My number one site, the one that I would read if I could only read one blog, is Althouse.  If you aren’t familiar with Ann Althouse, she is a law prof from Wisconsin.  (Yeah, the one who married one of her commenters.)  She is conservative, but she voted for Obama.  I like her blog because it is an interesting round-up of what the internet has to offer and I love her conversational tone and seemingly incidental humor.

The best Vermont conservative blog is, of course, Vermont Tiger.

The best national blog for discussion of issues is Q and O.  Q and O is a libertarian blog that tends to be more policy-oriented and less gotcha partisan garbage.  A big thumbs-up on that.

The best place to find out what is hot in conservative opinion is Ace of Spades HQ.  If you can get past the foul-mouths and the locker room-style humor, it really is a comprehensive look at what conservatives are talking about.  And Ace has some first-rate commentary when he’s on a roll.

Finally, if politics has you ready to just bang your head against the wall, laugh along with the right-wing humor blog,  IMAO.  Bear in mind, you will probably only laugh if you are conservative, and only then if you have a certain sense of humor.

So, that’s my informal list of She’s Right blog awards.

Don’t forget to check out my new blog, Shatter Nicely.

A “public option” would be a government payer (a la medicare or medicaid) as one of the menu choices. Obviously this makes subsidizing easier on the one hand, but also allows the feds more control over the types of coverage. Private insurers are afraid any public option would be too appealing and affordable and draw away business – and both opponents and proponents of a single payer system see this as a way to potentially facilitate a transition to such a model.

The bolded selection is my emphasis, obviously.  That’s the part that’s, let’s say, less than accurate.

How about this?

Private insurers are concerned that any public option will be given an unfair advantage and, as a result, look more appealing and affordable.

The public option will be artificially low in cost, as the current medicaid and medicare systems are.  There’s the obvious, that the public option has the advantage of tax payer funding, but that is not the only advantage.  The government does not pay fair market value for services rendered. This is possible because the rest of us are subsidizing it though our insurance or cash payments.

Once the public option entices unsuspecting consumers with her siren song of low, low prices, the private firms will be driven out of business and all of the sudden the public plan will be in a world of financial hurt, since there won’t be anyone around to offset the below-value payments.

Oh wait, the public option already is in a world of financial hurt.  How about we fix the public plan before we lure more people onto it?

Here’s an analogy the left ought to appreciate: The public option is like when Wal-Mart moves into a neighborhood and puts everyone else out of business with their artificially low prices.  And how does it get such low prices?  By forcing companies to charge them less, in exchange for doing business with the country’s largest retailer.  That’s exactly what the government does to doctors.

The public option: it’s the Wal-Mart of health care.

Sign me up!

Look, health care is expensive.  Next time you are at a hospital, take a look at all of the expensive equipment.  We have made amazing advances in medical science, all of which cost money.  If we want it, we need to pay for it.

Right now, private insurance is paying for most of it.  When private insurance is gone, the public plan will have to pony up the dough.  It’s either that or lower our expectations for care because it’s not going to come for free.

As P.J. O’Rourke says, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”

Here are some links I had bookmarked to blog about.  You can read them yourself.  You don’t need me to tell you how to think!

Heads should roll – Camille Paglia – Salon

President Obama’s clumsy, smirky staff is sinking him — and resurrecting a deflated GOP!

Spending plan kills funding for Washington school vouchers – LA Times

If the voucher program is allowed to expire, the students would probably be back in the public system within two years.

“It would be really shocking to see 1,700 kids removed from the best schools they have ever known,” said Andrew Campanella, a spokesman for the Alliance for School Choice, a pro-voucher group.

I guess only the haves, such as the Obama children, should be allowed to opt-out of the failing DC school system.

Blogging in the Obama Era – Preston on Politics – CNN

Liberal bloggers were the cyber cheerleaders for Barack Obama in the 2008 race for the White House. But now that he has won, these “netroots” activists face a major challenge: criticizing the new president and his administration.

The Cure for Poverty

This disease is poverty. And the cure for poverty is the free market. That’s because the free market is the only environment in which entrepreneurs can flourish. And it’s the entrepreneurs – and only the entrepreneurs — who create the jobs that lift us all out of poverty.

Depression Cooking – YouTube

93 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era. Learn how to make simple yet delicious dishes while listening to stories from the Great Depression.

And because we have not yet beat the IRV discussion to death,

Voting Paradoxes and Perverse Outcomes: Political Scientist Tony Gierzynski Lays Out A Case Against Instant Runoff Voting – Vermont Daily Briefing

Let’s get right into it: Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is not good. It is not good because it suffers from three fundamental problems: it discriminates against classes of voters by adding complexity the ballot; it has a very real potential to produce perverse outcomes or voting paradoxes that are not majoritarian; and it fails to address the real problem that arises when multiple parties compete in a two-party system.

Have a great day, folks!

I am still feeling pretty aweful, but I am also getting bored, so I thought I would do a semi-linkdump. It’s a linkdump with commentary.

