Obama vs The Supremes

Apparently bucking the known odds, the Houston Chronicle proclaimed in a March 28 article: "Both sides confident high court will rule their way". OffHisMeds' first reaction was one of curiousity that the Chronicle - given the drubbing the Administration took at the hands of the Justices - should feel this was a fifty fifty proposition. His second reaction was amusement that the administration's Solicitor General Donald Verrilli should justify the law before the Supremes by citing the preamble to the Constitution, intuiting from those very general paragraphs that the phrase "secure the blessings of liberty" meant that free health care should be provided to the uninsured.

That's an interesting strategy, given the number of specific Amendments in the Bill of Rights that Obamacare would seem to trample:

- The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law abridging ....the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". Obama's "Exchanges", with rates negotiated between the Insurance Cartels and the government certainly deprives me of that.

- The Fifth Amendment: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation". The Individual Mandate is even worse: all Taking with no compensation.

- The Eight Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted". There's that pesky Mandate again. OffHisMeds thinks any fine imposed because one chooses not to surrender to a Cartel is excessive.

Obamacare seems to be a violation in its entirety of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments that prohibit the federal government from exercising power designed to "deny or disparage (rights) retained by the people" or taking for itself "powers not delegated by the Constitution (and) reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". Heck, I'd even argue - with my tongue ever so lightly pressed against my cheek - that Obamacare violates the Eight Amendment prohibition against Cruel and Unusual Punishment, since having to stand by as the Administration's lawyers so abuse the Constitution is both, but technically, I have to be an inmate before that particular Amendment comes into play. Wait. That's right. I am.

Suffice to say, The Usual Suspect wasn't happy with the way the Supremes appeared to be treating his signature accomplishment, what with this being an election year and everything and so inconvenient to his prospects for future employment. So a few days after the Hearing, he fired up the rare press conference, cranked the TelePrompTer up to ten and started throwing bombs. "Judicial Activism", he huffed. "Legislating from the bench", he puffed.

And yet, their house remained undisturbed.

There's a good reason, or reasons, for that. First, John Paul Stevens, the most tenured and doctrinaire Liberal on the court, and a man who has - prior to this case - never seen a government usurpation of constitutional liberties that he didn't like, doesn't like the Individual Mandate. He grilled Verrilli on the point in such a matter as to do Anton Scalia proud. Second, Kagan, Sotomayor and even Ginsburg chose to not even address the Mandate issue, and confined their questions to whether or not - absent the Mandate - portions of the law could be preserved. This is all the more telling in that even Kagan - Obama's former solicitor general - could not be roused to defend the law in its entirety.

Finally, OffHisMeds is not impressed with President Obama's argument about judicial activism. It was he and his Minions, after all, who crafted the legislation so as to make the Individual Mandate a Poison Pill that, if removed, would kill the entire bill. Given his pedigree as a professor of constitutional law, that makes his hypocrisy all the more cringe-inducing for thoughtful Democrats - all ten of them.

Barack Obama Unhooked

His vast inventory of verbal gaffes over the past four years notwithstanding, President Obama outdid himself this past week with a couple of doozies. The first that popped up on OffHisMeds' screen being, of course, the "Open Mic" incident wherein he assured Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would be in a much better position to make more unilateral concessions on a nuclear arms treaty once he was re-elected. His actual words, of course, were much less controversial, but the effect could not have been more damaging to our ability to negotiate the issue in the future. Medvedev's response and Obama's reaction were also instructive. After Obama volunteered that "when he is re-elected, he'll have more flexibility", Medvedev replied that he understood, and would relay the news to Vladimir. Their words and gestures made it clear that they were both Stooges for the real power: Putin.

For my Liberal friends who reflexively defend Obama, I'll take a moment to explain why what he did was not only wrong, but damn wrong; damningly wrong. In saying what he said, Obama laid his entire hand on the table, and to a despot at that. And this despite the certainty that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is certainly as much a shadow of its former self as is Russia compared to the Soviet Union. In card playing terms, Obama folded his Full House to Russia's pair of Threes, despite the fact that - courtesy of the CIA - he knew exactly who had what hand going in.

Is it any wonder Poker Players the world over have no respect for this Hump?

A battalion of Shrinks could have a field day psychoanalyzing the apparently unquenchable need for approval that motivated him to say what he said to Medvedev - and by extension, Putin, particularly since they are nothing but contemptible Thugs; Thugs who, granted, dispose of several hundred nuclear weapons, but Thugs nonetheless. Surely, OffHisMeds believes, Obama has to see the Russian Oligarchs for what they are. It's not like there's a lack of a track record, most notably their efforts to destabilize every country around them and the rest of Europe to boot; and don't even get me going on the dozens of times Russia has stiffed NATO in the UN on sanctions in the Middle East, most recently ensuring with their efforts that Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon. Given this reality, Obama's behavior can only reasonably be described as - how to put this gently - infantile.

