Thursday, September 17, 2009

Some Posts Write Themselves....


From Barack Obama's website

Feb 21st, 2008

NEW ORLEANS, LA -- ACORN’s Political Action Committee today announced that it has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for President.

When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education.  Senator Obama said, "I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school.   That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it.  I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.  Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”


Religion of Peace








Main Stream Media Finally Covers ACORN Scandal!!!

Finally, someone in the media besides Fox News has decided to cover the growing scandal surrounding ACORN.  

Watch the video HERE

Or maybe not.  But you can still depend on Fox News if you need someone to throw some dirt on a liberal cause.


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Cap and Trade...and Tax!

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by a group called Competitive Enterprise Institute.  The .pdf of the documents may be viewed HERE.


Monday, September 14, 2009

The Truth War

I received an e-mail in favor of the Democrat's health care bill. In it, the sender stated that medical bills directly contributed to 70% of bankruptcy filings. This claim was too good not to check out.

In 2005 Harvard University published a consumer finance study of bankruptcies filed in 2001. It found illness and medical bills caused about 50% of personal bankruptcies. The best part is that 75% of those people had health insurance at the start of their illness. Read the entire study HERE.

38% lost their insurance during the illness. Because COBRA insurance is available for 18 months in the event they lost their job due to the illness (by the current federal law), either their insurance was canceled, hit their lifetime cap, or they had to make the hard choice of food Vs insurance premium. I didn't go to Harvard and there is no way to confirm, but my best guess is that lack of income because of the illness created an inability to work. Lack of income was a far greater cause leading to bankruptcy rather then just a lack of health insurance. However it is safe to assume that loss of insurance during the illness due to inability to pay the premium is an contributing issue. Which brings us to the health care plan. Even with the public option of government supported insurance, I don't believe any government program will move fast enough in moving someone from the public option to a Medicare type plan to have any real chance of avoiding bankruptcy. There is no reason to believe that the addition of a government supported Universal Health Insurance option, or any of the other proposed changes in the health care system will have any real financial impact of a catastrophic illness to the point of keeping a consumer out of bankruptcy.

EXIT QUESTION: Which issue is a greater threat to our economy and in greater need of reform: our health care system, or our financial system?

Racism in America

If you don't believe that a government run and public funded health insurance plan is a good idea, or that permitting insurance companies to compete across state lines is the best and most cost effective method of promoting competition then you are a racist. I'm watching The Situation Room on CNN, and that's pretty much their lead. I usually like James Carville, but saying that Joe Wilson can't help being a racist because he's from the South is very sad. The left has no response suitable to defend the criticism against their plan. The best they can do is attack their critics as racists.

Peter Roff, from US News and World Report:

"Obama may claim the House proposal—the only substantive piece of legislation yet assembled and made available for public scrutiny—doesn't make care available to illegal immigrants, won't eventually lead to care being rationed by bureaucratic government entities and doesn't provide for public funding of abortion but there are plenty of responsible, smart experts on healthcare including quite a few doctors who say it does. And plenty of plain, ordinary folks who have read the bill say it does too."

Of course you may have heard that by Friday after the President's speech, Democrats managed to add language to the bill that actually would prohibit the government from providing health insurance for illegal aliens. Unless you watch CNN of course, because I don't believe they reported that.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

What Has Become of Me?







I turn 50 next week, and In my bathroom I have watermelon and green tea foaming soap in a green pastel dispenser. No one who knew me at the tender age of 16 would have ever predicted the evolution of events. Back in those days (which seem just like the other day), my dad kept a bar of Lava soap by the downstairs stink. The bar was usually smeared with dirt and grime from those times that mom required my brother and I to wash up after a hard day of catching bees in mom's canning jars or playing football. We went through the cleaning process prior to sitting down to a bowl of Chef Boyardee ravioli. Several summers I went on extended canoe trips. It was usually a full day on the river of catching turtles and exploring some new found land. For those trips I brought out the big gun, a bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap. There is nothing in nature that can withstand the onslaught of Fels-Naptha. Dirt, bugs, poison ivy, all gone. It is truly the tsunami of soap, wiping away everything in it's path. There was nothing better at the end of the day then jumping into the gravel pit and scrubbing down with a bar of Fels-Naptha prior to opening up cans of Spam and baked beans around the campfire. Today, if I could find a bar of Lava soap in my house, the label would state "...with moisturizers".

I've had a pretty good life so far, and I've been able to spoil my kids with bikes, paintball, ATVs, and every game console known to mankind. But somewhere deep inside I feel that I've taken the wrong path. They have never had a paper route to earn money, and they have never taken a bath in the river with a bar of Fels-Naptha, topped off of a night of telling lies around the campfire.

I used to go to concerts. My friend Dan and I used to brag that we got spit on by Ted Nugget. We had pushed our way to the front row during the opening act of some no name band that no one had heard of (AC/DC) so we could get close to the mad man in the loin cloth. I saw Ted Nugget in concert twice, AC/DC three times, Black Sabbath, Journey, ZZ Top, Blue Oyster Cult, The Rolling Stones twice. Now I suffer from hearing loss and a constant ringing in my ears.

Dan believed the best way to start out a night on the town was to coat the stomach with greasy food and cheap whiskey. His theory was this combination would line the stomach and provide an even digestion of alcohol throughout the evening's activities. Once a couple of "kids" challenged that they could keep up with us. At 9:00 PM they laughed at us and said our reputations were exaggerated as they were a drink ahead of us. By 11:00 PM they were puking their guts out in the parking lot. That's where we found them when the club closed at 2:30. From what I remember, they asked to be dropped off at their car prior to Dan and I having a couple of beers at Johnson's house for breakfast.

It would not surprise me to learn that the great Hunter S. Thompson, suffering from arthritis, a new metal hip, and general aging and hard living issues, went into his bathroom and found watermelon and green tea foaming soap, which was the final insult that caused him to take his life.

What has become of me?