Humor (but too realistic...) How Government Works

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night."

So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One to do the studies and one to write the reports.

Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" So they created the following positions, a time keeper and a payroll officer,

Then hired two people.

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?"

So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer and a Legal Secretary.

Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost."

So they laid off the night watchman.

NOW slowly..

Let it sink in.

Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.

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How Much Obamacare Costs the Average Family - (That Means YOU!)

by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Whether or not you now have health insurance, Obama’s health care bill will cost you dearly.

If you don’t have insurance, you will be required to buy it. The legislation specifies how much you will have to pay for the coverage before any subsidy kicks in. All during the campaign, Obama kept speaking about affordable coverage. Now it appears that his definition of “affordable” might be a bit elastic.

If your household income is $66,000 a year, slightly above the national average, Obama’s health care bill will require you to spend 12 percent of your income -- about $8,000 a year or almost $700 a month -- to buy health insurance before you get any federal subsidy.

Even those making less will have to reach deep into their meager resources to satisfy Obama’s statutory requirement. Families scraping by on only $44,0000 a year will have to pay 7 percent of their income (about $3,000) on insurance. Even those making just $33,000 will have to ante up 4.5 percent of their income (about $1,500) for health insurance. The required payments reach so far down the scale that those who are living at the federal poverty level of $22,000 will have to shell out 2 percent of their totally inadequate incomes ($440) for insurance.

That Obama is charging premiums to those living at or on the border of poverty is absolutely incredible! And this from a candidate who pledged that he would not tax the middle class!

If you have insurance, you will get hit by his proposed 40 percent tax on insurance premiums.

When the tax -- and the legislation -- takes effect in 2013, all families making about $120,000 or more in combined household income (14 percent of all families or one in seven) will have to pay the tax.

By the next year, 2014, the tax will hit every family making more than $100,000 (about 18 percent of all families or one in six).

By 2019, 10 years hence, the tax will reach down to affect every family making more than $75,000 a year (31 percent of families or one in three).

The tax will take 40 percent of all premiums above $21,000.

So if you don’t have insurance, you will be socked with a mandate to buy coverage and pay a hefty proportion of your income to do it; and if you have insurance, you will be hit with an excise tax on the coverage.

(In theory, it is the insurance companies that have to pay the tax, but the Senate Finance Committee “assumes” that they will pass the tax along to their policyholders).

These costs make a mockery of Obama’s oft-repeated pledge to avoid any tax increase that would impact those making under $250,000 a year. He finances about half of his health care plan on the backs of the elderly by cutting Medicare and inducing scarcity and the other half by premium taxes and insurance purchasing mandates on the middle and lower middle class.

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To Sue or Not

by Thomas Sowell

To sue or not to sue? That is the question.

After racist statements were made up out of thin air and then attributed to Rush Limbaugh, these were the options he had.

It is easy for me to understand that these are not simple choices because I have faced those options as well. Recently there have been a number of columns made up by others and put on the Internet with my name on them. The things said in those bogus columns have nothing in common with anything that I have said, in my columns, in my books or anywhere else.

Years ago, CBS reporter Lem Tucker said in a broadcast on October 13, 1981 that my views "seem to place him in the school that believes that maybe most blacks are genetically inferior to white people."

Anyone interested in the facts could have discovered that I had argued directly against this idea in a number of writings, including a feature article in the New York Times Magazine on March 27, 1977.

An attorney I did not know, but who had read my writings and knew that what was insinuated in that broadcast was totally false, offered to represent me in a lawsuit against CBS. That was when I faced the kind of dilemma that Rush Limbaugh faces now.

When someone is considered to be a "public figure"-- and Rush Limbaugh is certainly that-- the Supreme Court has narrowed the grounds on which that public figure can sue for libel, to the point where even the most blatant lie can often go unpunished.

Worse yet, there may be millions of people who never heard the original lie but who will hear it repeated in the media as a result of news stories about the lawsuit. And when those who committed character assassination are let off the hook on a technicality, they can claim "vindication," as if what they said was true.

The question facing any public figure who has been the target of character assassination in the media is: Is it worth investing a large amount of time in a process that can make you worse off by spreading the very lie that you are suing to stop?

The down side of not suing is that it allows the lie to continue to be repeated in the media, with later repetitions being justified in terms of "just reporting" what someone else said.

No one can resolve this dilemma for someone else. My decision in 1981 was that I had too many other things to do for me to go into the exhausting and time-consuming process of suing CBS, with such dicey odds in the courts.

Every situation is different, so whether Rush Limbaugh should sue is a question that only he can answer.

The question for the media to answer is: Are lies to go unchallenged when they are lies against someone you disagree with? Worse yet, are they to be excused, rationalized or even repeated?

Already there are people on television saying that, although Rush didn't actually say the things that have been attributed to him, he has said other things that they choose to call "racist."

