I can’t help myself. I had to go and see, and apparently they’re having a circle jerk of misery over at the Corner.
I have found that tears make such ineffective lubricant. Too chafing.
However, they all appear to agree that the wingnut pundits from the non-Corner parts of National Review Online, who are claiming that Roberts’ decision was in fact a good thing for Republicans because tax Trojan horse mumblecakes, are talking out their collective arses, which is never a good thing in a circle jerk situation.
I admit that I giggled a bit when I read Daniel Foster’s comment that:
On the substance, I’m with VDH, Ramesh, Rich, et al.
because, frankly, that sounds like a situation in you should see your doctor before pus starts coming out, but I thought Michael Walsh’s post was rather good, if one ignored the wah wah defeat to liberty beginning, the “liberals are po-mo fraidycats” bit and the trite baseball metaphor.
Re: yesterday’s Supreme calamity, put me down in the Victor, Andy, and Jonah camp. There’s no way to rouge this porker of a decision from the chief justice as anything other than a stinging defeat for the forces of personal liberty. When you have to tell your troops that they “really” won, even as they flee the battlefield, you’re out of your mind.
As Professor Hanson notes, “rationalizing defeats is no way to learn from them.” Besides, counter-factual rationalization is the Left’s game; post-modern to a fault, they exist in an imaginary universe of dark shadows and dog whistles. So what if Roberts drop-kicked the Commerce Clause? The same end was accomplished by grabbing the taxing power instead, then helpfully rewriting the law and the administration’s own testimony to “correct” what Congress meant to say.
True, Romney had a big fund-raising day yesterday, but so what? I don’t buy the notion that Obamacare will now be the issue heading into the election; for the vast majority of Americans, that got settled yesterday, and it will be child’s play for the Left to paint conservatives as whiny sore losers and crude revanchists. Romney will again be forced to explain exactly why Romneycare was right for Massachusetts but Obamacare is wrong for America — and appeals to the Tenth Amendment just aren’t going to cut it.
We’ll probably never know why Roberts — with the country begging for clarity and resolution — walked right up to the line and then backed away. For conservatives, yesterday’s defeat is like the Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series: one strike away . . . and then the ball rolls through Buckner’s legs.
Rouge this porker. Hee.
Rich Lowry sticks an umpire, a tsunami, a zombie, a sweaty jockstrap and quite possibly a snake, a dog and a rooster into a stout leather bag, gives it a few whacks with a stick and throws it into the Tiber.
Chief Justice John Roberts famously defined himself as an umpire in his confirmation hearings. But an umpire is willing to make the toughest calls.
In his Obamacare decision, Roberts the umpire blinked. By issuing a decision that forestalled the tsunami of criticism that would have come his way had he struck down the law (as an activist, a partisan, and an altogether rotten human being), Roberts effectively rewrote the constitutionally problematic portions of it. He overstepped his bounds. The umpire called a balk, but gave the pitcher a do-over. The ref called a foul, but didn’t interrupt the play.
As a result, there’s Obamacare as passed by Congress. Then there’s Obamacare as passed by the Supreme Court.
Sadly I can’t tell you what Jonah Goldberg thinks because in line two of his article he started talking about haruspices and I had to stop reading before I broke my iPad.
Finally, Victor Davis Hanson, who I have always liked in a creepy-nephew-who-is-probably-a-serial-killer-but-gets-you-good-coke kind of way, hits several nails squarely on the head:
[Image: Tullia Drives over the Corpse of her Father, by Jean Bardin.]Meanwhile, after a “disastrous” May and June, Obama is edging up again in the polls. For all the reports of his fundraising problems or his existential election crises, he seems to have many millions in key swing states to run class-warfare hits against Romney. The serial “Swiss bank accounts” and “shipping jobs overseas” don’t seem to be countered, and so are having some effect. If Obama is where he is after a disastrous 60 days, where will he be after a so-so next two months? … All of the above should mobilize conservatives in 2012 as never before and open their eyes to the resources and zealotry pledged against them: November is really a sort of last-ditch effort in a way prior elections were not.
Xecky Gilchrist
it will be child’s play for the Left to paint conservatives as whiny sore losers and crude revanchists.
Why, yes. Yes it will.
Not that that means anything has changed.
