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The choice of Paul Ryan has been an inspired one by Mitt Romney. He has finally found a way to attack Obamacare without reminding us that he too passed an individual mandate in MA.

By picking Ryan and bringing the entire debate of Medicare to the forefront, it has given Romney the opportunity to remind seniors that Obamacare takes 700 billion out of Medicare, and that it also creates a panel of bureaucrats (the death panel – yes, Palin was right) which will be in charge of deciding who is worthy of receiving a medical treatment.

The individual mandate might have been far more troubling to conservatives than anything else that Obamacare does, but the death panels and the shifting of 700 billion from Medicare to Obamacare are very troubling on their own right. And they are especially troubling to seniors. And if Romney is able to get seniors on his side, he wins this election, and more importantly, Obamacare will be repealed.
For years Democrats have used Mediscare tactics to defeat Republicans. It is time to give them a taste of their own medicine with Obamascare facts.
If Romney overcomes the usual Mediscare tactics thanks to Seniors greater fears of Obamacare, then he will have an unmistakable mandate to repeal what is the most troubling and dangerous piece of legislation passed by our Congress over the last century.
By picking Paul Ryan, Romney has not only given himself a much better chance of winning this election, but he has given us hope that the restoration of the United States of America is possible.

By Michael Santos

Priorities USA Action, an Obama super PAC, released an attack ad this week implicating Mitt Romney in the reckless homicide of the wife of an employee Romney never met.  The ad blames Bain Capital’s decision to close a GST Steel plant for the cancer death of the spouse of a former employee who no longer had health insurance.

The ad features Joe Soptic, the former employee, who tells the audience:

I don’t think Mitt Romney understands what he’s done to people’s lives by closing the plant. I don’t think he realizes that people’s lives completely changed.  When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill.

I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance. And then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia and that’s when they found the cancer and by then it was stage four. It was — there was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days.

I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone.  And furthermore, I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.

It is no doubt a tragic story, one unfortunately shared by far too many Americans in Obama’s third straight summer of unrecovery.  There are, however, a few significant omissions that the ad failed to mention.  First, as noted by the Political, the Kansas City plant did not close until 2001, several years after Mitt Romney had left Bain Capital.

Secondly, the Political also reported that Mrs. Soptic did not die until 2006, Romney’s last year as governor of Massachusetts.  Third, in a random act of journalism by CNN, it turns out that Mrs. Soptic was employed, with her own health insurance plan, through 2002.

The ad also doesn’t describe what President Obama would’ve done for the Soptics.  Far from giving them free health insurance, Obama would’ve taxed them as “free riders” who bought food rather than insurance.  And rather than encourage Mr. Soptic to find a job, he would have continued to give him unemployment benefits and, when those finally ran out, provided him welfare without work requirements.

Nor does the ad mention that, under Obama, the real unemployment rate is 15%, or that millions of Americans will lose their current employer-provided health insurance under ObamaCare.  Surely an unhappy tale or two can be found among this mass of misery that occurred on Obama’s watch.

But let us assume that the ad was accurate—Romney personally made the decision to close the plant and lay off Mr. Soptic, whose wife died shortly thereafter from lack of early detection because they no longer had health insurance.  So what?  No employer has a responsibility, moral or otherwise, to retain an employee so he doesn’t lose his health insurance or house, plunge into bankruptcy, or face any other type of hardship.

To argue otherwise would produce a second Great Depression that would make that of the 1930’s pale by comparison.  Profitable businesses would lack the flexibility to allocate resources necessary to remain competitive and innovative.  Businesses operating at a marginal profit would be unable to cut expenses in order to stay afloat.

And no one would risk hiring new employees because they would then be shackled with them for life.  It would, in short, freeze current levels of employment until the economy collapses after thousands of companies suddenly go out of business because they cannot use their workforces profitably.

Interestingly, what the ad doesn’t say is that Mr. Soptic’s job was only created in the first place because capital was reallocated from old, unproductive jobs to new, productive ones.  Nor does it mention that Mr. Soptic’s job was eventually reallocated to newer, more productive opportunities that allow the creation of more jobs and lower the costs of products for consumers.

This is the circle of life in the free market—creative destruction.  While the short-term effects are painful and at times tragic for those laid off, their only hope for a better tomorrow is an efficient, productive free market that continually creates more capital, which leads to higher wages, increased jobs, new innovations, and a higher standard of living.

Economic progress can only be made through creative destruction.

What the Occupy DC movement failed to accomplish last November, Americans for Prosperity did quite nicely on their own last Friday. You may recall last winter when the AFP held its “Defending the American Dream” summit in downtown DC, those rollicking, goodtime Occupiers tried to storm the convention center so they could harass attendees and disrupt the conference.

That Occupy effort failed. Now that the freebies have run out, there were no Occupiers at this year’s conference. But that didn’t prevent AFP organizers from disrupting their own event.

The showcase for Friday’s session was the “Hands Off My Health Care” rally with featured speaker Cong. Paul Ryan. Shuttle buses were scheduled to take conference attendees to Capitol Hill.

I was part of a large group that waited outside the hotel for almost an hour. During that time tour buses, double–decker buses, jitneys, large vans and even Metro buses all rolled tantalizingly by, but no shuttle. Staffers informed us there was a problem— obviously — but not to worry, the rally was being delayed until we could arrive.

When shuttles finally materialized, we quickly boarded and slowly made our way to Union Station. Inside the parking garage we were told the bus would be returning to the hotel, because the rally was over.

So I have no insight on the current intensity of opposition to Obamacare, the size of the rally crowd or chances for repeal.

Fortunately the day was not a complete loss. During one panel guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe was asked what he thought was the greatest problem confronting conservatives. His answer was both pithy and pertinent: “Conservatives lack (a vulgar word for courage).”

Chick–fil–A President Dan Cathy proves O’Keefe’s point. A mere two days after conservative Americans made it a point to eat at his restaurants on appreciation day, Cathy canceled his scheduled speech in Prince William County. And he canceled every other public appearance scheduled for 2012.

That’s a fine how–do–you–do to all the customers who waited in line and helped set a one–day sales record so that Cathy and his company would know they are not alone in their struggle to uphold Biblical tradition in the face of a hostile culture.

Instead of publicly thanking them and continuing to conduct his business and professional life in a confident and visible manner, Cathy flees inside the bunker.

There are times in life, commerce and politics when you just have to buckle up and ride it out. And who would have thought that alleged squish Mitt Romney would provide a sterling example of just that.

Romney released two years worth of tax returns to braying Democrats and media (although I repeat myself) and said that was it.

Naturally, the failure to completely drop his drawers whipped the opposition into a frenzy. Democrat apparatchiks speculate on what’s Romney’s hiding. The media echoes the speculation. Sen. Harry Reid (D–Demented) escalates by claiming Romney hasn’t paid taxes for ten years.

Even the Weekly Standard and respected conservative columnists have surrendered and said it would be better if Romney released all his tax returns and ended the controversy.

But that would just be the beginning of the controversy and Romney knows it.

Frankly, Romney’s steely refusal to give in to the mob speaks well of his character and makes me a little more optimistic regarding his administration.

On the other hand Cathy’s ignominious retreat sends two harmful messages. The first is mom–and–pop conservatives are wasting their time when they try to resist the decline and decay of secular commercial culture. They will get little, if any positive reinforcement from the businesses they try to support and they will be either ignored or attacked by media and cultural elites.

The second message tells homosexual activists, other libertines and the left that they are winning the culture war. All that is necessary for final victory is to continue the pressure until the resistance of Middle America collapses once and for all.

Conservative leaders need to start leading. Conservatives in the House of Representatives should to stop ducking confrontation with an administration that ignores the law. Conservative business leaders are either going to have to start fighting back or acknowledge the fact they’ve made a career of exploiting the decline of American culture. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Tom Coburn (R–OK) and Rush can’t do it all.

Without leadership the majority of everyday American conservatives are going to leave the field to the leftists with disastrous consequences for the future. For as the Apostle Paul wrote in 1^st Corinthians 14:8 “…If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”

Whenever the IRS is involved everyone knows its job is to collect taxes, taxes, taxes. What the IRS will be doing with the health care bill is to collect yet another tax. That is what the IRS does by definition. That is its purpose and has always been so. If voters have a choice to get rid of the IRS out of their lives, it will not be hard to divine what they will choose.

If the health care bill is not a tax, why is the IRS enforcing it?

When people think of the IRS, what first comes to mind? Taxes and nothing but taxes. Then they think of levies, fines and maybe jail. President Obama wants us to believe that the IRS is now going to be concerned about our health. Decades of the worst of abuses of the citizenry by the IRS will not fool the ordinary citizen into thinking this health care bill is good for his health.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, who is told the IRS will make them buy health insurance is conditioned to view the IRS as a tax enforcer. This has been so for many decades. Everyone hates the IRS.

This is not a winnable PR war for the democrats to convince ordinary citizens that the IRS gives a damn about them because it never has. They will never convince people that this health care bill is a gift from heaven when the mafia goons of the IRS are going to break kneecaps if you do not buy the insurance. That is more like extortion. It does not matter which socioeconomic sector an individual comes from. All have had the same universal experiences with the IRS which are terrible to nightmarish.

Obama is a lost cause for the democrats that is costing them the election. They will never convince anyone that the IRS is there to better their health. The IRS is a gruesome, unfair, sadistic organization and 100% of the working population knows it.

The Democrat’s PR game is a lost cause before it starts. The democrats are so stupid to think we do not know what is happening when they are sending in the IRS to terrorize the citizenry into compliance. Whether democrat, independent or republican a citizen will know this is a bad deal because that same citizen has had dealings with the IRS and all have been bad. Basically, when dealing with the IRS the proposition is that it wins and the citizen loses regardless of the citizen’s case.

Some of you may or may not remember when Hillary Clinton wanted to ram through her version of Obamacare back in 1994. People were so opposed to Hillarycare that the Democrats lost both the House and the Senate for the first time since the 83^rd Congress of 1953-1954. Prior to the congressional elections of 1994 no pollster even registered the level of unhappiness the American citizen had with Hillarycare. No pollster had any idea that President Clinton and the Democrats were going to lose on such a grand scale. One of the overriding reasons was that the democrat vote turned against President Clinton in staggering numbers. This author remembers talking to long standing, hard core democrats in 1994 and all said the same thing. They did not want government dictating to them what they could do with their doctors. Democrat women especially were very, very vocal after the 1994 congressional elections that they were appalled at this level of government intrusion. What was shocking was that these ordinary democrats who had voted democrat all their lives did not hesitate to throw their party under the bus on this issue.

The polling data is very clear and consistent on Obamacare. 60% are opposed and 40% are for.

Even If It Survives the Court, the Health Care Law Is Doomed according to Scott Rasmussen.

This data has not changed since democrats rammed Obamacare through the senate in 2010. Add to that the following.

 80% Expect Repeal of Health Care Law If Romney Wins , Economy, Health Care Top Voter Concerns , 66% Believe U.S. Has Too Much Government Power, Too Little Freedom , 66% Say Spending Cuts Should be Considered in All Government Programs .

If that is not enough, the news until the election in November is getting worse and worse and worse for Obama. The Census Bureau is about to release data that the US poverty rate is the highest it has been in 15 years and these poverty figures have not been seen since the 1960′s. In other words, Obama’s policies of which Obamacare is the central piece have rolled back 50 years of progress against poverty. This is a crushing bit of news.

