Ensign Signs Out

"Rule of the Beltway: Never trust a man in politics whose hair is prettier than his wife's." ~Michelle Malkin, 2009.

I'm not one to quote Michelle Malkin, but that's a pretty good rule. It applies to Rod Blagojevich, Gary Hart and also John Edwards.

Enmeshed in an ethics and sex scandal, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) announced that he is resigning his seat. Nevada's governor is expected to name US Rep. Dean Heller as his replacement. Heller will be the new incumbent.

So, what's up? Well, two years ago it was revealed that Ensign had an affair with a campaign aide who was married to his best friend and Senate chief of staff, Dean Hampton.

Wait, it gets worse. Or funnier, depending how you look at these things.

Hampton received a gift of $96,000 from Ensign's parents, and there are allegations that the senator used his influence to get Hampton a job. No! That's illegal? I had no idea!

Now Hampton faces serious legal problems -- he was indicted for improperly lobbying his old boss.

Great hair, though. And for the record, I don't trust any of them. Pretty hair or not.

And another parting shot (see what I did there?) at least the Republican will quit once caught. Democrats have a tendency to linger after they're caught in the cookie jar. I guess that's the only real fundamental difference between the two parties?

Thanks to Marathon Pundit for the majority of the content.

The Nagging Swing of Dissatisfaction

"An army of the people is invincible!" ~ Mao Zedong (Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)

In almost every national election for the past two decades, we have seen a change in control of either one or both houses of Congress or the White House. This has happened in 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008, and now again in 2010. The pattern is very clear. And it is not because Americans “prefer divided government,”-- it’s because they can’t get anyone in the system to listen to them!

Why is that? Becauseneither of these factions is ever going to change the system one iota if they can help it; they are the system, they are its servants, its enablers, its enactors.

There's talk today warning the TEA party people that the hard part starts today - to keep their candidates on point and not to fall into the pattern that seems to be the norm in Washington - absolute power.

"The usual pattern is that after the election the voters and the activists go back to their normal lives, but the organized interests redouble their efforts to influence policymakers....Tea Partiers must change that pattern. They must keep up the pressure on Congress and state legislators. They must demand actual performance, not just promises. And they must also seek to change the attitudes of the American people. It’s not enough to favor small government in principle; more voters have to agree to give up their own subsidies and benefits," writes David Boaz

That's all well and good - and yes, his suggestions should be taken to heart. They won't.

That's why the Pelosi-Reed gang did nothing to peel back anything the Bush Administration did from 2001-2006. Even when they had the majority - what, exactly, did they do differently? They stopped the wars. They repealed the Patriot Act. They put Rove and Cheney on trial and closed Gitmo. Oh, they didn't? That's right, because they voted or approved ALL of that on their watch with hardly a blink of an eye.

The Progressives elected Obama, sat down and went back to Tweeting. There was a real failure on their part to assume that Mr. Obama "Got It" and was willing to do whatever it took to get it done. On the left, there's a lot of blame and failure to shake at - but four fingers point back to the real problem... a fall back to apathy and complacency.

On the bright side, we're starting to - maybe barely - wake up from the United States of Amnesia. We know we've been lied to, bullsh*tted, and without cheap oil or Simon on American Idol - the end is near. Yes, this is the beginning of the end - who's end? That's up to us. It's all our doom if we don't wake up soon. It's theirs if we don't hit the snooze button - and they know that.

Meantime, here are two well crafted articles from two extreme ends of the political spectrum.
Paul Craig Roberts: The Impotence of Elections
Scott Tucker: Apocalypse Again: The Boom-and-Bush Cycle of Bipartisan Politics

The Delusion

If were to actually ask a conservative, a real one, about the Bush years, you might be surprised and get an honest answer - that the Republicans f*cked everything up. They will blame Bush for spending recklessly, and expanding the wars - and TARP. Occasionally you'll even get an ear full about the Patriot Act. Some will bitch about Cheney opening up the treasury for all his buddies, others will complain about McCain. The real conservatives will explain it's all these things why they got their ass handed to them in 2006 and 2008. They did a lousy job when it was their job.

However, listening to the stories and the narrative being written right now, the Democrats have not owed up or even contemplated why they're about to get slaughtered. And this as their aids are laying out the plastic sheeting in anticipation of their bloodbath.

Which, seemingly, shouldn't make any sense at all. The Republicans were (practically) unable to stop the Pelosi/Reed/Obama agendas and projects. They passed: The stimulus, expanded bailouts, financial reform, Cash for Clunkers, the student loan takeover, and Health Insurance Reform.

