Living in a DC Comic Book World.

During a Q&A session at one of the Meet and Greet events a few weeks ago, a young lady on our staff stood up and said she felt like she was living in Bizarro World, an expression I've used myself on many occasions.

For those of you too young to remember, Bizarro World was an invention of the fruitful minds of the writers of DC Comics, originally introduced in their Superman series in the early 60's. On Bizarro World, everything good is bad, everything right is wrong, everything beautiful is ugly.

Those who live on Bizarro World are hideously disfigured clones of their counterparts on Earth. As enunciated so clearly by Bizarro, the character after which the planet formerly known as Htrae (Earth spelled backwards, of course) is named, their credo is as follows:

"Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!"

It doesn't take a terrific leap of the imagination to see where this is going: the Obama Administration and the Democratic Majority have transported us magically, in less than one year, to what seems to be a bizarre alternate universe. Only, unlike the product of some comic book writer's imagination, this is all too horrifyingly and sickeningly real.

What makes this Administration bizarre? One scarcely knows where to begin.

What we as Americans have revered for centuries our own government now reviles. Our free-market, capitalist system, which made us the greatest nation in the history of the world, is in the process of being crushed under the boot-heels of radicals. Do you realize how successfully this Administration has made "capitalism" a dirty word?

They and their minions work day and night strip all the goodness and morality from it, to portray it as greedy and selfish - all the while ignoring that it is a system of true equality for all men, a system under which the poorest among us can rise - not simply to mediocrity - but to great heights, by the virtue of our own minds and our willingness to work hard for ourselves and our families.

Think about how far this President and the Democrats have come in denying you the right to keep what you earn. Think about how far this President and the Democrats have come in their fight to convince Americans that they, the bureaucrats in Washington, know better how to spend your money than you do - you, who have actually earned it.

Bizarre, indeed.

We are a country that, since its inception, bent at the knee before NO foreign power, yet now Obama bows and scrapes in a sickening display of groveling as if WE were the cause of the world's ills - not the best hope for a cure. Forgotten by Obama, or perhaps never fully understood or appreciated, are the sacrifices of 25 generations of America's youth, who died as protectors of liberty for freedom-loving people everywhere on the planet.

Yes, I would call it bizarre for an American President to refer to his own country as "arrogant."

And what would you call it when a country rewards terrorists with the finest legal representation in the world, and all the Constitutional benefits of the citizens of the country they despise and would destroy - yet imprisons three Navy SEALs, who bloodied the lip of an murdering jihadist during his capture, and now await a Court Martial.

What would you call it when, after an Islamic jihadist murders 13 American soldiers about to be deployed, in a blatant act of terrorism on American soil, the President of the United States reminds us immediately that we should not blame his Muslim faith, that we should not jump to conclusions as to his motives, and that we must not let "diversity" be a casualty. This is the same President that labeled the Cambridge Police "stupid" when they responded to a breaking and entering call while he knew none of the facts and only one side of the story.

He and the Democrats are so quick to blame America, and so quick to excuse those who would destroy us.

Almost since Inauguration Day we have had inflicted upon us crisis after crisis, all followed by a flurry of multi-thousand paged legislation, incomprehensible bills to be rushed through Congress - because, of course, there is no time to waste.

And yet our media, those brave watchdogs of democracy, sit mutely on the sidelines, their silence painfully indicative of their lack of objectivity, their rare questioning of policy a bone flipped to the masses, their smug belief in their own superiority barely concealed.

Yes, we live in bizarre times, but more than that we live in dangerous times. Those who are not on the inside of the strategy, all of us, are coming to the horrifying realization that the destruction of the America we know and love is imminent not because of the actions of some foreign dictator, but because of a dangerous and duplicitous rogue regime.

And because we are now living in Bizarro World, the rogue regime that would destroy America sits in the White House, and walks the halls of Congress.

The Way It SHOULD Be Sung

The Obama Administration: God DAMN America

Late on a Friday afternoon, with the President out of the country, the Attorney General of the United States announced that the mastermind of 9/11, and four of his cohorts, will be brought to New York for trial. In a courtroom that would be in the shadow of the Twin Towers - were they standing - will be the vilest America-haters in the world, and sadly, not all of them will be members of al-Queda.

At the forefront of these will be Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

This sub-human piece of garbage will be accorded the same rights granted to the American citizens whose lives he snuffed out, because he so believed in the twisted drivel that is radical Islam.

This sub-human piece of garbage will be granted a hearing in a way that his victims never were.

This sub-human piece of garbage will get a bully pulpit from which to publicly bash our country after killing thousands of its innocent citizens, and from the very place where those Americans died.

This sub-human piece of garbage will get to plead for his life in front of a magistrate, and with legal counsel.

I have some questions.

When the passenger on those jets realized that they had no alternative but death, to whom could they make a plea? When those poor souls working in the Towers - forced to choose between leaping out of a window or facing an inferno of burning jet fuel - had to decide how they wanted to die, who was there to give them counsel?

There is only one way to describe this decision by the Obama administration: sick and demented. Perhaps as sick and demented as the men they are bringing to New York to face the justice guaranteed to American citizens by a Constitution they so despise.

We have elected a diseased group of America-hating radicals, and must be turned out of office.

Interpreting McMahon

We can all feel very much gratified, for a number of reasons, when considering the vote of Congressman McMahon on HR3962 this past Saturday evening.

