A significant blow to the "A"CA

One of the central tenets of the LITD worldview is that freedom is elegantly simple compared to any kind of contrivance that purports to make life "fair."

An interesting situation currently playing out inside the beltway, in which the House of Representatives is suing the Most Equal Comrade's regime over subsidies to insurance companies under Freedom-Hater-care, offers us the opportunity to see this play out. A federal judge upheld the lawsuit yesterday, asserting the basic Constitutional assignment of the power of the purse to the House.

I'll give you the deep-in-the-weeds account of what has gone down, and then break it down into the elegantly simple principles that underlie the whole situation.

Per Hot Air:

National Law Journal’s Zoe Tillman has more:

The Obama administration unlawfully paid billions of dollars to insurance providers under the Affordable Care Act without a funding appropriation from Congress, a federal district judge in Washington ruled on Thursday.

The insurance subsidies were designed to offset discounts that insurers were required to give eligible lower-income Americans under the health care reform law. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said federal agencies could not fund the subsidies through another section of the health care law that allocated money for tax credits.

“Paying out Section 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution,” Collyer wrote. “Congress authorized reduced cost sharing but did not appropriate monies for it, in the FY 2014 budget or since. Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one.”

That could mean an even faster destabilization of the irrational model at the heart of ObamaCare, of which more in a moment. The preliminary ruling on standing distinguished between subsidies paid to consumers in the exchanges (section 1401), which are statutory obligations through federal tax law, and those paid to insurers (section 1402), which are not part of tax law at all:

Properly understood, however, the Non-Appropriation Theory is not about the implementation, interpretation, or execution of any federal statute. It is a complaint that the Executive has drawn funds from the Treasury without a congressional appropriation—not in violation of any statute, but in violation of Article I, § 9, cl. 7 of the Constitution.17 The NonAppropriation Theory, in other words, is not about how Section 1402 is being applied, but rather how it is funded.

The issue, in other words, was that the executive branch had usurped the power of the purse. HHS argued that the House could have simply cut off funding for 1402 in explicit language, leading the judge to quote the House response that HHS was “apparently oblivious to the irony.” In order for the power of the purse to be a practical check, it has to be effective — and that’s exactly what HHS’ actions undermined:

The Secretaries further argue that the House is not injured by the lack of an appropriation because it can remedy or prevent that injury through means outside this lawsuit. Id. at 19-20. Chief among those means, they contend, is “the elimination of funding.” Id. As the House points out, the Secretaries are “apparently oblivious to the irony” of their argument. Opp’n at 35. Eliminating funding for Section 1402 is exactly what the House tried to do. But as the House argues, Congress cannot fulfill its constitutional role if it specifically denies funding and the Executive simply finds money elsewhere without consequence. Indeed, the harm alleged in this case is particularly insidious because, if proved, it would eliminate Congress’s role via-a-vis the Executive. The political tug of war anticipated by the Constitution depends upon Article I, § 9, cl. 7 having some force; otherwise the purse strings would be cut.

The Court finds equally unpersuasive the argument that Congress “could repeal or amend the terms of the regulatory or appropriations authority that it has vested in the Executive Branch.” Mem. at 19.23 But the authority trespassed upon under the Non-Appropriation Theory is not statutory; it is constitutional. It was not vested in the Executive by Congress; it was vested in Congress by sovereign people through constitutional ratification. Neither Congress nor the Executive has the authority to repeal or amend the terms of Article I, § 9, cl. 7.

Today, Rosemary Collyer rejected the argument that the statutory obligations to fund 1401 meant that HHS could commingle monies to fund 1402:

“If the statutory language is plain, we must enforce it according to its terms.” King v. Burwell, 135 S. Ct. 2480, 2489 (2015). Although the “meaning—or ambiguity—of certain words or phrases may only become evident when placed in context,” id., the statutory 2 provisions in this case are clear in isolation and in context. The Affordable Care Act unambiguously appropriates money for Section 1401 premium tax credits but not for Section 1402 reimbursements to insurers. Such an appropriation cannot be inferred. None of Secretaries’ extra-textual arguments—whether based on economics, “unintended” results, or legislative history—is persuasive. The Court will enter judgment in favor of the House of Representatives and enjoin the use of unappropriated monies to fund reimbursements due to insurers under Section 1402. The Court will stay its injunction, however, pending appeal by either or both parties. …

