The omission of severability seems likely to have been intentional. I get the sense that the Obama White House calculated that if it was in there it would be too easy for a future Congress to strip it. And that would undermine the deal Obama forged. A deal which is now looking too clever by half.

As for why the mandate was even there while the public option wasn’t allowed to be considered, simple. Obama’s instincts are all directed at striking the perfect middle ground. This nature of his, which looks increasing like a character flaw, led him to find some way to balance changing the health care system while preserving the for-profit skimming insurance industry.

I don’t think the reform was ever about a better health system, it was about creating signature legislation that showcased Obama’s ability to find that perfect compromise. He never set out to fix anything.

Obama, August 2009: “We need a uniquely American Health Care System”. I cringed when he said that, I knew he was going to entrench the for-profit health care insurance industry.

Well, it’s uniquely American, alright. It’s being challenged in court and stands a chance of being killed or gutted. On the plus side, if the mandate is struck down but everything else stands, that just might bankrupt the insurance companies.

It really was election fraud, even if fraudulent voters were used to rig the election. My rule of thumb is this: if those running the election rig the results, it’s election fraud.

We’ve looked carefully at Part 1 and taken time to analyze and reexamine everything from the script to the casting.

Reexamine the casting? Nothing says successful sequel like new actors. Imagine Frodo being someone different for each Lord of the Rings movie. Or Harry Potter. Oh sure, rotating leads mostly worked for Batman, but the main character there isn’t so much the actor, but a man dressed like a bat.

On the other hand, that’s basically what was done with Journey 2, replacing Encino Man with The Rock.

The crux of the Social Security “crisis” is to keep engineering “bankruptcy” 30 years in the future as a justification for cutting benefits and undermining the program. Meanwhile taking money out of the trust fund to use for other things with a so-called promise to pay it back. Just change the law to avoid paying anything back, that’s the ultimate goal.

It makes me mad/sad to recall how much the corporate media mocked Al Gore for his “lockbox” idea on Social Security funds, right as he was.

The payroll tax cut is a nice way to underfund Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment Benefits. Nice backhanded way of undermining the social safety net.

Yesterday Obama forcefully said he would veto any attempt to undo the automatic cuts. Today he called for Congress to extend the payroll exemption. Since the expiring payroll exemption is one of the automatic cuts, I find Obama’s statements inconsistent.

I believe his call for Germany to bail out Europe is gravely misguided.

No, the ECB needs to print money to give to the banksters to cover their losses. It’s not “bailing out Europe”, it’s making the debts of banks disappear. The banks mismanaged their risks while gambling, and the house needs to cover their bets.

Making people in the various countries suffer is just sadistic policy, much worse than risking a slight rise in inflation by printing some more money.

I find it disturbing (and a fatal flaw of the parliamentary system), that unelected banksters are being put in charge of countries to gut them. It’s like watching private equity firms take over and strip out all of the value. The MOTUs explaining on news outlets why this is good is alarming and bizarre: “So-and-so knows everyone, he can play the game properly.”

Meanwhile, apparently, Germany is so traumatized by hyperinflation that they refuse to print free money (as Atrios recommends). What they seem to be missing, however, is that the crippling austerity being forced on people in these countries could very well be laying the groundwork for the kind of demoralized society Germany became because of hyperinflation.

I don’t think people realize how big of a deal it is that Bob Fletcher got ousted by voters, he was probably the biggest anti-civil liberties GOP operative in Minnesota. So yeah, his getting “fired” after his handling of the GOP convention was pretty important, even if the local media totally ignored the story.

I think Obama declaring himself the “underdog” is wishful campaign marketing, they want to run the election that way. But he’s the sitting president, and right now the GOP has a clown show for opposition. I don’t think Obama’s likely to lose unless the GOP can field a reality-based candidate, which hasn’t shown itself to be the case yet.

My first reaction to the statement was what a poorly-executed job of setting up the campaign narrative because it’s so blatant. My second reaction was that this is just another way Obama looks weak, because his opposition is ludicrous at this point. It really seems like making excuses for failure in his job.

(And no, I don’t think people expect him to have fixed everything. But he’s really failed to even competently try the right things.)

Sure, pick on Greece for their poor fiscal management. But then look over at the UK and note how austerity there is collapsing the British economy as well.

Has anyone else noticed the apparent rebranding of “frack” to “frac”? Seems the environmentalists and concerned public who talked about this early on call it “fracking” but now that corporate media are involved suddenly it’s “frac’ing” everywhere. I can only assume the corporate powers feel dropping the ‘k’ makes the word seem less vulgar.

There’s a huge battle brewing in Wisconsin over the creating of huge sand pit mining operations for taking sand for fracking. And Minnesota is banning the sand mining.

The Supreme Court’s habit of last-minute appeal deliberations seems to me to violate the Eight Amendment. Imagine the mental torture of being strapped to the gurney, minutes away from dying, and waiting for word on whether or not the Supreme Court will intervene.

Note how Troy Davis was tortured:

- First execution was stayed one day before he was scheduled to die.

- Second execution was stayed less than two hours before he was scheduled to die.

- Third execution was stayed three days before he was scheduled to die.

- Fourth execution stay was delayed an hour after his scheduled execution because the Supreme Court announced they would review his petition. Several hours later they denied it, and he was executed.

This is an inhumane and barbaric process.

I get all that, but it doesn’t explain why Greece has to stop using the Euro. The French and German banks should have factored in the appropriate risks when lending money to Greece, seems like their failure more than Greece’s. Like I said, Greece won’t be able to borrow money so easily but it sure beats the ravages of austerity measures to appease banksters who seem to think they should never face risk.

I don’t understand why “default” and “exit Eurozone” are tied together. Can’t Greece just default, let the investors eat their losses (like they’re supposed to) and go back to business? Sure, they’re a higher risk for future loans, but someone will loan them money.

El Salvador uses the US Dollar as its currency, but the United States doesn’t dictate their economic policy. So why must Greece leave the Eurozone unless kicked out? I really don’t understand why one follows the other.

If what everyone is saying about Obama’s jobs plan is true, it’s not nearly bold enough to be taken seriously, so why should it last more than week? It’s just more tinkering with current policy, meaningless in scope. There’s almost a perverseness to Bush’s law-flouting actions that broadened executive power being followed immediately by Obama’s timidity that is shrinking it.

I have to give credit to the White House when they said the other day that nobody was going to care about the scheduling screw-up. They were right, there was a much bigger cave to the GOP just hours away from happening…