Topic: was Roberts' adoption of two children used to blackmail his Obamacare vote?

[IronDioPriest]

The GOP can't be fixed, so it must be replaced. It won't be replaced until a party challenges it and wins. So by default, the only way to have an effective 2nd party is for there to first be three.

[AlanS]

The GOP can't be fixed, so it must be replaced. It won't be replaced until a party challenges it and wins. So by default, the only way to have an effective 2nd party is for there to first be three.

I tried the Constitution Party last time. That didn't work out so well.

Any ideas?

[IronDioPriest]

Nope... except that my gut tells me it's all academic anyway.

[Alphabet Soup]

Liberals may hate each other but they never stray far from the pack. Very few of them ever jump ship. And even when they do it's mostly for show. The most any of them ever do is have temper tantrums. They always come back to the fold.

I wouldn't count on the left dividing like the right is poised to do. It ain't gonna happen. If we can't take control of the Republican party we will be consigned to the wilderness. The best I can hope for is that the left sill so engorge themselves that they explode from their own excesses.

No matter what happens it's gonna be nasty to have to clean up...

[Weisshaupt]

Liberals may hate each other but they never stray far from the pack. Very few of them ever jump ship. And even when they do it's mostly for show. The most any of them ever do is have temper tantrums. They always come back to the fold.

I wouldn't count on the left dividing like the right is poised to do. It ain't gonna happen. If we can't take control of the Republican party we will be consigned to the wilderness. The best I can hope for is that the left sill so engorge themselves that they explode from their own excesses.

No matter what happens it's gonna be nasty to have to clean up...

The left won't and can't divide.  They are tribal in nature, and their identities are consumed by the tribe.  They are no Different than the Germans who believed themselves to be of superior Ayrian stock and therefore excused any and all of the atrocities of the third Reich  as being ultimately for the "common good" ( of Ayrians anyway)

By not voting GOP we will fracture and kill the Republican party, and the Dems will become more emboldened.  If we vote Republican, the Dems still do the same, and we get the kabuki theater  of sociopathic liars pretending to be on our side and pretending to oppose the libs.  Rubio is an excellent case in point.  They will lie, cheat and steal till the Dems control everything. And then the system will implode as sure as Detroit.

In short, IDP is right. The point is Moot. Don't vote GOP- make sure as much blame as possible rests on the shoulders of the Dems and their F'd up ideology and hunker down.  A Civil war it pretty much now inevitable. The libs won't back off. They cheated in the last election to the point where your were seeing MORE THAN 100% of the vote for Obama in some places, and will do it again in the next election.  The IS no political solution.  The old republic is dead.  Who you vote for in the tawdry attempts to give the new regime legitimacy is irrelevant - voting is irrelevant, because they will get the result they want regardless, and make it known that is the case.  We either fight them at our doors, our we accept the death of individual freedom and the last best hope for humanity.  We may , of course loose, but I can't say I really wish to survive into the hell the Democrats will create. It will be worse than the USSR, and even as their chains are set upon them, the libs will scream "Its Bush's fault"

[Alphabet Soup]

I just thought I'd share an analysis I saw at the FReepers. I offer it up for comment and don't (necessarily) endorse it...

I keep trying to explain. The Obamacare decision was not about Roberts. It was about Kennedy. He is a reliable liberal vote when it really matters, but he will only do so when he is the *deciding* vote. The man is bizarre. He wants to be in the legal books as the deciding vote.

He *wanted* Roberts to vote against Obamacare, so he, Kennedy, would be in the law books forever. And it would have been Obamacare with all the bells and whistles. The liberals and Kennedy would make it a 5-4 decision, and there was nothing Roberts could do to stop it.

When Roberts outmaneuvered him to vote *for* Obamacare, Kennedy was livid. But make no mistake, Obamacare was going to pass, one way or another. No matter what happened.

But why did Roberts do this? Because of the one thing that makes the Chief Justice different from the other justices. When he is with the majority, he can decide *who* writes the majority decision.

And he chose himself to write that decision. However, he could not have totally nuked Obamacare when he did so, or the liberal justices would have refused to sign on, and written their own decision.

So instead he subtly inserted two “poison pills” into the decision. And both really, truly matter.

The first was that he said that the Obamacare mandate was not a regular law, but a *tax*. Why? Because Democrats have long used the filibuster trick to prevent Republicans from overturning the Democrats big government schemes. So unless the Republicans literally had 2/3rds of BOTH houses of congress, they could not overturn Obamacare.

But tax law is different. You cannot filibuster changes to tax law. It just takes a simple majority, 51% of both houses, to make changes. This means the next time the Republicans control the house, senate and presidency, they can KILL OBAMACARE DEAD! Just bare majorities, and the Democrats cannot block them from doing it.

The other poison pill we are seeing right now. The fight at the state level about expanding Medicaid or not.

But why does that matter? Because in his decision, Roberts wrote that, while the federal government may mandate state programs, it has to pay for them. That is, the Democrats wanted Obamacare to be a continual drain on the states, that every time the Democrats voted to expand Obamacare, that expansion would have to be paid for by the states.

“I want to give my girlfriend a fur coat, and make you pay for it.”

And this poison pill actually matter *more* in the long run, because the Democrats have used this trick for years. The states bitterly complained about it, calling it “unfunded mandates”.

And Roberts decision in Obamacare opens the door to states suing the federal government to end 70 or more years of federal expansions of mandated programs. This isn’t just Obamacare, or LBJ’s Great Society welfare state, this hits them going back to FDR’s New Deal.

