SCOTUS on a very hot Thursday morning. Right wingers in droves are chanting, their leader blaring out on the only microphone why SCOTUS should decide in their favor. Obamacare violates the First Amendment. It will put insurance companies out of business. The stock market will tank. Taxes will be raised--one less vacation for any unfortunate lower-upper earning a paltry $250,000 or more?
I can't find the Democracy Now! folks but the MSM are out in force, suits and all (sweat!), with Fox very decisively parked in front, ordering me off their territory when I walk past them. La dee dah. I was press, I said. "Be nice." "I am nice," blathers back the Foxoid. Whose sidewalk? The taxpayers', you blip.
The Dems are quiet, though evident--far fewer than their foes, far more splintered since the Progs, many of them, are alienated. A few voices request single-payer healthcare or expanding Medicare. One poster backs this up. One. Why?
From a distance you'd think it was us, those noisemakers. They've stolen our vehicles. This became more evident after the 5-4 decision became public shortly after 10 a.m. Five to 4 as usual, and I assumed the expected usual, but the justice Time magazine called the Decider last week, more powerful in this case than the president, didn't cast the decisive vote. Roberts, the other wavering justice back a few weeks ago, decided that Obamacare was the people's business, not SCOTUS's--the people's business as expressed in Congress by our representatives. The citizens' problems are theirs to fix, not the Supreme Court's.
So is interstate commerce Congress's affair, not SCOTUS's, went the Democratic argument.
There was a compromise that involved not adding funding to Medicaid--I haven't gotten the details yet, but let's compromise more often, guys.
As a companion and I eyed the ruckus from across the street after the decision went public, I said, "This is what democracy looks like," regretting that the vociferous minority might access the scene differently.
Note all the scaffolding amid the SCOTUS spread (sorry I had my digital camera on the wrong setting!). Doesn't that say a lot about the state of the Union? Braces on its teeth or worse?
We've got better ideas about reforming healthcare, said the protesters. "Why in hell didn't they produce their suggestions sooner?" I asked my companion.
No loud cheers from the left wing? Did they know in advance? Curiouser and curiouser.
A few suits emerged from the august neoclassical structure. First to address the crowd was Congressman Jeff Landry (R-LA), mad as hell: "Repeal this tax!"
The next official to speak was named Humphreys, or Humphrey (former Republican senator from New Hampshire, the "Live free or die" state?), mocking the left, bemoaning what he projected us as chanting: "Hey hey, ho ho! Obamacare is here to stay!" (or something like that). He was in no mood to come up with a better chant for us. How about "Yippee yay! Obamacare is here to stay!" That was easy. Romney will repeal it, for sure. He's changed a lot since governing Massachusetts and furnishing such an important prototype.
"We must fight," the dignitary continued. Someone mumbled that those who would benefit from Obamacare had never paid a cent in taxes.
An evangelical clergyman who lived across the street from SCOTUS (in the Capitol building??) told the heterogeneous crowd that Justice Kennedy denounced the decision. He knew that Roberts knew that Congress and Obama had lied to the people. He denounced the prospective tax hike and the penalty for those who choose to opt out of Obamacare.
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