THE JOE WILSON SHOW

It's time for another episode of The Joe Wilson Show tonight, and you've got a sneak preview exclusively here on edwardgroberts.blogspot.com, so tell all of your friends. You can catch the live broadcast tonight at 9:00 PM EST on the channel that would otherwise be broadcasting something worth a squat. Without further ado, here it is:

BILL LIVINGOOD: Madam Speaker… the President of the United States.

(applause)

BARACK OBAMA: Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States:

One year ago we started down a new pa- oh, and my fellow Amuslicans. One year ago we started down a new path: one of hope and of change. We have come a long way, the light is at the end of the tunnel, yes we can, we will win.

(short applause from Pelosi and Biden)

Thank you. Thank you. Today some are suggesting that our efforts are not working, but I want to be perfectly clear – they are.

Unemployment may be up, but hope is high. This administration’s approval ratings may be low right now, but so are copper prices. What does all this mean? It means our economy has never looked better. And with me in the White House the hope is going to change all of this into a more stable and viable national agenda capitalizing on helping Americans and immigrants create a better tomorrow for the future of children...

(confused silence)

We are going to fix all of this over the next year and here is how I am going to do it:

(applause)

I’m putting a freeze on all domestic spending for the next three years. The deficit is at an all time high due to an unprecedented and reckless amount of spending, and we must put a stop to it. For too long Washington has been throwing money around as if it were just that *snap* easy to print, and those who are responsible must be held accountable. My staff and I will be going over George Bush’s economic record right down to his personal checkbook to find out where all this money has gone.

If Americans are going to be on top again we must fix the education system. To that end I am calling for a 6% increase in Education spending domestically. This will create much needed jobs at both the teaching and administration levels, and represent a huge increase in government education contracts. I am also introducing a brand new idea that I came up with… well, me and the Democratic members of congress that are up for re-election this year – they helped me on it, so remember that. Anyway, we’re going to start Charter Schools all over the country. This will introduce competition in education, just like in business.

And speaking of business, some CEOs seem to be under the impression that I am against big business. I want to be perfectly clear on this: nothing could be further from the truth.

JOE WILSON: You lie!

(loud murmur and applause from all but Pelosi and Biden)

BARACK OBAMA: The caps on CEO wages that I am endorsing are for your own good. With that your compensation is tied to stock market value through stock bonuses and buy-backs, rather than the long term value of the company and its product. This way the economy turns around faster on paper and you get a bigger piece of the pie through Wall Street manipulation. Good for you. Good for stockholders. Good for my administration. Good for everybody.

During this time of economic hardship it seems that prices on commodities are rising without any logical reason. Oil fluctuates daily though the supply and refining capacities remain either constant or on the rise. This is due to the health care situation in this country. I want congress to buckle down and get something passed before Novemb- uh, before we lose the momentum needed to bring about what all of the Americans who can’t afford it want.

As you all know, recently the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and other far right interest groups will be able to make movies that send messages to the voters. This decision could very well be used to try to discredit the health care reform that we are working so hard on, or our initiatives to reign in out of control business in America. That is why I am taking steps to dampen the effect of this ruling against the American voice. I am appointing Michael Moore as the Czar of Media Messaging.

Finally, some in the media have suggested that I did not respond adequately to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound commercial airliner in December. I want to be clear on this: nothing could be further from the truth. And I really don’t think these hate-mongers represent the best of America. To show just how wrong they are I am announcing a new initiative to battle terrorism.

Thanks to some family ties on my father’s side, we will be taking over all administrative duties of Al-Qaeda starting immediately. This will be a three-pronged approach. First, we have determined that Al-Qaeda Afghanistan, where we have made great strides militarily, is just too big to fail. So, starting now we will be funneling monies from the pirates in Somalia and terrorist cells in other parts of the Middle East and redistributing it to those in the hills of Afghanistan. We call this the Terrorist Activity Realignment Plan. This will keep a concentration of terrorists in Afghanistan, thus giving the US military a more manageable area of operations where they can continue to keep their performance numbers up.

Second, we are going to offer all terrorists employment through their local governments. These jobs will include everything from repairing road surfaces damaged through wars and years of neglect, to damaging road surfaces to ensure continued employment. These will be stable, government jobs. It is time to get them off the battlefield and onto the public payroll.

And finally, in order to win the terrorists loyalty and divert their attention away from the fact that we are trying to destroy their way of life and turn their nations into the picture we have in our minds, we are going to offer them universal healthcare. We will be able to raise the money for this by taxing their income – from those government jobs we are setting up – at a 50 to 60 % rate. Actually, I really don’t know how much it will be – we’ll figure that out after the fact. But no matter what it will buy their loyalty and bankrupt their operations.

