You know who the real winners will be with the passage of health care legislation?  The insurance industry and the IRS. 

Despite a small glimmer of hope, I think this bill will pass.  And despite Obama skewering the insurance companies, they will be the big winners.  The mandate equates to 30 million new customers, if you believe the administration’s numbers.  It’s closer to 8-12 M, maybe more in this economy, but still, a whole bunch of new customers.  Plus, the administration will give subsidies DIRECTLY to the insurance companies to cover people with incomes 133% of the poverty level. 

And, on top of that, many smaller companies who already provide insurance will see their premiums skyrocket and end up dumping their insurance and pushing their employees onto the open market.  No more group discounts, so the customers will end up paying retail prices instead.  Woo Hoo for the insurance companies!

And Ace has a great round up of the MASSIVE power and control the IRS will have over our lives. 

What a wonderful world this will be.

I just wanted to wish Texas a happy, happy birthday!  I lament that fact that no one seems to celebrate today, but we always have a ton of celebrations for Cinco de Mayo, a fake Mexican holiday. 

Anyway, here’s to 174 years of Texas and hoping for 174 more!

And don’t forget to vote early, vote often!  Just kidding.

Everyone is talking about the suicide pilot here in Austin.  We need to remember the victims, now.  Unfortunately, there were a couple of  men who didn’t escape unscathed.

Vernon Hunter, 67, died in the attack.  His wife also worked in the building, but she escaped.  Apparently, Mr. Hunter’s office was very near the impact site, and he was in it when the crash occurred. 

He is survived by his wife and six grown children. 

Also seriously injured in the crash was Shane Hill, a 38-year-old investigator with the Texas comptroller’s office.  He was badly burned on his back, and he was eventually taken to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, one of the best burn centers in the country. 

Also victims in this are the wife and step-daughter left behind.  While we don’t know how much the wife knew, she probably never imagined her husband would do anything like this.  His family will probably be hounded for weeks.  I know the wife is supposed to make some sort of statement in the near future, but that will not stop the phone calls and questions.

I found out about the crash about 45 minutes after it happened.  I saw that E.D. Hill, the former “Fox and Friends” host, was going to be on “The View” discussing her medical procedure.  I didn’t want to watch all the other prattling that happens on that show, so I checked in to see if she was on yet.  When I went to the recording, I saw the local news had broken in about the crash. 

I was concerned, needless to say.  My best friend lives near the site, and she has to drive through the 360 / 183 intersection (this building is in the SW corner of that intersection) to go to work everyday.  She was OK. 

I know the building.  While I live on the other side of town from there, I drive by it all the time.  A couple of years ago, a group I’m in had our three major events at a hotel just down the access road from this location.  I thought about how lucky it was to have a very good hospital just up the highway from the location.  It seemed like for all the smoke and fire, that everyone (except possibly the pilot) would escape the accident.  I went on with my day, taking my daughter to her gym for her class. 

In the car, I heard the guy did it on purpose and he had set his house on fire.  I was shocked.  I spent dance class going back and forth between the car (to listen to the news) and the class (to watch my daughter).  I started getting calls from family and friends. 

I felt a little ( a very little ) like 9/11.  I had taken that day off of work to pack for a plane out to Vegas on 9/12.  My office workers called me to relay what was going on, because the internet was pretty much down, and they didn’t have a TV to see what was going on.  I remember relaying to them that the buildings were going down.  Today I had friends calling me to ask what the coverage was like, because it was no where near the internet jam of 9/11.  I think we just wanted to talk about it to people. 

In discussing terrorism, I’ve always said I felt lucky because I live in Austin.  Yes, it’s the capital of Texas, but it’s not as big of a target as say, Houston, which is home to many, many defense and oil industry companies.  Heck, I grew up in Baytown, just 20 miles east of Houston, home to the largest oil refinery in the world.  And even the Houston area is no where near the target that New York and Los Angeles are.  But I bet the people of Oklahoma City felt the same way at one time.  Nutjobs are nutjobs, and they will attack whenever and whereever they can.  This is a scary, and hopefully not-so-tragic reminder of that. 