Good on you not reading Jonah – hard to get the smell out of your curtains later, and besides, Edroso the Magnificent always does such a fine job for us.
Patricia Kayden
Victor Davis Hanson (what a posh name!) is right that President Obama should be way down in the polls and shouldn’t be doing as well as he is given the “bad June” and “bad unemployment news” of the last few months.
Or perhaps the Media is rooting for a horse race and is creating an illusion that the Romneybot can win. Don’t know. I guess we’ll all find out in November.
feebog
Comments like this must be mocked to the max:
Personal liberty from what exactly? The right be dropped from you insurance because you get sick? The right to not qualify for insurance because you have a pre-existing condtion? The right to hit your lifetime benefits cap in the middle of your chemo treatments and die?
These people are insane or evil, or both, I’m tired of trying to make the distinction.
BGinCHI
“post-modern” doesn’t mean what you think it means, fella.
But since, in the real world of polls and statistics, liberals are far better informed, more well-educated, and more open-minded, this can only mean that we’re rubber and you’re glue.
Villago Delenda Est
Yes, the personal liberty to die of an untreated illness because you can’t get insurance.
This is the sort of personal liberty that so many fought, bled and died for.
These people are total fucking idiots. Batshit insane. They have no fucking clue about what liberty actually is. VDH, for example, thinks that Sparta was the fount of liberty in ancient Greece, best I can tell. The most totalitarian of all the Greek city states.
It must be good to be the king. Everyone else can just suck it.
MattF
I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to point out that the winger ‘losing is winning’ meme has a big problem, but now they’ve gone and done it for me. Thanks!
Someguy
Please. Let’s be honest about what ACA is.
It’s a string of crony capitalist bullshit deals, operated under a botched set of federal regulation. The goal is and always was for it to fail, and when it fails to turn to Single Payer.
You think a combination of the insurance companies (and WalMart) that lobbied for this and the IRS/HHS bureaucracy is going to improve things? No way. It’s going to suck.
But only by going through the suck can get we get to a better place.
BGinCHI
@Someguy: You need to read the back side of your American passport, because that’s exactly what it says:
In what other world would anything else have happened?
Villago Delenda Est
@Someguy:
Agreed. It’s an intermediate step to a single payer system, which will move us toward ending the farce of health care being a market based service, when it clearly cannot be, due to its nature. The rest of the industrialized world knows this. We’re a bit slow here, contrary to where we were 200 odd years ago when we were well ahead of the curve on political thinking.
Mark S.
That’s almost too beautiful.
Bulworth
The liberty to rest assured that at least someone somewhere is being deprived of the benefits the courageous libery loving conservative receives for free.
Yutsano
@Someguy: Clap louder too. I think the fairy’s still breathing!
(Japan does not have single payer. They seem to manage.)
Comrade Dread
@feebog: Pro-life conservatives believe that if you don’t have health insurance, then therefore you have personally failed in your responsibility to take precautions for future risk and should reap the consequences of your failure: death.
If you are poor and cannot afford a good policy or care, then you’re moral failure is poverty. You should have worked harder. Tut tut, sorry, old chap.
If you are long termed unemployed, you’re moral failing is that you learned the wrong things in college or have bad work habits. Too bad, sport, should have become an investment banker.
If you’re insurance company drops you when you get ill or cuts off care, well then, son that’s your own fault too for not getting a legal degree and parsing through the fine print terms of your insurance policy. So kindly go screw yourself, Sickie.
Long story short, for the conservative, there is no such thing as luck. It’s all your fault. Either directly, or perhaps indirectly because of your sin and God is deliberately giving you cancer as a punishment.
dmsilev
I had the misfortune to read Jonah Goldberg’s column over breakfast this morning. In my defense, my morning coffee had yet to kick in and it took a little while to realize what I was reading.
Jonah is convinced that Obama intimidated or otherwise “convinced” Roberts to rule for the ACA. Being Jonah, he wrapped that in a whole bunch of text that made little sense, including the bit at the beginning about haruspices, which I took to mean that he lost a bet with Hanson and had to throw in a nonsensical classical reference.
Valdivia
That Victor Davis Hanson guy had a horrid screed against Obama earlier this week so it’s no surprise to me that he thinks his re-election would truly be the Apocalypse. But funny that he and some of these guys see so clearly that losing=losing and some guys on our side are still hard at work telling us we lost yesterday, as are the good guys in the This is Good news For Mitt Romney Team, ie the Village.