Obama pulled the reckless reigns of foreign policy from the idiot cowboy and won the Nobel Prize for his amazing turn around in policy -- or something like that. Mr. Obama handled a major disaster in Louisiana completely differently than the Fortunate Son, and now the Democrats are so powerful they can get bills that haven’t even been read, they've appointed numerous czars that are above recall and oversight, oh, and they can spend like there’s no tomorrow - with zero consequences.

Guess who’s been running on this agenda? Yeah, the displaced and rebuked un-electable Republicans. And isn't it strange that the Democrats aren't even mentioning their records, or even running away from them at this point?

"My name may not be on the ballot, but our agenda for moving forward is on the ballot, and I need everybody to turn out." -- Barack Obama

Last night Jon Stewart should have told him to quit saying this, as it's a rally cry for his enemies.

My point is, rather than realizing that their Rahming of a slipshod agenda through America's oversized gut was their undoing, they're too busy blaming everything and everyone else - from foreign money, to Bush (still), and that Obama being too nice, or the laziest - that the American people are irrational and racist....

And now they're already bullsh*tting themselves that the Republican landslide is going to be a GOOD thing for Obama and his agenda.

“Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.” ~Bhagavad Gita

The real fun will be when the n00b Republicans announce, casually, on week six that they, "...had no idea the enormity of the problem..." and snuggle into the lobbyists and the backslapping backroom deals that all that came before them ALL fell into. THAT's when things are going to get really funny.

Send in The Clowns

When the Bozos and Clowns are testifying before Congress - the Republic is hereby ended.

"A clown in the circus who doesn't hide the fact that he is a clown. Now, who's the clown who asked him to testify?"

Stephen Colbert, in character, spoke to Congress today.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was not amused. "Mr. Colbert's submitted statement was considerably different from the one that he presented," he said. As if Mr. Conyers deserves or commands any respect? It's hard to have a sense of humor when your wife is sentenced to 37 months in jail on bribery charges.

He submitted serious testimony to a judiciary subcommittee hearing on the issue of farm workers and immigration, but when it was his turn to speak, the talk show host slipped into character as a satirical conservative to make his points in support of more favored status for migrant farm laborers.

Yes, yes. Laughs. Ha ha.

I get the point that he's trying to bring attention to this issue - however, jokes aside - when you can't take anything seriously - you're going to wonder why the Republicans are re-running the 1990's -- and there isn't anything left to laugh about.

The GOP Front Runner is... Who?

Over the weekend, a straw poll by Republicans picked Indiana's Mike Pence the win over Palin, Romney, Huckabee and everyone else. Palin was on the bottom... there's a joke there somewhere.

He's chairman of the House Republican Conference and part of the congressional leadership, Pence, whose district sprawls across the eastern part of Indiana, remains unknown to many conservatives. He introduced himself in the speech:

"Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes,” said Pence. “All you really need to know is that I'm the father of three teenagers (hence the white hair), I have been married for 25 years to an elementary school teacher who is the love of my life -- Karen Pence -- and I'm a Christian, a Conservative and a Republican, in that order.”

Great. Just what we need.

While Pence, who first won election to Congress in 2000, criticized the Obama administration and Democrats in control of Congress, he also lashed out at policies backed by former President George W. Bush. Well, that's topical.

"Even Republicans in Congress are getting back to fiscal discipline and reform,” said Pence. “Let's be honest, four years ago Republicans in Congress didn't just lose their majority, they lost their way. When I opposed No Child Left Behind, when I opposed the Medicare prescription drug bill, and when I opposed the Wall Street bailout, I knew that if we kept acting like big government liberals, the American people were eventually going to go with the professionals. And they did.

"The truth is our party in Congress walked away from the principles that minted our national governing majority and the American people walked away from us,” added Pence.

"These are serious times,” continued Pence. “A nation conceived in liberty has come of age in bondage to big government. We've lost respect to the world. We are going broke. And our social and cultural fabric is unraveling. People are scared.”

And he's the guy to fix it?

So - in my opinion - he's a nice guy, and parrots Ron Paul? So he's the Ron Paul Lite?

A source to Blasphemes has revealed: "

His politics are terrible, but what a nice guy." I think being a nice guy gets you pretty far in politics, actually ... Palin seems to generate a lot of nasty comments from people who've interacted with her personally.

Ron Paul Lite

The Constitution is NOT an Ala Carte Menu

This isn't a pick and choose, people. It's not the Bible.

Why does it seem that Democrats love the first amendment, but hate the second?

The Republicans are trying to get rid of the 14th, love the second and the tenth, but are treating the first and fifth as optional.

It's a package deal. All or nothing, gang. It's only a buck oh' five.

