A.  The Federal Government has never administered any program successfully!  (Social Security is broke; Medicare will be in 2017)  Look at the Keystone Cops mishandling of the Christmas Day Bomber incident;  

B.  Increases Taxes ($10+ BILLION for North Carolina ($4,400 for a family of 4); 

C.  Cuts Medicare benefits, payments to doctors & hospitals ($1 Billion+/year for NC);

D.  Burdens States will BILLIONS in new Medicaid costs ($500 MILLION/year for NC) -- more expense will certainly result in yet more taxation;

E.  Increases Government Control dramatically, along with huge growth of bureaucracy; 

F. The original goals stated for this Bill are absent:  23 million remain uninsured, and there is NO reduction of costs -- only predicted increases;

G. There are still loopholes allowing funding for abortion services and health insurance for illegal immigrants;

H. The legislative process designed by our Founding Fathers has been mangled and/or ignored throughout.  The bill was drafted and is being modified further in secret, it includes multiple pay-offs and bribes for certain members of Congress and contains unconstitutional provisions favoring certain states and removing personal freedom by mandating purchase of insurance.                

Last, despite program cuts and huge new tax loads, the CBO estimates this new program will still cost almost $ 1 TRILLION!!  (or, $9,000 for each family of 4 in North Carolina).

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night."  So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

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

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

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

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

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

So they laid off the night watchman.

NOW slowly, let it sink in.

  Quietly, we go like sheep

  to the slaughter... 

Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY .... During the Carter Administration?

Anybody?

Anything?

No?

Didn't think so!

Bottom line.. We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency .  the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember!

Ready?? It was very simple ... and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.

The Department of Energy was instituted on 8-04-1977. TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL..

Hey, pretty efficient, huh???

AND NOW, IT'S 2009 -- 32 YEARS LATER -- AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS "NECESSARY" DEPARTMENT IS AT $24..2 BILLION A YEAR. THEY HAVE 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES; AND LOOK AT THE JOB THEY HAVE DONE! THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, "WHAT WAS I THINKING?"

Ah, yes -- good ole bureaucracy.

AND, NOW, WE ARE GOING TO TURN THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY OVER TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT?

 HELLOOO !  Anybody Home?  

 WE FIGURED HIM OUT

To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.

Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let's review.

What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told). China hasn't moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed it's pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

What's come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? "The settlement push backfired," reports The Washington Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have "arguably regressed."

And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it's too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.

The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?

"Russia Not Budging On Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart." Such was The Washington Post headline's succinct summary of the debacle.

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that "threats, sanctions and threats of pressure" are "counterproductive." Note: It's not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.

It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved -- to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? "We are not at that point yet," she averred. "That is not a conclusion we have reached ... it is our preference that Iran work with the international community."

But wait a minute. Didn't Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face "sanctions that have bite" and that it would have to take "a new course or face consequences"?

Gone with the wind. It's the U.S. that's now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We're not doing sanctions now, you see. We're back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.

Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

Updated: this posting has been visited lately by visitors who have kind of rushed through this and concluded I have decided, out of the blue, to collect "dirt" on Glenn Beck. I forgot I'd need to explain things slowly for them: