Where's Luke? gets our Joan Rivers on

Earlier this week, our esteemed blog turned the big 3...uh, just 3, so yaaay, happy birthday us! Three in blog years makes us about as old as Joan Rivers, so I figured it was time for our first face lift. Thus, the new '80s-printer-paper-inspired look. Whadday'all think? Wow, and in "Spaceballs" Joan Rivers' character was named DOT MATRIX. Twas meant to be.



As Side Bar pointed out in our weekly email chat about the blog which we had for the first and only time this week, we totally pulled a Frank the Tank and forgot our own birthday. Pretty sad, but totally not my fault, as I've been a bit under the weather since somehow catching a cold when it was like 75 degrees out this weekend. Blame = avoided.

So yeah, we have a spiffy new look and we're gonna hit on some chicks with it.

And speaking of face lifts, how 'bout this health care thing? (Segue Award win.) Looks like I picked the wrong time to quit smoking, huh.

Anyway, health care. As our honorable and eloquent vice-president said, yes, this is a big fucking deal. Along with a shit-ton of smaller initiatives, here's what I see as the four major accomplishments:

1. Covering an additional 32 million people
2. Subsidies of approxmately $80-90 billion a year for low- and middle-income folks to buy either health insurance they didn't have before, or higher-quality care (mostly starting in 2014, though)
3. Preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to someone who either gets sick or has a preexisting condition
4. Reducing the deficit by over $1 trillion (though exactly how accurate that estimate ends up being is impossible to know)

None of those things have anything to do with death panels, pulling the plug on granny, a government takeover of 1/6 of the economy, totalitarianism, or any of the other complete fucking bullshit so many on the right claimed -- and not just insane performance artists like Glenn Beck either. That horseshit was spread by congressional leaders and folks even considered intellectuals (Gingrich) and high-level party strategists (Rove).

I'm not sorry one iota for the magnificent schadenfreude I've been feeling since John Boehner's childish tantrum on the House floor Sunday night (see #1 on this list of the Top 5 Health Care Debate Meltdowns).

So, to the moosey muse of Where's Luke?, former half-Governor Sarah Palin, who not too long ago asked in that Real American™ way that she does, "How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?" I would say two things to you and your retarded, inbred, dying-off-due-to-the-very-natural-selection-you-evolution-denying-shit-for-brains-don't-understand ilk right now:

1. Pretty well, actually.

and

2.