Declaration: A Rough Draught

Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence

Click here for pdf version (best for printing)

This text of the Declaration of Independence is from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1: 1760-1776 (Princeton University Press, 1950), 423-8. Although at some point Jefferson labeled this manuscript as the “original Rough draught,” it was not his first drafting of language for the Declaration. Portions of what Julian P. Boyd, the founding editor of the Papers and a student of the writing of the Declaration, called Jefferson’s “composition draft” have survived. What Jefferson came to call his “original Rough draught” was, Boyd surmised, a fair copy made from the earlier drafts. It has considerable significance, however, as the earliest complete version of the Declaration in Jefferson’s hand.

It did take on some characteristics of a draft, Jefferson making several emendations to it (including alterations he ascribed to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who along with Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston made up the committee charged by the Continental Congress with the drafting of a declaration). In editing the “Rough draught” for publication, Boyd endeavored to recover the text of Jefferson’s fair copy—that is, Jefferson’s original full text before any collaborative revision.

To that end, this rendition of the text does not take account of alterations to the manuscript that represented, in Boyd’s estimation, changes to the fair copy. In Volume 1 of the Papers, the “original Rough draught” is the third of a set of documents related to the Declaration.

To view images of the “original Rough draught” (Library of Congress) click on the links below.

A Declaration of[1] the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant [sic] station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;[2] that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights[3] inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness. prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject[4] them to arbitrary power[5] it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government & to provide new guards for their future security. such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.

he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good:

he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate & pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to them.

he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation,[6] a right inestimable to them, & formidable to tyrants alone:[7]

he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly & continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people:

he has refused[8] for a long space of time[9] to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, & convulsions within:

he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands:

he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers:

he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and amount of their salaries:

he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people & eat out their substance:

he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies & ships of war:

he has affected to render the military, independant of & superior to the civil power:

he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

for imposing taxes on us without our consent;

for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;

for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:

he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, & declaring us out of his allegiance & protection:

he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns & destroyed the lives of our people:

he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation:

he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence:

he has incited treasonable insurrections in our fellow-subjects,[10] with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN[11] and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce:

in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12[12] years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered & fixed in principles of liberty.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. we have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and we appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our correspondence & connection. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, & when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election re-established them in power. at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & deluge us in blood. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free & a great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it: the road to glory & happiness[13] is open to us too; we will climb it in a separate state,[14] and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces[15] our everlasting Adieu![16]

We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled do, in the name & by authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve & break off all political connection which may have heretofore subsisted between us & the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independant states, and that as free & independant states they shall hereafter have power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts and things which independant states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honour.

Annotations and the original website can be found here, C/O Princeton University

Guess Who Voted to Limit the Liability of Oil Companies?

S

Man, people are pissed about that oil spill. But some of that blame is (rightfully) bouncing back to the congress-persons who voted for the Oil Pollution Act. Many believe that those who voted for it are directly responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf. That's a stretch... But they did enable British Petroleum to loosen their safety procedures, to operate without redundant oil spill prevention systems, to take risks, and be, you know, capitalist pig dogs. The argument is that this is why they're using the same oil spill clean up technologies used the in the late 70’s are still in place today.

The Oil Pollution Act diluted (heh heh) any motivation for improvement in oil spill safety, prevention and oil spill containment procedures by removing the penalties for neglect.

Many congress-persons who voted for this act are still in office today. The cry for these people to be removed is getting louder... and yes, I agree, but not for this. What we really should be outraged is that government, which demands obedience to protect us from these things, accepts no liability when they happen.

But anyway, here are their names (these congress-persons voted for the Oil Pollution Act of 1990):

United States Senators – [source]

Richard Shelby – Alabama

John McCain – Arizona

Barbara Boxer – California

Chris Dodd – Connecticut

Joe Lieberman – Connecticut

Joe Biden – Delaware (currently Vice President)

Tom Carper – Deleware

Daniel Inouye – Hawaii

Daniel Akaka – Hawaii

Dick Durbin – Illinois

Richard Lugar – Indiana

Chuck Grassley – Iowa

Tom Harkin – Iowa

Pat Roberts – Kansas

Jim Bunning – Kentucky

Mitch McConnell – Kentucky

Olympia Snowe – Maine

Ben Cardin – Maryland

Barbara Mikulski – Maryland

John Kerry – Massachusettes

Carl Levin – Michigan

Thad Cochran – Mississippi

Kit Bond – Missouri

Max Baucus – Montana

Harry Reid – Nevada

Frank Lautenberg – New Jersey

Jeff Bingaman – New Mexico

Chuck Schumer – New York

Kent Conrad – North Dakota

Byron Dorgan – North Dakota

Jim Inhofe – Oklahoma

Ron Wyden – Oregon

Arlen Specter – Pennsylvania

Tim Johnson – South Dakota

Orrin Hatch – Utah

Patrick Leahy – Vermont

Robert Byrd – West Virgnia

Jay Rockefeller – West Virginia

Herb Kohl – Wisconsin

U.S. House – [source]

