I can recall those years that I worked for my Father in the woods logging.  I can’t say that I necessarily can reflect upon that portion of my life pilgrimage with fondness but I can remember it.  I say this because I recently, like many of my fellow contractors, have had to put together a resume in an attempt to find work.  The President, along with his local ally former Governor Baldacci, have deemed independent contractors unnecessary to a functioning economy and have decided to shut them down.

So the slow and painful process of trying to attach appropriate dates to faded memories, prying open the lids, encrusted over with the corrosion of neglect, that cover the trunks and boxes of mental history stored away in a simple man’s intellectual attic and trying to piece together the job history of a young man who was somewhat nomadic has begun.  Yeah, I know, it’s easier to say resumes are a pain in the royal caboose, but where is the entertainment value in that.

In one of those faded old memories, I found some interesting analogies. These could be applied to recent events.  One morning before heading up the trail to start cutting my first twitch, I met a new logger who had moved into the area from the New Jersey/New York area.  He was going to try his hand at logging and set up shop a few twitch yards down from us.  This guy was huge!  He looked like he could play defensive end for the New York Giants.  He had muscles bulging out of places I didn’t realize muscles could bulge.   As a teenage boy, I couldn’t help but compare his physique to my lack thereof and wondered what I, with my hobbit-like frame, was doing working in the woods.

Much to my surprise, it soon became apparent that his amazing physical profile would be his worst enemy.  He couldn’t keep his balance to pull the cable from the winch to the tree.  He couldn’t bend over far enough to notch and cut his tree low enough.  His arms were too big to get the choker around the tree.

I learned a valuable lesson.  God designed the muscular structure of our bodies to adapt to the demands you place on it.  He was built for the gym and show.  What little bit of teenage muscle I possessed had been formed by the very job duties this man could not perform.  A few months later, he was out of the work force with debilitating muscle injuries.  My father and other adult men that I worked with said he was too big, too much muscle.  Really?  Hmmmm…that sounds like our Government.

Darrell Issa has correctly described the many stimulus dollars and other funds running through our government as food that feeds a beast covered with the bulging muscles of corruption.  He wants this government to slim down, lean down and lighten up.  He wants answers to why this administration has given most of the stimulus projects to unions and other nagging questions.  Of course an upstanding crusader for truth like our President would applaud a fellow crusader like Mr. Issa and encourage…him…oh, no wait, they are lawyering up.   Wow, that sounds a lot like Chicago gangster tactics.  I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

It looks to me like Darrell Issa is just the diet the government beast needs.  He understands what many doctors would describe as a skeletal structure overstressed by muscles too large for the frame that carries them.  Yes, this is a common problem amongst bodybuilders.  When strained, the massive muscles begin to tear apart the bone structure.   This is what happened to my logger friend.  These massive muscle heads seem more equipped for standing in front of a mirror or stage to be gawked at than working a day to day job that requires everyday strength and brawn.

Our government is too massive and it’s structure strains to keep the muscles of corruption from tearing it apart.  Those in power have been convinced that their primary purpose was to be on display for the American people’s viewing pleasure, while those same American people, would prefer government worked.  In the months to come, the IssaToner Diet may be just what the Doctor ordered

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/10/arizona-massacre-prompts-political-cheap-shots/

A spokesman for Markey, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee — which has jurisdiction over both public lands and energy development on them — told FoxNews.com that drilling in the refuge is not just an Alaskan issue.

“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is public land, part of our national natural heritage that all Americans share – belonging as much to the people of Massachusetts as it does to the people of Texas or California or Alaska,” Markey spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said in an e-mail.

The intraparty spat comes as motorists are besieged by rising oil prices. Oil prices rose 22 percent from Labor Day through the end of the year. The national average price for gas is about $3.08 per gallon, the highest since January 2008 when the price was around $3.11 a gallon. Oil prices fell below $88 Friday, but analysts expect price of a barrel to surpass $100 this year. And gas prices generally rise between the start of the year and Memorial Day.