When I heard that he set his house on fire while his wife and kid (or ex-wife and stepkid or whatever relationship it was) were in there, I was disgusted.  I’m not sure why that bothered me more than him flying a plane into a building with the intention of killing someone else’s wife and/or kid, but it did. 

I heard he was a software engineer, and I began to wonder if I ever worked with him.  After reading his manifesto, it appears he owned his own business, and I doubt I ever did.  I heard he was a musician, and now I wonder if I’ve ever seen him at a club or restaurant.  Until I heard he flew out of the Georgetown airport, I wondered if my husband (who at one time was taking flying lessons) had ever come across him in the day.  It’s so weird to think you might know someone who could do something like this.  I’m pretty sure I never came across this guy.

Early next week, probably, I will take a trip up there to see the damage.  I just have a morbid curiosity, I guess.  But I don’t want to be up there while the investigations are going on.  I understand the guy’s frustration, but I can’t fathom how he could think this is the answer. 

In all of this, my daughter heard Megyn Kelly say “Austin, TX” while we were in the car.  She was so excited to hear that and commented about how that’s where we live, and she proceeded to name off all of the other places where our family lives in Texas.  She was almost as excited about that as she was when she recognized her name written (she didn’t hear it) on the TV when Sadie the Scottie won the dog show (I was excited about that one, as we’ve been struggling with the ABCs). 

It just reminds me to treasure these little moments because you never know when it could all abruptly end.

Update: Sadly, it looks like the pilot took the life of an innocent person as well as his own.  Authorities found two bodies, one of which is the pilot’s.  I was hoping against hope it would only be the building the pilot took out, but it looks like he succeeded in his mission of having a body count..

Geraldo is…  wow.  He has some nerve.  I can’t believe Fox News still employs him.  He probably cried racism when they tried to fire him after this incident in 2003:

Fox News Channel correspondent Geraldo Rivera is being expelled from Iraq for broadcasting details about future U.S. troop movements in the country, according to the Pentagon.

Dick Cheney is only the second person (that I recall) that this treasoner has accused of treasonous behavior.  Remember when he accused Rick Perry of it when he “threatened” secession during a Tea Party rally? 

The only person listed in this blog post guilty of REAL treason is Geraldo himself.

BUMPED: John Stossel is covering this tonight (2/11) on his Fox Business show tonight.

Liberty Chick has a fantastic article over at Big Government that details one of SEIU’s most recent methods of forcing more and more workers become union members.  Except this time, it’s all about self-employed people being forced, by executive order, to pay union dues with almost no benefit whatsoever. 

These are home-based child care workers.  Daycare centers that people run out of their own homes.  No card check.  No meetings.  No votes.  Nothing.  The governors of several states make these people union members, the union sets up a shell company that these people aren’t employees of but with which the union can “bargain” with, and take union dues out of payments made by child care subsidy programs. 

And in a weird twist, one woman was forced to close her home-based day care business due to economic circumstances.  She went to work for another woman with whom she filed suit against the state regarding this forced unionization.  The employer is forced to pay union dues, but the woman who now works for her, the employee, is not.  Whoa. 

With these fiats, unions get access to people’s home addresses and other information required because of child care licensing laws.  And the only thing the business owner gets out of it is, well, nothing.  Read the whole article.  Watch the video.  It’s sickening. 

Being the “subject” of a union through my husband’s work, I’m glad I live in a state where the union doesn’t have the hold it does on workers.  It’s a right to work state.  However, my husband is practically forced to join lest he be left on his own if he needs help out in the field or if he wants anyone in his office talking to him, period.  I don’t understand how that goes on — wouldn’t that be some sort of harrassment?  Plus, each election season, we get pamphlets listing the people we are supposed to vote for.  Just a list, no reasons listed.  Some of these unions are tax exempt — how can they get away with that (especially when churches are being targeted if pastors / priests preach about specific candidates)? 

