Added response... below Mike's words!
We all know that we need health care that works. Very few liked the way the contested healthcare law was written with all the "value added" pet attachments and the 2500 pages of regulations. Adults with a clear view of necessity vs boondoggle need to comb over and alter what is needed... but enough from me.

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

The Supreme Court ruling on health care was a win-win-win.

First, three cheers to those who sought to find a solution to the nation's health care problems. It was the right thing to do.

Second, three cheers to those who sued to have the law overturned. It was and is badly flawed.

Third, three cheers to the Supreme Court that both rejected a cancerous "commerce clause" argument and rightly reframed the health care law 's individual mandate in more honest terms: a tax imposed on citizens by the Congress.

Here is what is left for the future.  All laws have unintended consequences. Big laws have really big unintended consequences. 

The health care law is a poster child for unintended consequences. The Orwellian inanity of Nancy Pelosi, who argued that Congress had to pass the law in order to see what was in it, is a major reason why she is no longer Speaker of the House. This is an election year. In the near term, therefore, the only goal is to fix any of the really fatal flaws that immediately arise before they do real harm to the American people. If John Boehner balks at that maybe he won't speaker for long either.

After that, hope always springs eternal. 

Just perhaps in 2013 the unintended consequences of the law can be fixed in a bipartisan manner. No major piece of legislation of this magnitude had succeed without bipartisan support in both crafting and passing the law. Until that happens, a responsibility of the leaders of BOTH parties to reach out, the health care law is going to continue to be unpopular and divisive. More importantly, we will have failed to correctly address our health care problem, the original goal of the law.

Mike
____________________________________________

A added note from Dr. Wayne Downing

Hi Mike,

 

The Supreme Court by upholding Obamacare under the taxing power has placed a huge burden on the Democratic Party in an election year. First of all, since this a tax and not an entitlement, Congress must pass legislation to raise enough money from the uninsured to pay for their health care. Such a tax would

certainly be over $10,000 a year. If you were a member of Congress would you want to be the one who voted for a $10,000 tax increase in an election year? Who will get re-elected (the first duty of every politician is to stay in office) with that on their record? This will re-energize the Tea Party and conservatism in general.

 

Democrats may be celebrating right now. Republicans will celebrate in November. This travesty of a law will be repealed when we get a Republican president and a Republican Congress. Thank you, Supreme Court for

such a well reasoned ruling.

 

Wayne

______________________________________________

A note added from EricK Erickson, Red State

Dear RedState Reader,

As you have no doubt heard by now, the Supreme Court largely upheld Obamacare with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority 5 to 4 decision.  Even Justice Kennedy called for the whole law to be thrown out, but John Roberts saved it.

Having gone through the opinion, I am not going to beat up on John Roberts. I am disappointed, but I want to make a few points. John Roberts is playing at a different game than the rest of us. We’re on poker. He’s on chess.

First, I get the strong sense from a few anecdotal stories about Roberts over the past few months and the way he has written this opinion that he very, very much was concerned about keeping the Supreme Court above the partisan fray and damaging the reputation of the Court long term. It seems to me the left was smart to make a full frontal assault on the Court as it persuaded Roberts.

Second, in writing his opinion, Roberts forces everyone to deal with the issue as a political, not a legal issue. In the past twenty years, Republicans have punted a number of issues to the Supreme Court asking the Court to save us from ourselves. They can’t do that with Roberts. They tried with McCain-Feingold, which was originally upheld. This case is a timely reminder to the GOP that five votes are not a sure thing.

Third, while Roberts has expanded the taxation power, which I don’t really think is a massive expansion from what it was, Roberts has curtailed the commerce clause as an avenue for Congressional overreach. In so doing, he has affirmed the Democrats are massive taxers. In fact, I would argue that this may prevent future mandates in that no one is going to go around campaigning on new massive tax increases. On the upside, I guess we can tax the hell out of abortion now. Likewise, in a 7 to 2 decision, the Court shows a strong majority still recognize the concept of federalism and the restrains of Congress in forcing states to adhere to the whims of the federal government.

Fourth, in forcing us to deal with this politically, the Democrats are going to have a hard time running to November claiming the American people need to vote for them to preserve Obamacare. It remains deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people. If they want to make a vote for them a vote for keeping a massive tax increase, let them try.

Fifth, the decision totally removes a growing left-wing talking point that suddenly they must vote for Obama because of judges. The Supreme Court as a November issue for the left is gone. For the right? That sound you hear is the marching of libertarians into Camp Romney, with noses held, knowing that the libertarian and conservative coalitions must unite to defeat Obama and Obamacare.

