Sometimes The Jokes Just Write Themselves

It’s really funny how that group of tax scofflaws known as the Minnesota Republican Party is going after perceived boo-boos in Al Franken’s business tax filings.

It’s even funnier when you realize that Norm Coleman’s part-time wife Laurie is as vulnerable if not more so than Norm’s election opponent Franken to these sorts of allegations.

And it’s laugh-out-hilarious when you realize that a senator’s wife really is a spokesperson for a product named “Blo-and-Go”. (“Blo-and-Go”? I thought that’s what Norm’s dad got in the parking lot of the Savoy a few years back.)

UPDATE: What makes this especially sweet is how this turns a favorite trick of the GOP against them. The trick is to send a letter of complaint to some adjudicating agency — doesn’t have to be fact-based at all; in fact, the use of facts in context is death to a typical GOP complaint letter — then scream to their favorite tame media folk and/or paid stenobloggers that “a complaint has been filed” without putting too much emphasis on the fact that the Republicans were the ones that wrote the letter in the first place. Cons hate it when we turn their tools against them; it pushes their buttons and makes them gnash their teeth in impotent frustration. We can now say, just as truthfully as they can about Franken, that Laurie Coleman is ‘under investigation’ by the State of California. And just as with the complaint against Franken, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a meaningful response with the force of law behind it.

Random Tuesday Morning Stuff Roundup

— Welcome to the inaugural edition of What John Cole Said. “Straight Talker” John McCain uses his wife’s jet and other assets to skirt the very campaign finance regs he talks up.

— Pay Toilets Went Away For A Reason, indeed. And the idea that medical innovation doesn’t happen in socialized medicine is a myth that has been debunked for a while now. As I stated in the comments section:

Look at uterine artery embolization, for example: It’s been done in France for over two decades, yet didn’t make it to America until nearly the year 2000, and didn’t get widely used until the middle of this decade. Why? Because hospitals, seeking an easy way to recoup costs, chose to charge more for this relatively simple and non-invasive procedure than for a hysterectomy ($10,000 versus $6,000 in 2002, when I sought to have UAE). The insurance companies weren’t going to shell out for that, so they chose not to cover it, using the excuse that the procedure was “experimental” when it’d already been safely done on tens of thousands of French women!

Drug companies spend more on advertising than they do on research — and even then, they try to get by on the cheap, exploiting grad students at colleges for a fraction of what they’d have to pay salaried and degreed scientists. Furthermore, much if not most of the research is done not to create genuinely new or genuinely improved drugs or ways to treat illnesses, but to figure out ways to rework old ones just enough so they can be patented and sold as “new” treatments (commonly called “me-too drugs”) that aren’t any better than the old drugs that are no longer covered under patents.

— Speaking of medicine: Graham explains how working in Guatemala, a free-market “paradise”, has made him appreciate the need for regulation and single-payer health care.

— Ooooh, so the Scary Minnesota GOP is running TV ads attacking the local Democrats for overriding Smilin’ Tim’s gas-tax veto. No mention is made of the fact that a goodly number of Republicans voted for the override as they too are sick and tired of seeing our once-excellent streets turning to axle-eating pothole farms. Meanwhile, the gas tax increase is already paying off in the form of work on turning the pothole farms back into safe roads.

— Speaking of silly Republicans: I find their lack of brains… disturbing.

The Following Is Not From The Onion

Though it reads like it could be.

Yeah, I know, Zirkle’s old news. It’s still funny, in a horrifying kinda way.