I’m not even sure the other conservative justices even (at least publicly) realized what Roberts had done at the time.

But Roberts really set into motion some huge changes in the future, and the Democrats will not like it one bit.

45 posted on Monday, June 10, 2013 1:19:22 PM by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse]

[Libertas]

Too  nuanced for me, and more importantly, too nuanced for the constitution.  If Roberts wants to go down in history as the Dread Chief Justice Roberts and wear the traitors collar, so be it.

[Dan]

That's interesting, Soup. If that's  the  case, I  wonder how long it'll take the  interested parties to  figger' it out.
Seems to be along the  lines (of nuance and  subtlety)  of  what i  mentioned re: Sowell saying that it's a tax, meaing only the  House can raise funds that way,  and sisnce it's  a Senate bill,  it's  un-Constitutional, but I think this take you present has more  meat to it, but it  may take longer to  chew.

[Glock32]

So if this Supreme Court ruling was supposedly a sly way of opening it up to challenge on the basis that tax legislation must originate in the House, WTF hasn't it been challenged on that point?

I'm tired of nuance. Too often it's just a euphemism for "being self-serving and unprincipled". To borrow a phrase from Reagan, I want bold colors and broad brushstrokes. Red meat. A lot of pundits and pols ostensibly on our side seem to forget the importance of emotion in the Culture War. You have to animate people, and that in turn creates a social meme that will ultimately bear more fruit than dry technicalities.

[Libertas]

"I'm tired of nuance. Too often it's just a euphemism for 'being self-serving and unprincipled'."

My brother!   

Dread Chief Roberts, the feckless Pubbies...all made their bed...if they burst into flames all they can expect from me is gasoline.

[IronDioPriest]

We don't have the luxury of time to allow the chess match scenario above to play out. The whole thing will crash and burn before those supposed "poison pills" can accomplish their mission.

[Glock32]

We don't have the luxury of time to allow the chess match scenario above to play out. The whole thing will crash and burn before those supposed "poison pills" can accomplish their mission.

Exactly. As I have said many times, they are stuck in this mentality that it's all a big gentlemanly parlor game. Oneupmanship. Ahhh, good show old chap! You got us good on that one! See you at the club for brunch and bloody marys this Sunday?

[Libertas]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/20/bush-era-nsa-whistleblower-makes-most-explosive-allegations-yet-about-true-extent-of-govt-surveillance/

Kinda makes you wonder...doesn't it?

Time has run out, people must start thinking past politics and they should have started thinking this years ago.

[Alphabet Soup]

I think you're gonna find that the Bush-era allegations will turn out to be complete bullspit.

[Libertas]

No doubt, more disinformation feeding the Obama "It's Bush's falt!" meme the Leftists keep stuffing in the public's mouth like its a universal pacifier.

[IronDioPriest]

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that previous administrations have been collecting available information on American citizens for quite some time.

Bush kicked the door open for a lot of what we are seeing today from Obama. The idea that his administration was involved in surveillance and data-mining of American citizens would not be far-fetched. I would need evidence.

[Pandora]

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that previous administrations have been collecting available information on American citizens for quite some time.

Bush kicked the door open for a lot of what we are seeing today from Obama. The idea that his administration was involved in surveillance and data-mining of American citizens would not be far-fetched. I would need evidence.

Didn't Clintoon have something, a program?  Echelon?  I'd not be in the least surprised to know he and Her Thighness were behind widespread data collection.

As for Bush, really, I wouldn't doubt it, but I personally don't care:  "what difference, at this point, does it make?"   It's happening now and has been for some time and here's where we are.

[Glock32]

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that previous administrations have been collecting available information on American citizens for quite some time.

Bush kicked the door open for a lot of what we are seeing today from Obama. The idea that his administration was involved in surveillance and data-mining of American citizens would not be far-fetched. I would need evidence.

Didn't Clintoon have something, a program?  Echelon?  I'd not be in the least surprised to know he and Her Thighness were behind widespread data collection.

As for Bush, really, I wouldn't doubt it, but I personally don't care:  "what difference, at this point, does it make?"   It's happening now and has been for some time and here's where we are.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed by Clinton (and of course, passed by a GOP House).  It mandated among other things that mobile phones be GPS capable and with an ability to track them.  Alex Jones has been referring to this act including appropriations for NSA spying programs for quite some time now.  I found several articles on Infowars from 2011 about it. I feel like I owe an apology to people I used to dismiss as conspiracy goons. Hell, even the quintessential "black helicopter" ones have been proved right.

http://www.infowars.com/investigation-government-ordered-cellphone-companies-to-spy-on-users/

http://www.infowars.com/nsa-admits-it-tracks-americans-via-cell-phones/

[Libertas]

W was busy, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 - http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/index.html

But the foundation was laid a long time ago and the modern apparatus came into being with the 1947 National Security Act.  At that time the FBI was responsible for domestic intelligence and counterintelligence, but the CIA could obtain FBI info upon written request.

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/int022.html

In 1978 FISA came into being, ironically under Carter, and what was once meant as a check to guard civil liberties has morphed into a blank check under succeeding legislation and executive orders.

ECHELON was initiated a long time ago and was intended for foreign surveillance, but once the NSA was able to demonstrate its prowess and with advancing technology it is little surprise their ability on a global scale (including our own nation) was going to do anything but expand.  With GPS and backdoors and compliant private industry personal cilivl liberties were doomed to become extinct.

Take it away now and the PTBs will ask "What do you have to hide?" when the real questions should go the other direction the way the Founders intended "Why do you need private information on every living soul?!