I spotted this chart (courtesy Larwyn, of course) at The Jacksonian Party. It explains a great deal about our current situation; one in which the people find themselves pitted against their elected officials.

Prior to 1902, Congress had never reached a 70% reelection rate.

Jacksonian argues that when the Senate became a directly elected body and no longer represented Statehouses, taxation and other federal usurpations of Constitutional bounds became rife. In other words, the federal government could and did use its power to begin punishing the states, regulating local affairs and interfering in every sort of arcane transaction.

That change triggered an ever-increasing federal budget that went far beyond national defense. Budget-busting initiatives, politically motivated in nature, purported to help retirees, the sick, the elderly and so on, while concentrating ever more power in Washington.

The federal government now consists of a body of lifetime bureaucrats, many of whom couldn’t power a flashlight with all of their brainpower combined, who are reelected automatically through their use of federal tax funds. They reward, they punish, they anoint.

And they continue to aggregate more power at the federal level — and to build their own personal wealth — ignoring and flouting the law. Dodd, Rangel, Feinstein, Frank, Reid, Waters, Conyers, Mollohan, Murtha — to name but a few — have repeatedly thumbed their noses at financial disclosures, ethics violations, criminal complaints, FOIA requests, and the like.

If government worked as Obama and the National Socialist Democrats say it will, then why would we care about separation of powers? Why would we care about different levels of government?

Why would we care about the Constitution?

Why was this nation founded in the first place?

If government is so beneficent, so effective, so humane and compassionate, how is it that throughout all of human history, the great philosophers and thinkers were so fearful of it?

Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Montesquieu, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and so many more.

Were they all wrong about government and Obama right?

Were they all wrong about limiting, balancing, placing checks on government? Were they all wrong about liberty?

Is human history all wrong and Obama right?

Is human history all wrong and Nancy Pelosi right?

Is human history all wrong and Harry Reid right?

Do you really think Obama, Pelosi and Reid hold a candle to the greatest thinkers civilization has ever seen?

Because for Obama to be right; and for his party, now in the hands of the radical left, to be right; the Founders had to be wrong.

For Obama to be right, the Declaration of Independence has to be wrong.

For Obama to be right, the Constitution has to be wrong.

For Obama to be right, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Montesquieu, Burke, Smith and the founding fathers all had to be wrong.

And so it is clear how all of this will end.

Government-run health care will be used as a tool by government officials. As these programs always are. It will be used to punish political enemies, to reward friends, to entice supporters and — always — to aggregate more power.

It must be defeated.

Hat tips: The Jacksonian Party, Thirty Thousand and Mark Levin (8/14/2009, 44:30 – MP3).

OK , for all of Obama’s blunders and naivete of foreign policy and basic economics, I can give him some slack.   But when you have any administration snitch on fellow citizens, there is a cause to be alarmed.    What is the purpose of gathering opposition to the Obamacare Bill.   How are they going to use this information and who is going to see it.   And is this even Constitutional???   I disagree with almost all of Obama’s policies, and that is just the American way.   We will always have disagreements on policy, foreign affairs, and how the government should be run.  And each side has their strength and weaknesses, but we should all debate that.   But having a snitch line on the opposition is going too far.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

OK I will Bite

To Whom it may concern,

I am a citizen of the United States and I have some questions on what is the goal in this email program.   First, what is the objective of gathering this information????   Second , who is going to see this information????  Third, is there going to be an online site with the information that is collected????

As a citizen of this country I think that these questions should be answered.   This is not a Republican/Democrat or a Conservative/Liberal argument.  This is a question of why the present Administration wants to have people snitch on their fellow citizens to an authority that we have no idea what it will be used for.   I would be appalled at any administration that does this, this is affront to our  1st Amendment Right.  Will I have to wonder if someone sent me into the Administration if I have any kind of disagreement of the Administrations policies in the future.

Doug Welch

Belleville, IL

And  if any of you send an email leave it in the commments.

Here is a leaked version of the Kennedy Healthcare Bill. Read it, I am sure that most of CONgress will not read this monstrousity.

kennedy_healthcare_bill_draft –

Over the weekend I went up to Chicago for the Second annual Sammies Awards put on by the Sam Adams Alliance. It was an award show for those that went above and beyond the call in making the Government more transparent and also for helping get the word out about how Free Markets and Liberty are the way for the government to run.   And they has some good presenters for the event in which I got go talk to afterwords.   I got to sit and talk with Michelle Malkin after the party was over with some other fellow Bloggers and Sam Adam employees.  Also I got to talk a little bit with Joe the Plumber before he left, he was leaving in the morning early to go to more events.

