Where Is That Waiver Pen? Obama Needs To Break It Out. AGAIN.

Hard to believe some people are still dumb enough to defend the Obamessiah.

New Health Czar Challenges Obama's Ethics Reforms

By Philip Klein

Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, who President Obama appointed as director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform on Monday, took home at least $2.4 million in 2006 and 2007 from serving on the corporate boards of health-care companies whose businesses she would be in a position to affect in her new position.

Since leaving the Clinton administration in 2001, DeParle has made a fortune by serving on 10 boards in the health-care industry in addition to her lucrative career as a managing director at private equity firm CCMP Capital and a senior adviser at JP Morgan Partners. Her journey from the public sector to the private sector and back again would seem to represent the type of revolving door relationship between Washington and corporate America that President Obama pledged to put an end to during the campaign and in an executive order.

Tom Daschle, who was originally supposed to hold the same "health czar" position in addition to serving as Secretary of Health and Human Services, came under fire after it was revealed that he received $220,000 for giving speeches to health groups over two years. But DeParle's ties to the health-care industry run much deeper.

In just 2006 and 2007 alone, DeParle earned $376,140 in cash and stock from Cerner Corp., according to a TAS analysis of the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cerner is a leader in the field of health information technology, which the Obama administration has made a key part of its health-care agenda. During the same time, she also was awarded $377,319 by DaVita Corp., which specializes in kidney dialysis, and $224,749 from medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp.

In addition, she served on the board of Triad Hospitals from 2001 through its merger with Community Health Systems in 2007. When the $54-per share deal was approved, she was paid $1,059,205 for the stock options she held in Triad and she sold an additional $349,164 in common stock, for a windfall of $1,408,369.

This analysis only scratches the surface on her overall earnings from corporate boards since 2001. The reason is that some corporations did not specify how much each individual board member received in compensation in their filings in a given year.

For instance, at medical device-maker Guidant Corp., where she served from 2001 until its merger with Boston Scientific in 2006, its filings specify that board members would have received a $36,000 annual retainer, plus $3,000 for every meeting attended in person and $1,000 for every telephone meeting. Without knowing which meetings she attended, it's impossible to say precisely how much she would have earned. In addition, at the time of the Boston Scientific merger, she was able to exercise options on 35,000 shares of Guidant stock, allowing her to convert it into shares in the newly formed entity.

This analysis also leaves out any compensation she would have received for her board work in 2008, because that information is not yet available.

Her service also included stints on the board of Specialty Laboratories Inc. from 2001-2004; pharmacy network Accredo Health Group Inc. from 2002-2005; and diagnostic imaging company Medquest Associates Inc. since 2002. In 2008, she also joined the board of Legacy Hospital Partners Inc., which was formed by former Triad executives and mail order pharmacist Medco Health Solutions Inc. (which took over Accredo).

In her new role as the so-called "health czar" DeParle will be tasked with leading the White House efforts on overhauling the system. Asked yesterday whether her extensive board service would present a problem, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, "No. I mean, obviously, the White House has confidence in her and her abilities as part of the health care reform effort here." Gibbs said he anticipated she would leave the boards she is currently serving on.

Daschle eventually withdrew his nomination over controversy stemming from his failure to pay taxes in addition to the uproar over his health-care industry income. As a cabinet nominee, he would have faced Senate confirmation, but DeParle will not since the Obama administration split Daschle's dual role, and tapped Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama issued a widely-touted executive order requiring appointees to take a pledge declaring, "I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts."

As her web of relationships to the medical industry becomes known in greater detail, the administration will be pressed to explain how DeParle could take on overhauling the entire health-care system without violating the spirit, if not the letter, of President Obama's ambitious ethics requirements.

Change?
Definitely. In worse.

ACORN Taking What The Obama Campaign Promised Them

" Police in Baltimore today made what is believed to be the first arrest in a civil disobedience program aimed at supporting homeowners who refuse to vacate their foreclosed homes.

An activist with ACORN — the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now — faces criminal charges after breaking into a home in southeast Baltimore on Thursday to protest the foreclosure crisis sweeping the country.

"This is our house now," ACORN member Louis Beverly reportedly said after cutting a lock with bolt cutters at the home."

