I'm Back

My computer died. Belly up.

But now I have a new one. Got most of the software installed, too.

I'm back.

It's Not About Health Care

The horribly mis-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare) isn't about health care — it's about insurance. Or, to put it another way,

One of the harder realities is that health care reform is not about public health. That's the mistake people make. . . . Health care reform is public finance. And when you get into public finance, it's not about doing a study to guide policy; it's about creating a business plan.
      — Ralph de la Torre, CEO, Steward Health Care System,
          "health care's new maverick"

Harry Reid's Friend

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) says presidential candidate Mitt Romney hasn't paid any taxes in ten years. He said an investor in Bain Capital told him that in a phone call.

Reid's claim, by itself, raises a few questions. One is time frame. Reid is talking about ten years, which may be the last ten years or the ten years preceding the tax returns Romney has released. That would be ten years beginning in either 2002 or 2000. But Romney was hired in 1999 as president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. He was brought in there to fix the problems they were having; he wasn't at Bain Capital. When that task finished, he ran for and was elected governor of Massachusetts later that year; he wasn't at Bain Capital.

Then there is another class of questions. What would anybody at Bain Capital know about Romney's taxes beyond whatever residual income he might have gotten from Bain — even if Romney had still been at Bain full-time? And beyond that, what would a mere investor know about details of the tax returns of anyone there?

But Harry Reid insists on spreading the charges, with the blessing of the Obama campaign (and probably of Barack Obama himself). And Reid insists Romney must answer these charges, that Romney is guilty until he proves himself innocent.

In the face of all this, how can Harry Reid's friend know what Reid says he knows? One writer says the answer is clear: Imaginary people know everything.

I disagree a bit. It seems to me the answer is that Harry Reid and the rest of the national Democrat leadership are simply making stuff up, for obvious political reasons. And then others — like former governors Ed Rendel (D-PA) and Ted Strickland (D-OH) on CBS' Face the Nation this morning — wrongly put their trust in these misleaders.

Why are Reid et al. doing this? That, too, seems clear: Anything to move the discussion away from Barack Obama and his record.

UPDATE: If, indeed, Harry Reid's claim is that Mitt Romney hasn't paid any taxes "in the past 10 years", the charge disproves itself. The two years of tax returns Romney has released (2010 and 2011) show he paid taxes — a lot of taxes — in those two years, which are part of "the past 10 years."

You May Be A Liberal . . .

Yes, Mrs Critter and I went into Albuquerque yesterday (that's where our nearest Chick-Fil-A is) and got a couple of chicken sandwiches with waffle fries and soft drinks. It took a long time to get through the drive-up line, and the walk-up was no better — both came out and circled the building, and we weren't there at a peak time! But, even then, we saw reporters and news photographers there, and a TV crew setting up and starting to film. Later in the day, we saw feature reports from the Chick-Fil-A restaurants on all three networks' local news broadcasts.

Kerry's Assessment of the Global Climate Change Challenge

Senator John Kerry (D, MA), "the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam", delivered this assessment of the seriousness of "climate change"

I believe that the situation we face, Mr. President, is as dangerous as any of the sort of real crises that we talk about

As dangerous as a real crisis? That sounds to me like quite an admission.

Obama on the Aurora Theater Shooting

Today's news is full of the midnight shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

President Barack Obama had a very human reaction, thinking about what if his own children had been there. He said

My daughters go to the movies. What if Malia and Sasha had been at the theater, as so many of our kids do every day?

My immediate thought was that, if the Obama girls had been in that theater, the shooter would have been down after his first couple of shots — at most — courtesy of the Secret Service.

Obama Ad Debunks Itself

Either Barack Obama and his campaign people are incredibly stupid or they think we all are. And I don't think they're that stupid.

Here's today's proof:

The Obama campaign truly seems to be out of touch with reality. Yesterday it issued an ad that can only be describe as bizarre. Titled "Mitt Romney: Saying Anything to Get Elected," it begins with words on the screen: "Mitt Romney is launching a false attack." Then it shows a clip of Romney quoting Obama: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

"The only problem?" reads the onscreen caption "That's not what he said." The ad then shows a lengthy clip of Obama in which he says exactly the words Romney attributed to him! Making the point more dramatically, someone with the YouTube account NotBarackObama.com did a shortened version of the Obama ad, cutting out a bunch of other Obama quotes. In the context of this ad, "That's not what he said" is either a brazen lie or an act of dissociation, a psychological term meaning a severe detachment from reality.

