MFC 2009 Edition

Once again, we take a break from our usual misanthropy to wish all and sundry a Merry Christmas. We took care of our visiting and gifting yesterday, so we have been laying around the house watching the old Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas specials on DVD. After watching most of them one after another, we have come to one inescapable conclusion: Romeo Muller was (or still is) one deeply strange human being. The rest of the Rankin-Bass crew enabled his dementia. If you get a chance, clear your mind of all your childhood memories and watch these shows again. They are freaking bizarre.

As a side note, the minions of the Heat Miser and Freeze Miser are the prototypes for Mini-Me, aren't they?

Breakfast Food Geekery

Apparently, one can slice a bagel into two interlinked congruent halves. You may be wondering what the hell that means, so go here and gaze in wonder at mathematics applied to bagels.

Why Government Doesn't Work, Part Umpteen-Million

So, you poor suckers are gonna get "health care reform". It has nothing to do with health care, and it won't reform a goddamn thing, but you're gonna get it anyway. Tom Harkin (D-Out Wandering) openly admits any bill that's passed will be subject to mission creep almost immediately.

In the future, amending it and changing it isn’t going to be as tough as passing it in the first place.

So, he and his compatriots will continue to tinker and screw around with your health care if they can get it passed. Yay.

Of course, it's not all bad. Depending on where you sit, it may be a great bill.

The health-care industry has captured the regulatory process, and it has used that capture to eliminate any real competition, whether from the government, in the form of a single-payer system, or from new and more efficient competitors in the private sector who might have the audacity to offer a better product at a better price.

Me? I work in the oil industry, so all I can see is a giant screwing coming along.

Finally, I will ask a question that is somewhat antiquated in the modern era. Where, exactly, in the Constitution did we delegate the authority to Congress to require us to buy insurance? I'm just not seeing it anywhere in my copy of the document.

Not Children, Again

I seem to recall I've mentioned the idea that 18 year olds are not children a time or two before. Anyhow, Stingray took on the task of reminding all of us why treating them as such is a bad idea. Go read.

Read and Weep

Paranoia, government overreach, and collusion with industry. This story has it all, and I urge you to go read the whole thing.