HEARTLAND INSTITUTE

Stephen Colbert is very upset.

On Monday’s Colbert Report, the comedian lit into those young people who are concerned about expensivehealth care, the crazy federal debt, and the fact that Obamacare makes both worse.

He singled out FreedomWorks in particular, ridiculing the group’s efforts to let young people receive a better quality of care while keeping more of their own money. In his opening segment, Colbert ignored the dire warnings about Obamacare from the law’s former supporters. Instead, he mocked millennials for daring to question the wisdom of Washington politicians.

FREEDOMWORKS

Stephen Colbert is upset with us.

On last night’s Colbert Report, the comedian lit into those young people who are concerned about expensive health care, the crazy federal debt, and the fact that Obamacare makes both worse.

He singled out FreedomWorks in particular, ridiculing our efforts to let young people receive a better quality of care while keeping more of their own money. In his opening segment, Colbert ignored the dire warnings about Obamacare from the law’s former supporters. Instead, he mocked millennials for daring to question the wisdom of Washington politicians.

FREEDOMWORKS

Whenever he talks about the economy, Obama sounds like he's trying to explain to a professor why his term paper is late.

Yesterday’s speeches in Galesburg, Ill., and Warrensburg, Mo., marked the President’s 382nd pivot to the economy. He gave another today in Jacksonville. Don’t worry if you missed the droning affairs, because you’ve heard them 381 times before. An hour-plus fusillade of shouldas, wouldas and couldas if it weren’t for those meddling Republicans.

But what is more concerning than the speeches’ gaseous impotence was the president’s troubling security priorities.

RICOCHET

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT]

Conference Room Yosemite B, Holiday Inn Express, Fresno, California, 9:30 a.m., July 24, 2013.

CARLOS DANGER: Hello and thanks for coming to this press conference on such short notice. As you may have heard, my good name has been smeared all over the news. My phone has been ringing off the hook, reporters are peeking through my windows — it’s been an awful 24 hours for me and my wife.

To clear up any confusion, I am the real Carlos Danger and this is my wife, Betty. I was born in Tulare, California to Enrique and Juanita Danger… well, Peligro before they Anglicized it.

Anyway, I am not Anthony Weiner, okay? No one even heard of me until that disgusting politician used my name for his late-night chats. Thanks for letting me clear that up and thanks also to Geno’s Sandwiches for catering this ev…

Q: Anthony! Anthony! Are you still running for mayor of New York?

CARLOS DANGER: No. Didn’t you just hear me? I’m not Anthony Weiner. I’m Carlos Danger. I’m not running for mayor of any city — my wife would kill me. Any more questions?

FREEDOMWORKS & HEARTLAND INSTITUTE

You remember the NSA, right? Big, shadowy agency recording everything you say, write or do online or on your phone? It was in all the papers about four and a half scandals ago.

To refresh your memory, the National Security Agency is basically the intelligence nerve center for planet earth. The 30,000-person organization is working on a nearly $1 billion supercomputing center at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters, while they finish their new $1.2 billion cybersecurity data center in Camp Williams, Utah.

All this information technology has made the NSA a supercomputing powerhouse, allowing it to scan billions of digital messages for those few communiqués deemed to be a threat. Forget finding a needle in a haystack, NSA computers are designed to find a teardrop in the ocean.

FREEDOMWORKS

Stacey Calvin is a busy mom in suburban Atlanta whose passion is helping kids. When she isn’t watching her three kids or volunteering at their school, she works at a day care center on the other side of town.

Stacey takes a combination of two buses and two trains for a nearly two-hour commute each way. She checked into moving closer to the job, but that neighborhood’s prices were too high.

Despite Atlanta’s prosperity, the region is one of the most economically segregated areas of the country. A new study found that these types of communities make it that much tougher for the poor to get ahead.

FREEDOMWORKS

To the chagrin of Michael Bloomberg and Michelle Obama, America's favorite cream-filled snack cakes are rolling off the assembly line. After a union standoff drove Hostess Brands out of business, new owners purchased the company. They hired a non-union staff and are now sending Twinkies to retailers from coast to coast.

The Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) is unhappy with this right-to-work resurrection since it’s the union that nearly drove Twinkies to extinction. BCTGM has announced that the new Hostess Brands must immediately let them back in the bakery doors, if they know what's good for them.

“Despite the fanfare, the long-term viability of this effort is highly uncertain,” the BCTGM said in a statement Friday. “Rather than hire professional, experienced bakers who have produced quality snack cakes in the company’s bakeries for decades, Hostess management has chosen instead to hire primarily workers with little or no experience in the demanding wholesale snack cake baking industry.”

FREEDOMWORKS

Being a semi-old coot, I don’t have much experience with hipster retailer Urban Outfitters. I visited one of their stores a few years ago to grab a gift card for my niece. My young daughter liked the set-up and excitedly told a pierced and tatted counter girl, “this place is almost as cool as WalMart!”

Miss Counterculture didn’t find this as amusing as I did.

To differentiate themselves from the WalMarts of the world, UO offers irreverent products aimed at their college-age clientele. Among the trendy and tacky wares, they feature a mug with an obviously fake prescription for coffee. “Drink one mug by mouth, repeat until awake and alert,” reads the Rx to “Mr. Java Joe Espresso.”

FREEDOMWORKS

This week, the White House launched a new initiative for a “better, smarter, faster government.” At a showy Monday press event, President Obama declared, “we need the brightest minds to help solve our biggest challenges… It’s up to each and every one of us to make it work better.”

Where exactly has The Smartest President Ever decided to focus several of his brightest minds? On punishing “Raisin Dissidents.”

No, Raisin Dissidents isn’t a college indie band or a molecular gastronomy trend that all the foodies are raving about. I would call the very concept “Orwellian” but not even the author of Animal Farmand 1984 could have concocted such a ludicrous term.

RICOCHET

Welcome to the Golden Age of New York tabloids.

Gotham's headline writers already were blessed with the mayoral candidacy of aptly named Twitter flasher Anthony Weiner. But early Monday, disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer tossed his briefs into the New York City Comptroller race.

The Office of Comptroller deals with numbers, which should be a good fit for Client No. 9. The Knickerbocker sans knickers was booted from office after soliciting a high-priced call girl originally known as Kristin. As the '80s band Night Ranger sang, "Spitzer Kristin, oh the time has come," and within a few days, the Love Gov was motorin' out of Albany.