Sadly, No!

Megan McArdle, The Atlantic:
My Last Word on Guns

• Okay, look: Waving assault rifles at Presidential events makes things harder for the Secret Service. Protests also make things harder for the Secret Service. Therefore BY LOGIC THE ONE EQUALS THE OTHER, so unless you suggest banning protests, WHICH ARE NOT AT ALL LIKE WAVING ASSAULT RIFLES, then by logic you SHOULD SUPPORT WAVING ASSAULT RIFLES AT PROTESTS gargle-gargle howl-squeal liberals are insane and at fault for violent danger and blame goes to liberals case closed ragga-fragga blatz screech-gargle no backs the end.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post:
Can Dems Rescue ObamaCare?

• Say, I’ve got some unsolicited advice for Democrats: Why not start over on health care reform, but this time drop death panels, rationing and the public option, and rewrite the bill to shovel taxpayer money into the pockets of private insurers. Heck, we could even restore your death panels and rationing a few years down the road, when nobody’s paying attention.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Digby alerts us to Ashton Kutcher giving us his Deep Thoughts on health care reform:

Frankly, I don’t want to pay for the guy who’s getting a triple-bypass because he’s eating fast food all day and deep-fried snickers bars. I don’t want to pay for him! Whether he’s wealthy or he’s not!

And you know what? Part of me agrees with this. I don’t want to subsidize someone’s shitty lifestyle choices when I’m a relatively healthy person who runs three times a week, who watches what he eats and who doesn’t smoke. The thought of paying for someone else making stupid decisions is not very appealing to me.

But guess what? I’m already paying for it. Check out this Price Waterhouse Coopers study on health care spending in the United States. According to the good folks at PWC, obesity in this country costs our health care system $200 billion — yes, $200 billion — a year in wasted spending. What most people don’t understand about health care is that by its nature it imposes collective costs. If we have our emergency rooms clogged up with people who have preventable illnesses or who go there for primary care because they can’t afford health insurance, that’s going to drive up health care costs and insurance premiums for all of us.

So really, this gives us three potential solutions:

• You can refuse treatment to people who have made poor lifestyle decisions, but I think most sane people would agree that this is inhumane and not a reasonable option.

• You can try to lower costs by expanding the risk pool to include more people and by emphasizing more preventative care, but this will inevitably lead to cries of the evil gubmint taking away individual freedom. Americans, as we’ve seen, don’t like being told to eat fewer Hardee’s Monster Thickburgers.

• Or you can do what we’re doing now, which is to pay more money per person on health care and get results that are worse than most industrialized nations.

Most countries have chosen to enact the second option, either through a single-payer system or through mandatory insurance with strict regulations of private insurers. We’re currently going with the third option, which is going to result in us spending 100% of our GDP on health care in 70 years’ time. I get the feeling, though, that at some point we’re going to be forced to go with the first option and will just let people die.

I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but the path dependency of America’s health care has given us a basketcase system that probably won’t be reformed even if our life expectancy drops below that of Sierra Leone. Sorry to be depressing and all, but that’s the way things are.

Any female readers from other countries want to marry my sorry ass and get me out of this nuthouse?

Shorter Fred “But I’m Really White, Goddamit” Schwarz, America’s Shittiest Website™
Why Obamacare Is Going Down

• Yes, National Review may have been racist in the sixties, but the magazine, in retrospect, was absolutely right. Even though the liberals said back then that passing civil rights laws wouldn’t mean a Negro takeover of the country, that’s exactly what happened, just as we predicted. It will be the same thing with Obamacare. Even though the liberals are now saying there won’t be paid abortions, death panels, and free beaner health care, there will be. You’ll see.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online:
A Test of Kennedy Currency:

• Democrats think they can bamboozle Republicans into voting for their health care “reform” bill by naming it after Ted Kennedy, even though they criticized Rush Limbaugh for coming up with the exact same idea five months before the senator succumbed to brain cancer, because doing so would force critics of the plan to necessarily speak ill of the dead – which no wishes to do. So in conclusion, Chappaquiddick, Martha Moxley, Oswald and Vietnam, JFK spurns MLK, tax cuts and liberal fakes, left-wing bullies, crass rallies, get them out of back allies, Reagan’s markets, we’re all targets, I can’t take it anymore!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Debbie Schlussel:
When a Snooty Left-Wing Celeb Goes to Grad School @ Harvard

• I once had an opportunity to attend the Harvard Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, but declined their offer of requesting an application. I am now so glad I did because meow-meow, rar-rar, hsss! jealousy, meow-Ashley-Judd-meow, S-N-O-B-S! hsss-rar!

Debbie Schlussel:
You Won’t Get TedCare Under ObamaCare: Ted Kennedy’s Brain Cancer Dream Team (Private Planes, Copters, Police Escorts, Mozart of Brain Surgeons)

• Ew, look at the ultra-elite, jewel-covered celebrity medical care lavished on ‘man of the people’ Ted Kennedy, ew. This is what Obama wants to take away from you.