Martin
Thanksgiving must be awesome at your house.
Mino
Please, please, let statehouse Dems run on accepting the additional Medicare funds for their states.
Quincy
@feebog:
I lover their obsession with “personal liberty.” They have a complete inability to understand this was never a “personal liberty” issue. “I don’t want to live in a country where the government can force me to buy insurance.” You know what? If the Court had overturned the ACA you would still live in a country where the government can force you to buy insurance. The State government can do that at any time and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. This was about technical issues related to federalism and the delineation of powers between levels of government. Liberty didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
kd bart
“Rouge This Porker of a Decision” is the name of my ska band.
TheMightyTrowel
@Martin: Just don’t eat the brown stuffing, man.
Pangloss
Right Wing Madlibs. It’s all gibberish.
Martin
@Someguy:
Well, no. It’s not going to fail. It’s designed to patch the current system together in a good enough fashion that it doesn’t fail, save the government some serious money at the same time, and get everyone to a point where we say “Hey, if we just replaced these exchanges with a single payer system, everything comes out better”
Single payer is an inevitability. Just bank on that. What we don’t know if it’s a 5 year, 25 year, or 100 year inevitability, and you can’t just flip 15% of the US economy on it’s back and start hacking away at it. We let the beast get too big to do that. There’s no fucking way that you’d get Democrats from Iowa, Nebraska, and Connecticut to sign off on a bill that would immediately render 15% of their workforce unemployed by killing insurers. You have to take it on in stages, and because of its size, a divide and conquer strategy is very effective here as you use one side of the beast to combat the other. You use its size against it.
The insurers don’t get a great deal here. But it’s not a bad deal either. They’re the only ones who don’t take a serious hit. But they’re relatively small: 7% of spending. They have a lot more influence than cost, so put their cost aside for now, leverage their influence (particularly as it aligns with the goals of Medicare and Medicaid), tackle the 93% of the cost and loop back for that 7% later.
Honest to fucking god, Democrats wouldn’t bother trying to stop the asteroid because it’d require dumping money into military industrial complex. Try and focus on the big picture and stop trying to solve every possible problem simultaneously. It’s as bad as the GOP purity bullshit.
Bubblegum Tate
For whatever reason, I always equate “Professor Hanson” with the name of that wrestler who was on the Simpsons, Dr. Hillbilly.
Frankensteinbeck
Am I the only person who remembers the discussions back when the ACA was passed about how the mandate was enforced by a tax for the specific reason that it becomes blatantly, inarguably (HA!) constitutional?
@Someguy:
The insurance industry spent ten times as much lobbying against as for it (businesses try to hedge their bets). It’s two thousand pages of regulations to bring costs into control and beat down the abuses that have sent our medical system off the rails. And it also extends insurance to many, many millions of people whose lives were otherwise in danger. It’s an utterly fantastic law – but I would be delighted if it became a springboard to single payer, as is certainly an option. These systems are usually expanded after they’re passed.
pragmatism
quite liked this takedown of the NR. http://boingboing.net/2012/06/28/national-review-supreme-court.html
celticdragonchick
Don’t hold your breath. Sully has been innundated with quality entries for Malkin Award of the Year. It will be some time before he gets back to looking for Moore Award nominees.
Smedley the Uncertain
@dmsilev: I agree with Sarah, I never liked liver even when I was told it was good for me. It just didn’t taste good…
Rommie
They could blanket the Orion Nebula with that much projection. Sheesh.
Southern Beale
But let’s remember, the battle is just beginning:
It will all be for nought if we lose in November, and with the way GOP is suppressing the vote and buying elections this time, I’m not at all convinced that we can hold on to what we’ve got. So, get busy people.
GeneJockey
@Comrade Dread:
That sums it up nicely, though I would say that this applies to Conservatives who are fortunate enough to have health insurance.
For those NOT so fortunate, it’s someone else’s fault – probably liberals for forcing banks to lend to
coloredundeserving people so that the economy crashed, then not cutting taxes on rich people far enough, and making employers hire blacks, Latinos, women, and gays instead ofthemREAL AmericansCap'n Magic
@pragmatism: Even Sully liked that.
