This appeared within 24 hours of a "FactCheck" that came to the opposite conclusion. Posted here for easy access.

Quick Test

2012-07-US-Sapphire 1

The two most important counters to the Obamacare as tax increase meme:

1: In the anti-injunction section of his ruling Roberts makes clear that the Congress did not intend for the penalty to be regarded as a tax. Anyone who uses this as a basis to claim that "Obama lied" about raising taxes are themsleves, lying. 2: It's a tax that NO ONE has to pay. The mandate is not a tax. The penalty is. It results in no ones taxes going up except in the rare event that they steadfastly refuse to provide for their own medical care. Furthermore the HCR law DOES include some taxes which the Republicans are respinning as affecting earners under 250K. But in each case, the claim is based on the actual payers of the tax passing them on to their customers as higher prices. This does NOT constitute a tax. People who claim otherwise are lying

Where I can Find Them

SB 1070 falls.

No one covering the latest Supreme court ruling seems to be noticing this crucial point:

(2) It is not clear at this stage and on this record that §2(B), in practice, will require state officers to  delay the release of detainees for no reason other than to verify their immigration status.  This would raise constitutional concerns.   And it would disrupt the federal framework to put state officers in the position of holding aliens in custody for possible unlawful presence without federal direction and supervision.  But §2(B) could be read to avoid these concerns.  If the law only requires state officers to conduct a status check during the course of an authorized, lawful detention or after a detainee has been released, the provision would likely survive preemption—at least absent some showing that it has other consequences that are adverse to federal law and its objectives.  Without the benefit of a definitive interpretation from the state courts, it would be inappropriate to assume §2(B) will be construed in a way that conflicts with federal law.  Cf.  Fox v.  Washington, 236 U. S. 273, 277.  This opinion does not  foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.  Pp. 22–24.

In other words 2(B) stands if and only if in actual practice it is not allowed to be the basis to detain anyone.

It has become fashionable now that Obama has created a 'Dream Act by Fiat" for Republicans to complain that he 'didn't do anything about immigration" when the Democrats controlled Congress.

Senate Republicans Block DREAM Act for Illegal Immigrants"

Needless to say, this is a lie........

The Individual Mandate Circa 1993

Left on a techie thread.....

Every time I call a company have to navigate a seven layer maze in order to reach a human I am reminded that the entire rationale for the technology that businesses buy is to eliminate jobs. In a day and age when entry level positions simply don't exist, celebrating additional triumphs of robotic thinking strikes me as horribly misguided.

I'm posting this as a constant reminder that no matter how far we think we have come, the past is not too far behind us. This is a page from The Rand McNally Grammar School geography textbook published in 1899.This is what my paternal Grandfather was taught in school!

The difference between Jobs, Job losses and Job loss rates seems to confuse people so I thought I'd draw my own picture. The blue bars represent the public sector job loss data that is often published on Left leaning sites including the White House. The red line is just the sum of those job losses or if you want, just label it Jobs. The green line (with the black trendline) is the month to month variation of the red line. I only mention it because Heritage once created a graphic designed to treat it as significant that there was an inflection point in it just as HCR was passed. I hope this chart demonstrates just how ridiculous THAT chart was.

On Gay marriage and Obama's 'evolution'

I'm delighted that Obama cited the Golden Rule as one basis of his decision. What strikes me more than anything is the volume of Scripture that people have to ignore in order to justify actively opposing Gay Marriage. If the Gospel teaches us anything its that 1: Our responsibility is to keep our own House in order and concern over condemning others is itself sinful. 2:Prayer should be a private matter between you and your Creator and that public displays of piety count for naught. 3: We are ultimately judged by how we treat prisoners and beggars and outcasts. Engaging in behavior designed to create outcasts is directly contrary to Jesus's direction. It never ceases to amaze me how many people fail to notice these simple points.

Decisions, decisions......?

What I find fascinating at this point is the Republicans seem completely undecided whether Obama is a ruthless thug or a spineless pushover. Having to decide definitely throws them off their game.

The Buffet Tax.....

