Let’s start off with the obligatory “Dewey Defeats Truman” mash-up:
Well played, Mr. He.
We’ve already had a thread or two devoted to savoring pink Himalayan salt-flavored wingnut tears, but you can never have too much of that delicacy, so if you’ve got something delicious to share, please do! Or discuss whatever.
russ
I’m sure some tears were shed by those who got to keep their healthcare.
WereBear
Has it only been a dozen years since George W Bush was elected, to stride the earth like a C+ Colossus?
Was this not supposed to usher in a Permanent Stasis of Upright Moral Rectitude and BigBucks for all?
I think we’ve seen the big door shut on all that crap. Even a lifelong corporatist like Roberts couldn’t take this one for the team.
It turns out, he would rather live in Realityville, and not Crazytown.
EconWatcher
Doesn’t the ruling now put Obama in a great position to just pound Romney relentlessly on the popular parts of the bill? When there was constitutional doubt, that gave Romney some cover, because he could insinuate that Obama’s plan would not stand. But now?
I can picture the debates: Mitt, I think the American people are entitled to answers: Will you turn the clock back, so that insurance companies can once again turn away people with preexisting conditions? Will you throw young adults off of their parents’ insurance? Will you allow insurance companies to rescind coverage for people who are sick?
The law we passed protects people against all of these things. Why do you want to repeal it?
Whose side are you on, Mitt? Do you stand for sick people, or for insurance companies?
Romney was always in a very awkward position on this issue. But I think the SC may have just made his position completely untenable.
cmorenc
I’m currently away from home, traveling in the Mountain time zone, and so I knew that about the time I received my 8am wakeup call in my motel, the Court’s ACA ruling would have just been made public. And so, I had gone to bed fitfully anxious, hoping at least one of the conservative justices would hesitate to throw decades worth of constitutional law into the abyss, but fearing the worst, another 5-4 politico-ideological decision radically altering the landscape. It was like being a kid going to bed on Christmas Eve, fearing bad Santa would come and leave lumps of coal instead of presents.
WHAT A RELIEF this morning, what a surprise that it was Roberts who pulled back from the cliffs.
Baud
Topic for discussion:
If the public option had been part of the ACA, Roberts would have voted to overturn it instead of uphold it.
Xenos
@Baud: Roberts might have wanted to rescind it, but how could he do so without also rescinding medicare?
cmorenc
@EconWatcher:
Romney will claim that he will repeal and replace the ACA with something that offers similar benefits, but entirely by lessening burdensome regulations on the insurance industry. Of course, he won’t tell us how he’s going to do that, any more than he will tell us what tax deductions he’s going to eliminate for upper-income folks to offset the huge decrease in their tax rates he proposes while allegedly bringing in the same amount of tax revenue.
Romney tells ten impossible lies before breakfast every morning, hoping (correctly too often) that the too-infrequent times the media is paying attention and questions him on it, he will simply move on to the next outrageous set of lies, counting on some shiny object to come along within a day or two to distract the media from further focus on the matter.
Baud
@Xenos:
See the dissents. They can do anything they put their minds to.
arguingwithsignposts
speaking of pink Himalayan salt, what has ye olde madame asymmetrical galt said about all this!
RossInDetroit
@EconWatcher:
Speaking of that, here’s a real live death panel story. It’s long but it’s important so please consider reading it.
I worked for life/health insurance home offices for 13 years. In one small regional a recently enrolled insured suddenly needed a very expensive heart/lung transplant. There was clear evidence that he had lied on the insurance application to conceal his medical condition and the policy never should have been issued. The Board of Directors met to discuss whether to cover or cancel him. To their credit, they decided to keep him on the books and pay for his care. But in the meantime he died. That’s one of the things that happens all the time when you have for-profit companies making life/death decisions.
EconWatcher
@Baud:
What would the constitutional problem even be with the public option? I don’t see one.
Medicare and similar programs were never in danger from this ruling. Even Scalia would readily admit that the government has the power to tax and then spend, for general welfare purposes. That was never in question.