In September 2010, the Associated Press prepared an advance report on the expected surge in the Census Bureau’s official poverty rate, which rose from 13.2% to a 15-year high of 14.3%. Their stated preoccupation was not with the associated pain, but with “the unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when Congress is at stake.” More

This health care bill is DOA with the American people. It is so clear that the electorate is overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare. As in 1994, democrats and independents will show up in droves to vote against Obamacare in November. And just as in 1994, the pollsters are either too politically correct to do an honest poll or more likely rebellious democrats are fearful of telling pollsters how they will truly vote in November as they did to defeat Hillarycare in 1994. They already hate this bill 60% against and 40% for. Add the IRS to this equation and we are going to swear in President Romney by 8:00 PM on election night and kill the bill with a simple majority vote in the Senate. No way this has a chance of a snow flake in hell of surviving and neither does President Obama.

“It’s stuff like this that makes me confident. I think that there is a hidden majority out there. I really do.  You know, ever since Nixon first talked about it, there’s been a Silent Majority. I think that there is a groundswell of anti-Obamaism out there that is set to explode and shock and surprise everybody in the media and on the Democrat side.  I don’t think this is a tight race. ” More…

Mr. Obama may not be the only President we have ever elected who has little real world experience, but he may be the first who has none.  And hopefully he will be our last.

President Obama’s latest insult to hardworking Americans has drawn massive press, at least in the portion of the Media that isn’t consumed with repeating and debating his false allegations concerning Romney’s business record.  It isn’t hard to understand how a Marxist would consider the accomplishments of a capitalist to be criminal.  It also isn’t hard to understand how a Marxist would believe that no one can accomplish something on their own; they do believe it takes a village to raise a child after all.  What is hard to understand is how America was gullible enough to elect a Marxist president when the evidence of his beliefs, his associates, and his political activities were so easy to see.

What will be utterly beyond comprehension is a majority of our fellow voters drinking the kool-aide a second time when it is obvious from Mr. Obama’s rhetoric that he is selling a blatantly anti-capitalist and anti-American line of constitutional suicide.

With serial apology tours, bowing to foreign leaders, and abandoning our surrogates to help install the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, it is obvious Mr. Obama is a walking disaster for America’s foreign policy.  It is also obvious from the recession he has managed to turn into the Great Recession that his spread around the wealth transfer policies are an unmitigated disaster on the domestic front.  His record wouldn’t inspire anyone except a fellow American hating Marxist to vote for him, so his only viable tactic is to make the other guy totally unacceptable.  In the coming months watch as the President, his fellow traveler mouth pieces, and the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media turn squeaky clean bland, boring Mitt Romney into a nefarious arch criminal who has built a massive criminal enterprise on the backs of exploited victims.

Even if President Obama really believes personal accomplishments, except his own of course, are merely the trophies of exploitation that doesn’t mean the rest of us should accept this as a legitimate premise for discussion.  The Democrat Media may want to spend endless hours asking Mitt to explain why he threw grandma off the cliff after stealing her Social Security check, but that doesn’t mean any sane person should waste time considering it.

A better question might be if capitalists have claimed personal success unfairly while using roads and electric grids built by others why is it fair for Mr. Obama to claim as his own the  fame for killing Osama when someone else started the campaign and someone else executed it?  Why aren’t the failures of his forays into venture socialism such as Solyndra, the Volt, or anything else his fault?  Our Dear Leader is a walking example of socializing the costs while personalizing the profits.  If it goes bad it was someone else’s fault, but if it goes right it was all him.  He has changed the famous Truman quote to “The Buck Stops with You” and since the teleprompter told him to say it he was able to do it with a straight face.  The saddest thing of all is that the dumbed down crowds he wows probably don’t know he changed the quote at all.

All of this is shaping up as a surreal election cycle.  We have a Democrat doing everything imaginable to lose.  He is abandoning the white middle-class, attacking capitalism, and lavishing insult after insult upon anything and everything Americans have always held dear including our founding principles.  We have a Republican who passed the template for Obamacare and can’t generate as much excitement as a Saturday night of rearranging your sock drawer.

America hangs in the balance.

If we re-elect a Marxist on a platform of class warfare and soak the rich, I imagine we will see class warfare and soak everybody.  If we elect a middle of the road Massachusetts Republican with a veneer of conservatism who is enamored of the foreign affairs advice of John Bolton, the angriest  of the neo-con war hawks I imagine we might get a reprieve on the Marxism as the government grows to sustain more wars for peace.

What’s a patriot to do?   Are we teetering on the edge, past the tipping point, or already careening into the Abyss?  Do we throw away our vote on someone with no chance to win?  Do we choose the lesser of two evils knowing that we will still be choosing evil?  Do we do as one of my oldest friends is doing: sell everything and leave the country before all this progressivism hits the fan?  Do we store food, bury guns, and wait for the zombie apocalypse?

The answers could be so simple.  Domestically we could cut taxes, cut regulations, and let the economy surge.  In foreign affairs we could follow the direction laid out by the founders: a friend to all and an enemy to none, withdraw our far flung international police precincts, make our homeland an impregnable fortress and let trade be our currency and peace be our policy.

Instead we face a future of austerity and contraction based upon a bloated government swallowing ever more of the American pie no matter who wins.  We face endless interventions and undeclared wars in quagmires defending a status quo that is no longer tilted in our favor.  China, the rising dragon of the East, is playing chess as our dithering Progressives moan about chickens coming home to roost, and political correctness prevents us from doing what we should do when we should do it.

We are truly between Barack and a hard place with every forward indicator pointing down.

These are times when I draw upon the true source and summit of my being and remember that the God of Heaven and Earth has not left us without understanding.  We face these problems because we have forsaken Him, and the only way back is through Him.  He told us long ago, “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  That isn’t just an observation it is a promise.  And unlike our fickle politicians who merely want to tickle our ears, God always keeps His promises.

Therefore as we turn to face the change don’t be discouraged, don’t be depressed, and don’t worry.  God has our back if we will give him our faith. For He also told us, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.”

Keep the peace.  Keep the faith.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Infowars.com | Health insurance is on the rise as sterilization and eugenics programs sweep the land.

Infowars.com | Health insurance is on the rise as sterilization and eugenics programs sweep the land.

Source: The Blaze
July 11, 2012, 3:59pm EDT

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, a largely symbolic move that has virtually no chance of moving forward.

Five Democrats crossed the aisle to join 239 Republicans in voting to overturn the Affordable Care Act: Rep. Mike Ross (Ark.), Reps. Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell of North Carolina, Rep. Dan Boren (Okla.) and Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah). Not a single Republican voted to keep the law. The final vote count was 244 to 185.

The Democrat-controlled Senate has made clear any similar repeal effort will not succeed, and Obama has vowed to veto any such bill that reaches his desk.

The House vote comes two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld the law’s constitutionality. It was the 33rd time Republicans have voted to scrap the law in whole or in part since its passage in 2010.

Quite apart from all the legal wrangling and politicking surrounding it, Obamacare has two fatal flaws that doom it to failure — (1) design-from-scratch complexity and (2) central planning and control.

In simple terms, because of these two factors:

It.  Won’t.  Work.

Obamacare is surely one of the most complex sociological, technical, financial, legal, and political systems ever conceived. Moreover, much of the system pictured above is being designed from scratch, and it is all supposed to work from rules and regulations set and managed largely by HHS central contol in Washington.

First, regarding design-from-scratch complexity:

Over a 40-year career in telecommunication systems engineering, I developed great respect for the following aphorism, sometimes known as Gall’s Law:

• A complex system that works invariably began as a simple system that worked.
• A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched to make it work.
• You have to start over from a working, simple system.

Our federal government has shown that with the arguable exception of the military, it cannot manage anything very well.  Any one of the hundreds of subsystems shown in the chart above is a major challenge for any competent system engineer, let alone politically appointed bureaucrats who focus primarily on empire building and self-preservation.

Even those few subsystems that seem to work in isolation will fail at their interfaces with other systems.  Designing those interfaces to work correctly and efficiently is the hardest part of building any large system, and it is at those interfaces that we’ll see the most intense finger-pointing between those in charge on opposite sides of each interface.  The whole thing is a system engineer’s nightmare and a techno-political debacle in the making.  The situation couldn’t be worse if one had deliberatetly set out to create a disaster.  It is a modern-day Tower of Babel.

Second, regarding central planning and control:

The history of central planning and control in the USSR, China, North Korea, and other socialist regimes should compel us to avoid central planning on anything as large as our national health care system.  Closer to home and on a smaller scale, but also involving life-and-death issues, is the dramatic failure of central planning in the community at Plymouth Rock,1620-1622, that nearly led to mass starvation of the entire community.

In all of these cases, even well-intended leaders found that no one would put in any extra effort on anything unless they had personal incentives to do so.  As failure loomed, Communist countries infamously resorted to force, guns, gulags, prisons, and virtual slavery on collective farms.

On the other hand, at Plymouth Rock, Governor William Bradford abruptly turned away from central control and social-justice-based “equal shares of everything for everybody” to a decentralized system based on personal property and free-market trading.  Consequently, there was extra reward for extra effort, and the Plymouth community went from near starvation to prosperity in short order.

In addition to the incentives problem, centralized control suffers horribly from poor information flow.  By the time even well-intended centralized control can react to the facts, too much damage has been done.  And what little information central planners do get is polished and distorted to protect lower-level bureaucrats who rightly fear they’ll lose their position and livelihood if they deliver bad news.

A good example of failure that many of us remember is the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo.  Congress’ Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, passed the month before the embargo, mandated from Washington how supply reductions had to be handled, rather than allowing the usual market forces to work.  The feds may have meant well, but they simply weren’t up to the job.  Some areas had plenty of gasoline, and some areas were starved for it.  A buying panic set in, and people sat in gas lines for hours, engine idling, hoping to top off their tank.  It was a complete botch.  And that allocation problem was orders of magnitude simpler than the health care system Washington wants to control.

So what’s the answer?

Let free market competition and chaos reign.  Seriously.  It sounds risky and unpredictable, but as Milton Friedman pointed out, it is only the millions of large and small voluntary trades and interactions in any economic system that can make any large economic system work as a whole.  Hong Kong, Singapore, pre-socialist America and Europe, and Bradford’s little colony at Plymouth Rock are all examples.

A follow-on article will present more on this theme as well as the necessary and proper role of government in national health care.

Your New Health Care System

Quite apart from all the legal wrangling and politicking surrounding it, Obamacare has two fatal flaws that doom it to failure — (1) design-from-scratch complexity and (2) central planning and control.

In simple terms, because of these two factors:

It.  Won’t.  Work.

Obamacare is surely one of the most complex sociological, technical, financial, legal, and political systems ever conceived. Moreover, much of the system pictured above is being designed from scratch, and it is all supposed to work from rules and regulations set and managed largely by HHS central contol in Washington.

First, regarding design-from-scratch complexity:

Over a 40-year career in telecommunication systems engineering, I developed great respect for the following aphorism, sometimes known as Gall’s Law:

• A complex system that works invariably began as a simple system that worked.
• A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched to make it work.
• You have to start over from a working, simple system.

Our federal government has shown that with the arguable exception of the military, it cannot manage anything very well.  Any one of the hundreds of subsystems shown in the chart above is a major challenge for any competent system engineer, let alone politically appointed bureaucrats who focus primarily on empire building and self-preservation.

Even those few subsystems that seem to work in isolation will fail at their interfaces with other systems.  Designing those interfaces to work correctly and efficiently is the hardest part of building any large system, and it is at those interfaces that we’ll see the most intense finger-pointing between those in charge on opposite sides of each interface.  The whole thing is a system engineer’s nightmare and a techno-political debacle in the making.  The situation couldn’t be worse if one had deliberatetly set out to create a disaster.  It is a modern-day Tower of Babel.

