THE ENTERPRISE--JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU'D SEEN/HEARD EVERYTHING

"GET YOUR DAMN FEET OFF MY FURNITURE UNTIL YOU DO SOMETHING POSITIVE FOR AMERICA"

(You'll need Powerpoint to view this one--Sorry!) Sometimes a person's body language tells you a lot about his regard and how he feels about people and his surroundings--disdain? contempt, disrespect, or simply disregard? Our Narcissist in Chief thinks the world revolves around him, and because he surrounds himself with people who act that way, he can't ever figure out why most of us think he is an arrogant, misguided, jerk who somehow, got elected President.

Download Obama feet on furniture

Here's the story behind his current success: As George Bernard Shaw once said, "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

WHAT DO I THINK OF THE SUPREME COURT'S OPINIONS THIS WEEK?

I'll borrow from the email I received from a brilliant friend, who summed up the one on Obamacare pretty well.

Here's what he said:

"Here’s my take: Despite my opposition to Obamacare, I really feared the politics of the Supreme Court overturning the ACA – both for the Court’s standing and for Republican prospects in November. I think today’s decision is a huge POLITICAL victory for the Rs and for Romney.[NOTE: My emphasis added]

1.      It will mobilize not just the core of the Republican Party but also the Tea Party and the Independents who deeply oppose Obamacare…something Romney, so far, has been unable to do. Imagine the opposite: Mobilizing the Left…not only for Obama but also against the legitimacy of the Court.

2.      It will permit Romney to continue with one of his main themes – namely that he will act on the Day 1 to repeal and replace the ACA. Imagine the opposite: One of Romney’s main themes would be reduced to “I told you so.”

3.      It will require Obama to admit that he has raised taxes –- the power to tax (and not the power to regulate commerce) is how the Court affirmed the ACA. Moreover, Obama’s ACA will have raised taxes on business and on the middle class. Benefit: Romney and the Rs will be able, credibly, to return to an old but powerful theme about the Ds’ addiction to tax and tax.

4.      It will make clear:  The only way to defeat Obamacare is to replace Obama. Benefit: Gives a strong CAUSE to the election.

5.      It will create a mess in state-federal relations, freeing the states to decline to participate in the exchanges, thereby confirming the strategy that Chris Christie has followed in NJ. Benefit: It will spotlight the inability of the government to manage…something everyone experiences when the visit the Department of Motor Vehicles.

6.      It lets stand a huge, new, $1.0 trillion unfunded mandate, spotlighting the irresponsible spending of the Obama administration.  Benefit: Sheds new light on an old issue – fiscal irresponsibility by the Obama administration.

7.      It creates a huge unfunded mandate on the states by the way it shifts costs to Medicaid, a program largely funded by the states. Benefit: Get grass roots political leaders, both Rs and Ds, exercised.

8.      It will now give a focal point to the job-killing effects of federal regulation and federal over-reach. Benefit: It will allow the business community to talk concretely about how government policies kill jobs. Benefit: Less abstract whining and more concrete examples of the damaging effects when government increases the costs of hiring people.

9.      Most important: It will allow the Rs to take the lead in a new intergovernmental, public-private initiative to increase access and decrease the costs of health care in America. Hopefully, they will rise to the occasion, including the opening on the 10^th Amendment that the Chief Justice seems to have achieved."

That’s my first reaction. Yours?

I think that is a pretty reasonable series of thoughts. What do YOU think?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER NAILS IT, TOO

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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

www.nationalreview.com

Why Roberts Did It

By Charles Krauthammer

June 28, 2012 4:30 P.M.

It’s the judiciary’s Nixon-to-China: Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of Obamacare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time. He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against Obamacare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law — and thus prevented the Court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration.

Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the Court’s legitimacy, reputation, and stature.

As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration’s central argument that Obamacare’s individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce.

That makes congressional power effectively unlimited. Mr. Jones is not a purchaser of health insurance. Mr. Jones has therefore manifestly not entered into any commerce. Yet Congress tells him he must buy health insurance — on the grounds that it is regulating commerce. If government can do that under the Commerce Clause, what can it not do?

“The Framers . . . gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it,” writes Roberts. Otherwise you “undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers.”