First and foremost, from my perspective, is the apparent affect your tireless work had on the outcome, forcing him to examine the roots of our opposition to the bill, and helping him to understand the reasonableness of our objections.

For his part, he listened, and that is big, and ultimately he voted against his party’s leadership. We’ll take as an act of faith that he voted his conscience.

But what if he didn’t? Should the Congressman be condemned if his vote was merely an act of political expediency? The more cynical among us will point out that Ms. Pelosi had 40 votes to play with – to pass, the bill needed a majority of 218 votes, and there are 258 Democrats in the House. This gave her, ostensibly, a pocketful of dispensations which could be doled out to nervous Blue Dogs - or other vulnerable Democrats. Michael McMahon is one of these, since he is a freshman D in a district that is reliably Republican - 28 years worth - in a district that voted comfortably for John McCain in the last Presidential election.

To be sure, Congressman McMahon listed a goodly number of appropriate reasons for voting against the bill – indeed, had he gone a little further, he might have been able to justify supporting the Republican version of healthcare reform, which came to be known as the Boehner Amendment.

In a statement, the Congressman said:

"I believe that we need to reform the healthcare system, reduce spending, cut waste, fraud and abuse and expand coverage for more Americans. Unfortunately the bill that passed the United States House tonight does not do that.

The cuts to Medicare will affect seniors in my district, the cuts to the Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) will make it harder for hospitals to service Staten Island and Brooklyn and the cost containment doesn't go far enough. There is no guarantee that this bill will reduce the cost of healthcare premiums for Staten Island and Brooklyn families."

To summarize, Congressman McMahon’s objections to HR3962 are as follows:

1. The bill does not reduce spending.
2. The bill does not cut waste, fraud and abuse.
3. The bill does not expand coverage for more Americans.
4. Medicare cuts will affect seniors in the district.
5. Cuts to Disproportionate Share Hospitals will affect service to Staten Islanders.
6. Cost containment does not go far enough.
7. There will be no guaranteed reduction in the cost of healthcare premiums.

A quick look at the Boehner amendment reveals that it would address many of these concerns; certainly the fiscal ones, according to the scoring by the Congressional Budget Office.

However, Congressman McMahon dutifully, and to no one’s surprise, voted against this Republican amendment, even though it would have overcome nearly all the hurdles that caused him to vote NO on the version that came to the floor. That may cause one to wonder if the stated reasons for voting against the bill were the real reasons he voted against the bill – or might he have voted NO to take political cover in his Republican district.

That would be known as having your cake and eating it, too.

(We should note that there is a distinct possibility that the bill will be back again for another vote, if and when the Senate passes its version. Having set a high bar, a bar any reconciled bill may not be able to hurdle, Congressman McMahon will be forced to vote NO once again. We certainly live in interesting times.)

Despite all of this, Congressman McMahon has voted the right way on HR3962, and in the end that’s all that we asked for. So kudos to the Congressman, and great big kudos to the tireless work of the hard-working, ordinary citizen-members of the Staten Island Tea Party.

We never stopped letter-writing, phone-calling, e-mailing, sign-making, trip-taking and generally being a tenacious bunch of pains-in-the-asses - and in the end, we learned that yes, we can make a difference.

I’m very proud of you all.

They Are Voting Us Into Slavery.

I don’t know what else you would call it. Nancy Pelosi’s version of HR3200, which is called HR3962, would essentially make slaves of us all.

Sounds dramatic, I know, but consider that never in the history of American law-making has the federal government ever mandated the purchase of anything.

Until now.

Passage of this bill will force every American to buy health insurance. For most of us reading this, the money that we use to “buy” something comes from our labor – OUR labor, not someone else’s. We trade the work product of our muscles or intellect for money, in a free exchange with our employer or employees. If the federal government forces you to buy something, it is compelling you to wake up and go to work some morning not to earn money for your own purposes, but to satisfy a bureaucrat’s vision of what he thinks is in the best interests of you and the nation.

Of course, you can choose not to make the purchase and pay a fine of 2.5% of your total income. Further, you can choose not to pay the fine. I don’t need to carry this exercise to its final conclusion, which I’m sure you have realized means, ultimately, being taken at the point of a gun to trial and eventual incarceration.

Your crime? Failure to turn your property, the sweat of your brow, over to a federal bureaucrat. In an earlier part of our country’s history, when a man was compelled at the point of a gun to work for the benefit of another, it was called slavery. It is still slavery today.

We expect our government to protect us from those that would enslave us.

How’s that for irony?

I have never asked anyone to send something I wrote to another, but I think it would be a good thing to make as many Americans aware of this as possible; if you agree, forward this to your email list.

If you’re a Staten Islander, or a Brooklynite living in parts of Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst, your Representative is Michael McMahon. Congressman McMahon has indicated lately that he is leaning towards voting for the bill. We have little time to persuade him not to. Here is where to contact him:

Congressman McMahon in D.C.:
Phone (202) 225-3371
Fax: (202) 226-1272

Congressman McMahon in Staten Island:
Phone (718) 351-1062
Fax: (718) 980-0768

Please call and fax.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he will be supporting a massive intrusion of government into our lives.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he is voting to forever change America – not to become a greater country, but to become a lesser one.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he is voting to kill the rugged individualist spirit of Americans.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he will be complicit in the bankrupting of the United states of America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

Let him know that we do not want any form of socialized medicine – it has failed wherever it has been tried – and it will fail here.

And finally, let him know that he will be held accountable for his votes.