BUDGET CUTS! BE STILL MY SOUL! THEY'RE COMING!

Even President BO is concerned about budget cuts.

Really concerned!

I mean, he really cares!

He is consumed with passion about budget cuts!

Feel the emotion!

He has announced that he will make "significant" (his very word) budget cuts!

Rejoice!

President BO finally gets it!

Now I double-dog-dare you to watch this minute-and-a-half video:

A VIDEO EXPLANATION

So, are you underwhelmed?

STEREO-TYPICAL LIBERAL-THINK

It is SO liberal-think: We don't care one whit about what the majority of the country thinks, what the Constitution says, or what the unintended consequences will be, we have a "social" philosophy and we're going to implement it, no matter what.

That's their attitude toward whether to make Puerto Rico our 51st state (President BO's belief that he has visited 57 of them notwithstanding).

The House is set to vote on the so-called, "Puerto Rico Democracy Act."

That sounds really fair and "democratic," doesn't it?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In typical liberal fashion, the bill has been couched in a sweet sounding title in order to disguise its real purpose and assuage suspicion of its content (very much like the health care bill and the so-called "Fairness Doctrine").

This bill attempts to rig the voting process and denies the American people the right to decide whether they really want Puerto Rico to be granted statehood.

In fact, the bill has been written in such a way as to fast-track Puerto Rico to statehood without the consent of Puerto Ricans!

They have taken up the issue of statehood in the past and have thus-far rejected it.

Now, I'm all in favor of allowing any country or entity to apply for statehood if they want too. I favor letting their people decide the issue from their point of view, and I favor the citizens of the U.S. being able to decide whether or not we want them.

I lived in Puerto Rico and my sister was born there. I have no problem with their becoming a state if they want too and if the majority of American citizens want them to.

This bill provides nobody any choice in the matter, and is rigged to be obscure at best.

It sets up a preliminary vote on whether a majority of Puerto Ricans favor changing the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to "a different political status," then it goes on to establish a second vote that would pose three options: 1) Puerto Rico should become fully independent from the U.S.; 2) Puerto Rico and the U.S. should form a political association not subjected to the Territorial Clause of the United States Constitution; and 3) Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State of the Union.

This vote is set up to allow a plurality of the people to make what should be a majority's decision.

It also allows non-resident Puerto Ricans to vote, meaning that former Puerto Ricans now residing in the U.S. could vote with the resident Puerto Ricans on the issue of statehood.

One result of Puerto Rican statehood would be an increase in entitlement spending an estimated $3 billion per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that to a Commonwealth already way up on the list of welfare receipts.

Congress is not supposed to have the authority to make this kind of a decision, but make it they are about to.

That's because we have elected a bunch of people whose main objective is to take as much of citizens' earnings and spread them around as thinly as they can, so that the whole of the people will have too little economic power to resist the whims of a run-away Congress.

Typical liberal and RINO-think.

You lilly-livered, yellow-bellied, sapsuckers on the "conservative" side of the political spectrum had better do your homework, think this through, wake up and stop this atrocity.

My prediction: You aren't smart enough, brave enough or principled enough.

SO...YOU BELIEVED ALGORE AND FRIENDS AND THOUGHT CO2 WAS A POLLUTANT!

Did you know that the bigger plant (the one on the right, for those of you educated in recent government schools) gives off more oxygen than the smaller plant?

See, my liberal mangle-brained friend, CO2 is NOT a pollutant.

Any "scientist" who says it is...watch out for him/her. He/she will lie to you about other things, too.

(Does anyone know how to make the video fit on a blogspot post?)

Addendum: Thanks to ablur for the help with the video size! It worked!!

AREN'T YOU TIRED OF IT YET?

As of right now, not a single program from the recently passed health care legislation has gone into effect and there are already major problems with it.