Debbie Schlussel:
“Death Wish”: Important Movie Celebrates 35 Years; The Anti-Obama Flick

• I first learned about “Death Wish” from my father, a man excited by subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz. Now under Obama, who disrespected the Cambridge police¹ and implied they are racist, and with chain emails saying that even the liberal Snopes.com has confirmed that he is attacking our Second Amendment gun rights,² its message of vengeance and vigilantism is more relevant than ever.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Via Jesse, here’s one of Megan McArdle’s readers explaining the real reason poor people are overweight: because they lack the ambition of their betters:

I wanted to comment on your Bloggingheads event with David Frum and his total non-responsiveness to your theory about why people overeat. As someone who works in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles–land of the perfect body–I totally agree that government pressure will do nothing to make people lose weight. People will only give up one pleasure in exchange for a more intense pleasure. And if you’re poor and miserable, and eating is the high point of your life, you’ll always reach for the cheetos.

I suspect the only way people will change their behavior is a sudden desire to move up the social ladder. Being thin and attractive gives you a competitive edge, especially if you live in a city with lots of talented people.

Actually, no.

There are lots of reasons why people overeat. One reason is a lack of education. That’s not to say that people are stupid, but more that our food industry likes to pack lots of salt, sugar and fat into meals and marketing them to people as “healthy.” Take, for example, Vitamin Water. It’s billed as a great way to add nutrients to your diet without eating actual fruits and vegetables. Except then you learn that it has as much sugar as a can of Coke. See also the allegedly “healthy” salads that are loaded up with cheese, bacon and fatty dressings and that have nearly as many calories as Big Macs.

And then there’s the fact that fast food chains have been really upping their game in recent years by slopping ever-larger portions of fat, salt and sugar onto plates and selling them for $4.99 each. By a happy coincidence, I’ve just published an AlterNet article on some of the very nastiest examples, including Hardee’s 1,400-calorie Monster Thickburger:

Simply put, the Monster Thickburger is a fat, sloppy middle finger aimed at nutritionists everywhere. Clocking in at an artery-blowing 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat, the Thickburger premiered in 2004, when McDonald’s and Burger King were starting to sell out and offer their customers salads. In defending his decision to sell such a gaping monstrosity, Hardee’s CEO Andrew Puzder played George W. Bush to McDonald’s and Burger King’s John Kerry, essentially calling them out as wimps who didn’t have the balls to dramatically shorten their customers’ life expectancy with just one meal. Specifically, he said the Thickburger was “not a burger for tree-huggers” but rather “for guys who want a really big, delicious, juicy decadent burger.” Yes, gents, nothing will show the ladies how manly you are quite like a belly made entirely of butter.

Now, I’m not somebody who thinks that you should sue corporations who sell you shitty food and make you obese. But by the same token, more people need to realize that the companies selling them food aren’t interested in making them healthy and that if they eat a bunch of processed crap they’re going to gain weight. “Don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised” is this generation’s equivalent of “Don’t trust anyone over 40 30 ,” methinks.

UPDATE: Dan Someone wins the thread:

As a guy with a wife who finds and cooks nutritious and fresh foods on a generally reasonable budget, I can honestly say that I’m still fat. Also, as much as I would like to move up the social ladder, I’m too fucking fat to climb it. Next solution!

Doop-de-doop, eatin’ some cheese fries. Ding-dong, oh wait, it’s the door. Sign there? Why certainly.

It was the OPPS guy. That’s the parcel delivery service that delivers non-oneself Internet folly such as is produced by other people. The name is pronounced ‘oops.’ You can often, by the way, find their deliverymen intruding on conversations here on the Internet, such as when some other person is posting or chatting, or increasingly Twittering, with some other people entirely, and is interrupted as follows:

DOOP DE DOOP EATIN SOME CHZ FRIES OPPS ONO BRB……..

A bribe? Great, but once you’ve taken her money, try doing a Julian Lennon documentary without including all sorts of Sean footage. No, it only goes to show you how other people are always getting into funny trouble.

Let’s see what’s in this small oblong box marked GOP DER. I think it’s going to be a gopoder, or a vocoder to make Go-Bot as opposed to just plain robot voices for what you might call gip-gop tracks.

Steve Benen, Washington Monthly:
Kennedy’s Unfinished Work

[…] Noam Scheiber wrote over the weekend, before any of us knew any details about the senator’s condition, about the likely political consequences of the Liberal Lion’s passing.

That’s sort of like a robot voice, but it’s actually Steve Benen writing in the plainsong style of the Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal column, as originated by the unrolling red lens-eye of Kevin “Hello, Dave” Drum, himself dismantled as though in reciprocal proof of the maxim, “Keir Dullea, gone tomorra.” Here’s the…wow, that scraping sound was me striking bottom.

