Conservative Refocus

By Barry Secrest

Who knows, maybe it was the chemtrails...

I waited, purposefully, until now, to write down my thoughts on the Obamacare decision, because I really wanted to see if there might be some curveball in the decision, perchance some piddly little piece of the opinion that everyone missed that actually gave new insight to what it all means. Now, despite what you might hear some bloviatingly superior opinionist say, there is no true rainbow embedded in the mandate's passage. Oh, there is the Medicare/ States issue, to be sure, while there are also many who say that the dicta within means the commerce clause can no longer be questioned, which truthfully makes no sense, at least not after this session.

However, and ultimately, like it or not, this particular decision means that all bets are off on any future Supreme Court cases. If one can somehow make the Evel Knievel leap between one part of the canyon, being Mandate Illogic, to the other side of the chasm, being nothing if not a Great Wall of Taxation, then folks, these guys on the bench can take any string of illogical thought and trot it down any unconstitutional trail.

Chief Justice John Roberts' enigmatic decision on the health mandate left even the most rabid of Liberals speechless, well, at least at first, anyway, because that was quickly, if not predictably, remedied. In fact, the ensuing cacophony of Left-Wing gestalt was soon to remind me off my youthful days spent tending the farm, once the word actually got out, in earnest, on the mandate's unlikely outcome.

And no, I know what some of you might be thinking;  however, it wasn't the farm's cow manure barn, nor was it the hog slop, not the goat pen, and no,  not even the compost box either.  It was actually the chicken coop that brought the memories crowding back.

Oh, and for you Metrosexual Elites out there, bear with me for just a minute longer....I mean, hey!  You might even learn something, farmulaic, for Heaven's sake.

The Hen Party That Went Metro

You see, as many already know, whenever a chicken hen completes her dutiful task of finally pushing an egg out, she begins clucking joyfully, which then sets the other hens clucking in support.  Then the roosters chime in, and before you know it, the entire coup is one big clamour of clucking and crowing, and who can, in fact, blame the blessed foul?  You try pushing something the size of a bowling ball out of your arse, bet you celebrate too.  Heck, I would probably even celebrate with you, come to think of it.

But then, as the celebration heightened even further ,with the media performing springing hand-stands, and the Obamaphibians climbing the trees and howling in triumph, I began wondering if Obama may have lost some US armed conflict somewhere in the world, thereby setting the Libs into pyroxisms of elation.  It's what they do.

However, the decision, and the ensuing Liberal reaction, did remind me of one particular line in a blockbuster movie:

"So, this is how Liberty dies....with thunderous applause."

Granted, having the Statists telling us what we must buy "or else," is bad enough, but it's what this will do to our medical sector that really has many of us worried.  Not to mention the fact that the mandate's effect on business in general has been nothing if not a business equivalent to the fabled "horse lattitudes" of early seafaring days.

But, when I personally saw the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare tweet across my iPhone, I was strategically positioned in, perhaps, the best place imaginable...my master bathroom. The porcelain throne, surrounded by books, glistened invitingly, as my first thought wandered down to the sudden onset of wave after wave of nauseatingly relentless peristalsis; shall I kneel or should I perch became the question? The sick-feeling in the pit of my stomach grew worse.

When In Doubt...

It was touch and go there for just a moment.  Still in shock, I decided to ask my iPhone and personal assistant, Siri, what I should do, who unhelpfully suggested a web search.  I cursed her, once again, and mused dispiritedly as she clucked at me in bemusement. My immediate conundrum was eclipsed, however, by a singular  bewilderment that also came over me; well, Justice Kennedy must have veered off to the Left, again.  I plopped down with a depressed sigh and started tweedling through the messaging, the acid reflux tasting sour but morosely familiar, at this point.

I had decided that, with only coffee percolating around in digestive tract, self-flagellatory retching would only clear the vastly needed supply of caffeine that this day would quite obviously require,  as the soft whir of wind from the ceiling fan in the adjacent bedroom beckoned seductively. The temptation of crawling back under the covers and instigating a rebellious insurrection, leveled at  massively lowering the air conditioning  thermostat, almost took me over as the temperature outside began to mercilessly climb.  Hell was on earth was my beleagured thought.

Simply blacking out to this Statist nightmare was compelling, but we all eventually wake up at some point, some earlier than others, alas. Maybe I should give the standard Progressive methodology a try.  You know, the one where you completely ignore all of the serious problems and issues and simply pretend as if everything's just peachy keen, keep spending, they'll make more, or covering your head with a blanket when terrified at something in the night.  I mean, since there's no gun on the premises, and all, quite obviously.

