Potpourri

Well, I must be getting over my jet lag because I find myself able to marshall rage at obvious stupidity again. And judging by the news today there is plenty of it. The difference between now and yesteryear though is that I find myself wishing to drive the point home more forcefully:

I’ve got more than a few people I could use that on now.

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Very well then, lets begin-I’ll start with Egypt. The ignorance the bulk of the news media has shown about the country is really appalling-more importantly I think people are really misjudging the Egyptian people. Will they screw up the revolution they are fomenting? Absolutely. But will Egypt become the next Iran? Not a chance.

Lets start with the hypocrisy that is present on both sides and the obsession of with tangential issues. Here is the voice of right wing America today:

Hey, look, folks, if the industry of talk radio was responsible for Tucson, how about blaming Obama’s Cairo speech for this? Yeah, have you seen, folks, the liberals, the Democrats, the media seem to be more embracing of the Muslim Brotherhood than the Tea Party movement. Have you noticed that? I have… “The Obama administration has aligned itself with Egypt for calls for orderly transition.” Orderly transition? What if this bunch turns out to be led by Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or what have you? It’s the Muslim Brotherhood. For crying out loud, Obama “embraces,” “aligns itself with protests in Egypt”? Uhhhh.

 

That really caught me, because we don’t know who or what is behind this movement. We do know Obama has been focused on changing America. We do know that Obama has spent his time abroad apologizing for our past and he’s been lauded for doing this by our media, the left, the likes of Colin Powell. If he were a traditional American president, Obama would have been using our authority — our moral authority — and experience to ensure our best interests remain intact.

Now those who are long time readers know I really don’t care about any Arab’s opinion on anything-but to ignore what appears to be a genuine popular uprising is to act in our own disinterest. We just have to step back and watch this play out-we have no more ability to influence events than I have to influence the repeal of the USFSPA. ( Interestingly for people who are opposed to government intrusion in one’s life- NOT ONE TEA BAGGER has come out in opposition to that. Guess they can all afford three ex wives like Gingrich).

Let’s look at the facts: 1) The Army is in control-and if this goes over the edge there will be a lot of dead Egyptians in the streets, and most of them know that. 2) Egyptians understand the need to have tourists coming to their country and ships going through the Suez Canal. (Even though they don’t deserve it (it was never theirs) and in my perfect world the French and British would still run it). I believe we should give them some credit. They don’t want an Islamic Republic like Iran-they just want a new President. And they are jealous of their sovereignty-so people who say America “should be telling” Egypt what to do are ignorant. Thus in my opinion,  we should just be sitting on the sidelines watching this play out.

Imagine if history had turned out differently and we had Islamic commentators “tisk tisk”ing over the Christianist “tea party brotherhood” uprising in South Carolina. Not every nation will act in US self interest and we are not the rulers of the world. We will be fine-no matter what happens. As for the Egyptian people? Well their needs are never going to be high on my list of concerns-they are still Arabs after all. But they are not Iraqis either- and not stupid enough to go back to 1966.

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Then there is the health care ruling. To read the columns on Facebook and Memeorandum it is the end of the world as we know it. Which is pretty amazing, given the fact that the douchebag   Tea Party beholden judge had pretty much telegraphed what he was going to do long before the issuance of the ruling.  What’s really amazing is that he took 78 pages to show how stupid he is :

Got that? The uninsured can only have a “substantial effect on interstate commerce” — and thus be regulated by Congress — if they are subject to the precise conditions which exist today all over the country, and which prompted the Act in the first place. The judge acknowledges this point, to his credit, saying that the Congress would of course have the power to regulate the millions of people who meet his five criteria above. But he then concludes: “But, to cast the net wide enough to reach everyone in the present, with the expectation that they will (or could) take those steps in the future, goes beyond the existing ‘outer limits’ of the Commerce Clause” (emphasis in original).

I suspect there will be a million words of legal and political analysis over the logic and viability of that conclusion.

