Month: January 2013

…”Hoo. Boy, that escalated quickly.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1JlzkiKbCE

“I mean, that really got out of hand, fast.”

– “It jumped up a notch.”

“It did, didn’t it?”

– “Yeah, I stabbed a man in the heart.”

“I saw that! Brick killed a guy.  Did you throw a trident?”

– “Yeah! There were horses, and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident.”

“Brick, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.  You should find yourself a safehouse or a relative close by; lay low for a while, because you’re probably wanted for murder.”

Moe Lane

Frank Lautenberg’s staff kind of sidles away from Bob Menendez.

I can understand why Frank Lautenberg’s staff would program this into the Senator.

Frank Lautenberg said today he was sorry to see his fellow Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, entangled in a controversy over trips he took to the Dominican Republic on the plane of a campaign contributor.

The contributor, Salomon Melgen, an eye doctor in West Palm Beach, Fla., is the subject of an FBI investigation. On Tuesday night and again Wednesday, agents searched his offices, although they have refused to disclose what they were looking for.

“If there are infractions as they are reported, it’s too bad,” Lautenberg told reporters.

After all, a suddenly-absent Robert Menendez would be most beneficial for Frank Lautenberg’s staff’s long-term employment prospects.

Via

Lindsey Graham uses his powers for good on Chuck Hagel.

Do you know why Lindsey Graham frustrates a lot of my Republican colleagues? The real reason?

It’s because every so often he does something like this…

During his Senate confirmation hearings, former Senator Chuck Hagel R-Neb. couldn’t name any of the “dumb things” that he said the “Jewish lobby” forced the Senate to do.

…AND WE DON’T KNOW WHAT SWITCH WE NEED TO FLIP TO GET LINDSEY GRAHAM TO DO THIS ALL THE TIME.

:pause:

Gah.

Chuck Hagel nomination hearings going on right now.

He’s going to have a bumpy ride, based on testimony so far.  Alas – and this concession will undoubtedly please the antiwar movement, which has been breathing hard about this nomination from Day One – at the end of the day we only have 45 seats in the Senate, and the Democrats have enough problems right now without making life difficult for Barry Obama.  The Republicans are going to give him a good kicking, but unless 2014 Red State Democrats decide that they don’t dare risk it we’re probably going to see Hagel nominated.

Sorry, guys.  There’s a limit to how much I can do without a working Senate majority.

Thanks to Democrats, poor families getting squeezed on Obamacare exchanges.

They’re calling it a “glitch.” Goodness gracious:

Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what’s being called a glitch in President Barack Obama’s overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president’s plan had hoped.

As a result, some families that can’t afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear.

The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress wrote the law[*].

Essentially, it breaks down like this: the government is forcing everybody to buy health insurance. The government is also mandating the existence of health care exchanges. If somebody theoretically can’t afford the exchanges, then they theoretically can get subsidies. The rule of thumb for ‘affordability’ was capped at a level designed to keep people from simply dropping their employer coverage.  But the rule of thumb was also capped assuming average costs for individual coverage, not average costs for family coverage.  As a result, some families will be left in a bad situation: they don’t get family coverage from their employers, they aren’t able to afford the new exchange policies on their own, and they can’t get subsidized because they’re over a badly-designed arbitrary affordability level.  And, of course, this is all disproportionally targeting lower-income families.

Well, as Nancy Pelosi (in her increasingly doddering way) said, they had to pass the law in order to find out what was in it.
Continue reading Thanks to Democrats, poor families getting squeezed on Obamacare exchanges.

Heat + Wet + CO2 = MORE LIFE. :sotto voice: *Idiots*.

The problem with our Greenie religious fanatics is – well, they have several, really. But one of their major problems is that they’ve never quite twigged to the realization that there’s an entire industry dedicated to scaring the money out of them. Which is pretty much the entire global warming / climate change / Mother Earth Goddess Rages business, right there. Couple that with an inability to do higher math* and to realize that there was actual history before 1950** and you get people profitably panicking that we’re one burning coal pile away from Venus.

Fortunately, there’s objective reality. Continue reading Heat + Wet + CO2 = MORE LIFE. :sotto voice: *Idiots*.