Leftists - so many questions, so little time

I've got some questions for my leftie & moderate friends about this:

"The U.S. Health and Human Services Department reported this week that 364,682 people had signed up for private coverage through the new health insurance marketplaces as of Nov. 30 and an additional 803,077 had been determined eligible for Medicaid."

Less than a million of you have signed up for govt care? Where the hell have you been hiding, and why? Seriously, I want an explanation, because even if we grant the fig leaf of these 'in the shopping cart' sales numbers as actual enrollees, these numbers raise a few questions for me. You see, looking at the numbers of those who voted for Obama and his anti-free choice regulatory state, which was somewhere in the area of a popular vote of 69 million in 2008 and 61,173,739 in 2012, not to mention the enthusiastic supporters who didn't bother to vote, there's a huge number of supporters of 'spreading the wealth around', who don't seem to want anything to do with the ObamaCare flagship for 'spreading the wealth around'.

How do you explain this? Because this explanation, from the AP, doesn't cut it:

"The discrepancy may trace back to the political leanings of their elected leaders.

Newly released federal figures show more people are picking private insurance plans or being routed to Medicaid programs in states with Democratic leaders who have fully embraced the federal health care law than in states where Republican elected officials have derisively rejected what they call "Obamacare.""

Leaving aside the subversive insinuation that it may have more to do with 'elected leaders' than those who elected them, I suspect there are other numbers that play a more significant role in the paltry few who have braved the new world of the ObamaCare website, and placed their 'like' on hold in the govt shopping cart.

Like these numbers:

1. #1 ‘Lie of the Year’ award given by Politifact to Obama for his oft repeated lie of: "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it."
2. Average Deductible for O-Care Bronze Plan is Over $5,000 a Year
3. The millions of people nationwide who personally discovered the nature of that lie as their own healthcare plans were terminated because of ObamaCare
4. Washington enrollee's "are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts."
5. The $400 million dollars spent on the ObamaCare website that doesn't work

So I guess my big question of the moment, to those sixty million people who actually voted for Obama and his regulatory take over of your ability to make your own choices in your own life, aka:ObamaCare, as well as millions more who supported him in spirit... why aren't you signing up for ObamaCare?

Did you really think that 'spreading the wealth around' wouldn't apply to your wealth?

Did you really think that giving govt the power to eliminate the choices of 'the wealthiest 1% of Americans', could be done without eliminating your ability to choose too?

Did you really think that when you cheered for the Obama administration using the power of its regulatory agencies to go around congress, that they wouldn't also use their power to do what they wanted whenever YOU stood in the way of what they wanted to do?

Did the mindless celebrity Obama cheerleaders think that their copyright royalties stood a chance against the admin's desires for more power worldwide? Insider friendly Trade Agreements? Corporate GMO Foods? Too friendly with FatCats?

Here's a truth you aren't going to get around: You can't get something for 'free' without paying for it... but you sure can catch a lot of suckers by promising it.

Some questions worth asking yourself
Here's another question to ask yourselves: If the wealthiest and most powerful 1% of Americans can't count upon The Law defending their property, rights and choices against govt abusing them... what in the hell chance have you got?!

Ok, one other question. If you give people who do not know you, the power to make or overrule every significant decision you make in your life, what are the odds that they are going to make, or rule out, decisions which make the life that your decisions would have made, non-existent?

Or put this way, of all of your closest friends, those who know you best and care about you most, what are the odds you'd like your life, if they made every decision in your life, for your own good, for you?

And you want to give people who don't know you, who don't care about you, power over you, while they are in a struggle for political power?

One question you really ought to be asking, is why your schools don't teach you about the U.S.Constitution and why the Bill of Rights were written to restrict govt power, or if they mentioned it, why they tried to make it appear a tool of oppression, rather than the means to freedom?

Frederick Douglass had a similar question back in 1860, "The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?" that is just as applicable today:

"...Thus, for instance, the American Government and the American Constitution are spoken of in a manner which would naturally lead the hearer to believe that one is identical with the other; when the truth is, they are distinct in character as is a ship and a compass. The one may point right and the other steer wrong. A chart is one thing, the course of the vessel is another. The Constitution may be right, the Government is wrong. If the Government has been governed by mean, sordid, and wicked passions, it does not follow that the Constitution is mean, sordid, and wicked. What, then, is the question? I will state it. But first let me state what is not the question. It is not whether slavery existed in the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution; it is not whether slaveholders took part in the framing of the Constitution; it is not whether those slaveholders, in their hearts, intended to secure certain advantages in that instrument for slavery; it is not whether the American Government has been wielded during seventy-two years in favour of the propagation and permanence of slavery; it is not whether a pro-slavery interpretation has been put upon the Constitution by the American Courts — all these points may be true or they may be false, they may be accepted or they may be rejected, without in any wise affecting the real question in debate. The real and exact question between myself and the class of persons represented by the speech at the City Hall may be fairly stated thus: — 1st, Does the United States Constitution guarantee to any class or description of people in that country the right to enslave, or hold as property, any other class or description of people in that country?..."

