When I first heard that Fidel had asked a question of the Pope, I thought it might be “How many divisions have you got?“
And in other news…
…Santorum seems to be slipping in Pennsylvania.
The plan: from Obamacare to single payer?
I’ve long thought that Obamacare was just a prelude to what Obama and the left really want, which is single payer health insurance. Obamacare was an unwieldy compromise, complex and cobbled together and passed because it could be done, whereas single payer’s time had not come. Yet. But Obamacare had the added plus of being so potentially problematic to the private health insurance industry that it might indeed lead to that entity’s demise, to be replaced by single payer.
In addition, I’ve long admired retired blogger Steven Den Beste’s acumen, and I’m happy to see him writing again about something other than anime. But although I’m in agreement with some of what he says here about Obamacare and single payer, I’ve got some disagreements, too.
Den Beste writes that Obama actually wants the mandate to be declared unconstitutional yet severable, because then:
That makes private health insurance economically unviable, and the insurance companies will all exit the business or they will go out of business. At which point the Democrats will try to implement “single payer”, a total nationalization of the entire health care industry, financed by a huge rise in taxes.
Single Payer is what they always wanted. The bill wasn’t originally written that way, though, because they knew that even with twin Democratic majorities, there was no chance of passing it. So they included the mandate instead.
So far that’s in line with what I think, although I don’t believe that Obama and the others thought in advance that the bill would be challenged in the Supreme Court; my sense is that they thought it would lead to single payer ultimately, without that detour along the way. But once the obstacle was thrown up it wasn’t seen as insurmountable, because it could also wind up leading to the ultimate goal of single payer.
More of Den Beste:
If the mandate is struck down, then Congress will have to act. There won’t be any way to repeal the rest of the law because Obama will veto, and the Senate will sustain the veto. The only thing he will agree to is implementation of single payer.
This is where I disagree, at least sort of. It was always clear that, unless the Supreme Court struck down the entire bill (which I don’t think most people ever considered tremendously likely), Congress would be faced with the question of repeal, now or later. That doesn’t change if the mandate is found unconstitutional but severable; Congress is still faced with the task of what to do.
But why would Congress have to act in the few months left before the 2012 election? What’s the big rush? Repeal could be used as a huge issue in the election, both for members (and prospective members) of the House and Senate and for the presidential candidates.
Obama would be forced to take a stand on a bill that’s become increasingly unpopular, and his opponent (yes, even if it’s Romney) would run on the idea of repeal, and indicate that Obama, if re-elected, would be likely to veto any repeal. My prediction is that then, just as in the 2010 election, candidates who would run against Obamacare would be likely to be elected, and Republicans would do quite well in Congress. That would set the stage for a repeal under a Republican president who would not veto it—or at the very least, a defunding.
Federalism and Obamacare
An excellent article by Rick Lowry on federalism and how it relates to Obamacare.
“He picked the wrong plane”
I’m surprised that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. But I’m awfully glad it doesn’t:
A JetBlue flight captain went berserk mid-flight today and had to be restrained by passengers as the plane made an emergency landing.
Clayton Frederick Osbon, 49, reportedly screamed ‘say your prayers, say your prayers’ at horrified passengers after running up and down the aisle shouting ‘Iraq, al-Qaeda, terrorism, we’re all going down.’
The captain of flight 191 from JFK to Las Vegas went ‘crazy’ passengers said after he went to the toilet and returned to find that he had been locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot who had concerns about his behavior.
Why was it “the wrong plane”?:
The flight had been packed with heavily built men heading to the 2012 International Security Conference in Las Vegas held for professionals working in ”˜law enforcement, border protection and campus security’.
It has media sponsors including The Counter Terrorist magazine, Homeland Security Newswire and Government Security News.
One witness told CBS: ‘He picked the wrong plane. Huge guys just tackled him. The response was Olympics kind of stuff.’
Actually, Osbon’s lucky he didn’t get killed.
I wrote that this sort of incident doesn’t happen very often. But this isn’t the first time it’s ever happened, either:
In 2008, an Air Canada co-pilot had a mental breakdown on a flight from Toronto to London and was forcibly removed from the cockpit, restrained and sedated.
Most of us have (at least, I do) an image of pilots as unflappable, stalwart, calm, hyper-rational; ice water in their veins in a good way. Captain Sullenberger comes to mind as the quintessential pilot you’d like to have on board in case of any untoward event. Who expects the pilot himself to cause the ruckus?
[NOTE: At least it wasn’t anything like what happened on EgyptAir 990.]
New evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was world-wide
Interesting. Now let’s see how this gets integrated into the narrative:
A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ”˜consensus’, the ”˜Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe.
In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica ”“ which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.
My guess is that AGW supporters will say it still doesn’t mean that the warming back then was global in scope. But it certainly means it will be harder to argue that it wasn’t.
Here’s more about that Medieval Warm Period, which I remember learning about—and being fascinated by—long ago, when I was in school. You probably did, too:
The Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north. Around 1000AD the climate was sufficiently warm for the north of Newfoundland to support a Viking colony and led to the descriptor “Vinland”. The MWP was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that lasted until the 19th century, and the Viking settlements eventually died out.
This guy’s got sense: on the Trayvon Martin case
You may notice that I haven’t written about the Trayvon Martin case yet. This is for the simple reason that I’ve been waiting for the facts to come out. At the beginning, the MSM was reporting only one side, and now the other is emerging.
But I/we still don’t know what the truth is. It could be a case of the racist, wanton killing of a young and innocent black man. Or it could be a tragic error. It could even be a case of reasonable self-defense. I don’t know. Do you?
But it seems to me that former NAACP leader C. L. Bryant is making a great deal of sense:
Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant is accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.”
“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller.
The conservative black pastor who was once the chapter president of the Garland, Texas NAACP called Jackson and Sharpton “race hustlers” and said they are “acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy.”…
…Bryant…said people like Jackson and Sharpton are being misleading to suggest there is an epidemic of “white men killing black young men.”
“The epidemic is truly black on black crime,” Bryant said. “The greatest danger to the lives of young black men are young black men.”
Bryant said he wishes civil rights leaders were protesting those problems.
“Why not be angry about the wholesale murder that goes on in the streets of Newark and Chicago?” he asked. “Why isn’t somebody angry about that six-year-old girl who was killed on her steps last weekend in a cross fire when two gang members in Chicago start shooting at each other? Why is there no outrage about that?”
The answer is clear: because it doesn’t sell newspapers, and it doesn’t get the kind of publicity Sharpton et.al. are seeking.
Reading the justices: second day of SCOTUS arguments on HCR
I’ve noticed a lot of speculation today about the way the questioning is going in the Supreme Court, and what it might mean for the ultimate ruling.
And that’s as it should be. It’s a case of unusual importance, and not just because HCR is a big deal. The constitutional questions raised are an even bigger deal.
But it’s been my observation in the past that trying to predict what the justices will rule based on the questions they ask during oral arguments is a fool’s errand, although a very tempting and perhaps irresistible one, especially for legal analysts. Justices ask questions for a lot of reasons, but one of the main things they appear to be doing is acting in a Socratic manner, almost like law school professors trying to tease from the advocates for each side all the possible arguments pro and con. Then after some contemplation they ordinarily rule exactly as they were leaning in the first place, IMHO—usually with Justice Kennedy casting the deciding vote.
So articles like this, although interesting, are not necessarily good prognosticators:
If the vote had been taken after Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., stepped back from the lectern after the first 56 minutes, and the audience stood up for a mid-argument stretch, the chances were that the most significant feature of the Affordable Care Act would have perished in Kennedy’s concern that it just might alter the fundamental relationship between the American people and their government. But after two arguments by lawyers for the challengers ”” forceful and creative though they were ”” at least doubt had set in. and expecting the demise of the mandate seemed decidedly premature…The argument on Tuesday pointed the Justices in opposite directions ”“ the first hour against the mandate, the second hour cautiously in its favor.
Well, yes. That’s the way these oral arguments tend to go.
So I don’t think any predictions right now mean much, although you can read about the issues and the arguments at length at the links I’ve already given. One thing I will say, though, is that at this point none of the justices agrees with the oral argument of that great legal mind Nancy Pelosi:
Jeepers creepers, winter’s back…
…in New England. But only for a little while.
March is usually quite cold here, and often snowy, although by then we can comfort ourselves with the idea that the long winter is nearly over. But this March it’s been exceptionally warm all over New England, prompting both joy and dark mutterings about global warming.
I’m not sure how far ahead of the usual schedule the flowers are, but there’s forsythia all over the place, and this is not a normal March phenomenon. And the peepers are making an awful lot of noise already, too:
This tiny frog is a seldom seen, but often heard and one of the real telecasters of spring.
These hardy little frogs spent the winter sleeping under leaf litter and logs. They are about an inch long, brown, and difficult to see in their new wetland homes. As the season progresses, each male stakes out a small, four to sixteen inch square, “territory” and sets up housekeeping.
During the breading season, this little fellow sits in the frigid water on his homestead and is heard peeping through the night. Whole marshes and wetlands come alive with a chorus of their song. The loud high-pitched peep is repeated once per second from dusk to dawn, as many as 4,500 times a night. This vocal effort is an attempt to defend his homestead area, and to attract a mate. Science has shown the females are attracted to the older males who tend to call faster. Once he attracts a lady, and she is happy with the “home”, she will lay up to 800 eggs, and when they hatch, they are a food source for birds, snakes, turtles, and fish. Those tiny frogs that survive, head for the woods to find small spiders and insects to eat.