PELOSI: Uh, Mr. President… doesn’t that seem a bit far-fetched? I mean, they’ll never go for it.

BARACK OBAMA: You’d be surprised, Nancy. You'd be surprised.

(room fills with maniacal laughter)

WEAK END REVIEW

I haven't posted in a while and I'm doing this over my lunch break, so it's liable to be rather weak.  I apologize to all of my adoring fans.  Not much time to insert videos and what not, so please follow the links herein.  It's been quite busy here, lately.  Thank you all for your prayers for the quick recovery of my wife after her surgery.  We really thank you and she is doing fine.  Please now pray for my truck which is not doing quite as well, but then, it's got a lot more miles on it than... uh, I better stop right there.

ELECTION RESULTS!

A full 20% of the populace came out to tell the world just what they think about how things are going. City Councilman and future indictee William Bell has been elected the new Mayor of Birmingham after beating attorney Patrick "I Didn't Approve That Video" Cooper by more than 3,000 votes in a run-off from an election in which Bell lost to Cooper by 15% of the vote.  That's Birmingham Mathematics, folks.  Although I am not allowed to vote in the election, I would have gone for the lawyer due to financial reasons: it'd be cheaper in the long run to have a mayor that could defend himself.

A KENNEDY DOES SOMETHING POSITIVE

Who'd have thunk Ted Kennedy would turn out to be the shining star in the family?  A great big EDWARD THANK YOU goes out to the great big fat scum for dying when he did. His brother John's death brought about LBJ and the worst economic pipe bomb to hit this country since TARP (or is that the other way around?).  His brother Robert's death paved the way for Hillary Clinton to become a Senator (for the purposes of this article it did!).  And John John's death/suicide flight/double murder eclipsed the passing of John Edward Long, an Alabamian with more than 7 years flying time - a world record likely to never be broken.

But thanks to Ted "Can I Give You A Lift" Kennedy, healthcare reform, as Obama knows it, may be dead thanks to Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts.  (By the way, Mississippi is a much better state than Massachusetts... because it's easier to remember how to spell. "M-A-S-S, A-C-H... aww!)  Brown will presumably go right along party lines and vote against healthcare reform, denying the Democrats the 60 votes they need to railroad the American taxpayer.  Pundits are projectile vomiting theories as to why he won. Here're the only two reasons you need to know:

1. The American voter rarely allows one party to control the White House, House, and Senate for very long

2. Americans don't like it when politicians tell them, "We don't care what you think, we're doing it anyway."

Nancy Pelosi has already started making excuses stating that she doesn't think the House has the votes to pass legislation.  I guess this election was transparent enough for her.

THE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS OF THE YEAR!

Jay Leno will be taking back over The Tonight Show. *yawn*  What that means is that Conan O'Brien is now out of a job. There have been a lot of suggestions on just what he could do for a living after he's spent all of the $45 million severance package on hair gel.  I have the best solution, one that will make everyone happy: he should campaign with Sarah Palin... as her vice-president (after all, his ratings are pretty low). It's perfect.  He's already got the sympathy of the American people.  He's a redhead and Irish, so he's got the whole minority thing going for him.  He's practically poor (compared to other late night talk show hosts).  He's unemployed.  And who knows better than he how cruel and inhumane Corporate America can be?  I think he's got a real chance.  Plus, how cool would a State of the Union Address written by Conan O'Brien be?

AIRless AMERICA

It's funny... I make a disparaging remark about Al Franken and his talk show last week, Air America - the radio network created specifically so liberals could get on the air - dies this week.  "MSNBC... CNN..... NPR... American Idol... Barbara Streisand." Again, many liberal excuses are being made for it's failure:

"the very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America's business. This past year has seen a `perfect storm' in the media industry generally" - NBC can afford to pay a guy $45 million not to be on the air

"painstaking search for new investors... ultimately fell short." - I guess you were too successful at motivating voters to Vote for Change in '08

SO OLD SHE'LL MAKE YER HEAD SPIN

For my buddy Jesse, Linda Blair is 137 years old today.  I don't think this is a current photo, but again, it's for my buddy Jesse.










AND ONE FOR THE LADIES

Strike another success for Equal Rights: The country's first legal gigolo starts work in  Nevada this weekend.  He's taking appointments, ladies.  "Markus," the self-proclaimed Rosa Parks of prostitution, is a college dropout, likes working out, enjoys casual heterosexual rendezvous, and long walks on the beach... as long as he's getting paid for them.  Looks like Obama has those employment figures on the rise! (Uh, no pun intended, Markus.)