Ho, ho, ho, meretricious! Well, inside our present box is not a vial of ‘go powder’ or an opPod with which to sneakily watch vintage kaleidoscope patterns whilst driving, nor a pair of Gomper Stompers such as Samuel Gompers wore, but it is literally GOP DER, because OMG NOM SCHBR WTF!!!

Noam Scheiber, The New Republic:

[…] If Kennedy were to pass away in the next few months, the Senate math on any health care vote would almost certainly get easier, not harder. For one thing, it would single-handedly make the magic number 51 votes, not 60, since it would be suicidal for the GOP to filibuster the culmination of the last Kennedy brother’s lifelong crusade.

Um. At a time in which the GOP is coordinating with mobs of angry talk-radio addicts to disrupt Congressional town hall meetings and health reform events, one in which the level of mainstream conservative discourse includes concocted concentration camp and euthanasia outrages and droned suggestions that the President is literally a Nazi of the Communist variety and/or vice versa, in which the current high mark of right-wing scariness (not counting a rash of uncoordinated shootings) is a display of assault rifles outside the venue of a Presidential visit, and in which conservatives are openly talking about secession, revolution, ‘watering the Tree of Liberty,’ and so forth, and preparing to go Peak Apeshit over Ted Kennedy’s funeral — nay, to open up the Strategic Apeshit Reserves, to drill for Apes in our national parks and zoos and to process profligate tonnage of Ape Shale… Um, it would be suicidal for the GOP to filibuster the what, now?

Beyond that, I suspect the coverage of Kennedy’s death would silence healthcare reform critics and boost proponents in a way that netted at least a couple of wavering moderates — so clearing the 51-vote threshold wouldn’t be a problem. Heck, you might even see Utah Republican (and longtime Kennedy friend) Orrin Hatch back in the reformist camp.

It reads like comedy, doesn’t it? Or, that is, like ‘comitragedy,’ that bright and often accidental tragedy so naively distinct from the dark and ironic comedy that is ‘tragicomedy.’

Comitragedy is when a man with an expressive mustache goes “Whoopsie!” and falls down a hole marked with a little wooden sign saying “R.I.P,” especially if the mustache is initially left spinning midair and then falls down a little hole marked with a little “R.I.P.” sign. Tragicomedy is when that man helps you feel sorry for yourself — i.e., he is you, and the hole is marked with something poignant, like “So long, sucker.” Or it’s a toilet marked “The Way of All Flush” or “The World, Flush, and The Devil.” But let’s see that passage again:

Beyond that, I suspect the coverage of Kennedy’s death would silence healthcare reform critics

Who, until some TV spots on Ted Kennedy’s life and legacy made them come grudgingly to honor this lion of liberalism, were running around in mobs screaming that Kennedy’s dream of health care reform is actually a DemonKKKcrap Farty plot to mass-murder America’s grandparents.

…and boost proponents in a way that netted at least a couple of wavering moderates — so clearing the 51-vote threshold wouldn’t be a problem. Heck, you might even see Utah Republican (and longtime Kennedy friend) Orrin Hatch back in the reformist camp.

You know, usually when you see a sentence beginning with ‘Heck, [article or pronoun]…’ it’s to signal that a whimsical overstatement is close at hand — the whimsical overstatement being an imagined form of humor used by the non-humorous, who think that jokes should make less sense than serious writing, whereas in my account, serious writing is really a kind of slow, rolling joke with a soft landing. But I digress.

Making self-consciously abrupt digressions in order to create sense in unexpected ways, yes. Heck, we saw that happen a thousand times just now! Whee! But no, Scheiber is serious:

So all the maneuvering around Kennedy’s hypothetical replacement strikes me as unnecessary at best and possibly even counterproductive, since it could only detract from what would otherwise be a powerful (and authentic) emotional outpouring in the event of Kennedy’s passing.

Um, talking about his replacement would…? Because the…? ??? sproing??? Here’s Steve Benen, more clearheaded and as it happens less exploded into a strew of broken clockwork than we:

I would love to believe this is correct. Honestly, I would. And it’s possible that honorable lawmakers are capable of more humanity than I give them credit for.

Well, sure, but it’s the Republicans we have to worry about. Meh, it looks like we’re the OPPS guy this time. Ding-dong. Hi, sign here, reasonable liberals, for this package you ordered, marked POO CANO. It looks like a plastic mountain with a 220 volt electrical plug coming out of it, like for a really large gauge of train set maybe.

* Recurring pun funnel cf.

Andrew “Ku Klux” Klavan, Pajamas Media:
Bye

• A chap, a quid, a dick — Pachacutec.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

D. Aristophanes adds: A man, a tran, a panel van — Klavan, A.

Above: La-la something-something foggy drip

Ben Smith, The Politico:
Conservatives on Kennedy: ‘A Wellstone memorial on steroids’

• Conservative bloggers are angry at an imaginary Ted Kennedy funeral in their heads. It would seem odd for Kennedy’s family, friends, and colleagues to arrange his actual funeral to appease conservatives, but if they do not, conservative bloggers might go after health care reform.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™