Dear Senator McCain, I'd like to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for your time spent in military service. You showed remarkable courage under extreme duress, enduring torture by the enemy while refusing an early release, or any special treatment. As a result, you've suffered from permanent physical disabilities after six years in captivity. I have enjoyed a lifetime as a free citizen in the greatest nation on the face of the earth, because of brave warriors like you. Thank you for your service, sir. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Secondly we, the people, recently learned the very serious news about your cancer diagnosis, and I wanted to convey my sympathy to you. Twenty years ago my father died from that exact same disease, a glioblastoma tumor in his brain, so I am well aware of the challenge you face. It was shortly after his retirement that my father began acting uncharacteristically confused and disoriented. He also complained of a constant headache. An MRI confirmed that he had a large brain tumor, a glioblastoma. The neurologist diagnosed him on a Tuesday, and he had surgery the following Monday, but never regained consciousness. About two weeks later, his life support was disconnected. I'm glad your surgery was more successful than his, and I wish you the best as you continue to recover. While I'm fairly confident that a sitting U.S. Senator such as yourself has access to the very best healthcare in the world (probably much better care than a retired serviceman living in Savannah, Georgia would ever get), I do not blame my father's … [Read more...]
Post Obamatax: now what?
Some supporters of President Obama's massive overhaul of our national health care system have compared the individual mandate to the requirement that drivers purchase car insurance. The analogy is fatally flawed for two reasons: driving a car is a privilege, not a right, as mandated healthcare for everybody has been said to be. In other words, if you neither own nor drive a car, you don't have to buy car insurance. The second reason the analogy doesn't work is that the minimum required insurance doesn't protect you...it covers the other guy when you are at fault. Liability insurance covers the people who might get injured because of your improper exercise of your privilege to operate a car, assuming you have a driver's permit and minimum coverage. To have your own car fixed when you are at fault, you need to buy collision insurance. The "individual mandate" now declared a new tax was opposed by almost eighty percent, nearly four out of five American voters prior to the official release of the court opinion. It stands to reason that more people will oppose this very onerous, punitive and unpopular new tax levied on a select members of the middle class. Why selected members of the middle class? Remember, the court also ruled that entire states can "opt out" or refuse to implement Obamatax without paying a Medicare penalty. Republican governors on record have already announced that's exactly what they plan to do. According to Eric Cantor, the vote to repeal Obamatax is now scheduled for July 11th, only a couple of weeks away. Even if passed by a … [Read more...]
The man who saved America
The reaction to the Supreme Court ruling yesterday that declared ObamaCare to be legal was swift and palpable. The most consistently accurate polls have shown that already more than half of Americans supported repeal of the law prior to the court's ruling. Expect that number to dramatically increase, now that it has become clear the law is nothing more than a massive new tax disguised as yet another entitlement provided "for free" by the federal government. Within minutes of the announcement, people on Facebook began to express renewed enthusiasm to vote this November. Within hours, the law had a new nickname: Obamatax. The conventional wisdom soon became that Chief Justice John Roberts had caved in to pressure from President Obama, and gave the Democrats a clear victory on his crowning achievement, the horribly misnamed Affordable Care Act. Indeed, the early analysis showed that the final decision came so late in the game that the dissent was worded as if written by the majority, and vice versa. The ultra liberal Daily Kos celebrated the ruling, opining that the decision "breaks the heart of every Republican and Federalist Society member." A liberal analyst at Slate crowed that "It is impossible for a lawyer to read even the first few pages of the dissent without coming away with the impression that this is a majority opinion that at the last moment lost its fifth vote. Its structure and tone are those of a winning coalition, not that of the losing side in the most controversial Supreme Court case in many years. But when we get to Page 13, far more … [Read more...]