According to the chief actuary of the Health Care Financing Administration, Richard Foster, millions of people could lose their health insurance, health-care costs will rise faster than they would have if the law hadn’t passed, and the overhaul will mean that people will have a harder and harder time finding physicians to see them.

Here are some things Foster has stated will occur:

1. About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019.

2. Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014.
3. Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “...passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums...”

4. “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”

5. national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. Instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” (Foster)over the next decade.

6. An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.

7. Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable”

8. Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.

9. A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Liberal, how are you liking the way your "free" health care is coming along?

I live in Florida. The Florida legislature voted Thursday to place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would ban any laws that compel someone to “participate in any health care system.” The legislation is modeled after the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, which has been introduced or announced in 42 states.

Did you get that? Forty-two states out of fifty!

Liberals all around us are crying, "OMGosh! We didn't know this would happen with health care when we pushed to have it adopted! We thought it was a happy little benign bill that would make certain that all Americans had 'fair' access to health care!"

Well, we tried and we tried to warn you, but your rose colored glasses were too darkly tinted for you to see.

Thanks, liberals, for installing a "health care reform" bill that will re-form our nation's health care system from one that is the best in the world, though troubled, into one that will be disastrous in the extreme.

Why don't you just drop your sophomoric pride and admit that your hair-brained ethereal philosophies sound good but are nothing more than figments of your vain, Utopian imaginations?
Come on...you're smart enough to see the need for that, aren't you?

(Maybe not.)

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A JOKE

A French doctor says, "Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take A kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks."

A German doctor says, "That is nothing; we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks."

The Russian doctor says, "In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks."

An American doctor, not to be outdone, says, "You guys are way behind. We recently took a man with no brains out of Illinois, put him in the White House, and now half the country is looking for work!"

TODAY IS MY WIFE'S BIRTHDAY - NO POSTING TODAY

Check out the celebration at my other blog: Joe's Jottings (My Other Blog)

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME?

What I mean is: When was the last time all of the cars in the world, all of the factory smoke stacks in the world, all of the aircraft in the world, all of the aerosol cans in the world and all of the burning of the forests in South America and elsewhere disrupted this much of peoples' lives?

Air travel across much of Europe was paralysed for a fourth day on Sunday as the cloud of volcanic ash drifted from Iceland and hung over the continent.

Peoples' homes were covered in ash which then got rained on and turned into a sort of cement.

Where is Algore in all of this?

Why have we not heard from the stupidly inane global warming crowd?

Don't they know that this is bound to have an effect for centuries to come?

How much carbon dioxide has been pumped into the atmosphere from this phenomenon?

(Hint: More than all of the factories, vehicles, fires and aircraft in the history of the industrial era.)

We should sue "mother nature," that non-existent "force" that all news reporters, scientists, and sociologists lean on in their never-ceasing attempt to deny the existence of God, while maintaining that faith is foolish.

Now don't go off half-cocked. I'm not implying that God caused the volcano to erupt, or that He is somehow getting even with someone for some evil they've done.

We live in a fallen world, and as a result, its forces do what they do without reference to God.

Jesus, Himself, said, "In this world you will have tribulation...," and we do. He was right. He told the truth.

Nevertheless, those of us with any more than an iota of sense are humbled, awed and amazed at the raw power of the forces in nature.

In light of this demonstration of what it really means to disrupt the atmosphere, why don't we get off of our environmental high horses, quit railing against one another and set about the business of solving the interpersonal relationship issues we grapple with constantly (for which, by the way, there is only one answer)?

You go first.

Phew! Glad that's behind us!

HAPPY TAX DAY!!

It's here! It's here!

It is time for the wonderful, beneficent government to confiscate their portion of your hard earned money.

Don't fight it...you won't win.

Give it up willingly.

Think of the Senators and Congress Persons you will be helping!

Think of the way you can be involved in promoting Entitlement Fever!

Think of how much more of the American Dream you might have if the government didn't steal so much of your income.

Nuts. Now I'm depressed.

I'll see you later.