Second, regarding central planning and control:

The history of central planning and control in the USSR, China, North Korea, and other socialist regimes should compel us to avoid central planning on anything as large as our national health care system.  Closer to home and on a smaller scale, but also involving life-and-death issues, is the dramatic failure of central planning in the community at Plymouth Rock,1620-1622, that nearly led to mass starvation of the entire community.

In all of these cases, even well-intended leaders found that no one would put in any extra effort on anything unless they had personal incentives to do so.  As failure loomed, Communist countries infamously resorted to force, guns, gulags, prisons, and virtual slavery on collective farms.

On the other hand, at Plymouth Rock, Governor William Bradford abruptly turned away from central control and social-justice-based “equal shares of everything for everybody” to a decentralized system based on personal property and free-market trading.  Consequently, there was extra reward for extra effort, and the Plymouth community went from near starvation to prosperity in short order.

In addition to the incentives problem, centralized control suffers horribly from poor information flow.  By the time even well-intended centralized control can react to the facts, too much damage has been done.  And what little information central planners do get is polished and distorted to protect lower-level bureaucrats who rightly fear they’ll lose their position and livelihood if they deliver bad news.

A good example of failure that many of us remember is the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo.  Congress’ Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, passed the month before the embargo, mandated from Washington how supply reductions had to be handled, rather than allowing the usual market forces to work.  The feds may have meant well, but they simply weren’t up to the job.  Some areas had plenty of gasoline, and some areas were starved for it.  A buying panic set in, and people sat in gas lines for hours, engine idling, hoping to top off their tank.  It was a complete botch.  And that allocation problem was orders of magnitude simpler than the health care system Washington wants to control.

So what’s the answer?

Let free market competition and chaos reign.  Seriously.  It sounds risky and unpredictable, but as Milton Friedman pointed out, it is only the millions of large and small voluntary trades and interactions in any economic system that can make any large economic system work as a whole.  Hong Kong, Singapore, pre-socialist America and Europe, and Bradford’s little colony at Plymouth Rock are all examples.

A follow-on article will present more on this theme as well as the necessary and proper role of government in national health care.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts prefers to dress casually in his off hours.

Last Thursday dawned bright and clear. It was shaping up to be a great day for conservatives. More than one observer — waiting for the Obamacare decision outside the Supreme Court — noticed aircraft coming in low on the horizon. Everyone assumed it was ICE drones searching for illegal aliens deserving of amnesty and a college scholarship.

But as the aircraft passed overhead the full weight of our mistake hit home. That wasn’t the Army Air Corps insignia on the underside of the wing. That circular logo was the Obama meatball and it was Pearl Harbor all over again! Obamacare was legal and conservatives were caught completely unprepared as plans to roll back Big Government exploded in their face.

Make no mistake. Chief Justice John Robert’s decision is a total, crushing and potentially unrecoverable defeat. Roberts joins with Chief Justice Roger Taney of Dred Scott fame as another Maryland chief justice responsible for a Supreme Court decision that will live in infamy.

“I always say…that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Chief Justice John Roberts

Justice Holmes, a crusty veteran wounded three times during the Civil War, was being cheerfully cynical. Justice Roberts, who appears to be suffering from PTSD induced by State of the Union criticism following the Citizens United decision and potential criticism prior to the Obamacare decision, is merely being pathetic.

Berkeley law professor John Yoo contends Robert’s doesn’t agree with his own ruling but intended to “pull the court out of political fight.”

Unfortunately, Robert’s job is to uphold the Constitution regardless of Democrat political pressure. His failure to do so removes one of the few remaining limits on the growth and expansion of federal power.

This type of judicial temporizing in the face of political pressure is the same thing that happened during the 1930’s. A gutless Supreme Court stood idly by while FDR and the Democrats twisted the Constitution and began the long, legislative march toward intrusive, domineering Big Government.

If conservatives had not been lulled into a false sense of security, much like radar observers at Pearl Harbor, the Robert’s decision earlier in the week to overturn most of Arizona’s illegal alien law would have served to warn us of impending problems.

Deluded optimists claim the decision was a clever rope–a–dope and now Obama has to run for re–election with Obamacare and its hidden tax hung around his neck for all the voters to see.

I don’t know what election these optimists have been watching, but the failure of Obamacare was already part of his campaign. Now, thanks to Roberts, he can run on the success of Obamacare, which serves to solidify a base that was becoming increasingly disillusioned. Protecting the fruit of this Supreme Court decision becomes a strong motivator to get out the Obama vote.

If this is a victory for conservatives, God save us from defeat.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–KY) is already whining that it’s going to be difficult to repeal the entire law because it’s so complicated. But it doesn’t require a 2,400–page bill to repeal a 2,400–page bill. You could do it with a bill no longer than a single page. What it does require is a certain strength of will and Sen. McConnell is telling us he and the majority of Republicans in the Senate lack that will.

They would rather file a lawsuit and let the Supreme Court do the heavy lifting, an option that after last Thursday no longer exists. This, in fact, will increasingly complicate life for Congressional Republicans as an imperial presidency continues to trample the Constitution. The legislative branch can no longer delegate Constitutional protection to the Judiciary.

The second rationalization for our famous victory is that Roberts ended the abuse and misuse of the Commerce clause. But that’s wrong, too. As Rick Richman notes in the Commentary blog: “Part III-A of the Roberts opinion – concluding the Obamacare mandate was not valid under the Commerce Clause – was not in the portion of his opinion that represents the opinion of the Court.” Which means the Commerce portion does not set or overturn precedent.

What a difference a week makes. Last Thursday a powerful conservative fleet was ready to weigh anchor. Eager to catch the high tide of the Obamacare decision and sail to victory in the fall. Today we’re tapping on the barnacle–encrusted hulls of capsized battleships trying to find survivors.

Some are using hammers. Me? I’m using my head.

Michael McCarty | A lawyer I am not, but I do not require the skill of a legal sage to determine that the recent Obamacare decision has rocked the Tree of Liberty in this once great, united, United States of America. The supreme court is corrupt to the core.

James Hall | Hold on to your socks, the part time hiring of employees will become the new normal. The biggest prohibitive hit against job creation is in full motion. A very plan designed to blow out America.

After reading John Roberts’ opinion in the PPACA (Obamacare) decision and the Conservative pundits’ articles thanking him for the wakeup call, I decided to hold a meeting with my family and make the following announcement:

It’s up to us as individuals to make sure that we use electricity responsibly in this house.  The whole house could burn down if we aren’t careful.  Our circuit breakers are no substitute for diligence.

Therefore – 

As a wake-up call, I am going to do our family a “favor” by removing the circuit breakers from our electrical panel, wiring the circuits straight through without any protection at all.  Now it’s up to us alone to be diligent.

Absurd?  You bet it is.  But that’s the metaphor I offer to illustrate the absurdity of the message that Chief Justice Roberts sent us on June 28.

Our Constitution was created by the Founders to limit the power of government over its citizenry.  The SCOTUS Justices were intended to be our national “circuit breakers” for the US Constitution. In the event that Congress were to run amok with its taxing power, even with most of its citizenry seduced or asleep, the black-letter law of the Constitution was to be there to protect us, and the Justices were to make the call when Congress went too far.

Well, the SCOTUS circuit breakers failed to trip as they should have on the PPACA decision.  And it’s not Justice Roberts’ fault alone, although under the “doctrine of last clear chance,” he is certainly responsible.  Dusty, tired, and corrupted by 100 years of leftist / progressive / liberal / redistributionist / collectivist / neo-Marxist infestations, those old numbed SCOTUS circuit breakers failed to provide the intended protection.

Worst of all, by failing on this most critical case, SCOTUS has set the precedent that they will almost surely fail again when Big Government next tries to control our lives and freedoms through taxation.  And thanks to PPACA, that day is right around the corner.

Limiting federal powers of taxation was one of the prime motivators of the Founders in drafting the Constitution itself. Indeed, “Taxation without representation is tyranny!” was the battle cry of the American revolution.  Now, SCOTUS has aided and abetted taxation by misrepresentation.  What a letdown.

Thomas Sowell, as usual, put it well when, on July 4 of all days, he wrote:

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by them, to use their wisdom instead of their cleverness.
…
How far do you bend over backwards to avoid the obvious, that ObamaCare was an unprecedented extension of federal power over the lives of 300 million Americans today and of generations yet unborn?

These are the people that Chief Justice Roberts betrayed when he declared constitutional something that is nowhere authorized in the Constitution of the United States.
…

One of the Chief Justice’s admirers said that when others are playing checkers, he is playing chess. How much consolation that will be as a footnote to the story of the decline of individual freedom in America, and the wrecking of the best medical care in the world, is another story.

There are many speculations as to why Chief Justice Roberts did what he did, some attributing noble and far-sighted reasons, and others attributing petty and short-sighted reasons, including personal vanity. But all of that is ultimately irrelevant.

What he did was betray his oath to be faithful to the Constitution of the United States.

Who he betrayed were the hundreds of millions of Americans — past, present and future — whole generations in the past who have fought and died for a freedom that he has put in jeopardy, in a moment of intellectual inspiration and moral forgetfulness, 300 million Americans today whose lives are to be regimented by Washington bureaucrats, and generations yet unborn who may never know the individual freedoms that their ancestors took for granted.

Some claim that Chief Justice Roberts did what he did to save the Supreme Court as an institution from the wrath — and retaliation — of those in Congress who have been railing against Justices who invalidate the laws they have passed. Many in the media and in academia have joined the shrill chorus of those who claim that the Supreme Court does not show proper “deference” to the legislative branch of government.

But what does the Bill of Rights seek to protect the ordinary citizen from? The government! To defer to those who expand government power beyond its constitutional limits is to betray those whose freedom depends on the Bill of Rights.
…

Amen, Dr. Sowell, amen.

Should we give up?  Of course not.  Has the past week been enough time to rationalize and agonize over Roberts’ June 28 betrayal?  I think so.  I’ve had enough.  Dr. Sowell’s article tied a ribbon on it for me.

The next step for Conservatives is to pound away at that Obamacare bill, making it clear to We-the-People how deeply in debt we already are, how close we are to the edge of Obama’s seductive cliff (see cartoon at right), and how a Congress run amok with no SCOTUS circuit-breaker protection is going to set our house ablaze in debt just before we sail off that cliff into darkness.

Forget the differences among mandates, penalties, and taxes, America’s voters need to understand what Obama’s regime will do to them and their families through the freedom-robbing leverage of taxation, over-spending, and over-borrowing.  With SCOTUS now having abdicated, getting this message out to all Americans is the best November election strategy to win back a positive future for our republic, our children, and our grandchildren.

Granting President Obama another term in office would guarantee the expansion of the nanny state, perhaps beyond the point of no return.

It is clear that many will vote to reelect President Obama because they like the Nanny State. Some may do so for reasons similar to those clearly stated by this fine young college student:

[I] am a black you man who go to college and also seek for jobs to help my parent also the economy has a better for president obama . i do not like romney because he voke for the rich not the middle class while obama is voke for minority, middle class , student, business people, corporation company to vote for me this election also i ike obama he is the man that can change and forward with ideas to the people in america. romney has several lies which i have the websites below http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/29/12483552-chronicling-mitts-mendacity-vol-xxiv?lite. i am send this message for the black people ,latino, corporation, america people to vote for obama for second term because obama has created job for the american people not romney.