Don Young – Alaska

Jon Kyl – Arizona

Howard Berman – California

David Dreier – California

Elton Gallegly – California

Wally Herger – California

Jerry Lewis – California

George Miller – California

Nancy Pelosi – California

Dana Rohrabacher – California

Henry Waxman – California

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – Florida

Cliff Stearns – Florida

Bill Young – Florida

John Lewis – Georgia

Jerry Costello – Illinois

Dan Burton – Indiana

Pete Visclosky – Indiana

Hal Rogers – Kentucky

Barney Frank – Massachussetts

Ed Markey – Massachussetts

Richard Neal – Massachussetts

Steny Hoyer – Maryland

John Conyers – Michigan

John Dingell – Michigan

Dale Kildee – Michigan

Sander Levin – Michigan

Fred Upton – Michigan

Jim Oberstar – Minnesota

Gene Taylor – Mississippi

Frank Pallone – New Jersey

Chris Smith – New Jersey

Donald Payne – New Jersey

Gary Ackerman – New York

Eliot Engel – New York

Nita Lowey – New York

Charles Rangel – New York

Jose Serrano – New York

Louise Slaughter – New York

Ed Towns – New York

Howard Coble – North Carolina

David Price – North Carolina

Marcy Kaptur – Ohio

Peter DeFazio – Oregon

Paul Kanjorski – Pennsylvania

John Spratt, Jr. – South Carolina

Jim Cooper – Tennessee

John Duncan – Tennessee

Bart Gordon – Tennessee

John Tanner – Tennessee

Joe Barton – Texas

Ralph Hall – Texas

Solomon Ortiz – Texas

Lamar Smith – Texas

Frank Wolf – Virgnia

Jim McDermott – Washington

Nick Rahall – West Virginia

Alan Mollohan – West Virgninia

Dave Obey – Wisconsin

Jim Sensenbrenner – Wisconsin

and

Newt Gingrich

Now what ought to REALLY anger you is how many of these jokers are still incumbents TWENTY years after. That is greater of incumbents that existed under one party rule in China and the Soviet Union. I think only Castro has outlived these lifetime Congressional 'leaders'?

And since we're on the issue, weren't these the same idiots who were against liability caps for medical malpractice just a few months ago, pointing to the increased cost of business that are incurred as a result of doctors taking great pains to avoid litigation? If you didn't support the doctors in that case and then turn around and yell they didn't put big enough caps or should have unlimited liability in the case of Big Oil Spill, perhaps you can share why? Also, do you consider a cap on medical liability an intrusion of government? Why would your opinion change so radically, and so quickly?

Oh we got both kinds, Democrat and Liberal Democrats!

Pelosi: Health care bill can be bipartisan even without GOP votes

The top lug nut of the House, Speaker Mrs. Pelosi, appears to be signaling that her party has all but given up any hope [finally] of achieving meaningful bipartisan support for a health care reform bill.

“Bipartisanship is a two-way street. But let me say this, the bill can be bipartisan, even though the votes might not be bipartisan, because they [Republicans] have made their imprint on this.”

Uh, huh huh. Wut?

Pelosi pointed to the fact that the final bill will, probably, not include a government-run public health insurance option, a provision vigorously opposed by congressional Republicans but supported by liberal House Democrats. Instead, Pelosi said that Democrats have settled on insurance exchanges as a way to help contain health care costs. No tort reform or anything that might ACTUALLY contain costs... But her compromise position reflects an acknowledgment of Republicans’ approach to health care reform. Oh, so that's how we're defining bi-partisanship now?

The Senate and the President do not include a public option in their versions - maybe that's what she's blabbering about? While pissing off all the Democrats who very much want a public option - or a single payer option to health care - White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration made that decision to drop it because it did not appear that there would be sufficient votes to get the public option passed in Congress. Even with a super majority? Although some liberal Democrats in both chambers favor a public option, a substantial block of conservative Democrats in the House, known as the Blue Dogs, do not support it. Blue Dogs are folks who won Republican seats from Republicans by pretending to be Republicans, but put a 'D' on their ballot slips. These are the folks that are dropping like flies and are the most likely members to be booted out in November.

