Category: Health Care

Federal Bureaucracy: Doomsday Machine

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by Smitty

Echoing VodkaPundit’s rejection of Star Wars (I have never esteemed it above mildly entertaining space opera, myself) we’re going reaching back to Denny Crane’s old show for a metaphor to mock Politico’s risible title: “Southern governors secede from Medicaid”


Darn right, Lachlan. Progressives behave as if the collapse of these United States into a single uber-State (destined for UN assimilation) is some foregone conclusion. As though every single velvet handcuff entitlement program is irrevocable. As though liberty has to be devoured by a doomsday machine.
Politico:

Govs. Rick Perry in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida have both said they won’t expand Medicaid to more of the working poor in their states — rejecting a central part of the law designed to cover 15 million more Americans.
. . .
The reluctance of other GOP governors suggests they’re not at all sure that rejecting a big infusion of Medicaid cash makes for good policy or good politics. In fact, they’re trying to recast the problem as one that Obama must solve.

If you were so crazy as to take a common sense look at economics, you might naively think that economic effort of citizens bubbles up through states funds the federal government.

Progressives basically admit that the system is broken, and all runs backwards. We don’t budget at all, and haven’t had a balanced budget in recent memory.

Thus, ‘Zimbabwe’ Ben Bernanke is pulling money out the nether end of the Doomsday Machine, creating suction to draw in the states. It is a shameful, dishonest, un-American process. That tarted-up Star Trek image pretty well sums not only this idiotic health care debate, but the November election in general.

Stop the Bureaucratic Doomsday Machine!

Demand liberty!

Update: linked by Daily Pundit. Thanks!

The Vulgar Left’s ObamaCare Arguments

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by Smitty

<rant>
Regulating commerce; the power to tax. Whatever. Somebody get ahold of Jake Tapper and have him ask that miserable twerp Carney: “How is it not fundamentally dishonest that the Administration cannot make a clear, simple, straightforward case for ObamaCare and just put it out there?” The administration has tacked and jibed over the last 2.5 years with enough agility to make Dennis Connor seem a slouch. Even the heavyweights like Hinderaker get sucked into the petty details of how, with enough mental gymnastics, we can contort ObamaCare into something akin to a policy, and deal with it as such. Fine. Full court press.

Step back though and consider what a fundamentally dishonest enterprise ObamaCare has been. Truly, it represents how un-forthright (forthleft?) Barack Obama and the entire Progressive movement have been. And we all know that, for all the resources they’ve sunk into ObamaCare, they don’t even really give two hoots about it: it’s another brick in the wall leading to single payer.

Let this blog post be a hearty “get stuffed” to the administration and the lying liars that support it. Take your arguments and return them to Hell. If you tried to run a business with your snaky approach to, well, anything, you’d be bankrupt overnight. But we live in an age where craven thieves connected to the aristocracy of pull just get bailed out with fake money issued by an illegitimate government in a decadent age.

Think I’ll let this go while it’s still brief and family-friendly. Get pissed, people, and let’s put the November election past the margin of fraud.
</rant>

Update: linked at The Camp of the Saints.

Update II: linked at Daily Pundit:

If the Strauss & Howe Generations Theory is correct, we are already in a historical process that will culminate in an existential crisis for the United States of America, most likely a Depression-like financial collapse (already in progress), a violent revolution, a global war, or some combination of the three – possibly all of them. I can easily see a pathway to all of them from where we are now.

I think the Internet marks the nadir of Progressivism. Sure financial collapse, but I don’t see how anybody sustains anything like a global war. Even the regional fisticuffs like Afghanistan are a substantial strain.

Stephen Kruiser Offers A Manic Take On Politics, And Zen Meditation, But Mostly The Politics

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by Smitty

I was reminded on Twitter that Stephen Kruiser is The Man, and that prompted me to get this video posted from Saturday. If you only have time for one, take the second, where I give Stephen a pants check and he recognizes me from whenever in the past.

The first part is Stephen warming up:

He reacts to the ObamaCare ruling here, and interacts with the cameraman (me) ~2:55:

The climax:

As Long As We’re Viewing ObamaCare With Integrity, What About Social Security?

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by Smitty

The main reason I figured the SCOTUS was going to find ObamaCare Constitutional was that punting it could open up challenges to the rest of the Progressive project, e.g. Social Security.

Progressivism is antithetical to liberty as we know it. The silver lining crew is attempting to find something good in the Thursday’s whuppin’. And you can re-fight it like a Civil War battle all you like. Whether or not history shows that Roberts gave us the Full Denton doesn’t matter: that’s the decision.

So, instead, let us prove ourselves an exceptional nation. Let’s muster all the patriotic attorneys general, and the great conservative legal minds, and set about saying that a tax is a tax; that godforsaken sacred cow Ponzi scheme known as Social Security is a tax, and send it to the butcher along with ObamaCare.

Who is with me?

Update: linked at Daley Gator

Mataconis: Less Guano, Please

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by Smitty

Mataconis takes Podhoretz to task for asserting that the Chief Justice contradicted himself by discussing ObamaCare in terms of the Anti-Injunction Act for purposes of standing, and then turning around and finding ObamaCare Constitutional as an exercise of tax power.

