“Let me say this as clearly as I can, The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical.”
BHO April 7, 2009

TAPPER: But as the Senate puts its bill—its final bill together and as a House and Senate prepare to vote on a—on a—after the conference committee, they should know, does the president think jail time is inappropriate…

OBAMA: Well, I’m—I’m not sure that’s the biggest question that they’re asking right now…

TAPPER: No, but the question…

OBAMA: Well, the…

TAPPER: (INAUDIBLE).

OBAMA: I think I put out the principle that penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.

From the Joint Committee on Taxation letter(JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.”
                                                         
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…”
                                                 
“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses.  Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

Is this the best they can do and is this the kind of Government we really want?

Discredit and marginalize your critics.
Clearly a Free Speech issue yet barely a whimper from the entire neutered lap dog media.

About the First Amendment

By Brian J. Buchanan
First Amendment Center Online managing editor

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The First Amendment was written because at America’s inception, citizens demanded a guarantee of their basic freedoms.

Our blueprint for personal freedom and the hallmark of an open society, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition.

Without the First Amendment, religious minorities could be persecuted, the government might well establish a national religion, protesters could be silenced, the press could not criticize government, and citizens could not mobilize for social change.

The original lyrics for the “Lip-Smack’in Bi-lingual Progressive” version:

La Mao Bamba
In order to dance the Mao bamba / Para bailar la Mao bamba
In order to dance the Mao bamba / Para bailar la Mao bamba

A little propaganda is needed / Una propaganda pequeña es necesitada
A little censorship for me and you / Una poca censura para mí y usted

Faster and faster / Arriba y arriba
More and more / Mas y mas

We’ll be here for you / Estaremos aquí para usted
I’ll be here for you / Estaré aquí para usted

I am not an empty suit / Yo no soy un traje vacío
I am your captain / Yo soy su capitán

I am your leader / Yo soy su líder
I am your chairman / Yo soy su presidente

Dance the Mao bamba / Bailar el Mao bamba

Jail-Time Mandate from Democrats: Prison, $25,000 Fines for Not Having Health Insurance
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Flout_the_mandate_penalty_Face_the_IRS.html?showall

Americans who fail to pay the penalty for not buying insurance would face legal action from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

  The remarks Thursday from the committee’s chief of staff, Thomas Barthold, seems to further weaken President Barack Obama’s contention last week that the individual mandate penalty, which could go as high as $1,900, is not a tax increase.

  Under questioning from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Barthold said the IRS would “take you to court and undertake normal collection proceedings.”

  Ensign pursued the line of questioning because he said a lot of Americans don’t believe the Constitution allows the government to mandate the purchase of insurance.

  “We could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously, because they believe in the U.S. Constitution, we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, all the way up to imprisonment,” Ensign said. “That seems to me to be a problem.”

  Ensign’s argument, however, wasn’t persuasive to the committee — which rejected an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) to eliminate the individual mandate.

  Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to preserve the mandate.

And in case you think this smells like fishy dis-information and needs to be reported to the nearest ACORN office, there was confirmation…

Here’s the text of a note from Tom Barthold, chief of staff to the Joint Committee on Taxation, to US Senator John Ensign (R-NV) [Click here for PDF]:
http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Barthold_letter.pdf

  Dear Senator Ensign,

  Sec 7203 of the Code provides that if there is a willful failure to file, pay. maintain appropriate records and the like that the taxpayer may be charged with a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to $25,000 and not more than one year in jail.

  Sincerely,
  Thomas A. Barthold

The “Code” in question is the Internal Revenue Code, and Barthold’s note was a followup to Ensign’s public interrogation of him on the issue of whether or not the IRS would be responsible for enforcing the “individual mandate” in President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” plan.
Apparently the answer is “yes.”

I sense a growth industry in “House Arrest” ankle bracelets and other related paraphernalia. If you think people are pissed off now, how will the “Left” spin the good news about all the Debtors’ prisons?
ObamaCare ...You’re Going to Love It or Else…

In case you missed it on Rush Limbaugh or Red County today: Our Attorney General, Reichsführer-SS Eric Holder, may well be breaking new ground in Justice Department unscrupulousness by hiring—viz., “paying with taxpayer dollars”—wackjob liberal bloggers to seek out and troll-poop on anti-Obama Administration media reports and blog posts.

  As reported at The Muffled Oar, a blog that first broke the story of Holder’s secretive blogging unit—dubbed the “Blog Squad” by blogger Isaac Muzzey—Holder has housed this unit in the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice. It also appears that former John Edwards staffer Tracy Russo is part of this special unit.

From The Muffled Oar, who broke the story last Friday:

  Not only is the Department of Justice Blog Squad going to reach out to nontraditional media like TPM Muckraker or the Muffled Oar, but they are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments at conservative leaning blogs such as the Free Republic. They are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments, or comments under pseudonyms, at newspaper websites with stories critical of the Department of Justice, Holder and President Obama.

