Is it a tax or not? Depends...

Obama and Dem spokesclowns before the razor-close congressional vote on Obozocare: "This 'mandate' thing is NOT a tax. Not. NOT! Absolutely not! No way is this a tax! Really! Reeeeallly! You can trust us on this--it is *absolutely* not a tax!

Supreme Court, 2012: "You claim the 'mandate' part of this law is permitted under the Constitution's commerce clause. Um...it's not. But don't worry, we'll rewrite it for you so it'll pass, by calling the individual mandate a 'tax'. There ya go! No charge."

Obama and Dems: "Yay!! We're number one! We're great! Da People have spoken! But...uh...that part where the court said it was a tax? IT'S NOT A TAX! We have no idea where he got that idea! What a nutcase! Didn't you hear us, Roberts? It was NOT a tax! God, what a moron! Hey, c'mon, have we ever lied to you?"


On the same topic: I'm seeing lots of comments about the decision like this one:

What's the point of caring about this shit?

The Right never wins when it matters.

When the right side does win it makes no difference.

The crucial vote--and the crucial theory saving Obamacare--came from a justice appointed by a Republican.

Republicans strive to appoint sound "jurists" who will uphold the Constitution. Democrats appoint reliable ideologues. One of our "jurists" almost always flips to join their ideologues and we end up with crazy shit like a constitutional right to bugger, a blessing for liberals to practice "good" racial discrimination, and a penalty that the court rules could have been a tax and thus is Constitutional, or some similar gibberish.

In ten years this whole country is going to look like the worst parts of Detroit, Greece and Nuevo Laredo.

Or this one:

Who cares whether they call it a penalty or a tax? Say you're a low-income, low-information voter who doesn't have health insurance now because you don't want it. Not your choice anymore, but you love it because you don't see that losing the option to choose is a problem.

But even a product of public-school education quickly realizes that the premium for the insurance the gov't wants you to buy is more expensive than the tax or penalty or whatever the hell it is.

So you pay the tax (or penalty or whatever) because the media have told you you can just wait until your latest tongue piercing turns into a life-threatening staph infection before you buy insurance--because Dear Leader and the Dems have decreed that you can't be denied coverage. (Cue heavenly music!)

And even better, thanks to the morons who crafted this bill, you then get to pay the same premium as all the healthy people in the plan. So if the insurance company ends up paying $500,000 for your treatment and you've only paid a tiny fraction of that in premium, it's your lucky day, and tough luck for them, right?

What could possibly go wrong with such a brilliant plan? How could this not be sustainable forever? Besides, insurance companies are eeeevil, so they shouldn't make a profit anyway.

Wow.

And this one:

Obama's lawyers argued that the federal government's powers were unlimited, because of the Commerce Clause. Justice Roberts sharply disagreed: He ruled the federal government's powers were unlimited because of the taxing power.

I really love blog comments!

This commenter had a good take, but naive:

Barky and the Dems keep saying "It's not a Tax." But this contradicts Justice Roberts, who says the only way ObamaCare is constitutional is....as a tax.

So when Barky and the Dems keep saying "It's NOT a tax," in effect they're saying that ObamaCare is unconstitutional.

They can't have it both ways.

Ah, young Grasshopper, of course they can. They're liberals, which means they routinely hold contradictory beliefs without a scintilla of discomfort. In fact you can see the New Talking Point forming now: That Roberts didn't literally say it was a tax, but merely that IF it were to be considered a tax it would be constitutional.