The Nutty Professor

Before starting a teaching job at one of California's many fine universities or junior colleges, the prospective instructor must first undergo a simple hazing ritual that involves looking upon the hideous visage of a Lovecraftian Elder God.  If the applicant survives, his new colleagues clap him on the back, and everybody goes out for drinks and appetizers at the Cheesecake Factory..

However, if a glimpse of Yog-Sothoth or Shub-Nigurrath reduces the candidate to a gibbering madness, he is immediately subdued by the able-bodied men present, immobilized with leather gyves and a stout canvas "restraining sheet," and offered the chance to pick up a little extra cash writing articles for American Thinker. Then everybody piles into the Party Bus and it's off to the Cheesecake Factory!

This week's Cthulhu-plagued pedagogue is Robert Oscar Lopez, English Professor at California State University-Northridge.  But before we get to Professor Lopez's particular moral hobbyhorse, let's take a moment to meet the man himself.

[cue The Dating Game theme]

Bachelor Number One describes himself as a "children's advocate" and the editor of English Manif, a bilingual French-English blog which promotes the idea that "The rights of children trump the desires of any group such as the LGBT lobby seeking control of children for their personal fulfillment."

When the Minnesota legislature was considering marriage equality, Bachelor Number One showed up twice to testify as an expert witness:

On March 12, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee a convoluted story about growing up with a lesbian mother, falling himself into a life of drugs and promiscuity as a young gay man and finally marrying a woman and becoming a father. The experience, he testified, scarred him for life.

I'm sure my Dad would agree with Professor Lopez that becoming a father can leave a few scars. Especially when the ungrateful little twerp refuses to mow the lawn or get a haircut.

"[My peers] learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures. These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.”

"So in conclusion, Senators, when you consider upending an institution that has been a cornerstone of civilized society since time immemorial, please remember the stereotypical trailer lesbians. Thank you."

“Young adult men’s support for redefining marriage may not be entirely the product of ideals about expansive freedoms, rights, liberties, and a noble commitment to fairness,” he is quoted as concluding. “It may be, at least in part, a byproduct of regular exposure to diverse and graphic sex acts.”

As several scientifically rigorous, peer-reviewed studies have shown, the more porn stars toss each other's salad, the more the typical young adult man thinks about marriage.

Prof. Lopez appearing uninvited before the Minnesota State Senate Judiciary Committee to answer the eternal, if unasked question of how he caught The Gay from two lesbians in a mobile home.  The Committee unanimously voted his testimony the Worst Penthouse Forum Letter Ever.

Anyway, on with the Professor's lecture:

The International Gay War on Black People

The most blatant contempt toward black Americans I've seen recently has come from none other than the organized leadership of the LGBT lobby.

ME:  And where exactly did you see that, Professor?

LOPEZ:  Inside this kaleidoscope!   (BRANDISHES LIFELIKE 13-INCH RUBBER PENIS)

ME:  I thought kaleidoscopes were those cardboard tube thingies.  That actually looks more like an enormous dildo...

LOPEZ:  Of course it does!  Where else would you hide the LGBT lobby?  (PUTS THE MEATUS TO HIS EYE AND TWISTS THE FORESKIN BACK AND FORTH)  Ohhh, you should see how racist they're being in here. Also, if you turn it real fast, it looks like the opening credits of Family Affair.

Donnie McClurkin, an award-winning musician, was supposed to perform at the fiftieth anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march on Washington. McClurkin is a black Christian who has come forward with an inspiring life story. He was molested as a boy and developed homosexual behaviors, possibly as a result of the trauma.

I dunno, Prof...as inspirational TV movie fodder goes, it's not exactly Brian's Song.  And if we're going to offer pseudo-scientific explanations for same-sex attraction, we should make certain that we're absolutely sure of our fake facts.  Have you considered the possibility that Mr. McClurkin developed homosexual behaviors as the result of a vaccination?  Or maybe he was driven to knob-gobble after years of using Sexy Hair's Soy Renewal Nourishing Styling Treatment.  (By the way, is it just me, or does The Knobgobbler sound like a character from those old McDonaldland commercials?)

Later his faith helped him to overcome his homosexual desires and live a more biblical life.

Now he spends most of his time cuckolding Hittites and refusing to mix his fabrics.

Under pressure from gay power activists in Washington the mayor of Washington, D.C., Vincent Gray, decided to drop McClurkin from the concert. McClurkin was humiliated. LGBT activists felt that someone who had called homosexuality a "sin" could not perform at a concert commemorating the life and work of a black Christian reverend.

Well, he also called it a "curse," but maybe he was just talking about the way trailer lesbians synchronize their monthly cycles.

Professor Lopez goes on for awhile, so let me summarize: at this point he rehearses a litany of African-Americans who've said or done discriminatory things regarding gay people and gotten flack for it.  Why is he the spokesperson for Black Christendom?  Probably for the same reason he's the leader of a Children's Crusade against the LGBT powers of personal fulfillment.