The only result of the ACA, however, is that the Section 1402 reimbursements must be funded annually. Far from absurd, that is a perfectly valid means of appropriation. The results predicted by the Secretaries flow not from the ACA, but from Congress’ subsequent refusal to appropriate money. Such an appropriation cannot be inferred, no matter how programmatically aligned the Secretaries may view Sections 1401 and 1402. See 31 U.S.C. § 1301(d) (“A law may be construed to make an appropriation out of the Treasury . . . only if the law specifically states that an appropriation is made”). “This principle is even more important in the case of a permanent appropriation.” Remission to Guam & Virgin Islands of Estimates of Moneys to be Collected, B-114808, 1979 WL 12213, at *3 (Comp. Gen. Aug. 7, 1979).

Paying out Section 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution. Congress authorized reduced cost sharing but did not appropriate monies for it, in the FY 2014 budget or since. Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one. See U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 9, cl. 7 (“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law . . . .”). The Secretaries’ textual and contextual arguments fail.

HHS has been enjoined from paying subsidies to insurers through 1402, although Collyer stayed the order while the Obama administration prepares an inevitable appeal. Without these subsidies, insurers will high-tail it out of the exchanges, a process that’s already under way. And for good reason, as I note in my column today at The Fiscal Times:

As the fourth year of Obamacare approaches, Politico’s Paul Demko reports that consumers can expect more of the same price hikes and narrowed choices as they have seen the first three years. The Obama administration insists that prices only rose eight percent for 2016 over the previous year – even though that itself is still more than three times the rate of inflation, and ignores states like Minnesota where the average premium increase was over 30 percent.

“There are reasons to think the next round may be different,” Demko warns. He quotes a Deloitte executive who agrees. “A number of carriers need double-digit increases” for 2017. Those price increases will hit the Obamacare exchanges on November 1^st, one week before voters elect a new President and Congress.

Kaiser Health News reports that 2017, far from being the year that stabilizes the Obamacare exchanges, will be another “adjustment year” for the risk pools. Even the director of Covered California expects to see higher rate increases in the fourth year of Obamacare than previously seen, although Peter Lee shrugs off the risk for his own exchange. “There are a number of reasons 2017 will have higher rate increases than the last few years,” Lee tells KHN. “But we believe in California we won’t see the significant headwinds many other states are experiencing.” However, Lee would not answer when KHN asked if UnitedHealth Group had applied to participate in Covered California for 2017.

This brings us back to the ability to keep one’s plan. UnitedHealth has made clear its intentions to exit most of the state Obamacare markets next year, and California may well be one of them. A more troubling exit looms on the horizon – the exit of all insurers from the lowest-cost bronze plans.

If this stands, House Republicans may have finally put a stake through the heart of ObamaCare. If so, they’d better start delivering on their promises for a coherent replacement.

Now, for those elegantly simple principles:

1.) As LITD, and everyone with basic economic common sense, has argued since this "A"CA was still in the discussion  argument stage, a company has to be able to cover its costs and make a profit to stay in business. If government uses its monopoly on the legitimate use of force to make an insurance company offer discounts to low-income people seeking to buy the company's product (coverage), it is using tyrannical means to prop up an otherwise unprofitable arrangement.

2.) The government has been subsidizing the difference between the discounted price of the product and what the companies need to operate profitably. The subsidies are money taken - again, backed by the implicit monopoly government has on the legitimate use of force - from taxpaying citizens to address the specific needs of certain fellow citizens. This is raw redistribution.

3.) The executive branch took it upon itself to pay this subsidy to the insurance company, in violation of Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.

So there are (at least) three levels on which this arrangement has been wrong: Government making a private business operate a certain way, using redistribution to so make it, and violating the Constitution.

Good on ya, Judge Collier. It's folks like you that keep us from looking askance at the entire occupational field of robe-wearing dispensers of justice.

Wednesday evening round-up

The Brazilian left's response to the relieving of Dilma Rousseff of her presidential duties pending a conclusion to an investigation of her alleged corruption is in a range the parameters of which are disbelief and rage.

