Very punny

Groannn...

Sunday's "Pearls Before Swine"

Meme for a Thursday morning

As seen everywhere, here's the “7 Random and/or Weird Things About Me” meme:

1. I built toad cities in my sandpile when I was a child. The toads were less than amused.

2. I grew up thinking it was perfectly normal to mix Swedish phrases into everyday speech.

3. I saw a UFO when I was about ten years old.

4. I have hyperextensible thumbs, both of them green. ;-)

5. I once turned down a chance to study in France for a year, when I was not quite seventeen. No, really - I used to be an idiot. But I got better.

6. I don't like roller coasters. In fact, the only amusement park "rides" I really like are water slides.

7. I wanted to go into space from about the age of three. Not surprisingly, this coincides with my father introducing me to Star Trek.

Share your own list in comments if you feel inspired. :-)

Random thought...

How pathetic am I when I can be sitting at Melt, drinking a beer and watching several Pink Panther cartoons back to back, and then suddenly realize that I'm keeping track of how many laws of physics have been broken per episode?

*sigh*

McCain on Healthcare

McCain's "Plan" for Health Care: Do the same for that industry as Deregulation did for Banking

Excerpt:

[The] McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.

So what would happen?

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.

No way would this benefit the American people.

Edit: I see I'm not the only person looking at McCain's health care plan today.

*snork*

Found a link to this over on Making Light, and it was just too good not to share with the folks who read my LJ...

A Letter To Moloch

Bwahahahahah! Oh, and be sure to read the comments; they're the best part!

Watching the debate? Play Palin Bingo!

Palin Bingo




And if that's not quite your speed, there's also the Vice-Presidential Debate Drinking Game.