to be granted autonomy from district and union rules.

Each teacher then had to reapply for his or her job. A published report said only six teachers remained.

When the devil is in the details, simply ignore the details.

Good News - GDP Exceeds Previous High - US Economy Expanding

Opinion: Obamacare Is Already Falling Apart

If this is so, what is left except a huge bureaucracy?

Excerpt: Last week, the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin -- 245 to 189 -- to repeal the president's landmark health reform package. It's unclear whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will bring the measure up in the upper body.

But even he doesn't, the law is already showing signs of serious trouble.

In recent weeks, some Democrats who supported the law have called for scrapping portions of it.

The 1099 provision

Waivers for unions and "mini-med" programs

Preexisting conditions

Individual mandate

So despite committing more than a trillion taxpayer dollars over the next decade to health reform, Obamacare will leave tens of millions uninsured, drive the cost of care up for virtually all Americans, and put the federal government in charge of ever more of our health care decisions.

As the Obama administration grapples with implementing its signature piece of legislation, the case for repealing it is becoming self-evident. Public support for the law continues to erode. Lawmakers should follow the House's lead and repeal this monstrosity.

Read full AOL News article for a detailed discussion of each provision here.

Should Wal-Mart Be Hired To Run The Country?

Received this email today and thought I would pass it along. Wal-Mart vs.  The Morons 1.   Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every  day. 2. This works  out to $20,928 profit every minute! 3.   Wal-Mart will  sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March  17th) than Target sells all year. 4. Wal-Mart  is  bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears  + Costco +  K-Mart  combined. 5. Wal-Mart  employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and  most speak English. 6. Wal-Mart  is the largest company in the history of the world. 7. Wal-Mart  now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they  did this in only fifteen years. 8. During  this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought  bankruptcy. 9.   Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the  world. 10.   Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 2,906 are Super  Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five  years  ago. 11. This year  7.2  billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart  stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5   Billion.) 12. 90% of  all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.  13.   Wal-Mart has gross sales that total more than the total revenue of all the  countries in the world, except 6.  You may  think  that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work  for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix  the economy. This should  be read and understood by all Americans Democrats, Republicans,    EVERYONE!! To the  President  and all 535 voting members of the  Legislature, both  parties.  It is now official you are  ALL corrupt  morons: a.. The  U.S.  Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to  get it right and it is broke.   b..   Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it  right and it is broke. c.. Fannie  Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is  broke. d.. War on  Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion  of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they  only w ant  more. e.. Medicare  and Medicaid were established in 1965.  You have had 44 years to get it  right and they are broke. f.. Freddie  Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is  broke. g.. The  Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign  oil. It has ballooned to 16,000  employees with a budget of $24 billion  a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it  right and it is an abysmal failure. You have  FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while  overspending our tax dollars. AND YOU WANT  AMERICANS TO  BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH  CARE SYSTEM     ??    YOU THINK YOU CAN RUN THE AUTO INDUSTRY.... THE BANKING  SYSTEM????? MAYBE  WE OUGHT TO KICK YOUR EGG-HEAD BUDDY BUMS OUT OF OFFICE AND HIRE WALMART TO  RUN THE  GOVERNMENT  ??? WALMART SEEMS  TO KNOW HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS.......WHY DON'T YOU GUYS JUST ADMIT IT'S WAY  BEYOND YOUR PAY GRADE, AND QUIT? Folks, keep  this circulating. It is very well stated.  Maybe it will end up in the  e-mails of some of our "duly elected' (they never read anything) and   their staff will clue them in on how Americans feel.   "You can't fix stupid,  but you can vote it  out."

France’s Solar Bubble Pops

Unfortunately, many of the bright ideas thought up by academics and politicians don't work and have disastrous unintended consequences. I like the comment by the French lawmaker, "we didn't see it coming". This is true of many of the bright ideas that become law both here in the US and overseas. It is the ordinary citizens and taxpayers that bear the brunt of all this waste and regulation.

Maybe France and Spain have learned their lesson, and will back away from the foolish notion that wind and solar can replace carbon fuels in the near future at an affordable price. Obviously Obama and the liberal Democrats refuse to learn anything from the bankrupt socialist laboratories in Europe.

Excerpt: Two years ago, the National Assembly adopted one of those solar “feed-in tariffs” — a cute misnomer for a mandate that forces utilities to buy expensive renewable electricity at ridiculously high prices. Flush with visions for the solar future, the legislature set the price at 546 euros per megawatt-hour, almost ten times the market price of 55 euros that customers pay for electricity from other sources. Electricitie de France (EDF), the national utility, was obligated to buy from all comers, covering the costs with a special levy on other customers.

