AFF Sentinel Vol.6#39

There are few rules at the hog trough: get there first, hold your spot by pushing and shoving and squealing and when the feed runs out in front of you, look right or left for more.

In Congress -- as confirmed by Harry Reid -- the rules apparently are little different. But Harry is much more crass about it than the leadership usually is. Part of their current exuberant, bare knuckle style power politics, apparently.

"I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," Reid said, referring to Healthenstein. "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them." In effect, Harry is complimenting and encouraging senators who forced him into negotiations, much as a heavyweight exhorting a lesser boxer to come after him. Reid is enamored of the process, the fight, the bargaining necessary to cram something through - when lots of Congress and the majority of the people oppose him.

AFF Sentinel Vol.6#38

With a final flurry of disgusting deals, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stooped to the final depths he needed this weekend to get the last votes. At 1:00 a.m., the bill passed the first of three votes needed to get a final vote on the Senate health care bill on Christmas Eve.

In a taste of things to come, the bill featured two methods of big government coercion: a 10 percent tax on tanning bed visits and a requirement that restaurant menu boards post calorie counts and other nutrition info by each item.

The last relatively doable chance of stopping the Senate's version of Healthenstein had rested with Sen. Ben Nelson, Nebraska.

AFF Sentinel Vol.6#37

The official explained the latest EPA salvo - the declaration that the CO2 that every living being exhales plus other greenhouse gases were endangering the health of the populace and required drastic government intervention - was just one arm of a pincer movement designed to trap Congress. The message was, pass cap & trade legislation or the EPA will begin raining down rules and regulations on businesses by fiat, the official confided.

Even more incredible than one branch of "our" government threatening another branch of government, chewing up its own citizens, revenue- providing taxpayers and its economy in the process, was the Administration's smokescreen.

AFF Sentinel Vol.6#36

Imagine you are some dictator of a poor African country. You have a palace, a guard and an army and the West sends you a steady supply of food and medical aid but you really need a new source of cash flow. What do you do?

You may remember or have read about Eisenhower's warnings about the Military Industrial Complex taking over the running of the U.S. He meant the interests of our post-WWII "immense military establishment and a large arms industry" dominating American politics and the economy.

Well, we think globally now. And the emphasis has shifted. Now it's the Western Capitalism Guilt Complex. And all a poor African dictator has to do is dial up the current list of offenses committed by the West on the world in general and Africa in particular and demand compensation. President Obama has furthered the cause of American guilt admission by apologizing for us all over the world in his first ten months in office.