The peculiar ideology of the LGBT lobby, however, seems fashioned perfectly to inflame the rage and resistance of African-Americans. First, the ideology is based on biological determinism. The repeated appeals to the Fourteenth Amendment depend upon the notion that homosexuals are born with their orientation in the same way black people are born with dark skin. This isn't the most inviting way to start a comparison: "Hi, I'm a guy who loves playing with other men's genitals, and that's just like you being black!"

I really need to quit using this as an icebreaker at the Apollo.

There is an added dimension to this dangerous form of essentialism, however. The LGBT lobby is driven by the belief that people whom they classify as "born homosexuals" must engage in the actual acts of sexual gratification with the same sex, or there is something wrong with them.

Dude, this is America.  TV commercials for fast food patty melts make you feel bad if you're not having sex -- straight, gay, or otherwise.  

Within this logic, it is impossible to go from homosexual activity to non-homosexual activity.

I had no idea homosexuality was so powerful that gay guys can't stop blowing each other long enough to make a pot roast or buy snow tires.

So convinced are LGBT activists of this rejection of free will and self-control that they have moved to make it illegal in California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts for counselors to help minors cease or avoid sexual activities with the same sex.

And if you outlaw an entire industry based on quack psychology and self-loathing, it will likely have drastic and deleterious effects on society.  For one thing, it may lead to a decrease in teen suicides.  Which, okay, I admit sounds good, but will almost certainly produce unintended consequences, such as...um...fewer Bobbie Gentry songs?

The LGBT lobby also demands that same-sex couples have the right to be parents. Here is where the movement becomes utterly irreconcilable with black history...For same-sex couples to become parents, they must purchase children. They won't call it that, of course. But buying sperm from a sperm-bank or renting a woman's womb both entail the exchange of money for ownership of a child. The state is then embroiled in the arrangement as an enforcer of the contract, compelling the child and third parties to respect the authority of two adults, one or both of whom are unrelated to the child, and both of whom came into possession of a dependent human being through money.

Ahhh...that explains this birth announcement I just got from my friends Mark and Pam:

How does this sound for a race of people who came out of slavery? Do you think it makes sense to tell black people, who were treated as chattel and stereotyped as savages incapable of self-control, that they ought to jump on board?

Had Harriet Beecher Stowe only known that slavery, which seemed such a cruel injustice in her day, would come to seem trivial compared to in vitro fertilization, she probably would have titled her book Uncle Tom's Sperm Bank.

Has it ever occurred to the LGBT lobby's loudmouths that they are fighting for segregation, not against it, so they shouldn't be comparing themselves to blacks fighting Jim Crow at all?

This should be good...

 After all, to fight for same-sex marriage means that the state endorses the creation of separate estates for male/male and female/female couples, with restricted access to property. Old marriage laws ensured gender diversity within households; same-sex marriage drives men and women into ghettoized enclaves.

So traditional marriage was really just affirmative action?  It was a quota system?  In other words, Professor, you're telling me that under the old law, even if I found a more qualified man to propose to, I could be forced by the government to marry a woman?  Alright, that's it!  I'm taking this all the way to the Supreme Court.

Laws against miscegenation were based on the idea that whites were born to mate with whites and not with blacks -- so why is racial history being cited by a lobby that thinks gays were born to mate with the same sex and not the opposite sex (orientation-mixing, which they view as unnatural and even want to outlaw in California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey?).

Wow. That makes so little sense I'm surprised the Professor doesn't teach criminology.

Toad in the Hole

 When it comes to Concern Trolls, I don't claim to be a connoisseur, but I do prefer the imported variety.  Call me a snob. Perhaps it's because I know Toby Young not from his failed stint at Vanity Fair, or his memoir about it, How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, which sounds like it ought to have been ghostwritten for Sarah Palin, but because he was a judge on the sixth season of Top Chef.  Here's a bit of his bio from the show's website:

Young has appeared as a judge on a variety of food reality programs, including Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Criminals and most recently, a 20-part BBC series called Eating With The Enemy. In addition, he was a contestant on Come Dine With Me, a popular Channel 4 reality show, which he won.

[I]n 2005, co-wrote a sex farce called Who's the Daddy?

I find the news that someone is still practicing the fine old art of British sex farcing delightfully quaint, like watching a cooper assemble a firkin in Colonial Williamsburg.

President Obama's socialist agenda will divide America – or, rather, make the existing divisions even more bitter and rancorous

What a contrast last night's Inaugural Address was compared to the one President Obama gave four years ago. Gone was any attempt to reach out to his Republican opponents.

Well, in all fairness, you don't reach out to John Boehner, you reach around to John Boehner, and even then you might have to grope around for a bit.

In its place was an aggressive assertion of modern liberalism, with the emphasis on gay rights, gun control, gender equality, combating climate change and – if his remarks about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and income inequality are anything to go by – redistributive taxation. 

Ah, Modern Liberalism...aggressively asserting rights we should have had in the Seventies, and tax policy we did have in the Sixties.

This is a fully-fledged socialist agenda that will leave the the 47.2 per cent of Americans who didn't vote for Obama feeling ostracised and angry.

My great aunt, a rock-ribbed Republican who has lived her entire life in a small rural community, no longer dares to show her face in town, thanks to carbon offsets.

 If this is going to be the tone of Obama's second term, the next four years are likely to see America more divided than at any time since the 1960s. 

