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):

A trick or two

Peter Martins choreography for Stravinsky's Jeu de Cartes, New York City Ballet, via.

A compelling little bit of linguistic strangeness in the aftermath of Senator Reid's remark on Senator Vitter:

 “He just is just not playing with a full deck. Something is wrong there.” Vitter shot back in a statement to HuffPost saying, “Unfortunately, the deck I’m playing with in the Harry Reid Senate is quite full -– of jokers.”

Vitter is just trying to be quick-witted here, putting out a statement that is only meant to sound nasty, not to have any particular meaning, like your argumentative early-adolescent son who thinks the most devastating comeback is to repeat what you just said with one of the words changed.

But he betrays a curious misunderstanding of what the idiom (most properly, I think, "not dealing from a full deck") and others like it ("a couple of bananas short of a bunch...") are about, namely, one's own endowment of gifts or skills: the insulter is saying that you're in some sense not all there. But in Vitter's usage the cards aren't in his hand, as it were, but out on the Senate floor; the idiom has become about the people you work with, as if colleagues were just material to be manipulated; and he's complaining that the Democratic senators aren't in some way "good" enough to let him manipulate them. If you don't do what Vitter wants (like acquiescing in the mistreatment of your support staff re health benefits), you're a "joker".

There's something similar to what Reid noticed in Cruz, in the same interview:

Cruz is a smart man, but he “has still not accepted” that he’s in the Senate and can’t constantly be talking down to people as if they’re not on his level. [Reid] added, “He might be able to work a calculus problem better than I can. But he can’t legislate better than I can.”

Cruz wants to work with people the way he might work with symbols on paper or perhaps game tokens, shoving them into place and performing his algorithms. It's the same "conservative" or psychopathic difficulty in recognizing the humanity—the agency—of the other person (of which Reid, in contrast, is liberally, sometimes infuriatingly, aware).

Also, too: Cruz as brilliantly quoted by Chris Cilizza in today's Wapo as "summarizing Cruz's approach to politics in just one sentence:

 “I’m not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate.”

No Obamacare for you, peasants. Postscript

Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker brilliantly thought to ask Congressional staff to email him on the subject of the scheme by Senator David Vitter and others to force them onto the Obamacare Marketplace exchange without the government subsidies that will make the program work for everybody else (so that in the name of giving them "no special privileges" he wants to have them actually treated worse than the entire remaining population). Here is a sample response:

I will make $22,800 this year after taxes. That is it. I am a 30 year old married congressional staffer with a 20 month old son who depends on my job for his health insurance. My husband has to pay for his own health care through his salary, and it would cost him over $1000 a month to cover the whole family. I just started in this position 6 months ago, after being out of work for a year and staying at home with my baby. I need my health insurance, and I cannot afford to pay $600 a month for coverage. Without this so called “subsidy” (the same “subsidy” congressional staffers have been receiving for years before the ACA) both myself and my son will be uninsured. With our combined salaries, my husband and I will not qualify for subsidies via the ACA, so we would have to pay for it all out of pocket....

Much more, some of it pretty moving, at the link. I do not have any illusions that Lizza reads this page or that I had anything to do with his great story, but I do want to note that I was there first, piping my native woodnotes wild, three or so weeks ago. H/t JJ for the tip.

No Obamacare for you, peasants!

From Politico:

Vitter’s plans were detailed in an email — obtained by POLITICO — sent from Vitter’s staff to fellow GOP staffers and closely mimics a similar plan in the House. If the Senate strips out a provision that defunds Obamacare in the spending bill and sends it back to the House, Republicans in the lower chamber may send back a spending bill that kills the subsidies for Capitol Hill staffers and lawmakers, raising the shutdown stakes even further.

Talk about your house n****ers! Millions of Americans are about to get affordable health insurance for the first time in their lives, and David Vitter (not just a spank-me–loving pervert but a millionaire who could easily afford his own premiums) doesn't want his own staff to have it. And the staff not only goes along with this mistreatment but reaches out to other colleagues to invite them to swallow it too.

German Peasants' Revolt, via Xtimeline.

You know how expensive DC life is, and how little some of these people get paid? They used to have great health benefits, but Senator Grassley decided they shouldn't, so even as President Obama was tricking them into voting for health insurance for 30 million Americans, Grassley was trying to snooker his own staff out of it. Democrats rescued them from this pickle, but Vitter is determined to get them back to wage slavery, one car accident or stroke away from destitution.

I've been sending them Tweets trying to wake them up

Systems administrator for @SenVitter has to live in DC on $31000/year. Boss says "no Obamacare benefits for you!" http://t.co/KqyjO1BlrY
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 24, 2013

@SenVitter's director of scheduling works 2 jobs for $37K. No Obamacare benefits for her, says boss. http://t.co/6qGo1GWWEb
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 24, 2013

Hey @SenVitter staff, 30 million people will get health insurance subsidies while your boss wants to take yours away. You have a #badboss
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 24, 2013

but I am getting absolutely no response. In fact, Senator Vitter's Twitter account has never been used. What do you suppose is up with that?

Update:
He just started using the account! Two Tweets so far. He's still using the default egg gravatar, but still—I think I'm starting to work on him.