An Air Force witness who was stationed in northern Italy in September 2012 says his squadron was ready to go. Could have easily come to the rescue of the Benghazi people.

This is dandy:

As American and allied officials celebrated the opening of a long-awaited missile defense system in Europe with a ribbon cutting and a band, the reaction in Russia on Thursday suggested the system had raised the risks of a nuclear war.

Russian officials reiterated their position that the American-built system imperiled Russia’s security. But the public discussion in Russia was darker, including online commentary of how a nuclear confrontation might play out in Europe, and the prospect that Romania, the system’s host, might be reduced to “smoking ruins.”

“We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.

“Measures are being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia,” he said. “The president himself, let me remind you, has repeatedly asked who the system will work against.”

The United States has asserted that the anti-ballistic missile system would protect only against “rogue” states, particularly Iran, and provide no protection for either Europe or the United States from Russia’s far larger arsenal of nuclear missiles. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization site will be controlled by an American officer.

The system, called Aegis Ashore, was essentially transferred from a seaborne launchpad onto land in Romania, at the Deveselu air base. The United States on Friday planned to break ground on a second site, in Poland, that should be completed in 2018. But a deputy United States defense secretary, Robert Work, reiterated Thursday there are “no plans at all” to strengthen this missile umbrella to protect against Russia.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Russian defense experts consider the site a threat.

“We still view the destructive actions of the United States and its allies in the area of missile defense as a direct threat to global and regional security,” Ms. Zakharova said.

Are you buying this crap about a "glitch" being the reason why the 2013 video of the Rosen - Psaki exchange is missing?

 

This will be a major change in my morning Web-perusal routine, but . . .

 . . . after sixteen years, I will no longer be checking in with Free Republic.com. Robinson and his Kool-Aid drinkers have made it official:

On the right, we’ve grown to pride ourselves on our greater openness to debate and ideas, on having no need to toe a Politically Correct line or crawl into a “safe space” like pampered college kids who just can’t handle hearing from anyone who disagrees with them.

For myself, I am so personally dedicated to this ideal that I even perform the great personal sacrifice of reading the comments field beneath my articles.

Yet somehow I wasn’t surprised to see Donald Trump supporters, those swaggering tough guys, turn one of their favorite Internet forums into a safe space where they no longer need to encounter criticism or opposition. Earlier today, Free Republic proprietor Jim Robinson announced that the discussion board would no longer tolerate opposition to Trump’s candidacy.

FR is going all in to defeat Hillary/Bernie, et al, by supporting our America-first nominee Donald Trump to the hilt.

Very sorry if your favorite candidate did not win the nomination and sorry if you cannot understand or agree with our mission, but those who can’t live with our immediate goal need to either keep it to themselves or sit it out (from FR) for the duration. Anti-Trump activities and NeverTrump trolling and recruiting efforts are not appreciated and are unwelcome on FR….

Our intent is to do whatever it takes to defeat the commies in November and if you do not wish to be part of this effort, please sign off now.

As I say, creature of habit that I am, it will be weird tomorrow to leave that out of my rounds, but they've made it clear they have no use for principled conservatives anymore.

Crickets from the bots

Rush Limbaugh, still in that tortured objective-analyst mode, trotted out a 2012 interview FNC's Greta Van Susteren did with Squirrel-Hair "just to see what the Trumpeters' reaction would be." He waited and waited after he played it. The result: "Zip, nada," to quote the talk-radio titan.

Here's The Blaze's summation of the exchange:

In the interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, Trump called Clinton a “terrific woman.” 

“I mean, I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years,” Trump continued. “I live in New York. She lives in New York. And I’ve known her and her husband for years, and I really like ‘em both a lot, and I think she really works hard. And I think she, again, she’s given an agenda that’s not all of her, but I think she really works hard, and I think she does a good job.”

“I just like her,” Trump added. “I like her, and I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, and it was very well received.”

Trump said in the clip that former President Bill Clinton is “a really good guy” and that Hillary Clinton is a “really good person and woman.”

Well, there wasn't a complete absence of response. What Rush got was all positive.