Toby has a point.  Obama's predecessor brought together a much higher percentage of the American people; in November, 2008, 75% of them thought he was an idiot.

Obama's opponents will claim – rightly – that he has no mandate for his egalitarian agenda.

Winning a clear majority of votes used to be sufficient to claim a mandate, but English is a fluid, dynamic language, and now the term is reserved exclusively for Australia's Number 1 Adult Male Review.  So while you're in decent shape for a man your age, Mr. President, you're gonna have to swing a pretty hefty banana hammock before you can assert the right to increase the progressivity of the tax code.

 He made numerous attempts yesterday to claim the mantle of previous presidents who've advanced the cause of equality, including Abraham Lincoln. But he overlooked the fact that in almost every case they were able to take the majority of the American public with them thanks to exceptional historical circumstances. 

It's always polite to hold off on promoting gay rights until a war starts, or the stock market crashes.   It's like waiting for the hostess to pick up her shrimp fork.

Lincoln, for instance, would not have been able to get the 13th Amendment through Congress if the North hadn't been about to declare victory over the South in the Civil War – and even then he only managed it by the skin of his teeth, as Spielberg's recent biopic makes clear. Similarly, Franklin D Roosevelt would not have been able to persuade Congress to embrace the New Deal if it hadn't been for the Great Depression.

Of course, Lincoln had the advantage of a Congress free from the kind of Southern reactionaries and bigots who are obstructing progress now.  But perhaps if that same group would take arms against the lawful government again, he could rack up a similarly impressive legislative record.  True, nobody's fired on fort Sumter yet, but they're already making noises about nullifying federal laws, and in America, nullification is like the Soup Starter of bloody insurrection.

Just add Treason!

Obama's circumstances are less like those of Lincoln or Roosevelt and more like those of John F Kennedy. 

Or so the patriots calling for his assassination seem to hope.

Kennedy had a similarly ambitious liberal programme, 

He planned to create vast new federal bureaucracies tasked with adding extraneous vowels and consonants to all our words!

but was unable to get almost any of it through Congress. To take just one example, his civil rights bill was successfully obstructed by a Senate dominated by conservative Southern Democrats.

And now conservative Southern Republicans are obstructing legislation.  Why?  Because old times there are not forgotten.

In Kennedy's favor, he did end discrimination in federal housing, but he had to do it through an executive order.  I trust it's not too late to impeach him.

 One of the clear lessons of the fourth volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson is that, without Kennedy's assassination, the 1964 Civil Rights Act would never have been passed.

So while conservatives obstructed equal rights for African Americans, a Communist with an itchy trigger finger facilitated them.  I'm not entirely sure what Toby's point is here, but I think he's advising us to stock up on magic bullets in the event of a filibuster.  I'm sure Hogwarts has a pawn shop...

The vision outlined by Obama yesterday was, in its own way, as ambitious as anything set out by Lincoln, Roosevelt or Johnson. But there's no corresponding historical crisis to provide Obama with the political opportunity to realise that vision. In the absence of that, Obama has little hope of getting a programme of liberal legislation through Congress. I'm even sceptical about the passage of a gun control bill. Instead, Obama will just end up dividing America – or, rather, make the existing divisions even more bitter and rancorous. 

"Congratulations, Mr. President.  You endured a long and brutal campaign to win an exhausting and thankless office, during which you became a repository for the hopes and dreams of millions of struggling Americans, and according to our extensive polling, the best and most rational course now would be to give up."

He is leading his forces into a civil conflict he cannot possibly win and unless he reverses course the next four years will be among the ugliest in America's history.

Sure, Vietnam, the Depression, Jim Crow, the Civil War all seemed pretty ugly at the time, but if Obama doesn't turn Caucasian and veer to the right of Mitch McConnell immediately, people might circulate some intemperate emails.

Mo' Better Blahs

Let's check in with self-appointed troubadour of the Tea Party Movement, Lloyd Marcus, seen here at some sort of Colonel Sanders cos-play convention:

(Actually, now that I perform a bit of Google Image Search due diligence, I see that the above photo is from a recent column entitled, "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day: Great Turnout, Few Blacks In My Town."  Apparently, Lloyd feels that living in a largely Negro-free community makes for improved public events, which probably explains his attraction to Tea Party rallies.)

Obama versus Jesus: Black Christians Must Decide

A poll claims that Romney will receive zero percent of the black vote. Well, if the poll proves correct, it means that a vast majority of black voters are ignorant of the truth...or else they're racist. 

That seemed a bit harsh, until I remembered that I'm planning to vote against Romney too, and if I'm going to be completely honest with myself, I have to admit that it's largely out of a sense of racial solidarity; because, like President Obama, some of my relatives are also white.

Black Christians who vote for Obama knowing his crimes against Christianity and biblical principles have chosen to worship the idol of racial loyalty over their discipleship to Jesus Christ. Pure and simple.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." -Exodus 20:3 

I bet Exodus was pretty peeved when Jesus and the Holy Ghost horned in, but then, I'm no doctrinal expert (my mother tried very hard to persuade me to become a Christian, but I was always more attracted to monotheism).