Begich says Congress specifically set aside 1.5 million acres along the coastal plain for oil and gas exploration. He says the area has enormous potential and should be part of the nation’s energy plan.

“I agree that we need to do more to develop alternative energy forms as part of our national plan, but to put ANWR off limits is shortsighted,” he said. “ANWR will not be locked up

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/07/democrats-lock-horns-proposal-protect-wildlife-refuge-drilling/#ixzz1AOL3XFJK

By KARL ROVE

A primary task for the new Republican House majority is to undo as many of the pernicious effects of ObamaCare that it can. One of these effects is the spectacle of employers going hat-in-hand to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for waivers from some of the law’s more onerous provisions.

In September, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius began granting waivers to companies that provided workers “mini-med” coverage—low-cost plans with low annual limits on what the insurance will pay out. This followed announcements by some employers that they would have to drop these plans because they did not meet the new health law’s requirement that 85% of premium income be spent on medical expenses.

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Associated PressHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

By early December, HHS had granted 222 such waivers to provide mini-med policies for companies including AMF Bowling and Universal Forest Product, as well as 43 union organizations. According to the department’s website, the waivers cover 1,507,418 employees, of which more than a third (525,898) are union members. Yet unionized workers make up only 7% of the private work force. Whatever is going on here, a disproportionately high number of waivers are being granted to administration allies.

Then, on Dec. 21, Ms. Sebelius announced that insurance companies seeking rate increases of 10% or more in the individual or small group market must publicly justify the hikes under standards set by her department.

Insurance regulation has traditionally been a state responsibility, and 43 states must already approve proposed insurance-rate increases. ObamaCare does not authorize HHS to deny rate increases, but the agency said that if a state “lacks the resources or authority” to conduct the kind of review the agency wants, it will conduct its own.

This proposed regulation will erode the states’ dominant role in insurance regulation, centralizing more power in Washington. The HHS announcement also mentioned that it will set different thresholds of what constitutes an “unreasonable” increase for every state by 2012.

The Obama administration’s behavior to date suggests that it will not hesitate to take care of its friends. The Senate Republican Policy Committee’s health policy analyst, Chris Jacobs, points out that the administration has already given an extravagant gift to the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), a key player in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The AARP provided a big chunk of the $121 million spent on ads supporting the bill’s passage, as well as $21 million on lobbying in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. HHS’s proposed regulations on Dec. 21 exempted the AARP’s lucrative “Medigap” plans from the rate review and other mandates and requirements.

The AARP and other Medigap providers can require a waiting period before seniors with pre-existing conditions have to be covered. Insurers covering those under 65 cannot.

The AARP is also exempt from the new law’s $500,000 cap on executive compensation for insurance executives. (The nonprofit’s last CEO received over $1.5 million in compensation in his last full year, 2009.) It won’t pay any of the estimated $14 billion in new taxes on insurance companies, though according to its 2008 consolidated financial statement, it gets more money from its insurance offerings than it does from dues, grants and private contributions combined. Nor will it have to spend at least 85% of its Medigap premium dollars on medical claims, as Medicare Advantage plans must do; the AARP will be held to a far less restrictive 65%.

It’s not hard to connect the dots. The Obama administration is using waivers to reward friends. On the flip side, business executives will be discouraged from contributing to the president’s opponents or from taking any other steps that might upset the White House or its political appointees at HHS.

This is not what people had in mind when candidate Obama promised in his acceptance speech in August 2008 to undo “the cynicism we all have about government.”

In a speech at the University of Iowa last March, the president heralded health-care reform as “a new set of rules that treats everybody honestly and treats everybody fairly.” Determining whether that is true will be another task for House Republicans. They have an obligation to look into this matter, and Mr. Obama can hardly object. It was former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, whom the president frequently quotes, who wrote in 1913 that sunlight “is the best of disinfectants.”

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.