And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
–Plutarch, The Life of Alexander the Great
On June 25, for the second time in three years, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely known as Obamacare.
Thirty-four Republican-led states have refused to set up state health insurance exchanges so their poor and medium-income residents can obtain affordable medical care.
In those Republican-governed states, citizens can obtain their health coverage only through subsidies given by the federal government.
A handful of words in the ACA suggested the subsidies were to go only to consumers using exchanges operated by the states. In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said those subsidies did not depend on where people live.
But three years earlier, Republican suffered another setback in their efforts to deprive their fellow Americans of access to healthcare.
Republicans expected June 28, 2012 to be their day. The day when the United States Supreme Court struck down the ACA.
It would be a day to celebrate–and to revel in the sheer ecstasy of their hatred for the country’s first black President.
The United States Supreme Court
The previous President, George W. Bush, had lied the nation into a needless and destructive war with Iraq by repeatedly claiming that:
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Saddam Hussein and Osama bin laden had teamed up to bring on 9/11;
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Saddam was trying to get a nuclear weapon; or
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Saddam already had a nuclear weapon and intended to use it against the United States.
That war cost the lives of 4,486 Americans and well over $1 trillion.
And Bush–taking a “hands-off-business” attitude–had presided over the 2008 Wall Street “meltdown.” By the time Obama took office in 2009, the unchecked greed and stupidity of wealthy businessmen threatened to bankrupt the country.
But for the American Right, these weren’t crimes. They were simply incidents to be ignored or arrogantly explained away.
Yet when President Obama sought to provide full medical coverage for all Americans, regardless of wealth, that–-for the American Right–-was a crime beyond forgiveness.
“Obamacare,” at all costs, must be discredited and destroyed.
As President Obama’s best-known achievement, its destruction by the Supreme Court would discredit the reputation of its creator. And this would arm Republicans with a potent election-time weapon for making Obama a one-term President.
Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive nominee for President, openly boasted that the Court would overturn the Act.
Among those Right-wingers poised to celebrate on the morning of June 28 was Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt.
Wearing a white dress, she stood in front of the Supreme Court waiting to hear about the healthcare ruling–-when the joyful news came:
The Court had ruled the Act was not enforceable under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution!
Although this was in fact true–-and reported on CNN and Fox News–-it was far from the whole story.
A cell phone camera-wielding onlooker spotted Schmidt on her own cell phone.
“Yes! Yes!” Schmidt screamed. “Oh, what else? Thank God! No, they struck down the individual mandate! They took it away! Yes!”
Jean Schmidt
Her fascistic joy manifested itself in ear-splitting screeches and air punches. Her entire body rocked up and down, shuddering with the ecstasy of passion. She resembled, more than anything else, a woman caught up in the frenzy of an orgasm.
In this case, an orgasm of pure, undisguised hatred–-
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for the Affordable Healthcare Act;
- for those millions of uninsured Americans needing healthcare coverage; and
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above all, for the President himself.
It is a lust so demonic, so characteristic of the all-out, lethal hatred that Republicans aim at Obama, that words alone cannot fully describe it. It must be seen for its full, revolting quality to be felt.
But then came the bad news:
The Court had ruled that the Act was Constitutional under the power of the Congress to levy taxes. Thus, the hated individual mandate–-requiring the wealthy to buy insurance–-was legal after all.
And suddenly the Right saw its orgiastic fantasies disappear.
Later in the day, Schmidt posted a conventional press release: “I’m disappointed by the Supreme Court ruling….”
Some commentators mocked Schmidt’s moment of orgiastic hatred, comparing it to the famous scene in When Harry Met Sally: Seated in a diner, Meg Ryan’s Sally fakes an orgasm to show Billy Crystal’s Harry how easy it is to fool a man.
But there is a huge difference between Sally and Schmidt.
Sally was clearly faking to drive home a humorous point. Schmidt’s joy wasn’t faked–-it was primal, and fueled by pure hatred.
On March 6, 2012, Schmidt was defeated for re-election in the GOP primary by Brad Wenstrup.
After World War II, the United States occupied West Germany and rooted out those former Nazis who had so arrogantly and brutally ruled over the lives of millions. And America helped to set in power a government equally determined to stamp out a return to Nazism.
It remains to be seen if Americans, as a people, have the courage to do the same for themselves.
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TRUMP: THE LORD OR THE DEVIL?
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2016 at 9:48 amIronically, Right-wingers, who support many of the same policies of Adolf Hitler, often attack liberals as Nazis–especially President Barack Obama.
But now a genuine authority on Fascism has come forward to assess the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination.
“If Donald Trump become[s] the next president of the US it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”
So says Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. As a survivor of Auschwitz, Schloss should know something about Nazis.
Eva Schloss
Now 86, Schloss met Anne in Amsterdam as a fellow refugee. Both their families had taken refuge there after fleeing Nazi Germany.
Anne Frank spent four years hiding in an attic and keeping a diary. But in 1944 she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
She was 15 when she died there of typhus in March 1945. After the war, Eva Schloss’ mother, Fritzi, married Otto Frank, Anne’s father.
Anne Frank
Eva was detained at the same time as Anne and sent to Auschwitz. She survived when the camp was liberated on January 27,1945.
In a January 27th essay for Newsweek, Schloss warned of dire consequences if Donald Trump became President.
“During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.”
She was 11 when her family immigrated to Belgium after Hitler forcibly Annexed Austria in 1938.
“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture….
“I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders,” said Schloss, who lives in London. “Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees.”
And on February 18, Pope Francis also waded into the 2016 Presidential race with his own assessment of Trump.
The comment came in answer to a question by one of several reporters who were accompanying the Pope to Rome from a six-day trip to Mexico.
What, a reporter asked the Pontiff, did he think of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border and expel millions of illegal aliens now living in the United States?
“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian,” replied the Pope. “This is not the gospel.”
Pope Francis
Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” to Trump because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently.
But he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”
Trump, a Presbyterian, responded minutes later: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”
Trump has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama–a self-described Christian–as a secret Muslim.
Donald Trump
On February 21, for example, he tweeted: “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of [Supreme Court] Justice [Antonin] Scalia if it were held in a mosque.”
Obama had paid tribute to Scalia at the Supreme Court on the day prior to the funeral. He declined to attend the service because his heavy security detail might disrupt the ceremony.
“I am proud to be a Christian,” added Trump, “and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”
Nor did he stop there: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.
“ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.”
Trump thus implied that the Pope’s future security depended on the United States generally–and on Donald Trump in particular.
And he clearly ignored the fact that, since September, 2014, the United States Air Force has been bombing ISIS convoys in Iraq and Syria.
Trump has long been critical of the Pope’s stand on immigration.
As the Pope undertook his trip to Mexico, Trump told Fox Business Network that he didn’t think Francis understood “the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.
“I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is,” he said. “They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.”
A Vatican spokesman replied: “The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace.”
For millions of Jews and Catholics, the election of 2016 may turn on how they answer the question: Am I serving the Lord–or the devil?
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