In an attempt to rein you all in, here's an open thread for you to talk about recent celebrity deaths: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Billy Mays. That way, if people want to ignore it they can. So try and keep it here, m'kay?

Now we know just how ignorant Obama thinks the American people are. Answer: Dumb as rocks.

All the president's men (and women) are out selling the asinine idea that Obama's government health insurance idea is going to put competition into the marketplace. This is an idea that one could only sell to a fool. Thanks to our system of government education, we are not suffering any shortage of fools.

Here's what Obama wants us to think. If the government gets into the health insurance business it will create such a fine and wonderful health insurance product that all other health insurance companies out there will have to tweak their products and prices in order to compete. This competition will, if you believe Obama and his sycophants, make health insurance more effective and more available across the board.

Like I said .. there's certainly no shortage of fools out there. Someone is buying this load of horse squeeze.

Sure, the government may very well come up with a health insurance product that is cheaper (to the consumer) and more effective than those offered in the private sector. Think about this though ... Could that possibly be because the government will be under no pressure whatsoever to make a profit on its health insurance? When you can operate at a loss indefinitely you have no problem undercutting your competitors. When you can call on endless government subsidies you can run anyone you chose out of business.

Let's say I open a grocery store. My stated goal is to give the other grocery stores in town some competition so we can provide a better product to the poor hungry consumers and help them save money at the same time. The other grocery stores will have to make a profit or close their doors. Not me! I'm the government, and I can operate at a loss. I have endless government subsidies and infusions of cash at my disposal. What will happen? No secret: When I move into the marketplace with a below-cost product the other grocery stores will shut down and I'll have your business locked up. Then I can do whatever I want with the choice, quality and price of my groceries and there really isn't a thing you'll be able to do about it.

There, my friends, is Obama's goal. He knows very well that his government-run insurance option is going to run private sector insurance companies out of business. Then the only game in town will be the government. This "competition" nonsense is just a talking point created to placate the dumb masses. The average 12-year-old home schooled child could dissect this game plan in a heartbeat. The same fools who thought Obama was going to pay their mortgage and put gas in their cars will now think that PrezBO is bring good old free market competition to the health insurance marketplace. All hail Obama, the sort-of God.

Now if the competition line doesn't work there's always a little class warfare that can be played. Sorry ... didn't get the name ... but I saw some ObamaBot on Fox News last night trying to sell Obama's health insurance takeover on a wealth envy basis. He referred to health insurance companies being engaged in "Sweetheart Deals that makes its executives very very rich," and referred to the private sector health insurance companies as a "cartel." On the one hand he plays directly to wealth envy and the hatred that the Obama crowd has been generating toward high-paid executives; on the other he conjures images of health insurers operating like the Mexican or Columbian drug cartels. That's the Obama concept of open discussion.

This is about control. Nothing more, nothing less. Obama wants control. Control over every aspect of your life. He's well on his way to complete success.

Wednesday, the president will hold another online town hall about heath care. They're taking your video questions via YouTube. You can try asking your questions. We'll see if they actually get answered or if they just cherry pick the easy ones.

Just when Barack Obama and the Democrats are on the verge of erecting a government-run healthcare system in this country, other counties are reverting to private options. Take this latest news from Great Britain, which is being called a "radical shift in government policy." Cancer patients who are facing long waits in the National Health Service will be given cash to go seek private treatment.

I'm not kidding, folks. The government is going to pay people to opt out of its government-run system and seek treatment from private providers. Basically the legislation would ensure that cancer patients who cannot get an appointment with a specialist within two weeks after being referred from a GP would be provided funding for a private consultation.

Ironically enough, this plan is being included in Gordon Brown's "Building Britain's Future." Meanwhile, the United States is attempting to build the entirely opposite future - going in the opposite direction.

On Friday, your House of Representatives passed the largest tax increase in American history. Most of them probably couldn't tell you many details about the bill, considering the Democrats were still ramming through 300-page amendments as of late Friday night. In fact, on Friday afternoon House minority leader John Boehner tried to dissect some of the language of that 300-page amendment on the House floor. But after his mini-filibuster was over ... the House voted ... and it passed. There were 44 Democrats who voted against the bill. They're all up for re-election in 2010. But there were eight Republicans that ended up voting for the bill, which passed 219-212. So here they are.

