Constitutional Mustard

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) A/K/A Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court in a rare 5-4 decision that did not involve Justice Kennedy in the majority. Surprisingly, Chief Justice Roberts, who generally votes with the reactionary activists on the court, sided with the more liberal justices in a decision that now has Republicans fired up.  The SCOTUS ruling upheld the individual mandate, which requires people to buy health insurance or pay a fee, that the court called a tax. This reference to a  tax particularly delights Republicans.  They plan to use the word tax to instill fear and loathing among the electorate to get Romney elected, who vows to repeal the ACA on day 1 of his Presidency.  Romney has not said what he would would replace it with were he elected.  The irony is that Obamacare is essentially Mitt’s Romneycare which is now law in Massachusetts.

The ACA passed the constitutional mustard, which I find most amusing because mustard is a condiment typically reserved for the unhealthiest of foods, like hotdogs, which Ralph Nader once called “pink missles”, unsafe for human consumption…at any speed.  Mustard goes well with anything super salty – pretzels, sandwiches, even french, I mean, freedom fries.  French’s by the way makes a mean mustard.  If I were a condiment maker, I would launch a new product simply called Constitutional Mustard.  It would be a more upscale mustard, a little like Grey Poupon, only sold in a big syringe, or one of those hospital drip bags, to remind consumers to mind their health, lest they wind up on a gurney.  Hey, constitutional mustard could even be a new crayon color, a shade between burnt sienna and neon carrot.

Swarming Homeless Honeybees Hunt Hives and Higher Education

A  swarm of homeless bees attacked a Volvo station wagon as a horrified family of three looked on helplessly from the comfort of the cabin.  One theory for the attack (mine) is that the safe and roomy Volvo provides the perfect home for a swarm of upwardly mobile bees, SUMBs for short.  I imagine this ambitious family of honeybees have their sites on college in upstate New York and may very well have noticed the Bard College sticker on the back glass of the car.  I suspect that these are the same progressive swarm of bees that have taken to the streets to protest the lack of environmental regulations that have given rise to climate change.  These bees, though not aggressive by nature, do intimidate by swarming science deniers and plan to disrupt the GOP convention this summer.  Actually, Bard College is the perfect school for them – progressive with a campus full of smokers, which would help calm the bees at night.  And Bard has a wonderful new science facility where the bees might lend their expertise on pollination, hive making and honey production.  Should Bard move to admit bees, I would think they would soon follow with a Bee Keeping major.

Another Frank Gehry masterpiece