The result was an avalanche of expensive rooftop projects. Whereas EDF had received only 7,100 applications a year for such connections before 2008, by last December it was fielding 3,000 per day. “We didn’t see it coming,” French lawmaker Francois-Michel Gonnog told Bloomberg News. “What is in the pipeline this year is unimaginable. Farmers were being told they could put panels on hangars and get rid of their cows.” The government cut the price support twice last year but was finally forced to impose a three-month suspension in December.

The utility is now 57 billion euros in debt. Plans to upgrade its aging fleet of 53 nuclear reactors — which provide 75 percent of France’s electricity — have been thrown into doubt.

France seems to have created its bubble out of sheer delusions over the “renewable future.” “Most panels installed in France were made in China with a highly questionable carbon footprint,” Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told parliament last month. “Policies should create jobs in France, not subsidize Chinese industry.”

They should also recognize that running the world on solar energy is a disastrously expensive fantasy.

Read full National Review article here.

Chris Christie Talking To Disgruntled Police Officer - Reality Has Set In

Go to video here.

Entire US Government Said To Know Obama Ineligible For Office

This article was written in the EU Times a while back, but is an interesting early analysis of Obama's eligibility. The fishy smell is becoming apparent and remedies are being pursued in the State legislatures.

The twist here is that the EU Times believes the birth certificate search is a smokescreen to take the attention off the fact that Barach's father never was a US citizen. This in itself disqualifies Obama from ever becoming a legitimate President.

The article also points to the courts as instrumental in prolonging our search for Constitutional justice, by hiding behind the facade of "lack of legal standing" to dispose of any legal challenge to Obama's eligibility.

As legal standing goes, if not the people, then who?

I don't know how our 3 branch system of government can handle this blatant disregard to the concerns of the people, by our courts. We are losing our freedoms and our voice in running our nation.

Excerpt: Members from all three branches of the Federal government already know that Barack Hussein Obama is ineligible for the office of President. National leaders, to include members of the US Supreme Court, already know that Barack Hussein Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States of America, and therefore, is ineligible for the office he currently holds.

What they don’t know is how long it will take for most Americans to figure it out, or what to do about it.

The diversionary search for an authentic birth certificate is ongoing and Obama has now spent in excess of $2 million in legal fees to keep that search alive.

Eric Holder’s Department of Justice continues to deploy taxpayer funded attorneys around the country to file dismissals on behalf of Obama, denying all American citizens access to the courts as a peaceful remedy, which only fuels the fire of discontent and the questions about Obama persist.

Michelle Obama states that Kenya is Barack’s “home country.” She knows, after twenty years with Barack. The Ambassador or Kenya has confirmed the same His family friends all know it, and are in fact quite proud of the fact that Americans had no hesitation in electing a “black man from Kenya” as President of the United States.

The US Supreme Court knows what the constitutional condition of “natural born citizen” means. Even the most far left member of that court, Justice Ginsberg, is on record proclaiming that a “natural born citizen” is a birth child of TWO legal US citizens.

Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi knows that Barack Hussein Obama is not eligible for the office of president, which is why she refused to certify the following language when certifying Obama as the DNC candidate for president in 2008

Read entire EU Times article here.

Unending Bias Of The Main Stream Media

South Carolina Out In Front - Bill Proposed To Ban Sharia Law

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A legislative initiative aimed at preventing “a court or other enforcement authority” from enforcing foreign law in the Palmetto State was introduced today in both the S.C. House and Senate by Rep. Wendy Nanney (who drafted the bill) and Sen. Mike Fair respectively, who say the bill will preempt violations of a person’s constitutional rights resulting from the application of foreign law.

Legislators and other proponents of the bill say America has unique values of liberty which do not exist in foreign legal systems. Yet foreign laws are increasingly finding their way into U.S. court cases, particularly in the area of family law, involving divorce and child custody where, for instance, Islamic Shariah Law has been invoked in several U.S. state.

According to Christopher Holton with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy (CSP), “There are numerous examples in dozens of states in which parties to such a dispute attempted to invoke Shariah.”

Iranian Book Celebrating Suicide Bombers Found in Arizona Desert

With the billions of dollars we are spending on air security, you would think that some attention could be given to our borders. Anyone with half a brain, terrorist that is, could figure out that the easiest way to enter the US illegally and unnoticed, would be to cross with the hundreds of Mexicans entering our Southern border each day.

Sure we feel safer after Grandma gets patted down, or one of our fighting wounded has to remove his prosthetic leg to pass the security checks; or do we? Why don't we just profile like the Israelis do. I know I would feel much safer and we could then restore basic civil rights to the majority of our population.

This article and the second one I refer to below raises a major question. How many terrorists have crossed over our Southern border, where are the sleeper cells located, and what murderous acts are being planned?

It is time for Obama and our liberal Homeland Security chief to wise up and secure our borders.

Excerpt: A book celebrating suicide bombers has been found in the Arizona desert just north of the U.S.- Mexican border, authorities tell Fox News.

