I don't watch all that much TV nowadays, but every now and then I see another McDonald's ad that touts their "triple-thick shakes."

I'm no foe of McDonald's.  They've made their fair share of dollars off me over the years, and I'm well satisfied overall with the value returned for my money.

But their shakes seriously suck.

Triple-thick?  Let's not be modest.  How about ten times too thick?  Just TRY to pull the stuff up through a straw.  Can you suck that hard?  I can't.

What's going on here?  The shakes, once you eat them with a spoon, are pretty typical in composition, containing, besides air, a goodly amount of the food groups that are "bad" for us, and that we all seem to crave: sugar and fat.  McDonald's shakes are neither the best nor the worst in this regard.

But they're incredibly stiff.  And why?  Because McDonald's has stuffed them full of empty stiffeners, that's why!  Because some marketing "guru" said that thicker is richer is better is more sellable.

Maybe some people suck harder than I do.  Maybe they don't mind eating shakes with a spoon.  Or maybe McDonald's is losing millions because they're making dumb marketing decisions.  Any of these is just fine with me.

That's the beauty of the free market.  McDonald's, a wonderful success story, could turn south and crash.  Or, if my tastes are outside the norm, they could thrive even as I gripe.  Either outcome serves consumers in the long run.

On the other hand, when the government pushes "triple-thick shakes," we're all forced to consume them.  In the matter of hype over substance, almost any action of government trumps McDonald's by a mile.  Consider:

- War in Iraq.  We have any number of "triple-thick" reasons for doing it.  How dare Saddam Hussein try to amass 1/100 of the "weapons of mass destruction" that the U.S. both has and is threatening to use around the world?  The nerve of that guy!  We killed roughly 100,000 young teens and old men in George I's war; let's do even "better" under George II!  Let's use mass destruction to keep us safe from mass destruction.  That'll work really well, right??

- Public schools.  One size fits all, and we'll make it a political decision what gets taught and what gets left out.  Triple-thick doesn't even BEGIN to describe the stupidity.

- The war on drugs.

- Locking up U.S. citizens without trial.

- Refusal to let airline pilots carry firearms; we'd rather shoot planes out of the sky if there's any trouble aboard.

- Blind support for Israel, no matter what atrocities they perform or how much land they steal.

- Spying on each other, as if the Soviet Union and East Germany were perfect models of ideal society.

- Death by taxation, quadruple what the patriots who told England to f*** off endured in 1776.

I could go on for pages.  Government is force.  Government is stupidity.  Government is the antithesis of freedom.

So, please tell me I was hallucinating when a poll recently reported that George II has 71% of the populace believing that he's a decent, good man.  Talk about asleep!  One look at the guy's face, and one minute of listening to his words, are plenty to tell that he's a charlatan.

Whatever.  Lincoln is regarded as a near saint even 130 years after his death, when the truth has been available to anyone willing to do a little digging.  Is that going to happen to George II and company as well?

Gag!  Pass the triple-thick shake; I'm ready!