Am I trying to say that we face the same conditions that Douglass faced in his day? The barbaric brutality he lived through forbids our equating the two.

But is slavery defined only by the severity of the conditions a slave faces? Or by the choices and decisions about their own lives, that are forbidden to them? Does it matter if they are enslaved for their own good?

Leftists; you have so many questions to ask, and so little time.

Labor Day Celebration:"We're all communists now... right? No? Then we're taking our racist fascist butts outta here!!!"

A couple weeks ago I noted that union bigwigs James P. Hoffa, & others, were so upset and disillusioned with Obamacare, that they wrote a letter to Harry Reid & Nancy Pelosi telling them just how unhappy they were with them, and with the Obama administration in general.

I also couldn't help but noticing that what they were saying about Obamacare - that it would ruin their healthcare, that it would cause unemployment, shatter the middle class, etc, were the very things which they had accused the Tea Party of being racists and fascists for having said... and so... by dint of their own reasoning, the Teamsters were obviously racists and fascists for not accepting what this President had created for them.

It was a pleasant morsel to savor... though...really... it was less like a morsel, than a mint.

Why?

Because what they were upset about, was not that Obamacare was going to do those very things to the country, but that Obama & his minions in the Senate and House weren't going to extend the unions enough exemptions to spare them what they were more than willing to inflict upon the rest of the country.

Hardly a Road to Damascus moment.

Well, we just got another little mint today, in that the Longshoreman's union is taking its 40,000 members and leaving the AFL-CIO, not just because of a turf war at the docks, but also in part, for its support for Obamacare as well as the administration's immigration policies.

But not because, you know, those policies are like, wrong, destructive, a violation or our rights, or anti-American, or anything like that... nyahhh. What of it? No, they're just peeved because the Trojan Horse that Obamacare is for single-payer govt controlled healthcare - aka Communism - hasn't rolled through the gates fast enough:

"The ILWU President made it clear they are for a single-payer, nationalized health care policy and are upset with the AFL-CIO for going along with Obama on the confiscatory tax on their "Cadillac" healthcare plan."

Not only that, but because neither the AFL-CIO nor the Obama Administration, would support an immigration plan that the NYT noted, insisted,

"Applicants must be at least 18 years old, have no "disqualifying felonies" on their records, be physically and mentally able to perform longshore work with or without reasonable accommodations for disabilities. Successful candidates, the committee said, must have sufficient understanding of English to understand safety warnings and be eligible to work in the United States."

IOW, the Longshoremen are demanding an immigration plan that, if the Tea Party or anyone else right of center had proposed it, would be called racist and fascist for.

And for not immediately being given a government run single payer healthcare plan that no communist worth his gulag would care to live without.

And while it's fun to be able to point out again that, by there own reasoning, they should be called racist fascists for their statements, the fact is that they only believe the administration hasn't been racist and fascist enough for their tastes.

"WAAAA!!!! We're not racist and communist enough yet! WAAAAAAA!!! We Wants IT!!!"

How's that for a truth in advertising Labor Day celebration?

Instant Karma: According to Union leaders and membership, all union leaders and members are racists and fascists.

Just a quick note to prove I'm still alive and share a fun fact. It seems that the Unions are waking up to the facts about Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed & Obamacare. The Wall Street Journal informs us that James P. Hoffa, together with other Union big-wigs, have penned a letter to little miss "Gotta pass it to find out what's in it" Pelosi and Harry 'Pasty Face' Reed (long time Nevadan's will get that), telling them that:

" will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class."

They also note that their political darlings are apparently dishonestly leading them on for their own purposes:

" As you both know first-hand, our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. "

They've even figured out that they won't get to keep their own health care plans if they like them,

"Our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the Administration, our employees will treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens. As such, many employees will be relegated to second-class status and shut out of the help the law offers to for-profit insurance plans."

