My husband recently read an article on the Web that the Bible forbids Christians from having a Christmas tree in their house (Jeremiah 10:3.) was the Bible verse that the article listed. Our children are going to be crushed if we don’t have a tree this Christmas. What can I do?

Signed,
Peggy

Dear Peggy,

You, your husband, and your whiny children are well and truly fucked. Your husband has discovered the dirty secret of Christmas: Everything involved in our celebration of the holiday stems from pagan rituals, developed by Satan millennia ago as a ticking timebomb that not even Jack Bauer can defuse before your life takes a commercial break.

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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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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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We have only two questions regarding healthcare reform:

1. Is it better than what exists?

2. Does it screw us over?

The second question has never been an absolute deal-breaker for us — just an ongoing note of concern. We can deal with some degree of fuckitude for the good of the Republic. Just be gentle with us.

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We have no shortage of anal pears to bestow upon Joe Lieberman, and the past couple of days we’ve been more than happy to give their cranks a few extra twists. But mere satiric vitriol isn’t enough for Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake:

Donations to find a cure for cancer should not be used to pay the salary of former insurance and drug lobbyist Hadassah Lieberman, wife of Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who is pledging to kill health care reform while millions go untreated.

Hamsher, a three-time breast cancer survivor, lays out a complicated case against Susan B. Komen Foundation spokesperson Hadassah Lieberman: that she “has worked for the insurance-pharmaceutical-lobbying complex”; that “she has used her association with her husband the Senator” to score cushy consulting gigs; that “the death of health care reform will no doubt please the clients of Hadassah Lieberman’s lobbying firms”; that “the drugs that are developed by the Komen money are being put out of the financial reach of average middle class women by Hadassah Lieberman’s lobbying firms”; that “the Komen Foundation focuses its resources on developing treatments that increase the profitability of pharmaceutical companies like the ones that employ Mrs. Lieberman rather than prevention”.

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Like any Tea Party Patriot, Merry Hyatt has had it to here with government intrusion into our lives. But instead of wasting her time on meaningless theatrics like a Senate Die-In, she’s actually doing something about it — gathering signatures to put hijacked pagan solstice rituals back where they belong:

The initiative would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn’t followed.

As it happens, California schoolchildren are already allowed to sing odes to festive winter home-invasion scenarios, but that’s missing the point:

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Irony never died, of course. It never does. Irony is a fundamental organizing principle of civilization, as necessary to our communal survival as agriculture and fluffy toilet paper. Without irony, life itself would be impossible. Or, at the very least, insufferable.

Yet it was only a year ago that the Death of Irony was again proclaimed, its high priests and low jokers pointedly asked to justify their existence in the dawning Age of Unicorn. On or about November 4, 2008, human nature had changed, and Ironists would be as useless as Karl Rove’s conscience.

That moment has long since passed. But with Barack Obama today accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, heralded by a Russian missile, and following his announcement of tens of thousands of additional American troops not-occupying Afghanistan for years to come, we choose this occasion to celebrate renewal. Irony is dead! Long live Irony!

It is our good fortune to have a President who recognizes this, and who will make the point himself during his acceptance speech. No ginned-up aircraft-carrier landings for him. For if there is one thing that is truly postmodern about Obama, it’s that he gets it.

War president will address incongruity of accepting peace prize [WaPo]

Strange light in Norwegian sky sparks mystery [Telegraph UK]