So…if you’re down to your last $500 and have to chose between buying groceries for your kids and keeping the heat on OR purchasing a FEDERALLY mandated health insurance plan….Olympia Snowe wants to fine you $1900 if you decide to stay warm and eat as opposed to sending your money to a federally approved insurance plan.

Of Course…it doesn’t stop there….because if you don’t pay the $1900 fine because you spent your last $500 buying food and shelter…the good Senator has decided you should face one year in federal prison and $25,000 in fines….God only knows how someone who couldn’t afford to pay for a $500 insurance premium or a $1900 fine after that is supposed to pay an additional $25,000….and I can only assume there would be a potential for additional jail time for refusing to pay the $25,000…but one could go on and on from there.

But who are we to worry ourselves about all this because Senator Snowe has decided she knows best how individual citizens should spend their hard earned dollars and sees no reason to bother herself with that pesky Constitution which she swore to uphold and defend against “ALL enemies; both foreign and DOMESTIC“.

There is no thought or consideration as to whether the FEDERAL government SHOULD be telling people how to live their lives on the most basic level let alone whether it has the AUTHORITY under the Constitution to do so. Her imperial proclivity to foist a big government nanny state government bureaucracy on Texas from the wintry wonderland of Main coupled with her sycophantic desire to be bigger than the rest of flyover country with her “BIPARTISANSHIP” is all that matters here.

And for everyone last week who was jumping up and down congratulating each other because she decided to act like a Republican for a change and speak out against a public option…where are you now? Do you really think we’re not going to get our public option if she has her way?

Think again….let’s not forget…she’s the genius behind the “trigger” option that would stop a public option now….yet would implement it later “should it become necessary”….of course NONE of the geniuses out there from Rush, to Hannity, to Beck and the rest of the “conservative” talking heads have ever put it together that this is a ploy which will tamp down everyone’s objection to HCR in the short term because we’re all supposed to think the public option is dead. Yet see it enacted over the long term because….Once enacted…the whole thing is already set up to be implemented without any Senator or Congressperson having their fingerprints on it and without the people being able to object because it will be implemented automatically once the inevitable trigger is pulled.

BTW…I read yesterday and can’t find the link….that Harry Reid is posing about giving up on a public option and has now signed off on Snowe’s idea for a trigger and Co Ops and is praising her for bringing them to the table.

No doubt, a couple of months or maybe years hence…we’ll all be looking around staring death panels and rationing in the face…losing our private insurance and being forced into a public health option all the while looking for someone to blame…and the clowns in DC will be shrugging their shoulders telling us it wasn’t their fault…it was already in the law…and it was the last Congress that screwed us all! Of course…I and many like me will be saying…I told you so” and pointing the finger at Snowe where the blame lies…and the establishment will be looking down their noses at us because we couldn’t possibly know better than they, since we didn’t go to Harvard or Yale…Oh…and besides…nothing else matters beyond having another seat with an R on it no matter the fact it means nothing when it comes to actually governing…“Winning” is all that matters don’t you know?

Finally…please spare me the sanctimonious crap about how I prefer to attack Republicans over Democrats which is an over simplification…The issue is…I expect more out of Republicans than Democrats and I’m outraged when people do crap like this when they should darned well know better!

I just can’t figure out for the life of me what we gain by having Snowe doing this because with her…even when we win…WE LOSE!

Cross Posted at The Minority Report