Happy New Year, everyone - I'm going to have some herring (Swedish tradition) and open a red wine. Have a safe night, all.

Another year-end list - Politico has the top 10 weirdest moments of 2009.

Miami espionage - Yesssss! "Burn Notice" marathon on USA today.

The ghost of health care reform future

Via Heritage, here's what Americans can expect with the new health care legislation. Sounds expensive for everybody.

2010: Physician Medicare payments decrease 21% effective March 1, 2010
2011: “Annual Fee” tax on health insurance, allocated according to share of total premiums. Begins at $2 billion in 2011, then increases to $4 billion in 2012, $7 billion in 2013, $9 billion in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016, and eventually $10 billion for 2017 and every year thereafter. Two insurers in Nebraska and one in Michigan are exempt from this tax.
2012: Medicare payment penalties for hospitals with the highest readmission rates for selected conditions.
2013: Medicare tax increased from 2.9% to 3.8% for incomes over $250,000 (joint filers) or $200,000 (all others). (This is stated as an increase of 0.9 percentage points, to only the employee’s share of the FICA tax.)
2014: Individual mandate begins: Tax penalties for not having insurance begin at $95 or 0.5% of income, whichever is higher, rising to $495 or 1% of income in 2015 and $750 or 2% of income thereafter (indexed for inflation after 2016). These penalties are per adult, half that amount per child, to a maximum of three times the per-adult amount per family. The penalty is capped at the national average premium for the “bronze” plan.
2015: Establishment of Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to recommend cuts in Medicare benefits; these cuts will go into effect automatically unless Congress passes, and the President signs, an override bill.
2016: Individual mandate penalty rises to $750 per adult ($375 per child), maximum $2,250 per family, or 2% of family income, whichever is higher (capped at the national average premium for the “bronze” plan). After 2016, the penalty will be increased each year to adjust for inflation.
2017: Itemized deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses is limited to expenses over 10% of AGI for those over age 65.

Keep in mind that nobody but nobody believes that Congress will reduce reimbursement rates to Medicare doctors by 21%. The political pressure to counteract these cuts will be intense meaning that Washington will depend on even more deficit spending. And suddenly I'm a big fan of "the trigger option." Why not wait until next year to see if Washington holds firm to their own legislation? If Congress can't find the fortitude to cut Medicare payments by one-fifth, let's call the whole thing off.

Let freedom read - Atlas Network: "Top 10 pro-liberty books of the decade."

Bad ads - Slate: "Readers sound off on the year's worst commercials." The anti-depression drug commercials are always...depressing.

I need a Congressional scholar

After all the speeches, the new Rasmussen poll out today shows a new high for Americans opposing the health care bill moving through Congress. A full 58% oppose the bill with 46% of them strongly opposing; only 39% approve with 19% strongly in favor. The state governors are waking up to the massive new unfunded liabilities in Medicaid expansion. And the green eyeshades at the CBO have discovered that Congress is double-counting Medicare "savings" from cuts that will never occur. And those are just the aspects of the legislation in plain sight: a big chunk of the cost is hidden in adjusted insurance rates and taxes on medical supply companies.

So I need somebody answer this question because I can't quite figure it out from online sources: what is the procedure to merge the two (House and Senate) bills? Do they go to committee and then face a whole new vote in both houses? If so, is there another chance to filibuster in the Senate or has that ship sailed? Does the CBO need to score the merged bill? Finally, is there any possibility that some legal authority (the Rules committee or the Justice department) could declare that parts of the bill are unconstitutional?

Extra - Critical Condition: "It's not inevitable." Good to know!

Update - Two kind commenters (commentators?) have good explanations in the, um, comments. Also, there's this story from Fox News: "Republican attorney generals threaten lawsuit over health care." I thought the correct term was "attorneys general." Eh.

The country gets serious on airline security - The country called Holland.

Money well spent because it's somebody else's

President Obama: "We can't continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like monopoly money."

This just in: "Treasury plans to inject another $3.5 billion into GMAC." Maybe another round of Cash for Clunkers, why not? Send the bill to the kids.

Related - Opinion Journal: "The deficit commission trap"

Cornhusker kickback kicks back - It looks like the voters of Nebraska are not appreciative of Ben Nelson's Medicare deal in the health care reform bill: "Health care bill may be bad news for Nelson in 2012." Only 17% approve of his vote while 53% strongly disapprove; 55% now have an unfavorable view of Nelson. Welcome to Chris Dodd territory, Senator.

