Obama Calls Supremes "An Unelected Group of People" Like That's a Problem

Now that we know that the constitutional "scholar" grasps the fact that the Supremes are not elected but appointed by the president, I guess we can safely conclude that Obama's period of learning the ropes of the presidency is finally over.

It took him long enough, except all we've really learned is that he thinks that's wrong and that the Supremes should be elected, or subservient to the Congress, at his beck and call, or something.

Here's the line:

"That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law."

Here's the source.

Isn't it the argument of the likes of Obama that the Civil War was fought to overturn the duly constituted and passed laws upheld by the Supremes' Dred Scott decision?

Just doing our job, sir.

A tirade like this from a president should be an automatic verdict against the law, just to put him in his place for a change, since no one else seems to have the balls to do it.

Current Federal Spending Implies a Head Tax of $12,338 on Every Man, Woman, Child

$3.8 trillion in spending divided by population of 308 million equals $12,338 per person this fiscal year, including every baby and everyone in a nursing home.

It would probably be as popular as was Margaret Thatcher's Community Charge.

But it might drive out the illegals.

When the People Lose Control of the Public Finances, Tyranny Often Follows

Herbert Hoover has captured the imagination of a number of writers recently, from Walter Russell Mead to R. Christopher Whalen.

Now James Grant weighs in too at The Wall Street Journal, here, contrasting Hoover's fear of tyranny with our desire for it:

Herbert Hoover, who learned a thing or two about debt and adversity, warned in his memoirs that, unless the dollar was convertible into gold, the people would lose control of the public finances, "their first defense against tyranny." Simon Johnson and James Kwak, the authors of "White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You" could not seem to disagree more. To them, the problem today isn't paper money but a government that hovers too little and taxes too lightly. More regulation—especially financial regulation—and selectively higher taxes are the answers, they contend. ...

Johnson and Kwak are special pleaders. Human life being uncertain, they wish to protect us from it. How much risk of sickness, unemployment or indigence do you, a mere individual, wish to bear on your own? "The question we leave you with is this," the pair write: "Are you and your family willing to face these risks alone, not knowing what will happen in the future, or do you want to live in a society that will protect you from misfortunes that lie beyond your control? For that is what the debate over the national debt boils down to, and its outcome depends on you."

More than likely, the outcome does not depend on you, whoever you are. It rather turns on the intellectual climate in which the people at the top frame public choices.

And Mr. Grant makes another good case for the choice of free men: gold.

Why Obama Loves Condoms

His condoms allow for . . . inflation!

His condoms halt . . . production!

His condoms destroy . . . the next generation!

His condoms protect . . . a bunch of pricks!

His condoms make you feel protected . . . while you're getting screwed!

Precisely

"Why does Obama feel the President of Russia is entitled to know more about Obama’s plans than the American public?"

-- William A. Jacobson, here

Worst President Ever Seen In Liberal Minnesota

(source)

One Promise Obama Has Kept

Seen here:

. . . a Post It note left on a gas pump.

Fertility In All Tiger Economies Has Fallen Below Replacement Rates

So says Joel Kotkin for Forbes here:

"All Tiger nations now suffer fertility rates roughly half the 2.1 children per household needed to replace the current population. By 2030 these countries could have fewer people under 15 than over 60."

The fault of prosperity, or at least the pursuit of it, at the expense of the old traditional, especially Confucian, ideals of family.

The Joke of the Day: 239 Bean Irish Stew

Why do the Irish put only 239 beans in their stew?

Because just one more and then it would be too farty, if you know what I mean.

h/t Cathy

Tax Policy is Social Policy, And It's Anti-Marriage, Just Like ObamaCare

So says Phyliss Schlafly here:

[A] fourth of those unmarried heads of household have an unreported live-in partner with a job. Simple arithmetic shows that a single parent with an unmarried live-in partner would then be valued at 2.4 persons, which is more favorable tax treatment than respectable married couples struggling to support their own children.

That means, if the single mom has a live-in boyfriend who files his own tax return, they end up with more favorable treatment in the income tax system than a married couple raising their own children. We should not allow marriage to be discriminated against in the income tax code.

Even ObamaCare contains a marriage penalty by reducing the insurance subsidy when cohabiting couples marry. As a Democratic staffer explained to the Wall Street Journal reporter who questioned the marriage penalty written into ObamaCare, "You have to decide what your goals are."

The Democrats know that 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008. Democratic consultant Tony Podesta has cooked up 83 bills to increase handing out more taxpayers' money to single moms.

The real war on women is a Democrat war on married women.

Larry Kudlow Has Been Sensitive About "Socialism" Since His Support Of TARP

He got ripped big time for it by the left:

No wonder he's been slow to slam Obama as one.

