By: Chuck Muth
Citizen Outreach

THE DAVID CASSIDY OF POLITICS

“There’s nothing wrong with a boring politician. But Obama isn’t becoming boring in a stolid, dependable Angela Merkel kind of way. He’s not boring like a mannerly George H. W. Bush or a thoughtful Bill Bradley. He’s boring like yesterday’s celebrity. He’s the teen heartthrob who’s grown a little too old.”

– National Review editor Rich Lowry

SOME TAXPAYERS ARE CREATED MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

“At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation’s history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from its own employees. Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000. . . . The agency with the most tax scofflaws is the U.S. Postal Service, with 28,913 employees who owe $297,933,756.”

– WTOP.com, 12/14/09

DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO

“For critics of the Democrats’ $849 billion health care bill, this may be the ultimate irony: millions of dollars set aside so the government can help teach citizens how to handle their own money better. . . . The nation’s borrowing is about to surpass the statutory limit of $12.1 trillion, and Congress will have to increase that limit, probably well beyond $13 trillion, to ensure the country meets its obligations to creditors overseas.”

– Manu Raju of Politico, 12/14/09

IT’S ON A NEED-TO-KNOW BASIS, AND YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW

“Although Democratic senators expressed confidence that the (health care reform) bill will pass, they professed to know few details about the public-option deal, kept under wraps by (Sen. Harry) Reid while the CBO analyzes the cost.”

– Washington Post, 12/10/09

WHAT COMES AFTER 59 AGAIN?

“Majority Leader Harry Reid is having a difficult time piecing together a health-reform bill that will get 60 votes in the Senate because of his overreach in trying to create a health-care ‘system’ that would be run out of Washington.”

– Grace Marie-Turner of the Galen Institute

JUST SAY NO

“Harry Reid is really getting desperate to pass his health-care legislation. In a gambit that has confounded both liberal and conservative groups, the majority leader is using the health-care bill to restore funding for abstinence-only sex education programs that liberals – such as Mr. Reid himself – have spent the past three years trying to zero out. . . . Come to think of it, a period of abstinence might be the best solution to Mr. Reid’s increasingly reckless attempts to get a health care bill through the senate.”

– Allysia Finley in Political Diary, 12/14/09

HARRY REID IS NO PIED PIPER

“There’s trouble in paradise, or rather there would be if the U.S. Senate’s Democratic Caucus were paradise. Last week we heard that Majority Leader Harry Reid had struck a compromise deal on ObamaCare. But, characteristically for the Senate, the leader is having trouble finding followers.”

– James Taranto, Best of the Web, 12/14/09

CLIMATE CHANGE SUPER-HYPOCRITES

“(Limousine company manager) Majken Friss Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week (for the climate change conference) has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. ‘We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand,’ she says. ‘We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.’ And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? ‘Five,’ says Ms Jorgensen.”

– London Telegraph, 12/5/09

SURVEY SAYS!

Is global warming a real threat, normal atmospheric change, or an environmentalist hoax?

  • The sky really is falling!
  • Don’t worry. Be happy.
  • Martians have landed on Earth!

To cast your vote in today’s online survey, click here!

RAH-RAH-RHEE!

“The Washington, D.C., public school system, with its high dropout rates and low test scores, has long been a national embarrassment. But things seem to be improving under maverick Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. So it’s curious that the White House hasn’t done more to support her reform efforts, especially since they track so closely with the Obama Administration’s own stated education goals.

“…Before Ms. Rhee’s arrival, the nation’s capital went through six superintendents in 10 years. Since taking over as Chancellor in 2007, Ms. Rhee has replaced ineffective principals, laid off instructors based on “quality, not by seniority” and shuttered failing schools. These actions have angered teacher unions to the point of bringing (unsuccessful) lawsuits, yet academic outcomes are clearly improving.”

– Review & Outlook, Wall Street Journal, 12/14/09

SMACKDOWN IN CONNECTICUT

“Even when matched up against the newest Republican candidate on the block, Linda McMahon, ex-CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, (Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd) trails by six points. . . . Ms. McMahon, who spent more than $2 million in the first two weeks of her campaign, has said that she’s willing to spend a total of $30 million of her own money on the race.”

– Allysia Finley of Political Diary, 12/14/09

MUTH’S TRUTHS

“Eyebrow threading is a booming industry in Texas because it’s cheaper, faster and less painful than waxing,” our friends at the Institute for Justice inform us today. “Plus, it doesn’t involve any chemicals, dyes or sharp objects and is healthy for the skin. It’s creating lots of jobs in Texas, especially for immigrants.”

So this is a good thing, right? Um, not so fast.

“Now threaders are being forced to pay $20,000 to obtain up to 1,500 hours of instruction in a school that does not even teach their trade,” the IJ reports. “They are also being forced to pass exams that don’t test for threading. Inspectors have already begun handing out $2,000 fines. This scheme protects cosmetology companies from honest competition, but does nothing to help consumers.”

Eight of the threaders are now suing, with IJ’s help, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR). Learn more in THIS brief two-and-a-half minute video.

ADDITIONAL READING

John McCain, Arizona senator and failed presidential candidate (twice), is up for re-election next year. J.D. Hayworth, former conservative congressman and current Phoenix talk-show host, is mulling a challenge to McCain for Barry Goldwater’s seat in the GOP primary next year. So the McCainiacs have been out doing an underhanded “push-poll” to tar Hayworth. Read all about it HERE

FED-EXCESS

There’s a scene in John Wayne’s True Grit where the character Mattie Ross stomps off after once again threatening to have her lawyer, J. Noble Dagget, sue somebody. To which the character played by actor Glen Campbell says to Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn, “Lawyer Daggett – she draws him like a gun!”

That scene always comes to mind whenever I read new propaganda from FedEx complaining about “labor unions” in their fight against a proposed change in federal law which would place their express delivery drivers under the same law as every other express delivery driver in the country. Read the latest HERE

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“Once created, federal programs are nearly impossible to eliminate.”

– Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)