How do you people - the people that responded, as well as the Charles Hurts, the Newt Gingriches, the Laura Ingrahams, the Wayne Allen Roots of the world - sleep at night?

Medicare: Not set to go kabust in the future, already there

Juniper Research Group's Chris Jacobs, writing at NRO, explains what being gun-shy of the third rail hath wrought:

It’s not that Medicare will become insolvent in ten or twenty years’ time — it’s practically insolvent now. The program’s Part A (hospital insurance) trust fund lost a whopping $128.7 billion between 2008 and 2014, according to the program’s trustees. The Congressional Budget Office projected earlier this year that the trust fund would become insolvent within the decade.

But in reality, the only thing keeping Medicare afloat at present is the double-counting budget gimmicks created by Obamacare. In the year prior to the law’s enactment, the program’s trustees estimated that the Part A trust fund would become insolvent by 2017 — just a few short months from now. But within months after Obamacare became law, the trustees pushed back their insolvency estimate twelve years, from 2017 to 2029.

The trustees’ estimates notwithstanding, Medicare hasn’t become more solvent under President Obama — far from it. Instead, the Medicare payment reductions and tax increases used to fund Obamacare are simultaneously giving the illusion of improving Medicare’s insolvency. When former Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius was asked at a congressional hearing whether those funds were being used “to save Medicare, or . . . to fund health care reform [Obamacare],” Sebelius replied, “Both.”

The Madoff-esque accounting schemes included in Obamacare do not improve Medicare’s solvency one whit. In fact, they undermine the program, because the illusion of solvency has encouraged politicians to ignore Medicare’s financial shortfalls until it’s too late.

And ignore it they have. Sanders has proposed a “Medicare for all” plan that a liberal think tank this week estimated would cost the federal government $32 trillion over ten years. Hillary Clinton has proposed creating another new entitlement — this one a refundable tax credit of up to $5,000 per family to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses, for which many of the 175 million Americans with employer-sponsored coverage could qualify. And Donald Trump has run ads, in states including Pennsylvania, claiming he will “save Social Security and Medicare without cuts.”

And Jacobs spells out a key concrete reason why Speaker Ryan must exercise maximum wariness in these get-acquainted sessions with Squirrel-Hair:

By claiming he can ’save Social Security and Medicare without cuts,’ Trump is effectively signing Republicans up for a $28 trillion tax increase to ’save Medicare.’  Little wonder, then, that the Speaker expressed his reluctance to endorse Trump; at their meeting today, they could well address this topic in detail.

This piece was written before Ryan's post-pow-wow presser, which I found encouraging.

Refusing to follow Jerry Falwell, Jr. over the cliff

Not everyone in the greater Liberty University community is marching in lockstep:

(RNS) Mark DeMoss, a public affairs executive with deep ties in the U.S. evangelical community, has resigned his board seat at Liberty University after clashing with university President Jerry Falwell Jr. over Falwell’s endorsement of Donald Trump.

DeMoss, who for many years served as chief of staff to Jerry Falwell Sr., the founder of the university, said he disagreed with the “appropriateness” of Falwell Jr.’s endorsement.

---

But, he said, “I hope we have not ‘fallen out’ over this matter. I am a Liberty graduate and have been associated with the school for nearly 40 years. Despite our differences on this endorsement, Jerry and I share a love for Liberty University.”

The resignation serves as another sign of how Trump’s emergence as the presumptive Republican presidential candidate has fractured the evangelical establishment.

DeMoss told The Washington Post two months ago that the Republican front-runner’s insult-laden campaign has been a flagrant rejection of the values Falwell Sr. espoused and Liberty promotes on its campus.

In late April, the executive committee of Liberty’s board of trustees had voted to ask DeMoss to resign from the board’s executive committee, which he chaired, according to a statement he made to Patheos blogger Warren Throckmorton. Days later, on April 25, DeMoss decided to step down from the board as well, citing “a concern about a lack of trust.”

Another glorious sign of resistance.

