Bloodless Coup

Michael Bloomberg definitely goes on the list of people to get kicked in the balls.

food of the gods? KFC? this is like the most un-binky binky declaration i've ever seen. i feel like i know you so much better now. :-)

oh, and if anyone tries to take my dunkin donuts, i will level this city with god-like wrath. fuck, as they say, that!

allegheny county just voted to ban smoking, a la new york city, pretty much everywhere, and i can live with that (perhaps because it started in new york when i was there, and perhaps because an honest smoker foodie will tell you that he also would prefer not to smell smoke when eating a thoughtfully prepared dish), but not dunkin donuts. sometimes bringing the office a couple dozen dunkin donuts is the only thing that can buoy my mood.

I've yet to taste the KFC comfort-food goodness, though I REALLY want to. But just the idea of endangering donuts - aarghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Though you know this relates to what's always struck me as problematic about our insurance system (well, one of the things) - if it was "fair" 1) you should have to pay more or less depending on what you eat and 2) the door is opened to regulating tasty morsels that lead to things the insurance industry doesn't want to pay for.

yeah, but people seem to forget, the only thing insurance companies _really_ care about is uncertainty. if they know what they'll be held responsible for, and what they won't be responsible for, they can actuarialize it and tuck it into premiums.

don't get me wrong, their armies of lawyers have to do something, so that tends to focusing on limiting exposure, but that's not really incompatible with the above analysis -- in theory, as they limit exposure, they can reduce premiums accordingly in an effort to undercut the competition.

oddly, i actually believe that, and i deal with insurance issues as much as anyone here. on the other hand, none of this prevents them from occasionally behaving really hideously toward individual claimants.

Oh, sorry - I didn't type as far as my head was going on point 2. I think that eventually we are going to end up with publicly run insurance or insurance that's not officially publicly run, but is much more directly in that direction than it is now. And as THE STATE (cue the Darth Vader music) starts to bear more of the cost for paying for heart bypass operations, I'd think that they'd do more to regulate 'em, see that they don't happen in the first place.

Now given our country's general disinterest in preventive medicine, I could be entirely wrong about this fear. But it does seem to nicely dove-tail with all the recent laws that make it illegal to do things that might be bad for you (from motorcycle helmets to cigarette bans to this post, etc.).

Looks like Moon is not alone in his donut love: All Your Donuts Are Belong to Us. And yes, I posted that link mostly for the excellent title.

on a related note, what happens when the nanny county collides with the casino-happy state: it seems that the county's just-passed public smoking ban will create an unfair disadvantage to local businesses when the casinos arrive, protected, as they are, by a surprise statewide exemption from smoking regulations. seriously, you can't make this shit up.

OK, I know where to get Krispy Kreme - but where is the nearest KFC? I figure I need to act fast to get one of those bowls before they are banned.