The Delusional President We Know, Or The Delusional Candidate We Don’t?

Now that I’ve calmed down quite a bit from the shock of today’s ruling — a shock exacerbated by the fact that Fox, reading the opinion as written, initially announced the mandate was struck down — I’ve taken a look at both Obama’s and Romney’s statements about the ruling.

As for Obama, he continues to tell us that we can all keep our insurance, that our insurance companies won’t increase our rates “for no reason,” that in 2014 states will be offering us “an array of quality, affordable, private health insurance plans to choose from,” etc., etc. These are all the lies we’ve been told since the democrats started working to pass this monstrosity.

But what’s more disturbing is this statement from Obama: “Today, the Supreme Court…upheld the principle that people who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance.” He taught in a law school, right? I think I read somewhere that he even taught Constitutional law. The Supreme Court did not uphold the principle behind the Obamacare legislation. All it did was (perhaps erroneously) uphold this legislation as constitutional. And here is our President, treating today’s ruling as if it’s a mandate for Obamacare as policy! He must be delusional.

And yet, the delusional candidate we don’t know, Mitt Romney, isn’t much better. Watch his brief reaction to the ruling, on this video:

How does Romney propose to mandate that insurance companies accept subscribers with pre-existing conditions, and ensure “access to affordable health care,” without increasing the size and scope of government? Without having “the federal government get between us and our doctors”? In his remarks, he says he plans to do this. I’d like to see precisely how. Obama and his democratic allies found it necessary to force a bunch of young, healthy people into the insurance market, in order to create the pretense of “paying” for goodies of the type that Romney promises.

Take the requirement that insurance companies accept subscribers with preexisting conditions. Why don’t the insurance companies do this already? Because they will lose money. So, if Romney is going to mandate that they accept these subscribers, he either needs to find a way to compensate them, or the companies will go out of business. Same with ensuring access to “affordable” health care. If it was profitable to provide whatever Romney thinks is affordable, then some company would be doing it already. So this, too, will need to be paid for somehow. As we all know too well, Obamacare attempts to “pay” for such goodies by forcing people to buy something — insurance coverage — that they would not otherwise buy. And even so, as Romney himself points out, Obamacare will cause a massive increase in deficits and total debt, because the money brought into the insurance market won’t be enough. Does Romney have superpowers? Is he able to make money grow on trees? Am I missing something?

Obamacare Mandate upheld as a TAX with swing vote coming from Roberts, appointee of “compassionate conservative” G.W. Bush

I need to calm down and read the darn opinion, but it seems that, although the Court was not prepared to uphold the Individual Mandate of Obamacare, either under the Commerce Clause power, or under the Necessary and Proper Clause, that they were happy to uphold it as a TAX!

This is thanks to the swing vote from Chief Justice Roberts, appointee of “compassionate conservative” G.W. Bush. Now its seems that Bush not only gave us Obama, he also gave us the Chief Justice who would be the deciding vote upholding Obama’s worst, most evil piece of legislation.

This is a prime example of the pure evil that compulsory taxation represents.

More later…

UPDATE with some further thoughts:

This also shows how everything is interconnected. Now, to fight for a free market in health care, we need to get rid of compulsory taxation. First steps towards achieving this goal: total repeal of Obamacare, and legislation drastically curbing the taxing power.

This Individual Mandate will destroy whatever free market is left of health care. It’s just a matter of time. Unless the GOP shapes up (i.e., stops this “replace” talk), quick, Obama will win.

Do the “repeal & replace” types have any idea of what they want to replace it with? They need to realize that ANY government intervention in health care will destroy it and, eventually, our entire economy.

We knew that, long-term, we need a moral & philosophical revolution. We were just hoping for a bit of a reprieve while fighting for it.

MORE UPDATES:

Some have pointed to a possible “silver lining” with respect to limiting Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. I scanned the syllabus, and it seems the Commerce Clause holding is based on the activity/inactivity distinction. IF the Court had invalidated the legislation, then having this distinction become part of our jurisprudence, temporarily, might have been worth it. But now we not only still have Obamacare, we also have, even more entrenched, the idea that it’s OK for Congress to regulate anything, so long as it’s “activity” and not “inactivity.” Who would’ve thought we’d have BOTH the mandate upheld, and the activity/inactivity distinction made part of Commerce Clause jurisprudence?

STILL MORE: I’ve read (quickly) the Commerce Clause portion of Roberts’ opinion, partly because I calmed down enough to do so, and partly because I saw a link to a Slate.com piece claiming that Roberts voted in favor of the mandate being a tax, just so he could “gut” the Commerce Clause. I saw no gutting of the Commerce Clause. Roberts explicitly reaffirmed Wickard v. Filburn, which is about as bad as it gets. (It says that Congress can regulate someone who grows his own wheat for consumption, because by not buying wheat on the market, he is “affecting” interstate commerce.) So basically Roberts said today that the only limit he was instituting was that Congress could not do something under the Commerce Clause if there was no existing activity to regulate. This was true before Obamacare, so all he did is say, “this far and no farther.” No gutting, despite the strong “limited government” language in places. And, besides, for all the complaining about what the powers of Congress would be if this was upheld under the Commerce Clause, he went ahead and voted for the same exact thing to be done, as part of the power to tax!

So, so far as I can tell, the only possible silver lining in this opinion is the Court’s holding that strikes down the provision in the legislation giving the federal government the ability to force states to comply with the Medicaid expansion, by means of threatening to withhold a state’s existing Medicaid funding. That the Court said the government could not do. How much will that affect the ability to implement Obamacare? Not sure.

Those who are as upset about this ruling as I am might enjoy Bosch Fawstin’s latest cartoon. Make sure to look and see what’s on Roberts’ forehead.

Check out additional commentary, from The Ayn Rand Center, here.

Why You Should Vote For Me Instead of Gary Johnson. Obama’s desperation. And more today at 5 p.m. PDT, 8 p.m. EDT

Planned topics for today’s podcast: Just as a Muslim Brotherhood candidate wins the Egyptian Presidency, and his supporters call for a renewed drive to establish an Islamic Caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital, here in the U.S. our Department of Defense suspends a military instructor for including, in a course, material that crticizes Islam. Why you should vote for me (or yourself) instead of Gary Johnson. Disturbing evidence of Obama’s desperation to win. And more.

Today’s live show, and then later the archive recording, can be accessed here.

To access the show page at BlogTalk Radio, which will allow you to check out a past episode, or to subscribe to the recorded archives via iTunes and other services, use this link.

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