I can’t speak with authority on the whole whopping budget. But there are one or two things I haven’t had any way of avoiding knowing about, that fill me with terrible alarm. For instance, the funding that’s earmarked for nationalizing government healthcare.

larrys–who knows–maybe you’re living at the bottom rung of the economic ladder and you’ve been taught to be jealous of people who have more than you. Maybe you’ve also gotten one government freebie after another, and you view government as the ultimate free goodie machine. Maybe you’re at the top and some idiot has impressed upon you a great need to feel guilty about being at the top. Still, whatever place you’ve found yourself, that’s no excuse for the blinkers you’re hanging onto for dear life. I’d say I live about one, maybe two rungs up from the bottom, but definitely not three. Educate yourself. Please.

It is NOT in my best interest or in my family’s best interest that Obama’s socialist reforms go forward. I’m afraid that if they do, we’ll fall OFF the ladder and end up living in the street. I do not want that for my kids.

I’m most especially not impressed with the idea of gov’t healthcare. We already have it, thanks to my husband’s kinda/sorta gov’t paid job. I wouldn’t accept gov’t help, except my husband is owed some kind of benefits for the work he does and politics is doing him out. Gov’t healthcare as we know it is inadequate, it has caused me/us more trouble than it has generally cured, the phone system/s are lousy, reasonable requests can and will be denied, and–if I have to share my doctor’s office with you and every other soul in America, I am not going to bother going there anymore for anything. Between budget constraints (which, with inflation are only going to get worse) and the shortages in medical supplies that are almost guaranteed to follow, going to the doctor is gonna be one big howling piece of futility if I can even squeeze through the door. If you’re not living down at this end of the economic ladder, please believe me, you’re not missing much by NOT having gov’t healthcare and you don’t want it, and you ought to tell CONGRESS that you don’t want it. That no one wants it. Not like this. Please. Tell them vehemently.

Right now it looks like–SURPRISE!–you’re all going to get gov’t healthcare anyway (it’s one of those things funded by that huge “stimulus” package), and whoopee. Here we go. Bye-bye, dear doc. Hope we never meet again, ’cause it sure is gonna STINK to be you…

But just so you know what the consequences of your choices are, larrys: there’s a dear old Canadian man I greatly respect. He’s a great humanitarian and brilliant medical doctor, though I doubt he’s anyone you’ve ever heard of. He never ever once, that I recall, stood on his dignity or demanded his share of the spotlight. Served overseas in a terribly primitive situation for years, got paid sometimes with, quite literally, coconuts, and he’s dying of cancer, and guess what? The Canadian hospital he ought to be dying in is full, no spare beds. He’s DYING, and he can’t get in to be cared for except at the E.R. His WIFE is nursing him alone around the clock. Do you hear me? No nursing staff to help him at home either.

Mind you, he’s not so badly off that he couldn’t pay for healthcare if he could just get access to it. But he can’t.

Does no one in Canada care about their neighbors? Are they all so lost to reason that they can’t see this poor, exhausted woman struggling and reach out to help her? Or are they so busy scrambling for their share of gov’t goodies that this couple’s tragic circumstance moves them not at all? Are they still blindly expecting government to DO something?

And he’s a MEDICAL doctor, and so’s his son, and they’re both respected in their field and by everyone who knows them, and you’d think that medical practioners would care enough to at least take care of one of their own! But no. He’s a brilliant, kind, compassionate man who devoted his life to serving others, and he’s shut out of the hospital to die on his own. He’s NOT rich, larrys, but boy, isn’t Canadian Socialized Medicine sure sticking it to him!

Do you feel good about that? ‘Cause aren’t those Canadians treating everybody equal and doing everything you profess to love? Frankly, it makes me SICK!

That, larrys, is what is coming to America. Because you and millions of other, gullible people like you voted socialists into power, because you persist in supporting them. Socialists make all sorts of big, fuzzy nice promises, but when the rubber meets the road, (PSST!) they’re lying to you. They’re completely without scruples. They can’t afford to keep most of the promises they make, they’ll only keep the ones that give them iron-fisted control of YOUR life, and they’re lying. They know it and I know it, and the others here know it. Maybe you know it too, but don’t want to believe it. Poor you. And if you knowingly support this agenda, how thoroughly, nastily evil of you. May God take you in hand, please, and make you very, very repentant…

I wonder how you’re going to feel when it’s you the system crowds out because you’re just another number, and sorry but we’re overloaded here, and did you really expect government to pick up the tab for all your needs and wants? Do you really expect gov’t to solve everything for you?

I wonder how you will feel when a doctor sticks you with a lethal dose of whatever’s handy and as you’re dying says, “Sorry man, we need your bed…!” And that, larrys, is inevitably what’s coming down the pike. It’s what’s happening in Europe in the systems OBAMA wants to model ours after–

Where will the “greedy insensitive” rich be then who your family can turn to, to donate to a fund to help your widow and kids pay the bills the gov’t ISN’T going to cover from your hospital stay…? ‘Cause you’re still gonna owe and I’m sorry to tell you, but I won’t have money to spare. Neither will anyone else. We’re all gonna poor and miserable together. What hellish kind of joy is that?

You’re in deep, larry, real deep. It was when the underlying loans went bad that balance sheets suddenly turned toxic. What do you think started the big investment houses tumbling in the first place?

A. There’s not much reason to continue this discussion, and

B. If there are too many like-minded (using the term loosely) individuals, we’re in trouble for the long haul.

Unbridled free-market economics is as dangerous as unfettered socialism. Either should function quite well, in theory, but they never manage to “get it right” in the real world we all live in.

Yet Another Huge Spending Bill Planned For Next Week

And as for this

It’s not like the crisis we’re suffering through now are self-inflicted wounds.

your leaden sarcasm backfires. Feckless borrowing and government meddling is what got us into this. More borrowing and meddling seems contra-indicated, don’t you think?

The capital gains tax is unjust (double taxation) and causes a number of inefficiencies. Abolishing it would be a good Heimlich maneuver for the stock market.

I doubt a one-time $3000 for every taxpayer would have much of a stimulative effect, but at least it would cost less than Porkulus, and whatever effect it did have would be fast.

Cutting tax rates for middle income households, or for any bracket, would definitely stimulate.

Guaranteeing loans to small businesses is something the feds already do. Worthwhile or not, I’d prefer not to see the program expanded right now, as the feds presently guarantee too damn much of the “leveraged” part of the economy. Better might be the House Republicans’ proposal, to “allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income. This will immediately encourage investment and free up funds for small businesses to hire new employees and create jobs.”