You say . . . I say . . .

The Affordable Health Care Act (H.R. 3962), which Republicans have dubbed "ObamaCare," is under attack. They have reportedly given up on chances for total repeal, knowing that the Senate would not go along and that Obama would veto it.

So they're chipping away, the prime target being the mandated universal participation. States are suing to have that declared unconstitutional.

They say: "You can't force people to participate in commerce."

I say: "Fine. Let's use the power to tax."

Simply drop H.R.3962 and expand Medicare to cover everyone -- and raise taxes to pay for it.

That way everybody is "given" health care rather than forced to buy it. Like all the other advanced Western nations, who get better overall health care at far less cost.

OK? Agreed? You don't want to be forced; we'll give it to you -- and then make you pay for it. I could live with that.

Ralph

Change of pace

A Jewish friend sent me some "Jewish haiku." I'm the first to insist that you don't have to be Jewish to have had a "Jewish mother." Southern fundamentalist mothers can be every bit as guilt-inducing and infantalizing. So my stereotyping is multi-religious. The difference is that their children have not yet acquired the salving grace of wit to deal with it.

Here are some that made me chuckle with recognition [with annotation for some of my friends who may not know the associations].

Today I am a man
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade.
[Bar Mitzvah]

On Passover we
opened the door for Elijah.
Now our dog is gone.
[leaving the door open for Elijah is part of the Seder]

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly
But her son is forty.
[no explanation needed]

Sorry I'm not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news.

Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?

A lovely nose ring,
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.

Jewish Buddhism:
If there is no self,
whose arthritis is this?

Inner curmudgeon #5

There's political bloviation and obfuscation, and there's campaign excess and outright lies.

And then there's the appalling behavior of pretend-journalists that is so biased that it becomes unprofessional and unethical. That's where my inner curmudgeon gets roused.

No one does it as often as the denizens of Fox television network. They're at it again, and it's deplorable.

I have my own ambivalence about the morality of assassinating an unarmed man, even of the likes of Osama bin Laden. I am relieved that he is no longer in the world, and I might very well have given the same order that President Obama did, given all that he had to consider -- sort of like shooting a mad dog in the streets even though it's not in an act of killing that requires immediate self-defense.

The questions here though are philosophical and moral.

FoxNews is just being political -- and, I submit, committing unprofessional journalism (the word 'journalism' hardly even applies to Fox).

Two different Fox anchors have called killing the unarmed Osama "illegal."

Here's what rouses my inner cur:

1. We know, as well as we know the sun will rise tomorrow, that they would not be doing so if GWBush were the president who gave the same orders.

2. We know that the denizens of Fox have led the pack in calling Obama weak and ineffective on foreign policy and war-waging. Now that he's done what they demanded he do, they say it's illegal.

3. We know that if news had leaked that this opportunity to take out Osama had arisen and Obama had not taken it, they would have (figuratively) dragged Obama's body through the streets.

Listen UP, FoxNews: don't try to peddle to this old curmudgeon your tired political smears wrapped in the bloody gauze of morality and integrity. You have none.

None. Absolutely none.

Bah humbug.

Ralph

American enterprise

Newsweek's reporter Daniel Stone tweeted the following:

"Obama got Osama" t-shirts for sale at Farragut Square. Now that's America.

In 12 hours after the announcement of bin Laden's death, American enterprise had already started to cash in. Why don't we have people with that kind of initiative solving the jobless situation?

Ralph

Bin Laden

So we finally killed Osama bin Laden.

My feelings are mixed. I do not rejoice in anyone death, especially not a killing, But bin Laden terrorized the world, was responsible for thousands of deaths, American, Muslims, among others. The world is better off without him.

But here is the irony of the date:

It was exactly 8 years ago, May 1, 2003 that George W. Bush put on his aviator costume and flew onto an aircraft carrier that had been turned around so the TV view wouldn't show it to be in the San Diego harbor but would look like it was out to sea. Because actually the carrier was within helicopter range and could have deposited him on deck without all the heroics of our warrior president bringing in a carrier landing of a fighter jet.

There, under the banner "Mission Accomplished" Bush gave his declaration that major combat operations have ended in Iraq.

That was a little off too -- we could almost claim it now 8 years later.

Obama looked every bit the commander in chief in making his announcement tonight. This should quell -- for a bit, anyway -- talk of him as too weak to handle our foreign affairs.

Not so.

Ralph

Beating a dead horse #6

Adam Liptak, writing in the Sunday New York Times, has a somewhat different reading of the King & Spalding withdrawal from defending DOMA.