Finally, while I am not down on John Roberts like many of you are today, i will be very down on Congressional Republicans if they do not now try to shut down the individual mandate. Force the Democrats on the record about the mandate. Defund Obamacare. This now, by necessity, is a political fight and the GOP sure as hell should fight.

60% of Americans agree with them on the issue. And guess what? The Democrats have been saying for a while that individual pieces of Obamacare are quite popular. With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts has forced everyone onto that ground.

It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.

*A friend points out one other thing — go back to 2009. Olympia Snowe was the deciding vote to get Obamacare out of the Senate Committee. Had she voted no, we’d not be here now.

Erick

Does she remind you of that senior center gossiper who always has an aside that is blatantly shallow, mean, self-serving and off the mark? I think she is cracking up!

Nancy Pelosi: “This Holder contempt vote is about voter suppression”

Erica Johnsen, Hot Air

This was during Nancy Pelosi’s press briefing Thursday morning:

“They’re going after Eric Holder because he is supporting measures to overturn these voter suppression initiatives in the states… This is no accident, it is no coincidence. It is a plan on the part of Republicans.”

Pelosi denied that Operation Fast and Furious is the real cause of the investigation and contempt charge. “These very same people who are holding him in contempt are part of a nationwide scheme to suppress the vote,” she said of her congressional colleagues. “It is connected. It’s clear as can be. It’s not only to monopolize his time, it’s to undermine his name.”

“These folks want a plutocracy where instead of the choice of the many the checks of the very very few determine the outcomes of elections,” she said.

…I don’t even know what to say. My amazement that this person is the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, of the United States of America, is once again overwhelming me. The deceit and demagoguery truly know no bounds.

Yes, I’m sure Republicans planned Operation Fast and Furious themselves, and then convinced Holder to willfully ignore the requirements of a Congressional subpoena, so that they could bring him up on contempt charges, so that they could undermine his quest to continue to allow people to vote without providing identification. Or something.

In the name of all that is holy, stop calling Republican efforts to combat voter fraud, “voter suppression.” Voter fraud is a real and widespread occurrence, although I’m sure the fact that proven cases of voter fraud tend to disproportionately benefit Democrats has absolutely nothing to do with their insistence. Even President Obama has been known to ask for IDs from people attending his rallies — why aren’t any Democrats righteously screaming that he’s trying to “disenfranchise minorities”? I mean, it’s only logical, right?

Limosines galore...

Limosines galore... as far as the eyes can see...

By "most open" Obama must have been talking about more elbow room in his admin's transportation.

Due to confusion about what a limousine is, the General Services Administration has had a hard time counting its limos in recent years, but now insists a new definition will accurately account for the fleet of government agency-owned luxury vehicles.

Last year, the GSA estimated the number of government agency limousines at 412, amounting to a 73 percent increase between 2008 and 2010, according to iWatch News.

The statistic was touted by conservatives as an excessive indulgence in tough economic times and as an irresponsible use of taxpayer money under the Obama administration.

Two months after the rise was reported in May 2011, the GSA changed the definition of “limousine” to exclude such vehicles as shuttle buses and sedans, previously classified as limos.

When the GSA released its 2011 fleet report last month, limos were shown to have decreased 62 percent to only 158, iWatch reported.

The State Department, under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, reduced its limo count the most, to just 50 after reporting 259 in 2010.

In releasing the 2010 fleet report, GSA officials admitted the limo numbers in the report were not reliable, according to iWatch.

Intelligence leaks, part duex

Intelligence Leaks, Part Duex

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

One nice thing about being retired and being an American is the right to free speech. So here goes.

If you want to come to grips with why there are so many leaks look to Thomas Donilon.

He never served a day in the intelligence community and has no real comprehension on the difficulty, stresses and hardships that are thrust upon the men and women who carry out those operations overseas.

He never served in uniform so he has not even the foggiest concept of operational security on a personal level. 

He has never had  to put his life on the line and has no useful sympathy the women and men in uniform who go outside the wire. For Donilon, that life is always an abstraction, never a reality. 

He apparently refuses to keep what is secret secret. This should not be a surprise given the enormous gap between the average Americans serving our country overseas and the protected and privileged life of a Washington DC elite that Donilon has led as an adult. They are from the same country, but from completely different worlds.

