From Euripides' Blog

I finally met up with the informant I'd been after for two years. Before we met, he would pass information along by leaving rainbow-hued sticky notes to the underside of my Ford pickup. At first, I thought it was a joke, but the information on each sticky note would always predict the actions of Congress with at least a day's notice:

Nancy Pelosi will have her maidservant pick up her dry cleaning at 3:00 p.m. today.

Steny Hoyer will fall asleep during the reading of H.R. 748.

James Clyburn has developed an embarrassing case of jock itch.

Always, the predictions were dead on accurate.

I started writing sticky notes back, leaving them exactly two inches to the right from where the informant stuck his notes, per his instructions. He always answered my notes within a few hours, always finding my Ford wherever I happened to leave it. On three occasions, he left me notes while I was on the expressway from Dulles International.

I decided I had to meet him. I had to find out how he knew so much about future events in Congress. I had to find out what Congress' next moves were. I had to find out how he arranged to attach sticky notes on the bottom of my truck while driving full speed down the expressway.

In all this finding, I had to know the answer to The Big Question.

After two years, he finally agreed to meet me in the parking garage at a high-class hotel in Anacostia. I asked him what I should call him. He would only identify himself as "Shallownostril."

On the forth level, ten meters to the south and seventeen meters to the west of the elevator, I first set eyes on Shallownostril. He wore a dark suit, dark shirt, dark tie, dark shoes, dark hat, and white socks. He nodded once at me as I departed the elevator. I nodded at him in return, tripping on a drunk who had chosen to pass out just outside the elevator doors. I sauntered over to him, trying to impress him with my swagger. He didn't look impressed. So I stopped sauntering and walked the rest of the way.

Once we stood face to face, he carefully set down an obviously heavy, metal briefcase in front of me. I, in return, set down a ripped pair of pants on top of the briefcase.

"Euripides?" he inquired.

"Eumenides?" I replied.

He nodded once and took the ripped pants.

"Does this contain what I think it contains?" I asked, indicating the briefcase.

"It does," he replied. "It's the answer to The Big Question."

We stood in silence for a moment, staring at each other, waiting for the other one to make the next move. Five, then ten seconds passed. The silence grew uncomfortable.

I guess I was too nervous. I broke first.

"Well thanks," I said. "I've got to get home. Haven't had dinner yet."

Shallownostril nodded with understanding. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I came straight over here from work and I haven't had anything to eat since lunch."

"Well. See ya'," I said.

"Nice to finally meet you."

I nodded in agreement and picked up the briefcase. We walked away in opposite directions. Shallownostril headed toward the fire escape. I sidestepped the drunk as I returned to the elevator.

I shook with anticipation as I sat in my pickup truck with the metal briefcase on my lap. Inside contained the answer to The Big Question. I could scarcely control my hands as I reached for the latches to pop them open.

Inside the briefcase was a sticky note. The note was penned in the finely crafted handwriting of Shallownostril. I strained to read it under the flickering sickly orange-green light, broken from its cage on the side of the concrete garage wall. Shallownostril had indeed found the answer to The Big Question: Who drafts the healthcare bill that Congress wants to desperately pass?

The answer to The Big Question took hundreds of hours of research, untold thousands in bribes, and an uncomfortable afternoon spent watching Nancy Pelosi at a local spa getting a body wrap.

Despite the hardship and overtime hours, I have discovered the author of the healthcare bill.

The healthcare bill was written...

I closed the briefcase. My perception changed. My paradigm shifted. My left eye twitched, but that had nothing to do with the answer to The Big Question.

As I pointed my Ford Pickup toward home, I pondered the answer in my mind over and over again. The answer made perfect sense.

The healthcare bill was written by a small monkey who has been fed an exceedingly large amount of gin.


My thanks to Brandon Sanderson whose brilliant writing inspired me to write this extemporaneous piece. You'll find his inspiring line (though with a completely different context than the one I just gave it) on page 341 of his latest book, Warbreaker (New York: Tor, 2009). I highly recommend this and his other works to you.

Years ago I lived in Bolivia. One of the major sources of wool there comes from llamas and to a lesser extent from alpacas. In order to harvest the wool from the llamas, the farmers usually kill and skin it. For the llama, giving wool is a one-time deal. You could say the llama gives up everything to provide wool to the farmers.

I always thought this was a strange way to gather wool, since I knew about the process of shearing sheep. Shearing preserves the sheep which can provide wool for many years. I wondered, why kill off the llama when you could just sheer the wool? (Since I left Bolivia, I learned that some farmers did indeed sheer the llamas instead of skin them.)

We are at an interesting crossroads in the United States. For the first time we have a statist liberal in the White House, a heavily statist Congress, and statist control of the Democratic party. What this means for the country, is that radical liberal ideals have very few impediments in the federal government. Radical liberal ideals include funding giganormous welfare programs, redistributing wealth, punitive taxation, leveling income, and, of course, increasing government control over all aspects of our lives.

