Obamacare: The Final Battle/ Republicans have to explain why it’s bad — and explain it soon.

 Avik Roy at  National Review Online  "Mitt Romney said it best on Thursday. “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.” Those who have been sitting on the sidelines, out of complacency or loyalty to someone else from the primaries, must get out of their chairs and get to work. But while that work must end with Mitt Romney in the White House, it must begin with a Republican majority in the Senate."  ....
"Finally, we have to remind voters that conservatives stand for lowering the cost of insurance by removing costly mandates and by giving people freedom to sign up for the insurance plans of their choosing. Candidates for the Senate must bone up on these concepts and explain them as they campaign for office.

"Health care has long been outside of the Republican comfort zone. We find it easier to talk about taxes and the debt. But if we are to repeal Obamacare and gain a mandate for our own reforms, it’s not enough to say “Obamacare is a government takeover” or “I support Mitt Romney’s plan.” It’s important to explain why  Obamacare will make health care more costly, and why free-market reforms are better.

"If we don’t, we will lose. And if we lose, we will be stuck with Obamacare forever. And, even worse, we will have deserved it."   (Emphasis added)

From Politico/MSNBC; Schumer: Repeal would be a GOP disaster   "Schumer also argued that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would be hamstrung in his ability to attack President Barack Obama on health care, pointing out that he pushed an individual mandate as governor of Massachusetts.

" "Mitt Romney is in a pickle here," Schumer said."

Cartoon at right from DonkeyHotey

Coming soon: Obama’s ‘They’-Did-It Campaign

Victor Davis Hanson  "What then to expect if the race remains tight or Obama finds himself behind?" ....
"The novelty of the first African-American president has become passé. And “hope and change” has been replaced by a concrete record of three and a half years. Given those realities, if his being an unknown quantity was a reason to vote for Barack Obama in 2008, his being all too familiar will be cause for rejecting him in 2012."

Obama’s Air Force One Call to Donors Reveals Money Worries

Karl Rove; Obama's Campaign Whoppers  "The Romney campaign's challenge is to rebut Mr. Obama without lowering their candidate to the president's level or adopting his tone. Mr. Romney himself will be tempted to fact-check Mr. Obama, demanding he "stop lying about my record," in Sen. Bob Dole's immortal words to George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential primary. Mr. Romney must resist this."


Obama Campaign Website Plays The Ku Klux Klan Card…
"The same KKK that was part of the Democratic party."


From barackobama.com:  "President Obama has consistently stood up for our men and women who wear the uniform. His whole administration has. I’m proud to stand with him as a Democrat and I’m proud to stand with him as a veteran.  "Today I'm a grandfather, and I may be a little slower than I once was, but my will is still as strong as ever, and if President Obama needs me, I’m there. Because I’m not willing to stand down for him while our Commander-in-Chief stands up for us. Not when our vote means so much to so many.   Hat tip to Weasel Zippers

Obama, Storyteller; It appears that Obama will say and do anything, and the press shies from holding him to account.

Victor Davis Hanson  "A sign of an undisciplined mind is serial lapses into self-contradiction, or blurting out a thought only to refute it entirely on a later occasion. For a president to do that is to erode public confidence and eventually render all his public statements irrelevant. That is now unfortunately the case with Barack Obama, who has established a muddled record of confused and contradictory declarations.

From Human Events; OBAMACARE: TWICE AS EXPENSIVE AS PROMISED, AND GETTING WORSE  "One of Obama’s sleaziest tricks was front-loading revenue into ObamaCare, while deferring expenses for as long as possible.  This made it look like it would cost a lot less than it actually would". ....
Remember: the good stuff comes before election and the bad stuff afterward.

California, there she goes!

Stockton Bankrupt; Unions Pension Death Trap for Cities to Blame  

1. The immediate solution is bankruptcy. Expect to see more cities file. However, longer-term structural problems must also be addressed.

1. Untenable pension contracts need to be tossed out by the courts and benefits reduced. Every taxpayer not on the public dole should cheer bankruptcy, not resist it.

1. End defined benefit pension plans for public union workers.

1. End collective bargaining for public union workers. Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin has proven that can be done.