The book, "In Memory of Our Martyrs," was spotted Tuesday by a U.S. Border Patrol agent out of the Casa Grande substation who was patrolling a route known for smuggling illegal immigrants and drugs.

Published in Iran, it consists of short biographies of Islamic suicide bombers and other Islamic militants who died carrying out attacks.

According to internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection documents, "The book also includes letters from suicide attackers to their families, as well as some of their last wills and testaments." Each biographical page contains "the terrorist's name, date of death, and how they died."

Agents also say that the book appears to have been exposed to weather in the desert "for at least several days or weeks."

Just last year, the Department of Homeland Security had in custody thousands of detainees from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. U.S. Border Patrol statistics indicate that there were 108,025 OTMs detained in 2006, compared to 165,178 in 2005 and 44,614 in 2004.

Read full FOX News article here.

Read previous post on subject here

Is Illegal Immigration Destroying The Southwest United States? 19 Immigration Facts That Very Few People Are Talking About

Excerpt: Immigration is not a bad thing. In fact, the United States is a nation that is made up of immigrants. However, the truth is that rampant, unchecked illegal immigration is a really, really horrible thing and it is permanently destroying many areas of the southwest United States. The U.S. government has refused to control the U.S. border with Mexico for decades, and this has allowed millions of criminals, drug dealers and gang members to cross freely into the United States. Not only that, but our refusal to secure the border has allowed thousands (if not millions) of people that have very serious diseases into the country. After illegal immigrants arrive they either try to make a living legally (by directly competing with blue collar American workers and driving their wages down) or illegally by selling drugs or being involved in other kinds of criminal activity. The economic burden that these tens of millions of illegal immigrants has put on our system is almost incalculable.

Once again, immigration is not a bad thing. But allowing rampant, uncontrolled illegal immigration is absolute insanity.

The following are 19 facts about illegal immigration that very few people are talking about....

Read the 19 facts here.

Game-changer! Arizona to pass 2012 eligibility law

Obama will have to produce birth certificate to run again.

It appears that more and more "birthers" are outing themselves as it becomes clear that Obama's long form Hawaiian birth certificate does not exist. This together with the fact that Pelosi and Co. did not vet Obama as they did McCain, and Obama has spent over $2 million in legal fees to hide his records, says to me that "there is something there".

More and more states are getting on the bandwagon, due mostly to the influx of Republicans into the State legislatures during the last election. The article names Arizona, Montana, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas as going forward with this type of legislation. Interest has also been expressed in Tennessee, New Hampshire, South Dakota, California, Maine, New Mexico, South Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey and Iowa. If you live and vote in these states, talk it up and see that a similar bill is put before your representatives.

It also seems to me, that since the House has changed hands, Obama should be properly vetted prior to the 2012 elections.

Excerpt: The proposal, which also is being taken up in a number of other states, is highly specific and directly addresses the questions that have been raised by Barack Obama's occupancy of the White House. It says:

Within ten days after submittal of the names of the candidates, the national political party committee shall submit an affidavit of the presidential candidate in which the presidential candidate states the candidate's citizenship and age and shall append to the affidavit documents that prove that the candidate is a natural born citizen, prove the candidate's age and prove that the candidate meets the residency requirements for President of the United States as prescribed in article II, section 1, Constitution of the United States.

The critical phrases are "natural born citizen" and the requirements of "article II, section 1, Constitution of the United States," which imposes on the president a requirement not demanded of other state and federal officeholders.

"Obama may be able to continue showing contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law for the next two years, as he has demonstrated his willingness to do in his first year in office," he wrote in a column. "However, a day of reckoning is coming. Even if only one significant state, with a sizable Electoral College count, decides a candidate for election or re-election has failed to prove his or her eligibility, that makes it nearly impossible for the candidate to win. It doesn't take all 50 states complying with the law to be effective."

Read full WorldNetDaily article here.

Another Triumph for the Greens - Dirty Dishes

A problem that arose in the Spokane River in Washington state has become a much bigger problem for the whole country. Liberal environmentalists, with little scientific evidence succeeded in destroying the effectiveness of the detergent you use to wash the plates you eat off. It is time that we neuter the nut-jobs that promoted this change, and who also gave us the incandescent light bulb ban, in favor of bulbs containing mercury, a hazardous material,

Excerpt: To go with toilets that don’t flush and light bulbs that don’t light, we now have dishwashers that don’t wash.

It so happens that in the last six months, a lot of people have suddenly discovered their dishwashers don’t work as well as they used to. The problem, though, isn’t the dishwashers. It’s the soap. Last July, acceding to pressure from environmentalists, America’s dishwasher detergent manufacturers decided to change their formulas. And the new detergents stink.