It seems likely that rather than choose between Governor Romney and President Obama, more than a few conservatives will vote for a third party candidate who won’t win the election but who might tip it to President Obama whom they probably want even less; those votes might as well be cast here:

Although it is conceivable that voting for a candidate who won’t win this year might help him to become a winning candidate in 2016, to quote our most post-racial, post-partisan President ever, “we can’t wait” until then.

We should not be condemned to wait until 2016 by our own conservative colleagues who probably want another four years of President Obama no more than we do. As Victor Davis Hanson wrote today, the country is already rotting under the rule of President Obama and he may well be reelected. Far too many seem to like the rot or fail to smell it. If we have to wait until 2017 for someone else, the damage done to our country between 2009 and the present will seem insignificant compared to what President Obama will do during his next four years with the increased “flexibility” he craves and will have. The Supreme Court, in the ObamaCareTax decision has shown one way. Even though President Obama’s flexibility is still slightly tempered by his craving for reelection, he ignored our Constitution and our laws at least twice recently in other ways in areas of illegal immigration. He has clearly shown that he well knows how to proceed. He will do so in spades when no longer facing a troublesome reelection campaign; by 2017 the damage he has accomplished may well have become irreversible.

This observation, quoted in the context of the ObamaCare ruling, is applicable here as well:

Perhaps history’s greatest military strategist is Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general and tactician. Tzu made the following observation:

“Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.”

And to make it absolutely clear he reiterated it in The Art of War on several occasions:

“He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue… In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.” (Emphasis added.)

If we don’t vote for the candidate who can gain enough votes to win against President Obama, we will have helped to reelect him. If he wins, we will have helped to show that the country wants — and because of our collective lack of responsibility may even need — a Federal Government that considers itself all wise and which we will have helped to make sufficiently intrusive to mandate whatever it may desire. Even when we are too “foolish and irresponsible” to agree, it will be deemed to be for our own good. “Elections have consequences” and the consequences of a win by “The Won” would be terrible. If we fail to defeat President Obama we will all be screwed as the Nanny State becomes even more engorged and as the economy continues to tank — even those who now benefit from and hence think they like the Nanny State.

Sometimes it is necessary to rise above principle.

Some conservatives may not vote for Governor Romney on principle because he is a Mormon. I wrote about that possibility here and here and think that not voting for a candidate because of the doctrinal (as distinguished from the practical) aspects of his religion would be unwise.

To oppose or to favor Governor Romney because of doctrinal peculiarities of his religion, having nothing to do with how he would or could conduct himself in office, strikes me as no less perverse than in comparable circumstances favoring or opposing a candidate because of his race or gender. There are many other, and better, factors to consider. (Emphasis added.)

Some conservatives may not vote for Governor Romney due to their principled objections to RomneyCare. I empathize with that view but find it dubious. My principal objection to ObamaCare lies in it’s inconsistency with the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution (and also with the legitimate taxing authority of the Congress, recently expanded outrageously by the Supreme Court). The Commerce Clause was intended to limit Federal meddling with the rights of the States to control their own intra-state commerce, not to prevent the States from enacting legislation such as RomneyCare to which it does not apply. The States can and should experiment with various initiatives wanted by their citizens and consistent with their own constitutions to see whether they have the desired results. If they don’t, it is easier for the States to repeal them than for the Federal Government to repeal one size benefits few all disasters. If elected President, Governor Romney will be under substantial pressure to work to repeal ObamaCare and he has committed to do so. With conservative majorities in both houses of the Congress, it should not be very difficult. Should President Obama remain in office that will be very difficult if not impossible even with conservative majorities in the Congress.

Voting for a third party candidate who cannot win in reliance upon one’s high principles can make one feel pleased with one’s superiority to and independence from the common herd. However, voting for a candidate who will not win, and so cannot save himself or the rest of us from the worst possible choice of reelecting President Obama, is wrong because the consequences can be terrible. An analogy: to help someone unable to swim to dive into the deep end of a swimming pool to save a terrified child thrashing about in the water would be neither good nor principled. He would then likely need to be rescued at the risk of distracting and even preventing a swimmer already in the water, who could have saved the child from drowning, from doing so. With a non-swimmer who cannot rescue a distressed child in the water with him, both thrashing wildly about, it could be impossible for the swimmer who could otherwise have done the job to do it: two people thrashing wildly about might well keep him from saving either. Heroic defense of principle ceases to be either good or heroic when it can only make a bad situation worse. Voting for a third party candidate who can’t win would be much the same.

I rarely agree with “Black Panther leader, civil rights activist and fun-loving rapist, Eldridge Cleaver.” This may well be our only point of agreement:

You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem– there ain’t no more middle ground.

Mr. Cleaver certainly did not intend his comment to be taken in this context, but voting for a candidate who will not win in preference to one who can would help to get President Obama reelected and thereby enhance the chances that the country will thrash about for four more years and perhaps drown. Those doing so would be part of the problem; as to this, I can find no middle ground.

I do not think that Governor Romney is the best candidate we might have had, but he is the only one we now have who can defeat President Obama. I would like a better candidate but he is better than President Obama. Therefore, I shall support and vote for him with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. The more I see, hear and read of President Obama, the greater will become my enthusiasm.

And now a few words from Governor Palin.

First published at Dan Miller’s Blog.

Stephan Lendman At issue was National Federation of Independent Business, et al, Petitioners v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al (NFIB v. Sebelius).

Natural News | By now, we all know the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate portion of Obamacare by declaring it a “tax.” This is a complete tragedy in America, we need to act now while we still have time.

PurpleSurf.com | Thank the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney not Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi – they merely took the health care handoff.

Ohio Lt. Governor Mary Taylor

by Melissa Dilley
The Other Paper.com

If President Barack Obama or anyone in his administration tries to implement the health care reforms known as Obamacare in Ohio, they’d better not expect any help from Gov. John Kasich or any of his staff. That’s what Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor said Thursday in a teleconference following the U.S. Supreme Court’s validation of the Affordable Care Act.

“We’re very disappointed that this flawed law has been allowed to stand,” said a joint statement issued by Kasich and Taylor Thursday afternoon. “The Supreme Court has confirmed what everyone knew all along — but that the White House tried to deny: This is a massive new tax on the middle class.”

Later in the afternoon, Taylor and Ohio Medicaid Director John McCarthy hosted the media in a phone conference, reiterating not only their disappointment, but promising to be downright obstinate.

If Ohio is “forced” to adopt Obamacare in the wake of the Supreme Court’s majority decision that upheld the act’s mandates as constitutional, Taylor said neither she nor her boss would go above and beyond to make it easier for residents to get health care under Obama’s federal plan.

That includes the Affordable Health Care Act’s recommendation that each state create and staff its own state-based exchange to assist Ohioans in searching for health insurance policies and comparing rates and determining Medicaid eligibility. That won’t be happening in Ohio.

“The Governor and I don’t see how a state-run exchange is in the best interest of Ohio because we don’t see where the additional money will come from,” Taylor said during the conference call.

Read more: The Other Paper

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Libertyand the pursuit of Happiness.” Please notice that this, the foundational sentence of the American way of life does not say “endowed by the Supreme Court.”

Ever since the Supreme Court took unto itself the power to void laws passed by the representatives of the people in Marbury V. Madison the black-robed Justices have acted, and Americans have accepted them as if they are the source and the summit of what is and what isn’t allowed in America.  In most cases since the middle of the 20^th century, the high court has sided with whatever the central government wanted to do in the way of extending its power and curtailing rights which any person who can read plainly sees protected in the document they are sworn to defend.

However, in Article Three of the Constitution, the one that outlines the judicial branch, after specifically enumerating which types of cases the Supreme Court shall try it says, “In all the other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

We often hear of obscure clauses of the Constitution which have been stretched and strained to sweep more power and authority into the never satisfied maw of the Federal Leviathan such as:

• The “Necessary and Proper Clause” which is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 states, “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the [enumerated] Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”  This is also known as the “Elastic Clause” because Congress and Presidents have stretched it to give them powers the Founders never would have dreamed possible outside a tyranny.
• The “Commerce Clause” found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 states, “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”  This is the go-to clause for the Progressive’s conquest of America.  This is the clause that was used in the 1930s by FDR to implement most of the New Deal.  It was used by LBJ in the 1960s to impose the Great Society.  And it is being used by BHO in the 21^st century to shackle us with the social democracy brand of socialism which has devastatedEurope and which has been repudiated by our former adversaries in the Cold War.

In the Supreme Court decision Wickard v. Filburn in 1942 it was handed down from on   high that wheat farmer growing wheat on his own property for his own use can be         legally regulated under the commerce clause because not selling your wheat and using it           yourself is actually competing with wheat that is sold and is therefore commerce.  This is the same clause the Obama Administration originally used as a defense to say they can fine people for not buying insurance arguing that not buying insurance is commerce.

Yes, these two clauses have been stretched and interpreted beyond any semblance of rationality to restrict and restrain Americans in the enjoyment of the freedom and liberty which should be our birthright, yet the clause which clearly states that Congress has the power to reign in the Court has been ignored.

Forget all the posturing about abortion by all the so-called conservatives in Congress. Has there ever been a concerted, protracted or sustained effort to remove abortion from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court?  No there hasn’t.  And yet tomorrow, or even today Congress could pass a law stating that abortion is an exception to the court’s jurisdiction and with the signing of this law by the president Roe V. Wade would be null and void, and all state laws affecting abortion would once again be in effect.  And this same procedure could be used for the representatives of the people to take back control of the law and the country from the Court.

The Congress is elected. The Supreme Court is appointed.  Congress can be replaced. The Justices of the Supreme Court serve for life.  They could be impeached and removed; however, none have ever been removed and the likelihood of that happening is remote.  There are checks and balances in the process of passing laws.  The Senate is a check on the House and the House on the Senate.  The President is a check on Congress and Congress is a check on the President.  There is a check designed to restrain the Supreme Court from becoming a black-robed committee of kings: Article 3, Section 2, Clause 2 giving Congress the power to create exceptions to the Court’s jurisdiction.  However, tradition and the desire of professional politicians to demagogue about issues instead of solve them keeps the perpetually re-elected from reigning in these want-a-be demigods.

Thursday June 28, 2012 will live in the memory of all patriotic Americans as a day of infamy along with Pearl Harbor, and 9-11. This is the day the Supreme Court ruled that if the Central government can’t force American citizens to do what they want them to do one way they can do it another.

When the Obama Administration and their co-conspirators, the Progressive Democratic Party in Congress, rammed Obamacare through Congress they argued that the fines imposed under the individual mandate upon anyone who didn’t purchase health insurance wasn’t a tax, but that it was penalty allowable under the Commerce Clause.  According to the Constitution all tax bills must begin in the House.  Obamacare began in the Senate; however, that was all right since the fines weren’t taxes they were penalties.

When the issue got to court and it became clear there wasn’t a majority ready to declare not buying insurance was commerce the Obama Administration argued there was no standing to litigate the individual mandate and the fine it imposed because it is a tax.  Through the looking glass inside the beltway and behind the curtain it’s a penalty when that argument works and it’s a tax when that argument works.

Sophistry is defined as “Reasoning that appears sound but is misleading or fallacious. In Metaphysics, Aristotle defines sophistry as ‘wisdom in appearance only.’”  When we look at that definition from now on it will be hard not to see the face of Chief Justice Roberts who today showed his true colors as the midwife of totalitarianism.  While declaring unconstitutional the very arguments used to pass the law the majority declared the law constitutional based upon the very arguments its opponents used to try and defeat the bill.  Up is down, right is wrong, and the government can do whatever it wants.