Liberals have always sheared the American people through taxes, which raises money for a grossly obese government, controls spending and the society in specific ways (for example, by giving tax breaks to married people to encourage marriage), and punishes certain segments of the population (for example, those deemed to be too rich).

However, with this new administration, the wool shearers have turned into llama skinners. Instead of preserving some Americans to give wool for another day, these llama skinners are content to kill off a segment of the population in order to provide enough money to fund their version of government and fulfill their statist agenda.

President Obama made his infamous comment about "spreading the wealth" during his campaign. In cahoots with Congress, that translates into overtaxing those who make $200,000 (or is it $150,000? or maybe $100,000?) or more. The plan is to raise the top tax rate to 40% and there is talk of a "surcharge" on the rich of 5% to 6% as well. Capital gains taxes will rise. FICA taxes will increase as well for the rich. Corporate taxes take their share. For business owners, withholding and unemployment taxes take another cut. Cap and trade taxes could cost more than 5%, increasing year by year. Health care taxes will add to current medical spending and will grow unwieldy toward the rush into bureaucratic overload (think Medicare). States, forced to an ever increasing demand, have raised their top income tax rates to 10%. Added together, these taxes could take a hefty 70% from the wealthy to pay for the new slew of social and environmental programs at the core of liberalism.

The question remains, who are these "rich" whom liberals demonize as the greedy elite who destroyed the US economy? Who will fund the ever-controlling government and pay for welfare? Are they all CEOs of Enron or AIG? Are they all Wall Street moguls? In other words, who are the llama skinners going after and what is the harm in gathering wool from those who can afford it?

Most of the Americans on Obama's hit list are small business owners. They own and operate businesses and are the top employers (apart from - surprise - the government) in the United States. As an example of a small business owner, I know quite a few printers. Some are very successful and are, according to Obama, rich. Let's say one of these successful printers employs 20 people in his print shop and makes $200,000 a year. Along comes the Obama tax scheme and takes 70% of my friends's salary, leaving him $60,000 a year.

How does my "greedy," rich friend react? He cuts back on spending. He cuts the number of employees, increasing unemployment. He doesn't buy new equipment and press manufacturers go out of business. He finds his "new" salary inadequate to pay for the home he's lived in for 15 years and is forced to move. He doesn't buy a new car and the government has to take over another automobile manufacturer. He cannot afford a new computer, cell phone, iPod, or plasma TV. He thinks to himself, "Why should I work so hard anymore since the government is going to take my money anyway? I can work half as hard and make $100,000 and keep more of it than when I made $200,000." Cutting his income reduces the amount of taxes the government takes in and reduces government income.

Now think of not one, but tens of millions of business owners who will be affected by the statist government tax scheme. The "poor" didn't have any federal tax increases (let's pretend here) yet the federal government has succeeded in killing off small business and, by extension, the economy of the United States. Government has switched from shearing to skinning.

This is the essence of our llama skinning government. In the name of Robin Hood redistribution, the spending and taxing scheme created by this statist government will have a few unintended consequences - it will skin small businesses - the backbone of our national economy - and kill them off.

Write your congressional representatives and your senators today and tell them you do not agree with their radical liberal ideals to sock it to the "rich." Do not let our government shearers become llama skinners. There are better ways of maintaining the economy and funding government programs than having small businesses give up their skins to the government.

I can hardly wait to have my email inbox filled with Viagra-like ads for this new earth enhancement bill. There's nothing like a whole new slew of taxes to get us all stimulated.

The Snarky Files. Snarky means several things. I prefer the definition of "sharply critical." Here's my take on some news stories this past week. No real news here, just snark.

What a banner week for snark! I wanted to take on so much but my editor made me cut down my post to the bare minimum. Such a shame. There was a lot of good stuff he made me take out.

24/7 Porn
Apple now allows the iTunes store to sell pornography apps (Wired). Isn't this taking the accessibility and spread of porn a wee bit too far? Don't people spend too much time looking for the stuff online, that they need it on their iPhone too? Is the world too porn deprived that we need an iPhone app for it? Will drivers now watch porn while driving? Will executives now demand their companies supply iPhones so they can get their thrills during boring board meetings?