Incredibly, some blacks have completely forsaken their Christianity for Obama.

I wonder what's convincing all those white young people to abandon the church?  Probably their unhealthy fixation on Joe Biden.

A fellow PK (preacher's kid) said her parents recently changed their stance on same-sex marriage in support of their black president. I find this remarkable.

Though I disagree, I have been sympathetic and understanding with black seniors who have suffered dearly, with hearts still bearing scars of racial injustice.

LLOYD:  Mr. Johnson, pardon me for barging into your oxygen tent, but I just heard you've decided gay people shouldn't be attacked by police dogs or beaten with truncheons for demanding their civil rights, the way you were, and I just wanted to say...I forgive you."

But now that Obama has been exposed as the most anti-Christian president in U.S. history...

(False charges courtesy of David Barton, America's leading fake historian.)

...senior black Christians must no longer be given a pass for supporting this man. 

Get over your damn flashbacks to the Edmund Pettis bridge, Grandpa, or Lloyd's gonna turn the firehose on you and everyone in this whole damn nursing home!

At stake is something extremely important: their fellowship with Christ versus an idolatrous worship of skin color.

Blonde, blue-eyed Jesus would really like you to get over this hangup, black people.

Talk about hardcore anti-Christian beliefs: not only does Obama support abortion, but he supports infanticide -- killing babies who survive failed abortions.

Of course, this is an urban legend, but then, so is most of the Bible, so there's probably some sort of Ninth Commandment exemption for spreading it in the name of Jesus.

Obama taught Alinsky tactics to university students from a book which its author dedicated to Lucifer. Rules for Radicals was written by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's dedication says, "...the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer" 

Actually, that's part of the epigraph (the same page quotes Rabbi Hillel and Thomas Paine); the book is actually dedicated "to Irene."  But she was probably Satan's wife or something.

Obama's attacks on religious freedoms are numerous. Over 40 Catholic groups are suing Obama for mandating in ObamaCare that faith-based institutions provide contraception and abortion services. 

It doesn't, of course.  But after years of getting sued by victims of clerical sexual abuse, the Catholics probably just got tired of the Defendant's table, and wanted to see what it was like to sit on the other side of the courtroom for once.  ("Hey, this is niiiiice.  We should complaintiff more often.")

Anyway, black people need to vote against the first black president because mostly white Catholics are squicked out by lady parts.

Incredibly, the roots of racial hatred run so insidiously deep into the hearts of some blacks who profess Christianity that Obama has their vote -- period. 

That's why Republicans have worked so hard this year to reduce minority voting rights.  It's not that they want to disenfranchise blacks, they're just trying prevent a hate crime.

These blacks will claim that my facts are lies, that videos have been doctored, and that I am a paid Uncle Tom sell-out to the Republicans. 

Well, I wouldn't blame it on their race, Lloyd, since I'll claim the first two out of three myself.  I don't feel I have the right to claim the last, however, because I don't honestly believe they're paying you for this shit.

In the biblical account of Christ's Passion, the law gave the mob an opportunity to free one condemned prisoner, thus saving their choice from crucifixion.

Well, it was a coupon good for One Free Prisoner, but the mob forgot to present it immediately upon ordering.

Pilate asked the crowd, do I free Jesus or Barabbas? The crowd yelled, "Give us Barabbas!" Jesus was crucified.

Which was probably a good thing in the long run, because if Barabbas had been crucified, we'd spend every December watching holiday specials like A Charlie Brown Barabbasmas, which I suspect would prove hard to say after the second mug of wassail.

Two thousand years later, biblical principles are scheduled for crucifixion in America.

But they wanted to do it on the lawn in front of City Hall, so naturally the ACLU has filed a lawsuit.

Black Christians are faced with a crucial choice: Jesus or Obama.

I didn't even realize they were competing products.  Remind me, which is the one with Flavor Crystals?

I pray that come November, a majority of black Christians will not yell, "Give us skin color!"

Because that would mean that the majority of black Christians had become albinos, which would mean The Omega Man plague was upon us, and that would suck.

"I was concerned about protecting access to reproductive health care, preserving Pell Grant funding, and reducing unemployment, but I'm a single-issue voter now, baby!"

Bryan Fischer: I Never Said I Didn't Believe in SOCIAL Darwininsm!

Reader Bob was kind enough to call our attention to this timely column by radio rant show host Bryan Fischer, who -- just this once! -- puts aside his usual anti-gay crusade to solve the problem of rising health care costs.  (I don't want to give away the ending, but it involves you making a series of spectacularly stupid and ultimately fatal choices, beginning with your decision to read a column by Bryan Fischer.)

Bryan Fischer: Bringing down health care costs so easy a caveman could do it.

Well, first off, it appears that Bryan has confused those politically correct Neanderthals offended by the use of troglodyte stereotypes to sell car insurance, with the lizards and domestic fowl which act as spokesmodels for life insurance companies.

Oetzi the Ice Age Mummy says, "In my day, we didn't have government mandated health care, and yet somehow I managed to climb nine thousand feet into the Alps, despite arthritis and a bad case of whipworm.  In fact, I used to be an adventurer like yourself, until I took an arrow in the knee."

