The debt issue will never go away, as long as there is anything left of the welfare state. Because the fiction that the debt is a terrible problem is the cloak that hides the right-wing attack on social problems.

It’s good that you quoted that famous remark of hers, because it sums up her political philosophy so well. It’s like the right-wingers in this country who preach that government doesn’t work. They really mean to add, “elect us and we’ll prove it!” With Thatcher it was, “there is no such thing as society. Elect me and I’ll make sure that’s true by destroying what society there is!” And she very nearly did.

Romney’s first name is “Willard.” Why don’t Democrats start calling him “Dubya Mitt Romney?”

Every word in both those quotations from Ferguson is a lie. Including the various occurrences of ‘and’ and ‘the.’

Excellent story, KG. Further evidence, if more were needed, that there is a large faction of mainstream, so-called “liberals” who really don’t give a damn about the First Amendment.

So there are actual death panels all across the country. They are more familiarly known as Republican-controlled state legislatures.

“I think this is both true and false.”

Actually, nothing is both true and false, and I’m afraid I don’t think DD makes it clear what he might mean. DD has some kind of objection to what Krugman is saying, but all I can get is that he thinks Europe should “put down the band-aids.” That’s hardly something Krugman would disagree with. But it’s irrelevant anyway, because Krugman is in prediction mode in this post, not recommendation mode. He is claiming, roughly, the following. Greece is going to exit the euro one way or another, and soon. There might possibly be a manageable exit for it, if the ECB provided massive funds, etc., etc. But based on past history, and on recent remarks by the German vice chancellor which indicate that the major players don’t understand the severity of the situation, it is very unlikely that the Germans are “ready to see that.” Hence, what is likely to happen is a messy and ugly exit for Greece, with attendant financial disruption on a large scale, of which we should all “be very afraid.”

So what part of this prediction does DD think false?

Wow, great endorsement of your party’s presidential candidate, John!

Well, the only thing that would make it not weird is if there is something in there that is sooooooooo bad that almost any damage he sustains for not releasing it is better than releasing it.

“It essentially said, ‘You expand your program to where we tell you, and if you don’t, we’re taking the rest of your money away.’ Well, that’s extortion,” Christie said [...]”

We are all familiar with the idiot teabaggers who said, “keep your government hands off my Medicare (or Social Security)!” These clowns thought that these benefits were “theirs” by divine right or something, and were ignorant of the fact that they flow from government.

In much the same way, Christie is in effect saying, “keep your federal government hands off our Medicaid funds,” and seems to think that the funds in question belong to the states by divine right. But the fact is that those funds were given to the states by the federal government under a federal program that the feds can alter any time they want.

At least that’s the way it ought to be, and would be if we didn’t have an extreme right-wing court.

Suppose that, out of the pure goodness of my heart, I start handing out a lollipop to each student in my class every day. After a time, I announce that I will thenceforth hand out *two* lollipops to all the students who come to class on time, and as an incentive to do so, I will cease giving any lollipops to students who come late. Imagine a student who protests, “you can keep the second lollipop if I’m late, but you have no right taking away the first one!”

If you think that student has a case, you could be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

I understand Roberts’s reasoning about the ACA mandate/penalty/tax to be a bit more complicated than DD thinks. Note the interplay of the modals in the following:

(1) The mandate CAN be regarded as a penalty associated with a requirement to purchase insurance.
(2) The mandate CAN be regarded as a tax.
(3) There is no other way the mandate can be regarded.
(4) If the mandate is read as a penalty, it is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
(5) If the mandate is read as a tax, it is constitutional under the taxing power.
(6) If there is a unique way a statute CAN be read under which it is constitutional, then it MUST be read that way, out of deference to the legislative authority. Hence,
(7) The mandate MUST be regarded as a tax (i.e., it IS a tax).

(7) follows from (1) – (6), and all six of those premises are needed to get to the conclusion. But (4) has no analogue with respect to Romneycare, as there is no “Commerce Clause” for the states. So Romney can claim that Roberts’s reasoning does not apply to his Massachusetts program.

Roberts’s reasoning in support of (2) would seem to apply to Romneycare, however. So, at a minimum, Romney ought to admit that his mandate CAN be regarded as a tax, even though it does not have to be so regarded to be constitutional.

I understand Roberts’s reasoning about the mandate/penalty/tax to be a bit more complicated than DD thinks. Note the interplay of the modals in the following:

(1) The mandate CAN be regarded as a penalty, associated with a requirement to buy insurance.
(2) The mandate CAN be regarded as a tax.
(3) There is no other way to regard the mandate.
(4) If the mandate is regarded as a penalty, it is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
(5) If the mandate is regarded as a tax, it is constitutional under the taxing power.
(6) If there is a unique way a statute CAN be read under which it is constitutional, then it MUST be regarded that way (out of judicial deference to the legislative authority.)
Hence,
(7) The mandate MUST be regarded as a tax (i.e., it IS a tax).

(7) follows from (1) – (6), and all six of these premises are needed to get to (7). However, (4) cannot be true of Romney’s Massachusetts insurance mandate, since there is no “Commerce Clause” for the states. So Romney can argue that Roberts’s reasoning does not apply to Romneycare in Massachusetts.

The reasons Roberts gives in support of (2), however, do seem to apply equally to Romney’s mandate. So that can be regarded as either a penalty or a tax, and it is constitutional either way. At a minimum, Romney should admit that his mandate CAN be regarded as a tax, though I’m sure he won’t.

Prosecute the bastards for child sexual abuse.

The “big boy pants” remark tells you everything you need to know about this sicko. It’s all about showing what a man he is, which in his depraved mind you do by torturing someone who is shackled and can’t fight back. He’s obsessed with his own masculinity because he knows in his heart he’s a gutless, spineless coward.

Krugman sez health care reform doesn’t work without the mandate:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/naked-blackmail/

Do you know something PK doesn’t? Of course, single payer would be better, but we know that is not going to happen anytime soon. We could add a public option, but that wouldn’t really be an alternative to the mandate, just a another way of complying with it. I don’t know what else you have in mind, could you explain?

I know facts are stupid things, but there is not a shred of evidence in this report that Democratic losses were due to the lack of a public option. The report claims that large numbers of voters perceived votes for the healthcare plan as evidence that their representatives were more liberal then they were, and accordingly voted for their opponents. This effect, to the extent it is real, was obviously due largely to GOP disinformation about what the plan contained. Of course, it may be true that if the public option had been included, more liberals would have turned out to vote for Democrats, thereby minimizing the effect of Republican disinformation. But this report does not address that issue at all–the phrase “public option” occurs nowhere in it. So again, whatever the truth may be, there is no evidence *in this report* that has any bearing on the consequences of the lack of the public option for the 2010 races.

‘Obama, said Carney, felt that, “the kinds of personal attacks that have been directed her way have been inappropriate.”’

Whoa, that’s telling ‘em, Big O!

“Inappropriate” is when you wear brown shoes with a black suit. The proper words for what Limbaugh said are “vile,” “despicable,” “odious,” “loathsome,” “cowardly,” “sub-human,”. . . I could go on but I loaned my Thesaurus to my roommate.