konane's Blog

Video will not embed here, link to player below.  Mammoth crowd, they all paid their own way to get there so truly a grassroots movement that's not going away. 

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=288868-1&showVid=true

YouTube - Glenn Beck - How Deep is Our Debt?

Poll link, right now it's 99% in favor.

Should Justice Investigate ACORN?

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/10/decide-acorn-justice-investigate/

Quoted from Powerlineblog.com, definitely worth the read.

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Came in email.

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Pet Cajun Fish

A  Louisiana Cajun was stopped by a game warden because he had two ice chests full of fish.  He was leavin' a bayou, well-known for its fishing.

        The game warden asked the man, 'Do you have a license to catch those fish?'

        'Naw, sir', replied the cajun. 'I ain't got none of dem there licenses. You gotta unnerstan', dese here are my pet fish.'

        'Pet fish?'

        'Yeah. Evry night, I take dese here fish down to de lake and let 'em swim 'round for 'while. Den, when I whistle, dey jump right back into dis here ice chests and I take 'em home.'

        'That's a bunch of hooey! Fish can't do that.'

        The cajun looked at the warden for a moment and then said, 'It's de truth Mr. Government Man. I'll show ya. It really works.'

        'O. K..', said the warden. 'I've got to see this!'

        The cajun poured the fish into the lake and stood and waited.

        After several minutes, the warden says, 'Well?'

        'Well, what?', says the cajun.

        The warden says, 'When are you going to call them back?'

        'Call who back?'

        'The FISH', replied the warden!

        'What fish?', replied the cajun.

        Moral of the story: We may not be as smart as some city slickers, but we ain't as dumb as some government employees.

        You can say what you want about the South, but you never hear of anyone retiring and moving north.

 

"Census Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN
The Census Director has sent a letter to the National Headquarters of ACORN notifying the group that it will no longer have a role in conducting the 2010 census. ACORN had previously been tapped to help with low level data gathering.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/11/census-bureau-severs-ties-acorn/

"Exposing ACORN: Introducing James O’Keefe

"MIssing" mostly from Latin America

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 10, 2009 Posted by Paul at 8:30 AM

"Last night, Scott wrote about "Obama's missing millions." These are the 16 million people who were included when President Obama said last month that 46 million Americans lack health coverage but excluded when, in his speech to Congress, Obama lowered the number to 30 million.

It seems clear that most of these missing millions (9.6 milllion, in fact) are non-citizens, and, in most of these cases, illegal immigrants. The remainder, I assume, are people who are enrolled in Medicaid or S-CHIP but didn't tell the census taker. This is the so-called "Medicaid undercount," discussed here.

So Obama counted non-citizens as "Americans [who] don't have health coverage" in his Portsmouth, New Hampshire speech when he wanted to inflate the number of uninsured Americans so as to persuade us that there's an enormous crisis. He then discounted them when the charge that Democrats will insure illegal aliens gained traction.

Obama and his supporters want to call this charge a lie, but the "lie" begins to look true when illegal immigrants are included among those whose situation the legislation is designed to remedy -- "Americans" who don't have health coverage. The "lie" is, in fact, substantially true because Democrats have defeated all efforts to include an enforcement mechanism that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered.

Stated more concisely, in order to make his opponents out to be lying, our slippery president must now abandon his prior false statement."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024480.php

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"Obama's missing millions

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 9, 2009 Posted by Scott at 8:39 PM

"Only last month In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, President Obama declared: "I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage."

Tonight Obama declared that "[t]here are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.he number of our fellow citizens who have no coverage is 30 million."

These statements can be reconciled. "Nearly 46 million" is "more than 30 million[.]" But this is obviously not what Obama meant. It would be a mistake to reconcile the statements in this way. In any event, both numbers are bogus. It would be a mistake to take either of them seriously.

What can we learn from the malleable, missing millions who provide the pretext for Obama's proposed takeover of the health care system? He willfully misrepresents the magnitude of the problem. He is not to be trusted with numbers. He does not fear being called out on the obvious discrepancies on the fundamental rationale he presents to support his program, whatever it is.