If those other things really are racist, why don't they quote them, instead of something that was made up out of whole cloth?

The Rush Limbaugh show has, after all, been broadcast for many years, three hours a day. There are thousands of hours of those broadcasts that people can go back through to look for things to quote.

If critics can't find anything racist in all that material, why should an outright lie about what the man said be given a pass?

As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts.

Ultimately, this is not about Rush Limbaugh or anybody else who is smeared with impunity. It is about the whole climate in which issues are discussed.

Without a range of opposing opinions being available to the public, the basic concept of a self-governing democracy is a mockery. If views that some people don't like can be silenced or discredited by character assassination, the whole country loses.

The courts should not be the only line of defense. Common decency should be the first line of defense, so that people who smear others will pay a price in the outrage that their lies should provoke, even among decent people who do not agree with the target of their smears.

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Capitalism: A Big Fat Smelly Love Story

by Mike Adams

Michael Moore says he’s a Christian. I think he’s an ungrateful hypocrite who makes millions of dollars lying and defaming real Christians without blinking or, for that matter, shaving. He rarely checks his facts and, like John Edwards, has charged as much as $30,000 to speak out against capitalism and poverty for a whole hour. But at least he didn’t father an illegitimate child while his wife was suffering from cancer. Remaining perpetually un-bathed does have some advantages.

But enough about Michael Moore’s good qualities. One of Moore’s worst qualities is that he supports a 70% income tax rate, which would virtually destroy charitable giving in this country. Let me be clear: No man who would implement tax policies that would virtually destroy charitable giving can call himself a Christian. And few Christians can fulfill their duty to tithe when faced with a 70% tax burden.

Christian capitalists are the backbone of this great Christian nation. Take my good friend Jim Weaver. His wife quit a well-paying position last year to take care of their three small children. They are living off of one income now. But that hasn’t changed Jim’s commitment to using the money derived from the greatest economic system ever devised – capitalism, not socialism – to help others in need.

He gives 5% of his gross business profits to my friend Pastor Jackson from Kenya. You may know the story of Pastor Jackson. He felt a calling to build a mission seeking to take young boys off the streets of Kenya, to give them a home, and to teach them about the Gospel. He had an overwhelming sense that a small church in North Carolina was somehow supposed to help him fulfill that mission. So he sold his car to buy a plane ticket to go to America and visit these people he had never met.

The capitalists that run the church – mostly white males, I hear - decided to pledge 10% of their offerings to his mission. And now, driven by capitalist profits - and not a cent of government money - the mission is thriving. The man who sold his car to get to America has built a new school for the boys. They just bought a new school bus. They even decided to open up a new school for girls.

Around the time Pastor Jackson was taking his leap of faith, Michael Moore was harassing Charlton Heston – a Christian suffering from Alzheimer’s – with abrasive questions for an award-winning documentary. I think it was called “Bowling for the Special Olympics” but I could be wrong. I never check my facts when I’m writing about Michael Moore. I didn’t even take a shower today.

When Michael Moore did his “Fahrenheit 911” documentary he featured an anti-war group in Fresno that had been infiltrated by local police. Soon, the ACLU was teaming with Moore to come to the aid of the anti-war radicals. Imaging that: America’s biggest (literally) Christian teamed up with the organization that has done more to exclude Christians from the public square than any in our Christian nation’s history.

By contrast, my capitalist friend Jim Weaver also gives 5% gross profits to the Alliance Defense Fund – the greatest defenders of Christian legal rights in our Christian nation’s history. If Michael Moore doesn’t believe me here’s some evidence that not all capitalists are greedy and uncharitable.

While Michael Moore is teaming with the ACLU, the profits derived from my buddy’s capitalist risk-taking will defend another Californian who had his First Amendment rights violated. I wonder whether Michael Moore will give any of the millions made in his last (capitalist?) venture to help Jonathan Lopez.

Surely Michael Moore has heard of Jonathan Lopez. He was the student given a chance to speak on any topic whatsoever in his class at Los Angeles Community College (LACC). He decided to speak about God and miracles. In that speech, he quoted two Bible verses and expressed his support for traditional marriage. His instructor halted the speech, called him a “fascist b*stard,” and, remarkably, refused to give him a grade.

After his instructor wrote “ask God what your grade is” on his evaluation sheet – instead of actually giving Jonathan a grade in the class he paid for – he contacted the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). Lawyers for the ADF contacted the LACC administration. They tried to explain that a public school cannot ban as “offensive” the view that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman. But the school brazenly stood behind its patently illegal speech code. LACC administrators then flippantly told ADF lawyers who they could call in order to serve papers.

In other words, LACC dared ADF to sue them. So ADF sued them. And, now, the LACC speech code has been nullified with a federal court injunction. This victory was made possible by small business men, like Jim Weaver, who take capitalist risks and use the profits to help fellow Christians in need.

