Wow, you look really great in that picture Dr. Z. Have you been tanning? Luckily you live in SoCal and can do it the natural way and avoid that tanning salon tax that has John Boehner, as Peter Sagal of "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" put it, "Orange with rage."

You know, I enjoy the right's linguistic trick of naming their opponents programs. Like ObamaCare. I wish that we on the left were as persistently clever: Just think what we could've done with BushWar, BushHurricane and BushDeficit!

That said, I'll outsource further commentary on Z's complaint to Ezra Klein, which I feel compelled to reproduce at length:

Take the corporations arguing that the Affordable Care Act is wrecking their balance sheets. AT&T says it's writing off a billion dollars. Caterpillar took a $150 million hit. But what's going on here isn't a new mandate or a hefty tax, but the elimination of a subsidy that advantaged firms who provide drug benefits to retirees.

What happened was this: When George W. Bush and the Republican Congress passed Medicare Part D in 2003, they were presented with a problem: The fact that the government was now offering prescription drug coverage might encourage these companies to dump the prescription drug coverage they were already offering employees. So Congress gave them a kickback: Companies that provide retiree drug benefits get a subsidy of about $1,300 per retiree per year in order to keep companies from ending their retiree drug plans at once and dumping everyone into Medicare. This subsidy is not just tax free but also tax deductible. Let me make sure that's clear: Not only did companies get a subsidy, but they could also deduct that subsidy from their taxes. Sweet deal.

This looked a bit nuts in retrospect, so Democrats ended the subsidy's deductibility. Again, let's be clear: They didn't end the subsidy. And they didn't make it taxable. They just said that it couldn't be used as a tax deduction. And ultimately, this doesn't raise that much money: About $4.5 billion over 10 years (the sums look large on the corporate side because they're writing down the deduction's expected future value, not just its annual value).

Emphasis added.

The consequences were intended:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528637

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has fired off a nasty letter to those companies.

I take it you didn't actually read the letters. Here's an excerpt.

The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold a hearing on April 21, 2010
at 10:00 a.m. in Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building to examine the impact of the
new law on Deere & Company and other large employers. We request your personal testimony
at this hearing.
To assist the Committee with its preparation for the hearing, we request that you provide
the following documents from January 1,2009, through the present: (1) any analyses related to
the projected impact of health care reform on Deere & Company; and (2) any documents,
including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to
the projected impact of health care reform on Deere & Company. We also request an
explanation of the accounting methods used by Deere & Company since 2003 to estimate the
financial impact on your company of the 28% subsidy for retiree drug coverage and its
deductibility or nondeductibility, including the accounting methods used in preparing the cost
impact released by Deere & Company this week.

I'm not sure how that can be characterized as nasty.

Actually, it reminds me of government bullying — the kind the left decries as McCarthyism. Waxman is going to haul these CEOs before his committee and berate them for telling the fiduciary truth they are required by law to tell. He'll be, in essence, bullying them to lie about what the real-world impacts of ObamaCare will be on American companies — and, naturally, the Americans who work for those companies ... otherwise known as us.

Once again, your overblown rhetoric is just so much hot air. Are you really trying to equate McCarthyism - the practice of subpoenaing individuals and coercing them to, at best, inform on the political beliefs of their peers, and at worst perjure themselves, with no regard for the available evidence or recognition of the lack thereof - with Waxman asking for the executives to provide the evidence that led them to a contradictory conclusion as to the financial impact of the health care law? If anything, you should welcome an open discussion where an alternative interpretation of the accounting is presented.

This type of stuff is why Atrios was right. It's easy to disregard the rantings of those like Aronymous and still have an intelligent discussion. But when an otherwise reasonable argument (with excellent points I might add) is laced with such hyperbole it makes it difficult for the other side to sit through it and stay sane. This is why Olbermann and Hannity preach to their choirs (and a few masochists).

I wonder what Waxman is thinking, since its no longer necessary to lie, since Obama and Bacus have recently reiterated what this bill is about.

I wonder why the left thinks they have to also carry this water.

I wonder if any of Obama's minions believed that this was Private HC reform in the first place, and if so, how do they feel now that they know it isn't.

I wonder how long they will continue to lie and say that this bill will lower costs, raise the standard of care, and increase access, as costs rise, standards drop, and access requires longer and longer waits.

I wonder what solution they will offer to fix the mess that they create, but I know for a fact that they will not listen to anyone but themselves.