One of the key ingredients in dish detergent is (or was) phosphorus. Phosphorus is a sociable element, bonding easily and well with others. In detergent, it strips food and grease off dirty dishes and breaks down calcium-based stains. It also keeps the dirt suspended in water, so it can’t reattach to dishes. Best of all, it prevents the washed-away grime and minerals from gumming up the inner-workings of your dishwasher. Traditionally, phosphorus was loaded into dish detergent in the form of phosphates, which are compounds of phosphorus bonded to oxygen. (PO4 if you’re keeping score at home.) Prior to last July, most detergents were around 8 percent elemental phosphorus. Now they’re less than 0.5 percent phosphorus.

The result is detergents that don’t work very well. There have been a handful of stories in the media about consumer complaints. The New York Times noted that on the review section of the website for Cascade—Procter & Gamble’s market-leading brand—ratings plummeted after the switch, with only 11 percent of consumers saying they would recommend the product. One woman in Florida told National Public Radio that she called Procter & Gamble to complain about how its detergent no longer worked. The customer rep told her to consider handwashing the dishes instead.

Read full Weekly Standard article here.

White House Insider: Birthers - Proceed At Your Own Peril

Ulsterman claims to receive insider info from somewhere in the Obama Administration. This insider is telling Ulsterman to be careful. Why? Who knows?

Excerpt: As Insider admits in this most recent message – “there is something there.”

Read full Ulsterman report here.

The Genesis Code - Trailer

Ryan Is Republican Point Man

Paul Ryan is not afraid to say what he thinks will help the American economy and the people, much to the dismay even of many Republicans. We need more representatives like him to get the discussions going on how to rein in Federal spending and growth and promote the Freedom guaranteed to us by the Founders.

Excerpt: While unknown to most Americans, Mr. Ryan, 40 years old, has established himself as a leading conservative thinker on federal spending, shaped in part by his early work for supply-side icon Jack Kemp.

Now, Republicans not only have made Mr. Ryan chairman of the House Budget Committee, but on Tuesday the House is expected to vote to give him unprecedented powers to force spending cuts for the current fiscal year. That authority will allow Mr. Ryan to act unilaterally in setting an overall spending level for the rest of the year, a job usually handled by his full panel.

Hours later, Mr. Ryan will speak to the nation in a televised address following Mr. Obama's remarks to a joint session of Congress. He was chosen for the role by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.

Read full WSJ article here.

Tea Party Repeal ObamaCare Ad

Obummer! by Christina Houston

Smoke & Mirrors - GOP Rep. Paul Ryan Tears Down the ObamaCare Fiscal House of Cards

The Pathway To Repealing ObamaCare in the U.S. House

What Has American Become

GREENPEACE FOUNDER QUESTIONS MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING

Sarah Palin Battle Hymn

For those Sarah Palin lovers out there.

House GOP Lists $2.5 Trillion in Spending Cuts

What are those nasty House Republicans and Tea Party people doing to our government? For a change, maybe they are trying to do what they were elected to do. Wouldn't that be a kicker?

Excerpt: Moving aggressively to make good on election promises to slash the federal budget, the House GOP today unveiled an eye-popping plan to eliminate $2.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. Gone would be Amtrak subsidies, fat checks to the Legal Services Corporation and National Endowment for the Arts, and some $900 million to run President Obama's healthcare reform program. [See a gallery of political caricatures.]


What's more, the "Spending Reduction Act of 2011" proposed by members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, chaired by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, would reduce current spending for non-defense, non-homeland security and non-veterans programs to 2008 levels, eliminate federal control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, cut the federal workforce by 15 percent through attrition, and cut some $80 billion by blocking implementation of Obamacare. [See a slide show of the top Congressional travel destinations.]

Some of the proposed reductions will surely draw Democratic attack, such as cutting the Ready to Learn TV Program, repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, the elimination of the Energy Star Program, and cutting subsidies to the Woodrow Wilson Center. [See editorial cartoons about the GOP.]

Read the full detailed list of proposed cuts in the US News report here.

Hawaii governor can't find Obama birth certificate

The old adage, that "Where There Is Smoke, There Is Fire", seems to fit here. With Obama spending millions to keep his records secret, and now Hawaii not being able to find the long form certificate, I am starting to see some embers smoking.

Excerpt: Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie suggested in an interview published today that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.

Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser he was searching within the Hawaii Department of Health to find definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii, because the continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the president's chances of re-election in 2012.

Donalyn Dela Cruz, Abercrombie's spokeswoman in Honolulu, ignored again today another in a series of repeated requests made by WND for an interview with the governor.

Toward the end of the interview, the newspaper asked Abercrombie: "You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding birthers and your plan to release more information regarding President Barack Obama's birth certificate. How is that coming?"

In his response, Abercrombie acknowledged the birth certificate issue will have "political implications" for the next presidential election "that we simply cannot have."