He will say whatever he deems necessary to seek to persuade his audience. A man who refuses to get this issue right cannot be trusted with the more important facts, figures and propositions with which his speech was larded.

UPDATE: Byron York: "Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million." At this rate, if we can wait until November, the problem may resolve itself.

JOHN adds: The number of "uninsured" who have suddenly disappeared amount to three and a half times the population of the State of Minnesota. You get the feeling that Barack Obama is a person to whom numbers don't mean much. He's not someone you would put in charge of a business."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024477.php

From Powerlineblog.com, attorneys who know how to read and interpret the Obama-care bill, also how to point by point separate BS from fact in Obama's speeches.

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"From a policy standpoint, there was nothing new in President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress tonight. It can only be assessed, therefore, in political terms. I read the transcript rather than watching it, but the speech struck me as reasonably effective. I assume the delivery was standard Obama--smooth, generally flat, occasionally a bit whiny.

One striking aspect of the speech was that Obama kept talking about the "plan" that he "announced" tonight--but there is no plan; not in writing, anyway. Not unless Obama meant Nancy Pelosi's House bill, but he didn't seem to, since he made a point of saying that details remain to be filled in, referred to work still going on in committee, and said that "his plan" is open to alternatives to the public option. This vagueness gives him a sort of deniability: what he was describing was more his concept of the qualities health care legislation should have, rather than a specific bill. Whether that was politically smart remains to be seen. So far, vagueness hasn't seemed to be the President's friend on this issue.

Here are some excerpts from the speech that I thought were noteworthy:

Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.

Then, a few minutes later:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.

By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed.

I'm not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not "bickering." Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a "game." This kind of gratuitous insult--something we never heard from President Bush, for example--is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited.

I assume most people noticed how, in tonight's speech, Obama's assurance that we will not lose our present insurance coverage has been scaled back. This was after thousands of critics pointed out that under the Democrats' proposals, many people (more than 100 million according to some estimates) will in fact lose the insurance coverage they now have:

[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

That's true, of course. No one ever said it did. What the Democrats' plan does do, however, is give employers the opportunity and, depending on pricing, the incentive to terminate their employees' plans and dump them into the public system. And whether private insurance companies can compete with the public "option" depends on whether Obama keeps his pledge that the public program won't be subsidized.

[I]nsurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.

How does that work? Better coverage for more people at less cost. Does anyone actually believe that is possible? I don't think so.

Obama described his plan for an insurance exchange where those who are not part of a larger plan will be able to buy coverage. He then added:

This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right.

But wait! Aren't people dying? The Democrats tried to ram their bill through Congress before the August recess, with essentially no debate and with virtually no one having read it. Their theory was that we are facing such a dire emergency that there is not a moment to lose. If, in fact, we have four years to spare, could we maybe stop trying to cram the bill down Americans' throats?

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those - particularly the young and healthy - who still want to take the risk and go without coverage.

That's true, of course. There are millions of people, mostly young and single, who choose not to buy health insurance or take a job where compensation comes largely in the form of benefits (same thing) because they have made a rational decision that for them, health insurance isn't worth the money. As Americans, they should have that right. The problem is that, in the unlikely event they do get sick, they know they will be treated anyway.

That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.

Traditionally, it was liability insurance that drivers were required to carry, not to protect themselves, but to protect others from their possible negligence. It is only because of no-fault laws that most states now require drivers to carry insurance that includes first-party coverage. There are some similarities, but many differences, between automobile and health insurance.

[U]nless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - just can't be achieved.

This is a key point that many will overlook. One of the central purposes of nearly all health care "reform" proposals is to force young people into the system to help pay older peoples' bills. Why is it that you can't force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions--i.e., "insure" against something that has already happened, a logical impossibility--unless you force young people to "do their part"? Insurance companies, and, eventually, the government as single payer, need young people to pay premiums that far exceed any actual risk to subsidize the known losses that will come from being forced to "insure" people whose medical conditions are not risks but certainties.

