From Yahoo Finance:

Vice President Joe Biden wants all Americans to know about the roughly $300 billion in tax breaks that were part of the Recovery Act passed last year.

There’s also the issue of whether these tax cuts, in conjunction with the health care reform bill signed last week, represent a redistribution of wealth in America, as many claim.

“It’s a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care,” Biden says. “If you call that a ‘redistribution of income’ – well, so be it. I don’t call it that. I call it just being fair – giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.”(Emphasis mine)

Hey Joe, I think everyone’s entitled to a representative government. You don’t mind if we drastically slash your pay, do you? While we’re at it, I think everyone is entitled to organic meats and produce to feed their families. I would love to buy only organic, but the price is so high that I simply can’t do it. I demand a government subsidy. And why am I still getting a water bill each month? Isn’t water a necessity? Of all the things you can’t live without, I’d put water second on the list, right after air. It’s so unfair that I have to pay for water, when it should be a basic human right.

Are you getting the picture, Joe, or should I go on? Or did I just provide you with a whole new list of government programs? That’s a scary thought.

The fact is that people have rights so long as they don’t infringe upon the rights of another person. To say that one person has the right to a service provided by someone else is not fair, it’s insane.

Jason Mattera discusses his new book Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.

Tom Reed talks about his run for Congress in New York’s 29th district — the seat previously held by Eric Massa.

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Guess who’s speaking at a tea party this April 15th?

If you’re in Orange County, come celebrate America with us, and get fired up to keep fighting against the transformation of the greatest country on the planet.

This morning I came across one of the more delusional articles I’ve read recently. Aside from anything on the Daily Kos, that is. Written by Brent Budowsky, the piece attacked Matt Drudge as being a propagandist and anyone that reads his site as being fed biased opinions.

Here are some of my favorite lines:

Drudge only reports the polls he likes, which gives a warped view of the state of the nation.

It is true that countless lazy individuals in media just read Drudge, patronize his propaganda, and parrot his party line like robots. His influence is unquestioned and immense.

Drudge may not report it, but the healthcare bill passing has put the president on the upswing, Democrats lead Republicans in the Gallup poll, the negatives of the healthcare bill are starting to recede, independents are alienated by right-wing extremism, the jobs picture I predict will soon brighten, and the Democratic base is finally being motivated.

Drudge only reports on the stories he likes, but NBC, CBS, and ABC report on everything, fairly and squarely? Mmm-hmmm. Yup, and they parrot Drudge all the time. Right. (You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes as I write this.) If you believe that major media outlets didn’t (and still do!) have a slobbering love affair with Obama, then I can’t help you. Seriously. Move along. Come back when you start to realize that hard work and integrity built our country, not entitlement and handouts.

As for the passage of the health care bill raising President Obama’s approval rating… all I can say is duh. All the people that were upset with him because he hadn’t passed the bill yet are soothed by his rhetoric once again. That doesn’t mean much. Just because a picture is worth a thousand words:

One more thing. If independents are alienated by right-wing extremism, how does Mr. Budowsky explain Scott Brown? Bob Mcdonnell? Chris Christi? Shall I go on? I’m sure the list will be quite extensive come November.

But who knows? Maybe I’m just a deluded Republican. At least I’m in good company. I’ll take Matt Drudge any day of the week over Keith Olbermann.

Remember Bart Stupak? He was the “pro-life” House Democrat that caved to peer-pressure and voted for the health care bill along with ten of his cronies. The next day, the bill was signed into law by President Obama. But don’t worry, President Obama signed an executive order that would outlaw federally funded abortions. Except for the fact that that order isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Why would they cave, I wonder? What could be the cost of 11 votes that would tip the scale on the health care bill that has nothing to do with health care? Apparently it costs $3.4 billion.

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform legislation mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks — and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual or political payoffs.

Stupak’s office said there’s absolutely no link between the earmarks and the health care bill’s passage.

Sure. There’s absolutely no link between my happy hubby and my new pair of shoes either. Give and take. Making deals. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It’s part of being human. But we’re not playing with other people’s money. Democrats are.

From Business Week:

March 26 (Bloomberg) — AT&T Inc. will book $1 billion in first-quarter costs related to the health-care law signed this week by President Barack Obama, the most of any U.S. company so far.

A change in the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies triggered the non-cash expense, and the company will consider changes to the benefits it offers current and retired workers, Dallas-based AT&T said today in a regulatory filing.

Do liberals thinks that businessmen have huge vaults of gold that they swim around in like Scrooge McDuck?  That any and all profit they make gets locked away just so that greedy executives can have the pleasure of staring at it, smelling it, touching it?

Um, no. You see, people like to be successful.  They like to make their businesses bigger and better. You know, creating those… uh… what were they called again?  Oh yeah. Jobs. Didn’t people used to like having those things? I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, since the government is now going to take care of all of our problems.

Do you know what happens when businesses get heavily taxed, yet don’t see any benefits? They have to make up that cost somewhere. Either with layoffs or by raising the price of their products or services. Or both.

But hey, at least we have free health care now.

At least until the doctors are too taxed to work.

The Democrats have been doing a victory lap this week over their defeat of the Republicans in the battle for health care reform.  So weird, I thought the parties were supposed to work together, not duke it out until the bitter end. But I guess all things are fair in love and war, and politics is a bit (or a lot) of both. So a battle it was.

Have I mentioned that the Democrats passed the bill without the majority support of their constituents?  Or that not a single Republican voted for it? Or that they resorted to deceitful trickery in the worst ends-justifying-the-means scheme I’ve ever personally witnessed?  That’s bipartisanship at it’s best, all right.