Here is a few of us bloggers before the event..

Me, Melissa Clothier, Earl Glynn and Bob Weeks

Melissa Clothier And John Fund

The room before the event

Blogger’s Row

My laptop and my place at Bloggger’s Row

Oink Oink

The Cocktail reception

Inside the event

Sam Adam’s via video link

Guy Benson and his teleprompter

John Tsarpalas  President of Sam Adams

Melissa Clothier Microblogger of the Year

Ruth Bendl Voter Watchdog of the Year

Vicki McKenna

Fred Baldwin and Seth Cooper won Wikiteer Awards

Jonathan Hoenig

James Bell won the Tea Party Award

Joe the Plumber

Elizabeth Crum won the Blogivist of the Year

Michelle Malkin

Chad “teddybear” Everson Blogger of the Year

Mary Katherine Ham

Video of the Year by Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stephen Moore

I missed Willian Carlin Walker’s pic  but he won the Sunshine Award.

Paul Jacob He also won the Lifetime Sam Adam’s Award

The Chief of the night who was also Dick Cheney’s chef and cookesd at the White House

Sam Adams Arrives

Eric O’Keefe closes the evening out

Tonight as Obama tells us that we are all going to hell in a handbasket, you can have some fun and play Obingo.

Thanks to Americans For Tax Reform.

For more cards you can download these:

KEY:

“Since the Great Depression” – The economic one, not the feeling you’ve had since he signed the “stimulus” bill.

“Save or create” jobs – Obama’s new metric whereby he can claim credit for the outcome no matter what happens (how exactly does one determine the number of “saved” jobs?)

“Crisis” – Excuse to hike taxes and grow the government per Rahm Emanuel’s theory: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

“Stimulus” – The 1,000 page Pelosi-Reid-Obama pork bill rushed through in the dead of night with no transparency and that not a single member of Congress who voted for it actually read.

“Hope” – The optimistic expectation, against all evidence that this government will be the first in the history of time to succeed in spending its way out of economic problems.

“Change” – Take-home pay of future generations due to massive spending increases and government expansion.

“Bipartisan” – “Pelosi and Reid get to decide what we’ll do, but I’ll have you over for tea first.”

“Children and grandchildren” – The people picking up the tab.

“Shovel-ready” – Vital projects that somehow are not important enough to receive funding through the regular appropriations process at the local, state, or federal level.

“Toxic assets”- Now the responsibility of those who followed the rules and made wise decisions.

“Failed policies of the past” – An overspending problem by George W. Bush to be expanded by Obama

“Investment” – Government spending.

“Sacrifice” – Tax hikes.

“As I’ve said before” – Prepare for a poll tested line from stump speeches.

“Make work pay” – Writing welfare checks through the tax code (and then calling it a tax cut).

“Climate change” – (Formerly known as Global Warming) The natural cycles of the sun and the four seasons.

“FDR” – The last President to attempt and fail to spend the country’s way out of a hole.

“Let me be clear” – Warning to “have your shovel ready.”

“Executive pay” – A serious problem because large cash awards are only appropriate when politicians dole out taxpayer money to the pet projects of their sons, brothers, wives, or campaign contributors.

“Protecting responsible homeowners” – Forcing you to pay your neighbor’s mortgage.

“Trillion-dollar deficit that we’ve inherited” – Bush overspending – which Obama just doubled.

“Essential services” – Government programs that employ unionized bureaucrats.

“Vulnerable Americans” – People that Obama wants to make dependent on the government.

“Tax cuts to 95 percent of working families” – See “Make Work Pay”

“Alternative energy”– Energy that is either too expensive or hasn’t succeeded in the free market on its own (if it worked, it would just be called “energy”)

A pretty good video of the break down on the Porkulus Bill.  There is all good intentions in the Bill, but it will probably not do any good to stimulate the economy.  It iwll pay off all the organizations that helped Obama and the Democrats get elected.   Hence the name I gae this Porkulus Bill (Obama’s Kick Back Bill)

Click here to view the embedded video.

The “Foot in the Door” in the form of going into the Medical Industry to get Socialized Medicine in the name of Liberalism.   This has been going on for a long time.  And in the Porkulus Bill, we have the “foot in the Door” legislation ion the form of the the Medical Information Czar.