As an actual policy proposal, the Buffet tax is a really bad idea. It just adds an additional layer of if/then calculations to a tax code that's already virtually incomprehensible. The value it brings to the campaign though is that it demonstrates in stark terms that the Right doesn't care about deficits and in spite of all the wailing and rending of garments, they never did. The fact that it would only cover a small percentage of the deficit is NOT an argument against it. If I have a chance to save 15% on my mortgage payments by refinancing, I'm not going to turn it down just because I still have to pay the rest. The bottom line is that the entire campaign strategy being presented now, is a direct result of the debt limit battle in August. Having demonstrated that Eric Cantor's agenda has dire real world consequences, Obama's now going to run directly against it.

Old Time Rock 'N Roll (Solo Break)

Comment on the IL Primary.

Illinois is unique in that it has all the demographic elements of the entire country laid out in sharply defined geographical boundaries. The city of Chicago is ethnically diverse and solidly Democratic. The surrounding counties (DuPage and Lake) in particular are entirely filled with the sort of preserve-my-wealth Republicans who nevertheless feel comfortable with the city, actually know gay people and are mostly uninterested in the Culture wars. From I-80 south OTOH the entire rest of the State is cornfields peppered with pop. 2000 town and a few minor almost-urban areas (Champaigne, Kankakee, Peoria, Springfield, Joliet) It is there, where fear of strangers, open unapologetic racism, and religious certainty are all welcome, that Santorum is able to shine. The reason that Romney is the inevitable nominee, is that the third category is a large area but very sparsely populated. (Don't tell any of those inhabitants that they don't represent the real America though) Those are fighting words!

The biggest LLC checks to Restore Our Future in January came from entities close to one industry: short-term lenders.

It's interesting that it takes a discussion about campaign finance to finally begin a discussion about predatory lending. As the rich and the poor choose up sides in our political system and invest their best efforts aligning sympathy from those who are neither rich nor poor one simple fact gets easily lost in the noise. Being poor is expensive. It's often said "it takes money to make money". Just as true is a similar slogan. "It costs money to need money" Between the lack of credit and the lack of transportation, not having a leg-up in life ends up being a chronic condition. Of course the reason this sees little discussion is that it interferes with the notion that the poor are just parasites who deserve their fate. At the end of the day though, any business model that relies on the ignorance of its customers is NOT an example of normal Capitalism at work.

Recession?

While everyone goes back and forth arguing over what a recession is, it obscures an important point. We are not in a recession and haven't been for a long time. Corporate profits are quite healthy. Productivity is healthy. The stock market is healthy. What isn't healthy is the job market. The irony then is the fact that we can lay the blame for our current morass on one place and one place only. The Job Creators®. For a bunch of folks who insist that the government can do no right, the current crop of Republicans are sure spending a lot of time blaming the Government for a situation that's directly under the control of the private sector. But as I've said before, when you're a purchaser of labor, high unemployment is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Ron Paul

The central paradox surrounding the Republican party is that they profess to hate the Federal government as an encroachment on their freedom, yet that hatred suddenly evaporates when the portion of the Federal government in question is the one that actually has control of all the weaponry.

Another Swampland Post:

Oddly enough I just used the phrase 'the politics of bedwetting' on the Ron Paul thread. I should have saved it for here. Anytime a commenter here (of any persuasion) makes a confident statement about the impending victory of their side in an upcoming election I am reminded of the tendency of people to think that their familiar world extends much wider than it actually does. They know how their neighbors vote and assume that that viewpoint is widespread. The downside to this style of thinking though is that the outer edge of this 'sphere of familiarity' represents a much sharper border in people's minds than it is in real life. No matter how frightening or foreign or dangerous a place seems, it's home to the people who live there and people are WAY more alike than they are different. (It may not seem that way until you remember that the next closest point of comparison are apes) We often marvel at how small the internet makes the world seem, but it's still no substitute for actual travel.

Posted on a Swampland thread re: Teacher's Salaries.

I knew it would be only a matter of moments before we got crowds of people demonstrating the inadequacy of public school teachers by displaying their own ignorance proudly. The truth is that a bad teacher can't keep a motivated student down and a good teacher can only marginally help someone who's uninterested in learning. How we succeed as a nation has a lot more to do with whether we hold education as a value in the first place. The fact that an entire movement is being built up around shouting down experts, decrying elitism (except among skilled gamblers), targeting bright people as worthy of scorn and flat out denying the utility of science says 10 times more about how we are going to fare as a nation than whether schoolteachers manage to pull down 60K or settle for 40. This Heritage foundation (lying with graphs since 1973) study is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.