Well,…
…this should come as no surprise. For quite some time we’ve been saying on this blog that Obama will have more “flexibility” (although we haven’t used that word) in a second term.
Supreme Court begins to hear oral arguments on Obamacare today
Three days of oral arguments is a long time in SCOTUS-land, indicating that the Court considers the issues in the HCR case incredibly important. And yet this hasn’t stopped some liberal commentators (see this, for example) from preemptively suggesting that the arguments of the opposition are ludicrously weak, and that therefore any ruling that might go against the health care reform law will be obviously biased and politically motivated.
Liberal Ezra Klein, though, has done a pretty good job of simply laying out the main issues to be discussed in the oral arguments. In summary, we’ve got:
(1) Anti-Injunction Act: can the Court rule on the case before 2015, when the penalties in question goes into effect?
(2) Individual mandate: is it permissible under the Commerce Clause?
(3) Severability: if the mandate is found unconstitutional does the entire HCR act have to go as well?
(4) Medicaid expansion: can the bill force the states to expand Medicaid in a manner they say is too economically onerous?
That’s a simplification, of course, but it’s the basic idea. Real SCOTUS junkies can hear oral arguments and read transcripts here—not live but pretty quickly after they occur. And SCOTUSblog has a lot of fast-breaking information on what’s happening, and all sorts of links.
The overarching issue is the power of the federal government:
“This case will be a tremendous opportunity to reaffirm that Congress is a legislature of limited powers,” said Randy Barnett, a Georgetown University law professor who is helping the challengers.
Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe…said opponents are asking the court to erase the flexibility the Constitution’s framers gave Congress. If the court struck down Mr. Obama’s law, said Mr. Tribe, it would implicate “virtually every major piece of federal legislation enacted over the past several decades, and many laws now in the pipeline”””including proposals favored by conservatives.
To libertarians and many conservatives, that latter point is a feature, not a bug.
Dick Cheney: age, status, and heart transplants
As soon as Dick Cheney’s heart transplant was announced, the predictable unfunny jokes began to proliferate:
Have they put Bush on the brain transplant list?
Don’t they mean an implant, since he didn’t have a heart to begin with?
Too bad there’s no soul transplant list.
So funny I forgot to laugh, as my brother used to say.
I’ve never understood the intensity of the hatred for Cheney. Disagreement, yes. Disapproval, yes. But there’s no end of rabid hatred from the left, so much so that many people really do seem to wish him dead.
As far as Cheney’s transplant goes, I wish him well. And I have to say that I’m astounded he’s lasted this long; when he was nominated as VP in 2000, and then re-elected in 2004, I never never never thought he’d live to finish out his terms. In fact, one of the many thoughts that passed through my mind on 9/11 was that Cheney must have a stronger heart than I thought he did to have survived the shock.
And here it is almost eleven years later, and 71-year-old Cheney’s got his new heart. Apart from all those who hate his guts (another body part), there are quite a few people discussing whether or not someone of that age ought to be eligible for a transplant. I don’t think there should be any hard-and-fast rules about that. It depends on so many things: need and availability and match, first and foremost; and then how otherwise healthy and active person is. In this, many physicians in the field of transplants seem to agree:
His age may be 69 [when he was first put on the heart-transplant list] but we talk about physiological age. There are transplant centers who will definitely consider a 69 year old,” [heart surgeon Magliato] said. “There is no national cut off age for heart transplants; it depends on the transplant center. Some have abolished a cut off age and will consider every patient on a case by case basis.”…
According to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, the survival rate for a heart transplant on a patient over the age of 65 after one year is 84 percent. Magliato stressed that the prognosis for these patients is quite good considering their chances of survival without the transplant…
“You don’t get on the list by buying your way on. People think somehow wealth plays a role, and that is absolutely not true, nor does socioeconomic status,” she said. “The bottom line is the sicker you are, the higher on the list you are.”
Yes, but I’ve got a question: what if this had happened while Cheney was VP? Would (and should) the priorities have been different? Should he have gone to the head of the line then, no matter what? And my question isn’t specifically about Cheney, of course, and whether you like or hate him. It’s about someone holding that office (or the presidency) who becomes ill. Shouldn’t they get some sort of special treatment? And if so, where would it stop? How about members of Congress? Personally, I think it should stop with the presidency and vice-presidency, but I do think they should get priority.
[NOTE: It seems that Cheney waited longer than average for his new heart.]