1. Scrap Davis-Bacon and all state prevailing wage laws.

1. Institute national right-to-work laws. 

1. Merit pay for teachers

1. More competition from accredited online schools to drive education costs way down

1. Scrap student loan programs that only benefit administrators and educators, not the kids.

California’s Fiscal Woes  ..."There are three major problems:  (Watch for the word "fairness")

(1) Stringent real estate development restrictions,
(2) High tax and regulatory burden, and
(3) The power of the public employees’ unions  

...."Whenever you raise taxes, you decrease investment. It’s that simple. It’s been spun as an issue of “fairness”, but that’s a flawed prism to examine the issue under. It’s not about “fairness”; it’s about the fact that you can’t create growth without investment and high taxes take money away from investment."

Arizona decision leaves U.S. naked to our enemies

Alan Keyes  "As I pointed out in 2010, in a related article posted on my blog, the concept of invasion need not involve armed violence. Unarmed incursions can threaten the life, livelihood, or moral identity of a people in ways more pervasive and damaging than armed forces. From the perspective of the Native American experience with settlers from Europe, our own history illustrates this truth in a host of ways and instances. So does ancient Rome's experience with the so-called barbarian tribes driven by the conquest of their homelands to push into territory within the jurisdiction of its Empire."

After fleeting Supreme Court victory, Obama remains the amateur

Edward Klein, author of The Amateur  "Only a rank amateur could levy a series of new taxes on America’s small businesses, under the guise of ObamaCare, that will raise unemployment and stall an already anemic recover.

"Only a rank amateur could hand his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, an electoral game changer.

"Yes, Barack Obama is still The Amateur"

Read excerpts of "The Amateur" here.
 See an interview with Edward Klein here:

A doctor comments on his taxes and FLOTUS's vacations

Posted by Tom Williams, Merced, CA.

So...what about those Chevy Volts in the region?

From Hot Air; DC, mid-Atlantic region could be without power several more days
"Last week, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu insisted that the government needed to subsidize electric vehicles to make them cheap enough to transform personal transportation away from fossil fuels.  This week, people in Washington DC, Virginia, and several other states may beg to differ:"
....Thus we see the wisdom of energy diversity.  Light rail and subways run on electricity, which is only stable and plentiful enough to supply that kind of power because of the use of coal and natural gas.   (Emphasis gleefully added.)

http://cfif.org/v/freedom_line_blog/13164/ramirez-cartoon-how-electric-cars-work/

"....On the other hand, those who have no other transportation options except electric are stuck inside the emergency area.  Their vehicles don’t have the range to get them out of the disaster area, which means they have to be dependent on rationed supplies if their food supplies run low.  They can’t easily get to distribution centers for that, either, at least not more than a couple of times, which means that emergency response teams eventually have to bring in gasoline-powered vehicles to reach them in a disaster."

POTUS and the SCOTUS

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Rick Moran: Support for Obamacare ticks up after SCOTUS decision  "Frankly, I'm surprised the jump in support wasn't larger. Many Americans respect the Supreme Court and even with a decision like the one last Thursday, tend to see SCOTUS as the final judge in matters Constitutional. The fact that sentiment to repeal the law has actually gotten stronger at the same time support has also grown, would seem to indicate that some voters actually favor repeal but respect the Court's decision."


Althouse; Is Roberts a genius or just a politician?  Commenting on the Wall Street Journal column posted above:
"They're disturbed that Congress can configure a tax that shapes behavior that it could not simply command, and yet they admit — as they must — that tax law does that all the time. Congress can't compel you to go into debt to buy a house, but you'll pay less taxes if you have a mortgage interest deduction. Congress can't require you to get married, but single taxpayers get stuck with higher tax rates. Why is this new area of taxing so shocking?"

http://www.solidprinciples.com/blog/political-cartoons-michael-ramirez-70/

Neal Boortz; Four days after  "No … sorry.  I can’t figure out just what Chief Justice John Roberts was trying to accomplish with his ruling on ObamaCare last week.  And no … I don’t pretend to know how this is going to work itself out in the election and for future court decisions.  I can, though, just throw out some random thoughts on the subject … see what you think."....

http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/

Michael Barone: Obamacare survives, but political playing field has changed   "But the fact remains that a majority of five justices, including Roberts, also declared that Congress' power to regulate commerce does not authorize a mandate to buy a commercial product. This will tend to bar further expansion of the size and scope of the federal government.
"Moreover, the Constitution's limits on congressional power have now become, for the first time in seven decades, a political issue. They're likely to remain one for years to come."
As far as the Democrats claiming the mandate was not a tax, Barone writes:

Roberts' decision undercuts such arguments, now and in the future. Members of Congress supporting such legislation will be held responsible, this year and for years to come, for increasing taxes.