During the ratification debate when addressing the Supreme Court one of the leading Anti-Federalists wrote, “There is no power above them to control any of their decisions.  There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controlled by the laws of the legislature.  In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven.  Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel independent of heaven itself.”

The balance between the central government and the once free citizens it is attempting to turn into dumbed down helpless dependents has been significantly changed.  As predicted by the Anti-Federalists, the courts have been used over and over to expand the power of the central government to the detriment of the States and the citizens.  Today we crossed a threshold; we passed a tipping point and are no longer at the edge of the abyss. We are careening down the cliff into the fearful embrace of totalitarianism.  An over the top Supreme Court has given the green light to an out of control Progressive Administration, and as of today there are no checks and there is no balance.

Those of us who love liberty and are dedicated to limited government must contact our representatives and demand that the Supreme Court be brought under control.  Something must be done to preserve liberty or the United States we have loved will become the one we have dreaded.  An all-powerful central government will continue to grow and bend all things to its will.  We must return to the literal definition of constitutional government or this living document will be the death of freedom and the graveyard of liberty.

Keep the faith.  Keep the peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

By Sally Pipes
Human Events.com

Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a controversial 5-4 verdict on the constitutionality of President Obama’s signature piece of legislation — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, it was not the 5-4 verdict most of America was hoping for.

Chief Justice John Roberts ruled with the liberal wing of the court that the law’s individual mandate, which requires Americans to purchase or otherwise obtain health insurance or face a fine starting in 2014, was constitutional as a tax — not under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate commerce “among the several states.” President Obama did not want the mandate to be labeled a tax because it amounts to a regressive tax on the middle class — something he wanted to avoid.

The high court may have deemed Obamacare constitutional, but both Republicans and Democrats acknowledge that this ruling alone won’t solve our nation’s healthcare woes. Health care spending is still set to gallop on at a dizzying pace. And for many people, coverage will remain unaffordable.

Obamacare won’t solve either problem. And just because the law passes constitutional muster doesn’t mean it’s good policy.

Fortunately, Americans have the chance this fall to put in place a Congress and a president who will dismantle this law as it was created — through the legislative process — and replace it with reforms that actually lower health care costs and improve the quality of Americans’ care.

Read more: Human Events

CorporateMediaExposed | The Supreme Court has upheld the health care bill commonly refereed to as Obamacare. The decision, a 5-4 vote, paves the way for the continued political battle over the law.

Kurt Nimmo | In a victory for the New Deal bastardization of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can mandate at gunpoint that Americans buy monopolized health care insurance.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, head of the Republican Governors Association, said states should wait until the election before implementing Obamacare in hopes Mitt Romney will win and kill the reforms. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

By Paul Bedard
The Washington Examiner
June 28, 2012

Republican governors are planning to ignore the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to uphold Obamacare hoping that the issue will drive voters to dump President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney who has vowed to kill the Affordable Care Act.

After the decision, the Republican Governors Association said that nothing should be done by the states until after the election, a clear signal that they believe a GOP president, House and Senate will kill the health care reform pushed through by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.

Read more: The Washington Examiner

Doing business in the US and Mexico has a number of similarities, although the medium of exchange is sometimes different.

Here’s an outrage: sleazy government officials approach a major business interest and want to enter into “negotiations.” The officials casually mention, “You’ve got a nice little business here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Both sides know the business needs permits to operate, current regulations could be changed or delayed and the bureaucracy’s normally glacial pace could begin to approach that of plate tectonics. All it takes is a little ill will on the government side and costs and delays start to escalate for the business side. And there’s no one to complain to for obvious reasons.

The government officials say this doesn’t have to happen. We can all cooperate for “the greater good.” Spend a little money now and it will pay off tenfold in the future. Everybody’s happy. It’s just a cost of doing business in this locale.

Yeah, yeah, you’re thinking: Wal–Mart in Mexico. Old news. The bad guys have already been treed in Bentonville.

But it’s not old news and it’s not in Mexico. It’s how Obamacare was passed in Washington, DC.

The Washington Times reports that internal Obama administration documents just released by House Republicans reveal “those negotiations violated the promises of transparency Mr. Obama made during his 2008 campaign.” Well whoop–tee–do. My question is: why didn’t those “negotiations” violate the law?

Let’s compare the two stories. In “progressive” circles all cultures are relative until a non–union US corporation decides to ‘go native,’ so to speak, and conform to the cultural norms where it’s attempting to do business.

Wal–Mart is now in a heap of trouble for potentially violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Specifically, Wal–Mart is accused of paying “mordida” translated as the “little bite” to local officials. These bribes meant the officials didn’t “lose” paperwork, invent environmental problems or arbitrarily change the rules for building permits in the middle of the process. “Mordida” is a way of life when dealing with officialdom in Mexico, as many US drivers who’ve received a traffic ticket South of the border know from personal experience.

As a result, Wal–Mart’s Mexican division rapidly built stores all across the country and became the fastest growing part of the corporation with one in five stores now located in Mexico lindo.

Now compare that with the Obama administration “negotiations.” The Washington Times reports White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina and health care honcho Nancy–Ann DeParle met with major drug company representatives and told them that if the drug companies didn’t publicly support passage of Obamacare, the administration would demand a 15 percent rebate on Medicare drugs and urge Congress remove the tax deduction for consumer advertising. Times reporters estimate this would have cost drug companies $100 billion over the next decade.

This little problem went away, just like Mexican permit difficulties, when drug companies agreed to changes in Medicaid and new fees that would raise $80 billion to offset Obamacare costs. And drug companies also agreed to spend millions of their own money on an ad campaign supporting “healthcare reform.” As a bonus, druggies also got a new captive market and Obama dropped support for importing cheaper Canadian drugs.

Right here you’ve got your quids and your pro quos. In Texas, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a doyen of “progressive” circles, indicted Attorney General Jim Mattox for fund–raising calls that weren’t nearly as blatant as these “negotiations.” Yet it’s business as usual in the capital as Attorney General Eric Holder spends his time attempting a posthumous indictment of Pitchfork Ben Tillman.

Here’s another similarity between the two cases. In Mexico not one government official went public when Wal–Mart money crossed his palm, which is saying something because even in the District of Columbia’s government you can occasionally stumble across an honest man. And of course Wal–Mart paid because that’s how one gets things done in a corrupt environment.

Similarly, not one White House minion felt the least bit unclean about participating in the Obama protection racket and the drug companies paid because that’s how you get things done in a Chicago administration.

Once you get past the general atmosphere of third–world sleaziness, the really insulting fact is the Mexicans got the better deal!

Wal–Mart is the largest employer in Mexico and it is planning to add an additional 23,000 new jobs. Mexican shoppers have new, modern stores with “everyday low prices” and senior citizens asking if you “want a sticker on that” when you enter the store.

On the other hand, US taxpayers are going to get a health care system that will soon resemble Mexico’s along with ballooning Obamacare deficits and fees the drug companies will pass along to them.

Progressive moralizers passed the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act to protect the third–world from its own culture. When are they going to get around to passing a Corrupt Domestic Practices Act to protect us from “negotiations” like this?

The economy is scheduled to plunge off a cliff in January.

Back in the first two years after the Progressive’s November Revolution of 2008, the big government party enacted tax increases not scheduled to take place until after the 2012 elections. They also passed Obamacare which carries within it multiple tax increases, which are also scheduled to take affect after the 2012 election.  Combine these with previous tax rollbacks scheduled to expire in January 2013 and we are looking at the major economic crisis the progressives have worked so hard to create so they can then work so hard to solve.

In 2010 the voters got a chance to let the central planners know what they thought of what had been done with the power entrusted to them in 2008.  However, with only one house of Congress in Republican hands they were unable to reverse any of the changes made in the first two years of the Obama administration, so come January we hit the wall.

This manufactured economic crisis will be used by the triumphant Progressives as proof that capitalism doesn’t work.  Then following their play book, since too much government wrecked the economy we need more government to fix the economy.  They will tighten the already strangulating regulatory straight jacket.  If Obamacare is upheld and implemented, within a few years it will kill the private insurance industry as company after company figures out it is cheaper to pay the fines imposed than purchase the insurance required.  The flight of paying customers from the private insurance companies will force them into bankruptcy.  Remember even if they used deceptive language at the moment of passing the bill President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid were on the record many times saying what they were aiming at was a single payer European type healthcare system.  And we can all see how well that is working out for the Europeans.

They will also use the failure of the insurance industry as more proof that capitalism doesn’t work.

As President Obama travels around the country inciting class warfare with his constant attacks on the millionaires and billionaires which he tells us aren’t paying their fair share he continues to accept vast amounts of money from those same millionaires and billionaires.  While his administration imposes regulation after regulation that every day makes it harder to start new businesses, maintain or expand small businesses he turns a blind eye to the continued casino like atmosphere at the largest banks: the ones that are too big to fail and which should be too big to bail.

The largest bank in the country, J. P. Morgan Chase just lost another couple of billions in risky credit derivatives that their own chairman says were ill-conceived, poorly executed, and not managed very well.  This is the same bank that President Obama says is one the best run banks in America and the same chairman who has visited the Whitehouse at least 18 times since 2009..  The Chairman of the Board Jamie Diamom, the one in charge when all the poor execution was going on was just voted 23 million dollars in compensation while the stockholders take it in the wallet.

Crony capitalism, where the public takes the risk and bears the loss while the cronies who contribute money to the politicians reap the benefits is alive and well.  Favored corporation such as GE whose chairman, Jeffrey R. Immelt serves on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness makes billions in profit and often pays nothing in taxes.  Personally I believe there should be no corporate taxes since they are in reality double taxation but taxing some while exempting others is the worst kind of Corporatism and the President merely uses this system to reward donors and then turns around and attacks this pay-to-play system as an example of the rich not paying their fair share.

There is a con game going on.  Straw men are being set up only to be knocked down.  Our fellow Americans who get their news from Jay Leno and the Daily Show have no idea what is being done.  They swallow the party line as belched out by the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and troop to the polls to vote for the same party their fathers and grandfathers voted for.  But the major parties today aren’t ideologically, organizationally, or in practice the same partiesAmericahas known.

Neither party stands for smaller government, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.  At one time they both stood for these fundamentally American concepts.  Operating like the twin heads of one bird of prey, both major parties expand the government and add to the regulatory burden which is changing America from the Land of the Free into a totalitarian morass that is stagnating its way from the first world to the second world.

From the beginning of the primary process it was obvious that Romney was the anointed choice of the establishment Republicans and the media.  Now that he has been all but chosen it is time for the Democrats to scare up a third party somewhere somehow.  President Obama’s record of socialist accomplishments is so stunning it has even aroused enough of the politically comatose to push him back to the 40+% of the electorate who would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for anyone except a Democrat.  He has lost the independents and the undecided.  His only chance for victory is a third party, so there will be a third party even if the Democrats have to invent it and pay for it themselves.

As the big day, the day when we as voters will get a chance to reverse the November Revolution of 2008, watch as a third party emerges, well-funded and well prepared.  This third party will say all the right things.  They will come across as conservative ideologically and economically.  They will probably even try to portray themselves as the organized expression of the thousands of independent Tea Parties across the country.

No third party has won a presidential election inAmericasince 1860.  The rules have been rigged, and so many people vote instinctively for the party their fathers voted for the odds of a third party winning are close to the odds of winning the power ball.

If the progressives win one more election they will cement in their transformation of America from a land based on equal opportunity to a land of based on equal outcome.  Everyone gets the same thing except of course for those who divvy up the swag.  Those who divide what they take from the producers to give to the non-producers always seem to end up with everything while everyone else gets just enough to get by long enough to produce something else that can be expropriated by an all-powerful central government.