JGabriel, Statist Minded Ideologue of the Left
__
__
Michael Walsh @ NRO:
I love it when the Right gives us good advice and does our work for us.
.
pragmatism
@Cap’n Magic: sully has some lucid moments. those are followed by looking for any excuse to pivot back to oakshottian modesty/restratint/etc. he can’t help it.
General Stuck
I can’t help myself lately, from breaking my own rules about reading too much columnist punditry, especially from David Brooks with the forked tongue. But his piece today has me wondering if the guy is cracking up under the pressure, with some really jaw dropping ignorance and double talk. Amongst the usual buck up the troops jabber, about how HCR and Obama are ultimately losing, by continuously winning.
this
LOLwut? Silly. First the tax code is congresses domain, exclusively. What does he mean by ‘to delve into areas that have, until now, been beyond its reach”. Again, this is what congress does, write laws, and really little is beyond its reach economically. I think he means HCR had been beyond its reach, from republicans blocking any and all efforts successfully to reach it, until Obama came along with his 60 votes for the ACA and pulled that sucker off the forbidden fruit tree
then back she flops
Duh. first he says congress populated by politicians, or elected officials of the people voting, should
Congress is now going to have to be very careful when it tries to use the tax code and other measures to delve into areas that have, until now, been beyond its domain.
And now he wants the people and their reps to be ‘audacious’. Newsflash for David. That is precisely what Obama and democrats did, they were fucking audacious, and they did it after campaigning on it, and winning an election with the numbers to pull it off. John Roberts just wasn’t going to undue the peoples will that was covered under lengthy precedence, and destroy the institution he is responsible for. the judiciary.
And now becoming urban legend, and the wingnut rallying cry, is the utterly empty gesture of Roberts saying the Individual mandate was not under the commerce clause. When all the regulations that were passed to blanket the nation with national rules for health insurance in this country, were left fully intact. And thereby passing constitutional muster under the commerce clause. The Individual mandate was a one off at the federal level, as every other new deal like law was funded via the tax code. Though also with making a national regulatory framework, via the commerce clause.
finally
Fools Gold. It dazzles almost like the real thing. But it isn’t the real thing. It’s Jimmy Buffet, admiring his new tatoo, and how it got there, and they also haven’t a clue. and No Mexican cutie.
NonyNony
Whoa. That’s industrial-grade projection that is.
Everyone knows that the Left’s game is Circular Firing Squad. The Right’s game has always been Counter-factual Rationalization, when they aren’t playing Blame The Victim.
Anoniminous
Vastly amusing to watch the third rate hacks comprising the “Conservative Intellectuals” (sic) slowly sink into WATB-dom.
Ruckus
@feebog:
These people are insane or evil, or both, I’m tired of trying to make the distinction.
Good on ya.
It helps with the bp not to have to argue over things like how many unseen angels might be on the head of a pin or insane or evil or stupid or all of the above. You know the answer from the evidence. Cut to the chase and just go to D. all of the above.
David in NY
@Frankensteinbeck: Apparently the folks drafting the bill were desperate for it not to be called a tax. A certain irony in all this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I’m thinking of treating myself by having a T-shirt printed up that on the front says “ObamaCare Death Panel Executioner Squad” and on the back says “I have a license to kill. Just like James Bond except for lots more paperwork. The number of forms involved, OMG, you have no idea”.
__
Who wants one?
Redshift
@feebog:
Remember, corporations are people, so personal liberty means liberty for corporations. It restricts the liberty of companies to screw you over, so it’s an affront to personal liberty, QED.
greennotGreen
I think the “personal liberty” most conservatives are grieving for is the liberty to not spend money on insurance, then, when they get injured or sick, get treated anyway and pass that cost on to everyone else. Just like the people who want to ride motorcycles but not wear helmets. When they have a TBI, their rehab or care for their comatose bodies is passed on to the rest of society as greater overall health care expenses.
Conservatives often talk about “personal responsibility.” I do not think it means what they think it means.
Culture of Truth
Roberts redefined the commerce clause in a way that limits the power of Washington. Congress is now going to have to be very careful when it tries to use the tax code and other measures to delve into areas that have, until now, been beyond its domain.
LOLWUT?
sublime33
They can’t even get their sports history right. The score was tied when Bill Buckner made that error. If he makes the play, Boston does not win then and there. The game goes into extra innings.