HELTHКAЯE ЯEFORM (Part 8)

Ignoring all pleas and protests to the contrary, the House formally known as 'of Representatives' has passed a 1990-page Healthcare Reform Bill, ready for Senate approval. The final vote was 220-215, with 39 Democrats voting against it, and only one Republican voting for the bill. With numbers like that it is clear Nancy Pelosi is doing everything in her power to make sure the whole of the American public is behind this, and that nothing is ramrodded through Congress against the will of We the People...

I'll cover some of the highlights of the bill over the next few days, but for now, let's try to get a handle on this price tag: $1.2 trillion or, if you're not into the whole brevity thing, $1,200,000,000,000.00.

How much is that, really? What is that number? Well, it's what is going to have to be spent on this health care overhaul. It's the amount that is going to be added to our national debt; therefore, it's what your kids will be repaying. Remember those 7th graders from Part 7? Yeah, they're the ones who will have to pay. Well, just how much is $1,200,000,000,000.00? Good question. Let's put it into perspective.

Imagine that you were to be paid $1.00 for every second of the day. One dollar per second. In one minute you'd have earned $60.00. Pretty sweet, huh? In an hour you'd have earned $3,600.00. Really sweet, right? Let's expand that same rate on out a little further:

Day = $86,400
Week = $604,800
Month = $2,600,640
Year = $31,536,000

Wow! Now I would take that! Who wouldn't? Heck, that's about 1.5 times the $19 million that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is worth. It's hard to even imagine that much money, but that's what you would have if someone paid you $1.00 for every single second of the year. Enough to buy any car you wanted. A mansion. Jewelry. Servants. A second iPhone. Anything.

And if you paid that much - $1 for every single second of the year - toward that Health Care Bill? Why, you'd have it paid off in just 38,452 years.

38,452 years.

Say that out loud: Thirty-eight thousand, four hundred and fifty two years. Go on, say it again. In fact, say it out loud to your 7th grader: Thirty-eight thousand, four hundred and fifty two years.

I know, that's pretty dramatic. Nobody gets paid a buck a second. Well, that's not completely true. The apolitical Tiger Woods makes a little over $3 dollars a second, and Barack Obama's campaign manager Oprah Winfrey rakes in $8.72 per second. (It would take Oprah a mere 4,364 years to pay off the Health Care Reform Bill.)

Of course, statistics suggest that your little middle-schooler, as talented as he/she is, will not grow up to be either the greatest golfer or the biggest gabber of all time. In fact, statistically speaking, he/she will grow up to make $18.60 per hour, during the work week. That comes out to a yearly salary of $38,390.40. Not bad, but not quite enough to cover the $1.2 trillion tab in one lifetime. In fact, it will take him/her 31-million, 257-thousand, 814 and one-half years to pay off the House's health care reform. Go ahead and say that one out loud:

31,257,814 and 1/2 years.

Before you point out that it's the whole of the population and not just one person that will be paying the tab, consider that at the average salary it will take 400,177 lifetimes to pay it off, if every single cent of salary were put toward it. But given that the average worker doesn't put in a full 78.11 years worth of 40-hour weeks, but more like about 45 years worth, the total comes to around 700,000 lifetimes. Do the math... I've given you the links. Now, who works a lifetime with absolutely no personal gain, all of the fruits of their labor going to someone else? Slaves, that's who. It looks as though this bill will create the equivalent of three-quarters of a million slaves in this country. Which ones will it be? Mostly, the ones not even old enough to vote yet.

There are those who will pooh-pooh this blog, claiming that this country can't afford NOT to pass health care reform legislation. Now, I'm just a regular Joe, working a job and raising a family. My wife is a regular Jane doing the same. With the money from our two jobs we often use the phrase, "How are we going to afford...?" As in:

How are we going to afford Christmas presents for the kids?
How are we going to afford that repair on the truck?
How are we going to afford braces?
How are we going to afford propane for the winter?
How are we going to afford groceries next week?

We use those phrases often, but I can't remember one single time in my LIFE that I've ever used the phrase, "We can't afford NOT to..." I just can't understand that mentality, especially when talking about $1.2 trillion of our children's money.

Maybe I could understand it if I was worth $19 million.

HELTHКAЯE ЯEFORM (Part 3)

I created no small amount of controversy with Part 2: some accused me of claiming that doctors are somehow more important as humans than are mechanics. Nothing could be further from the truth and I am sorry that some misinterpreted my comments that way. I guess I could’ve calibrated those words differently. All human life is equal and no one person is any more valuable than another; although, if we were all stranded in the Andes and the group was starving, I do believe the doctor would be sitting in a safer position than the mechanic. Hey, don’t feel bad… I’m just a writer. That means I’d be eaten before the dog.

