U S Circuit Court Rules Health Care Constitutional

This morning the sixth circuit court ruled that you did indeed have to buy into "Obama Care" and have no choice in the matter. But guess what - the republicans aren't even going to fund the thing when it comes in three years, so it will be a mute point. On this court are justices appointed by republicans so that the conservative foes of Obama Care were rubbing their hands in anticipation of a favorable ruling. But the court said that since health insurance was "commerce" therefore the government had the power to regulate it. According to Thom Hartman since according to him health insurance is a "need" then the government must provide it. Now tell me where in the constitution does it say or hint anywhere that "the government is obligated to provide for the basic material needs of each and every citizen"? It doesn't. Therefore it can't regulate what he hasn't been given the power to control in the first place. Judy and Dr. Levy and all the rest were right when they said that Obama Care would take us down the road to socialism. And if there is anything the constitution is not, it's a socialist document. Nowhere does it say that the government is in charge of making private business decisions. It could be to expand or not to expand your business, or a hospital deciding whether or not they want to hire on a few more doctors. Clearly it's a short step from today's decision to deciding where any individual can practice and which city already has enough doctors. Of course the utilitarian argument is made that we need all that "fresh blood" in the system to drive down the premium table to an affordable rate for those who really need it. And it wouldn't matter whether it was somebody growing marijuana in their window box for their own consumption - - or whether they are growing apples. Because as far back as Barry Goldwater he complained that nowadays "An American is guilty of interfering with interstate commerce if he grows food to be eaten on his own farm". When I read that back in the 'sixties I really thought our government had gone screwy. Today it is medical insurance. Tomorrow it would mandating that all cars be manufactured so as to only run on corn oil. You know how strong the corn lobby is getting. Or the government could mandate solar pannels on everyone's roof. They may say "If everybody does it it will drive down the price". Don't get on that. It depends how elastic the supply curve is. "What is a supply curve?" you ask. Well suppose I want to buy a solar electric pannel for my home. So I agree to buy one for one thousand dollars. Then I get to thinking about it and decide I can sell these things myself as a profit. So I go to the guy and say "You know I've decided I want to buy 95 solar pannels from you. What will that cost me?" He doesn't bat an eye and says "$95,000". But I protest I should get a volume discount. And the guy says "A thousand dollars is what they cost a piece so that's what you pay". That would be an example of a completely inelastic supply curve. An example of a more elastic supply curve would be being told by the head waiter they have no tables at a certain resturant. So you wave a twenty dollar bill in front of him and he says, "You know sir, something just opened up". It would be the same thing for oil supplies or perhaps rare leather goods nobody can get. There was a store that was selling them yesterday but today they say they are out. So you say "what can you get me for ten thousand dollars?" and suddenly they just remembered that a shipment was coming in. There are two conflicting slogans about elastic supply curves. There is they saying "Money will buy you just about anything" and there is another slogan that goes "Some things money just can't buy". Some might argue that the government does get involved in business stations like "must carry" TV stations on cable or for that matter rural electrification inthe 1930's and the Tennessee Valley Authority system of bringing electric power to a whole region. But in this case it's a matter of government saying to business "You know we have got a ton of money and we'd like you to have it, but you're going to have to play ball with us". Something like that.

Most people don't know what a supply curve is anyhow. Many people think as the price comes down the supply increases. But they have that ass backwards. If you study economics the supply curve goes up with price. It's the demand curve that comes down with price. And where the two lines meet is presumably the price of the product. Let me illustrate this further for you. I just got a coffee maker. I give a few cups to close friends and make deals for cigarettes occasionally and once I bartered for more coffee filters. But that's basicly the ammount of coffee that exchanges hands when they get it for free. The more people are willing to may me for coffee the harder I'm willing to work to insure that there is a supply. Suppose the head hauncho of this place comes to me and she says, "Marcus, I've issued an order that nobody in this place gets coffee unless they come to you for coffee at a guarenteed buck twenty-five a cup". If she said that I'd suddenly be a busy man. I'd start working my ass off working sixteen hours a day in a money making venture like that. Well, this is what the government is doing with our health care today. They are ordering you to buy it and they are also mandating that there can be no discounting in the price of it. Now what most people think of when someone talks about supply and demand is something different. They are thinking of the sales volume demand curve. I'd also like to illustrate that one for you. They say that high volume in sales will compensate to a drop in price. Yes it does, but only to a degree. Suppose I'm selling widgets and on each widget I make a dollar profit. Now if I sell one of them for eight dollars I make eight dollars in profit. And if I sell eight of them for one dollar profit I also make eight dollars a day or whatever. But I would be wiser if I sold the widgets for either four or five dollars of profit. Because if I sold five widgets for four dollars profit a piece, I would make twenty dollars a day. If I sold four widgets for five dollars a piece in profit I would also make twenty dollars a day. In either case twenty dollars a day is more than eight dollars a day. Geometricly this is what is happening. If you stacked blocks up and took the perimiter of a stack of eight it would be eighteen. If you lay all the blocks out in a row it would also be eighteen. But if you had a block of four by five- - - actually that perimeter would be the same, eighteen. It would be 18. And yet I would make more money. This is why sales people to well to run Excel computer models.