Mary Bono Mack (CA)
Mike Castle (DE)
Mark Steven Kirk (IL)
Leonard Lance (NJ)
Frank A. LoBiondo (NJ)
John M. McHugh (NY)
Dave Reichert (WA)
Chris Smith (NJ)

So what can you do? Well, your voice can be heard at the ballot box. The next time these hacks come up for re-election, you simply vote them out of office. Show them that their time for monkeying around in Washington is over. That's it. We know this won't happen though. Every one of these politicians has a long list of wonderful pork projects they've brought back to their districts ... projects that give them all the reelection juice they need.

Meanwhile, now the next battle is in the Senate. Make even more of a concerted effort to contact your Senators and make sure that they won't be conned into voting for this huge tax increase based on the global warming scam.

For those of you who need a refresher ... here are some details from Investor's Business Daily:

An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million (see charts below).

Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once put it, by 90% adjusted for inflation. Inflation-adjusted gasoline prices would rise 74%, residential natural gas prices by 55% and the average family's annual energy bill by $1,500.

Hit hardest by all this would be the "95% of working families" Obama keeps mentioning as being protected from increased taxation. They are protected, that is, unless they use energy. Then they'll be hit by this draconian energy tax.

And what would we get for all this pain? According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 -- the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill -- would reduce global temperature in 2050 by a mere 0.05 degree Celsius.

It's a scam, folks. It is not about the environment, it is about gaining power. It is not about creating jobs, because it won't. It will actually kill jobs. Speaking of that .........

How would America's biggest oil companies react to this cap-and-trade legislation? Most people would say "who cares?" because they are big, bad, evil corporations. But you should care, because they big, bad, evil corporations also provide Americans with jobs and energy.

So how will these companies react? According to Bloomberg News, they will be closing plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports. You see, fuel importers will only need to purchase permits for the fuel that is to be burned by cars, trucks, etc. Domestic oil companies, on the other hand, would also have to buy allowances for any CO2 produced by their plants. Clearly that would make domestic companies less competitive and create an imbalance in the market. Yeah .. .haven't thought of that one, have you?

The CEO of ConocoPhillips, Jim Mulva, says, "It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment."

It is estimated that one out of every six US refineries would close by 2020 because the cost of carbon allowances would simply erase profits, according to the American Petroleum Institute. For the consumer, carbon permits would add 77 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline. Slowly, people have started to realize that Obama has mastered the art of increasing taxes on businesses, which ultimately pass on those increases in the form of price hikes for consumers.

The Obama administration has gotten itself into a little pickle. You see, on the campaign trail, Barack Obama made the mistake of promising that he would not raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year. But now reality has hit. He really wants to get this healthcare reform passed and he needs to find the money to do it. One option that has been on the table is taxing healthcare benefits as income. Anyone who isn't government educated might immediately understand that this would clearly constitute a tax increase for a lot of Americans, including a lot of 'em making less than $250,000 a year.

So over the weekend, George Stephanopoulos asked Obama's senior advisor David Axelrod about this option. Axelrod did not say what the people wanted to hear: Axelrod said that taxing healthcare benefits would not be an option because that would clearly constitute an increase in taxes for the middle class. Instead. Then, having said that, he immediately reversed course and "left open" the possibility that Obama would still sign legislation calling for taxing health care benefits if such a bill were passed.

Axelrod avoided answering the question directly by saying, "The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that, but there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see ... The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

Throughout the questioning Axelrod refused to re-state Obama's promise to not raise taxes on the middle class. Are you starting to get the picture here?

So ... tax increases for the middle class if that's what's needed to "keep the process moving." Now I get it.

I mentioned this one on the air last week, but it is so outrageous that it is worth repeating. When it comes to healthcare reform, the Senate is considering the idea of allowing union-negotiated benefit packages go un-taxed. Yep, as I just talked about in the Nuze item above, there is still an option on the table that would tax employee healthcare benefits. However, if that plan makes it into the bill, union-negotiated contracts would be exempt from paying these taxes.