He suggests that we have rapidly arrived at a tipping point in public opinion, and that it was this, more than internal struggles on gay marriage among its own staff, that led K&S to take the unusual step of backing out of a contract to defend the House of Representatives in a challenge to the constitutionality of one of its own laws, one that the Obama Justice Department decided not to continue defending.

Liptak writes:

For many gay rights activists, the decision amounts to a turning point in the debate -- the moment at which opposition to same-sex marriage came to look like bigotry, similar to racial discrimination and the subordination of women."

Of course, here he's attributing the assertion to "gay rights activists," but the the tone of the rest of his article supports that view.

It's important to distinguish the point Liptak is making -- a genuine change in social attitudes akin to changing view of race and gender discrimination, not "caving in to pressure" from important clients and staff and gay activists.

I agree that changing societal attitudes is a strong factor. I think K&S's commitment to diversity and to its own gay staff may have put them a bit ahead of the curve among law firms -- but not far ahead. Liptak also points out that the legal profession as a whole has been a leader in acceptance of equal rights for gays and lesbians.

Another factor that no one else seems to consider: K&S's assessment of whether they could make a plausible defense of a bill that, at least in parts, has been deemed unconstitutional by legal scholars. That was the DoJ's rationale for no longer defending it. Maybe it really boils down to this: K&S did not want to take a case they would lose, perhaps look both naive and bigoted in trying to defend, and at the same time alienate their own staff, some of their clients, and much of society.

Ralph

What a week

Lots of important events this past week:

1. Two billion people worldwide watched the wedding of England's future king Prince William and Kate Middleton, hopefully ushering in a new era for a royal family rocked by bad-news scandals involving princes behaving badly. Amid inevitable comparisons to the ill-fated marriage of Charles and Diana 30 years ago, we might hope that the royals decide to skip over tarnished Charles and Camilla and put the fresh and appealing William and Kate in place as soon as 85 year old grand-mum Elizabeth is ready to retire.

2. The late Pope John Paul II will be beatified in Rome today, hopefully ushering in a new era for a Roman Catholic Church rocked by bad-news scandals involving priests behaving badly. John Paul's fast-track to sainthood cleared a major hurdle with the certification of his intercession in the miraculous cure of a nun from Parkinson's disease. Two miracles are required for sainthood. Too bad he couldn't miraculously cure all the little boys of the lasting sexual trauma inflicted on them by abusing priests during his years as pope.

3. President Obama pulled out his birth certificate and pulled the rug out from under the strident birthers and Republican wannabes, hopefully ushering in a new era of campaigning on the vital issues of the day. Not likely: Donald Trump simply took credit for forcing the president to do show and tell; and then he pivoted and claimed that Obama wasn't qualified to attend Ivy League Schools and must have gotten in Columbia and Harvard through affirmative action -- which pretty well proves the racism behind it all. At last night's White House Correspondents Dinner, SNL comedian Seth Meyers shot back that he was surprised to learn that Trump was running for president as a Republican, because he had just assumed he was running as a joke.

4. Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal signed into law the bill that allows local municipalities to hold referendums on retail sale of alcohol on Sunday in their jurisdiction, hopefully ushering in a new era of declining dominance of religious conservatives over our political process. This was no rash decision: I remember in my high school years when our "dry" county held a referendum about sale of alcohol, period, not just on Sundays. The ladies of the Women's Christian Temperance Union thought it was their Christian influence that kept us dry, but it was really the bootleggers who worked behind the scenes for the same cause but from different movites. You know, politics and its strange bedfellows.

5. Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding pulled out of its contract to defend the Defense of Marriage Act for House Republicans, hopefully ushering in a new era that will lead eventually to nationwide legalizing marriage for same-sex couples. K&S found itself between a rock and a hard place when its high profile appeals attorney Paul Clement took the case but signed a contract that included a gag order prohibiting anyone at K&S from speaking positively about gay marriage for the duration of the case. K&S prides itself on promoting diversity, it actively recruits to hire gay and lesbian attorneys, and boasts about it's 95% equality rating from gay-rights watchers. Well-known and out gay lawyers in the firm, who had nothing to do with the case, would have had to keep quiet about gay marriage for, probably, the next several years while the case meanders.

Once the contract was signed, there was no win-win solution, but they made the right one. Clement left the firm for a more conservative one in Washington and will take the case with him, so the Repubs still have their attorney of choice; K&S retains its reputation for fairness and equality and respect for the rights of its staff.

And that was the week that was.

Ralph