Keep calm and karaoke!

Via Cosmo Orbüs.

There's a certain amount of outfreaking (German: Ausfreakung) going on in the Tubes over today's ruling by a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Federal Court of Appeals that Affordable Care insurance clients can't get their premium subsidies in the 36 states whose Republican governors and/or legislators refused to set up a state exchange, because the law doesn't mention doing subsidies for the big federal exchange that these citizens are forced by their stupid rulers to use instead. "Omigod," I'm hearing, "they're going to murder Obamacare!"

I'm not buying it. Only a couple of hours later another ruling came down from a different panel and in the opposite direction (same link as above):

Yelp!

Thanks to David Waldman for the inspiration.

Grassley inappropriate

The melting of the polar icecaps? Nah, that's not a problem.

Eighty-seven gun deaths every day? Please, it's not like the victims haven't been born yet...

No, when you want to talk about serious problems, how about the fact that some potential foreign terrorists might be getting disability payments, or earned income tax relief. Or maybe not. But that's the thing, isn't it, there's nothing in the law that says they can't, and those precious dollars, if they exist, could be used to buy gallons and gallons of ethanol:

“...How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?” (Raw Story)

Glad you got your priorities all worked out, Chuckles.

Senator Charles Grassley, in his stylish cash-register-tape cravat. (When my Aunt Emma got to be his age she was, similarly, given to putting paper napkins on her head at odd moments.) No, wait, it's an optical illusion; actually a briefing paper the hot-under-the-collar senator is using as a fan. AP photo.

Real thing

Updated 4/22/2012

An Italian contemporary art and design blog entitled CocaColla.it, apparently quite a good one, gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago—it had existed since 2010—under assault from a certain large international company with a similar-sounding name, for infringement of copyright.

Found at Bloggokin.it.

You can read about it, in somewhat undependable English, here, and a more extended text in Italian and English here. I don't think there's anything that can be done about it, but there is some other Coke news: [jump]

Grassley misleading

People who live in glass houses, my dad used to say, shouldn't take baths.

And by the same token Senator Grassley ought to watch out how he throws around the word "stupid":

This from the man who suggested that we should get rid of child labor laws to combat obesity; who spells the Israeli prime minister' name "Netanyahoo" (that would be clever in a thuggish way if he were doing it on purpose, but I'm afraid he's not); who accused Kathleen Sebelius of illegally using the HHS website for propaganda; and who explained the crisis of rising health care costs thus (for splendid video, see the Daily Show edition):

As Congress contemplates ways to cut down the massive, fire-breathing Debt and Deficit Dragon, it must wield the proper weapon or weapons.  

A few weeks ago, House Democrats proposed a graduated surtax of up to 5.4 percent on taxpayers making over $280,000 to partially offset their health care reform bill. This small business surtax would push the top marginal tax rate up to between 43% and 46.4%, a rate that would jump to over 50% in 39 states if Medicare and state and local taxes are added in, according to the Tax Foundation. So, is this small business surtax the proper weapon to strike down the Debt and Deficit Dragon? I have a chart here that shows not Sir Lancelot, but Sur Tax-a-lot, on his way to slay the Debt and Deficit dragon with his mighty surtax.

As you can see from this chart, the surtax is a large, heavy, painful weapon, and lethal to America's job engine -- the goose that lays the golden egg -- small business America. However, it is not effective against the Debt and Deficit Dragon because it does nothing to slow the dragon's exponential growth. The costs of health care that the dragon feasts upon will continue to increase much faster than the revenues Sur Tax-a-lot can collect with his surtax.

See, Chuck, we all know you're not quite as dumb as you look, and the cornpone idiocy you laced that speech with was specifically meant to distract attention from the bald lies you and the Tax Foundation were trying to sell about this so-called "small business surtax" that would have affected virtually no small businesses and its imaginary effect on top marginal tax rates.

And damn if it didn't work! Old Jon Stewart and I were laughing so hard that the lies slipped right by us back in 2009. But the word "stupid" is a large, heavy, painful weapon, a-and sometimes it boomerangs too!

Big government is for little people

I'm sure if Dickens were composing us he'd love to come up with the idea of a Senator Grassley from the Land of Pork (a gross and greasy grass-fed grouch), but it's hard to imagine him going all the way to imagine a Senator Grassley like ours, who blames child labor laws for childhood obesity. (Little nippers don't sweat the way we did in my day back in the 1880s.)

And then there is well-known Belgian imperialist terror candidate Dr. Newt Gingrich, who only wants them doing "light janitorial work" and even then only if their parents qualify for food stamps, or did I get that wrong?

Hell, I say put 'em in the army. Don't we need drummer boys?