Consider the analogy to life insurance: could a dying, 90-year-old person expect an insurance company to issue him a million dollar life insurance policy? Maybe, but it would cost close to a million dollars. Why can life insurance companies sell policies at rates that people consider reasonable? Only because they are insuring against premature death, and the insured has been paying premiums for many years, during most of which time there was little risk of his dying. The same principle applies, pretty closely, to health insurance.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

No, it isn't. The Democrats' bill doesn't call the agencies it sets up "death panels," it says they will decide on "best practices." But any socialized medicine scheme saves money by rationing care. Who gets shorted, the politically powerful? No, of course not; the elderly and those who are otherwise helpless. In the United Kingdom, the death panel goes by the Orwellian acronym "NICE."

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

This is an outright lie, as Congressman Joe Wilson couldn't resist blurting out during Obama's speech. The Democrats defeated Republican-sponsored amendments that would have attempted, at least, to prevent illegals from being treated under the House version of Obama's plan. I think everyone expects that if Obamacare becomes law, illegals will receive benefits on an equal basis with citizens.

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

More oily language from the master of the half-truth. Under Obama's plan, it won't be necessary for federal dollars to fund abortions, at least not until socialized medicine actually arrives. Insurance dollars will fund abortions. The House bill sets up a nameless, unaccountable committee that will decide what coverages must be included in any approved private insurance policy. Those required coverages, you can be 100 percent certain, will include the costs of abortions. But Obama will take no responsibility; those are just "best practices."

This seems to me to be the most critical moment in Obama's speech:

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.

In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand "choice and competition" in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis. Like, say, computer companies, beer companies, automobile companies, law firms, and pretty much everyone else. The Democrats' refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about "choice and competition."

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.

Really? We've all seen the YouTube video where Obama says that under his plan, private health insurance will be driven into extinction over a period of ten to twenty years. Has he changed his mind? When? Why? Does President Obama fail to understand the ubiquity of YouTube? Does he not understand that many millions of Americans consider him a liar when he says things like this?

President Obama talked about the "public option" and assured listeners that it would not be subsidized by the government:

I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.

Is it churlish to point out that profits are not overhead? It might be if this were just a slip of the tongue on the stump. But this was a speech that was carefully crafted by Obama and his top advisers. They really do not know the first thing about business or economics. So why should we put them in charge of our economy?

I want to speak directly to America's seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

Actually, the administration has said that around half the cost of the plan, $500 billion, would be paid for by cuts in Medicare. So it isn't exactly "demagoguery and distortion" to suggest that there might be cuts in Medicare.

[N]ot a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.

I should hope not, since there isn't any Medicare trust fund, just like there isn't any Social Security trust fund.

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud...Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

But wait! If we can identify hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and we know how to eliminate it, why haven't we done so already? Why don't we do so--right now!--regardless of the administration's highly controversial health care bill?

There is no possible answer to these questions. The Obama plan--whatever it is, once reduced to writing--depends for most of its financing on the bare assertion that we are currently wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, and that we will stop wasting that money only if taxpayers knuckle under to Obamacare.

This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024478.php

Video links cited in article below if you care to watch .... explicit language warning!

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtTnizEnC1U

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNYU9PamIZk

_____________________

"ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' How to Lie to IRS

"Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

The videotape was made public Thursday on

 BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.

In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation's largest community of low- and moderate-income families "working together for social justice and stronger communities," according to its Web site. The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year's census.

A spokesman for ACORN, Scott Levenson, when asked to comment on the videotape, said: "The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism. This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."

On the videotape, "Kenya" can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to "Kenya" that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge "Kenya" $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.

ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.

The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance "performing artist."

"It's not dancing, trust me," the "pimp" says.

"But dancing is considered an art," the ACORN staffer replies. "[Exotic dancers] usually go under performing artists, or yeah, they usually go under performing arts, which will be what you are — a performing artist."