, with even a glimmering of a hint that the Free Market may have some benefits for workers, they note that,

"And finally, even though non-profit plans like ours won’t receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they’ll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable, and will undermine the health-care market of viable alternatives to the big health insurance companies."

Though, in the end, demonstrating that they are themselves simply corrupt thugs demanding their share of the loot, they opine,

"We continue to stand behind real health care reform, but the law as it stands will hurt millions of Americans including the members of our respective unions."

Isn't that special?

Of course, most of that is what the Tea Party was trying to explain to them back in 2010.

To which we were subjected to slander and even assault. But, out of respect for the Union brotherhood's tightly reasoned and highly principled responses to the Tea Party when we tried explain the '2+2=4's of the world to them, obviously Hoffa and all Union members, and all Union sympathizers, are clearly all ignorant racists and neo-fascists who just hate America and who especially hate America's working class, it's children and the elderly.

Thank you, that is all.

What if you held an election... and no one paid attention to the winner?

What if you held an election... and no one paid attention to the winner?

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder told Dana Loesch on her radio program today, that there are disturbing signs that the GOP dominated legislature is considering doing just that, and only YOU can stop them.

This year, even in the midst of the GOP electoral losses, Missourians were very clear in their dislike of ObamaCare:

From BallotPedia:

Missouri Health Care Exchange Question, Proposition E (2012)
The following are unofficial election results:
Missouri Proposition E

Result	Votes	Percentage
Yes	1,567,816	61.8%
No	970,924	38.2%

The Missouri Health Care Exchange Question was on the November 6, 2012 ballot in the state of Missouri as a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment. The measure would prohibit the establishment, creation, or operation of a health insurance exchange unless it is created by a legislative act, a ballot initiative, or veto referendum. According to the text of the bill, the proposal is aimed at prohibiting the establishment of a health care exchange by the Missouri Governor.[1]
The bill's formal title in the 2012 state legislative session was Senate Bill 464.


The ballot summary of the measure, according to the Missouri Secretary of State:[2]
Shall Missouri Law be amended to prohibit the Governor or any state agency, from establishing or operating state-based health insurance exchanges unless authorized by a vote of the people or by the legislature?
No direct costs or savings for state and local governmental entities are expected from this proposal. Indirect costs or savings related to enforcement actions, missed federal funding, avoided implementation costs, and other issues are unknown.

And yet, our Lt. Governor, Peter Kinder, is reporting that our GOP dominated legislature, is getting wobbly at the thought of standing up to ObamaCare, even though their constituents, you and me, clearly expressed our support and expectation for their doing just that!

Kinder is urging the "...Legislature to refuse health insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansion..." and reminds us that, no matter what you might hear, or be lobbied by the Insurance companies to believe, the state is under no obligation to act:

“Setting up a health insurance exchange is a direct violation of the Healthcare Freedom Act, passed by 71 percent of Missouri voters in 2010, which forbids Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates. This month, Missouri voters again revealed their reluctance to embrace Obamacare’s implementation by easily passing Proposition E, which prohibits the establishment of health exchanges without a vote of the people or their representatives.

“These exchanges will cost states between $10 million and $100 million per year, and will set up state officials to take the blame when Obamacare increases insurance premiums and denies care to the sick. There is no compelling reason for Missouri to implement this unpopular, expensive and intrusive federal power grab. I urge the General Assembly to reaffirm Missourians’ opposition to Obamacare by refusing to create a health exchange or expand Medicaid.”

On top of that, it was just two years ago that Missourians first declared their resounding opposition to ObamaCare, when in we stood against the Obama Express, and passed Prop C

Shall the Missouri Statutes be amended to:
Deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance or infringe upon the right to offer or accept direct payment for lawful healthcare services?
Modify laws regarding the liquidation of certain domestic insurance companies?

Proposition C

Result	Votes	Percentage
Yes	669,847	71.1%
No	272,723	28.9%

What if you held an election... and no one paid attention to the winner?

What if? Well, as Dana pointed out, our newspaper media and Gov. Nixon, are planning to demonstrate what that would mean - that they can scoff at We The People, without a care in the world. For if you can hold an election, and your elected officials feel under no obligation to take your electoral wishes into consideration, and their fellow travelers in the News Media, decide to aide and abet their doing just that, then... you've got a voice that no one can hear.

That my friends is the tyrants favorite tune, music to their ears: ♫  ♪ ♬ The Sound of Silence ♬♪♫

But it stands to reason that their dreams of turning a deaf ear to your vote, again, will be exponentially more difficult to realize, if We The People make damn sure that they can't avoid hearing our voices as we melt the wires of their phones, faxes, emails, twitters and also by word of mouth: Call your friends and family too!

