Hammer Mill Days

Hey, what the...? Did I sign off on that? Are you sure? Well, I guess you would know better than I. Wouldn't you? RRRrrrrr.... Face it, we've got bad quality control here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Was a time that not a single hammer went out of here with unsightly flashing or a splinter out of place in their ironwood handles. Not so with Big Green, it pains me to say. We are not perfect - ADMIT IT TO YOURSELF. It's just because we've got irons in so many fires. Too many spoons in the stew. Eleven toes on each foot. I don't know - you pick the metaphor. I've got work to do. Nah, see... Marvin (my personal robot assistant) posted our March episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, before I had had a chance to listen to it. We could be saying ANYTHING, for chrissake. If we had reputations or integrity, we could lose either (or both). There are some advantages to general slovenliness and moral degeneration, but I've only just thought of one of them, so.... th

The Affordable Care Act (what Republicans contemptuously refer to as "Obamacare") goes before our brilliant Supreme Court this week. Given that the law does yeoman service to preserving the private health insurance industry in America and is therefore a friend to the almighty Corporation, one might expect them to turn back the constitutional challenges on that basis alone. There are, of course, stronger constitutional arguments in favor of the plan - David Cole runs through them in The Nation much more fluently than I could ever attempt to do. I think, though, that we have to see these challenges for what they are, not for an effort to secure something called "economic freedom" which G.O.P. presidential candidates regularly invoke but fail to define. The challenges are, of course, a cynical delaying tactic and an effort to procure through other means what the Republicans failed to achieve through the legislative process. They have attempted to put a log in the spok