THE NEW RIGHT

We recently found out something that thousands of years of humanity had never known, yea, never imagined: Health Insurance is a God-given right.

I'm not certain where that right came from, or how we came to know of its existence, or when it became effective, but it has seemingly been there all along...we just didn't recognize it.

Now we have.

Well wouldn't you know it? We forgot about the other inalienable right we all have.

This forgotten right is literally "for the children."

I mean, without it, they have no chance of getting by. They will find themselves destitute in no time...shortly after I'm gone.

That right is: LIFE INSURANCE (also known as Life Care or ObamaLife).

Tens, even hundreds of thousands of people go to bed each night not knowing what will happen to them when their fathers, mothers or grandparents die.

Something must be done!

We need the federal government to step in (although you would think by now that they would be more careful about what they step in).

Government Life Care, or Life Insurance is a must! We all have a right to it.

Tens of thousands of employers are shirking their duty to their employees by not supplying Life Insurance, or by providing such a minuscule amount that it is virtually useless.

Government Life Care must be mandated!

We must form great groups of people who can meet around the country, especially on Independence Day. We will call them T-Buggers, or Lifers (not to be confused with those serving time for heinous crimes against society, like former Congress persons).

Right now, evil life insurance companies sell policies across state lines. I, myself, although I live in Florida, carry a policy issued to me by Massachusetts Indemnity and Life Insurance Company (MILICO).

This must be stopped, as it severely increases competition among life insurance companies and has resulted in lower prices for life insurance all around the country.

It has even given rise to life insurance that is good for a given period of time, called Term Insurance...sold by Termites.

We must stop life insurance companies from refusing to sell life insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, such as death.

People afflicted with death have just as much right to life insurance as anybody else.

And their rates should not go up, just because they are dead.

If a person does not have, or does not want life insurance, tough tombstones. He or she must be mandated to purchase it.

When hired by another company, a person must be able to carry over his/her life insurance to the new company.

If a person is poor, rich people in the U.S.A. must chip in to buy his/her life insurance. It's only fair.

Life Insurance agents must have a cap placed on what they can earn on a life insurance policy sold through the federal government. Nobody should become rich providing this newly discovered right of the American people.

Student loans should be determined by the amount of life insurance carried by his/her parent(s).

Call or write your Congressperson today. Better yet, call President BO.

Tell them we need...insist on...ObamaLife.

Do it today! Do it for the children!

The life you cover might be your own.

It's only right.

THE LAW

Congress sees itself as a very important part of the American way of life.

One thing you can count on them to do is to say, "Americans want..." when they neither know nor care what Americans want.

They only care about what they want, which is, and always has been, more power with which to control the actions of the American people.

There was a time when congressmen moved among their constituents to get a feel for what they wanted, but that time is long gone. Today they hold "town hall meetings" at which they get angry and/or aggressive when they are told what the people actually want.

In their minds, there should be a law for everything. They have set out to accomodate that perceived need.

Ancient Israel did the same thing.

God gave one law: Don't eat the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. (Whether you believe that literally or not, follow the logic to see where I am going before you react with, "I don't believe the Bible...," because that will miss the point...and frankly, I am not interested in liberals' opinions of the Bible).

Adam and Eve (mankind, if you will) could not obey that one single law.

Then God gave the Ten Commandments.

Mankind could not obey them.

Israel came up with over 600 laws.

We sure can't abide by them.

Congress is doing the same thing.

We started with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights.

Not enough.

We "needed" more laws, so Congress came up with them.

We still don't have enough. Not to worry...more are on the way.

For instance, don't try to sell your house until after you pay out good money to upgrade all of your appliances to meet federal standards (find THAT one in the Constitution, I double-dog-dare you).

I submit that we'd all be better off if Congress would repeal all of the laws but two:

1) Do all you have agreed to do.

2) Do not encroach on other persons or their property.

Let's all hold our collective breaths.