There was only a constitutional question here because Congress, for political reasons, avoided labeling a tax as a tax. Thus, we had to litigate whether Congress has the power to “mandate” members of the general public to buy things in the marketplace, when really, the only question was whether Congress can impose a tax on you, and then credit the tax if you engage in certain specified behavior. And that’s not a question at all. Of course Congress can.
The whole disssent rested on the notion that Congress was stuck with the labels it used. Because Congress refused to call the mandate a tax, the dissent claimed, it cannot be upheld under the taxing power. And that claim was radically contrary to vast amounts of prior precedent, which establishes that laws should be construed as constitutional if possible, and that labels are not dispositive. Rejecting or ignoring that prior law–which simply holds that substance prevails over form–was partisan hackery of the first order. And for that, Kennedy especially should be ashamed.
Don’t listen to any of the nonsense about how there are now five votes to cut back on the scope of the commerce clause. Nonsense. Raich shows that there aren’t five votes to do so in any way that really matters.
If Congress ever again decides to mandate every member of the general public to engage in some kind of commercial activity–and that mandate cannot, in contrast to the ACA mandate, be portrayed as a tax–then we might have a problem.
But can anyone think of any conceivable example of this? I can’t. We don’t have a problem. This was a straight win.
Warren Terra
wrt the Truman/Obama shoop, and funny ACA images, I rather liked the Affordable Care Cat Is Upheld pic, via Ezra Klein’s joint – apparently there are a bunch of similar ACA lolcats based on the transposition of two letters in the last word of “Affordable Care Act”.
Amir Khalid
Und jetzt sind die Editknöpfe wieder hier. Das ist gut.
As a foreign observer (dari Malaysia, nicht aus Deutschland), I’m struck by the extreme partisan sentiments at play here. On one side, at any rate. Malaysia doesn’t have universal healthcare so far; but the government here has been exploring the idea, and I just can’t imagine anyone opposing it. (In fact, the government had to downplay expectations of a Malaysian NHS.) In most countries, anyone denouncing a law like PPACA would be considered a kook.
Warren Terra
@arguingwithsignposts:
Isn’t she still on Indefinite Book Leave? Writing one or reading one, it isn’t really clear.
(old joke, probably a bit unfair in this instance: no-one’s ever really accused her of being dumb. Incredibly obtuse; willfully blind; and profoundly, smugly lazy – but not dumb, not really.)
Amir Khalid
Oh, I should mention this, by an underblogger at Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line.(Caution: Link goes to the Washington Post, but it’s one of the good guys.)
Jamelle Bouie’s intro gets straight to it:
Baud
@EconWatcher:
I didn’t see a constitutional problem with the current ACA, but we had four and a half dissents.
Some of speculated that Roberts was sympathetic to the insurance industry here. I just wonder if he would have felt the same way if the insurance companies were more opposed to the ACA because of the public option.
ETA: By the way, I agree it was a straight win, and I’m not concerned about the commerce clause issue (at least not yet).
Valdivia
I plan to stay inside and away from the torridness of our heat wave. Also, too. Start drinking early. And spike the football all day long.
Baud
@Valdivia: You are living my dream.
AnonPhenom
The media have already started using “what Republicans call Obamacare” where they use to say “Obamacare”, they will slide nicely into generic phrases like: ‘health care reform bill’ as will the Republicans as the ACA becomes more popular, Dems and Progressives should continue to use the phrase Obamacare as it changes from a term of derision into a growing set of reforms the population value and respect.
The Ancient Randonneur
Guess who the newest RINO is in wingnuttia? John Roberts! If you dare, and want to relish those salty tears, go read the comment sections at Malkin, Powerline and Hot Air. I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.
Uncle Glenny
When I first flipped by that picture I thought “Etch-a=Sketch”!
EconWatcher
@Baud:
None of us knows what’s in Roberts’ head. But the simplest and most plausible explanation for his behavior is that he saw how flimsy the arguments were for striking down the entire statute, and just couldn’t choke them down.