If Michael Moore succeeds he will destroy the capitalist choice to give, which is necessary to qualify any act as charitable. Even liberals will lose the freedom to donate money to their favorite causes – such as saving the delta smelt and terminating their girlfriend’s pregnancies.

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Tolerance Gone Wild

by Rebecca Hagelin

"Of course I dislike the Nazis. But who is to say they're morally wrong?" The shocking statement was made by a college student in New York, as documented by author Kerby Anderson in a much-needed book, "Christian Ethics in Plain Language". The professor of the class, Anderson reports, "....said that he has never met a student who denied the Holocaust happened. But he also reported that 10 to 20 percent of his students cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong."

This is certainly an indictment of how modern society has made a false religion out of "tolerance" and how we adults have failed to teach that there are, indeed, moral absolutes. What evidence more strongly proves the dangerous folly of moral relativism than young people who can't distinguish between learning to "tolerate" what they merely "dislike" and recognizing what is, on its face, evil? We're in real trouble when even the most egregious evils can't be named as such.

Recent surveys that reveal a growing number of youth believe that lying and adultery are acceptable behaviors indicate that we are headed for serious trouble as a society. We've become so obsessed with what is "politically correct" and the need not to "offend" that we are failing to teach the principles that every civil society must uphold in order to survive. If basic relational concepts such as fidelity and honesty cannot be recognized as bedrock principles then how on earth do we expect the next generation to defend the principles of freedom and justice?

Some truths are supposed to be self-evident. Yet even our Founding Fathers saw the need to clearly state them as such. Dr. Jeff Myers, a recognized expert in leadership development who has trained some two million people in mentoring and world view understanding warns, "We live in what may be one of the first generations in Western Civilization that is not intentionally preparing to pass its values to the next generation."

One great resource to help you train the next generation are the materials from Dr. Myers' organization, Passing the Baton. At www.passingthebaton.org you can order a complete kit that will enable you to mentor and equip young people with the ability to develop a strong moral compass. As their website states, "The mission of Passing the Baton is to move leader development to the forefront of the cultural agenda by identifying and mobilizing one million adults to personally equip the next generation of culture-shaping leaders."You may also wish to explore other materials by Dr. Myers including his coaching curriculum, "Understanding the Times", which is used in many private schools around the nation.

Kerby Anderson's, "Christian Ethics in Plain Language," is also a terrific resource that provides the Judeo-Christian foundations on a variety of ethical issues.

The book is ideal for our time-pressed world. Take the chapter on abortion: In only 14 pages, Anderson gives us a history of this abhorrent practice, a brief description of the various abortion methods, and an array of arguments against the killing -- biblical, philosophical and medical. Readers also get a section titled "Answers to Pro-Abortion Rhetoric" to help them discern when someone is trying to deceive through the use of clever words.

Parents will find the chapter on sexual ethics particularly helpful. It includes information on teen sexuality, school based clinics, and sex education.

Anderson, the national director of Probe Ministries International, is well equipped to help develop the critical thinking skills that our young people desperately need. An accomplished writer and co-host of the popular radio show, "Point of View", Anderson knows how to communicate effectively and offers many resources at www.probe.org.

It takes but one generation for a nation to implode from believing lies and practicing moral relativism. Our children need us to deliberately guide and teach them the truth that will keep them free.

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Barack's Enemies List

by David Limbaugh

Sorry to disillusion those of you who are still in denial about President Barack Obama's true socialistic and dictatorial nature, but this guy's militancy against his perceived enemies puts Richard Nixon's White House to shame. His war on Fox News is just his latest salvo.

Obama's perceived enemies are all those who have the temerity not to roll over for his extreme agenda. They all must be demonized, marginalized and silenced by a president who has turned the Oval Office into a glorified street organizing headquarters to attack his opponents. Indeed, this self-described uniter is the most divisive president in memory, and his uncontrollable ego can't countenance legitimate dissent.

Consider:

--He has smeared medical doctors with reckless charges that they administer unnecessary courses of treatment for profit, e.g., tonsillectomies and limb amputations.

--He publicly berated Chrysler's senior creditors as a "small group of speculators" who "endanger Chrysler's future by refusing to sacrifice like everyone else," merely because they wouldn't acquiesce to his demands and insisted on asserting their contractual rights.

--He has demonized "big oil" and other energy producers, free market capitalists, corporate executives, pharmaceutical companies, Republicans who oppose his health care plan as dishonest and partisan, the wealthy, municipal policemen who dared arrest his Ivy League professor friend for disturbing the peace, pro-lifers, global warming skeptics, the CIA, the military, the best health care system in the world, and George W. Bush every time he needs cover for the inevitably negative consequences of his policies.

