The following story is making the rounds in email and is worth reading---

It is a slow day in the small Minnesota town, and streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

A rich tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Farmer's Co-op.

The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything... However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.

An individual named "Ellie Light" has been on massive letter writing campaign to defend our president. "Ellie" has written letters to newspapers all over the country, attacking the MSM for not supporting President Obama enough (yes, I'm serious, not enough). She also must be quite wealthy as she claims to reside in every single paper's readership area. That's quite a few homes to own or rent.

Click here to read the article about "Ellie Light" on Cleveland.com.

Massachusetts voters voiced their frustration with out-of-control spending and health care cramdown through the voting booth by handing a decisive election victory to Republican Scott Brown. Issues matter. Are the Democratic and Republican leaders paying attention?

According to Connie Hair on HumanEvents.com, Charlie Rangel held a committee hearing Thursday to certify the House health care bill (HB 3200) as meeting the requirements to pass as a "budget reconciliation" measure.

States Ms. Hair:

"Under reconciliation, the bill can be passed by a simple majority vote in the Senate -- just 51 votes -- and will be given preferential treatment on the House floor as well. The Dems have apparently invoked the “nuclear option” to shut out Republicans and ensure the bill is passed before the end of the year.

The bill certified for “reconciliation” is the Ways & Means version of H.R. 3200 that was passed out of committee before the August break, and before it was read aloud at town hall meetings across the country and blasted by voters across the country.

It contains all of the horrors previously exposed: federal funding of abortion, coverage for illegal aliens, comparative effectiveness, healthcare rationing, deep cuts to Medicare. Everything the American people overwhelmingly reject.

No amendments were allowed at the hearing and no debate. Rangel told Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the committee, that he would not have preferred to do it this way, but leadership -- i.e., Speaker Pelosi -- forced his hand."

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama has astonished a lot of people, including a lot of his own supporters. For many, it has absolutely sickened them. Quite frankly, my personal view is that this is more of an indictment against the Norwegian parliament than anything. After all, they voted to give him the award.

A link to the following post on HotAir.com was emailed to me by a friend (Thanks Stephen!) and I recommend it t0 everyone to read. It's titled "The Peace of The Grave" by Doctor Zero.

Click here to access the article.

I recently posted an article regarding a plan Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders in Washington are contemplating for getting health care with a public option passed. It involved attaching the entire health care bill as an amendment to another bill already passed in the House and pending in the Senate.

Now information is coming out about another option under consideration. Sen. Reid weighing the option of pulling a bait and switch to get the votes he needs for cloture while providing certain moderate Senators their deniability.

States Susan Ferrechio, Chief Congressional Correspondent for the Washington Examiner,

"Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is weighing a plan to bring the final health care bill to the floor without a public option -- making it much easier to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster -- and then adding the provision later as an amendment.

The public option amendment would be there waiting, but the 60-vote test would technically be on a bill without the government plan. Then moderate Democrats could drop out for the vote on the public option, which requires just 51 votes for passage."

The first I heard of Congress' plan to pass Obamacare by next week was on Rush Limbaugh's radio show today. His sources are articles by Brian Darling published on Human Events' web site and by Conn Carroll on the Heritage Foundation's web site.

Having lived in Washington, DC for 10 years, nothing shocks me when it comes to sneaky mechanisms to get around the will of the American people. There is a condition known as Potomac Fever and it infects many who live or work inside the Beltway. Some of the symptoms are warped priorities and forgetfulness as to who works for whom. I was lucky to escape town with some rational brain cells left intact.

The plan is to take the 2 Senate health care bills, cherry-pick the provisions best liked by the White House and Harry Reid, and combine them into one bill. It will be attached to the Tarp bill as an amendment and passed. The reason for using the Tarp bill is that it has already passed the House and therefore provides the basis for some fun procedural maneuvering. The Tarp bill being used is the one passed by the House during the AIG bonus debacle in which certain people are being singled out and having the living daylights taxed out of them for having the audacity to accept bonuses that certain members of Congress and the White House knew about and blessed in advance. Only in Washington can you exhibit this kind of chutzpah and the media just yawns.

Now that the secret plan is not so secret, maybe Democratic leaders will slink back into their dark little holes to hatch another dastardly plot to circumvent the will of the people; but maybe not. It is up to us now to keep a close watch on our elected officials and remind them that they will be held accountable for their actions.