The time had come. The new Constitution had been drafted and presented to the delegates.

Not all of them approved. But, wise men that they were, they determined to find unity, for after all, these were to be The United States of America.

Benjamin Franklin expressed to the assembly what had to be done to accomplish what needed to be accomplished if we were to form a new country.

We could learn from him...indeed, if we are to survive, we must.

Constitutional Convention, Monday, September 17, 1787.

DOC'r FRANKLIN rose with a speech in his hand, which he had reduced to writing for his own coveniency, and which Mr. Wilson read in the words following:

"MR. PRESIDENT,

"I confess, that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.

"It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgement of others.

"Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error.

"Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong.

"But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said, "I don't know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that's always in the right -- Il n'y a que moi qui a toujours raison."

"In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

"I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?

"It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats.

"Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.

"The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die.

"If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavour to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favour among foreign Nations, as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity.

"Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors.

"I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our Influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavours to the means of having it well administered.

"On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish, that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this Instrument."

He then moved that the Constitution be signed by the members . . .

It was.

JESUS IS ALIVE!

"Why seek ye the living among the dead. He is not here, He is risen as he said." (Luke 24:5)

WHO CARES?

The 10th Amendment says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I have read this amendment hundreds of times looking for some ambiguity in it. There is none.

It is important to note that the Tenth Amendment was not part of the body of the Constitution, but was added to ensure that the power of the federal government did not impose on the rights of the citizens, under the theory that "the closer to home one gets, the more power over their own affairs they should have."

It was based on this from the Articles of Confederation: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."

The Tenth Amendment was designed, as were all of the amendments, to change something, to add something or to clarify something in the body of the Constitution. A simple explanation of it can be found HERE.

Over the years, Congress, in their ever-growing thirst for control, have used Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution SEEN HERE, known as the Commerce Clause, which states that Congress has the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with the Indian tribes, to overcome the restrictions of the Tenth Amendment.

In each case, Congress was wrong to have done so, Supreme Court rulings otherwise notwithstanding.

(Note: The Supreme Court has been wrong on several occasions and its decisions have been subsequently reversed. Two examples of rulings that need to be revisited are: the Supreme Court upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated the production of goods shipped across state lines [1941] and Wickard v. Filburn, [1942] in which the Court upheld the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which sought to stabilize wide fluctuations in the market price for wheat by stabilizing supply through quotas. Others include: public housing, gun control, voter registration, education, and marriage)

The end result of power grasped by the federal government as they circumvent the Tenth Amendment, is legislation on a myriad of things that should NEVER have become federal issues.

My previous post (ANOTHER BITE OUT OF FREEDOM) is an example.

So is the health care legislation recently signed into law.

The overriding issue is the lack of respect for the original document that is the Constitution of the United States of America.

Although members of Congress and President BO swore an oath to defend and protect it, they clearly do not agree with it, nor do they respect it as a rule book for the federal government.

"Oh, Joe, you're so reactionary! Nobody in Congress has disdain for the Constitution! They all respect and care about it!"

Oh, yeah?

Check this out (h/t to Gateway Pundit):



So look, don't try to talk to me about Congress' respect for the Constitution.

In their minds, they control the Constitution and it says what they say it says, not what it actually says.

They don't care about it, liberals don't care about it and if they say they do, watch out for them...they'll lie to you about other things, too.

Apology: Sorry about the deletions. I thought I was deleting one comment and they all disappeared! Argh!!! I don't even know how to do a mass deletion...but I guess I do now, only I can't remember what I did.

ANOTHER BITE OUT OF FREEDOM

I guess FREEDOM is just highly overrated. Witness this from Hot Air.



If you eat out, tell me in the comments section how you will be influenced by the calorie count on all the foods you order.

Do you think it is reasonable to make a restaurant change all of its publications and posters every time it changes ingredients in its fare?

Why?

What percentage of overweight people will be helped by this mandate?