Hits & Misc

* Larry e-mails to note the Egyptian reaction to swine flu and sees an opportunity:

Occurred to me that if we had just called this "Al-Qaeda Flu" or "Bin Laden Flu," we might have gotten the Egyptians to take care of a couple problems for us. It's all about the moniker.

Good thing to keep in mind for the next pandemic.

* Nathan e-mails with a health care concern:

I haven't followed this too closely, but this seems downright frightening. The stimulus bill has a hidden provision creating a panel to study health care rationing. Can we be far from a world where the federal government decides who lives and who dies?

The reality that government run health care proponents don't like to talk about it is that at the end of the day, the only way such a system can control costs and remain viable is through some sort of rationing of care. People should understand that this is the inevitable result of turning their health care over to the government.

* Evan e-mails with a video on the real intent of President Obama's health care plan.

* Econ4U.org has a video in which they try to discover if people know how big a trillion dollars really is:

In order to do so, we took a poll of 1,001 Americans asking “How many times larger is a trillion than a million?” We also took our Econ4U team out in front of the White House to capture some live responses.

The video is amusing yet also depressing in that most people (79%!) can't grasp how much money we're actually going to be spending here.

* Shea e-mails with the latest on how fast food is becoming the new tobacco in the eyes of the Nanny Statists:

I don't know if you've seen former FDA Chief David Kessler making the rounds with his new book, trying to equate fattening food to tobacco and claiming that we're all being brainwashed into addictive overeating. Of course, if the Liberals can convince people of this insanity, then they get to impose new taxes on food they deem "bad." But I appreciated that Jacob Sullum at Reason has his number.

It's not my fault I'm fat, it's those devious food companies. The Age of Obama dawns as the age of personal responsibility fades ever further from view.

* Finally, my wife relates a flu-related conversation she overheard today at Target:

About two checkouts down, I heard a cashier talking to a woman and the subject somehow got to the Swine flu (the woman had a baby). She said basically that she wasn't too concerned about it yet. The cashier said that there was a woman in this week that stocked up on food/supplies in case we were told not to leave the house because of the flu.

I was thinking "freak," but that doesn't surprise me because there are always the handful that overreact. But what did strike me as odd was what the cashier said next. "Obama even said that it should be business as usual." Maybe that's not the exact quote but basically that's what he said Obama said. And that struck me as odd for some reason and then it clicked. I don't think I would have heard the same thing if Bush or McCain was president...."McCain even said that it should be business as usual." McCain didn't/doesn't have the mystique of God-like qualities and the ability to save us all if he became president...

No, McCain was definitely not the all-knowing, all-seeing One. As chilling as it is to see how readily people seem take their daily marching cues from President Obama, I suppose it could be even worse. They could be listening to Vice President Biden for advice.