The insurance industry would do just fine if the whole thing were struck down, and it will probably do fine now that the whole thing has been upheld. The only disastrous outcome for them seemed to be if the mandate were struck down, and the rest upheld. But there were zero votes on the Court for that outcome.
HeartlandLiberal
I, too, have debated moving to Canada.
Oh, Canada. Land of stable democratic government, but with a Queen to adore. Land of socialized medicine for all citizens. Land of First Nations Peoples, integrated and respected, despite their often darkly hued skins. Land of Quebec, where the people speak some sort of odd Frenchified language.
Don’t particularly care about the hockey, but I can live with it. And the Ontario Trophy Waters for fishing are worth spending a week every year, even if you don’t just up and move to Canada.
Eh?
Valdivia
@Baud:
just for today I have to say: me too! :)
The Ancient Randonneur
Buzz Feed has a piece on wingnut geniuses moving to Canada to get away from Obamacare. The right wingers must be trying to put the Onion out of business.
ETA: Got any wingnut acquaintences? Send them to this link.
bemused
We’re all broccoli now.
Kay
I sent an email to my sister where I wrote “yay!”, that was the whole email, then I got an email from my son where he wrote “yay!”.
He and I may actually be the same person :)
Valdivia
@Kay:
yay! :D
/the wonders of genetics, gotta love that.
ned
CLEARLY this is a fake photoshop job! Is that Robert Gates’s iPad?
/channeling this, if you need the reminder…
Has Texas seceded yet?
Warren Terra
@HeartlandLiberal:
If you think the First Nations are respected and integrated in Canada, you need to read more Canadian news. Yes, Canada didn’t have a lot of the horrors the US did, and may even still be better than the US in this area, but the potlatch remained illegal until 1951 (there were covert training sessions on the US side of the border to preserve a native culture illegal within Canada – in the 1950s!), and there are regular armed showdowns with First Nations peoples out East.
Someguy
Thanks to the decision, the Tea Party is planning a whole lot of doddering fulmination… er, protests. They’ve slumped a lot in popularity since 2010, and we should be able to use these racist fucksticks as a fat, pasty white brickbat to heave at Mittens’s huge rectangular head.
Punchy
I dont understand how ONE out of 5 decides its a tax, so now its played in the media as a tax. If Roberts thought it was consty cuz it looked like slave reparations, would the MSM thusly report that, too?
Shorter — how does one judge of 5 get so much puv while the others are so ignored?
double nickel
No point in moving to Canada just yet folks. Our present Prime Minister is GWB-lite and runs the government like his personal right wing think tank, without the thinking. Wait another 3 years, hopefully the revolution will be well underway by then.
Baud
@Kay:
Your son clearly has the Yay chromosome. ;)
kdaug
It will be a day of professionally crafted boo-hoos – the policy shops have been working overnight.
Watch for the talking points. They’ll be repeated all week.
Betty Cracker
I’ve been taking sort of a media break because…damn…, but I watched a bit of it last night for the schadenfreude, including Erin Burnett’s program, and the coverage is just stunningly stupid.
Alexandra
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Wingnuts moving to Canada? Not quite as delicious as this one commenter on RedState:
Isn’t there a International Court or UN that we could go to and appeal this?
http://bit.ly/Mc5Gm9
Still, John’s right. It’s now time to really sell the bill. Tell everyone the game’s over, throw 3-4 plain-language bullet points at them on the merits of the law and steer them to http://www.healthcare.gov
Kane
I can just imagine all of the republicans watching CNN and FOX, cheering as if their team had scored a last-second touchdown, only to learn that the play didn’t count because the player had stepped out of bounds before getting to the endzone.
The decision was great on its own, but to know that it messed with their heads is like icing on the cake. Delicious.
Lynnia
A (smart, liberal, retired) cousin of mine posted the following to my facebook, in response to a post celebrating the ACA being upheld:
“Someone just posted that since the feds will no longer pay medicare, it is allotted totally to the states, what will happen to our premiums? Arizona has essentially opted out of “Obama-care” because of our charming governor. Do you have any idea about that? (By the way, I am in favor of the act itself, and am very happy with the decision, but this was raised and I have no idea.)”