Culture of Truth
Who gives a crap about the commerce clause? What now Dems can’t force to you buy something so neener?
Oh, except for health insurance which they just did. Oh, and anything else under the tax power. But pot will be legal.
jheartney
Terrific comment from Washington Monthly:
Ed, Watertown MA on June 29, 2012 10:57 AM:
To all the handwringing, all I can say is look to Massachusetts. We already have a working model of how this will play out.
1). After initial griping, and a few longer doctor’s waiting room delays as previously uninsured people hookup with their new Primary Care Physician, both patients and Doctors will become supporters.
2). Less than 2% of people will decide that they would rather pay additional taxes than get covered by health insurance.
3). Insurers will come up with a variety of different and innovative insurance plans that they will offer through the exchanges. Almost everyone will find something that they can afford that will allow them to get at least a minimum level of coverage and avoid being forced into bankruptcy by a medical emergency.
4). After the first few years, savings will start to appear as people go to their Primary Care Physician for preventative care as opposed to going to Emergency rooms, forcing the taxpayers to pay for the most expensive type of medical care.
5). Those of us working as Independent Contractors and Entrepeneurs will finally be able to find affordable coverage on the exchanges. People will no longer feel forced to stay at a job they hate just to keep health coverage. Now they can take a chance on starting new businesses without fear that they are putting their family at risk. New startups in Massachusetts are among the highest in the nation.
6). I don’t know if it will translate across the country, but Massachusetts since instituting “RomneyCare” has been growing faster than almost all other states. As of May, we are now down to 6% unemployment. Much better than the national average of 8.2%: http://lmi2.detma.org/Lmi/News_release_state.asp
7). Paying for all this has increased the state budget by only 1% which has since been more than offset by the increased tax revenues from more employed workers.
So my final word? Chill out and stop listening to the people with the dire predictions. They have an alternative agenda. They are not trying to do the right thing for America. They just want to win the next election no matter how much damage they do.
Ruckus
@David in NY:
Obama can run on he didn’t call it a tax. It was never called a tax. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It’s a Mandate. Kind of like we mandate that if you earn x we collect some percent of x. You know, we tax you. It’s the SC calling it a tax, not us.
Culture of Truth
In retrospect it will boggle the mind the GOP nominated the one guy in the entire country who implemented Obamacare first.
Ken
Oh, they’re being countered. The problem is they’re being countered by third-party PACs whose idea of a “counter” is to run rants about forged birth certificates, FEMA concentration camps, and fluoridation. Or Herman Cain’s dead fish and creepy schoolgirls.
I guess it does show they aren’t illegally coordinating with the Romney campaign, since the campaign’s chosen response is a carefully parsing of the distinction between “outsource” and “overseas,” apparently under the impression that the phrase It depends on what you mean by ‘is’ was a big winner for Clinton.
KG
Does that make the election Game 7?
Mark S.
@sublime33:
That’s how I remembered it, but was too lazy to go look it up.
Maybe John Roberts is that Cubs fan who caught the ball in that NLCS.
28 Percent
The legal challenge situation has developed not necessarily to Republicans’ advantage.
David in NY
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Think I know a couple of people who would wear it. And maybe I would.
catclub
@David in NY: Actually, it implies some planning and forethought on both sides.
Democrats were afraid calling it a tax because they thought that would be the kiss of death in congress – particularly the house, I would guess.
GOP did not go out of their way to emphasize that it was a tax, because then the anti-commerce clause lawsuits fall flat immediately. If it is taxation, then it is clearly constitutional.
Irony indeed.
Anoniminous
@Culture of Truth:
Can some kind soul translate that into English?
(Thanking you in advance.)
catclub
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Death panel execution squad member.
1)License to kill
2) If forms 359a and 701c are filled out and signed by third level supervisor.
3) Weapon requisition 1401 completed in triplicate, signed and approved.
…
Oh never mind.
jl
The apocalyptic victory/defeat stuff among the conservatives puzzles me.
Under
PPACAObamacare the health insurance and health care market is still lightly regulated compared to some other insurance markets. Sure, it’s going to to be extremely difficult to get rid of the all the provisions, but some of those will be so popular that wasn’t going to happen anyway.Unless you are a fantasist or pundit paid to fill up air time, dead trees and computer screens with drivel, the real qeustion was, even before yesterday’s decision, how were those popular benefits going to be paid for? And would there be sane regularions to keep lesser people and businesses from getting ripped off?