• Computer-illiterate woman blames Dell and Ubuntu for the fact that she is clueless, doesn’t know how to ask for help, and dropped out of her online classes. Personal responsibility, anyone? The TV station was able to fix her problems by communicating with Verizon and the school. She could have done the same thing. Don’t blame the penguin.

• The Burlington Free Press rails against the 9.14% school budget increase in, City school budget divorced from reality. Is it me, or is that title harsh? Deservedly so, but harsh nonetheless.

• The Obama’s are calling you to serve your communities on January 19. I don’t have a problem with this. I have always said that a president can be a moral leader by example and rhetoric, as opposed to legislating our freedom away. If you want to serve, serve. If you don’t, don’t. But, you know it’s the right thing to do. And you can’t be a part of our hopey-changey oneness if you don’t serve.

• Thomas Sowell makes the case for why President Bush should pardon Scooter Libby.

• Added: How could I forget this?  Star Wars retold by someone who has never seen the movies.  It only covers the original trilogy.  Bill Simmon said it had him ROFL[his]AO.  I didn’t think it was quite that funny, but there was one part that had me LOLing pretty hard.

That’s all I feel up to right now. When I kick this cold, I have a few longer posts swirling around in my head that I want to get to.

Speaking of cold, there really should be another word for what I have. I mean, how can the sniffles and a little cough have the same name as this monster that has taken over my body and made me feel this lousy?

Oh, yeah, and still speaking of cold, we’re up to -1! (That’s Farhenheit, by the way.) No wonder they started calling it “climate change.”

What’s a gal to do when she needs a political blogging break?  Here are a few non-political sites I enjoy.

For the grammar nerds out there, The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks will have you L(ing)OL.

For the crafty mamas, Whip Up is a must read.  This is not your grandmother’s craft blog.  I mean, where else can you find a cross-stitch pattern for the Firefox logo?

Looking for a personal finance blog that is practical and easy to understand?  The Simple Dollar is for you.

And if you are looking for awesome recipes, brought to you by the editors of Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food, be sure to check out Dinner Tonight.

Well, Amity Shlaes takes a look at Recovery Without Bailout.

I wish I had finished reading her book on the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man. I’ll have to pull that out.

Elsewhere on the internet, Megan McArdle offers up what she thinks about the bailout plans.

And, last but not least, Rachel Lucas has a must-read, awesome round-up of what people are saying about the bailout. Lots of great links there.

Updated, to add: Jack Harding weighs in at VT Tiger, scoring geek points for a Terminator analogy.

Tax Day

Vermont Tiger’s Geoffrey Norman has a suggestion for those people who think our taxes are not high enough.

Dave Barry takes a look at some of the, um, interesting ways our tax dollars are spent.

Speaking of taxes, who is the logic-challenged individual (or group) that designed the Vermont State Income Tax forms? After years of filing my VT taxes, I have the process down to an impressive 40 minutes, but I could not help but notice how unbelievably convoluted the process is.

Is there someone in the state government in bed with the accounting industry? If I wasn’t such a tight wad so frugal, I would consider shelling out the extra bucks to upgrade my Turbo Tax and file my VT taxes electronically.

Buy A Gun Day. (HT: Alphecca)

For more, check out the celebrations around the blogosphere.

Speaking of guns, apparently not all college students are content to be sitting ducks when a shooter appears on campus.

“Would you rather just sit there and cower underneath a desk when someone executes you or would you rather have a chance to defend your life? That’s what it really boils down to.”

The Blog-o-versary of Candleblog

Last, but not least, today is the fourth blog-o-versary of Candleblog, the internet home of everyone’s favorite Burlington filmmaker, Bill Simmon.

Four years! We are so not worthy.

Head of over and give him w00t!

• Blogging While Female Part 2: Five Women Bloggers Talk About Gender Issues And The Blogosphere

• iBrattleboro Cleared in Libel Suit

• 802 Offline – It has been a while since Cathy stopped posting her regular weekly round-ups of Vermont’s blogosphere at 802 Online.  Still, I can’t help but be saddened by the finality of this announcement.

The Huffington Post has a round-up of sorts, with reactions from across the spectrum, including NRO’s Mark Steyn.

“Obama is meant to be the man who transcends the divisions of race, the candidate who doesn’t damn America but ‘heals’ it,” wrote Mark Steyn on National Review Online. “Yet since his early twenties he’s sat week after week listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster.”

Meanwhile, tensions between the Obama and Clinton campaigns continue to rise.

This week saw a Hillary supporter vow to discontinue posting at Daily Obama Kos.  Beth over at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has more on that.

According to Reuters, the candidates instructed their campaigns to tone down the rhetoric in order to avoid backlash against the party in November.

Apparently, it’s not working.

On Sunday, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns hosted conference calls in which each camp’s aides played political victim, manufactured outrage, and likely didn’t change the electoral landscape one bit.

The Obama folks teed off first, casting Clinton as a secretive pol driven by nothing more than political opportunism.

[...]

An hour later, Clinton aides struck back with attack lines of their own, accusing Obama of going viciously negative our of sheer desperation.

If you are looking for a good laugh this Sunday afternoon, be sure to check out the ringtones on the Obama campaign website.

And if you are looking for a website that is really powered by hope, there’s always this one.