5 Days Left......

[Harlan Huckleby]

Re: 5 Days Left......

I do think there will be pretty dramatic change if Obama is elected. His actual views are far to the left.

How do you know?

With Obama as pres. these guys could be virtually unchecked - and they are pretty far from mainstream, not to mention Obama himself.

What is mainstream? The views of laizzez faire capitalists (like your heroine, Ayn Rand) have never been more discredited. Well, maybe since the 1930's. PEople want regulation of markets, and they want access to health care.

edit: regulation of FINANCIAL markets

[mraynrand]

Re: 5 Days Left......

I do think there will be pretty dramatic change if Obama is elected. His actual views are far to the left.

How do you know?

With Obama as pres. these guys could be virtually unchecked - and they are pretty far from mainstream, not to mention Obama himself.

What is mainstream? The views of laizzez faire capitalists (like your heroine, Ayn Rand) have never been more discredited. Well, maybe since the 1930's. PEople want regulation of markets, and they want access to health care.

The little he's revealed in writings, voting record, attitude towards judges (empathy for single moms a top priority), attitude towards middle America, democratic platform positions (a government solution for everything), etc.

Your second comment is gibberish and completely off the mark. There are no pure capitalistic markets, there is intense regulation of markets and people in the U.S. have total access to health care. Oh, and Ayn Rand is not my heroine, but do we need to go through that again?

[Harlan Huckleby]

Re: 5 Days Left......

people in the U.S. have total access to health care.

Then why does anybody pay for health insurance if everybody has access?

decent health care is effectively withheld from at least 50 M people and growing. They can't afford it.

IF you say that Obama's positions are out of the mainstream, I believe you are out of touch.

[mraynrand]

Re: 5 Days Left......

people in the U.S. have total access to health care.

Then why does anybody pay for health insurance if everybody has access?

decent health care is effectively withheld from at least $50 M people and growing. They can't afford it.

IF you say that Obama's positions are out of the mainstream, I believe you are out of touch.

I agree that Obama's STATED positions - the positions that are put forth to the public are mainstream. I do believe that a lot of people supporting him don't know what they are actually getting. They want free stuff and he is promising it. I guess that is mainstream.

You are out of touch about healthcare to a large extent. of the 50 million who do not have health care, about 20% (and more) can afford it but chose not to purchase it (This is the largest growing class of uninsured - people making over 40K). All children and most adults are already covered by schip, medicare or medicaid, only they don't know it. Once they go in for care, they are signed up. Then next huge class of uninsured are illegals - from 12 - 20 million of them. They are included in the 50 million uninsured and they will be the greatest beneficiaries of any nationalized scheme. Access is completely unlimited. Virtually every major metropolitan area down to the smallest city has public hospitals that do not turn away patients. Many have the motto "We respect the dignity of those in our care, serving them with compassion and high quality, regardless of their ability to pay"
http://www.metrohealth.org/body.cfm?id=1177 and fork out hundreds of millions of free care.

The health care system is a mess, for reasons I and others have outlined elsewhere. Access and quality of care is very high. I believe there are some major reforms needed, but I think what Obama proposes will take the system in the wrong direction (and not because doctors won't work because they won't be paid enough).

[mraynrand]

Re: 5 Days Left......

Then why does anybody pay for health insurance if everybody has access?.

I think this line sums up the future of health care under the Obama plan if you replace 'access' with 'free health care'. (and could be applied to all his other governmental programs).

to the point: access to healthcare is not the same as ability or willingness to pay for healthcare.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Re: 5 Days Left......

to the point: access to healthcare is not the same as ability or willingness to pay for healthcare.

a meaningless distinction. if people can't afford health care, they effectively don't have access.

[mraynrand]

Re: 5 Days Left......

if people can't afford health care, they effectively don't have access.

That is completely and totally false. Completely and totally false. Totally wrong. Got it?

[Harlan Huckleby]

Got it. that's a relief, maybe things aren't so bad.

[mraynrand]

Got it. that's a relief, maybe things aren't so bad.