There is still plenty of time to co-opt the program and prop up dysfunctional mega insurance companies and providers.
I don’t think it would work, but I could be wrong.
In other insurance lines, like life insurance and property, the failures were so sudden and catastrophic that it was senseless to even try to argue that no regulation was needed for would be evil because it destroyed freedom.
With health care, the disaster is chronic, and happens little be little. A premature death here and there, a sad case few know about over there, some poor slobs suffering agony under a rock over the hills someplace.
Maybe that makes the difference. We are no where near the destruction of freedom in insurance markets that occured in the US in the nineteenth century when our commie forebears instituted sane insurance regualtion in other lines, nor close to the catastrophe in commie Switzerland’s healthcare (in which both public and private insurance companies compete quite nicely in the mandeatory basic policy line).
Oh, but I forgot, they are crazy. Never mind.
Edit: And I think Roberts did try to take another bite out of the Commerce Clause. but IANAL. But, why don’t the celebrate that?
Edit2: Heard on the radio this morning that Obamacare is now an Obama/DNC approved moniker!
BooYah. As I said, any teanut freaks out, I say, tell them that you are applying for job with the Obamacare death panels.
lacp
Why does Michael Walsh want to roger a porker? Oh? Oh…never mind.
KG
@General Stuck: Roberts’ Commerce Clause puffery will last until the next Commerce Clause case comes along and the Court rules a different way because it involves drugs or some other unsavory thing… So, to use another Buffett reference, it’s going to end up being nothing more than a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
David in NY
@catclub: Nice point. I had read somewhere (TPM?) about the originators chuckling together remembering the machinations they had gone through to make it not a tax. Interesting point about the Republicans also avoiding that.
lacp
@Anoniminous: I think he said the President is neener.
Citizen_X
That jumped out at me, too, probably because I first read it as “Roger this porker.”
I figured you would appreciate that sort of homonym. Hee.
@feebog:
From interference with your right to rape the peasants. That’s all it’s ever meant to them.
japa21
@Ruckus: Obama can run on he didn’t call it a tax. It was never called a tax. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It’s a Mandate. Kind of like we mandate that if you earn x we collect some percent of x. You know, we tax you. It’s the SC calling it a tax, not us.
The–often not observed–principle behind modern taxation is that people (and hopefully corporations) pay according to their ability, and public goods (schools, aircraft carriers, fire engines) are funded with the proceeds of that taxation and distributed according to need. The ACA which has a whole host of redistribution within it does not goes as far towards this principle as I might like, and it still makes certain groups (the elderly, those with middle incomes) pay more than what I’d consider their fair share. But the ruling at least gives us a starting point.
In any rational society health care ought to be a public good financed through taxation and distributed in some manner that makes rational sense. America has never officially believed that. Now it at least has affirmed the concept.
Redshift
@greennotGreen:
Actually, I don’t think so; that falls into the general “of course everything should be okay for me” side of conservatism.
The personal liberty they’re talking about (based on comments on a friend’s personal blog from not-completely-insane conservative friends of his) is the freedom not to have their money go to anyone they don’t personally choose. Actual comment: “voluntary donations are awesome. imposed obligations make people resent each other.”
I refrained from saying “You know what really makes people resent each other? Having yourself and your friends and relatives suffering from easily preventable illnesses or dying prematurely in the richest country in the world so that people like you can keep a few more dollars in your fucking pocket!”
A fundamental principle of conservatism is that real suffering never trumps ideological beliefs or hurt feelings.”
Mike E
The Buckner between the legs metaphor is way too lacking, passive. Roberts birthed this decision, midwifed it, gave it life-saving care and, dare I say, succor.
Brachiator
OT: all this talk about health care and the Supreme Court has to take a back seat to truly momentous news:
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing.
Culture of Truth
David Brooks said his tweedy conservative friends are “delighted” by the commerce clause ruling. But really, why? It was very narrow, and in any case their happiness seems to amount to, “now those liberals can’t force us to buy things” which we don’t want any way. Except for this one time, when the commerce clause argument, um, LOST.
John
This “rewriting” meme is infuriating. Roberts didn’t rewrite the health care law. He said that the penalty, as written, is effectively a tax.
scav
@Redshift:
So they’re in favor of the whole bake-sale approach to funding their wars?