The Progressives who have taken control of America act as if all the money we earn is theirs and the only debate is about how much they will let us keep.  And they constantly remind us that the government can’t afford to leave us with too much money.  If they did we wouldn’t be dependent on them.

Maybe we should change the motto from E Pluribus Unum to What’s Mine is Mine What’s Yours is Negotiable.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.

He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012

Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

by Jon Matthews, Right & Wrong Radio

Provoking The Goddess Of Distress

“True, This!  Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Behold the arch-enchanters wand!  Itself a nothing! But taking sorcery from the master-hand to paralyze the Ceasars, and to strike the loud earth breathless! Take away the sword. States can be saved without it!”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton penned these words nearly 200 years ago in his play Richelieu but anyone who participates in or follows politics closely can attest to their ageless relevance as we still witness today those who govern or seek to govern engaged in a war of words waged daily within their respective arenas.

Entire empires and nations have risen and/or fallen due to words spoken at the right or wrong time, inspiring men to fight beyond their believed ability or causing men to cower and retreat in spite of their overwhelming strength.

In days gone past swords were designed for different tactics.  The most effective swords were those designed for in-close battle.  They were short, comparatively light, sharp and pierced deeply.  In this same way a catchy cliché, a humorous quip, a sedative slogan, a headline by which a diversionary or character assassinating leak is disseminated, all these and more make up the weaponry of politics and as such the means by which victory or defeat is often determined.  As the words of Bulwer-Lytton contend it has always been this way and perhaps always will.

Adolf Hitler, arguably the most effective manipulator of words in our lifetime once said: “All great movements are popular movements.  They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.”

Idolatrously pledging his allegiance and unwavering loyalty to his goddess of distress Hitler implanted his nationalist ideology into the downtrodden war weary Germany through skillfully and tactfully spoken words, inspiring them to once again to take up arms against the world.  With provocative claims such as: “Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all”, Hitler alleviated their fear of taking on so great a task by first igniting the torch of hatred against a smaller target, the Jews.

The German people bought into this lie and foolishly believed their destiny pre-ordained and victory inevitable.  But as is often the case with those deceived, rather than conquest and greatness Hitler’s words proved to be nothing more than the prophetic eulogy of a narcissistic madman.

American politics are especially vulnerable to the weaponry of words because we have a Constitution that does not severely limit what can be said.

Franklin Roosevelt’s famous: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” speech at his first inauguration in 1933 helped him launch what we recognize today as the hard core implementation of socialism through his “New Deal”.  Recognizing the all too real trepidation of our nation stagnated by the Great Depression FDR mesmerized the American electorate into believing that “new” is always an improvement over old simply because it is new.

FDR justified his experiment in Keynesian economics as the path to a better future by stating emphatically: “One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment…If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.”

Presently we find too many of our fellow citizens and far too many of our elected officials still trying to affirm FDR’s contention we can “modify the moment” in spite of all evidence that proves we simply made the wrong choice in allowing FDR his failed experiment in socialism.  Didn’t someone once say, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”?  Are we becoming as mad as nations past and present in the search for Utopia?

It would seem so.  American pride has served us well in the past but it is now becoming a glaring weakness.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the deconstruction and redefinition of words becoming even more treacherous and destructive in their cause and affect.  And nowhere is this treachery more evident than in this current administration.

Just like Hitler, Obama’s team of deconstructionists has identified a common enemy in their war against America.  And like Hitler, Obama has allied himself with the Goddess of Distress, skillfully and methodically casting words of hate and division into the midst our people.  Who is his target?  Conservatives in general and the Tea Party in particular.  Consider these words in a recent interview with David Axelrod on CNN when asked why Obama had not yet achieved immigration reform as he had promised in his bid for the White House in 2008;  “A lot of Republicans in Congress want to cooperate, they know better, but they are in the thralls of this reign of terror from the far right that has dragged this party to the right.”

By taking the word “terrorist” and redefining it as a domestic enemy rather than a foreign one (remember it was Obama who said the word was inflammatory in his decision to no longer use it to describe Islamic fundamentalists), Axelrod presumptuously claims a majority of the GOP would actually be Obama’s ally were it not for those pesky extremists on the right.

Axelrod also falsely claims the Tea Party is an extremist faction “dragging” the GOP to the right rather than the truth Obama is deceitfully enticing the nation to move “forward” by storming to the left.  In reality the right is simply remaining where it has always been.  It is the left that is on the move.  Legislation introduced by conservatives to prevent abortion, homosexual marriage and/or reform of entitlement programs have all been in response to legislation from the left not the other way around.

The Goddess of Distress has been provoked the torch of the spoken word has been ignited and cast into the midst of the people.  The question is are we like those who were entranced by Hitler and others like him, going to march silently into an inevitable destruction prepared for us by this unholy alliance between a delusional narcissist scheming with his Goddess of Distress?  Let us hope not.

FDR once said: “In politics, nothing happens by accident.  If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”   If we allow Obama to continue knowing what we now know, we deserve the same plight and destiny as those before us who in their silence surrendered to the Goddess of Distress and her messenger.

Jon Matthews is President of Terra Productions in California.  He produces and hosts the weekly conservative talk show “Right & Wrong Radio” which broadcasts live every Friday at 12 PM (PST) from Puka Shell Studios in Garden Grove, California.  View his website for information and show archives at: http://www.rightandwrongradio.com/.  You can contact Jon at jon@rightandwrongradio.com.

“I’m not a lawyer and I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of the constitutional balancing tests,” admitted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelious to Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) in testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, “I’m not going to wade into constitutional law, I’m talking about the fact that we are implementing the law (ObamaCare) that was passed by the Congress, signed by the president, which directed our department to develop a package of preventive health services for women. We have done just that with the advice of the Institute of Medicine and promulgated that rule.”

The Sebelius “rule” gives Catholic institutions one year to decide how to become complicit in killing the unborn, which has become a secular blood offering to the Progressive gods.

This led to a rare constitutional “teachable moment.”

Rep. Gowdy: “Do you agree with me that government cannot force certain religious beliefs on its citizens? Why can they not do that?”

Sebelius: “Why can government not force religious beliefs?”

Rep. Gowdy: “What’s the basis of that?”

Sebelius: “The separation of church and state.”

Rep. Gowdy: “Can government decide which religious beliefs are acceptable and not acceptable?”

Sebelius: “Ah, no sir.”

Rep. Gowdy: “And why can they not do that?”

Sebelius: “It’s part of our … (gulp) … Constitution.”

Gowdy added an exclamation point to the exercise, “It’s a legal analysis. For me, this is not a political analysis, this is a legal analysis.”

A man is running for president who has shown nothing but contempt for the United States Constitution. And that contempt drips from every pore of every Obama administration functionary.

Sebelius says she is not a lawyer schooled in the fine points of constitutional law. So, she defers to the wisdom of the Institute of Medicine for advice on the matter. It’s difficult to say medical bureaucrats who receive much of their research funding from government – not to mention the harvested embryonic stem cells from aborted fetuses – are disinterested constitutionalists. That’s why we have courts.

This June, the Supreme Court will further the constitutional instruction for Sebelius and Progressives in both parties that we are a nation of laws and not overreaching men … or women.

By Jon Matthews, Right & Wrong Radio 

“Are you that desperate for an execution?” – Sam Patterson, Defense Attorney speaking to Marty Rockman, Producer of “Citizen Verdict” – 2003)

There is absolutely no denying the media today has transitioned from a somewhat objective public service entity to a biased propaganda machine that will it seems, remain forever lost in cyberspace until such time it is swallowed by the very black hole it has created taking with it those who worship it.

I believe the media reached its point of no return back in the late 70’s, surprisingly enough during a seemingly apparent moment of nostalgic journalistic integrity when it actually attempted to participate in productive journalism by asking the question: “Do movies shape opinions and/or influence actions in society?”

The question rocked Hollywood.  Fearing a potential backlash like that experienced briefly in the 50’s and 60’s from those who believed Rock & Roll was the devil’s music, Hollywood’s liberal element and the politicians funded by them responded quickly, collectively and loudly.  Movies they rationalized, are only entertainment and don’t have that kind of power.  Playing on the words of another battle cry prevalent in that day among those opposed to gun control Hollywood claimed, “Movies don’t influence people, people influence people.”   Forgetting apparently that movies are made by people.

Some went even further claiming it was society that influenced Hollywood rather than the other way around. Given the fact the media and Hollywood are both capitalistic profit seeking entities in spite of their attempts to portray themselves otherwise one can see their point, a case of simple economic supply and demand.

But studies like those conducted by Purdue University English Professor William J. Palmer who during the 90’s sensed a parallel change in our social climate in line with the media and Hollywood in the 70’s and 80’s theorized that rather than one affecting the other the media, Hollywood and society seemed to be working hand in hand and would continue to do so in the 90’s and beyond.  And, I believe he was right.

Ratings and thus revenue are determined by what people are watching.  Events have always driven the news media.  Hollywood sensed an opportunity and began to frame the social unrest of the 60’s and 70’s on the silver screen, transitioning primarily from escapism that entertained to audience inclusion, portraying historical aspects of social events, though obviously not always accurately.  The combination worked and a new era of movies enticed paying customers to attend their premieres in numbers never before imagined.

But as is the case in a hedonistic society such as ours interest in these episodes of semi-reality began to wane.  Society slipped back into its fantasy induced stupor having found a new escape in the form of better drugs and thanks to the massive increase in prosperity in our nation the money to purchase them.

Hollywood responded in kind.  They began once again to produce movies that fed our incessant need for virtual escapism a society such as ours craves to counter the daily grind we experience in our search for economic and hopefully subsequent spiritual Utopia.

Sci-Fi, cultural exploitation movies and futuristic political commentaries came at such a pace that the entire movie going experience morphed from a single premiere into a smorgasbord of cinematic choices complete with multiplex theaters in which to satisfy any particular taste.

I happened to have been in the military during the 70’ and 80’s and spent my off time partaking in both the drug and movie craze of that time (as well as a really ridiculous stint at discos of which I am ashamed to admit).  Whether it was the drugs or the atmosphere I personally found several movies during this season of change that struck me as prophetic.  As I look back on them now I see I was not just imagining but truly seeing into the future.

The movie “Network” (released in 1976) was one of those movies.  It so perfectly painted the love/hate relationship between Hollywood and the news media that existed then and so accurately depicts how these 2 industries have become “frenemies” for profit by simply marketing everything as entertainment and all participants as celebrities.

Even more telling is how the political landscape uses both for its progressive power grabs.  To watch this movie today and not see how prophetic it was then would be validation that one is truly an idiot (or a liberal which is the politically correct term for idiot).  “Network” won 4 Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Peter Finch), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), Best Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight) and Best Screenplay validating the media andHollywoodfinally found the niche in which they could both exist in harmony.  To this date I still consider this my all-time favorite movie.

There have been other movies of this genre. “Running Man” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson reluctantly comes to mind.  You may remember this was about a game show in which accused citizens were allowed to compete for their freedom against an array of super hero type executioners.

But in light of the recent controversy surrounding the Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and the vigilante responses by black activists, politicians and organizations like the “New” Black Panther Party (the “Old” Black Panther Party is now called the “Rainbow Coalition”) I am reminded of a movie that came out nearly 3 decades after “Network”, though not with as much fanfare or critical acclaim.  It is however just as prophetic and apparently just as accurate. It was the movie, “Citizen Verdict” and starred the king of trashy day time talk shows, Jerry Springer and B-Actor Armand Assante.