Update: Apple announced that it will not sell this app on iTunes. Thanks Apple for holding to standards of decency! (Wired)

Affairs of the Media
Remember James McGreevey, Antonio Villaraigosa, Gavin Newsom, Kwame Kilpatrick, or Jim Gibbons? Me either. What about Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Eliot Spitzer? What do they have in common with Mark Sanford? They were all politicians who had affairs. (Well, all except Spitzer who insisted this week that meeting up with prostitutes does not constitute a "real" affair.) Somehow, when a politician has an affair, we all get a bit overly excited and the news media goes into a frenzy of activity. The real question is, are any of us all that surprised that politicians, who regularly abuse their power, also abuse their marital fidelity? Mark Sanford put it this way:

“I don’t know how this thing got blown out of proportion,” the governor told The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., after he landed at the Atlanta airport Wednesday morning. (Politico)

If politicians can't keep their libidos under control, how can we expect them to act in the best interests of the people of the US?

One note of caution for all power-hungry, affair-starter politicians: Remember that anything you write on the internet will eventually surface and come back to haunt you. Read the juicy Sanford email conversation here!

Economic Recovery
Warren Buffett doesn't think much of Obama's economic savvy:

While the economy is a "shambles" and likely to stay that way for some time, he remains optimistic there will eventually be a recovery over a period of years. (CNBC)

The key word is eventually. (Did we really need a trillion dollar deficit to "eventually" recover?)

I've noticed that with the economic "shambles" of the economy, Obama and Pelosi still insist on pushing through more legislation that would strain the economy under the best of conditions. Are the leaders of the free world really that blinded by their ideologies that they can't see economic reality?

Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

Dodd and Dodder
Senator Chris Dodd is another politician who ignores principle for political expediency. Case in point: This week he gave up any shred of pretending to be a Catholic and weighed in on the side of same sex marriage.

[Dodd] declared he had changed his position on same-sex "marriage," and now calls law defining marriage between a man and a woman "archaic" and "unfair." (Lifesite News)

Now that's a sound basis for changing a fundamental social institution like marriage!

Here's a thought. I think Chris Dodd is archaic. He certainly looks like an old, hardcore, power-hungry liberal to me. And his views on marriage are patently unfair to the vast majority of Americans who don't agree with him.

Capped and Traded
Most Americans know that the US House of Representatives passed a bill to cap carbon dioxide emissions - the "climate change" bill or the "cap and trade" bill or the "Waxman-Markey" bill.

Is there anyone apart from the deluded Obama-Pelosi ticket that thinks this is a good idea? Does anyone really believe this bill is in the best interest of Americans? Does anyone doubt that energy costs will skyrocket and put us all in the poor house? Didn't the House push this thing through a bit too quickly, since no one had the opportunity to actually read the thing? What's in it for Waxman and Markey?

And why is government so interested in light bulbs?

Even the Wall Street Journal is skeptical.

Meddling
When Iranians took to the street in favor of democracy against a totalitarian government because they thought their election was rigged against them, Obama sat on the fence trying desperately not to meddle. He eventually came around to condemn the violence - too little, too late.

When the people of Honduras threw out their totalitarian dictator in favor of democracy, Obama immediately declared the coup illegal.

"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. (Reuters)

I don't get the warm fuzzies when Obama denies Iranian democracy over dictatorship then supports Honduran dictatorship over democracy. Just what is Obama's plan in all this?

Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

Mad About Madoff
I don't know what to make of Bernard Madoff's 150 year prison sentence for fraud. Compare his sentence with accused child molester, rapist and p-mp Frank Lombard who faces a whopping 20 years for sexually abusing his five year old son. At least the sentencing of Madoff made a lot of liberals happy for sticking it to the rich guy.

Liberal hearts will mend and the economy can now heal knowing that Madoff is behind bars and a rich guy got what's coming to him.

Sorry Soto
Judge Sonya Sotomayor's judgment denying discrimination claims by New Haven firefighters got overturned in the Supreme Court. While Republicans are having a field day with the news, this does pose serious questions about how much Sotomayor could influence the high court if her appointment is confirmed. If Obama's intent in naming Sotomayor was to include a liberal voice on the court (which is precisely the reason Obama named her for the appointment), liberals may be in for a disappointing time. Time Magazine concludes:

Until Sotomayor settles in with her new colleagues, Souter's departure and her arrival may represent a net loss of liberal influence rather than a gain. (Time)

That's actually a bit of good news, just in case you missed it.

Corruption
The last two stories are connected.

Minnesota finally declared Democrat Al Franken the winner in the senatorial race. (Was there ever any doubt considering Democrat power?) This, of course, is just what the US Senate needed to consolidate power - another bad comedian turned politician.

In a related story, the Gallup Poll announced:

A Gallup Poll finds a statistically significant increase since last year in the percentage of Americans who describe the Democratic Party's views as being "too liberal," from 39% to 46%. (Gallup)

That's a huge percentage increase from last year. Maybe Americans are finally waking up to the mess we've created by electing the most liberal of liberals to the White House, the most liberal of liberals to the vice presidency, the most liberal of liberals as Speaker of the House and then filling in the ranks with Democrat ideologues?

Let's hope the change in Americans isn't too late.