From FoxNews

Their house. Their country. Their President. Their rules, not the rule of law.
Anyone else has this strange feeling America is quickly becoming a third-world Banana Republic where a gang of thugs rules by intimidation and force?

Build Your Own Nobama-15 Assault Rifle

Can I get two lowers and pick my own serial numbers please? FA 1L and FWK0 FF.

H/T Melensdad over at Calguns

Rick Santelli Rant Of The Year

This man makes way too much sense for the bunch of clueless socialist monkeys who took over the Legislative and the Executive branches of the American government.

Hey Rick...if I would be you I would watch my back, man; you just crossed the Chicago mob. Expect to get a dead fish in the mailbox anytime now.

What I Have Learned From the Twentieth Century

Discovered this gem over at Sipsey Street Irregulars. It is a piece written 10 years ago by Mike Vanderboegh and his words are ringing today even truer than the day they were written.

Meet the Faculty Emeritus of the University of Collectivism. They make the trains run on time, right to the execution camp gate.
Here's a tip: Don't get in the boxcar.

I wrote this ten years ago. By request, here it is again.

Mike
III

What I Have Learned From the Twentieth Century

With thanks to Schoolmasters Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse-Tung and Pol Pot

From the Liberty Pole
June, 1999
by Mike Vanderboegh

As an amateur historian of this sad century whose time is almost up, I would like to reflect upon six lessons I have learned in my studies. Folks who wish to live free and prosperous in the next century would do well to understand the failures of the past.

LESSON NO. 1: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you do not want to go because of who you are or what you think -- kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent him. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant's executioners. Any nation which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants, or they will run out of it.

LESSON NO. 2: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms -- kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.

LESSON NO. 3: If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you be more easily identified -- tell him to go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors that are not on their list.

LESSON NO. 4: Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate liars. Just because a tyrant is "democratically elected" does not mean he believes in democracy. Reference Adolf Hitler, 1932.

And just because a would-be tyrant mouths words of reverence to law and justice, or takes a solemn oath to uphold a constitution, does not mean be believes such concepts apply to him. Reference Bill Clinton, among others.

The language of the lie is just another tool of killers. A sign saying "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes You Free) posted above an execution camp gate does not mean that anybody gets out of there alive, and a room labeled "Showers" does not necessarily make you clean. Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the meaning of "is" is plain when such perverted language gets you killed. While all tyrants are liars, it is true that not all political liars are would-be tyrants -- but they bear close watching. And keep your rifle handy.

LESSON NO. 5: Our constitutional republic as crafted by the Founders is the worst form of government in the world, except when compared to all the others. Capitalism, as well, is a terrible way to run an economy, except when compared to all other economic systems. Unrestrained democracy is best expressed as three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what to have for dinner. The horrors of collectivism in all its forms -- socialism, communism, national socialism, fascism -- have been demonstrated beyond dispute by considerable wasteful trial and bloody error. Leaders such as Bill Clinton who view the Constitution as inconvenient and ignorable are harbingers of tyranny.

LESSON NO. 6: While nations do not always get the leaders they deserve, they always get the leaders they tolerate. And anyone who tells you that "It Can't Happen Here" is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no "house rule" that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos. Dictators count on the assistance of people who are complacent, fearful, envious, lazy and corrupt. While there is no "Collective guilt" to the crimes of a regime (all such crimes being committed by specific criminal individuals), there is certainly "collective responsibility" -- especially for those who watch the criminals at work without objecting or interfering.

A French journalist of the last century wrote: "I must speak out, for I will not be an accomplice." Evil tyrants require, indeed they depend upon, willing and unwilling accomplices -- good people who would never think of harming a soul themselves. Lenin called such people "useful idiots."

De Tocqueville observed that "America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." As related in the Old Testament, God judged nations based upon the immorality and criminality of their leaders. Entire peoples were scourged because of their failure to remove corrupt leaders.

As we move from the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First, we should take care to remember the ancient story of Sodom and Gommorrah. If we wish to avoid the butchery of the Twentieth Century and the righteous judgment of the God of our antiquity, we would do well to keep our Bibles, our Constitution and our firearms close at hand.

In the backgound: Siegessäule monument (Victory column). Hitler's favorite landmark in Berlin, the column represented a symbol of German superiority over Denmark, Austria and France