But Tommy Boy does have a unique record:

1. He is a wealthy lawyer. How did he make his money? See points 2 & 3 below.

2. He was a Washington lobbyist.

3. He was an Executive Vice President at Fannie Mae for six years.

4. He was a public affairs officer (spelt p-r-e-s-s t-o-a-d-y) with the State Department.

5. Now he is the National Security Advisor for the United States of America.

Here is what the Huffington Post wrote in 2010:

Outgoing National Security Adviser Jim Jones once disparaged his replacement and current deputy, Thomas Donilon, for his lack of overseas experience, telling him that as a result: "You have no credibility with the military," according to Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars."

In addition, Donilon, who previously worked as a vice president for floundering mortgage giant Fannie Mae and was known for his strong views and opinions, once offending Defense Secretary Robert Gates so much during a meeting that the Pentagon chief almost walked out, according to Woodward.

Gates asserted that Donilon would be a "disaster" as National Security Adviser, the book alleges.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/08/tom-donilon-disaster-national-security-advisor_n_755708.html

You can't make this stuff up.

Mike

INTELLIGENCE LEAKS

Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)

The damage done to America’s national defense by the recent onslaught of intelligence leaks has been deeply disturbing. Some have claimed they were motivated by partisan political gain, to help reelect President Obama. This does not seem likely in my opinion, although how the newspaper editors chose to spin the information is another matter. Having been an intelligence officer for over a decade, to include serving as a member of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, the most likely outcome is that the person is of high rank, a general officer or intelligence/national security SIS/SES official or some equivalent. I am assuming that it is an individual as the alternative is too frightening.

Based on the range and depth of information betrayed by this person, we are looking at someone who has access to our most vital national defense operations. Very few people have such access, even within the relatively small intelligence community. It is possible that he could be one of those highly capable colonels or civil equivalents who become seemingly indispensible at times. The culprit could also be a product of a systemic risk failure. There is a possibility that someone who should not have been “read into” these compartmented operations was allowed to do so.

If people who do not have “a need to know,” because it is not essential to the conduct of their duties, are allowed to know then mischief and bad things inevitably follow. In this last case, we may be dealing with an “accidental traitor,” someone undeserving of the special trust and confidence given to him due to a lack of maturity and judgment coupled with a misguided sense of self-importance. Nonetheless, a pathetic traitor is still a traitor.

This gets to heart of the matter. What we are dealing with is a real stinker. Outwardly, the guy is discreet and competent. On the inside, he is someone with an outsized ego and an overwhelming degree of personal vanity. The fellow is both a smooth manipulator and emotionally needy. We have Mister Vanity. Mr. Vanity has a deep-seated sense of superiority and no small degree of contempt for those around him. He knows he is smarter and alone is fit enough to make the rules. Regrettably, Washington has a large pool of such folks.

This is not like Assange who worked from without or John Walker who betrayed America from within at a low level or even like Aldrich Ames who was a traitor within the CIA. Perhaps the closest case is that of Robert Hanssen of the FBI. Mr. Vanity certainly ranks up there with Hanssen because of his ability to gain access to the highest secrets, his immense ego and his arrogant willingness to redefine betrayal as service.

Let us be clear. This fellow is a traitor. Some shrill minority will argue he is a hero performing a public service. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Mr. Vanity’s leaks were destructive not constructive. He has aided the efforts of al Qaeda, the radical Mullahs in Iran and the worst elements in the Pakistani extremist circles. People either already have died or will die because of the actions of Mr. Vanity. He has warned our enemies. They will now be more alert, quicker and better able to attack us in the future while our closest allies are now more wary of us. Mr. Vanity is a traitor of the highest order.

The bottom line is that Mr. Vanity stinks. Like anything that stinks up your home, it needs to be tossed out with the rest of the garbage.

I can only wish Godspeed to the FBI and the DOJ prosecutors in their work. To the guys who will take away this turd, please remember to wear gloves and hold you nose.

Semper Fi,

Mike

A SMASHING VICTORY IN WISCONSIN

John Hinderaker, Powerline

Wisconsin looks to exceed our fondest hopes, as everyone has called the race for Scott Walker. With 60% of the vote now counted, Walker leads 57%-42%. That is way too big a margin for the Democrats to make up through fraud. The TV headlines to the effect that “Governor Walker Survives Recall” are really misleading. Walker didn’t just survive, he trounced the greedy union bosses who were fighting for their lives, as it turned out that a clear majority of union members were paying dues only because they were forced to do so. Public sector union membership has plummeted by more than 50% since membership became voluntary in 2011.