Speaking of furry four-legged animals, today’s focus is going to be on cats… cats of the fat variety. You may not realize this but there are people in this country that make more money than anyone really needs to survive. And these Fat Cats are just the ones that Congress is targeting to fill in some gaps in the Healthcare Reform tab. What they’re looking for from these folks is another $200 billion. Now, everyone knows that rich people are loathe to relinquish money to help other people, so Congress is going to use taxes, once again, to pry some of it out of their greedy little clutches. These tax revenues are going to add another 20% to the healthcare reform funds.

Given that so much of our healthcare monies are going to come from these people, perhaps we need to get to know a little more about them. First of all, who the heck are the rich? Well, Barak Obama suggested that they are American households earning more than $200,000 a year, but Congress politely corrected him, defining them as people who earn $350,000 or more per year. Congress did show the good taste not to belabor the President’s gaff by pointing out the shear coincidence that the Speaker of the House rakes in $223,500 per annum. Lucky for her they aren’t following Obama’s guidelines!

So, rich people are non-public servants who make more than $350,000 per year. And now they are finally going to be held to the flame and forced to help out the little guy, and frankly, I can think of no better group to target. I’ve known one or two of these “Fat Cats,” and the things I could tell… Even though these people make money hand-over-fist, it seems to be the only thing they can think about. I mean, they’re always at work, so much so that it’s rare anybody but the cleaning crew gets to the office earlier or leaves later. Even when they aren’t at work they think about business: on the golf course, during skiing vacations, at the Lexus dealership, over breakfast, in the car. Even when they were younger and all their friends were going out, running up credit card bills and buying big houses, these entrepreneurs were squirreling away every penny they had, and for what? To invest in some dream of theirs. Furthering their education, starting a business, expanding a marketing campaign. All to make more money.

During all that time what were they doing for society? Ever see them march in protest at a G-8 Summit? No. Ever see them at the homeless shelter or hanging out at Starbucks? Nope. Bump into them at a sea turtle rally? As if. No, these greedy people were too busy at work, filling out paperwork, signing paychecks for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of employees (before their own), shopping for less expensive health insurance, trying to find more efficient work methods for their people, negotiating with unions, tweaking the company retirement plan to maximize returns, investing their time and personal income into their business, facing the consequences of the risks they have taken, dealing with politicians and regulators, fretting over finances, negotiating with the banks, watching the Fed bailout poorly managed financial behemoths while turning a blind eye on entire industries – and being forced to finance the scheme, looking for a return on their personal investment, and seeking ways to expand and provide jobs to even more people. That’s the type of stuff they were doing. Oh, I’ve seen the Fat Cats at work… usually at the office when I show up in the morning.

So we’re going to hit these people with a surtax of anywhere from 1 to 5.4% of their income, depending on how successful they’ve been in their professional careers. (If this seems unfair to you, that no one should tell another person how to spend their own money, just remember that it’s their own fault for earning such a ridiculously large sum. Nancy Pelosi and I are both glad our incomes are low enough that no one can step in and tell us how to spend our money.) Adding this new source of government income to the 5% of the healthcare reform expense that the drug industry will somehow conjure, and the 15% that the medical industry will offer up gives us a total of 40% of the bill, which is estimated to be $1.5 trillion now. (I will remind you later that this is in addition to the estimated $4.6 trillion Congress admits has been spent thus far in the bailout. For perspective, the Gross Domestic Product of the entire country is about $14 trillion.) Several of my liberal friends assured me that 40% would cover the entire bill, but my calculator keeps coming up 60% short. What if my calculator is right?

Not to worry: Congress has considered this possibility. They will merely get the rest of the healthcare expenses from businesses, small and large. Sure, there will be money coming in from a few other sources (2.5% of your salary in the event you refuse an offer of affordable health insurance, for example), but the bulk of that 60% remainder will come from corporate America. The good news is that corporate America can get its hands on enough money to support just about any socialist program that Washington can dream up, in the short-term anyway. The bad news is that you may not be fully aware of where corporate America gets that money. I’ll give you a hint: corporations create neither money nor value. I’ll cover that in detail in Part 4.

LET'S HEAR FROM YOU: Who should pay for your healthcare needs?

Whose healthcare needs are your financial responsibility?

Do you find it curious that Congress wants to force you to get health insurance (through the 2.5% penalty mentioned above)?