Obamacare is %&@*ing Constitutional?

Well, the unimaginable has happened.  The Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the patently unconstitutional Obamacare law does indeed pass constitutional muster.   I am still trying to wrap my mind around the contorted adjudication that rendered THAT decision. 

I fully expected Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg to ignore the Constitution and put their politics above that of our supreme law of the land.  Hell, Kagan was advocating for the law personally and as solicitor general prior to being appointed by Obama to the Supreme Court, so that certainly comes as no surprise, even though she should have recused herself from the decision for that very reason. 

As for Ruth Vader Ginsburg, well her seeming disdain, if not outright loathing, of the Constitution is well known.  After all, she was the one that suggested to the newly elected Egyptian government to NOT use the United States Constitution as a model for their own.  She has long been inclined to look at international law when rendering Supreme Court decisions.  That alone strikes me as a violation of her oath and reason for impeachment from the bench, but I digress.

It is ironic that the “swing voter” Justice Kennedy wrote the dissenting opinion in this thoroughly baffling and asinine 5 to 4 decision and correctly stated that the entire law was absolutely un-constitutional. 

It was George W. Bush appointee Chief Justice John Roberts that appeared to lose all control of his mental faculties and refused to actually apply constitutional law in his decision and thus voted with the “liberal” members of the court in upholding this travesty of a law.  Whereas Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan are all about as useful as football bats, one had hoped that Roberts would have actually perused the Constitution and related law in reaching his decision.  Evidently that hope was misplaced like Miley Cyrus’ virtue.

What I find fascinating is the fact that Roberts and the progressive justices ruled that Obamacare was able to proceed in tact because the federal government could indeed levy such taxes (penalties) for those that did not acquire health insurance in accordance with the law.  Why that is interesting is because during the debate prior to its passage, all the players in support of the law including then-Speaker Pelosi and President Obama insisted that this was not to be considered as a tax, as that would constitutionally invalidate the bill.  Of course we were also told that the law would lower our health care costs and that the entire process would be transparent and debated on C-Span too.

Well now that the left has spoken, there is only one more firewall left to prevent this egregious freedom-stealing, life-destroying, cost-raising law from being fully implemented.  America MUST elect Romney to the presidency and ensure that he has solid majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate so that this monstrosity can be fully repealed.  If we fail to do this as a nation, the law will be fully implemented in 2014.  I fear our nation as we currently know it will not survive if full repeal does not come to pass.

Once people become dependent upon this new program, it will be nearly impossible to repeal.  Never mind the fact that this law has already proven to make the costs for small businesses go up and thus reduced their ability to hire new employees.  Never mind the fact that there are indeed pro-abortion mandates within the law.  Never mind the fact that conscience clauses and religious exemptions are null and void for this law.  Never mind that rationing of critical medical services will indeed occur.  Never mind that medical devices stocks are already plunging today in light of this news.  Never mind that the death panels that Sarah Palin warned us about and was summarily laughed at accordingly will come to pass, albeit under the gentler euphemism of “end of life counseling”.  Never mind that we have created one more entitlement program that is so gargantuan in its scope that it encompasses 1/6 of the nation’s economy.  Never mind that the added costs of this law will add to the already $16 TRILLION debt we currently have as a country and are unable to pay right now.  Yep, never mind.  Instead of being the rugged individuals that fought for and supported liberty in this greatest country on earth, we will have become a nation of progressive victims that look to our nanny government to solve every problem we encounter in our lives.  Those that would proudly take care of themselves and their kin will be looked at as a kind of odd and slightly amusing anachronism to the left.

One wonders, now that the Supreme Court has stated that the federal government can mandate that private citizens must purchase whatever goods or services that the government deems as necessary for the "common good", just where that might take us?  I wonder just how loudly the progressives would scream and whine and gnash their teeth if some future congress and president mandated that every citizen must purchase a firearm, as part of a citizen militia, or face penalties.  There certainly seems to be more constitutional standing for that mandate than there is for Obamacare, not that we are using the Constitution as our standard any more apparently.