Conceivably, the yet undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has discovered may have come from the grandparents registering Obama's birth, an event that would have triggered both the newspaper birth announcements and availability of a Certification of Live Birth, even if no long-form birth certificate existed.

WND has also reported that Tim Adams, a former senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008, has maintained that there is no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate on file with the Hawaii Department of Health and that neither Honolulu hospital – Queens Medical Center or Kapiolani Medical Center – has any record that Obama was born there.

Read full WorldNetDaily article here.

House passes health law repeal

With thoughts of the Tea Party in their heads, all Republicans and three Democrats voted to scrap ObamaCare. Knowing that the bill stands little chance of passing the Senate and a veto by President Obama, the Republicans stayed true to the voters and went on record against maybe the worst bill to ever get through Congress and the President.

This vote, along with the news that 26 states now are suing the Federal Government over the bill on Constitutional grounds, gives us new hope that maybe, just maybe, the voters and politicians get it. Our freedom is at stake and we conservatives are in an all out war with the progressive/liberal left for the survival of our Republic.

Excerpt: House Republicans passed a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan Wednesday, taking their first major step toward rolling back the massive overhaul that has dominated the American political landscape for almost two years.

The vote was 245 to 189, and unanimous GOP opposition gave the vote the same partisan feel of the March vote to pass the law, underscoring once again the hardened political lines of the health care debate. Only three Democrats backed the repeal, a smaller number than Republicans had once predicted.

The bill will head next to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has promised to block it. If it did receive a vote, the repeal bill would be unlikely to draw support from even a majority of senators. Even so, House Republican leaders have challenged Reid to give the bill a vote since Democrats, who control the chamber, have little to fear.

Read full POLITICO article here.

Bill Cosby, understanding Southern

Received this in an email today and though I would pass it along. Being retired in SC and liking many of Cosby's self reliance views, this is particularly amusing to me.

ObamaCare: What Most Needs Repealing and Replacing? Everything.

The referenced article is a good discussion of some of the contents of ObamaCare that need corrective action and you can go to the full text to examine the authors solutions to the ten problems listed.

It is great to discuss the many provisions of the Act that need to be improved, however, there is no mention here of the vast bureaucracy currently being set up to oversee and ENFORCE this takeover of 1/6th of our economy.

The only practical recourse is for the House to defund as many upstart agencies as possible and, hopefully, gain enough support in 2012 to repeal. Then serious free market solutions can be discussed and enacted.

Excerpt: Tomorrow night the House of Representatives will debate the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), what many call “ObamaCare.” Some critics complain that this is a futile exercise because there is little chance of short-term success. But that’s the wrong way to look at it.

At the time of its passage, most members of Congress had no idea what was in the ACA. Nancy Pelosi was more correct than she realized when she said, “We have to pass it to see what’s in it.” Even now, we don’t know half of “what’s in it,” but we know enough to have an intelligent debate. Ideally, tomorrow night’s proceedings will be educational — in a way that the debate last spring was not.

In anticipation of the event, representatives from the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the American Action Forum will conduct a briefing on Capitol Hill tomorrow at noon. Our goal: to discuss ten structural flaws in the Affordable Care Act. We believe each of these is so potentially damaging, Congress will have to resort to major corrective action even if the critics of the ACA are not involved. Further, each must be addressed in any new attempt to create workable health care reform.

1. An Impossible Mandate

2. A Bizarre System of Subsidies

3. Perverse Incentives for Insurers

4. Perverse Incentives for Individuals

5. Impossible Expectations/A Tattered Safety Net

6. Impossible Benefit Cuts for Seniors

7. Impossible Burden for the States

8. Lack of Portability

9. Over-Regulated Patients

10. Over-Regulated Doctors

Read the full NCPA analysis here.

Jared Loughner, The Arizona Shooter

The New York Times, on Saturday, had an interesting background article on the Arizona shooter. Two points that stand out are that Loughner was angry at George Bush and the government, and the other was the comments by the Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, who seems to have guaranteed Loughner's insanity defense by his public statements.

You can read the full NYT article here.

Congress Should Rein in EPA

While trying to excerpt this article I found that most of the points made were relevant to the discussion of the current environmentalist agenda and the circumvention of Congress by the Obama administration. Therefore most of the article by William F. Shughart II is reprinted here.

There is a fine balance between regulations that save our environment and those that rein in our economy. Unfortunately the EPA is run by ideologues that subscribe to the mantra of environment at any cost. Many in the EPA and the President himself have a different agenda. Their focus is on control of the economy and to use the environment as an excuse to pass "Cap & Tax", whether by legislation or fiat, to bring the energy sector under tight governmental control. This is much like what ObamaCare did for the health and insurance sector.

