Because You're Never Too Broke for Chinese Hookers

Last week, I bought generic Hamburger Helper to make dinner for baby Wyatt and me.

Hamburger Helper is a food-like product than normally costs around a dollar and a half, but I saved nearly fifty cents by denying the siren song of that creepy severed Mickey Mouse hand mascot. And while the generic version couldn't quite match the lofty prison-cafeteria standards of the real thing, tough economic times dictated I make the sacrifice.

Keep that sacrifice in mind as you watch this three-minute video from the Cato Institute blog:



Here's hoping that many more Congresscritters book trans-Alaskan flights, and soon.

Freedom Loaf

Mrs Finch was out of town for a week and I was left to hunt and/or gather my own food. For six out of seven days, I subsisted mostly on packets of unsweetened Kool-Aid mix and potpourri, but on day seven -- glorious day seven! -- I reached deep into the pantry and created a meal. Gentle readers, I give you... The Freedom Loaf*:

1 lb ground beef
1 egg, beaten like Gordon Brown
1/2 cup O'Charley's honey mustard
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot sauce
1 tbsp Dale's Steak Seasoning
1 tsp chipotle chile powder
2 cups garlic and onion croutons, pummeled angrily to dust
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mush everything into a big pale greyish lump and plop into any pan with sides (1" or deeper). Cook uncovered for one hour. Remove from oven using clean(ish) bathmat since you can't find a potholder. Scrape the fat drippings from the edges to give to your dogs, then slice meatloaf and serve with Cool Ranch Doritos or Nutter Butters.

*That's right. Scotticus Finch's milestone 100th post is a meatloaf recipe. Deal.

Jonathan Swift - Sarcasm = California

Ask any Tea Partier; there is plenty to dislike in the details of health care reform.

But we of the tinfoil hat brigade have long insisted that the principal problem with government-subsidized health insurance is broad: When government pays for health care, government will inevitably regulate anything and everything that can be even tenuously linked to health.

By ceding the responsibility for the cost of health care, we have sacrificed the freedom to make our own decisions about our health. A nauseating argument to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less true. We saw it happen with seat belts; we saw it happen with motorcycle helmets; we saw it happen with cigarettes. Now, just to prove that no caricature or paranoia could ever be as asinine as reality, we will witness within our lifetimes the end of Happy Meal toys.

...[C]ounty officials in Silicon Valley [Calif.] are poised to outlaw the little toys that often come with high-calorie offerings.
...
Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the proposal would forbid the inclusion of a toy in any restaurant meal that has more than 485 calories, more than 600 mg of salt or high amounts of sugar or fat. In the case of McDonald's, the limits would include all of the chain's Happy Meals — even those that include apple sticks instead of French fries.

Ken Yeager, president of the authoritarian nitwits Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, knows unequivocally that you are too stupid and/or incompetent -- all of you -- to spurn the siren song of a Shrek IV wind-up toy, so he is stepping in.

"People ask why I want to take toys out of the hands of children," said Yeager.... "But we now know that 70% of the kids that are overweight or obese will be overweight or obese as adults. Why would we want to burden anybody with a lifetime of chronic illness?"

Did you see that leap? Fast-food toys are responsible for a lifetime of chronic illness. Unless the McDonald's in Yeager's neighborhood has been offering polio pops or asbestos action figures, then he can take his hyperbole and insert it posteriorly.

Even then, whence does Yeager draw his justification for the crackdown? You guessed it:

"We're responsible for paying for healthcare in the whole county," Yeager said. "We pay close to $2 billion annually on healthcare, and the costs have done nothing but rise." A big part of the increase, he said, is costs related to obesity.

The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy; it is the undeniable nature of government power.

If Only We Could Identify the Addictive Chemical Which Makes Me Crave it Fortnightly

My position as a massively influential member of the media is not a mantle I bear lightly. With a keystroke, I could release the obsequious ScotticusFinch horde and likely topple even the most stubborn of institutions, yet I am tempered by perspective. No failing bank, no Haitian earthquake, and no case of kitsch larceny had yet been dire enough for me to fully wield the awesome power of my pulpit.

But that threshold has been breached. Friends, there is a chicken-wing shortage in America.

According to USA Today, skyrocketing demand for the ambrosial avian appendages fueled a 39% increase in the wholesale price of wings over last year.

The primary factor driving up wing prices is the growing number of restaurants, including many national chains, that are adding wings to their offerings, says Richard Lobb, spokesman for the Washington-based chicken industry trade group the National Chicken Council.

(On a side note, the National Chicken Council once mistakenly booked the same convention space as the American Egg Board, and the two groups spent six weeks trying to decide who should go first.)

Lobb says it's not a matter of simply raising more chickens. The nation's chicken producers turned out 9 billion birds in 2009, he says. Other than for wings, the recession has slowed demand, and the overall price for chicken has been soft. "As expensive as wings are, they cannot carry the entire bird," he says.

How true, both ornithologically and metaphorically. The problem is vexing. While I'm pheasantly pleased (Man, I'm on a roll!) to be able to grab a box of mediocre wings from every Rally's, Little Caesars, and KFC, I also have to face the reality that 20¢ Wing Night at Buffalo Wild Wings is as likely to make a comeback as Rod Blagojevich.

Ken Moran, owner of Rochester, NY's "Jeremiah's Tavern", remembers the halcyon days of cheap chicken:

"Chicken wings once were so cheap. ...It was an attempt to use all the parts of the bird. Now it's reversed. They've gotten pretty crazy in terms of popularity."

Most of you have probably already noticed the end-around that restaurants have been running:

To offset wing prices, numerous restaurants are adding "boneless chicken wings" made of breast meat, he says.

"The boneless wing is a much higher profit margin and it also attracts a lot more people who don't care to eat things on bones," he says.

"Boneless wings". Ever heard a boat salesman say he has a great deal on "wheel-less cars", or a paper company selling reams of "wordless books"? Still, if it lowers the price of my delicious dark-meat treats (Can I say that?), then KFC can call its spicy breast chunks whatever it wants. Until they start taxing napkins, I'll be at the bar.

(See the unparalleled scene that inspired the headline here.)