If we want to bring down the cost of health care, it’s easy. What we lack is not the way but the will.

The way is simple.

The simplest solution is usually the correct one, and the nice part is, Occam's Razor can also be used to lance boils, shave off cancerous moles, and perform other money-saving forms of self-surgery!

First, eliminate the federal requirement that hospitals have to treat any patient who shows up. That’s the place to begin.

Well, if that's the solution, then we'll probably have to begin outside, since we'll need to clear a space where we can stack the bodies of untreated coronary and gunshot victims like cordwood.  I suggest we mark off a section of the parking lot with traffic cones (there'll be fewer visitors anyway) or maybe tear out those shrubs near the ER entrance.

Get government out of telling hospitals who they have to do business with.

Maybe this whole business model is flawed to begin with, and instead of dealing with sick people, hospitals should be doing business with Fiberglass insulation manufacturers, or novelty gearshift knob wholesalers.

There is simply no way to control the cost of health care if hospitals are obligated to provide healthcare to all regardless of their ability to pay.

It's Economics 101.  Taking a commodity and making it rare and something that only the rich can afford is the best way to drive down prices.

How long would a mechanic last if he was required to fix every automobile anybody brought to his shop, regardless of ability to pay? He’d be broke and out of business in a week, and pretty soon there would be no mechanics for anybody. We’d all be riding bikes to work.

Is the mechanic tax exempt, like a non-profit hospital?  Does he accept automobiles on Medicare or Medicaid?  Do our car insurance premiums go up if he performs an emergency water pump replacement on an indigent 1977 AMC Gremlin?  And if mechanics are treating cars like people, does that mean doctors get to start treating patients like cars?  ("I'm afraid your father has a faulty heart valve.  Now, we can replace it, and you might get a few more years out of him, but between the parts and labor, you're better off junking him for the scrap value.")

People need medical care, you will say. Right. People need to eat, too. How long would a grocer stay in business if he was required to offer food to everyone who walked in the door regardless of their ability to pay? He’d be broke in a week, and then nobody would have food.

Or the government could issue Food Stamps, thereby permitting poor people to feed their children, while simultaneously allowing Mr. Drucker to maintain his quaint corner grocery and continue to live the Hooterville Dream.

But I think I see where you're heading with this Bryan, and I have to admit, between the starvation and the withholding of medical care, you may have finally solved the problem of our permanent underclass.

There was no such emergency room law prior to the one Ronald Reagan - yes, that smaller government, government-is-not-the solution Ronald Reagan - signed in 1986. For the first 200 years of our life as a republic, hospitals through charity and charitable donations offered health care to the neediest among us, and did so without anybody having to order them to do it.

It's baffling that Congress would go to the trouble of drafting and passing a law -- let alone that Reagan of all people would sign it -- to solve a problem that didn't exist.  But then, I felt the same way about the Clean Water Act, since for the first 200 years of our republic, polluting industries were scrupulous about saving their noxious effluent in Mason jars in the basement, much like Howard Hughes' bowel movements.

Anyway, I don't remember anybody worrying about doctor bills prior to 1986, although that could just be the result of this untreated head injury.

Most hospitals were started by Christians or Christian organizations, and will find a way to offer care to the indigent whether the federal government is standing over them with a cudgel or not.

I always thought Community Health Systems, Inc. was a huge, for-profit corporation, but apparently it's an order of Carmelite nuns who rebranded.

The American people, because of the spirit of Christianity, are the most generous people on earth, which they prove time after time when disasters hit anywhere in the world. Let’s not insult our own people by saying they are not generous and compassionate enough to help the needy with medical care.

So if you need a couple thousand dollars to get that abscess taken care of before you die of blood poisoning, just organize a telethon for yourself, or persuade Bob Geldolf to write a song about you.

Health insurance should be for emergencies, not routine maintenance. We don’t expect auto insurance to cover oil changes and tire rotations.

And that analogy would work brilliantly, if people were born with warranties.  ("I'm sorry, Bill.  If we'd detected your cancer earlier, we could have done something, but now, well...it's 25 Years or 25,000 Miles and you're 26 and a half.  Your parents should've bought the Extended Warranty when you were zygote.")

 It’s there for accidents. And so health insurance should not be there for checkups but for major events.

This may come as a blow to insurance companies, who often prefer to pay for mammograms rather than mastectomies, and prescription birth control rather than pregnancies, because they're cheaper, but if we're going to make Bryan's plan work, we're all going to have share the pain.

If people paid out of pocket for all medical expenses up to a high deductible, they’d be much more careful about their use of medical services and they’d take better care of themselves in the meantime. The cost of medical services would come down as health care providers lowered prices to attract business.

Having a heart attack?  Master the Art of the Deal and meet the Hospital's fee schedule with a low-ball counteroffer, then watch 'em sweat!

In the meantime, I look forward to the day when Big Pharma, desperate for business, is forced to open the equivalent of those "day old" bakery outlets, where they'll sell stale and expired medication at marked down prices.

Consumers would have an incentive to take good care of their own health and use medical services sparingly, because every dollar they save they get to keep.

