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I will no longer give credence to anyone making the assertion that the health care reform bill making its way through the House is, in any way, shape or form, a "government takeover."
It isn't. You know it. I know it. And if you don't know it, then you've been duped.
Any further use of this term, in person or via Interweb, will be met with instant and total derision, as well as full dismissal of all other points of view.
That is all.

Continuing a years-long effort to keep people the hell out of Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter unveiled the city's plan Thursday to institute a permanent 2-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary liquids.
"We've recently taken a number of steps to keep people - and their money - from flowing into our city and this new tax is in line with that agenda," said Nutter. "I don't think I have to remind anyone of the 8 percent sales tax we put in place last year. Our business taxes also remain among the highest in the nation, while our lack of parking and resultant violations collections measures are so legendary that A&E for some reason made a television show about it. ... For those who would rather take SEPTA into the city and avoid the parking situation, years of mismanagment have forced costs to increase to a 'prohibitive' level, all but eliminating that option."
While he wasn't directly responsible for it, Nutter said the city also takes great pride in its 4 percent wage tax, which he said has been an excellent deterrent to anyone willing to live or work in Philadelphia. He noted some 300,000 jobs have fled Phialdlephia since 1950, alnog with about 30 percent of the population.
This new sugar tax is ostensibly a "sin tax" intended to keep young people from getting fat, said Nutter, whose hatred for fatties (but not bloat) has been well documented.
Plans to provide poorer neighborhoods that more closely resemble a post-tsunami Indonesia than inner-city Philadelphia with access to anything more than a bodega for foodstuffs were apparently not included in discussions.
Nutter, the driving force behind a citywide smoking ban in 2007, said he does have some other plans in the works to combat obesity, however, including rationing of fast food access and an outright ban on cheesesteaks.
"Listen, we're not saying you shouldn't be able to make choices about what you do with or to your own body, except in the sense that yes, that is exactly what we're saying," said Nutter. "We just want you to live, work and play somewhere else. Why is that so hard for people to understand?"

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.