Culture of Truth
@Brachiator: blame the gays
jl
@japa21:
I think ‘tax’ is just a an umbrella term to say that any federal coercion or sanction for activity or sacred inactivity in market and adherence to mandate is done through the tax power. It it better described a tax credit than a tax.
Might be a good idea for Obama and Dems to explain this, if they are capable of organized concerted effort to counter GOP BS. Especially if it highlights how misleading and dishonest Romney and the GOP are.
Looks like Romney has himself tied up in knots already. Why not fight BS with truth? Might work sometimes.
jl
@Brachiator:
” Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing. ”
Well, there go see. People like Katie Holmes can take care of hazards to mental health using private initiative. She don’t need to governemtn to help her out.
I think this is HUGE!
Obama care is doomed.
General Stuck
First post ACA upholding poll I’ve seen. And it’s an even split, which is better that any pre SC ruling poll I saw. Independents agreed with the ruling 45 to 42. It’s over, I think, and the public wants to move on to more pressing issues. The stamp of approval by the SCOTUS, may well turn around the numbers for ACA and mandate. More wingnut tears. We are going to need a bigger boat.
David in NY
@japa21:
Not true, as I read the syllabus. Roberts found, in section III-C, that the mandate was constitutional under Congress’s taxation power. The four liberals joined this portion of this opinion, and would also have held that the mandate was constitutional under the commerce clause. So there were five votes saying it was a tax.
James E. Powell
Hanson says that “November is really a sort of last-ditch effort in a way prior elections were not.”
I know they say that about every election, but I’ve come to realize that they really believe it. They fight like their lives depend on it because they do. Their ability to construct and defend a plutocratic America depends upon their continuing to separate Americans into hostile camps. They also must prevent any Democratic administration not only from success, but from being seen as a success in the general population. If Americans ever fall out of the habit of hating each other, the Republicans are screwed.
That and they love to imagine themselves as The 300.
Mike E
@jl: I guess the joke about Dakota Fanning being the next Mrs Tom Cruise ain’t so funny now!
RSA
Walsh:
Lowry:
All based on Roberts calling himself an umpire. I count three sports other than baseball in these metaphors. Does being a National Review writer mean not having been a kid?
Culture of Truth
@Brachiator:
Adele is pregnant
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@James E. Powell:
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Agreed. They get that the success of FDR’s New Deal and the boost the economy got from WW2 created a positive feedback loop in the direction of liberal ideas. People saw the govt solving problems and helping people, and naturally people wanted more of that, especially when aimed in my direction. “Nobody shoots Santa Claus”. Once that pyschological dynamic starts rolling opponents have little change of stopping it until it falls apart of its own weight thru govt overreach, trying to solve really hard problems in which early attempts are bound to fail and fail badly and in a spectacular and noisy fashion.
__
Movement Conservatives have worked for 2 generations now to wreck the competancy of our govt at doing anything because they know that Americans who trust their govt to solve problems and get things done will vote for more of that and liberals are better positioned to offer it. That is the key to Obama’s low-key and less stridently ideological approach to liberalism, that the first thing liberals have to do to sell our ideology and turn the tide away from the last 30 years of conservative ideology is to make the govt work again, in ways that ordinary people can see, touch, feel and hear. It isn’t enough that conservative ideas have failed, liberal ideas have to be seen to work. And doing that right out of the gate means being very pragmatic about getting some results chalked up on the board. That’s what the last 3+ years have been about.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Culture of Truth:
English liberal hussy shags around in order to distract the world from Democrat power grab.
SatanicPanic
@Brachiator: More hollywood liberals assaulting traditional marriage
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift:
Incidentally, this kind of understanding of the inviolability of The Personal also leads to the negation of banking and insurance across the board. Like the parody of It’s a Wonderful Life on The Simpsons, where the Jimmy Stewart guy says that he can’t give out the deposit money because it’s in “your house, and your house,” so Moe the bartender says, “What’s my money doin’ in your house?” and starts throwing punches. We saw the same thing in the Sandra Fluke kerfuffle: my money going into her uterus, no fair! Yes, sometimes in the modern world we make a big pile of money and then share it over time. Conservatives seem to long for a world where that doesn’t happen. I think it’s been happening since the Hanseatic League. That’s close to a millennium ago.
