The vote sidetracking the bill was 56-41, with supporters falling four votes short of the 60 they needed to prevail. Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Dean Heller of Nevada were the only Republicans voting to keep the legislation alive and the only lawmakers crossing party lines on the vote.
Okay, look, middle age is what it is. And with many things, it really is true that it’s not how old you are but how not old you feel.
And, yet …
… I must be getting old, despite refusing to grow up.
I mean, I’m pretty sure Erika Moen’s flip-hole cartoon† is genuinely funny, but … why am I not laughing?
I mean, really, even the gratuitous New Hope joke just isn’t moving me the way it should.
I’m guessing there is a matter of perspective involved that I’m just missing. Like Wooderson raving about his car. That is, if you don’t get the underlying trope, you won’t understand why the joke is funny.
Still, though, we cannot forget the tireless dedication of our comic artists. The amount of thought and effort that goes into a joke like that is both incalculable and just a bit scary.
____________________
† TURD: NSFW.
There comes a point when the political discourse achieves such stupidity that, well … er … right.
Steve Benen explains the (ahem!) deal down in Georgia:
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has a problem: rural hospitals keep closing, overwhelmed by financial troubles they can’t solve on their own. The obvious solution – accepting Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act – is the one thing Deal refuses to even consider.
There is no great mystery here as to why the rural hospitals can’t keep their doors open. These facilities have routinely covered low-income Georgians who don’t have insurance, leading to facilities that can’t pay their bills. Medicaid expansion would “help rural hospitals by turning many of their uninsured patients into paying patients,” but the governor and GOP state policymakers won’t budge.
But don’t worry, Deal is ready to think outside the box.
So what’s the deal with Deal? The Georgia Republican has decided he has a problem with the 1986 EMTLA—Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act—which formalized hospital obligations to care provision. In other words, the deal is that Gov. Deal wants hospitals to stop treating the poor.
Yes, really. Sigh.
There is no point in complaining; I did this to myself. I mean, sure, I can say I was just taking a friend out to get some stuff she needs, and I wouldn’t be lying. But even that comes down to me. Or, put simply, this is what you get for setting foot inside a Walmart.
While the situation regarding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the George Washington Bridge raises a host of questions, one might reasonably wonder at the processes by which we might ask, with a straight face, if this can be blamed on President Obama. Or, as Maureen Dowd would have it:
The governor was a beneficiary of America’s desperate hunger for genuine leadership. You can blame Obama for the Christie tulip craze. The president has been so wan, he confused people into thinking that bluster was clarity. In a climate with no leadership, the bully looks like a man. If you’ve only been drinking water, Red Bull tastes like whiskey.
Obama’s ethereal insipidity made Christie’s meaty pugilism attractive; Obama’s insistence on the cerebral made voters long for the visceral, even the gracelessly visceral.
George W. Bush was the Decider who engaged in thoughtless action. So America veered toward Obama, who engaged in thoughtful inaction. Then they careered toward Christie, another practitioner of thoughtless action.
When all you have is leading from behind, there’s a place in your heart for in-your-face.
Wait, what? Really?
No, really?
Such as it is, Brian Tashman gets the obvious comment:
During the controversy over Chick-fil-A’s stance on gay rights issues, Fox News pundit Todd Starnes said that people boycotting the restaurant chain are “un-American” and warned that “the days of persecution are upon us.”
But apparently boycotts aren’t “un-American” as long as Starnes supports them, as today he endorsed the Religious Right boycott of the Girl Scouts over bogus accusations that Girl Scout cookies fund Planned Parenthood ….
Oh, come on. It was inevitable:
A team of European neuroscientists led by Giovanni Marsicano of the University of Bordeaux has found that, in mice, THC fits into receptors in the brain’s olfactory bulb, significantly increasing the animals’ ability to smell food and leading them to eat more of it. A big part of the reason why you might eat more food after using marijuana, the research indicates, is simply that you can smell and taste it more acutely.
That’s right. The science of getting mice high. No, really: (more…)
This Is 