-Here’s the update on the E-Book.
I’ve found ten complete pieces. I finished one that I had left unfinished years ago. I have one other that I need to finish. (I also found an unfinished one that I strongly suspect will remain unfinished unless I have a blindingly brilliant idea on how to finish it.) And I may crank out one more really short one. And then it’s just a matter of writing an introduction and formatting the sucker. And them making the cover. ( I actually have a kinda sorta feeler out for someone to do it. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be able to afford his services and I may wind up doing it myself.) I also have a title but I’m going to hold off announcing it until I’m closer to publishing. I will tell you this much. All the pieces are comic.
Most of them involve things geeks love.
There may be some political stuff but not much.
And one piece will end with a joke involving Pasolini’s “Salo: or 120 Days of Sodom”.
Hope that whets you appetite.
-In the meantime , life goes on. This week, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, specifically the Individual Mandate. And from what I’m hearing, it didn’t go so well. Via Adam Serwer at Mother Jones.
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.should be grateful to the Supreme Court for refusing to allow cameras in the courtroom, because his defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court.
Stepping up to the podium, Verrilli stammered as he began his argument. He coughed, he cleared his throat, he took a drink of water. And that was before he even finished the first part of his argument. Sounding less like a world-class lawyer and more like a teenager giving an oral presentation for the first time, Verrilli delivered a rambling, apprehensive legal defense of liberalism’s biggest domestic accomplishment since the 1960s—and one that may well have doubled as its eulogy.
“What is left?” Justice Antonin Scalia demanded of Verrilli, “if the government can do this, what can it not do?” Verrilli’s response to this basic and most predictable of questions was to rattle off a few legal precedents.
Justice Samuel Alito asked the same question later. “Could you just—before you move on, could you express your limiting principle as succinctly as you possibly can?” Verrilli turned to precedent again. “It’s very much like Wickard in that respect, it’s very much like Raich in that respect,” Verrilli said, pointing to two previous Supreme Court opinions liberals have held up to defend the individual mandate. Where the lawyers challenging the mandate invoked the Federalist Papers and the framers of the Constitution, Verrilli offered jargon and political talking points. If the law is upheld, it will be in spite of Verrilli’s performance, not because of it.
You get the feeling that if Obama wasn’t still visiting North Korea, he would have put on his lawyer jacket and argued the damn thing himself.
For additional reading, I also recommend Serwer’s more recent article “Will the Supreme Court create Zombie Obamacare?”. As lucid a slab of worse case scenario as you’re going to find on this topic.
Now I’ve heard it said that if the court strikes down the ACA, the obvious pivot would be to press for a single payer system. And I am sympathetic to that view, I think we should have opened with Single Payer then negotiated from there. But with a GOP that is now prepared to scorch the earth than replant the garden in charge of the House and eyeing the Senate like a pederast eyeing a playground, that is going to be a hard Goddamn sell!
Let me say this one more time. You want this shit to improve, get off your asses and VOTE YOU SONS OF BITCHES, VOTE!!!! We need the House and Senate back to get anything done and it will be a long slog. And it will get worse before it gets better.
If it gets better.
-And if the Supreme Court sticking it’s big bazoo into this doesn’t motivate you, maybe Mitt Romney will. The important part runs from 1:10 to 2:04.
WORDPRESS DOESN’T YET ALLOW EMBEDS OF MSNBC VIDEOS.
“That’s not how the game is played.”
Yeah and for low income people, the game is Russian Roulette. You can either buy insurance or use the money for food and shelter and hope that you never come down with heart disease or Cancer or something else life threatening.
I am now going to allow myself an angry moment.
Mitt, you fucking pasty faced automaton, WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS FUCKING HOLY AND SACRED IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Bridge is a game. So is Sorry. And so is Monopoly. There is a game called “Life” from Parker Brothers but we are not talking about “Life” the game. We are talking about “Life” the OTHER PEOPLES FUCKING LIVES!!!!!!!
When you look into the mirror and ask yourself “Why don’t people like me? I’m a nice guy.” Heed the words of the sage Sondheim, “Nice is different from good”.
More later.