Unsolicited and simplistic recommendations for the legislative branch? Also check. Judge Vinson wrote: “If Congress intends to implement health care reform — and there would appear to be widespread agreement across the political spectrum that reform is needed — it should do a comprehensive examination of the Act and make a legislative determination as to which of its hundreds of provisions and sections will work as intended without the individual mandate, and which will not.” In other words: Try again, Congress, and good luck with that!

 

Painfully half-hearted expression of regret for kicking the entire Affordable Care Act to the curb? Check. Judge Vinson wrote: “I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and regulate this market. That has not been disputed in this case. The principal dispute has been about how Congress chose to exercise that power here” (emphasis added).

I am sure that others, including some of my colleagues here at the Atlantic, will be spending time in the coming hours and days further parsing the ruling. For me, for now, it’s enough to say that Judge Vinson delivered for opponents of the Act precisely what he had promised them one month ago in open court in the motion hearing; a epic, hero-to-a-cause ruling that somehow makes U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson’s ruling last month in Virginia, which also struck down the “individual mandate,” seem like a relative exercise in judicial restraint. And that’s saying something.

What is particularly interesting about this, to me, is the fact that the news media has just rolled and printed every word of this ONE opinion-yet scant attention is given to an equal level opinion that points out how nice it would be if Judge Vinson walked in front a bus had actually interpreted the law correctly.

The district court rejected this claim and upheld the minimum coverage provision as a valid exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power. The court rejected the premise of that argument, explaining that the “decision whether to purchase insurance or to attempt to pay for health care out of pocket, is plainly economic.” The court explained that these decisions, “viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers, and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance.
The court emphasized that “[t]he health care market is unlike other markets. No one can guarantee his or her health, or ensure that he or she will never participate in the health care market. Thus, [t]he question is how participants in the health care market pay for medical expenses — through insurance, or through an attempt to pay out of pocket with a backstop of uncompensated care funded by third parties. Far from ‘inactivity,’ by choosing to forgo insurance plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance. [P]laintiffs in this case are participants in the health care services market, and they have made a choice regarding the method of payment for the services they expect to receive. How participants in the health care services market pay for such services has a documented impact on interstate commerce, and this market reality forms the rational basis for Congressional action designed to reduce the number of uninsureds.
This part is interesting. I haven’ t seen it before, anywhere:

The uninsured, like plaintiffs, benefit from the ‘guaranteed issue’ provision in the Act, which enables them to become insured even when they are already sick. Without the minimum coverage provision, there would be an incentive for some individuals to wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care, knowing that insurance would be available at all times. As a result, the most costly individuals would be in the insurance system and the least costly would be outside it. In turn, this would aggravate current problems with cost-shifting and lead to even higher premiums.

But Vinson, most of our Tri corner hat wearing idiot friends, and the rest of the callously uncaring have no problems sleeping at night-while this happens:

For example, Hillary St. Pierre, a 28-year-old former registered nurse who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had expected to reach her insurance plan’s $2 million limit this year. Under the new law, the cap was eliminated when the policy she gets through her husband’s employer was renewed this year.
Ms. St. Pierre, who has already come close once before to losing her coverage because she had reached the plan’s maximum, says she does not know what she will do if the cap is reinstated. “I will be forced to stop treatment or to alter my treatment,” Ms. St. Pierre, who lives in Charlestown, N.H., with her husband and son, said in an e-mail. “I will find a way to continue and survive, but who is going to pay?”
Exactly what will happen to the law’s specific provisions that prevent insurers from imposing lifetime limits and require them to phase out the annual limits now in place is unclear.

Hell-even Ayn Rand-the deceased icon of the Tea Party movement- was able to get public assistance when she needed it.

But a certain segment of America does not really care about anything- but preserving wealth for people that will never share it with them-much less allow them to become like them. That’s the part of the American psyche that has always eluded me-that Americans want so badly to be rich that they will let the people who are rich literally get away with murder, only because they hope someday to be like them. Even though the people they are assisting,  have stacked the deck against them, on purpose.

Well played morons.

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And so, when you realize that this is what we are dealing with, sometimes you want to lie back, rest, smile,  and imagine what you wish you could say:

Cause without imagination and fantasy-you would be stuck in the real world and we all know where that leads.