Heward's Handy Haversack: Healthcare, baby letters, and hamsters!

Welcome, friends, imaginary monkeys, and those who accidentally stumbled upon this page on your way to way cooler sites! Today's smorgasbord of news is brought to you by the letters B & G. Why B & G? Because the sheeple of America appear to be buying a clue about...

#1: Big Government! According to the Communist News Network (CNN) poll published this morning, "A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll."



Shocking! Overall, 56% of people believed the threat of government. Showing the type of mathematical genius rarely found outside of academia, the writer points out that 44% disagree. Captain Obvious at CNN goes on to say that there is a wide partisan divide. "...only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans."

If this universal truth, that government is a threat to freedom even in the best of times, is not lost there may yet be hope. Then again, apparently two thirds of college students believe that the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" either is or may have been included in the constitution. I guess that light at the end of the tunnel was a train after all.

#2: Obama a great listener...Provided of course that the person talking is, in fact, Obama. As you may be aware there was a much trumped summit on healthcare recently. I did not see one minute of this summit. I had more important things to do, like watch Olympic curling. (Yes, I watch curling. I am now a part of a very elite group of Americans who actually understand the rules and cheer at the appropriate parts. I agree, it is not the most exciting sport. I am looking forward to a US v. Canada gold medal hockey game exponentially more. Still, it is very addicting. But I digress.) I can tell you, however, it involved a crackton of jawboning and about a thimble's worth of actual decision making. Apparently our Commander in Chief took the lion's share of the boning.

"By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes - nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a 'talk clock' kept by GOP aides."

Don't get me wrong. I know that nearly all politicians, be they right, left, or center, could give lessons in self obsession to Narcissus. Regardless, it casts light on the true nature of the debate...By showing there really isn't one. Which leads us to our next item...

#3: Dem's healthcare motto: Go big or go home! Prior to the aforementioned summit the magic O released his healthcare plan. It comes in at the low, low price of just $950 billion*.

* - According to Whitehouse analysis. The CBO has not yet analyzed the legislation...To break it down in crayons, I'm anticipating the final shakedown to authoritatively turn that "b" into a "tr".

How will we pay for it? Hold on, let me find that broken record...Oh, here it is: We'll tax the rich! The plan boasts "bigger penalties on larger employers that do not provide health insurance" and would "would raise the Medicare payroll tax on couples earning more than $250,000 a year." Because, after all, the rich don't really deserve their money. It's not like they earned it or something.

The O plan does drop the very controversial public option, and lowers the penalty for being uninsured to just $325 (though that penalty goes up sharply after the first years). I suppose that is better than a more expensive penalty, but it begs the question: Since when should the government, particularly the federal government, have the right to penalize me for not purchasing a product of any type?

Buried in page three of the article is this line: "The bill also gives the federal government sweeping new powers to curb exorbitant rate hikes by the nation’s health insurance companies, a White House official said Sunday night". I'm not sure which is more frightening. The fact that the Whiskey Hotel thinks it ought to have the right to say anything about the rates a private company charges for a product that it sells to private citizens, or that such an opinion is so common is isn't even shocking anymore. I mean, when the Feds can outright own auto companies and fire CEOs at will, dictating rate hikes is small potatoes.

Though pushed forward by the executive branch, the left legislative branch plans to take up the plan as its own. Their game, according to party strategists and the Politico, is essentially to leverage their dominance in both Houses of Congress and push forward a "Democrat only" plan.

And finally...

#4: Infants and unborn write to President. This really isn't news, in the strictest sense of the word. However, since it's my blog and most everyone has wandered away to way cooler sites already, I'm going to go ahead and post it. This bit is from my man Glenn Beck's show about the letters the President receives on healthcare. It starts with 2 year old writers, and spirals down to a lowly sperm cell decrying the woes of the uninsured. Just plain funny.