“They could have been honest with us. They could have come to us as men and women and talked with us, sought our counsel. They could have tried to convince us that the good of their ideas was worth all we would have to give up to get it. They did not. They lied and lied and lied some more. They called us ignorant and vicious and heartless and stupid. They pushed a bill none of them had read in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. They fudged numbers so badly they ended up counting whole piles of money twice. They accused anyone who disagreed with them of wanting to kill old people and innocent children. They built a law their own lawyers can not ably defend.”
— Jimmie Bise Jr., “They’re Always Shocked When We’re Not Stupid”
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Offtopic but breaking news: Keith Olbermann is out at Current TV, which makes two TV shows he’s left in 15 months. When you’re too wack for Al Gore, you’re just plain too wack for television.
Top shelf stuff from Bise again. You’ve linked him before and I meant to bookmark him – didn’t forget this time.
When Obama – who had spent the better part of a year talking about the advantages of “my plan” and why it was so much better than the status quo or Hillary’s idea – turned up with no plan at all, and let Pelosi write the thing, it was destined to be a huge failure.
Those huge bills have to be presented, it’s work to do a real budget (not that Obama’s team would know), in a functional Administration the departments and budget team spend months planning and trying to get it right, at least. Congress operates more like a huge dumpster that isn’t locked at night – anybody gets to throw in their own garbage, nobody is really watching.
Compared to Olbie, Charles Johnson has a well-balanced self-image.
I hate to see him get a windfall, but the removal of millions from Al Gore and Joel Hyatt could work for the greater good.
And despite all that Bise mentioned, and he still left off some egregiousness, we’re likely just one man’s vote (Kennedy) away from redefining forever the relationship between individual and State.
That’s how perilously close we are to quite literally catastrophic, irreversible consequences. America cannot survive this pernicious threat that looms on the horizon as the Progressive/Communist/Fabian Socialist monster eases in and out of hibernation waiting for the right season.
These Statists will never stop. It’s what they do. It’s all they do. Governments grow. Period. These Statists will never leave a void. And if we remain “stupid” or cavalier for a second too long, our American experiment is over. We need a reversal of our course. This ratcheted stop which happened only because the contemporary SCOTUS is 56% “Conservative” at best will not hold. It’s going to move and we better force it to empower the individual for a while.
I’d worry more about Roberts, who has shown great deference to both Congress and the Executive, more than Kennedy. Kennedy in fact made the practical case that voiding the whole law was in fact judicial restraint because just killing the mandate would force outcomes Congress never intended.
But as it stands I would be more surprised by 5-4 to uphold than by 6-3 to overturn at least the mandate.
Oral arguments aren’t the critical component of a tough decision: the clerks will work up the truly strongest cases for both sides anyway. But they do count, these were extraordinary in every respect, and they were an utter disaster for Obama.
“Congress operates more like a huge dumpster that isn’t locked at night –
anybody gets to throw in their own garbage, nobody is really watching.”
Well said!
When the Republicans were in power, why didn’t they do something about healthcare? Maybe if they had, we wouldn’t have ended up with this disaster.
Recall, W. spent his re-election capital on trying to reform Socialist Security, and was wrecked for it.
Ironically, I think Bush kept Olbermann employed.
Because every time they tried to do something about it the Democrats and progs on the streets all threw collective hissy fits and blocked them at every turn. The Democrats are determined to have some form of socialized medicine, and they aren’t going to rest until they get it, and they sure as hell aren’t going to allow any Republican or market-based reforms to pull the rug out from under them.
Because Republicans have this nasty habit of wanting to do something that will actually address the problem. That’s more complicated and takes longer.
Adj just summed up the legislative process in the Congress in one sentence.
True, but, to be fair, the GOP are also a bunch of panty-waists.
Well its hard to get that sixty votes to stop a fillibuster, or override a veto, especially when you’ve always got a handful of RINOs ready to join in with the progs.
THIS. +100
The problem is these attempts at comprehensive solutions are always incomprehensible. Changing health insurance and how it’s paid doesn’t lower health care costs it just makes them more expensive in different ways.
Actually the problem is that narrowly focused solutions on aspects of the problem are held hostage to other interests. Allowing interstate health insurance is something that we know will work but the SD’s have to have their freebies for certain constituencies before anything is allowed to be done.