Well, "keep" in the sense that it'll go right into your health savings account.  "Sorry, son, I wanted to save for your college education, but I had to put that money away in case I needed a hip replacement.  But don't be mad -- the joke's on me, right, since the bank just failed.  Oh well, good thing I never had to do that Sophie's Choice thing like your uncle Jim did, when both his kids were in a car accident and he could only afford to save one.  I know that was a tough decision, but I still think he shouldn't have done it with a coin flip.  At least, not in the Gift Shop."

Right now, employees using employer-provided insurance have zero incentive to reduce the use of medical services. In fact, the incentive, perversely, is the other direction. Employees who make healthy lifestyle choices and rarely need medical care wind up with nothing to show for it, other than higher premiums to pay for other employees who don’t look after themselves.

No offense, Bryan, but wages are stagnant in this country, and if my employer isn't giving me a raise this year, then I'm gonna take it out in free colonoscopies.

Third, get rid of all government-mandated coverage requirements.

Honestly, you can probably get five, maybe six uses out of a good hypodermic needle before it's too dull to break the skin.

A huge driver of the cost of insurance is that government regulators, including Benito Obama with MussoliniCare

...have a policy of hanging all patients upside down by their heels, which is pricy, although admittedly effective for lower back problems and gout.

...require insurance companies to cover a host of treatments, whether the consumer has any interest in them or not. 

 Many people are under the misimpression that insurance companies routinely attempt to breach their contract with policyholders by denying coverage, because it pays off financially -- sick people often being too sick to fight back.  In truth, it's because insurers are the only entities in the health care industry who are willing to stand up and defend your leisure time hobbies and interests.  Sure, some doctor might think you need "emergency surgery" to repair your "ruptured femoral artery," but what if your insurance agent realized, during the ten minutes you spent together in his cubicle while you signed the paperwork, that your interests and aptitudes really ran more toward getting a pressure bandage and a quick trip in a wheelchair back to the loading zone?

 Let’s allow insurance companies to offer a range of packages and allow consumers, cafeteria style, to decide what kind of coverage they want.

Hey, we still can't do this with our cable channels, even though giving up ESPN or the Game Show Network isn't nearly as likely to kill you.

If they will never resort to acupuncture, why should they be forced to pay for it?

Exactly.  I'm pretty confident I can predict, with 100% accuracy, what kind of accidents and diseases I'm going to suffer, and the only thing I need to insurance against is having my soft palate impaled on a scale model of a church steeple, like Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz.

Highly paid lobbyists get state regulators to mandate coverage for all sorts of things, whether it’s psychiatric care or chiropractic care, that many consumers would not purchase if the choice was left up to them. 

I'd recommend that Bryan consider checking the "psychiatric care" box on his insurance coverage menu, but as D.Sidhe has pointed out in the past, there's a difference between being an asshole and being crazy, and like the common cold, there is no cure for being an asshole.

Let’s get employers out of the health-care-providing business and let them give the money they spend on premiums to their employees in the form of raises.

Or to themselves in the form of bonuses. Either way, it'll be a glorious blow to Big Chiropractic.

I flat out guarantee you that employees who are spending their own money will be more frugal about the choice of insurance products than their employers are.

Hell, I have insurance, of a sorts, through Mary, and I've still been putting off back surgery for the past three years because we can't make the deductible.  But imagine how much for frugal I could be, with the right disincentives!

If ObamaCare is shot down by the Supreme Court, as it certainly should be, the possibility of major health care reform will be sitting right in front of us. We can preserve the status quo, which nobody likes or should like, or we can make reforms that will reduce costs and improve access to health care for every American for decades to come. It will be time to choose. Let’s choose wisely.

I'm sure Bryan has heard the bad news by now, and, considering his passion for the subject, is undoubtedly taking it hard.  I'd like to help, and considered buying him a box of tissues (the nice soft ones, with Vitamin E and aloe), but alas, I also expected the Supreme Court to overrule the Affordable Care Act, so most of my money is tied up in Burial Insurance, and there are substantial penalties for early withdrawal.

 All in all, an elegant solution, Bryan...but as usual, Mystery Science Theater 3000 got there first.

Tucker Queen's Mystery Magazine

When I first read this comment, it got me to thinking about the 1975-76 Ellery Queen TV series.  If you remember this show (and if so, you should probably be taking Lipitor and making sure your Roth IRA is fully funded), star Jim Hutton would break the fourth wall at the end of each episode (a device that paralleled the "Challenge to the Reader" that appeared in the penultimate chapter of the early Queen novels) and say, "You've seen all the clues, you have all the information.  Do you know who the killer is?"  And I imagine a certain percentage of the audience -- the same people who now weave elaborate eschatologies about flying demons colliding with 747s so they have more airspace to wrestle with Jesus, and deposit them in forgotten threads on obscure  blogs -- responded to the TV by shrieking, "the Illuminati!" or "Fluroide!", when it fact the culprit was merely that week's guest star Ray Walston, Joan Collins, or obvious sociopath Ken Berry.

 This in turn put me in mind of a Woody Allen essay that first appeared in Playboy back in the early 70s, called "Match Wits with Inspector Ford"...