Well, President Obama stumbled through his lengthly press conference this morning taking five minutes to field each question. If it were I up there I would rather give a short and concise answer and because it only took twenty or thirty seconds there would be time for a follow up, if the reporter needed clarification on something. At any rate I would be forthright and not hesitate and tell the reporter the answer to his question as best I understood it. After all you're there to satisfy the press with answers and not to stand up there jerking off for an hour. But it was the way he answered these questions which mused me. He would act like he were reading off some teleprompter a carefully scripted answer. And every now and then he would pause and stare off into space, almost as if he were waiting for the text crawl. It was like these psychic mediums that have their headphones on during seances and some relative not there is feeding them the remarks to deliver to the client. And he would pause and then "Wait- - I'm getting another message" and go on. It was like Obama had a head piece and someone were whispering into his ear telling him what to say. But what he did say I didn't like either. Someone asked him whether the war powers act were constitutional. He said he would let the supreme court rule on that. That wouldn't be Hartman's answer. He doesn't believe in that. Obama has a whole lot more legal training than I do. But even I would attempt to give an answer, if I actually were the president and presumably supposed to know stuff like this. From my own reading of the U S constitution I say the war powers act IS constitutional. After all the constitution does talk about war and therefore has the power to decide the peramaters of presidential powers. And the constitution limited troop allocations for only two years at a time, which also happens to be the length of time House members are elected for. And all money funding bills have to by law originate in the House. Some say Jefferson didn't believe in standing armies. I don't know about that but clearly congress is given the most power under the constitution, and it is mentioned first. So to me if there are any conflicts of power, congress should pervail. Which means the President of the United States must obey the war powers act passed by congress. And that's my ruling on the matter.

The accronym B I T C H stands for Bravery, Intelligence, Tenacity, Creativity, and Intelligence. These are traits every school should seek to develop in its student body. Hell, I like this accronym. I think I'll start calling myself a B I T C H. Hey, want to take a BITCH-ing test in school today? Here is a solid geometry problem. You have a block, a rectangle. You want to saw the upper right corner off. So you draw a plane at a downward slope of thirty degrees from a horizontal axis, and hit six inches before the corner and keep going till you have transversed the object. Now as to the shape that is separated - - it is a three dimensional object, and there is a specific name for it that we mentioned a few postings back. What is it? We know two points define a line and three points define a plane and four points define a volume. But I bet what you didn't know that this is true no matter how many dimensions there are. Two points will define a line even in a three dimensional environment. Four points will define a volume even in a four, five or six dimensional environment. As to the word "define" it carries a certain power. So some degree if you define something you claim a type of ownership over it. As we said if you have four dots in space one of them is most likely non co-plainer. That's because you "have already set up the rules". If you have three dots that fail to make a straight line, you don't curve the line to accomidate the dots. (Who knows, maybe Einstein does it) We could use more Bitches in Bible School actually and exhibit a little bravery, intelligence, tenatiousness, creativity, and honesty there, too. Here are some common Greek translation errors. They say the Bible says that time will come to an end. Not so. This is a mistranslation of the passage in Revelation that says "And then an angel decreed that there should be delay no more". The word is "delay" and not "time". Another one accounts for drunken Catholic priests. It says "Drink ye All of it" so the priests do. The proper translation is "Drink of it - - - All of you". Another one is the place where it says about "remembering your first love". They take this to mean that Jesus is your "first love". How romantic! But the passage should be rendered "Remember the love you had at first". Then we come to Timothy about the passage that says "All scripture is inspired by God and is suitable for inspiration, instruction, reproof- - " and all of that. Others will come back and say it rather says "Every scripture (that happens to be) inspired by God is suitable for- - - and all that stuff. Well guess what? On this one the fundamentalists win. There is no word for this sort of IS in Greek. That would have saved a lot of hassle for Bill Clinton. And then we have the one about "Physical exercise profiteth a little". That's the proper translation. A lot of people try and take the "a" out of there and it changes the meaning for something more syniccal. Now we come to the most despited one. The Jehovah''s Witnesses say that the beginning of John states that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was a god. This drives people nuts, of course. They are right, of course. Clearly if the Greeks wanted to denote "The God" they would have used "The God" like they do other places. Yea, it's that whole Romulan thing again. Another occasional mistranslation is when some quote Jesus as saying to the adulterous woman "He who is without guilt let him first cast a stone at her", as though casting a stone at her were somehow a prerequisit to declaring your virtue on this issue.