Something I’m going to have to look into, I guess…

These global warming zealots and skeptics drive me crazy.  I’m sick of every weather event being used to either validate or disprove “climate change.”  Fact is: the climate is changing.  That doesn’t mean we humans (or cows or whatever else we can control) had a damn thing to do with it.  That doesn’t mean that we can do a damn thing to stop it.

I hear these stupid phrases so often:
     “It’s the hottest decade on record.”
     “Last year was the hottest year on record.”
     “The last decade has had the hottest xx years of the top 10.”

Well, when did the record start?  I mean, we didn’t have the Fahrenheit scale until the early 1700’s.  Is that when global warming zealots think the earth began?  And they call Sarah Palin stupid.

One of the first things I ask people when they start yelping at me about saving the planet from AGW is “Why is Greenland called Greenland when the capital city barely makes it to 50 degrees (F) during the year?”  I stole that line from a friend because it made so much sense.  Look it up.  Greenland used to be GREEN.  Then, the Little Ice Age happened.  Climate change happened.  Where were all the fossil-fuel burning cars then?  Where were all the incandescent bulbs?

Look at the ice core data that NOAA has gathered here.  Watch the video.  And by the way, the ”global warming” that began happening around -10,000 BC?  Well, that was when we started seeing humans roam the earth.  Hmm.

So Teh One now wants us to believe he cares about the poor, forgotten middle class since they rose up and kicked a Democrat out of the sacred Kennedy-owned seat in Massachusetts.  Well, don’t be fooled.  He was all ready to drop some heavy taxes on your butts when Obamacare passed — and make you pay them for four YEARS before seeing any benefit.  Do you honestly think taxes levied on everything from a heating bottle to a titanium hip joint won’t get passed on to the customers in higher premiums?  That’s not to mention the tax for opting out of the system if you chose not to be forced into participation.

So now he wants to give a bigger child tax credit.  That’s laughable.  That’s just a payoff to poor people who don’t pay income taxes to being with.  Just more transfer of wealth going on.  That’s not going to create one damn job for those people. 

Oh, he also wants to reduce minimum payments on federal student loans.  That only keeps people in debt for longer and just endorses the whole ”bill me later” lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to. 

And don’t forget the real doozy — force automatic IRA enrollment at work.  Hmm.  I wonder who benefits from those proposals.  Could it be those damn Wall Street firms (who service the IRAs) that he’s been vilifying this past week?  And aren’t we already forced to put money away in the form of social security taxes?

Ugh.  What liars.

The Obama administration has spent SO MUCH TIME talking about this stupid saved or created measurement for the stimulus bill.  They spent too much time honing and selling the brand, then they chucked it out the window when they saw the data was wrong at best, fradulent at worst. 

Now, the blogs and shows are buzzing about the administration not getting the message straight on the weekend talk shows.  Who CARES?  The only numbers we should be worried about are ones that we know are fact:

• 4.2 million jobs lost in 2009 (after promising to create somewhere around 3 million)
• Unemployment rate is up 2.6% (to end the year at 10%, even after promising the stimulus bill wouldn’t take us past 8%).

They WANT us bickering over the thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs CREATED so we won’t focus on how many were actually LOST!

What a night, what a night!  Scott Brown won!  Can you believe it? 

The Ds keep saying it’s a local race, but all Mass. voters I’ve heard interviewed ( on FNC, CNN, MSNBC ) who voted for Brown mentioned health care or sending a message to D.C.  So, if the Ds continue business as usual, unlike Clinton’s reversal of course back in ‘94, Obama is going down, and so are a lot of his liberal friends.

The link at Hot Air has the humpbot.  It’s nice to see it again!