You'd better get real loud and real clear, now, because there's something else that happens if you can hold an election where no one pays attention to the winner - it's as good as a declaration of taxation without representation, isn't it? I don't know about you, but I don't want to see what might follow if we allow that to stand.

We're hearing reports that at least one State Representative, David Sater (David.Sater@house.mo.gov) has responded that he will listen and stand with the vote of the people, please, make sure that he doesn't stand alone!

Here is a link to the phone and fax numbers for the MO Legislature:

Here are the phone numbers for the Senate
http://www.senate.mo.gov/12info/senalpha.htm

And courtesy of some of my friends,

Action Item:
Call or email each Republican senator. Time is very short as they will be discussing this Friday and Saturday. Tell them the people of Missouri don’t want them to set up an Obamacare exchange any more than they want the governor to. The sentiment behind the Prop E vote applies to them, too!
(Here are the senators for whom we have public contact information. Some of the new senators don’t have published information yet.)

Dan Brown Rolla Dan.Brown@senate.mo.gov 573-751-5713 R
Mike Cunningham R
Tom Dempsey St Charles tom.dempsey@senate.mo.gov 573-751-1141 R
Bob Dixon Springfield bob.dixon@senate.mo.gov 573-751-2583 R
Edgar Emery Lamar R
Michael Kehoe Jefferson city 573-751-2076 R
Will Kraus Lees summit Will.Kraus@mail.senate.mo.gov 573-751-1464 R
Brad Lager Savannah brad.lager@senate.mo.gov 573-751-1415 R
John Lamping St Louis 573-751-2514 R
Douglas Libla Poplar Bluff
Brian Munzlinger Williamstown 573-751-7885 R
Brian Nieves Washington Brian.Nieves@senate.mo.gov 573-751-3678 R
Michael Parson Bolivar mparson@senate.mo.gov 573-751-8793 R
David Pearce Warrensburg david.pearce@senate.mo.gov 573-751-2272 R
Ron Richard Joplin 573-751-2173 R
Gary Romine Farmington R
Scott Rupp Wentzville 573-751-1282 R
David Sater David.Sater@house.mo.gov R
Robert Schaaf St Joseph rob.schaaf@senate.mo.gov R
Kurt Schaefer Columbia kurt.schaefer@mail.senate.mo.gov 573-751-3931 R
Eric Schmitt St Louis eschmitt@senate.mo.gov R
Ryan Silvey Kansas city Ryan.Silvey@house.mo.gov R
Wayne Wallingford Wayne.Wallingford@house.mo.gov R
Jay Wasson Nixa jay.wasson@senate.mo.gov 573-751-1503 R

Here is a link to all the current phone and fax numbers for the State Senate
Here are the phone numbers for the Senate and links to all the Senators websites. If you don’t know what district you are in there is a place to put in your zip code to find out.
http://www.senate.mo.gov/12info/senalpha.htm

Chief Justice Roberts judgment against Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution

I spent the weekend reading through the SCOTUS decision on ObamaoCare. I've had better weekends.

It'll take me a while to whittle my notes down into something less that the 193 pages of decisions & dissents, but for now, maybe just a couple general points. I came to the SCOTUS decision hoping against hope to see the grand plan or silver lining in this decision, which so many others have been talking about. I didn't find it. I did see some particulars that look like silver, but on touching them, prodding them, they melt and slip away, less silver than Quick-Silver, Mercury, which, when I last checked, Mercury was still poisonous.

For those who'd like to take this lemon of a decision, and make some unsweetened lemonade out of it, Mytheos Holt's article on The Blaze, "Five Reasons Why The Obamacare Decision Might Not Be As Bad As You Think" is probably your best bet. And, yes, there are some things which will may be simpler politically now that it's been declared a Tax, it can be fought as a tax, but seeing that as a positive is a bit like being thankful that you won't have to shop for your hard to find oversize shoes, now that they've been conveniently amputated. True, shoe shopping would be greatly simplified, but... probably not the ideal deal you were looking for.

And that describes the position of this decision well, I think, something that was done to resolve or manage issues of the moment, something that the Chief Justice did 'pragmatically' because he thought 'it works' to solve an immediate problem of his own, without having to bother with any of those pesky first principles. But as the Kansas song goes, it solves his problem "Only for a moment, then the moment's gone", and IMHO, we really need SCOTUS decisions that are more durable than dust in the wind.