Excerpt: While EPA administrators and employees were congratulating themselves on some jobs well done—the amount of particulate matter being inhaled by Americans has fallen dramatically under the agency’s enforcement of the Clean Air Act, for example—after being reenergized by President Obama’s support for an activist “green” policy agenda, it also has proposed or already approved new regulations that promise to hobble economic growth and add to the nation’s unemployment problem.

Consider the following:

Despite the Obama administration’s recent decision to delay new rules regarding smog and emissions from industrial boilers, EPA is preparing to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and industrial users that consume oil, natural gas and coal beginning in January. The potential cost: cutting back on carbon emissions will force many smaller, coal-fired power-generating plants to shut down, almost certainly raise electricity rates around the country, undermine the international competitiveness of U.S. businesses and send more American jobs overseas.

It is proposing a reduction in the national ambient-air-quality standard for ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog, which would require industries and many small businesses to adopt new, costly emission controls. (Public opposition has prompted the EPA to delay the rule’s issue until July.) The potential fallout: according the Manufacturers Alliance, an organization that for 75 years has conducted economic research, estimates 7.3 million jobs lost beginning in 2020.

It just raised the amount of corn-based ethanol that must be blended with gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent for 2007 and newer vehicles. Projected cost: around $5 billion a year in federal subsidies.

It is reviewing federal legislation proposing to regulate so-called hydraulic fracturing in natural-gas production, a drilling technique that state agencies already oversee and which has been used in more than one million wells in the United States since 1950. The potential cost: in Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale zone alone, EPA regulation would destroy 280,000 potential jobs and reduce tax revenues by $6 billion over the next decade, according to a study by Natural Resource Economics.

It is preparing to mandate the use of expensive cooling towers at new and existing power plants to protect fish and other aquatic species from hot water discharges into lakes, rivers and coastal waters. The potential cost: $300 million per coal plant (413 plants impacted) to $1 billion for nuclear plants (59 units impacted). Because it likely would be prohibitively expensive to install cooling towers at most power plants, utilities are likely to shut down their plants, requiring them to import and resell higher cost power from other regions.

It is proposing regulations to classify coal ash as hazardous to human health. Projected cost: more than $20 billion and tens of thousands of jobs, while boosting electricity costs for businesses that rely on recycled coal to manufacture cement, wallboard and roofing materials.

It is preparing to mandate air pollution limits in January for industrial and commercial boilers that power the operation of paper mills, chemical plants and other facilities. Projected cost: based on an analysis by the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, $20 billion.

It tightened air quality standards for sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide, negatively affecting many industries, particularly utilities that rely heavily on coal. Projected cost: $70 billion over the next decade to replace or retrofit coal plants.

These are just a handful of the costly, job-killing regulations EPA has imposed or is preparing to impose. Many of the initiatives are aimed directly at the oil and natural gas sector, which is an important driver of job growth and nowadays accounts for 85 percent of our nation’s energy supplies.

The dreams of federal bureaucrats and their environmental-activist supporters notwithstanding, windmills and other “green” sources of power are unlikely to replace fossil fuels anytime soon. In the meantime, when the U.S. economy is anemic and nearly 10 percent of the labor force is unemployed, EPA has done (and can do) much harm. The new Congress should rein it in.

Read full article here.

CNN - Danger of Open Wi-FI Networks

Momentum builds for bipartisan State of the Union seating

The skeptic that I am tells me that the Dems are putting another one over on the naive Republicans. Since the Democrats will have the minority of seats at the event due to the recent election, I believe they want to lessen the impact of negative reactions to the Presidents speech. What better way to do that then to intersperse their members throughout the hall. Since they will be standing and cheering at every word (aka Pelosi last year), it will look like the whole hall agrees with Obama.

Where was this bipartisanship when the Democrats were in control?

Don't blame me, as a CPA/auditor, I was trained to be a skeptic.

Excerpt: Momentum is building to mix the traditionally partisan seating arrangements at the State of the Union later this month, even though there’s no clear plan for how to actually make that happen.

Several Senate Republicans have signed on to the effort, along with a few key House leaders, who have endorsed Democratic Sen. Mark Udall’s proposal to head across the aisle – literally – and sit with members of the opposite party during the annual address on Jan. 25.

All told, more than two dozen members of Congress have publicly endorsed the idea.

Congressional seating is open at the State of the Union on a first-come basis, so anyone can sit anywhere — outside of the first few rows reserved for cabinet officials, Supreme Court justices and certain congressional leaders.

The real test will come the evening of the address, when members will choose to sit with their parties or mix it up. But at least on paper, Udall’s request for a “symbolic gesture of unity” is gaining support.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced Friday she is now “co-leader” of the initiative, supported by GOP colleagues Sen. John McCain, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

Read full POLITICO article here.

Feds threaten to sue states over union laws - Back Door Card Check

The Obama administration will do anything they can to solidify their hold on the unions and union cash. The states are fearful that the Union "Card Check" law will somehow get passed (less of a chance now that Republicans control the House), and are trying to head off its implementation by blocking it under State law.