Oh, and by the way, I don’t EVER again want to hear the foolish meme from Rachel Maddow and the rest of the useful idiot progressive talking heads on TV and the radio whine about the “right wing Supreme Court”.  That dog simply won’t hunt anymore.  In fact that dog is road kill, along with one more of our essential liberties.

Political Gain Trumps National Security for Obama

In July of 2003 Robert Novak had an article published in the New York Times that created quite an uproar because it supposedly outed a CIA operative by the name of Valerie Plame.  This was done, so the left theorized, in retaliation by the White House for Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, having had the temerity to tell about the administration’s attempt to “manufacture evidence to gin up support for going to war in Iraq”.   

The fact was that Wilson’s “fact-finding mission” to Niger to determine whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium from them had enormous holes and contradictory statements in his report on the trip.  Indeed, The Iraq Intelligence Commission and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that many of Wilson’s claims were incorrect.  Further, the Senate report stated that Wilson’s report actually bolstered rather than detracted from intelligence about the purported sale of uranium to Iraq.  To this day, British Intelligence stands by the claim that Saddam Hussein did indeed attempt to acquire such material from Niger.

With all of that said and done, the progressive mainstream media nonetheless had a field day regarding the supposedly “politically-motivated” security leaks regarding the outing of a CIA agent.  Indeed the New York Times ran no less than 521 articles suggesting it was wrong of the White House, and presidential advisor Karl Rove in particular, to divulge such information.  So vexed were the Democrats that Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft saw to it that a special counsel by the name of Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate the case in depth.   Mr. Fitzgerald though seemed more bent on finding Republicans in the administration to skewer rather than any real interest in finding out who was the actual source of the leak.  Indeed he was told at the very beginning of his investigation that a high ranking State Department official who was critical of the Bush administration’s foreign policy by the name of Richard Armitage was the source of the leak that outed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent.  Fitzgerald proceeded with the investigation anyway in the hope of trying to find any sort of malfeasance on behalf of such possible trophies as Karl Rove or possibly even Vice President Dick Cheney himself.  What he ended up with was a perjury conviction of Cheney’s assistant Scooter Libby for statements that really weren’t even particularly pertinent to the leaking of Plame’s identity from Armitage.

In September of that year, Novak stated, "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. There is no great crime here," adding that while he learned from two administration officials that Plame was a CIA employee, "[The CIA] asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators."

The case was closed.  The left was disappointed that they were unable to catch a bigger fish in the “scandal” than Scooter Libby, and they decried that national security was weakened because an agent who was not working undercover and who was widely known in the DC cocktail circuit had her identity proclaimed to the world for purely crass political reasons.

Fast forward a little less than a decade and it would seem that numerous security leaks that have been done almost assuredly with White House knowledge if not outright orders to do so for absolutely political reasons is now the norm.  Multiple recent stories of national security interest leaked to the press all have one thing in common; they try to make President Obama look like he is tough on terrorism and a stalwart hero on foreign policy accordingly.  The problem is that Obama’s leaks truly do endanger national security.  They put covert assets in mortal danger, destroy trust and credibility with our allies, and enable our enemies to determine how to plug holes in their security.

Indeed in early May the Associated Press reported that a CIA asset from Saudi Arabia had infiltrated al-Qaida and had thwarted another planned underwear bomb attack on a flight to the United States.  His cover thus being blown, the United States had to extract this asset thereby precluding him from gaining future intelligence to protect America. 

At the end of May, the New York Times reported how President Obama personally is choosing the targets on a classified “kill list” of terrorists via drone attacks. 

On June 1^st, the New York Times ran an astonishingly detailed story regarding the administration’s working with Israel to create the Stuxnet computer worm to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  This removed plausible deniability for America and further exposed our ally Israel in the process. 