To validate OffHisMeds perspective, One need only contemplate what the consequences would have been had Obama kept his mouth shut and offered nothing to Medvedev. The short answer, of course, is that there would have been no consequences, and the US could have engaged Russia on equal footing in the event of some future Obama Administration. And yet, Obama still felt compelled to make unilateral concessions like Buffy, the insecure teenager who agrees to give it all up to Biff so she won't suffer the ignominy of not being invited to the Prom. Fast forward a couple days, and there's Buffy, getting nailed in the back of Biff's car, clueless that not only has she given up something precious for next to nothing, but that Biff is going to stiff her and not take her to the Prom.

The only difference between Buffy and Obama in this metaphor is that Obama sacrificed his Cherry a long time ago, but that certainly hasn't stopped him from acting like he's still got one, much less hoping that Vladimir Putin's backseat will be a little more comfortable than King Abdullah's, or Hamid Karzai's. Bottom line, he is congenitally unable to keep his mouth shut, or his knees together, so strong is his desire for approval; and there is no concession he won't make to keep the approval coming.

The other incident wasn't a single recent event but rather a compilation of statements made over the past couple years during his seemingly endless foreign jaunts called "Punching Above Their Weight". A Danish TV personality put it all together, and it's hilarious. Interesting to note that the pattern wasn't picked up on by America's media, or, more likely, it was, and summarily ignored. But, courtesy of Denmark we are presented with proof that President Obama is the TelePrompTer-addled Hand Puppet that we know him to be. My Danish friends won't need the subtitles.

You see Obama, in numerous appearances in Scandinavian countries and various others, paying his hosts the extremely left-handed compliment of declaring - in terms of foreign affairs - that they "punch above their weight". The statement is delicious, given that it is meant as a compliment but still manages to sound patronizing, smug and superior all at the same time. Not that this comes as any surprise to fair-minded domestic observers, or anybody whose higher brain functions have not been disabled by Obama Worship. The other thing that stands out is the breath-taking frequency with which he repeats this phrase. The video documents a half-dozen repetitions.

One can only reasonably conclude that: a) Obama liked the metaphor so much that he saw fit to trot it out time and time again; b) He was apparently convinced that he could not overdo it, and; c) His Handlers - the allegedly sober men and women who would do the math and decide, ultimately, that it was OK to flog the thing to death - vetted the phrase and intentionally incorporated it into future speeches. What were they all thinking? It's one thing for Obama as an individual to get so caught up in his own inflated opinion of himself that he couldn't see the potential for the rote repetition of such a banality to make him the subject of ridicule; it's entirely something else when the battalion of folks whose only job it is to protect him from such things make the stupefying error - collectively - to allow it to continue.

Remember, this is our first fully automated President. He uses the TelePrompTer so extensively, he is virtually an extension of it. With this technology, his Handlers have actually pulled off the PR Trifecta that jealous Republicans could only dream for: 1) A schedule of interaction with the Media extremely long on scripted set-pieces, and extremely short on press conferences or other impromptu appearances where he would be required to speak spontaneously; 2) A compliant media that sustains the fiction of spontaneity, even when he is reading scripted answers to their questions at press conferences; and 3) A Public that doesn't appear to care.

More and more, Obama resembles Jimmy Carter, most notably on matters of foreign affairs. Like Carter, Obama is content to give up the store to a bunch of ruthless Commie dictators: Carter with his dreadful START treaty and its seemingly endless permutations; Obama with his willingness to kill the interceptors designed to prevent a nuclear attack on Europe. It took a Ronald Reagan to reverse the damage Carter did; unfortunately, there is no Ronald Reagan on the horizon. A President Mitt Romney would be as feckless in this regard as is President Obama. That leaves it to a Republican congress to rein Obama in. Lord, grant me that small favor.

Like Carter, Obama thrills to the attention paid to him by despots and dictators, although to Carter's credit he was not - during his presidency at least - quite the suckup that Obama is. They both also shared an alarming tendency to trash their Friends, generally - and significantly - to the explicit benefit of the aforementioned Dictators. Just ask Israel, and Poland, and the Czech Republic, and Taiwan.

Most damaging, Obama and Carter both have exactly the same view of the righteousness of America versus the likes of the former Soviet Union, to wit: there is no difference. In Obama’s world, America is as likely to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike as Russia. America is also likely to do it for the basest of reasons, just like Russia. The fact that we are the world’s longest functioning liberal and participatory Democracy means nothing. Two Hundred plus years of history and precedent mean nothing. When Obama, Medvedev and Putin get together for cocktails, we’re all equals, so can’t we just be friends?

These two recent events point out all the more forcefully the need to neutralize Democrats by any means necessary, up to and including, as OffHisMeds has repeatedly suggested, driving them into the sea.

Well, rhetorically anyway.