Another headline like this and I’ll become an atheist again before you can say, “happy heretic.”

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Rick Moran: How the implementation of ObamaCare will make the GOP a majority party.

Rick makes some very good points, and I found myself nodding along most of the time. Especially when you think of how ObamaCare will require your doctor to ask you about tons of things unrelated to your visit (or to your health) and then report your answers to some bureaucrat in DC, raising the painintheassitude of simply trying to get some codeine cough syrup.

So maybe, yes, people rise up in a massive Health Care Revolt of 2016, to mirror the great Tax Revolt of 1979.

But what does the GOP do? Will it take a bold stand for dismantling this monstrosity? Or will it trim ObamaCare’s rougher edges, for a kinder, gentler democratic tyranny?

The GOP has some soul-searching to do between now and then.

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Iron Dome is good — very, very good — but it has a voracious appetite:

One factor Israel may have considered in agreeing to the recent cease fire with Hamas was a possible shortage of Tamir missiles (used by the Iron Dome system to shoot down rockets). The problem was that Israel was not sure how many long (over 20 kilometers) range rockets (that could reach larger urban areas) Hamas had left. Hamas had managed to about a thousand rockets in a week, with most of them hitting unoccupied areas, or being intercepted by Tamir missiles. Israeli aircraft had made over a thousand bombing raids on Gaza, hitting hundreds of rocket storage sites. But the rockets appeared to be stored in small quantities all over the place. Israel won’t say what their count was of Hamas rockets destroyed by air strikes, but it was apparently less than the 12,000 rockets Hamas is supposed to have.[Emphasis added]

This has to factor in to any Israeli decision to go to war against Iran. Hamas (to the south) and Hezbollah (to the north) would certainly join in the fun — and quickly deplete Israel’s stockpile of Tamirs. At $90,000 per missile, that puts a real crimp in the IDF’s ability to keep Israeli civilians safe for the duration of a protracted conflict. And don’t think the Mullahs and jihadis don’t know it.

This reminds me of Nasser’s plan to strangle Israel in 1967. He put the massive Egyptian army in the Sinai, forcing the IDF to mobilize and suck thousands and thousands of productive men and women out of the Israeli economy. Eventually, Israel would have to settle on terms favorable to Egypt, as their economy imploded.

Of course, that little gambit got shot to hell when the IDF struck first and destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground and beat their army back to the Suez in a lightning campaign.

It would seem that the Iranian/Jihadi alliance is trying the missile version of Nasser’s gambit. This time around, it’s civilian Jews being held hostage — along with the economy. The stakes are somewhat higher now, yes?

It will be interesting (ahem) to see how the Israelis raise them.

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So what happens when Tom Petty and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics collaborate with the director of The Kids Are Alright on the video of a song about an early-morning encounter with a coked-up Stevie Nicks?

This is what happens.

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The law of unintended consequences strikes hard at the restaurant industry:

The costs of fines or healthcare for dozens of employees per restaurant have the potential to bankrupt individually owned chains across the country. The Applebee’s in New York City would face fines of $600,000 per year if insurance isn’t provided for full-time staff, and estimates for offering federally approved insurance would cost “some millions” across the Applebee’s system. Both scenarios, according to Tankel, “[would] roll back expansion, roll back hiring more people. In the best case scenario [it] would only shrink the labor force minimally.” The restaurant industry, already operating with razor thin margins, doesn’t have the ability to absorb tens of thousands more in healthcare expenditures without a considerable increase in sales.

See, that’s going to be a problem with so many people shunted to part-time work and unable to afford eating out.

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Trifecta: It’s President Obama’s Burma-Shave moment.

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It’s the return of a holiday favorite.

The Perfect Post-Thanksgiving Turkey Club

[The above photograph is for demonstration purposes only. Please don't think you can come over here and eat my sandwich. Also, don't lick the screen.]

You’ll need:

Leftover turkey. White meat, dark meat — it’s all good.
Bacon. And lots of it.
Bread. Whole wheat.
Lettuce. Romaine.
Tomatoes. Sliced and deseeded.
Mustard. Gulden’s.
Mayonnaise. Real. If it comes out of a squeezy jar, it ain’t real.
Salt & pepper

The trick to making a perfect sandwich is in the layering. Also, if you’re piling it up tall, don’t toast the bread — you’ll need something you can grip. If not, lightly toasted is very nice.

Now then: The layers.

I live at a shade under 7,500 feet above sea level. So I have to move fast, take the bread out last, and spread on the mustard and mayo right away to help keep it moist. If you do, too, get all your mise on, then get your bread.

On the lefthand slice, spread on the mayo. On the right, the mustard.

Continue piling everything else on the mayo side, in this order:

Lettuce.
Tomato slices.
Season the tomato right now with a little salt and too much pepper.
Bacon. No fewer than four slices, if you know what’s good for you.
Turkey.
Now add the mustard slice on top — mustard down, please — to complete it.
Nom nom nom.

You want your B and L and T all together, because they’re just a classic combo. And you want them on the mayo side, because that’s classic, too. And you need the lettuce in-between the tomato and the bread, to keep the bread from getting soaked as you squeeze that bad boy down to fit in your mouth. (I know, I know — can’t let the bread get too dry, can’t let the bread get too wet. I’m picky. But there’s a reason we call this sandwich “perfect.”)

The turkey and the bacon go great together, too, so you want them right next to one another. And turkey and Gulden’s together? Heavenly. Lastly, and for reasons I cannot fathom, the sandwich works best with the veggies on the bottom and the meats on top — so don’t be a damn fool and turn it upside-down. There’s a right way and a wrong way to eat perfection. And that’s meats up/veggies down.