Nice job, Mr. all or none. I already said the system is bad. There are a lot of people who cannot afford healthcare, and it's important to find a way to get them to the point of affording it. And paying for it if they can. Like a lot of government programs, I believe Barack's will lead people further away from thinking they have to worry about paying for health care. And that will make them bad consumers of health care - which in turn has all kinds of negative effects on the system - including largesses for many companies and docs pushing things patients don't need. I think that stuff can best be rooted out by patient choice rather than by a huge Washington run bureaucracy.

[mraynrand]

Re: 5 Days Left......

if people can't afford health care, they effectively don't have access.

That is completely and totally false. Completely and totally false. Totally wrong. Got it?

I know I'm being an asshole about this, but I hope you'll look at the points I'm trying to make anyway.

[HowardRoark]

This just in...."this is a fake controversy......it's seven years old."

So, keeping score:

Ayers; he was 8.

Wright; aww, c'mon, I wasn't really there.

Radio interview; 7 years old.

Joe the Plumber; Thumb Screws

[MJZiggy]

Granted, I didn't have time to read the paper and I haven't seen the news yet, but are we remembering to note the difference between health CARE and health COVERAGE, small distinction, but two different animals. I see the possibility that you're fighting about different things.

[texaspackerbacker]

everyone just needs to calm the fuck down. it's not gonna matter one bit if your "guy" doesn't win, nor is it going to make a bit of difference if your "guy" wins.

Same shit, different day

There actually is a degree of merit in this argument.

Assuming the leftist piece-of-shit gets elected, America CAN survive all the socialist crap/redistribution of wealth/whatever that he intends to and undoubtedly will be able to ram through. The people will digest it, get a bad taste in their mouth, spit it out, and gradually swing back to what got us to the top of the heap.

The COLOSSAL fly in the ointment here, though, is the horrendous and extremely more likely prospect of terrorist hits in America due to the policies Obama advocates. THAT is something America just might NOT be able to return to normalcy from.

We take an awful lot for granted in this country--both in the realm of freedom and in the realm of prosperity. It's amazing how so many on both sides of the political spectrum can be so blind to the spectre of terrorist hits and the chaotic aftermath taking all that away from us.

It's no accident or product of luck that there have been no repeats of 9/11. It is due to clear cut policies and actions of the Bush Administration. Obama opposes ALL of those actions and policies. Yet there are enough people hoodwinked that he's probably gonna get elected.

There better be a God, and he better be on America's side. If not, we don't have a prayer.

[HowardRoark]

Long, but pretty good article:

Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution

The courts are poised for a takeover by the judicial left.By

STEVEN G. CALABRESI

One of the great unappreciated stories of the past eight years is how thoroughly Senate Democrats thwarted efforts by President Bush to appoint judges to the lower federal courts.

Chad CroweConsider the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his two terms as president, Ronald Reagan appointed eight judges, an average of one a year, to this court. They included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Larry Silberman, Stephen Williams, James Buckley, Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle. In his two terms, George W. Bush was able to name only four: John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh.

Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.
The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation's most important regulatory court of appeals.

The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts. Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.

On the Supreme Court, six of the current nine justices will be 70 years old or older on January 20, 2009. There is a widespread expectation that the next president could make four appointments in just his first term, with maybe two more in a second term. Here too we are poised for heavy change.

These numbers ought to raise serious concern because of Mr. Obama's extreme left-wing views about the role of judges. He believes -- and he is quite open about this -- that judges ought to decide cases in light of the empathy they ought to feel for the little guy in any lawsuit.

Speaking in July 2007 at a conference of Planned Parenthood, he said: "[W]e need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

On this view, plaintiffs should usually win against defendants in civil cases; criminals in cases against the police; consumers, employees and stockholders in suits brought against corporations; and citizens in suits brought against the government. Empathy, not justice, ought to be the mission of the federal courts, and the redistribution of wealth should be their mantra.

In a Sept. 6, 2001, interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ-FM, Mr. Obama noted that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society," and "to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical."

He also noted that the Court "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted." That is to say, he noted that the U.S. Constitution as written is only a guarantee of negative liberties from government -- and not an entitlement to a right to welfare or economic justice.

This raises the question of whether Mr. Obama can in good faith take the presidential oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" as he must do if he is to take office. Does Mr. Obama support the Constitution as it is written, or does he support amendments to guarantee welfare? Is his provision of a "tax cut" to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth? Perhaps the candidate ought to be asked to answer these questions before the election rather than after.