Clearly, Roberts is discussion two very distinct issues in these different section of the opinion. In the first, he is dealing with the discrete question of whether or not the PPACA mandate penalty qualifies as the kind of tax contemplated by the Anti-Injunction Act such that challenges would have to wait until at least 2015 to be filed in a Federal Court. In other words, it was purely a question of whether the Plaintiffs in the case had standing to challenge law at this time. The case law surrounding this issue tends to be complicated, but it was clear at the end of oral argument that none of the justices bought that argument.

Can we please cut through all the legal guano here, Doug? Get a piece of paper and draw a timeline. How, pray tell, if ObamaCare is magically discovered a tax, is it being argued before the SCOTUS three years ahead of completion of its infernal gestation?

A few points:

  • The decision is what it is. What this post is not is an attempt to re-jigger the past. The past, as the taxation nature of ObamaCare would be if anything like consistent logic obtained, will not budge. This is what we have, and calls for Roberts’ head on a silver charger are more than a little overblown.
  • Having SCOTUS decisions turn into convoluted crayon duels (like ObamaCare itself) is no help. The SCOTUS works for the We the People.  There is no excuse for complicating the situation unnecessarily.  If the legal stylings have become so Byzantine that the typical college student cannot follow them, then perhaps the fault is with the legal stylings, and not the audience.
  • Argumentum ad verecundiam is unimpressive. This is America. Respect, like contempt, is an earned quantity. Someone who yells “Are you a lawyer?” as a twit did at Seton Motley on Thursday the 28th, as though a law degree is a prerequisite for public speaking, earns the contempt.
  • What’s crucial, and therefore little-discussed, is the economics. Sure, legal arguments. Fine, political speechifying. From whence cometh the loot to drive it all?  As Walter Scott noted, “Be it better, be it worse, be ruled by him that has the purse.” The simple budgetary fact that the 57 State horses are being pulled by the Federal Reserve cart will become painful Real Soon Now. But that’s OK: we take honest budgeting as seriously as simple, coherent reasoning.
  • Libertas et Memoria points out that David Brooks likes the ObamaCare decision, which I think they called an OSCVLVM MORTIS (“kiss of deat”) in the old days.

As a lawyer of some note once said:

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

After that, I can’t decide whether (a) to break into a paraphrase of the dog lifting the leg to opine on the ObamaCare ruling, or (b) some jape about BHO looking at the dog and saying: “Breakfast!”
Exit question: Did Scott Adams intend a vague ObamaCare reference in today’s Dilbert?
Probably not.

Update: linked at WyBlog.

Save The ObamaCare Adrenalin For GOTV Efforts

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by Smitty

Surveying the blogs, there is as much certainty about how to interpret Chief Justice Roberts after the fact as there was about the ObamaCare decision prior to issue. Clearly, John Roberts is a strong contender for the All-Time Shrewdest Judas award.

While we can all berate Roberts for not simply doing the minimal job, the question begins and ends with the American people, in November 2008 and November 2012. Note this clip of two ladies whose hotness is only exceeded by their excellent analysis:


While the analysis is worthwhile, I hope this weekend sees a shift away from fretting about Roberts and a renewed focus on getting the Court of Public Opinion arranged for the November opinion, which stands even more crucial.

via Red Alexandria

Update: Heh:
sdaf

Update I.5: Absolutely brutal playing of the FDR card. Ow!

Update II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Michele Bachmann ObamaCare Decision Response At The SCOTUS

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by Smitty

“. . .Justice Kennedy, who read from the dissent from [the majority] opinion, and he stated quite emphatically that what happened today is that the Supreme Court in effect re-wrote the ObamaCare legislation. In effect, with their opinion, being a legislative court, as opposed to allowing Congress to make that decision.”

“One of the final remarks that was made by Chief Justice Roberts in the opinion. . .he said that today the American people will not be protected from the political decisions they made in 2008”

“What we have bought today in this Supreme Court decision is nothing more than unparalleled economic uncertainty. Because you see at the heart of ObamaCare is a bill that will never finish being written.”

“We will not forget in November.”


God bless the courageous Michele Bachmann and the United States.

Michele Bachmann for Congress

Battling the Left and their little knuckle-draggers since 2001

Update: linked at Caffeinated Thoughts who has an excellent roundup, in including the majority opinion.

Update II: linked at The Daley Gator, with another big roundup.

Update III: linked at The Lonely Conservative

Update IV: linked at Stacy on the Right, who does not imply that this blog’s Stacy is somehow on the Left.

Life Sucks: Supreme Court Upholds ObamaCare and … It’s Moving Day

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Also, Rick Locke has Stage 3 lung cancer, as if we didn’t have enough wretched bummers to go around today, huh? Headlines from Memeorandum:

Supreme Court upholds health care law
— MSNBC

Health care ruling:
Individual mandate upheld
by Supreme Court
— Politico

Supreme Court Lets Health Law Largely Stand
— New York Times

No joy in Mudville. The Chief Justice hath spoken. And my wife is frantic with stress, because we’re going today to sign the papers on a rental house that’s smaller than the house we’re moving out of, in order to put ourselves somewhere that vicious perjuring bastard Brett Kimberlin can’t find us. Blogging About Hyper-Litigious Convicted Lying Terrorists™ was never part of my career plan, of course, but stuff happens, eh? We’ve got to pay to get the electric and cable turned on in the new (too small) place, and will probably have to rent storage for vast amounts of our stuff, so once more I am compelled to invoke the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIPS JAR!

Life sucks. Thanks, Brett Kimberlin. Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts.