On his show last evening, Mark Levin broke down how all of the legal and societal dislocation we’re seeing and feeling under fundamental transformation is tied directly to the subversion or deconstruction of our Constitution, rendering us a representative republic in title only, ummoored from the original ideals and intentions of the Founders and Framers.
I’m going to now take that one step further, even at the risk of sounding “fundamentally unserious”: it is the method by which the Constitution has been (ostensibly) legally subverted that is the real locus of our societal transformation, and that method — which is really a commingling of methodologies all pretending to share the same function, with some doing so legitimately and others incoherently — is interpretation, or at the very least, what has come to count as interpretation, or granted at least temporary legitimacy as interpretation.
Longtime readers have seen me repeat this phrase over and over through the years: how you get there matters. By that, I’ve always held that one must view the speech act correctly — and to understand how it works (where signification takes place, what we assume counts as language and how) — for one to properly lay claim to engaging in interpretation, which is nothing more than the act of decoding and then re-encoding (in some paraphrase or attempted reiteration, either mental or physically, as in a written judicial opinion) a text. In the case of a text of our own design, or rather of our own framing as text (for instance, a sky filled with clouds that we “read” certain signs into: that fluffy signifier looks like a bunny; that wispy signifier looks like a serpent, etc), it is our intention to see the text as text, and to interpret that text in a way familiar to us (marks in the sky are representative or referential, just as marks on a page are, to some code, if not to any standard convention) that provides the basis for any meaning we see in that text. Or to put it another way, unless we believe God is creating cloud formations through which to speak to us of bunnies and serpents, the cloud formations only “mean” bunnies or serpents because of our intention to see them as such.
Alternatively, we see other texts as texts conventionally, and within that convention we recognize and accept certain foundational assumptions: first, that what we are going to engage with is language, meaning, the signifiers or marks we see before us have been presignified by some agency, presenting us with intended signs that, as interpreters, it is our job to decode and re-encode, sticking as closely to the original intent as we can; and second, that because we recognize the signifiers as signs, we are not free to attach to those signifiers our own signifieds without changing the intended signs — in essence, rewriting the text as if it were a scramble of marks we were permitted to play with. At least, we can’t do so while laying claim to “interpreting” the original text, because to interpret is to either create our own text from a series of marks (as we did with the clouds, in which case we are privileging our own intentions), but in so doing, recognizing that we are not engaged in a speech act with the sky; or to engage a series of marks convention or experience or assumption suggests to us are intended — are signs, are language — and so it is our job as interpreters to decode those signs (and re-encode them in a way that shows strict fidelity to the original signs) in order to lay claim to having interpreted them in the way we agree interpretation must necessarily function if it is to come to count as interpretation of the original text for purposes of explication or specific application.
Unfortunately, the fact that we can do other things with signs — reduce them to signifiers, resignify them ourselves, and show the cleverness and plausibility of our rewriting of the text before us — has convinced some that with possibility comes legitimacy, that because we can, what we can is coequal to what we must, should we wish to claim we are interpreting within the parameters of specific conventions.
In the vast majority of instances, when we engage a written text we believe that text to have been intended. The fact that something can look like language — egret tracks in the sand that seem to spell out “screw Obamacare,” for instance, but which we don’t believe were intended by the egrets, and so are accidents, coincidental simulacrums of language, like a “face” on Mars — doesn’t mean that it is language, save for our intention to see it as such. And that intention comes from conventions that tell us that familiar codes are likely language. And in most cases it will be: it is unlikely a confluence of events will come together that leaves you staring at egret tracks in the sand that appear to be language but are in fact coincidences. Still, for the purposes of theorizing, we allow for that possibility.
Yet it is that very improbable instantiation of being fooled into thinking we are looking at language when what we are really looking at are accidents of tiny peripatetic talons, that has led to a host of incoherent interpretative “methodologies,” some of which we have not only embraced as plausible, but have institutionalized as legitimate. And it is from that, as I circle back around, that interpretation has become illegitimate with respect to what it is we think we’re doing in the case of “interpreting” legal texts or any texts we presuppose to be linguistical: because to lay claim to interpreting those kinds of texts, we must first believe them language, which in turn presupposes that we see those texts as intended, with their intent being to codify the meaning of some specific agency (individual or corporate) in such a way that we may later understand, as the recipients of the text — as the final destination of the speech act — what that meaning is.
At the moment of signification — the moment an intending agent adds the referent to the mark to create the code we recognize as language — meaning is attributed, and it is fixed. And when interpretation is functioning legitimately, we understand this — just as we understand that because texts can outlive the agency that created them, it may be difficult, at times, to interpret the original meaning without going back and looking at the historical use of certain referents (“well-regulated”, eg) and familiarizing ourselves with the conventions surrounding the production of the text.
In literary interpretation, where the aim is sometimes to leave meaning “open”, we have more room to speculate on what the intention may have been when a sign was created: signs, because they don’t necessarily need to adhere to convention, are potentially infinite in their “meaning”; and yet this potentiality is always constrained by the designs of the agency who applied them, who signified them. So, for example, even if an author leaves a signifier — a mark — intentionally unsignified (and so literally open to any potential decoding), that is still an intentional act on behalf of the author, and, as such, doesn’t trouble the central idea behind an intentionalist stance with respect to engaging language.
All of which is just to provide the necessary theoretical background for what is, with respect to legal texts, incredibly simple — and yet has been turned into something incredibly cynical, opportunistic, covetous, and dangerous.
Legal interpretation carries with it a very specific set of conventions: the text must be written in such a way that its meaning is as clear and in keeping with contemporary convention as is possible, making it “plain” so that “reasonable people” can all agree upon its intended meaning. It makes sense for legislators to write laws in such a way if what the are hoping to do is see their will — their intent — understood and then applied; conversely, legislators who hope to leave potential intepretative “holes” in laws that can later be broadened by a motivated intepreter in order to exploit the opening, are hoping that judges or justices will not insist that clarifications be made.
In both instances, the legislators have an intent. And in both instances, those doing the interpreting have a job: to discover that intent and apply it. In the legal field, however, because the application of an interpretation becomes performative — as part of our membership in the social compact, we must then follow the laws as interpreted (think of this as the “I do” portion of a wedding vow that signals the acceptance of the contract as an instance of performative language) — interpreters are supposed to be constrained by conventions demanding that the texts, upon interpretation, can be readily understood and agreed upon. Meaning, that if the legislators don’t wish to narrowly constrain meaning, the justices must press them to do so, lest the “law” that passes has no clear end point.
Which is just a technical way of saying that justices need to be as certain as possible about what legislators intended as they can be when deciding on a valid interpretation. Anything else would be judicial rewriting: an interpreter who tells you he doesn’t care what was “intended” by the authors but rather is interested more in the “plain meaning of the text” is really only saying that the plain meaning of the text presupposes fidelity by its authors to the conventions of legal writing — that they can’t lay claim to hidden intent that was not made manifest under the rules of legal convention in order to say they created laws that no one but they were able to see.
None of which means we can’t get an interpretation wrong even when engaging a text using the correct (and in fact mandatory: intentionalism just is) “methodology”: a failure to effectively signal what we mean is not a failure to mean what we mean. Rather, it is a failure to make others recognize what we meant. Our meaning hasn’t changed, but the interpretation of it might, precisely as a result of our communicative shortcomings.
Unfortunately, from this rather obvious scenario has been born a number of schools of hermeneutic theory that rely upon what is, under some name or other, the notion that the text can exist without its authorship. To get there, these schools conflate authorship with the author, and declare the author — who is often dead or missing or who can’t be trusted to give a second-order accounting of what was originally meant — unnecessary to any understanding of the text. A proclamation that may or may not be true — often times biographical or autobiographical cues, once recognized, will allow for discoveries of intent that add new dimensions to a complex text’s meaning — but one that is likewise irrelevant. And that’s because it is the fact of authorship — the acceptance that we are engaging language, which in turn means we are engaging an intended set of signs ordered in such a way to live over time and space beyond the life of its author(s) — and not necessarily the author or his life, that we care about when we are dealing with intentionalism.
Going back to the realm of legal interpretation, the conventions for both the creation of text — the instantiation of legislative intent into language — and the subsequent legal interpretation of said text, are straightforward: that which is most straightforward is that which was likely intended. What isn’t the case is that, because the legislators have died or are unavailable, it is permissible therefore to dismiss their intent, and to appeal to that intent in any instance of interpretation that can legitimately lay claim to being an interpretation in the first place.
Sadly, we have confused our desire to allow the text to live beyond its author(s) with an insistence that, do ensure such a thing, we no longer need to appeal to their intent.
But this is nonsensical: simply by agreeing to see a text as language we are presupposing its intent. Which is why it is, as I said before, so cynical, opportunistic, covetous, and dangerous, to claim to “bracket” whatever that intent was in order to intepret the text qua text. A text qua text is of necessity a function of intent. With the clouds or the egret marks, the intent was supplied exclusively by the receiver, and so his or her willingness to frame an accident as a text leads to the intepretative moment, and his or her intent is being privileged for the purposes of interpretation.
However, we don’t — and can’t — with any coherence pretend that it is legitimate to interpret non-accidental texts in such a way. That is to say, we can’t treat what we know and agree are intended texts, language, imbued with meaning by some prior agency and given us to decode, as if it were a cloud formation.
And yet this is the central notion behind much of what passes for legitimate interpretation these days: rather than looking at the marks on the page as signs, marks that have referents and were intended to mean a specific thing, we have begun to treat them merely as signifiers, marks that exist apart from the agency who signified them, leaving behind for us playthings upon which we are free to graft our own intentions until the text “says” what it is we desire it to say, rather than what the authors intended it to say.
This breakdown of meaning and its logical and proper communicative transference — much of which is by design (hence cynical and opportunistic, and most certainly covetous in that it lays claim to obviating the author’s original signifcation in favor of its own rewriting following the theft of the originary referents, replaced by totems to our own ability to create signs) — is THE BREAKDOWN of the Constitution that Levin notes: through a palimpsest of precedences and poor or illegitimate misinterpretations or cynical rewritings of law, the courts have been able in essence to breach the Constitution by resignifying it to serve its own ends, sometimes accidentally, often not (as is the case with John Roberts, who it appears tried to find a way to reason backward from what he wanted his “interpretation” to be, and in doing so, was forced to dismiss that lawmakers and the President time and again insisted they weren’t levying a tax in order to create a text that relied upon a tax that the authors of that text never agreed to).
By constant if incremental rewritings of the intent of the Founders and Framers and various lawmakers, juridical malfeasance or ineptitude and ignorance had led to the subversion of our Constitutional system as designed, as intended.
To fix the problem, you must first identify it. And it is through language and what we believe we are doing with it that we find the root of the subversion. The left has long known this: it is no accident or coincidence that theories of language and interpretation that seek to tear meaning from originary authorship and grant it to a consensus of the “interpretive community” — to the collective and its will — comes from the left. Similarly, the left uses the same procedure — decoupling originary intent from interpretation in order to determine what a text “means” publicly, which they then reattach to the original author, in essence attributing to that author their own intention to see signifiers in a certain way. This is how they claim to hear dog whistles and find racism so easily and conveniently, and then use that “finding” — that illegitimate “interpretation” which is nothing more than their own rewriting with an insistence upon its legitimacy as an “interpretation” — to map their own poison minds onto those who never meant what some mob claims they must have meant, however “subconsciously.”
Now, I realize much of what I’ve written here may seem arcane or academic. But it isn’t. In fact, I’ve maintained through the over decade on this site that it is the crucial point to understanding the unraveling of our Constitutional system and its inevitable move leftward. The left claims to “democratize” a text by removing it from the authoritarian control of its author. But what they are really doing is claiming that the collective controls the individual by laying claim to that which the individual produced.
Which, if I’m not mistaken, sounds eerily like the linguistic equivalent of a certain kind of political system, one that — unsurprisingly to me — flows directly from the linguistic assumptions it adopts and then institutionalizes.
Having said all of that, I’m still sick and I’m drunk on cough suppressant. So forgive the rambling. I hope this made sense and didn’t prove too difficulty to get through.
Also, any errors I may have made? That’s not on me. It’s on the cough syrup. Intentionalism!
Now I’m going back to bed. Because none of this matters any more anyway. It’s become a postmortem. Which truly sucks.
“How you get there matters.”
I had this drilled into me by a HS math teacher who insisted we show our work. It isn’t enough to get the right answer by a method that won’t reliably produce the right answer the next time. Getting the right answer from the wrong algorithm is arguably worse than getting the wrong answer from the wrong algorithm, because at least when you get the wrong answer you know you’re wrong.
This is why libertarians/classical liberals so often get into what sound like arguments over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We understand that if it sounds like we’re agreeing with the wrong way to get there, we send entirely the wrong message.
If you’ll forgive the gratuitous health advice, don’t let it hang on too long before seeing a professional. I did that last January and it led to an emergency helicopter flight, ventilator and three week ICU stay, which BTW, my substandard, crap, fraudulent insurance policy paid for entirely after my deductible.
Just sayin’.
As for your post, you’re preaching to the choir.
Jeff, what brand of cough medicine is that? I need some the next time I work on a brief!
Once again proving that you can value TRVTH or power but not both.
As for your post, you’re preaching to the choir.
I’m not in the choir: I’m sitting in the pews. (“Preaching to the converted.”)
The choir consists of disinterested parties with no dog in the fight, but “preaching to the choir” is much catchier-sounding—and the disinterested party angle is less commonly needed—so the “choir” has come to mean “converted.”
Dicentra, I dispute that the word “choir” implies “disinterest.” They actually commit to showing up every Sunday for two services. It is in the pews where the pagans sit, needful of sermons filled with fire and brimstone.
Or in Jeff’s case, Nyquil and Sudafed.
Captain my Captain! And enjoy the music on the deck.
Something I’ve been thinking about, and, hopefully, the smart people on this blog won’t point and laugh to much, but, here goes: The bills being passed in Congress are vetoed by Jarrett, I mean, Obama. Meanwhile, after being threatened by Jarrett, excuse me, Obama, the insurance companies try to reissue canceled policies and detonate in the process, thereby detonating the entire financial system.
Meanwhile, people still need health care and are forced to pay cash for their health care. Because health care is currently somewhat of a scarce commodity, due to distortions created by health insurance, the availability of health care comes back into balance, bringing down prices.
After the destruction of health insurance, progressives try to bring in single payer, but, even the LIV’s have learned their lesson and the legislation fails.
So, we get the crash needed that clears out all the financial dead wood, health care goes back to more of a free market model, progressivism takes a pummeling and free markets, in general, return.
Wouldn’t the irony be thick if the largest government program ever attempted was the one that brought back a free market economy?
Wouldn’t the irony be thick if the largest government program ever attempted was the one that brought back a free market economy?
From your mouth to God’s ears.
Any god’s.
Srsly.
All over the place allasudden it’s Katrina, for fuck’s sake.
One day in 2005 we’re standing here and a big-assed killer of a storm comes ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, indiscriminately wiping out people and their properties right and left. But wait, we can caterwaul blame on Bush for the aftermath, despite [or because of] the ridiculous incompetence and corruption of the locals.
Why, it’s just like that ClownDisasterCare bill, another act of god originated, generated and intended by no-one knows what responsible being[s]. And presto, true responsibility fogs away to be reduced to ex-post-facto “management” and websites. Yeah, that‘s the ticket. Heck, we can even pretend to assign blame for those troubles on bureaucratic peons and computer programmers, when not insurance companies and greedy capitalists.
I hear some fella in the grocery muttering to himself “just remember, murder is wrong” and I’m beginning to see why.
See also this, interestingly. It appears that existentially in the absolute sense, meaning precedes existence, and with it, context. As such, context reinforces prior meaning.
There is no basis for the molecular rise of effect to reframe cause. It’s a small step to see that latter motive or aim likewise do not rewrite prior intent.
It also seems that only a principled, rational view gives perspective to the, if you will, simplicity of the gamut of complexity. Meanwhile, the sheer unending complex litany of the many “solipsisms” of The Lie and its relative Truths™ reduce everything to single, simple points of dysfunction.
Jeff, please go see your doctor. My husband ended up in the hospital for a week on breathing treatments and IV fluids and IV antibiotics when he stubbornly refused to go see the doctor for a chest cold that was actually pneumonia. If you’re running a fever, you could pass out and fall down the stairs or crack your noggin on the bathroom tile.
Excellent post,
A Choir Member
I see a new slogan: “Proud Member of the Vast Right Wing Choir”
I got chills, I tells ya, chills.
And so the pushback begins.
WA State rebuts Obama plan to allow old health insurance policies
Obumbles isn’t going to have as easy a time blaming state insurance commissioners (especially when they’re Democrats like WA’s is) as he would those evil insurance companies.
Quick Political Fix FAIL.
Schadenfreudelicious.
Hubs is convinced the insurance companies are going to roll over on this. I insist they will not, precisely because of the state insurance commissioners and the long range projections they have made in order to comply with this bullshit law.
Legislate in haste, repent at leisure, Barry.
I don’t see how they can roll over on this either. Remember, It’s. The. Law.
Obama’s “fix” is essentially a pinky-swear promise not to enforce the ACA law and a promise not to prosecute violators, which is what every single insurance company who re-offers non-compliant policies would be. And we’ve all gotten a good, first-hand look at just how worthless an Obama promise is.
As you note, first they have to get an appreciable number of the state insurance commissioners on board. I say good luck with that.
And any insurance CEO who trusts Obama on this and does offer non-compliant plans, I suspect is going to be an ex-CEO after the next shareholder’s meeting.
Correct, Dave. These commissioners are not Friends of BO, they have families to feed, college educations and retirement accounts to fund. Just like the rest of us.
BO will enlist his drooling “friends” in Hollywoodland to shill for him, but I believe most people are not buying and will take a “let them iron this out first” approach. Just like most of the rest of the country.
Leigh, sounds like your husband had what I had, except the pneumonia turned into a sepsis and ARDS. Not fun.
Yikes! No, it didn’t get that bad, but it sure could have, Sherm. He had a 104 degree fever one day, after four days of feverish non-sleeping and not eating and I finally talked him into going to the doctor. He, naturally, insisted he was going to drive. This lasted up until he ran a stop sign (thank god we live in the country) and I told him to pull over NOW and let me drive. I knew he was really sick when he didn’t argue with me and let me tell the doctor what was going on with him after he started babbling and I told him to let me handle it.
Anyway, chest xray and boom! Admitted to the hospital an hour later.
– Leigh you are more correct than you know. I can just imagine the battles going on right now between the BOD’s and the legal departments. The directors will try to stay ahead of the mess by reflexively acting on every little change and whim of Bumblefuck, while the legals will tell them they’re fucking crazy if they break the law on a promise that means nothing until its adjudicated.
– Guess who will win that one.Duuuuuhhhh.
The “we won’t enforce . . . swearsies” course of action, is specious because it ignores the policy holders. Consider the young woman who has an “old” policy without maternity benefits and then gets pregnant. She sues under the ACA demanding what the law requires. Without a change in the law, the ins. company is screwed.
Leigh, you sound like my wife. We had a rather spirited tiff before I acquiesced to be driven to the ER.
Heh, Sherm. The only way I won that fight was he was sick enough he knew I could take him. ; )
BBH, the one part of law I was ever any good at, is contract law. Numbnuts has voided the contract by unilaterally changing the terms.
He’s fucked. Good and hard, as we say in these parts.
The head of a pin, is that the pointy end or the flat end? Because if it’s the flat end then it would depend on they type of pin. You’d have to have the pin right there.
Have you noticed how philosophers spend the first 600 pages defining the terms they intend to use? That part takes forever.
I notice two things about signification over and over and over.
Programmers are better at deciphering hieroglyphics than I and it bums me out. They have a knack for learning the rules, accepting them and applying them. They are very good at all that. I have seen them untangle the gnarliest passages by sticking to arcane rules about male/female, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, person, singular/plural past/present/future/ and all that and reaching to 2nd and 3rd definitions and come out with something that makes perfect indisputable sense. I do admire that.
The second thing you can see for yourself and it is fun. I think it is. Open a window to YouTube and pick any song with lyrics. The best songs will be ones that girls will like. Any Adele song for example, any pop song, and type the title followed with “asl”, [song asl].
A young person will interpret the song and get it wrong.
Close, but no cigar.
And you can compare with another young person and see them get it wrong too.
The two languages have different syntaxes, some verbs are inherent in the movement of performing the sign for nouns, so no need to perform the sign for the verb in English. But there it is in English. And words appear on the beats. Or not. The song has rhythm. And it is a song not just lyrics. And that song does convey a specific feeling. And refrains are repeated for a reason in song, to drive the emotion the song is intended to evoke.
It does not convey the song when you sweep one arm with the opposite hand for the word “song” to say, “now they’re playing instrumental music and there are no lyrics.” That does not convey the song. The music is lost to that interpretation. Show the goddamn music! Which instruments are playing? Which one is predominate? Pantomime that! And do that with rhythm and a beat that signifies the music you’re hearing. At least try.
The asl to the lyrics plus pantomiming the instrumentation, moving the full body to the beat of the music veritably instructs you how to physically dance the whole song. All that tells you how to dance it, but nobody does. Nobody.
At this point it is not an exaggeration to say that I’ve looked at hundreds of such [song asl] videos, more likely several hundred. My YouTube history surprises myself when I look back there, it’s embarrassing, and what I’ve seen so far through all that is fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail… I expect that is all I will ever see.
Most of the videos you would not be able to tell what song it is if they did not explicitly finger spell the title for you outright. None of them get the music right, the song right. Even the expert signers fail.
Those are the two things that I notice.
– Exactly correct, and any company foolish enough to act on Bumblefucks “suggestions” is going to live to regret it. I’m just waiting for the first case of a 1%ter who gets screwed over by the dropped policy thing and takes it to litagation. Theres going to be a avalaunch of tort at some point and a shitstorm of epic preportions.
What’s the point of doing ASL to music if you can’t hear the song?
Isn’t that kind of like explaining color to the blind? Or are you making some arcane point that is flying over my head because it’s almost time for supper?
Yup, BBH. That’s pretty much the way I see it going down, too.
And another thing; I bought a bottle of Tuaca because of you and it’s horrible.
– bour3, the published lyrics for a song is a means for copyright and has very little to do with the way any artist might phrase the song in a recording. A lyric as published seldom is the same as recordings of the song since every artist tends to interpret the song according to their individual styling. Common “standards” come the closest to consistancy between published lyrics and performances.
oh my
Crisis management: Axelrod, Plouffe, other Hopenchange alumni gather at White House as ObamaCare falters
The crisis managers wouldn’t be collecting themselves up in one spot to commit a ritual communal seppuku, now would they?Nah. We’d never be so fortunate.
“Mommy, why does those people keep moving the deck chairs around?”
– The most Schadenfreude you can have without a license.
I had a chest cold that developed into pneumonia the summer before 10th grade. It really sucked
Inhale slowly but deeply and try to fill your lungs full. If you begin to cough like crazy just before you reach the full mark, you might have fluid therein.
I really don’t recommend pneumonia.
As a resilient young teen it was bad enough for me; as a father of two decades older, it will just about kill you.
Programmers are better at deciphering hieroglyphics than I and it bums me out. They have a knack for learning the rules, accepting them and applying them. They are very good at all that. I have seen them untangle the gnarliest passages by sticking to arcane rules about male/female, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, person, singular/plural past/present/future/ and all that and reaching to 2nd and 3rd definitions and come out with something that makes perfect indisputable sense. I do admire that.
Programmers get kicked in the ‘nads if they mess up on syntax, spelling, punctuation, and formatting, the kick coming from the executable not executing at all.
Unless they’re so conversant in their programming language they can do it in their sleep (and many do), they can’t hold down a good job. It’s a knack. They definitely think differently than I do.
– Ok, things are getting really fun now. the MSNBCommune is not goint to sit by while their god gets thrown under the bus. They’re declaring war on the Clintonesta’s. Yow, *snort*.
civil war in proggtardia
moose hunter news
Wisconsin City Sells Out of Palin Book After Visit
train wreck views
The Clattering Train
Insurers are in a catch-22 situation.If they take Obama up on his gracious offer, they’ll lose money, open themselves up to lawsuits, and put themselves in a position to be further exploited by Obama. If they don’t take him up on his offer, pitchforks.
****
Take care of yourself, Jeff!
>If they don’t take him up on his offer<
it is because state ins. regulators won't let them
it is fed./ state gov’t at this point
friday doc dump news
State Department reveals it’s been offering $10M reward for Benghazi info
Yep, it is a bogus offer, but they will nonetheless be condemned by Obama and others for not taking him up on his gracious impossible offer.
> be condemned by Obama <
lying liars what lies will be believed by whom? "if you like your creditability you can keep your creditability"
BBH: I wonder how long it took this “Krystal Ball” character to do a 180 after Bumblefuck did the same.
Obama himself has forced a Constitutional Crisis with this bone-headed move.
And not a moment too soon.
It’s time to reign in the Executive Office and remind it of the separation of powers.
Has Reggie Love also been seen entering the White House, along with the rest of the old gang?
I wonder what Rahm is up to this weekend.
– Yes, its definately a States vs. Fed thing, although in truth it really doesn’t matter what either says or does, the companies would be committing potential fiscal suicide to take Bumblefuck up on his offer. Yet another Progtard question thats meaningless. They’re masters at asking all the wrong questions.
– That is, of course, because if they ask the relevant questions, like for instance now what the fuck is jug ears going to do since hes just made the entire ObamaCare mess impossible to apply or defend, would be embarrissingly simple to see its an unreversable train wreck.
– As of now any person or company that signs on to ObamaCare, or a policy based on OCare, is totally fucked. The only thing thats still safe to use is existing plans that ignore OCare completely. All other aspects of the healthcare system are now in legal limbo.
– SBP, they never do a reverse, they just go silent and refuse to discuss it when things, no matter what the issue, go in the shitter for them.
– You’ll notice our resident ProgMole hits and runs these days. Even they realize that at this point its like shoveling shit against a tsunami. Bumblefuck has set some kind of politically dysfunctional record.
Time for a round of foreign visits! Someone give a head’s up to the Air Scouts to warm up Big Blue…
Fiscal suicide is correct, BBH. I don’t see insurance companies and commissioners touching this mess with a ten foot pole. They have shareholders (not to mention policy holders) to account to and I’m sure they’d rather not be voted off the board to please Jughead’s whims.
He really is an idiot. He spends months, hell years, demonizing the insurance companies and the medical profession by calling them blood-thirsty greedheads. What impetus do they have to piss on him if he’s on fire? None.
“Sorry, man. Our hands are tied.” They say. “I’ll transfer you to Legal.”
this O!bamacare should be a complete mess in december. good time for families to get together.
– The rebellion in Congress today should send shivers up the gestoppos necks. Probably the reason for the war console, but at this point they have a worse potential future than Assad in Syria.
– Notice how daily pressers have ceased so suddenly. Bumblefuck was supposed to meet with insurance company CEO’s today. I imagine they’d all be happy if he just promised not to do any more damage.
is that an iceberg mr. sulu?
Among the top concerns with the healthcare.gov website in recent days have been security and the privacy of users’ personal information, as questions were posed to top IT officials as they testified before the House Oversight committee.
Other officials also testified before the Committee on Homeland Security about cybersecurity and healthcare.gov.
A top Homeland Security official told the House Homeland Security committee this week that hackers have attempted more than a dozen cyber attacks against the Obamacare website. Those attacks have thus far failed, according to the official. There were also reports of the discovery of a denial of service tool called “Destroy Obama Care” designed to bombard the site with traffic, though the tool doesn’t appear to have actually been utilized.
Another concern has been that of the potential for fraud involving both the federal health insurance website and the state exchanges. Various reports have surfaced about scams sprouting up with the rollout of Obamacare, as well as other misrepresentations.
link
>There were also reports of the discovery of a denial of service tool called “Destroy Obama Care” designed to bombard the site with traffic, though the tool doesn’t appear to have actually been utilized.<
lying liars who what lie
– BTW, if he veto’s the Congressional bill like he said he will it will be his final coffin nail. The Constitutionally sound law would at least give him some breathing room for a time, even as it puts his flawed presidency in the spot light, and its about the only chance he has right now even to just hang on. I give it 1 in 8 odds he’ll overcome his ego and do the smart thing for a change, but maybe someone close to him will smack his ass hard enough to set him straight. Don’t know if thats even possible at this point, but even motley fools don’t generally bat zero. I don’t wish him well. He earned this disaster all by himself.
that’s : clowndisaster™ sir
“He spends months, hell years, demonizing the insurance companies and the medical profession by calling them blood-thirsty greedheads.”
Don’t forget Sebelius calling up healthcare executives and asking them to donate to Pro-Obamacare Enroll America.
The President acted stupidly.
Levin is worried about an insurance company bailout.
– Well, he broke them so Pier one imports policy applies.
“The President acted stupidly.”
As did the congress and supreme court…even the voters came off as stinkers.
that be colon bowel’s pottery barn thing. and de baracky broke it big time. have a swiss cake roll.
– Quote of the week:
– Progressives are like slinkies, good for nothing, but they always bring a smile when you push them down the stairs.
Levin is right to be worried. The only way an insurer will touch the policies they cancelled under ACA is if they have some kind of guarantee from the govt. that they won’t lose their asses doing so.
Then watch as federally guaranteed insurance policies go the way of federally guaranteed student loans.
“We’ve already established that you’re whores. Now we’re just negotiating the price.”
“That’s not the deal we negotiated!” “I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.”
let the “system” collapse .
– The mask of Proggressivism slips again.
– If I ever cross paths with one of these bastard Libturds their life insurance better be up to date.
Monster, Obama has already altered the deal more than a few times. Insurance execs are probably buying Tums and Maalox by the case.
As of right now, the bailouts that are hidden in the ACA can be used as a weapon to make insurance companies comply. On the other hand, insurance companies are being told they can break the law with impunity, but with no guarantees against later prosecution and, more than a few insurance commissioners have already said “nyet” to Obama’s plan.
I think health insurance companies are boxed in and it’s only a matter of time before they start detonating.
Seriously, I think the end result is 1/6 of the economy being destroyed in the next year or so. Hello depression.
oh my
For Democrats, Obamacare Unfolding Like a Greek Tragedy
A couple of postings.
And.
Smart, very smart, if chaos and destruction are the hidden agenda.
Is it 4/1/14 already?
– McAsshole is either senile tripping, Alzheimers or just plain fucked in the head. He can’t remember what he said ten minutes ago. Somebody needs to pack his office up in a box and move him to the nearest rest home or assisted living facility soon, like yesterday.
The insurance industry is furious,” wrote the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. “They’ve been working with the White House to get HealthCare.Gov up and running and they’ve been devoting countless man hours to dealing with the problems and they’ve been taking the heat from their customers over canceled plans, and now the Obama administration wants to make them into a scapegoat.”
– One thing you can always depend on when it comes to the Libturds. The instant they can’t get anything useful out of you they slip the knife in your back and shove you under the bus and expect you to take it in the shorts with a smile for Der Fuhrer. The fact that so many numbskulls actually flock to this bunch of vicious morons doesn’t speak well about a great many of our fellow humans.
So for the Mediaite writer just as for 95 percent of the rest of his kind the meaning of tragedy, even less of Greek tragedy, remains a mystery. The piece does make a nice showing how easy it is to warp language into meaninglessness though. But for the casual onlooker, here’s a hint: clowns have nothing to do with tragedy. Tragedies require excellent men to fall, and there are no excellent men on the scene of the ClownDisasterCare debacle. There are only unserious clowns, followed by unserious clowns.
Steve Forbes opines that the insurance commissioners and execs are going to do exactly nothing to help the Wan out of the ditch.
The business community nods sagely in agreement.
Insurance commissioners are not necessarily pro insurance companies (many insurance companies would privately state they are hostile), but they generally know how insurance underwriting works. They are not helping Obama out of the ditch because they don’t wish to follow him down there. Nothing personal.
Generally speaking, the players in a regulated industry like regulation because it minimizes competition and because pleasing a regulator is easier than pleasing customers.
But the whole point is profitability, and when the regulatory system is captured by those hostile to profit, S is going to HTF.