Obviously Obama cannot be trusted. What he cannot get through Congress, he will try to enact through Executive fiat. If Congress and the courts do not reign in the Executive branch soon, we will have a situation similar to that in Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez has become a near dictator.

In this instance, who do you think the workers fear the most, the employer or the union thugs that will personally deliver the voting cards to their homes? Only a liberal Democrat looking for Union largess would prefer the latter - for others, not themselves.

Excerpt: The National Labor Relations Board on Friday threatened to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over constitutional amendments guaranteeing workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

The agency's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the amendments conflict with federal law, which gives employers the option of recognizing a union if a majority of workers sign cards that support unionizing.

The amendments, approved Nov. 2, have taken effect in South Dakota and Utah, and will do so soon in Arizona and South Carolina.

Business and anti-union groups sought the amendments, arguing that such secrecy is necessary to protect workers against union intimidation. They are concerned that Congress might enact legislation requiring employers to allow the "card check" process for forming unions instead of secret ballot elections.

In letters to the attorney general of each state, Solomon says the amendments are pre-empted by the supremacy clause of the Constitution because they conflict with employee rights laid out in the National Labor Relations Act. That clause says that when state and federal laws are at odds, federal law prevails.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he believes the state is on solid ground. He plans to coordinate a response with the other three states.

"If they want to bring a lawsuit, then bring it," Shurtleff said. "We believe that a secret ballot is as fundamental a right as any American has had since the beginning of this country. We want to protect the constitutional rights of our citizens."

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley also promised to "vigorously defend our South Dakota Constitution" against any federal lawsuit.

Unions long have pushed for the card-check legislation, but the effort hasn't won enough support in Congress. Union officials say companies often use aggressive tactics — borderline illegal, they contend — to discourage workers from organizing unions.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that spent millions to back congressional Republicans in last year's elections, was among the groups that pushed for passage of the state amendments. Phil Kerpen, the group's vice president for policy, said the NLRB's action "shows how determined the board is to accomplish card check by backdoor means against the wishes of the American people and Congress."

Read full AP article here.

Why I Still Believe In The Future by Bernard Baruch

Bernard Baruch (1870-1965) was a financier and an adviser to Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman.

Hobcaw Barony, near my current home, was created by Belle Baruch, just outside of Pawleys Island, SC and is an outdoor laboratory used by SC colleges and universities for long term ecological research. Visitors to Hobcaw find the quiet woods teaming with deer, feral hogs, turkey, ducks, numerous birds, alligators, snakes and fox squirrels.

Bernard Baruch read this text over CBS radio in 1953:

When I was a younger man, I believed that progress was inevitable -- that the world would be better tomorrow and better still the day after. The thunder of war, the stench of concentration camps, the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb are, however, not conducive to optimism. All our tomorrows for years to come will be clouded by the threat of a terrible holocaust.

Yet my faith in the future, though somewhat shaken, is not destroyed. I still believe in it. If I sometimes doubt that man will achieve his mortal potentialities, I never doubt that he can.

I believe that these potentialities promise all men a measure beyond reckoning of the joys and comforts, material and spiritual, that life offers. Not utopia, to be sure. I do not believe in utopias. Man may achieve all but perfection.

Paradise is not for this world. All men cannot be masters, but none need to be a slave. We cannot cast out pain form the world, but needless suffering we can. Tragedy will be with us in some degree as long as there is life, but misery we can banish. Injustice will raise its head in the best of all possible worlds, but tyranny we can conquer. Evil will invade some men's hearts, intolerance will twist some men's minds, but decency is a far more common human attribute and it can be made to prevail in our daily lives.

I believe all this because I believe, above all else, in reason -- in the power of the human mind to cope with the problems of life. Any calamity visited upon man, either by his own hand or by a more omnipotent nature, could have been avoided or at least mitigated by a measure of thought. To nothing so much as the abandonment of reason does humanity owe its sorrows. Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life, have been the consequence of action without thought.

Because I place my trust in reason, I place it in the individual. there is a madness in crowds from which even the wisest, caught up in their ranks, are not immune. Stupidity and cruelty are the attributes of the mob, not wisdom and compassion.

I have known, as who has not, personal disappointments and despair. But always the thought of tomorrow has buoyed me up. I have looked to the future all my life. I still do. I still believe that with courage and intelligence we can make the future bright with fulfillment.

Texas Is The Model

There's a reason why the Lone Star State keeps growing.

GOP “cardinals” say pork moratorium only temporary

It appears some of the Republicans still do not get the message, a message that needs to be loud and clear by the next primary season. The Tea Party should get working on finding "qualified" and "attractive" candidates to challenge both Democrats and Republicans that believe they have the right to spend the taxpayers' money any why they see fit.

