The public is finally beginning to come to a boil.

On a tip from AlphaOmega.

"Anything like that we wouldn't carry," said clerk Emily Stackhouse at Cover to Cover Books in San Francisco. "We're a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross."

Are these hippies being narrow-minded and childish? You betcha. (Wink!)

Dear Senators:

There has been no extended congressional debate regarding the two frightening, 1,000+ page healthcare bills now under consideration. The consequences of moving our country in this direction WILL NOT save our economy but WILL decimate what has been the best healthcare system in the world. Superior American medical practice and innovation has been available to serve patients from other government run systems denied timely care and new drugs and procedures at home. If we now become a similar government controlled system, our healthcare will deteriorate and become rationed as doctors refuse to practice in a stifling environment and medical student numbers decline. Without capital generation in the system medical research and development will decline.

With our country currently facing unfathomable deficit spending and skyrocketing debt, how can we pay for a health care plan that will serve all? Vowing to do so will not make caring for a larger patient base less expensive. One plan version will tax the wealthy more but can the middle class be far behind? Proposed excise taxes on professional medical items will also be paid by the patients. Inevitably our children and grandchildren will be forced to pay this cost along with our other bonded debt. This is irresponsible.

We like the private insurance based system that we presently have and do not want to see it destroyed in competition with a non-profit and probably loss ridden government alternative. The goal of the Statist reformers of America is to convert our healthcare system into a single payer, government bureaucracy managing medical quality and quantity and end-of-life care for the good of society. This social purpose is most un-American!

So, now, again in great haste (as with the stimulus and Cap and Trade), health care legislation is being prepared to be passed before Christmas as the number one achievement of this administration. Can you please analyze the contents of this bill and its real cost without payout timing gimmicks before you vote on it? Can I also ask you to please consider voting NO, and instead seek legislation that will actually help benefit the healthcare system, such as insurance reform and interstate access? Capping frivolous lawsuits is a must as well.

And before considering massive healthcare reform, please take the first step of fixing the waste, fraud and unfunded costs of Medicare and of Medicaid. Finally, whatever legislation is enacted, it should certainly be made mandatory for members of Congress and all government employees.

Respectfully,

A Concerned American

Thousands of starry-eyed children all over the world are writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday season, but they will not likely get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers.

The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular effort begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks.

Postal Service officials said they are tightening rules in such programs nationwide after a postal worker in Maryland recognized a volunteer in the agency's Operation Santa program as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to make changes to the program.

People in North Pole are incensed by the change, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas. The letter program is a revered holiday tradition in North Pole, where light posts are curved and striped like candy canes and streets have names such as Kris Kringle Drive and Santa Claus Lane. Volunteers in the letter program even sign the response letters as Santa's elves and helpers.

As with all government decrees, there will be negative economic consequences.

Losing the Santa-letter cache is a blow to the community of 2,100 people, who pride themselves on their Christmas ties. Huge tourist attractions here include an everything-Christmas store, Santa Claus House, and the post office, where visitors can get a hand-stamped postmark on their postcards and packages if they ask for it. …

Santa Claus House, built like a Swiss chalet and chock full of all items Christmas, sells more than 100,000 letters from Santa and one of the lures is the postmark.

Operations manager Paul Brown believes his business will be affected under changes to the volunteer Santa letter program because tens of thousands of letters are addressed to Santa Claus House, North Pole, Alaska.

Those letters will still be forwarded to volunteers but it's unclear yet if anything will be done with them. Those intercepted by the postal service will probably eventually be shredded.

Here's an idea: Instead of shredding children's letters to Santa, why not keep them safe from molesters by treating child rapists to more than two months in jail?

On a tip from Anonymous Countermoonbat.

"I thought that one day I would return but I really didn't expect to be returning as the commander of a Navy warship," CMDR Hung Ba Le said after stepping ashore Saturday. "It's an incredible personal honor."

A small victory for America, and a defeat to all those sanctimonious hippie cowards who wanted Le to be raised in a communist dictatorship. (The same sanctimonious hippie cowards who now control the White House and Congress.)

Item Number Two: Andrew Klavan mounts a defense of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck but I couldn't figure out how to embed the video.

Item Number Three: In a sign of the times, Barack Obama --- who threw enormous gala White House celebrations in honor of Communist China and Moslem Ramadan --- has cut the size of the annual Hannukah dinner in half. You gotta wonder if the J-o-o-s are going to get the hint that this guy doesn't care too much for them, or at least not as much as he cares about Muslims and Communists.

Also... I'm sure Lao, Andy, and the rest of Tiger Beat's target demo are very excited that another Twilight movie opens today. In dishonor of that, I give you today's stinger:

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90.

