Never post date checks. Someone, somewhere, won't pay attention and before you know it, you'll owe the bank $140.
During a recession.
With one source of income in your house.
Awesome.

I think we can all agree that Pat Robertson is a jerk who uses tragedy to push his own warped idea of religion. Yes? Ok.
I would say the same of the Westboro Baptist Church and any number of other groups/individuals hiding behind the First Amendment to espouse hate in the guise of "God's divine message" or some other such hooey.
Luckily, most of us can also agree that these idiots are to be ridiculed and ignored. Hell, they practically beg for it.
But there are people out there - not you, gentle reader, but far stupider folk - who actually agree with the things that fall out of Robertson's mouth like so much half-digested tripe, who actually defend his statements in a revolting display of ignorance fit only for the truly crippled of reason.
"Yes, there is literally a fallen angel dressed all in red with horns and a pitchfork and the Haitians made a deal with him 200 years ago in his underground nether-realm to destroy the French and that is why earthquakes happen, durrrrrr" is not an uncommon thing for these half-wits to shout at one another while patrolling the walkways of Planned Parenthood clinics with rifles.
Granted, some of the things these people subscribe to are pretty damn funny. Westboro, for instance, never fails to amuse with its renditions of Christmas tunes describing how Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is leading our children to hell or some such nonsense.
But then they'll go and do something like show up at some poor kid's funeral waving placards reading "God Hates Fags" and, well, that I simply cannot abide.
Only, I can't really do anything about it, can I? I mean, it's not like you can just go around knee-capping people with baseball bats because of their indefensibly asinine public displays of contempt couched in theology.
At least, not yet.
Ladies and gentleman, I propose a new amendment for the new decade; an amendment for those who understand and embrace religious tolerance, but who have also just had it up to here with some of these cultish freaks.
Let us call it, "The Defense of Common Sense Act." I haven't worked out all the particulars yet, but basically it allows you to beat the living hell out of anyone trying to keep us in the dark ages - like Robertson - if they even hint at some foolishness like "earthquakes are a force of the devil."
I mean, really? Really? That alone deserves at least a smack upside the head, but knowing that ill-formed grotesquerie, he'd sue me for assault. And that's the rub, isn't it? The reasonably-minded among us, I'm sure, would love to give these dingbats a collective wedgie, if for no other reason than to simply stop them from making all Christians look like utter morons.
Except that you can't. There are laws against that sort of thing.
But hopefully not for long.

Former Vice Presidential candidate/Alaskan governor/relevant human being Sarah Palin announced Tuesday she would join the team at Fox News in 2010 to deliver "inspirational real-life tales of overcoming adversity throughout the American landscape."
Palin said in a release that she was "thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News," a place that "so values fair and balanced news."
Her opening segment was expected to focus on Glenn Beck.
However, just hours after announcing her new job, Palin announced she would walk out on her contract with Fox News 18 months early.
Arriving at a hastily-convened news conference by bus (which had picked her up from the airport, where she had flown in by private jet) Palin said she was retiring from broadcast journalism in order to pursue a career as an astronaut, a move she said was supported by four yesses and one "hell yeah!" from her family.
"The way I see it, if real Americans throughout this great land of ours watched the 2008 presidential race and still consider me a viable candidate for the presidency in 2012, then I'm qualified to do anything," said Palin. "Besides, I bet I can get a real good look at Russia from way up there in God's vacuum."
Michael Steels' head reportedly exploded upon hearing the news.

Here's the thing: My girlfriend has Crohn's Disease. If you don't know what that is, it's basically like having a flesh-eating virus stuck in your intestines with no hope of ever extricating it. I can't even fathom trying to live with that. Suffice to say, it sure doesn't look like fun. There's a lot of blood involved.
She was getting treatments for it with a shot called Remicade, which acts a lot like Nexium does on the esophagus, in that it helps rebuild damaged tissue. But that was when she had health insurance through her work. Without that insurance, she can't pay for the shot (which is to say nothing of the short hospital stay it requires to administer it).
She hasn't received treatment in more than a year because she hasn't had a job that offered insurance. She will have a new plan through her new job come Jan. 1. Meanwhile, lord only knows what has happened to her insides. I don't even want to think about it, but it could require surgery that would lay her up for months.
If there were a public option available when she lost her job - or, better yet, single-payer system in place like the rest of the freaking industrialized world has - she would likely be fine.
But she isn't. She's in constant pain.
And I blame you jerks in Washington.
Luckily, you've just passed two bills that could help address the problem. Only they won't, because it's Washington and you'll probably stuff the resulting compromise bill so full of pork and insurance company subsidies that it will resemble nothing even remotely like what people like us need.
For instance, poor people (again, us) don't need to be punished for not buying health insurance. That is the stupidest damn idea I ever heard. We're not buying insurance because we're poor, not because we think we're indestructible "masters of the universe," as Joe Sestak is fond of saying. If we can't afford insurance, what in the hell makes you think we can afford a fine for not buying insurance? And let me guess - we'll continue to be fined until we do buy insurance? Yeah, that helps. Thanks.
Also, lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 55? Terrible idea. As Darcy Burner explained in a recent article for the Huffington Post, insurance companies don't pay or underpay for routine and preventative care because by the time chronic problems like diabetes actually have to be dealt with, they're hedging that those suffering from these diseases will be covered by Medicare and therefor the government's problem (i.e. taxpayer's problem). Lowering that age, Burner correctly points out, will only make insurers less likely to cover costs for preventive care.
Compounding that with a lack of a single-payer system or public option - which you might remember as the entire freaking point of this bill - makes this legislation almost criminally stupid. Seriously.
But it's not too late for you out-of-touch Scrooges to put something actually meaningful together. Here are some ideas to help save this bill:
1. Start listening to Dennis Kucinich. He's arguably the smartest man in Washington.
2. Extending COBRA coverage for those who have lost their jobs is fine and all, or it would be if it wasn't so prohibitively expensive to maintain coverage with COBRA. Trust me, no one can afford this and there should be a way to correct that here.
3. Single payer/public option. Get it in there, or to hell with the lot of you.
4. Alternatively, federalizing regulation of insurance and allowing for inter-state commerce of insurance companies would go a long way toward reducing costs and breaking the kind of monopolies we see here in Pennsylvania. (As long as there are common-sense provisions for what insurers can and can't do - like screw us with this "pre-existing condition" crap.)
5. Go nuclear. If it's gotten to the point that children like Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson can hijack Congress with the threat of a filibuster, then guess what? It's time to remove that weapon from their arsenal and allow a simple majority vote to move a bill forward. Problem solved, idiots.