The "pimp" later says that he and "Kenya" plan to bring up to 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. Although an ACORN staffer points out their plans are illegal, she also suggests that the girls can be claimed as dependents.

"What if they are going to be making money because they are performing tricks too?" the pimp says.

"If they making money and they are underage, then you shouldn't be letting anybody know anyway," the ACORN staffer says, and laughs. "It's illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this. You talk too much. Don't give up no information you're not asked."

The "pimp" then asks ACORN staffers to "promise" not to discriminate against his sex worker because of "who she is and what she does," according to the audiotape.

"If we don't have the information, then how are we going to discriminate?" the ACORN staffer replies. "You see what I am saying?"

If the girls are under age 16, the ACORN staffer says on the tape, then they are not legally allowed to work in the state, regardless of what they do.

"So it's like they don't even exist?" "Kenya" asks.

"Exactly," the ACORN staffer replies. "It's like they don't even exist."

The staffer goes on to suggest that as many as three of the underage girls can be listed as dependents at the home, but a "flag" will be raised if as many as 13 are listed.

"You are gonna use three of them," the staffer says. "They are gonna be under 16, so you is eligible to get child tax credit and additional child tax credit."

The ACORN workers also appear to be promoting the group's services to the "pimp" and "Kenya."

A second ACORN employee can be heard on the audiotape suggesting that the couple join the organization for an annual cost of $120 prior to attending one of its first-time homebuyer seminars, which are underwritten with taxpayer funds.

Later, when the "pimp" asks what would happen if the organization is somehow connected to the scheme, the ACORN staffer replies, "First of all, it's not gonna damage us because we not gonna know. And with your girls, you tell them, 'Be careful.' Train them to keep their mouth shut."

"These girls are like 14, how can we trust them?" the pimp asks.

"Just be very, very careful," the ACORN staffer says. "Whatever you do, always keep your eyes in the back of your head."

Reached by FOX News, O'Keefe said he was "shocked" at the level of assistance provided by ACORN staffers.

"I was prepared for them to call the police, throw me out of the office and be hostile," he said. "Without hesitation, they helped me every way they could with evading taxes and setting me up with a brothel, with getting around federal tax laws — doing everything they could to help us. I was completely shocked."

House Republicans issued a report in July accusing ACORN of engaging in a scheme to use taxpayer money to support a partisan political agenda. California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called for a criminal investigation into the group, which dismissed the report as a "partisan attack job."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548827,00.html

Highly informative legal opinion about government health care, as to what the bill will and won't do.

Took the liberty to copy Michael Connelly's credentials quoted from his site to show qualification for his legal opinions.

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"MORE ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE BILLS

"How many times have we watched a movie about World War II and looked at the scene where a menacing Nazi soldier has stopped a citizen of an occupied country or even a German citizen and demanded to see the person’s “identity papers.” Failure to produce such papers would cause the person to be immediately arrested. I always felt good when I watched this because I knew that in my free country that couldn’t happen.

Yes, we have our driver’s license that you have to produce if you are stopped for a driving infraction and you may have to produce to write a check. However, if you choose not to drive you are not required to have one and you can get another form of identification to do something like cash a check. Yet, the fact is that you are not legally required to have either of these documents and if you do have them they can only contain a limited amount of information.

When I was practicing law I dealt with a situation where in the State of Louisiana you were required to provide your Social Security number to get a Driver’s License and it was also put on the license for everyone to see. I represented a client who had both privacy objections to this and religious objections. We won the case on the grounds that this requirement violated his constitutional rights. What made this particularly interesting was the fact that in support of our position I cited an opinion by a Court of Appeal Justice named Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is now one of the more liberal members of the Supreme Court.

Now, HB 3200 will mandate that everyone in the United States have a National Healthcare card that they will be required to produce to get medical treatment. This will be required whether they have private health insurance or are involved in the so-called public option. There are no real options, you must have this card and it can contain any information that the Obama administration requires. It will be the “identity papers” that so many totalitarian regimes are infamous for.