No, damnit!  I thought, I have a companies to look after, and besides, my clients always needle me relentlessly when I'm off on any given day, at least it often seems that way, and after four years of Obama's duffing, golf was no longer a part of any sort of recreational consideration, as I am routinely accused, namely because of those stupid independent agent golf endorsements, years ago.

Realization

After deciding not to change my day one iota, aside from going in a bit later so that I could learn more, I began feeling the same sort of way as when one might view a terrible calamity, a horrible tornado's devasting track or  the scene of a train wreck,  I simply couldn't keep myself from wanting to view more, while at the same time, wanting terribly to look away and have no more of it.

Bravely, however, I read through the news tweets while my mood darkened even further,  if that's possible.  Rut-Roh..."Conservative" John Roberts made the deciding decision on the healthcare mandate in cahoots with the Liberals.

Was this some awful joke?

I kept going through the news items hoping for retribution. I found one: "CNN says the mandate was struck down as unconstitutional."  Aha!  Maybe everyone's confused and CNN got it right!  But then my hopes immediately fell apart.  Wait a minute, this is CNN, since when have they gotten anything right? I moved further down the posts.

Okay, Fox News, normally very reliable, also says the mandate's struck down as unconstitutional--BUT--could be another one of those "blonde moments" at Fox, as if there could be any other.  Is that like some odd prerequisite for hiring over there, or something?

But, then, why all the consarned confusion about this decision, anyway?  Had the High Court lost the ability to communicate clearly? Wait, they're all a bunch of attornies, for Pete's sake!  Asking a bunch of high-end lawyers  to speak plainly is about as ridiculous as expecting the first lady to vacate at Camp David or fly on Air Force One with her baby-daddy, like that's really going to happen.

But was there  any hope, still?

My fingers slid desperately across the smooth face of the iPhone like Liberace on Meth, pausing every now and again at those important Huffington tweets about Britney Spears'  impossibly short skirt, or decolletaged Demi's next Cougaresque escapade, each threatening to derail my patriotic zeal.  But all of the tweets were explaining the unexplainable, and the truth was still somewhere out there, it seemed.

Also, at this point, something I had written about a year earlier, which had flitted all around the worldwide web, settled over me, as I chided myself.  Pragmatic reasoning would seem to suggest that the Eeyore Paradigm must be applied and especially in this case:

The Eeyore Paradigm

The attainment of measurable disappointment must be accompanied by at least some semblance of surpassing expectation....

You see, knowing what we know about this administration, and the extraordinarily unconstitutional shennanigans being parlayed onto the American people over the last several years, the mandate must have been held, somehow, to be constitutional.  I mean, why should we expect anything less from these Statist apparatchiks in charge of our "Government by the sheeple," at this point?

Acceptance....

Blast it all!  Our vastly depressing four year mission to explore strange new rules, to seek out new strife and new desecrations had been culminated by the Supreme Court's Cowardly Lion.

Chief Justice John Roberts caved;  a sad day indeed for what once was an equal branch of government, not to mention Liberty's having been held under water and virtually drowned like a scrawny mewling kitten.  We all knew this could happen, but never really believed that it would.  But, really, it was the way that it happened that excited our unparalleled fury.

As the truth slowly leaked out about the decision, one thing became crystal clear.  John Roberts was not the Constitutional saviour we all thought him to be.  In fact, the man quickly became another one of those wayward men with two first names, and you know what they say about guys with two first names.

Quite frankly, even the ill-informed Liberals knew the mandate was unconstitutional, Barack Obama included. The Progressives'  argument, trying to make us believe that  Obamacare was valid due to the commerce clause, might as well have been interchanged with the Santa Clause, as far as we were concerned. We even treated those who tried to make the clause argument like fancifully vapid little children who might believe anything, and as it turns out we were correct, according to the opinion.

You see, the majority of the court was under the opinion that the mandate was unconstitutional, and even said so at the front-end of the SCOTUS decision, which is what incited the confusion, by the way, and we Conservatives were proved correct, as is belatedly usual.

Now, at this point, it should have been game over, lights out, make sure the door is shut behind you. But, to be certain, no, because that particular outcome could only have happened in a true Constitutionally based Federal Republic, not our newly consigned Banana Republic, which is dispassionately under the desperate tutelage of Barry Obama and his colorful choom-gang , they who want change tendered at any cost and effected by any measure, to include unlawful edict.