You can thank Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus for this one. He's the one that believes that any major changes to the US healthcare system should exempt perks secured by existing collective bargaining agreements. In other words ... they would be grandfathered in. Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute makes a good point. He says that this "smacks of political favoritism ... "I can't think of any other aspect of the individual income tax that treats benefits of different people differently because of who they work for."

So this would be a way to still tax benefits, but magically exclude 12.4% of American workers who happen to be union members. In the end, who is going to have more of a say come election time?

California State Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Democrat, did an interview with the LA Times. Thought you may enjoy her response to the following question:

How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature's work?

Bass' response: The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: "You vote for revenue and your career is over." I don't know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it's about free speech, but it's extremely unfair.

Now that's a first. I know that politicians don't particularly like talk radio, and I know that many politicians are quietly plotting the demise of conservative talk radio wherever they can find it and by whatever means. This, though, is the first time I've heard a politician call talk show hosts terrorists. She wonders how in the world we can allow talk radio terrorism to exist.

OK .. so this is just one barking moonbat from California ... though a powerful one. Let's see how long it takes for the rest of the left to pick up the "terrorism" gambit.

It seems that there was a Tea Party tax protest scheduled for Independence Day in Gwinnett County. The event was going to take place in the parking lot of the old Macy's at Gwinnett Place Mall. Gwinnett Place is a Simon mall. The parking lot where the event was to take place is privately owned. The owner of the property had given permission. Last week the Simon people asked the event organizers to come to a meeting. Even though Simon did not own the property, there were some contractual agreements that gave Simon control over what could and could not be done there. So ... the Tea Party is now history. Julianne Thompson, the co-organizer of the event, tells us that Simon didn't like the fact that the word "protest" was being used to promote the event --- besides, Simon doesn't like "political events" on property they control.

So .. there you go. The Scheduled Atlanta Tea Party is history. The vendors, fireworks, children's activities ... all of it cancelled. No alternative location could be found on such short notice. So, on this Independence day, we want to thank Simon Property Group, Inc. for standing up for the cause of liberty. Not.

There are other Tea Party tax protests in the Atlanta area for Independence Day. Check out this list of nationwide protests to find one near you. 

Exactly what is going on in Honduras? This column covers it very nicely. It's important because our illustrious president is on the wrong side here. He knows most Americans aren't smart enough to figure that out.

Billy Mays passed away over the weekend. He, too, made the unfortunate mistake of going Tango Uniform in the wake of Michael Jackson's death.

Barack Obama wants the Senate to pass global warming legislation only after it passes it healthcare reform plan.

Jack Cashill has new insight into the speculation that Bill Ayers ghostwrote Barack Obama's Dreams from my Father. It's beginning to look like there was more than one radical at the word processor on this one.

Another great column from George Will about Americans' unreasonable expectations on healthcare costs and how we will regret "fixing" the system.

Iranian authorities have cracked down on protestors; thousands are in jail and hundreds of people are missing.

North Korea announced it can enrich uranium, which is a simpler method to build nuclear weapons than reprocessing plutonium.

Thomas Sowell explores how more Americans can consider themselves "conservative" and yet the Republican Party has nothing going for it.

The "powers that be" decided to back off on plans to investigate ACORN for committing voter fraud. Getting too close to PrezBO?

Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez says that the United States had something to do with the coup in Honduras.

The Obama administration appears to be considering issuing an executive order to govern the indefinite imprisonment of alleged Al Qaeda operatives.

Here's a must-read ... the man with unusual access to the White House: Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union. Yep, a union leader.

Today the Supreme Court will decide its final three cases, including Sonia Sotomayor's firefighter discrimination case.

The truth about the cost of Massachusetts healthcare program isn't helping the Barack Obama camp right now.

Here's why Slobbering Barney's plan to relax mortgage standards on new condos is a disaster waiting to happen.

States are having a tough time finding the funds to pay for unemployment benefits and some are expected to borrow up to $17 billion by next year.

A charter school in Los Angeles apparently won't let its class valedictorian deliver her graduation speech because she participated in a sit-in to protest teacher layoffs.