I know I’m late to the game to add my two cents to the Obama-vacay-in-Spain-water-cooler-talk. I’ve been busy living the glam life with Brittany Cohan in Wisconsin.

Or at least the relaxed life. I left the kids at home.

This is my summer vacation.

A $393.89 plane ticket purchased with reward points. An awesome friend with a guest room. A low-key Sunday spent in pajamas, on the couch, watching chick flicks and reading about Sookie Stackhouse, and drinking a little too much cheap wine.

It’s not Hawaii, but times are tight. And it’s not like it’s going to get easier anytime soon, what with the largest tax increase in history coming up in mere months.

It’s Wisconsin for me, because that what my budget allows for. It’s not a lavish hotel in Spain, where Michelle and one of her daughters vacationed over the weekend. Which I really wouldn’t care about under ordinary circumstances. They have money. Great. Fantastic. They should spend it however they want. Beauty of America and all that jazz.

Except that the majority of the trip’s cost was covered by Mr. & Mrs. Taxpayer. Almost $150,000 for transportation costs alone. Michelle apparently paid for her own hotel room, but America paid for the lavish lodging of her security detail at the Ritz-Carlton. Who knows how many other associated costs were paid for by you and me?

So let me get this straight: My taxes are going up so that Michelle can quite literally have tea with the Queen of Spain while I’m drinking a $4 bottle of wine in Wisconsin?

Is anyone else scratching their head?

Cover the extra costs yourself, First Family, or come on over to Wisconsin. I’ll even pour you a glass of cheap wine.

Being black does not excuse bad behavior. If a person lies, cheats, steals, or stomps on their neighbor’s flowers, it should not be excused because of that person’s skin color. Likewise, investigating black people on corruption charges does not make someone a racist.

These seem like simple enough concepts to grasp; yet some lawmakers are crying racist over the ethics violation charges being brought against Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-CA).

The two members of the Congressional Black Caucus (side note — if there’s a black caucus, shouldn’t there be white, brown, purple polka-dotted, and yellow-bellied caucuses as well?) are being formally charged with behavior unbecoming of a member of congress, let alone a decent human being.

Rangel is being charged on 13 counts of ethics violations including tax evasion and using his congressional staff and letterhead to solicit potential donors to the Rangel Center.

During the 2008 banking crisis, Waters intervened with the Treasury Department to benefit a small bank. A bank in which her husband held more $250,000 in stock. Nothing shady about that at all.

Both members of congress chose not to settle with House ethics investigators, as doing so would involve admissions of guilt. After all, it’s difficult to maintain that I-care-about-the-little-people facade when you’re hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars from the IRS or screwing over businesses to benefit your own family.

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Someone needs to explain this to me. A lawyer perhaps. Maybe a cop. Because I do. Not. Understand.

John Albert Gardner III forcefully raped and brutally murdered two beautiful teenage girls. He watched as the life drained from their terrified eyes, and hid their abused bodies in shallow graves. He took their lives and destroyed those of their family and friends. He shook the trust of a community. MY community.

He’s flat out admitted that he killed them. He raped them both. He stabbed Amber. He strangled Chelsea. He got rid of their bodies. Didn’t manage to get rid of Chelsea’s DNA though. And through a plea bargain, he led the police to Amber’s body.

The plea bargain basically said that he would avoid the death penalty if he pled guilty and revealed the location on Amber’s body.

He will now serve three life sentences, two of them without parole (The third is for an attempted attack on another woman that managed to escape). Chelsea’s parents agreed to the conditions because they knew the Dubois family needed closure, and the death penalty is an empty promise in California anyway.

Why is it an empty promise?

Why can’t we kill these demented perverts?

Why do they have more rights under the law than their victims did?

Why can’t the cops and lawyers make a plea bargain stating, “If you plead guilty and give up the location of Amber’s body, you can have a painless injection. If you don’t, we’ll fry you. Or hang you. Or chop parts of you off and let you bleed to death. Your choice.”

That’s a plea bargain I can get behind.

Life without parole isn’t good enough.

James Moore was spared the death penalty in 1962 after raping and murdering a 14 year old girl. Thanks to a change in the law, he’s now eligible for parole every two years.

In 1966, Kenneth McDuff killed a couple of teenage boys, then raped and killed one of those boy’s girlfriend. He got a life sentence. And was let out in 1989 when prisons were overflowing. He went on to rape and kill at least nine other women. We’ll never really know how many.

Willie Horton.

Clarence Ray Allen.

And many, many more.

Life without parole doesn’t cut it. Kill him.

Kill him dead.

And that’s how I feel about that.

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.

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.

Yesterday the Republicans and Democrats finally met together to discuss health care reform.  I guess Scott Brown (R-MA) really scared the crud out of the progressives, so much so that Obama actually made good on one of his campaign pledges.  That brings us to three promises fulfilled.  1) Take Michelle on a date, 2) Get a dog for the First Daughters, and 3) Air the health care debate on C-SPAN.  Actually, let’s strike number 2. The President promised to rescue a shelter dog, but instead accepted Bo as a gift from Ted Kennedy.  Which I don’t really care about, but it just goes to show that this guy has a really, really hard time staying true to his word.

My favorite moment was when Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) became my new hero.  He flat out explained that the CBO scores weren’t real, and explained exactly why.  The best part is the look on the President’s face as Ryan is explaining that “hiding a deficit is not reducing a deficit.”  I almost felt sorry for the guy, he looked so confused.  No wonder he’s racked up our debt- he does not understand that you can’t print more money.  Now I really want to see his transcripts.  He probably failed econ 101.

I always love hearing Liz Cheney speak.  She just has a way of getting to the core of issues with common sense truisms.  Like the time she said, “America needs a commander in chief, not a community organizer.”  Or how about last week when she said, “Vice President Biden has a famously tenuous relationship with reality”?  The girl is a genius, I tell you, a genius!

I made sure to be there for her speech at CPAC to catch the pearls she would undoubtedly throw out to the audience.  I was not disappointed.

She encouraged us Americans not to believe the mainstream media when they us that conservatism is dead.  Massachusetts voters told the mainstream what they could do with their “info”.  We know what Obama’s about now.  He can no longer hide behind hopey-changey campaign promises.  The truth is, he ‘s going to raise everyone’s taxes, because he wants government in every aspect of everyone’s lives.

He also wants terrorists in everyone’s lives.  Obama’s weird pledge to close Gitmo and bring the terrorists into Thompson County, Illinois prisons is not only a bad idea, it’s an expensive one to the tune of $200 million dollars.  And that’s in addition to the taxpayer money already spent on the cost of building and maintaining gitmo.

Ms. Cheney told us that even her 9-year-old daughter had it figured out.  “Mom, is President Obama really bringing terrorists into the US?” her daughter asked.  After hearing her mother’s affirmative response, she responded, “Man, use your brain Dude! That’s really stupid.”  This is not rocket science, people.  Terrorists belong in Gitmo, not America’s heartland.

President Obama is not on top of his game in the national security department.  He revealed US interrogation techniques and then stopped paying attention.  To keep the US safe, he needs to make it a priority, and not treat it like a part time job.

As Americans, we have the right and the obligation to say something.  Too many men and women have paid too high a price for that right to speak, so let’s send a message to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: You will never silence us.  We have the courage of conviction, which she learned from her dad….

…who then walked on stage.

Dick Cheney was in the house.

To be continued….