Showing posts with label broccoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label broccoli. Show all posts

Thursday, June 28, 2012

SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare! Tea Party Heads Asplode!

Photobucket




New drinking game... every time a Republican whines DRINK!
 ~ comment by IBrakeForFDR on Huffington Post

I warned T-b/aggers about this. I told them that they were grossly underestimating Obama's political ingenuity. The Tea-b/aggers wouldn't listen to me. Today the folly of their ways have been exposed for the world to see. President Obama has outfoxed them yet again.
~ comment by americanalien on Huff Post

New Republican campaign for 2012: Whatever you've got, we'll take it away!
~ comment by Iskra on Huff Post

Hey Limbaugh: Do you still want to spike the football? ~ comment by Sloane7 on Huff Post



































































From Buzzfeed: CNN News Staffers Revolt Over Blown Coverage
The erroneous breaking news was made into a chryon at the bottom of the screen. CNN also sent out a breaking news alert. And a half dozen top on-air reporters and producers within the esteemed news organization told BuzzFeed they are furious at what they see as yet another embarrassment to a network stuck in third place in the cable news race, and torn between an identity as the leader in hard news and the success of their opinionated, personality-driven rivals, Fox News and MSNBC. “F***ing humiliating,” said one CNN veteran. “We had a chance to cover it right. And some people in here don’t get what a big deal getting it wrong is. Morons.” “Shameful,” another long-time correspondent told BuzzFeed. "It's outrageous and embarrassing,” a third CNN staffer vented. “Maybe this will shake the company into understanding that CNN has not been the 'most trusted name in news' for a very long time." A fourth CNN source noted simply “obviously, it’s embarrassing,” but defended legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, and stressed that it’s the challenge of breaking news. “It looked to all the world like the chief justice was going to strike down the law,” legal analyst Toobin later said on air, seeking to explain the CNN confusion.






































Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Health Care: Take Two Aspirin and SCOTUS in the Morning

Photobucket

A liveblog of twitter and other stuff while we wait for the ruling...



With a little more than twenty-four hours to go before the Supreme Court is scheduled to release its last rulings of this Term, it is very likely that the Justices and their staffs are still doing some final editing on the opinion — or opinions — that will tell the constitutional fate of President Obama’s most important domestic policy: the massive overhaul of the way Americans get and pay for health insurance. The media and other pundits, and the academics, have all done their speculating on outcomes, and the blame games have started in anticipation that the ruling may turn out wrong for this or that constituency.
~ Lyle Deniston on Scotus Blog

If the Court strikes down the law, Democrats will need to redouble our efforts, fighting to ensure universal health care that’s affordable and accessible to every American is a reality.
If the Court upholds the law, dangerous Tea Party extremists will go on a rampage. Backed by Super PAC’s and shadowy front groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, they’ll do everything in their power to defeat President Obama, demonize Democrats who fought for health care reform and, if they win the election, dismantle the law piece-by-piece.
~ Patrick Kennedy, son of the late ACA leader Ted Kennedy, in a fund-raising email for the Health Care Rapid Response Fund



In the end, you have to make a prediction and take responsibility for it. I believe the mandate will not be invalidated tomorrow. Far less important, I expect the principal opinion will be written by the Chief Justice; a majority of the Court will find it has jurisdiction; and the challenge to the Medicaid expansion will be rejected.
Most observers disagree. There are certainly good reasons to believe the Court will invalidate the mandate. Most important, at the oral argument, the questions of two critical Justices – Justice Kennedy and the Chief Justice – were on the whole critical of the mandate’s constitutionality.
But in the end, based on the entire mix of information I have, I think the mandate will not be struck down tomorrow. (I don’t have any inside information, nor does anyone else.) My prediction includes the possibility that there will not be a single majority opinion for the theory on which the mandate is upheld, and even the thin possibility that the Court will not have a majority to find the mandate constitutional.
Tom Goldstein, Publisher of Scotus Blog

Right now it feels more like waiting for the results of my prostate exam. If the law is upheld (a good result), life will go on with all its attendant pleasures and travails. If the law, or more likely, parts of it, are struck down, like an exam’s bad news we are still left with a series of options, some less appealing than others. In any case, like the exam, the process has been annoying, and I for one will be happy when it’s over. Mostly, because its been an unneccessary pain in the butt.
~ Michael Waldholz in Forbes









































































There Will Be Outrage!








I spent a great deal of time vetting Justice Roberts in making my recommendation to President [George W.] Bush that he appoint Chief Justice Roberts to the court. One of the traits I most admired about him, and this is very consistent in his judicial decision making, is to decide decisions on the most narrow grounds possible, to not get to constitutional issues you don't have to in order to dispose of a dispute....So in that respect, I expect Justice Roberts to follow that approach in deciding this case.
That may mean, that he's going to be pushing the court to perhaps not make a decision on this case, wait until 2015, when the penalties on individual mandate come into play....Perhaps the chief justice is not going to go that way, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did.
~ Ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on CNN, quoted by Politico




































































Message from Twitter:
Loading Tweets seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.













Breaking News!!!! It's Confusing!!!!!!!


























Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Eatin' Broccoli with the Supremes

Originally Posted April 2, 2012 on Livejournal



Last week the Supreme Court spent three days debating Obama's Health Care Bill. Unfortunately at times it was more like theater of the absurd, as several Justices compared complex health insurance problems to whether or not we could be forced to eat our broccoli. *sigh* And it turns out, sadly, the whole broccoli example came from . . . Rush Limbaugh. You can't make this stuff up. Justice Scalia is just another Ditto-head.

Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment (about cruel and unusual punishment)? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? (Laughter.) And do you really expect the Court to do that?
~ Justice Antonin Scalia, quoted on Think Progress

We have a Supreme Court that thinks corporations are people, money is speech and broccoli is health care.
~ LOLGOP on Twitter

Talk of mandated broccoli and cell phones illustrates a general rule: ALL SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS ARE STUPID.
~ Richard H. Thaler, Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago on Twitter

I was appalled to see that at least a couple of them were repeating the most tendentious of the Tea Party type arguments. I even heard about broccoli. The whole broccoli argument is beneath contempt. To hear it come from the bench was depressing.
~ Charles Fried, Former Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan, quoted in The Washington Post

Maybe, the GOP Five should just drive down to the National Archives, pry open the case holding the Constitution and pencil in some new words. After the relevant section about Congress having the power to regulate interstate commerce, the GOP Five can scribble in “except for things like purchases of broccoli, gym memberships, cell phones and health insurance.”
~ Robert Parry on Consortium News

I wonder how the Supreme Court would vote if they didn't have the world's best health plan?
~ Albert Brooks on Twitter

The Supreme Court needs less Homophobes and more HMO-aphobes.
~ John Fugelsang on Twitter

Free question for Justice Scalia to use against Obamacare: Why doesn't everyone just get a lifetime appointment with free healthcare?
~ Stephen Colbert on Twitter


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)