Radio, radio

In my travels (so far) this week, I don't think I've heard a single radio station identified by their call letters. Instead, there were "The River," "The Peak," "The Point," "Fresh," and "Wink."

I remember when radio stations were brand names to themselves: WNEW (Where Rock Lives!) WPLJ, WCBS, WNBC. Even Z-100 bothered to tell you the radio frequency. Whatever...they all play the same adult contemporary music now anyway.

Quote of the day - Here's Christopher Hitchens on Slate: "The demand to satisfy that sad illusion [of air travel security] can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens' toothpaste."

But seriously now

I think Ann Althouse makes a good point here about how we're looking at the Christmas Pants bomber:

But no one - other than the bomber - was seriously hurt, so we can discount it or play with it and be flippant or political in ways that we would avoid if there were specific and numerous victims.

I don't have my copy of "The Looming Tower" at hand (I'm traveling for the holidays) but I'm suddenly reminded of an aspect of the 1993 truck bombing at the World Trade Center: at the time, some government and security officials failed to appreciate the building threat of Islamic terrorists because they became fixated on the fact that one of the truck bombers went back to the Ryder truck company to get his deposit. What a dope! Now I'm getting an unsettling deja vu that we'll be seeing "hot pants" gags on Leno. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano doesn't help the situation when she claims "the system worked," sending the blogosphere into a feeding frenzy.

By all accounts, the passengers of Flight 253 were a failed detonator away from the Great Hereafter. If that guy had detonated his device from the lavatory, there would have been nobody diving over seats to stop him. That's how close it was.

Yet today and tomorrow we'll be patting down little old ladies from the Midwest and dumping out baby formula and confiscating my nail clippers (that happened.) Meanwhile, the terrorists will be studying this attempt, probing for weaknesses, and planning their next assault. But we'll be serious then, after it's too late.

Extra - Jeffrey Goldberg: "The TSA's security burlesque"

Healthcare now and forever - Mark Steyn points out that the magnitude and complexity of taking over one-sixth of the U.S. economy will entangle the federal goverment for, well, forever: "Cross the river, burn the bridge."

The world's greatest deliberative body - Opinion Journal on the Senate postmortem: "A law so sweeping and complex that nobody can understand it but that will affect the lives of all Americans was thus rushed to passage without any real debate, and less reflection."

Also, there's that sticky issue of Constitutionality: "Connecticut might sue if Nebraska gets Medicaid money." Oh, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments, are you against it too? Tsk tsk.

Security theater - In light of the recent terrorist attempt, it's worth checking out this November 2008 Atlantic article on "The things he carried." Bottom line: all that shoe-removal and laptop-separation and air-spray are about as useful as a bogus scribble on your boarding pass.

Extra - Mark Steyn has more.

More (12/28) - Megan has the quote of the day: "The TSA's obsession with fighting the last war is so strong that I expect any day to see them building wooden forts at our nation's airports in order to keep the redcoats at bay."

The reason for the season

The staff here at Viking Pundit wishes everybody a happy and healthy Christmas season.

So that's that - Fox News: "Senate passes health insurance overhaul."

Let's recap: In a time of record deficits and exploding debt, Congress is going to pass the mother of all entitlement programs to pile upon the trillions of unfunded liabilities already in place from Social Security and Medicare. The funding for the bill is risible: Medicare cuts that will never happen are counted twice, doctor reimbursement rate cuts that nobody believes will occur, new taxes on "Cadillac" plans that will surely disappear, and an added burden on businesses as the country struggles to climb out of double-digit unemployment.

It is not universal coverage, it does nothing to bend the cost curve, and it imposes a possibly unconstitutional mandate on Americans to purchase something or be fined, which is laughably defined as "not a tax" by our President. It puts new burden on the insurance companies, forcing them to set prices against their very nature, driving up expenses that will surely be passed on to businesses and policy holders. There is no tort reform, no insurance portability, the tapped states will have to pick up the cost for expanded Medicaid.

Finally, Americans oppose this legislation by wide margins, but the Democrats know better. Congratulations on your big "win" guys.

Extra - Karl Rove "The real price of the Senate health bill." It's $2.4 trillion.

More - Right Wing Nuthouse: "The worst piece of legislation in my lifetime."

And this - Doctor Zero: "What democracy is not."

Beyond the law - Since we know that Obama will sign anything with the words "health care" on it, we may have to depend on the courts to restore sanity. Here's Richard Epstein with "Why the Reid bill is unconstitutional."

So that's a thumbs down - Good News Film Reviews on "Avatar": "This is the worst movie I have ever seen." Spoilers galore.