But the funny thing about facts — they’re stubborn things.  President Obama can say “this bill will reduce the deficit” until the unicorns come home, but it won’t make it any less untrue.  The bill is full of twice counted money, doesn’t include the thousands and thousands of government employees that will need to be hired to enforce the darn thing, and it assumes that revenue will continue to increase in the worst economy in a generation just as a massive health care tax is levied upon employers.

The mostly glaringly obvious discrepency is the fact that it includes 10 years of revenue, but only six years of pay outs.  What happens in 2020? Do we only get health care in years ending 4-9? So many questions, never any answers.

Congressman John Dingell (D-NY) was on a radio show in Chicago this week, and host Paul Smith asked him why the coverage wouldn’t be implemented until 2014. You know, in light of the urgency with which it was forced upon us unwilling tax-payers.

The telling response (emphasis mine):

“We’re not ready to be doing it. This has been going on for years…The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re passing legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways, it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Not sure about the rest of you, but I don’t relish the idea of being controlled. Seriously. Ask my husband. Or my dad. I believe his exact words to my new husband at our wedding were, “She’s yours now!”

One of my favorite movie lines ever is from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when Toula’s mom is explaining to her why being the head of the house isn’t everything: “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.”

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that on a blog that feeds into my hubby’s RSS feeder. Oh well, it’s not like it’s a humongous secret. But my point is that I don’t like other people trying to control me. I don’t want them limiting my choices on what kind of food to buy, where to send my kids to school, or whether or not I need a certain kind of health insurance.

Rep. Dingell went on to say:

“Our Republicans have spent a long time not participating, not helping, carping and delaying.”

I don’t know about you, but that makes me proud to be a Republican. They won’t be able to blame us one bit when this ship goes down in flames. And for the record, Dingell-berry, Republicans were shut out of the entire process, aside from a one day *Health Summit* in which the GOP pretty much shredded the bill and wiped the Liberals off the floor with it.

Which reminds me — I need to write another love letter, uh, I mean letter of support to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). He broke down the financial impact so well that President Obama looked absolutely confused. As in, “Huh. That actually made sense. But I wonder if he’s including the money from the cash tree out back? Do I tell him about that or keep it a secret? I better ask Rahm.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a glass of wine. Before the government takes that away too, for my own good.

Dr. Robert Sewell joins Jenny to talk about the recently passed health care law. Plus it’s Thing 2′s second birthday; What is she asking for?

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Hey everyone!

I started a weekly op-ed column over at CafeMom’s new site- The Stir.  Does this officially make me a mommy-blogger?  Do I have to attend BlogHer now? Hmm… things to ponder.  Actually, a couple of days in NYC this summer sounds great.  (My poor hubby is sitting at work on his lunch break reading that and getting worried.  Love you Honey! *mwah*)

While Leif tries to figure out if I’m seriously joking or jokingly serious about attending another conference, check out my first article.

The answer is unmistakably and resoundingly NO.  Americans do not want a health care system resembling that of Canada or the U.K.  We the people are saying no every way we know how to; in polls, at rallies, with elections.

The time for talk is over.  It is clear that the vast majority of Americans do not want this health care legislation passed.

Any sane and logical congress would say, “Ok, thanks for letting us know.  We represent you the people, and you have made your voices clear.  Let’s toss out this 2000 plus stack of paper and get started on something else.”  But nope, not our congress.  Our congress says, “We know you don’t want it, and we don’t care.  We’re going to find every loophole we can so we can slam you with the largest most unconstitutional tax ever created, all in the name of ‘helping the poor.’”

The poor will not be helped by this bill.  Just look at any other country with government run health care.  It’s the poor that suffer.  Only the rich can afford timely and reliable care.  Why does anyone think it will be different in the US?

I’m absolutely going to go bonkers if I keep hearing, “health care is a right.”  It is not a right.  It isn’t a privilege either.  It’s a service.  You are not entitled to the labor of a doctor.  Just like they are not entitled to free oil changes from the mechanic.  We all work for a living, some of us harder than others.  Call me crazy, but I believe that the people that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on education, work 90 hour weeks, and make life and death decisions on a daily hourly basis deserve to be paid more than my mechanic, and I’m happy to pay it.  I am not happy to pay for other people to see that doctor because they spent their money elsewhere.  We all have to make sacrifices.  Deal with it.  And here’s the thing about Americans- for the most part, we are an extremely charitable group.  If someone really was in a bad situation, I bet there would be a doctor somewhere willing to treat them, or benefactors willing to pay for the treatment.

I have faith in the American people.  I have faith in every single person who wants to better their life.  I have faith in the single mom struggling to make ends meet, the newly graduated college student looking for a job, the father of two teens that just got laid off after 20 years.  I have faith in those people to do what it takes to get through these rough patches of life, and I have faith in their friends and neighbors to help them as they’re able.  I do what I can to help those in need.  I’m grateful for all the times others have been there for me.

But oh this congress.  This congress does not have faith in us.  This congress does not want us to feel the triumph of overcoming adversity, the joy of accomplishment.  This congress wants to enable us with the most massive entitlement program our country has ever seen.  We are better than that.

I want this congress to stop taking my money and giving me back a paltry sum and expecting me to jump for joy.  I know what  you took.  Don’t tell me to be grateful for the $10 check when you snuck $100 out of my back pocket.  I’m wise to your tricks.  A lot of us are.  Which is why you will be voted out this November.  This health care bill and any other crap you manage to sneak through in closed-door deals will be repealed.

Who knew that it would take a violation of Constitutional principles by our leaders for America to stand united in a way we haven’t for generations?  Wonders never cease.