In response to a recent post — in which I wrote that “Barack Obama is a thoroughly post-modern president. Words and facts have no objective standing; they are relative, socially constructed, a way to advance personal reality.” — I was criticized by a Time magazine reporter for continuing my “relentless attempts to depict Barack Obama as a despicable human being” and for employing tactics that are “not only intellectually dishonest, but cynical in the extreme.”
In fact, the point of my piece — which is that during oral arguments before the Supreme Court President Obama’s legal team referred to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a tax even as his administration now says it isn’t a tax and never was a tax — remains unrefuted. Indeed, this short clip validates exactly what I was arguing. It shows Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt insisting that “at no point” did any of the government’s lawyers, including Solicitor General Verrilli, refer to the ACA as a tax — followed by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli referring to the ACA as a tax.
How inconvenient.
Increasingly, the only thing Obama’s allies in the press have left is ad hominem huffing and puffing. They throw out charges that are as severed from reality as the claims made by Obama. It serves as a cautionary tale. Those who choose to defend the corruption of words by this president and his team will, sooner or later, be drawn into the enterprise themselves.
Sorry, how is quoting Ben LaBolt (whoever he is) evidence that Barack Obama is a post modernist who believes that words can mean anything? n nMr. Obama may indeed be a post-modernist but quoting an obscure Administration official isn't evidence of it. It may be evidence of Mr. LaBolt (again, whoever he is) being a political hack or a post modernist or a liar or a fool. n nMy guess? He's a hack. Sorry Ben.
No, but, the evidence you deny, is everywhere….do you not read a broad spectrum of the media, both in print, video and audio? Just as an example: President Obama is quoted (and I personally heard him say) that the new jobs report which shows a horrible number preceded by two previous bad job numbers "is a step in the right direction"…what part of the word "right" do you not understand if you are a literate American? No, it is not a "step in…." his disingenuousness is beyond belief at this point…but it is everywhere…listen or read Axelrod, or any of the anchors in the media… the Veep, the cabinet members, department heads…words matter Steve…they matter very much and there is still a majority in this country who know the difference.
Words matter. Word are how you think and how you think is who you are. This whole 0bama gang works on situational principals. Whatever advances their agenda will be deployed. The "moving in the right direction" was stunning. In the same category as "private sector is just fine."
Sorry, I denied nothing; hence the comment "Mr. Obama may indeed be a post-modernist.." n nWhat I object to is quoting some obscure Administration official as evidence of his post-modernism. n nThat's, frankly, silly and Mr. Wehner is too smart to use this for his case.
…"That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning." h/t Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"Those who choose to defend the corruption of words by this president and his team will, sooner or later, be drawn into the enterprise themselves." n nThe most repressive dictators have their obsequious zealots, the product of intimidation and fear combined with a desire to survive. They are not admirable, but at least they can be understood. Do the MSM see the trillion dollar plus deficits projected to continue for years into the future and not fear for the well-being of their children? Do they see the Obama administration abdicating when American leadership is needed in the Mideast and not wonder how many American citizens will be in harms way ten or fifteen years from now as the consequence? When looking beyond the failures of this administration, what exactly is there to see? Mr Wehner is correct. The corruption of words will not seem an obstacle to those who venerate, for no fathomable reason, an individual who is pehaps the most ineffectual "leader" we have ever had.
Whether or not they even care depends which party is in charge 10 or 15 years from now. Remember when Bush was President and the daily news gave the tally constantly of Americans killed in Afghanistan? n nHow about this? A gatewaypundit.com article headline: "Grim Milestone: Over Twice as Many U.S. Soldiers Have Died in Afghanistan Under Obama In 3 1/2 Years Than Did Under Bush in 8 Years – Media Silent"
Must be Bush fault!
You right! It Bush fault!
To be a proper news magazine is to present the news, all of it – or “All the news that is fit to print,” as the old gray hag likes to say – objectively and neutrally. An excellent example of Post-Modernism would be a weekly “news” magazine that poses as being unbiased, neutral and objective, because after all it calls itself a “news” magazine, all the while exploiting every trick in the book to advance its thoroughly biased agenda. n nOne thing is for sure: Time Magazine knows about Post-Modernism (as does the old gray hag). n
I'm sure I can spend 30 minutes and find dozens of, let us call them, less than truthful statements by a number of previous Administration officials. Vietnam War anyone? n nNo, Mr. Obama's problem (and ours) is that he is a cynic; perhaps the most cynical president since, well, Richard Nixon. He also believes that Republicans are out to destroy the country; or the country he imagines (see Robert Samuelson's July 4th column for example). n nThat may or may not be worse than his being a post-modernist subjectivist. But it's not new to politics.
That’s his taquiya he gets you to accept.
He is destroying the US, not the Republicans and getting one to believe otherwise.
No, stevemg…..if you understand who Obama is, where he came from, who he came from…you understand that this President is, in fact, not the person anyone, except his inner circle of friends that consists of about 5-7 people, know anything about. It my own personal belief after over four years of reading, researching and listening, that the Obama cartel was never prepared for him to win in '08…they were prepared to wait for another 4 or 8 years…it was Hillary's turn. But events put in place by them destroyed Hillary's chances and history moved on….But, when you really understand what a "progressive" truly is, then you have no problem understanding what has been happening in the USA for nearly 50 years: the prog machine has been preparing for the day when they could infiltrate the highest places in the government…Obama was the "chosen" one…make no mistake that Obama doesn't believe that 100%…
"Vietnam War anyone?" n nWhy go all the way back to Vietnam? The lies surrounding the Iraq war aren't enough for you?
What "lies"? In responding please provide a definition of a "lie" so we can laugh in your face.
Do people still actually buy and read Time or does the publisher just throw it on people's porches and, in a post-modernist subjective way, count those people as subscribers?
Democrats will play and spread fear mongering to get what they aspire to. They want to submit the US citizen in a way similar to what is going on in the land of Allah! That is why the MB are supported by the O administration.
President Obama is a creation of words, often elegant, usually politically correct, frequently deceiving and dishonest, but ever, truly a creature of words. n nHe came to prominence on the basis of his memoirs and his keynote speech to the Democratic convention. From then on he was a debater and orator and charmer. Experience, performance, achievements had no role in bringing Obama to the White House. His words did it all. Words to explain away 20 years along side bigots like Jeremiah Wright, of radicals like Bill Ayers, words about change and hope and that Iraq was militarily unwinnable and the surge would only make the debacle worse. n nAnd as president he has been all words and no achievements. He sold the $860 billion stimulus on the promise that it would keep unemployment from cresting 8%. He sold the ACA on the promise it would bend the unsustainable cost curve down. it has bent it up. He would make Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror and would win that fight. He is withdrawing with the Taliban stronger than ever. During one election he opposed gay marriage because of his Christian faith, and for this election he supports gay marriage because of his Christian faith. n nPolitics is the realm of blowhearts. But never before has there been a politician so purely and exclusively a creature of vocabulary. Instead of flesh and bone Obama is words, words that dance and spin and say whatever it takes. Of course Wehner is right.
Wehner persists in misunderstanding that neither Obama nor his lawyer in court nor the court and nor the ACA say the charge for no insurance IS A TAX. All of them say if the mandate isn't within the commerce power, it must get a reading which is "fairly possible" to save its legality. To read the mandate as a tax, said the majority, is not the most natural reading. It's most naturally read as a command. But reading it as a tax for the reasons Roberts discusses is, holds the majority, "fairly possible." The dissent obviously disagrees. But it escapes Wehner's understanding that it's entirely consistent for Obama to say that SCOTUS upheld the mandate as a tax but that it's still a penalty. That will be understandably confusing to non lawyers inexperienced with the law. And in the mugs' game of politics, that distinction will both get hopelessly confused and by cynics who know better disingenuously preyed on. But for commentators with claims to thoughtfulness and intellectual honesty, that distinction should at least be understood and properly be taken into account in any writing on these issues, however polemical.
As Kagan was intimately involved in ACA and it's crafting, you need to read Ginsburg angry dissent to understand somewhat what Kagan attempted and Roberts stopped…my question is why did Roberts join with the progs…time will tell us….or perhaps when Obama leaves office we will learn the truth.
"All of them say if the mandate isn't within the commerce power, it must get a reading which [sic] is 'fairly possible' to save its legality. " n nWe have here a material implication. If A is false, then B is true. The Court ruled (5-4) that A ("imposition of a mandate is within the commerce power") is false; therefore they have, as the logicians say, affirmed the antecedent. Therefore, there is no other logical conclusion than to affirm the consequent B ("it must get a reading which is 'fairly possible' to save its legality," i.e., "the mandate is a tax"). The conclusion, however, is manifestly NOT "that there is a 'reading that is fairly possible' that the mandate is a tax." Don't be ridiculous. The suit was not brought nor defended for the purposes of deciding what is or is not" fairly possible," a wholly subjunctive statement that can have no place in positive law, the function of which is to decide WHAT IS OR IS NOT THE CASE, in this case what is or is not true as a matter of law. The legal conclusion obviously is that "THE MANDATE IS A TAX" is the case AND is true as a matter of law. Note, I have used no more than your own hypothesis here. n nSummarizing, to "affirm" something means summarily to state that that "something" IS the case. By affirming 5-4 that the commerce clause did NOT apply to the mandate, the Court moved the argument from the hypothetical to the categorical and affirmed that the mandate is a tax, which is to say, the Court concluded that IT IS TRUE that "the mandate is a tax." We have now employed the indicative, not the subjunctive, mood, and no malarky about "confus[ed] non lawyers inexperienced with the law" will rescue your argument. n nYour statement that "it's entirely consistent for Obama to say that SCOTUS upheld the mandate as a tax but that it's still a penalty" was therefore falsified once the Court had actually ruled. For what can you mean by "consistent"? It can't mean legally consistent: there is a whole body of Supreme Court precedent that says that taxes and penalties are different creatures. The statement can't be logically consistent for the reasons I have outlined. It can, however, be "fairly read" as being POLITICALLY consistent, which is to say, nakedly expedient and, in Obama's mouth, as having nothing to do with any variety of consistency one might mention. I submit that that is all that Mr. Wehner maintains in his post, having misunderstood nothing. n nThe arena in which the mandate "[is] still a penalty" is wholly hypothetical. (Talk about the meaning of the word "is"! ) In so mythic a realm, it's true, the IRS will accept your hypothetical dollars in payment of your hypothetical penalty. The rest of us will be liable to the real thing.
1. …"All of them say if the mandate isn't within the commerce power, it must get a reading which [sic] is 'fairly possible' to save its legality. " … n nWhy the "sic"? Where's the error. n n No one who understands the issues thinks that therefore it must get a reading which is fairly possible to save its legality. The proper conclusion is that the law must get all fairly possible readings to see whether any of them yields a constitutional supportable view of the law. That's an ironclad principle of judicial deference to the legislature, the court being unelected and all. Both dissent and majority agree on this principle. They simply disagree on its application in the instant case. n n"Fairly possible" is a jurisprudential test. It absolutely has a place in "positive law." Here your argument is with SCOTUS not me.
2. When you talk about moods and so forth you make it fairly evident that you don't know what you are talking about. Read the joint dissent. It move from "mood to mood" as well. Again the principle is in tact in both sets of reasons. Only the application differs. n nYou further misconceive how "consistency" applies here and are numb to the nuances of the law. See if you can follow this. The majority agreed the mandate is most likely and naturally read as a command. As a command it must be scrutinized under the commerce power. It exceeds Congress's power there. The next precedentially sanctioned analytical step is to seenwhether it bears not the best reading but a "fairly possible" one that comes within a head of Congressional power. The majority held that it could fairly possibly read as a tax while admitting this is not its most natural reading. The majority in effect construed it as a tax to save the mandate's constitutionality, in effect deeming it a tax. So what the payment requirement of the mandate is, is a penalty that can be legally read to be a tax for jurisprudentially sanctioned, judicial deference constitutional purposes. n nIf you go to Volokh Conspiracy and read the posts on this by the estimable Randy Barnett, you'll find he makes the same analysis.
The "sic" was supplied because in American English a comma is supposed to precede the nonrestrictive relative pronoun "which," except in the possessive case, as opposed to the restrictive "that." British English does not make this distinction. "Sic" does not necessarily mean error — I don't know if you're British or not — but here "sic" means that the meaning is ambiguous: inserting a comma after "reading" would change the meaning. n nLook, either it's a tax or it's a penalty. It cannot be both simultaneously. When Obama states that the mandate is a penalty, he obviously means exactly that and only that. He doesn't mean that it is a penalty but not just a penalty. How do I know? Because he also categorically asserts that it is not a tax, all your mumbo-jumbo about "jurisprudentially sanctioned, judicial deference constitutional purposes" notwithstanding. Obama is making a political argument, logic be damned, and it is painfully obvious that he is making a political argument. That is all that Wehner is saying. So why are you trying to rescue the President from the consequences of a ridiculous, politically motivated assertion by making on his behalf an argument that he himself is not making? You drastically misapprehend the point that Mr. Wehner is making about the lubriciously post-modern character of the reasoning, if it may be dignified as such, of Obama in particular and Democrats in general on this subject (as on SO many others). You simply disregard his point and insult him in aid of impressing us with law school sophistry. n nAlso, it is you who do not know what you're talking about when you bring up the subject of "moods." The fact that this, that, or the other grammatical mood is used during a legal argument is irrelevant, and I am amazed that you would resort to such a red herring. The Court's argument still ends, as clearly it must if their decision is to be enforceable, in a declarative statement: The mandate is a tax. Moreover, in practice it will be collected as a tax. Further, the attitudes that people subject to it will have about whether or not they will pay it, when they will pay it, why they will pay it, etc. depend essentially on its being a tax. n nThe hair-splitting gymnastics lawyers will put themselves and others through to deny the obvious is scarifying, and appeals to "nuance" do not render the practice any less objectionable any more than does appealing to the "estimable" Mr. Barnett. which, as they undoubtedly taught you in law school, is an argumentum ad verecundiam and therefore fallacious. Apart from which, Barnett is clearly defending Roberts' reasoning and not the uses to which the President is putting it.
"Sic" to my understanding usually means that the writer quoted has so written what is quoted and the error, if any, is with the writer. Here putting a comma after which or not putting a comma after which changes my meaning not a whit. The real point is that your "sic" is pedantry, an attempt to demonstrate some intellectual superiority, which is rather an exercise in irony in the circumstances. n nBut you are so wrong. The charge can be a tax and a penalty at the same tiime, depending from what perspective it's looked at. From the standpoint of what the ACA says, it's a penalty. From the standpoint of the majority's legal reasoning to try to rescue the constitutionality of the law as a matter of judicial deference, it's, as the court says, "fairly possible" to read it as a tax, even if that's not the best reading. As a matter of statutory construction for the precise purpose that construction was undertaken, it's a tax. n nObama could explain that differentiation when he speaks about about what the charge is. But why would he? He's campaigning now for reelection. He's not leading a legal discussion. He'll put things in terms that best suit him. It's exactly the subtlety of the distinction that had team Romney team so balled up. It was technically correct for his top guy to say the charge isn't a tax. But it was unfortunately politically stupid. So now Romney campaigning has to lower his I.Q. by about 30 points and join all the other vulgarians, who don't know what they're talking about, in saying because of the way Roberts ruled, the charge is a tax. They say that because "tax" is code for everything everybody on the right doesn't like about Obama. The word triggers political salivation, like Pavlov's dog salivated after conditioning. n nI'm not appealing to Randy Barnett to make my argument. I've already made it. I'm simply suggesting you consider –if you don't credit my argument–what the Godfather of the activity/inactivity distinction has had to say about the very issue you and Wehner are so confused about. n nFinally, you can throw around Latin phrases in further exercise of your pedantry. It doesn't help salvage your obvious confusion and being out of your depth here. As I said to you before, your argument isn't really with me. It's with the relevant precedent and the 9 SCOTUS judges who agree with the principle, your irrelevant observation about moods notwithstanding, but disagree with its application in this case, as reasonable people are wont to do.
Right off the bat you put the finger precisely on the problem, namely, your understanding, which is defective (NB: important comma before "which"). "Sic" does not mean error; it means "so" as in "[it's written] so." You see? A knowledge of Latin is more useful than ignorance of same. You also do not understand the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses, which is definitely not pedantic, or that the addition of a comma before the latter DOES change the meaning of a relative pronoun. Those distinctions are matters of elementary English grammar, yet you will lecture the rest of us "vulgarians" on the fine points of constitutional law. In short, to use your phrase, you are out of your depth in a half inch of water but imagine that you may paddle about confidently in the deep end. Pathetic or obtuse? You decide. n nClearly obtuse, however, is your failure to understand the important difference between whatever tortured logic judges may use to arrive at a decision and the law as applied. They are two different concepts. To quote you, "see if you can follow this" — fair warning, it will require some logical stamina, so it may be a challenge — if in fact one must change perspective to see the mandate now as a tax and then as a penalty, it is IMPOSSIBLE, as a matter of logic and psychology, to do that "simultaneously." In statutory (i.e., positive) law, the ENACTED law, the law containing elements of compliance and enforcement, the law that we live with, in the world that most of us inhabit by the way, in that world, I say, the mandate is now conclusively a tax and will be a tax at least until the next go at it in the Court. You could bark your shins on that tax, it's now that real. On the other hand, where IS this world of two "perspectives" you keep yammering on about? Who are its inhabitants, poor wretches? And is there a sophist or a confidence man or shyster lawyer in history who has not sung that old tune "Well now, if you'd just look at it this way . . . "? n nFurther, your vague statement appealing to "the 9 SCOTUS judges who agree with the principle" indicates your general lawyerly shiftiness. What principle are you talking about here and how does it apply in the instant case where four of the justices argued strenuously that the Court has NEVER treated a statutory penalty in the way Roberts did. They argued that position coming and going as being both unnecessary and insufficient to establish the constitutionality of the mandate. To imagine that you may enlist them on your side of the argument in a further, deceptive appeal to authority is fairly brazen (NB: important comma before "deceptive"). n nFinally, how the hell do you know what Obama would or wouldn't, could or couldn't do if he wanted to? You continue, with a determination that is SIMULTANEOUSLY remarkable and appalling, to ignore the point of Wehner's blogpost, which is that for Obama the truth or falsity of his claim that "the mandate is not a tax" does not much depend on the legal arguments John Roberts or Ruth Ginsburg put forth last week, just as his pre-emptive reclassification of 1.4 million illegal aliens as non-deportable en bloc on the basis of his discretionary power as chief law enforcement magistrate did not actually need to agree very much with the plain meaning of "discretionary." A dozen similar episodes of literal double-talk over the past four years might be mentioned. He can always find a "perspective" — or, what's even better, he can always count on some puffed-up fool to provide him with one — from which to argue that what is non-discretionary is discretionary, that what is not a tax is a tax, or vice-versa, as and when it suits him. That is what "Post-Modernist" and "post-modern discourse" mean, words that are in the title of the present post and that animate it but that do not merit attention even once in your response to Wehner (or myself). Your entire argument has therefore been a self-serving detour into the smelly On-the-One-Hand-on-the-Other-Hand Swamp where, instead of Pogo, who was at least entertaining while concocting his various paradoxes and malapropisms, we are to be treated to Barack Obama, David Axelrod, and their like impersonating John Lovitt aka Tommy Flanagan: "A tax? A penalty? Yeah! That's the ticket."
You write….it means "so" as in "[it's written] so… n nI wrote…"Sic" to my understanding usually means that the writer quoted has so written what is quoted and the error, if any, is with the writer… n nOnly pedantry could divine a difference here. Whereas in substance there is no meaningful difference between what we both said, you feel impelled to rehearse minutiae in a futile attempt to show you know more than I do. I can coin a new category of irony– pedantic irony. n nYou ask …pathetic or obtuse… But you studiously avoid explaining what in my sentence is changed by the use of a comma, which non meaning I asserted in my last comment, and which assertion to the least of subtle minds wanted a refutation, which refutation you purposefully side stepped. So, with all due respect, you are long on labels and Latin phrases but, in context, pathetically short on substance. You ask…pathetic or obtuse… May I suggest qua you, that may be a false opposition. The substance here is the use of commas for writerly effect not the slavish adherence to "rules." n nI will concede to you more knowledge of technical grammatical terms, but I have a Masters degree in English literature, taught freshman English and composition for two years at a good university, a law degree and many years of practice as well as having written literary criticism for my own and others' pleasure. What you have standing behind you I don't know but I fear it may be not much. n nYou write…What principle are you talking about here and how does it apply in the instant case where four of the justices argued strenuously that the Court has NEVER treated a statutory penalty in the way Roberts did… Obtuse this is and it wouldn't be pathetic for someone with appropriate modesty. I have repeated the principle twice. Let's go for the charm. The principle is that where a law cannot be upheld on the jurisdictional basis primarily asserted, here the commerce power, judges must scrutinize it to see whether it bears a "fairly possible reading" that will justify its legality under some other head of congressional power–here for the majority it did under the taxing power, again not the best reading of the law but a "fairly possible" one, a phrase from case law. n nYour attempt to examine the merits of Roberts's reasoning compounds the pathos (and your harping on your use of commas is an objective correlative for the smallness of your mind.) Also your comment betrays both your reading incomprehension and your lack of analytical rigor. I never addressed the merits of Roberts's reasoning. In fact I said the application of the principle, which I have now explained to you for the third time, could be a source of reasonable disagreement among reasonable people. That betrayal is evident in your supposition that I have enlisted the dissenters on my side of the argument, which is dumb given that you have clearly been unable to follow the line of the argument. n nLet me help you. I said the mandates's charge could be characterized as both a penalty and a tax, depending on the perspective it's looked at from. And I gave you both perspectives: the thrice explained principle and the straight words of the ACA, which I noted Obama prefers to harp on for his own political benefit. To emphasize the existence of the former perspective I noted at least twice that the dissent agrees with the principle, but not with its application here. Again, and again, and again, the charge is readable as a tax from the standpoint of a precedentially ordained need to give the law all fairly possible readings to try to maintain its presumptive legality. But from this you, unable to stay linear, launch into the frailties of Roberts's reasoning and advert to some of the dissent's reasoning, a subject I neither engaged nor which is pertinent to my argument. Hope that helps. n nLet me help you with your last paragraph as well, wherein you "lose it" analytically and launch into tirades about the ACA quite beyond the point of anything I suggested or argued. Wehner, as confused as you, defines post modernism as something like the view that there is no objective reality, that all reality is socially constructed and that therefore the post modernist is quite free to call anything whatever suits him. As far as that goes that's not too bad, if not overstated in its last part. But then Wehner, not understanding the effective "deeming" of the charge as a tax by the majority in its application of the thrice explained principle, conflates the two perspectives and in fact, in measure of his confusion, and yours, undermines his own argument. n nHe takes the thrice explained legal deeming of the law as a tax to be the "reality" Obama putatively trashes in his presidential post modernism. But Obama is quite unpostmodern in seeing, as do I and Randy Barnett, the legal deeming, the legal construction for precedentially ordained judicial purposes, for what it is–the legal construction of reality. Obama serves reality well by calling the charge a penalty and is decidedly not post modern in that. It is you and Wehner and the others who not not know whereof they speak who, and in deep irony here, unwittingly do post modernism's bidding by taking the legal construction of reality to be reality itself. n nBest of luck.
You originally wrote: "it must get a reading which [sic] is 'fairly possible' to save its legality. " n nI really shouldn't need to explain this to an actual English teacher. I am a physics teacher and even I know that in normal American English usage a "which" refers to the entire preceding clause, subject and predicate combined, i.e., "it must get a reading," whereas "that" is required if one intends to refer only to the immediately preceding noun (plus any modifiers), i.e., "reading." There is clearly a difference in meaning between the two construals, whether large or small is beside the point, but they do not mean the same thing, so what you choose to call "the use of commas for writerly effect" I call a tin ear for communicating American English. n nYou wrote: " . . . the writer quoted has so written what is quoted and the error, if any, is with the writer . . . ." First of all, the problem as I pointed out to you is that "sic" does not necessarily carry an imputation of error and, second, I did that because in your first response to me you asked "Where's the error?" Full stop. I did not, first time at bat, spell out the exact error, mentioning only that it had to do with restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses, because I foolishly took it for granted that a literate person would at once know what was meant. God help anyone who studied English at your knee, but you have ginned up this entire controversy out of a combination of ignorance and the refusal to admit that you may have expressed yourself with less than full clarity, which is ALL that the use of "sic" meant here. In that regard, it really is mystifying why you are defending to the death this one tiny infelicity of yours when you "submit" whole paragraphs of clumsy English sans care. n nI really do not have much more time or energy to waste on you, but ponder this question: Did you or did you not write "The charge can be a tax and a penalty at the same tiime, depending from what perspective it's looked at"? You complain about "conflation." Good grief, you cannot adopt two different perspectives at the same time! It's flat impossible. And here's a useful hint: THAT imbecilic premise of yours, the recognition of which as such would not tax the resources of a half wit, is at the bottom of the entire accusation of a Post-Modernist presidency. The gun barrel you attempt to train on Wehner has already blown up in your face. n nBy the way, for someone who "wrote literary criticism for yourself and other's pleasure" — hmm, reads like a vanity-press promo — your last paragraph really is unforgivably bad, just awful. Like a dog returning to his vomit, as the Good Book says, you repeat this rubbish, e.g., "the legal deeming, the legal construction for precedentially ordained judicial purposes," as if avoiding the issue for the third time will somehow make it go away, the issue being that Obama will say whatever is politically expedient for him to say, and the rules of consistency and noncontradiction can just go knit. Like the man following the elephant, some hack will come round to tidy up and answer any objections. (That's your cue, by the way.) n n nPlease, go right ahead. Repeat it a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth time. I'm done
As "My Cousin Vinnie" said after his first cross examination finished, "I got no more use for this guy." n nOn to better things.
What? Not a word about the Romney "It's not a tax / It is a tax" tap dance?
C'mon, you've made three silly comments in one post. Not a hat trick to be proud of. n nRaise your game, please.
Glad to see at least one wingnut is reading my comments. Maybe something will sink in.
PS – Still no response about the Romney tap dance. Hmmm, wonder why?
How many here have check out the "NEW OBAMA EXECUTIVE ORDER SEEKS 'CONTROL' OVER COMMUNICATIONS DURING 'CRISIS'…" This man is spooky!!!! (Remember Rahm's advise: don't let a crisis go to waste…")