Of course, you may be thinking that this will no longer be a problem if the “public option” is removed from the bill. This has been a trial balloon floated by the Obama administration yet it really means nothing if the rest of the bill is adopted. The Congress will still be transferring unlimited power to the Executive Branch of Government and the Commissioner appointed by President Obama can still require a National Health Care identification card, still have access to your financial and medical records, and still fine you for having a plan unacceptable to the government. This will result in the ultimate destruction of private health insurance and the adoption of a public system of rationed health care totally controlled by the government.

I found it interesting that a week after I wrote my first blog questioning the constitutionality of House Bill 3200 Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News interviewed two Constitutional experts who also saw this as an unconstitutional action by the Congress. They pointed out that normally when this type of legislation is introduced in Congress the members of the House of Representatives or the Senate cite the provisions of the U.S. Constitution that authorize such legislation.

 This has not been the case in any of the Health Care Bills proposed. This is not a simple oversight on the part of the Congress. They know they don’t have Constitutional authority to do this, but they simply don’t care. They intend to do it anyway. I find this to be both supremely arrogant, and absolutely terrifying. If they succeed in this, then no provisions of the Constitution are safe from attack.

In fact, in future articles I will point out where other provisions of our Constitution that I consider sacred are being totally disregarded and under full scale assault by the Congress and the Obama administration. I repeat what I said in my previous article; this is not about health care. It is about our fundamental rights as free citizens of the United States."

"The Truth About the Health Care Bills

           "Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

            To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

            The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

            However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

            The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

            This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3^rd and 4^th Amendments may provide.

            If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5^th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law.

            So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9^th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10^th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

            I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

            For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

            And another to the Bill of Rights: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

            There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly

Retired attorney,

Constitutional Law Instructor

Carrollton, Texas "

http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/

EDUCATION   

·    Diploma, Redemptorist High School in New Orleans, La. 1966.

·    Bachelor of Science, Business and Public Administration, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La. (Degree required numerous political science and business courses. Many history and public speaking courses were taken as electives.) 1971

·    Juris Doctorate, Louisiana State University Law School, 1973.

·    Graduate, U.S. Army Intelligence School, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, 1973.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

            MILITARY:

·    Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, 1971.

·    Active duty at the U.S. Army Intelligence School from Sept. 1973- Nov. 1973.

·    Assigned to reserve duty with 352nd Army Security Agency company in Baton Rouge from Jan 1974 until Aug. 1978. (Served as Supply officer, Operations officer, and Recruiting officer.)

·    Left the reserves in 1978 as a Captain.

LEGAL:    Licensed attorney in Baton Rouge, La. since 1973.

·    Qualified to practice before all Louisiana State and Federal Courts and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

·    I have also represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court.

·    Areas of practice include Constitutional Law, Personal Injury Law, Criminal Law, Family Law, Business Law, Medical Malpractice and Successions.

·    Special assistant attorney general for the State of Louisiana, 1977-80.

·    Of Counsel for U.S. Justice Foundation, 1980-98.

·    General Counsel, Council for Inter-American Security, 1978-95.

·    Still licensed, but inactive since 2001.

REAL ESTATE CONSULTING:

·    Part Time Real Estate consultant for McNichol & Connelly, Dallas, TX. (Duties included preparation of Market & Financial Feasibility studies, locating real estate for various projects, brokering loans, and locating potential investors.) 1997 - 1999     

TEACHING:

·         Currently teaching courses on Evidence Law, Constitutional Law, Courtroom Strategy and Business Law for Education to Go, an online company providing courses for numerous universities.

·    Have appeared as a guest lecturer at both LSU and University of New Orleans.

·    Substitute high school teacher for East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Sept. 1998-Jan. 2000.

·    Temporary full time teacher of World Geography, Woodlawn High School, Baton Rouge, La., 1998-99.

PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC SPEAKING

·    Authored, “Riders in the Sky: The Ghosts and Legends of Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico”, published by Merril Press in Aug 2001, and "The Mortarmen", published by Trafford Press in April 2005.