Immediately after the successful killing of Osama bin Laden last year, for which President Obama should indeed be congratulated, he released vital details of the mission including the fact that Seal Team 6 were the operators of the task.  Obama’s decision to take the announcement of this great coup to press so quickly after its execution precluded the ability of our intelligence agencies from following up on numerous other possible leads acquired during the successful raid.  Further, Pakistani Doctor Shakil Afridi reportedly provided critical intelligence on the location and identify of bin Laden thus allowing his termination to even be attempted.  Dr. Afridi is now serving 33 years in a Pakistani prison because of the public leaking of this information.  Such actions will make future would-be assets think twice about providing crucial information to the United States if they have to fear about their own safety or well-being.

“Too many people in too many places are talking too much about this operation,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said after the bin Laden raid, adding that the level of disclosures and blabbing violates an agreement reached in the White House Situation Room on May 8, 2011, to keep details of the raid private.  “That lasted about 15 hours,” a very vexed Gates said.

So severe are these continued leaks of vital national security issues that they have even been a source of great concern to many Democrats in the House and Senate.  “The accelerating pace of such disclosures, the sensitivity of the matters in question, and the harm caused to our national security interests is alarming and unacceptable,” said the statement from Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. — the chair and ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee — and Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Md. – the chair and ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.  “Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners, and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide.”

When asked about the seeming politically motivated release of such important national security information by the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, “This administration takes all appropriate and necessary steps to prevent leaks of classified information or sensitive information that could risk ongoing counterterrorism or intelligence operation.  …Any suggestion that this administration has authorized intentional leaks of classified information for political gain is grossly irresponsible.”

Okay, I would like to be able to take that statement at face value; however, it doesn’t seem to jibe with the facts at hand.  First, there was absolutely no condemnation or attempt to suppress any of these leaks by the White House after they were publicized.  Second, there was no statement on the matters whatsoever until the White House was specifically asked by reporters.  If these leaks were truly not politically motivated, one would expect that some harsh statement from the White House would have been issued and a concerted effort made to find the source of these leaks immediately. 

No, once again, our dear President is putting his own political career above that of our national security.  This time though how many lives could potentially be affected for his own narcissistic gain?  How many lives have already been affected or even lost because of Obama’s political calculations, with our national security being damned in the process?  Barack Obama is not just in over his head as I had once believed.  He has now become a threat to the very well-being of this country and is in violation of his oath of office.  He must be removed as president and commander in chief.  One hopes America can survive the rest of the year until that finally comes to fruition.

Democrats Disenfranchise Voters in Massachusetts

I came across an interesting little story during my lunch hour today that once again displays the shameless levels of hypocrisy perpetrated by the Democratic Party.   Of course it was not reported in the mainstream media.  It would seem that the Massachusetts Democratic Convention was held last Saturday on June 2^nd.  What was particularly interesting to note was that anyone entering the MassMutal Center for the convention would be required to show photo identification.  This was clearly spelled out on page 14 of the convention program accordingly. 

Now isn’t it amazing that the very party that screams about the disenfranchisement that the evil Republicans are creating by wanting to ensure that the people voting in elections are who they claim to be by showing photo ID prior to entering the voting booth is making it a requirement that photo identification must be presented in order to enter the Massachusetts Democratic Convention?  Is it possible that the Democrats really didn’t have altruistic motives in allowing anyone and everyone to vote based only on their good word that they were legally authorized to vote? 

If this disenfranchisement of Democrats from their state convention is offensive to you people, I would suggest that you make your complaint known in person to the Honorable Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice in Washington DC.  Just make sure you take along your driver’s license with you though, as I guarantee you will need a photo ID to gain access to this voter/taxpayer funded office building.

Michael Jordan and Agnes

The NBA draft in 1984 was remarkable for many reasons.  The first being that my beloved Portland Trailblazers and the Houston Rockets flipped a coin for the very first pick.  Houston won the flip and chose arguably one of the best centers to ever play the game in Hakeem Olajuwon.  The Trailblazers thus had the second pick.  There was a promising young wing man available, but the Blazers already had the brilliant Clyde Drexler and Jim Paxson on their roster.  What they really needed was a big man.  With that being the case, they chose Sam Bowie as the second pick of the draft that year and thus allowed the Chicago Bulls to pick Michael Jordan as the third pick of the draft.