BTW, one of the more interesting reactions to the decision, was when the MSM realized that Roberts had changed his mind; Why he changed his mind wasn't the shocker they had to deal with, but THAT Justice Roberts 'changed his mind', that was mind blowing for some in the media, One report investigated the phenomenon and said "Reportedly a Justice might change their mind once a term" (sorry, lost the link), and the New York Times called in a Harvard Law Professor to assure folks that,

"It is not particularly unusual for justices to change their minds while writing and exchanging drafts. Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School said that “the more it happens, the more it gives you confidence that there was a serious exchange of ideas."

It is apparently a shocking revelation to those in the news media, that on deeper consideration of an issue, a person can, actually, change their mind on finding that what at first seemed obvious was less true than might have first appeared (sort of like Welfare' seems kind on the surface.. but... never mind, that's beyond questioning for them). This is much less revealing about Roberts, than a surprising self revelation of the media - leftists don't actually approach ideas in order to discover what is true and best (believing in neither 'True' or 'best'), instead they have positions and use 'Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth', in this view, ideas and reasoning are simply tools with which they try and manipulate and contort data (they can't really be called 'facts' once they are shorn of their context) to match those positions. They don't change their minds, they simply restate their positions with rationalizations that better fit their purposes. But I digress. If Roberts changed his mind, that shouldn't be an issue, WHY he changed his mind, most definitely should.

Did he change his mind from the positions supported by Scalia, Alito, Kennedy & Thomas because he felt he discovered a more meaningful truth about the ObamaoCare Act?

Hardly, his decision doesn't just flip=flop, it contorts, gyrates and spasms mid way through at contrived pivot points, in order to state a position that no normal thought process could possibly reach except as a means of rationalizing a position - he simply cannot, based upon his own words, be thought to have arrived at his conclusion as an honest process of reasoning towards what was a deeper, truer, understanding of how to apply the law under the constitution..

So why did he do this? The odds on favorites on the political mind reading circuit is that he was concerned about the 'legacy' of his court,

Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They've explained that they don't want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.

But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public.

There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court - and to Roberts' reputation - if the court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the president himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld.

Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.

It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, "wobbly," the sources said.

It is not known why Roberts changed his view on the mandate and decided to uphold the law. At least one conservative justice tried to get him to explain it, but was unsatisfied with the response, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation.

, and if that is so, I hate to tell the chief, but his dishonest decision is what is going to be his court's legacy. If he did it in order to protect the court from public opinion and political turmoil, then his pragmatic "True=what works for the moment" solution is one that spits directly in the face of the constitution he has sworn to uphold, protect and apply. Think on that for a moment... the fullness of Justice available to us all, all of our Rights, our 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', all are deeply affected by, and in many ways dependent upon our Constitution - and Chief Justice Roberts put the popularity and 'respect for the institution of the court' above that.

This isn't just crude politicking or a bad decision concerning the abominable ObamaCare law, this action directly opposes and dissents against the Constitution itself. How so? The Constitution provides Supreme Court Justices with lifetime appointments 'during good behavior', "Article 3, Section 1

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."

The very point of awarding lifetime appointments, was to place them outside of, and above, the turmoil of popular opinion and concern for position, property and livelihood. Supreme Court Justices are given lifetime appointments in order to insulate them from the all too common concerns that can cause men to feel the need to strive after or flatter popular opinion, of either the public or government officials. This was how the Constitution was written and sold, as you can see by Hamilton's words in Federalist, no. 79

"This provision for the support of the judges bears every mark of prudence and efficacy; and it may be safely affirmed that, together with the permanent tenure of their offices, it affords a better prospect of their independence than is discoverable in the constitutions of any of the states, in regard to their own judges."

The reason why the Chief is Chief Justice for life, is precisely because that was seen as the best way to ensure that the Supreme Court Of The United States would rise safely and securely above the turbulence of public opinion and political pressure - and yet here, today, in direct opposition to the very purpose of the office he holds as well as that of his fellow Justices, Chief Justice John Roberts has made a decision on the constitutionality of a law affecting every single American, and how the Constitution may be applied for decades to come... based upon the popularity of 'His Court', rather than on what he himself originally found the meaning of the constitution, in this matter, to be.

On that score alone, the Chief Justice has not only failed the nation and failed the Constitution, miserably, he has decided to render a judgment for purposes that are in direct opposition to the very article and clause of the Constitution which provides for his office, his position and the purpose for occupying them.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you... cannibals in Florida are the very least of our worries.