Pun Salad

Let's not forget:

And I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

The Obama administration is turning up the heat on tanning salons across the country with the passage of its new health care bill.

To help fund the $940 billion health care overhaul, a 10% tax on individuals receiving indoor tanning services was tacked on, and the initiative is expected to generate $2.7 billion over ten years.

… whenever the history books are kept:

• I can't get all excited about Vice President Biden's potty mouth. How could I possibly respect this guy any less than I already do? I get Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt newsletter and I appreciate his observation there:

  This guy has the impulse control of a kindergartener after a binge on candy corn and Slurpees.

  But Andrew Malcolm at the LA Times noted the real scandal:

  Biden is fond of quoting poets in public, usually Irish ones and often in the Mideast for some reason. But today the man who was a senator while Obama was in the sixth grade chose another nationality.

  Here's what he said, according to the White House transcript:

  As I said just before the president signed the healthcare bill, I quoted Virgil, the classic Greek poet, who once said, 'The greatest wealth is health.' The greatest wealth is health. Mr. President, you've made us a nobler and wealthier nation by providing for the health of your fellow citizens.

  Here's the problem, as loyal Ticket reader Mike points out:

  Virgil wasn't Greek. He was Roman. Very Roman. So Roman, in fact, that the author (70 BC-19 BC) of the "Aeneid," among other famous works, is buried in Naples.

  And (even bigger problem), this is one of these quotes that nobody can seem to find in primary sources. From Meghan Clyne's takedown of Bidenesque rhetoric:

  … sure enough, Virgil is credited with the quote in thousands of Google hits, QuoteGarden.com, and even boxer shorts for sale on Amazon.com. But good luck finding the phrase anywhere in the Latin poet's actual writings. A search of the phrase (or even similar terms)--in English and Latin--in databases of Virgil's poetry yields nothing. Richard Tarrant, a professor of Latin at Harvard, says: "I'm not familiar with the quote (which sounds like something my mother used to say), and offhand I would doubt that it comes from Virgil." Two classicists at Cornell, while unable to prove that the poet never said anything like it, "doubt whether this quote comes from Virgil." One, Barry Strauss, adds: "It sounds more like a fortune cookie than a poet."

  There are few things more wonderful than the phony intellectual who can't manage to keep his mask on straight.

• Bryan Caplan makes his opening argument for the "separation of health and state":

  Government already plays such a large role in health care that it may be hard to understand what "separation of health and state" means. Let me be clear: In my ideal world, we wouldn't just abolish Obamacare. We'd abolish Medicare, Medicaid, regulation of health insurance, medical licensing, and the Food and Drug Administration... for starters. Unlike many opponents of the latest legislation, I'm not saying, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare."

  That's likely to strike many readers as heartless, foolish, scary. All the more reason you should Read The Whole Thing.

• Captain Ed has audio and transcript of Congressman John Dingell explaining why ObamaCare implementation will take a while:

  Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

  Emphasis added. You know, I bet a lot of people who find the Caplan quote above scarifying wouldn't blink an eye about Congressman Dingell. It's a funny old world.

• Worthwhile reading is Timothy P. Carney's article for the Washington Examiner, contrasting President Obama's allegation that "we pushed back on the undue influence of special interests" in passing Obamacare with, well, reality:

  Standing behind Obama at the bill signing Tuesday were Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the leading Senate and House recipients, respectively, of health-sector political action committee money in this election cycle. The 2008 champs of health PAC fundraising, Max Baucus and Charlie Rangel, were also on stage.

  And the man with the pen in his hand had received more money from drug companies and health insurance companies than any politician in the history of the country.