So Obama's campaign ad expects us to believe their statement ("That's not what he said.") even though they themselves provide the proof it is what he said. How stupid to they think we are?

Political Ads That Piss Me Off

The Sierra Club Political Committee is running some ads here in New Mexico that are particularly heavy-handed, and dishonest.

It is now absolutely certain that I will vote for the politician attacked in these ads.

And I am sure I am not alone.

Claims vs. Evidence

The Democrats claim to be the party of civil rights. They claim the Republicans want to go back to the days of Jim Crow.

Here is some evidence to the contrary.

Remember this when you hear more similar claims.

Does Obama Want to Damage the US Economy?

Jay Carney, White House propaganda minister, has now admitted that the "Bush tax cuts" helped the economy. Of course, now Obama wants taxes raised, and especially wants a tax increase for high income earners and small businesses. We are justified in thinking Barack Obama may want to damage the US economy.

Happy Fourth of July!

God Bless America!
And remember why we celebrate.

Homeland Security Says "Public Be Damned"

The Border Patrol is a law enforcement agency. But, to the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol agents are no more than convenience store clerks. DHS is instructing the agents, like the clerks, to run and hide if confronted by a gunman.

"We are now taught in an 'Active Shooter' course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to 'run away' and 'hide'" union leader Brandon Judd wrote on the website of 3,300-member union local. "If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become 'aggressive' and 'throw things' at him or her. We are then advised to 'call law enforcement' and wait for their arrival (presumably, while more innocent victims are slaughtered)." [...]

But members of Local 2544 say they are obligated to protect the public in such a situation, whether they are on duty or not. Given the instructions, some wonder if they would be disciplined for taking down a gunman in a situation like the Fort Hood shooting or the January, 2011 case in Casa[s] Adobes [a Tucson shopping center], in which a deranged gunmen shot 19 people, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Six people were killed.

“It is always comforting to know that for those of us who carry a weapon when we are off-duty, if we should encounter such a situation, stop a shooter and save countless lives, we can look forward to being disciplined or fired by the Border Patrol because we should have run away to hide and then maybe thrown objects at the deranged killer instead of taking action and stopping him with a firearm,” the union local’s website says.

This is not an idle worry. Especially because it wouldn't be the first time employees were terminated for not following instructions to hide and cower.

Whoever ordered this policy should be fired. And that's true even if it's DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano herself. Or her boss.

Some Consequences of the Roberts Decision

There will be consequences. Here's an early one.

That is an obvious consequence of this: John Roberts has conducted a judicial rewrite of the Obamacare "health care" bill (that Congress called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") to turn it into a massive tax. But, if it is a tax, then the Roberts ruling is completely improper.

1. An Obamacare tax cannot be litigated yet, due to the Anti-Injunction Act, since this tax is not yet being collected.
2. Tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but this bill originated in the Senate.

The Roberts decision asserts the individual mandate simultaneously both is and is not a tax. Particularly under the circumstances of this case, this finding is improper.

The view isn't better from the other side of the argument. If the individual mandate is a tax, then the White House and Congressional Democrats are guilty of perpetrating a massive fraud against us. All the more so since Obamacare absolutely would not have been passed as a tax. In fact, it would not have passed if there were any hint that it might be a tax. Indeed, as Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito noted,

the Democratic majority in Congress rejected an earlier version of the bill that became ObamaCare precisely because it imposed a tax — lawmakers intentionally substituted a mandate with a penalty for failure to comply so they could continue to contend that no one’s taxes were being raised. (emphasis in the original)

Now, Roberts asseerts Congress just inadvertently put the "wrong label" on their tax increase — changing its character after all the briefs and the oral arguments have been completed, to something even the Court's own hired outside lawyer (as well as all the parties to the case and the law and its history) said it wasn't — and that Roberts says earlier in his own decision that it was not. That, in an of itself, is an egregious violation of due process that no one would permit in a criminal case.