In “Citizen Verdict” (released in 2003) Florida governor Bull Tyler (Roy Scheider) is trying to ease the dissatisfaction of his constituents in the midst of a major crime wave.  Television producer Marty Rockman (Jerry Springer) has offered him a high-profile way to do just that.  Rockman, best known for his splashy reality program, “So Sue Me” has come up with an idea for a new show — “Citizen Verdict,” in which an alleged murderer is tried in three hours on broadcast television, with the viewers voting on the guilt or innocence of the accused.  If 75% or more of those who call in (the super majority concept was probably to appease Independents and Libertarians) vote to convict the defendant he/she will be executed as part of a pay-per-view special to follow.

Governor Tyler thinks the show could be good for publicity and gives his approval, with Ricky Carr (Raffaello Degruttola), accused of murdering the host of a popular cooking show, given the honor of starring in the first episode. Carr is being defended by Sam Patterson (Armand Assante), a once-respected civil rights lawyer fallen on hard times, while prosecutor Jessica Landers (Justine Mitchell) represents the state.

The movie takes its weird prophetic twist when Defense Attorney Patterson realizes the trial is being skewed after learning an obtained video placed as the key piece of evidence has been edited in order to ensure the conviction and execution of the defendant.  Sound eerily familiar yet?

Fast forward to today.  George Zimmerman has admitted he shot Trayvon Martin, claiming it was in self-defense. What we have seen since that day is evidence of the transfiguration of justice that has taken this country in the name of political correctness into class and racial warfare reminiscent of the 60’s and threatens to launch us into yet another civil war.

Daytime television talk hosts like Nancy Grace and Jane Velez Mitchell, never shy about being judge, jury and executioner in their daily trial by estrogen driven man-haters court room have all but condemned Zimmerman to execution.  MSNBC has not only made racist rhetoric a staple of their pundit circuit but continue to employ one of their most ridiculous pundits, Al Sharpton, who advocates civil disorder and instigates racist tensions on a regular basis. MSNBC has also been found guilty in editing audio tapes that imply racist claims made by activists like Sharpton in order to indict Zimmerman.

Politicians Maxine Waters has labeled the shooting a “hate crime” while Ferderica Wilson calls it “murder” stating that Trayvon Martin “…was hunted down like a dog, shot on the street.”  Former Black Panther and now Illinois Congressman Bobbie Rush donned his $300 designer Nike hoodie on the floor of Congress calling for vindication for racial profiling. Congressman John Lewis equated the shooting to the 1955 lynching of Emmitt Till (hung for whistling at a white woman) while Jesse Jackson elevated Martin to “martyr” status on behalf of the civil rights movement, which apparently still rages in the Jackson camp in spite of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Today, we learn that the newly appointed Florida State Attorney Angela Corey plans to bring charges against Zimmerman, apparently offering the due diligence Florida Governor Rick Scott has determined necessary to “…preserve the integrity of the investigation.” (Translation: “Come up with something to calm the hysterical masses and make it look like I’m tough on crime”).

And of course, Attorney General Eric Holder, utilizing the Obama’s camp credo of “…never let a crisis go to waste” is taking time off from handling his cover-up of the “Fast and Furious” scandal for a “thorough review” of the incident in order to determine if there were “civil rights” issues violated in the shooting (Translation: “Can we solidify even more of the black voting block?”).

Yes, it seems we are indeed once again at a crossroads in which the prophetic comes to pass.  Entertainment and influence is once again being redefined by the media as objective journalism.  And just as Sam Patterson asked Marty Rockman the question begs to be asked again by those who possess reason, “Are we that desperate for an execution?”  Unfortunately it would seem so.  I guess the only thing that remains is deciding who will host the new show, “Citizen Verdict” and what network will produce it?   Should Obama get re-elected my money is on CSPAN.  I bet they could even get Jerry Springer to host it.  I heard he is available.

Jon Matthews posts his column on Thursdays.  He is the President of Terra Productions in California. He produces and hosts the weekly conservative talk show “Right & Wrong Radio” which broadcasts live every Friday at 12 PM (PST) from Puka Shell Studios in Garden Grove, California. View his website for information and show archives at: http://www.rightandwrongradio.com/. You can contact Jon at jon@rightandwrongradio.com.

Obama announced the creation of Gen44, a youth organization devoted to the reelection of President Obama. Are young voters suckers, or will they reject Obama’s egomaniacal youth movement? Find out.

Attorney general Eric Holder submits letter to 5th Court of Appeals.

Recently President Obama made this remarkable statement, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  For someone reputed to be a former professor of Constitutional Law at theUniversity ofChicago this statement is hard to explain.  Any high school student in a sophomore American History class knows there are many precedents for the Supreme Court making laws passed by Congress null and void.  As a matter of fact, in the system of government tradition has delivered to us overturning laws as unconstitutional has been an important power of the Supreme Court for more than two hundred years.

And if the primary content of the President’s statement isn’t strange enough the supporting information is wrong.  Obamacare wasn’t passed by a strong majority in Congress. In reality the final vote in the House vote was 220 to 215.  Every Republican and thirty four Democrats voted against the law.  In the Senate the vote was sixty Democrats and Independents voting for and thirty nine Republicans voting against.  The Democrats, even though they controlled both houses of Congress knew they would lose enough of their own members that it was going to be a close vote so they moved the bill outside the regular order of business and used a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation to avoid giving the Republicans the opportunity to filibuster the law.

What is the context of these current pressure tactics being used by the executive branch on the judicial branch?

Soon after taking office in 1829, President Andrew Jackson a long time Indian fighter spearheaded one of his signature pieces of legislation through Congress: the Indian Removal Act.  This act gave the president the power to negotiate treaties with the various tribes which still existed in America East of theMississippi.  These treaties, often accepted either under duress or under questionable circumstances seized the lands of the tribes and forced them to move West to the Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma.  The time for fighting had passed and most of the tribes quietly left their ancestral lands.

One tribe decided to try another route.  The Cherokee Nation had adopted the ways of the Europeans.  They devised their own written language and wrote their own Constitution.  They had their own plantations, printing presses, and businesses.  They also had their own lawyers and instead of going on the warpath as their ancestors had done they went to court to fight the orders from the State ofGeorgiawhich dispossessed them of their land.

In two cases; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the United States Supreme Court considered whether or not it had the power to enforce the rights of Native American nations in disputes between them and the states. In Cherokee Nation v.Georgia, the Court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to review the claims of any Indian nation within theUnited States. InWorcester v.Georgia, the Court ruled that only the Federal Government not the states, had the power to regulate the Indian nations.

What the ruling in Worcesterv. Georgiameant was that Georgiacould not legally seize the Cherokee lands.  It was at this junction when referring to the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall that President Andrew Jackson made one his most famous statements, “Mr. Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!”  Instead of enforcing the ruling the Federal government joined in and the result was the Trail of Tears as the Cherokee lost their lands and moved west.

Franklin D. Roosevelt legislating Keynesian economic philosophy in the New Deal sought to end the Depression through government spending and central control.  With massive majorities in both houses of Congress the president’s agenda was enacted as quickly as possible.  Then less than three years after the New Deal began to transform America the Supreme Court began overturning some of the central portions of Roosevelt’s program

In response to this resistance to his vision for what should be done FDR decided to pack the court with Justices who would support his laws.  What he proposed was that for any justice over the age of seventy who refused to retire, the president could appoint a new justice to sit beside the current justice and do his work.   If his plan had been adopted and none of the then current Justices retired he would have been able to appoint six new Justices.  Since he couldn’t force the conservative justices to retire he sought in this way to outnumber them and thus change the ideological complexion of the court.  As the president moved ahead in his attempt to pack the court the Supremes started ruling in his favor which eventually stopped the need for his effort to influence the court through overwhelming appointments.  Then time and attrition did what he had tried to do with legislation.  By 1941, four justices had retired and two had died consequently by the end of his presidency seven of the nine justices were Roosevelt appointees.

Now we come full circle to President Obama and his obvious attempt to belittle and intimidate the court.  Should anyone be surprised?  This is nothing more than standard operating procedure for a Chicago politician.  It is also a normal technique for a community organizer who has been trained in the tactics of Saul Alinsky.  No, we shouldn’t be surprised but we could have expected more of anyone who has been entrusted with the highest office in the land.  It is just such crude strong-arm tactics such as this which open Mr. Obama up to charges of being a typical South Chicago thug.  If he wishes to avoid such charges he needs to avoid such actions.

The above brief review clearly shows that this was not the first attempt of a president to influence the court.  However coming from one who is constantly extolled as a constitutional scholar it is certainly disquieting.  As a constitutional scholar the president would obviously know what he said was incorrect leaving no other interpretation to his words than a conscious effort to alter the traditional system of checks and balances and the power relationship between the separate branches of the federal government.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

By Dr Phil Taverna

Near the end of March the Times/CBS crowd held one of those classy polls. This time they destroyed Obamacare. Barack can’t be too happy about this one. Again they polled a giant crowd. This one came in at 986. I am not sure how you can equate 300 million from a screening of less than a thousand but what the heck.

What these clowns did unintentionally, was to start educating the folks about what is in Obamacare. Very few people know what is in it. And the few that do know are aware that it is the stupidest law ever and it is the last and dying legacy of Obama and his liberal comrades.

And the more people that learn about how useless Obamacare really is and how expensive it will become, the more people will end up not voting for ObamaCare. Just the other day Kucinich was on O’Reilly and he said if the Supremes pull the plug on the dying patient called Obamacare, 50 million people will lose their healthcare. Is this guy a jerk or what? ObamaCare was passed because 7 or 8 million people couldn’t afford or chose not to buy healthcare, so tell me again how 50 million folks will lose their healthcare if Obamacare is thrown in the garbage along with Pelosi and Reid?

One of the first questions asked was Do you approve of Obamacare: 36% strongly approve and approve of Obamacare. 47% disapprove and 16% don’t know (DK). I do respect the DK’s in this case, because the dirty little secrets about Obamacare are just that, Dirty Little Secrets. Basically ObamaCare doesn’t accomplish anything, and it costs a whole lot of money and it hurts the economy. Usually the DK’s seem to be the folks that need to answer questions like did you sleep with that (your) head last night? But the Democrats have continued to keep their sheep in the dark on this one. But since most folks that pay taxes seem to be paying more taxes this year under Obama, maybe they can start to smell the odor of what is rotten in liberalsville.

Now this is funny. 26% want to keep the entire law. These are the deadbeats who would say:  I would vote for Ted Kennedy liberals no matter what! 67 % went in the direction of overturning the mandate and or the entire useless law. Hey Obama:  In a liberal poll the number is almost 70%. For those who took special liberal math classes that’s a super majority. And the DK’s come in at 8%. If we could possibly educate those folks then the 67% could look more like 75%. Just think it took the liberals about a year to pass this useless unconstitutional law.

Then the question focuses in on ObamaCare hurting you personally. 19% said it would help. Wouldn’t you like to speak to those idiots? And 31% said it would hurt and 43% no effect. What I think the voters were saying here was without considering finances will you derive any benefit. I would think that once the folks understand that they are paying for and being charged for any additional useless benefit (for most) that it is not worth it. And in the end they will pay more and get less. We can only hope that if we asked that question: Do you think you will pay more and get less; the response would be about 99% in agreement. So 99% of those surveyed would say that this Obamacare will cost more and the cost will not outweigh the benefit. Also note that almost 50% of all Americans do not consume any healthcare! But Obama and his comrades want you to pay for healthcare for others.