The Case of the Murdered Socialite

Inspector Ford burst into the study.  On the floor was the body of Clifford Wheel, who apparently had been struck from behind with a croquet mallet.  The position of the body indicated that the victim had been surprised in the act of singing "Sorrento" to his goldfish.  Evidence showed there had been a terrific struggle that had twice been interrupted by phone calls, one a wrong number and one asking if the victim was interested in dance lessons.

Before Wheel had died, he had dipped his finger into the inkwell and scrawled out a message:  "Fall Sale Prices Drastically Reduced--Everything Must Go!"

"A businessman to the end," must Ives, his manservant, whose elevator shoes, curiously enough, made him two inches shorter.

Inspector Ford goes on to solve a series of absurd crimes by making abrupt, senseless deductions bearing no relation to the evidence, which doesn't exist anyway -- so it all makes perfect sense.  Now Tucker Carlson -- the Greg Marmalard of New Media -- has hired his own consulting detective, Jamie Weinstein, who, in his brief time at Tucker's Weakly Reader (as TBogg calls it), writing their daily blast spam, the "DCMorning," has already done the impossible:  he's made Jim Treacher seem funny.

Not that Jamie's comic bona fides aren't impressive.  In addition to spicing up the Daily Caller's quotidian plea for attention, he's also "the winner of the 2011 'Funniest Celebrity in Washington' contest."  And that's a city which has witnessed the comic stylings of Dick Nixon, who hilariously invited the country to "Sock it to me?" while Obama, supposedly the hip and cool dude, won't even deign to note that da judge is approaching.

But today, Jamie isn't concerned with making us laugh.  No, today he's all about the serious business of Connecting the Dots and Laying the Pipe.  But since this is a classic "Fair Play" mystery, we will have all the same clues Jamie does, so let's see if we can't solve the case first.  Are you ready to...Match Wits with Inspector Weinstein?

So, Junior Detectives, how did Inspector Weinstein deduce from the evidence above that Sandra Fluke not only supports Charlie Sheen for public office, but has ever even heard of him.  Wait!  Before you answer, let's look at the actual article Inspector Jamie's email is flogging:

Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke said on Tuesday that candidates running for office should have to pass a pro-woman litmus test in order to get elected.

Fluke, an advocate for the Obama administration’s plan to force health insurers to cover birth control, was on Capitol Hill for a forum on “Opportunities and Challenges for a New Generation of Women,” in celebration of Women’s History Month.

“There should be a litmus test that they be pro-women so our votes have to include that requirement at least,” Fluke said. “And it should be a litmus test that applies to male candidates as well.”

She also spoke about the possibility of running for office in the future:

“Numerous American women have actually written to me in the last few weeks saying that I should run for office, and maybe someday I will."

So that's it.  You have all the clues...

Now if you've been watching -- closely! -- you have all the information you need.  And you should be able to deduce that the victim -- Facts -- was actually killed by the detective (just like in The Mousetrap)!  Or perhaps it's just a lazy, farfetched bit of hackery by a misogynist, entitled asshole.  As another famous literary sleuth observed, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

So, I'm going with the Asshole theory.

Fabian Society Radicals Pooped in My Snuff Box!

Washington Post Opinion columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is uniquely qualified to comment on the similarities between the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, and the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s.  As most pediatric psychologists will tell you, the first five years of a child's life are the most formative, and Gerson was born in 1964, making him three years old in the Summer of Love, and five at the time of Woodstock and the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, getting in just under the formative wire.  As a result, when he looks back upon his most vivid and influential recollections, he finds that they are inextricably linked with a disastrous upending of social and cultural norms, a brazen challenge to political orthodoxy, and near constant bed-wetting.

But before we plunge into his Mix 'n' Match exercise, we should probably ask ourselves who this confused-looking fellow in the photo above really is?  According to Wikipedia, "He served as President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006, as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006" -- when all of the Bush Administration's most important policy fuck-ups were conceived and executed.

In the Feburary 7, 2005 issue of Time, "Gerson was named as one of 'The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals In America'" (he came in 9th, but there were accusations of illegal performance enhancement by his fellow snake-handlers, who claimed Gerson dosed himself before particularly important or ecstatic religious services with large intramuscular injections of rattlesnake anti-venom).  As for the highlights of his speechwriting career:

Gerson proposed the use of a "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" metaphor during a September 5, 2002 meeting of the White House Iraq Group, in an effort to sell the American public on the nuclear dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

Gerson coined "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and "the armies of compassion." His noteworthy phrases for Bush are said to include "Axis of Evil", a phrase adapted from "axis of hatred", itself suggested by fellow speechwriter David Frum but deemed too mild.

According to Matthew Scully, who worked with him for five years, Gerson is a "self-publicizing" glory hog guilty of "foolish vanity", "sheer pettiness" and "credit hounding". In Scully's account, Gerson did not come up with the language that made him famous. "Few lines of note were written by Mike ... and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses -- not even 'axis of evil'."

Small wonder the Washington Post snapped up Gerson to fill the Chair in Advanced Plagiarism Studies after Ben Domenech resigned his position to spend more time with other peoples' writing.

So let's enjoy his fresh take on the lèse-majesté of our latter day hippies:

As radicalism creeps in, credibility retreats from OWS

At what point does a protest movement become an excuse for camping? 