[Chief Justice Roberts & Co.] said the American people are not entitled to an honest legislative process, one in which they can safely assume that when Congress intentionally uses words that have very different meanings and consequences — like tax and penalty — and when Congress adamantly insists that the foundation of legislation is one and not the other, the Court will honor, rather than rewrite, the legislative process. Meaning: if Congress was wrong, the resulting law will be struck down, and Congress will be told that, if it wants to pass the law, it has to do it honestly. (emphasis in the original)

Roberts gives lip service to the idea that the Court should honor the legislative process, and then directly violates that concept. “Due process would not allow this to be done to a criminal, but the Supreme Court [Chief Justice Roberts] has decided that Americans will have to live with it.”

And that says there are also longer-term consequences.

Supreme Court Drinks the Kool-Aid

I am amazed that the US Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare, and shocked that John Roberts is the one doing this to us.

The central element of the law is the individual mandate. That is the federal government ordering everyone (apparently excepting Christian Scientists, the Amish, Muslims, and illegal aliens) to purchase insurance. I mocked this idea (using my idea of the Cheeseburger Mandate) before it was made into law. But perhaps I should not have been so quick to mock it. My mandate idea (among many others) may well be passed into law by Congress — always being sure to include a penalty for non-compliance that can be (fraudulently) characterized as a tax.

The formal name of this law — the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” — is truly Orwellian. The bill provides no care, is unaffordable, and gives no protection to patients. It does not support the training of even a single additional doctor but, according to many statements from doctors, will drive many doctors out of medical practice. This law's focus is insurance. Insurance provides no care, but does provide some payment for some care —if you can find it on your own. This law accomplishes none of its purported goals; in fact, it makes every one of those problems worse than they were before. And, while the individual mandate has taken the most fire, the Obamacare law is full of all kinds of mandates, including those in the news more recently that violate individual conscience and religious freedom.

Admirable purported goals, perhaps, resulting in close to the worst possible result.

I am dumbfounded that this law was upheld — doubly so given that the majority ruled that the individual mandate an unconstitutional expansion of the Constitution's commerce clause. What kind of sleight-of-hand and deceit is required to do that, and then to make up a way to allow it — a way that has been denied by all parties to Obamacare — supporters and opponents alike — from the beginning to now? Just as a couple of examples, Obama himself most vehemently insisted the mandate and penalty are absolutely not a tax, and his Administration's lawyer said the same thing in oral arguments before the Supreme Court. But John Roberts says Barack Obama is a liar.

Obama lied to the American people. Again. ... Obama lies; freedom dies.

John Roberts tells us all that the individual mandate and its penalty are a tax — which means Barack Obama (with assistance from Harry Pelosi and Nancy Reid) has rammed through Congress the Barack Obama Tax Hike, which is the largest tax increase in US history — actually, the largest tax increase in the history of the world — and most of it falls on the middle class.

And isn't it ironic that Roberts was urged to uphold Obamacare or be attacked as illegitimate, but with this flip-flop and apparent late vote change has undermined the Court's legitimacy and demonstrated that the Supreme Court will succumb to political pressure. “[W]hile liberal critics were quick to accuse the Court of playing politics by taking seriously the Obamacare challenges, it may turn out that it was only politics that saved the ACA [a.k.a. Obamacare].”

Today's ruling effectively removes all restraints on government control of its American subjects. The result is almost the same as if the Court had ruled the mandate permissible under the commerce clause. The only difference is that now Congress will accompany each new requirement with a tax increase and/or a penalty that can be painted as a tax increase. As Justices Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia told the Court's left wing, “You've extended federal power to virtually everything.” And Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft captures today's reality:

The Supreme Court ruled Obamacare mandate UNCONSTITUTIONAL today but it Survives As A Tax!!

UPDATE: An insightful comment from before the decision was announced:

Even by a decision of five to four, the Supreme Court will throw an extraordinary spanner into the machinery of U.S. government, if significant parts of ObamaCare are struck down. Conversely, even by five to four, a decision to uphold could effectively erase the U.S. citizen’s last line of defence against absolute power.

UPDATE, TOO (from the Court):

In answering that question we must, if "fairly possible," construe the provision to be a tax rather than a mandate-with-penalty, since that would render it constitutional rather than unconstitutional (ut res magis valeat quam pereat).

But, I would say, except when such an interpretation has been explicitly disavowed in the statute itself and in its legislative history. Congress and the President have consistently and absolutely insisted the mandate penalty is absolutely not a tax. To “reinterpret” as a tax the penalty for violating the law, under these circumstances, is clearly impermissible malpractice. The Court's own record and history make this clear, too.

