ran 3.4 miles
I was certainly blind-sided today by the Supreme Court's response to ObamaCare. That's an understatement, actually. It was more like getting hit by a train pulling one hundred box cars of chaos and confusion. First, I was in shock trying to piece together the events leading up to this day (Barack Obama clearly stated in the recent past that the mandate is not a tax, yet SCOTUS upholds the health care law in its entirety through the lens of the mandate not being a mandate, because that would be unconstitutional, but the mandate being a tax, which our federal government has the power to levy upon its people through the proper channels of Congress, but Obama did not recognize the mandate as a tax, but the Supreme Court did recognize the mandate as within the constitutional boundaries of taxation)---three days of oral arguments in which right-leaning justices absolutely humiliated the lawyers representing ObamaCare, often leaving them in a mumbling stupor unable to grasp one single fiber of argument to support this law. It was like watching a Jimmy Kimmel roasting where you can't help but laugh at the stutters, "if"s, "but"s, and "um...um...um"s these guys had loaded in their pea shooters of reason. And now they actually passed it?
I'm not sure who said it first but this is a good line to live by, "I don't believe anything I hear and I only believe half of what I see".
After the initial shock of this verdict, I began looking for a logical approach to why ObamaCare was upheld in its entirety. This is the best I could come up with. It is mere speculation, but I am actually beginning to like this outcome. I am not endorsing the idea that perhaps the conservative seats on the bench did not want to make this decision and preferred to put it in the laps of the American people at large during the 2012 presidential election. But, that is the outcome we are left with and I prefer a collective American decision over the collective decision of only nine individuals. If you vote for Obama in November then you are voting for a full-blown, American-revolutionizing, point of no return, socialistic health care program, not much unlike exactly what is going on in a flailing Europe. If you vote for Romney then you are voting for a man who has made it his priority to remove Obamacare from existence. It is a gamble but if ObamaCare is something you would like to do without then Romney is a far better bet.
I believe if SCOTUS had struck down even only the mandate then that would have actually been a better predicament for Obama. This guys in a pickle and if he does get reelected it is going to be by the skin of his teeth. He has nothing to run on and throwing fuel on fire is his best campaign tool. The only thing he does have to run on is hope, which he has proven to be far overrated, and this health care law that the Supreme Court just handed him. But here's the thing. In recent months, Rasmussen Reports (the proven most reliable and accurate polling organization) has Americans at a consistent high fifties and low sixties disapproval rating regarding ObamaCare. His health care legislation is working against him more than it is for him and SCOTUS may have possibly returned a verdict that called Obama's bluff. I have every confidence that Barack Obama wanted his health care law to be deemed unconstitutional because that would have given him ammunition, and firing blame in all direction is the bedrock of this president's reelection platform.
Whether it was intentional or inadvertent, I think the conservative Supreme Court justices may have just served Obama a worst case scenario for his upcoming election. The 55%-60% of Americans who oppose ObamaCare were already mad, but I think they are furious now. They are the one's who are left with political ammunition and it is Barack Obama and his Democratic counterparts who are left having to defend and campaign on something that America, as a majority, does not want.
2,080 miles from Lafayette, LA to Washington D.C. and back + 3.7
