Tag Archives: political cartoon obama
Fiscal Cliff Clown Car
As for the Fiscal Cliff, the President’s latest position is tax hikes now spending cuts later. Krauthammer thinks Lee got a better offer than that at Appomattox.
Paul Ryan
Romney’s choice of Ryan as his running mate will make the campaign less negative. That’s because now there’s a candidate I actually like.
Ryan’s a serious person. In February 2010 the president hosted a health care summit. He played the role of professor, addressing his congressional charges by their first names. Of course, it was all Mr. President to them. He seemed pleased with the arrangement. That was until until Ryan schooled him with his detailed criticism of the president’s own plan. The pique on the prez’s face is priceless in this video (It runs 6 minutes but you see The Face early on.)
Obama later took his revenge by inviting Ryan to sit in the front row for a speech about health care and entitlements. There he insulted his guest by suggesting his plan was un-American.
An unbowed Ryan stood up to the bully-in-chief with this response.
Ryan is still unbowed. I think his remarks yesterday in his first speech as a VP candidate, about our rights coming from nature and God, and not Governments, were directed at Obama. And I suspect the president is not 100% bought into the founders’ thinking on that subject. His seems more a philosophy where he bestows rights, waivers, and penalties on winners and losers of his own choosing.
Two views of government stand in clear contrast here. Ryan adds Jack Kemp style seriousness to Romney’s more free floating managerial skills. Ryan, and now Romney, will try to preserve a government of laws built on classical liberal values. Obama didn’t build that, somebody else did. But he does seem to be trying to rebuild something else.
Healthcare Ruling
Chief Justice Roberts bestowed the burden of victory on the president by calling the individual mandate a tax.
The dissenting minority accuse Roberts of rewriting the legislation. Well, can’t say we weren’t warned of conservative judicial activism.
The Hammer thinks Roberts heroically twisted and turned through narrow legal fissures to restore the integrity of the court, in the eyes of his enemies on left. Those enemies think the court soiled itself by putting George W. Bush in office in 2001 and that it has been illigit ever since.
But even as he saved Obamacare, Roberts found the use of the commerce clause to justify the mandate to be unconstitutional. So he rewrote the bill to save the bill, calling the mandate a tax. I guess we can all agree that anyone can be bludgeoned to do anything with a tax. Mission accomplished:
The Wall Street Journal is not so easily impressed. Its editorial today notes references to Justice Ginsberg’s “dissent”. Why would she dissent if she was in the majority, unless she wasn’t until Roberts switched sides?