Every new federal judge has been required by federal law to take an oath of office in which he swears that he will "administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich." Mr. Obama's emphasis on empathy in essence requires the appointment of judges committed in advance to violating this oath. To the traditional view of justice as a blindfolded person weighing legal claims fairly on a scale, he wants to tear the blindfold off, so the judge can rule for the party he empathizes with most.

The legal left wants Americans to imagine that the federal courts are very right-wing now, and that Mr. Obama will merely stem some great right-wing federal judicial tide. The reality is completely different. The federal courts hang in the balance, and it is the left which is poised to capture them.
A whole generation of Americans has come of age since the nation experienced the bad judicial appointments and foolish economic and regulatory policy of the Johnson and Carter administrations. If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors; and approval of huge punitive damage awards, like those imposed against tobacco companies, against many legitimate businesses such as those selling fattening food.

Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation's courtrooms.

Mr. Calabresi is a co-founder of the Federalist Society and a professor of law at Northwestern University.

Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

[HowardRoark]

Looks like we have a theme today.

October 28, 2008
Obama and the Law
By Thomas Sowell

One of the biggest and most long-lasting "change" to expect if Barack Obama becomes President of the United States is in the kinds of federal judges he appoints. These include Supreme Court justices, as well as other federal justices all across the country, all of whom will have lifetime tenure.

Senator Obama has stated very clearly what kinds of Supreme Court justices he wants-- those with "the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old."

Like so many things that Obama says, it may sound nice if you don't stop and think-- and chilling if you do stop and think. Do we really want judges who decide cases based on who you are, rather than on the facts and the law?

If the case involves a white man versus a black woman, should the judge decide that case differently than if both litigants are of the same race or sex?

The kind of criteria that Barack Obama promotes could have gotten three young men at Duke University sent to prison for a crime that neither they nor anybody else committed.

Didn't we spend decades in America, and centuries in Western civilization, trying to get away from the idea that who you are determines what your legal rights are?

What kind of judges are we talking about?

A classic example is federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin, who could have bankrupted a small New Jersey town because they decided to stop putting up with belligerent homeless men who kept disrupting their local public library. Judge Sarokin's rulings threatened the town with heavy damage awards, and the town settled the case by paying $150,000 to the leading disrupter of its public library.

After Bill Clinton became president, he elevated Judge Sarokin from the district court to the Circuit Court of Appeals. Would President Barack Obama elevate him-- or others like him-- to the Supreme Court? Judge Sarokin certainly fits Obama's job description for a Supreme Court justice.

A court case should not depend on who you are and who the judge is. We are supposed to be a country with "the rule of law and not of men."

Like all human beings, Americans haven't always lived up to our ideals. But Obama is proposing the explicit repudiation of that ideal itself.

That is certainly "change," but is it one that most Americans believe in? Or is it something that we may end up with anyway, just because too many voters cannot be bothered to look beyond rhetoric and style?

We can vote a president out of office at the next election if we don't like him. But we can never vote out the federal judges he appoints in courts across the country, including justices of the Supreme Court.

The kind of judges that Barack Obama wants to appoint can still be siding with criminals or terrorists during the lifetime of your children and grandchildren.

The Constitution of the United States will not mean much if judges carry out Obama's vision of the Constitution as "a living document"-- that is, something that judges should feel free to change by "interpretation" to favor particular individuals, groups or causes.

We have already seen where that leads with the 2005 Kelo Supreme Court decision that allows local politicians to take people's homes or businesses and transfer that property to others. Almost invariably, these are the homes of working class people and small neighborhood businesses that are confiscated under the government's power of eminent domain. And almost invariably they are transferred to developers who will build shopping malls, hotels or other businesses that will bring in more tax revenue.

The Constitution protected private property, precisely in order to prevent such abuses of political power, leaving a small exception when property is taken for "public use," such as the government's building a reservoir or a highway.

But just by expanding "public use" to mean "public purpose"-- which can be anything-- the Supreme Court opened the floodgates.

That's not "a living Constitution." That's a dying Constitution-- and an Obama presidency can kill it off.