Obamacare Won’t ‘Solve’ Uninsured Problem, Either

Yuval Levin at National Review Online reviews some of the practical effects of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision:

Combined, these two rather arbitrary acts of revision mean that if the CBO reassesses the law’s effect on the number of Americans without insurance (which it certainly will do) using the same methods it used originally, it is likely to find a much smaller reduction in the uninsured.

Supreme Court Declines to Overturn Obamacare (UPDATED—see below)

Drudge and the AP are reporting that the Supreme Court has judged the individual mandate not unconstitutional.  Glenn Beck suggests that the reason Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberals on this vote (making it 6-3 rather than 5-4) is so that he could write the opinion and make it as narrow as possible, minimizing the damage it can do in the future.  (Given the impressions I came away with from constitutional-law class about the two partial-birth-abortion Supreme Court cases, I can believe it.  Roberts is a wily one—that is, according to some people’s interpretation of his actions.)

(Correction and updates below the fold.)

Change Happens

I stopped by the bargain rack at the poster store today.  Guess what was on clearance:

(The discounted poster shows the face of Barack Obama and the words “Change can happen”.)

It sure can.

No one is buying Obama any more; so the store is trying to get rid of him.  There’s a metaphor somewhere in there.

More Creative Ways to Support Obama 2012

We already knew that Barack Obama was a full-time campaigner (with a side job as president, when he can fit it in), but this is novel:  The Obama campaign now recommends that you register your wedding with them—that you actually ask your wedding guests to donate to Obama’s re-election effort (i.e., to fund ads smearing Romney?) in lieu of gifts—explaining that four more years would be “a gift that we can all appreciate”!

House Passed Jobs Bill Same Day that White House Accused Them of Doing Nothing for Jobs

A House committee voted on Wednesday to recommend that Attorney General Eric Holder be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a House investigation of Operation Fast and Furious for more than a year.  (The full House is expected to vote on it next week.)

In response, as PJ Media point out, the White House criticized House Republicans for supposedly not doing their job—

Rule of Law or Rule of Men?

Last Friday, President Obama decreed that what Congress has thus far declined to do, he will do by himself—in effect, amnesty for (by his administration’s own conservative estimate) 800,000 illegal immigrants (CNN, Fox)—even though President Obama himself is on record, as recently as 2011, at least twice (March, September), admitting that that would be unconstitutional:

Obama vs. Obama

Today’s recommended reading comes from National Review Online.  Rich Lowry and John Lott compare what President (not candidate) Obama said not long ago to what he’s saying now (he doesn’t compare favorably…), while Michael Barone discusses how the voters feel about that (angry).  Read the whole thing (all three), but here are some excerpts:

Lott, “Obama’s Revisionism” (“He predicted a strong economy, but blames his failure on Bush”):

In March 2009, when some economists, such as Harvard’s Greg Mankiw, questioned whether the stimulus would produce the promised benefits, Obama supporter Paul Krugman attacked their honesty. In one blog post at the New York Times entitled “Roots of evil,” Krugman accused Mankiw of “more than a bit of deliberate obtuseness” and claimed that “we can expect fast growth.”

‘It’s not bribing him with sex to get him to marry you (in fact, that’s what cohabitation attempts to do)’

I ran across this comment from Roxeanne de Luca, and thought it bore repeating:

Oh, heavens. Women wasting their waning child-bearing years on men who won’t commit to them is a rant in of itself. A society that does not condemn men who refuse to commit to women is another rant. A third rant is men who waste women’s time, so that the women they take to bed may never have the children they desperately want.

‘The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.’

Jonah Goldberg has an interesting piece at National Review Online today: “The Myth of the Good Conservative” (“For liberals, he always existed yesterday”).  The thesis is as the subtitle implies: that certain liberals are always praising particular conservatives of the past and/or hypothetical conservatives in general, to whom particular conservatives and conservative policy proposals of today supposedly compare unfavorably.

National Lemonade Stand and Bake Sale Hug-a-thon Day

Glenn Beck has organized lemonade stands and bake sales across the country today to help children learn to about enterprise and “entrepreneurship”, and to raise money to feed the poor.

Find a location near you and drink to our freedom!

Related entries:

• “People Sell Lemonade at Capitol, Are Arrested”

• “Legitimacy Does Not Come from the State”

• “More Government, Less Liberty”

‘When conservatives contemplate what a liberal means by “functional,” we say “bring on the dysfunction, baby!”’

I ran across this while doing Internet searches and reading up on the American Progressive movement, and thought it was pretty well put:

When a liberal says our government is “dysfunctional,” what he invariably means is that it does not vigorously churn out the sorts of egalitarian, freedom-destroying legislation that will propel us (even more quickly) in the direction Europe has already traveled.  When conservatives contemplate what a liberal means by “functional,” we say “bring on the dysfunction, baby!”  The American system’s separation of powers, checks and balances, bicameralism, federalism, and pluralism routinely result in the government’s utter failure to get anything done.  Thank goodness.  While there are important things that need doing, nearly all of them fall in the category of “undoings”—undoing the achievements of all that “functional” government liberals love, which have made us less wealthy and less free.

Walker Wins, 53-46

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker beat the recall yesterday.

Rumor that Governor Walker Sired a ‘Love Child’ or Pressured Anyone to Have an Abortion Is False

Robert Costa and Christian Schneider at National Review Online have the story and the links:  Scott Walker did not father a child out of wedlock.  The opposition came up with a last-minute election surprise this past weekend (the recall election is today), but there’s nothing to it:

(from Costa)

Over the weekend, Gillick, in collaboration with the Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative, alleged that Walker, who is pro-life, pressured “Ruth,” her roommate, to pursue an abortion.

The Rise and Fall of Public-sector Unions?

National Review Online’s Robert Costa reckons,

Regardless of whether Governor Scott Walker survives Tuesday’s recall election, Wisconsin’s public-employee unions are likely to see their power continue to decline.

The numbers are dramatic:

Indeed, according to the Journal, the American Federation of Teachers–Wisconsin, a labor organization representing 17,000 public-school teachers, has seen 6,000 members leave its ranks.