No wonder the ACA polls so badly. I posted a bunch of corrective material including the healthcare.gov fact sheet for seniors in response, which she read and thanked me for clarifying.
There’s really no point to this comment except that I felt the need to say AAARRGH loudly.
But maybe now that it was upheld it may convince some news media types to actually discuss what is (and isn’t) in the bill rather than just the politics? I heard an ad for the local news — “how the new healthcare law will affect your family” — I wonder what they said?
Kane
At least John Boehner kept his promise when he said that there would be no republicans gloating and no spiking of the ball.
jeffreyw
Good editorial cartoons are popping up with good sound bites.
Elizabelle
It was wonderful, waking up and remembering the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare. Makes me feel braver and more hopeful.
This happened yesterday: after his WH remarks, President Obama visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (which I will always think of first as Bethesda Naval Hospital). The fourth floor — where the Wounded Warriors are cared for — was shut down to outside visitors by the Secret Service.
I was at the hospital on business.
Popped into an elevator. Three people in it: a heavyset man with a military-style haircut, a young woman, and a maybe 10 year old boy.
They’d apparently been turned away from making a visit. The young woman said she planned to write a letter of protest.
Man drawls something about a “turrr in the White House.”
Me: “Excuse me, what did you just say?” (I am wondering if he said “terrorist.”)
Man: “I said there is a turd in the White House.”
Me: “It’s amazing to me that you would say that about the Commander in Chief when you are standing in a military hospital.”
They’re quiet for a moment.
Woman: “But, Ma’am, he wasn’t never even in the military,”
Me thinking “No sh*t Sherlock.”
Mercifully, the elevator doors open.
Munira
@HeartlandLiberal: I moved to Canada 20 years ago and yes, it’s nice here, but we also have our problems – the big one being Harper. And it might interest you to know that health care is always a huge issue during political campaigns – mostly because of long wait times for certain procedures and over crowding in hospitals. I’ve come to the conclusion there is no perfect health care system. The important thing is that everyone has access regardless of how you get to that point. Then you can spend a lot of time trying to improve whatever system you end up with.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@arguingwithsignposts:
it over on the daily beast “assmetrical information. or some such spelling.
MattF
Mitt and the wingers, generally, are clearly stuck in the “Opposite” game wrt Obama. One may note that the Kenyan Usurper has already come out as generally in favor of love and sex, I expect eating and breathing will be next.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Obama should declare “National Don’t Drive Chopsticks into Your Eyeballs Day.”
General Stuck
Guess I’ll tune into Chucky T this morn, to see what bullshit he spins on the reality of dems winning.
RossInDetroit
I don’t know if this has been noted here, but a former Michigan GOP spokesman Went There.
”Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?”
General Stuck
Nutters are firing up the Wayback Machine for some Clenis dot connection from loonyville.
Well, the why is clear, if you are insane
Personally, I would consider Obama snatched up Roberts to the Mothership for a little tune up with some alien invasion quality time.
This is where the rubber meets the room.
Omnes Omnibus
@Punchy: The four Justices on the left(ish) joined in that section of Roberts’ opinion, so there were five who found it to be a valid exercise of the tax-and-spend power.
Litlebritdifrnt
I get really tired of hearing the “long waiting times” argument being thrown around. It can take just as long to see a specialist over here. After the initial ER visit for a broken bone it can take someone six weeks to get to see the ortho. I was trying to make an appointment for one of our clients to see a neurologist and was told it would be two months out before they could be seen. I daily hear so many lies told about the NHS in Britain that I tire of correcting people about it. It really pisses me off.
shortstop
“you can never have too much of that delicacy”
I plan to make myself sick with unbridled consumption. Speaking of which, of all the funny things said yesterday, one of the funniest (and most succinct) uttered here was “Eat your broccoli, mofos.”