That's it.

Have a merry x-mas, you bunch of taxpayer-sponsored jerks.

Been awhile. Not that anyone reads this stupid thing, but I thought this was funny, so I am sharing it with the Internets.

Joe Sestak took a different tack in going after Arlen Specter Thursday. First, his Sestak for Senate campaign sent out a release lauding Specter for a prediction he made at an AFL-CIO convention in September that an Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) bill “totally satisfactory to labor” had been more or less "hammered out" and would likely be passed by year’s end.
The comment caused quite a stir - mostly because it was regarded as absolutely ludicrous that there was a bill anywhere close to being "hammered out" at the time. Sestak is apparently trying to hold Specter to it anyway (good luck).
But then (and this is where it gets weird) the “Real Arlen Specter” Web site – an attack site maintained by the Sestak campaign – issued it’s own release, pointing out Specter, a former longtime Republican, was actually against EFCA before switching parties earlier this year. (Gasp!)
Yawn, right?
Fair enough, but what I liked about it is the self-referential opening line of the "Real Arlen" release: “In light of a reminder from Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak's Senate campaign about Arlen Specter's pledge to have a done deal on the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate by year's end, The Real Arlen Specter for Senate campaign would like to set the record straight."
The kicker for a colleague was the email subject line, "The Real Arlen Specter: Joe Sestak Knows I Oppose EFCA."
"The subject line is what takes it over the edge," he said. "The 'Real Specter' (a character created by Sestak, right?) is telling the world that the real, real Specter (actual Specter) knows that Sestak knows that the real Specter (I don't even know which one) actually opposes EFCA, according to Sestak."
Wheeeee!

Arlen Specter Switches to Yankees Fan

In a hastily called press conference coming just hours after the New York Yankees convincing victory last night in Game Four of the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter announced today that he is now a Yankees fan.

Specter said the move had nothing to do with the Yankees victory last night giving them a 3-1 lead in the series. "I haven't felt like a Phillies fan for quite some time," said Specter. "I am not leaving the Phillies. The Phillies left me."

Specter's long time discontent came as a surprise to many who celebrated last year's World Series win by the Phillies along with Specter.

But New York Senator Chuck Schumer praised the longtime Phillies fan saying that this move by Specter highlights his "fierce independence."

"Arlen's independence, integrity and baseball intellect are to be admired and I'll be pleased to be sitting in Yankee stadium near him when the Yankees win the World Series," said Schumer.

According to some inside sources, Specter was expecting to be handed box seats at Yankee stadium upon his announcement but it turned out he was not given seniority over other season ticket holders and was only offered seats in the boisterous mezzanine level.

Specter infamously switched parties earlier this year when it appeared that he might not win in the Republican primary against his GOP challenger Pat Toomey

The following is a textual conversation I had with a friend today, very nearly verbatim:

Him: This phone machine sucks (expletive deleted).
Me: I thought you had some hoity toity phone machine with all manner of electronic gimmickry?
H: Promises promises. It's like the Sarah Palin of technology.
M: It has 3G experience because it lives near silicone valley?
H: It thinks that because it has a big bright screen no one will notice its shortcomings and illogical functions.
M: It browses Web sites. Which ones? Oh, all of them. All the major ones.
H: It denounces updates because they conflict with its Christian heritage.
M: It believes in time honored values like firewalls and one access code for one OS, but fails to acknowledge security breaches within its own network.
H: It wants to be the OS in charge, but it can't finish its first download.
M: It also spent a fortune on new skins out of your Paypal account and now refuses to delete any.
H: It also thinks it's rurally constructed base translates to the rest of the models.
M: And that overseeing 60 bits of ram for a year and a half has prepared it for taking charge of the DOD database.
H: Or when it drops a call the problem is "solved."
M: It sends the texts it chooses to send, not necessarily the ones you asked it to send. Because it's a maverick.
H: It won't use a rebate because rich people are all that matter and market forces have proved it.
M: It constantly digs into your thigh in an attempt to drill, baby, drill!
H: It's a friend to the environment because its radio waves are killing the pesky bees and their dumb hives.
M: The toxins from its batteries have been known to kill local wolf populations. From the air.
H: It's plastic contributes to global warming, which is solving the polar bear question.
M: It believes that cell phone creation begins not at the factory, but in R & D.
H: It believes that without its battery it will not be recycled and sit at the right hand of the one true cell phone.
M: It believes chargers are a privilege, not a right, and that every phone has to pull itself up by the charging cord if it wants a full battery.
H: It believes that each state should choose what is best for its cell phones without a body to oversee all cellphone activity, thus freeing the market to self regulate.
M: I'm totally putting this in my blog.
H: Sweet, I didn't know I was going to be published.
M: I'm not using your name.
H: (expletive deleted).

Parting shot: I'm really enjoying all this extra sunlight in the morning, and I can rest assured that I'll save on candles come Spring. Thanks, Mr. Franklin!