Pelosi is also quick to suggest that President Obama and congressional Democrats have gone to great lengths to give Republicans an opportunity to weigh in on health care reform notwithstanding fundamental ideological differences between the two parties. You know, except include them in the process, listen to their suggestions, or bend over backwards to cut special deals like the rest of the Democrats have been given. Oh, there was that little pow-wow last week - but the President released his plan before the meeting (oooh, bad timing!) and that gauranteed that the entire program was just a show for both parties to toss mud at each other.

Democrats - see? we tried, and they didn't want to play!

Republicans - They've staged this whole thing to make us look like obstructionists - when they had no intention on listening us in the first place.

It's all just b.s. political theater for the reporters anyway.

“We went into the legislative process - hundreds of hours of hearings and bill writing and all the rest - where the Republicans made their suggestions,” Pelosi recounts. “We know that one of the reasons we didn’t have a bill in the fall is because the president wanted to give the Senate more time to arrive at bipartisanship in the Senate bill, which he thought might be possible then.” Funny, that's not at all how I remember it...

Pelosi added, “And so what we’ve had is the year of trying to strive for bipartisanship, as I say over 100 Republican amendments in the bill. And the Republicans placed their own bill on the floor, here in the House, which insured 3 million. Our bill insures over 30 million. So we have a different value system here.” Yes, it seems theirs scraps a system that insures 300 million to insure 30, 15 of those are illegal aliens. The Republican one? Never heard of it.

I've promised you, fair readers, that I wouldn't complain and that I would offer solutions. I even took the time to come up with my own Health Care Solution.

In the meantime - let's stop having Health Care as a condition of employment, and a function of the individual. Like car ownership. You have collision and liability insurance on your car. If there's a fix or maintenance - it is up to the single owner to take care of it. Maybe it's just that simple? If not, we better come up with something else quick before Mrs. Pelosi starts swinging her lug wrench again.

Tea Baggers

Do you pay taxes?

Did you pay them today?

I mean, do you physically write a check every month to the IRS, or your bank with a 941 Quarterly payment?

Or do you just get yours withdrawn from your paycheck.

I'm going to assume that the good readers and followers of Blasphemes actually have jobs. Or at least jobs that require some amount of paperwork above the table.

I do pay my taxes. I write a lot of checks. In fact, the only reason I have a check book anymore is to write over money to the Feds. And I spend a lot of time in Chicago, so every time I buy something 10.25% of that receipt goes to Todd Stroger's family. Why do I always pick on Todd? I know it's not going to better schools or improved roads. Even the sidewalks are crumbling to dust.

So what's all this nonsense about the Tea Bag parties? Well, I was going to say "not much" - but then the MSM all the sudden went grape-nuts and couldn't stop making fun of it. Really? I really expected the media to completely ignore the events staged all over the country today - as if it didn't happen. But in fact, they're going out of their way to make fun of it. Or compare it to the Thai Protests, or the women in Afghanistan... again, to make fun of it. But the best joke is the name of the event.

Now making a "tea bag" joke really doesn't get much play outside of San Francisco or Halsted Street in Chicago. But why keep bringing it up? Are they scared that the Tea Bag movement might gain some traction?

Besides - the Democrats only rase taxes for the rich, right? And would Obama's constituents even notice? The rich ones don't pay taxes, they engage in "tax-reduction" strategies. They work for the government, or they're too rich to care. I'm sure many of them have offshore tax shelters, like George Soros.

The other constituents are engaged in a whipped up class warfare.

Look at California. In June 2002, the liberal American Prospect magazine called California a "laboratory" for Democratic policies, noting that "California is the only one of the nation's 10 largest states that is uniformly under Democratic control."

They said this, mind you, as if it were a good thing. In California, the article proclaimed, "the next new deal is in tryouts."

In just a few years, Democrats had turned California into a "job-free zone" – with a $41 billion deficit, a credit rating that was slashed to junk-bond status and a middle class now located in Arizona.

The Democrats governed California the way Democrats govern Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and New Orleans. They had an entire state. They bought the votes of government workers with taxpayer-funded jobs, salaries and benefits – and then turned around and accused the productive class of "greed" for wanting not to have their taxes raised through the roof.

Having run out of things to tax, now the California Legislature is considering a tax on taxes. Seriously.

California was, in fact, a laboratory of Democratic policies. Now Obama and the Democrats are trying it at the National level.

That's what the tea parties are about.

American Government

In the odd chance that your grade school education failed you (cough) or if you are one of those who constantly barks about the United States being a Democracy, perhaps you should watch the following...