General Stuck
And over at Protein Wisdom, the massive mind of JeffG, gives us the wingnut brainiac version of losing his shit
‘randy sheep three way’ mercy, baby jeevus gonna spit that one right on out
So very deep, and intentional.
NotMax
By asserting the mandate and penalty as a tax, that opens up another can of worms come 2014 when the conscience clause of ACA comes into effect.
That section concerns certain “officially recognized” religions which eschew healthcare (e.g., Anabaptists, etc.) as exempt from both the payment and from any penalty.
It could be argued at that time that, as the tax is deemed a promotion of certain behavior and the penalty a disincentive to other behavior, that the religious exemptions amount to a government promotion of specifically chosen and delineated religions as a means of tax avoidance, regardless of behavior.
SW
The only thing in this bill that people don’t like is the mandate. And this is because we have allowed the Republicans and libertarian dipshits to frame it as an issue of personal liberty. When in reality it is a matter of their defending the right for people to freeload on the system. We have to aggressively recast the mandate as an anti-freeloading provision. Everybody pays in because everyone is an eventual user of the system whether or not you believe you are immortal. Those who have the resources to participate and choose not to increase the costs for everyone else. It is that simple because the system still has to allow for their ass to be dragged to emergency room. Support the mandate. No more freeloaders. No more $100 aspirins at the hospital.
The Thin Black Duke
@General Stuck: Why do I have the ominous feeling that the household pets aren’t safe at this guy’s house…?
rikyrah
@AnonPhenom
there was someone from TPM yesterday in the comments that they would try and move away from calling it OBAMACARE, ASAP.
I see you have made the same point…LOL
rikyrah
@Kay:
kay, that’s sweet.
rikyrah
that DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN pic will never get old
General Stuck
@SW:
None of that will matter, until the paranoid rubes experience it first hand, and then know what it is. Being completely irrelevant to the 80 percent already having insurance policies, with the mandate only levied on those who try to skip by. Mostly the young. It is nearly impossible, imo, to convince a country suspicious of government in any significant way, until they see for themselves. It is not a blanket tax on everyone, we can keep telling them that, but little will get through until reality catches up.
The election is going to be about the economy. And if the wingnuts go off on some ideological frothing over the now done deal of the ACA, instead of the keystone issue, they will lose for sure.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Hah! Too late, though. I have walked people thru the Obamacare website, and I don’t refer to it by any name at all. They say “is this…. Obamacare?” You know, they’re surprised it is, because they were told, repeatedly, for two years, that there were death panels and terrifying directives and orders mandating rationing in Obamacare.
InternetDragons
Rmoney’s campaign raked in 2.5 million dollars yesterday on the waves of wingnut rage.
So don’t forget to make a celebratory contribution to our guy’s campaign :)
Punchy
@General Stuck: That is, hands-down, the funniest fucking shit I’ve read in weeks. Healthcare is now bisexual sheep orgies.
Who is JeffG and where can I suscribe to his newsletter?
General Stuck
@The Thin Black Duke:
That’s Reliapundit. some swear he is a spoof, but I don’t buy it. No one can maintain that level of crazy that isn’t genuine. He is a regular on memerandum, go figure.
rlrr
@Betty Cracker:
Or Don’t Drink Drano™ day…
shortstop
@EconWatcher: Always appreciate your informative comments.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Stuck:
Brilliant!
nominus
My favorites so far:
Rand Paul needs a dictionary
The Supreme Court is just “pretending”
General Stuck
@SiubhanDuinne:
Awe. thanks:)
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: Think of the U.S. as a paradoxical land of high-tech barbarism. All our resources don’t prevent our tendency to savagery.
rikyrah
From Charles Pierce about the SC Ruling:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ginsburg-opinion-healthcare-10127002
JoyfulA
@NotMax: I imagine it’s the same as Amish and Old Order Mennonites are treated under Social Security. They don’t contribute, and they don’t receive; their tenets are that God will provide, and any form of insurance is a denial of God.