·    Authored the true story, “Winds of Merit” which was the basis for a television documentary segment on the show “Storm Warning” shown extensively on both the Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel.

·    Authored numerous published articles on politics, law, and scouting as well as many “keyword” articles for various companies.

·    Contributor to the book, “Intruder in Your Home” by Ronald L. Cruit, published by Stein and Day, 1983

·    Frequent speaker before civic groups and guest on radio and television talk shows (both local and national) on various political and legal subjects.

·    Frequent speaker before school groups on Native American Heritage.

·    Editor and Publisher of an award winning independent campus newspaper while at LSU.

·    Co-host of a weekly radio talk show while at LSU.

References available on request."

Long commentary but very worth the read.   Am also totally disgusted by the GOP because they held hands with Democrats to get us where we are now.  Believe we'll see a rise of a third party in the near future.

_____________

"Too late for Obama to turn it around?
Plus: The left's visionaries lost their bearings on drugs -- but the GOP is led by losers

By Camille Paglia
Source Salon

"Sept. 9, 2009 | What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration's bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama's declining national support.

But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences -- in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy -- of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.

But dreaming in the 1960s and '70s had a spiritual dimension that is long gone in our crassly materialistic and status-driven time. Here's a gorgeous example: Bob Welch's song "Hypnotized." which appears on Fleetwood Mac's 1973 album "Mystery to Me." (The contemplative young man in this recent video is not Welch.) It's a peyote dream inspired by Carlos Castaneda's fictionalized books: "They say there's a place down in Mexico/ Where a man can fly over mountains and hills/ And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine/ And he never will." This exhilarating shamanistic vision (wonderfully enhanced by Christine McVie's hymnlike backing vocal) captures the truth-seeking pilgrimages of my generation but also demonstrates the dangerous veering away from mundane social responsibilities. If the left is an incoherent shambles in the U.S., it's partly because the visionaries lost their bearings on drugs, and only the myopic apparatchiks and feather-preening bourgeois liberals are left. (I addressed the drugs cataclysm in "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s" in the Winter 2003 issue of Arion.)

Having said all that about the failures of my own party, I am not about to let Republicans off the hook. What a backbiting mess the GOP is! It lacks even one credible voice of traditional moral values on the national stage and is addicted to sonorous pieties of pharisaical emptiness. Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload. They assail government overreach and yet support interference in women's control of their own bodies. Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought. The still inexplicably revered George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor and clumsily exacerbated the illegal immigration debate. And bizarrely, the hallucinatory Dick Cheney, a fake-testosterone addict who spooked Bush into a pointless war, continues to be lauded as presidential material.

Which brings us to Afghanistan: Let's get the hell out! While I vociferously opposed the incursion into Iraq, I was always strongly in favor of bombing the mountains of Afghanistan to smithereens in our search for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training camps. But committing our land forces to a long, open-ended mission to reshape the political future of that country has been a fool's errand from the start. Every invader has been frustrated and eventually defeated by that maze-like mountain terrain, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union. In a larger sense, outsiders will never be able to fix the fate of the roiling peoples of the Near East and Greater Middle East, who have been disputing territorial borderlines and slaughtering each other for 5,000 years. There is too much lingering ethnic and sectarian acrimony for a tranquil solution to be possible for generations to come. The presence of Western military forces merely inflames and prolongs the process and creates new militias of patriotic young radicals who hate us and want to take the war into our own cities. The technological West is too infatuated with easy fixes. But tribally based peoples think in terms of centuries and millennia. They know how to wait us out. Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

In response to persistent queries, I must repeat: No, I do not have a Facebook page, nor am I a "friend" on anyone else's Facebook. Nor do I Twitter. This Salon column is my sole Web presence. Whatever doppelgänger Camille Paglias are tripping the light fantastic out there (as in the haunted bus-station episode of "The Twilight Zone"), they aren't me!"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/