FlipYrWhig
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: One of my only DKos diaries, during primary season 2008, was about the similarity between Obama’s rhetoric and Michael Dukakis’s line “It’s not about ideology, it’s about competence.”
Martin
@Brachiator: It’s hollow news though. If Katie Holmes was ever on your list, she should be disqualified simply by virtue of having ever agreed to marry Tom Cruise.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I’m thinking, disqualified for having just dated him.
r€nato
<blockquote By issuing a decision that forestalled the tsunami of criticism that would have come his way had he struck down the law (as an activist, a partisan, and an altogether rotten human being)
but… but… I thought Obamacare was massively unpopular and rammed down the public’s throat in the worst act of tyranny since Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation!
If Roberts wanted to do the popular thing, wouldn’t he have joined the four other far-right justices?
HyperIon
@BGinCHI wrote:
Substituting “better educated” for “more well-educated” would make your argument stronger. ;=)
Hoodie
@General Stuck:
That’s like being delighted by the truffle mayo on the shit sandwich you were just forced to eat.
HyperIon
@Someguy wrote:
Oh, good!
Because that’s what I wanted all along.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: Guess she got too old to work his pedophile fetish any more.
ProtoThad
@Yutsano Says: (Japan does not have single payer. They seem to manage.)
I would note that while Japan might not be single payer, it does have a universal health care system with some significant differences from us. It includes government run insurance pools that anyone can buy into, fees set by the government, and all hospitals being run as non-profits. Good luck getting that past the American insurance lobby.
karen marie
@ProtoThad: I knew there was another shoe. Thank you for dropping it so I didn’t have to go look for it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@FlipYrWhig:
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Dukakis was wrong. Competence is ideological. Movement Conservatism would be politically untenable without incompetence in high places, and the more the better. That is why they seem so fucking Leninist, because for them heightening the contradictions really is the name of the game.
hitchhiker
@Redshift:
What I don’t understand about that is how they fail to see that we already have an imposed obligation.
We already agree that poor people can go to emergency rooms and that hospitals must treat them and that the rest of us are obliged to pay for that treatment through our own insurance policies, assuming we’re lucky enough to have them.
The only other option would be to say outright that hospitals are free to turn away sick and injured people like bouncers at a bar giving the heave ho to patrons who look like they’re too much trouble.
If they aren’t going to go there, they have to come up with another answer.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
Oh noes! Tom and Kate are like the most perfect couple evah! They’re not supposed to break up! What is the world coming to! ? !
(Is this what gossip-rag readers say to themselves when they learn of a Hollywood couple breaking up?)
greennotGreen
@hitchhiker: But conservatives never see beyond their noses. They don’t see that their money is already paying for the indigent patients just like they don’t see that their tax money paid for the sidewalk in front of their house. They can see that their money is being wasted when there are four men with shovels watching a fifth man fill a pothole, but they don’t see that their money ensured that the steak they just bought won’t kill give them BSE. They’re just not capable of following a thought more than a couple of inches.
Unless it’s a conspiracy. Fast and Furious, everybody!
Original Lee
@Redshift: Actually, what makes people resent each other is one group paying more than one thousand dollars a year in increased health insurance premiums because the freeloading freedom-loving free spirits of libertarianism want to be free not to pay for health insurance and ride motorcycles without helmets and not wear seatbelts when driving their bloated dinosaur SUVs.
Tonal Crow
For Republicans, up is down, black is white, and slavery is liberty.
It’s all propaganda, all the time, and always in pursuit of the one unifying principle of “conservatism”, which is to get as much power as quickly as possible and lord it over everyone else for as long as they can.
As someone famous wrote of an imaginary tyrant, so it goes here, with but a single substitution:
DaddyJ
@hitchhiker:
As I recall from a long-form public radio story I heard at the start of the ACA drive, the concept of health insurance itself (or at least Blue Cross, which was a foundational product) was driven by doctors and hospitals — who wanted to encourage working-class folks to consume health care services. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, didn’t they?
Of course, back then, Blue Cross was marketed as costing pennies a month.
If conservatives want to return to the good old days when poor and working people couldn’t afford healthcare, they might want to think about how the “best medical care in the world” they are always boasting about will begin to degrade as the market contracts.