That’s Roberts, philosophical conservative. But he lives in uneasy coexistence with Roberts, custodian of the Court, acutely aware that the judiciary’s arrogation of power has eroded the esteem in which it was once held. Most of this arrogation occurred under the liberal Warren and Burger Courts, most egregiously withRoe v. Wade, which willfully struck down the duly passed abortion laws of 46 states. The result has been four decades of popular protest and resistance to an act of judicial arrogance that, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, “deferred stable settlement of the issue” by the normal electoral/legislative process.

More recently, however, few decisions have occasioned more bitterness and rancor than Bush v. Gore, a 5–4 decision split along ideological lines. It was seen by many (principally, of course, on the left) as a political act disguised as jurisprudence and designed to alter the course of the single most consequential political act of a democracy — the election of a president.

Whatever one thinks of the substance of Bush v. Gore, it did affect the reputation of the Court. Roberts seems determined that there be no recurrence with Obamacare. Hence his straining in his Obamacare ruling to avoid a similar result — a 5–4 decision split along ideological lines that might be perceived as partisan and political.

National health care has been a liberal dream for a hundred years. It is clearly the most significant piece of social legislation in decades. Roberts’s concern was that the Court do everything it could to avoid being seen, rightly or wrongly, as high-handedly overturning sweeping legislation passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president.

How to reconcile the two imperatives — one philosophical and the other institutional? Assign yourself the task of writing the majority opinion. Find the ultimate finesse that manages to uphold the law, but only on the most narrow of grounds — interpreting the individual mandate as merely a tax, something generally within the power of Congress.

Result? The law stands, thus obviating any charge that a partisan Court overturned duly passed legislation. And yet at the same time the Commerce Clause is reined in. By denying that it could justify the imposition of an individual mandate, Roberts draws the line against the inexorable decades-old expansion of congressional power under the Commerce Clause fig leaf.

Law upheld, Supreme Court’s reputation for neutrality maintained. Commerce Clause contained, constitutional principle of enumerated powers reaffirmed.

That’s not how I would have ruled. I think the “mandate is merely a tax” argument is a dodge, and a flimsy one at that. (The “tax” is obviously punitive, regulatory, and intended to compel.) Perhaps that’s not how Roberts would have ruled had he been just an associate justice, and not the chief. But that’s how he did rule.

Obamacare is now essentially upheld. There’s only one way it can be overturned. The same way it was passed — elect a new president and a new Congress. That’s undoubtedly what Roberts is saying: Your job, not mine. I won’t make it easy for you.

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MOST SICKENING DEVELOPMENT IS THAT BARACK OBAMA'S FLAWED AND INEFFECTIVE JOBS EFFORTS ARE GETTING THE CREDIT FOR THE SUCCESSES OF GOP GOVERNORS LIKE JOHN KASICH OF OHIO AND OTHERS...

How Ironic, Barack Obama getting credit for the improving job situation in states like OH where Gov. Kasich and GOP controlled legislature are really responsible. Plus there are more GOP Governors at work in states where Obama will travel around claiming that he caused the improvements: Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and even Florida. This makes it a delicate balancing act for the GOP Governors and Mitt Romney who wants to emphasize Obama's poor performance with the economy and jobs--and yet these governors have made big progress--a sign of what could be done IF the right decisions were made nationwide.

THIS IS HARD TO BELIEVE--BUT APPARENTLY TRUE!

The height of arrogance? Or hubris? Or something. Somebody--how about a majority of voting Americans—needs to send this guy a message. "Go back home to live with your crooks and radicals in Chicago." Disgraceful!

Download Obama Campaign: Give Us Your Wedding Gifts - Advertising Age AND HOW IS THIS ONE FOR A CLOSER?

Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went straight to her grandparent's house to visit her 95-year-old grandmother and comfort her. When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied, "He had a heart attack while we were making love on Sunday morning." Horrified, Katie told her grandmother that 2 people nearly 100 years old having sex would surely be asking for trouble. "Oh no, my dear," replied granny. "Many years ago, realizing our advanced age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start to ring. It was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the Ding and out on the Dong. She paused to wipe away a tear, and continued, "He'd still be alive if the ice cream truck hadn't come along…

OK, "THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!"

HAVE A GREAT JULY 4, INDEPENDENCE DAY--AND BE READY TO STRIKE A BLOW FOR EVEN MORE FREEDOM IN NOVEMBER, 2012

BEST, JOHN

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Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, and the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY. Come see my blog posts on Forbes.com