Does this sound legal to you, dear reader? I suppose it could be considered so, if, like Führer Obama, you simply consider taxpayer dollars as your own, to do with as you please - even hand out to screaming rioters. For more on the legal issues raised, see NRO’s the corner blog.

Clearly it’s time for an investigation. Of course, who could possibly do that? The Justice Department, with it’s unimpeachably incorruptible AG, could investigate itself. Or the Democrat Congress—the most transparent, hard-working, and ethical Congress in decades—could appoint a Special Prosecutor.

Either of these sound about as likely as Obama singing The Star-Spangled Banner from memory whilst pulling a rabbit out of Happy Joe Biden’s arse. Until then, dear reader, the writers at Moonbattery.com will continue to taunt the Blog Squad to no end.

Popularity? ...What Popularity?
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove and that gives Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -7.  Overall, 51% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Forty-nine percent now (49%) disapprove.

I wonder how successful any of us would be if half of our co-workers and management thought that way about our job performance.

Do Nothingness Tracking:
PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on their Obameter. It’s tells the story pretty well.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
The Obameter Scorecard
•  Promise Kept 47
•  Compromise 12
•  Promise Broken 7
•  Stalled 12
•  In the Works 112
•  No Action 325

Speaking of doing nothing, hell even SNL took an unusual swipe at Obama’s ineffectiveness this past weekend.

Unemployment Disaster:
The number of unemployed Americans is now at 9.8%, the highest level since 1983, that’s 26 years folks. So where did that Stimulus money go? Now, with only 2.4 million full-time permanent job openings and 15.1 million unemployed, job seekers outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. Obama promised his stimulus program would create 3 million new jobs but the economy needs 8 million Jobs just to get even and to get back to full employment, or below 5% unemployment, the economy would have to create 12 million to 14 million jobs.  http://www.moneymorning.com/2009/10/05/unemployment-rate-5/
Not such a rosy picture so now the Obama administration is talking up another “Stimulus” bamboozle.

Barry’s Inconvenient War:
And then there is Afghanistan and the President’s foot dragging and ‘half-ass it and hope’ approach that finally led to a brief twenty-five minute meeting with General Stanley McChystal aboard Air Force One, more of a photo opportunity than anything else. More American soldier casualties have occurred this year than in any previous year of the war http://icasualties.org/oef/ yet Obama needs more face time with political advisors.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) put it as bluntly as possible to Obama in his letter September 22, 2009:

“I am convinced that there is no strategy short of a properly-resourced counter-insurgency campaign that is likely to provide lasting security. But, time is not on our side. Coming from Harry Truman country, I ask myself, ‘What would Harry Truman do?’  And this leads me to urge you to waste no time in providing a clear direction to our commanders and civilian leaders, along with the resources necessary to achieve their mission—and to do so with an understanding that the American and Afghan people, as well as our allies, must see progress in the next 12 months.”
• “The last administration allowed itself to be distracted from the fight forced on us in Afghanistan by the fight it chose in Iraq.  I believe that this was a strategic mistake, robbing the war in Afghanistan of the necessary resources and resulting in an approach of ‘half-ass it and hope.’  We cannot afford to continue that policy.”

The Indians and Pakistani’s are scared to death over Obama’s Afghanistan policy or lack of. India’s newspaper The Pioneer offers a blistering critique of Obama’s foreign policy. http://www.dailypioneer.com/205327/Nightmare-presidency.html

Given the intensely and admirably egalitarian nature of the United States presidential election process, it has always been a theoretical possibility that the country will send to the White House a person inexperienced in global affairs and unequal to the international situation before him. Often this has not been the case, and incumbents have risen to the job. Sixty years ago, Harry S Truman had limited first-hand knowledge of great power bargaining but turned out to be farsighted enough to anticipate the Cold War. Mr Obama is the antithesis of this phenomenon. He is completely out of his depth and will probably leave behind a dangerous and unsure legacy. India could have done without this neophyte.

Not all of us have forgotten the lessons of Vietnam and the waffling by this president is done at great risk to our soldiers and to the rest of the world. God Bless our soldiers in harm’s way.

So while Obama just won another phony global popularity contest and the inept media tries to claim that Obama’s approval ratings are actually increasing…fact is it takes more than star power and perpetually running for senior class president to be the President of the United States…an idea somehow lost on Obama and his administration.

You’ve got that pure feel, such good responses
But the picture has a mustache…
You’re coming to me with that soulful look on your face
You’re coming looking like you’ve never ever done one wrong thing,
So many fantastic colors; I feel in a wonderland.
Many fantastic colors makes me feel so good
You’ve got that pure feel, such good responses,
You’ve got that rainbow feel,
but the rainbow has a beard…
Cream Swlabr lyrics by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown