Why Chief Justice Roberts voted for Obamacare

A lot of people have been wondering why the right-wing extremist Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, could not only have broken ranks with his right-wing clones--Alito, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalia--to vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act in the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, but to have actually written the majority opinion himself, sending waves and shock and dismay among the ranks of the Republican politicians and the mainstream media.

One possible explanation has been offered by some observers: Chief Justice Roberts suffers from epilepsy [his seizures were documented  in 1993 and 2007] and it is almost a certainty that he has been refused medical insurance by the plutocrats' insurance companies because of his "prior condition."  So, in writing his decision in which he concurred with the four progressive justices--Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan--he may not have been thinking of the 30 million uninsured Americans, but, just like most people, he might have been thinking "Me first."

Jagor

Read political commentator and broadcaster Thom Hartmann's view on the decision:

The absurd Republican reaction to Obamacare being upheld

 

The Supreme Court's health care ruling on Thursday protected hundreds of millions of Americans from being denied health insurance for pre-existing conditions, kept millions of young people insured under their parents healthcare plans, and will eventually lead to coverage of more than 30 million Americans who previously did not have access to health insurance. But if you asked Republicans about the ruling, they'd say it's a sign of the apocalypse.

 

The reactions from Republicans to Obamacare being upheld are telling. Republican Congressman Mike Pence compared the ruling to 9/11. The former Spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, Mike Davis, argued that an armed revolution might now be justified. And Conservative radio hosts Michael Savage and Bryan Fischer attacked Chief Justice John Roberts, suggesting this his decision may have been influenced by epilepsy medication - a story that was also picked up on the Drudge Report.

 

The point is, Obamacare will save the lives of millions of Americans - and if Republicans think that's as bad for the nation as 9/11 or a sign that an armed revolution is necessary, then there's something very rotten in today's Conservative movement. It's clear today's Conservatives have been taken over by a strain of Ayn Rand psychopathy.

 

Source: The absurd Republican reaction to Obamacare being upheld

 

Plus ça change...

Newspaper headline: Mubarak's lawyer denies former president is 'clinically dead.'

Jagor's Comment: Well, clinically dead or not, Mubarak's life is over. He waited just long enough to be sure that the military had retained and secured control of Egypt as it has in an unbroken line since the young officers overthrew King Farouk in 1952.

After all the sound and fury, all the hundreds of hours of demonstrations carried live around the world, after all the deaths and bloodshed, after all the elections and all the political punditry and prognosticating, it's all back to the status quo ante: the military is running Egypt.

As the French say "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." That old cliché has never been truer.

Global push to guarantee health coverage leaves U.S. behind

Here's more evidence--if anyone needed it--that the United States continues its decline into the status of a third-world banana republic, neglecting the needs of its citizens and squandering trillions of dollars on unneeded weapons systems.

 

This article from the Los Angeles Times explains how China, Mexico and other countries far less affluent are working to provide medical insurance for all citizens. It's viewed as an economic investment--not an expense.

Excerpts:

China, after years of underfunding healthcare, is on track to complete a three-year, $124-billion initiative projected to cover more than 90% of the nation's residents.

Mexico, which a decade ago covered less than half its population, just completed an eight-year drive for universal coverage that has dramatically expanded Mexicans' access to life-saving treatments for diseases such as leukemia and breast cancer.

In Thailand, where the gross domestic product per person is a fifth of America's, just 1% of the population lacks health insurance. And in sub-Saharan Africa, Rwanda and Ghana — two of the world's poorest nations — are working to create networks of insurance plans to cover their citizens.  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/12/nation/la-na-global-health-reform-20120512

Read the whole article and weep--and then, dry your tears and get organized and start demanding full, universal health care for all American citizens.

 Health care for all Americans can easily be paid for by slashing wasteful and unnecessary white elephant "defense" projects such as the F-35 fighter, the most expensive weapon ever. The entire program is now expected to cost taxpayers nearly $1.51 trillion; Each individual plane is now estimated to cost $160 million - more than double the $74.5 million the DoD initially estimated they'd cost.

Just think of how much good $1.5 trillion could do to keep Americans healthy and cure them when they are sick.

Think about it...and act!

Jagor