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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Life Is What Happens...

Yeah, yeah, I know.  It's been awhile.  I've been busy fomenting revolution and being the agent provocateur that God intended. It can keep a girl busy.

First off, for those of you who have emailed and messaged me, the knee is doing much better and I am scheduled to return to my Harley course in May. I've taken steps to insure that I don't seem the complete idiot and I'm practicing on my own bike before hand to get a better feel for the controls.  My husband mentioned something about training wheels but I'm pretty sure he was kidding.  Pretty sure...

I went to South by Southwest in Austin for the last weekend and had a blast, even though I just really wandered around downtown and was refused a tattoo for my 17 year old daughter.  I've decided to forward my mission of common sense and personal responsibility.  Defeat is not an option.  But watching the Hippie Kids out in their environment was a hoot. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me as my daughter took my camera battery so she could text her friends while at SXSW.  I was going to post pictures in my "I Bet Their Parents Are Proud" album on Facebook.  Tuition dollars at work.

Oh, yes, our Shitzu/Poodle mix had her eye popped out by our German Shepherd.  The vet just loves us, he really does.  We're trying to get rid of Zeusifer.  Posted pics on FB and everything.  He's free to a loving home just as soon as someone steps up.  Please step up.  Pretty please?  I love the beast but he's just Baby Huey, no awareness he's not a lap dog and the strong desire to play. Think of the black dog in Over the Hedge.  Play?  Play?  That's our Zeus.

So now to the meat and potatoes of what's been floating over my mental transom.  This week the SCOTUS heard two days of arguments from the States vs Obamacare.  From everything I have heard from these hearings the Government attorney was incredibly ignorant and could not answer challenges to the constitutionality of the Individual Mandate.  Nor could he apparently tell the difference between a tax and a penalty.  He's obviously the the IRS.  But an keen observation was made by yours truly around a water cooler.  It's no wonder he's so obviously unprepared for this battle.  How can you possibly defend the indefensible?  One of the justices brought up a good analogy.  If Congress can make us buy health insurance, where does it stop?  Can they mandate we buy broccoli because it's fiber and therefore makes us more healthy?  At what point in the Constitution does it say Congress has the ability to make us buy anything we don't want and may not need?  When do we become responsible for our lives? I don't know about you, but having a bureaucracy make those decisions for me does not relieve me in any way whatsoever.  I am an adult, responsible.  You would have to be either the dumbest person on the planet or monumentally naive to think that anything run by the government is EVER good for you.

We have to stop this insanity now or we will NEVER get rid of it.  It's already encroached into our lives with keeping the kiddies on until they're 26 and no pre-existing conditions.  They're out there telling horror stories, that one they are looked into a little closer are never what the media spun them to be.  Look at this excerpt from today's transcripts:

GENERAL VERRILLI: To live in the modern world, everybody needs a telephone. And the — the same thing with respect to the — you know, the dairy price supports that — that the Court upheld in Wrightwood Dairy and Rock Royal. You can look at those as disadvantageous contracts, as forced transfers, that — you know, I suppose it’s theoretically true that you could raise your kids without milk, but the reality is you’ve got to go to the store and buy milk. And the commerce power — as a result of the exercise of the commerce power, you’re subsidizing somebody else –
JUSTICE KAGAN: And this is especially true, isn’t it, General –
GENERAL VERRILLI: — because that’s the judgment Congress has made.
JUSTICE KAGAN: — Verrilli, because in this context, the subsidizers eventually become the subsidized?
GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, that was the point I was trying to make, Justice Kagan, that you’re young and healthy one day, but you don’t stay that way. And the — the system works over time. And so I just don’t think it’s a fair characterization of it. And it does get back to, I think — a problem I think is important to understand –
JUSTICE SCALIA: We’re not stupid. They’re going to buy insurance later. They’re young and — and need the money now.
GENERAL VERRILLI: But that’s –
JUSTICE SCALIA: When — when they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they’ll buy insurance, like the rest of us. But –
GENERAL VERRILLI: That’s — that’s –
JUSTICE SCALIA: — I don’t know why you think that they’re never going to buy it.
GENERAL VERRILLI: That’s the problem, Justice Scalia. That’s — and that’s exactly the experience that the States had that made the imposition of guaranteed-issue and community rating not only be ineffectual but be highly counterproductive. Rates, for example, in New Jersey doubled or tripled, went from 180,000 people covered in this market down to 80,000 people covered in this market. In Kentucky, virtually every insurer left the market. And the reason for that is because when people have that guarantee of — that they can get insurance, they’re going to make that calculation that they won’t get it until they’re sick and they need it, and so the pool of people in the insurance market gets smaller and smaller. The rates you have to charge to cover them get higher and higher. It helps fewer and fewer — insurance covers fewer and fewer people until the system ends. This is not a situation in which you’re conscripting — you’re forcing insurance companies to cover very large numbers of unhealthy people –
JUSTICE SCALIA: You could solve that problem by simply not requiring the insurance company to sell it to somebody who has a — a condition that is going to require medical treatment, or at least not — not require them to sell it to him at — at a rate that he sells it to healthy people. But you don’t want to do that.

That is absolutely awesome.  Thank you Justice Scalia.  No one should be forced to purchase something they don't want or need.

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