Choke on this little nugget of reality, Barracuda

Anybody getting all wet in the britches over the prospect of primarying Speaker Ryan is facing an uphill battle:

Later today, Paul Ryan will meet with Donald Trump, a summit brokered by the GOP in order to help unite Republicans against Hillary Clinton. Ryan, who as Speaker of the House would normally serve as convention chair, expressed reservations about supporting Trump — and immediately became the target of threats of getting primaried. So far, though, the “Cantoring” of Paul Ryan looks like a bust:

Paul Ryan has an overwhelming lead on GOP challenger Paul Nehlen, according to a new poll.

The Remington Research Group found 78 percent of likely Republicans in the 1st CD backed Ryan, while 14 supported Paul Nehlen. The firm’s director wrote in an email it was the first survey the Kansas City, Mo., firm has done in the Ryan-Nehlen match up.

The contretemps with Trump hasn’t done much damage to Ryan’s standing in his district, either. One reason is that Trump himself isn’t all that popular in WI-01. While Ryan gets a 75/15 favorability rating in the district, Trump only gets a 41/43. Sarah Palin, who threatened that Ryan would get “Cantored” by Nehlen and publicly endorsed the challenger, does even worse at 24/54.

Ryan’s numbers are only slightly lower than a separate poll of WI-01 conducted by Marquette Law School, considered the gold standard of Wisconsin pollsters in March, and repeated by USA Today yesterday:

Ryan was viewed favorably by 81% of Republican voters in his district and unfavorably by 12% in a late March poll by the Marquette University Law School.

By contrast, Trump was viewed favorably by 28% of those voters and unfavorably by 59%.

The survey was taken before Trump became the presumptive nominee and before last week’s dramatic announcement by Ryan, the party’s highest-ranking public official, that he isn’t ready yet to make an endorsement.

Here's hoping no common ground is reached in Ryan's meeting with Squirrel-Hair today.

Three great takes today on the nightmare choice we face

Heather Wilhelm at Real Clear Politics says that if Squirrel-Hair keeps up his momentum and wins in November, it will be because Hillionaire so plainly a misanthrope:

Hillary Clinton also seems to quietly dislike (a) people, and (b) America, and you don’t need an advanced degree in election analytics to know this is not good. Sure, Donald Trump has talked about how stupid the people in Iowa are and how he wants to punch protesters in the face, and maybe sue a few journalists here and there, and how he won’t leave nuking Europe off the table, but overall—and again, here are those magic 2016 Goggles™ working—he manages, like Barack Obama, to serve as a blank screen upon which his followers can project their hopes.

No one cares about policy when it comes to Trump, apparently not even Trump himself. Just as Obama fans ignored his wacky pastor, his blatant insults to Christians, and his promise to control global sea levels, Trump fans ignore a multitude of sins. To his supporters, Trump projects “Team America,” even though we have no idea what Trump’s America might do. (Note: This should be mildly terrifying.)

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, bless her cynical heart, desperately tries to project a team of some sort, but fails miserably every time. This is because, as noted before, she doesn’t seem to like you all that much, and for many Americans, the feeling is mutual.

Noah Rothman at Commentary asks readers to consider how post-Americans two generations out will look back on this year:

 Amid all this, the temptation to succumb to cynicism is strong. For those not steeped in the political process, the desire to drop out of it must be intense. It serves us, however, to put aside our revulsion for a few minutes to ponder the moment and ask how posterity will look upon it and us. We might be able to fool ourselves into believing that all of this is normal and within the bounds of normal American political behavior, but will our children or their children? What kind of politics will they be left with? And will they ask if any of this could have been averted? Some might be tempted to wash our hands of it all, sit back, and enjoy the “reality show.” But none of this is a game.

And Larry Elder at Townhall echoes a lot of the point Matthew Continetti was making last summer in a Washington Free Beacon piece called "Revenge of the Radical Middle" which I've discussed here many times. They both rightly point out that the non-ideological critical mass of post-American society does not make the connection between the pervasive role of government in their lives and two bad results of that: an erosion of freedom, and an accumulation of insurmountable debt. Elder couches it this way: Face it, this is presently a center-left country:

As with socialist Bernie Sanders, economic anxiety fuels Trump's candidacy. After eight years of Obamanomics -- raising taxes, increasing regulations, "stimulus" and "investing" taxes on failed "green initiatives," most of the country says that economically we are on the wrong track. Their near stagnant paychecks, unemployment and under-employment tell many Americans that this recovery is the worst in their lifetime. Given the shared grievances of Sanders supporters and Trump supporters, Sanders voters may, in some number, turn to Trump over Clinton.
Unfortunately, the correct prescription to deal with this -- lowering taxes, reducing the size of government and reducing regulations -- is not what voters want. They want the social safety net preserved, not reformed. This is what Trump is offering.