In a few cases, this Court has held that a "tax" imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held — never — that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress' taxing power — even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty.

The Supreme Court has never rewritten a law to turn a penalty into a tax. Never until today, that is.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Justice Antonin Scalia along with Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito wrote a very impressive dissent that Chief Justice Roberts should have also joined. As the four justices said, Obamacare “exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting States all Medicaid funding.

These parts of the Act are central to its design and operation, and the Act’s other provisions would not have been enacted without them. In our view it must follow that the entire statute is inoperative.” With just one more vote, the entire bill would have been declared null and void as unconstitutional.

. . .

With the failure of the judicial process, the only thing left to do now is to get rid of Obamacare legislatively. Congress passed this monstrosity, and the only path to lifting it [this onerous new Obama tax increase] from the backs of the American taxpayer is through the legislative process. That means that legislators should vote again to repeal all of Obamacare.

So we have come full circle. Congress is responsible for the mess that the Supreme Court has refused to clean up, and that leaves Congress with the responsibility to clean it up. Otherwise, they can be sure that voters will be watching.

And, hopefully, the voters will, firmly, “throw the bastards out”.

How Few Have Served

Over the past 65 years or so, the portion of our population that has been responsible for our nation's defense has been shrinking. And the burden placed on that shrinking portion has been increasing.

Partly as a result, that portion of our population and their families have become less and less understood by the rest. Young men and women who choose to attend one of the service academies, or to enlist, are counseled that "You don't have to do that. You have other options." As if military service is only for those who have no other choice.

Some additional thoughts on this issue have appeared elsewhere, like here. Go there — it seems to be a good read.

Just Because

... Just because it's such a striking picture.

Obama Writes Law By Himself

Congress wouldn't pass Obama's "DREAM Act", so he has apparently decided to make law all by himself. (And here I thought the Constitution said Congress had to make the laws.)

Here's a pithy comment on Obama's action from "old glazier":

America has learned a lesson the last 3 1/2 years. Black-robed gods(judges) make the rules and overturn the will of the people all the time. Now we have Hitler-lite in the White House pretending to do the job of the peoples House. We have an A. General who does not obey or enforce the law of the land. We rebelled from England for far less. I’m at the end of my rope here.

Democrats/Bolsheviks……same thing

Islamists vs. Islam

The world has gotten even more insane when religious extremists directly and explicitly violate the directives of their founder and their holy book. But that's what's happening in a number of places, and the examples are getting both clearer and more extreme.

As I understand it, Mohammed and the Quran command Muslims to conquer but protect (under a "dhimmi" status of second-class citizenship) the "people of the book" — Christians and Jews. But a bunch of Islamist "Muslims" don't care and violate these commands regularly.

A case in point: Islamist clerics in Pakistan threaten to kill a Christian pastor. His crime? He dared to quote — accurately — from the Quran.

And now, Islamists in Syria have ordered the "infidel Christians" to leave Syria or be murdered.

There is just one solution: All civilized people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, need to work together to end the threat the Islamist "misunderstanders of Islam" pose to everyone.

Islamist Depravities

It's not bad enough that the Islamists sentenced people to death for dancing at a wedding in Pakistan. Are there no limits to the depravity of these people? This is the lowest nadir of uncivilized inhumanity.

Or maybe not. A day or two later, Pakistani religious leaders sentenced another group of women to death. Their "crime"? They clapped along with the music at a wedding.

Guess that answers my question. There is no depth to which Islamissts will not stoop.

D-Day, 68 Years Ago Today

68 years ago today, 160,000 troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. Along with 24,000 paratroopers dropped into the area a few hours earlier, they began the final invasion of the European continent.

Omaha Beach was the most restricted and most heavily defended of the invasion beaches. One of the units landing on that beach that day was the 29^th Infantry Division — the Blue and Gray Division. The division included National Guardsmen from the Virginia and Maryland area, and men who were not yet in the Army when the 29^th shipped out to England.

Maybe today would be a good day for a movie that includes the Normandy invasion. A good one that provides a good sense what the landing felt like (according to one of the men who was there) is Saving Private Ryan. (When the movie ends, consider that all its action took place in just one week.)

Today would also be a good day to read the day's commemorations at Blackfive, specifically this and this and this, and to consider how terribly high the stakes were on D-Day in 1944.