Excerpt: Three Republican cardinals on the House Appropriations Committee say they view the ban on earmarks as temporary and that lawmakers should retain the right to direct spending to their districts.

None of the three spending-subcommittee chairmen have a specific timeframe or plan in mind to resume earmarks, but they said earmarking should be restored once the public has more confidence in the process.

“I don’t find a problem with me deciding that I want some of the money in the state and tribal assistance grants going to help a community in Idaho rebuild their water system,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the new chairman of the Interior and Environment spending subcommittee and a close friend of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who ushered in the new GOP rules.

“I can make that determination because I know that district better than somebody from the EPA,” he added.

If Simpson thinks he knows better than the EPA about how to spend money, which is a pretty low bar to set in any case, then let Simpson propose those projects as separate bills subject to votes by the full House. At least that way, his choice of spending money has full public accountability — and since it would exist separate from other appropriations bills, would have no undue influence on votes on other funding. There should especially be more scrutiny when elected officials try to direct federal funds to their own districts rather than the under-the-radar pork method. That kind of sunlight would go a long way towards discovering graft and corruption before the money gets spent, rather than a couple of years or more down the road — especially when the road is named the Senator Foghorn Leghorn Highway, leading to the Senator Foghorn Leghorn Airport.

And even apart from the substantive problems with pork, is it so difficult to deal with accountability that the porkers couldn’t even wait a fortnight in the new session of Congress to start dreaming of the day when they could get back to bacon-hunting?

Read full Hot Air article here.

Video: How did Christie balance the budget and cut taxes in New Jersey?

Go to Hot Air article here.

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Yet to Come

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Yet to Come
By Arnold Ahlert Wednesday, November 24, 2010

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.
Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another TofuTurkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the TofuTurkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats-which were monitored and controlled by the electric company-be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited," explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines - for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost. The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible," said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example," she added.

Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner," but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2010, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

Are your car mirrors adjusted correctly?

Jesus in Every Book of the Bible

Mortgage Refinancing Scam

United Nations Health Organization Stats - Why Kill Best Health System With ObamaCare

Just in case you have not seen these interesting statistics:    
 A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very
 interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations
 International Health Organization.

 Percentage of men and women who survived a  cancer five years
 after diagnosis:

    U.S.                65%

    England          46%

    Canada           42%

 Percentage of patients diagnosed with  diabetes who received
 treatment within six  months:

    U.S.                93%

    England          15%

    Canada           43%

 Percentage of seniors needing hip  replacement who received it
 within six  months:

    U.S.                90%

    England          15%

    Canada           43%

 Percentage referred to a medical specialist  who see one within
 one month:

     U.S.                77%

    England          40%

    Canada           43%

 Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic  tool) per million people:

    U.S.                71

    England          14

    Canada           18

 Percentage of seniors (65+), with low  income, who say they are in
 "excellent  health":

    U.S.                12%

    England          2%

    Canada           6%


I don't know about you, but I don't want “Universal Healthcare"
 comparable to England or Canada   .
 Moreover, it was Sen. Harry Reid who said, "Elderly Americans
 must learn to accept the inconveniences of old age."

 SHIP HIM TO  CANADA OR ENGLAND !

 He is "elderly" himself but be sure to remember his  health
 insurance is different from yours as Congress  has their own high-
 end coverage!  He will never have to learn to accept
 "inconveniences"!!!

 AND THE WINNER IS VERY INTERESTING!

 The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in
 the private business sector prior to their appointment to the
 cabinet.  You know what the private business sector is... a real
 life business, not a government job.  Here are the percentages.

 T.  Roosevelt........   38%

 Taft.....................40%

  Wilson   ................52%

 Harding..................49%

 Coolidge..............   48%

 Hoover................. 42%

 F.  Roosevelt.........   50%

 Truman..................50%

 Eisenhower...........  57%

 Kennedy..............   30%

 Johnson.................47%

 Nixon...................   53%

 Ford.....................  42%

 Carter..................   32%

 Reagan...................56%

 GH Bush................. 51%
Clinton     .................. 39%

 GW Bush................  55%

 And the winner of the Chicken Dinner  is:


 Obama................  8%!!!

 Yep!   That's right!  Only Eight Percent! The least by far of
 the last 19 presidents!!  And these people are trying to tell our
 big corporations how to run their business?  They know what's
 best for GM...Chrysler... Wall Street... and you and me?

 How can the  president of a major nation and society...the  one
 with the most successful economic system in world  history...
 stand and talk about business when he's  never worked for one?...
 or about jobs when he has  never really had one??!  And neither
 has 92% of his senior Staff and closest advisers!  They’ve spent
 most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit
 jobs...or as "community organizers" when they should have been
 in an employment line.

More on Obama - Why Is He Spending Millions to Hide Personal Info?