In a nutshell, conservatives are right, but there are not as many of us as we've been assuming.

It is very late in the day.

The architect of planned decline at Howard University

The Most Equal Comrade uses the occasion of his commencement address to prepare the graduates to take their places among the cattle-masses of post-America.

Derek Hunter at Townhall spells out exactly what the MEC's sinister agenda was in crafting and delivering his remarks, and how they are at odds with the reality of how human success is achieved:

How does it help to tell people the system is rigged against them? What will they do when it’s not the system against them but the normal adversity that arrives whenever people work hard for something important? Will they stay the course and try to overcome? Or will they fall on the excuse they’ve been given? Bad choices become easier in this situation, but they’re still bad choices.
“We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust,” the president continued. 

Again, Obama is acting like the Pope here absolving people of the choices they made and the consequences of those choices. Those people, were “ground down” by racism, he says. Here’s a tip: If your life sucks, 99.99 times out of 100 it’s your fault. Society isn’t “unfair and unjust;” it doesn’t know or care you exist.
Next came the crux of the horrible message the president was selling. “And that means we have to not only question the world as it is, and stand up for those African Americans who haven't been so lucky -- because, yes, you've worked hard, but you've also been lucky. That's a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don't realize they've been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wasn't nothing you did. So don't have an attitude.”
No, Mr. President, it was something they did. These kids who worked their asses off to earn their degrees did, in fact, “build that.” Luck had nothing to do with it; choices did.
They chose to work hard in high school to get into a good college. They chose to resist the temptations available to everyone. They chose to set a goal and accomplish it. 

You can just tell the MEC licks his chops at the opportunity to address an audience of black post-Americans. Their treatment in most of the post-American media and academic institutions renders them tailor-made for perpetuating his general narrative that  dependency is virtue:

That’s the president’s real goal. He and his fellow progressives want people to view effort as a sucker’s bet and the concept of earning something worthy of contempt. Society used to admire those who sacrificed, risked and achieved; now they’re the object of scorn.

And after eight years of this - a hundred and three, really, if you count progressivism's insidious insinuation into all of American thought and civic life - we are now incapable as a people of selecting for ourselves any better choices for a successor to this evil than the two moral monsters now at the fore of the presidential race.

Yes, the cattle-masses are stirred up presently. But, no longer being fully human, they have no idea why, and are therefore incapable of determining how to ameliorate their agitation.

 

Secretary Global-test, the king of patty-cake

Mr. Unicorns-and-Rainbows is actually out there encouraging the legitimization of America's mortal enemy, the world's number-one sponsor of terrorism:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that European businesses should not use U.S. sanctions on Iran as an excuse for avoiding business with Tehran.

Mr. Kerry’s comments, just ahead of meetings with European banking leaders here Thursday, were part of the Obama administration’s moves recently to help integrate Iran into the global economic system after decades of punitive sanctions.

Six world powers agreed last year to lift international sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. But since the deal formally took effect in January, Iranian officials have complained that they are not seeing the results of the sanction relief swiftly enough. Although the U.S. played a major role in the nuclear deal, U.S. sanctions related to human rights and terrorism remain in place on broad sectors of Iran’s economy.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Mr. Kerry told reporters traveling with him Tuesday that the U.S. “sometimes gets used as an excuse in this process” by business executives who fear that U.S. would frown on deals with Iran.

“If they don’t see a good business deal, they shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because of the United States.’ That’s just not fair. That’s not accurate,” Mr. Kerry said.

Then again, given recent revelations about Ben Rhodes and how the Most Equal Comrade's nomenklatura knew that Rouhani getting "elected" president would not moderate the Iranian regime, we can see that this is of a piece with that whole bunch's mad vision of a world based on an "international community" that includes rogue states that develop nuclear missile programs with which to murder us in our beds.