Kudlow Changes His Tune: Calls Obama A Socialist

Last July Larry Kudlow was positively insisting that Barack Obama is just a liberal, not a socialist.

Today on his radio program in the opening hour he's changed his tune, calling Obama's policies socialist in most respects.

Progress.

It Turns Out, The Cost Of Free-Riding Is A Straw Man Argument For ObamaCare

Thanks to Ronald Reagan's signature on EMTALA in 1986, hospitals must by law provide service to anyone, regardless of ability to pay among other things.

It turns out that the costs of this beneficence have indeed grown into a big problem, but it is nowhere near as big a problem as advocates of ObamaCare would like to make out.

Here's the government's best estimate of the problem, from the Congressional Budget Office, which everyone has known about since 2008 (italics added):

"A recent study by Hadley and others, which used that analytic approach, examined a sample of medical claims for uninsured individuals and projected that they would receive about $28 billion in uncompensated care in 2008. That study also examined cost reports from hospitals and a survey of doctors and generated a different estimate: The gross costs of providing uncompensated care would be about $43 billion in 2008, of which $35 billion would come from hospitals and $8 billion from doctors. Total spending on hospital care in 2008 is estimated to be about $750 billion, so those figures would imply that uncompensated care accounts for about 5 percent of hospital revenues, on average. Those findings are consistent with CBO’s analysis of uncompensated hospital care (cited above), which found that a sample of for-profit and nonprofit hospitals incurred costs for such care that averaged between 4 percent and 5 percent of their operating revenues."

So there you have it. The government has known all along that this  has been a problem in the neighborhood of 5 percent of the gross costs of care overall, yet it is preparing under ObamaCare to spend $200 billion annually to bring in the uninsured, almost 5 times as much as the problem warrants, wrecking insurance for everyone else in the process.

Who Knew The American Red Cross Was UNIONIZED?!

They went on strike today in Michigan!

I must be the last person alive to realize this. The photo shows Red Cross workers on strike in Ohio in February (image source here).

Story here:

More than 200 American Red Cross workers in Michigan went on strike this morning.

Staff members represented by the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 459 and Teamsters Local 580 walked out because of a dispute over health care benefits.

The strike affects blood collection centers in Kalamazoo, Jackson, Lansing, Flint and parts of northern Michigan.

That's the last time I give them any dough. If they can go on strike, so can I.

North Texas Woman, 71, Gives Wood To Queer, Charged With Hate Crime

The story is here.

I guess he didn't like it like that.

Justices Appointed By Republican Presidents Have Been Opponents Of Conservatism

In the attack on the traditional values of the American people, Republican presidents bear heavy responsibility for betraying them by their Supreme Court appointments.

Reagan is a particular disappointment. In the history of conservatism, he should assume the status more of "Democrat in recovery" than "conservative." And if it weren't for his signature on the 1986 law known as EMTALA, we might not be in this mess today.

So don't get your hopes up about Roberts and Alito on ObamaCare, let alone Kennedy.

Consider Roe v. Wade, 1973:

"In disallowing many state and federal restrictions on abortion in the United States, Roe v. Wade prompted a national debate that continues today, about issues including whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wade reshaped national politics, dividing much of the United States into pro-choice and pro-life camps, while activating grassroots movements on both sides."

In the majority were:

Blackmun (NIXON APPOINTEE, 1970),

joined by

Burger (NIXON APPOINTEE, 1969),

Douglas,

Brennan (EISENHOWER APPOINTEE, 1956),

Stewart (EISENHOWER APPOINTEE, 1958),

Marshall,

Powell (NIXON APPOINTEE, 1971).

Or consider Lawrence v. Texas, 2003:

"In the 6-3 ruling, the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by proxy, invalidated sodomy laws in the thirteen other states where still existed, thereby making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory."

In the majority were:

Kennedy (REAGAN APPOINTEE, 1988),

joined by

Stevens (FORD APPOINTEE, 1975),

Souter (BUSH APPOINTEE, 1990),

Ginsburg,

Breyer,

with concurrence by O'Connor (REAGAN APPOINTEE, 1981).

The sheep will get in line and follow their shepherd Romney this year. But if you believe that as president he will appoint anyone substantively different than this lot, fuhgehtaboudit. The Senate would never confirm such a person anyway, especially its Republican members, as disgraceful and disreputable a lot as you'll find anywhere in America.

Moochelle and the Girls Take a Trip to Vegas "On the Taxpayers' Dime"

Michelle Obama is off to the western US, including Mt. Rushmore and Vegas before hitting the left coast for a fundraiser for her husband and Democrats.