And at what point does camping become an excuse for a protest movement?  When I was in Boy Scouts, that moment came when Mr. Fischer, the fill-in Scoutmaster dropped a lantern, setting one of our World War II-era Baker tents on fire, and burning up two rain ponchos and most of our toilet paper.

 At what point is utopianism discredited by the seedy, dangerous, derelict fun fair it creates?

At what point is a pure Aryan society discredited by the race-mixing, mongrelizing action of the Play-Doh Fun Factory?

The emergence of Occupy Wall Street raised Democratic hopes for the emergence of a leftist equivalent to the Tea Party movement. The comparison is now laughable.

Exactly.  Where are the stirring orations and the Charlie Daniels Band medleys?  Where are the posters of Obama as Witchdoctor Hitler?  Where are the holstered Glocks and the slung AR-15s?  And most important, where are the patriots in their silken knee britches and tricorner hats, riding their Hoverounds through town to warn the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, by ringing those bells, and makin' sure to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed?  Huh?  I ask you.

Set aside, for a moment, the reports of sexual assault in Zuccotti Park and the penchant for public urination.

"I say, Old Bean, I don't know about you, but I've been seized by a mad fancy for an al fresco whiz."

Tea Party activists may hate politicians, but they venerate American political institutions. Veneration does not always involve understanding. But the Tea Party’s goal is democratic influence. 

Let's take a moment to applaud their efforts to gain influence over institutions they don't understand.  And to note the odd coincidence that "veneration" and "urination" rhyme.

On its tie-dyed surface, the OWS movement seems little more than a confused collection of grievances.

Why, when one of these greasy-haired, leather-clad, cycle-straddling delinquents was asked what he and his cohort were rebelling against, he responded inanely, "Whaddya got?"

But there is some ideological coherence within OWS. Its collectivist people’s councils seem to have two main inspirations: socialism (often Marxist socialism) and anarchism.  [...]  That is the opposite of participatory democracy — the use of power to intimidate a fellow citizen on a public street. It is the method of British soccer thugs.

In Oakland, protesters have been playing at the Paris Commune — constructing barricades, setting fires, throwing concrete blocks and explosives, declaring a general strike to stop the “flow of capital” at the port.

Not to mention deflecting tear gas canisters with their heads, which is more the method of British soccer players.

Here, OWS seems to be taking its cues from both “Rules for Radicals” and “A Clockwork Orange.”

While Michael seems to be taking his cues from the first scenes of Battleship Potemkin, and the last scene of Easy Rider.

Defenders of OWS dismiss this as the work of a few bad apples. But the transgressors would call themselves the vanguard.

Detractors of our corporate media would call Gerson a fawning, bum-sucking courtier to a Mammon-worshiping oligarchy.  But Michael would say, "I'm sorry, I can't talk with Charles' and David's Koch in my mouth.  But I will take bets on which one of them you think will win the sword fight."

Since the 1960s, some on the political left have sought liberal reform through the democratic process and nonviolent protest.

Prior to that, though, it was all tumbrels and guillotines.  As every schoolboy knows, President Benjamin Harrison signed the Sherman Anti-Trust in the blood of J.P. Morgan, using the tycoon's still spurting neck stump as an inkwell.

Others have sought to hasten the crisis and collapse of fundamentally illegitimate social and economic systems. Both groups can be found within OWS, but the latter is ascendant.

Still others, like Michael, have bravely defended a fundamentally illegitimate social and economic system, even going so far as to record YouTube videos assuring the bullied plutocrats that "It Gets Better."

City governments have also begun to look hapless for their accommodation of squalor, robberies, sexual attacks, drug use, vagrancy and vigilantism.

Although I hear Mega City-One is having a good deal of success with its new "Street Judge" program.

And what must Democratic leaders — who rushed to identify with a protean political force — now be thinking? OWS is not a seminar on income inequality — not the Center for American Progress on a camping trip. It is a leftist movement with a militant wing.

In other words, it's the worst nightmare of both Michael Gerson and Congressional Democrats: liberals who are actually pissed off enough to fight back.

Will Americans, looking for jobs, turn in hope to the vandalization of small businesses and the promise of a general strike? Will citizens, disappointed by a dysfunctional government, be impressed by the endless arguments of anarchist collectives? Will people, disgusted by partisanship and rhetorical rock-throwing, be attracted to actual rock throwing?

Will Brenda tell her fiance Jack that she actually married Stavros, the Greek shipping magnate while she was suffering from amnesia?  Will Joe and Betty be able to dig their way out of the collapsed mine shaft in time, or will Aunt Susan be forced to give birth in an old ore cart?  Will a lazy columnist padding out his 800 words resort to the kind of breathless, cliffhanger questions associated with the climax of a radio soap opera and the sting of a Hammond organ?

Tune in tomorrow.

This seems to be the desperate political calculation of the Democratic Party. Good luck with that. 

Thanks, Michael.  And best of luck with Herman Cain as your front runner (you were right -- that merger with the Tea Party by the Republican leadership in 2008 was a smart investment.  Will the OWS movement still be paying these kinds of dividends three years from now?  Good luck with that, indeed).