And question number 7 points us in that direction. 52% think it will raise costs. 15% think it will lower costs. And 43% claim it will have no effect. What planet have these folks lived on in the last year? All premiums have gone up. And if Obama wants you to pay for Fluke’s contraception, you can bet the farm, assuming you have one left, that the premiums will always go up, and  that’s assuming you or your employer are paying for healthcare premiums right now.

There was a question pertaining to businesses having to cut jobs in order to be able to afford the mandatory healthcare premiums. This was a question? Do you think it is likely that this will happen? And a whopping 73% thought ObamaCare would affect the economy. 16% voted not too much. And only 9% thought it would not affect it at all. We could only hope that they were all government workers that chose that direction. So 81% believe that the job market will go down because of Obamacare. For the DK’s out there, that means there will be fewer jobs out there because businesses in the United States will not be able to afford to hire more folks and pay the absorbitant costs and taxes of Obamacare.

You could be the dumbest person on the planet, but would you ever vote for a liberal Democrat again if you believe this poll?

Only 20 % claimed to have benefited by the 26 year old rule. Do the idiots know that they paid more to keep their adult children on their healthcare plan?

Only 16 % claimed to have benefited by the pre-existing illness rule. Do those idiots know that they paid more for this benefit on their healthcare plan?

I asked the other day, if we are paying high premiums why is Obamacare going to cost the taxpayer about $2 trillion dollars in the next ten years. And the answer jumped out the other day. Remember when this all began the liberals felt sorry for the 7 million folks without healthcare. Some of these folks choose not to buy healthcare, others can’t afford it. The liberals would say that they had to decide to either pay for healthcare or buy groceries or a big screen TV. The truth of the matter is that since healthcare has increased about $2,000 since Skippy has become president, these folks are less likely to buy healthcare then before 2008. And with the Obama economy, 6-8 million jobs have been lost, so those folks aren’t paying for healthcare either.

So this is the liberal plan. Most people have healthcare today. Technically everyone did before Obamacare. What the liberals plan to do with the $200 + billion a year is to expand Medicaid. Excluding the costs for all the liberal jobs created to run this expensive ObamaCare and the death panels, that $200 billion would be enough to provide healthcare plans for about 33.3 million folks. That means you will be paying for someone else’s healthcare besides paying for your own. The liberals said the rich would pay for this Obamacare. If their lips are moving they are lying!

If you really think expanding Medicaid will help you out, think again. In order for any insurance to work, you need to have more people pay into the pot to lower the premiums. Medicaid money does not pay into the pot. It actually does the opposite. It is the government plans that actually cause your premiums to go up because there are less people paying into the general pot. And it causes your taxes to go up because someone is going to have to pay for the expansion of Medicaid and it won’t be Michelle and Obama. It will be you and the forgotten folks of America.

I am going to start writing about the forgotten man. The poor people will think it is them. And the Blacks will think it is them and this is all because of liberals and guys like FDR. But the Forgotten Men are you. Ya see what happens is someone thinks up a problem. Like there are 7 million folks without healthcare. And the thinkers get together with the liberal politicians and liberal educators and they pass laws to help those 7 million folks. The problem is that the folks who are paying for this expanded Medicaid are you and not the crooks who decided to pass the law. You are the forgotten men. And the liberals and the academia that have never run a business in their lives, decide to help the 7 million and they want you to pay for it. And you had no say in the decision!

It is time for the forgotten man to speak up and tell the politicians to forget about the 7 million and stay the hell out of our wallets. This is another reason not to vote for a liberal Democrat in November.  Let’s make them the forgotten men and women! I betcha the economy improves the next day!

YourDemocracyChange.Com

In his ruling US District Judge Roger Vinson wrote, “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void.”

He goes on to make reference to the Boston Tea Party:

“It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be ‘difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power’ [Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 564], and we would have a Constitution in name only.”

This is a big victory in the ongoing battle to defeat this terrible bill. Once again we have made history together. It was pressure from us that brought this case to court and saw it through to this point. The influence of Tea Party Patriots is undeniable.

One of the overlooked patriots today is Florida’ s Former Attorney, Bill McCollum.  McCollum lead the charge against Obamacare when it was unpopular and even more risky was supporting the tea party.  However, my conversations with Bill were short but simple.  Bill McCollum wanted to make a stand for Liberty despite the risky politics and lack of time.    Many politicians would have chosen not to get too involved in the Obamacare issue or, at the least, keep it to a minimum amount of time.   However, McCollum chose to fight for We The People and dedicate precious time on a battle he would not finish.   Thank you Bill McCollum for defending Florida!

I would be remiss if I forgot to thank Governor Rick Scott.  Rick Scott deserves also deserves credit for his battles against government health care.  For nearly 20 years Scott has fought the fight against the government taking over healthcare.   Scott gave a millions in a battle for freedom.   As with many Floridians, I look forward to Scott taking Florida in prosperity by limiting government’s role and helping businesses grow.

Would you like to not only repeal Obamacare, but restore states rights? I am excited to announce the introduction of the Heath Care Compact. State compacts are agreements between states the predate the Constitution. Examples would include your drivers licenses, life insurance, and concealed weapon carry.

The Health Care Compact returns the power to regulate health care to the states in the states which pass the Compact (the Member States). Each Member State will then be able to write its own health care laws, creating more effective and efficient health care policy for its citizens.

Once the Member State creates its own health care policy, its citizens will no longer be subject to federal health care laws and regulations, including “Obamacare.” Additionally, because it would be unfair for citizens of Member States to continue paying federal taxes for health care without any reciprocal benefit, the Compact will allow the Member States to continue receiving approximately the level of federal funding they are currently receiving.

This will allow the Member States to implement better health care policies for their citizens without subjecting their citizens to a double burden of taxation.  You can read more about the Florida Health Care Compact by going to www.FloridaHealthCareCompact.com

Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and both the elder and younger George Bush all found the third and fourth years of their presidencies harder than the first and second. The nation and the world tired of speechmaking. The novelty of a new commander in chief faded; poll numbers went south. The same thing is now happening to President Obama on a variety of fronts. Democrats assured voters that we would love ObamaCare once the new federal health care plan

Excerpt from: Obama Faces A Rendezvous With Reality

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The Road To Repeal: The campaign to rid the country of ObamaCare got off to a running start Friday when a procedural hurdle was easily cleared in the House. So far, so good for the new majority. By a 236-181 margin, the House on Friday approved rules for the debate leading up to Wednesday’s up-or-down vote on repeal legislation. Democrats, fearing they may lose their grip on Americans’ health care, launched into hysterics right away. “Repeal this

See original here: The End Begins?

Anti Wrinkle Cream

The biggest political “lie” of 2010? The winner is: the Republican assertion that ObamaCare is a “government takeover of health care.” A website called PolitiFact based this on the votes of 4,000 of its readers. ABC’s “Nightline” featured PolitiFact’s editor, and “Nightline” reporter Jake Tapper heartily agreed that this was the “biggest lie of the year.” Tapper, normally pretty sane, concluded the piece by saying, “Way to deceive the public!”

Originally posted here: ‘Saved Or Created’ And Other Whoppers

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Health Care: Unable to attach it directly to ObamaCare, a new Medicare rule will offer incentive to doctors who advise patients on end-of-life care in a program that seeks to control costs. Connect those dots, grandma. The GOP House that comes in January has pledged to chip away, defund and neuter ObamaCare in any way it can, since outright repeal is problematical until 2012. President Obama’s veto pen looms large, even if such a bill makes it

Read the original: Regulated To Death By ObamaCare?

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Medicine: The FDA has reversed its approval of a widely used cancer drug approved in Europe to treat breast cancer on the grounds it doesn’t provide a “sufficient” benefit. Let the terminally ill and their doctors decide. One of the blessings of blocking the omnibus spending bill was that it included $1 billion for the implementation of ObamaCare. Yet the first effects are still being felt, the latest being the Food and Drug Administration’s

View post: ObamaCare Rationing Begins

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HIghlights from the 9/12 Taxpayer Tea Party March on Washington, DC

The rest is here: 9/12 Taxpayer Tea Party March on Washington, DC

South Florida Tea Party joins fight against health care reform

The South Florida Tea Party chapter is joining a statewide effort July 2 to prevent Florida legislators from backing a federal bill that would dramatically raise beverage taxes to support a government takeover of the nation’s health care system.

Tea Party chapters across the state are calling for Florida residents to visit congressional and senatorial district offices July 2 to urge legislators not to sponsor the Affordable Health Choices Act.

Proposed by the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee, the bill seeks to, among other actions: expand Medicaid to 150 percent of the federal poverty level; tax citizens who cannot show they are covered by government-defined “qualified” health insurance; and establish numerous government-appointed committees to certify and inform citizens about insurance plans.

The legislation eliminates individual freedoms in making medical decisions, decreases the quality of care and goes against the founding beliefs of the nation’s health care system, primarily that:

• Americans should be in control of their medical decisions, not the government and third-party payers who will ration care for politics and profit.
• Government should reserve public funding of health care for poor and provide tax breaks to all for private health care.
• Patients should decide how much to pay for routine annual medical care and reserve health insurance for rare catastrophic events.

The bill is being rushed through Congress, as the Obama administration hopes to have it approved by the House of Representatives in August and signed by the president in October.

The South Florida Tea Party urges citizens to stop by their nearest legislative office July 2 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. to voice concerns opposing the Affordable Health Choices Act. Because officials will be on break that day for the July 4 recess, the offices are open for visitors to submit comments for legislators to review when they return from the break. Residents who cannot visit an office July 2 are encouraged to submit comments via phone.

The South Florida Tea Party will hold rallies at several offices and is recruiting volunteers to help organize the events. If you would like to volunteer, please e-mail info@southfloridateaparty.org.

Check www.southfloridateaparty.org for further updates.

Legislative offices in Martin, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties:

Sen. Bill Nelson

500 Australian Ave., Suite 125

West Palm Beach, Fla. 33401

Phone: (561) 514-0189

Fax: (561) 514-4078

Sen. Mel Martinez

7711 N. Military Trail, Suite 1014

Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. 33410

Phone: (561) 842-8300

Fax: (561) 842-8949

Rep. Bill Posey

335 S.E. Ocean Blvd.

Stuart, Fla. 34994

Phone: (772) 288-4668

Rep. Thomas J. Rooney

111 N.W. 183rd St., Suite 315

Miami, Fla. 33169

Phone: (305) 690-5905

Fax: (305) 690-5951

Rep. Kendrick B. Meek

10100 Pines Blvd., Third Floor, Building B

Pembroke Pines, Fla. 33026

Phone: (954) 450-6767

Fax: (954) 450-6768

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

4960 S.W. 72nd Ave., Suite 208

Miami, Fla. 33144

Phone: (305) 668-2285

Fax: (305) 668-5970

2500 N. Military Trail, Suite 490

Boca Raton, Fla. 33431

Phone: (561) 988-6302

Fax: (561) 988-6423

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

10100 Pines Blvd.

Pembroke Pines, Fla. 33026

Phone: (954) 437-3936

Fax: (954) 437-4776

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart

8525 N.W. 53rd Terrace, Suite 102

Miami, Fla. 33166-4520

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings

U.S. Federal Building, Suite 127

299 E. Broward Blvd.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 33301

Phone: (866) 713-7303

Fax: (954) 735-9444

Rep. Suzanne M. Kosmas

12851 S.W. 42nd St., Suite 131

Miami, Fla. 33175

Phone: (305) 225-6866

Fax: (305) 225-7432

About the Affordable Health Choices Act:

Proposed by the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee, the Affordable Health Choices Act injects an unprecedented level of government control over the nation’s health care. The bill seeks to, among other actions:

• Expand Medicaid to 150 percent of the federal poverty level.