I personally don't think it's funny

The fact that the "A"CA is a cluster-you-know-what for nearly every age group, income bracket, and health situation is, at this moment, affecting millions of post-AMerican households.

Charlie Rose and the Most Equal Comrade's speechwriters think it's quite a you:

If you are one of the millions of people who lost their health insurance under ObamaCare, the President’s lie “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” probably still stings. But to CBS This Morning host Charlie Rose and the Obama speechwriters he invited on his PBS show, it’s now a hilarious laugh line. 

On Monday’s edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show the host invited on former Obama speechwriters David Litt, Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett to wax fondly about Obama’s “great” communication skills when it came to delivering both serious speeches and funny lines. When Lovett, now a writer in Hollywood, told Rose he was most proud of the “serious speeches” on the economy and health care, Favreau jokingly jabbed that Lovett was responsible for the now infamous lie about keeping your health insurance plan. Rose and the entire panel cracked up at the line.

The following exchange was aired on the May 9 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show: 

CHARLIE ROSE: My point is do you have equal impact on serious speeches? Because it’s about style, use of language, etcetera? 

JON LOVETT, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: I really like, I was very — the joke speeches is the most fun part of this. But the things I’m the most proud of were the most serious speeches, I think. Health care, economic speeches. 

JON FAVREAU, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: Lovett wrote the line about “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”

LOVETT: How dare you!            

[laughter]

LOVETT: And you know what? It’s still true! No. 

That ain't any audacity of hope, but it's definitely audacity.

And this is beyond lame:

One Colorado politician was unusually candid about the rising health care costs Americans can expect as the president’s Affordable Care Act goes into full effect. In a painful interview with The Daily Sentinel this weekend, Sen. Michael Bennett (D) basically said that consumers in western and central Colorado, who face the most expensive health plans in the country, are out of luck. 

“I don’t have answers for Grand Junction, but I’m aware of the problem,” he said.

Because Obamacare lowered the threshold for Medicaid and allowed working-age adults to reap the program's benefits, it doubled enrollment in Colorado from 358,000 to 721,000, explains The Colorado Statesman. The financial consequences were not pretty.

As a result, general fund spending on Medicaid grew from $1.15 billion in 2009-10 to $2.67 billion in 2016-17. Add to that nearly $1.5 billion from the “hospital provider fee” and matching federal funds. Total spending on the department that oversees Medicaid has grown to more than $9 billion — fully one-third of all money spent by the State of Colorado. 

Bennet is simply left speechless.

It's been a while since Freedom-Hater-care was front and center on post-America's collective radar, but the cattle-masses are feeling the effects.

State Department creepiness

You knew the EPA, the IRS, the DoJ and ICE were this sinister. You had strong feelings that the State Department probably was, too.

Well, here's your confirmation:

While the White House scrambles to contain the damage caused by one of President Obama's closest aides -- who boasted of manipulating social media, journalists and friendly interest groups to sell the Iran nuclear deal -- it now is facing new questions about a portion of missing tape in which a State Department official acknowledges misleading the press on the Iran negotiations.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes' comments to The New York Times Magazine have sparked outrage in Washington's political and policy circles, especially re-igniting the debate over whether the White House oversold the deal to curb Iran's nuclear program.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., issued a scathing statement Monday saying the article “exposed how the White House manipulated and, in some cases, manufactured facts to sell the reckless Iran nuclear deal to the American people as a prelude to large-scale disengagement from the Middle East.”

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse took to the Senate floor Monday to lambaste the “spin.”

Now, the administration is facing further questions over a block of missing tape from a 2013 State Department briefing where top spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.

In that exchange, Psaki seemed to acknowledge misleading the press, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”

The Psaki comments, and prior department remarks, would appear to conflict with a fresh claim by Rhodes that they “confirmed publicly” there were “discreet channels of communication established with Iran in 2012.”

That Psaki exchange, however, was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. The department now says it cannot explain the deletion and is working to restore the material.

The era of the Most Equal Comrade's nomenklatura's grip on post-America's throat has been, from a journalistic standpoint, one long eating of the homework by the dog.