H/T to The Heritage Foundation

Click here to view the embedded video.

Orlando over at Fort Hard Knox has a post about the Porkulus (Stimulus) Bill which I have affectionately called the “Obama Kick Back Bill”.  It is not a stimulus bill at all, it is a way to pay back his voters. As we in Illinois call it “The Chicago Way”.   Just ask Blogojevich about it, he will be singing like a canary soon, he is not going to go down by himself, h will bring others down with him.

But now to all the goodies going to Obama’s voters,  via Fort Hard Knox:

• Only 12 cents out of every dollar is for growth stimuli (which doesn’t go into effect for years in some cases)
• $600 million is to buy themselves new “green” cars (even though they already spend $3 billion per year)
• $252 billion is for people who do nothing: $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for people who don’t pay income tax
• $54 billion will go to “ineffective” government programs (reported by the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office)
• $66 billion goes to the Department of Education

It gets worse.  According to CNS News and Fox News:

• $500 per worker and $1,000 per couple including illegal aliens since social security numbers can’t be checked
• $335 million for STDs
• $4.19 billion in “neighborhood stabilization activities” such as ACORN
• $10 million for bike and walking trails
• $200 million for plug-in car stations
• $400 million for climate change research
• $600 million for grants for diesel emission reduction
• $650 million for “alternative energy technologies”
• $1.5 billion for construction of “green schools”
• $2.7 billion would go toward embryonic stem cell experimentation
• $75 million for smoking cessation
• $246 million over 11 years for investors in big budget movie projects
• $50 billion to the National Endowment for the Art
• $150 million for bees called “honey insurance”
• $20 million for “fish barriers”

I am still trying to figure out how this will stimulate antything other than the Machine that gotObama elected.

The personality cult presidency of Barack Obama starts in just a few short hours, but some celebrities just couldn’t wait to pledge their allegiance, not to the flag, but to The One™

Click here to view the embedded video.

Granted, some of the things they mention are worthy goals that deserve peoples work and effort. I don’t deride the idea of doing good things or determining to make choices that improve your life and the lives of others, instead it is the eerie devotion to the idea that now with this president we can finally shape our country the way it should be.

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about this phenomenon. He asked me what I thought drove the idea that Barack Obama could, simply by his election, bring about all of this change. I told him that I believe that a big part of that is the fact that our soon-to-be-trained-on-the-job President is such a blank slate with no record, no history, and no demonstrable core values, that it allows every individual to project on to him the things that they hope for. His candidacy and election remind me of the UPS Whiteboard commercials — you can write or erase whatever you want to get whatever you want and to make things look the way you want.

Frances Romero writing for Time said,

Remember when we used to pledge allegiance to a flag? Not in Barack Obama’s nation. On the eve of his grandly coordinated, $150 million Inaugural, celeb power couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore released a video full of their Hollywood friends and colleagues pledging to Obama to “be the change” that so many want to see with his incoming administration.

And concluded with this,

Overall, there’s some good stuff in here: Smile, mentor someone, drive slower, conserve gas. Steer clear of the last 20 seconds though. Fifty celebrities pledging in unison to serve our new President from an elaborate Brady Bunch grid, is creepy. A little cult-ish even.

Ace remarks,

If you get sick of it, skip to the end, to see a cultish chant to “serve our president” from all of the various B- and C- and F- list celebrities on display.

Remember when they put out a similar video after 9/11? Nope, me neither.

Curt at Flopping Aces observes,

Check out this video of the many ignorant celebrities who have over the last 8 years done whatever they could to tear down our President, stand in his way of making any progress to protect this country and its future, and insulted him at every chance.

[...]

The whole video is embarrassing but in the final moment when the image pulls out and eveyone of these nimrods is a part of the Obama portrait…then it became downright creepy. You just can’t describe this cult of personality any other way other then creepy and scary.

Andrew Breitbart sums it up well at his new Big Hollywood digs.

Remember this video: It is a instructive relic of the era of celebrity decadence and boutique anti-Republican activism under President Bush. It is a sickening display that they want fast and easy absolution for having comported themselves like ill-behaved children for eight difficult and war-torn years.

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.

Years ago (this video is from 1969) Red Skelton offered a look a what the real pledge should mean. Take a look, especially if you watched the first one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cross-posted from bRight & Early