Now that the Public Option has been redacted from healthcare reform like a Sharpie on a visor, focus is shifting to the screw-you provision “individual mandate,” which would require folks to buy health insurance or face a penalty. And while there are reasonable arguments to be made for the Mandate, one we fear we’re going to be hearing too much about is the comparison to car insurance.

States require citizens to buy car insurance, after all, so what’s the problem?

Just one: States do not require citizens to buy car insurance.

Was that unclear?

STATES DO NOT REQUIRE CITIZENS TO BUY CAR INSURANCE.

But how can that be? How can one of the major talking points of healthcare reform’s Individual Mandate be so easily undermined?

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It’s been a while for a post from me.  Sorry — work, work, no usable internet connection at work, work.  So I need to come back with a bang.

In that spirit, I offer the greatest thing ever.  Hurry Hard Condoms, sponsored by — yes — USA Curling.  (Curling is that sport that everybody falls in love with during the Winter Olympics after they get sick of wall-to-wall figure skating, and is the second national sport of Canada City.  It’s the one with rocks that people sweep, with brooms, up and down the ice, with people yelling HURRY! and HARD! at the sweepers.  Hence, the humor.)

There’s other curling jargon that is appropriate here, such as “the button,” “double takeout,” “hack,” “pebble,” “swingy,” and “biter.”  But I will leave that alone and leave you to contemplate whether curlers actually get any, thus necessitating the need for Hurry Hard Condoms.

[Noted: the condoms were released as a part of awareness-raising for World AIDS Day a couple of weeks ago.  So I should feel awful for poking fun, and you should feel awful for the laughs (pity or otherwise).  We are all AWFUL.]

[Also noted: while I was in Madison, I curled for a year.  It’s a great sport played by, well, almost uniformly dull people.  But curling is kind of out there.  Indie rock for accountants and insurance salesmen, perhaps.  And it is one of the ways good Wisconsinites and Minnesotans take out their aggression without killing animals.  So there’s that.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO7WXYrZGVI

How dare we have an opinion about our leaders!

I think that a lot of those people are troublemakers who love to sit in the backseat and complain. They’re not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they’re not interested in working for somebody in public office. They get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.

Dear Tweety,

I am an American citizen. Fuck you.

Cordially,

Nojo

Matthews: The netroots ‘get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.’ [ThinkProgress]

Short of denying Droopy his precious Homeland Security committee chairmanship, we’ll have to settle for Al Franken telling him to STFU on the Senate floor today.

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To the Teabagger who asked when she could get her country back, here’s the answer: She still has two generations to ruin it for everyone else.

The country’s financial meltdown and post-Sept. 11 immigration enforcement have slowed the growth of minority groups here. If those conditions remain the norm, whites would make up the majority of the population until 2050, eight years later than previously projected.

That’s according to a report from the Fascism Accountability Office Census Bureau, which also delays the projected 400 million citizens from 2039 until whenever.

For comparison, we’re at 308 million souls right now, two-thirds of which are real Americans. You don’t know whining until we Eurotrash-Americans lose even that substantial margin.

White Americans’ majority to continue until 2050, report says [LAT]

It’s one of those stories where you can read just the headline of the article then move on. Because, honestly, do you really need to delve into the body of a story that boasts the absurd (but true!) headline: NATO chief asks for Russian help in Afghanistan?

The NATO chief later said that he had asked Russian leaders to allow the alliance to fly cargoes — including possibly military ones — over Russian territory to Afghanistan and to provide more helicopters for the Afghan armed forces.

“I indicated that we would like to see a widening of the transit conditions,” he told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Medvedev would consider NATO’s requests, but gave no indication that Moscow was willing to increase cooperation and Rasmussen said he did not expect an immediate answer.

Students of history will recall that the Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted some nine years, led to the deaths of 15,000 Soviet soldiers, and is widely credited as one of the factors that led to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Russian reticence to get more involved is understandable, then, and the nine year conflict that broke the Soviet Union’s spirit has often been referred to as the Soviet Vietnam. The only question now is whether Afghanistan will turn out to be our Vietnam… er wait, I mean… that didn’t come out quite right.

(Via Michael Moore)

Once upon a time, a great leader named Slick Willie got his willie slicked. And while the people of Slick Willie’s land loved Slick Willie, Slick Willie’s friend Lockbox Al feared Slick Willie’s slick willie, and ran away as far from Slick Willie as fast as he could, leaving Slick Willie’s throne to the usurper, Burning Shrub.

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