The president's wife doesn't seem to remember or care about what her husband said about keeping up appearances in 2009 and in 2010, how Vegas somehow connotes wasteful excess, especially for people who take public monies.

The Boston Globe has the temerity to feature the germane quotations from the president, here:

The feud [with Vegas] began in 2009, when Obama admonished corporations using federal bailout money: "You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime." A year later, Obama warned families against gambling away college tuition: "You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college."

Sure you can go, if you're The First Lady.

The first family isn't trying to save anything except its ability to milk the presidency for all its worth.

Government Shape-Shifting in Hutaree Case Decisive to Federal Judge

US District Judge Victoria Roberts, quoted here:

 "The evidence is not sufficient for a rational factfinder to find that defendants came to a concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the authority of the government of the United States as charged in the indictment."

"The prosecution is not free to roam at large — to shift its theory of criminality so as to take advantage of each passing vicissitude of the trial."

"If the government now admits that the plan alleged in Count 1 of the indictment (seditious conspiracy) did not exist, then defendants must be acquitted."

Prepare for Police Drones Spying on You from 400 Feet Starting May 1

Total information awareness, brought to you by the Republican US House of Representatives, the Democrat US Senate, and the president who cares only about himself: his ideas, his pleasure and his power.

Computerworld has the story here:

The Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, signed into law by President Barack Obama last month, requires the FAA to permit the use of drones by law enforcement agencies, commercial organizations and hobbyists.

The statute will initially let law enforcement authorities and emergency services use drones that weigh less than five pounds and fly at an altitude of less than 400 feet starting in May. The law requires that the FAA have rules in place permitting the use of all varieties of drones by law enforcement and private entities by the end of 2015. ...

The Center for Democracy and Technology contends that the legislation provides no privacy or civil liberties protections for ordinary citizens.

The law "says nothing about the privacy implications of filling the sky with thousands of flying robots," said Harley Geiger, senior policy council at the Washington-based think tank.

The Pantywaists at National Review Finally Notice the Hutaree, After Vindication

Mark Steyn does a nice job here in National Review of covering up for the way "the right" ignored the significance of the government's ridiculous entrapment of a bunch of religious nuts with guns in southeast Michigan the week ObamaCare passed in March 2010, but still misses the point by connecting their treatment to that of . . . Conrad Black!

I guess it's Canadian obsessive compulsive disorder, or something, on display there.

And I'll bet Conrad isn't too flattered with the comparison, either.

While some of these Hutaree ne'er-do-wells had to rot in jail for two years and others were released with monitoring devices attached to their ankles, all of these hapless souls had to rely on government attorneys to defend them against trumped-up charges while conservatives all across this country pretty much ignored them, except when the left tried to tar the right with their example.

What we got was the right stiff-arming that charge by participating in the marginalization which the Hutaree saw as confirming their peculiar position as God's chosen warriors against the imminent appearance of the AntiChrist. Only extremists or nuts buy guns and train on weekends in the woods. They might as well be the same as those who threw rocks through local Democrat Party offices to show displeasure at ramming government healthcare down our throats, or who made intemperate or even threatening phone calls to Congressmen, some of whom got tracked down, arrested and convicted.

Now vindicated, the Hutaree can become an example of "who's kookier?" Steyn writes:

But they weren’t paranoid, were they? They were convinced that one day the black helicopters would be hovering overhead. And one day they were. Or, actually, one night – in the wee small hours, descending from the skies with searchlights circling. Oh, and Humvees – just like in Waziristan. So Eric Holder proved their point. In Lenawee and Hillsdale counties, they still talk about it – and the general consensus is the pseudo-commandos of the federal constabulary looked way more ridiculous than the survivalist kooks.   

As at Waco, our feeble tyranny finds itself constrained to choose targets who are already estranged from the mainstream of society, in order the more easily to make an example of them to the rest of us who had better not get out of line when government decides to force its will on the people.

This week Rush Limbaugh has been complaining that it's astonishing that the question of government force, the individual mandate, at length comes down to just nine people in black robes who will decide the fate of a once free people.

It is astonishing. He's had the power of a microphone in all this and has done nothing to stop it coming to this pass, all because he's afraid of being called an extremist, just as are almost all conservatives. Rush Limbaugh is most certainly afraid of what people will say, which is why Rush protests so often that he doesn't care what people think. It's his livelihood to care, otherwise he's out of a job.

Let's suppose the Supremes uphold the mandate. What will become of people's fear then? They will have a choice, to let their children become Red, as we now know John F. Kennedy was prepared to do in the Cuban missile crisis, or to fight.

I have just one question for all you pantywaists. When George Washington and his ilk decided it was time to start shooting Red Coats (over taxes which were paltry compared to what we endure), was he an extremist?