Apparently even climate scientists have noticed that it's been getting colder, not warmer; that's why they have to fudge the numbers.

At least some of these people have a conscience:

I'm not too comfortable with this, and would rather not sign — at least not without some real time to think it through and debate the issue. It is unprecedented and political, and that worries me.

Everything having to do with "climate change" is political, all right.

On tips from Oiao, Dave K, LouieLouie, and Michael S.

When an ambulance brought Daniel Webb home from the hospital after he hurt his knee in March, paramedics warned the then 550-pound man he probably wouldn't be able to get up from his recliner if they put him there, his wife said.

Webb told them to leave him there anyway. He would sit in that recliner, slowly dying, for the next eight months. Finally, paramedics were called back to his Greenwood home on Wednesday because he was in a lot of pain.

Webb's body was physically stuck to the power recliner and firefighters had to cut him from the chair to take him to the hospital. He died a few hours later, his body covered with sores and a "very bad odor," according to a police report.

Webb, 33, didn't ask for help for all those months, because he was ashamed and didn't have health insurance, said his wife, Ada. He slept and used the bathroom in his chair and she cleaned it every day. …

Webb's mother was the one who placed the final call to paramedics. Not only did crews have to cut apart the chair, but they had to cut a hole in the wall of the couple's mobile home about 70 miles west of Columbia [South Carolina] to get him out. A police report said he weighed about 800 pounds, but his wife said he was closer to 500 pounds.

If only he could have held on to see Obamao et al. provide free healthcare to everyone, Webb might have lived to make half a ton — unless being overweight put him last in line for rationed care.

On a tip from heckrulz.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

"Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection," Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.

Not to worry, UNFPA bureauweenies have come up with "five measures to mitigate climate change and overpopulation":

• Bring a better understanding of population dynamics, gender and reproductive health to climate change and environmental discussions at all levels;
• Fully fund family planning services and contraceptive supplies within the framework of reproductive health and rights, and assure that low income is no barrier to access;
• Prioritize research and date collection to improve the understanding of gender and population dynamics in climate change mitigation and adaptation;
• Improve sex-disaggregation of date related to migration flows that are influenced by environmental factors and prepare now for increases in population movements resulting from climate change; and
• Integrate gender considerations into global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

To sum up, they want to reduce the human population by promoting abortion and other means of birth control on your dime — and they want to yap some more about meaningless BS like "gender considerations" as they relate to natural and unavoidable climate fluctuation, also on your dime.

Time to add prostitution to The List.

On tips from mega and Beef.

"Rough estimate from the city of New York, which I received yesterday, place the added cost of moving the trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other terrorist suspects to New York somewhere in the ballpark of $75 million, that's a minimum," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)

Schumer said extra security procedures could push that number up to $100 million, and asked that the federal government foot the bill.

But New York is full of fat-cat capitalists, many of whom were foolish enough to vote for Obama. Let them spread the wealth around!

Maybe we can get Al Qaeda to pick up the bill. The propaganda value to their cause would be worth every cent. This farcical trial is likely to turn the tide in their favor. But so long as it can be used as an opportunity for Bush-bashing and sanctimonious posturing, that's fine with our current rulers.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Lavelle Stewart, of ACORN in South Central Los Angeles, tells us she thinks we have to hook up with "someone who's on that international sex business level," that "14 and 15 year olds been traveling overseas for years," that she can do independent research for us, and that she has had meetings with Porn magnate Larry Flynt. As for laundering the sex money into my faux political campaign, Lavelle says, "there are ways, people do it all the time. Yeah there are ways, especially out here in California."

With only one exception so far, Chairman Zero's ACORNista friends are always willing to help anyone they think crawls around in the sewer. No wonder the Moonbat Messiah would like to have his extensive ties to them scrubbed.

Don't miss earlier O'Keefe/Giles ACORN gems — and hold on tight for what might go public if Eric Holder still won't investigate his fellow cockroaches. Andrew Breitbart explains:

Not only are there more tapes, it's not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it's not just ACORN, and we're going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don't give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

We'll see what the chances are of getting a "clean investigation" out of the same Injustice Department that scuttled the prosecution of Black Panther thugs who intimidated voters during last November's catastrophe.

On a tip from Oiao.

There were no apologies, at least in public, this time. Few raised cheers. "On every issue - exchange rates, market access, even the terms of the broadcast of his town-hall meeting in Shanghai - the president was outmaneuvered by a Chinese government growing in confidence every day," said Scott Paul, the executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

At least he was honored with that commemorative Oba-Mao tee shirt, utterly befitting his standing in the world of the Elitist Left. Obama's Marxist father would have been so proud.

The debate is over; we have a consensus: Al Gore is a liar.

On a tip from Oiao.