Actually, for their sake, I hoped for single payer. They do use modern medicine, as far as they can afford it; Old Order Mennonite friends of my father were in a buggy accident, and raising the funds to pay off treatment for a broken pelvis took them years.
danielx
@Valdivia:
A-men. I am positively awash in schadenfreude this morning. I’d be setting off fireworks except it’s too dry, and it’s supposed to be 100 or over for the next…six…days. Our particular Affordable Care Cats are going outside for ten minutes, coming inside and collapsing two feet from the door. Too hot for long hair white and short hair black kittehs.
Cue the “Impeach John Roberts” stickers. Passing thought – I wonder what kind of cleanser will be needed to remove the Scalia spittle from the conference table inside the Supremes’ deliberation chambers.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
The most striking thing I read yesterday was from, oddly enough, Weigel. He posted about being outside the Supreme Court as the ruling was announced:
I heard a peal of delight and turned around — that’s the picture at the top of this post. Hilary Matfess, a young policy analyst, was jumping up and down, yelling out details.
“The mandate is constitutional! It was upheld! Roberts went for the swing vote! Yes! Oh my God! The individual mandate survives as a tax!”
Did you work on passing the bill? I asked.
“No!” said Matfess. “I just have lupus!”
He had no comment about Jean Schmidt’s football spike as she got the Fox report. In his defense, I think he had the better get.
chopper
@EconWatcher:
this. the dissent reads like a bunch of guys actively ignoring not only decades of precedent, but the general legal mandate of the court to actually, you know, construe laws. this ‘it wasn’t labeled a tax’ horseshit is just post hoc straw grasping. i’m sure seeing the fail in that argument is one of the things that led roberts to reconsider.
Kane
On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart said that “President Obama strolled down I Killed Bin Laden Lane and addressed the nation.”
Just by President Obama walking down that hall, I wonder how many people were reminded of Obama’s successful mission of killing Bin Laden. It was a subtle reminder and a brilliant political decision to make his remarks there rather than behind his desk in the Oval Office.
danielx
@General Stuck:
Jeebus. That’s some first class gibberish worthy of David Brooks, almost. I wonder if JeffG blushes with Hayekian modesty when he reads the comments.
El Cid
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And so FREEDOM dies because of the selfish Lupus-American lobby.
NotMax
@JoyfulA
Just to clarify a tad regarding Amish and social security — the members do not receive benefits, but they do contribute the tax in some cases, if they receive wages from non-Amish employers or companies.
chopper
@InternetDragons:
i donated. obama had a good week, dinnt he?
magurakurin
@SW: send this comment up the flagpole. Abso-fucking-lutely spot on. Everyone has to pay into the system or it doesn’t work. If you don’t pay up you’re a freeloader. That is the way it should have/ should be framed. A++.
Paul in KY
@HeartlandLiberal: If Canada was at the same latitude as the US, I would have already moved there.
Keep on hammering the Rethugs! 4 more years!
sublime33
Can someone explain to me why so many of the so called “Pro Life” are so upset about living breathing Americans getting access to life saving health care? I think they should be required to rename themselves either the “Pro Embryo” or “Pro Fetus” movement. Because they sure as hell ain’t “Pro Life” for all of the living.
And last time I checked, Jesus also healed those with pre-existing conditions.
bemused
@rikyrah:
Love this. Justice Ginsburg just laid out a common sense argument that should be obvious to all. It boggles my mind that a Supreme Court Justice, Scalia, could actually use the incredibly dopey broccoli argument. He is truly off his rocker and an embarrassment to the country.
butler
@InternetDragons: I keep hearing that this is some big windfall for Romney, but I think its really a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
In May, Romney raised $78 million, or roughly 2.5 million a day. So if he really did raise 2.5 million yesterday, that would be… totally average.
General Stuck
I do think the SCOTUS upholding the ACA is going to have an effect of the House races. With dems less likely to take the House back. But I doubt it will matter much with senate elections. Everything else is all thumbs up.
Scratch
We all need to remember that the PPACA survived by a 5-4 margin. Obama may not be as progressive as some of us would like, but I would much rather have him nominating Supreme Court justices than Romney.
