Do the Hokey Pokey

"Words no longer have meaning" says Justice Scalia and he should know, being a major contributor to the vocabulary of Right Wing babble.

Chief Justice Roberts' reasoning in yesterday's decision on the Affordible Care Act was "Argle-bargle. The decision against the Defense of Marriage Act was "Jiggery-pokery."  That's the power of words to hide the embarrassing truth and in Scalia's case,  the truth is he's arguing the reverse of last years' Bargerly Argle.

"Three years ago, when the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality was challenged, Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito read the law in such a way as to see all eligible consumers receiving subsidies, regardless of state or federal exchanges. In today’s dissent, these three had to read the law in the polar opposite way" writes Steve Benin. 

Contradictions like these say a lot. They say that the Court's most "conservative" spokesmen see the law in a rather situational way, That is to say it's right or wrong depending on who's doctrinal ox is being gored.  In this case maybe we can call it argumentum ad Obama, or "whatever he does is wrong."  If words have lost their meaning, which in a sense is true, perhaps it has much to do with the kind of rhetorical  wriggle-wragle or humpity-bumpidy defenders of  antiquated hoogely-boogely use to justify their dishonest HokeyPokey

Say, how many worms are in that can?

Americans like words like Freedom and Liberty and perhaps because those ideas scare us so much. We are terrified of coercion by a government we all choose but we love to coerce those who disagree with us and deny them the right to choose.  We certainly are rarely in agreement as to what it means to be a free country and I might dare to say that question is still central to political argument today.  How do we define freedom?

• " It's a free country and I can do what I want." 
• " It's a free country and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do."

Some would equate those statements, others would point out that the first is true within limits and the second isnot, but the idea that freedom carries no obligation and indeed that in a free country it never should seems common amongst extremists.  Unfortunately extremists have a stranglehold on the Supreme Court and perhaps on Congress.  The recent decision regarding the ACA mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for contraception shows that the court sides with the second example and that when it comes to the concept of  freedom of religion and perhaps freedom of speech, personal beliefs convey personal privilege, but because this is such a limited ruling, the inherent hypocrisy becomes apparent.

If  I believe interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg is murder, it's because of a religious interpretation of murder other people do not share and an interpretation of humanity and human rights that borders on the ludicrous. Citing a definition of freedom I do not believe the Constitution shares, the God Squad on the court allows me to opt out of  having my corporation pay for insurance that might pay for a "morning after" medication and perhaps any form of contraception. That court and indeed all courts do not provide immunity for other religious or other personal opinions and specifically not to opt our of paying for wars and executions and that is proof that one specific belief is being given special rights and others are not.  This violates the constitutional prohibition against establishment.

How will we see yesterday's ruling when other religious groups decide they don't want indirect participation in executing prisoners, bombing foreign countries and a host of other activities?  Will the court have to say this opinion is privileged and that one is not?  Haven't they just done that?  Does an aversion to contraception become an excuse to opt out of  an obligation only if  it's tied to some organized faith or is a personal dislike sufficient?  That question was answered during the years we had the draft.  It was damned hard to establish personal aversion to war without showing long term affiliation with a pacifist religion and not just a pacifist philosophy.

There can be little doubt that our government is in the business of establishing religious belief and assigning special privileges, special rights to members thereof.  There isn't a damned thing we can do seeing that the independence we make a fuss about every July was so limited.  We severed ties with the United Kingdom but not with Christianity as a force that legitimizes government and those who demand and assert the "Christian Nation"  idea are no more patriots or advocates for freedom than the Hessian troops George II hired to kill our revolutionary patriots.

It will be very hard to cite this decision as limited to the case that prompted it, and there are so many worms in that can that everyone will be able to fish for whatever special dispensation from any obligation he dislikes and our reputation for sanity, if we ever had one, won't need any bit of lead to make it sink to the bottom.

NIH shutdown

Well isn't that special?  You know that RomneyObamacare bill forced on us by the people we elected to do just that is a terrible thing, not only because of the Death Panels that it does not include which replace the Insurance company death panels that do exist but because it's going make the US just like those backward countries like - well like most countries actually - that provide health care insurance or at least make it possible to buy it.  When something is passed in Congress, by duly elected representatives, signed by a duly elected president and confirmed as to its legality by the Supreme Court -- it's not enough. The Tea Party after all is the only authority and  your vote just doesn't mean shit.

Republican doctors, even those who are not doctors tell us that "Obamacare" is just awful because you might have to wait for that ingrown toenail operation so that someone with chest pains or cancer can get immediate assistance. Even those Republicans who thought it was great before Obama are now shouting themselves hoarse

To make sure that doesn't happen, they have decided to sabotage the government and miliary operations and if people who were waiting for clinical trials through the National Institutes of Health, they can just go to Canada, or Sweden or Switzerland or any of those damned Godless Communist hell-holes because overthrowing the US government against the wished of the electorate is the patriotic thing to do.  About 200 people register for NIH clinical trials every week, many of them children with cancer who are expendable after all  considering the importance of making sure they never get health insurance in their lives even if they survive -- and making sure their parents have to declare bankruptcy - if they can under the Republican sponsored bankruptcy laws, but such things are just collateral damage after all.  It's only a small thing compared to the rest of the consequences of the shutdown in terms of the economy and national security and those consequences are exactly what the Republicans hope for, economic collapse, some major attack we could have prevented if  we hadn't laid off  all those DHS people and civilian employees.  Hell, taking food stamps away from military families already unable to survive on their salaries is part of the same effort:  the end of the USA as we know it.