--He uses his White House blog to attack his political opponents.

--He condemned opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens as "demagogues."

--He foreshadowed his true nature in the campaign with his spontaneous denunciation of small-town Americans as bitterly clinging to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.

--His administration has likened "tea party" protestors to an "angry mob" and "potential terrorists." His adviser David Axelrod has said they "are not in the mainstream and not in the majority" and represent "the angriest and most strident voices."

--In reference to opponents of his health care scheme, he said in a speech to a joint session of Congress, "I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it." He also said: "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so (Democrats) can clean up the mess." And this: "If you misrepresent what is in this plan, we will call you out."

--He has targeted and vilified the entire insurance industry for daring to oppose his plan, describing them as "those who would bend the truth -- or break it -- to score political points and stop our progress as a country," and accusing them of "filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads ... designed to mislead the American people." Even the liberal New York Times acknowledged Obama's use of "unusually harsh terms" in attacking the industry as being "interested only in preserving their own 'profits and bonuses.'" And in a true Stalinesque intimidation move, he is threatening to repeal the industry's antitrust exemption.

--He has abused the office of the presidency to personally attack Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and conservative talk radio in general. As we speak, his "czars" are devising schemes to shut down that very medium.

--Now he has launched an orchestrated attack against the only television network that makes a sincere effort at offering balance, Fox News Channel, in an attempt to isolate, demonize and delegitimize the organization because it won't follow suit and join the state-run media. The administration is vacillating between boycotting and allowing some administration officials to appear on the network. Obama singled Fox out as "entirely devoted to attacking my administration." Rahm Emanuel said it's "not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." David Axelrod said, "It's really not news; it's pushing a point of view." Axelrod implored ABC's George Stephanopoulos and his network "not to treat (Fox) as a news organization." White House communications director Anita Dunn, who has bragged about her success at controlling the media, said Fox is "like a wing of the Republican Party" that "spouts Republican talking points."

The common denominator of all these vicious White House attacks is that their targets are those who oppose the administration's agenda. Instead of selling its agenda the old-fashioned way -- by convincing the unconvinced -- it attacks those who dare to articulate and air the opposing point of view. This is a totalitarian, bullying administration, which is revealing its heightened state of panic and desperation over the public's growing awareness of the dangerousness of its policy prescriptions for America.

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White House Urges Other Networks to Disregard Fox News

Senior Obama administration officials took to the airwaves Sunday to accuse Fox News of pushing a particular point of view and not being a real news network.

FOXNews.com

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece. 

Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News. 

But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news" in an interview last Sunday. 

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." 

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization." 

"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way." 

Asked Monday about another Axelrod claim that Fox News is just trying to make money, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that while all media companies fall under that description, "I would say sometimes programming can be tilted toward accentuating those profits." 

But by urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month with Dunn's comments. 

So far, none of the four other major networks has given any indication that they wish to disinvite Fox News from the White House pool -- the rotation through which the networks share the costs and duties of White House coverage and the most significant interaction among the news channels. 

The White House stopped providing guests to "Fox News Sunday" after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. 

Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do." 

"She criticized 'Fox News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check." 

"Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong." 

Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues." 

Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House's decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks. 

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: "I don't always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree." 

David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: "I totally agree with Donna Brazile." Gergen added that White House officials have "gotten themselves into a fight they don't necessarily want to be in. I don't think it's in their best interest." 

"The faster they can get this behind them, the more they can treat Fox like one other organization, the easier they can get back to governing, and then put some people out on Fox," Gergen said on CNN. "I mean, for goodness sakes, you know, you engage in the debate. 

"What Americans want is a robust competition of ideas, and they ought to be willing to go out there and mix it up with some strong conservatives on Fox, just as there are strong conservatives on CNN like Bill Bennett." 

Bennett expressed outrage that Dunn told an audience of high school students this year that Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China, was one of "my favorite political philosophers." 

"Having the spokesman do this, attack Fox, who says that Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in her life, was not...a small thing; it's a big thing," Bennett said on CNN. "When she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, that -- I mean, that is crazy." 

Fox News contributor Karl Rove, who was the top political strategist to former President George W. Bush, said: "This is an administration that's getting very arrogant and slippery in its dealings with people. And if you dare to oppose them, they're going to come hard at you and they're going to cut your legs off." 

"This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list. And it's unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do," Rove added. "That is over- the-top language. We heard that before from Richard Nixon." 

Media columnist David Carr of The New York Times warned that the White House war on Fox "may present a genuine problem for Mr. Obama, who took great pains during the campaign to depict himself as being above the fray of over-heated partisan squabbling." 

"While there is undoubtedly a visceral thrill in finally setting out after your antagonists, the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence," Carr wrote over the weekend. "So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year." 

He added: "The administration, by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight."

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