So when we have chances to talk non-frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives but those who might not realize just how much good the PPACA will do, tell them the good things the PPACA will do and tell them how Romney is vowing to repeal it.
The PPACA is a huge step against the rightward tide this country has been suffering from the last 30 years. Obama got it done. Let’s make sure it stays done and that the Supreme Court will let it stay.
butler
@sublime33: Because they have been brainwashed to belief that this bill covers widespread abortion services (which we know it doesn’t) and because it covers things like birth control, which they insist will actually lead to more abortion because… um… sex is icky or slutty or something?
bemused
@sublime33:
Too many people are pitifully ignorant and mean as rabid skunks at the same time. Recently a letter writer to a local paper on Nuns on the Bus story said, “What exactly is the contribution of the food stamp people and welfare recipients. I am tired of this ‘something for nothing’ mentality”.
JoyfulA
@NotMax: You’re right. Amish working for non-Amish employers used to be exceedingly rare, but times have changed.
geg6
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Man, I can’t stand Weigel, but that is an awesome story. The question I have is, did Dave have any sort of moment of enlightenment from that delicious moment with that young policy analyst?
If he did, good on him. If he’s still spouting libertarian bullshit, he probably has no idea how awesome that little tale actually is.
shortstop
@JoyfulA: In fact, more Amish are working for English than not at this point. There just isn’t enough available land for contiguous family farms.
geg6
@Kane:
Since I’ve been lambasting Stewart here for the last couple of years, let me give him credit where credit is due. That is a truly great line.
Cacti
While I usually keep my Facebook politics free, I’ve been having great fun tweaking my winger friends and relatives, and here’s why.
I’m happy that PPACA was upheld because it will save lives and make people’s lives better.
If it had been struck down, they’d be celebrating for no other reason than “Screw Obama and teh libruls!”.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@geg6: I feel the same way about Weigel – I stumble onto the piece and was glad I did. It’s an awesome snippet that I’m trying to spread far and wide.
A cheer on the lawn as the decision was announced not because it was about work product for the woman cheering; rather:
No, I just have lupus
Steeplejack
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Amen. I went in for my regular skin-cancer checkup in late May. Small spot was found, biopsy done–yes, it needs to be removed. First available appointment: mid-July. I blame Obama.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Betty Cracker:
My wife was looking at knitting patterns, saw something that was funny and brought it to my attention.
The first person I thought of was you. :)
NonyNony
@Litlebritdifrnt:
You have to understand where the “horror story” idea come from. It’s one of those “zombie stories” from the 1970s that are still with us today (like how horrible it is to use the Post Office). In the 70s there really was a marked difference in the speed of care between Britain and the US for those in the US who had coverage. In Britain they had a supply/demand problem and rationing issues and they hadn’t worked out their system completely. Thatcher made hay about it IIRC while Reagan was in office. And that’s the key – it’s one of those “Reagan stories” of government inefficiency that stick with us today.
In the 80s and 90s the US system started collapsing under its own weight while the UK system started really figuring out how to make things work well. So that even by the time Clinton was talking about HCR and people screamed about how inefficient NHS was they were wrong and overstating their case – because it was based on ideas and stories from the 1970s.
ellie
@Litlebritdifrnt: Agreed. I don’t know who these people are who can just waltz into their doctor’s offices. It takes me three months to get into the gynecologist and when I first started going to her, it took six months to get the initial appointment. And I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
burnspbesq
@Punchy:
ROBERTS, C. J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III–C, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined;
Frankensteinbeck
@Punchy:
It’s a tax. It’s always been a tax. The government argued about it being a tax in front of the Supreme Court, but general opinion was the government’s laywer did a terrible job of that. That it was framed as a tax came up when it was originally passed, because that framing was specifically chosen to make absolutely sure the law passed constitutional muster.
If they want to call it a tax, let them. Romney does not want to get Obama talking about taxes. Black Metrosexual Able Lincoln swings for the ‘the rich don’t pay their share’ fences every time.