Scorn

So, Roberts, rather than coming to a Constitutional decision, actually had just a little bit more going on in his decidedly indecisive decision. Think about it.  If a law that's been passed is found to be unconstitutional, then how in the Sam Hill can the law be upheld?  Isn't that the very simple question before us?

Apparently not, these days, because now, even in a Supreme Court decision, there is also the question of politically correct, and that now trumps everything through a Rube Goldberg construct of exactingly perverse reasoning.  John Roberts followed  his own artfully conceived bread-crumb trail to the end-point of an hysterically un-intellectual argument; the mandate, aside from being unconstitutional as a mandate, is constitutional because it is a tax.

Er...Say what!?

Even Justice Kennedy and Barack Obama almost popped a blood vessel on that argument.  You see, it was the sometimes Conservative Kennedy, who had tried everything in the book to change John Robert's mind, after he had changed it the first time much earlier on. Oh, in point of fact, that's absolutely true; Jan Crawford's insider report was very, very,  clear on this fact.

John Roberts' first decision was to overturn the mandate.  It was only later that he changed his mind and made the decision to "go with the beltway flow," as they say, which left the Court's other Conservatives thunderously pissed to put it lightly.

However, philosophically speaking, I should point out that Chief Justice John Roberts now reminds me of one of those people who plays chess with themselves perpetually, and then wonder why they lose all the time.

Judicial Philandering

You see, in partial explanation, there was just a bit more going on than meets the proverbial eye, in this particular case. Remember the veiled threats tendered by El Magnifico when the Court first began hearing the arguments?  Well, SNAP!  That wasn't the first time Obama stealthily threatened the Supreme Court; there have, in fact, been numerous times when "Numero Uno" has launched invective at the Court to the wide approval of the Axis Press and the Communist legislators inside the Beltway.

Obama even slammed the Court to a thunderous standing ovation during a particulary caustic, if not Hitleresque, State of the Union Address, for God's sake. Roberts should have slam-dunked this decision as unconstitutional purely on the basis of comeuppance to Barack the Job Slayer. It's what a co-equally threatened branch of the US Government must do to simply maintain a balance, like it or not, good or bad.

Our government was painstakingly constructed to include the perversities of human interaction, ego, politicization, legislative blackmail and virtually every other perversity and goodness known to man. The Founders were not inclined, but rather they were inspired, at virtually every juncture, to embed natural law in the very ink, itself, of the Constitution and the Charters of Freedom.

The simple fact that John Roberts had to play his own personal game of yoga-pocket twister, in coming to the decision, becomes painfully clear, especially when we hear the bits and pieces of background intelligence that waft out of the Supreme Court's inner sanctum, like cinders from the ash of a US Constitution, which Roberts set ablaze with this particular decision.

Justification

Roberts was, almost laughably, as it turns out, trying to make the Court appear to be above it all, trying to be non-partisan, neutral, as it were, and to his own flawed reasoning, was trying to improve the standing of the Court, which to him, must have seemed damaged from all of the politics. Roberts was, in fact, by his own statement,  trying to find a way to justify the legislative act by virtue of Progressive Supreme Court Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes' following directive:  

"The rule is settled that as between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the Act.”

 However, in Robert's particular argument, we wonder, if say, the Legislator had signed an act abolishing the US Supreme Court and the President had signed off on it, would Roberts have also done eveything necessary to "save the act"? I believe we know the answer to that particular question.

Holmes was not, by the way, an adherent of natural law, it should be noted, and was a darling of the Progressives in his time, as you might well have guessed.

The US Constitution and the Supreme Court were each conceived as the most powerful institutions available to the people for the final protection of the people's political choices; otherwise, the Court would not be considered a co-equal branch of the Government. What is there, in point of fact, but the final implications of our political choices in virtually all things when it comes to the final judgement?  In fact, each Justice swears an oath to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic, at the time of their taking office.

The point of the Court, and its lifetime tenure, being so that the justices can rule blindly and without fear of the always inevitable politics at play within any judgement. Truthfully, when you deconstruct and completely boil down the rationale behind the Chief Justice's decision on Obamacare, the most basic element of his decision comes down to one predicated on irrational fear rather than solid Constitutional principle.

The people of this brave country deserve and require far better than what now appears to be nothing more than a cowardly lion of the court. But, there may yet be hope.  I hear there might be a wizard in Malta, where the Justice recently fled, who may even be able to bestow some bit of courage to our follow the yellow brick road Judge.

"Okay, I've had about enough of this nonsense, Beam me up, Siri"