Enjoy.

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Trifecta: Is peeple getting more dumberer?

I, for wun, am’t.

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What are you doing on the internet today?

Scram. Get out of here. Go on.

And have a happy Thanksgiving.

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Lawrence Kasdan coming on for one or two of the Star Wars sequel-sequels? Now I’m getting excited about going back to a galaxy far, far away.

Seriously, Kasdan’s script provided the foundation for Empire being far and away (heh) the best of the six movies. It didn’t hurt that Lucas stayed mostly away from principle photography (which he’ll be doing again), and that Irvin Kershner directed with a flair for real humanity.

Lucas, out. Kasdan, in. Now we just need a director.

UPDATE: Come to think of it, there is one director I trust to reboot a beloved franchise.

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Safety by cellphone.

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Timothy Noah on what President Obama should do in his second term:

With the election over, the president can now take bolder action on a host of domestic issues that don’t require cooperation—or even input—from Congress. Though some of these actions might be controversial, that concern matters less now that Obama has faced voters for the last time. What follows are eight policies that the executive branch can carry out on its own, in many cases immediately. Obama will almost certainly do some of these. Others require a bit more gumption. He should do those, too.

Shorter version: F— you. Hell, even Noah calls it “the unilateralist manifesto.” The Founders would call it “tyranny.”

Of course, since at least Nixon, every Republican president has followed the Democrats’ example of consolidating purely discretionary power in the Oval Office. And now we reap the rewards of that folly with a President who has very little discretion about the exercise of that power.

And plenty of slutty cheerleaders like Noah to urge him on.

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Mediation has failed. Hostess will go into liquidation.

Congratulations to Big Labor, which has killed yet another fabled American brand.

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The headline reads, “Administration affirms key mandates of healthcare law.”

This is news in the same way it’s news when the fox agrees to watch the henhouse.

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Barbarians.

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Huh:

As Curiosity prepares for Thanksgiving on Mars, rover fans have been left hanging about a discovery from the Red Planet that a NASA official has billed as a big one.

Just you wait, NASA says.

Not everyone wants to. Curiosity’s Facebook page had one early-morning comment from a fan: “WHAT IS IT?!?!” Mars watchers were expressing the same sentiments on Twitter.

I think I might know what it is.
(more…)

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Michael Barone looks back at the November 6 state-by-state results and draws

two conclusions from these figures, one with some certainty and one tentatively.

One is that Democrats have a structural advantage in the Electoral College. An extra 2.46 points of the popular vote netted Obama 80 more electoral votes than Kerry. Obama won 58 percent or more in 11 states and D.C. with 163 electoral votes. He needed only 107 more to win.

In 2004, the 16 states Bush won with 58 percent or more had only 130 electoral votes. He needed 140 more to win and barely got them.

My tentative conclusion is that we may be back to the nearly even balance between the parties we saw between 1995 and 2005. Since then, we’ve been in a period of open-field politics, with big swings to the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and a big swing to the Republicans in 2010.

He says we’re back to “trench warfare.” It feels like we never left.

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Criminal mastermind at work:

Court papers filed Friday in Brooklyn show that one Renel Rene Richardson has been arrested by the FBI and charged with acting as the lookout for a pair of accomplices as they allegedly forklifted two pallets containing 1,800 iPad minis each into a waiting tractor-trailer.

The FBI was reportedly led to Richardson after co-workers told Port Authority detectives that he had made suspicious inquiries about when the iPads were due to arrive and where a forklift might be found.

I hope the judge sets his bail at One. MILLION. Dollars.

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Trifetca: I was a little shocked to hear what Bill and Scott had to say about raising taxes on all those evil millionaires and billionaires.

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How can you tell it’s Thanksgiving break? When for the past 12 hours or longer, Drudge has been running the same boring headline involving France and a years-old photo of Sarkozy above the mast.

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Trifecta: Is Big Labor set for a big comeback, spurred on by Twinkie the Kid?

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Europe: Sinking fast.

I read Zero Hedge because their most outlandish theories usually turn into fact within a year or two. In this case, I’m thinking it will take considerably less time. Read:

Despite the recent deal worked out with Greece, the old cliché about kicking the can down the road is close to becoming no longer possible. Deferring the inevitable is only a political option so long as there is no immediate damage from doing so. But this is no longer true in the Eurozone, where political procrastination is now identifiably responsible for social unrest. It’s not just the trade unionists in revolt; now it is the middle classes as well. Doctors and teachers in Greece do not get paid anymore, and it is going that way in Spain, with regional governments surviving by simply not paying their bills. Government is destroying society, proving the falsity of the heretofore accepted belief (in Europe, anyway) that government makes society better. But then, anyone who has bothered to read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom will not be surprised.

How did Europe go broke? Two ways. We’re still on the first one — for now.

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Jonah Goldberg:

For reasons, good and bad, voters don’t treat tax dollars the way they do their own dollars. They don’t demand quality. They don’t demand accountability. They don’t push for efficiency. Many people think the government should spend money as if it comes from someplace other than the wallets of citizens and that what we get for it should be graded on some spiritual, emotional, philanthropic or metaphysical curve. How we spend for X so often seems to matter more than how much X is actually delivered.

And that’s the American breed of homo economicus, among the most rational and pecuniary of the species.

That, to paraphrase Yoda, is why we fail.

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Seriously.

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Illinois Governor Patt Quinn and his pall Squeezy the Pension Python explain their state’s budget problems.

I felt a little dirty just typing that.

ALSO: The site hosting the video is “ThisIsMyIllinois.” And you can keep it.

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