Lee
@Cacti:
There is your problem. I have too many wingnut friends which makes that impossible.
Yesterday I went with a ‘let’s just take a moment to recognize the millions of people with insurance….’ Today I’m planning on hammering them :)
Comrade Mary
@Paul in KY: Don’t worry about latitudes: global warming will take care of that for you. We didn’t really have a winter this year. I put studded tires on my bike in December, but really needed them for less than 7 days total. My strawberry plants lived through the winter, and I was eating my fresh, homegrown tomatoes in mid-December.
And Toronto is in our third or fourth heat wave since April. I’m scrambling off to the library to work in air conditioning right now.
The Red Pen
@HeartlandLiberal:
Yeah, you might want to check on that. Canada’s history with its native population is arguably worse than ours. It was considerably less brutal, but its policy of oppressive, racist decisions lasted to a much later date.
bemused
@Lee:
John Fugelsang said this morning on the Stephanie Miller Show, paraphrasing, that Republicans are freaking out about the individual mandate in Obamacare but will go out and vote for the guy who started it first, Mitt, who called it the individual responsibility mandate.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@shortstop:
“America is the only nation to go from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization in between.”
(multiply attributed to: Oscar Wilde, Ambrose Beirce, George Bernard Shaw, AND Georges Clemenceau… the quote’s just that good, apparently).
Jon
@bemused: I bet Politifact says that saying that Mitt Romney started the individual mandate is “mostly false.”
Therefore, it is good politics.
Ben Cisco
@General Stuck:
Oh yeah, I’m SO stealing that shit right there.
Canuckistani Tom
@HeartlandLiberal:
Yeah, we are not good on this one. I think it was Trudeau who said ‘The Americans tried to slaughter their native population. We just ignore ours and let them starve to death’
J.D. Rhoades
I got taken to task for “gloating” by one of the few moderately polite wingers in my local paper’s comment board. I pointed out that his fellow wingnuts had been taking premature victory laps all week, so I was going to enjoy the Schadenfreude a little while longer, thanks much.
Beauzeaux
@HeartlandLiberal:
I did just that in 2004 and here I am with very good medical care and living in beautiful British Columbia.
My brother-in-law has lived in Ontario for many, many years. Just before we moved here, my husband asked him what is the absolute worst thing about living in Canada.
“The weird spelling,” he said.
And he has been proved correct.
Beauzeaux
@Canuckistani Tom:
“I think it was Trudeau who said ‘The Americans tried to slaughter their native population. We just ignore ours and let them starve to death’”
The real difference is that native peoples have been slaughtered AND starved in both places but Canadians are embarassed about it and USians aren’t.
kamalokitty
@EconWatcher: Perfect.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Not genetically possible.
Y not, one might ask.
Still, very cool anecdote. My morning commuting buddies were glum over the prospects of health care being overturned. But lots of smiles and pleasant murmuring on the ride home.
andy
Wingers are screaming moaning and crying as if they have had liberals crap burning corrosive shit on them, when all they really got was AFFORDABLE FUCKING HEALTH INSURANCE.
What they are really crying about is people they don’t approve of benefitting too. And on newspaper comment threads across the country, wingnut circle jerks have taken on a funereal aspect…
Paul in KY
@Comrade Mary: Glad y’all are getting some good ole fashioned Southern Summer. It was 102 yesterday down in KY. 89 at 945 PM.
pseudonymous in nc
@Munira:
But the point about Canada is that everybody there has a stake in shaping a system that works pretty well for most people and won’t leave you to die or ruin you with the cost of making you better. In every country with universal healthcare, arguments about its priorities and goals are part of the political debate, and that’s a good thing, because it tells you that it belongs to the people.
Paula
@Kane:
“How’s it taste, motherf*****s?”
To be fair, Obama could barely keep the swag down. He was suppressing one of those big ear-to-big ear grins.
Thoughtcrime
@General Stuck:
A Mothership Connection would have been orchestrated by Clinton: America’s first black president:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaczdU5U5cs