Will tonight’s victory reverberate from now until November? Mitt Romney released this statement about Walker’s victory:

I congratulate Scott Walker on his victory in Wisconsin. Governor Walker has demonstrated over the past year what sound fiscal policies can do to turn an economy around, and I believe that in November voters across the country will demonstrate that they want the same in Washington, D.C. Tonight’s results will echo beyond the borders of Wisconsin. Governor Walker has shown that citizens and taxpayers can fight back – and prevail – against the runaway government costs imposed by labor bosses. Tonight voters said ‘no’ to the tired, liberal ideas of yesterday, and ‘yes’ to fiscal responsibility and a new direction. I look forward to working with Governor Walker to help build a better, brighter future for all Americans.

That seems like a fair assessment. Liberals on television tonight–i.e., CNN and MSNBC–are wailing and gnashing their teeth. It has been fun to see. I actually haven’t watched MSNBC for years, and was a little shocked, when my wife switched the channel just to gloat, that compared with Fox, MSNBC looks like a public access channel in the middle of the night. Pathetic.

So, tonight is a time to pop the champagne and celebrate a great victory for liberty.

Tonight was also the debut of Power Line Live. PL Live was a smashing success, much like the Walker campaign, as more than 1,200 people occupied the tavern/chat room at the evening’s peak. Thanks to Joe Malchow, the site never wavered with posts coming across the transom every second. Those who hung out with us had a great time. The bar will be open all the time, and no doubt will attract even bigger crowds at key moments in the 2012 campaign as it unfolds.

UPDATE: One more thing: The Democrats’ last-minute smear, their absurd rumor that Scott Walker fathered an illegitimate child 24 years ago, fell completely flat. That is a very good thing–a complete repudiation of liberal smear tactics.

Politics of red, white and green

By Jonah Goldberg, http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed

It was interesting while it lasted. But it looks like the “green revolution” has entered the long slide into “What was all that about?”

In January, the Spanish government removed absurdly lavish subsidies for its renewable energy industry, and the renewable energy industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable energy industry at all. It was a government subsidy industry where in exchange for creating conscience-soothing but other-wise inefficient windmills and solar panels, the government gave the makers piles of cash consumers never would.

“They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium (on subsidies),” European Wind Energy Association CEO Christian Kjaer told Bloomberg News.

The reason the Spanish example is so important is that it demonstrates how the whole green energy “revolution” was really an ideologically driven green boondoggle from the start.

At the beginning of his administration, President Obama insisted that if we didn’t follow their lead, we would surrender the hugely profitable renewable energy sector to those sagacious Spaniards. In 2009, researchers at King Juan Carlos University found that Spain had destroyed 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job it created. It also calculated that the Spanish govern-ment has spent more than half a million euros for each green job created since 2000, while wind industry jobs cost more than 1 million euros apiece.

“Since 2009,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “the Obama administration has awarded more than $1 billion to American companies to make advanced batteries for electric vehicles. Halfway to a six-year goal of producing one million electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, auto makers are barely at 50,000 cars.” Well, that leaves just 950,000 cars to go.

Obama believed he was smart enough to start whole new industries simply by sluicing taxpayer dollars into the right maws. Any suggestion that the transition to inefficient energy sources might come at a cost to taxpayers or economic growth was derided as a “false choice.”

It seems like Obama at least understands the tough choices he faces. In 2009, the president’s Earth Day message was stridently dedicated to climate change. In 2012, it didn’t even mention the word “climate.” Much to the chagrin of the green lobby, Obama will not be attending this year’s Earth Summit. Heck, the current picture on the White House’s energy and environment page even shows Obama happily walking past a stack of oil pipes. Subtle.

Yes, Obama threw a bone to the greens on the Keystone pipeline, but he more quietly opened up the Alaskan Arctic to new oil development, granting Shell permits to drill offshore.

“We never would have ex-pected a Democratic president — let alone one seeking to be ‘transformative’ — to open up the Arctic Ocean for drilling,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, told The New York Times [NYT].

Now, I have no doubt that Obama’s course correction is entirely political. For instance, if he hadn’t approved the Arctic drilling, Shell almost surely would have sued the administration for the billions it’s spent developing its Arctic leases. That’s not the kind of lawsuit Obama would want in an election year.

But saying Obama has caved to political reality doesn’t change the fact that political reality is largely a function of economic reality. In Europe and America alike, voters increasingly recognize that the benefits of the green revolution aren’t worth the costs, particularly when the revolutionaries don’t have a clue what they’re doing. The only question for voters is whether Obama has really learned his lesson, or whether he plans on reverting to type if re-elected.

Talk back at JonahsColumn@aol.com.