 

The rest is history, of course, as Michael Jordan came to be the player that was synonymous with basketball and a champion that dominated the NBA during his career.  He is still one of the most recognizable sports stars in the world, despite the fact that he has been retired for nearly a decade.  Ask anyone who the greatest NBA player of all time is and odds are good that Michael Jordan will be the answer you get.  He really was that good, and I cry to think what my Trailblazers could have accomplished with Drexler and Jordan as teammates.  Of course my Blazers seemed intent on repeating history when a few short years ago they chose the perpetually-injured and now retired Greg Oden with the first pick of the draft instead of the amazing Kevin Durant, but I digress.

The fact is that Jordan was an extraordinary player that elevated the playing level of all of his team-mates.  His determination made everyone on his team better.  His entrance into the NBA forever changed the game in new and exciting fashion.  One man with skill and burning determination changed the game and became a world-renowned icon.  Players of his caliber come along only once in several generations.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on August 26^th of 1910 in Skopje, now the capitol of Macedonia.  This slight and unassuming lady heard God’s call at an early age and therefore decided to live a life consecrated to Christ as a nun.  She was called again by God in September of 1946.  He asked her to form the Missionaries of Charity because, as He told her, by her weak and sinful nature her future accomplishments through Him would glorify Christ.  In her humility and obedience she asked permission of her archbishop to proceed in her Divinely-instructed task and in January of 1948 was granted permission accordingly.

Agnes labored and toiled in the slums of Calcutta, India and throughout the world helping the sick and poverty-stricken.  At the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity that she founded had 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis.  She established soup kitchens, child and family counseling programs, orphanages, and schools throughout the world.

 

Through her willingness to say “yes” to God’s call she was able to glorify Him and help literally millions of people directly and indirectly throughout the world.

Agnes was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her indefatigable caring of the sick, poor, unwanted, and unloved.  When asked at receiving the award, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered "Go home and love your family."

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu has been beatified since her death in 1997 and is awaiting a second miracle accredited to her in order to complete the process of being recognized as a Saint by the Holy Roman Catholic Church.  Of course, the world knew Agnes as Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Mother Teresa changed the world by her perseverance, faith, and most of all love.  She was voted as the most admired person of the 20^th century by a wide margin in a 1999 Gallup poll.  She was rather apathetic on a personal level about temporal awards given to her, but dutifully accepted them for the attention and money that they could bring in order to lessen the suffering of others in the world. People of her character also come around once in scores of generations.

Summing up her life in characteristically self-effacing fashion, Mother Teresa said, "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."

Today, when one asks a child, or even most adults who their heroes are, Michael Jordan could very likely be one of the answers one would receive.  Indeed, he elevated basketball to an entirely new plateau and will go down in history as one of the greatest, if not the greatest player of all time.  That said, his accomplishments are as nothing when compared to a petite and humble lady that was willing to listen and devote her life to glorifying God through her actions.

Despite that, can one imagine how absolutely amazing the game of basketball would be today if there were a dozen Michael Jordan’s playing in the NBA now?  The excitement of the competition would be incredible.  Basketball would surely become the most dominating sport in the world accordingly with such talent exhibited.

Far more importantly, can one imagine how much better a place the world would be today if there were a dozen Mother Teresa’s in it?  How many lives could be made better?  How many hopeless people would know that there was someone that cared?  How many sick and dying would know that there was still love in the world?

While I admire the talents and accomplishments of Michael Jordan, and dearly wish my Trailblazers had been more prescient in their draft choice, his life’s work pales horribly in comparison to someone who really is deserving of the moniker of hero, even though Mother Teresa would never accept the title.  If only there were a dozen more heroes like Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in the world.  Better yet, if only every single person out of the nearly 7 billion in the world would stop for a moment and do just a single act of kindness towards their fellow man, as Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ would wish it, what a better place we would all make our world.  I am sure even Michael Jordan would agree.